she was bonafide lefty Jewish gal with great hair and big hooters...head of local NOW for a while...lawyer...great lawyer
we were opposites but really were fond of one another...hell I still respect her and loved her wit and whatnot
but in 2004 just chatting on the phone...she went on and on about how she hated Bush and conservative Christians had to be kept in check and all that crapola and that besides that fear she only cared about Israel (I though wow..you are so misguided to be so smart?)
I asked her how could she say that after 9-11 and how many of her rights did Christians want besides abortion to take away snd that we sure helped Israel aplenty to be so fearsome to her..
Silence.
We ended the call frostily and haven't spoken since nor done Holiday season cards.
That about sums it up.
Jews are either like her and this insane logic over Christian Pogroms in the US or they are great stalwarts like Levin and several Jewish freepers.
I don't know when this happened. The first Jews ..English and French and Sephardi Jews who settled here...many in the antebellum South where they were landed gentry same as Protestants or early urban areas up north did not think so much outside the mainstream and agitate for so much humanist change.
I think...just musing....that the latter huge waves from Eastern Europe brought a destructive way of thinking with many of them. Some have shaken it off...some not.
I was just in Miami..after 20 years...even the beach seemed less Jewish than the old days.
Good lord at the pretty girls though..wow...whiplash for an old horndog like me
Ironically, those early Jewish settlers weren't known for their Orthodoxy and were sort of "proto-Reform" in many ways. Many of them intermarried and their descendants have melted into the non-Jewish population.
I think...just musing....that the latter huge waves from Eastern Europe brought a destructive way of thinking with many of them. Some have shaken it off...some not.
Eastern European Jewish immigration was a mixed bag. While many were Marxist radicals others were real Orthodox Jews--perhaps the first real Orthodox Jews to come to America.
Contrary to popular stereotype, the Eastern European 'Ashkenazim, not the Sefaradim, are the true "fundies" of Judaism. The Sefaradim were always highly assimilated, more conversant with modern notions, and religiously laxer. The Eastern European 'Ashkenazi Orthodox Jews were totally isolated from the outside world, fanatically strict, and untouched by modernity--almost Amish. Unfortunately when Jews of this background rebelled, they went all the way and became radicals. Sefaradim, being laxer, more easy-going, and more assimilated, never had to make this all or nothing choice. At any rate, the Eastern European 'Ashkenazim are among the greatest Jews in the world.
Three hundred years ago all Jews everywhere were members of autonomous, self-governing Theocratic communities under the civil authority of Theocratic rabbinic courts. It was the "enlightenment" that put an end to that. Personally, I'd like to see a restoration of the former system, but such a thing would rub a lot of "enlightenment"-influenced "conservatives" the wrong way.