The New York Times feels my pain

As I recently complained, this time of the year is not a fun time to be a Jew.
Yesterday the New York Times published this article that showed that many fellow Jews feel my pain. Apparently, it is now "hip" to be a cultural Jew, but not religious (which I guess is what I am.) The whole article is good but some highlights follow below. (And by highlights I mean that I relate with what the article describes here.)

Mr. Tannenbaum said he tries to convey his feelings to his Christian friends by asking them to imagine this: "Everywhere you go strangers say to you, 'Merry Ramadan.' Anywhere you go you can't get into a store because people are bowing to Mecca. You'd be an angry minority. You'd be like, 'Enough of this Ramadan all ready.' "

In 1997 the creators of "South Park" mined the potential agony of being a Jewish child during December with the lament, "It's Hard to be a Jew on Christmas." By 2003 T-shirts that read "Jewcy" were selling like potato hot cakes, and Jewish hip-hop went from a simmer to a boil. On Monday VH1 will attempt to understand why Judaism is all the rage with a pop culture special called "So Jewtastic." An excerpt from the show's press material reads, "In an age when Madonna demands to be called 'Esther,' Jon Stewart is a sex symbol and seemingly everyone speaks a little Yiddish, it's never been hipper to be a Jew."

Over the last three years more and more young Jews have been flaunting their heritage, donning T-shirts that proclaim their Semitic roots, listening to the Hasidic reggae singer Matisyahu and climbing onto the celebrity-driven kabbalah bandwagon. And though many occupy the same Lower East Side walk-ups that their grandparents once did, they are not interested in quietly assimilating. They identify more with the cultural trappings of Judaism - the music, the cuisine, the humor - than with the teachings of the Torah.

"We ourselves are less observant Jews, but we are still very culturally Jewish," Mr. Steingart of Jewcy said. The comedian Rebecca Drysdale is of like mind. "My connection with being Jewish is not a religious one," she said. "It's cultural."

Mr. Neuman explained: "There's this emerging sense of new Jewish culture that is self-consciously postdenominational and largely devoid of religious context."

All right, I'm done bitching about being a Jew. Go Hannukah! (I'm not even sure if that is how you spell it. I am truly a bad Jew.)