At least somebody is finally doing something about the "Jews are smart" stereotype.
By countering with "no, Jews can be blond"?
Many blond people are highly educated.
Anyway, my neighborhood has two Yeshivas but I know nothing about them except where they are.
I know exactly where of all the yeshivas in this town are located.
Periodically, young men in jackets that don't fit ask me if I'm Jewish. This always makes me feel like I should go lift weights. Then I feel bad for stereotyping Jewish people as unfit. Then I remember Sandy Colfax. Then I remember that it's "Koufax" and I've instead given him the name of the elementary school in my neighborhood where the secular and reform Jewish kids go.
Then I get hit by a bus for not paying attention to where I'm going.
Have I mentioned that my step-grandmother dated Hank Greenberg? I'm sure Jewish baseball players have come up here before. Or rather, ISJBPHCUHB.
According to Wikipedia, he finished his career playing on the field that they put Posvar Hall on top of.
Natives often think I'm one of them. I've had this happen in Argentina, Spain, Italy, Greece even though I'm none of those. The only place that obviously didn't work was Ireland. NB I have not been to any Asian countries.
No one has ever asked if I'm Jewish.
If you say yes, they'll tell you that you're doing it wrong.
"Our students are as well educated as they were 100 years ago."
Telling.
"Argentina, Spain, Italy, Greece"
Actually given this list maybe I just look like I'm a credit risk.
13: Before reading the article I assumed that line was meant as a jibe.
I have a Jewish friend who looks like an extra from a Viking movie. He gets very offended when other Jewish people assume he's Danish.
I'm against ethnic stereotyping on principle, but it's hard to speak out against it when one fits one's own ethnic stereotype exactly.
According to Wikipedia, he finished his career playing on the field that they put Posvar Hall on top of.
This kind of gives the impression that he was playing there one day and then WHAM they dropped a building on him.
I've never actually gone inside Posvar. They tell me home plate is still there.
10, 17-19 It was called Forbes Field. To paraphrase Sudden Sam Malone, it's not widely known, but it was famous. And for a while, left field was called "Greenberg Gardens."
There's still a historical marker there, on Joncaire or Bouquet, and part of one of the outfield walls. One of the local greasy spoons has some great photos of when it was around, including one of a bunch of people high up in one of the academic buildings (not sure if the Cathedral makes sense chronologically) sneaking a peak of the game.
I've read other accounts of ultra-orthodox separatism in the US, and therefore probably shouldn't have been as surprised by this, but I sent the link to Heebie because the poor quality of education purposely provided was still shocking to me.
Poor quality education and not keeping up the exterior of their houses.
One of my collaborators was raised Haredi. He went to Yeshiva University, and that caught him up somewhat on secular education, although he still had to start grad school with very little math beyond calculus. I'm not sure just how behind he was when starting college.
How did he get into grad school?
I tend to think that the best response to 'religious school' is something like 'wait, which one was it again?', but that story is really remarkable. Usually there's at least a bit more of a fig leaf - even among the fundie home schoolers.
21: One of the local greasy spoons has some great photos of when it was around
I went to game there in early to mid-60s; my memories of it seem to be in black and white*.
*Almost surely an overlay of my actual memories due to old photographs. Actually almost all of my memories of Pittsburgh from a few trips we took their in my youth (my Mom had a friend who lived in Bethel Park) seem to be black and white. I do think the sooty smokiness was part of it
17: This kind of gives the impression that he was playing there one day and then WHAM they dropped a building on him.
Ding-dong, the Jew is dead! Which old Jew?The wicked Jew.
Plenty of the Orthodox girls I taught were blonde girls in fashionable clothes, but when I told them I lived in Brooklyn, they giggled and then explained: "That's where the dorky Jews live." By dorky Jews they meant Lubavitchers. Among the ultra-Orthodox, it's not enough to maintain extremely close standards of tsnius; you also have to wear ugly clothes, which the modern Orthodox women considered beyond the call of duty. Can we not cover our collarbones, knees, and elbows without looking like Kmart rejects? etc. The point is, there is a really really specific set of standards for dress that, from outside the communities, aren't obvious unless someone shows you them.
