sashinka | observation orientated, with a twist of lime | a blog

How Jewish Is Jewish?

So last night, I was at a friend's house, and the conversation turned to that age old question: how Jewish is Jewish? This should, theoretically, be said in the no-neck-position, where you lift your shoulders so high in a questioning stance that your neck disappears. Of course, sitting in any residential property with a north London postcode could possibly be the starting point for such a conversation. We talked briefly about our group - mostly Jewish - and it turned out that of the two "non-Jewish" people, one's grandfather was Jewish, and one is married to someone Jewish. And you say there is no Jewish conspiracy - or maybe you say there is.

Do you have to be a paid-up member of a shul (synagogue)? Is that what makes you Jewish? Even if you only join to get your burial rights, and think of it as the "shul you don't go to", does setting up the standing order make you Jewish? A bit like having your gym membership on direct debit automatically makes you healthy.

The food? Do you have a prediliction for fatty, dairy-laden food that cries out cholestrol! as you reach for seconds? Do you go heavy on the sour cream? Thing bagels, herring, chop-fried fish is cordon bleu? You're not just Jewish, you're Ashkenazi (of - broadly - eastern European origin). I was really surprised on a trip to Warsaw a couple of years ago that all the restaurants there make what feels like Jewish food. I felt right at home. Of course the food's not necessarily Jewish, it's just Polish/Lithuanian/Romanian/who even knows any more.

Or maybe you do Jewish things? What are Jewish things? Well, Hillel says.... If you go out to dinner with your friends, rather than for a drink, and spend the evening picking fault in your mutual acquaintances, does that make you Jewish? Or you like to shop in Brent Cross Marks & Spencers, knowing that you'll take everything back anyway, and make a day trip of it, and go to Marble Arch Marks & Spencers? Are you Jewish then? Do you read the Guardian, but moan about the anti-semitism? Or perhaps you don't read the Guardian any more, but let everyone know just how traumatised you are by making your moral point.

Or perhaps it's just a fashion thing. You're prone to over-accessorise. You have too many shoes. You ocassionally - OK, more than that - overdress in relation to the event.

Do you have a slightly over-exaggerated sense of family and community? Do you have many great Aunts (from the generation where people have 6-plus children) called things like Emmy and Essie and Effie? True story: few years back, the flat next door to me was sold, and the guy moving in, youngish, my kinda age, was showing his extended family round the garden. About four over-dressed generic Jewish grandma types, the sort who pinch your cheeks even if you're thirty - I knew at that moment he was Jewish.

Maybe you're just Jewish-Chronicle-Jewish? So Gwyneth Paltrovski's Jewish, and so's Edwina Currie (highly sexed, should have given it away), and... I'm sure we can six-degress anyone into being Jewish in an emergency.

So it's not all praying and hats and ethnic liturgical music. By the self-definition argument, anyone's Jewish - which makes Madonna Jewish, too - and while I'm not sure I'd go that far, I don't think it's an exam. You're as Jewish as you feel, I guess. Vague, badly thought out. That's my specialism.