12 ms·

Wow amazing how the bound of religion and ethinicy can led people to survive thousands of years and still maintain an identity.

by oyvey 9y ago

baud147258 9y ago
I didn't got that from the article. As far I understood it, during all this time, multiple iddentities appeared, evolved, split and disappeared, even if all can be traced back to the original Israel Kingdom.
LoSboccacc 9y ago
Not strange at all, integration is an exception more than the norm. The various chinatowns, italian quarters, irish quarters etc should be a testament to that: communities always tried to stick together thorough time and space, now and in the past. There are comparatively few cases of succesful long term non violent integration.
- paganel 9y ago
  > There are comparatively few cases of succesful long term non violent integration. I beg to differ. I live in Eastern Europe, at the crossroads of different migration waves, and I'd say we've been quite successful at integrating people over the millennia. Just look at this widely circulated genetic map of Europe (http://brilliantmaps.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/genetic-map-europe.png http://brilliantmaps.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/genetic-...), you can see that Romania (the country from where I'm from) is pretty diverse, and that happened because we're at the crossroads between "mainland" Europe, the Asian steppes, Anatolia/the Middle East etc. And looking past genetics, I can give you countless examples of Transylvanian Saxons and Hungarians who, once they had passed the Carpathians into Wallachian and Moldavian lands, ended up by giving up their religion and language and completely assimilated (yeah, it took them a couple of generations or more, but the process was generally irreversible). The local Jews were also quite well integrated in terms of customs and everything, in fact one of the most famous Yiddish songs ("Roumania Roumania - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuj-qjyUjxY" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuj-qjyUjxY") mentions Romanian foods like "mamaliga" or "pastrama" (which we stole from the Turks, but everybody from the Balkans did that) in a melancholic way, like it also belonged to them, the Jewish people who used to live here.
  - LoSboccacc 9y ago
    jews still lived in jewish quarters, married mostly other jews and aggregated around jewish structures; being integrated is a little more than liking local dishes; beside that "integration" ended up in violence anyway even before wwii, when romanians started persecuting them.
    - paganel 9y ago
      I've actually made a map of the Jewish Bucharest buildings that were nationalized by the communists after WW2 (available here: http://bucuresti.maglina.ro/nationalizari/# http://bucuresti.maglina.ro/nationalizari/# - works better on desktop, not so sure about mobile/tablets), you can see that while there was a concentration of buildings in what people now call the "Jewish neighborhood" (which was not called like that back then) those properties were quite largely spread over the entire city (the Jews made 10% of the Bucharest population before WW2). > beside that "integration" ended up in violence anyway even before wwii, when romanians started persecuting them. WW2 and the 1930s were very difficult times (and not only for the Jews). I like to look at those times as the exception rather than the norm.
      - LoSboccacc 9y ago
        weird because we've been relatively paceful only in the first world and only in the last 30 or so years. jugoslavia was just torn in an ethnic war; spain, ireland and russian client state were host to terrorost movement up until a couple generation ago, with many issue yet unresolved and likely to resurface. before the first world war there were a host of proxy wars around africa and middle east, class cleansing in the east, before that full on wars in the americas, before that france england and germany were in a state of constant skirmishes, with spain under siege by the moors and italy cities changing state flag every couple of generations. china was in warring state mode too until unification, then class warfare, then religious warfare, then the great step ahead. humans have been a bunch of assholes, we living in a niche of limited peace on a few locations shouldn't give us the peace of mind that everyone else understand the value of integration. note that a person or a family by itself is likely to integrate, it's significant migration that end up into more or less pronounced isolationism. again, just have a look at all the chinatown and italian quarters. the actual border may be fuzzy, but the sense of identity is definitely there. and while wwii was an exceptional time, smaller conflict are still very present and the failure integration models are popping up every day stronger.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- charlesism 9y ago
  Your last sentence doesn't strongly support your first, thanks to the four qualifiers you added.
- fauigerzigerk 9y ago
  That is one weird conclusion. The fact that there are still traces left from past migration waves is hardly evidence of failed integration. How many generations does the ancestoral language usually survive? Two? Three? Integration succeeds en masse all the time, especially where religion doesn't interfere. It's just that nationalist wars make more headlines than all the kids I went to school with who didn't even properly speak the language of their own mothers (something I find rather regrettable).
- kolpa 9y ago
  Ethnic ghettos are as much or more imposed by external oppressors than internal separatism. The USA is full of Chinese, Italian, Irish etc descendants, most of whom do NOT live in those ghettos. After a generation to learn the local language and culture, descendants leave the ghettos for success in the wider world.
anovikov 9y ago
There is little in the way of ethnicity. Ashkenazi Jews are an ethnicity, Jews in general, aren't. They even spoke different languages before Hebrew became a thing in early XX century, and many of them still do.
- umanwizard 9y ago
  “Ethnicity” is a pretty broad and vague term. People don’t have to speak the same language or be the same race to consider themselves the same ethnicity.
  - vasilipupkin 9y ago
    it's not as vague as you think. Ashkenazi Jews literally share a lot of genetic material, for example, when two Ashkenazi Jews get married and want to have a child, they get tested for genetic diseases that only Ashkenazi Jews have.
    - jklinger410 9y ago
      Look up the definition of ethnicity. I think you mean "race."
      - vasilipupkin 9y ago
        no, I don't mean race. An ethnic group, or an ethnicity, is a category of people who identify with each other based on similarities such as common ancestry, language, society, culture or nation common ancestry - genes.
        your-nanny 9y ago
        I would dispute the notion of common ancestry is synonymous with common transfer of genes. The former is about descent, within a system of kinship, that may or may not recognize within it's domain an actual realized transfer of genes on the one hand, and may include in it's domain instances when no such transfer might have occurred (adoption/cuckoldry/politically motivated claims of kinship/etc.etc.).
MichaelMoser123 9y ago
Indeed, this fact this makes me proud to be a Jew. (A happy Passover to all whom it may concern). As a young boy my father used to take me to the Pergamon museum in Berlin - one major exhibit is the Babylonian street of processions (it dates to the neo-Babylonian empire) He used to say - here you see our heritage, we were around the show when Berlin (and all the other great capitals of the world) were still a swamp.
- cik 9y ago
  מועדים לשמחה
  - MichaelMoser123 9y ago
    מועדים וזמנים לששון
    - SpeciesInvader 9y ago
      חג כשר ושמח
      - MichaelMoser123 9y ago
        תודה אחי
      - jakemor 9y ago
        !חג שמח
        avremel 9y ago
        א גוט מועד!
        throwawayjewis2 9y ago
        !א גוט יום טוב
- 9y ago

