# Do Americans get too much information about Jewish culture, relatively speaking?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-americans-get-too-much-information-about-jewish-culture-relatively-speaking/493037
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [April 14, 2009, 4:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-americans-get-too-much-information-about-jewish-culture-relatively-speaking/493037 "2009-04-14T04:55:44Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 3
### Author:  [@shy\_guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shy_guy)
#### Post date: [April 14, 2009, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-americans-get-too-much-information-about-jewish-culture-relatively-speaking/493037/41 "2009-04-14T15:56:55Z")
> [@DMark](#):
>
> I think a lot has to do with where you live.
> When I lived in NYC and LA, due to the huge Jewish population, you quickly learned about Jewish holidays and traditions simply because many of your coworkers and neighbors were Jewish.
Totally. I happen to have made a handful of Jewish friends during college, and I’ve dated a few Jewish guys in the past, but working in an overwhelmingly Jewish office in NYC was still sort of a crash-course, at least as far as holidays were concerned. Largely because my friends don’t celebrate or care about them, but many of the older people in the office would still take them off.
For the record, I’m a quarter Swedish and from a part of the country with a large Scandinavian immigrant population. The Swedes certainly know their meatballs, so there’s that.
---
### Author:  [@Polerius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polerius)
#### Post date: [April 14, 2009, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-americans-get-too-much-information-about-jewish-culture-relatively-speaking/493037/42 "2009-04-14T16:01:55Z")
> [@Captain\_Carrot](#):
>
> [QUOTE=Polerius]
> Concepts which I have heard countless times:
>
> ```
> * Kosher
> * Bar Mitzvah
> * Sabbath/Shabbat
> * Restrictions on what can and can't be done on the Sabbath
> * Yarmulke
> * Hanukkah
> * Rosh Hashanah
> * Yom Kippur
> * etc
>
> ```
Hearing them is one thing. Do you know what they are? In more detail than ‘holiday’ or ‘weird little hat’?
[/QUOTE]
Off the top of my head (no Googling or Wikipedia):
[ul]
[li] Kosher[/li]A meal/food item has to go through a certain process, likely overlooked by a Rabbi or some other related official, who has to certify it as Kosher.
Also, “Kosher salt” is a misnomer. The salt does not go through any special process, it is just that it is used for making meats Kosher, so a better name would be “Koshering salt”
```
[li] Bar Mitzvah[/li]A coming-of-age ceremony for Jewish boys, around the age of 13 I believe. Also, there is a ceremony for girls "Bat Mitzvah", but that may be a more modern invention.
[li] Sabbath/Shabbat[/li]A special day, day of rest, when Jews are not allowed to to certain things, like work. For Orthodox Jews, the list of things they can't do on the Sabbath is large.
[li] Restrictions on what can and can't be done on the Sabbath[/li]One can't work, drive a car, turn on a light, answer the phone, push the button on an elevator, cut toilet paper, turn on your stove to cook, open your fridge if that makes a light come on, ...
```
There are workarounds: have a non-Jew answer the phone for you and give it to you, have elevators that stop at every floor, have a stove that automatically turns on at specified times so you can cook, unplug the fridge light bulb, buy pre-cut toilet paper, …
```
[li] Yarmulke[/li]A head piece that signifies a special connection and/or promise to God
```
…
[/ul]
Should I continue?
How did I do?
---
### Author:  [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)
#### Post date: [April 14, 2009, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-americans-get-too-much-information-about-jewish-culture-relatively-speaking/493037/43 "2009-04-14T16:03:54Z")
> [@shy\_guy](#):
>
> For the record, I’m a quarter Swedish and from a part of the country with a large Scandinavian immigrant population. The Swedes certainly know their meatballs, so there’s that.
[No doubt they learned from this Swedish-American.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sY_Yf4zz-yo)
---
### Author:  [@Mahna\_Mahna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahna_Mahna)
#### Post date: [April 14, 2009, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-americans-get-too-much-information-about-jewish-culture-relatively-speaking/493037/44 "2009-04-14T16:07:24Z")
> [@Polerius](#):
>
> Russians are Slavs and Italians are not, so that’s not a good example
Yes, but that’s the point I’m trying to make. The two are both Christian, but other than their religious traditions (similar holidays, similar religious rites, etc), they actually have very little in common.
Same goes for Ashkenazi and Sephardim - aside from religious festivals, rites of passage and traditions that are centered around their faith, they’ve got zilch in common. Hell, they don’t even speak the same language.
