*nod* it bothers me too... I'm aware that it's not necessarily a virtue either for the Jews who achieve it or the city which allows them.
Another story: I have a friend I've known since I was very little. People always assumed we were sisters when we were younger, we have matching frizzy hair. And her family are church-of-england christian athiest with a side order of scientologist, and she had a family story about being able to trace the family in London back to Cromwell's time.
And then she got interested in family history, and started looking at the records, and turned out they were Sephardi Jews. Birth and death records in London parishes going back to the 1600s. A couple of generations marrying in churches in the 1700s, and then records of adult circumcision and back to marrying in synagogues for a while, when the borders were opened again, before marrying back into Christianity a second time in the 1800s.
My college had a Jewish cemetery from the 1200s under its chapel. Not London, but... I dunno. It's very easy I think to think about Jews as being people who arrive somewhere. But her family have been Londoners for four hundred years or so.
And yeah, I'm also really aware of 'length of history' as a fallacy.
I dunno. I just... I guess I love my city. *grin*.
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Date: 2011-03-24 07:12 pm (UTC)Another story: I have a friend I've known since I was very little. People always assumed we were sisters when we were younger, we have matching frizzy hair. And her family are church-of-england christian athiest with a side order of scientologist, and she had a family story about being able to trace the family in London back to Cromwell's time.
And then she got interested in family history, and started looking at the records, and turned out they were Sephardi Jews. Birth and death records in London parishes going back to the 1600s. A couple of generations marrying in churches in the 1700s, and then records of adult circumcision and back to marrying in synagogues for a while, when the borders were opened again, before marrying back into Christianity a second time in the 1800s.
My college had a Jewish cemetery from the 1200s under its chapel. Not London, but... I dunno. It's very easy I think to think about Jews as being people who arrive somewhere. But her family have been Londoners for four hundred years or so.
And yeah, I'm also really aware of 'length of history' as a fallacy.
I dunno. I just... I guess I love my city. *grin*.