Jew/Jewish

Peter A. McGraw pmcgraw at LINFIELD.EDU
Wed Jul 3 21:57:18 UTC 2002


My father (a gentile) worked as a lifeguard at the Jewish Community Center
in Des Moines in his late teens or early 20s.  He once heard one of his
younger charges mutter to another one, "What's HE doin' here?  He ain't no
Hebe!"  I always assumed this was a normal self-reference among Jewish
youth at that time and place, but I suppose it could have been an
appropriation of a derogatory term used by gentiles at the time.

Peter Mc.

--On Wednesday, July 3, 2002 3:11 PM +0000 "James A. Landau"
<JJJRLandau at AOL.COM> wrote:

> My father told me that in World War II his "dog-tags" (a form of ID used
> for US soldiers) had an "H" for "Hebrew" rather than "J" for "Jewish".
>
> "Hebrew" is still sometimes used to mean Jewish, although not as much now
> as in the 19th century.  Note the Union of American Hebrew Congregations
> (the lay group to which Reform Jewish congregations in the USA belong),
> which was founded around 1875 (I don't have the exact date handy).



****************************************************************************
                               Peter A. McGraw
                   Linfield College   *   McMinnville, OR
                            pmcgraw at linfield.edu



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