The fact that you’re not aware of the fundamental differences between the two largest sects of judaism just proves how little the average American actually understands about Jewish culture.
---
### Author:  [@Abby\_Emma\_Sasha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Abby_Emma_Sasha)
#### Post date: [April 14, 2009, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-americans-get-too-much-information-about-jewish-culture-relatively-speaking/493037/45 "2009-04-14T16:10:39Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#):
>
> :
>
> Hava Nagila? Anyway, if you’re listening to the Pussycat Dolls version I don’t think that counts.
No, sorry, I have no interestt in any pussycats except my own.
---
### Author:  [@Polerius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polerius)
#### Post date: [April 14, 2009, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-americans-get-too-much-information-about-jewish-culture-relatively-speaking/493037/46 "2009-04-14T16:16:39Z")
> [@Mahna\_Mahna](#):
>
> Yes, but that’s the point I’m trying to make. The two are both Christian, but other than their religious traditions (similar holidays, similar religious rites, etc), they actually have very little in common.
>
> Same goes for Ashkenazi and Sephardim - aside from religious festivals, rites of passage and traditions that are centered around their faith, they’ve got zilch in common.
Aren’t they also both ethnically the same?
Wikipedia sayeth:
> [@](#):
>
> Jewish ethnic divisions refers to a number of distinct communities within the world’s ethnically Jewish population. Although considered one single self-identifying ethnicity, there are distinct ethnic divisions among Jews, most of which are primarily the result of geographic branching from an originating Israelite population, and subsequent independent evolutions.
So, even though there are ethnic sub-divisions, they both come from “an originating Israelite population”.
I don’t think Slavs and Italians came from the same “originating population”, so that’s why the Russian-Italian example was not a good one.
---
### Author:  [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)
#### Post date: [April 14, 2009, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-americans-get-too-much-information-about-jewish-culture-relatively-speaking/493037/47 "2009-04-14T16:20:13Z")
> [@Polerius](#):
>
> So, even though there are ethnic sub-divisions, they both come from “an originating Israelite population”.
They’ve been separated long enough to be hard to distinguish from the surrounding populations, in most cases. In Cochin, India, one of the biggest Indian Jewish communities, it’s impossible to identify a Jewish person just by looking at them. They just look “Indian”.
---
### Author:  [@Abby\_Emma\_Sasha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Abby_Emma_Sasha)
#### Post date: [April 14, 2009, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-americans-get-too-much-information-about-jewish-culture-relatively-speaking/493037/48 "2009-04-14T16:30:44Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#):
>
> . In Cochin, India, one of the biggest Indian Jewish communities, it’s impossible to identify a Jewish person just by looking at them. They just look “Indian”.
So, then Naveen Andrews is the chosen one? Cool, He’s my new boy toy.
---
### Author:  [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)
#### Post date: [April 14, 2009, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-americans-get-too-much-information-about-jewish-culture-relatively-speaking/493037/49 "2009-04-14T16:37:00Z")
Huh?
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### Author:  [@Abby\_Emma\_Sasha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Abby_Emma_Sasha)
#### Post date: [April 14, 2009, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-americans-get-too-much-information-about-jewish-culture-relatively-speaking/493037/50 "2009-04-14T16:47:44Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#):
>
> Huh?
yeah I was kinda being tongue in cheek. [http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0004710/](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0004710/)
---
### Author:  [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)
#### Post date: [April 14, 2009, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-americans-get-too-much-information-about-jewish-culture-relatively-speaking/493037/51 "2009-04-14T16:48:33Z")
> [@Polerius](#):
>
> Aren’t they also both ethnically the same?
>
> Wikipedia sayeth:
>
> So, even though there are ethnic sub-divisions, they both come from “an originating Israelite population”.
Yes, but they did intermarry with the locals at least to some degree. Many European Jews look a lot like other Europeans from around the same area. I’m not Jewish by birth, but I can pass for it. If European Jews looked totally different from other people of European descent, the way people of (say) East Asian descent look different from people of European descent, I probably wouldn’t be able to do that.
ETA: Of course, their cultural and religious practices could diverge from each other, even if there were little or no intermarriage with locals. Australian culture and English culture aren’t identical, after all.
