How do you prove your authenticity as an American?  By voting in every election, even the sparsely attended local races?  Or singing the national anthem at baseball games?  By wearing a flag pin? 

            Ex-patriate Americans could live for years abroad, without any observance of Thanksgiving or Fourth of July—whether from personal neglect or circumstance—and they would still be considered citizens, while the children of illegal aliens who have been educated and acculturated in this country are not.  But who are more committed to our ideals?

             If one were to make the calculation—and I would prefer not to—who is the more authentic Jew?  Me, a Jew-by-choice who has raised children with a knowledge of their religious and cultural heritage or the secular Jew who has chosen not to obtain for his son a brit milah or to attend a seder?  Sociologists can predict whose children would remain within the faith.

More binding than nationality and religion is race, but historically, that, too, has proven fungible.  Two different groups—Asian Indians and Jews—have over time been listed as either whites and non-whites according to the U.S. Census Bureau.  So, what about people who are bi-racial or even multi-racial?  In his collection of essays, An Accidental Asian, Eric Liu noted: “Between 1970 and 1992, the number of mixed-race marriages quadrupled.  We are mixing our genes with such abandon that the Census Bureau considered adding a  new “multiracial” category to the forms in the year 2000.  It settled instead on a potentially more radical solution: allowing people to check as many boxes as they wish.”

Racial self-identification—how refreshing!  Let people choose how they are to be known, just as they have chosen what they are named.  I find that very intriguing indeed.  One could now include all the minority parts (DNA-wise, that is) of one’s heritage.  So, could one consider oneself “adopted” into another, without benefit of miscegenation?

Wikipedia defines authenticity as “the truthfulness of origins, attributions, commitments, sincerity, devotion, and intentions.”  (I have Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition, on my desk but wikipedia allows me to cut-and-paste.)  I’m not fond of the initial definitions, preferring the latter ones of “commitment, sincerity, devotion, and intentions.”  Identifying with a race means you align yourself with others of that label.  Being a Jew involves living a life with Jewish values.  Being an authentic American means upholding democracy and civil liberties, which is a delicate proposition during these xenophobic times.  Ethnic suspicion can so easily combust into prejudice, hysteria, and forced internments.  Americans have seen it all happen before.

My husband wonders why am I so negative, so bleak about our times?  I am naturally optimistic, but I’m perturbed by the hysteria that is popping up in different arenas.  And I feel it personally:  I am a Chinese American Jew from a culture that has been demonized before and a faith whose practitioners have been fatal victims of blood libels.  It was only 68 years ago that the United States government rounded up its Japanese American citizens and interned them in remote camps.  But human nature has not changed, even if our political tactics have gotten more sophisticated. 

In 1982, Vincent Chin was murdered by disgruntled auto industry workers who blamed him (mistaken for a Japanese) for taking away their jobs.  In 1999, John Huang, the former Democratic National Committee fund-raiser and Commerce Dept official, pleaded guilty to a single felony count of conspiracy and suddenly every Asian American in politics was under a cloud of suspicion, for being more loyal to their ethnic country of origin than to their country of service.
 

            Your new neighbors may be of an inscrutable faith.  The person on the plane may sport a beard and look Arab.  Our Persian Jewish friend (who is bearded and complected like his Muslim former neighbors in Iran) carries a food magazine (his hobby) and not a technical computer journal (his professional reading) while traveling to mitigate uneasiness amongst his fellow travellers.  We may present a different mien and a different faith, but that does not preclude us from being authentic, law-abiding, and committed Americans.  We live in perilous times indeed, but we must retain our decency and good sense. 

            “Write about the moment you realized you were an adult” were the instructions for a recent essay contest.  I asked my collegiate daughter if she felt she had something to report and she denied that she’s a really an adult, as she’s dependent of us financially (and emotionally, at times).  So, I started wondering about different ways to define being grown-up.

            Cultures all over the world have distinct rite-of-passage rituals for their youth.  Modern American society has delayed the attainment of independence with the commercially-beneficial phase of life called adolescence (although the Irish and Italian men who still live with their mothers may give us a run for our money for the honor).  According to the Chinese, one becomes an adult upon marriage, which is particularly applied to its young women.  Within the ghetto neighborhoods, a living badge of manhood is the fathering of babies, the distaff version being teenage motherhood.

            When I consulted my mother-in-law, she paraphrased the Israeli writer, Amos Oz, that one becomes mature when one realizes one’s limits.  I recall my husband reminiscing about the day when he realized he could not accomplish as much as did Moses, Beethoven, or Einstein (Gee, is this a male thing?  I never aspired that high.).  While it’s American to exhort our youth that if you only dream it, it will be, it’s just not reality that every aspiring athlete could turn pro or every music student attain the concert stage.  But there’s another aspect to recognizing our limits and that’s accepting our place in this world and how we relate to others.

            On ABC Nightline last night, John Donvan (full disclosure: he’s married to my husband’s cousin) reported on the demise of Senator Edward Kennedy.  The phrase that popped out at me was: the day that [Senator Kennedy] accepted full responsibility for his past mistakes (in the ‘80s!) was the day he finally became mature.  I turned to my in-laws and said, Ah ha!  That’s it.  We become mature adults when we accept responsibility for our words and deeds. 

             A test of loyalty in ancient Israel was the shibboleth, a vocal distinction that the tribe of Ephraim could not produce.  According to the Biblical book of Judges, with the use of this test during wartime, tribal members were identified and subsequently killed.  Modern-day culture is fractionally less lethal in its application of loyalty litmus tests.

            Before the latter decades of the 20^th century, immigrants to the United States were instructed to drop their ethnic ways and means of speaking (teachers in public school punished students who spoke anything other than English) and Christmas was taught as a national holiday.  This indoctrination extended to the Native Americans (or “First Americans,” as I once heard a woman quip).  During the height of the current war with Iraq, candidates for political office were scrutinized for demonstrations of patriotic zeal, such as the sporting of a flag pin on a jacket lapel.

            How did people adapt?  Immigrants tend to do so very well, by making the most of the educational and economic opportunities that America offers.  However, there is also the less rosy side of assimilation and cultural integration, one called “passing.”   There are various terms-- all negative-- used by ethnic groups for members of their own kind who are seen to subvert their ethnic heritage to become one of the dominant culture.

            I was startled by my sister’s recall that her high school classmates did not consider her “Asian” at all.  And candidate Barack Obama was criticized by people (mostly from the black community, perhaps?) who claimed he was not “black” enough.  That’s laughable, because would more people vote for him if he were more identifiably black and what would that be like?  After all, Moses grew up in the palace of the Egyptian Pharoah, so that he had the tools to become the savior of the Hebrew slaves.  But more insidious than an enthusiastic adaptation of the mainstream culture, is a conscious determination to not make waves, not draw attention.

