Any Christians out there?

[FurryFury]

I haven't seen it. I blame Hugh Jackman. Isn't he in that one? Anyway, Moulin Rouge and I liked it. Yes it was kind of terrible, but there were things I just loved about it. And I absolutely loved Strictly Ballroom. It's just so sweet.

I love, love, love those movies!

 

[JMohegan]

Maybe I'm just stomping my feet and saying, well, you guys started it!, and JM is not the first person to have made this criti-I mean, observation , but to me it seems that any drive to be separate was born out of self-preservation, whether that be in response to unfriendly governments or food poisoning.

JM himself wrote: "Part of this seems to be a very understandable reaction to persecution across millennia." Even before you brought it up.

After a while, all of this foot stomping starts feeling like a kick in the head.

 

[FurryFury]

I agree with you.

Do you think for a moment, that if faced with a mess of guys in Klan hoods they're going to be more interested in my agnosticism than my Jewishness?

Did "I'm a secular humanist" save anyone when the feet were to the fire?

This is the difference I'm talking about. It's an unpleasant reality, and one which I'm sure everyone would rather not participate in, but when societies are stressed you can't escape history and unpleasant realities. What would happen to me and what would happen to you a mere 30 years ago house hunting are different stories. Not because I'm Jewish and you're nothing. Not because I'm Jewish and you're neutral. Not because I'm Jewish and you're agnostic. (I'm agnostic when you get down to it, on certain good days or bad ones maybe there's a God maybe not.)

And it's because whatever you believe you will be percieved as Christian enough when heat is applied, and I will be perceived as not, unless I want to engage in some psychotic passing game. What you do with that is your choice and it matters. It matters a whole hell of a lot, as people of both decency and privilege have illustrated over and over and over at personal cost through history - but it's the base fact.

It's painful to have other people label you, but unfortunately it would be incredibly naive of non-Christians not to have a sense of opposition, and I say this in the sense of dichotomy not throwing things. And dangerous.

It doesn't mean I can't be friends with people, understand them, or even feel that I'm somehow in any way better than anyone or worse or anything - but there's a difference.

But to lose track of difference and dichotomy at the same time that one pursues hybridity as an ideal doesn't seem feasible.

 

[Netzach]

JM himself wrote: "Part of this seems to be a very understandable reaction to persecution across millennia." Even before you brought it up.

After a while, all of this foot stomping starts feeling like a kick in the head.

This dialogue got started with someone stating that it's OK to be anything other than Christian, everyone else has it better, kid gloves are out blah etc. Just bringing it back for a second.

As for what I am, what you are - I don't particularly love embrace and thrill to my Jewish identity most of the time, despite the fact that you'd think it was a huge deal to me via this discussion. I am perfectly content to deal with you, as an individual, as an agnostic, and raised in an insanely faith-biased culture. The same one we're both stuck with.

It's not a big deal, until I see some kind of challenge to the narrative that got me here that I simply can't just ignore and let sit.

In large measure I'd *love* to be thought of as just some American agnostic, but smarter people than I have been caught in that trap and on certain levels that is never going to happen. I can rail against it and hide or I can accept. If you have culture you are fucked by it in some way - I'm not saying it only goes in one direction.

David Cross, the comic does an amusing bit on this. He's an atheist, he's trying to get away from religion altogether, but lo and behold - Jewish mother!

 

[intothewoods]

After a while, all of this foot stomping starts feeling like a kick in the head.

Now you know what it's like to be Jewish! Oy, you think this is a kick in the head? When I came to this country I had nothing! I learned a thing or two about getting kicked in the head.

JM himself wrote: "Part of this seems to be a very understandable reaction to persecution across millennia." Even before you brought it up.

You did, I thought I gave you credit for that. I just think "part of this" is an understatement.

 

[intothewoods]

I worked at Moishe's for a while (its a bakery - GREAT humantachen), but quit because Moishe is a miserly old man and paid me near to nothing, when he paid me.

Moishe is such a character. If you go in there while he's behind the counter more often then not he'll rip off a piece of Challah and say "Have a nosh." and tell you a joke and give your kid a cookie. He also tried to teach me a little Yiddish which was nice. He was thrilled that I was Jewish.

Besides being incredibly miserly, Moishe is pretty racist. The other girl working with me was Chinese and my first day there he told me to watch her because she steals. Later he asked me if I saw her steal anything and I said no and he told me that I only didn't catch her because she's sneaky.

Oy vey.

And I give a rats ass! I love NYC and all the good Jewish food around. If your ever in NYC, remind me to tel you about Russ and Daughters on Houston. Lox you wouldn't believe.

And being in Boston for this long really is a huge bummer. You can't find a good bagel up here! They don't exist! You ask for a bagel and they give you a bread disk.

Hey, we can't all be Rahm Emmanuel!

Um, when I said give a rat's ass, I meant about preserving Jewish culture. I mean, beyond the fucking bagels. Bagels are important, don't get me wrong, but there is more to being Jewish than the food. I mean, not much more...

Sorry people, I will leave the thread now - I've had a crazy shitty day, and I'm about to have one of those crazy girl moments where I laugh hysterically and then cry in a corner.

 

[JMohegan]

This dialogue got started with someone stating that it's OK to be anything other than Christian, everyone else has it better, kid gloves are out blah etc. Just bringing it back for a second.

As for what I am, what you are - I don't particularly love embrace and thrill to my Jewish identity most of the time, despite the fact that you'd think it was a huge deal to me via this discussion. I am perfectly content to deal with you, as an individual, as an agnostic, and raised in an insanely faith-biased culture. The same one we're both stuck with.