Wow amazing how the bound of religion and ethinicy can led people to survive thousands of years and still maintain an identity.

by oyvey 9y ago

Wow amazing how the bound of religion and ethinicy can led people to survive thousands of years and still maintain an identity.

baud147258 9y ago

I didn't got that from the article. As far I understood it, during all this time, multiple iddentities appeared, evolved, split and disappeared, even if all can be traced back to the original Israel Kingdom.

LoSboccacc 9y ago

Not strange at all, integration is an exception more than the norm. The various chinatowns, italian quarters, irish quarters etc should be a testament to that: communities always tried to stick together thorough time and space, now and in the past. There are comparatively few cases of succesful long term non violent integration.

paganel 9y ago
> There are comparatively few cases of succesful long term non violent integration. I beg to differ. I live in Eastern Europe, at the crossroads of different migration waves, and I'd say we've been quite successful at integrating people over the millennia. Just look at this widely circulated genetic map of Europe (http://brilliantmaps.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/genetic-map-europe.png http://brilliantmaps.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/genetic-...), you can see that Romania (the country from where I'm from) is pretty diverse, and that happened because we're at the crossroads between "mainland" Europe, the Asian steppes, Anatolia/the Middle East etc. And looking past genetics, I can give you countless examples of Transylvanian Saxons and Hungarians who, once they had passed the Carpathians into Wallachian and Moldavian lands, ended up by giving up their religion and language and completely assimilated (yeah, it took them a couple of generations or more, but the process was generally irreversible). The local Jews were also quite well integrated in terms of customs and everything, in fact one of the most famous Yiddish songs ("Roumania Roumania - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuj-qjyUjxY" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuj-qjyUjxY") mentions Romanian foods like "mamaliga" or "pastrama" (which we stole from the Turks, but everybody from the Balkans did that) in a melancholic way, like it also belonged to them, the Jewish people who used to live here.
- LoSboccacc 9y ago
  jews still lived in jewish quarters, married mostly other jews and aggregated around jewish structures; being integrated is a little more than liking local dishes; beside that "integration" ended up in violence anyway even before wwii, when romanians started persecuting them.
  - paganel 9y ago
    I've actually made a map of the Jewish Bucharest buildings that were nationalized by the communists after WW2 (available here: http://bucuresti.maglina.ro/nationalizari/# http://bucuresti.maglina.ro/nationalizari/# - works better on desktop, not so sure about mobile/tablets), you can see that while there was a concentration of buildings in what people now call the "Jewish neighborhood" (which was not called like that back then) those properties were quite largely spread over the entire city (the Jews made 10% of the Bucharest population before WW2). > beside that "integration" ended up in violence anyway even before wwii, when romanians started persecuting them. WW2 and the 1930s were very difficult times (and not only for the Jews). I like to look at those times as the exception rather than the norm.
    - LoSboccacc 9y ago