            One of the lesser discussed aspects of racial profiling is the response by the subject being profiled.  One reaction is the reflexive habit of deferring to authority figures that can be demonstrated among Asian immigrants.  Hot-tempered members of other ethnic groups are not comfortable appearing meek and respectful to public figures, even at the risk of inciting abusive tactics.  Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was arrested for forcibly entering his own house last week and the public is hotly arguing whether this was a case of racial profiling.  A minority of voices, even black ones, questioned whether he could have spared himself a legal scandal by speaking calmly and respectfully to the responding police officer (despite being furious at the insult). 

            I doubt that we’re in a “post-racial” society yet.  Racial, cultural, and religious differences still hinder public acceptance of our fellow inhabitants (a more mellifluous term would have been “citizens” but that would have excluded those less fortunate in their birthright).  The Chabad rabbi in Aspen, speaking about harmony amongst Jews, recently taught that we shouldn’t allow the 10% that differentiate us from other people to over-shadow the commonality stemming from the 90% of traits we do share.

 
Dedicated to Tisha B'Av 5769

             In today’s New York Times, there was an article about the entrepreneurial genius behind the widely successful marketing of gyros, the Greek restaurant staple in the United States since the 1970’s.  You may not actually want to know the provenance of this mystery meat that has been treated and shaped into a cone for easy slicing.  But I found the story of its origin fascinating.  After interviewing the retired giants of the industry, the journalist zoned in on one name—the Jewish-born John Garlic (who actually got the idea from his wife, Margaret).  Who knew?

            I’ve been relishing stories of these kinds of cultural loans for years, such as the Japanese origin of fortune cookies (tracked down by Jennifer 8. Lee in her book, The Fortune Cookie Chronicles) or the diverse musical heritages of Adon Olam, the Hebrew hymn sung at the conclusion of the Sabbath and festival morning services (and evening services for Ashkenazi Jews).  Adon Olam can be sung to virtually any tune, and many synagogues like to use topical ones, for instance, the Shabbat before Hanukkah, the tune for Maoz Tzur (sung on that festival), might be employed.  Or, Jews might borrow secular melodies such as “It’s a Small World” or the Notre Dame fight song for Birkat HaMazon, the grace after a meal.

            I recall a cultural dispute reported earlier this spring [New York Times, 3/12/2009], and named the “war of the kebabs” by George De Stefano on the Italian/American Digital Project.  In the Italian town of Lucca, officials have banned new “ethnic” food establishments from opening within the ancient walls of the Tuscan town.  De Stefano reports that “Milan, also governed by the right, has followed suit, with the anti-immigrant Lega Nord party imposing restrictions ‘to protect local specialties from the growing popularity of ethnic cuisines.’”

            As De Stefano quoted from the Times of London, “when Zaia [Luca Zaia, Italy’s agriculture minister and a Lega Nord member from the Veneto region], was asked whether he’d ever eaten a kebab, he indignantly declared, “No – and I defy anyone to prove the contrary.  I prefer the dishes of my native Veneto.  I even refuse to eat pineapple.”  Now this ethnocentric preference of Italians--  extreme locavorism!--  is well-known to me.  A friend recently spent a sabbatical there and couldn’t find tofu at the markets.  But this new form of “culinary protectionism” or “gastronomic racism” is attempting to legislate personal preferences.

            I come from a different perspective.  The Chinese are found all over the world and they’ve been known to incorporate the local vegetation to traditional cooking methods.  In fact, there’s even a Cantonese-Peruvian restaurant in Philadelphia now.  And, my adopted heritage of the Jews?  The most popular cuisine among the Jewish wedding and bar mitzvah circuit is now kosher sushi.  Why sushi?  Is it because it’s tasty, foreign, and sophisticated?  The better question would be: why not sushi?

            My beloved Rabbi Emeritus recently assured me that “a talmid chacham (wise scholar) is one who learns from everyone.”  This has become my cultural and ethical motto.  Wisdom can be found in every culture and society (and no singular one can claim to be superior, quoting Judge Sonia Sotomayor).  We, each in our own way, have much to teach each other and may a inter-cultural cooperation bring us closer to Heaven on earth.

 A reader comments: 
Your references to Italy confuse two, different things.  The Lega Nord ("Northern League") is trying to actively preserve and promote local culture.  It has its more than fair share of extremists, and I can easily see that some include shunning "foreign" food cultures.  It's not much different from the French first objecting to McDonalds coming to their country; yet I heard on "A Chef's Table" yesterday that the country with the 2nd biggest sales by McDonalds is France.  (The American author interviewed on the show used this as an example of the decline of French cuisine.)

The inability to find tofu (now corrected with the opening of an organic food store) is unrelated.  Tofu, I think, was simply an unfamiliar food in Italy.  Maybe like quinoa was unfamiliar in the U.S.  10 or 20 years ago in the US.  Not all foods are equally familiar and  accessible all over the world.

            Last June, I wrote about making informed choices to minimize our impact on the environment, but I had little inkling then of the complexities that have been mostly hidden from the consumer.  In Daniel Goleman’s new book, Ecological Intelligence, he discusses a new field of industrial ecology which quantifies the impacts on nature of man-made things.  Adverse consequences are measured for the geosphere (soil, air, water, climate) the biosphere (our bodies, those of other species, plant life), and the sociosphere (conditions for workers).

            Using life-cycle assessments (a step-by-step analysis of industrial processes and its impact on nature), it can be shown that locally sourced foods may not always be the best choice for the environment.  One example: scientists at Lincoln University in Christchurch, New Zealand calculated that lamb from New Zealand shipped to Britain has a carbon footprint just one-fourth that of British lamb—“in part because most electricity in New Zealand comes from renewable sources, and ample rain and sun means pastures need less fertilizer there than in cloudy Britain.”  I resisted this conclusion when I first learned about it (elsewhere), and did anyone clear the New Zealand scientists of any proprietary interests in their study results?  Another example was a study conducted at Cranfield University in Britain on long-stemmed roses for sale in London in February, some from the Netherlands and some from Kenya.  Goleman reports that they found that the Dutch roses have a carbon footprint six times greater than the Kenyan roses.  The assets in favor of Kenya are its “steamy” climate, small size of its farms, a scarcity of tractors, and the use of manure instead of chemical fertilizers.  The Dutch rely on factory farming in greenhouses and the costs outweighed the CO2 emissions from flying roses further across the ocean.

