the wandering jew, by gustav doréI'm still not done talking about Jewish identity, sorry.
While doing some very preliminary research for my medieval European history paper, I came across the myth of the wandering Jew, the man who pissed Jesus off so much that he was cursed to roam the earth until the second coming.
I, like many other secular American Jews, really enjoy the diaspora. I don't want to be in Israel. I rather like feeling displaced. Of course, I might feel differently if I was being oppressed, which I'm not. One of the great things about being a Jew is that you can embrace the label while still rejecting everything it entails. It's a self-selecting identity. And since there are so few of us, I, at least, feel the need to help my people survive. I don't proselytize and I certainly don't plan on having a bunch of babies, so maintaining my own Jewish identity is the best I can do.
Why have we survived so long? We've survived by wandering, by being, in one way or another, useful to whoever is in power (a few exceptions aside), and by assimilating but still holding onto, at the very least, the J word. In medieval Europe, the average Jew was far better educated than the average Christian. Study is an inextricable part of the religious culture.
I understand why, given some of our past experiences, but I find it rather ironic that for a group of people constantly threatened with annihilation, who have no land of our own (many would disagree with me on this point, but the fact is that, at this point in history, a group cannot have a country wholly of its own without engaging in monstrous violations of human rights), we are so damned exclusive and xenophobic. We might be too obsessed with survival, or we might be just obsessed enough.
Are we too neurotic to settle down? According to German legend, when the wandering Jew came to Fünfeichen, he didn't eat or sleep, instead pacing in the sitting room of an inn all night long. Maybe he was cursed, but it sounds to me like he was just nervous.
Does this explain our survival? Perhaps. No matter how things go, cursed or no, we are always on our toes.
While doing some very preliminary research for my medieval European history paper, I came across the myth of the wandering Jew, the man who pissed Jesus off so much that he was cursed to roam the earth until the second coming.
I, like many other secular American Jews, really enjoy the diaspora. I don't want to be in Israel. I rather like feeling displaced. Of course, I might feel differently if I was being oppressed, which I'm not. One of the great things about being a Jew is that you can embrace the label while still rejecting everything it entails. It's a self-selecting identity. And since there are so few of us, I, at least, feel the need to help my people survive. I don't proselytize and I certainly don't plan on having a bunch of babies, so maintaining my own Jewish identity is the best I can do.
Why have we survived so long? We've survived by wandering, by being, in one way or another, useful to whoever is in power (a few exceptions aside), and by assimilating but still holding onto, at the very least, the J word. In medieval Europe, the average Jew was far better educated than the average Christian. Study is an inextricable part of the religious culture.
I understand why, given some of our past experiences, but I find it rather ironic that for a group of people constantly threatened with annihilation, who have no land of our own (many would disagree with me on this point, but the fact is that, at this point in history, a group cannot have a country wholly of its own without engaging in monstrous violations of human rights), we are so damned exclusive and xenophobic. We might be too obsessed with survival, or we might be just obsessed enough.
Are we too neurotic to settle down? According to German legend, when the wandering Jew came to Fünfeichen, he didn't eat or sleep, instead pacing in the sitting room of an inn all night long. Maybe he was cursed, but it sounds to me like he was just nervous.
Does this explain our survival? Perhaps. No matter how things go, cursed or no, we are always on our toes.
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