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<p>It can be a nuisance to have any kind of stereotypical name, especially if it doesn’t quite match your actual heritage. I grew up with a stereotypical Irish name, but only my father was Irish, and I was a member of my WASP mother’s Protestant church. People often expected me to be an expert on all things Catholic, and I often had to explain that I wasn’t Catholic at all, despite my name. It was annoying.</p>
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<p>This is actually an interesting question. My step-mother-in-law was in this position – her mother was a Catholic from the Bavarian nobility, her father a Jewish lawyer who had separated from her mother. She, her brother, and her mother WERE interned in a concentration camp in 1942. (The father was living in Switzerland.) It wasn’t pleasant, and they underwent real hardship, but it wasn’t an extermination camp, or a place like Auschwitz where inmates were worked to death. They don’t have tattoos on their arms. My step-mother-in-law had no Jewish identity whatsoever, and didn’t acquire one there.</p>
<p>Stereotypical Jewish names:</p>
<p>I have a stereotypical Jewish last name. My only first cousins on my father’s side have a very non-Jewish mother, and were raised in the bosom of the Presbyterian Church. I also know a number of people with recognizable Jewish names thanks to one Jewish great-grandfather, but whose families have been Christian Scientists for three generations or more. I feel a little sorry for THEM – they must run into confusion all the time.</p>
<p>I was glad to get rid of my stereotypical Jewish last name when I married. I felt it just “announced” things about me before people met me.</p>
<p>My sister married a man from a Catholic family. Before she met them, he took his mother and sisters out for lunch and told them that he had met the girl of his dreams, blah blah blah. Then he announced her name – with that very obvious Jewish last name. The mother got up from the table and left, and one of the sisters had to chase her down. When she met my sister, she understood that my sister hadn’t been raised with Jewish identity, that she could out-Christmas and out-Easter anybody, and that it wasn’t a problem, but the name really did cause a barrier.</p>
<p>Jewish Demographics is not for the faint of heart, but…</p>
<p>There are between 5 and 7 million Jews in the U.S.<br>
‘Jewishness’ is an ethnic definition. Religious affiliation is strongly bound up in it. I would describe the unconverted child of a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother, who identifies as a Jew, as ‘ethnically Jewish, but not halachically suitable for me or my child to marry under a chupah (kiddushin)’. But the fact that I can be so roundabout and careful in saying that is itself testament to the increasing complexity of American Jewish life. </p>
<p>About 4 million Americans describe themselves as “strongly connected” to Judaism.
(A 2003 Harris poll found that) about 2 million American Jews belong to a synagogue.
38% Reform, 33% Conservative, 22% Orthodox, 2% Reconstructionist, 5% Other</p>
<p>…so the percent of synagogue-affiliated Jews whose denominations explicitly DO NOT accept paternally-inherited Jewishness is (33+22=) 55%. Probably somewhat higher, since some portion of ‘Other’ is doubtless Messianic Jews, and I would disregard their opinion in this matter.</p>
<p>Therefore, it is still true that for most American Jews for whom it matters in a religious sense, paternal affiliation is not enough to define a child as Jewish.</p>
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<p>Sorry, your religious doctrine has no relevance to what parts of my heritage I, as an atheist mixed patrilineal Jew, identify with. You’re free to say that I can’t be part of your denomination without conversion, as religious denominations get to set their own standards (and if, say, you only want to marry halachically suitable Jews, that is absolutely your own business and I have no reason to care), but I am still a child of the Jewish people and proud of it.</p>
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<p>It is a term that people understand, much as they understand “half-Irish”. It is also useful for solidarity with other children of Jewish intermarriage, because the Jewishness is what we all have in common.</p>
<p>However, the fractional-identity thing is kind of weird. I think it’s sometimes more appropriate to just say the things that you are if you want to state your heritage (e.g. “I’m Sephardi Jewish, Ashkenazi Jewish, Welsh, English, Czech, Winnebago…”) but that list can get kind of long for some people (like me).</p>
<p>Also, you do have a point, in that some mixed Jewish people are unwilling to just say that they are Jewish, they feel like they have to put in the “half-” qualifier even in a context where it’s not necessary or helpful. I think this has something to do with all the people, like the person I quoted at the beginning of this post, who tell them that they have no right to claim their own Jewish identity. People internalize that crap.</p>
<p>Now I’d like to go back to the OP’s question:</p>
<pre><code> “Recently I have seen increasing number of Jewish comments at my school.”
</code></pre>
<p>I don’t have any idea what sorts of comments you mean. If you have specific comments in mind, you should tell us about them. It would also be helpful to know something about the context of your school. What part of the country do you live in? Are there lots of Jewish kids at your school, or are there very few?</p>
<pre><code> “The media isn’t helping either with the Harold and Kumar series.”
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<p>That is one dumb movie series aimed at teenagers and potheads. I don’t actually have any idea what image of Jews is promoted or mentioned in that movie. I doubt it has much to do with ‘people hating Jews’ at your high school - do you really think it does?</p>
<pre><code> “Remarks about the greediness and the wickness of Jews are rampant where I go to school.”
