Re: Re[2]: Der yidisher tam

[Solidarity Foundation <svzandt...>]

On  Mon, 9 Mar 1998 12:03:28 -0500, Rich Wolpoe wrote:
Mozart and all the rest borrowed extensivly from folk music.  So does
our liturgy.  A number of Polish Gentiles have told me that what we pas of
as jewish is merely Eastern European stuff.  From pierogies, to blintses,
etc. etc.  So that yiddisher taam that wells our eyes with nostalgia might
actually refelct more the Eastern European milieu more than anything
intrinsically Jewish.

Reply: I'm singling out this statement, Rich, because it's such a perfect
illustration of misunderstanding the importance of _minhog_. in the
definition of Judaism. Let me first repeat something I wrote in the
"Klezmer Trumpet" discussion , 26 Jan 1998. Reyzl had noted:

:Some non-Jews in Balkan countries to this day hear Jewish and call it
Balkan, unable or unwilling to see anything distinctively Jewish or
different about it."

The essence of my reply was, what's unique about it, ultimately, is the
yidishe neshume , or what I'm calling here der yidishe tam (Jewish taste,
or aesthetic). Aside from the fact that when you're talking about food,
halakha, kashrus, has greatly influenced the food. I can't recall any
traditional Jewish pork dishes, but there are lots of Polish ones. 

We ought to get over this complex that Jews borrow culture from everyone
else, but no one else borrows culture from Jews, or that other cultures
don't borrow from other cultures. 

It is a historic fact, that when Christianity first was adopted in Rudssia
at the end of the 10th century A.D., there were already extensive Jewish
settlements in southern Russia, including the city of Kiev. The oldest
known Polish coins have writing in Hebrew letters on them -- not because 
they were Jews, but because that was the only writing the Poles had at
that time.

So when you write:
"A number of Polish Gentiles have told me that what we pas of
as jewish is merely Eastern European stuff.  From pierogies, to blintses,
etc. etc.  So that yiddisher taam that wells our eyes with nostalgia might
actually refelct more the Eastern European milieu more than anything
intrinsically Jewish." I wonder what "intrinsically Jewish" could possibly
mean to you. Even the halakhic tradition of the East European Jews is 
specific to the historical development of Jewish life IN EASTERN EUROPE.
Who suddenly made these Polish Gentiles meyvinim on the yidishn tam,
that I should accept their judgment that it is "merely Eastern European
stuff"? over my own, which is from my family and culture. On the one
hand, yes it is part of the east European cultural milieu, as with any
other people from Eastern Europe. We're not from Mars, you know. On the
other hand, that "merely" sounds like the typically antisemitic or
Jewish self-hatred thing of, of "Oh, you people have no culture." There
may not be any ONE Jewish culture, any more than there is ONE Christian
culture, but there certainly are Jewish cultures, and on the Jewish
Music List I don't think it would be inappropriate to encourage people
to learn as much as thye can about the particular culture they happen to
come from.
Itzik-Leyb