Tuesday, December 29, 2009

While I'm away, read this

I'm away on vacation but saving up lots of stories and bloggish material for next week, but in the meantime, you should read Jay Michaelson's latest Polymath column in the Forward. Titled, "The Myth of Authenticity," the article explores the nagging sense that ultra-orthodox Jews are inauthentic and the rest of us are not. For example:
It’s not, of course, that we want to be the shtetl Jews of Anatevka — only
that we continue to see them as the “real” ones, and the rest of us, well, as a
kind of hybridization, or adaptation. Thus there persists in the American Jewish
imagination an anxiety of inauthenticity — that someone, somewhere, is the real
Jew, but I’m not it.

If you've ever seen "Annie Hall," "A Serious Man," or a female rabbi, the article has something for you. I'll be back next week.
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1 comment:

  1. AnonymousDecember 30, 2009 at 6:24 PM

    Good article and the letters are rich in every direction. I am reading an MRT library book on Yiddish culture. Did you know that in the 12 to 14th centuries Jewish culture (both Germanic based and Greek-Turkic based spread to the East (Poland and Russia,etc)? One area for the creation of Yiddish was EASTERN plains for raising livestock for the Western Europe, ie, Jews of that epoch were the cowboys of Eastern Europe. That was a cliche image of the real Jew for that time. Bob G.

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