The Spiritual Crisis of Zionism

by Doctor Science

Peter Beinart’s The Crisis of Zionism came out in the spring, but I only recently got a chance to read it — supposedly it wasn’t all that popular, but it still took a while to work its way down to me on the public library waiting list.

The Crisis of Zionism may not have gotten much in the way of sales, but it sure generated a lot of heat. Andrew Sullivan did a pretty thorough job of tracking reviews and commentary about the book — most of which was negative, to Sully’s great disappointment.

My take: Beinart is talking about a real, critically important issue for Israel, Zionism, and the worldwide Jewish community:

In Israel, the deepening occupation of the West Bank is putting Israeli democracy at risk. In the United States, the refusal of major Jewish organizations to defend democracy in the Jewish state is alienating many young liberal Jews from Zionism itself.

I think the book’s greatest weakness is that Beinart mostly talks about the issue as a political problem, to be solved by political means. He doesn’t spend enough time thinking about this as a religious or spiritual issue: the non-Orthodox majority of American Jews are finding Zionism-as-she-is-practiced less and less compatible with our beliefs about what we, as Jews, are called to do. American Jews are not becoming more secular, we are becoming more religious — but in a different way than Israeli Jews.

I had intended to write and put up this post at the beginning of the Days of Awe, for seasonally-appropriate discussion, but it grew to be over 4000(!!) words long. By that point there wasn’t time to have an actual discussion before I would have had to close the comments for Yom Kippur. So I’m posting it now, for an early start on *next* year’s Days of Awe.

Be warned that I will be policing the comments with extra firmness — I’m aware that this topic is one of the third rails of the Internet, with Godwin pre-installed. Historical comparisons had better be supported by historical evidence, not just by your feelings.

Shofar-NMM

Carved shofar from 17th-18th century PolandNational Music Museum in Vermillion, SD. The carvings are Kabalistic, and draw numerological connections between the shofar’s sounds and the story of the Binding of Isaac, the Torah reading for Rosh Hashanah.

Four different shofar calls are sounded on Rosh Hashanah; you can hear them in this YouTube video. The Yom Kippur service ends with the long blast, Tekiah Gadolah, prefiguring the Last Trump of Judgment Day. If your shofar-blower is bald or nearly so, you’ll see a wave of red (or even purple!) wash over his whole scalp for the last seconds of the call.

Zionism and “Who Is a Jew?”

The best measure of the over-narrowness of Beinart’s focus is that he never mentions the issue known as Who is a Jew? For anyone who isn’t familiar with it,this ADL article gives a good historical outline. Basically, every decade or so there’s a huge uproar in the international Jewish community: the Orthodox rabbinate in Israel asserts its authority to determine who is Jewish enough to be considered a Jew for Israeli purposes, and rejects (or tries to reject) conversions to Judaism under the auspices of non-Orthodox rabbis. Most American Jews are non-Orthodox, and can recognize that we’re getting the message Israel to Diaspora: Drop Dead.

I’m getting kind of radical, here, but I think that if American Jews have cooled their support for Zionism and their feelings for Israel (which Beinart says, and which I agree is true), the fact that many Israelis clearly consider us second-rate Jews might have something to do with it. When your partner in a relationship keeps disrespecting you, maybe you should rethink the relationship.

At the same time, American Jews notice that we could not practice Judaism as we feel is right in Israel. Most blatantly, at present it looks as though around half of non-Orthodox rabbinical students are women. I assume that at this point the vast majority of non-Orthodox American Jews have attended a service where the rabbi or the cantor or both is female. It is, as they say, the new normal.

Meanwhile, in Israel the Women of the Wall face regular abuse and even arrest for daring to pray as a group, wear tallit, or carry a Torah — all of which are completely unexceptional in non-Orthodox American congregations.

In Israel, Orthodox rabbis are supported by the state; non-Orthodox rabbis have only recently begun to be state-supported, and their support does not come from the Rabbinate. AFAIK, non-Orthodox rabbis have no authority to conduct marriages in Israel.

This is why Jeffrey Goldberg, one of the most prominent and mainstream of US Zionists, can say that

It has been true for decades that Jews in the U.S. have more freedom of religion than Jews in Israel

Think about that a second. Part of the appeal of Zionism is the idea that Jews need a place of refuge, a backup, someplace to go when their religion or very existence is threatened in their native country. But Israel as it is now doesn’t offer a place of refuge for most American Jews: it’s a place where our conscientious religious practice is *more* threatened than at home.

The Gentleman’s Agreement is history

Beinart points out that one of the driving forces behind Zionism is the idea that Jews cannot count on anyone but ourselves, that any acceptance or home we experience in countries other than Israel is grudging and temporary. But, as he says, this is not the experience of American Jews for the last 50 years. As former Haaretz editor David Landau wrote in his special report on Judaism and the Jews for The Economist, American Jews have a sense of complete, seamless belonging in our culture, which doesn’t involve concealing or rejecting signs of our Jewishness. Landau describes how Joe Lieberman, a Modern Orthodox Jew who was Al Gore’s VP choice (and who John McCain would have personally preferred as his), was “dreaming of a large sukkah” for the official vice presidential residence. For the past four years, there’s been a Seder at the White House, attended by the Obamas and their Jewish staff.

This kind of acceptance doesn’t just happen at high political levels, it’s a reliable factor for all kinds of American Jews. To take a random NJ example, Temple Micah is a Jewish congregation in Lawrenceville, NJ, that holds its services and runs a Jewish school at Lawrenceville Presbyterian Church. This is not a temporary arrangement — Temple Micah has been hosted by the Presbyterians since its inception more than 40 years ago. Old Presbyterian churches turn out to be very compatible with Jewish services, because they’re resolutely image-free; Unitarian churches in this part of the country also often host Jewish congregations in their sanctuaries, while smaller Jewish groups use the non-sanctuary spaces of Episcopal churches.

I’m not saying that anti-Semitism is dead in America — look at Goldberg’s post about the misspelled, spittle-flecked emails he gets about Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and his Jewish plotting … even though Geithner isn’t Jewish.

But it’s no longer what it was when I was born in the 1950s: an American Jew can reasonably expect to not encounter anti-Semitism in her choice of college, job, place of residence, or club membership. She’ll probably encounter it if she chooses a political career, but it’s not likely to be a limiting problem.

Liberty-bell-papercut

Liberty Bell, from Jewish Papercuts: A History and Guide by Joseph and Yehudit Shadur. A combination of traditional Jewish and American national motifs reflects the universal expression of freedom in Leviticus 25:10: ‘Ye shall proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.’ The papercut was made by Yehudit Shadur in 1981 for the American Embassy in Israel.

In his negative review in Haaretz, James Kirchick admits that

Beinart is right when he says that the world has changed and that America is blissfully free of the violent anti-Semitism that plagues so many other places.

But he then goes on to call Beinart “provincial” and “complacent, if not recklessly arrogant” for not focusing on anti-Semitism in the Middle East — thereby missing Beinart’s point. The point is that for American Jews, Zionism is like wearing a cast when your leg isn’t broken. To treat our friends and compatriots as closeted anti-Semites, never more than a couple steps from Kristallnacht, is repulsive. That’s not prudence, that’s paranoia.

Historian Rick Perlstein, in contrast, finds Beinart’s description of American Jewish life completely credible:

The notion that violent paranoia must be taught as the moral center of Judaism has persisted to recent times

It follows that the actual world we kids inherited, in which Jews now serving on the Supreme Court outnumber Protestants three to zero and a Jew serves as House majority leader and the Jew who used to be the president’s chief of staff runs our third largest city, and in which Israel is a nuclear-armed regional superpower can really be only a mirage. “Is It 1939?” Malcolm Honlein, the head of the influential Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, asked in a 2010 speech. It just might be, was his answer. Which is why he displays in his office a photoshopped image of Israeli F-15s liberating Auschwitz. Six million Jews are once more getting ready to die.

This was the moral education that I found so dissatisfying in my youth, as it trickled down to medium-sized Midwestern burgs – a disingenuous muddle of a irrationalism, intellectual double standards, and whiny special pleading.

All of which left me, in my youth, feeling utterly uninterested in Judaism, which to me appeared inherently barren: If you found dubious the proposition that Israel as it existed protected Jews around the world – rather than making them more vulnerable through the injustices it perpetrated – there was really nothing spiritual left.

Beinart recognizes that there’s a spiritual problem with Zionism, the kind of “deeply unsatisfying tribalism” that Perlstein says drove him away from Judaism. He writes about Ze’ev Jabotinsky‘s rejection of the Jewish prophetic tradition, and how influential this was for the first generation of Israelis, including current Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s father Benzion. He also looks at the recent growth of the minyanim movement and other paths for committed Jews who stress the social justice commandments.

Beinart’s suggestions: weak political solutions for spiritual problems

But Beinart shies away from facing the spiritual issues driving American Jews away from Israel, which is why his suggested solutions are more political than religious. On the Israeli side, he suggests a BDS movement focused on the West Bank settlements, to put economic pressure on Israel to curb them. This strikes me as incredibly weak sauce for a problem that’s now embedded in Israeli culture and politics; I just can’t imagine that it will work.

On the American side, Beinart wants Jewish support for education vouchers, so Jewish children can go to dedicated Jewish schools, to become more committed Jews who don’t intermarry.

Paul Golin points out how bogus this “solution” is:

It wasn’t higher levels of Jewish education that kept intermarriage rates so low in the first half of the 20th Century, and it’s not lack of Jewish education that drives high intermarriage rates today. There are many other, more important factors. Primary among them: the rest of America simply stopped hating us.

A new intermarriage narrative has emerged in much of the community, even as the old one refuses to die. The new narrative demonstrates how essential the inclusion of intermarried families is in Jewish life, even in day school communities. In the new narrative, Jewish education is not a vaccine against dreaded outcomes, it’s the sharing of wisdom and heritage that impacts positively on individuals, whether they have two, one, or no Jewish parents. Fear of intermarriage as a motivating factor for doing anything needs to be expunged from our communal institutions, to be replaced by the joy of sharing what we love about being Jewish with all who might benefit.

Even Jeffrey Goldberg agrees:

I’m not even going to try to unpack my complicated beliefs about intermarriage and assimilation and life in the Diaspora here; that’s for a book. But let me just say that intermarriage can also be understood as an opportunity.

Beinart is also overlooking the fact that among the non-Orthodox even rabbinical students, whose commitment to Judaism is not in question, are less committed to Israel than are their elders, even though they’ve spent more time there. Their spiritual commitment to Judaism is what makes them less Zionist.

I suspect Beinart is shying away from confronting the spiritual issue because he doesn’t feel as secure talking about spirituality as he does talking about politics. Last May, Beinart had an interview-conversation with Tikkun editor Rabbi Michael Lerner:

Lerner: The spiritual well-being of the Jewish people requires the ability to identify with the suffering of others, and the mistaken notion that “Never Again” means never again only for the Jews not to ever have to suffer hatred, racism and genocide, has led a spiritual crisis or at least a crisis contraction in what Jews used to be. There is something in the Jewish tradition that would lead us to say, as it does in the Torah, ve’ahavta la’ger, “You shall love the Other (the stranger).” The catering to the “we are all family and should give priority to the needs of our family” which is, as you have pointed out, the underlying assumption which leads J Street to adopt the discourse it does, has the possible consequence of leading the Jewish people away from its own spiritual core just in the way that the settlers and their approach to Judaism does. So this approach on the part of J Street, while it may be effective in Congress, may actually be detrimental to our people.

Beinart: I find a lot to which I resonate when you speak …. On the other hand, I have to say that when I look at the Orthodox community where there is the highest level of Jewish education and commitment as measured by synagogue attendance and ritual observance, yet they do not identify with the values that you emphasize. I don’t feel comfortable suggesting that they are in any way in a spiritual crisis. I do disagree with the political and moral currents that are in the ascendancy in the Orthodox community, but can I say that they are in spiritual crisis? When I sit around the Shabbat table with Orthodox Jews, I don’t sense I’m with people who are in spiritual crisis, I see people who are living a really spiritually rich life and a very attractive life in a lot of ways to me—I just don’t see them as ethically and politically where I wish them to be, but I don’t know that I could say that they are in spiritual crisis.

Lerner: We at Tikkun don’t accept the division or ability to separate a spiritual life from an ethically coherent life.

In other words, *smackdown*.

Rabbi Lerner is saying that, no matter how scrupulous they are about the other mitzvot, if the Orthodox are ignoring the commandment — repeated more often than any other — to respect and care for the stranger, the widow, the orphan, those on the down side of society, for you were strangers and slaves in the land of Egypt, then they’re missing the mark, as we say. As Hillel stated, the Golden Rule is the take-home message of Torah, everything else is commentary.

A major theme of Beinart’s book is that many Jewish practices and habits of mind developed to deal with being a powerless, persecuted people. Now, though, both American and Israeli Jews are powerful: rich and protected in America, a regional nuclear superpower in Israel. As Rick Perlstein’s Jewish experience shows, acting as though you’re powerless and persecuted when you’re actually powerful just makes you sound whiny.

What we need here is a Prophet

Fortunately, the Jewish tradition is so complex and enduring that it includes plenty of guidance for when we’re in a position of power, if we’re prepared to listen to it. What our tradition says is that powerful people (individuals or groups) will *always* try to abuse their power, you can count on it. Jewish rulers are not exempt, not at all. As Beinart points out, we celebrate Hanukah as a triumph over outside oppression, but maybe we should be joining it to learning about the Hasmoneans and their failure to live up to our glorious, hopeful expectations.

What the Jewish tradition says we need when we’re powerful is a prophet. A prophet isn’t a magician or fortune-teller, whose main job is to “tell the future”. A prophet’s job is to comfort the afflicted, as has been too often the case over the last two millennia. But once we’re comfortable, the prophet’s job is to afflict *us*.

Zechariah in sistine chapel

This is a prophet: Zechariah, as painted on the Sistine Chapel ceiling by Michelangelo.

Here is Zechariah 7:8-12 (Bible Gateway; Chabad), in a chapter that the New International Version titles Justice and Mercy, Not Fasting.

8 And the word of the Lord came again to Zechariah: 9 “This is what the Lord Almighty said: ‘Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another. 10 Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor. Do not plot evil against each other.’

11 “But they refused to pay attention; stubbornly they turned their backs and covered their ears. 12 They made their hearts as hard as flint and would not listen to the law or to the words that the Lord Almighty had sent by his Spirit through the earlier prophets. So the Lord Almighty was very angry.

13 “‘When I called, they did not listen; so when they called, I would not listen,’ says the Lord Almighty. 14 ‘I scattered them with a whirlwind among all the nations, where they were strangers. The land they left behind them was so desolate that no one traveled through it. This is how they made the pleasant land desolate.’”

[Via slacktivist’s Sunday Favorites tag.]

Abraham Joshua Heschel, author of The Prophets and many other works of Jewish spirituality, explained his American political activism:

The more deeply immersed I became in the thinking of the prophets, the more powerfully it became clear to me what the lives of the prophets sought to convey: that morally speaking there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings. It also became clear to me that in regard to cruelties committed in the name of a free society, some are guilty, while all are responsible.

This is what Israel, and Judaism in general, needs: a prophet. Zionism has a spiritual problem, it needs a spiritual solution more than the economic/political ones Beinart prescribes.

And specifically, what we have here is a falling-away from the commandments, a missing the mitzvot mark. So what we need is a prophet from within the Orthodox community, whether Israeli or American: someone who studies and practices all the ritual mitzvot, and who can authoritatively talk about the ve’ahavta la’ger mitzvah, too.

In the Tikkun interview, Beinart said of Orthodox Jews that “I don’t feel comfortable suggesting that they are in any way in a spiritual crisis.” Respectfully, I think he needs to be uncomfortable. He isn’t qualified to be a prophetic speaker for the Orthodox, but he might use his engagement with that community to move them toward justice. As Lerner said, the lack of an ethically coherent life *is* a spiritual failure, a falling away, missing the mark — something that the Orthodox maybe need to be reminded of.

InjusticeMartinLutherKing500

This also is a prophet.

As for non-Orthodox American Jews, unless Israelis change their direction most of us will continue to be like Paul Krugman, who admitted:

The truth is that like many liberal American Jews — and most American Jews are still liberal — I basically avoid thinking about where Israel is going. It seems obvious from here that the narrow-minded policies of the current government are basically a gradual, long-run form of national suicide — and that’s bad for Jews everywhere, not to mention the world. But I have other battles to fight, and to say anything to that effect is to bring yourself under intense attack from organized groups that try to make any criticism of Israeli policies tantamount to anti-Semitism.

Not all Jews who wander are lost

I admit I’m not a “native informant” for American Jews. As I’ve said before, I was brought up as a Christian (Catholic/Lutheran). I’ve only been attending Jewish services for about 20 years, and those mostly in Reconstructionist, Jewish Renewal, or Reform congregations; my husband grew up in The Atlanta Temple congregation, a deeply Reform group.

Whenever I’m in an internet discussion about American Jewish/Israel relations, sooner or later an Israeli will pop up to tell me that it doesn’t matter what non-Orthodox American Jews believe, our religion is dying out due to secularism, intermarriage, and LGBT acceptance. In my admittedly limited experience, non-Orthodox Jewish America is going through an exuberant renaissance of spirituality, observance, and liturgical practice.

One example: when she was at Wesleyan, Sprog the Elder participated in a program for adult B’nai Mitzvot, in which students who for one reason or another hadn’t had a Bar/Bat Mitzvah at age 13 were able to study Hebrew and be called to the Torah. She was one of *ten* B’nai Mitzvot called up that year, every one of them with a level of thoughtful spiritual commitment that 13-year-olds cannot match. It was also a transformative experience for the Wesleyan Jewish community, who all had to pitch in to tutor so many students and to organize their heartfelt celebration. I would urge every college Hillel to look into a B’nai Mitzvah program: it’s a great way to get young people committed or re-committed to Judaism, at a time in their lives when they’re most likely to be thinking about spiritual issues, and also when they’re in a setting where studying is the norm.

Another example: I’ve linked before to Rachel Barenblatt, the Velveteen Rabbi. Reb Rachel was trained for the rabbinate through ALEPH’s Rabbinic Program, which has a large distance-learning component. It took many years for her to be able to “play with the real rabbis”, but even before that she wrote a Hagaddah (we’ve been mining it for years, taking elements for our own family Hagaddah), and a collection of miscarriage poems that would be valuable for pastoral counselors of any religion

On the third hand: a USA Today article from last year’s High Holidays, about Judaism without God:

“Atheism and Judaism are not contradictory, so to have an atheist in a Jewish congregation isn’t an issue or a challenge or a problem,” Shrogin[, an observant Jewish atheist,] said. “It is par for the course. That is what Judaism is. It is our tradition to question God from top to bottom.”

Atheism is entrenched in American Judaism. In researching their book American Grace, authors Robert Putnam and David Campbell found that half of all American Jews doubt God’s existence. In other groups, that number is between 10 and 15 percent.

American Judaism can be a spiritual home for atheists because not even Orthodoxy is truly a -doxy, a system about what to *believe* — it is Orthopraxy, a system about what to *do*. In Israel itself, it seems that no more than half of the Jews are “believers”, while the rest are outside the religious fold, as “secularists”. In America, Jacob’s tent can hold *all* kinds.

Beinart’s reaction:

Blessed by conditions more favorable than any Diaspora generation has ever know, committed, progressive young American Jews are creating a religious life perfectly tailored to their values and tastes. Focusing on the nasty, messy, frightening debate over Israel’s future only disrupts the dream.

It is a lovely dream, and an abdication. … Jewish liturgy itself, if taken seriously, requires wrestling with what Jews make of their return to the land of Israel.

In my limited experience, these committed Jews are having a wrestling match with the idea of Jerusalem, and their general conclusion is: our ideal spiritual home is Zion, an idea or heaven or otherworldly concept. Eretz Israel, the physical land of Israel, is a sign of Zion, it is not Zion itself — just as the words we use for G-d — “Adonai” or “HaShem” or “Yah” or whatever — are placeholders for the True, ineffable Name, which we do not speak and which may even be unspeakable. Similarly, anything we reverence too much, as though it is G-d, can become an idol, a fetish — even the Temple, or the Torah, or the Talmud, or Eretz Israel. They give us the illusion of certainty and security, when there’s only One Who truly counts, and Who is the security of the Jewish people and faith.

For me, I think of the Jewish people as though we’re still in the desert, traveling together in an uncertain world. Wandering perhaps, but not lost, following a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.

Pillar-of-Cloud-Pillar-of-Fire_atJack_Kirby

Pillar of Cloud, Pillar of Fire by Isaac Brynjegard-Bialik. Taken from his exhibition, Paper Midrash, these paper-cut art pieces are based on bible stories and intersect comic mythology with the mythos of Judaism by use of cut-up comic books as background textures.

In this piece, Brynjegard-Bialik cut up images of The Watchers, a 1960s Marvel Comics extraterrestrial race that teams up with the Fantastic Four. Watchers were meant to just observe mankind, but most often became involved.

“For many people there is such ambiguity about God.” Brynjegard-Bialik said. In ancient Israel, “God was constantly involved in the people’s lives, performing miracles, talking to prophets. This piece asks, how do we see God’s presence in our lives now? Is God involved? Is God a Watcher. Is God a pillar of fire?”

214 thoughts on “The Spiritual Crisis of Zionism”

  1. This is interesting to read as an American frum-from-birth frummie. I don’t have any comments or such, because it is such a different way of looking at things from where you’re coming from. But thank you for your perspective. I have very little experience outside of Orthodox, which isn’t so much a monolithic group as many, many, many groups, who do as many “no, you’re not a [good enough] Jew” to other frummies as they do to non-frummies. So it’s not just you. 😉 As the joke goes, every Jew other than me is a fanatic or a heretic. 😉

  2. Thanks for your comment, L! Any insight you can offer into how the situation looks from the US frum perspective would be great.
    The non-Orthodox congregations I’ve seen have been very lackadaisical about every Jew other than me is a fanatic or a heretic. People make individual choices about how observant they want to be, and about what, so that (for instance) the clothing at shul today was extremely variable: no one in this particular congregation was wearing a kittel (though I’ve seen it done in Jewish Renewal groups), but whether men (or women!) wore tallit and even a head-covering depended entirely on their personal preference.
    In your experience, is Beinart correct when he says that the “social justice” mitzvot (e.g. Exodus 22:21 “You shall not mistreat a stranger, nor shall you oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”) are not emphasized in Orthodox communities? This was very surprising to me, because they are emphasized and discussed at *great* length in all the non-Orthodox services I’ve attended.

  3. Thank you so much for writing so clearly and giving us so many places to go next. I understand much better now the feelings I’ve been having about Israel, specifically my own selfish interest in Israel as a refuge at need for my family.
    I will want to support and protect my extended family in Israel whether or not Israel is my personal haven and whether or not I agree with its political direction. But I’ve gone from Conservative Judaism toward Reconstructionist and Egalitarian Judaism, and I don’t feel as though any of those branches of Judaism are welcome in the Land.

