To teach table manners to my granddaughter Gloria I had first to learn them myself, so I too am reading Miss Manners 700 pg book. I discovered that my life had been wasted among uncivilized barbarians, that myself am a brutish animal that ignores the ways of civilized human beings. How could I ever eat fish without a proper fish knife? And ice cream - I used to lick it with my naked tongue, a most disgusting custom - when it should be consumed using an ice-cream knife (see pic right). Did I ever open the car's door for a lady? Never in my living memory. I lived my life like a Neanderthal caveman, seizing the turkey leg with my hand and making swine-like noises to show my satisfaction to the hostess.
Qué Bestia! but now, thanks to dear Miss Manners, I shall start a new life of a civilized human being. Soon I will be able to share the table with K in his favorite restaurant in Manhattan. (But I'm not ready to leave a 20% tip. Everything but that!)
26 comments:
People who had too much time to spare.
I had ancestors who did things like this. Seems there is life without.
Generation who when from this to absolute poverty survived anyway and recovered. And somehow managed to have no regret about this particular behavior. About the wealth and properties of course but not about all sorts of idiotic useless table manners and other similar human behaviors.
Interesting as a cultural peculiarity I suppose. But completely useless and even dangerous. Creates a wrong mindset.
Got sometimes regaled by grandmother with comments like : I'd have been punished for behaving like you. For doing things like a "brutish animal that ignores the ways of civilized human beings ". But she herself thought all that was a complete use of time and energy.
Going through some great historic hurricanes makes people understand what is useful and what is not.
All that rubbish makes only funny reading.
"swine-like noises to show my satisfaction to the hostess"
????
I thought that is a Chinese custom. I mean it is a Chinese custom. I saw it myself. But did it propagate to Israel?
That is quite strange.
Pls advice.
Don't listen to J - he is humble-bragging and has exquisite Viennese manners - he knows an ice cream fork from an ice cream knife and how to kiss a lady's hand.
K
Have you visited J, K?
Not yet. Maybe l'shana haba'a. But I know that he knows a hawk from a handsaw.
K
You are overestimating my manners. Basically I am a Hungarian schtetl boy and just discovering civilization. I dont know how the ice cream fork looks like. May be I'll pass the ice cream and ask for an easier dessert, a banana.
J, you've described your personal experience of what the late John Murray Cuddihy called the "ordeal of civility." Cuddihy was a professor at CUNY specializing in the sociology of diaspora Jews and could be viewed as a milder predecessor of KMacD. Here's a link to Cuddihy's mildly anti-Semitic book from the 1970's:
Ordeal of Civility: Freud, Marx, Levi-Strauss and the Jewish Struggle With Modernity
Thanks Anonymous for mentioning that "intellectually intoxicating book". I'm sure all Americans know Miss Manners's 700 pg book by heart and never eat fish without a fish knife and fish fork, and of course never leave the spoon in the soup but lay it on the underlying flat dish. I also heard that Minnesota Hmong and Sudanese immigrants acquire high class WASP manners as soon as they land. BTW, I mentioned the swine-like noises for color, in reality it sounds more wolf-like...
No, of course not, J. Most Americans, including the white ones, are prole philistines when it comes to table manners. My post was made with tongue firmly in cheek as I too am Jewish.
Thanks Anonymous. I was always somewhat of a rebel and disdainful of table manners, even in official receptions (I had more than enough of them, thank you), but one is getting older and recognizes the value of politeness and conventions. It is less stupid and less pompous than made off. My family will never have the natural gracefulness of true WASPs because we are not such, and we shall never pretend to be what we are not, but it is never to early or late to learn.
PD.: Truth is that we Israelis have no table manners, or manners at all. We are insensitive and aggressive, always hurting each other's sentiments. Maybe with time we too shall grow a ruling class with less street-fighting manners.
Israeli bad manners are a residue of its leftist history. Manners were another piece of bourgeois baggage that was supposed to be left behind in the new egalitarian socialist society.
K
Most Jews in the schtettl were so poor that had no proper table services with different glasses for champagne, white wine, red wine, dessert wine and so. Only Eliyahu's cup and the shabbes wine cup was silver. I wonder how they cut the ice cream, if ever. Those were problems they never faced.
Israeli rudeness has nothing to do with poverty or lack of etiquette knowledge. As I said before, it was intentional rudeness to prove your leftist cred.
K
We also live under pressure and have no time nor patience for niceties.
Maybe with time we too shall grow a ruling class with less street-fighting manners.
Yet another role for the J Elite Mathematics and Science Preparatory Academy. I can imagine the legend on the coat of arms: Mathematica, Scientia, Caelibatus et Mensa Moribus (Mathematics, Science, Celibacy and Table Manners).
No, no, if anything. it will be written that
אני יהוה, אשר הוצאתיך מאור כשדים--לתת לך את-הארץ הזאת, לרשתה
I took you our Ur of the
Chaldeans, to give you this land, for your descendants
That's hardly a fitting motto for an elite math and science academy. That mythical promise isn't seen as having been made to the ancestors of the elite students alone.
Seen by whom?
B, is there ANYONE who believe that Israel was promised ONLY to elite math and science students and not the Jewish people in general? J's proposed motto might fit the entire state (a little bit long to fit on a coin) but not such an academy. That was 2:23's point.
Also, I wouldn't mention this too much or you might see "Jews go back to Ur Chaldee" signs any day now.
Your challenge is to come up with an appropriately Jewish motto for J's future academy.
K
I think it is proper for several reasons. First, it is in Hebrew, like Harvard or Yale's motto (if I am not wrong). Second, the Chaldeans in questions were the astrologers aka scientists of the Ancient Middle East, so we were taken out from among the scientific/priestly elite. Third, Rachel stole his Father's most advanced scientific instruments, hiding them under her camel saddle. The land of knowledge was given to us for our descendants. Just like Eretz Israel.
Harvard's motto is Veritas, and Yale's is Lux et Veritas. There is Hebrew on the Yale's shield but not on Harvard's, at least not the modern versions.
The Hebrew on the Yale shield says:
אור ותמ
ים ימ
Urim vtumim (from the priestly breastplate) in somewhat garbled Hebrew.
K
The Hebrew isn't garbled. It was considered bad heraldry to show a word going across the pages of an open book. Harvard ignored that rule, so the "tas" from "Veritas" does exactly that on the third open book of the Harvard shield.
That's not the only garble. They forget to use the final "mem" at the end of the words (I made a mistake and put one in). In the modern spelling a vav is put between the T and the M, but I'll give them that one. And arguably you should use the definite article "ha".
I didn't know that about heraldry. My family lacks a coat of arms. The Harvard logo has the A in TAS in the fold between the pages of an open book, which looks really stupid. Maybe it says something about Harvard that the print on the pages is really big, like a childrens book, with one letter per page.
K
No, Oxford University's shield has slightly smaller lettering for its motto "Dominus illuminatio mea." The words are split across multiple lines, and "illuminatio" is on both pages but is not printed across the spine.
Now I realize that the University of Ariel has no motto. Something is to be done urgently.
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