buffaloEx-Pat

buffalo chips                      from the Editor...       
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As noted post-script to "Confessions of an ExPat" a variation of that article is being featured at Buffalo Rising Online, where part one was recently posted. The article contained a link to this website and we have been able to identify at least 600 unique visits as a result. We would assume that most of the traffic came because they enjoyed the article and were looking for more from an ex-pat perspective. We would and can assume such, but we will never know. We do know that nearly fifty of the fifty-two responses (to date) were quite exercised about the article for reasons that are perplexing.

Other than general comments criticizing the writer's style or ability (made by people who don't appear capable of recognizing good writing if Joyce Carol Oates were sitting at their kitchen tables-- hey if they can dish it so can I! Wow! This is fun, being an anonymous ignoramus!) two basic themes emerged. One was a strong backlash to my use of the metaphor of the Jewish Diaspora for the Buffalo Diaspora. ("Being from Buffalo in the rest of the world is like being Jewish in Tehran..") and my comments that one reason I do not move back to Buffalo is the snow, since I'm currently living in Metro Chicago where the snowfall is significantly less. We will address these issues one at a time, and then conclude with some more general comments about the piece at BRO and those who responded to it. 

First the Jewish analogy. I think there is one obvious reason why it bothered people so much that I compared being from Buffalo to being Jewish. Antisemitism. Some accused me of being antisemitic for using the metaphor, but they protest too much. Besides, they also interpreted my comments as being anti-Buffalonian, which of course they were not. The only reason one would consider what I said about Buffalo as negative or critical in that context is that they are offended by the comparison. They wouldn't be offended by the comparison if they were not antisemitic. I have the greatest respect for Judaism. If I hadn't converted to Catholicism, I would have converted to Judaism. I once had a very vivid dream I was a Jewish woman in Paris who died in the Holocost. I'm still not sure that I wasn't. I used to visit Synagogues quite frequently. I used to do lunch with Rabbi Dena Feingold, sister of Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin. I made the mistake of telling her about my dream and she shut me down pronto, because "Judaism doesn't believe in reincarnation." Well, duh, neither does Catholicism, but that doesn't mean it isn't real, and that doesn't mean I can't believe I've had other lives. I don't know if I have or haven't, but if I have, I know one of them was Jewish. All that-- too much information, no doubt-- to say this. I am not antisemitic, don't have an antisemitic hair on my rapidly balding head. And I'm certainly not anti-Buffalo. As one person aptly observed. "How could anyone look at this website and think you were not in love with Buffalo?"  How indeed?

So what was I trying to say? I was saying something that people who have not lived elsewhere for an extended period of time might not be aware of-- that once one leaves Buffalo, one realizes that there is something unique about the experience of growing up here, being from here, and then going elsewhere, that is not the same as if we were from some place like Miami or Denver or Columbus, for instance. It may be similar coming from certain other Rustbelt towns-- Cleveland, for instance. I'm not sure. But the point is that there is a sense in which being Buffalonian has more meaning than where someone lives or lived once, or grew up-- whatever. And I was saying this from a theological and a theologian's perspective (I have a master's in theology) that I'm quite sure many people didn't get. In the theological sense being Jewish is being a people who have experienced/endured a common history, whose identity is in a significant sense tied to a geographical location (the promised land, the holy land, etc.) who were once slaves, delivered together from bondage, wandering in exile, and finally taking possession of the promised land, thinking they had finally arrived, that it was the end of history, only to learn that history repeats itself. And still, repeating.      More