Talk:Jewish culture

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)

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)

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)

What are secular Jewish cultural traits?

The article on secular Jewish culture clearly says there is none. It says all the geographic groups have a different secular culture.

And that is what one would expect. What things unrelated to religion could the Falashmura, Arab, New York, Russian, and Iranian Jews possibly have in common? I have yet to hear of any but the Jewish Arabs ululate.

If there is to be a claim of a Jewish culture unrelated to religion then one has to list secular things which are common to all Jews else there is no such thing.

Matt Giwer (talk) 00:30, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

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

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)

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)

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}}

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)

Yiddish culture

A couple of wikipedia pages link to Yiddishism and to Yiddish culture. Do people feel these should have pages? If so, does anyone feel like starting them? BobFromBrockley 10:28, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Orphan alert

Jewish geography, the social game, needs incoming links -- and this article seemed appropriate, but I couldn't find a place for it. Most of the existing sections were too specific. --Dhartung | Talk 04:16, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Popular culture vastly disproportionately represented over, say, science

I was shocked to find paragraph after paragraph after paragraph on dance, song, theatre of this kind and the other kind, movies, and all manner of popular culture . . . with science and the not-even-mentioned mathematics given one whole tiny paragraph.

This profoundly misrepresents the distribution of professions among secular Jews.Daqu 09:02, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:West Side Story Poster.gif

Image:West Side Story Poster.gif is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot (talk) 07:28, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Science is inappropriate

While there are many Jews represented in science so are all major religions and a lot of minor religions. There is nothing uniquely Jewish about science. Even Einstein was a German.

Nor is a particular love of science a Jewish characteristics considering Freud and all those who claim to have been able to analyze dreams and help people "talk their way to mental health" were and are con artists and deserve prison instead of popular acclaim. As MDs it is impossible to credibly suggest not a single one of them did not notice their patients were not being cured.