Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by EBerlin (A) on March 25, 2007 at 09:36:14

In Reply to: Re: Why is that a horrible thing to say? posted by Victor Khomenko on March 25, 2007 at 08:23:36:

...what we are or aren't. It appears to me that what the Nazis did was precisely to deny this. It was all about your blood, which is not how I view it, even though I do recognize the reality of cultural memory, generally speaking.

Sorry, but I don't see how my statement could be construed as "potentially" insulting. I think you're passing my comment through an internal filter of your own that is not common to others. Certainly I don't recognize it. If I was inclined to cast aspersions on Jewishness would I have led with an acknowledgment of my own Jewish origins? And, as a director of the documentary "Paper Clips" I dare say I hardly risk being accused of being insensitive on the subject.

Growing up in a cosmopolitan part of the Eastern US the cultural memory one might acquire in an observantly Jewish home or, say, in an intimate village shtetl setting was, in my case, deeply and inevitably diluted by the more pressing, immediate, and to me more real influences of my generic culture. Two of my three sisters have become reasonably observant secular Jews and the son of the other also had his bar mitzvah even though she's less attendant to the religion. So it was never inevitable that I'd veer off this way. It's a personal thing. In fact I've been very interested in religion over the years and my college major was comparative religious studies. Although it sounds pretentious to say so as I'm far from an expert in any of it, I consider myself a religious free-thinker above all.