2006-09-06 - 7:15 p.m.
After the x-rays, it was time for cleaning. Last time I went, my dentist had hired a dental hygienist and she tore into me and my periodic plaque problem like the torturer from the movie, Marathon Man. "I REALLY DON'T KNOW WHETHER OR NOT IT IS SAFE!" (That's a reference for those of you older than 50. Look it up in the Internet Movie Database, if you are interested.) Honestly, when I got home, I was afraid to look at my teeth in the mirror for fear that they would now look like Mount Rushmore. She sent me to the store to buy a Sonicare and honestly, ever since then, I have been flossing after nearly every meal.
It all must have paid off, because after that visit I had been put on "cleanings four times a year instead of twice a year", but I did so well in the intervening that with this second cleaning, I have graduated back to "cleanings every six months" again. Instead of a jack-hammer to the mouth, this cleaning was very leisurely and simple...in fact, we carried on a conversation throughout the entirety of it. Which ordinarily would be next to impossible, you know, with some kind of a dental instrument in the mouth, but she would scrape for a moment, ask me a question, stop scraping, I would answer, then she'd scrape some more, then she'd stop and I'd ask HER a question. All very nice and easy.
During our conversation, I learned that she was Persian. I had been wondering just what she was, but couldn't put my finger on it. This was a nationality or a heritage that I hadn't considered; it's not the normal thing we think of in Southern California, where the vast majority of the people are from somewhere south of the border.
I asked her what her last name was and she told me that it was all but unpronounceable for most people, which, when I heard it, was true. "Fortunately, though, I have a Jewish first name," she said, so at least people had something more common to use when calling her.
"I have a Jewish name, too," I said (Thomas is a Jewish name), but the difference, though, is that she really is Jewish. I didn't ask her just exactly what that meant, but I will assume it meant Jewish in religion as opposed to Jewish in race or cultural heritage since she had already told me that she was Persian. But the point is that religions and cultural heritage are not always a one-on-one correspondence, and neither is language, for that matter. For example, while I think everyone living in Israel is Jewish, a large number of them aren't religious at all, no more than the people of, say, Sweden (in which while, nominatively Lutheran, only about seven percent of the people ever go to church). In this regard, Israel is as much of a modern secular state as is much of the United States, Canada, or the United Kingdom.
In Lebanon, currently battling it out with Israel, most of the people, who are Arabs, are actually CHRISTIAN in religion, although the terrorist/freedom fighter group Hezbollah is Islamic. In Iraq, there are three main cultural groups contending against each other, the Shiites, the Sunnis, and the Kurds. The Shiites and the Sunnis fight each other over differing Islamic doctrine, whereas whatever Islamic doctrine the Kurds accept I don't know, but they are distinct from the Shiites and the Sunnis, who speak Arabic, in that the Kurds speak a Persian language.
Confusing, much?
There definitely are quite a bit of Iranian Jews, I have met several of them (and so my dental hygienist is yet one more), and there is an organization of them in West Hollywood.
So what would an Iranian Jew, living in Southern California, think of both of the two major political parties in Iran calling for blowing Israel off the face of the map? Now, I know that most of these Iranian Jews living in Southern California are Americans, and I am pretty sure my dental hygienist is. So perhaps it doesn't affect her personally and specifically any more than what was going on in Northern Ireland several years ago affected me personally and specifically, even though my heritage includes Anglo-Saxon and Celtic roots.
Still, it does present a situation that could cause a certain level of heartbreak. If nothing else, it points out the insanity of the situation. You can't form a clear-cut line of demarcation between people by defining them as either Moslem or Jew, or any other group, because there are other kinds of people who clearly point out how you can form an internal combination of diverse elements. Obviously it is possible for a Iranian to adopt Judaism, or for a Lebanese Arab to adopt Christianity, or for Persian-speaking Kurds to live in Arabic-speaking Iraq. And surely there must be at least a few marriages between an Israeli and a Palestinian, resulting in mixed-heritage children. How are these people supposed to divide themselves up? The point is, they can't, and they don't need to.
I noticed how "diverse" my very own dentist office is. The guy at the front desk is Hispanic. The dental assistant who did my x-rays is black. The dental hygienist is a Persian Jew. And my dentist is white. And all of them are successfully working together on some level to ensure that I retain my nearly perfect teeth. Those pearly-whites line up in productive harmony inside my mouth. Why can't the people in some regions of the world do the same?
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