Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Where are you from?

In my long, hopefully non-boring post, on Judaism in pre-war America I discuss three Jewish factions that were active here before WWII: The American reformers, who were largely German and the descendants of Germans; the Eastern Europeans who came from Russia and Poland and places like it; and the "dignified Orthodox" who followed halacha, but kept customs and practiced a Judaism that looked very different from the sort of Judaism the Eastern Europeans brought here. After the war, Hungarians and Romanians came, too.

Where are you from?

I'll go first: My family is entirely descendant from the Eastern Europeans, and all of my grandparents were born in the US of A. (We suspect that one of my American-born grandfathers is himself descendant, at least in part, from the "dignified" Orthodox, but that's speculation based on certain facts, and not a conclusive fact itself.)

Your turn.

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