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Jewish problems

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Re: Jewish problems

#151

Post by brandoncor »

jfruh wrote: post #140

This reminds me of an interesting story from Not In My Neighborhood, a history of residential and institutional segregation in Baltimore. Baltimore in many ways had three-way segregation -- black, white, and Jewish -- with Realtors for all three communities refusing to show houses in the "wrong" neighborhood to anyone. However, the public school system only had two-way segregation -- black and white, with Jews attend…

What you describe seems to be the same thing that's happening to Asian Americans today: http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/art.... Though there might not be specific quotas, there is a feeling that certain universities are "more Asian" than others, Johns Hopkins being one of them.

Re: Jewish problems

#152

Post by vbtemp »

mazuhl wrote: post #102
iskander wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as the Soviet Union tried to keep down Jews, they were also trying to promote people who fit a nationalist narrative. So it wasn't just antisemitism, it was also affirmative action for Russians (especially those of peasant descent).

And at the same time the Russians did much to preserve Yiddish (a Jewish language).

The Russians (you mean Soviets) did nothing to preserve yiddish. They tried to exile the jews to a desolate remote corner on the fringes of siberia where they could practice their culture (not their religion) in a soviet communist framework.

I took Yiddish in university for a while. During the soviet years they tried to neutralize any hebraic or biblical references. For example, in hebrew the word for friend is "Chaver". It's the same in yiddish. But the soviets insisted that it be changed to the more germanic "fraynd". Similiarly, they insisted even on the changing of spellings to make the language altogether less hebraic and jewish - and more neutralized and soviet.

Re: Jewish problems

#153

Post by sethg »

graupel wrote: post #144

As a Jewish American, the biggest question I have is "How does any college/institution know that I (or my children) are Jewish?" We don't have a particularly Jewish last name, have some Irish mixed in with an Eastern European background, etc - without putting "Fluent in Yiddish" and "President of Temple Beth Sholom" on a resume, I don't see how anyone would ever pick us out from the crowd as being Jewish. I can see h…

In the USSR, everyone had their ethnic identity listed on their government-issued identification.

Re: Jewish problems

#154

Post by d00f1s »

berntb wrote: post #98
johnyzee wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great comment and the length of it just goes to show how complex the issue is. If we were to add contemporary issues things would get even more complicated: Zionism and Israeli policies has created a lot of anger against 'Jews'. This has much less to do with ethnicity than historical anti-semitism, but the two get conflated which leaves everybody confused and talking past eachother. Add to the mix the fact that Jews…

Would there be so much anger at zionism if they were Christian? I doubt it, if you compare Israel with e.g. the surrounding dictators -- and (at least here in Europe). Israel gets at least two factors of ten more criticism (before March this year) for arguably much less. The first time when I read criticism of Tunisia's dictator in Swedish media, was when he fled. (I'm not claiming you can't criticise Israel, democra…

The USA gives Israel more foreign aid than any other country besides Iraq. Prior to us invading Iraq, it was the first. See source here http://assets.opencrs.com/rpts/RL33222_20100916.pdf

My point is that the relationship between Israel and the US taxpayer is very intimate. I feel somewhat entitled to criticize Israel if I don't think they are acting in our interests.

Re: Jewish problems

#155

Post by pessimizer »

graupel wrote: post #144

As a Jewish American, the biggest question I have is "How does any college/institution know that I (or my children) are Jewish?" We don't have a particularly Jewish last name, have some Irish mixed in with an Eastern European background, etc - without putting "Fluent in Yiddish" and "President of Temple Beth Sholom" on a resume, I don't see how anyone would ever pick us out from the crowd as being Jewish. I can see h…

They may not be able to guess whether you in particular or your children are Jewish, but if I can guess your name from your sex, zipcode, and birthdate, I'm pretty sure that there will be many markers of that major a part of your life to someone who examines you at any depth looking for those markers. A major marker will probably be, for example, the lack of any markers of any non-Jewish group, i.e. you're not an obvious Catholic, Muslim, Protestant, etc.

Of course, as a black American, I'm jealous that that's the biggest question that you have.

Re: Jewish problems

#156

Post by rbanffy »

known wrote: post #113

There are ~50 mutually exclusive religions in this world. It is prudent to create 50 independent states for these people. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Religious_wri...

