{"id":227,"date":"2014-07-26T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-07-26T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yule-tide.generalsemiotics.net\/index.php\/2014\/07\/26\/post-220-jewish-classmate-reminisced\/"},"modified":"2014-07-26T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2014-07-26T00:00:00","slug":"post-220-jewish-classmate-reminisced","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/2014\/07\/26\/post-220-jewish-classmate-reminisced\/","title":{"rendered":"Post-220: Jewish Classmate, Reminisced"},"content":{"rendered":"
Fall 2000. Lunchtime. School cafeteria. Within sight were probably a few trend-followers wearing very, very baggy pants (a fashion that is, thank God, long gone). A few of us had finished eating and were wandering around out of doors, just outside the cafeteria. J.A., my Jewish friend, was there. I brought up the latest Israeli vs. Palestinian fighting then occurring. He said a few things which I’m sure he was repeating from his Jewish School teachers or parents. How to solve the problem once-and-for-all. Something about a “two-state solution” which I didn’t understand at the time.

<\/span><\/span>(J.A. also remarked, either on this occasion or another, something about the “real problem” being the Ultra-Orthodox Jews, a comment I also didn’t understand at all, so simply accepted, on his authority as a Jew, without comment.)<\/span>\n<\/div>\n
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Read More<\/font><\/strong><\/font><\/a>\ufeff<\/span>\n<\/div>\n
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J.A. is one of the few Jews I have known closely in my life. We were friends in middle school and high school (after briefly being “enemies” in middle school).

<\/span><\/span>J.A.’s father was an investment banker or something. …I know, I know: It sounds like I’m making it up, playing to a Jewish stereotype. He is the only classmate I ever had whose father had such a “high-flying” job, that I knew of. It’s a credit to Arlington Public Schools that such man would send his son to a public school and not to a private school. J.A. himself didn’t look at all like a Jewish stereotype. He was tall and red-haired, with the build of a swimmer (and he was one). I haven’t heard from him in ten years now. I am sure he’s been to Israel, probably more than once.

<\/span><\/span>Reading the news lately, writing #218<\/a> and #219<\/a>, and reminiscing about that period in fall 2000, I see that nothing has changed in 14 years. Nothing! (Just as nothing had really changed from the 1980s up to year 2000, I suppose, when I first became aware of this issue.)
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<\/span><\/span>Back on the firm ground of the present. The Gaza death toll rapidly approaches 1,000 dead in the past three weeks.
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Palestinian Shijaiyah neighborhood, Gaza City, after Israeli bombardment (July 26 2014, AP) <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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Fall 2000. Lunchtime. School cafeteria. Within sight were probably a few trend-followers wearing very, very baggy pants (a fashion that is, thank God, long gone). A few of us had finished eating and were wandering around out of doors, just outside the cafeteria. J.A., my Jewish friend, was there. I brought up the latest Israeli […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}