From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Sun Jul 23 2000 - 21:40:23 MDT
At 10:38 PM 23/07/00 EDT, Nadia wrote:
>When they say they are Jewish they
>mean the ethnicity, not the spiritual practice.
>Like being African American or Native American. Is this a strange phenomenon?
No, but IMO it's a rather oddly essentialist way of looking at it. Isn't
this a bit like `When they say they are Christian they mean the ethnicity,
not the spiritual practice'? Granted, Judaism tends to be strongly
endogamous - although it does allow conversion and marrying-in - but it's
now a vastly complex cultural tradition (I'd have thought) rather than a
gene-line or a religion. (Presumably Eli disagrees with this last
assessment, since in rejecting the Orthodox strand of the religion he
rejects his status as such - which to me implies a wholesale rejection of
the cultural apparatus tout suite. And maybe that's what he's done.)
Congratulations on your candor, pal. I know it's a hard move.
Damien Broderick
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