  4. Very interesting perspective. I come to this from yet another one: I was raised Reform/Conservative and became Orthodox as an adult.
    Social justice? I cannot say that I’ve heard that term, but certainly the concept of not oppressing strangers is discussed, and being charitable, along with many of the other commandments. I think we understand the concept a bit differently, though – and I don’t know that I want to go far down that path, as it could divert the discussion.
    Yes, I definitely see my non-Frum relatives much less interested in Israel than is my immediate family. It’s hard for me to say, though, that is largely about the “who-is-a-Jew” question, as much as it is that Judaism is peripheral to their lives.
    But there are a couple of issues on which I would disagree with you, DS. First, is your explanation of the prophets. Looking over what was collected of their writings, it is pretty clear that the base message is: keep the Torah, you’re not keeping the Torah, bad things will happen if you don’t – but G-d will wait patiently for you to return. That’s the basic comforting message of Zechariah – that we always have a chance to turn around and get it right. So it’s not – comfort us until we’re comfortable and then “afflict us” – it’s largely about keeping the Torah, and keeping it properly. And yes, properly includes helping others and not just thinking that rituals suffice.
    Also, it is far from clear to me that non-Orthodox Judaism is doing well. There may well be “an exuberant renaissance of spirituality, observance, and liturgical practice” among those who are still committed, but the numbers appear to be diminishing. Maybe it’s different in your synagogue, but I see a lot of small families and intermarried families in which the children don’t strongly self-identify as Jews. If you don’t have enough children committed to your values, how much impact can you have on future generations?

  5. As a member of a large Reform congregation in the Maryland DC suburbs, I sometimes get the sense that the Reform movement is strongly Zionist for vicarious reasons, as if to make up for the feeling that Reform Judaism is insufficiently Jewish.

  6. A prophet’s job is to comfort the afflicted?
    That is contrary to much of my understanding, which is that a prophet’s function is to deliver words of righteousness to the people. These people may be afflicted, but if they are afflicted with evil, those words will bring shame and possibly anger rather than comfort.
    Which in some long-term sense might be comforting the afflicted, but I don’t get that sense frim your words.

  7. I was all set to do historical analogies, backed up ones even, with no Godwin triggers, but this piece is more about the relationship between Zionism and Judaism and not directly about the I/P conflict, so I won’t. Instead, here are links to parts 1 and 2 of Jerry Haber’s essay on Zionism, Orthodoxy, Palestinian rights, etc.–
    Part 1
    I’m not sure what happens if I go away for the second link, so I’ll post this now.

  8. Fuzzy Face:
    it’s largely about keeping the Torah, and keeping it properly. And yes, properly includes helping others and not just thinking that rituals suffice.
    Since it’s fresh in our minds, let’s take the Yom Kippur haftarah, as an example: Isaiah 57:14–58:14. Isaiah doesn’t mention keeping the Torah (much less halacha) as a *whole*, he explicitly elevates what I’ve called the “social justice mitzvot” above even fasting:

    Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
    to loose the chains of injustice
    and untie the cords of the yoke,
    to set the oppressed free
    and break every yoke?
    Is it not to share your food with the hungry
    and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
    when you see the naked, to clothe him,
    and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?

    For the prophets, social justice isn’t just *part* of Torah, all of which should be properly kept. Social justice is the *main part*, the crucial element that the rest supports.
    All the congregations I’ve visited for High Holidays have had food drives on Yom Kippur. The food isn’t collected just for poor families in the congregation or even just for poor Jewish families, either: it goes to the county food bank (or equivalent large organization). The rabbis explicitly connect this custom to the haftarah, “to share your food with the hungry”.
    Do Orthodox congregations do Yom Kippur food drives? I haven’t been able to find any via Google, but that’s not particularly good evidence.
    From time to time the prophets certainly declaim against idol-worship, sexual immorality, and violating the Sabbath. But the offenses they keep coming back to, again and again, are against social justice:

    Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine
    and champions at mixing drinks,
    who acquit the guilty for a bribe,
    but deny justice to the innocent.

    [Isaiah 5:22-23]
    What do you see as the “take-away” from yesterday’s haftarah, if not that “social justice is more important even than observing the Holy Days”?

  9. Donald Johnson,
    Thanks for the links to Haber. Very interesting essay.
    Unfortunately, (or perhaps predictably) the orthodox too often seem to be an obstacle to just treatment of the Palestinians. Nice to read Haber and see a different view.

  10. I cannot say that I’ve seen any Orthodox congregations with food drives on Yom Kippur. But then, I don’t recall any non-Orthodox congregations collecting Matanas L’Evyonim for Purim or Maos Chittim for Pesach. Those are times when the tradition has been to help the poor – and those traditions go back thousands of years.
    Since the main theme of the day is repentance, that is the main theme of the morning haftarah. It speaks of the proper way to repent. We are commanded to fast, but that does not mean that fasting excuses bad behavior. What’s the point of confessing that you’re sinning if you’re just going to go right back and do it again? So yes, Isaiah in this passage insists that we must feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and so on. That doesn’t say that those things are “more important” than the Holy Days.
    The afternoon haftarah, from the book of Jonah, is also about repentance. If you’re going to learn that feeding the hungry is the key, based on the morning haftarah, then logically you should see it just as critical that we put on sackcloth and ashes, based on the afternoon haftarah. But nobody argues that, for a very good reason: both were chosen from already written passages when the sages defined the prayer service after the return from Babylon. Neither was written to be the essence of Yom Kippur.
    On the other hand, the prayer service itself was created explicitly for Yom Kippur, so surely it’s a better source of understanding the point of the day. I have an old Reform prayerbook that my mother used when I was very young; I don’t know how close it is to the service you are used to, and one thing I note is how much of the traditional service is missing. But right there at the beginning of the confession section is the key: “we have turned aside from Your commandments and your beneficent ordinances and it has not availed us” (or in Hebrew, the passage beginning סרנו ממצותיך וממשפטיך). The full confession lists many kinds of offenses for which we are asking pardon; only a few of them could really be interpreted as being about “social justice.” That’s just a part of our obligations.

  11. A prophet’s job is to comfort the afflicted?
    That is contrary to much of my understanding, which is that a prophet’s function is to deliver words of righteousness to the people. These people may be afflicted, but if they are afflicted with evil, those words will bring shame and possibly anger rather than comfort.
    Which in some long-term sense might be comforting the afflicted, but I don’t get that sense frim your words.

    Posted by: Slartibartfast | September 27, 2012 at 01:21 PM
    I had the same understanding.
    A prophet is almost/practically God’s mouthpiece. And the label is not to be taken lightly.
    Is this just a Christian interpretation?

  12. Many of the tensions you point out seem to be the inevitable product of religion becoming bound and un-bound to ethnic identity and then once national identity is woven into the mix, “let the games begin!”
    With so many identities, “authenticity” ends up meaning so many things. I don’t know if you watched the documentary “Defamation”, but this blurring of religious, ethnic and national identities gets played out in the film. A Russian Orthodox Jew found American secular Jews to be busy bodies accused of “shallow guilt” for not being religious, thus finding anti-Semitism everywhere. An older Zionist grandmother seemed to engage in some of the stereotypies anti-Semites’ use, when criticizing Jews who refuse to relocate to Israel. An Israeli Jew (the director) seemed to think that Holocaust tours did more harm than good. The list goes on…I don’t know what to make of it, since I am not Jewish. But coming from the position of a person of color who shares the religion of the European colonizer, I/we became very adept at parsing out what was Christian (ie White), or Christian (Protestant) or Christian (American identity) from Christian (Republican) or even Christian (European), you know what I mean?

  13. “Many of the tensions you point out seem to be the inevitable product of religion becoming bound and un-bound to ethnic identity and then once national identity is woven into the mix, “let the games begin!””
    Almost precisely, but more like, “let the self destructive neurosis begin”.
    As a second generation American of Armenian decent I know a little bit of these things…..the religion, the clannishness, the obsession with the horrors of the past. I grew up with genocide survivors living in my house as extended family.
    It’s all BS.
    Each individual, regardless of ethno/religio heritage – Jew, Armenian, American Indian, Black – has to either let all of that go and embrace their individuality and freedom or return to the “old country” (or res.) and live out some bygone (losing) myth at their own risk. Or get stuck in between and hate life in a peculiar grey way.
    Those who know that Jerusalem (Yerevan, Center of the Earth, etc) are spiritual places in the heart are happy. Those that make the mistake of turning the symbol into concrete are doomed to suffer.

  14. Each individual, regardless of ethno/religio heritage – Jew, Armenian, American Indian, Black – has to either let all of that go and embrace their individuality and freedom or return to the “old country” (or res.) and live out some bygone (losing) myth at their own risk. Or get stuck in between and hate life in a peculiar grey way.
    I don’t agree with all that….historical memory is no joke, and should be placed within some sort of context. I believe “individuality”, at least how it is structured in our consumer society, is a bit over rated. But how we subjectively engage in our collective identities, is how we construct our individuality.

  15. “…historical memory is no joke…”
    It’s a serious as you make it out to be. That choice is yours.
    “I believe “individuality”, at least how it is structured in our consumer society…”
    Screw consumer society. That’s the biggest sham on the planet. I’m talking about who YOU really are. The torah, The book of mormon, the new testament….that’s all consumer society.
    Hey dude, it’s not that big a planet and she’s getting smaller every day. You really think we’ll all make it with all these little clans running around all over her, each “remembering” that they are the “chosen people” and identifying with that and each “remembering” all those other things that make us different – even historically in conflict with – with everyone else? Remembering all those justifications for building walls, for war, for closing our minds to influences around us becuase they don’t fit our “history” as a this or that? For remembering to punish ourselves for not paying obligation to systems that were developed thousands of years ago in different lands?
    This is a good stuff?
    “But how we subjectively engage in our collective identities, is how we construct our individuality.”
    No. Not a healthy person. Love is love. If the love is pure a Jew experiences it the same as an Armenian or a Pacific Islander.
    That special sense of you that you feel deep down inside once in a while (a least, I hope), that is where the identity needs to be.
    If you were a Jew and played an instrument, would you only play Jewish music? Or would branch out and embrace the full spectrum of styles on this planet?

  16. ” I’m talking about who YOU really are.”
    Son, you are not born into a vacuum. The woman who pushed you out of her, came from somewhere and got to that place somehow. It wasn’t Martin Luther’s mother, Bruce Lee’s mother, Gandhi’s mother, George Bush’s mother, nor my mother.
    It was YOUR mother, and she didn’t pop out of thin air. And that barely begins to build the foundation for who YOU really are. YOU didn’t create the culture and society YOU were born into, it created YOU.

  17. Blackhawk, you are making an awful lot of assumptions that you don’t recognize. Values come from culture – they don’t magically appear from the aether. Most of the values of Western society originate in either Judaism or ancient Greek philosophy, melded and transmitted primarily by Christianity. That secular Westerners largely embrace those same values is due to their immersion in a culture founded on them.
    But take away the sources, which you deride as “little clans” and it becomes increasingly difficult to transmit those values to the next generation.
    There are plenty of different sets of values – it’s just that Western ones have been the source of the greatest elevation of the poor from poverty and minorities and women from degradation. No other culture comes close. And that’s what you want to undo…?

  18. I’m surprised that several people don’t see the prophets as (occasionally) comforting. Some of their comfort is of the “God will slaughter your enemies!” sort, e.g. Isaiah 13. Sometimes it’s a prediction of a hopeful future, like Isaiah 49 or Jeremiah 30.
    Even when Jeremiah or Hosea is really on a tear, he always offers the comfort that none of Israel’s suffering is meaningless: it’s all part of a plan, and there’s always the prospect that in time, with true repentance, she’ll return to G-d’s favor.

  19. Oh to be sure, the prophets do also comfort. In fact, the seven haftaros between Tesha B’Av and Rosh Hashana are known as the “haftaros of consolation” starting with Isaiah 40 – “Comfort, comfort my people.”

  20. “It was YOUR mother, and she didn’t pop out of thin air…”
    My mother thinks for me? I can’t go out in the world and explore and come to my own conclusions? If I had my mother’s voice echoing around in my head, I think I’d feel like a child; certainly less than a self-actualized man. As it turns out she died when I was young. All I remember, when I think about her at all, is her love. No thou shalts/shall nots. Well this is a thread about Jewish culture. I understand from stereotypes that there is a lot of mommy hang-up angst amongst Jews. There’s something cultural worth passing along to the next generation.
    “Blackhawk, you are making an awful lot of assumptions that you don’t recognize.”
    Please don’t tell me what I recognize or don’t. You don’t know me and have no idea where I’ve been or what I’v thought about.
    Fuzzy Face and someotherdude, if you want to chain yourself to that kind of thinking then you are perpetuating the cycle and you have chosen to live your life in chains that someone (your mother? – god, how sad) put you in. And then you can whine about it and spend your life introspectively shrinking your own head.
    “Values come from culture – they don’t magically appear from the aether.”
    Huh…I thought yaweh gave them to Moses up on the mountain top, which is it? God or Moses’ culture?
    Seriously though, I think you guys can’t see the forest for the trees.
    “But take away the sources, which you deride as “little clans” and it becomes increasingly difficult to transmit those values to the next generation.”
    What values? We are the chosen ones and all the rest are cattle? You do recognize that that is the kind of “values” that have caused massive bloodshed and hardship throughout history and that will probably get all of those future generations you worry about slaughtered in some apocalyptic war.
    Your arguments, especially this, ” Most of the values of Western society originate in either Judaism….. There are plenty of different sets of values – it’s just that Western ones have been the source of the greatest elevation ….” sounds suspiciously like an excuse for manifest destiny and other master race BS. Got to keep the culture pure. Got to keep the walls up. Got to keep the guns loaded. Can’t mingle with those lower races and their decadence. Right?
    If this was a thread about any other religion, say fundementalist christians, your sort of commenting would bring a hail of jokes and insults.

  21. You know, blackhawk, someotherdude is from a protestant (evangelical) background, so trying to ding him with the Moses reference is kinda stupid. And in fact, because FuzzyFace and sod are from very different traditions, your lumping them together suggests that you are misunderstanding.

  22. Blackhawk: “What values? We are the chosen ones and all the rest are cattle? ”
    Well, this would indeed be evidence of what you don’t recognize; further, it would demonstrate that you know very little about Judaism and Christianity, and that, given you are willing to attribute such an attitude toward them, that you’re something of a closed-minded bigot. I don’t need to know you other than through your words to conclude that.
    What I mean by “values” are things like:
    – you’re not allowed to kill other people except under very specific circumstances, such as self-defense (including wars of self-defense). That’s largely unique to the West. In most other cultures, you’re allowed to kill to avenge insults, real or perceived.
    – separation of religion and state – in many cultures, there is a very tight overlap.
    – self-criticism – Western culture tolerates and even invites questioning of its actions and ideas to an extent very rare in other cultures
    – guilt – in a guilt-based system such as ours, if you do something wrong, you are in the wrong, even if nobody else knows. In an honor-shame culture, what really matters is whether others believe that you have done something wrong.
    – an insistence on the same types of justice for all, as opposed to one set for insiders and another for outsiders
    That hardly means that Westerners are perfect. Having a value system doesn’t mean that everyone follows it all the time. But in most other cultures – unless they’ve learned these from the West – these are not even things that they necessarily value
    It’s not just natural resources that led Western civilization to be dominant and freer that most others. It is the value system.

  23. I’m surprised that several people don’t see the prophets as (occasionally) comforting.

    That wasn’t my point of disagreement. My point of disagreement was that you characterized, or appeared to characterize, comforting the afflicted as the job of a prophet. In other words: one of a prophet’s primary functions. I think this point of view is not supported by any reasonable reading of the Law and the Prophets.
    This is not to say that prophets are forbidden to comfort the afflicted, or that prophets comforting the afflicted is some ridiculous notion that never, ever happened. It’s to say that comforting the afflicted is no more the job of prophets than propulsion engineering is the job of a neurosurgeon. It’s not forbidden, but neither is it their prime directive.
    In addition, I object to your characterization of social justice as a prime admonition of the Torah. I might have misunderstood you, but although helping the poor and afflicted is mentioned (more frequently by Jesus, I would say, but that’s a matter of impression that I am not going to evidence right now) in the Old Testament (which has some substantial but incomplete overlap, in my understanding with Jewish sacred writings), it’s not the sole thrust of those writings. Certainly God was not concerned enough with the afflicted in Sodom and Gomorrah to throw them a line, if they failed to repent.
    IMO, of course. Much of the Old Testament is a listing of instructions to obey God, as well as what happens to those who don’t, and what rewards might be available to those who are particularly close to God. Love each other is certainly in the mix, but not to the exclusion of everything else.
    Oversimplification, probably. But I think a more accurate one than yours.
    Now, to the matter of American vs. Israeli Jews. In Israel there are ethnic Jews and observant Jews. There is a substantial difference between American non-Orthodox Jews and Israeli religious Jews, and glossing over that as if it were nothing, which is what it appears you are doing (in effect, just shrugging off differences in opinion between the two), is I think a mistake. In Israel, as far as I have been able to observe, there is no grey area; either you are a strictly observant Jew, or you are nonreligious. Oddly, although strictly observant Jews are in the minority, kosher rules and mezusahs are practically omnipresent as far as I was able to observe.
    I don’t know anything at all about Reformed Jews, but I would imagine that they have split the difference between Orthodox Judaism and Christianity by giving themselves a break from strict adherence to the Law (as the covenant made possible by Jesus permitted Christians) without acknowledging Jesus as the Messiah. I might be wrong in this supposition. It’s not made with any intent to harm or dismiss any Reformed Jews, just making an assessment from my half-assed understanding.
    It would be interesting to see how much orthodox American Jews tend to support Israeli policies, I think.
    Back to prophets, though: if anyone thinks that the primary job of a prophet is NOT so act as a conduit between God and the rest of humanity, I’d like to hear why they think that.

  24. “In Israel, as far as I have been able to observe, there is no grey area; either you are a strictly observant Jew, or you are nonreligious.”
    Actually, not the case. There are a fairly wide range of levels of observance. The main difference is that very few Israelis identify with the American Reform (not Reformed!), Reconstructionist or Conservative movements. For those non-observant Israelis, the synagogue that they don’t go to is almost always Orthodox (of course whether it is Haredi or Dati Leumi, etc…)
    Reform Judaism does not believe that the Torah was written by G-d. The movement accepts the critical theory of Biblical authorship: that the Bible was written by separate sources and redacted together. Reform Jews do not believe in observance of commandments as such, but they retain much of the values and ethics of Judaism, along with some of the practices and the culture. The original, basic tenets of American Reform Judaism were set down in the Pittsburgh Platform. Many non-observant, nominal, and/or agnostic Jews will identify themselves as Reform when pressed to specify simply because Reform is the most liberal movement, but that is not really a fair reflection on the movement as a whole. There are plenty of Reform Jews who are religious in a Reform way. The NJPS found that 35% of American Jews identify themselves as Reform, including 39% of those who belong to a synagogue. There are approximately 900 Reform synagogues in the United States and Canada. – from the Judaism 101 website.
    “It would be interesting to see how much orthodox American Jews tend to support Israeli policies, I think.” There is a difference between supporting Israel and supporting Israeli policies. Among Orthodox Jews, support for Israel is very high. Many Orthodox high school graduates spend a year or two in Israel studying before attending college. I have a son there now, and his older brother did the same before him. As for support for policies, that changes with the policies, as you might expect.

  25. Most of the values of Western society originate in either Judaism or ancient Greek philosophy, melded and transmitted primarily by Christianity.
    Fuzzy, I’m not so sure. One of the critical values of Western society is that you should have some say over how you run your life. And that arises from the democracy of the whole village that characterized the Saxon villagers in England a millenium ago. (See also Kipling’s Norman and Saxon)
    It is, I sometimes suspect, why it can be very hard to establish a resilient democracy is some other cultures. If your culture has always valued someone else being in charge, and the masses simply following, it is easy to slip back into that mode when a glorious leader arises. (Heaven knows, even in the West we repeatedly see glimmers of that.)

  26. I think you misunderstand. It’s not that “nonreligious” Jews never do any of those things, it’s that the Jews that are considered “religious” always do those things.
    In my understanding. Which is based on a relatively small number of conversations, and so may be very, very wrong. Based on your link, the number of Jews who always observe religious dictates (not that that is possible, even, but Sabbath is kind of a threshold thing, in my thinking) is around 40%. I was thinking more like 30%, but 40% is still a minority.
    But it may very well be that there’s a continuum more than a step. The nonreligious people I talked to viewed it as an either-or thing, even though some of them observed various Jewish holidays. Just as we in America observe Thanksgiving, I’d imagine.

  27. I expect Hartmut to weigh in here, but that having a say in your life is one of the key points that Greeks liked to distinguish themselves from the East with.
    This is not to say those Saxon (and those Norse values, come to think of it) haven’t been a strain in our society, and the history we have is basically the ones the Greeks wrote, so the fact that they saw themselves as standing up to Persian values (and when Alexander had the chance to replicate those values, he did it with alacrity, so it is not unexpected to invoke those values as values of Western Civ, but still, they do hold the patent by virtue of prior art…

  28. …that you’re something of a closed-minded bigot. I don’t need to know you other than through your words to conclude that.
    To wit:
    I understand from stereotypes that there is a lot of mommy hang-up angst amongst Jews. There’s something cultural worth passing along to the next generation.
    …from the pure maverick who figured it all out himself, free from the chains of history and culture.

  29. Fuzzy, I’m not so sure. One of the critical values of Western society is that you should have some say over how you run your life. And that arises from the democracy of the whole village that characterized the Saxon villagers in England a millenium ago.
    As lj points out, Greeks actually seem to have invented democracy – and Jewish tradition has always seen a division of powers: kingship, priesthood, and law interpretation are three separate authorities.
    the pure maverick who figured it all out himself, free from the chains of history and culture.
    Wow. You invented English and mathematics and ethics all by yourself? You never spoke with another human being all your life and yet you managed to conclude basically the same things that Western culture has taught for millennia? OK, call me impressed.

  30. The Greeks had democracy. For the elite. Whereas the Saxons (Norse, etc.) had it at the level of the common man.
    There is, to my mind anyway, a difference between saying that the top 1% (or 5% or whatever) of society get a say in how things are run, and saying that everybody in the group does. A difference in degree amounting to a difference in kind. Yes, the Greeks (at least the Athenians; I seem to recall that Sparta had a different approach) had a less autocratic system than the Persians or the Egyptians. But I would say that they were still closer to those societies than to the Saxons.

  31. Fuzzy Face,
    I’m with Mahatma Gandhi, when it comes to understanding what Western civilization means:
    “(When asked what he thought of Western civilization): “I think it would be a good idea.”
    But my understanding of that quote is tied to the way I was reared within “Western civilization,” my racial/ethnic/class/religious/citizenship position within the USA formed why I agree with Gandhi.
    As, I am sure, you interpret Western civilization in a very different way because of your racial/ethnic/class/religious/citizenship position within the USA.
    —-
    I think Israel’s policies, concerning who is a Jew, are tied to the socio-political events on the ground. Arab Jews seem to have a different relationship with Zionism and Europe, than say some secular Russian Jews or other secular Russian Jews.

  32. “I understand from stereotypes that there is a lot of mommy hang-up angst amongst Jews. There’s something cultural worth passing along to the next generation.”
    Just to clarify, I didn’t say *I* believe the stereotype. I was joking. I was thinking about the long list of Jewish commedians who write entire routines around these self-depreciating memes. Given the role of the jester in society, I did figure there probably is something to it.
    “Wow. You invented English and mathematics and ethics all by yourself? You never spoke with another human being all your life and yet you managed to conclude basically the same things that Western culture has taught for millennia? OK, call me impressed.”
    You have totally missed my point. Of course I not only grew up in western culture, but I studied it (by free will and otherwise) k-12 and at university as well. However, I also, voluntarily, studied eastern and middle eastern culture, by choice. I have lived with tribal people (including native Americans) for periods of time in my life.
    At this point my perspectives on everything from cuisine to spirituality are a blend of all that I have experienced. For example, though I was raised in an orthodox christian church, when I die my will contains strict instructions to follow Tibetan traditions……..and no, I’m not saying that I am some kind of maverick hero. I am merely saying that the one of the wonderful aspects of being alive at this time is that there is such opportunity to explore the richness of cultural diversity and to make personal choices concering which and what resonnates with YOU concerning spiritual truth.
    I offer this as a contrast to the idea that one is born, say a Jew, and therefore one must always be “a Jew” and then go about burdened with all of the ramifications of that quandry of meaning in a rapidly changing and increasingly interwoven human community. That situation seems to me to be antithetical to freedom and happiness (which gets me back to Woody Allen’s routines and parodies).

