(Breaking my own rule again:) common knowledge about... you guessed it

[roga]

Couldn't resist this: minisinoo wrote a pan-Indian version, and here's the original post, and coffeeandink has composed a link list of the various follow-ups

Comments

[sabra_n]

I'm kind of wondering what people will say for #6. I know what my answer is, but I'm an Israeli expatriate at best.

-blue

[roga]

Well, now I want to know what your answer is :-) Although I suspect it's mine.

[sabra_n]

Rabin's assassination, for me. I remember where I was.

-blue

[roga]

That's the one. Everyone remembers where they were. (Were you living in Israel then? No...)

[severuslovesme]

I know people are saying 'don't post the answers!' but I'd love it if you'd answer these questions, because I am an ignoramus and like learning, and I would love to hear your thoughts/answers! :D

[roga]

I will, if not in comments to this then later on...

[dafnagreer]

Oooh, can I play? Here are my answers to the ones that I'm not 100% sure I know:

4. 200,000?

5. Marriage no, though I think there's some sort of civil partnership in Tel Aviv, right? Military, yes.

6. In my apt. in the Old City, on the phone with a friend. We were talking about how a bunch of our other friends had gone up to Tel Aviv for a peace rally but we were too broke to go.

8. Bwahahahahaha.

13. With pita?

14. Peres?

[roga]

Okay, 4 was totally a trick question. I'm sure there's a statistic out there, but my answer is no one. Because nobody speaks Yiddish anymore - it's as dead a language as you can get, or if it isn't it will be within ten years. There's Yiddish slang that's worked itself nto the language just like it has in America, and a few grandparents who still know it (though most don't actually speak it).

5. Common law marriage, yup. Not just in Tel Aviv, although as a very culturally gay friendly city it makes sense that they'd live there.

6. I was thinking more about the collective experience, not the individual, which would have been Rabin's assassination. (it could also be the day the Yom Kippur War broke, or the day the state was declared, or the '72 Olympics, or Entebbe, or John Lennon or 9/11, even - but it's most likely to be Rabin.)

8. Yes :-) But that's one thing I doubt most people are aware of.

13. But how

14. Yup.

[npkedit]

Hmmm. I'd have to disagree on number 4. When I went to Mea Shearim on my last trip out, I conducted most business in Yiddish (or Yinglish), and everyone there was gabbing away in Yiddish and not Hebrew. The really frummy charedim still speak it...and they have pretty high birth rates. I don't know exact numbers, but dying out it's not.

And in America, Yiddish might have shrunk in the general population, but it is also still very much alive, and the language of choice among chassidim (who also reproduce at rather large rates).

[roga]

Okay, I just did some wider research and you're right. I admit, I'm no that versed in the inner works of haredi and chassidic society, and I'd forgotten about them. So the numbers in Israel are more or less what Dafna said.

[swatkat24]

I would play, but then I discovered I know nothing. Educate me? #10, for starters? I'm also tempted to make one of these up myself.

What's the correct way to eat hummus?

I read that as 'humans'. *facepalm*

[roga]

WITH SOY SAUCE.

Answers will come, I promise.

[kita0610]

I read that as humans too.

Then my head went to the drinking the blood of Christian babies thing, and it went downhill from there.

*heddesk*

BTW, roga Hi, nice to meet you, great questions, interesting answers, and I can't remember how I got here. :)

[roga]

Hi!

It was all those Judaism discussions. I kept reading them and opening new tabs to read more and more and ultimately, in some way, they all lead back to you :-)

Which is a lot for you to be proud of. I love seeing these issues talked about, especially with people I'm comfortable with, ie fandom. So thanks for that.

[bironic]

This is fascinating -- I'm so glad you wrote up answers, and in such detail. I only knew about four, which is kind of shameful. :/ (11 was easy since we learned about the Ethiopian Jews in Hebrew school -- though not the recent history of emigration to Israel via the Sudan -- and most of my American-Israeli friends/acquaintances are originally from Russia.)

[roga]

I learned about Operation Solomon when I was in Hebrew school - well, private Jewish school - too, because it happened when we were living in the US. I remember being really proud of it, because my uncle was a Hercules pilot and he flew one of the rescue planes.

And my Jewish American RL friends are the same. It's funny, when I was road-tripping last year, one of my companions was a girl from Russia who'd made aliya in 1990. Along the way, we met an American girl, whom we discovered was Jewish, originally Russian, and moved to the US in 1990. They both spoke great Russian and English/Hebrew (one well, the other less), came from very similar backgrounds, and - you could just see where the paths they took in life separated, how a chance decision by any government official could have made the two of them switch places.

[bironic]

Oh, nifty.

Pee ess: For a Jewish person to immigrate to Israel. The word itself means "to rise" or "ascension". The opposite, for a Jew who lives here to leave Israel for good, is yerida - "to descend" -- the seed of an SGA story, mayhap?

[roga]

Oh, did you have to say that? Really? Did you have to?