</code></pre>
<p>Again, examples would help. Remarks are rampant? Really? Among most students, teachers, administrators? Do tell.</p>
<p>Also, I’d like to point out that ignoring the ethnic dimension of Jewishness (as some posters here have done) is offensive to many people, as Pizzagrl and Jessiehl have pointed out. It’s also a repudiation of an important distinguishing feature of Jewishness for the last 2 millenia at least - it’s ability to represent and define a hard-to-nail-down mix of ethnic identity and religious denomination. </p>
<p>Ignorant rants about Israeli rabbis are also unwarranted, even when they are made by the likes of Billy Crystal. No Israeli rabbi ever cast doubt on Billy’s Jewishness, just on the conversions performed by Conservative rabbis. I agree that that in itself is problematic, but I protest expanding the sense of outrage beyond what is required.</p>
<p>Back to Kosherz’s world:</p>
<p>“Austrian jews enjoy their Kosher lifestyle along with their Conservative history.”</p>
<p>I suspect that this was just a throwaway line, but I’m curious to know what it means.</p>
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<p>I think it’s more a way of saying “Some of my ancestors were Jewish, but you shouldn’t necessarily expect me to be knowledgeable about or involved in Jewish culture.” </p>
<p>My half-Jewish son and daughter have only a superficial knowledge of Jewish traditions, and people who know them understand that. If they identified themselves as Jewish, they would set up expectations that would cause confusion. I don’t think either of them would ever identify themselves as Jewish unless they became much more knowledgeable about and involved in Jewish culture (perhaps through a Jewish boyfriend or girlfriend), at least to the point where they wouldn’t constantly have to correct people who would assume that they know the difference between a Seder and a shul.</p>
<p>It’s not a matter of lacking pride in the Jewish part of their heritage. As far as I have ever been able to tell, they LIKE being half-Jewish because the label “Jewish” comes with an automatic assumption of education and sophistication – two things that were not prominent on the non-Jewish side of their family.</p>
<p>To be explicit, most of the Reform community now accepts as Jews people with non-Jewish fathers. I can introduce you to some because they are in my Temple. These people would not be accepted in Israel under the Law of Return … but then neither would many other people with two Jewish parents who could not prove their lineage, because now that department is controlled by the ultra-Orthodox and they are pursuing an agenda of religious purity (which I find somewhat disgusting). </p>
<p>There are a number of studies in which it’s clear that people call an area Jewish (or black) when the percentage reaches 10%. Thus my community is sometimes called Jewish when it’s actually a plurality of Irish Catholic, with Jews being at most the 3rd largest group. We see this subtle form of racism in crescent’s ignorant comment about Jews being “prevalent” in some areas. To make the point with numbers, there are about 2 million Jews in the New York area - not in New York City but the area. The New York area has a population of 20 million, and thus Jews are about 10% and thus people like crescent think Jews are “prevalent.”</p>
<p>As for Jews and self-image, every minority has issues with that. I know Koreans who worry because the traditional image of beauty in their parents’ culture doesn’t fit American standards. Jews have an additional problem, though, one that’s felt in the name: danger. It can be dangerous to be a Jew. You have to worry when you travel that someone will hate you because you are Jewish - remember the Achille-Lauro cruise ship hijacking (made into an opera) in which the fatality was an old Jewish man in a wheelchair who the Palestinians threw overboard because his name was Klinghoffer. If you wear a Star of David you may be attacked by Muslim youths on the streets of a number of cities in Europe. If you use your name and it’s very Jewish sounding, then you have to worry about your safety in much of the world.</p>
<p>And even more starkly: tell me how many Churches have armed guards at their entrance every day and especially when school for children lets out. Larger Jewish temples, the ones that can afford security, have it because this can be a very dangerous world for Jews.</p>
<p>As for a person being half-Jewish, how I react depends on the context. If the person is a Christian, then he or she is not Jewish at all, but I can see how that person might view the Jewish history in his or her lineage as something to respect. But beyond that, Jewish is the only “ethnic” category which is actually a religion. I’m an American and my relatives might be Dutch or Egyptian* but as of now they wouldn’t say they’re Egyptian because the Egyptians rejected them (after thousands of years) and they weren’t able to say they were Dutch in WWII (but the survivors now do say they’re Dutch). In other words, if a country doesn’t reject us out of irrational hatreds then we’re perfectly happy to be Jewish-American (or Jewish-Canadian or Jewish-Brazilian), the same as anyone else. </p>
<p>I use this idea of hyphenation to identify racists. I meet people - and we have some on this board - who connect the dots backwards and think that Jews don’t want to be American, as they didn’t want to be German or French. The opposite is true: Jews were German but the Christian Germans decided that you had to be Christian to be German. Didn’t matter that you fought for the Kaiser or that your family could trace its German roots back for hundreds of years. Racists turn that around to say that Jews stick together and the neat thing is that they’re rarely aware that this is racist sentiment so it’s really easy to identify them.</p>