  33. If I had my mother’s voice echoing around in my head, I think I’d feel like a child; certainly less than a self-actualized man. As it turns out she died when I was young. All I remember, when I think about her at all, is her love.
    And then,
    I understand from stereotypes that there is a lot of mommy hang-up angst amongst Jews. There’s something cultural worth passing along to the next generation.
    Mommy hang-ups, indeed!
    Anyway, my point is after you were pushed from her womb, a whole community of folks steps in to clean you up, and wiping your filthy self, for God knows how many decades. They formed your “authentic” independent individual mind. Volumes of stories, myths, and symbols were used to form your “authentic” independent individuality. You may think you came down from the heavens having already figured it all out, and my kids think they own the home they sleep in.

  34. “ou’re not allowed to kill other people except under very specific circumstances, such as self-defense (including wars of self-defense). That’s largely unique to the West.”
    It’s even more unique than that, since we don’t follow it very consistently. I’m not sure about every other value system, but as a Christian I would not be surprised either way. Maybe God did reveal something unique to the Jews (which was then passed down to Christians) or alternatively, maybe the law written on everyone’s heart (Paul’s phrase) means that some of these basic moral principles are found everywhere (and flouted everywhere).
    “It’s not just natural resources that led Western civilization to be dominant and freer that most others. It is the value system.”
    Plus a willingness to flout the value system and take land from others when the opportunity presents itself, all the while telling oneself that it is moral and just to do so. (See the history of the West for examples). The West isn’t the only group that does this, of course, and I agree that when followed what we call “Western values” are wonderful things. (Depending, though, on what you consider to be those values.)

  35. “and my kids think they own the home they sleep in.”
    I can top that, but if you also have a cat you’ll know what I’m about to say.

  36. I offer this as a contrast to the idea that one is born, say a Jew, and therefore one must always be “a Jew” and then go about burdened with all of the ramifications of that quandry of meaning in a rapidly changing and increasingly interwoven human community.
    A “burden” more and more of us are happily embracing. Classical values are never really outdated.
    But as I’ve said, having a value system is not the same as every single person following it at every point. But without one, you cannot even seriously discuss whether you should.

  37. Fuzzy, is there some links or references you’d want to list to back up your claims regarding the West vs. other societies? I’ve seen such claims before, sometimes from Christians and sometimes just from Western civilization boosters, but I think I have also seen Amartya Sen claim that one finds so-called unique Western values in other cultures that arose independent of the West. I’m relatively open-minded about this –the hint of closemindedness on my part stems from the sort of argument that begins with the alleged moral superiority of the West and ends with the conclusion that we should be bombing the hell out of or colonizing the hell out of or in some way dominating the hell out of our moral inferiors. But an argument could be misused and not be wrong in itself.

  38. It occurs to me that it is relevant that Greek thinking was influenced by Indian thinking (East Indian, of course). The Greeks were quick to recognize that the Hindu dieties were similar to their own. In fact they as far as to see that they were the same, but only with a different name and cultural nuance. The Greeks, great thinkers that they were, integrated ideas from other cultures. They avidly sought new input. They probably would have integrated even more had they not been hindered by the travel and information storage constrictions of their time.
    Again, these were people who wanted to learn and to grow intellectually.
    Falling back into ancient clan paradigms is quite the opposite.
    “Anyway, my point is after you were pushed from her womb, a whole community of folks steps in to clean you up, and wiping your filthy self, for God knows how many decades. They formed your “authentic” independent individual mind. ”
    I disagree completely. I would say that my authentic independent individual mind developed (and is still developing) due to my breaking away from whatever was stuffed into my head for my first decade or two. That said, I recognize that a lot of people; probably most, are merely the robotic product of societal/familial programming. I don’t think this is a good thing.

  39. Donald Johnson writes: Fuzzy, is there some links or references you’d want to list to back up your claims regarding the West vs. other societies?
    I did try to find one page which would have all of the info well-organized, but I was unable to. I tried to summarize what I did find combined with what I’d read in the past; if there is some reason to doubt specific claims, I’d be happy to try to do more research on it.
    Blackhawk12 writes: Also, Fuzzy, just curious. Do you apply the same respect and reverence to, say, Islam?
    Not sure what kind of respect and reverence you expect, or on what basis.

  40. Not sure what kind of respect and reverence you expect, or on what basis.
    Now realizing my phrasing might be easily misinterpreted. Let me try again:
    Can you be specific about what I should respect and revere? As a rule, I am going to revere what is consonant with my own values, which Islam is not. I can respect people’s right to believe what they like. If that’s not what you’re looking for, perhaps you can expand on your question?

  41. Since Donald requested this, I’ll try and sketch out why I think that Christianity was a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for the development of the idea of universal human rights. (I’m coming to this as a historian of medieval religion/morality, so admit I’m much less informed about eastern religious thought). This is a very broad-brush approach, focusing not so much on individual ethical rules, such as the Golden Rule, as on the overall shape of religious traditions.
    Most religions, as far as I’m aware, are tribal and polytheistic: we over here worship these gods, you over there worship those gods. Most early societies were built on small-scale solidarity; we should help those in our tribe or who are like us, we don’t have to help those in another tribe (or indeed, it may even be our duty to harm them).
    Polytheistic religions encourage religious/cultural tolerance: both the Persian and Roman empires were noted for this. But they can also encourages a belief in the alienness of others – they are different sorts of people, who do not necessarily share anything in common with us. Monotheistic religions, in contrast, have a horrible record on religious tolerance, but they do have the belief that God created everyone, that all humans are children of the same God. As a result, they encourage wider forms of solidarity than the tribe or the caste, potentially reaching out to all humans, or at least to all co-religionists across the globe (e.g. the Muslim umma). At some basic conceptual level, one God (or one true path, as in Buddhism) goes with one human race and the idea of the shared humanity of the king and the peasant. The idea of many gods fits with many different, separate peoples and no universal values.
    What you do with this idea of unity depends on what you think about this earth and what happens after. If religion is just about escaping this world (as in Buddhism and some strands of Christianity) then shared humanity means that both the king and peasant are equally miserable in this world. If you’re in a religion which stresses the need to care for your brothers because they are also children of God (Judaism, Islam and some other strands of Christianity), then you have the basis for the idea of caring for the practical needs of others beyond your immediate community. I’m open to correction by those who know more about non-western religions, but I don’t think there are many parallels to the medieval Christian tradition of kings washing the feet of the poor (on Maundy Thursday). That’s just a symbol of solidarity, of course, but it’s a symbol that shows the potential of Christian ideology to consider all people as fully human, as mattering to God. The same principle is seen in the Jewish tradition of care for the stranger, or Islam’s demands for charitable giving.
    As I’ve already said, monotheistic religions are mostly very bad about accepting religious pluralism (I don’t know if Buddhism is an exception to this). Both the Old Testament and the Koran have demands for believers to punish unbelievers (Islam makes an exception for Jews and Christians, but not polytheists). The New Testament doesn’t have such demands, perhaps at least partly because it was written down in a situation where the Christian church didn’t have such muscle. As soon as it did (after the conversion of Constantine) the church started happily applying religious coercion with the worst of them. But it didn’t have that tradition embedded in it quite as fundamentally as some others. Which meant that when political circumstances made it convenient for Christian societies to accept some religious pluralism (e.g. to avoid sectarian conflicts or to accommodate useful Jewish immigrants), there were fewer theological obstacles than a Jewish or Muslim state would find to incorporating such practices.
    As I said, I think Christianity was necessary, but not sufficient for the development of human rights, and the empirical evidence supports that. There were repeated attempts to put the egalitarian principles of Christianity into practice, but they tended to get suppressed fairly brutally by Christian rulers (Peasant Revolt of 1381, Anabaptists, Levellers, etc). But I’m not aware of universalist human rights traditions that have come solely out of other cultures, whereas it’s hard to see much non-western influence on French Revolutionary thought, say.
    I also think it’s perfectly possible to maintain the principle of human rights without a society being Christian, but only if you have some other conceptual underpinning to the belief that all humans are the same at some basic level and thus deserve equal rights. Evolutionary theory, showing we’re all one species, is one possibility, but I think Social Darwinism suggests it may not be a strong enough support on its own to maintain them.
    I can talk a bit more about the development either of military ethics or democracy in a separate comment, if anyone’s interested. There are rather different trajectories there, I’d say, and I certainly don’t think Christianity has much to do with the development of democracy.

  42. I expect Hartmut to weigh in here, but that having a say in your life is one of the key points that Greeks liked to distinguish themselves from the East with.
    I tend to keep out of discussions on Jewish themes. It’s to easy to step on a mine and these discussions have a tendency to get nasty even in reasonable company.
    On Greece, I’d say it is far more complicated then most people think. From up close those democratic Athenians look like a bunch of arrogant and hypocritical donkey cavities (even before they turned the Delian League into a tool to enrich themselves). And after their resurgence after the lost war with Sparta the tolerance went out the window too. One main charge against Socrates was the alleged introduction of foreign religious ideas/gods/cults and insufficient belief in/worship of the tarditional deities of the city. In general they treated anyone not a full citizen like shit (with women essentially ranking even below slaves).
    Sparta served as a serious inspiration for modern fascism (btw there were actual discussions in the Nazi leadership to reintroduce the infamous black broth) but at the same time practiced equality of the sexes (all hands needed to keep down the helots I presume). Anf the philosophers were quite a mixed bunch too. Name any idea, benevolent or outricht nasty, and there’ll be a Greek philosopher who discussed it.
    I think the Greeks had a general tendency to think in systems but without regard for practicality while the Romans were primarily practical and came up with a systematical description only afterwards often primarily in order to justify what already existed. Compare Platon and Cicero. Platon tries to design the perfect system from scratch (what is the best system?) while Cicero tries to give the Roman republican system a philosophical basis (Why is OUR system the best?). With the seeming abundance of competing/rivaling thinkers in Greece it was more or less inevitable that some came up with ideas we recognize as the basis of our own systems (but also the opposite).
    Although parts of the NT try to infuse Greek ways of thinking into originally Jewish ideas, the church (in the West) based its philosophy mainly on Roman models or at least models that had undergone Romanisation (neoplatonism and stoicism). And Christian theoreticians came up with the principle of Parteilichkeit, i.e. the open declaration and justification of a double standard (while prior to that the main purpose was to hide its application).
    Even inside the christian community the idea of equality was shortlived (the principle of ‘some are more equal than others’ was always present and to a degree still is*).
    It’s getting late (after midnight around here) and I see that I am rambling. So let this be enough for the moment.
    *I know enough religious people of the type ‘I am more humble than thou, so you are my inferior’

  43. Interesting stuff and apologies to Hartmut for pulling him in. About ideas floating around, I guess it is dangerous to attribute historical ideas of change to societies by using quotes from individuals, but I have always been impressed by “Homo sum. Humani a me nihil alienum puto.” which is from Terence. (I’m human, so nothing that is human is alien to me) A friend of mine translates that as meaning ‘there is no such thing as foreign studies’. Of course, we get our word barbarian from the Greeks, which basically means that its a person who talks funny, but the Terence quote seems to be something that Greeks added to the mix while the impression of people speaking ‘bar bar bar’ is something that was already there.

  44. Sorry, I meant to add, magistra, if you feel the comment box is too confining, you are welcome to try and talk about the development of military ethics and/or democracy on the front page. Contact me at libjpn at gmail if you are

  45. Fuzzy Face:
    I’m sorry I didn’t get back to reply to you before Shabbat; presumably you’ll be back after sunset tomorrow.
    – you’re not allowed to kill other people except under very specific circumstances, such as self-defense (including wars of self-defense). That’s largely unique to the West. In most other cultures, you’re allowed to kill to avenge insults, real or perceived.
    This is absolutely incorrect.
    In the first place, killing “to avenge insults, real or perceived” was an acknowledged feature of Western society until the 19th century: see any good book on the history of dueling.
    In the second place, both Confuscianism and Buddhism do not tolerate dueling, honor killing, or revenge killing. Indeed, the Buddhist/Hindu philosophy of Ahimsa is far more devoted to non-violence than anything found in Western culture.
    That’s just your first point. If you want to play “comparison of world cultures & history” — which happens to be one of my favorite games — you need to do more background reading. Recent books in the field that I’ve found illuminating include:

    Stay away from Niall Ferguson whatever you do.

  46. I forgot to thank you for the post, magistra. And it would be nice if you’d take LJ up on his offer.
    Looks like there might be the makings of a debate between Doctor Science and Fuzzyface. I think I’ll just watch.

  47. Slarti:
    That wasn’t my point of disagreement. My point of disagreement was that you characterized, or appeared to characterize, comforting the afflicted as the job of a prophet. In other words: one of a prophet’s primary functions.
    Aha, I see the problem: I was eliding a couple of steps.
    I agree that the mission of a prophet is to listen to and proclaim the word of G-d. Sometimes what G-d wants is to chastise or warn his people, sometimes he want to comfort them. So over the centuries the prophetic writings have been read for warning and direction, but also for comfort.

  48. Slarti:
    In addition, I object to your characterization of social justice as a prime admonition of the Torah.
    Oh, that’s not just my characterization — it’s a common belief all along the non-Orthodox Jewish spectrum. See the quote from the editor of Tikkun in my post:

    The spiritual well-being of the Jewish people requires the ability to identify with the suffering of others

    — or this, which I linked to: the most important mitzvah:

    Love the stranger in you midst, for you were strangers in Egypt. Here, the stranger is the Other, the foreigner, the not-me, not-my-family, not-my-group person. We are commanded not once, not twice, not thrice, but three dozen times, love the Other.
    This, like Rashi’s Golden Rule summary of all of Torah, suggests that what is most important is how we treat our fellow human beings. The Creator (Blessed Be the One) does not care as much how we tie knots on our tallit (the tzit-tzit, or fringes of the prayer shawl) as the Creator (the Blessed One) cares how we bind ourselves in relationship to each other.

    Another facet of this emphasis is the concept of Tikkun Olam, “Repairing the World”:

    Tikkun olam, once associated with a mystical approach to all mitzvot, now is most often used to refer to a specific category of mitzvot involving work for the improvement of society—a usage perhaps closer to the term’s classical rabbinic origins than to its longstanding mystical connotations.

    Yes, some of this will sound reminiscent of Christianity — why is that surprising?
    For me, the distinctive flavor of the Jewish Golden Rule comes from, “for you were strangers in Egypt.” We are to identify with the suffering of others because *we know what it’s like*, it’s not supposed to be all based on hypotheticals. And that ties into the Passover mandate:

    In every generation a person must regard himself as if he personally has come out of Egypt.

    I’m trying to say that, in my observation and experience, social justice is a core *religious* value for non-Orthodox American Jews, and if we break with Israel over it it’s a *religious* disagreement.

  49. Slarti:
    You wrote:
    There is a substantial difference between American non-Orthodox Jews and Israeli religious Jews, and glossing over that as if it were nothing, which is what it appears you are doing (in effect, just shrugging off differences in opinion between the two), is I think a mistake.
    Wow. Apparently I miscommunicated big-time. I was *trying* to say that there are huge differences between American non-Orthodox Jews and Israeli religious Jews (who are almost all Orthodox), and that these differences are one of the things driving younger American Jews away from identifying with Israel.
    What part of my post gave you the impression that I was glossing over or shrugging off the differences? I obviously made some kind of mistake, and I’d like to know what not to do next time.

  50. Hartmut,
    I get the sense that the NT/Christianity was much more influenced by Hellenized infused Roman thought, than it was Judaism?
    I wish I could remember the author, but a Jewish thinker made the argument that there is no Judeo-Christian tradition. That it would be more historically correct to call it a Helleno-Christian Tradition.

  51. “I’m trying to say that, in my observation and experience, social justice is a core *religious* value for non-Orthodox American Jews, and if we break with Israel over it it’s a *religious* disagreement.”
    There ought to be another consideration for Jews regarding breaking with Israel; that is loyalty to this country, the USA.
    If a Jew is an American citizen and Israel chooses a course of action and attempts to involve the US in that course of action, and that course of action is not the most ideal option for the US, then, all religious considerations aside, the jew has the obligation to break with Israel and to side with the US.
    There is already too much activity on the part of American Jews to influence campaigns and policy formation for the benefit of Israel. I suppose if one truly believes that what is best for Israel is also best for the US, then there is no conflict of loyalty (and, indeed, much of the rhetoric is an attempt to convince people that this is the case). I just don’t accept that anyone beyond a lunatic fringe really believes that to be the case.

  52. On the wider question of our involvement in the Mideast, where previous empires have gone to die
    Which empires would those be? Wasn’t the original caliphate itself an empire that spread almost exclusively through conquest and conversion by the sword? I believe that is the case.

  53. someotherdude, the way I see it the Western church rose on a diet of Roman philosophy, i.e. a mix of filtered old Greek philosophy spiked at times with a dose of modern (gnostic). What would later become the Eastern church(es) drew far more directly from Hellenist sources which were themselves a mix of the old with oriental (esp. Persian and to a degree Egyptian) ideas. The latter played a large part in the development of the Caesaropapism typical for the Byzantine Empire. In the West Cicero became something of an idol for some of the most important Fathers of the Church (Hieronymus had nightmares about going to hell for being more Ciceronian than Christian) and he was considered a pagan visionary who anticipated the coming of Christ that just had lived a few years too early (anima naturaliter Christiana). Btw, some of Vergil’s poems were also seen as a premonition in that direction (although what they took as visions of the coming Christ is more likely a backdated prophecy of the ‘divine’ Augustus restoring the golden age).
    I would say, but that’s just my interpretation, that the West mainly absorbed the affirmative philosophies (strongly Romanised classical Greek philosophy) while the East went more for the speculative and modern philosophies with litte Roman input. In both cases the Gnosis, although identified as archenemy of the true faith beginning as early as with St.Paul’s condemnation of it*, managed to poison the tree (to this very day, I’d say). In my opinion some of the worst aspects of church doctrine can be attributed to gnostic influence. This includes but is not limited to the elitist understanding of the priesthood and the rabid somatophobia**.
    Again, I am no certified expert on theology or philosophy and it has been quite some years since I last engaged in the topic. I also have to admit that I intensely even viscerally dislike some of the fathers of the Church. In my opinion their doctrines were directly responsible for the death of innumerable human beings and the misery of many more. And that was no later abuse, some of them practiced it while still alive.
    *but even he shows certain signs of infection visible in his quite contradictory stances on some topics (within the letters of undisputed authorship. It gets worse when those with disputed authenticity are included).
    **also fed by neoplatonism. I believe the soma-sema (the body – a tomb) idea came originally from that side and the slogan got adopted by the gnostics who knew good PR when they saw it.

  54. “Wasn’t the original caliphate itself an empire that spread almost exclusively through conquest and conversion by the sword? I believe that is the case.”
    Since the Middle East is not one unified country, apparently that original caliphate also died. Incidentally, I don’t know how much conversion by the sword there was. Pagans were not treated well by Muslims (or by Christians either) or so I’ve read, not being “people of the book”, but Christians could remain Christians and Jews remain Jews, though they would be second class citizens. But that was fairly tolerant behavior by the standards of the day.
    More knowledgeable people can jump in and correct me. (Even less knowledgeable people too, of course, this being the internet.)

  55. Magistra,
    If I understand your comment, and I may not, you are saying that monotheism promotes the idea of universal human rights better than polytheism, and that Christianity does this better than either Judaism or Islam.
    It’s not clear to me what the basis for the latter part of this proposition is, at least with respect to Christian beliefs as opposed to Christian political power. You write:

    …(after the conversion of Constantine) the church started happily applying religious coercion with the worst of them. But it didn’t have that tradition embedded in it quite as fundamentally as some others.

    I do not think Christianity has less of a tradition of religious coercion than Judaism.

    Which meant that when political circumstances made it convenient for Christian societies to accept some religious pluralism (e.g. to avoid sectarian conflicts or to accommodate useful Jewish immigrants), there were fewer theological obstacles than a Jewish or Muslim state would find to incorporating such practices.

    Is it historically clear that the rulers of Christendom treated members of other religions better than Islamic rulers? I’m not so sure. With respect to Jews, what tolerance there was in Christian lands was based, as you suggest, on occasional political and financial convenience rather than any moral principle. Whether that was also true under Islam I don’t know.

    As I said, I think Christianity was necessary, but not sufficient for the development of human rights, and the empirical evidence supports that. There were repeated attempts to put the egalitarian principles of Christianity into practice, but they tended to get suppressed fairly brutally by Christian rulers (Peasant Revolt of 1381, Anabaptists, Levellers, etc).

    How many of the movements you cite here were interested in religious tolerance extending beyond various Christian sects?
    I’m not trying to be difficult here. I just find your claim a little surprising.

  56. In the first place, killing “to avenge insults, real or perceived” was an acknowledged feature of Western society until the 19th century: see any good book on the history of dueling.
    Granted – and you could also presumably add trial by combat. But in both cases, the theory appears to have been that somehow justice would be served. Certainly one challenged to a duel had options of weapons or refusal (albeit with a taint of cowardice). That’s not the same as “he insulted me, so I can just kill him.” There are rules and procedures which must be followed.
    In the second place, both Confuscianism and Buddhism do not tolerate dueling, honor killing, or revenge killing.
    Again, granted. I did say most other cultures, not all other cultures.
    And thanks for the book recommendations. I’ll try to get copies; my local library, unfortunately, has been closed for construction for some time.

  57. Dr. Science writes:
    — or this, which I linked to: the most important mitzvah:

    Love the stranger in you midst, for you were strangers in Egypt. Here, the stranger is the Other, the foreigner, the not-me, not-my-family, not-my-group person. We are commanded not once, not twice, not thrice, but three dozen times, love the Other.
    This, like Rashi’s Golden Rule summary of all of Torah, suggests that what is most important is how we treat our fellow human beings. The Creator (Blessed Be the One) does not care as much how we tie knots on our tallit (the tzit-tzit, or fringes of the prayer shawl) as the Creator (the Blessed One) cares how we bind ourselves in relationship to each other.


    I would say that is largely true, but overstated. First, by way of agreement, we have Hillel’s statement (Babylonian Talmud, Shabbos 31a)

    “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. This is the whole of the Torah; all the rest is commentary – now go and study

    How we treat one another is the core; that is why the prophets scorn insincere fasts, but that does not mean that we can do without the rest. That is why Hillel concludes “go and study.” Rituals of all kinds are intended to teach and drive home lessons. If you don’t learn the lessons, the rituals are empty; but if you don’t do the rituals, it is hard to transmit the lessons over the generations. One of the serious challenges of liberal Judaism is that it tends not to engage the next generation.
    Rabbi Jonah Pesner, Senior Vice President of the Union for Reform Judaism, notes that as many as 80% of young people fall away from Reform Judaism by eight grade (after bar or bat mitzvah). It’s very hard to get people to identify and value something that doesn’t have strong rituals and traditions. The numbers aren’t noticeably better for Conservative Judaism.

