From Ha’aretz via LeanLeft comes news of quite possibly the biggest idiots I have ever heard of, which is saying a lot: the The White Israeli Union, creators of the first ever Israeli neo-Nazi web site:
“The site is well organized. It has text and pictures showing the activists of the organization, “The White Israeli Union,” some of them in Israel Defense Forces uniforms on the background of army camps and saluting with a raised arm. The expanded text is divided into sub-sections. There is one on “Who we are,” where the managers of the site introduce themselves as “Ilya from Haifa and Andrei from Arad,” and it is related there that the members of the organization are “people who have pride in themselves and are sick of living among the dirty bastards.” There is a section on “Who our enemies are,” where all the “enemies” are extensively documented: the Jews, the Arabs, the immigrants from all Moslem republics of the former Soviet Union, the Moroccans, the foreign workers – in short, the “black-asses.” In the material about the Arabs there is even a practical suggestion to enlist in the IDF in a combat unit, in order to get weapons and begin to shoot at them in every possible circumstance.
In the guest forum on the site, other opinions can also be found – for example, that the hatred of Jews should lead to an alliance with the Arabs. There is also a “codex” section of rules of behavior for members of the organization, among them respect for parents, but also “not to be miserly, because a miser is a Zhid,” a derogatory Russian word for Jew, approximately equivalent to “Kike.” And notably there is a rich section of jokes, the greater part of which is devoted to all kinds of funny incidents in concentration camps that end badly for the Jews.”
Indeed.
Apparently, many of the members of this organization are immigrants from Russia who qualified as Jews under the Israeli Law of Return, which allows any Jew to immigrate to Israel. The Law of Return has an expansive definition of who counts as a Jew, based on the Nuremberg laws. Apparently some of those who meet that criterion do not regard themselves as Jewish, and I guess the neo-Nazis among them are not troubled by the fact that Hitler would have disagreed. This seems to be sparking some calls for a tightening of the criteria someone must meet to qualify as a Jew under the Law of Return. Trying to pull apart the levels of deeply unpleasant irony in this makes my head hurt.
But really, Israeli neo-Nazis? What’s next: the Ugandan chapter of the KKK? The Wiccan Coven of the Malleus Maleficarum? Kulaks for Forced Collectivization? Armenians for Ataturk? Is anything so grotesque that someone, somewhere won’t try it?
I’m not sure I want to know the answer.
You get gay neo-Nazis, too, which is just as mad for exactly the same reason: Hitler would have killed them.
There were Jews in Germany in the 1930s – Germans who were Jewish enough by a grandparent to end up in concentration camps – who didn’t think of themselves of Jews but as Germans, and who (so I have read) were as likely to become Nazis as any other German.
There’s nothing so weird someone won’t do it, especially not on the Internet.
There was an interview with Phyllis Bennis (head of the Middle East Project at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C.) that I recalled reading a few years ago, which described Israel as a society deeply stratified by race:
I’ve never lived in Israel, but I have friends who have, and one who (a British Jew who lived with a Jew whose parents were expelled from Syria) when I asked him about intra-Jewish racism in Israel, agreed that there was a considerable divide between the European/American Jews and the Middle Eastern Jews (he didn’t know or mingle with the Ethopian Jews).
Black Republicans?
“I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years, either.”
Trent Lott
Log Cabin Republicans?
I am not sure that we have to look very hard to find idiots.
Don, surely you can appreciate the difference in degree of conflicting interests between a black Republican and a Jewish Neo-Nazi.
Leave it to Don Quijote to spoil sport a typically excellent, thought provoking post by hilzoy. Just to show I’m not the only one who might think DQ’s trolling represents little and reflects nothing, I’ll bring along a few freinds
here , here and here .Eh, in the run-up to the election, Thomas Sowell published a column that essentially said “don’t bother voting if you haven’t thoroughly educated yourself on the issues.” It was pure political FUD. He’s nowhere near as bad as a Neo-Nazi, he’s just an antidemocratic tool.
(Actually, it looks like he ran a whole series, but I haven’t yet read parts 2-4.)
hilzoy,
The Law of Return has an expansive definition of who counts as a Jew, based on the Nuremberg laws. Apparently some of those who meet that criterion do not regard themselves as Jewish
I think you are missing another angle. I’ve read about this in the russian media a while back and these guys are not Jews at all. Some of the Jews who came from Russia, under the Law of Return, had russian spouses. Some of those russian spouses had children from previous marriages (who, perhaps, had a hard time assimilating), and some were able to bring their extended families.