It's not a big deal, until I see some kind of challenge to the narrative that got me here that I simply can't just ignore and let sit.

In large measure I'd *love* to be thought of as just some American agnostic, but smarter people than I have been caught in that trap and on certain levels that is never going to happen. I can rail against it and hide or I can accept. If you have culture you are fucked by it in some way - I'm not saying it only goes in one direction.

I have no idea what that first paragraph means. My dialogue with you got started because I said "I'm not Christian" and you said "Yes you are." (Those aren't quotes, they're paraphrases.) My dialogue with ITW about Judaism began when she responded to my comments regarding Chosen People discussions I've had in the past. We're having two different conversations.

The irony about what you're saying here is that actual, believing, practicing, church-going Christians don't consider me Christian because I have never been baptized or confirmed and I deny the Jesus thing. The very idea that I would be considered Christian is deeply insulting to them.

Yet here you are saying that my resistance to accepting the label is some kind of challenge to the narrative that got you here. As if my failure to call myself Christian is somehow insulting to you.

I have no wish to insult you, Netzach. Not as an individual, and not as a Jew. But I will continue to define myself as agnostic, not Christian - because that's what it feels like I am.

 

[Netzach]

I have no idea what that first paragraph means. My dialogue with you got started because I said "I'm not Christian" and you said "Yes you are." (Those aren't quotes, they're paraphrases.) My dialogue with ITW about Judaism began when she responded to my comments regarding Chosen People discussions I've had in the past. We're having two different conversations.

I'm going back to the beginning of this whole tangled hairball.

The irony about what you're saying here is that actual, believing, practicing, church-going Christians don't consider me Christian because I deny the Jesus thing. The very idea that I would be considered Christian is deeply insulting to them.

Check, agree, got that.

Yet here you are saying that my resistance to accepting the label is some kind of challenge to the narrative that got you here. As if my failure to call myself Christian is somehow insulting to you.

No, I'm saying "Christians have it harder than everyone else" is a problem for me, as a concept. Not that you said that. That's the hitch in the narrative that made me sit up and "what?"

I'm not insulted remotely and I'm not trying to insult you in turn.

And I'm saying that the general mainstream of American religious heritage is Christian,. If you are some very deliberate small religio-ethnic minority you are outside. Hell Jews are one of the larger ones with more respect.

And I'm saying that in a census, cultural, check the box sense, long standing European Christian heritage is a marker whether active participation as an adherent is there or not. That everyone is an individual, wonderful and fabulous snowflake, me, you, itw, Recidiva, everyone - BUT that there's a macro level on which everyone pays the piper and is defined in brutal terms they don't get to pick.

I am absolutely not saying you have to identify as anything - but that the distant Scandinavian stock who probably prayed in small earnest groups much like the ones I'll find if I drive 35 miles out in any direction - are part of the picture, matter, and mean, they can't and should not just be waved off. It's not the whole picture, but it's part of the picture.

The things that people talk about as being "neutral" or "mundane" or "vanilla" are specific things, mainstream IS specific to those outside it, something that has to be learned.

 

[JMohegan]

I'm going back to the beginning of this whole tangled hairball.

Tangled hairball indeed!

No, I'm saying "Christians have it harder than everyone else" is a problem for me, as a concept. Not that you said that. That's the hitch in the narrative that made me sit up and "what?"

The person who said that has me on freakin' ignore. Obviously, it's total bullshit to say that "Christians have it harder than anyone else." On that point, you and I totally and vehemently agree.

I'm not insulted remotely and I'm not trying to insult you in turn.

And I'm saying that the general mainstream of American religious heritage is Christian,. If you are some very deliberate small religio-ethnic minority you are outside. Hell Jews are one of the larger ones with more respect.

And I'm saying that in a census, cultural, check the box sense, long standing European Christian heritage is a marker whether active participation as an adherent is there or not. That everyone is an individual, wonderful and fabulous snowflake, me, you, itw, Recidiva, everyone - BUT that there's a macro level on which everyone pays the piper and is defined in brutal terms they don't get to pick.

I am absolutely not saying you have to identify as anything - but that the distant Scandinavian stock who probably prayed in small earnest groups much like the ones I'll find if I drive 35 miles out in any direction - are part of the picture, matter, and mean, they can't and should not just be waved off.

Thank you, Netzach. Clearly I was confused as to what you were saying, and I really appreciate you clarifying here.

I agree with everything you've written in this post.

 

[Netzach]

Tangled hairball indeed!

The person who said that has me on freakin' ignore. Obviously, it's total bullshit to say that "Christians have it harder than anyone else." On that point, you and I totally and vehemently agree.

Thank you, Netzach. Clearly I was confused as to what you were saying, and I really appreciate you clarifying here.

I agree with everything you've written in this post.

Ok, whew, that was worth it.

 

[00Syd]

Hey, we can't all be Rahm Emmanuel!

Um, when I said give a rat's ass, I meant about preserving Jewish culture. I mean, beyond the fucking bagels. Bagels are important, don't get me wrong, but there is more to being Jewish than the food. I mean, not much more...

Sorry people, I will leave the thread now - I've had a crazy shitty day, and I'm about to have one of those crazy girl moments where I laugh hysterically and then cry in a corner.

Well, yes, there is more to it, but my relationship to the culture revolves pretty heavily around the food. That's probably why I instantly thought about how bad the bagels are in Boston (awful).

And I'm sorry to hear that you've had a crazy shitty day I'm sending you many virtual hugs.