Do you identify with your family's origin?

amother

Slateblue ↓

Wed, Apr 26 2017, 12:38 pm

I'm a Yekke. My grandparents are from Germany, they came to America after the war. I kept yekkish minhagim till I got married (to a Litvak). When it comes up that I'm a Yekke, people understand what I mean and will usually discuss minhagim and their own family's origin. Recently it came up in conversation because we met someone who was actually from Germany and he said I can't refer to myself as a Yekke because I wasn't born in Germany. I argued that it's about family origin and minhagim, not personal origin. My husband says he's a Litvak and he wasn't born in Lithuania. The people I know who call themselves Hungarian aren't actually from Hungary. My sefardi friends all identify as Syrian or Persian or Moroccan etc even though they were all born here. Most frum Jews I know classify themselves by family origin that dates back to grandparents or even earlier. So just out of interest- do you identify as where your family/minhagim are from, or do you think it only applies to people actually from the Old Country?

leah233

Wed, Apr 26 2017, 12:47 pm

If you had to be born in old country to keep it's minhogim and identify with it then very few people would still be keeping their families minhogim. As long as there is still a community that keeps those minhagim and you are part of that community you identify with it.

water_bear88 ↓

Wed, Apr 26 2017, 12:53 pm

I think it often goes back to what country you immigrated from. So in the US I was a mix of Lithuanian, Russian, and other things but in Israel I'm an American (until I'm talking to someone else with Lithuanian grandparents/great-grandparents- then suddenly we're landsmen!)

amother

Ivory ↓

Wed, Apr 26 2017, 2:47 pm

Hmmmm... My grandparents hail from Russia, Poland, Lithuania, Hungary and America. My grandfather was born in Siberia. Diverse cultures, diverse paths...

I identify as American, because I was born here. My family has a mishmash of minhagim and traditions and never belonged to any particular community - we were a mix of yeshivish and middle of the road orthodoxy.

amother

Orange ↓

Wed, Apr 26 2017, 3:24 pm

The Torah was given from Father to son. So obviously we look back to the previous Generations.
Todays days people will try to take similar background for shiduchim just so the families:
1. Have similar mentalities
2. It says that one should take from similar levels so one spouse doesn't tell the other oh I have a better yichus then you.
Now since I am American apple pie. I come from mixed backgrounds. But I do identify myself with the background have more of ex: I have 3/8 great great grandparents that are Galician/Polish. But I definitely do not want to touch a Hungarian because they have a very different mentality then Polish. I do not iron shirts (except dh), I can make macaroni for supper and wear clothing from JC penny and get away with it. If a Hungarian would see that they would say that I am dysfunctional. But in my community staying in bed more then three weeks after a baby is dysfunctional. So if we would mix it would be kind of hard to understand.
All these type of background check is very strong in the Heimishe / chasidi world.

amother

↑ Ivory ↓

Wed, Apr 26 2017, 3:32 pm

amother wrote:

The Torah was given from Father to son. So obviously we look back to the previous Generations.

But that's not the case today.

In my world, the type of yeshiva the boys go to say a lot more about what type of boy he is than what the father is or looks like. It's interesting to see how different it is in other circles.

Where does it say this regarding "levels"? I can't imagine anyone trying to up their spouse in an argument by bringing in yichus....

amother

↑ Orange ↓

Wed, Apr 26 2017, 3:42 pm

amother wrote:

If anyone has a different background then yes. Let's not go into that as we want to be sensitive to others feelings. But I am sure you will want a girl from a kosher background.

etky

Wed, Apr 26 2017, 3:45 pm

Not really.
My great grandparents emigrated to the US from eastern Europe in the first years of the 20th century ( my maternal grandmother's family came over earlier in the 1880's).
I know the names of the places they came from: Riga (Latvia), Lomza and Prosnitz in Poland and Zvenegirodka - a small town not far from Kiev in the Ukraine.
Other than the names of these places I don't feel any affiliation or identification.
It doesn't help that on my mother's side no religion was practiced - well, unless you can call Socialism a religion....
I guess some of the dishes I learned from my paternal grandmother count but then she herself was born in the US and I don't know how authentically Jewish-Polish her cooking was and not just generically Ashkenazic.
As water bear88 said, here in Israel I am 'American' or, as some still say, "Anglo-saxon" Rolling Eyes

amother

↑ Ivory

Wed, Apr 26 2017, 3:47 pm

amother wrote:

If anyone has a different background then yes. Let's not go into that as we want to be sensitive to others feelings. But I am sure you will want a girl from a kosher background.

If you're talking about the obsession people have with niddah and BTs, no I don't care about that and it doesn't matter to me when it comes to shidduchim.

samantha87

Wed, Apr 26 2017, 6:54 pm

zaq wrote:

Of course I do. There's a reason why only sweet lokshen kugel will do and the name Tate Banks makes me collapse in paroxysms of mirth.

If you khap this, you just might be a genuine Litvak.

What is tate banks?

Signed, a Yekke who has never lived in Germany.

↑ zaq ↓

Wed, Apr 26 2017, 8:44 pm

samantha87 wrote:

What is tate banks?

Signed, a Yekke who has never lived in Germany.

Tate Banks is some kid who won a national Merit scholarship. There may be other people with the same name.

Es helft vee a teit(pronounced Tate)in bankes is a Yiddish expression meaning "it's utterly useless" . This is the Lithuanian pronunciation. Contemporary yeshivish people, who consider themselves "Litvish", which is not the same thing, would say "vee a toyt (rhymes with Hoyt) in bankes " if they use the expression at all. Which is why the name Tate Banks is funny only to an old time Litvak. Hardly anyone speaks Yiddish with this accent any more. It must be a recessive trait (not troit LOL

) because any time Litvaks married "out" it seems that they adopted the other accent. At least IME.

Bankes were small glass cups that were heated and applied to the skin of sick people. The resulting suction created the impression that the cups were pulling the sickness out of the body. This treatment would obviously be ineffective on a dead person, so something that helped like putting bankes on a corpse was clearly useless. In reality, bankes didn't do anything except give people hickeys all over their bodies, and on a dead person they would be more useless still. . So something that helps vee a teit in bankes is less than useless.

After the dog puked on the carpet I tried Febreze on it. Es hot geholfen vee a teit in bankes--the carpet still reeks.

amother

↑ Orange

Wed, Apr 26 2017, 10:39 pm

amother wrote:

100% identify with my Polishe/ Chassidishe background. What's the fact that I was born in the US and never set foot in Poland got to do with it?

Your age please? I am asking you because you probably don't have kids in shiduchim yet. Also maybe if you don't mind your child marrying a Toldos Aaron boy?

tigerwife

Thu, Apr 27 2017, 1:05 am

amother wrote:

Your age please? I am asking you because you probably don't have kids in shiduchim yet. Also maybe if you don't mind your child marrying a Toldos Aaron boy?

What on earth is the correlation between your post and the post you are quoting?

To answer OP, I've got 6 different countries of origin between my parents and grandparents and don't really identify with any of them. I consider myself American even though I am first gen. DH, on the other hand, is mostly American (up to five generations back!) but identifies strongly with his European roots (via one grandfather).

Raisin

Thu, Apr 27 2017, 4:54 am

Chayalle wrote:

My MIL A"H was born in China. Did that make her Chinese?

we had shabbos guests once who old us they keep the Dutch minhag of waiting one hour after meat for dairy. Why? Their grandfather lived in Holland for a few years before the war. (I think he was from Germany and subsequently made it to the USA)