<p>*My family has a number of branches and these are really two of them. Others include Polish, Lithuanian, German, Hungarian and Belarussian. BTW, Jews would not have considered themselves Polish or Russian in the past, even when they lived side by side for several hundred years. There are a number of reasons, but the topic is perhaps best ignored.</p>
<p>My mother is Jewish. I am a Christian woman and ancestral Jew. No one gets to define anyone other than himself. My son has a very stereotypical Jewish name. It drove my FIL straight out of his mind that his only grandson had such a Jewish name, hater that he was. The part that amused me was that it was his last name that made the name sound Jewish. One could never say such a thing to him, though. He really, really hated Jewish people. Especially women. Like my mother. Oh well.</p>
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An excellent point and one that might explain why the girl on the plane referenced earlier in the thread was concerned. One doesn’t necessarily want to be the one with the Jewish name on an airplane, you know?</p>
<p>Good questions for the OP, memake. I suspect he’s a ■■■■■, but he has generated a valuable discussion. </p>
<p>The Jewish status of the children of mixed marriages is such a thorny issue in the U.S. Here are a few clips from a brief primer on the subject from the Reform Movement (Judaism’s most liberal movement):</p>
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<p>[Reform</a> Movement’s Resolution on Patrilineal Descent](<a href=“http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/patrilineal1.html]Reform”>Reform Movement's Resolution on Patrilineal Descent (March 1983))</p>
<p>In Judaism’s more traditional movements (the Conservative and Orthodox movements), the rule of matrilineal descent remains in place. Unless a non-Jewish mother has formally converted to Judaism (the Orthodox movement recognizes only Orthodox conversions, while the Conservative movement recognizes both Conservative and Orthodox conversions), her children are not halachically (legally) considered to be Jewish. These legal descriptions, of course, ignore the ethical/cultural aspects of the issue.</p>
<p>Way back near the beginning of this thread, morrismm lamented the lack of true integration.</p>
<p>Given the prevalence of intermarriages between Jews and others and the awkward problems of ethnic definition that it creates, which has dominated much of the thread, I think that there has been plenty of integration at least as far as Jews are concerned (maybe more than those who are concerned about preserving Jewish heritage would like to see). </p>
<p>After all, one of the things that happen when you truly integrate is that people from one heritage end up dating and marrying people of other heritages.</p>
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<p>And so if my children – raised from birth in a Jewish household, Jewish preschool all the way up through b’nai mitzvah and in S’s case, more extended Jewish learning – were to marry your children, then they as adults would have to deal with whether they wanted to undergo a Conservative or Orthodox conversion for that purpose, or whether they found that insulting.</p>
<p>(Parenthetically, of their four grandparents, my mother - the one non-Jewish one - is FAR more learned about Judaism and religion in general than any of the other 3. But the other 3 “count” even though they are Jewishly ignorant. It’s more than a little galling. Frankly, I think when you’re married to someone with a highly Jewish last name and get treated as Jewish, you absorb some of it by osmosis. LOL.)</p>
<p>Honestly? Is it that thorny of an issue? If my kids decide to marry a Conservative Jew for whom their Jewish status isn’t “enough,” then they’ll decide if they want to undergo a C conversion. Would it really be that big of a deal? </p>
<p>There is an old saying among Hillels and Chabads to the effect of … of the kids who come to their events, you know who the real Jews are … the ones with the last names of Martinez and O’Reilly, not the ones with the last names of Goldberg and Rosenstein (because the ones with the last names of Martinez and O’Reilly are the children of Jewish mothers, whereas the ones with the last names of Goldberg and Rosenstein are the children of Jewish fathers and non-Jewish mothers).</p>
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<p>Zoosermom is exactly right. If she doesn’t identify as Jewish, it is silly to say that she, and her daughters, and her daughter’s daughters, and so forth, are all Jewish just because of bloodline. But yet some family with a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother, who has raised the kids Jewish, clearly identify as Jewish, participate in Jewish communal events, and so forth, can’t be Jewish. The Reform movement’s policy makes a lot more sense in light of what we know about biology today.</p>
<p>"An excellent point and one that might explain why the girl on the plane referenced earlier in the thread was concerned. One doesn’t necessarily want to be the one with the Jewish name on an airplane, you know? "</p>
<p>True enough, but that was not the context of this particular conversation. Her complaint appeared to be much more about not wanting to have a Jewish name while living the daily life of a teenager in the US rather than any international travel safety issues.</p>
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<p>Actually, the non-recognition of conversions by Conservative rabbis is a separate controversy. The controversy Crystal (and many others) was reacting to was a pronouncement that Reform and Conservative Jews are not “real” Jews. The uproar that resulted (and the pulling of funding to Israel by a number of American Jewish Federations) led to a revised interpretation and we were “reinstated”.</p>
<p>What is Harold and Kumar anyway?</p>