As for social consequences of our consumer choices, Kate Heyhoe who coined the term, ecovore, to describe a person who’s conscious about the environmental impact of one’s choices of food (more nuanced than the term, locavore, which connotes a person who chooses locally sourced food) writes: 

            “The global economics of food also color the ecovore’s diet.  If poorer nations are suffering because corn costs have skyrocketed due to demand as a biofuel, or if a global rice shortage is literally hitting below the belt, should we buy corn and rice?  Instead of these grains, would opting for quinoa, even if it’s grown in South America, be a wiser choice instead?  An ecovore would ideally choose domestically grown quinoa, but until recent times, such an item did not exist.” [Cooking Green: Reducing the Carbon Footprint in the Kitchen]

            Upon first encounter, the head aches from so much information and it can be paralyzing to attempt such calculations on our own.  But Goleman envisions a future in which there’s radical transparency in consumer goods and we would have the choice amongst products that are labeled according to health, environmental and social performance, a kind of values shopping.  He profiles one company, GoodGuide in Berkeley, California, whose first release of product analyses detailed more than 50,000 brands of personal care products and household cleaners.  And for the Jewish community, Uri L’Tzedek (Awaken to Justice) this week launched its ethical seal program, Tav HaYosher, to identify kosher establishments that comply with ethical labor practices.  While it might never had been true that “what you don’t know can’t hurt you,” with a growing compendium of information on what has been hidden from us for so long, it behooves the conscientious consumer to pay attention.  These grass-roots initiatives just might propel our government to act and pass legislation to require companies to disclose information right on the product themselves.

[This off-schedule post is in honor of my daughter's birthday today.]

           Recently, upon meeting an Amish farmer in Lancaster County, I was surprised by his claim of a Jewish ancestor.  Apparently, a forefather six generations ago emigrated from Europe.  He was a Jew by the name of Glick.  In America, he and his family were fleeing from Indians.  All were killed except for one son who escaped and hid in a hollowed log.  A spider spun a web across the opening, so his pursuers did not look inside.  The son was later adopted by an Amish family, so the Glicks of Lancaster County are now Old Order Amish.  I told him that his family’s lore was similar to the story told by Jews about King David who was saved by a spider’s web.  When I reported this to a writer friend, she told me that a similar tale is told about Robert the Bruce, King of the Scots from 1306-1329.  It tickled me and got me thinking about the shared ancestry of folktales.

            Later while reading a book about Japan, I learned about an ancient custom to celebrate the lunar new year.  Japan now observes the Gregorian calendar, but Setsubun, the bean-throwing ceremony, is still celebrated on the third or fourth day of February at shrines and temples and in private homes.  This is timed for the last day of winter, a dangerous time as is any turning point between seasons was thought to be, because demons and spirits are most powerful then.  The modern reason is to bring in luck, good health, happiness and harmony.  First, the entire house is cleaned thoroughly.  The father wears a mask to represent the evil spirit, the oni.  The doors and windows are opened to allow the oni exit and to bring in the good luck.  The family chases the oni and throws roasted soybeans all throughout the house.  Each person then picks up the number of beans that’s equivalent to his age and eats it.  A methodical way is to pick up beans from each room of the house.

            Does this remind you of the Jewish ritual of bedikat chametz?  It’s the search for leavening conducted the night before Passover after the house is thoroughly cleaned.  To engage the interest of the little ones, a set number—say, 10— of leaven, such as Cheerio pieces—are placed by the mother throughout the house.  The family then conducts a search for them, traditionally using a candle, a feather for scooping into a large (wooden) spoon, and a bag to hold the pieces.  The next morning, the bag of leavened pieces are burned with a ritual recital in Aramaic. 

            Two cultural ceremonies and both inscrutable and weird to the outsider.  But how curiously similar they are in detail, down to the search into each room of the house.  One could be the cynical skeptic and deride them for their similarity, as if any borrowing makes them inauthentic.  However, the more uplifting point of view is that whatever similarity proves the universal message of cultural traditions.  The rescue by a spider web can be used to teach respect for nature and its tiny miracles.  The house cleaning ceremony focuses attention on rooting out negative thoughts and habits from our lives.  Under our skin, there is no ethnic difference and I’m learning that we share more than our genes.

Proverbs are a rich source of clues about a people’s cultural values.  One cautions: All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  Western civilization treasures its leisure time: the French and Italians regard their August vacation almost as a national right.  And the Bible had the revolutionary concept of a weekly Sabbath day of rest as well as the shmittah year, in which the land of Israel is to lie fallow once every seven years.  But what if your culture regards hard work amongst its highest ideals?

In Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, Outliers: The Story of Success, there is a fascinating chapter on how Asians achieve excellence in math and how scholars can trace it back to the ancient practice of rice-paddy farming.

Western agriculture developed in a temperate climate where the work season of planting and harvesting alternates with the resting season during the winter and early spring.  Gladwell cites a historian, Graham Robb, who’s written that peasant life in a country such as France, even well into the nineteenth century, was “essentially brief episodes of work followed by long periods of idleness.”

However, the peasant in East Asia has no prolonged period of rest.  The gentler climate allows for three full growing seasons for rice.  Furthermore, in contrast to the Western approach towards efficiency, Asians do not rely on labor-saving machinery to improve yield.  The paddy fields have to be meticulously leveled, lined with a layer of clay, another of mud; seedlings have to be transplanted by hand; and irrigation channels have to be maintained.  Success comes from “being smarter, by being better managers of their own time, and by making better choices.” Gladwell cites the work of the anthropologist Francesca Bray who reports that “people who grow rice have always worked harder than almost any other kind of farmer.”

The work of the rice farmer was meaningful, since there was a direct relationship between the effort expended and the yield.  It was complex enough to demand intelligent decision choices.  And the work was autonomous, self-initiated.

How this culturally ingrained (pun intended) habit of diligence relates to achievement in mathematics is elaborated by Gladwell, who cites the work of Alan Schoenfeld, math professor at Berkeley.  Americans tend to think of mathematical ability as innate.  Schoenfeld has demonstrated that what matters is attitude, not aptitude.  Gladwell writes, “Success is a function of persistence and doggedness and the willingness to work hard for twenty-two minutes to make sense of something that most people would give up on after thirty seconds.”

            An unusual indicator of diligence was discovered by Erling Boe, professor of education at the University of Pennsylvania.  Students across different nations are measured for their math and science skills in the fourth and eighth grades.  This test, the TIMSS, is accompanied by a long and detailed questionnaire—120 questions long—that ask the students about their parents’ level of education and their views of math and such.  Many students do not complete this exercise.   It is possible to rank the participating countries according to how many items their students answer on the questionnaire.  Boe found that “countries whose students are willing to concentrate and sit still long enough and focus on answering every single question in an endless questionnaire are the same countries whose students do the best job of solving math problems.”  So, which countries are these?  No surprise that it’s Singapore, South Korea, China (Taiwan), Hong Kong, and Japan (mainland China does not participate in the TIMSS).  The common background is a culture of wet-rice agriculture and "meaningful work."  These are places that teach its children proverbs such as “Don’t depend on heaven for food, but on your two hands carrying the load” and “No one who can rise before dawn three hundred and sixty days a year fails to make his family rich.”  Hard work is Asia's cultural heritage and if you accept Thomas Friedman's prediction (laid out in his new book, Hot, Flat and Crowded),  it could be how Asia gains economic supremacy in the 21st century.

