Park Your Amusements Here

[FaustWolf]

Don't let Masato Kato catch wind of this Sajainta, or he'll write in the cheerleaders for the next Chrono Trigger re-release...

...just like he wrote in Dalton taking over Porre...after seeing it HERE!

[Truthordeal]

Jewish in race, or religion? If his mother is fully Jewish he should at least be half, unless she's not his real mother. Though if she is fully Jewish, and he didn't get any Jewish genes, that would be quite amusing and would give the genetic scientists a whole lot to chew on.

Just to put this out there...the "Jewish race" is typically referred to as Hebrew, while the religion is called Jewish. He might be part Hebrew, but unless he's just a very bad Jew, he cannot be part Jewish.

[Sajainta]

Just to put this out there...the "Jewish race" is typically referred to as Hebrew, while the religion is called Jewish. He might be part Hebrew, but unless he's just a very bad Jew, he cannot be part Jewish.

I've never heard that.  Where did you find that information?  All of the Jewish (by ethnicity) people I know refer to themselves as Jews, not Hebrews.  They make a distinction between ethnicity and religion by saying that they are ethnically Jewish, but not religiously Jewish.  I always thought that "Hebrew" was the older name for them before they were called Jews.

[Truthordeal]

This is a lesson I picked up from an ethnically Jewish friend of mine, who made me very aware of this fact after I brought up his Jewish ancestry.

Of course, in retrospect, this could be a personal preference of his rather than  a social rule. Iono.

*Goes back to eating pie*

[Sajainta]

I think it might be a personal preference.  I've never heard that before and I know quite a few people of Jewish heritage.  I actually asked my boyfriend (whose mother is ethnically Jewish) if he'd ever heard this, and he said he hadn't.

[Lord J Esq]

I was torn as to whether I should correct GenesisOne and Truthordeal for the benefit of the gallery, or just sit back and quietly enjoy the preposterousness of people talking authoritatively on a subject where they are quite obviously clueless. I have finally decided to let truth rule. For the record:

1. In orthodox Judaism, the religious aspect is inseparable from the ethnic one. That distinction is made by people who find themselves apart from the religion but still feel connected with Jewish culture sufficiently that they feel the label "Jewish" to be self-descriptive. Me, for instance, my affiliation with Jewish culture is marginal, so I don't use that word to describe myself unless it explicitly comes up in conversation, at which point I sometimes describe parts of my lifestyle--such as my love of pastrami on rye--as Jewish in character or inspiration.

2. Ethnicity is not a byword for "race." Ethnicity is a cultural parameter, encompassing various elements such as language, folkways, nationality, religion, and so forth, but not conditioned on any of them specifically.

3. The Orthodox consider Judaism to be matrilineal, meaning that one's "Jewishness" depends entirely on whether one's mother had been Jewish. Unlike the proselytizing religions, (orthodox) Judaism is exclusive and very hard for outsiders to join. So, if Harrison Ford's mother is Jewish but he himself says he is not, then, depending on who you ask, he is either entirely Jewish or not Jewish at all. Only a demographer or an artist could legitimately invoke fractions. As for me, the Orthodox wouldn't consider me Jewish at all: My mother was a Christian and never underwent an Orthodox conversion.

4. No mainstream group of Jewish, religious or secular, ever calls themselves Hebrews in a contemporary sense. That term in that context is almost exclusively used by Christians. In fact, I can't speak for other languages, but in English the term "Hebrew" as a synonym or replacement for "Jew" is usually considered derogatory by Jews themselves. A person can call themselves whatever they like, but I've known quite a few Jews and not a one of them ever styled themselves a Hebrew.

Class dismissed.

[Truthordeal]

You said it yourself that it was self-descriptive. Anyway, as I said, I received this tidbit from a very vocal(to respect his wishes) Hebrew. While he's not the only Jewish person I've met, he is the only one to explain this point to me.

Furthermore, if you have to correct me on a point I get wrong, then do so. Just don't be an asshole about it.

[Lord J Esq]

I'll PM you my reply to that...

[MsBlack]

My usage has it that there are three separate senses of 'Jewish' here: religious, ethnic and cultural, with what people refer to as the 'Jewish race' referring to what is actually and more accurately the genetically 'Semetic' group within humanity.

I'd guess that the conflation of those three senses of 'Jewish' and referring to the genetic group as 'Jewish' is because of that exclusivity you mentioned: The Jews (in the religious sense) were so close-knit for so long, that they became culturally, ethnically and perhaps even somewhat genetically distinct. That would apply to both ignorant outsiders and hardcore insiders like the one Truthordeal is referring to.

Of course, that's informed by my woeful knowledge of Jewish (heh) history. What do you think, J?

[Lord J Esq]

There really is no such thing as "the Jewish race." Even if you buy into the concept of race (which I don't), the biological distinctiveness of the Semitic peoples crosses Jewish lines in two places: Not all Jews are Semites, and not all Semites are Jews. The Ashkenazim, who comprise the majority of Jews alive today, are not Semitic. (You might also notice that the term "Semitic" and the term "anti-Semitic" mean two completely different things.)

