In the spirit of Chanukah, this blog goes out to all those Jewish people I know and is dedicated to my Uncle Stu.
What does it mean to be Jewish? I mean, my grandparents were Jewish and raised my father with the religion, but I have never really practiced it. Luckily my elementary students cleared it all up for me. I had quite a few classes that were reading stuff about WWII and the Holocaust and so I asked the kids what “Jewish” meant. What is a Jew? Without fail every single class came up with the exact same definition: “Really rich and smart people”. My reply was always “yes, often times they are well off and intelligent, but what specifically makes a Jewish person different than so many other people in the world?” Blank stares were always my response. So, since I am not rich, and only consider myself of average intelligence I am wondering if I am barred from being Jewish in Korea. Maybe they wouldn’t even believe me if I told them I was. Meanwhile, most of my student’s parents are raking in more money than I probably ever will, does that make them more Jewish than me?
Oh and we got pizza at work today and it came with a star of David on it? I am not sure if it is just meant to look nice or if it is the Korean way to observe Chanukah. The pizza did have bacon on it though so I'm going to assume it was a non-kosher star of David pizza.