After all, we are the "chosen people" right? It means that some other people weren't chosen. And we totally showed those losers! Ahem, anyway, Jews have, for the majority of history, been an "out group." A minority among a majority that was at best ambivalent, and at worst outright hostile.
Mobius of Jewschool has posted a discussion (from The New Republic) on what constitutes a Jew vis a vis membership in the Jewish nation. This particular discussion is culled from the letters of David Ben Gurion and Isaiah Berlin in 1958, and is a fascinating read. Also, as Mobius points out prescient of some major social issues that would arise as a result. On that topic nnseek has a post about the new regulations governing the "Right of Return" to Israel. They quote Professor Ruth Gaibesson as saying ""There is no reason to grant rights on the basis of the [Law of] Returnto individuals who have no interest in a Jewish lifestyle, and at timesare even devout members of a different religious community." Speaking in this case about the Ethiopian Falash Mura.
Stuart Dauermann of Rabbenu traces back the idea of chosenness to the bible, and examines the conditions for the endurance of the "chosen" status. Before anyone yells at me, I know that he's a Messianic Jew. He still makes some interesting points, based on the presumption that Jews/Children of Israel are G-d's chosen nation.
On the lighter side, this satire site has an article entitled: "G-d Names Next Chosen People, It's Jews Again: Oh Shit, Say Jews."
Of course some people (ahem Not Chosen's friend Manwhore) call exclusively indating/inmarriage a racist ideal, and the topic has recently (always?) been the subject of a great deal of controversy. Most recently Jewcy dating blogger Amy Odell's column that starts with the words "I don't understand why so many Jews refuse to marry non-Jews." Really? You don't understand?
While I only date Jews, I like to be exclusive in another way. You see, I like to date guys that don't like other people. Some people might call these guys "a**holes." For the record, CJ is very nice, so I think that I've broken that trend.
And one unrelated note: while wasting time yesterday, I was reading Kosher Eucharist, and I happened to leave my mouse on top of their links list. Well, when you roll over their blogroll you can see that they have added editorial comments about each blogger. If you roll over "Jewbiquitous" it says: "Mobius says they're totally cute." Needless to say, we totally appreciate comments of this type. Read the whole string here, with input from our blog-crush David Kelsey.
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Not related to the post, but the thank you page has been updated. Have a good Shabbos.
I'm sitting in class right now while my students are working and just read, the line about God names next chosen people- I snorted my tea out my nose- the students kept demanding to know what was so funny- I couldn't tell them. Oh, man, that was a funny line.
You know, I got really pissed when I read that article on Jewcy. I thought to myself, gee, if you can't figure that out, then why the hell are blogging for a Jewish website? What exactly are the criteria for Jewcy writers? Is it like David Plotz's blogging the bible project at Slate, qualifications being that he knew absolutely nothing about the bible or the traditional way of understanding it? Grrrrr... the Heeb mentality lives on.
Statements like those in Odell's column are pretty much the reason I find reading Jewcy so difficult to actually do.
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