Yesterday I heard Robert Siegel of NPR doing two Christmas stories. One was about NORAD tracking Santa's movements, as it does every year. And in another story he signed off by saying, "Happy Christmas." Siegel is of my generation: a postwar Jew, with New York roots. When I was a young journalist, the idea of throwing any coins in the fountain of American Christmas was repugnant. I bet I would have turned down a Christmas story at the Philadelphia Daily News, when I was a reporter there. (Don't remember.)
Whatever his private feelings on this score, Siegel did Christmas with zest. And without a choice, really. Because he is a powerful, representative journalist. And he represents American culture, which includes Christmas.
If you look across the length and breadth of the Jewish establishment, prominent Jews with wealth and status, from the 13 Jews in the Senate to all the Jews in the Congress, media, thinktanks, and Madoffia, you will find that all these Jews have a responsibility to represent others. You can't really be ethnocentric when you are a national leader. For all his ethnocentrism, Madoff had to seek out non-Jewish money. When Joe Lieberman ran for vice president, he denied to Don Imus (because of a question I had raised) that Jewish law forbad intermarriage. A pure lie, for political purposes. But a lie with consequences. It is impossible to maintain strict ethnocentrism when you are representing the nation.
I'm leaving the Israel lobby out of this. It is ethnocentrism and political corruption. But my point here is about the transformation of the Jewish presence in American life.
What I tried to say last night about the Muslim complaint against the fast food restaurant for giving out a Bible toy is that This sort of ethnic rage characterized my own youth. We felt threatened in America as Jews. We needed to stake out our position. That's all over. We have position. We say "Happy Christmas" with zest on the most influential radio program in the U.S. (Sorry Rush).
Which brings me to my headline. Are Jews a minority? I don't know. WASPs are a minority but would never characterize themselves as such; and Jews have more money than WASPs according to Pew and arguably more power. From a social/employment standpoint, I doubt that there is any real discrimination against Jews. (OK some country clubs; but how important is that bar?) The Chinese are a minority in the world, yet no one goes around calling them that. When I lived in Minnesota, I had Icelandic friends who saw themselves as distinctly a minority within the Scandinavian community. And the Catholics of St. Paul the same, let alone Tom Friedman's Jewish community in the western suburbs. Do American Catholics call themselves a minority? Everyone is a minority really in pluralistic America.
The significance of the word minority is that it describes a lack of cultural/legal/financial power. Webster's: "part of a population differing from others in some characteristics and often subjected to differential treatment." Having come back from a lovely and yes privileged Christmas dinner in which I felt completely comfortable as a Jew– and I reckon this is an experience a great number of intermarried Jews are having these days– I would not characterize myself as belonging to a minority.
Related Posts
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- Support the Iranian protesters even if they represent a minority
- NPR anchor Robert Siegel’s double standard for Freeman
- In Media Reports, Christians Are Quizzed About Their Beliefs. Why Not Jews?
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Two years ago, Glenn "Hurricane" Schwartz,
a Philadelphia weatherman at the local NBC affiliate refused to mention Christmas during his forecast segment. This info leaked to the gossip sections of the newspapers.
Hurrican Schwartz quickly reversed and apologized.
http://willdo.pwblogs.com/2006/12/19/youre-a-mean-one-mr-hurricane/
Did the late Harold Pinter, born Jewish Cockney in London, consider himself a minority? Judging from his writing, evidently not.
But he certainly held minority political views, as compared to the American and British cultural mainstreams, which still improbably regard themselves as shining exemplars of democracy and human rights.
As Bush and Blair tip into history's dustbin, Pinter's uncompromising Nobel Prize lecture in 2005 remains a bracing refutation of their narcissistic delusions — even if Pinter did not deign to mention the faux-patriotic neocon court Jews (Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith, et al) who aided and abetted their depredations against humanity.
————
The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them.
The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law. The invasion was an arbitrary military action inspired by a series of lies upon lies and gross manipulation of the media and therefore of the public; an act intended to consolidate American military and economic control of the Middle East masquerading – as a last resort – all other justifications having failed to justify themselves – as liberation.
