Once a Jew, always a Jew? (An interview)

[DavidDvorkin]

I was interviewed this morning on the Chicago Jewish Cafe program about my book ONCE A JEW, ALWAYS A JEW? Here's the video link:

[cilla4progress]

1. Bookmarking!

Born of Jewish parents and grandparents, all 4, I was raised by and in secular humanism.

As such, we celebrated Christmas - no symbols of Hanukah, but no other Christian holidays - or Jewish for that matter!

I can only guess at my parents' reasons.

I found Ari Melber's interview of Jeff Goldblum on this topic interesting yesterday - did you catch it?

[DavidDvorkin]

3. I didn't see the Goldblum interview

I wish I had.

[Croney]

2. The host maintains that whether or not you can call yourself an ex-Jew

depends on where you live, so I don't think he's understanding the internal criteria that was satisfied to justify your personal claim to the label.

I remember what my mother said years ago when I told her I was an atheist. "No you're not! You were raised a STRICT BAPTIST!"

She didn't understand what I meant either.

[DavidDvorkin]

4. I felt we were talking past each other

But I'm grateful to him for doing the interview, and he did put the Amazon link for the book on his show's YouTube site.

[Warpy]

6. Thanks, I thought the same thing

It wasn't as much an interview as it was two competing monologues.

What they were both talking past is deep culture, which covers things like how men talk to women and women talk to men and how they talk to each other, humor, eye contact, social distance, and a host of other things we really don't tend to think about because they're so ingrained.

Nothing much can change this, but people who realize what's going on can blunt it slightly when stepping out of their own culture and dealing with another in order to decrease the intercultural friction.

One of the funniest things I ever read was a book on intercultural psychotherapy wherein none of the authors actually got the point. The chapter on the Irish was written by an Italian who said (among other howlers) that psychosis was so common among the Irish it had to be taken as a cultural norm. The chapter on Native Americans was written by a WASP who thought all tribes were exactly alike in basic beliefs and customs. I learned a lot from that book but it wasn't anything the authors wanted me to.

Neither guy in this interview had gained that kind of insight, so they were both talking around it and talking past each other.

[Croney]

7. The OP is one of the guys.

[DavidDvorkin]

8. Indeed

And, unsurprisingly, I thought that the OP knew exactly what he was talking about.

[Croney]

9. 🙂

[70sEraVet]

5. My grandfather used to say that he was 'Pennsylvania Dutch', which apparently was a way of

telling other Jews that he was a Jew.
The Marx Brothers had inside jokes about being Jews scattered throughout their movies.
An Ex-Jew's grandchild may suddenly embrace his/her own Jewishness, based on the inherited Jewishness of their ex-Jewish grandfather. I am something like that.