      weird because we've been relatively paceful only in the first world and only in the last 30 or so years. jugoslavia was just torn in an ethnic war; spain, ireland and russian client state were host to terrorost movement up until a couple generation ago, with many issue yet unresolved and likely to resurface. before the first world war there were a host of proxy wars around africa and middle east, class cleansing in the east, before that full on wars in the americas, before that france england and germany were in a state of constant skirmishes, with spain under siege by the moors and italy cities changing state flag every couple of generations. china was in warring state mode too until unification, then class warfare, then religious warfare, then the great step ahead. humans have been a bunch of assholes, we living in a niche of limited peace on a few locations shouldn't give us the peace of mind that everyone else understand the value of integration. note that a person or a family by itself is likely to integrate, it's significant migration that end up into more or less pronounced isolationism. again, just have a look at all the chinatown and italian quarters. the actual border may be fuzzy, but the sense of identity is definitely there. and while wwii was an exceptional time, smaller conflict are still very present and the failure integration models are popping up every day stronger.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
charlesism 9y ago
Your last sentence doesn't strongly support your first, thanks to the four qualifiers you added.
fauigerzigerk 9y ago
That is one weird conclusion. The fact that there are still traces left from past migration waves is hardly evidence of failed integration. How many generations does the ancestoral language usually survive? Two? Three? Integration succeeds en masse all the time, especially where religion doesn't interfere. It's just that nationalist wars make more headlines than all the kids I went to school with who didn't even properly speak the language of their own mothers (something I find rather regrettable).
kolpa 9y ago
Ethnic ghettos are as much or more imposed by external oppressors than internal separatism. The USA is full of Chinese, Italian, Irish etc descendants, most of whom do NOT live in those ghettos. After a generation to learn the local language and culture, descendants leave the ghettos for success in the wider world.

anovikov 9y ago

There is little in the way of ethnicity. Ashkenazi Jews are an ethnicity, Jews in general, aren't. They even spoke different languages before Hebrew became a thing in early XX century, and many of them still do.

umanwizard 9y ago
“Ethnicity” is a pretty broad and vague term. People don’t have to speak the same language or be the same race to consider themselves the same ethnicity.
- vasilipupkin 9y ago
  it's not as vague as you think. Ashkenazi Jews literally share a lot of genetic material, for example, when two Ashkenazi Jews get married and want to have a child, they get tested for genetic diseases that only Ashkenazi Jews have.
  - jklinger410 9y ago
    Look up the definition of ethnicity. I think you mean "race."
    - vasilipupkin 9y ago
      no, I don't mean race. An ethnic group, or an ethnicity, is a category of people who identify with each other based on similarities such as common ancestry, language, society, culture or nation common ancestry - genes.
      - your-nanny 9y ago
        I would dispute the notion of common ancestry is synonymous with common transfer of genes. The former is about descent, within a system of kinship, that may or may not recognize within it's domain an actual realized transfer of genes on the one hand, and may include in it's domain instances when no such transfer might have occurred (adoption/cuckoldry/politically motivated claims of kinship/etc.etc.).

MichaelMoser123 9y ago

Indeed, this fact this makes me proud to be a Jew. (A happy Passover to all whom it may concern). As a young boy my father used to take me to the Pergamon museum in Berlin - one major exhibit is the Babylonian street of processions (it dates to the neo-Babylonian empire) He used to say - here you see our heritage, we were around the show when Berlin (and all the other great capitals of the world) were still a swamp.

cik 9y ago
מועדים לשמחה
- MichaelMoser123 9y ago
  מועדים וזמנים לששון
  - SpeciesInvader 9y ago
    חג כשר ושמח
    - MichaelMoser123 9y ago
      תודה אחי
    - jakemor 9y ago
      !חג שמח
      - avremel 9y ago
        א גוט מועד!
        throwawayjewis2 9y ago
        !א גוט יום טוב
9y ago