This week's NYT Mag cover story was shocking, shocking! Apparently, sometimes intermarriages between Jews and Gentiles involve no "shiksa" whatsoever. Contrary to popular belief, Jewish women are not all home alone watching episodes of "Rhoda," gorging themselves on latkes, and bemoaning the fact that all the nice Jewish guys have, by some fluke, paired off with clones of Claudia Schiffer.
Of course, the opener (confession - I have not yet read far into this article, and may never do so) - "Last spring he cut apart a frozen pig’s head with his compound miter saw in our basement. He needed the head to fit into a pot so that he could make pork stock." - reads like a parody of what a Jew might fear would happen pairing off outside the faith/tribe/whatever. 'The goyim, they don't just love pork, they hack apart pigs' heads whenever they get the chance!'
Monday, December 07, 2009
Popular culture, meet the "shaygetz"
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9 comments:
Not so. I've verified with my boyfriend that he has no intention of chopping up a pig's head in our studio apartment, which is for the best, really, given the mess even a simple pasta dinner makes of the kitchen.
I'm sure he's just saying that because he thinks it will improve his chances of chopping up pig heads. If he tells you of his desire you'll take steps to prevent it, so better for him to suggest otherwise. That way, when a pig-head finally presents itself, he'll be ready and you won't be ready to stop him.
Only time will tell.
So what do you think of this article? My first thought when I read it was, "Jews, money, lawyers, people angry about Jews, money, and lawyers--Phoebe!" My second thought was, isn't it the purpose of school boards to "talk about money, about bids, budgets, contracts" and NOT to be an open forum for abstract contemplation of the meaning of education?
The link's broken - I'm desperately curious!
oops, fail: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/07/nyregion/07towns.html
OK, so it seems the main problem here is the article itself. Orthodox Jews, according to the journalist, "control" various boards, as opposed to composing the majority of the members. The two sort of mean the same thing but sort of don't. Not every group of representatives perfectly represents, in all categories, the population it acts on behalf of. So a disproportionate number of Orthodox Jews might pose a problem in certain situations, but should not be assumed nefarious.
I wasn't clear from the article (was this something I missed?) if the particular Orthodox Jews on the board send their kids to public schools - if they do, it seems irrelevant that others of 'their kind' do not.
Then there's the fact that someone involved is named Rothschild - the earliest versions of French (if not other) anti-Semitism in its modern form come before the term was coined, and were directed against the Rothschilds, of whom maybe this guy is one. Maybe it's in the collective subconscious to become convinced of a Jewish conspiracy whenever that name pops up?
I don't know about that. I couldn't even figure out what the "war" was over here--it seemed like the school board was trying to make cuts, which was bad, but then also hired this expensive lawyer for some special ed machinations, which was also bad. And then said some awkward stuff about disabled kids, even though presumably the Jews have a lot of disabled kids of their own since they hired this lawyer to provide services for them? The nature of the problem was very confusing, but seemed to center on Jews only caring about money.
"The nature of the problem was very confusing, but seemed to center on Jews only caring about money."
True enough. I couldn't figure out what the "war" was either.
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