Dining on Sacred Cow
History’s New Genetic Vanguard
For about a decade, I’ve been an avid reader of the latest work on human population genetics. Following a rush of oddball (and sometimes downright irresponsible) amateurs and a few informed commentators, I’ve woven in a background in ancient history and comparative linguistics to compensate for my elementary-at-best knowledge of molecular genetics. Last year, I bucked the norms of my Arabic composition class on literature and politics, writing on the origins of the Semitic language family and the demographic nature of the Islamic conquests from a genetic perspective. Until quite recently, this was an exercise on the margins: in most cases, genetic researchers kept their speculation to the unfathomably distant past, and traditional historians steered clear altogether.
A More Benign Intoxicant?
Nothing illustrates this principle more starkly than the strange reality of marijuana at Harvard: that is to say, it’s rarer than you might expect. On the campus where Timothy Leary once conducted lab experiments with much harder drugs, only 35% of 2012’s graduating seniors claimed to have ever tried marijuana—as compared to 47% of American college students, by the Harvard School of Public Health’s account. This is not for lack of intoxication, however. By contrast, a substantial 67% admit to drinking alcohol at least once a week, with 93% admitting to have tried the liquid drug at least once.
Moses in the Desert
In the theater of the absurd that often becomes of Birthright’s trips for Diaspora Jewish youths to Israel, few moments are stranger than the detour into the Negev desert to the now-canonical “Bedouin tent.” Pitched by businessmen for tourists, stocked with modern comforts, and designed with intra-Jewish coupling in mind, the airy tent becomes a romantic stand-in for the experience of the Negev Bedouin, one of two varieties of “Good Arab” in the official Israeli imagination. “You see, hevre,” I imagine a guide explaining to a bunch of clueless American Joshes and Jeremies, “the clannish Bedouins don’t want trouble like other Arabs—they’re loyal to the State of Israel, and serve as excellent scouts in the army!”
No Thanksgivukkah for Me
I will not deny that the convergence of Thanksgiving and Hanukkah serves my interests, narrowly speaking: That is to say, my mother will have no choice but to prepare a flavorful brisket instead of the ever-unpopular, but culturally perfunctory turkey. But beyond the alimentary upside, Thanksgivukkah does absolutely nothing for me. To put a finer point on it, this chimera of a holiday epitomizes much of what has always alienated me, a proud Jew and proud American, from the culture that is Jewish America. This season, I would rather celebrate the two concurrently than be dragged into the morass of cranberry sauce latkes, Hallmark bastardizations, and what I can’t help but imagine of Adam Sandler in pilgrim garb.
World of Rosencraft
“Craft!” whispers another, smaller voice from your corner lamppost, giving testimony to a national ethos whose name, shared with the currency, derives from the suffix of the president’s surname. Not quite president, but “director,” he reminds foreign correspondents. That was his title when the family business acquired the hard-hit national government on December 31, 1996, and as far as he’s concerned, nothing has changed.
