Jewish Stuff

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Dreidel Song

Happy Hannukah everyone! I thought you may all enjoy this:

http:www.thisridiculousworld.blogspot.com

Two of my co-workers have a blog about...well...this ridiculous world. They added a video of my senior 1's performance at the Christmas concert this year. They all sang the dreidel song and one lucky kid, Jerry, got to wear a bad-ass dreidel costume that I constructed out of a cardboard box.

Candle Lighting and Jewish Studies

For all of my Jewish family and friends, I think you'd be quite interested to hear that I discovered the Jewish Studies program at Nanjing University. It was created by Professor Xu, a Chinese national who took a keen interest in Jewish studies and managed to raise a whopping 50 million US dollars via networking and Jewish philanthropy. Wow! Three Jewish friends (yes, I have Jewish friends here!) and I headed out to a Hannukah candle lighting at the University. It was essentially a whole bunch of Chinese students watching intently as we mumbled the prayers. Interesting experience. I also got to meet a few Israelis and another Jew, who is actually teaching journalism here and has published a book about the Shanghai Jews.

You're Jewish?!?!

Being Jewish in China is actually quite interesting. Without fail, every time that I tell a Chinese person that I'm Jewish, I get the same reaction. "啊！你是犹太人!你很聪明，是吧？！" = "Aaah! You're Jewish! You're really smart then, eh?!" (Interestingly enough, you can take this reaction and replace the word "犹太人" {Jewish) with "左手的" (left-handed) and it would also work). People in China have an interesting respect for the Jewish people. You can buy books at the airport with titles like "Ten Ways To Do Business Like A Jew." However, as my new Jewish scholar friend pointed out, stereotypes are still stereotypes. Whether they're positive or negative they're not a good thing. You can compare the stereotype of Jews within China today with the stereotype of Jews in Russia 100 years ago and you'd get the same thing. The only difference is that the Chinese hold money and business skills in particularly high esteem, which has resulted in their respect and admiration for the Jewish people. In Russia...well...that was a different story...

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