  58. “It’s very hard to get people to identify and value something that doesn’t have strong rituals and traditions. ”
    Really? Or is it that many people feel what I have expressed in comments above; that it is better to find oneself as an individudual and then as a member of the global community – that is all humanity – as opposed to being bound to a tradition whose myths and symbols, despite strong rituals and traditions, no longer have relevance.
    Your answer seems to be to double down on the clan identification.
    You’re going to keep on losing.
    Let your people go free.

  59. (from wiki) – During his Dinkytown days, Zimmerman began introducing himself as “Bob Dylan”.[30] In his autobiography, Dylan acknowledged that he had been influenced by the poetry of Dylan Thomas.[31][a 1] Explaining his change of name in a 2004 interview, Dylan remarked: “You’re born, you know, the wrong names, wrong parents. I mean, that happens. You call yourself what you want to call yourself. This is the land of the free.”[32]

  60. It seems to me, Blackhawk, that you are deciding for others what should be of relevence to them. If you find value in the traditions under which you were raised, why shouldn’t you keep those traditions and try to further them? I don’t think anyone here is saying that people should be forced to do so, regardless of the value of the traditions, or with contempt for other traditions.
    Some people love their families, their histories and their cultures, sometimes for good reason and sometimes not. You seem to think one must reject his upbringing, because the only way one would stay in keeping with it would be to shut out the rest of the world. I don’t think that’s true.
    I agree that people should be free to follow whatever it is they prefer, within the bounds of morality, but I believe that includes keeping the traditions in which they were raised. Maybe there are circumstances under which that would be stupid, but that doesn’t mean it’s always stupid. And I see no reason to believe that rejecting one’s cultural traditions can’t sometimes be stupid, depending on what someone does adopt in their place.
    And going back to the idea of classical values, I think the point was that they are universal, rather than being applicable only in rarified and clannish environments.

  61. “You seem to think one must reject his upbringing, because the only way one would stay in keeping with it would be to shut out the rest of the world. I don’t think that’s true.”
    The problem, hairshirt, personal growth issues aside, is that we know that clan identification leads to conflict with outsiders. That is, sadly, a primitve, yet very much active, feature of human nature.
    We know from experimental social psychology that even obscure or shallow arbitrary clan identification will set people with much in common, accept the clan ID against each other. Very silly divisions can create conflict. In one experiment a group of college students is arbitrarily assigned to either red team or blue team and then given a series of tasks to accomplish as respective teams. Questionaires show that red team and blue team became quite competitive and that members would assign positive values and attributes to members of their own team and significantly more negative values and attributes to members of the other team. Then there are prisoner experiments where college students are aribtrarily assigned to be either a guard or a prisoner. After a short while – a few days? – the experiments, in some cases, had to be stopped because the subjects had forgotten that is was just a game and there was real abuse occurring. Again, each group, when questioned, dehumanized the other and attributed very negative values and other characteristics to the other. These experiments have been replicated. I’m sure yoy have heard of them. And these are just simple games involving supposedly intelligent non-invested students.
    Is there some value to clan identification? In some cases, yes, of course. But there is always a cost as well, to the each individual and to the group. Like anything in life you can’t just focus on the benefit while ignoring the cost (or vice versa).
    Specifically regarding the Jews, their strong clan identification has long caused them much suffering at the hands of their host countries. Even in Israel, there is much conflict with their own Arab citizens and neighbors.
    I don’t think it’s always bad for people to maintain a sense of their traditions and history. Some people are more in need of that kind of sense of social continuity and support than others.
    However, I do think it is always bad for people to withdraw into an inflexible ancient clan with traditions that no longer have relevance in the modern world. People have a bad habit of mistaking the metaphor for the truth behind it. The 4,000 year old methaphors of a desert tribe no longer hold today. They are disfunctional, even schizophrenic. A lot of people have no trouble pointing this when discussing fundementalist christians. Regarding Jews, not so much. But it’s the same thing.
    Like I said, I was raised to “never forget” the genocide perpetrated by the Turks on the Armenians and to hate Turks. Had I not been under to obligation to Uncle Sam, I was ready to volunteer to go fight in Nogorno-Karabahk. I’m glad, now, that Unlce Sam said “no”. I was raised to see non-Armenians as “odars”, an Armenian term that is basically the same in meaning as goyim.
    A few years later I was scratching my head wondering what the hell I was thinking. I even ended up having a Turkish girlfriend for a while (great looking and cooked a mean Kufta to boot – met her at middle eastern festival). I know I am much happier and much better for letting all of that go. I no longer have anything to do with it. It was someone’s else’s life in another time and place. I have even changed my last name to my middle name (which is anglo saxon).
    I know what this clannish BS is all about and you can’t sugarcoat it as far as I am concerned. It’s not just a social club. It’s about who is alright and who isn’t and who we hate. In theory it may be different, true, but in practice it always works to bring to out the worst in people. I don’t see how you can deny this. Just look at what’s going on in the world. Clans hacking each other to bits (literally hacking in the case of Rwanda) even though they’re really only families apart. Show me where it’s otherwise.

  62. Show me where it’s otherwise.
    from this link
    As “globalization” increases, so does the loss of human languages. People find it easier to conduct business and communicate with those outside their own culture if they speak more widely used languages like Chinese, Hindi, English, Spanish or Russian. Children are not being educated in languages spoken by a limited number of people. As fewer people use local languages, they gradually die out.
    At least 3,000 of the world’s 6,000-7,000 languages (about 50 percent) are about to be lost. Why should we care? Here are several reasons.
    The enormous variety of these languages represents a vast, largely unmapped terrain on which linguists, cognitive scientists and philosophers can chart the full capabilities—and limits—of the human mind.
    Each endangered language embodies unique local knowledge of the cultures and natural systems in the region in which it is spoken.
    These languages are among our few sources of evidence for understanding human history.

    This time of year is really busy for me, so forgive me for just quoting rather than making it a personal comment, but in some cases, the desire to free people from ‘clannish BS’ becomes a requirement that they speak and act ‘like everyone else’. Speaking English and being a part of the culture that is assimilating has you miss that.

  63. Specifically regarding the Jews, their strong clan identification has long caused them much suffering at the hands of their host countries.
    Just wanted to make sure everyone saw this, since it’s essentially blaming Jews for the Holocaust, pogroms, and what have you. It’s not the clan identification of Nazis or ethnic Russians or Slavs or WASPs that have caused this suffering. No, it’s those pesky, sneaky Jews and their Jewy-ness.

  64. “At least 3,000 of the world’s 6,000-7,000 languages (about 50 percent) are about to be lost. Why should we care? Here are several reasons.”
    First off, the link doesn’t address the question I asked – show me where clannishness doesn’t lead to social strife, war and persecution. And, even if the loss of linguistic diversity is actually a loss of quantifiable value, you still have to show that the loss is greater than what is gained, which you/your link has not.
    Hey, things change. In fact the only constant in life is change is itself. The reasons listed for why we should care sound pretty much like some acedemicians’ intellectual thesis writing needs. Lots of traditional American values and lifestyles have also been lost over the past 100 years as well. Sometimes I get the feeling that sociologists and anthropologists are worst sorts of bigots. They want all those quaint little primitive people to stay that way, like animals in the zoo,so they can be observed and studied. So you, also a member of of the dominant culture, get all your toys, the iPads, the cell phones, the flatscreen tv, twitter, facebook, flights to other countries and employment and general exposure in those cultures, etc ,etc, but some tribal person is to be denied all of that which you enjoy because someone needs to be the missing link to the past?
    As I say, why should people remain behind the new paradigm? Of course they don’t when given the opportunity to go with the current winning flow.
    “Just wanted to make sure everyone saw this, since it’s essentially blaming Jews for the Holocaust….”
    Not even a smiley face for a nice try, silly phillie, you little PC cop, you. However, I am glad you recognize that the holocaust, like so many similar events, was (and are) all about clan identification. So you are making my point for me.

  65. Blackhawk12,
    Even when you are attempting to be an “authentic individual” you are acting like a typical white kid raised in an American consumer society. You seemed to have bought into the idea, that you are the lone wolf trying to just figure it all out, you and a million other white kids are all, ironically, typical cookie-cutter “individuals”. You use the myths and symbols of the society around you to express your pioneering ways…but typical and predictable, and obscenely clannish. But instead of admitting you are part of a clan, you think you’re individuality, is somehow universal as well. (I think it’s called male privilege or white privilege).
    Most new white ethnic kids would rather assimilate into the larger “non-ethnic” ethnic group: WASP! But that does not make you some radical individualist; you are very typical of new immigrant children. Your old “clan” can no longer fulfill your needs, and the dominant group seems to have better perks clan-wise, than the old. Nothing wrong with that, except you are smack dab in the middle of the strongest, most influential clan in the world and you just can’t see it. But you can certainly see all the other clans around you…and it’s both funny and sad.

  66. Amazing that someone who lives in a country full of “Why should I have to press one for Engish, this is America?!” Idiots doesn’t understand the connections between control of language, control of culture and control of power.
    Actually, it isn’t, because he is a deeply, deeply stupid person.

  67. First off, the link doesn’t address the question I asked – show me where clannishness doesn’t lead to social strife, war and persecution.
    If the argument is that we should be against anything that causes social strife, that is an argument that both society should never change (because any change is social strife, right?) and that we should let the dominant power decide and any smaller group should assimilate. So you’ve bravely chosen to argue that imperialism, slavery, Jim Crow and virtually feature in society that has changed for the better is not really worth it.
    It’s basically the same as an argument from social darwinism and the whole shtick that if you are a member of the dominant social clan, you can use iPads, cell phones etc (and the implied if you aren’t, obviously, you can’t) makes the link palpable. Silly others, if they were really worthwhile, they would have invented something that we couldn’t do without. if you can’t figure out why this is problematic, I’m not sure I can explain it so you can understand.

  68. Byomotov,
    I wasn’t as clear as I should be, partly because I’m trying to pull together a lot of different ideas. I’ll try and be a bit more specific this time.
    The Old Testament (particularly the Torah) provides a fairly detailed framework for how you run a whole society, top to bottom: appropriate sexual behaviour, treatment of slaves, justifications for war, judicial procedures etc. The New Testament doesn’t have this kind of material. You have the Gospel teachings which give a few moral principles but no detailed specifications, and then you have St Paul and other epistle writers trying to work out ad hoc responses on how you run the churches (small-scale voluntary organisations).
    After that, in about 100-400 CE you have men in very different areas of the Roman Empire developing separate theories of what you do in a lot of situations that the New Testament didn’t discuss and how you run a society (rather than just a sect) on Christian lines. Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York, 1988) is a fascinating book about how many different ideas about sexuality there were that early theologians came up with. (He’s also just published something on early Christian ideas about wealth, which I haven’t read yet). There is enough contradictory source material in the Old and New Testaments combined to make it possible to support most positions theologically: pacifism or holy war, equality or subordination of women, religious coercion or religious pluralism. The views that the Church Fathers came up with were often influential, but they weren’t definitive. Even in Catholic thought “because St Augustine says that” is not taken in itself as a sufficient argument.
    The Koran also doesn’t have this kind of framework for running a society. But as I understand it (and I admit my knowledge of Islamic history is limited), the hadith writers produced such a framework fairly quickly (within 200 years), and these collections became canonical in Sunni and Shia tradition (even if they have different canons).
    In other words, both Judaism and Islam from fairly early on had agreed forms of ideal social organisation: a detailed template for what the correct Jewish/Muslim state should be like. Christianity didn’t; it was more readily adaptable to other cultures, because the social details in its scriptures were less specific. As a result, it took on more of the flavour of the cultures which adopted it: Peter Brown speaks of the early medieval period as one of micro-Christianities, each believing and practising separately.
    The disadvantage of this was that Christianity took on a lot of the nastier habits of some of the societies it entered. Racism was justified via “the curse of Ham”, etc. But this lack of definition of social structures also meant that there was more leeway for Christian reformers to argue for changes to social practice than for Jewish or Muslim ones. The Old Testament, the New Testament and the Koran all accept slavery, but the New Testament allows more wiggle-room for change via the “neither slave nor free”.
    On the specific issues of religious tolerance, for the majority of its history, Islam has been more tolerant of both Christians and Jews than Christianity has been of either Muslims or Jews. There are Christian communities in Egypt that have been there for more than 1000 years; until very recently there were Jewish communities in Iran, etc.
    This is because Islamic thought in the seventh to eighth century produced a strategy for accommodating religious minorities that was considerably more enlightened than contemporary Christian societies (such as Byzantium or Visigothic Spain). However, this accommodation was embedded in a specific institutional framework of the subordination of Jews and Christians (dhimma), seen as justified by a seventh century pact made by Caliph Umar. Because this treatment was authoritatively formalised early on in the Caliphate, it’s a lot harder to alter than the nastier traditions of persecution of the Jews in Christian tradition, which have rarely been written down in authoritative documents. (In western Europe, the papacy was only effectively able to enforce its doctrines from about 1050-1500 CE and even then it often got ignored).
    So a form of religious tolerance which looked enlightened in the eighth century, but hasn’t essentially changed since then, ends up as less accepting of religious pluralism than a Christian tradition towards other religions (and heretics and atheists) that started out more nastily, but was less firmly fixed in canonical texts and so easier to adapt to changing social norms.

  69. “What we need here is a Prophet”
    But that is hardly a solution either, when (as you and Beinart point out) Jabotinsky and his followers seem to see the prophets as part of the problem, and reject their teachings.
    I’ve just started reading Beinart’s book, which I’m finding very interesting. I don’t expect any solutions to the problems of the Middle East from it, but as an analysis of some of those problems it’s quite compelling. It’s certainly helping educate this European in some of the tensions within Judaism that I was pretty ignorant about.
    One thing I found quite striking was the comparison made by some of the early Zionists between the position of the Jews in Palestine and the Boers in South Africa – something I’d only seen before from those who condemn current Israeli policy.

  70. What part of my post gave you the impression that I was glossing over or shrugging off the differences? I obviously made some kind of mistake, and I’d like to know what not to do next time.

    I don’t think that it was any one thing; it was more the ascription of the rift between Israeli and American Jews to lack of spirituality. Which I think misses the point that Israeli Orthodox Jews tend to be more about ritual than about compassion. Which sounds overly glib now that I’m about to hit “Post”; it’s not that Israeli religious Jews are not at all compassionate, it’s that compassion doesn’t overrule obedience to ritual.
    Your general point about the most important mitzvot is I think just a bare assertion. You have some people who agree with you, but there are also others that disagree with you. The most important thing, though, is what God thinks, which is not generally available. My personal favorite answer among those presented at your link is that the most important commandment is the one that rules the issue before you right now.
    But that’s just my favorite answer; I don’t pretend that I have any basis for believing it’s the “right” one.
    Please don’t take this as an attack; it’s intended to be more of a discussion. I don’t mistake myself for any kind of authority on any religion, including my own.

  71. Even in Israel, there is much conflict with their own Arab citizens and neighbors.

    In Israel, Israelis frequently live cheek-by-jowl with Arabs. Peacefully.
    “Much” is doing a lot of work, here. If you look at violence in Israel and subtract border incidents, I think you’ll see something a little different from what your imagination has constructed. Most of Nazareth is Arab, for example, and you only rarely hear of Arab/Jew violence. And in Jerusalem, Arabs live a mostly peaceful coexistence with Jews.
    I don’t think it’s the locals. Look up the rash of bombings in Jerusalem and you’ll mostly find that the perps are from elsewhere. Gaza and other border sites are of course a different story. Point is: it’s not just a cultural thing, because it’s clear to anyone with vision that Arabs and Jews can and do live essentially right next to each other without serious clashes.

  72. Here’s a 2011 poll on Israeli Jewish and Israeli Palestinian (or Arab–I gather the PC term changed, but am not sure) attitudes–
    link
    Nearly all the Israeli Arab and a majority of Israeli Jews think there is some discrimination against Arabs in Israel. Not that Israel is worse than, say, Egypt with respect to its Copts, but things aren’t perfect. There is violence against Palestinians from settlers. In Jerusalem, the Palestinian claim is that Israelis are trying to take over, both within the city and by building massive “suburbs”/settlements outside that they don’t intend to give up.

  73. “And in Jerusalem, Arabs live a mostly peaceful coexistence with Jews.”
    And Arabs enjoy the same rights as Jewish Israeli citizens? Or is it more of a Jim Crow situation?

  74. Yes, of course Donald (re; the poll you cite – BTW, I have been to Israel).
    Why is it I feel the need to intensely fact check anything that anyone on this blog writes? The willingness to turn the truth, logic or another commenter’s words into a pretzel to maintain an otherwise untenable position is as amazing as it is pathetic.
    Clans don’t fight each other, ethnic/religious clanishness is not only not a major source of conflict I’m only saying that it is because I’m a spoiled white boy…….Bwah ha ha ha ha ha…..

  75. Why is it I feel the need to intensely fact check anything that anyone on this blog writes? The willingness to turn the truth, logic or another commenter’s words into a pretzel to maintain an otherwise untenable position is as amazing as it is pathetic.
    I don’t think you should be so harsh on yourself.

  76. Magistra,
    Thanks for the more detailed discussion. Let me raise a few points in response.
    First, you talk about the Islamic concept of dhimma as representing a permanent tolerated but subordinate position. To the best of my knowledge Judaism contains no parallel concept – the Chosen People idea is entirely different.
    More important, with respect to dhimma, we do not know how it would have evolved had Islam enjoyed the political and military success of Christianity in later years. It’s plausible, it seems to me, that it would have become a lower bound, rather than a standard, for treatment of religious minorities, or that it could have more or less disappeared under different historical circumstances.
    Has Christianity adopted similar views? Well, I’m no expert on Aquinas, but a quick google on “Aquinas Jews” turns up:

    Your Excellency inquired whether it is allowable for you at some time and in what way to make an exaction upon the Jews.
    To which question (proposed in this unqualified way) it can be answered that although, as the laws say, the Jews by reason of their fault are sentenced to perpetual servitude and thus the lords of the lands in which they dwell may take things from them as though they were their own—with, nonetheless, this restraint observed that the necessary subsidies of life in no way be taken from them, because it still is necessary that we “walk honestly even in the presence of those who are outsiders (I Thes. 4:11),”

    Sounds a little dhimmish to me.
    It seems to me that you rely on somewhat abstract arguments, without giving sufficient weight to actual practice. Does Christianity define structures that consider non-Christians inferior? Maybe not. But it was certainly widely interpreted to justify violence against non-believers, for any number of reasons. And its leaders were often among the more enthusiastic supporters and perpetrators. Do I need to mention the Crusades? I’m sure you’ve read Luther, and the popes condoned and promoted anti-Semitism well past 1500. It’s all very well to point to isolated reform movements, which mostly failed, but they were not the voice of organized Christianity.
    Christianity certainly adapted to changing norms over time, though quite slowly, in my opinion. Isn’t it possible that Islam, under similar conditions, would have evolved similarly?

  77. And Arabs enjoy the same rights as Jewish Israeli citizens? Or is it more of a Jim Crow situation?

    I can’t really say. Arabs are certainly not represented proportionally in the Knesset, but neither are blacks, hispanics and women represented proportionally in our Congress. What those things mean in terms of human rights, I don’t know.
    Probably Arabs have it a great deal better in Israel than Jews have it in Arab countries. I know: probably irrelevant.

  78. Clans don’t fight each other, ethnic/religious clanishness is not only not a major source of conflict I’m only saying that it is because I’m a spoiled white boy…….Bwah ha ha ha ha ha…..
    When people point out that what they perceive is a lack of self-awareness on your part, I don’t think that means they don’t believe clans fight each other or they think the world is free of ethnic strife.
    You have practicing Jews writing on this thread things like “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. This is the whole of the Torah; all the rest is commentary – now go and study.” These are people who see their tradition as being in opposition to clannish fighting and dehumanization of the “other.” That opposition must stem from the recognition of that which is being opposed. You don’t need to point it out to people who have already recognized it and are already in opposition to it as a result of their traditions.
    Perhaps the cardboard cutouts of the people you are arguing with aren’t particularly accurate depictions of the actual people you should (or shouldn’t?) be arguing with.

  79. “Probably Arabs have it a great deal better in Israel than Jews have it in Arab countries. I know: probably irrelevant.”
    Probably, though until the Arab spring the Arab countries were monarchies or dictatorships. In that case the proper comparison would be to Palestinians on the West Bank, who basically live under military rule by the Israelis, with a token Palestinian authority in place.
    One of the crucial tests of the Arab spring will be how minorities are treated. But it’s probably safe to guess there will be some turbulent years before we can tell.

  80. “You have practicing Jews writing on this thread things like “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. This is the whole of the Torah”
    Sure, and that’s wonderful. We also have that same practicing Jew stating that he finds Islam to be inferior and we also had me stating that while most major religions have something positive to say regarding how to treat outsiders, in practice those aspects of doctrine are not followed because, in practice, people, unfortunately, develop a clan based mindset that leads to cruelty towards outsiders.
    You’re right though, I shouldn’t have even make the point le alone harp on it because everyone with a basic education should have recognized these things long ago. However, they apparently have not since we have s many people, including some here, seeking to advance the clan mentality.
    To mind it’s like veryone agreeing that if you play with fire you’ll get burnt and then going on to discuss how best to construct flaming hoops, the best technique for diving through them, etc. It makes you wonder if they really do understand the part about getting burnt.
    Really, my point wasn’t even so much about clan identification leading to destruction. It’s was more about the fit and value of ancient clan religions in a rapidly chnaging world where clan barriers are disolving at an increasing rate.
    If “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow” is the whole of the Torah, then we have a functioning philosophy for the new era. Why then go obscure that behind all of the ancient symbols; symbols? Apparently there is not a reason that is satisfactory to many with jewish heritage because, as the practicing notes (and bemoans) people are falling away from the practice of the religion. His answer seems to be to increase the force of the ancient rituals.
    My real questions in all of this is why he thinks that would work if the rituals are not in tune with our modern world and why is a clan approach a good thing when 1. clan identification is historically destructive and 2. It is becoming less relevant in our increasingly interwoven humanity.
    BTW, I am not just applying this thinking to Judaism.

  81. Even when you are attempting to be an “authentic individual” you are acting like a typical white kid raised in an American consumer society. (…)
    I have no idea what the quest for authenticity has to do with being white or male or whatever. A young person challenging or breaking away from tradition to go out into the world and find their own way – that’s one of the oldest tropes in literature and art because it’s a universal dynamic across most cultures. Challenging traditional values in the quest for more universal truths is also what has driven much of philosophy through the ages: Sapere aude!

  82. Christianity certainly adapted to changing norms over time, though quite slowly, in my opinion. Isn’t it possible that Islam, under similar conditions, would have evolved similarly?
    Posted by: byomtov | October 01, 2012 at 11:15 AM
    I’m very sympathetic to this view. If Christianity had inherent universal rights embedded within it, the persistent “Jewish Question” would have been unnecessary.
    Christianity didn’t; it was more readily adaptable to other cultures, because the social details in its scriptures were less specific. As a result, it took on more of the flavour of the cultures which adopted it: Peter Brown speaks of the early medieval period as one of micro-Christianities, each believing and practising separately.
    The disadvantage of this was that Christianity took on a lot of the nastier habits of some of the societies it entered. Racism was justified via “the curse of Ham”, etc. But this lack of definition of social structures also meant that there was more leeway for Christian reformers to argue for changes to social practice than for Jewish or Muslim ones. The Old Testament, the New Testament and the Koran all accept slavery, but the New Testament allows more wiggle-room for change via the “neither slave nor free”.