If Sowell is your friend, bbm, I’d really suggest getting some new friends.
More from the article:
Over time he has accumulated hundreds of incidents that elsewhere in the world would be defined as “manifestations of anti-Semitism,” but in Israel, the political system and the law-enforcement authorities relate to them with studied indifference. The range of incidents is wide: non-Jewish immigrants calling Jewish immigrants Zhid, an elderly Jewish immigrant woman in Jerusalem being beaten by a non-Jewish caregiver who calls her “Zhidovka,” comments like “Hitler didn’t finish the job,” swastika graffiti found all the time in predominantly Russian-speaking neighborhoods, vandalism in synagogues and cemeteries.
Speaking of strange bedfellows, this column from TNR relates another situation that has a WTF quality to it as well.
Well, liberal j, we can all use new friends, or should I say, different friends.
Our ability to subdivide seems to know no limits. Why are we surprised that this is happening in Israel? Whenever there is a perceived advantage to belong to one group rather than another we will create whatever contortions necessary to belong to the preferable group or, if we cannot join, we will attempt to strengthen our supposedly less-desireable group.
I just saw Hotel Rwanda and it reminded me of how a group, once it has been oppressed by another group, doesn’t forget. Keeping past injustice alive allows us to excuse our desire to oppress the next weak group.
Laura,
Whenever there is a perceived advantage to belong to one group rather than another we will create whatever contortions necessary to belong to the preferable group or, if we cannot join, we will attempt to strengthen our supposedly less-desireable group.
Read both of my posts. They are not Jews.
More on this:
About a million Russians and others from former Soviet states have emigrated to Israel over the past 10 years. It is an open secret that many have only distant ties to Judaism and some bought forged birth certificates with Jewish names to escape the collapsing Soviet Union. The Israeli government, desperate for new immigrants to counter the burgeoning Palestinian population, turned a blind eye.
and
“Many new immigrants to Israel have found to their horror that they encounter anti-semitic harassment and humiliation from non-Jews who arrived from the former USSR. They had hoped to escape anti-semitism, or at least to be protected from it, when they came to Israel.”
And even more:
The behavior of many of the non-Jewish immigrants to Israel is chillingly similar to the disrespectful and disorderly behavior of illegal Mexican immigrants to the United States and Muslim immigrants to Western Europe. Russian thugs in Israel have perpetrated dozens of anti-Jewish incidents. These incidents were all documented by the Israeli Information Center for the Victims of Anti-Semitism run by Zalman Gilichenski, a rabbi from the former USSR, and other Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union. The Soviet Jews are the only Israeli community that pays any attention to Russian anti-Semitism in Israel and are the only people that try to fight it.
In the years 2000-2003, at least 500 anti-Semitic incidents were recorded (with many more unrecorded) in which Russians were arrested for spraying anti-Jewish graffiti, desecrating synagogues and attacking Jews. Synagogues were defaced in Bnei Brak, an ultra-Orthodox town in central Israel, cemeteries were vandalized in another religious town, Ramat Beit Shemesh, and Jews were attacked all over the country (Netivot, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, northern Israel), some by openly neo-Nazi bandits. At a soccer match in Haifa in which Israel played the Russian Federation, drunk Russian youths shouted down the Israeli national anthem and yelled anti-Semitic slogans – an incident almost identical to the infamous anti-American debauchery of Mexican fans at a soccer game in Los Angeles a few years ago, except that it was “Hatikva” that was booed down instead of the “Star Spangled Banner”.
Stan LS: That’s an angle I hadn’t thought of, and it makes sense. Thanks.
About Israel and its stratification: when I lived there, in the early 80s (and thus before Russian or Ethiopian immigration had really kicked in), it was stratified, but in the same way that, say, northern US cities are stratified by race. Which is to say: there were a number of people (liberals mostly, but there you are) working to overcome it, but also a lot of ordinary people who took it for granted that “their” (the Sephardic Jews’) culture was backwards, that “they” were criminals or unclean or what have you; etc., and then a few who clung to this difference out of fear or whatever, in a way that was unpleasant (even for me, and I’m not Sephardic, (or for that matter Jewish. My main racial problem was having people look at blonde blue-eyed me and have this look flash over their faces which I could only interpret as: the last time I saw someone who looked like you, I was in a concentration camp and that person was the sadistic guard.)
