Huh.

[darcydodo]

Turns out that Richard (Australian guy in my class) is Jewish (well, half, anyway, but that's how he identifies himself). Would never have guessed.

I'm possibly doing my presentation in French on cheese.

Tomorrow I'm planning to visit the Museum of Wine. And I can't really imagine that anything particularly interesting is going to happen tonight that will merit posting about, so....

Comments

[liv]

Hey, that's my line!

[neonchameleon.livejournal.com]

As I've said to you in the past, from the point of view of an outside observer, being a Jew can be used to refer to at least three distinct concepts. The first, and probably the most obvious (from outside anyway) is one's religion- from this perspective being half Jew would be hard (probably not impossible- but certainly not easy). The second is one's ethnicity and being half Jewish from this point of view is no more silly or paradoxical than being half English or half Asian (or any other namable group)- although you end up probably as more than one person if you use this definition. The third is cultural, and from this perspective it is theoretically possible to be half of each culture- but most people would class themselves as a member of each culture (particularly Jews IME), meaning that this is unlikely.

From this I conclude that he has one Jewish parent (probably a father)

[darcydodo]

neonchameleon has got it in one. Richard's dad is Jewish, but he considers himself to be Jewish. Being completely non-religious, it's entirely a cultural thing.

[liv]

OK, so half-Jewish was a shorthand for 'half the world would consider him Jewish, half wouldn't' (excluding, obviously, all the people who don't care either way). Fair 'nuff.

[darcydodo]

Uh, no. 'Twasn't. It was shorthand for "only one of his parents is Jewish and you can tell 'cause something about his coloring's not quite right." *kippers*

[neonchameleon.livejournal.com]

No. Half Jewish means that he knows that he isn't technically Jewish but is culturally Jewish and needs to explain how he fits into that and/or he has an odd coloration and often gets asked about it. Seemingly both based on D's comments.