Although I am not a writer, though I guess that we all are in a way, I look forward to “Everything Is Personal” every week. I identify with your observations. It’s like crawling into your head and finding tiny scraps of myself. Thank you!
I have never heard the word shiksa but I grew up and live in a very NOT diverse area. I rely on reading to make my world get a little bit larger and richer.
Laurie, thank you for writing this. We need to be reminded often, and Anne Frank's story keeps me vigilant and concerned. I have a close friend living in Tel Aviv. We met because both of our children have the same rare diagnosis: Apert syndrome. We spoke yesterday, and she said she doesn't believe people care. I said I do. And I knew there were others who did, too.
the story line in NOBODY WANTS THIS actually isn’t that far-fetched. only two non-Orthodox denominations (Reconstructionist, in 2015; Reform this year) allow rabbis to intermarry. it’s outmoded among most people—most Jews are intermarried—but not in this specific regard.
I visited the Anne Frank Museum in 1980 and I still remember it as a shattering, heart-breaking experience. I think about Anne often and about all the many people who are living in hiding, living stories we will never hear. I watched Nobody Wants This and had the same reaction. The tropes seemed dated. I'll guess that any new Yorker knows what a “shiksa” is, though I wouldn't be surprised if many Americans have not heard this word. I know Jewish parents who don't want their kids to marry “out,” but many more of us Jews live fairly secular lives. I was amused and also not amused by the stereotype of the blond shiksa being some object of both attraction and repulsion...it seems a bit quaint and not in a good way. Also, importantly, the Kristen Bell character came off as more than a bit shallow and I found it hard to imagine that this super adorable and hot young rabbi would step away from his lifelong dream for this particular shiksa. But that might just be me.
I did not know that “shiksa” was a slur. I doubt many midwesterners have ever heard that word at all. I’ve read it in books a couple times but have never heard it used.
Did enjoy going through the Anne Frank house a few years ago. My husband is Dutch. His parents (not Jewish) lived through the Nazi occupation.
I did write a long comment about your review of Nobody Wants This and it disappeared (mercifully perhaps)
I agree completelywith your comments - except that I don't think it was adorable or funny -particularly the scene of the mother in-law to be eating prosciutto (possibly) taken out of the rubbish bin. I imagine that many religions have groups that chose to ignore the real world and may seem more at home in another century and this was the choice I think Joanne would find the hardest to make.
Your column was a great contrast between a time when Jews were forced to hide behind walls to survive and were later sent to their deaths behind walls that others built and a time (as portrayed in Nobody wants this) when they chose to build those walls themselves for the purpose of discriminating against others and ultimately to isolate and control .
Does tourism ask anything of anyone? You go someplace and ask questions because you are you; some people will visit the museum and think how sad, or not think at all. Jan hopes he gets people to ask certain questions, but you, still being you, raised you are set of questions. In Bescancon,
a center of resistance to the Nazi occupation, there's a Museum of Resistance and Deportation (Richard would like it), and it hopes to raise questions like the Anne Frank Museum, but I walked through wondering what I would have done then. What will I do now? Will I come to the US and become an enemy of the people if Donald Trump wins? My uncle was with the WWII Belgian antifa underground, till he was picked up and sent to the special place in the hell of Buchenwald reserved for Jewish Communist resisters. (He survived, wrote a memoir, by the way - Beyond the Last Path, Eugene Weinstock. What does writing ask of its reader? Can the tourist to an essay walk through without a thought, ignore the writer's questions, or does all this happen in the space between reader and writer, the place where meaning is created?
I was curious as to what you think of the use of the words genocide and indigenous regarding Jews? Anne Frank’s story is one among too many and unique because of the diary and her age but the systematic elimination of a race spares only those who are able to escape. I too have dear friends who have friends and family in Israel. These are people of conscience and peacemakers who are torn to pieces by the situation and deeply hurt and mystified by how despite all they do as peacemakers the world configures them as villains when they were attacked and atrocities not seen since the Nazis were and are committed against them.
I think you have read enough of my posts to know they speak for themselves in exactly the way I intended for this moment, and I don't have anything further to add.
I like that you write what you want to in the way you want to, to whomever is smart enough to get whatever it is you want to say.
Thanks, pussycat. You give me courage. Always. xxL
Although I am not a writer, though I guess that we all are in a way, I look forward to “Everything Is Personal” every week. I identify with your observations. It’s like crawling into your head and finding tiny scraps of myself. Thank you!