           How do certain social values become mainstream?  The civil rights movement in this country gained potency when the military forced co-existence amongst its recruits.  The Army leads, society follows.  After the troops came home from Korea and Vietnam, segregation was no longer an issue for soldiers who’d lived and worked with people of other races.  How the anti-smoking movement moved from the fringe to galvanize legislation against indoor smoking still puzzles me.  And as an environmentalist, I’ve been an interested participant in moving sustainability issues into the mainstream.

            Mainstreaming to me means an acceptance by the general public.  However, people do not necessarily have to adopt the idealistic values that hard-core proponents hold.  Economic calculations are a major factor in social ideas becoming mainstream.  Women moved into the work force after World War II after they showed that they could do work formerly deemed “masculine,” promoted through images such as Rosie the Riveter, but also because a dual income became necessary to maintain a middle-class lifestyle.  Organic products could remain the privilege of the segment of the population that David Brooks termed, “bourgeois bohemians” (or bobos in his 2000 book, Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There), who could afford the expensive and exotic accoutrements of their lifestyle.  Organics were the original pure food before agribusiness turned huge yields with the promotion of chemical fertilizers and pesticides.  Cheap food has instead become a national privilege; 8.5 percent of the American household budget is spent on food at home, down from an average of 19 percent of the total budget in 1960, according to FoxNews, [10/8/2007].

The healthy eating movement has developed  with the intertwined values of organic foods for personal as well as ecological reasons.  People could make this choice based on perceptions of health and taste, and not out of any idealism about the environment.  The Organic Trade Association estimates that sales of organic fruits and vegetables will reach $8.5 billion by 2010, a sales increase of over 300% from 2000 (but still only 3% of total food sales).  The economic power of labeling an item as “green” has convinced the box-store giant, Wal-Mart, to offer an organic line.  This may trouble some purists who fear a dilution of farming practices, by previously non-practicing farmers, in order to fulfill massive orders.  As reported in Business Week, another concern is that Wal-Mart’s initiative may drive down prices and hurt U.S. farmers [3/29/06].  However, from a sociological perspective, this was a big stamp of approval by mainstream commerce.  People can shop at their usual venues and not have to expend any effort in learning about the values of environmental sustainability.

What about the mainstreaming of other environmental values?  What about climate change and energy independence?  How do we make these issues of importance to the average American?  Van Jones is a black social activist and environmentalist who can be passionate and funny about being black and green as described by Thomas Friedman in his new book, Hot, Flat and Crowded.  Jones is a leading spokesman who claims, “if we want a broad-based environmental movement, we need more entry points.”  How do we grow a movement whose “ecological base”-- defined as Americans who report the environment as being central to their concerns—is “nearly 90% white, mostly college-educated, higher-income, and over 35,” according to a 2006 study commissioned by Earthjustice and reported in this week’s issue of The New Yorker for which Elizabeth Kolbert has written a fascinating profile of Van Jones.

            Jones is a singular voice in arguing that we can fight both global warming and urban poverty by creating millions of “green jobs”—weatherizing buildings, installing solar panels, and constructing mass-transit systems for which he would designate a certain proportion of these jobs for the disadvantaged and the chronically unemployed.  His efforts helped pass a bill in Congress that was signed into law by President Bush in December 2007 to spend $125 million to train workers for green jobs, although no funds have as yet been appropriated.

At a time when the economic crisis has virtually stopped new construction, re-habbing existing buildings to become more energy-efficient and sustainable is not work that can be outsourced overseas.  Another point Jones makes is, “there is a category of very vulnerable poor people who own their own homes, but tend to be older and on fixed incomes.  They are very vulnerable to soaring energy prices.”  A government program that trains unemployed youth to retrofit buildings would help keep these people in their homes.  “Make their homes energy-secure and their kids’ job-secure and you stabilize the neighborhood.  And you get cleaner air to boot.  You fix social problems and ecology problems at the same time.  You help Grandma and the polar bears stay at home.”  These are the words of a visionary for mainstreaming environmental values by making them relevant to the urban poor.

In a recent article in the New York Times [11/17/08], the Cairene economist and author Galal Amin is quoted thus: “A man without history is a man without humor.  A man with history is more likely to have humor, because he is more likely to see the irony in things, how things were and how they turned out to be.  And patience.” 

The Egyptian playwright Aly Salem, is then quoted: “When other people talk about hoping to see something happen soon, they probably mean within the next few months.  For an Egyptian, it could mean in the next 50 or 60 years.  An Egyptian has a particular pace.  His pace is different than an American’s.  And a long history can do this.”

When the American mountaineer, Greg Mortenson, started his work building schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan, he was taught this lesson about patience.  When he bought all the materials to build his first school (now totaling 78 and none have been bombed by terrorists), he was informed that his construction project had to wait until a bridge could be built to carry the supplies to the village.  He told the villagers that he’d spent most of his money already on the school supplies and he’d have to return to America and try to raise more money for the bridge.  
 

            “He expected the Korphe men to act as crushed as he felt.  But waiting was as much a part of their makeup as breathing the thin air at ten thousand feet.  They waited half of each year, in rooms choked with smoke from yak dung fires, for the weather to become hospitable enough for them to return outdoors… A Balti hunter would stalk a single ibex for days, maneuvering hour by hour to get close enough to risk a shot with the single expensive bullet he could afford to spend.  A Balti groom might wait years for his marriage, until the twelve-year-old girl his parents had selected for him grew old enough to leave her family… Patience was their greatest skill.” [Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin]

This Middle Eastern view of history may be baffling to Americans who expect expediency in all matters, including diplomatic affairs.  But the Bible has an even longer view of time: Genesis relates the creation of life in seven days or seven blocks of time, which can be interpreted to cover the millennia that scientists have documented.  Imagine the patience of a God that waits for human perfection.

              As an observer of the American electoral process, I’m bewildered by how people make their choice for President.  Repeatedly for many American voters, candidates such as John B. Anderson and Al Gore were considered “too intellectual” to serve as their elected leader.  They preferred someone who was just like them, someone they would feel comfortable with.  In a recent article in The New York Times [10/27/08], a young man from Pennsylvania was quoted, referring to Governor Sarah Palin’s speeches, “She’s always talking about the “Average Joe.”  Average me!  I don’t want myself in the Oval Office.  I want someone smarter.”

