tionand self image of jews, "is the pintele yid,that ineradicable...Jewishness which surfaces at least occasionally to create havoc with carefully calculated loyalties and elaborately reasoned postures." Infact, for 150 years, a genre of post-Emancipation Jewish humor has benn predicated on the "sudden havoc" that the unwanted and unvoluntary eruption of Ostjude identity from beneath the "passing"exception Jew can come up with in public. A recent example of such humor goes as follows: "A nouveau riche Jewish couple moved to a non Jewish neighborhood, changed their name from Cohen to Cowles,and sought admission to the country club that frowned upon Jews. Finally admitted, they show up atthe Sunday night club dinner, Mrs. Cowles, nee Cohen, decked out in her pretty jewels and brand new gown.The waitor serving soup slips and it lands on Mrs. Cowles lap. She lets out a shriek:'oy Gevalt, whatever that means'". The meaning behind this "humorous" story told in The Ordeal of Civility, is to let the readers know that stories like this entail many different functions. For instance, if this story was told in the Jewish communityjust like this one was, it is a source of social control, a warning to Jews to not try and leave the Jewishcommunity because one would fail at doing so. If this story was to be told by an outsider of the Jews,such a joke could serve as an objective correlative of ones subjectively ambiguous poition or situation.I personally don't know any Jewish people, and I don't know much about their religion and/or beliefs,but I most definately would like to learn more about it, so that I can understand their position a little clearer. But I think that goes for any religion that is not of your own. Many of us have the wrongcorralations and ideas of one anothers religion and belief and faith, and maybe if we all just took asecond to try and understand and listen, then there wouldn't be so many disputes about religion, and which one is t...
