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Mind Your Metaphors

Today on Tablet

by
Marc Tracy
May 11, 2011

If a new BBC miniseries on the strange group known as Irish Travellers tells us anything, contributing editor Rachel Shukert writes today in Tablet Magazine, it is that Jews reflexively identify with most any “insular, strictly endogamous ethnic community shrouded at least partially in secrecy, with their own peculiar rituals, proscriptions, language, ethical standards, and modes of dress,” at the risk of our own fair-mindedness. How frequently, after all, are we in fact on the outside, in the comfortable majority, looking in? And in how much of specifically Jewish history can one see the history of all peoples, and all people?

Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.