Cup of Chicha: to be or not to be jewish

to be or not to be jewish

Terry Teachout links to Joseph Epstein’s essay “Funny, But I Do Look Jewish.”

FUNNY, BUT I DO LOOK JEWISH, at least to myself, and more and more so as the years go by. I’m fairly sure I didn’t always look Jewish, not when I was a boy, or possibly even when a young man, though I have always carried around my undeniably Jewish name, which was certainly clue enough. But today, gazing at my face in the mirror, I say to myself, yes, no question about it, this is a very Jewish-looking gent.
The article “Types, Anthropological” in the old “Jewish Encyclopedia” (1901-1906), written at a time when the Jews were anthropologically still considered a race, notes that “persons who do not have the Jewish expression in their youth acquire it more and more as they grow from middle to old age.”

I have a strange — and that’s to say, probably typical — relationship to my Jewishness. Among other Jews, I’m quick to proclaim myself one; among non-Jews, I never mention it. But my appearance’s ability to imply my heritage betrays both impulses. In Iowa, people look at my dark wavy hair and say, “You could be Jewish!,” meaning, “If there were Jews in this city, you would be one of them.” In cities or schools full of Jews — Beverly Hills, Brown University, NYC — people say “But you don’t look…” and point to my nose, straight with a ski-slope tip. (Also, my last name is Sephardic; no trace of the Ashkenazi -bloom or -man or -stein.)
The result is that I feel, no matter where I go, that I look Other. And am Other. I’m not quite a Jew: I never had a bat mitzvah or ate Jewish food at home; my mother’s ancestors were soldiers in the Civil War, not recent Eastern European immigrants; and my family, inflated with stepparents and adoptions, includes so many religions that the only holiday it makes sense to celebrate is a commercialized Christmas. But I’m also very much a Jew, at least in terms of its stereotypes: I’m bookish, sickly, and very paranoid about future waves of anti-semitism. But, most importantly, I have the correct attitude towards categories: an attitude of tension, ambiguity, Otherness. For, what does it mean to be Jewish when Jewishness is not an ethnicity? When, given the growing amount of non-practicing Jews, it isn’t always a religion? And when, among many, it is absolutely not a heritage? Jewishness becomes this: to NOT be what others are, to categorize oneself in terms of absence rather than presence, alienation rather than inclusion.
Reading Epstein’s essay, I was waiting for him to come to the same conclusion and finally, at its end, he does:

Jews come in all shapes and sizes, tastes and temperaments. They can be garish and vulgar, pushy and wild, sensitive and cerebral, artistic and conservative, but they are rarely dull, except of course when trying to pass themselves off as something other than Jewish. Sometimes I think I can have had no better luck than to have been born Jewish, even though I am in my religious belief a pious agnostic and far from a sedulous practitioner of the Jewish religion. At other, rarer times, the complication of being Jewish seems heavy, or “fraught,” as is nowadays said, and what it is fraught with, I believe, is the feeling of never quite feeling altogether at home anywhere.
“What are you doing here?” is a question that plays somewhere in the back of every Jewish person in whatever country he or she takes up residence. (“A Jew,” Andr� Aciman remarks “is always someone about whom one asked: Why on earth isn’t he where he belongs?”)

Posted by nchicha on December 08, 2003, 09:51 AM

Comments

Next time you read Don Quixote or hear Quixotic, just think he was “Jewish” (converso), like most probably Cervantes himself. Then a lot of things about the novel as an art form start to make sense.

Btw, you look totally Jewish to me. What you don’t look at all is Ashkenazi. But that’s a completely different story, the fact that the Ashkenazi experience has become *the* Jewish experience. If you want to be surrounded by pale-skinned brunettes looking exactly like you, just go to Southern Spain. We have so much Jewish (Sephardic) blood running through our veins you would stop looking Other and become “family”.

Posted by Ion at December 8, 2003 02:49 PM

So you look Jewish. You are also quite beautiful, and sexy as hell wearing a monocle. Just be glad you’re not ugly. Now that is a tribe you do not want to belong to.

BTW, you have a twin, a girl I used to know named Sharona Schlein. Now she was Jewish. And absolutely stunning. Hell of a poet too.

Posted by nabocuff at December 8, 2003 05:12 PM

Ion — I am actually going to Spain for my honeymoon but haven’t made any specific plans yet — any suggestions for places we can go? I love Sephardic melodies and would love to go places where Sephardic musicians are.