Huge thanks, so happy to hear! By the way, I post 6 or 7 times a month, not once a week. The rhythm is one day on and four days off.
I have never heard the word shiksa but I grew up and live in a very NOT diverse area. I rely on reading to make my world get a little bit larger and richer.
Sorry you have ever heard it. It’s deeply misogynist among other offenses.
I had never heard it before either - probably because I live in Tasmania! But my partner who’s from Alaska also didn’t know the word
This was astounding, Laurie. I look in on you when I can ( that sounds weird), but this was so…
I was at the Anne Frank house a lifetime ago
Memories never betray us. They feed us.
Some memories feed us, others can starve us.
Laurie, thank you for writing this. We need to be reminded often, and Anne Frank's story keeps me vigilant and concerned. I have a close friend living in Tel Aviv. We met because both of our children have the same rare diagnosis: Apert syndrome. We spoke yesterday, and she said she doesn't believe people care. I said I do. And I knew there were others who did, too.
the story line in NOBODY WANTS THIS actually isn’t that far-fetched. only two non-Orthodox denominations (Reconstructionist, in 2015; Reform this year) allow rabbis to intermarry. it’s outmoded among most people—most Jews are intermarried—but not in this specific regard.
I visited the Anne Frank Museum in 1980 and I still remember it as a shattering, heart-breaking experience. I think about Anne often and about all the many people who are living in hiding, living stories we will never hear. I watched Nobody Wants This and had the same reaction. The tropes seemed dated. I'll guess that any new Yorker knows what a “shiksa” is, though I wouldn't be surprised if many Americans have not heard this word. I know Jewish parents who don't want their kids to marry “out,” but many more of us Jews live fairly secular lives. I was amused and also not amused by the stereotype of the blond shiksa being some object of both attraction and repulsion...it seems a bit quaint and not in a good way. Also, importantly, the Kristen Bell character came off as more than a bit shallow and I found it hard to imagine that this super adorable and hot young rabbi would step away from his lifelong dream for this particular shiksa. But that might just be me.
I did not know that “shiksa” was a slur. I doubt many midwesterners have ever heard that word at all. I’ve read it in books a couple times but have never heard it used.
Did enjoy going through the Anne Frank house a few years ago. My husband is Dutch. His parents (not Jewish) lived through the Nazi occupation.
I did write a long comment about your review of Nobody Wants This and it disappeared (mercifully perhaps)
I agree completelywith your comments - except that I don't think it was adorable or funny -particularly the scene of the mother in-law to be eating prosciutto (possibly) taken out of the rubbish bin. I imagine that many religions have groups that chose to ignore the real world and may seem more at home in another century and this was the choice I think Joanne would find the hardest to make.
Your column was a great contrast between a time when Jews were forced to hide behind walls to survive and were later sent to their deaths behind walls that others built and a time (as portrayed in Nobody wants this) when they chose to build those walls themselves for the purpose of discriminating against others and ultimately to isolate and control .
Does tourism ask anything of anyone? You go someplace and ask questions because you are you; some people will visit the museum and think how sad, or not think at all. Jan hopes he gets people to ask certain questions, but you, still being you, raised you are set of questions. In Bescancon,
a center of resistance to the Nazi occupation, there's a Museum of Resistance and Deportation (Richard would like it), and it hopes to raise questions like the Anne Frank Museum, but I walked through wondering what I would have done then. What will I do now? Will I come to the US and become an enemy of the people if Donald Trump wins? My uncle was with the WWII Belgian antifa underground, till he was picked up and sent to the special place in the hell of Buchenwald reserved for Jewish Communist resisters. (He survived, wrote a memoir, by the way - Beyond the Last Path, Eugene Weinstock. What does writing ask of its reader? Can the tourist to an essay walk through without a thought, ignore the writer's questions, or does all this happen in the space between reader and writer, the place where meaning is created?
I was curious as to what you think of the use of the words genocide and indigenous regarding Jews? Anne Frank’s story is one among too many and unique because of the diary and her age but the systematic elimination of a race spares only those who are able to escape. I too have dear friends who have friends and family in Israel. These are people of conscience and peacemakers who are torn to pieces by the situation and deeply hurt and mystified by how despite all they do as peacemakers the world configures them as villains when they were attacked and atrocities not seen since the Nazis were and are committed against them.
I think you have read enough of my posts to know they speak for themselves in exactly the way I intended for this moment, and I don't have anything further to add.