---
### Author:  [@Bridget\_Burke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bridget_Burke)
#### Post date: [April 14, 2009, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-americans-get-too-much-information-about-jewish-culture-relatively-speaking/493037/52 "2009-04-14T16:49:11Z")
> [@Polerius](#):
>
> Aren’t they also both ethnically the same? …
Nope. Lapsed Catholic Irish-American in Texas reporting in. But even I know that the Sephardim descend from Jews expelled from Spain in 1492. Some of them still speak Ladino–a very interesting offshoot of Spanish. Many of the Ashkenazi spoke Yiddish. And I learned some Yiddish words from the Borscht belt comedians on TV in my youth.
You don’t know too much about Jews–you know too little.
---
### Author:  [@Mahna\_Mahna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahna_Mahna)
#### Post date: [April 14, 2009, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-americans-get-too-much-information-about-jewish-culture-relatively-speaking/493037/53 "2009-04-14T16:54:00Z")
> [@Polerius](#):
>
> Aren’t they also both ethnically the same?
Yes and no.
If you trace back far enough, you’ll find that they’re all related, but they’ve been separated for so long that they’ve become quite distinct from each other on a genetic level - it’s been several thousands of years since the tribes left Israel, after all. Speaking in general terms, Ashkenazim tend to have a fair bit of Central/Eastern European blood, while Sephardim have a lot of Iberian and North African blood.
The distinction is wide enough that the two groups don’t even share a common list of hereditary diseases… geneticists tend to distinguish between the Ashkenazim and Sephardim when taking family histories for this reason.
Beyond that, like **RNATB** says, there are smaller Jewish populations that don’t look anything like their European cousins… there are African Jews, Indian Jews and Chinese Jews, all of whom are quite distinct from an Ashkenazi.
Good luck finding a “pure blood” Jew… they’re a pretty mixed bunch, just like the rest of us non-Jew mutts.
---
### Author:  [@Kyla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kyla)
#### Post date: [April 14, 2009, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-americans-get-too-much-information-about-jewish-culture-relatively-speaking/493037/54 "2009-04-14T17:02:19Z")
> [@Abby\_Emma\_Sasha](#):
>
> Woosh?
What am I being whooshed by? Are you implying the entire OP was a joke that I didn’t get? Because I’m pretty sure it wasn’t.
Look, I’m an atheist, but I spent a number of years pretending I was a good Jew and ran into huge, huge amounts of (good-natured) ignorance of Judaism and Jewish culture. It’s certainly better than American knowledge of Islam or Hinduism, for example, but Americans tend to have, at best, a superficial knowledge about Judaism.
Just this week I’ve had to explain what kosher for Passover means to several people (although to be fair, once it was to a non-American). I’ve had to explain that Jews don’t believe in the New Testament. Like a week ago I corrected someone’s assertion that kosher food had to be blessed by a rabbi over in GQ. I had had to explain the difference between Hebrew and Yiddish a SHOCKING number of times (FTR, they’re completely different, unrelated languages), and once actually had an argument over which language Israelis speak. (My opponent eventually “triumphed” over me by finding a source that said that Israelis speak “ivrit”. _Ivrit_ is the Hebrew word for “Hebrew”, dumbass.) Ask an American what the most important Jewish holiday is, I bet you anything most would say “Hanukkah” - which is actually once of the least important holidays. (Yom Kippur is the correct answer.) I doubt most Americans have even _heard_ of Shavuot or Sukkot, both of which are more important than Hanukkah. Just for an example.
Honestly, I don’t think this is a huge deal. Jews make up a small percentage of Americans. But to assert that Americans know _more_ about Judaism and Jewish culture than is deserved given that small percentage is quite laughable.
---
### Author:  [@Kyla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kyla)
#### Post date: [April 14, 2009, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-americans-get-too-much-information-about-jewish-culture-relatively-speaking/493037/55 "2009-04-14T17:04:39Z")
> [@Mahna\_Mahna](#):
>
> Beyond that, like **RNATB** says, there are smaller Jewish populations that don’t look anything like their European cousins… there are African Jews, Indian Jews and Chinese Jews, all of whom are quite distinct from an Ashkenazi.
Chinese Jews, AFAIK, haven’t existed for centuries. They were long ago assimilated into Chinese culture.
---
### Author:  [@filling\_pages](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/filling_pages)
#### Post date: [April 14, 2009, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-americans-get-too-much-information-about-jewish-culture-relatively-speaking/493037/56 "2009-04-14T17:06:29Z")
Something that hasn’t been brought up in this thread is the effects of the Holocaust. I would imagine that many Americans learned quite a bit about Jewish peoples and culture as a result of WW II, and that really wasn’t all that long ago.