    Posted by: magistra | October 01, 2012 at 03:15 AM
    Right! Christianity just does not have within it, what most people think it does. One could justify Medieval Hierarchies as well as, anarchist congregations. In many cases, how one interprets the Scriptures, probably says more about the person’s subjective position.
    I don’t think it’s meant to be a pluralistic religion, or a religion that is supposed to speak on every aspect of life. I think it can support Communism, Capitalism, totalitarianism, social democracy, etc. Paul is writing to and about a church attempting to exist in the shadow of Imperial Pagan Rome, not a political organization reorganizing the New World Order.
    I would prefer it if folks tried not to use it to justify every new political theory or public policy, but …I ain’t the President of the world.
    I have no idea what the quest for authenticity has to do with being white or male or whatever. A young person challenging or breaking away from tradition to go out into the world and find their own way – that’s one of the oldest tropes in literature and art because it’s a universal dynamic across most cultures. Challenging traditional values in the quest for more universal truths is also what has driven much of philosophy through the ages: Sapere aude!
    Posted by: novakant | October 01, 2012 at 04:17 PM
    No doubt, I just didn’t spend time with the nuances and caveats of the comment. Let me put it this way, when I was younger, and decided I wanted nothing to do with the religion of my parents and grand-parents and I wanted nothing to do with “White America” I began to experiment with “radical” ideas. Since I grew up in a hardcore working-class neighborhood, I had to experiment with Marxist-Leninism (sell outs became Republican, rebels were Leftist, you know the narrative), and started reading Nietzsche to rid myself of the stench of the divine. And I wanted to bring down White Supremacy in America. It wasn’t that I was not sincere, but I had no context to understand the position I was in. As much as I decried the small minded nature of religious fundamentalism, I engaged in particular Leftist fundamentalism. As much as I decried the ethnocentric nature of the racist West, most of my intellectual heroes were totally white Westerners. I accused everyone else of engaging in blind clannish/tribal behavior, while assuming my stands were the reflection of deep rational thought tapping into the objective truths of a Godless universe. My radical authentic individuality was contingent on Western symbols and myths as they were filtered in America’s Los Angeles. No, I wasn’t part of the typical mainstream, but I wasn’t the pioneering rebel, either.
    At some point I had to engage with folks, without dismissing them with labels that can be leveled at me. Not so I avoid being called a hypocrite, but because I need to develop relationships wherein we respect each other. /testimonial end.
    I can’t help and think of someone like Baruch Spinoza, who was excommunicated from the Jewish community in Amsterdam. It’s not like Christian society decided he was no longer Jewish.

  83. I can’t help and think of someone like Baruch Spinoza, who was excommunicated from the Jewish community in Amsterdam. It’s not like Christian society decided he was no longer Jewish.
    Posted by: someotherdude | October 01, 2012 at 05:39 PM
    Ignore that, I started a thought I could not finish.

  84. What’s really funny about epiphanies is that that the one to whom “so much” is revealed rarely can persuade anyone else of just how profound and awesome his/her new insights are. And, in nearly every instance, there is very good reason why this is so.

  85. someotherdude, I was never talking about looking to the outside or to leaders. I was talking about looking to the inside, to one’s own heart and following one’s own path.
    It is interesting that elements of the Jewish diaspora found equality and a lack of persecution in India amongst the Hindus (contra fuzzy face’ cheerleading for montheistic western society).

  86. We also have that same practicing Jew stating that he finds Islam to be inferior…
    I think you need to provide a quote for this. My understanding was that the way the religion develops its rules and organizational structure can have some effect on what kind of outcomes it produces, which means it may be enlightened in one context (like the 8th century) but it may not be able to change with the times.

  87. someotherdude:
    I often finish thoughts I couldn’t be bothered to start.
    MckT:
    Best not to verbalize one’s epiphanies with an initial “Eureka!”
    Just quietly state them and slink away.
    I experienced an epiphany the other day that all of our epiphanies should occur early in life, say, during puberty and in a bunch, thus leaving plenty of time to profit by them.
    Plus, when the mother of the 11-year-old boy hears the cry of “Eureka!” from the locked bathroom, the boy can answer her question “What’s taking so long in there?” by claiming he’d just had a series of epiphanies.
    My favorite epiphany in recorded history, aside from James Joyce, religion, and the benzene ring, was when the entertainer Danny Kaye very late in life drove himself to the hospital for what would be his final illness and parked his car in the expensive close-in hospital lot.
    Many weeks later, after being diagnosed, admitted, and now dying, Kaye, whimsically pop-eyed and orange hair erumpent, one imagines, abruptly sat up in his death bed, interrupting a visiting friend in some desultory mid-sentence, and shouted “MY CAR!!!”
    He fished his car keys from the drawer in the bed-side table and impatiently sent his friend to recover the vehicle and pay the sizable parking fee, not covered by Medicare.
    My best friend years ago was sitting in what appeared to be a very large restaurant with tables extending far into the distance and spotted an attractive woman/girl sitting across the room to his left.
    He decided to get up and walk past her table, perchance to flirt. He stood, pushed in his chair, adjusted an imaginary cravat, like David Niven, turned to his left and took about five steps and collided face first with the floor-to ceiling mirror (wondering absentmindedly, eye on the girl, why that good-looking guy walking toward him wasn’t yielding) that covered every square inch of the restaurant’s opposite walls.
    Then, like Danny Kaye, he could think only of the location of his car … and died.
    Not so much an epiphany, but a thought I neither started nor finished.

  88. Plus, when the mother of the 11-year-old boy hears the cry of “Eureka!” from the locked bathroom, the boy can answer her question “What’s taking so long in there?” by claiming he’d just had a series of epiphani
    For some bizarre reason, this reminded me of a woman I heard about who walked into the bathroom as her young son was working on an epiphany, and, not taking time for thought, she blurted, “Johnny Thullen! What are you doing?!?!?”, to which little Johnny calmly replied “Nothing, Mom. I fell off my bike yesterday and it’s been this way ever since.”

  89. What’s really funny about epiphanies is that that the one to whom “so much” is revealed rarely can persuade anyone else of just how profound and awesome his/her new insights are. And, in nearly every instance, there is very good reason why this is so.
    Quoted. For. Truth.

  90. “What’s really funny about epiphanies is that that the one to whom “so much” is revealed rarely can persuade anyone else of just how profound and awesome his/her new insights are. And, in nearly every instance, there is very good reason why this is so.”
    Well, it depends on whether the new views line up with the views of the listener. When they do line up, very often the epiphany seems quite convincing. When they don’t, it doesn’t. Funny how that works.
    Also, substitute “rationally defended political views ” for “epiphanies” and I don’t think the percentages change much. Hilzoy used to post here and you couldn’t find a calmer person more devoted to logic (to the extent anyone can be) and she didn’t convince everyone all the time. That wasn’t necessarily irrational on the part of her opponents. Though sometimes it was. (I’m thinking of just those instances when Hilzoy’s views lined up exactly with my own.)

  91. That said, if we’re talking about Blackhawk’s epiphany, I’m not on his side on the value of old religions issue. Since I’m Christian, you wouldn’t expect me to be. But he’s obviously partly right about the clannishness problem. I see that on a small scale with American Christians in various ways and for that matter, in my own prejudices when I’m aware of them.

  92. If I mention Philip Roth, will we be back on topic?

    Only if we all launch into a chorus of Fifty Ways To Love Your Liver.
    Speaking of which.

  93. (contra fuzzy face’ cheerleading for montheistic western society)
    I think you’ve inferred something that was not implied.

  94. here is everything i remember from every Phillip Roth novel i’ve ever read : “buttermilk and clorox”, and animals have just the right amount of brain matter to tan their own hides.

  95. This is a great and thoughtful post Doc, thank you for it.
    My “late to the party” contributions:
    the primary job of a prophet is … to act as a conduit between God and the rest of humanity
    As I understand it, this is exactly the role of the prophet. The prophet’s “job”, as it were.
    Also as I understand it, any reading of what the actual Hebrew prophets actually wrote and said has to lead you to believe that one of the most important things to god – one of god’s highest priorities – is that people in a position of misfortune or disadvantage be treated not just fairly, but with positive kindness and generosity.
    I.e., that they be comforted.
    Likewise, I can’t imagine reading what the actual prophets actually wrote and said and not come away with the impression that the special target of god’s anger were people who held any sort of position of privilege or authority, and used that position for their own advantage. Especially if that came at any cost to the less fortunate.
    Maybe we’re reading different prophets.
    The law given by Moses, and later in the levitical code and in deuteronomy, places great importance on personal righteousness, especially as expressed in practice.
    I don’t see the same emphasis in the prophets. In fact, the prophetic understanding of righteousness (again, as I read it) in many cases *is* to treat other people humanely and with respect, and in particular to treat the less fortunate with positive kindness and generosity.
    I.e., to comfort them.
    That’s what I take away from it, FWIW.
    I thought wj’s point about Greek vs. Germanic / Nordic democratic traditions was right on, and probably worth a discussion either here or (more likely) in another thread.
    Folks talk a lot about the “Judeo/Christian” traditions of the US. To my eye, the Anglo/Germanic traditions are far more relevant, historically.
    Thanks again for a great post Doc!

  96. The other thing that strikes me in Doc Science’s post is the quandary that Israel faces through being both a political entity and a religious community. Or, at least, a community with a strong and distinct religious identity.
    How do you meet the pragmatic, real-world obligations of a modern nation-state, while also living up to the moral, ethical, and spiritual requirements of religion, let alone faith?
    When people talk about the US being a “Christian nation”, I always have to ask myself if they understand exactly what they are calling for.
    Seriously, do they really want to take that on? Do they really want to be obliged to live out (for example) the words of Jesus, as a national project?
    A lot of things would have to change. Probably more than folks have in mind, when they talk about stuff like that.

  97. When people talk about the US being a “Christian nation”, I always have to ask myself if they understand exactly what they are calling for.
    Exactly. Proper theology? No heretics? Literaliism? Everybody behaves? Protestant Christianity?
    Zionism is formed during an era in European history wherein ethnic and religious identity were to be bound up with the notion of the nation-state, isn’t its original intent moot? What can Zionism say to Arab Jews? African Jews? Indian Jews? Does it matter, since Europeans have/had a better grasp on organized violence? Power dictates truth.

  98. Proper theology? No heretics? Literaliism? Everybody behaves? Protestant Christianity?
    The stuff I have in mind is more along the lines of “if any man asks for your shirt, give him your tunic also”.
    In other words, never mind the theology, just the basic words of Jesus are a sufficient impediment.
    “Christian nation” is a very high bar. Likewise “Jewish nation”, “Muslim nation”, “Buddhist nation”, “Hindu nation”, etc. Take your pick, they’re all difficult.
    Just meeting the bar of simple, basic justice is more – way more – than hard enough. “Good” is, IMO, beyond the grasp of polities.

  99. magistra writes:

    On the specific issues of religious tolerance, for the majority of its history, Islam has been more tolerant of both Christians and Jews than Christianity has been of either Muslims or Jews. There are Christian communities in Egypt that have been there for more than 1000 years; until very recently there were Jewish communities in Iran, etc.

    That might be setting rather a low bar; treatment of dhimmis is only “tolerant” if you compare it to frequent murder and forced conversion. Not allowing people to build houses of prayer, requiring them always to be treated as second-class citizens, with a death penalty if they dare get “uppity” and try to act as though they are full human beings is not what we’d call tolerant – at least not compared to 21st century Western standards.
    Blackhawk12 writes:

    And Arabs enjoy the same rights as Jewish Israeli citizens? Or is it more of a Jim Crow situation?

    The same rights? Yes. But the Israeli election system is rather idiotic, requiring voting for a party list rather than candidates. The result is massive fracturing of voting power except from groups that figure out how to band together – which usually means some least-common-denominator interests. Religious Jews and Sephardic Jews are also under-represented in the Knesset, as a result.
    Arabs sit in the Knesset, on the Supreme Court, and so on. They have total freedom of movement and the right to live anywhere in the country. That doesn’t mean that there is no perception of intolerance. I heard a talk recently from an Israeli professor who was being interviewed by reporters from several Arab nations. They wanted to know pretty much this question, so he called in one of his students, who happened to be an Israeli Arab sheik. The sheik told the reporters that Israel was horribly unfair to Arabs – but that it was a hundred times better than any Arab nation.
    Blackhawk12 again:

    It is interesting that elements of the Jewish diaspora found equality and a lack of persecution in India amongst the Hindus

    and many other places; antisemitism has mostly been found among Christian, Muslim, and Communist societies, to the best of my knowledge.
    My comment about the advantages of the West were about success of the societies overall – not tolerance of others.

  100. I’ll try a different tact on essentially the same question I started out with, to wit, who the hell actually chooses to be a Jew?
    I mean people convert to christianity, people elect to be buddhists, people choose new agey thinking, peaople even convert to islam, but I can honestly say I’ve never even vagually known anyone who read about judaism and decided to become a jew. It’s seems ridiculous to, my mind, to even attempt to imagine such a thing – that is, accept for people with Jewish genes that decide to explore their ancestory or something and then decide to get involved in the religious aspects where they had not previously been.
    I don’t think Judaism has much to offer beyond the clan/anscestor thing. The golden rule, apparently, is the trump card and it’s available in several more appealing flavors.
    I’d like to hear Jews explain why they want to identify as jews before I hear about all of their angst and confusion. It would really help provide some context.
    So, what, exactly is the appeal of Judiasm beyond getting to declare that g-d likes you better than those marshugana goys? seriously. What?

  101. sorry, that last came of a little too harsh. But I am seriously interested in whether or not judaism has an appeal – or even a willingness to accept converts – beyond some sense of ancestorial ties.
    I truly don’t see the appeal myself, but i am wondering what others might see there that other systems don’t offer.

  102. Oddly enough, I really don’t understand why anyone wants to be a Christian. The whole concept makes no sense to me.
    Original sin?
    You get away with all sorts of crap because Jesus was crucified (well, I see the appeal, but it still makes no sense).
    Heaven? Hell? Because you buy into the whole thing, or don’t? Come on.

  103. Blackhawk12,
    Religion does not have the same universal function you think it does. For some it is a metaphysical thing, others it is part of their ethnic/ethnie/ethnos identity, others it is Western, Modern, Progressive thinking, other it is anti-modern, regressive, hierarchical, and even others it is about national pride, for some it is rational, others it is mystical and a-rational or irrational and for others it is all those things.
    You keep assuming everybody uses religion in the same way.

  104. Blackhawk… um…
    Doctor Science had just posted that she had chosen to become a Jew and you ask, “who the hell actually chooses to be a Jew?” Seriously?
    I know quite a few Jews-by-choice. There doesn’t seem to be only one reason, but many people decide that they like the value system and they way that we have of connecting with G-d. You’ve so convinced yourself that clan identification is the major function of religion that you have blinded yourself to the face that most people – especially most religious Jews and Christians – don’t see it that way.

  105. FF, Doctor science is very peculiar in her perspectives and activities in many ways, IMO. I don’t take her to be at all typical.
    someotherdude, you contunue to make wildly inaccurate assuptions about what I assume.
    “You’ve so convinced yourself that clan identification is the major function of religion that you have blinded yourself to the face that most people – especially most religious Jews and Christians – don’t see it that way.”
    Of course they don’t see it that way. They are convinced that they are correct in a very final absolute objective way and that everyone else is wrong. What’s *not* clannish about thinking that my god is the real god and all those who don’t believe that are lost in this life as well as the next? You keep saying that it’s not clannish, but that doesn’t make it so. How about actually explaining *why* it’s not.
    Judaism is not only a” my god is the only true god” religion, but it’s also tightly based on a supposed history of a clan of people (after all most of the OT is just a bunch of stories about the history of the Jews, their special relationship with god, and the purity of the Jewish familial lines). You deny this to be the case?
    However, FF, you also continue to make erroneous assumptions about what I think. I do not see, for example, Buddhism or Toaism as being clannish, nor the Hindu system, nor the beliefs of the ancient Greeks ( to include the Eleusinian mysteries).

  106. “…..For some it is a metaphysical thing, others it is part of their ethnic/ethnie/ethnos identity, others it is Western, Modern, Progressive thinking, other it is anti-modern, regressive, hierarchical, and even others it is about national pride, for some it is rational, others it is mystical and a-rational or irrational and for others it is all those things.”
    This, by itself is a valid statement that I agree with and already knew.
    Thay being said, it really says nothing.
    Are these all good motivations in a 21st century world? Or are some of them destructive?

  107. BTW, speaking of converts, it seems that Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world, with 80% of adherants living outside the Arab world.
    The fastest growing religion in the US is, apparently, Buddhism.
    Converts to Judaism are too miniscule to even show up on the radar screen as far as I can see – I only mention this to back my assertion that it is an unusual person indeed that converts to Judaism. From what I read, orthodox Jews don’t even want the conversion of goyim spouses of Jews.
    So it’s not only that people aren’t getting in line to convert to Judaism, it’s also that some proportion of Jews don’t want new Jews. They want to keep the clan’s blood pure.

  108. Blackhawk12:

    They are convinced that they are correct in a very final absolute objective way and that everyone else is wrong.

    You’re projecting, here. You know basically nothing about religious people, but you have invented your own ideas about how they think. This line describes you – at least as you have behaved here. You believe yourself to be correct in a very final absolute way and that everyone else is wrong.

    Judaism is not only a” my god is the only true god” religion, but it’s also tightly based on a supposed history of a clan of people (after all most of the OT is just a bunch of stories about the history of the Jews, their special relationship with god, and the purity of the Jewish familial lines). You deny this to be the case?

    Actually, Judaism is a “my god is everybody’s god” religion, but “only those who were born Jewish or choose to become Jewish are obligated to follow Jewish rules” religion. It’s not “based on” our history. Rather, a portion of our history is recorded as a record of our attempts, successful and failing, to keep it. As opposed to, say, Christianity and Islam which agree on the “one god” thing, but insist that everybody in the world needs to follow their rules.

    From what I read, orthodox Jews don’t even want the conversion of goyim spouses of Jews.
    So it’s not only that people aren’t getting in line to convert to Judaism, it’s also that some proportion of Jews don’t want new Jews. They want to keep the clan’s blood pure.

    Um, no. I know quite a number of Orthodox Jews married to converts. It is amazing how little you know about Judaism and Jews, yet you feel free to make lots of hateful comments.
    I guess you’re basically uneducable. I’m going to try ignoring you at this point. But it can be sooo hard when you are so wrong.

  109. Oddly enough, I really don’t understand why anyone wants to be a Christian.
    I see your point.
    Personally, I focus more on Jesus and less on Paul.
    And I pay no attention to Augustine, at all.
    But even so, yes, there is something absurd about it.

  110. Blackhawk, why do you have such an idiotic handle? What person in their right mind names themselves after a helicopter?
    ===pause===
    My apologies for making my point by example rather than by explanation, but your attempts to try and find out more about Judaism strike me as being about the same as saying ‘It’s a shitty little religion for small minded people. By the way, does anyone want to explain why anyone would want to convert to it?’
    Now, you have a bit of a history of anti-semitic remarks (see here as one specifically called out by other commenters and including a(n apparently unclosed) goodbye cruel blog tag) means you are basically starting this discussion firmly seated in the penalty box, but I took your 10:39 comment at face value, so I am going to pause for another moment here, and just point out that when you are presented with a counter example (like the good Doc being a convert to Judaism) and you reply “I don’t take her to be at all typical”, you are violating the first rule of holes.
    As for the question of how many people convert to various religions, that is an interesting one, but ultimately unrelated to this discussion, as it is a discussion of the principles of various beliefs, not the number of likes a religion can attract, because if it were, we would probably be worshipping at the First United Church of Porn.
    On other things, I want to change Russell’s observation to a rhyme to teach to people going to Sunday school.
    Focus more on Jesus and less on Paul
    And pay no attention to Augustine at all.

  111. that is, accept for people with Jewish genes
    1. s/accept/except
    2. “Jewish genes?”
    You might be taken a lot more seriously if you didn’t write like a third grader in the White Power movement.

  112. (Although I shouldn’t expect more from someone who thinks Martin Sheen, Rita Hayworth and Cameron Diaz aren’t “white.”)

  113. Byomtov/Fuzzyface
    Specifically on contrasting treatments of the Jews by Christians and Muslims, my main argument is that neither Islam nor Christianity intrinsically possess values that would automatically lead to religious tolerance/intolerance. Modern “Western” values do not flow automatically from Judeao-Christian teaching, because if they did, how do you explain more than a millennium of failure to conceive of religious tolerance, never mind practice it? (Incidentally, Fuzzyface, to say that “separation of church and state” is a “Western” value just seems ludicrous to someone like me, who is a member of the Church of England, a church governed by Queen Elizabeth II. We need to try and think comparatively about such matters, which is hard for all of us).
    What I’m arguing is that because Islam at a relatively early stage evolved a written and authoritative statement of how other religions should be treated, it has been harder for it to adapt to changing social values concerning tolerance than Christianity, which has fewer specific social rules in its canonical texts. To take the examples of Britain and the Ottoman Empire: the Jews were expelled from England in 1290, and only allowed back in informally in the late seventeenth century. Jews were allowed to enter Parliament in 1858 and full access to all offices of state came in 1890.
    The Ottoman Empire never expelled Jews living there and passed laws in the mid-nineteenth century officially abolishing religious discrimination (as part of the Tanzimat reforms). Some of the successor states to the Ottoman Empire have subsequently re-imposed restrictions on Jews (e.g. they are effectively banned from entering Saudi Arabia). Restrictions on Jews have not, however, been re-imposed in the UK. So the position of Jews in the UK is now better than in the former Ottoman Empire, having once been substantially worse.
    Why is this the case? It can’t be because British people/Europeans/Christians are intrinsically tolerant and Turks/”Arabs”/Muslims aren’t; the medieval and early modern evidence doesn’t support that. Anti-semitism certainly continued to exist in twentieth-century Britain (we had our own home-grown fascists). It can’t be about the “separation of Church and State”, because there is still a state religion in the UK. It can’t be attributed to the effect of ancient Greek values or the existence of Parliament or the Renaissance/Reformation, because the treatment of Jews was worse in England until at least the seventeenth century, well after these occurred. (The suggestion that Oliver Cromwell officially allowed the Jews to return has now been debunked).
    I want to argue that one of the reasons that British anti-Semites/theocrats were not able to re-impose restrictions on Jews after they had been removed in the nineteenth century is that they did not have specific canonical authority to appeal to. Protestants who wished to repress Jews could point to passages of the New Testament that were generally hostile to them, but not ones mandating how they were to be treated by the state, because early Christianity wasn’t in a position to decide that. And to Protestants, the Old and New Testaments was the only canonical authority for such decisions. On the other hand Sunnis or Shias who wished to repress Jews could point to early canonical texts (the hadith, the pact of Umar) that did mandate how they were to be treated as inferior by the state.
    In other words, path dependence meant that canonising rules early on that were more tolerant than one’s neighbours made them harder to alter at a later stage, when they had become less tolerant than others.

  114. “Arabs sit in the Knesset, on the Supreme Court, and so on. They have total freedom of movement and the right to live anywhere in the country. That doesn’t mean that there is no perception of intolerance. I heard a talk recently from an Israeli professor who was being interviewed by reporters from several Arab nations. They wanted to know pretty much this question, so he called in one of his students, who happened to be an Israeli Arab sheik. The sheik told the reporters that Israel was horribly unfair to Arabs – but that it was a hundred times better than any Arab nation.”
    I don’t have time for this today, but this is just embarrassing. “Perception of intolerance.” So its just perception?
    Anyway, Israel’s biggest sin is in how it treats the Palestinians on the WB, which is comparable to the way a certain southern African country treated its black population.