            In an effort to educate myself about cultural views on the qualities of leadership, I learned that the ancient Chinese general, Sun Tzu, wrote: “you need to lead from the front.  In general, people are lost.  When they see someone ahead of them to guide the way, they tend to follow.  Be that someone.  By default, you are their leader.  No formal ceremony necessary.”  [sonshi.com, a website on Sun Tzu’s The Art of War]

            Then I found an insightful speech prepared by D. Quinn Mills, a professor of the Harvard Business School on “Asian and American leadership styles: how are they unique?”  (delivered in Kuala Lumpur in June, 2005 and  posted on the school's website).  While his analysis applies to business situations, I thought it would be a helpful guide to the electoral process.

Mills says that “leadership is about a vision of the future and the ability to energize others to pursue it,” in contrast to management or administration.  Across Asia, it is common for family leadership of business enterprises, including large companies.  While this also is true for some American firms, both publicly held and private, they are more commonly run by professional managers, appointed by the board of directors.  To a significant degree, says Mills, large American firms are at a later stage of development than many Asian firms.

            There are five leadership styles exhibited in America: directive, participative, empowering, charismatic and celebrity.  Directory leadership, which stresses the direction given by executives to others in the firm, is very common in Asia but while well-known in America, it’s declining in frequency.  Participative leadership, which involves close teamwork with others, is “more common in Europe, where it is sometimes required by law (as in northern Europe, especially in Germany) than in America.  It is also common in a variant colored by national cultural norms,[as] in Japan.”

            Empowering leadership is relatively new and stresses delegation of responsibility to subordinates.  American companies, says Mills, that operate with largely autonomous divisions employ this style of leadership.  “At the core of empowering leadership is the ability to energize the people in a company…Energizing others is the core of the new leadership in America.”

            Charismatic leadership is the leader who looks like a leader.  People follow such a leader, says Mills, because of who he is, not because of good management or even business success; nor because [the people] are offered participation, partnership, or empowerment.  Human magnetism is the thing and it is very different in different national cultures.”

            Celebrity leadership looks outside the company to the impact on others—customers and investors.  “It is in a bit of a slump in the United States right now due to the corporate financial reporting scandals, which have focused attention on CEOs with the ability to get things done right in the company; but celebrity leadership will make a recovery.”

            Then Mills spoke about the nine key qualities that research shows people seek in a successful leader: passion; decisiveness; conviction; integrity; adaptability; emotional toughness; emotional resonance; self-knowledge; and humility.

            The emotionalism, says Mills, that goes with passion is more common in America than elsewhere.  “Europeans see it as a sort of business evangelicalism and are very suspicious of it.”

            Decisiveness is common to effective executives in all countries, says Mills.  “In this regard European and Japanese chief executives are the most consensus-oriented, and Chinese and American top executives are more likely to make decisions personally and with their own accountability.”

            Conviction is common to all.

            Integrity, says Mills, is a complex characteristic very much determined by national cultures.  “What is honest in one society is not in another, and vice versa.”

            Adaptability, says Mills, is a pronounced characteristic of American leadership generally.  “It is less common and less valued in Asia and Europe.  It will be needed everywhere soon enough.”

            Emotional toughness is common to all top executives, says Mill, but “Americans spend more time trying not to show it.”

            Emotional resonance, the ability to grasp what motivates others and appeal effectively to it, says Mills, is most important in the United States and Europe at this point in time.  “It will become more important in Asia as living standards improve, knowledge workers become more important, professional management gets greater demand, and CEOs have to compete for managerial talent.”

            Self-knowledge, says Mills, is important in avoiding the sort of over-reach so common in America; “it is less common a virtue in America than in Asia and is a strength of the Asian executive.”

            Humility, says Mills, is a very uncommon trait in the American CEO.  It is sometimes found in Asia.  “It is often a trait of the most effective leaders, as it was in the best-respected of all American political leaders, Abraham Lincoln.  Once, when the Civil War was not going well for the Union side, a high-ranking general suggested that the nation needed to get rid of Lincoln and have a dictatorship instead.  The comment came to Lincoln’s ears.  Lincoln promoted the general to the top command in the army anyway and told him, “I am appointing you to the command despite, not because, of what you said.  Bring us victories, and I’ll risk the dictatorship.””

            Up until the polls close on Tuesday, we can only judge the style of leadership exhibited by Senators John McCain and Barack Obama.  After Tuesday and the inauguration in January, the nation will know whether the new President will be an effective leader after all.  The world, and all the crucial policy issues pending, await our choice.

             When I chose to join the Jewish community, I swapped the societal norms of my native heritage for a new one—one where guilt replaced shame as the overriding moral restraint.  In the Chinese culture, a child is expected to behave with proper conduct or work with diligence in school, because otherwise one would bring shame to the family.  However, my parents never applied the rule of guilt.  As a married adult, I have never been chastised for not calling more often, visiting regularly, or treating my parents the same way as my siblings—and we each do so in different ways, different styles.

            In the Jewish tradition, Moses’ Ten Commandments are evenly split between the laws between man and man and those of man and God.   The moral restraint is one of guilt, when one falls short of the standards elaborated by the rabbis over millennia.  Often, the transgressions are private ones, which an outsider would not be cognizant.  Nevertheless, a connected member of the culture would feel mental and emotional anguish over them and, especially during the month of Elul and the ten days of repentance before Yom Kippur, would strive to work harder to overcome any deficiencies.

            When I consider American society, I would choose guilt as a defining moral restraint.  There is a great emphasis on individual choice and responsibility.  The American democratic system offers a voice and a vote to all citizens and, despite the Electoral College, it is incumbent on each of us to exercise our right in choosing our leaders.  In modern medicine, it is further evident that one’s choices impact on one’s health with the scientific evidence that one’s environment is as much of a trigger for the diseases of lifestyle as one’s genetic heritage.   Finally, shame is not much of a deterrence in a society where one can re-invent oneself and where outrageous behavior is simply fodder for entertainment.

Postscript:

A psychologist at George Mason University,  Dr. June Tangney, defines the distinction between guilt and shame thus: "Shame, the feeling that you're a bad person because of bad behavior, has repeatedly been found to be unhealthy, whereas guilty feelings focused on the behavior itself can be productive."  [New York Times, 8/25/09]

The Buddhist belief in global ramifications of minor, individual action meant that my mother sewing my garment across the room could blame my badness for the thread snapping in her hand.   No guilt, but all shame all the time.

            While reading Ellis Avery’s novel, The Teahouse Fire, I learned that in the Japanese tea world, there is a concept called ichugo ichie, which means one moment, one meeting.  “Every moment is what it is.  Even though tea people watch each other constantly for slips in form, and gossip shamelessly about one another’s technique, in the end, in the deepest sense, there are no mistakes.”   This got me thinking about whether things happen randomly (as physicists claim) or not.

