« March 1998 | Main | May 1998 » April 1998 ArchivesApril 17, 1998Time to Name NamesSeveral years ago, at one of the money-wasting general assemblies the Jewish federations fete themselves with, Malcolm Hoenlein, the major American Jew who runs the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, spotted me in a hallway and called me over for a huddle. It turned out that Mr. Hoenlein had a warning for me. April 12, 1998Jews You Can UseThe following are fields in which Jewish men are believed to excel: gastroenterology, the violin, political consulting, the domination of world financial markets, and particle physics. One field in which it is believed we do poorly, however, is beating people up. We are, the stereotype has it, lousy fighters, and this rankles. Some of us respond to this slander by embracing, in the words of the cultural critic Daniel Boyarin, our "sissy heritage" and taking up, among other things, the study of Yiddish (not for nothing is it known as "mama-loshen," the mother tongue). Others move in the opposite direction and join the Israeli army, where Yiddish, the language of our sissy exile, is most definitely not spoken. Still others take up ice hockey. |
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