  115. I don’t have time for this today, but this is just embarrassing. “Perception of intolerance.” So its just perception?
    That’s kind of a hard question to answer, wouldn’t you say? If I claimed that there was no actual intolerance, wouldn’t that be my perception, while somebody else’s would be different? I don’t think anything can be described as “just perception” or “not just perception” as that assumes some way of determining reality without using perception.
    Anyway, Israel’s biggest sin is in how it treats the Palestinians on the WB, which is comparable to the way a certain southern African country treated its black population.
    I don’t believe that’s a reasonable or fair statement. South African blacks didn’t have a longstanding history of murdering the whites, along with repeated statements that their goal was genocide. How to treat the Palestinians is a thorny problem in Israel; every single time they decide to let up on restrictions, more Palestinians take advantage of the opportunity to murder Israeli civilians.
    It may well be that many Palestinians would be perfectly happy leaving in peace with Israel. Maybe. When Palestinians form their equivalent of Israel’s “Peace Now” organization, it will be much easier to believe.

  116. magistra,

    Specifically on contrasting treatments of the Jews by Christians and Muslims, my main argument is that neither Islam nor Christianity intrinsically possess values that would automatically lead to religious tolerance/intolerance.

    I suppose it depends on what you believe automatically leads to religious intolerance. Given that modern-day Christianity is very tolerant, I would tend to agree as far as that faith is concerned. I’m not so sure about Islam. True, the Ottomans did not expel their Jews; however, there were intermittent pogroms and forced conversions – on top of the general treatment as second-class citizens. The “Golden Age of Spanish Jewry” in the Iberian peninsula was under the Berbers and Moors, who weren’t particularly devout Muslims, and ended when the very religious Almohads took over. I think we’d need an existence proof an actually tolerant Muslim society before agreeing that intolerance is not inherent in Islam.

    Modern “Western” values do not flow automatically from Judeao-Christian teaching, because if they did, how do you explain more than a millennium of failure to conceive of religious tolerance, never mind practice it? claimed that (Incidentally, Fuzzyface, to say that “separation of church and state” is a “Western” value just seems ludicrous to someone like me, who is a member of the Church of England, a church governed by Queen Elizabeth II. We need to try and think comparatively about such matters, which is hard for all of us).

    I don’t recall claiming that those values flowed automatically from such teaching. Only that the values are found within the teachings. For example, a Western value demands equal justice for all – that’s pretty explicit in the Pentateuch. But much of Medieval European society had clearly different justice systems for the highborn and the lowborn.
    When I say that separation of Church and State is a Western value and is based (or at least permitted) by Judaeo-Christian teachings, I mean that you can find the basis therein. Judaism has a separation of powers among the kingship, priesthood and judges, while the Christian statement “render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s; render unto G0d that which is G0d’s” gives an explicit basis from Christianity. You won’t find a similar statement within Islam, as far as I have been able to tell.

  117. Liberal Japonicus, I got to tell you, it really shows an inablility to think rationally and discuss openly when someone conflates a dislike (perhaps even an intense dislike) for Israel’s policies and Israel’s relationship with the US, with anti-semitism/hate talk.
    So we have Bibi running around with his immature crayon scrawled cartoon bomb graphic (talk about third grade) trying to scare the citizens of the US into a war with Iran. And lying about % figures (IAEA says 20% , Bibi is going on about 80% to 90% enrichment). I can’t be upset that Israel is trying to take us over the edge of sanity for it’s own selfish reasons?
    That AIPAC exists and how it functions and for what purposes is no mystery nor conspiracy theory. A US citizen not wanting a foreign government lobby to have a grip on US govt is not antisemitism nor is it hate talk.
    Not appreciating how Israel treats its Arab citizens and neighbors – most practically due to how that behavior impacts the US – (despite FF’s blatant distortion of the truth concerning these things) is not antisemitism or hate talk either.
    Phil, re; the white power movement (of which I am not a member nor even a sympathizer) let me ask you this. If Jews and African Americans, etc all get to be proud of their traditions and openly celebrate them and we are to respect them, why can’t white people be just as proud of their heritage. Are you white, Phil? I think you are. Why do you self loath?
    Fuzzy Face – it does seem to be true that Judiasm doesn’t seek converts. However, your response to the issue of those seeking to convert is facile at best. Reformed Jews? Seems they are more open to the idea. Orthodox, not so much. So it looks to me, admittedly an outsider, that it really depends on who you ask.

  118. If Jews and African Americans, etc all get to be proud of their traditions and openly celebrate them and we are to respect them, why can’t white people be just as proud of their heritage.
    I guess you’ve never heard of the many St. Patrick’s Day parades around the country. Did you happen to see Ferris Bueller, which featured a major scene during a very large and well attended German parade in downtown Chicago? Are Italians white enough? They have quite a few large festivals in the cities in my part of the country, most notably on Columbus Day in Philadelphia. I know of decent sized Polish and Greek festivals that occur at least yearly around here. I could probably go on, but I think I’ve made my point.
    So, I guess my question is – WTF are you talking about?

  119. Russell (and anyone else),
    Thanks for not being offended. I wrote that in a moment of irritation and should not have adopted such a mocking tone.
    I do wonder, from time to time, whether it’s possible to make a sort of metaphorical sense of the whole thing.
    Original sin: Natural and unavoidable human failings.
    Crucifixion: The damage we do others by our bad behavior.
    Redemption: Understanding the damage and atoning.
    Not particularly original, I suppose, and a lot of stretching of ideas that I don’t actually understand more than very supercficially.

  120. “So, I guess my question is – WTF are you talking about?”
    The white power movement?
    Just trying to respond to Phil’s scatological comment. My mistake.

  121. why can’t white people be just as proud of their heritage.
    They can.
    It’s the shooting the people who aren’t white part that’s problematic.
    Thanks for not being offended.
    NO WORRIES.
    I wrote that in a moment of irritation and should not have adopted such a mocking tone.
    Understandable.
    Not particularly original, I suppose
    The best things rarely are.

  122. iberal Japonicus, I got to tell you, it really shows an inablility to think rationally and discuss openly when someone conflates a dislike (perhaps even an intense dislike) for Israel’s policies and Israel’s relationship with the US, with anti-semitism/hate talk.
    Why, just LOOK at all this criticism of Israel, its policies and its relationship with the US!
    ” I can honestly say I’ve never even vagually known anyone who read about judaism and decided to become a jew. It’s seems ridiculous to, my mind, to even attempt to imagine such a thing”
    “I don’t think Judaism has much to offer beyond the clan/anscestor thing.”
    “who the hell actually chooses to be a Jew?”
    “So, what, exactly is the appeal of Judiasm beyond getting to declare that g-d likes you better than those marshugana goys?”
    Just trying to respond to Phil’s scatological comment.
    You do not know what the word “scatological” means. You are a stupid, stupid person and are punching way above your weight class.

  123. Liberal Japonicus, I got to tell you, it really shows an inablility to think rationally and discuss openly when someone conflates a dislike (perhaps even an intense dislike) for Israel’s policies and Israel’s relationship with the US, with anti-semitism/hate talk.
    Let’s look at the comment I linked to
    Any how, to answer that question is easy. No one gets elected in this country without the Zionist lobby (e.g. AIPAC) backing. Anyone who defies Isreal won’t get relected. Israel itself boosts of this power.
    Romney is already on board with the neocon nuts who think that bloody revolution across the middle east is a good thing – you know, the same guys that brought us the Iraq adventure, occupy A-stan, support the Muslim Brotherhood in Sysria, Egypt and Libya. Mostly jews, but also some other brilliant think tank paid for by the arms industry types.
    Obama less onboard, yet finding himself needing to ride the fence for fear of running afoul of the zionist lobby pre-election.

    You cast around these words, and when called on them, you say ‘oh, only talking about Israel, not about Judaism’. So there is something about owning what you say rather than trying to squirm out of it.
    But to make this clearer, the good doctor wrote the following in the original post
    Be warned that I will be policing the comments with extra firmness — I’m aware that this topic is one of the third rails of the Internet, with Godwin pre-installed.
    She may be hesitating to pull the trigger on the ban hammer because she doesn’t want to be seen as being thin skinned. I labor under no such burden, so I am giving you a warning now, one which I extend to the ‘why can’t white people be just proud of their heritage’ garbage (as if someone said they couldn’t be). So whatever ‘you got to tell me’, you may wish to turn it over a few times and then pass on the temptation. If you want to participate here, you are going to have to play nice, regardless how much you feel israel is a carbuncle of nations. I hope I’ve made myself clear.

  124. “You cast around these words, and when called on them, you say ‘oh, only talking about Israel, not about Judaism’.”
    Well, that’s where things get interesting because for Jews Israel is obviously holds some amount of importantance in their identity as Jews and for some, even those who are American citizens, Israel is a major facet of that identity; perhaps even above and beyond their identity as Americans.
    That there is a Jewish lobby is beyond question at this point. True there are some strains of the lobby that are more militant than others.
    Even Barack Obama implicitly noted differences within the lobby when ‘casts’ this about, “there is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says, ‘unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel, that you’re anti-Israel,’ and that can’t be the measure of our friendship with Israel.”
    So this is an interesting aspect of Judaism; what it means to be a Jew. For some maybe it’s just righteously following the miztvahs (apologies if I got that wrong) and for a substantial proportion (I don’t know what proportion) there is an integral and very important link to a little piece of land on the Eastern shore of the Med. that they believe god promised to them and that they are entitled to and that, furthermore, they are always looking to beyond the country of their residence and citizenship.
    This latter seems to me to be a source of both group cohesion and of group self-perpetuating suffering. Deserved suffering? I didn’t say that, but a reality of suffering nonetheless.

  125. Even Barack Obama implicitly noted differences within the lobby when ‘casts’ this about, “there is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says, ‘unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel, that you’re anti-Israel,’ and that can’t be the measure of our friendship with Israel.”
    Notice that Obama doesn’t use the word “Jewish” anywhere in this quote. The strain of the pro-Israel community he’s speaking about consists of many people who are not Jewish. It is not a “Jewish lobby.” It’s most of the American right.
    So far, it seems you think people who are devoutly Jewish are necessarily clannish and that people who are pro-Israel are necessarily Jewish (and therefore clannish).
    I mean, I get that you disagree with American Jews who, in your opinion, identify too strongly with Israel and that you disagree with many of the Israeli government’s policies and positions. I probably agree with you on some, perhaps many, of those points. But you bring along so much baggage with it that it’s really hard to take you seriously.

  126. You know hairshirt, people here accuse me of being intensely stupid, having all this or that baggage, being ignorant, bigotted, etc, but the thing is that the same people just make sh_t up to fit their view of the world – like you for example. Yes, AIPAC has members and support from non-Jewish members and groups, particularly hardcore christians of the end of times ilk. However, AIPAC is *not* ,as you suggest, just an org with rightwing appeal. It is happy to have – and does have – members from the left as well. It self describes and successfully seeking alliance with and membership from both major US political parties. It achieves this at least partly and perhaps largely through massive campaign contributions. It is the most powerful lobby on the hill. It’s not all about ideals for non_Jewish members/supporters.
    Additionally, All of it’s presidents have been Jewish.
    At least one former CIA director and one former DIA director believe and have publicly stated that AIPAC should be registered under FARA.
    I don’t normally rely on wiki too much, but this one has some good links that I am too busy to go pick up individuall on my own.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Israel_Public_Affairs_Committee
    So a former CIA director is saying essentially what I am saying, but people here are better informed and know it’s all just antisemitic rhetoric? Because that is basically what you are saying – that or you just don’t care to actually look into the issues and prefer to float around in a happy bubble.
    We should have to go so far afield to get some fundemental facts correct just to have a basic discussion. I understand, though, that it’s not a discussion anyone here wants to have. I’ll let you be.

  127. “I don’t believe that’s a reasonable or fair statement. South African blacks didn’t have a longstanding history of murdering the whites, along with repeated statements that their goal was genocide. How to treat the Palestinians is a thorny problem in Israel; every single time they decide to let up on restrictions, more Palestinians take advantage of the opportunity to murder Israeli civilians.”
    I believe it is an entirely fair and rational statement. I could change the comparison to the United States and its Native American population in the 19th century and the comparison would be even more fair. The main distinction between the three cases (and here I’m not being original)is simply the relative populations involved. As some clever commenter at Jerome Slater’s blog (I’m too lazy to go link) pointed out, what makes the I/P conflict unlikely to end in a democratic one state solution as opposed to the apartheid one state we have now is the fact that the numbers on both sides are similar. White people in the US might have been reluctant to let Native Americans off the reservations if there were 200 million of “them” crammed into less than 22 percent of their land (and shrinking due to white settlement activity), all wishing the Europeans had never come. There are always atrocities (on both sides) and there is generally bloodthirsty rhetoric involved when a settlers move into an already inhabited land.
    I wonder too if you remember much about what South Africa was like–not so much terrorism against whites, but thousands died in black on black violence in the townships between the ANC youth and the government-backed Inkatha party. The ANC tortured people in its prison camps. And South Africa isn’t exactly a crime-free region since. Is that sort of violence not supposed to count in determining the rights and wrongs in a given situation?
    As for the rhetoric used, I just saw an interesting link to a Haaretz piece which pointed out that the rhetoric and the behavior (on both sides) doesn’t really match up too well.
    As for violence, an early Zionist Ahad Ha’am was already complaining about contemptuous violence being displayed by Jewish immigrants towards Arabs in the early 1890’s. The first large scale killing between the two groups was in the 1920’s, by the Palestinians in two pogroms. In the later one, in Hebron, many Jews were saved by their Palestinian neighbors. By the 30’s the Jewish terrorist groups were planting bombs in Arab marketplaces. So there’s some parity there.
    As for restrictions and murdering civilians, please don’t tell me you’re serious. Well, I know you are and that’s depressing as hell. The Israelis have killed more civilians and if you say “in response to terrorism” I will invite you to look a little more deeply at the details. I’m not going to do it here, but frequently a given spasm is initiated by something violent the Israelis do first. And many of those restrictions you mention are imposed to protect the settlers on the West Bank, who in turn often get away with violence against Palestinians. There are two sets of laws in practice for two sets of people in the West Bank and that’s apartheid. As for what happens inside Israel itself, there is real discrimination, but as there is some chance of fighting it legally within the system for Israeli Palestinians that’s a separate issue and doesn’t really concern me as an American, or no more than countless other cases in other countries. But we are deeply implicated in Israel’s stupid and immoral policies towards Palestinians in general.
    “When Palestinians form their equivalent of Israel’s “Peace Now” organization, it will be much easier to believe.

    That’s grotesque. There are Palestinians who are in favor of non-violent protest. (Unfortunately some of the youth still throw stones, though I noted with interest that stone-throwing was considered non-violent protest when it was done against the Mubarak security forces.) You talk as though it’s Islamic Jihad on the one hand, and Peace Now on the other. That’s simply false. What’s really ridiculous about this is that Israel has had just about the most compliant Palestinian government it could possibly wish for in the PA (too compliant, really) and they still keep building on the WB, even during the so-called freeze a couple of years ago.

  128. There was no mention of AIPAC in the Obama quote I was addressing, nor in my comment. AIPAC is not the whole of the “pro-Israel community.” So, who’s making stuff up?
    I can’t say with certainty that AIPAC is or is not the most powerful lobby on the hill, but that assertion sounds pretty fishy.

  129. But even so, yes, there is something absurd about it.
    Posted by: russell | October 03, 2012 at 04:30 AM
    I would go even further and say the relationship between the father and son/Jesus, is sickening. The relationship between God and his children is brutal and abusive…but I keep coming back to the faith. Like a moth to a flame, or a dog to his vomit.
    Like Lady Gaga said (I think), maybe I was born this way. (Maybe that’s why Calvinism speaks to me).
    But Blackhawk, you have a very old fashion understanding of religion, which was much more popular at the turn of the last century.

  130. not the number of likes a religion can attract, because if it were, we would probably be worshipping at the First United Church of Porn.
    Posted by: liberal japonicus | October 03, 2012 at 07:41 AM
    That was freakin’ funny. Because its true…and they demand more than 10%
    As an aside, I wish folks would stop hating on Paul and Augustine. If you guys don’t like the way they formed their understanding of the Gospel, blame Greek philosophy. And Hellenized Rome.

  131. “I sure hope that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, understands that the standing ovation he got in Congress this year was not for his politics. That ovation was bought and paid for by the Israel lobby.”
    That was from Thomas Friedman in a column from December 2011, referring to a Netanyahu speech that received 29 standing ovations from both members of Congress when he visited that summer. So yeah, it’s a pretty powerful lobby. I don’t know about “most powerful” or how one rates such a thing. Obama tried to force a settlement freeze, a pretty mild thing really, since settlements on occupied land are an ongoing war crime, and he didn’t get much support from either side of the aisle. You only started to see prominent Democrats siding with Obama against Netanyahu recently, because Netanyahu was trying a little too hard to push us into war with Iran.

  132. Donald,

    I believe it is an entirely fair and rational statement. I could change the comparison to the United States and its Native American population in the 19th century and the comparison would be even more fair. The main distinction between the three cases (and here I’m not being original)is simply the relative populations involved. As some clever commenter at Jerome Slater’s blog (I’m too lazy to go link) pointed out, what makes the I/P conflict unlikely to end in a democratic one state solution as opposed to the apartheid one state we have now is the fact that the numbers on both sides are similar. White people in the US might have been reluctant to let Native Americans off the reservations if there were 200 million of “them” crammed into less than 22 percent of their land (and shrinking due to white settlement activity), all wishing the Europeans had never come. There are always atrocities (on both sides) and there is generally bloodthirsty rhetoric involved when a settlers move into an already inhabited land.

    That you’ve found a similarity – two different populations – doesn’t make the comparison appropriate. The Arabs, including the Palestinian Arabs, have been completely consistent in insisting that they will never live in peace with a sovereign Jewish state. You seem to be making a bunch of unwarranted assumptions, including the idea that the Palestinian Arabs were native to the land and that the Jews are interlopers. That happens not to be the case. The land never belonged to them, and they didn’t even start calling themselves Palestinians, as far as I can tell, until the 1960s. By international law, the entire Palestinian mandate was intended for Jewish settlement, subject only to guarantees for the civil rights of any non-Jewish inhabitants. Of course, 78% of the mandate was unilaterally handed over to the Arabs to create what is now the state of Jordan.

    There are Palestinians who are in favor of non-violent protest. (Unfortunately some of the youth still throw stones, though I noted with interest that stone-throwing was considered non-violent protest when it was done against the Mubarak security forces.) You talk as though it’s Islamic Jihad on the one hand, and Peace Now on the other. That’s simply false. What’s really ridiculous about this is that Israel has had just about the most compliant Palestinian government it could possibly wish for in the PA (too compliant, really) and they still keep building on the WB, even during the so-called freeze a couple of years ago.

    Not at all. In the first place, stone-throwing is not non-violent, no matter what people may have said regarding Mubaraks’ forces. And I am not talking of some isolated non-violent protests. Peace Now is an Israeli organization which protests against Israel. A corresponding Palestinian organization would be protesting against the Palestinian Authority and in favor of concession to Israel. Nothing of the kind exists.
    And no, I am not “talk[ing] as though it’s Islamic Jihad on the one hand, and Peace Now on the other.” I’ll thank you not to try to read my mind. Respond to what I actually say, please, not what would make it easy for you to answer.
    No, the PA government has never been “compliant.” The PA has recently been cooperative as regards security arrangements in the West Bank – which has resulted in some mutual benefit. But its leadership has consistently refused to accept the possibility of a permanent Jewish sovereign state, has refused to take action against terrorism against Israelis, and doesn’t control Gaza at all. In fact, according to its own constitution, it has no legitimacy, since its term of office ended years ago.
    Building in the WB is a point of contention, as both sides rush to create “facts on the ground.” But Israel has not expanded the boundaries of its populace there, by agreement, while the Palestinians have shown no such restraint. All building has been within the existing boundaries.
    But the issue is not, and has never been, about boundaries. It is about whether a sovereign Jewish state is permitted to exist at all. The conflict is between the Jews, who want to keep on living in their ancestral land, and the Palestinians, who would – at least according to the Hamas charter – prefer to kill them all.

  133. There is a huge peace movement among the Palestinians; for some reason many in the US media do not feel it important enough to report about.
    Israel wants to claim all the good stuff of “The West” while clinging to its bad stuff as well. One man, one vote is the future of Israel, and the old fashioned state-political theory of a unified ethno-religious-national identity will be understood to be a relic of the past.
    One more thing, I attend conferences on Calvinism and there is always a huge South African presence. And one of the justifications for apartheid was the inherent violence of Black Africans, and the suffering their ancestors experienced in concentration camps of the British.

  134. Another thing. Native Americans never referred to themselves as Native or America, or Indian. And various tribes in Africa, never referred to themselves as African or Black. All of those names were given to them, as a result of colonialization.

  135. I can’t say with certainty that AIPAC is or is not the most powerful lobby on the hill, but that assertion sounds pretty fishy.
    If one searches OpenSecrets.org, one finds that, as spenders go this cycle, they aren’t even in the top twenty.

  136. If you guys don’t like the way they formed their understanding of the Gospel, blame Greek philosophy. And Hellenized Rome.
    Hmmmm
    Focus more on Jesus and less on Greek Philosophy
    And pay no attention to Hellenized Roman fee fees.

    Doesn’t quite scan. ;^)

  137. I guess what I’m trying to say is that both Paul and Augustine were profoundly influenced by their culture, going so far as to use Neo-Platonic categories to translate/communicate the Gospel to the culture around them. The Trinity, piety, and other concepts seem to have been more Hellenistic/Roman, than Judaic.