             Among the less-often quoted tenets of drivers’ education is that there are no accidents.  Every action on the road could be predicted and prevented.  A skillful driver would be always be alert to others’ inattention and errors of judgment, and act accordingly.

             There is a Hebrew expression used by religious Jews: gam zu l’tova, which means it’s all for the best.  The inconvenient events of our lives—both the tragic as well as the trivial-- are meant for the good, if only we could understand God’s intent.  Faith—and tea ceremonies—are ways that human beings cope in a chaotic world.

            As I linger over the gorgeous selection of produce now available in my farmers’ market, I marvel at the bounty and the diligent labor of the caretakers of this nation’s land.  Someone was up at 5:30 that morning to pick the corn I was holding in my hand, which at the market, that same farmer hand-selected for me!  Grocery shopping at other times of the year is bereft of such direct interactions between the producer and the consumer, when we can acknowledge the relationship in personal, visible ways.

             Then once home, I read a post from a woman who lives on a yishuv, a settlement that predates the establishment of the state of Israel.  This being a shmittah year, a Biblically mandated year of rest for the land of Israel, Yael Maizels writes, “Here in Israel, when I walk around in our Yishuv I can see (depending on the season) figs, grapes, pomegranates, almonds, loquats, lemons, oranges, apricots, pecans, plums, cherries, apples, carobs, etrogs and mulberries all growing. Some are on public lands and some are on private lands but this year is shmittah and unless someone specifically states otherwise the fruit is free for the picking.”  Farmers learn to rotate their crops for maximal yield and health to the land; the shmittah mandate requires one to recognize the source of all our bounty, that divine beneficience supersedes any and all effort on our part.

             There is no modern equivalent to the shmittah year, one in which slaves and debts are also released (the actual translation of shmittah). The English developed the concept of the common land (or the commons), a piece of land owned by one person, but over which other people can freely use, such as for grazing by their livestock.  Our public parks are an extension of the commons.  Asian cultures do not have a concept of public space, so public behavior is not deemed moral or relevant.  Hence, Singapore needed to institute a strict code of liability for public behavior deemed unacceptable and unhygienic, such as spitting (a fine of a maximum of S$1,000 for a first offense and a maximum of S$2,000 for subsequent offenses). 

             In countries across the world, the newly affluent are isolating themselves behind gated communities, where they choose who has access and who do not.  This kind of gated mentality could easily pervade one’s outlook, wherein the outsider is not worthy of one’s concern and the spaces beyond the gated boundaries are not worthy of our custodianship.  In my earlier post, I wrote about building a shared sense of identity.  Now, I’m mulling over a shared sense of space, from farmers’ markets (a more evolved entity being the CSA (community-supported agriculture), in which members share in the risks of a harvest) to public parks to shmittah produce that is free to all.

            There are three models of integration described in Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’ new book, The Home We Build Together: Recreating Society: the country house, a hotel and a home.  Guests arriving to a country house are welcomed, maybe offered comforting gestures, but they are not expected to stay. ( “Guests and fish are thrown out after three days” according to a folk saying.)  This is the model that best applies to Europe where guest workers may reside within their midst for years and even raise families, but these aliens are not fully integrated into society.  The second model, a hotel, is one where the guests come freely and pay their dues, and as long as they do not cause harm or discomfort to others, are allowed to stay.  This is the model that Rabbi Sacks applies to England.  Unfortunately, with this approach, ethnic enclaves have developed where there is no desire or need to interact with others outside their group, leading to increasing alienation into subsequent generations.

The best policy for social integration, according to Rabbi Sacks, the Chief Rabbi of Great Britain and the Commonwealth, is the model of a home, where everyone contributes their skills to build a society that seeks “unity out of diversity, while at the same time honouring the dignity of difference.”  This is in contrast to the failed experiments with multiculturalism (a salad bowl instead of the melting pot), as demonstrated by violent incidents in the Netherlands in recent years.  Rabbi Sacks then presents an erudite and vigorous argument as a religious defense of liberal democracy, (in contrast to Athenian democracy or classical republicanism, in which political life is the noblest expression of life) in which politics is simply a “set of arrangements that ensures civic peace and allows people to get on with their other business of life.”

As read annually on the holiday of Shavuot, the Biblical story of Ruth is about a Moabite widow who chooses to accompany her mother-in-law, Naomi, back to Israel, to Bethlehem, Naomi’s ancestral home.  Ruth meets Boaz, one of Naomi’s kinsmen, who helps them and eventually marries Ruth. Their union begat the ancestor to King David.  This is a tale of kindness to strangers, about chesed, usually translated as “lovingkindness” but better defined as “convenant love” according to Rabbi Sacks.  In a convenant-based nation—England and Scotland in the 17^th century and the United States today—society matters as much as the state.  “Society is created by the convenantal virtues, chief of which is, for the Bible, chessed, and for its Western heirs, civility…In the republican tradition, nothing stands between the individual and the state.  In the convenant tradition, almost everything does.  Governments are necessary…But they are not the highest expression of human life.  Love is.  Not love in the romantic sense, but in the social sense of kindness to strangers.”

Watching the volunteers for the Christian-based Habitat for Humanity and the families they help in building a home for themselves, Rabbi Sacks came to understand why the construction of the Tabernacle was given so much textual space in the Bible.  “Nothing else, not the miracles, the division of the Red Sea, even the revelation at Mount Sinai, turned the Israelites into a nation.  The simplest of projects, the making of a Tabernacle did.” He came to understand the “connection between giving and belonging,” and how a group identity could be created without an “us” and “them.”  It needed no delicate negotiation of beliefs and sensibilities.  You don’t need theology to understand why you should help someone build a house.  Habitat for Humanity is a metaphor for our common life. “

Nations all the world over are grappling with aliens in their midst.  How they  welcome foreigners and integrate them as productive members of society will greatly impact the cohesive health of their country for generations to come.

            I’d originally posted this off-blog on a date when I would have posted on this bimonthly blog, but a friend pointed out that I was limited and dated in my definition of “culture.”  So, here it is on A Cultural Mix.

            If  “the unexamined life is not worth living,” as famously coined by Socrates, then living an examined life certainly takes more time and effort.  Years ago, I'd gone through the cost-benefit analysis for cotton versus disposable diapers (water use versus landfill availability).  I've finally found a place that would accept our #5 plastics for recycling.  I have not purchased our way out (aka, carbon off-setting) of our recent flight across the country (see Verlyn Klinkenborg's piece on it [New York Times, 6/24/08]).   As a long-time vegetarian, I’m excited to learn about two long, scholarly articles about combating global warming with your choice of food.  Christopher L. Weber and H. Scott Matthews in the journal, Environmental Science and Technology, and Gidon Eshel and Pamela A. Martins in Earth Interactions have used scientific analyses to show how a diet devoid or low in animal protein factors into this new realm of environmental calculations.  In summary, the choice of food matters more than the choice to eat locally sourced food.  Thanks to Mental Masala’s blog, The Ethicurean, for bringing my attention to these scientific articles and for coming up with the term, “food mindfulness."

