Talk:Secular Jewish culture

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[edit] Music and Dance

To help shrink this article, I have moved off secular music and dance to their own page. It was also very confusing the way Jewish Music would send users here for secular music. I also added headlines for each of the types of music, "Klezmer", "Sephardic", "Israeli Folk," etc.... I also added a leadin for the Jewish Humor within this article. Epson291 09:04, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Circumcision reference

Is it not true that non-religious Jews are more likely to circumcise their sons than the statistical norm of most societies? Can someone come up with a reference? Why does this community shy away from dealing with the connection between Jewish culture and circumcision? Is there some kind of shame associated with it? What does this shame tell you? Sirkumsize 02:36, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

Why are you asking so many leading questions? Jayjg (talk) 14:27, 31 May 2005 (UTC)
But to address your question despite your tone: probably non-religious Jews are more likely to circumcise their sons than the statistical norm of most societies. Just like they are less likely to eat pork. And just like secular people of Christian background are likely to celebrate Christmas and unlikely to feast on Passover. These are all customs of religious origin that tend to slide over into secular cultures of people of those backgrounds. -- Jmabel | Talk 00:55, Jun 7, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:WikiProject Jewish culture

I'm spreading the word about this WikiProject, which is intended to be a forum for discussion on all aspects of Jewish culture / contribution to society (apart from the explicitly religious). Please feel free to join in and help out! RMoloney (talk) 23:38, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] What are secular Jewish cultural traits?

Can anyone help with this question? I can't find discussion of traits online. Observations such as "22% of Nobel Prize winners" (from the article) seem to imply differences, but what are they? I come from a Jewish family that has been Athiest for three generation and wouldn't have known I was Jewish if I hadn't been told. I don't even know the names of the Jewish holidays. Yet I suspect that I can sense a cultural affinity with other secular Jews.

I suspect there are traits to do with education, intellectualism, agumentativeness, money management (steriotypes may be there for a reason), consumerism. There must be others, and studies published. Can anyone point me in the right direction? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Rowaneisner (talk • contribs) 24 Dec 2005.

I'm not going to try to answer more than a little of this but:
  1. secular Ashkenazi culture (which seems to have become the topic of this article) is a very separate matter from any Sephardi culture. I gather from that "Eisner" that you are probably from an Ashkenazaic background, as am I.
  2. I've never seen any indication of Jews being more consumption-oriented than anyone else. There are individuals who are, but same in any other group. But conscious in terms of money on some other levels? Yes. No WASP-y taboo against bargaining, no taboo against discussing prices, salaries, things like that.
  3. Frankly, I find the pointing to Jewish Nobel prizewinners annoying. Yes, Jews tend to value education, and I'm sure that has been a big factor having so many Nobel prizewinners, but it kind of pisses me off when I watch it turn into some kind of implicit argument for ethnic superiority by perfectly average people try to associate themselves with some sort of claim of "racial genius" that somehow associates millions of with a relative handful of standouts.
Jmabel | Talk 08:20, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] We need more on Sephardim and we need more on Europe

A lot of this is getting too focused on Ashekenazim and on the U.S. We need more on Sephardim and we need more on Europe. And more on Mizrahim (in the broad sense) and far more on Israel. This has not been deliberate omission, this has been a matter of some of us writing what we know.

We also need more on the emergence of secular Jewish culture in the era of emancipation, and more on the Hellenizing Jews of 2000 years ago.

I suspect that a lot of what we are writing now will have to be radically reworked when more material is added. -- Jmabel | Talk 09:17, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

    • "This has not been deliberate omission, this has been a matter of some of us writing what we know." I suppose that is exactly what my additions were. Instead of the material being "radically reworked", I would probably prefer of we could add the needed information to balance the article but without deleting or cutting down on what is already there. The "Theatre" section now includes information on Israeli and European theatre, if that helps as a start. I think that the music section is much better than when it was just one paragraph, however. Previously on Jewish music the only reference to secular music was a link to klezmer, so it seemed necessary to explain how the works of Jewish musicians and composers in European and American forms is also a part of Jewish secular culture. Yid613 09:41, 25 December 2005 (UTC)
      • Absolutely. But we have to beware of largely duplicating Jewish_American#Jewish_American_culture. I'm not sure if the division into genres is the right way to structure this, and I think it may be more revealing to structur it by times and places. -- Jmabel | Talk 19:50, 25 December 2005 (UTC)


Changed "singer Mel Torméduring " to "singer Mel Tormé during". Wasn't that first guy in the Silmarillion?  :-) 2 january 2006

[edit] Definition and scope, or lack thereof

Is it possible to clear up the muddled philosophy and sociology behind the term "secular Jewish culture"? Searching briefly on the web, I see the term only at irreligious organizations. That makes it hard to create an NPOV definition without expressing an original perspective. The top Google hits are organizations focusing on "Jewish Secular Humanism" [1], "Secular Judaism" [2], and "Cultural Judaism" [3]. The next one [4] may be more accepting of religious belief, I don't know.

Our premise is that Jewish culture is hardly limited to religious study and practice. We need articles that discuss the phenomenon of Jewish culture broadly. However, I'm not sure that it's NPOV, or encyclopedic, or even helpful, to start the discussion by circumscribing "secular Jewish culture" as such. Can anyone provide scholarly sources for the idea? Isn't there scholarly consensus, or at least discussion, on how to approach the body of Jewish-flavored cultural works?

Why not revise the scope a bit, perhaps as a series of articles on "Jewish themes in art", "- literature", etc. (not limited to religious themes)?

--Hoziron 14:13, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Jewish WIKIVERSITY

NEW: On Wikiversity there is now a "Jewish Studies School." Will it become a "duplication" of many things on Wikipedia? What should it's goals and functions be? Please add your learned views. Thank you. IZAK 09:12, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Jewish Ethnicity

Perhaps it is important to note that Jews have not interbred with their host countries, thus preserving a large part of their original Semitic ethnicity. {{subst:unisgned|Smnioffe|11 December 2006}}

[edit] Allen Ginsberg

any reason ginsberg isn't included? his two most famous poems (howl & kaddish) both include allusions to his judaism.

thanks, 70.49.58.177 22:50, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

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