  138. “The Arabs, including the Palestinian Arabs, have been completely consistent in insisting that they will never live in peace with a sovereign Jewish state. You seem to be making a bunch of unwarranted assumptions, including the idea that the Palestinian Arabs were native to the land and that the Jews are interlopers. That happens not to be the case. The land never belonged to them, and they didn’t even start calling themselves Palestinians, as far as I can tell, until the 1960s. By international law, the entire Palestinian mandate was intended for Jewish settlement, subject only to guarantees for the civil rights of any non-Jewish inhabitants. Of course, 78% of the mandate was unilaterally handed over to the Arabs to create what is now the state of Jordan.”
    It is true that some Jews have been there all along, and there’s been a longing on the part of Jews in the diaspora to return. The idea that Arabs aren’t native is silly–either you are agreeing with the Joan Peters idiocy (though it’s older than her) or you’re saying that people whose ancestors moved there hundreds of years ago (or longer) aren’t natives. Frankly, I’d say Israelis who are there now are natives, if they were born there and are first generation. (Also, if we’re going back 2000 years ago chances are the genetic lines between Jews and Palestinians are very entangled. At least some Jews presumably converted to Christianity and then some of them later to Islam.)
    I know that the Sam Remo declaration is commonly cited by rightwing Israel supporters. In the early 20th century Jews were less than 10 percent of the population. The Balfour declaration was sheer arrogance–the British had no moral right to be making such promises. It’s also doubletalk–you don’t promise the land that is already lived in to Jews (who were a small minority there) and at the same time say the civil rights of the non-Jewish population would be respected. This is characteristic of the time period, towards the end of the era of European imperialism and as happened elsewhere, the European powers set the stage for all the crap that has happened there since.
    Palestinian nationalism as such was probably born as a reaction to Zionism. It’s an irrelevancy as far as rights are concerned–there were hundreds of thousands of Arabs/Palestinians living in what is now Israel and they were forced out or fled and not allowed back.
    “Peace Now is an Israeli organization which protests against Israel. A corresponding Palestinian organization would be protesting against the Palestinian Authority and in favor of concession to Israel. Nothing of the kind exists.”
    It shouldn’t exist, not as you want it to. There are Palestinians who believe in a nonviolent struggle for their rights. That’s what should exist.
    “But its leadership has consistently refused to accept the possibility of a permanent Jewish sovereign state, has refused to take action against terrorism against Israelis”
    Abbas refuses to say he recognizes Israel as having the right to exist as a Jewish state. He recognizes it as a sovereign country that controls its own borders–as he put it, what they call themselves is their business. Asking Palestinians to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state is asking them to endorse their own expulsion. This is a separate issue from the Palestinian right of return. Olmert claimed he and Abbas argued about the extent of that back in 2008, but that Abbas conceded he wouldn’t demand that it be taken to the point of changing Israel’s Jewish character. (BTW, that’s a hell of a concession for the Palestinians to make and it dwarfs anything Israel will ever give up.)
    “Building in the WB is a point of contention, as both sides rush to create “facts on the ground.” But Israel has not expanded the boundaries of its populace there, by agreement, while the Palestinians have shown no such restraint. ”
    Um, yeah, sure. Palestinians are rushing to build in what’s left of their land, while Israelis cancelled their settlement “freeze” (which wasn’t real to begin with).
    By the way, how many settlements are WB Palestinians rushing to build inside the 67 borders of Israel? I mean, if there’s some sort of parity here then presumably both sides are crossing the border in opposite directions, trying to build facts on the ground. Israelis must grind their teeth constantly having to pass through all those Palestinian checkpoints around Tel Aviv.
    I agree that the Hamas charter is barbaric, but that doesn’t represent all Palestinians. It doesn’t even represent all of Hamas. But the difference between the Israeli right and the Palestinian right isn’t all that great anyway, not in practical terms. They are brothers under the skin and as for genocidal rhetoric, there’s some of that from Israeli rabbis too you know.

  139. I don’t know how much money is spent, but AIPAC gets results–here’s an example from 2010, when 76 Senators sided with Netanyahu against Obama–
    politico
    The background was that Obama wanted a settlement freeze, while the Israelis wanted negotiations without preconditions. The senators, full of support for that noted dove Netanyahu, thought Obama was making a mistake.
    No doubt it was the cogency of Netanyahu’s arguments that had them all convinced.

  140. someotherdude,

    There is a huge peace movement among the Palestinians; for some reason many in the US media do not feel it important enough to report about.

    Then I’m rather disappointed you didn’t think it important enough to link to information on it, either.

  141. If one searches OpenSecrets.org, one finds that, as spenders go this cycle, they aren’t even in the top twenty.

    Everyone knows that the Jooos have infiltrated the Illuminatis (or was it vice versa?) that control most of the rest of campaign contributions. You have to peek behind the curtain, as I have.

  142. Donald Johnson,

    It is true that some Jews have been there all along, and there’s been a longing on the part of Jews in the diaspora to return. The idea that Arabs aren’t native is silly–either you are agreeing with the Joan Peters idiocy (though it’s older than her) or you’re saying that people whose ancestors moved there hundreds of years ago (or longer) aren’t natives.

    Those who moved their hundreds of years ago or longer, sure. It is certainly not the case that no Arabs are considered native to the land. That’s why the Mandate specified that their civil rights had to be preserved.

    The Balfour declaration was sheer arrogance–the British had no moral right to be making such promises.

    And it was that same “arrogance” that led them to create the many Arab nations that now exist. Are all of those also illegitimate? Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and so on? By international law, conquerers have always decided where sovereignty lay. What other right did the Ottomans have? Or, for that matter, what right did Rome have to expel the Jews in the first place? You need to be consistent. Are you going to invalidate Pakistan, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait…? All of these countries were invented by the Brits.

    Asking Palestinians to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state is asking them to endorse their own expulsion.

    Nonsense. Israel being a “Jewish state” does not mean that nobody else is allowed to live there. It’s not like the Palestinians insistence on a Juden-rein Palestine. It’s just stating that they will accept Israeli sovereignty as final, and not constantly be trying to undermine it. They want a state for the Palestinians, they have to concede a state for the Jews.

    Um, yeah, sure. Palestinians are rushing to build in what’s left of their land, while Israelis cancelled their settlement “freeze” (which wasn’t real to begin with).

    By what law did the land ever belong to the “Palestinians”? You seem to be inventing your own laws, here.

    I agree that the Hamas charter is barbaric, but that doesn’t represent all Palestinians.

    And yet they voted Hamas into power, and there doesn’t appear to be any effective resistance to their authority.

    But the difference between the Israeli right and the Palestinian right isn’t all that great anyway, not in practical terms. They are brothers under the skin and as for genocidal rhetoric, there’s some of that from Israeli rabbis too you know.

    If the Palestinians limited themselves to rhetoric, there would be peace. The Israeli rabbis aren’t firing rockets at Palestinian schools. Do you really not see a practical difference between offensive rhetoric and murder?

  143. Or, to state it from a slightly different angle:
    both Paul and Augustine were profoundly influenced by their culture, going so far as to use Neo-Platonic categories to translate/communicate the Gospel to the culture around them.
    That’s all good, but their culture is not my culture.

  144. “And yet they voted Hamas into power….”
    And Israelis voted Bibi into power.
    “The Israeli rabbis aren’t firing rockets at Palestinian schools…”
    Sure they are. Willy Peter too….and bulldozers. They kill ratio is about 5 to 1 (Pal.s to Jews) over the past decade.
    “Everyone knows that the Jooos …..”
    Is that what a jackass considers to be a cogent argument?

  145. “And it was that same “arrogance” that led them to create the many Arab nations that now exist. Are all of those also illegitimate? Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and so on? By international law, conquerers have always decided where sovereignty lay”
    Promising that Palestine would be the homeland for Jews when the vast majority of people already living there were non-Jewish is arrogant. The US recently conquered Iraq. If we had then proclaimed that Iraq would be the homeland of some group (perhaps even one with an ancient historical tie to the land) that would have been not only arrogant, but ridiculous. And yes, the rest was arrogant too. You were making a claim based on international law and I’m pointing out the sheer moral irrelevance of the Balfour declaration and what followed. I’m not suggesting that we now have wars to redraw all the boundaries.
    “Nonsense. Israel being a “Jewish state” does not mean that nobody else is allowed to live there. It’s not like the Palestinians insistence on a Juden-rein Palestine. It’s just stating that they will accept Israeli sovereignty as final, and not constantly be trying to undermine it. They want a state for the Palestinians, they have to concede a state for the Jews.”
    Nonsense right back at you. Israel is a Jewish state because about 700,000 Palestinians were ejected back in 1948 and not allowed back. (Some that tried were shot.) Asking the Palestinians not just to recognize Israel as a state (which the PLO did decades ago), but as a Jewish state is a slap in the face. So they take the land, force the Palestinians out, and then demand that the Palestinians recognize their right to have done it? Abbas is right–once the Palestinians recognize Israel’s right to exist they have done what is required under international law and it is not their duty to go further. Are we supposed to recognize Iran’s right to exist as a Muslim theocracy? No. Is Mexico supposed to recognize our right to exist as an Anglo-Saxon hegemony that took much of their territory from them in the 19th century? No. As for Juden-rein Palestine, have we just gotten into Godwin territory? Can I make Nazi analogies too? Palestinians demanding the removal of illegal settlements on the West Bank are often portrayed as demanding a “Juden-rein” Palestine.
    “By what law did the land ever belong to the “Palestinians”?”
    Un freaking believable. So it’s perfectly okay for Israelis to settle in the West Bank, but it’s not okay for West Bank Palestinians to move back inside the 67 lines? Are you making a case for a one state solution? The apartheid one, that is? Quite a few rightwing Israelis think this way and it’s part of why some think the two state solution is near death. I’m not optimistic about a democratic one state solution coming out of this–more likely there will be either the continuation of apartheid (dressed up as a 2SS, complete with bantustans).
    Incidentally, some lefties think that because the tendency is going this way it’s good news for a one state solution, but I think Jerome Slater is right–if a 2SS is out of reach a democratic 1SS is even further.
    link1
    Slater
    “nd yet they voted Hamas into power, and there doesn’t appear to be any effective resistance to their authority.”
    Israeli behavior is barbaric too, and there doesn’t appear to be any effective resistance to their authority.

  146. “The Israeli rabbis aren’t firing rockets at Palestinian schools. Do you really not see a practical difference between offensive rhetoric and murder?”
    I didn’t see that until I saw the other person’s reply. I grant the terrorism and murders committed by the Palestinian side and you say the most extraordinary things, as though you imagine that Israel didn’t drop white phosphorus on Gaza (the willy pete of the other reply) or that they haven’t killed far more civilians in the past several decades than Israeli civilians killed by Palestinians. You can’t have a serious discussion on this topic if both sides aren’t willing to admit that both sides have done terrible things.
    And there’s nothing unusual in your stance. It pops up in virtually every discussion of the I/P conflict and it has no more relationship with reality than the most vile piece of anti-semitic rhetoric, yet it is accepted as part of polite conversation.

  147. Promising that Palestine would be the homeland for Jews when the vast majority of people already living there were non-Jewish is arrogant. The US recently conquered Iraq.

    Numbers seem hard to verify, but OK, I’ll grant the arrogance. Yes, I was arguing law – didn’t realize you weren’t. But then, most of the borders of Middle East are the result of British arrogance. Some wound up worse than others.

    Israel is a Jewish state because about 700,000 Palestinians were ejected back in 1948 and not allowed back.

    Incorrect. They were not “ejected” – at least not most of them. Arab leaders told them to get out of the way and claimed that the Jews were going to massacre them if they didn’t, so they fled. Those who did not flee became citizens of Israel.

    So it’s perfectly okay for Israelis to settle in the West Bank, but it’s not okay for West Bank Palestinians to move back inside the 67 lines? Are you making a case for a one state solution?

    I am questioning your assertion that the land was ever the property of the Palestinians. Israel conquered the West Bank in a defensive war – and when they offered it back to Jordan (along with the Gaza back to Egypt and the Golan back to Syria) in return for peace, they were answered with the three “Nos” of Khartoum. That’s what gives them the right to control the land, including allowing their citizens to settle in it – along with the Mandate which gives them the legal right under international law.
    Given that the West Bank Palestinians fled and are not citizens of Israel, and have no control over the land, they have no right to enter the country.
    You keep invoking the bugaboo of “right-wing Israelis” – I think you have missed the fact that pretty much all Israelis nowadays have concluded that the Palestinians have no interest in peace. No, there is not likely to be a two-state solution or a one-state solution as long as the Palestinians are intent on the destruction of Israel. Once that changes, all kinds of things could be possible. I’m not holding my breath.

  148. “Incorrect. They were not “ejected” – at least not most of them. Arab leaders told them to get out of the way and claimed that the Jews were going to massacre them if they didn’t, so they fled.”
    You’re decades out of date on this. Some fled because there was a war and some were deliberately expelled. You don’t know this? And after the war some tried to come back. Some were shot. The ones who stayed were now a small minority, no demographic threat, to use the charming phrase.
    “I am questioning your assertion that the land was ever the property of the Palestinians. Israel conquered the West Bank in a defensive war – and when they offered it back to Jordan (along with the Gaza back to Egypt and the Golan back to Syria) in return for peace, they were answered with the three “Nos” of Khartoum. That’s what gives them the right to control the land, including allowing their citizens to settle in it – along with the Mandate which gives them the legal right under international law. Given that the West Bank Palestinians fled and are not citizens of Israel, and have no control over the land, they have no right to enter the country”
    This is sheer nonsense. How can you possibly believe that there is a law that says Israel can take over territory already inhabited, keep it if it wants to, allow its citizens to settle there, and treat the Palestinians there as less than citizens. You objected to the apartheid label and yet you actually embrace the practice of it. You just don’t want the label.
    And the Mandate is a League of Nations affair–I doubt very seriously that most experts in international law would give the Balfour declaration any weight. Israel’s right to exist as a nation would fall under what the UN decided in the late 40’s. That, incidentally, was also unfair to the Palestinians, but that is the law and so Palestinians, the sensible ones, would do well to recognize it. The moderate ones did decades ago. I agree with Finkelstein about that–if the left is going to invoke international law it also has to recognize Israel’s right to exist inside the 67 borders. Again, the PLO has done this–not the “Jewish state” angle, which they aren’t obligated to do. Hamas has not, though some have made noises about being practical. But Israel screams and yells when the PA tries to obtain recognition at the UN, so they have little basis for complaint regarding rejectionist Palestinians.
    “You keep invoking the bugaboo of “right-wing Israelis””
    I’m being charitable. If you wish to claim that most Israelis think this way, go right ahead. I suspect the truth is more complicated–that the majority are indifferent to the Palestinians or even uneasy about their treatment, but so long as there is no intifada going on and their own lives are comfortable enough they’re not going to start an upheaval in their own society to reach a peace agreement. People tend to be that way. The settlers are passionate in their belief that they have the right to practice apartheid and passion wins over indifference in politics.
    As for blaming the Palestinians, no doubt that’s true too. There’s a considerable amount of doublethink in your own position–you object to the apartheid label and yet embrace the notion that Israelis can move to the WB and Palestinians can’t move inside Israel. That makes perfect sense to you, so it would seem like fanaticism if Palestinians bitterly resent the hypocrisy, racism, and arrogance. On top of that some Palestinians really are fanatical, just as some Israelis clearly are.
    I expect nothing from the I/P conflict except disaster in the long run. I hope that’s wrong. Maybe it would be if Obama in a second term felt empowered to grow a spine, but I doubt it. As an American I would like to see us dissociate ourselves from that train wreck. We are perfectly capable of committing war crimes on our own account without being wedded to Israel’s . But we’re too deeply entangled and it’s our problem too.

  149. Crikey. I finally got caught up on reading all your comments.
    Blackhawk, be more polite. I don’t feel as though I’ve monitored this discussion as closely as I should have (a client opened an email attachment they shouldn’t have, didn’t realize what was going on, then updated their website via FTP and got malware on EVERYTHING), so I feel like I have to not banhammer you at the moment. But I really want you to think CAREFULLY about your next comments.

  150. That’s all good, but their culture is not my culture.
    Posted by: russell | October 03, 2012 at 10:17 PM
    You got me there.

  151. To give a polite answer to a rude question:
    My observation is that in the past 20-30 years conversion to Judaism has become not uncommon. It is rare for people to convert as singles, though. In most cases, converts are partnered with a Jew, and come in with them.
    Googling about, I came across Peter Kaufman Gluck’s U. Michigan PhD dissertation, an anthropological study of interfaith parents raising their children as Jewish. His findings are very close to my observation and experience.
    Most importantly, it is *extremely* rare for intermarried American Jews to convert to Christianity; it is not uncommon for their Christian spouses to convert to Judaism, or to practice Judaism and raise their children as Jews without undergoing a formal conversion.
    Partly, in my experience, this is because Judaism is not centered on a credal statement: there is no list of things to which you have to give assent, as one does converting to Christianity. Judaism is about what you *do*, how you act — it’s possible to be an observant Jewish atheist or agnostic, for instance, which is pretty much unthinkable for a Christian.
    Now I have to go to sleep, so play nicely while I’m gone.

  152. Fuzzy Face,
    I was under the impression that Israel had established itself, like a traditional European (Western, if you like) colonizing power.
    Ari Shavit, Q: According to your findings, how many acts of Israeli massacre were perpetrated in 1948? Benny Morris, A: “Twenty-four. In some cases four or five people were executed, in others the numbers were 70, 80, 100. There was also a great deal of arbitrary killing. Two old men are spotted walking in a field – they are shot. A woman is found in an abandoned village – she is shot. There are cases such as the village of Dawayima [in the Hebron region], in which a column entered the village with all guns blazing and killed anything that moved. “The worst cases were Saliha (70-80 killed), Deir Yassin (100-110), Lod (250), Dawayima (hundreds) and perhaps Abu Shusha (70). There is no unequivocal proof of a large-scale massacre at Tantura, but war crimes were perpetrated there. At Jaffa there was a massacre about which nothing had been known until now. The same at Arab al Muwassi, in the north. About half of the acts of massacre were part of Operation Hiram [in the north, in October 1948]: at Safsaf, Saliha, Jish, Eilaboun, Arab al Muwasi, Deir al Asad, Majdal Krum, Sasa. In Operation Hiram there was a unusually high concentration of executions of people against a wall or next to a well in an orderly fashion. “That can’t be chance. It’s a pattern. Apparently, various officers who took part in the operation understood that the expulsion order they received permitted them to do these deeds in order to encourage the population to take to the roads. The fact is that no one was punished for these acts of murder. Ben-Gurion silenced the matter. He covered up for the officers who did the massacres.”
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benny_Morris

  153. It might be argued, that one of the reasons for the fundamentalist reaction in the early and mid 20th Century, was the rise of “Christian atheism.” That is, Protestant churches did not require members to believe in the supernatural events of Scripture, for membership.
    Most of the Founding Fathers, are usually understood as deist, but I think Christian atheism might better describe the form of their deism. Thomas Jefferson’s Bible being a prime example of this impulse.
    Michael Harrington and James Joyce are examples of RC examples.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_atheism
    I understand about 30% of Northern European Christians, do not believe in a literal interpretation of the supernatural events of the Bible.
    But your point is well taken, since the late 1970s, literalism has become more popular.

  154. Fuzzyface wrote:
    The “Golden Age of Spanish Jewry” in the Iberian peninsula was under the Berbers and Moors, who weren’t particularly devout Muslims, and ended when the very religious Almohads took over. I think we’d need an existence proof an actually tolerant Muslim society before agreeing that intolerance is not inherent in Islam.
    Well, there you have it. If someone finds an example of a tolerant Muslim state, you decide it’s not properly Islamic. If someone finds an example of a anti-Semitic western/Christian state (like medieval England), well that doesn’t count, because what you’re talking about is ‘modern Christianity’ (well, what you’re really talking about is Christianity as practised in the US, given you don’t seem well-informed about even European Christianity). You’re moving the goalposts in a way which makes any comparisons meaningless.
    It’s perfectly sensible to say that Christianity as currently practised in the USA is much more tolerant than Islam as currently practised in Middle Eastern countries (I don’t pretend to know the details of e.g. current South East Asian practise). But to say that is the one eternal truth about Christianity and Islam is to adopt a completely ahistorical attitude.

  155. Is that what a jackass considers to be a cogent argument?

    No, it’s what a jackass thought was a fun way to underscore that the rhetorical vehicle of another commenter is in fact a Mini Cooper with a few dozen clowns as passengers.
    Once the Internet fixes the sarchasm, life will be much easier.

  156. Once the Internet fixes the sarchasm, life will be much easier.
    IOW, I think Slarti was saying that the Clan of Fiercely Independent Thinkers has a bit of a stiffy for the Clan of the Jews.

  157. “Clan of Fiercely Independent Thinkers ‘
    Clan meaning more than one? I don’t have any use for Blackhawk’s idiotic statements about Judaism (I happen to know Christians who’ve converted to Judaism and vice versa and a long time ago where I went to school a white female college prof from the Midwest had switched from Methodist to Muslim. People convert every which way. The whole religion bashing topic bores me no matter who does it and I ignore it,but yeah, Blackhawk made some offensive statements upthread.)
    Or is this another one of those routines where if someone bashes AIPAC and/or Israel it’s because they’re anti-semitic? Because that’s garbage.

  158. Just (and belatedly) for the record. I am not hating on Paul but happy to do it on St.Augustine. There is quite a lot I dislike about him but I think the most consequential evil he wrought was his teaching on original sin that explicitly condemned even the unbaptized unborn to hell without exception.

  159. Someotherdude,
    OK, you’re right – these do sound like non-violent protest movements, and they are indeed not covered by the Western press that I’ve seen. Now, they are not what I was talking about. The point I was trying to make was that Palestinian society does not appear to tolerate dissension anything similar to what Peace Now represents – protests _against_ their own authorities and in favor of reaching out to the other side. That’s what I believe is essential for the possibility of peace.
    But

    I was under the impression that Israel had established itself, like a traditional European (Western, if you like) colonizing power.

    A frequent charge, but wrong in this case, not the least because a colonizing power by definition makes the new territory a colony of its home state. And you need to be very careful about citing Benny Morris. He says that a lot of his work has been misunderstood and misused, especially by dishonest scholars like Ilan Pappe and Norman Finkelstein.
    http://zionism-israel.com/israel_news/2008/05/benny-morris-on-1948-recanting.html
    Donald Johnson,
    We’re not coming even close to an understanding here, so I won’t bother answering every comment you make, but I’ll take on a couple.

    This is sheer nonsense. How can you possibly believe that there is a law that says Israel can take over territory already inhabited, keep it if it wants to, allow its citizens to settle there, and treat the Palestinians there as less than citizens.

    No. There are a few issues here. First, if you’re going to say once a land has inhabitants, no other people is allowed to come in establish a state there, then most of today’s nations have no right to exist. If you’re going to establish a rule along those lines, you need to refine it quite a bit and show that it applies to everybody, not just Israel. Second, even ignoring your misuse of the label (the Arabs living there did not call themselves Palestinians), those who remained in the borders are full citizens. It is only those who took themselves out of Israeli sovereignty who are not. Non-citizens, especially those who have in word and deed declared themselves enemies of a state, do not have the right to be citizens of that state or be treated as such.

    There’s a considerable amount of doublethink in your own position–you object to the apartheid label and yet embrace the notion that Israelis can move to the WB and Palestinians can’t move inside Israel.

    Apartheid has a specific meaning: a system of segregation by race. Israel does not do that. Israeli Arabs are full citizens, permitted to live where they wish. Palestinians in the West Bank are not, and therefore have no more right to move into Israel than Mexicans have to move into the US. The disputed territories are not sovereign nations, and their status is disputed. Both sides claim them, so you cannot apply the same principles there.
    magistra,

    Well, there you have it. If someone finds an example of a tolerant Muslim state, you decide it’s not properly Islamic.

    It is not for me – or you – to say who is “properly Islamic.” I said only that they were not particularly devout. Claiming that Muslims who are not devout are not “properly Islamic” is like claiming that Reform Jews are not “properly Jewish.” As somebody who grew up Reform, and who has plenty of Reform relatives, that’s not a claim I choose to make.

  160. There is quite a lot I dislike about him but I think the most consequential evil he wrought was his teaching on original sin that explicitly condemned even the unbaptized unborn to hell without exception.
    Posted by: Hartmut | October 04, 2012 at 11:26 AM
    He’s an egalitarian! As an aside, I was lurking at a reactionary Roman Catholic site. (And when I say reactionary, I mean that’s what they were calling themselves, not conservative, not orthodox, but reactionary). Anyway, when they would enter abortion discussions, it was interesting to read how newbies to the site were introduced to the concept of original sin and the notion of “innocent babies.”
    In defense of the indefensible, the concept of original sin helped me make sense of Foucault’s notion of “power” and Marx’s notion of “Primitive Accumulation.”

  161. It is not for me – or you – to say who is “properly Islamic.” I said only that they were not particularly devout.
    I think magistra was invoking the “no true Scotsman” thing rather than accusing you of being judgemental about a lack of religious conviction.