In fact, thinking about it, Judaism would probably be almost entirely absent from high school history classes if not for the Holocaust.
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### Author:  [@Abby\_Emma\_Sasha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Abby_Emma_Sasha)
#### Post date: [April 14, 2009, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-americans-get-too-much-information-about-jewish-culture-relatively-speaking/493037/57 "2009-04-14T17:12:21Z")
> [@Kyla](#):
>
> What am I being whooshed by?
> Honestly, I don’t think this is a huge deal. Jews make up a small percentage of Americans. But to assert that Americans know _more_ about Judaism and Jewish culture than is deserved given that small percentage is quite laughable.
Sorry, I was led among the wrong path.
My bad.
---
### Author:  [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)
#### Post date: [April 14, 2009, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-americans-get-too-much-information-about-jewish-culture-relatively-speaking/493037/58 "2009-04-14T17:16:07Z")
> [@Polerius](#):
>
> Aren’t they also both ethnically the same?
They definitely have different cultures.
They had different native languages, Yiddish and Ladino.
Even in Hebrew, the holy language that they shared, they didn’t pronounce it the same way.
They didn’t cook the same foods. Sephardic Jewish cooking is quite different from what you probably think of as Jewish cooking, which is East European Jewish cooking. They both might adhere to the same kosher laws, but that doesn’t mean they all used the same recipes. American and Indian (from India) cuisine both have a taboo on horse meat, but that doesn’t mean American and Indian cuisines are the same.
They didn’t celebrate holidays the same way. As one example, observant Ashkenazic Jews aren’t eating corn, rice, or beans right now, because it’s Passover. Observant Sephardic Jews do eat those things during Passover.
---
### Author:  [@Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malleus_Incus_Stapes)
#### Post date: [April 14, 2009, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-americans-get-too-much-information-about-jewish-culture-relatively-speaking/493037/59 "2009-04-14T17:32:32Z")
> [@Polerius](#):
>
> Off the top of my head (no Googling or Wikipedia):
> [ul]
> [li] Kosher[/li]A meal/food item has to go through a certain process, likely overlooked by a Rabbi or some other related official, who has to certify it as Kosher.
>
> Also, “Kosher salt” is a misnomer. The salt does not go through any special process, it is just that it is used for making meats Kosher, so a better name would be “Koshering salt”
>
> ```
> [li] Bar Mitzvah[/li]A coming-of-age ceremony for Jewish boys, around the age of 13 I believe. Also, there is a ceremony for girls "Bat Mitzvah", but that may be a more modern invention.
>
> [li] Sabbath/Shabbat[/li]A special day, day of rest, when Jews are not allowed to to certain things, like work. For Orthodox Jews, the list of things they can't do on the Sabbath is large.
>
> [li] Restrictions on what can and can't be done on the Sabbath[/li]One can't work, drive a car, turn on a light, answer the phone, push the button on an elevator, cut toilet paper, turn on your stove to cook, open your fridge if that makes a light come on, ...
>
> ```
>
> There are workarounds: have a non-Jew answer the phone for you and give it to you, have elevators that stop at every floor, have a stove that automatically turns on at specified times so you can cook, unplug the fridge light bulb, buy pre-cut toilet paper, …
>
> ```
> [li] Yarmulke[/li]A head piece that signifies a special connection and/or promise to God
>
> ```
>
> …
> [/ul]
>
> Should I continue?
>
> How did I do?
Pretty good, so far.
---
### Author:  [@Polerius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polerius)
#### Post date: [April 14, 2009, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-americans-get-too-much-information-about-jewish-culture-relatively-speaking/493037/60 "2009-04-14T17:34:54Z")
> [@Kyla](#):
>
> Jews make up a small percentage of Americans. But to assert that Americans know _more_ about Judaism and Jewish culture than is deserved given that small percentage is quite laughable.
If it’s so laughable, can you come up with another culture that makes up a similar percent of the US population, and about which Americans know as many concepts as mentioned in the OP?
Granted, many Americans may only have a passing knowledge of these things, and may not know what exactly Kosher is, or which Jewish holiday is the most important, but the fact that so many terms from this culture are known to Americans is unusual, if we compare it to any other subgroup of the same size living in the US.
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