Would this be considered prejudice or self-hatred?
This afternoon, I was talking with my cousin, Tima, back in suburban Cleveland. He and his girlfriend had a bit of an adventure back in March - at the beginning of March, they went on a trip to Jamaica, and by the time they got back, state after state were enacting shelter-in-place orders, and they had to spend 14 days in quarantine. With colleges shifting to online learning for at least the rest of the semester, he is back with his parents, and we've been trying to arrange a Skype call, and we finally managed to pull it off.
Anyway, while we were Skyping - him from his phone, me from my laptop, his mom, Aunt Anya, came back from a grocery run [Note](for those new here, Aunt Anya is actually my mom's cousin, but there's no elegant way to translate двоюродная тётя into English, so just plain "Aunt" it is). After she made sure her hands were washed and everything was disinfected, Tima handed the phone to her for a few minutes.
"So I was at this Russian grocery store I haven't been to in a while," Aunt Anya said in Russian. "And they were sold out of everything. Even Kvas. And the cashier, he was this really Jewy type, like a hardcore Soviet Jew..."
"Mom, come on, seriously?" Time interjected in Russian, and I could practically hear his eyeroll.
"What? He was! Anyway, he said, all smug - 'don't you know it's Orthodox Easter tomorrow? Everything is sold out.'"
Aunt Anya, as longer-time readers may recall, is an Orthodox Christian, and she takes her faith fairly seriously. And, like my mom, she's a daughter of a Russian-Jewish man.
Aunt Anya and I talked for a bit more, before she excused herself to do some cooking, and Tima carried the phone back to his room to finish our conversation.
"Sorry about my mom," he said in English as soon as he was out of Aunt Anya's hearing range.
"It's okay," I replied in English. "Though, honestly, part of me wanted to tell her," I shifted to dramatic whisper, "I don't know if you noticed, but your dad was one of those Jews."
Later, I would think about how, back when then-mayor Rahm Emanuel did away with the huge Christmas tree that has become Chicago tradition, my mom quipped that this is what happens when you get a Jewish mayor - but she prefaced it by saying that she felt bad making that joke. Aunt Anya just dropped that borderline bit in a conversation without a second thought.
And another part of me wondered - would that count as borderline antisemitism or partial self-loathing?
Anyway, while we were Skyping - him from his phone, me from my laptop, his mom, Aunt Anya, came back from a grocery run [Note](for those new here, Aunt Anya is actually my mom's cousin, but there's no elegant way to translate двоюродная тётя into English, so just plain "Aunt" it is). After she made sure her hands were washed and everything was disinfected, Tima handed the phone to her for a few minutes.
"So I was at this Russian grocery store I haven't been to in a while," Aunt Anya said in Russian. "And they were sold out of everything. Even Kvas. And the cashier, he was this really Jewy type, like a hardcore Soviet Jew..."
"Mom, come on, seriously?" Time interjected in Russian, and I could practically hear his eyeroll.
"What? He was! Anyway, he said, all smug - 'don't you know it's Orthodox Easter tomorrow? Everything is sold out.'"
Aunt Anya, as longer-time readers may recall, is an Orthodox Christian, and she takes her faith fairly seriously. And, like my mom, she's a daughter of a Russian-Jewish man.
Aunt Anya and I talked for a bit more, before she excused herself to do some cooking, and Tima carried the phone back to his room to finish our conversation.
"Sorry about my mom," he said in English as soon as he was out of Aunt Anya's hearing range.
"It's okay," I replied in English. "Though, honestly, part of me wanted to tell her," I shifted to dramatic whisper, "I don't know if you noticed, but your dad was one of those Jews."
Later, I would think about how, back when then-mayor Rahm Emanuel did away with the huge Christmas tree that has become Chicago tradition, my mom quipped that this is what happens when you get a Jewish mayor - but she prefaced it by saying that she felt bad making that joke. Aunt Anya just dropped that borderline bit in a conversation without a second thought.
And another part of me wondered - would that count as borderline antisemitism or partial self-loathing?