My sense was that there was some added inflection that came from the fact that anti-Arab racism (by which I do not mean, minding attacks on civilians, or something equally OK, but views about all Arabs and their supposed inferiority) was OK and very common in Israel. — My second Israeli boyfriend, the ex-love of my life, was an Israeli Arab (and before we go down this road, let me add: a near-pacifist who publicly condemned all acts of violence regardless of who perpetrated them), and there was this interesting interaction that used to happen a lot: someone (Jewish would ask whether I was seeing someone; I would say yes; they would say, Oh good, what’s his name? and I would answer. (His name is not an obviously Arab one, like Muhammed; his family converted to Catholicism during the Crusades, and the names run to saints, and are thus versions of the same names you’d see in Europe.) And my interlocutor would look puzzled: is he Israeli? Yes, I’d say. A sabra? (I.e., born in Israel, though in practice restricted to Israeli Jews. But sometimes I’d feel mean, so I’d answer:) Yes. More puzzlement: it’s just that it’s not a typical Israeli name. Where’s he from? I’d say the name of the tiny village, which they wouldn’t recognize. And this could go on, sometimes for half an hour or more, before the possibility that socially acceptable me might be seeing an Arab would cross their minds. (Note: I am not a mean person, but sometimes, when I am feeling annoyed, I will let people hang themselves on their own presuppositions. Like when I used to take pleasure at roundly trouncing high school boys who would see me playing Space Invaders and assume that, as a girl, I was no good, and say to me in that annoying superior high school boy way, Hey, let me show you how it’s done. Hah. Same impulse here.)
But anyways: that anti-Arab racism was OK in Israel did, I think, give an added inflection to Ashkenazi (e.g., European Jews) views about the Sephardim (Middle Eastern and N. African Jews), but it was fairly subtle. My sense is that the Russian (and, to a much lesser extent, the Ethiopian) wave of immigration completely up-ended things.
I also felt, when I lived in Israel, that if you wanted to understand the country, it was hard to overestimate the importance of the thought: this is a society founded by Russian and Eastern European socialists (and here ‘socialists’ is quite distinct from ‘communists’); it tone was always set by them; and they tended to have both a set of wonderful virtues and a set of major blind spots, especially as regards non-Europeans and women.
Stan, thanks for the interesting links, however, this bothered me
…chillingly similar to the disrespectful and disorderly behavior of illegal Mexican immigrants to the United States and Muslim immigrants to Western Europe
‘disrespectful’ rings a few unpleasant bells. Here in Japan, the government, attempting to bolster the population, made it easier for ‘nikkeijin’ (people of Japanese descent) (generally from South America) to come to Japan to work. There were problems, similar to that of Israel, for forged birth certificates, but I believe that those problems (for Japan) were vastly overstated. What has been a problem is that Japanese felt they were getting people just like them and are shocked to find that the culture that these Japanese bring over is not the same as what they are used to. This has led to precisely the same sort of accusations, that Brazilian Japanese are disorderly and disrespectful of Japanese culture. Yet Japanese youth do things that are much more disrespectful and disorderly, but foreigners are scapegoated in this regard. This is not to dismiss your source, but when statements like these aren’t backed up by solid facts and statistics, I get a little nervous.
Stan LS,
Whether these hate groups are made up of Jews or non-Jews is irrelevant to me. I thought the point of this discussion was how and why human beings do these things to one another. And perhaps how we could learn to stop doing these things to one another.
hilzo,
Interesting post, but regarding this:
My main racial problem was having people look at blonde blue-eyed me and have this look flash over their faces which I could only interpret as: the last time I saw someone who looked like you, I was in a concentration camp and that person was the sadistic guard.)
That look that flashed over their faces is open to interpetation and your own hyper sensitivity. I am an Ukranian born Jew and my family was (obviously, due to the geographics) was directly affected by the Holocaust, yet I don’t think badly of blondes, germans, etc. You might find this curious, but when I play Call of Duty online (WW2 shooter) and the teams are not balanced, I do switch to the german team for the sake of a better gaming experience. So, as you see, I can keep things in context – a game is just a game.
That being said, I did get pretty ticked off when the memory of the Holocaust was invoked in the 2000 election fiasco (ie, Holocaust survivors were disenfrenchised in Florida,etc).
So, back to the point. That look that you think you saw flash over faces, could’ve been nothing. You’ld be surprised at how less sensitive minorities are then you think, and I say that as I am eating my bagel with lox.