And have ~50² religious wars in the process? No, thanks.

Re: Jewish problems

#157

Post by ralmeida »

andrewpi wrote: post #4
suivix wrote: post #3

I don't understand how these problems would be harder for Jews than anyone else. It's controversial in my opinion to claim that educated Jews are worse at these based on their ethnicity. edit: wow people responded too quickly, sorry if it was to something I edited out

This was a set of problems only given to Jewish candidates.

I had the very same doubt the author of the comment you replied to seems to have had. What confused me is that I thought that the 'directioning' these problems to Jewish people was an implicit scheme.

After all, simply directing the questions to Jewish candidates is discrimination too start with. They took so much care in finding a set of problems they could justify as not discriminative that I though they had developed a clever scheme to implicitly direct the questions.

I mean, the university prepared itself to answer "But the problems aren't hard, check out the solution!" when asked "Why did you give hard problems to Jews?". I would simply ask "Why didn't you give everybody the same set of problems?". What I don't get from having skimmed over the paper and comments is how they prepared to the latter question.

Re: Jewish problems

#158

Post by eps »

FWIW the Jew discrimination in Moscow State University was non-existent by early 90s, and likely even earlier than that. I had a well over a dozen Jew friends join Math dept - basically every one who applied - around that time, with no fuss whatsoever. This was an attribute of earlier times, 50s through 70s.

Secondly, to those asking who did they know who was a Jew and who wasn't. First of all, the nationality was in a passport - the primary ID issued to everyone over 16 years of age. Secondly, they looked at the last name. Thirdly, to those trying to evade this sort of filtering through changing the last name, they asked for mother's maiden name - which is as conniving as it is clever. Fourthly, they just looked at the person. It was an oral exam after all.

Re: Jewish problems

#159

Post by yardie »

netcan wrote: post #110
kamaal wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extreme forms of Antisemitism existed long before even Muhammad was born. You are probably referring to the outcome of a half a century long conflict. Yes there is a lot of anti-Jew factor in the Muslim world(I am a Muslim my self). But there is also a lot of anti-Muslim factor widely prevalent in the west too! Every bit of people on this earth have suffered with that problem. The Muslim world looks at these problems…

Like I said, I have no wish to justify Israeli policies and there are many genuine reasons to object to them. History I don't even think it's possible to justify. I was commenting though on different types of objection though. Objections based on delusions, nationalism and religion. Jews absolutely do not have a monopoly over these. Anti-muslim sentiment in the Europe is largely xenophobia and in the US its mostly na…

Americans can be delusionaly racist and nationalistic to. But, you can't sell the idea that shark attacks were orchestrated by from Iran or anything like that.

As an American I wish this was true but there are people in the US that believe man walked amongst dinosaurs and the earth is 5000 years old. These are people that were educated to at least a high school diploma and learned the scientific method at some point.

Re: Jewish problems

#160

Post by berntb »

srl wrote: post #141
berntb wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would there be so much anger at zionism if they were Christian? I doubt it, if you compare Israel with e.g. the surrounding dictators -- and (at least here in Europe). Israel gets at least two factors of ten more criticism (before March this year) for arguably much less. The first time when I read criticism of Tunisia's dictator in Swedish media, was when he fled. (I'm not claiming you can't criticise Israel, democra…

[Jewish American here] From my perspective (in my ultra-liberal enclave in the east), a large part of the criticism isn't that Israel's policies are objectively bad - one can hardly expect a country surrounded by its worst enemies to have a polite attitude toward said folk. The criticism is that we, in America (and until recently, throughout much of the west) are giving them disproportionate (military and otherwise)…

>>until recently, throughout much of the west

You should see my local Swedish media...

The reason I follow this is not that I care about Middle East politics -- it is because I am shocked about my local media. I have compared Swedish media with BBC and NY Times since 7-8 years.

Some subjects are more or less censored in Sweden. Things like torture between Palestinian groups have been cut out since the 1990s, Pallywood has never been mentioned, etc.

Translation of Reuters/AP/etc telegrams are slanted.

And so on. Sweden is probably an extreme case. I am seriously thinking of Swedish as the language of lies.

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