Meanwhile, speaking of policy, of which Trump has none, J.D.
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@KarenStrickholm @wdlindsy
Judaism is all over the world. There's a very old Jewish population in India,
there are lots of Jews in South America and Central America, lots of Jews in Africa - especially South Africa and Ethiopia (ancient population!), just everywhere. Oh - and quite a few Middle Eastern Jews (Lebanese, Iranian, Iraqi, Egyptian, Syrian, etc.)... -
William Lindsey :toad:replied to lolonurse last edited by
@lolonurse @KarenStrickholm An interesting optic on how diverse and global Jewish cultures are: Claudia Roden's Book of Jewish Food. I love how eye-opening it is in showing the tremendous diversity of foodways in various Jewish communities around the world, the vast diversity of Jewish cultures rooted in one foundational belief system.
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William Lindsey :toad:replied to Karen Strickholm last edited by
@KarenStrickholm @lolonurse Of course having Jewish blood of any degree β the Nazis directly emulated the one-drop rule of Jim Crow America β became potentially lethal in the Nazi period. This was not the case when my husband's ancestors with "mixed" blood left Germany in the 1840s. This is one of the huge tragedies of what the Nazis did. German Jews had previously been well-integrated into German culture.
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William Lindsey :toad:replied to William Lindsey :toad: last edited by
@KarenStrickholm @lolonurse Go through little villages all over Germany and you'll see Jewish names on the monuments to the fallen of WWI in front of churches. And then within only a few decades, people were convinced to turn on their Jewish neighbors or to stand by in silence as others did so, to hound and expel and murder them. I am not saying there was not antisemitism in Germany prior to this time. What I am saying is that the situation changed radically due to Nazi propaganda.
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William Lindsey :toad:replied to lolonurse last edited by
@lolonurse @KarenStrickholm Yes, the notion that any ethnic group or "race" is "pure" is mind-boggling to me. It ignores the vast complexity of history, and it ignores the plain fact that race is a socially constructed category and by no means a natural one. DNA testing begins to show us this in interesting ways β begins to shatter our myths. I'm as Southern "white" as you can get, with almost all my immigrant ancestors arriving in Virginia in the 1600s.
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William Lindsey :toad:replied to William Lindsey :toad: last edited by
@lolonurse @KarenStrickholm Also a proportion arriving in Maryland in the 1600s, and a few more in the middle colonies in the 1700s, then drifting South. I have only one 19th-century immigrant ancestor, my mother's Irish-born grandmother.
So a typical Southern "white" familyβ¦. But Ancestry reports to me, to my brother, to our first cousins, that 1% of our genetic make-up comes from the Bantu people of Africa. So somewhere along the line, there was racial line-crossing in one of my lineages.
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William Lindsey :toad:replied to lolonurse last edited by
@lolonurse @KarenStrickholm These are such fascinating stories. Yes, have read about the Chinese Jewish communities and how Jewish cultural patterns have been preserved in them, even when they're no longer understood. I'm fascinated that two leading writers about Catholic spirituality from Spain in the post-Reformation period, Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross, both had conversos ancestry, and may both have been hounded by the Inquisition for that reason.
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William Lindsey :toad:replied to lolonurse last edited by
@lolonurse @KarenStrickholm Yes, for sure. Some of his ancestors left Germany specifically because of the Prussian takeover of their Catholic regions, with the attempt to impose Lutheran standards and repress Catholics. Several of his ancestors from Catholic parts of Germany were directly involved in rebellions against the Prussian rule and had to leave Germany for fear of reprisal after those rebellions failed.