I also felt, when I lived in Israel, that if you wanted to understand the country, it was hard to overestimate the importance of the thought: this is a society founded by Russian and Eastern European socialists
The Soviet Union sent a bunch of Soviet Jews (in the first years of Israel), who were agents, to Israel with an intention of establishing another soviet sattelite over there (why do you think the USSR voted for the creation of Israel in the first place?), so that might have something to do with it. Also, there’s a school of thought that says that if it were the Sephardic Jews who dominated Israeli politics, then there would be no Israeli-Palestinian conflict today. Instead of european style diplomacy, Sephardim, who have lived among arabs, would’ve done things the arab way.
Laura,
Sorry about that, I actualuly managed to misread your short post. Once again, I must not post before my first cup of coffee.
Stan: I didn’t at all mean to suggest that that look flashed across everyone’s face, or even many people’s; it was a very occasional thing. (I just threw it into the post as a sort of throwaway line, meaning basically: I had virtually no racial problem myself, at all.) That said, part of the reason I interpreted it that way was that, unless I’m really no good at reading faces at all, there was a component of fear to the reaction, and since I am not a very scary-looking person, that was the only thing that leapt to mind. (Also, it was an expression I only saw on people who were older.) But, as you say, I could have been completely wrong.
hilzon,
Maybe you are just a super hot blonde chick, hence the looks 🙂
Leave it to Don Quijote to spoil sport a typically excellent, thought provoking post by hilzoy. Just to show I’m not the only one who might think DQ’s trolling represents little and reflects nothing, I’ll bring along a few freinds here , here and here .
Does the phrase Southern Strategy ring a bell?
Don, surely you can appreciate the difference in degree of conflicting interests between a black Republican and a Jewish Neo-Nazi.
one is extremely stupid, the other is suicidally stupid.
Maybe you are just a super hot blonde chick, hence the looks.
There’s only one way to find out. hilzoy? The webcam please… 😉
ObTopic: I’d read somewhere many years ago that most of those considered “Jews” nowadays weren’t originally Jews, for some definition of “originally”. It had something to do with the early Roman Empire and the Diaspora; around that time there were a lot of other dispossessed and disenfranchised groups (particularly the Carthiginians) who adopted the marker of “Jewish” because it was preferable to their real ethnopolitical identity. Has anyone heard of this theory before? Anyone know if it’s true or not?
There is a degree of difference, sure: but Don’s right. Black and gay Republicans have signed up to a party that is actively racist and actively homophobic. It’s not as suicidal as being a gay neo-Nazi or a Jewish neo-Nazi, but it’s still supporting people politically who fully intend to attack you; it’s a reversal of the usual (good) motive for getting involved in a political party, the belief that it will promote your interests and make the country a better place for you and yours.
Jes,
Right, because opposing the affirmative action is racist. Ofcourse.
“The webcam please… ;)”
— I prefer to retain my aura of mystery.
Apparently some of those who meet that criterion do not regard themselves as Jewish, and I guess the neo-Nazis among them are not troubled by the fact that Hitler would have disagreed
This is hardly a new concept. Around 150,000 of these people fought in the German military during the Hitler era, Hitler’s term for them was “Mischlinge”. They served from the bottom ranks up to the rank of Field Marshal. Some of them had to hide their origins, others served with Hitler’s full knowledge. Some of them served because they felt they had no other choice, others believed in the Nazi cause. These people ranked other concerns ahead of Hitler’s policies towards the Jews. Perhaps they were impressed with Hitler’s muscular foreign policy.
As far as Don’s post goes, it would be wrong to compare the administration’s policies towards gays with the policies towards Jews at the lowest depths of the Holocaust. It would not be out of place to compare the administration’s policies towards gays with the policies towards Mishclinge enacted at the beginning of Hitler’s term. And it would not be unfair to compare the motivations of a Log Cabin Republican to one of the Mischlinge. Both of them could give apparently rational sounding answers for why they supported an organization where some of their fellow members wished to see them destroyed.
The question for the Log Cabin Republicans is “How far down that path you are willing to go, and do you really think you will be able to turn back before it is too late?”.
Anarch
Wow, interesting question. Here’s what google turned up
The search for [jewish genetic markers] has a number of interesting links. Most links suggest that there is some genetic connection, of which this link argues most strongly, though it is obviously from a source that would emphasize continuity.
This link has some fascinating stuff about various diaspora communities.
