Jews, Children of Intermarriage, and Neo-Nazi Shemale Pricks

Yesterday, Michael kindly leapt to my defense against those who assert that I'm unentitled to speak on Jewish issues, what with my being not only a "neo-Nazi shemale prick," but, less forgivably, a non-Jewish neo-Nazi shemale prick.

Michael volunteered that I'm "100% halachically Hebrew," and he’s probably right about that. Still, my great-grandmother—the halakhically relevant one—was named Mary and was illiterate in Yiddish. I assume Mary was Jewish, but there seems cause to wonder, and I really can’t be bothered to find out. For anyone who places importance on such things as matrilineal succession, I encourage you to operate from the assumption that my mother is Margaret Thatcher.

And isn't that the point? We am ha-ares are so incurious about this stuff, so cavalier about life's BIG questions such as the Jewishness of one’s mother’s mother’s mother’s mother. It's really not much of a surprise if, as one commenter said, some ultra-Orthodox will no longer drink wine prepared by secular Jews. How can they be sure?

Michael also says "For the record, Joey's reference to "mongrel" or "FrankenJews" in his dialogue with Jack Wertheimer applied to only a few of us at Jewcy who were born of virgin Gentile mothers (myself included)." Actually, I did not intend terms such as Frankenjew to apply only to those whose mothers are not Jewish, or to children of intermarriage generally. I regret that I seem to have left myself open to that interpretation.

As I said to Jack Wertheimer in my second e-mail, “I don’t believe intermarriage is the cause of all this turmoil, but rather a consequence…your enemy is not intermarriage, but the pluralistic, endlessly permeable culture of the modern American city.” As an example of my own Frankenjew “patrimony,” I mentioned my high school experiences at a Korean Baptist Bible study, rather than anything about the diversity of my family. That’s because my point was that it’s our “polyglot, postmodern American creole culture,” rather than our ancestry, that makes for “Jewish-American mongrels” or “Frankenjews.” It’s a culture we share with people from an endless array of backgrounds, and in which our worldview is shaped by all sorts of non-Jewish influences, even as we also retain Jewish influences and connections.