Posts from — May 2006

Who can know the motivations of a group blogger? Many want to claim that blogs are not important. I don’t agree categorically, and though I am not personally making any assertions of self-importance, I see no merit to the suggestion that one must drop out of college and bear arms for the Zionist Entity to be doing something of substance.

It is hard to say what benefits the blogger enjoys. There is no money. The relationships forged are purely cyber ones.

It is an existential question as to why one blogs. A mystery locked within the depths of the soul of man. There are no answers. Only more questions.

We know who is Chief. Meet the other editors.

Your high power job with a credit card company was probably not an invitation to ask you about your feelings on the Bankruptcy Law.

In fact, I would have to concede that was a bit inappropriate and forward of me.

But in an otherwise humorless evening, I have to say that your ascribed motive for this law which was purchased from Congress by banks such as the one you work at– “in order to give deserving people more creditâ€?—was the funniest line I have ever heard on a first date. At least compared to other first dates with Republican yuppie Conservadox chicks from Long Island.

As I warned, the Jewish community’s lead for intervention in Darfur is not being received with widespread kudos or support many expected.

In a follow up post by fellow Jewschool contributor, deitybox, Mobius referred to my earlier post and to me as a “Ghetto Jew� in his editorial note at the end of the post.

This might sound similar to the casual reader as when some of the Zionist boys over at Jewlicious refer to me as a “Shtetl Jew.�

Bu it is not the same, though there are certainly some similarities, such as a preference for a traditional, and yes, cautious, Diaspora approach as an important consideration when crafting Jewish communal policy, with concern over precedent, arrogance, and overreaching.

But Jewish ghettos were massive centers of cultural and Intellectual power in major metropolitan areas, not minor ones. And they still are. Mobius may be pigeon holing me a little, but it is not without merit, and it is not dismissive in the same way as “Shtetl Jew,â€? which is meant to suggest a world view that is not only small town and small minded–and of course, weak–but also antiquated, and quite over.

Shtetl implies Eastern Europe, and of course, the dead language of Yiddish. But ghettos are the traditional strongholds of Diaspora intensity. They preceded Yiddish life, and they live on today. The ghetto is not static or for the history books, but a vibrant continuum. There are Jewish ghettos all over New York, with varying levels of religiosity, and they continue to thrive in many major metropolitan areas throughout the Diaspora.

So I’m soooo ghetto.

I’ll wear that label like a bochur wears a borsalino on a shidduch at a swanky Manhattan hotel lobby.