This is a list of references
Another list is here I love the notion of a ‘Cohen’ gene, but it is rather farmisht, as they say in Yiddish.
This last one talks about genetic links between Kurds and Jews. Don’t tell the neo-cons about it though! (><)
Anarch: I’d read somewhere many years ago that most of those considered “Jews” nowadays weren’t originally Jews, for some definition of “originally”.
Would it matter to anyone now? Even the Orthodox Jews accept conversion: a converted non-Jew becomes a Jew.
Jes,
But how high was the conversion rate?
Jewish polyethnicism’s never presented much of a mystery to me. 2000-some years of moving from country to country and intermarrying will do the trick quite handily.
And in Eurasia, particularly in the first millenium CE, there were probably conversions for religious reasons: a single deity might’ve looked pretty good to people in cultures where you couldn’t swing a cat without hitting a dozen gods, each demanding its own worship and tribute. Plus, Judaism allows a personal relationship with god, not one mediated by priest castes allied with the local power structure.
My grandmother, who loved all things Chinese, was amazed and delighted to hear about the discovery of an ancient Jewish settlement on the border of China (circa a thousand years ago, IIRC). She insisted some of our ancestors came from there, then headed west to Russia and Eastern Europe. She made that up from her own wishful thinking, but it could have happened.
I think the only ethnic group who got around more than Jews were the Gaels, who came out of Gaul originally and went all over the place.
Here’s an interesting article
Many of the traditional ceremonies in Japan seem to indicate that the Lost Tribes of Israel came to ancient Japan.:
The crest of the Imperial House of Japan is a round mark in the shape of a flower with 16 petals. The current shape appears as a chrysanthemum (mum), but scholars say that in ancient times, it appeared similar to a sunflower. The sunflower appearance is the same as the mark at Herod’s gate in Jerusalem. The crest at Herod’s gate also has 16 petals. This crest of the Imperial House of Japan has existed since very ancient times. The same mark as the one at Herod’s gate is found on the relics of Jerusalem from the times of the Second Temple, and also on Assyrian relics from the times of B.C.E..
and
“Yamabushi” is a religious man in training unique to Japan. Today, they are thought to belong to Japanese Buddhism. However, Buddhism in China, Korea and India have no such custom. The custom of “yamabushi” existed in Japan before Buddhism was imported into Japan in the seventh century.
On the forehead of “Yamabushi,” he puts a black small box called a “tokin”, which is tied to his head with a black cord. He greatly resembles a Jew putting on a phylactery (black box) on his forehead with a black cord. The size of this black box “tokin” is almost the same as the Jewish phylactery, but its shape is round and flower-like.
and
In the early history of Japan, there were absolutely no lions. But the statues of lions have been placed in Japanese shrines since ancient times. It has been proven by scholars that statues of lions located in front of Japanese shrines originated from the Middle East.
Read the whole thing for more interesting similarities.
Ok, pretty crazy stuff… From the same source as my last post:
Old Japanese Words Have Hebrew Origin.
Joseph Eidelberg, a Jew who once came to Japan and remained for years at a Japanese Shinto shrine, wrote a book entitled “The Japanese and the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel.” He wrote that many Japanese words originated from ancient Hebrew.
For instance, we Japanese say “hazukashime” to mean disgrace or humiliation. In Hebrew, it is “hadak hashem” (tread down the name; see Job 40:12). The pronunciation and the meaning of both of them are almost the same.
We say “anta” to mean “you,” which is the same in Hebrew. Kings in ancient Japan were called with the word “mikoto,” which could be derived from a Hebrew word “malhuto” which means “his kingdom.” The Emperor of Japan is called “mikado.” This resembles the Hebrew word, “migadol,” which means “the noble.” The ancient Japanese word for an area leader is “agata-nushi;” “agata” is “area” and “nushi” is “leader.” In Hebrew, they are called “aguda”and “nasi.”
This discussion of Jewish migration of course reminds me of a central tenet of Mormon history: a group of Jews escaping the destruction of the second Temple made their way to North America and turned into / intermarried with the native Americans.
BYU archeologists have been working at various sites around the Yucatan peninsula for years, with no real success, it seems.
Mormons believe that every churchmember spiritually belong to one of the original twelve tribes. Native Americans belong to the “lost tribe,” if I’ve got it right. They tell me I belong (spiritually of course) to, wait, let me look it up, ah yes, the tribe of Ephraim.