We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery, degradation and death to the Iraqi people and call it 'bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East'.
How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand? More than enough, I would have thought. Therefore it is just that Bush and Blair be arraigned before the International Criminal Court of Justice.
Sometimes a writer has to smash the mirror – for it is on the other side of that mirror that the truth stares at us.
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2005/pinter-lecture-e.html
————
Well done, brother Harold P.
Godspeed to you, sir.
Madoffians on guard For Thee…
'According to the Cook County Assessor’s website, the Chicago home of four-term Democrat Congressman and likely new White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, doesn’t exist. While the address of 4228 North Hermitage is listed as Emanuel’s residence on the Illinois State Board of Elections’ website, there seems to be no public record of Emanuel ever paying property taxes on this home…
Why wouldn’t 4228 North Hermitage property owners Rahm Emanuel and wife Amy Rule not pay property taxes?'
Pinter, who, according to the Nobel Prize citation, in his plays "forced entry into oppression's locked rooms" was also a co-signatory of the statement on Gaza by 300 prominent Jewish Britons advertised some years ago.That statement is now even more acute:
“We watch with horror the collective punishment of the people of Gaza. Everything reasonable must be done to secure Corporal Gilad Shalit’s safe release but nothing Israel is doing contributes to that aim. Instead, it is using its enormously superior military might to terrorize an entire people.”
“Destruction of the fragile Gaza infrastructure will not release Shalit. Bombing power stations and cutting off fuel supplies deprives people of electricity, refrigeration, pumped drinking water and sewage disposal services. It holds hostage hospital patients on life support systems, or undergoing dialysis. It brings the threat of epidemics and starvation.”
“As Gideon Levy wrote in the Israeli daily Ha’aretz, this is “not only pointless, but… blatantly illegitimate”. Gilad Shalit has become a pawn in the Israeli government’s ongoing battle to topple the democratically-elected government of the Palestinians.”
“Presenting this as an isolated hostage-taking incident ignores Israel’s regular snatching of Palestinians from their homes. Thousands are held in ‘administrative detention’ without trial, women and children amongst them. A doctor and his brother – civilians – were kidnapped from their home in Al Shouka, near Rafah, the day before Corporal Shalit was captured. Like him, they need to be returned to their families in the established practice of prisoner exchange. And all elected MPs, punitively imprisoned by Israel in recent days, must be immediately released.”
“For the US and its allies merely to call for ‘restraint’ is desperately inadequate – and evidently ineffective. This is a situation that requires determined action by the international community.”
"the 13 Jews in the Senate"
Soon to be more…Ted Kaufman will soon replace Biden in the Senate, and a Jew (Jan Schakowsky? – her husband is a white collar criminal) will probably take over Obama's seat in the Senate.
Not to mention the other Senate seats which are being vacated by those who are going to serve in Obama's Administration.
Sad day. Harold Pinter is without doubt one of my most favorite writers. Ever. Great voice. Great talent.
Kaufmann, Biden's flunky, is a Catholic.
I'm noticing the raft of complaints citing 'anti-semitism' surrounding coverage of Madoff, as if non-Jews are to blame for his demise.
I would suggest those who are doing it to stop.
This is McCarthyism. 300 million Americans are not going to buy this baggage. Jews are doing themselves no favors floating the 'anti-semitism' balloon over this one.
"When I was a young journalist, the idea of throwing any coins in the fountain of American Christmas was repugnant."
Why repugnant? As a non-Jew, I find that attitude terribly offensive. I certainly could never imagine holding that view towards Yom Kippur, Ramadan, or any other religious holidays.
No one is asking any Jew to celebrate Christmas, but that's no reason to hold the holiday in contempt.
LOL
Compare in Mein Kampf the visceral passage where the young Adolf
describes how he felt upon gazing at ortho Jews in the shabbier streets of Vienna.
Max Nordau,
The conservatives' lie about Rahm Emanuel and property taxes was debunked the same day it started.
Emanuel paid over $13,000 – around twice the amount his neighbors pay.
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