Well, the men are really obviously dressed.
I don't think I've linked this here, but it's one of the funniest things I've ever read. So much is needed to explain the jokes here, but modern Orthodox girls do a lot of competitive piouser-than-thou stuff in the hopes of attracting boys.
So good: "The good part about this is that Yeshiva Day Schools teach Hebrew worse than YU teaches you how to interact with minorities in the workplace."
I only got bits and pieces of that, of course, but this line is great:
being Jewish is not easy, that's why it's called "being Jewish" and not "being Christian" #ChristBurn
The benching gomel thing cracked me up. Every time I ended class and said, "Have a great weekend!" there would be a murmur around the room of "God willing, sure."
Quinoa, as I understand it, actually is kosher for Passover, which seems bizarre as hell to me, given that anything that even reminds you of chametz has to be swept out of the house or sold to goyim. But yeah, claiming that no way would I even ever or even have it because it might be something I want during Passover... I died.
I accidentally got a few of my students in trouble by saying that I really enjoyed a kosher restaurant that a student took me to, but to someone for whom that particular kosher restaurant was rumored to be in some very particular way not the very most kosherest kind of restaurant. Who took you there? And they said it was kosher? Huh. Huh, that's really interesting. Of course it says that on the door. Huh.
The Dunkin Donuts down the street says it is Kosher.
This means you have to go to one of the other Dunkin Donuts if, for some reason, you want to eat a sausage wrapped in pancake batter.
The Dunkin Donuts where I lived in NJ was kosher.
25: That's a good question, and I don't really know. I'm guessing the letters had to have been pretty amazing.
Here's an extensive summary of the quinoa for Passover debate: http://ohr.edu/5390. Needless to say, there are authorities on both sides.
Needless to say, there are authorities on both sides.
This is what you get with a religion that is both obsessed with arcane rules and totally decentralized in organization. Who has the authority to make a final decision on the right answer? Nobody!
I eventually looked up "benching gomel" after my initial assumption (that it was some sort of Hasidic upper-body workout exercise) didn't quite seem to work in context.
This is what you get with a religion that is both obsessed with arcane rules and totally decentralized in organization. Who has the authority to make a final decision on the right answer? Nobody!
That was what struck me about the long New Yorker article about the Hasidic guy who was trying to report sexual abuse to the NYPD. The people who called him a "moser" seemed to think the WORST thing about his decision was that he went against the advice of the Talmudic scholars!
Yes, but he followed the advise of different Talmudic scholars.
Plenty of the Orthodox girls I taught were blonde girls in fashionable clothes,
Which, to tie threads together, I believe was the same building that my grandfather attended high school in. The school closed, and then reopened elsewhere in 1984.
According to some Talmudic scholars, buildings shouldn't move around so much.
Nor land on top of Hank Greenberg.
49 is funny, because the only Hank Greenberg I know of is the former chairman of AIG, Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, who famously sued the government for investing $182 billion to rescue his company from collapse, and I think that a lot of Talmudic scholars would agree with me that buildings can move around as much as they jolly well like if there's a chance that in doing so some of them may land on Hank Greenberg.
(Not to be confused of course with Alan "Ace" Greenberg, who was chairman of Bear Stearns when his company collapsed, but did not sue anyone and died earlier this year for non-building-related reasons.)
House Greenberg hasn't had a good few years, what with one thing and another.
50: house of Greenberg is folding so fast that you'd think their patriarch was named Job.
I am just really stuck on the Terry Gilliamesque image of Manhattan buildings leaping gracefully into the air with loud BOING noises while a tiny Hank Greenberg runs around frantically trying to avoid them. In the corner, a small group of venerable Jewish blokes nod approvingly.
53.last: While another group express their disapproval.
The Terry Gilliam Talmud is the best Talmud.
55: I'd like to see the Terry Pratchett version.
Have I mentioned that my step-grandmother dated Hank Greenberg?
Have I mentioned that my mother dated Kinky Friedman? It is my only legitimate claim to fame!
