Where exactly was he from?
This question can be asked of 3/4 of the Jewish World today, the Diaspora. A century ago 15,000,000 Jews lived in Europe, or the United States, or the Arab Middle East.
Today almost all of the Jews are gone from the Arab Middle East and Europe. Of the 15,000,000 Jews on earth today, 6,000,000 (Whoops! There's that number again!) reside in Israel and the same number in the United States.
Yesterday we noted our Russian Jewish neighbors, from Lithuania and Ukraine, with friends from all over the former Soviet Union.
Our grandfather's family were Dutchmen on one side (Stroocks) and Krauts on the other (Neuberger, Loeb). Both got out of Europe after the Revolutions of 1848. As noted before the man for whom we are named (our grandmother's father) flew airplanes, in the Great War...for the Kaiser.
Mrs. Stroock is descended from Lithuanian/Byelorussian peasant stock, we mean real Fidler on the Roof stuff. One of her cousins just married an Israeli man. His family was from Baghdad, which was about 45 percent Jewish until 1948.
This is usually the conversation one has when one meets Jews. So sayeth the great, the indispensable, Breitbart's lion, Ben Shapiro:
When we meet another Jew, the first thing we do is play Jewish geography: who knows whom, who is related to whom. That’s the rich side of being part of a global tribe – everyone is one degree removed from everyone else.Usually in America these are Krauts or Russians and in Israel they're Middle Eastern, though many are descendent from Europeans obviously.
And so In every generation they rise up against us to destroy us and we all end up some place else. Diaspora from Spain, to Russia, to America. Returning home became a religion until itself. Which is why most Jewish holidays end with Next year in Jerusalem.
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