The Intercultural Communications Approach Good morning! On today’s episode of “The Pretend Jew,” our heroine waivers on hosting the Hanukkah open house in her home because her Christmas tree is still up. And who doesn’t love her confused expression every time she’s in synagogue (she doesn’t speak Hebrew!) and has no idea when to sit down! And here’s your hostess…
So a representative from my Alderman’s office called the other night to ask for my vote in her reelection. “Overall I’m satisfied with her work for our ward and plan to vote for her,” I said, “but there is one thing that I just wanted to share that really bothered me. It was a phone…
I could not be more proud that my son can watch Aladdin and immediately realize that the underlying stereotype when only the villain speaks with a Middle Eastern accent. Or questioning the underlying bias of the positioning of modern African folk art as items of tribal ritual in an art museum. After all, we’ve been…
I can’t tell you if this is a story about Really, have we met? Finding out something totally surprising about my husband of 25 years that I never knew Duh—how did I never see something so obvious when seen through the eyes of another? Or Deep, sensitive intercultural insight when seeing how USAmerican Culture is…
A couple of weeks ago I got home late from work and realized at 9:30 pm that I didn’t have the packing list to pack my son to leave on a school retreat at 8:30 the next morning. I called one of the other parents who’s always volunteering and on top of things, and said…
I got this my email today: I was a career day speaker at a Chicago Public School last year. This year I was disinvited. Mr. Sims, We would like to thank you for dedicating your time to this year’s career day. Unfortunately due to the nature of the content that you presented to our young…
My husband and I have skirted this conversation for 24 years. Not really skirted. For us, culturally Jewish (me) and Brazilian (him, non-Jewish) we are comfortable with our choices to raise our son Jewish, and make sure he is well connected to his Brazilian heritage, despite growing up in the US. But family members sometimes…
For Jews it’s 5771, for Christians (and the world) it’s 2010. For the Chinese it’s 47098. It’s 1431 Hijrea (after the migration of Muhammad PBUH from Mecca to Al-Madina ) for the Islamic calendar. And for the Jain’s it’s going on 75,000 years. The conversation arose during a celebration of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New…
White Tim White talks a lot about White Privilege, White Peggy McIntosh is well-known for “Unpacking the White Knapsack” about what it means to be white, and most recently, White Mikhail Lyubansky, professor of Psychology at the University of Illinois, takes a stab at the notion in his article on psychologytoday.com, “Going Where Glenn Beck…
Between a Bat Mitzvah (Jewish coming of age ceremony, Bat for girl, Bar for boy) on Saturday and a conversation at lunch yesterday that exposed multiple unconsicous assumptions of mine, I seem to have race, bias, and interculturalism on the brain, and in particular the idea of how culture is passed-on from one generation to the…