On another subthread topic, I worked with an insane orthodox woman who could only eat at two restaurants in Manhattan, she told us. I may have gotten her in trouble with god once. Oh, it wasn't anything like that.
57: You tricked her into eating trefe, didn't you?
Hank Greenberg was the occassion for the most idol-worship among Jews since the golden calf.
According to some Talmudic scholars, buildings shouldn't move around so much.
It's okay if they have their threads tied to together.
58: I forgot the whole women not touching men thing and there was a head rub thing she did for a friend who had a headache that magically made it go away and I asked her for that and actually I didn't have a headache even.
I live in an Orthodox neighborhood, and it's definitely true that the fine gradations in dress identify them if you know how. We have two, possibly three varieties of Chassidim, counting Lubavitchers as one despite their divisions, and many varieties of Orthodox.
Modern Orthodox are not so visible, for obvious reasons, but I don't know if anybody's done a census. Our Alderman is an Orthodox woman, always in a skirt but often quite a short one.
Since they walk everywhere on the Sabbath, you get to see them more than you would other populations. The large numbers of genuinely young parents certainly make an impression; in my circles there is no such thing. The air of bustle and purposefulness can seem appealing from a distance: the role inhabited.
My take on intense kosher-keeping is that it reinforces bright social in-group perimeters, and creates barriers with the outgroup, because eating is such a central part of socializing. And that this is possibly the main reason the practice perpetuates itself, because it's so closely woven with maintaining certain social bonds and preventing others.
And for a while, left field was called "Greenberg Gardens."
Despite his only playing one year for the Pirates.
To persuade him not to retire, Pittsburgh made Greenberg the first baseball player to earn over $80,000 ($845,000 today) in a season as pure salary ... . Team co-owner Bing Crosby recorded a song, "Goodbye, Mr. Ball, Goodbye" with Groucho Marx and Greenberg to celebrate Greenberg's arrival. The Pirates also reduced the size of Forbes Field's cavernous left field, renaming the section "Greenberg Gardens" to accommodate Greenberg's pull-hitting style. Greenberg played first base for the Pirates in 1947 and was one of the few opposing players to publicly welcome Jackie Robinson to the majors.
63 is probably a good explanation for pretty much every food-based custom and taboo everywhere ever.
63:
Often openly acknowledged; the traditional phrase is "making a fence around the Jewish People."
I've heard "making a fence around a rule" too.
Sung at the end here, after Groucho, Bing and Hank do some comedy including some cringe-worthy mid-century humor about gals.
63 is a concise summary of Max Weber's Ancient Judaism.
66: I think you're confusing things -- there's a phrase "make a fence around the Torah"- which refers to making the strict possible interpertation of Biblical commandments to insure that you don't even come near to breaking them.
http://www.bible-history.com/Scribes/THE_SCRIBESA_Fence_Around_the_Law.htm
But you are correct that practices that separate the Jews from the Gentiles are promoted explicitly for that purpose.
Oh yeah, I didn't mean to imply that making a fence around a rule had the same meaning. I was just free-associating.
I've heard all these variations, but the Torah one is obviously the source. Perhaps the "Jewish People" variant is a way of modernizing it in some contexts.
73: It probably has something to do with the West Bank.
Greenberg Gardens
"Mother wanted I should come out in a kimono. Oy, such a fight we had."
It probably has something to do with the West Bank.
Not my first thought when I consider the concept of getting a lot of Jewish people in one place and putting a big fence round them.
I had a client once, very smart and nice guy, some variety of orthodox, worked for an org run by a board of ancient orthodox guys. My client (really the org, so my client contact) developed a pretty strong but also totally innocent work-crush on me, which was fine (my god where would we all be without harmless work crushes?), until the entire creaking board traveled cross country for several days of meetings. Wow those guys were difficult to feed, and also took some serious unruffling re totally harmless work crush issue, all completely unstated but I was a bit surprised client contact was so naive and couldn't seem to understand he needed to dial back even the merest hint of fandom. Much was solved by going on and on about my identity as adoring parent of small child. Don't think I was married at the time, can't remember how I finessed that.