  162. Dissent is usually a touchy subject in occupied and colonized areas. Whether it was Native American’s lynching Christian converts in reservations or Necklacing in South Africa or the notion of the Useful Jew, in anti-Semitic societies.
    In regards to Morris, I know his controversial place in establishing Israeli history, and that is why I chose him. He is bluntly honest as to what it took to establish a Jewish state. He reminds me of the Anglo-Saxonist/conservative historians who are blunt about breaking Indian and African eggs to establish the United States.
    Ben-Gurion was a “transferist”?
    “Of course. Ben-Gurion was a transferist. He understood that there could be no Jewish state with a large and hostile Arab minority in its midst. There would be no such state. It would not be able to exist.”
    I don’t hear you condemning him.
    “Ben-Gurion was right. If he had not done what he did, a state would not have come into being. That has to be clear. It is impossible to evade it. Without the uprooting of the Palestinians, a Jewish state would not have arisen here.”
    When ethnic cleansing is justified
    Benny Morris, for decades you have been researching the dark side of Zionism. You are an expert on the atrocities of 1948. In the end, do you in effect justify all this? Are you an advocate of the transfer of 1948?
    “There is no justification for acts of rape. There is no justification for acts of massacre. Those are war crimes. But in certain conditions, expulsion is not a war crime. I don’t think that the expulsions of 1948 were war crimes. You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs. You have to dirty your hands.”
    We are talking about the killing of thousands of people, the destruction of an entire society.
    “A society that aims to kill you forces you to destroy it. When the choice is between destroying or being destroyed, it’s better to destroy.”
    There is something chilling about the quiet way in which you say that.
    “If you expected me to burst into tears, I’m sorry to disappoint you. I will not do that.”
    So when the commanders of Operation Dani are standing there and observing the long and terrible column of the 50,000 people expelled from Lod walking eastward, you stand there with them? You justify them?
    “I definitely understand them. I understand their motives. I don’t think they felt any pangs of conscience, and in their place I wouldn’t have felt pangs of conscience. Without that act, they would not have won the war and the state would not have come into being.”
    You do not condemn them morally?
    “No.”
    They perpetrated ethnic cleansing.
    “There are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing. I know that this term is completely negative in the discourse of the 21st century, but when the choice is between ethnic cleansing and genocide – the annihilation of your people – I prefer ethnic cleansing.”

    From:
    An Interview with Benny Morris

  163. “The point I was trying to make was that Palestinian society does not appear to tolerate dissension anything similar to what Peace Now represents – protests _against_ their own authorities and in favor of reaching out to the other side. ”
    The Palestinian governments are not very tolerant of dissent–there is dissent however and Palestinian human rights organizations that criticize Hamas based in Gaza. Human Rights Watch just put out a very critical report of Hamas’s human rights violations in Gaza based on info from Palestinians. HRW They do not “reach out” to the other side in your sense AFAIK, nor should they, not given your opinions.. Palestinians are doing what they should be doing if they advocate nonviolent resistance to Israeli occupation and also the oppression of their own government.
    “First, if you’re going to say once a land has inhabitants, no other people is allowed to come in establish a state there, then most of today’s nations have no right to exist. If you’re going to establish a rule along those lines, you need to refine it quite a bit and show that it applies to everybody, not just Israel. Second, even ignoring your misuse of the label (the Arabs living there did not call themselves Palestinians), those who remained in the borders are full citizens. It is only those who took themselves out of Israeli sovereignty who are not. Non-citizens, especially those who have in word and deed declared themselves enemies of a state, do no”
    Sigh. More nonsense. People who either flee their homes in war or are forced out have the right to return afterwards. If the government in charge doesn’t let them back in then it’s a form of ethnic cleansing even for those who fled.
    As for your first point, on moving into an already inhabited land, clearly that is much of the story of humanity and in particular, Western settler colonialism in recent centuries. I implied as much already when I compared Israel to the US. The Zionists got into the act very late, when that sort of behavior was in its twilight years of acceptability. White people could still set the terms and draw the borders, but it was starting to look funny. As far as Israel inside its 1967 borders are concerned, the injustices (including the Nakba) involved in its creation are receding into history. Israel has the same legal rights as any other country inside the 67 borders. A two state solution might involve some sort of negotiated right of return, allowing a non-demographically threatening number of Palestinians to come back. Personally I think the whole question of “demographic threat” is nonsense, but I also recognize that it might be awhile before the Middle East is ready to accept the melting pot notion.
    But you and whatever fraction of Israelis agree with you still want to live happily back in the good old days of imperialism, where Israelis get to waltz into the West Bank and establish settlements and build roads mainly for themselves, cutting the landscape up and making life for the Palestinians an absurd Kafkaesque existence, and sometimes worse than that, while they of course aren’t allowed to move back inside the 67 lines. Sure, don’t call it apartheid. Call it narcissistic racist bovine fecal matter if you prefer. Apartheid is shorter and gets the point across. Desmond Tutu called it apartheid, but what does he know about it?
    “Apartheid has a specific meaning: a system of segregation by race. ”
    Race is a socially constructed category, as I think the intellectual types like to say. You could distinguish between two groups of people any old way you wish and run an apartheid-like system. It doesn’t have to be race. It could be the length of their eyelashes. One of the smart things Blackhawk said way upthread is that people have been shown to establish idiotic oppressive systems like that in experiments with college students arbitrarily divided into two clans. You singled out the morally insignificant detail (how the two groups are defined) and focus on that, but you are defending two sets of laws for two groups of people, one on top and one on bottom. It’s apartheid even if it is based on eyelash length.

  164. [Palestinians[ do not “reach out” to the other side in your sense AFAIK, nor should they, not given your opinions.

    In which case, there can never be peace.

    People who either flee their homes in war or are forced out have the right to return afterwards.

    Where does this “right” come from? In the wake of WW II, there were millions of refugees. They were resettled elsewhere. Why didn’t they know about this “right”? The creation of Pakistan created millions of refugees, both Hindu and Muslim – they were resettled elsewhere.

    “Apartheid has a specific meaning: a system of segregation by race. ”
    Race is a socially constructed category, as I think the intellectual types like to say.

    You have completed missed the point. There is NO forced segregation in Israel, whether by race, height, hair length, or anything else. Israeli Arabs can live anywhere they choose.
    Refusing to allow hostile non-citizens to move in is not apartheid.

  165. In light of Johnson’s comment, let me refine my comment. I don’t think finding discord, criminal behavior, brutal treatment, torture, or exploitation among and within a community, as proof of their lack of legitimacy.
    This is a bit ironic tactic, considering that European Christendom justified Jewish ghettos, because of the crime and vice committed within the areas they had originally created.

  166. I think it’s sort of basic human decency, fuzzyface. The funny thing is you don’t even have to defend the Nakba–in practice not many people outside the far left think there’s going to be an unlimited Palestinian right of return actually implemented. How could there be without Israel’s consent? Won’t happen. But you apparently can’t let it go at that–terrible injustice, but that’s water under the bridge. No, you have to defend forbidding people to come back to their own homes and you defend it by referring to other, greater massive human rights violations that occurred around the same time.
    So you’re right, fuzzyface. Human rights themselves are nonsense on stilts. People are murdered all the time, driven out of their homes all the time, there’s no compensation and they or the surviving family members just have to suck it up.
    “You have completed missed the point. There is NO forced segregation in Israel, whether by race, height, hair length, or anything else. Israeli Arabs can live anywhere they choose.
    Refusing to allow hostile non-citizens to move in is not apartheid.”
    Hey, right back atcha. You’re the one saying Israelis can move into the West Bank, but Palestinians on the West Bank can’t move into Israel. Because they’re “hostile” non-citizens. Imagine. Hostile. Why ever would they be hostile, being treated as second class non-citizens in their own land?
    You’re killing me here. I was angry and disgusted, but we’ve reached a breakthrough–this is just starting to get funny. The best arguments against the rightwing Israeli position are made by those who hold that position–they just have to keep talking. Excuse me for the bugaboo of “rightwing”–you claim that this is just the majority of Israeli opinion. You’re not doing Israel any favors claiming that.

  167. “”In which case, there can never be peace. ”
    On the bright side though, that means Israel can keep stealing more land.
    Anyway, the serious Israeli peace activists wouldn’t expect the Palestinians to be making concessions–the Palestinians are the ones with the boots on their neck. The one exception here is that the Palestinians should be expected to renounce terrorism, as Israelis should be expected to renounce war crimes. (Not that easy to do, apparently). And oh, settlement building.

  168. In light of Johnson’s comment, let me refine my comment. I don’t think finding discord, criminal behavior, brutal treatment, torture, or exploitation among and within a community, as proof of their lack of legitimacy.

    Nor do I. But 1) the attacks on Jews predate the founding of the modern state of Israel – see the 1929 Hebron massacre, for instance, and (2) the repeated promises of genocide against the Jewish population and repeated attacks on Jewish civilians make it rather difficult to believe that they would ever be ready for peaceful coexistence.
    This is not and never was about land. It is about whether Jews are allowed to have a sovereign state in the Middle East.

  169. “This is not and never was about land. ”
    That’s great news. If that’s the case then the Israelis can stop stealing land in the West Bank, uproot the settlements, pull back to the 67 lines and tell the Palestinians they are willing to negotiate in good faith, but any rocket attacks or suicide bombing attacks will be dealt with by Israel, though they would welcome the assistance of the Palestinian government in suppressing fanatics in their own ranks.
    Now sure, that’s not really fair to the Palestinians. They’ve suffered much more at Israeli hands than vice versa. Still, it’s a fine start. Isn’t it great that it’s not about the land?
    Incidentally, lumping all Palestinians into a category of genocidal Jew killers does make it easy for you, doesn’t it? White Americans used to say the same thing about Native Americans. Of course during the Hebron massacre many Jews were saved by their Palestinian neighbors, but that doesn’t mean anything to you either, nor do the massacres of Palestinians by Zionists. There was this guy named Sharon, for instance–got his start as a mass murderer in 1953, then moved on, eventually became Prime Minister. People must have voted for him. Weird.

  170. link
    The link at the blog Lawrence of Cyberia makes the point about why it is important to respond to the kinds of dehumanizing ploys that fuzzyface is using about Palestinians. You’ve got to point out that Israelis/Zionists used the very tactics they condemn as barbaric when Palestinians do it, and they often employ their standard tropes even when they don’t apply. (There’s an interesting story there about a NYT reporter who photographed a Palestinian rescuing a child caught in crossfire during the 2nd intifada, and then a few weeks later that photo is used by an Israeli as “proof” that Palestinians use their own children as human shields.)
    Anyway, I’ve spent enough time today arguing with 19th century white person attitudes. The interesting question is to what extent fuzzyface is right in claiming his views are the norm in Israel.

  171. That’s great news. If that’s the case then the Israelis can stop stealing land in the West Bank, uproot the settlements, pull back to the 67 lines and tell the Palestinians they are willing to negotiate in good faith, but any rocket attacks or suicide bombing attacks will be dealt with by Israel, though they would welcome the assistance of the Palestinian government in suppressing fanatics in their own ranks.

    In 1967 they were at those lines, there were no settlements, but the Arabs were busy trying to murder Israeli citizens. What possible reason is there for Israel to expect something different happen if they tried it again?

    Incidentally, lumping all Palestinians into a category of genocidal Jew killers does make it easy for you, doesn’t it?

    Of course I never did any such thing? You like to twist my words. Most Palestinians never make any effort to commit genocide. They make no effort to condemn it, but they personally wouldn’t do it. I’ve even been approached by a Palestinian in the US who expressed a wish for peace. The problem is not that every single Palestinian is intent on genocide, but that their leaders do and there is no real activist opposition to the idea. Those who murder Israelis are lionized as heros and have streets named after them. In the relative few cases when Israelis have attacked Palestinians, they’ve generally been arrested and prosecuted by their government – that’s why it doesn’t happen so often.
    Please justify your slander of Ariel Sharon. Document the “mass murders” that he started committing in 1953, etc. I’m getting a serious impression that you spend a lot of time reading anti-Israel sources

  172. Nor do I. But 1) the attacks on Jews predate the founding of the modern state of Israel – see the 1929 Hebron massacre, for instance, and (2) the repeated promises of genocide against the Jewish population and repeated attacks on Jewish civilians make it rather difficult to believe that they would ever be ready for peaceful coexistence.
    Posted by: Fuzzy Face | October 04, 2012 at 06:24 PM
    Are you talking about Arabs, or Europeans? Because if that’s your argument, why are there Jews still living in Europe?

  173. This is not and never was about land. It is about whether Jews are allowed to have a sovereign state in the Middle East.
    How is that not about land?

  174. russell, perhaps I should have been clearer and said it is not about boundaries. It’s not a question about which land will belong to whom but whether Israel is allowed to have a country with defensible borders.

  175. I’m not going to get into discussions of Israel/Palestine, but while this thread is still alive I would like to ask those who know a lot more about modern Judaism than I do on what arguments it bases its acceptance of religious toleration (e.g. freedom of worship by all faiths within a Jewish state, freedom to convert, etc). Is this on the basis of specific Tanakh/Talmudic statements or on more general principles of tolerance?

  176. Ephraim Kishon joked that Israel needs the West Bank to have enough space for the -ael on the world map (instead of just Isr.). That makes more sense than some of the justifications used by actual politicians/ideologues.
    Btw, where is the Canaanite lobby?

  177. Anyway, I’ve spent enough time today arguing with 19th century white person attitudes.

    I don’t believe anyone at all has mentioned anything related to skin color. Besides you, I mean.
    Aren’t Arabs Caucasian? Aren’t Arabs Semites, in general? What part of this conversation could “white person attitudes” be relevant to?
    Other than that: good (if perhaps overheated) back and forth. The only thing I would counsel, were I any sort of referee, would be for you to lose the “sheer nonsense” kind of comments. Dismissiveness works less well than people who are being dismissive might like to think. But mileage on that sort of thing varies, and this is a matter of style rather than substance.

  178. Aren’t Arabs Caucasion?
    Indeed they are, just like Irish people, which means that whether Americans consider them “white” is a social fact that can change over time.
    Aren’t Arabs Semites
    Indeed they are, and that’s why there is obviously no such thing as an Arab anti-semite. Obviously.
    In any event, I’m not sure you understand enough about Donald’s comment to critique it. You see, historically, in the 19th century, various white people engaged in an enterprise called imperialism where they invaded people’s countries and forced them to live as second class citizens with no rights compared to the white people planted amongst them, people who greedily consumed all the resources of the lands they conquered. Now, most modern people look back at this with horror and shame, but some people like Fuzzy Face defend it. I think Donald’s point was that Fuzzy Face’s arguments are all too similar to 19th century imperialism justification arguments made by various white supremacists.

  179. I was about to explain, slarti, but Turb did it for me.
    On the “sheer nonsense” thing, I was looking for a within the rules way of expressing really heated disagreement. Whether it’s effective in changing minds is a separate question.

  180. In the relative few cases when Israelis have attacked Palestinians, they’ve generally been arrested and prosecuted by their government – that’s why it doesn’t happen so often.
    I’m really in way over my head with you (and Donald), FF, when it comes to this discussion. But I’d like some further explanation of the above.
    Are you talking strictly about private Israeli citizens acting on their own without Israeli-government sanction? If so, that sounds like an odd way to compare what Israelis and Palestinians do to each other.

  181. He’s probably talking about private citizens. There was an attack recently that was condemned by the Israeli government–there’s also been the ongoing phenomenon labeled “price tag” violence where the more radical settlers attack Palestinians or damage or destroy their property, usually without suffering any consequences, though the Israeli government does condemn it. I would imagine Dani Dayan, the cultivated settler leader recently profiled in the NYT (August 17 if you want to look it up) would probably condemn that too. Dayan is an oh-so-sophisticated kind of person who wants the Israelis to take over the West Bank. He also had an op ed piece in the NYT in July, I believe. His views are what have some thinking that the 2SS is dying or dead, and the next step for Palestinians is “one man, one vote”.
    Here’s a Guardian piece about price tag attacks from some months back–
    link

  182. The Israeli group B’Tselem is one of the more thorough places to go for info about human rights violations on both sides.
    B’Tselem list of topics
    You can also search the web for various Human Rights Watch reports. They criticize all sides impartially as best I can tell. (Right now I think they’re more focused on Syria, for obvious reasons, but they just came out with a report on Hamas’s use of torture in Gaza.) Amnesty International is good too, but I always find it a little difficult to search for their stuff, for some reason.

  183. Arab identity, much like Latino identity, has the white/mixed/black racial categories embedded within it.
    In most Latin American countries, with huge African slave trade (ie, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Panama, Colombia, and Brazil) the one-drop rule was done in reverse. That is to say, in most Latin American countries, having Spanish blood meant accessing privileges a full blooded African or Indian could not. That does not mean that the mixed person had the same privileges as someone who was full blood Spanish/White, but the person was not Black or Indian.
    However, immigrants from Latin America had to negotiate the racial categories created in the U.S. differently, than at home. Since, one could be put in prison for “impersonating” a white person, many light skinned Latinos did not take chances, but others did. An example of this “proof” is seen when Puerto Ricans tried to break into major league baseball, teams would send investigators to the island to check the ‘purity’ of the applicant. No light skinned PRs passed. In the case of Mexicans, it was a bit different. White/light skinned Mexicans would just claim to be Spanish or Portuguese, and it was settled, since most Anglo-Americans had assumed Mexicans looked “mongrel”, ie Indian and Spanish. The book Playing America’s Game: Baseball, Latinos, and the Color Line by Adrian Burgos, covers this.
    I bring this up because there are similarities with the way Arabs were racialized in the United States. Phenotype and stereotypes, would determine which rights and privileges Arabs could access as citizens. Sarah Gualtieri’s Between Arab and White: Race and Ethnicity in the Early Syrian American Diaspora, focuses on Syrian migrations, but she also does a comparative analysis of Northern African/Black Arabs and Lebanese/Syrian Arabs, and demonstrates how phenotype and religion were used to racialize them. Most of the Northern African/Black Arabs were Muslim while Lebanese/Syrian Arabs were Christian. However, after all of the eloquent discourse of the whiteness and civilizing effects of Christianity, and the blackness and primitive nature of Islam, really it came down to phenotype. Black Christians, Arab or not, and White/Light Arabs, Christian or not, would fall into traditional American categories.
    Now to the issue of racialization in Israel, I don’t have any book titles, yet (although I have many on the way Jews were racialized in the US and Europe), I think this article by Meyrav Wurmser is interesting. First off, because she is married to a prominent Neocon, David Wurmser and is critical of Post-Zionism, but secondly, it is interesting how she tracks the racist and Eurocentric attitude of Zionism. Maybe it was not her intent, explicitly, but it comes through in the article. That is, European Zionist brought their notions of European/white privilege with them.
    Sociologist Uri Ram questioned the moral validity of the Zionist enterprise, finding it a form of colonialism, and concluded that the Jews have no more of a claim to Palestine than do the British to India. Israeli journalist Boas Evron wrote that Zionism fabricated a false connection between the Jews and the land. Many historians have echoed this approach, including Simha Flapan, Ilan Pappé, Uri Bar-Joseph, Michael J. Cohen, and others.
    […]
    The post-Zionist critique of Zionism is not limited to the Palestinian question. Concentrating on the manner in which less advantaged segments of Israeli society were treated by the Zionist state, it also focuses on women and Sephardic Jews (Jews who immigrated to Israel in the early 1950s from Middle Eastern countries whom post-Zionists view as Jewish-Arabs; the very idea of grouping of Palestinian Arabs and Sephardic Jews as a single subject of inquiry is revolutionary within Israel). Post-Zionism calls for adopting the “uncivilized” narratives of the subjugated segments of Israeli society. Embracing Edward Said’s critique of Western Orientalism,17 the grouping of Arabs and Sephardic Jews reflects the post-Zionist outlook that the oppression of the Israeli state cuts across national and gender differences.
    Post-Zionists do not limit themselves to stirring debate on current social and political matters. They address some of the most sensitive issues facing the Jewish people. For example, several works pose new moral and ethical questions in their reexamination of the Holocaust, one of the most sensitive nerves in Israeli society. Tom Segev, a historian, wrote that the Zionist movement used the Holocaust to advance its political goals, arguing that political groups in the Yishuv (the pre-state Jewish community in Palestine) viewed the destruction of European Jewry as a historic opportunity to further Zionist goals and did little to save the dying Jewish masses. In the state of Israel today, continues Segev, the cynical misuse of the Holocaust continues, because its lessons are framed in terms of a narrow Jewish particularism (the Holocaust as a uniquely Jewish affair) which thereby justifies actions of the nation and strengthens nationalistic feelings, rather than including general humanistic lessons.
    […]
    Post-Zionism clearly has an impact on the next generation of Israelis as more and more young Israelis receive a post-Zionist education and are raised in a society in which anti-nationalist feelings gain growing legitimacy. These ideas are also seeping into the schools. A recently-published history textbook, prepared for use by Israeli high-school students, includes an article describing Zionism as a “form of colonialism” without any legitimate claims to Israel.44 In this spirit, it comes as no surprise that a 1993 survey found 30 percent of Israeli secular students said that for them, to be Jewish was “not an important part of life.”45 The numbers would quite certainly be higher today.

    From:
    Can Israel Survive Post-Zionism?
    Please read

  184. Another link I’m recommending–
    Jerome Slater article
    The link above is to an entry in Slater’s blog, where he gives a summary of and a link to an article he has just published in “International Security”, a Harvard/MIT publication. The article is a critique of Israel and the Gaza War and it also contains a summary of some of the other things Israel has done wrong over its history. I’ve just started reading it.

  185. On second thought, if I’m going to recommend an article it’s better to post the abstract rather than my own inept summary. Here’s the abstract–
    “The 2008–09 Israeli military campaign in Gaza, commonly known as Operation Cast Lead, is best understood in the context of Israel’s “iron wall” strategy. During the 1930s, the strategy emphasized the need for overwhelming military power to break Arab resistance to the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine; since the creation of Israel in 1948, it has continued to be at the core of Israeli policies in the overall Arab-Israeli conflict. From the outset, the strategy has included attacks on civilians and their crucial infrastructures. Such attacks violate the just war moral principles of discrimination and noncombatant immunity. In addition, Cast Lead violated the just war principles of just cause and last resort, which state that wars must have a just cause and even then must be undertaken only after nonviolent and political alternatives have failed. Israel did not have a just cause in 2008–09, because its primary purpose was to crush resistance to its continuing de facto occupation and repression of Gaza. Further, Israel refused to explore the genuine possibility that Hamas was amenable to a two-state political settlement. Thus, the iron wall strategy and Operation Cast Lead, in particular, have been political as well as moral failures, undermining rather than serving Israel’s genuine long-term security needs.”

  186. It’s always a question how long an oderint dum metuant strategy can be kept up (for whatever reason it got adopted in the first place). The longer it lasts the more likely are that the final result will follow one of two bad paths not the single good one. Either the moral event horizon has to be crossed finally or the ability to instill the necessary fear gets lost. To get rid of both hatred and fear is a feat rarely managed.
    As far as foreign policy goes Israel was more or less forced to adopt a general strategy of becoming too feared to get attacked openly again (and the nukes are a central part of that). If played right (i.e. without open aggression and with tact) this can be a viable solution because there is a chance that in the long run the hostile neighbours will see reason.
    But to consciously apply the same at home is a different matter, esp. with people of influence eager to turn the screw unnecessarily (or even openly calling for crossing the moral event horizon).

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