             The publication of Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America in 2000 by Professor Stephen Bloom of the University of Iowa put the town of Postville (population: 1,478) on the national radar.  Eight years later, it’s again garnered national attention with the federal raid on May 12^th on the Lubavitch-run AgriProcessors kosher slaughterhouse in Postville.  The presence of illegal and under-age workers were the precipitating factors for the government’s intervention-- 389 Mexican workers were arrested, 200 were sentenced and the rest were to be deported.

            In the intervening days, there’s been a weird split in response within the Jewish community.  Whereas some have been calling for a boycott of meat processed from this company’s plants—Rubashkin, Aaron’s Best, and David’s brands — as promoted by the year-old Orthodox social justice group, Uri L’Tzedek, Hebrew for “To Awaken to Justice,” others have refused to take notice.  As reported in the New York Jewish Week [5/30/08],  the owner of Glatt Mart in Flatbush, Brooklyn-- which sells some 75,000 pounds of meat monthly-- claims that not one customer has asked which meat is Rubashkin’s!

            This time we’re not talking about the ethics of killing animals for food.  As Fuchsia Dunlop pointed out in her new book, Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China, “In English, as in most European languages, the words for the living things we eat are mostly derived from the Latin anima, which means air, breath, life.  ‘Creature,” from the Latin for ‘created,’ seems to connect animals with us as human beings in some divinely fashioned universe.  We too are creatures, animated.  In Chinese, the word for animal is dong wu, meaning ‘moving thing.’  Is it cruel to hurt something that (unless you are a fervent Buddhist) you simply see as a ‘moving thing,’ scarcely even alive?”

            The chef Dan Barber has attempted to minimize the distance his meat travels by building his own artisanal slaughterhouse on the grounds of the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture near Tarrytown, New York.  While tours are conducted of this teaching farm, the slaughterhouse is now off-limits to the public, because Barber doubts that “his organic-friendly clientele truly understands about what goes on at a farm.” [New York Times, 6/6/08]

            This week, the food writer Mark Bittman published an article on how to reduce our meat intake, “Putting Meat Back in its Place.” [New York Times, 6/11/08]   If kosher meat will be in short supply because of AgriProcessors’ woes,  it’s time to think outside of the meat-for-Shabbat-and-Yom-Tov box.  [In the interest of full disclosure: I’ve been vegetarian since I was 16.]  However, I urge people to think of the bigger issues of labor (and animal) malpractice as displayed in the AgriProcessors plant.  In the words of philosopher Abraham Joshua Heschel, “Few may be guilty, but we are all responsible.”

           Dr. Carolivia Herron has written of her Jewish ancestor, Sarah bat Asher, being captured along a beach in Italy and held for ransom.  She escaped with the help of a male captive, who was being trained for piracy.  They traveled to America and were settled amongst the descendents of West African slaves, the Geechee people, on the Sea Islands of Georgia.  Their offspring have inter-married with the Geechee and other black people and Dr. Herron now identifies as a black-American woman.

            A number of notable facts from this unusual family heritage are: one, that Jews were known to redeem one of their own kind--  even strangers-- from kidnappers; two, that even female Jews had been captured and held for ransom, and three, that in 1805 the American marine merchant captain had so little thought of depositing his Jewish passengers in an enclave of African people.

            The most astounding fact that I learned is that the definition of race has changed over time.   We now recognize the three races of Asia, Europe and Africa.  In the 2000 U.S. census, “white” is defined as “a person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa. It includes people who indicate their race as "White" or report entries such as Irish, German, Italian, Lebanese, Near Easterner, Arab, or Polish.”  However, Jews were not considered as “white” until relatively recently.  Dr. Karen Brodkin, professor of anthropology at UCLA wrote How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says about Race in America in 1998.  In the nineteenth century, there were hundreds of races; most, including Jews, being considered neither black nor white.

Asian immigrants fanning out across the world are often classified as the “Other,” being neither the dominant ethnic group nor the disenfranchised, outcast group.  They were also vulnerable to any political disturbances to the status quo.  Thus, the “boat people” fleeing southeast Asia after the Vietnam War in the late ‘70s were ethnic Chinese.  Determined to make Uganda "a black man's country," General Idi Amin expelled the country's 40,000-80,000 Indians and Pakistanis in 1972.  It may be understandable that in an aspirational gambit for self-identity and claim to the dominant culture, one Asian Indian that I know declares himself white!

In his new book, The Home that We Build Together: Recreating Society, Sir Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi of the British Commonwealth, writes that race was a factor in the evolving development of anti-Semitism.  After the Enlightenment, when religion was no longer a valid source of authority, people turned to science and social Darwinism and the “pseudo-science of race.”  Racial anti-Semitism was recognized by the “more insightful of Europe’s Jews…that the new hate was far more dangerous than the old.  People can change their religion.  They cannot change their race.”

          The expression often cited to demonstrate patriotism is “as American as apple pie”  but when was the last time you ate apple pie?  Compare that with your most  recent meal of Chinese food.  For an immigrant group that was despised and feared from its earliest arrival on these shores (to date, the only group meriting a dedicated act by Congress, the Chinese Exclusion Act passed in 1882), the Chinese has made tremendous in-roads into the American society.  Americans, and especially the Jews, have embraced Chinese food, both as takeout comfort meals as well as for celebratory occasions.  But the beloved foods known as chop suey (now considered passé, but wildly popular in the years after World War II), fortune cookies, and General Tso’s chicken are as American-born as apple pie.  In fact, an ill-fated endeavor to introduce fortune cookies to China in the 1990’s was met with abysmal failure, because the treat was considered “too American.”  The tastes that Americans love— intensely sweet, crispy, and deep-fried —are just not authentic Chinese ones.

            The Powerball scandal of 2005 when 110 lottery winners nationwide all claimed to have obtained their winning sequences from a fortune cookie lead Jennifer 8. Lee to an journalistic investigation, from which she proceeded to write an intrigue-filled book on Chinese assimilation through the prism of food, titled The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food.  Ms. Lee is a reporter for the New York Times, a graduate of Harvard with degrees in applied mathematics and economics, and an American-born Chinese. 

