A friend of mine, holding his bowl of soup while eating, explained to me that it wasn't psychopathology that I was seeing: the bottom of the bowl was dirty so he didn't want to put it down. I responded by saying that I hadn't noticed, I grew up with lots of Asians, and they all ate their soup that way.
Another friend of mine, commenting on his extreme meticulousness, explained that his habits come from sailing: where space is scarce, and a misstep or loose knot can be fatal.
A third friend of mine commented on the neurosis of observant Jews, always ritually washing their hands (e.g. before eating, praying, after using the toilet). I explained that it was merely a dictate of the religion.
David Warren says:
Posted by David Boxenhorn at November 24, 2004 11:47 AMLet us linger one more time over the scene of death, so far as we can reconstruct it from press reports. The Dutch pundit and filmmaker, who had been out on his bicycle, was shot several times at close range, and according to witnesses, remained alive long enough to beg his assailant to stop. He then had his throat slit, and spinal cord severed, to the point where he was nearly beheaded. Five pages in Arabic were then pinned to his body, by the knife then embedded in his chest. This dissertation consisted of quotations from the Koran, and promises that Holland, Europe, Israel, and America would all be annihilated by victorious Islam. Various prominent Dutch personalities were threatened by name.
It is important to take this in. Theo van Gogh's "alleged" murderer (we are dealing with Western legal niceties which are not recognized in Sharia law) was a psychopath, but not of the "normal", loner sort with which we are familiar from the annals of Western psychiatry and jurisprudence. The police in Amsterdam were able to round up six of his alleged accomplices after the crime, and are seeking more. And the relationship between the ritual murder of Theo van Gogh, and the numerous butcherings of hostages by Jihadis in Iraq, Pakistan, and elsewhere, was obvious from any distance.
do sephardic and mizrachi jews have the same neuroses? i ask because i suspect that askhenazi jewish selection for IQ also resulted in a lot of weird psychopathologies normally associated with the intelligent, but in this case, you developed a whole culture of eggheads (no offense).
Posted by: razib at November 24, 2004 01:23 PM PermalinkI don't have an answer to your specific question about pathologies (though I suspect that the answer is no), but Sephardi and Ashkenazi cultures definitely have a different "look and feel" in Israel. On the other hand, so do Israeli and American (Ashkenazi) Jewish cultures. (Most American Jews are Ashkenazi, but only about half of Israeli Jews are Ashkenazi.)
Sephardim tend to be warmer and more easy-going than Ashkenazim - something like the North-South difference in Europe. I would say that's true of Israeli vs. American Ashkenazim too. It seems to me like American Jews have adopted much of the Anglo-Saxon cultural look and feel.
Posted by: David Boxenhorn at November 24, 2004 08:14 PM Permalink