Word: jew
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Secular Jews, for whom Jewishness is little more than a form of ethnicity, identity or perhaps just racial memory, have long been accepted in the American mainstream. Why, Jerry Seinfeld--the quintessential nominal Jew who quite cheerfully acknowledges his Jewishness but finds it so devoid of meaning that it plays no role whatsoever in his life--became the most popular figure in American popular culture. The embrace of Jews is so thorough that Irving Kristol once noted wryly regarding the alarming rates of Jewish assimilation, "The problem is that they don't want to persecute us, they want to marry...
This embrace of the secularized Jew has not, however, extended to the Orthodox. Orthodox Jews tend still to be seen by the mainstream as eccentric, even alien. Ironically, this cultural allergy is particularly acute among nominal Jews like Woody Allen, in whose films the Orthodox Jew is invariably a bearded, black-hatted buffoon...
...remember having any contact with either a Palestinian or a Jew until 1976. A street game called ballon chasseur, or hunting ball, was catching fire in Lebanon. The game consisted of two teams of six in which one team player would throw a ball at a member of the other team. If the recipient caught the ball without dropping it, the ball thrower ended up a prisoner of the other team. But if the ball hit a rival team member and was not caught, the unlucky fellow ended up a prisoner of the ball-throwing team...
...babe magnets, often securing dates with neighborhood sweethearts. My skinny body and quick reflexes made me a popular choice for serious teams and consequently a hot item on the street, until Daniel Block walked into the picture. "Flash," as they started calling him, was a 16-year-old French Jew whose father taught painting at my high school. Though Daniel concealed being a Jew, he was boisterous about being the best ballon chasseur player and about having persuaded May Qudsi to let him peek at her underpants behind closed doors. May was not only my flame but a Palestinian...
While Israel was gleeful over the veep selection of Senator JOSEPH LIEBERMAN--"a very Jewish Jew," as one Israeli diplomat noted--the Senator and the Israeli government don't always walk in lockstep. Lieberman opposes the U.S. release of convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, and he signed a letter to Barak protesting Israel's plans to sell China a sophisticated early-warning aircraft. He also visits Arab countries on Middle East trips. In 1991 he spent a week in Riyadh, where the Saudi royal family fixed kosher meals...