#JewishandProud

Someone in the American Jewish Committee (AJC)must have recently watched the old Annie get Your Gun movie with Irving Berlin’s famous Anything you can do, I can do better.  Why should – they must have thought – only Gays have all the fun, with their colourful Gay pride marches. And so, they announced a Jewish Pride Day. For some reason, they chose the 6^th of January – Epiphany – for it.

I don’t know whether AJC organised carnivalesque floats, with young or not so young men demonstrating the binding of tefillin, extravagantly dressed orthodox Jews showing off their kaftans, yarmulkes  and tallit prayer shawls (they might have gone for the rainbow coloured one, to show commonality with the other “others”.  

I have no objection to parties, not even to street parties. It is the concept of pride that I question. The AJC’s website explains “We will win not by guarding our identity, but by celebrating it. We will win not by hiding who we are, but by trumpeting it, and by being embraced by our friends in other communities.” I agree about not hiding. I just don’t like the ‘pride’ concept.

According to the Oxford dictionary pride is “a feeling of elation or satisfaction at achievements or qualities or possessions etc. that do one credit”. I am not quite sure which achievements, qualities or possessions, the AJC believe we are to be proud of. The other meaning of pride, the Oxford dictionary offers is “high or overbearing opinion of one’s worth or importance”. I cannot imagine that we would like to suggest that we are afflicted with this condition. That leaves a pride of lions...