note: an old blog that I lost my steam on and never made public, the thoughts here are kinda unfinished. what the heck.
I like to think I'm a pretty tolerant person. Pro-choice, pro-gay, proletariat, whatever. Black, white, yellow, purple, I don't care, you have your experiences, I have mine, nice to meet you. I don't take kindly however to trying to invent a place for yourself using someone else's racial background. You're blonde and blue-eyed, no matter how much Biggie you listen to you're never going to understand what it's like to grow up black in druggie-infested NY--and way to enforce negative stereotypes with the baggy jeans and bad ebonics. Visiting a reservation while on a roadtrip, watching Discovery channel, then wearing feathers in your hair doesn't mean you totally understand Native Americans and would totally go live with them off the land--you have no friggin' idea what it means to be Native, especially in the 21st century. Even the "my great great great grandma was [whatever minority], so I can relate" is totally weightless.
I've met a handful of Jewish converts before (I'm sure more than I think I have, and the fact that they converted never came up in conversation), but most recently it's been on my mind thanks to my best friend. She started dating a new guy a few months ago named Moses--quite the biblical name--and mentioned he was Jewish. I figure most Jews are Jewish like my family is, more in theory than in practice and thought nothing of it until my friend mentioned her new boyfriend's ex-wife and baby's names--very very Hebrew names. I asked if they were from Israel (you don't hear names like theirs very often) and was shocked to find out that both Moses and his ex-wife had converted to Judaism and changed their names. What are you, teenaged vamps? Call me Lestat, and this is my girlfriend, Ophelia Scarlett. The real kicker though was when my friend piped up, "He got his conversion card and everything!"
Hold the hell up. You can adopt thousands of years of culture after taking some classes and getting a card with your name on it? I'm not a devout Jew by any means (I'll take the ethics, but hold the God please), but being Jewish has been a very defining part of my life and my family. Even though I fought it as a child ("no Bekka, you HAVE to go to Hebrew school because you have Jewish blood!") I really do see being Jewish as an ethnicity more than just a religion. Empathizing with a persecuted people does not make you one of them. Have you been banned from friends' houses because you were Jewish? Have you been teased by your entire class because you were Jewish? Have you been deemed unintelligent because you were Jewish? Have you ever been genuinely attacked and had "kike" spat at you because you were Jewish? Have you ever even had to tame a full head of unruly Jew-fro because you were friggin' Jewish? I'm more than happy to share my culture with people, introducing people to something new is such an incredible rush, but that still doesn't make it yours. Plus, from a rabbinical standpoint you can't ever really convert anyway, we're a specific "chosen people," you'll have to take that one up with the big G-dawg.
True