A Crises of the Identity Sort by Sarede Switzer Abraham our father, was the first man ever to recognize the existence and prevalence of a Single Being over the entire universe and beyond. He also just happened to be the first Jewish soul ever to be sent down to our world. At the very moment of our birth as a people, we were deemed outcasts, possessing within our petty selves the ability to be literally blamed for causing much of the world's misfortune. Nations mistook their fear of us for hatred, and convinced themselves that if only we were somehow extinguished, all of the world's problems would be solved. With only slight alterations in setting and plot depending on the level at which the world found itself at that particular moment, the history of the Jewish people is a repetitive cycle with a prevailing theme. A message so persistent, yet at the same time so persistently ignored, resonates in the presence of every Jew who is to be found alive today. Jews themselves - despite what those who put to writing the nefarious Protocols of the Elders of Zion would have us believe - for the most part do not even begin to conceive of the meaning and distinctiveness of their existence. The secular world plays games with the mind of the modern Jew, who today, more than ever before, struggles with an identity crises of the most severe sort. It is understandable, after all, this incredible feeling of depersonalization which we Jews insist on imposing upon ourselves. On a strictly physical level, we indeed do look much like everyone else. Unlike the Blacks therefore, we cannot be clearly identified as a race. Though Israel has been considered the homeland of the Jewish people by many, being Jewish is not the same thing as being Israeli, which is yet another thing which sets us apart from the Italian or Irish, for example. Religion is indeed probably one of the last things that enters the average North American Jew's mind when confronted with his Jewishness, so it seems Judaism cannot be examined as a purely religious culture like Islam or Buddhism. On the subject of culture itself, there is scant, if any, strictly Jewish (aside from religious of course), traditions. Images of gefilte fish and horas spring to mind, yet an Eastern Poland "delicacy" and a watered down Russian dance cannot be seriously considered definitions of Jewish culture. The very language of Yiddish (otherwise known as Jewish, in fact), is nothing more than a configuration of German, Hebrew and various other languages. What it means exactly to be Jewish, it seems no one quite knows. For the modern Jew, coming to terms with Judaism is an exceptionally difficult feat, however unavoidable it is. I know of a Lubavitcher man who came upon a very telling encounter in his travels on the city bus. Finding himself seated besides a friendly Jewish woman in her middle ages or so, he gave her a smile and a pleasant "Hello". Upon seeing his hat and beard, this otherwise agreeable woman began attacking the ÿ
