In Quebec, where I live, I have encountered a bizarre confusion among Francophones about the meaning of Jewishness and Jewish identity. To many, because there is a visible Hassidic community in Montreal, that is the only face of Jewishness. I used to live in Mile-End, a neighbourhood with a large Hassidic community, and when I used the word Hassidic to describe my neighbours, I was often met with a blank stare, followed by "Oh, you mean 'Jewish'", which bothered me to no end. I remember a co-worker actually telling me that Dustin Hoffman refuses to do love scenes, because he's Jewish. Now she was not exactly an intellectual, so I basically ignored her. But I was recently surprised to find that Nathalie Petrowski, a prominent newspaper columnist, in a piece about Woody Allen suing American Apparel over its use of his image in its ads, referred to said image as "Woody dressed as a rabbi" from "Annie Hall". I thought to myself, "I really don't remember that scene, could she be thinking of him as a Hassidim"? Another newspaper columnist, Lysiane Gagnon, describes this Quebecois Jew-confusion in a piece in the Globe and Mail a couple of months ago.

Speaking of idiotic media types, I was shocked to hear CBC radio reporter Catherine Cullen refer to the islands of St-Pierre and Miquelon as 'St-Pierre and Moliquin' yesterday. Not quite as bad as low-rent French-language TV station TQS referring to 'le gouvernement Hindou' not too long ago, but still problematic.