Awkward Experience

Sometimes the Brandeis community really weirds me out. Today we had our 4th hour of Hebrew (it's supposed to be on Friday, but there are 7 of us who can't make it them because of course conflicts, and then a few people for whom this is more convenient, so there's also a session Thursday afternoons), and we read a poem about a guy who's standing in front of an Arab shop in Jerusalem on Yom Kippur. So I was working with two folks, and we were talking about the Damascus Gate, and I was trying to figure out why it's called that when it was Sha'ar Shkhem in Hebrew (literally Gate of Shkhem, which I know as a biblical name, the name of the man who raped Dinah, who is Jacob's daughter, and this is tempting me to go off on a whole random discussion of whether or not it was really rape, and why I'm identifying her as Jacob's daughter not as Leah's daughter, and whether or not Jacob and his wives had other daughters who just aren't named in the text or not- this is what text classes cross-listed with women's studies do to my brain). (I, by the way, still don't know the answer, so if you do...) But Steve tells me that Shkhem is a town, also called Nablus, except that it isn't, and she wouldn't know, because there are lots of Arabs there, and it's in the territories and she couldn't go there when she was in Israel. And she made some rather unpleasantly connoted comments about Arabs. The guy we were working with is from Syria- I don't know about him, but I was darn uncomfortable with the situation. So after class I told her I was uncomfortable with her comments. But it isn't the first time I've heard some pretty offensive comments, and sadly enough, not the first time I've heard offensive comments from Steve herself- the others about homosexuality. And get people onto the topic of how I ought to behave religiously at home? I've found that to be a Bad Idea: people insist that their way is the only way to handle parents who aren't as religious as I/they are. I've gotten random criticism for the way I live my life with my family. For a place that is billed as very liberal and accepting, there are parts of the community that are actively prejudiced in all sorts of ways.

Awkward Experience

Sometimes the Brandeis community really weirds me out. Today we had our 4th hour of Hebrew (it's supposed to be on Friday, but there are 7 of us who can't make it them because of course conflicts, and then a few people for whom this is more convenient, so there's also a session Thursday afternoons), and we read a poem about a guy who's standing in front of an Arab shop in Jerusalem on Yom Kippur. So I was working with two folks, and we were talking about the Damascus Gate, and I was trying to figure out why it's called that when it was Sha'ar Shkhem in Hebrew (literally Gate of Shkhem, which I know as a biblical name, the name of the man who raped Dinah, who is Jacob's daughter, and this is tempting me to go off on a whole random discussion of whether or not it was really rape, and why I'm identifying her as Jacob's daughter not as Leah's daughter, and whether or not Jacob and his wives had other daughters who just aren't named in the text or not- this is what text classes cross-listed with women's studies do to my brain). (I, by the way, still don't know the answer, so if you do...) But Steve tells me that Shkhem is a town, also called Nablus, except that it isn't, and she wouldn't know, because there are lots of Arabs there, and it's in the territories and she couldn't go there when she was in Israel. And she made some rather unpleasantly connoted comments about Arabs. The guy we were working with is from Syria- I don't know about him, but I was darn uncomfortable with the situation. So after class I told her I was uncomfortable with her comments. But it isn't the first time I've heard some pretty offensive comments, and sadly enough, not the first time I've heard offensive comments from Steve herself- the others about homosexuality. And get people onto the topic of how I ought to behave religiously at home? I've found that to be a Bad Idea: people insist that their way is the only way to handle parents who aren't as religious as I/they are. I've gotten random criticism for the way I live my life with my family. For a place that is billed as very liberal and accepting, there are parts of the community that are actively prejudiced in all sorts of ways.