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lolonursereplied to William Lindsey :toad: last edited by
@wdlindsy @KarenStrickholm
Sefardic Jews, as a whole, have a very much more lively, exciting, varied way of cooking than Ashkenazis. But I haven't ever researched Jewish Indian foods. My dad said his people were neither Ash nor Sef, and someday I hope I learn if they were Karaites or what. I will look for that book, William, thank you!! -
lolonursereplied to William Lindsey :toad: last edited by
@wdlindsy @KarenStrickholm
It wasn't at all unusual for Jews to "convert", and overtly practice Catholicism, but secretly, inwardly, remain Jewish, and teach their children the same, in hopes of someday being able to practice their religion openly again. I guess the Inquisition knew (or clearly suspected) this. My understanding is my German family left Spain for France somewhere between 700-800. -
lolonursereplied to William Lindsey :toad: last edited by
@wdlindsy @KarenStrickholm
Humans are not nice people. -
Karen Strickholmreplied to William Lindsey :toad: last edited by
@wdlindsy @lolonurse Do you ever get to NYC? There's an amazing restaurant featuring the cuisine of the Jewish district in Rome. I love foodways.
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Karen Strickholmreplied to William Lindsey :toad: last edited by
@wdlindsy @lolonurse I know. This turning on their neighbors is a big part of the horror of it all, don't you think? If it could happen there, it could happen anywhere.
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Karen Strickholmreplied to William Lindsey :toad: last edited by
You and I are probably distantly related too! My mother's father came from an old pre-war plantation family in Georgia. But those grandparents got divorced. I have a geneology he did, but there are few family stories from that quadrant. My mother never forgave him for leaving the family for another woman - his university student, Marion! They had a son who I never even knew about until mom let it slip, then growled, " He's no brother of mine."
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William Lindsey :toad:replied to lolonurse last edited by
@lolonurse @KarenStrickholm Often they definitely aren't. And then they surprise you and can show amazing compassion.
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William Lindsey :toad:replied to Karen Strickholm last edited by
@KarenStrickholm @lolonurse We're all related in fascinating ways, aren't we? I've loved the reaction of white supremacists to the well-substantiated finding that we all stem from an African Ur-mother. Couldn't happen to nicer people! Sounds as if there could be interesting stories on that Georgia branch of your family. It's always fascinating when the "hidden" relative suddenly emerges through a little revelatory comment like your mother's.
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William Lindsey :toad:replied to Karen Strickholm last edited by
@KarenStrickholm @lolonurse Yes, that's the horror, to live next to and with people for years β for centuries! β living in relative amicability. And then to discover people can be made to hate by ugly propaganda and can turn on a dimeβ¦. And, of course, the ground was fertile for that hateful propaganda due to centuries of antisemitic lies, the blood libel stories, etc., all rooted in distorted versions of Christianity that needed to demonize the Jewish people.
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William Lindsey :toad:replied to Karen Strickholm last edited by
@KarenStrickholm @lolonurse I made a trip there this spring to see my brother, who lives in Brooklyn β his niece and former wife are in Connecticut, and I stayed with both my niece and my brother. My brother took us to his favorite Jewish deli in NYC and we had pastrami sandwiches. For years when my husband and I would go to NYC, Katz's iconic deli on the lower east side was our go-to place. NYC has so amazing much to offer in terms of Jewish cuisine and every other cuisine imaginable.
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William Lindsey :toad:replied to lolonurse last edited by
@lolonurse @KarenStrickholm Yes, that's right. And when the pressure has been so intense β a matter of life and death at some points in European history β this is understandable. One of my mystery family lines that emigrated, probably, from Great Britain to Maryland has a really uncommon surname that I find only in a Jewish family that left Spain as Spain expelled its Jewish population, with branches going to Belgium, Germany, and what's now Poland β and possibly the British Isles?
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William Lindsey :toad:replied to lolonurse last edited by
@lolonurse @KarenStrickholm Yes, this is a point that Claudia Roden often makes in her magisterial survey of Jewish foodways globablly. So many of us Americans tend to think of Jewish food as synonymous with Ashkenazi cooking, which is in so many ways Germanic-central European without the pork, and not very exciting. But the Jewish cooking of Egypt, for instance, or of Ladino communities: exotic and very unlike that central European Jewish food.