I’m also interested in the observation that the American Jewish experience is almost exclusively Ashkenazic and that many Sephardic Jews therefore feel excluded. I’m sorry for my part in that, though I hope you’ll be happy to know that in my novel-in-progress, which follows an Ashkenazic Jew as he comes to terms with what it means to him to be Jewish, there’s at least an acknowledgment of Sephardic traditions, specifically some of the differences regarding what is prohibited during Passover.

Posted by Cheshire at December 8, 2003 05:16 PM

Cheshire,
I’m sorry if I implied that the Ashkenazic voluntarily excluded the Sephardic Jews. Sometimes things just happen: in 1900 only one tenth of Jews all over the world were Sephardim, and crucial events for the Jewish people in the 20th century were things affecting primarily the Ashkenazim: the emigration to the Americas to create new communities in the US but also in Argentina and M�xico; the Holocaust; and the creation of the State of Israel in the late forties and fifties. I happen to be more interested in the Sephardic experience because of my Spanish origins. The history of the tens of thousands of Jews that converted in the 15th century and stayed in Spain after 1492 is an extremely interesting, complicated and paradoxical one. You can’t really say it’s part of the history of the Jewish people and at the same time modern antisemitism, based on “race” and not religion or culture was born in Spain in the sixteenth century.

As for places to go in Spain, I would recommed Toledo, C�rdoba (it has a synagogue from the 13th century, restored in the 19th) and my hometown, Seville: the oldest remaining part of the city is from the 11th century, la Juder�a (the Jewry). The progroms of 1381 destroyed many of the jewries all over Spain, and centuries of the Inquisition erased whatever it was left, but here and there and in surprising places you can find remnants. I don’t know of any festival devoted to Sephardic music, but if you go to these places you may be lucky to find concerts and events. They are not that common but not too rare either.

Posted by Ion at December 8, 2003 07:06 PM

I pretty much fit the stereotype:
Dark, curly hair, not tall, bookish, more than occasionally kevetchish …

I’m a lawyer and my brother is a doctor, the high school we went to was 90% Jewish, as a result I occasionally slip out with Yiddish slang …my mother can completely obliterate self-esteem in two minutes …all except for one thing - I’m not actually Jewish! Though people just often assume I am.

I think my colouring comes from being part Mexican and part Scot. I lived with a Jewish woman for 9 years. I suppose I have a fairly good amount of insight into the culture for a Goy. That’s not to say I know what being Jewish is like. Though I have even once in a while heard slightly anti-semitic comments behind my back from people like co-workers who assumed I was Jewish (try bringing up a cost-saving idea at a staff meeting!) On other occasions, the assumption has probably helped me a little - I’ve had Jewish co-workers and professors who seemed a bit more friendly or to cut me just a little more slack than average. At least that was my perception.

Well - in any case, you’re a beautiful woman - juding from the photos you have posted here. I actually assumed you were Latina - given the name of your weblog and being from L.A. Ah … the assumtions we make!

Posted by Charles at December 9, 2003 12:35 AM

Ion,
While my mother’s side is Ashkenazi and very mutt-y (Austrian, Russian, Polish, etc.), my father’s side is purebred Sephardic. They left Spain during the Inquisition (if you’re interested, there’s a lot of Chicha folklore about this time period), and settled in Northern Africa, were they were assimilated by the French. Then, after the Algerian War, they relocated to France; so, in terms of citizenship, I’m French (and American), but, in terms of genetic heritage, I’m much more likely Spanish.

Posted by Nathalie Chicha at December 9, 2003 10:43 AM

speaing of belonging to the ugly tribe… I just checked out Cheshires site.

Posted by barnswallow at December 9, 2003 10:52 AM

Hmm…I’m pretty sure that wasn’t a compliment.

Posted by Cheshire at December 9, 2003 12:09 PM

Barnswallow, I have no idea in hell what you’re talking about.

Posted by Nathalie Chicha at December 9, 2003 12:58 PM

Hum, “Chicha”, that’s an interesting last name. I don’t think it’s related at all, but in Spain at least, “chicha” is also used as “intellectual substance”, as in that “that article has a lot of ‘chicha’” or “that book has no ‘chicha’ at all”. So “Cup of chicha” has another meaning for Spanish ears… a very appropriate description, I would say, of your blog.

Posted by Ion at December 10, 2003 07:25 AM

Hi - I was looking for some political sites with articles on the recent US election and found your nice site. The comments from others on here are pretty good so I just thought I’d add my thoughts also!

Elaine Cooper

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