One chapter in her book is devoted to answering why have Jews embraced Chinese food?   I learned from Ms. Lee’s book that there are academic treatises written on this subject, including a paper written by Gary Tuchman and Harry G. Levine called “Safe Treyf” (treyf being the Yiddish word for non-kosher food) in which they propose that of all the foods encountered in America, Chinese food was the most foreign, the most “un-Jewish.”  Yet, writes Ms. Lee, “Jews defined this particular foreignness not as forbidding but as appealing, attractive, and desirable.  Indeed, many Jews saw eating in Chinese restaurants as an antidote for Jewish parochialism, for the exclusive and overweening emphasis on the culture of the Jews as it had been.”

Hanna R. Miller in her paper, “Identity Takeout: How American Jews Made Chinese Food Their Ethnic Cuisine,” cited the geographic proximity between these two immigrant groups in New York City’s Lower East Side (ignoring the third ethnic group living in nearby Little Italy).  Other scholars note the absence of dairy in Chinese cuisine, which makes it more easily compatible with kashrut (laws on kosher food preparation, specifically the forbidden mixing of meat and dairy ingredients) than Italian or French cuisine.

Ms. Lee even sought out a literary angle, quoting Philip Roth’s character, Portnoy, on his perspective on Chinese food: “Yes, the only people in the world whom it seems to me the Jews are not afraid of are the Chinese.  Because, one, the way they speak English makes my father sound like Lord Chesterfield; two, the insides of  their heads are just so much fried rice anyway; and three, to them we are not Jews but white—and maybe even Anglo Saxon.  Imagine!”

Finally, the author traveled to China to seek someone who could speak with authority about both Chinese and Jewish cultures.  There she met an 81-year-old Chinese woman who lived on Jiaojing Hutong or “Teaching Scriptures Alley” in Kaifeng, where the Jewish faith was known as “the religion which removes the sinew.”  (The Jewish community of Kaifeng thrived from 1163 until the 1860s.)   The author hoped that “she,  being one of the rare Chinese Jews in the world today, would be able to shed light on a question that had vexed academics, bolstered comedy routines and intrigued Portnoy.”  

‘“Why,” I asked, “do Jews in America like Chinese food so much?”

With a glint in her eye, she slapped the wooden table.

She knew.

I leaned in.  This was the insight for which I had traveled thousands of miles, walked along a highway at midnight, and scoured alleyways.

Her Buddhist koan-like response was profound in its simplicity:

“Because Chinese food tastes good.”’

Another chapter introduced the soy sauce trade dispute in which the Japanese delegation petitioned to the international trade regulatory organization to set standards for soy sauce, as the French has done for champagne, the Italians for Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, and the Koreans for kimchee.   However, these latter are known and consumed by few connoisseurs in comparison to the worldwide market for soy sauce.  The version of “soy sauce” consumed by most Americans (most often served in little plastic packets distributed by Kari-Out, owned by the Epstein family of Westchester, NY) is not made from actual soybeans.  Instead, its list of ingredients are: water, hydrolyzed vegetable protein, caramel coloring and corn syrup—essentially, thick, brown salty water.  This is not an atypical story of the American alteration and mass-processing of foods from around the world, including beer, chocolate, and cheese (to the dismay and frustration of their original compatriots).  After several years of hardball lobbying by the Americans, the Japanese quietly withdrew their petition in 2005.  The Americans had won: soy sauce does not have to be made from whole soybeans.

There are other chapters with fascinating insights on how Chinese immigration has impacted American society.  To find out the real deal on fortune cookies, check out Jennifer 8. Lee’s new book.

           In Chinese families, a child is given a “milk name or “little name” until his or her official naming ceremony when the child survives the hazardous first month after birth.  The tradition is that the given name bestowed is chosen with the consultation of the grandparents.  Furthermore, the cousins of the same gender within a generation are given a generational name that is paired with an unique character for a two-character given name.  Therefore, my daughters were named by their maternal grandfather accordingly: “Precious Treasure” and “Bright Treasure.”  When my cousin’s wife gave birth, they honored my family by choosing to name their daughters a variant of “Treasure.”

            It is considered inappropriate to name Chinese children after a famous figure and highly offensive to name after an older member among the family or even distant relatives.   In contrast, Americans and Jews of Sephardic heritage seek to name their children after living relatives and personages; Ashkenazi Jews tend to name babies after deceased, honored relatives.

            When my family arrived in America, we were told that our Chinese names would be a social liability.  So after my cousin read aloud names from a book, my mother picked Biblical names that sounded like our Chinese names for me and my siblings.  Years later, I pointed out to her that she’d picked our destiny-- as a good Buddhist, she believes in fate.  Thus, we can claim that she had a role in my becoming an Orthodox Jew and my brother in becoming a fundamental Christian; our sister remains an agnostic.

In the current Spring issue of the JOFA Journal, Professor Elie Holzer (of Bar-Ilan University and Brandeis College) quotes from the Midrash Tanhuma, a collection of homiletic and haggadic interpretation of the Bible, on the chapter of Vayakheil: “People are called by three names: One is the name the person is called by his father and mother; one is the name people call him/her; and one is the name the person acquires for him/herself.  The last is the best one.”   In this country that honors the iconic stories written by the Reverend Horatio Algiers, Jr. about down-and-out boys who achieve the American dream of material success, it is the earned moniker that we choose to live by.

            In this piece, I’ll explore the concept of home, from the physical, spiritual and psychological point of reference.

            In the Chinese language, the character for family and home is written as a roof encompassing a pig, connoting the primacy of sustenance and protection from the elements.  A home is where one can provide for one’s creature comforts.

            In the Jewish culture, the physical home is not as important as the ancestral home.  Psalm 137 exhorts Jews to remember Israel: “Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I remember thee not; if I set not Jerusalem above my chiefest joy.” [Soncino  Books of the Bible].  The Passover story, as recounted in the ritual text, the Haggadah, is one of destiny and redemption.  The Jews were exiled and they were rescued by God (working through the personages of Moses and Pharoah) to return to the land of Israel.  The Hagadah cites a quote from Genesis 47:4: They (the sons of Jacob) said to Pharoah: “We have come to sojourn in this land…” [The Artscroll Family Haggadah]  The temporary residence of a Jew in the Diaspora (outside of the homeland of Israel) is permitted for matters of study, seeking a mate or livelihood (parnassa in Hebrew).

            In America, this country of immigrants: where is home?  In an excellent review of the Bengali-American writer Jhumpa Lahiri’s new collection of short stories, Unaccustomed Earth, Liesl Schillinger writes: …the place to which you feel the strongest attachment isn’t necessarily the country you’re tied to by blood or birth: it’s the place that allows you to become yourself.  This place, she [the author] quietly indicates, may not lie on any map.”  [The New York Times Book Review, 4/6/08]   Lahiri cites a passage from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Custom House, which “suggests that transplanting people into new soil makes them hardier and more flourishing.”  If immigration brings forth only the most motivated of people, does then a successful integration in America occur to the most adaptable?