The question of what constitutes a Jew is fraught with controversy. You're right: Until the middle of the last century, it was easier to conflate Judaism the religion with Jewishness the ethnicity, because, for all intents and purposes, all Jews were religiously observant to some degree. Even as it still is for the Orthodox, once upon a time so it was for all Jews that the religion was inseparable from the larger culture. Even the secular Jews who were philosophically non-theistic had to go through the motions of Jewish observance. Those of us my age and younger who live in the First World are spoiled; we're not going to be put to death by religious people for not being religious. In many cases we can get by in society just fine. That's a new development in modern history. A century ago, the Daniel Krispins and Truthordeals of the world would have been calling for our deaths.

The personal rule of thumb that I use to estimate whether someone is Jewish or not is to consider as Jewish anyone who is any one or more of these three things:

A1) A non-Muslim Israeli;
A2) A religious Jew;
A3) Someone who was raised in a Jewish household;

AND:

B) Does not explicitly renounce the label "Jew" and all related cultural affiliations.

I find this to be a fairly accurate empirical approximation of a question that may not be solvable analytically.

Edit: Here's some information you may enjoy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Return

[Magus22]

Don't let Masato Kato catch wind of this Sajainta, or he'll write in the cheerleaders for the next Chrono Trigger re-release...

...just like he wrote in Dalton taking over Porre...after seeing it HERE!

LOL!!!

And we all know who to thank for that... 

[Sajainta]

I had an epic dream today, and I figure I'd share, since a lot of you are Star Trek fans.      (I am totally going to use this smiley throughout the entire post.)

I had just woken up from a huge nap, and during the nap I dreamt that D (my boyfriend) was Mr. Spock.  He was still D, and looked like D...but he was also Spock.  He had the Vulcan eyebrows and Vulcan ears, but he still had D's gorgeous fluffy hair!

We were at my parent's house, and my two brothers and mum were in my bedroom--only in the dream it was a den.  They were all playing MarioKart 64, and my mum was kicking their asses.  This is something that would never happen IRL, but yay for dreams.  

Then suddenly all of us (brothers, mum, D/Spock, and myself) decided to go to DSpock's home planet.  Which I remembered, in the dream, was called Vulcan.  [I've never watched a single Star Trek episode, I've only seen the most recent film, heh, so I'm kind of proud of myself that I remembered the name of the planet.]

On Vulcan, they had these huge, Zeal-like floating islands, which (of course) I was excited about.  "OMG it's like Zeal!"

Well unfortunately, they had the same fate as Zeal.  

You see, the Russians wanted to take over Vulcan, so they had flown to the planet and were negotiating with the Vulcan...leader.  They decided to settle this on the tennis court.  If the Vulcan leader-person won, the Russians would have to leave.  If Putin won, well goodbye Vulcan and hello New Russia!

So they started playing, and the Vulcan kicked Putin's ass.  

But unfortunately, Saddam Hussein was there and wanted to cause mischief.  So he had Iraqi bombers start bombing VulcanZeal!  

My family and DSpock escaped (on these nifty elevators), but alas...VulcanZeal was no more.

On the surface, the Vulcan government (what was left of it), wanted to kidnap us, so they somehow knocked out everyone else.

They couldn't knock me out for some reason (you inept Vulcans, you!   ), and I was completely oblivious regarding their attempts.  So what they did is put some drugs into a chocolate chip cookie and laid it on a table for me to find.  I walked by and said "Oooh, cookie!"  I ate it and fell unconscious.  : /

I woke up in this weird, dark basement with my family and DSpock, and these Vulcans came into the room and told us to come with them.

We were lead to this office where a man told us of a prophecy from thousands of years ago, and they thought that DSpock was going to be the one to fulfill it.  Apparently there were these ancient scripts saying that the ancient Vulcans used to chant "[Insert weird ancient Vulcan words] [insert my boyfriend's full name] [insert weird ancient Vulcan words]." as a sort of prayer.

We got back to the surface and DSpock turned to me and said "I think I'm falling in love with you..."

To which I said "Aren't you supposed to be all rational and shit?  We've only been dating for a month and a half!"  XD

And then I woke up.

I called D immediately afterward and told him.  He's a Trekkie and was super thrilled to learn that he was Spock.  Apparently he wanted to be Spock as a kid.  

A while later, I was online and told Lord J about the dream.

[J's screenname] (11:06:03 PM): You know, you've lived the Trekkie dream: Mr. Spock fell in love with you.
[J's screenname] (11:06:16 PM): He caused so many crushes back in the '60s and '70s.
CieldesPapillons (11:06:30 PM): Oh, but that terrible haircut!
CieldesPapillons (11:06:36 PM): At least D kept his nice fluffy hair!

[J's screenname] (11:08:05 PM): Yeah...that was a pretty epic dream.
[J's screenname] (11:08:24 PM): Come on, it had everything. Putin, Saddam Hussein, Spock, flying islands, tennis, poisoned cookies, love...

And there you have it!

I love my dreams.

[Uboa]

I'm amazed, Saj!  This is the best dream account I've heard, possibly ever.  I cracked up when I got to that part about the cookie!

"She's resisted our conventional methods of subjugation.  You all know what this means.  We must deploy the cookie."



Edit:  You know, when I mentioned that this might be the best dream account I've ever heard I got a strong sense of deja vu, and I couldn't figure out why.   Then I remembered I'd actually told you that before; when you last told me about an awesome dream!  Neat-o.

[Zephira]

What entertains me most about that dream is that I can't read "DSpock" without thinking "Nintendo DS". Did he have the touch screen and wifi attachments?

[Lord J Esq]

Live long on dual screen!