Comments on: Fashion

By: paul

paul — Thu, 28 Apr 2005 23:41:32 +0000

The ass-end of American Culture.. I like that. I have no discernable cultural heritage from my immigrant ancestors that I know of. Just plain American as far as I can tell (unless a fondness for potato’s can be counted as a German trait).

I think my Mom’s side tried to downplay their German heritage during World War II.

Speaking of culture, my Mom’s German surname had only 4 letters and we always thought it was some version of a longer name that had gotten shortened at Ellis Island or elsewhere in the immigration process. But when my Brother went to Germany to look it up, it turns out it is a moderately common 4 letter name in Germany.

Strikes me as anti-climactic somehow.

By: jadedju

jadedju — Thu, 28 Apr 2005 06:49:29 +0000

Your mother’s father may well have been Jewish–or at least his parents were. Forced conversion, or conversion to avoid persecution, has been a continuing theme for Jews through the centuries.

On that note, I’m claiming you as one of my people. Welcome to the fold. By the way, you’re looking a little peaked–you should eat more.

By: jilbur

jilbur — Wed, 27 Apr 2005 18:23:10 +0000

It’s remarkable to me that your family was able to hang on to any Yiddish at all for so many generations, considering how far back the one Jewish person was … my family was all 100% grade-A Jewish until my generation, and though Yiddish was spoken *to* my Mom in her household (by her grandmother), she had the usual ‘greenhorn 2nd generation’ attitude and responded in English–so she knows Yiddish, but only ‘passively’, not very well actively. Yiddish was something you spoke at family gatherings so that the children *wouldn’t* understand (shande!)

I knew some German, and so in my early 20s tried to learn as much Yiddish as I could: learned how to use the Hebrew letters to spell it (the rules, such as they are, differ from how they’re used to spell Hebrew), tried to read some Singer and Sholom Aleichem. Got far enough to understand the bits of Yiddish I could seek out in the family environment, which was precious little. In addition to my anemic Jewish cultural sentiments, I also have a rather strong orientation to language as culture generally, and am sad to see any language die–but this particular one, it’s my direct heritage, and, well.