Somehow I doubt the Israeli government will invite me to make Aliyah (sp?), however.
felixrayman: This is hardly a new concept. Around 150,000 of these people fought in the German military during the Hitler era, Hitler’s term for them was “Mischlinge”.
Actually, there were both Mischlinge of the first degree and Mischlinge of the second degree, depending on the precise nature of one’s Jewish ancestry. The lines weren’t exactly clear, though; people could get “promoted” or “demoted” (I don’t remember the exact phrase, sorry) depending on their actions and, in particular, their past willingness to have sacrificed for The Greater Glory Of The Fatherland, however defined.
Jes: Would it matter to anyone now?
It might conceivably have (or have had) political ramifications to those who believe that race, culture and ancestry are inextricably intertwined. Truth be told, though, I have no idea; it matters to me only as an academic curiosity.
CaseyL: I think the only ethnic group who got around more than Jews were the Gaels, who came out of Gaul originally and went all over the place.
Depends on how you define “ethnic group”. If you consider the Celts as a single ethnic group, which some do, they got around more than anyone else by, if you’ll pardon the pun, a country mile. The distinguishing factor of the Jews is that they got around and managed to preserve their “ethnic identity” (whatever that means), whereas the Celts (and the various Turkic migrations, for that matter) assimilated indistinguishably.
[That said, they’re still unearthing Roman artifacts in Indonesia, I think it is, as well as western China. Traders, most likely; I don’t think they’ve uncovered any settlements, though I could be wrong. And the Phoenicians… hell, who knows where they managed to get to. And the Polynesians were no slouch either. So there actually is some heavy competition depending on how you want to set up the game.]
Hey, this might be a good place to ask the ancient history buffs for help finding a book.
Years and years ago, I took an Ancient History class at college. One of the assigned texts was a slim little book, red softcover, about human migration throughout the Really Ancient (ie, pre-Classical) world, esp. littoral migrations. There were a lot of maps, many showing how new arrivals mingled and displaced previous arrivals.
I loved those maps. It’s one thing to read “Hittites went here, Assyrians went there, they collided with the Soandsoites and there was a war.” It’s another to actually see maps showing the sweeps of all that ancient imperial expansion and combativeness.
Then I lost the book. I’ve tried to find it, but I can’t remember the title, the authors, or anything, which is a bit of a handicap.
Does anyone here know of any book that might either be the one I’m talking about or is anything like it? The maps were what I liked most.
Thanks!
I have no idea what you’re looking for, CaseyL, but I’d love to get a copy myself. One of my secret weaknesses is historical atlases, especially showing migration, linguistic and cultural expansions. Drop me a line if you find out!
Actually, Casey, when you find it, why not post it here, since if you, me and Anarch are all interested, we are probably not the only ones.
Have I mentioned recently how glad I am to be posting at a site most of whose commenters can be relied on not to write about the tenants of a belief system?
most of whose commenters can be relied on not to write about the tenants of a belief system?
I wouldn’t trust anyone who was only renting a belief system.
Actually, I once got annoyed by my students’ tendency to misuse words, and went on a little riff about it, in which I would take various sentences they had written and consider, straightfaced, what the student who wrote each of them might have had in mind, supposing that the word s/he used were the word s/he meant. The only part of this that I can still remember was the part where I talked about someone who wrote about the ‘tenants’ of a belief system, and I said something like: perhaps this student has in mind a contrast between the property-owners of a belief system, which are those propositions that pay taxes, are responsible for their own care and maintenance, and cannot be simply turned out if they become obstreperous or difficult, and its mere tenants …
Some of my students told me they thought this was mean, despite the fact that I hadn’t used anyone’s names. I replied that they were responsible for writing in a way that didn’t invite ridicule. I then announced, before each paper, that I would do this, and I’ve never had to do it again. Tee hee hee.
The tricks we use to get our students to have actual physical contact with dictionaries…
What does “make Aliyah” mean?
On the question of why a person who is the target of prejudice would join the prejudiced group–could it be a kind of “Stockholm Syndrome”? The desire to suck up to or become the powerful abuser in order to avoid being abused? (By the way I am not suggesting that all Log Cabin Republicans fall in this catagory. My guess is that, to them, gay-related issues just aren’t as important as some other issues, or, perhaps they view the anti-gay bigots as a non-threatening minority in the Republican party.)
Lily: make aliyah means: to emigrate to Israel. (Strictly, if memory serves, it means to ascend. I don’t think it’s used of non-Jews.)
lily: or, perhaps they view the anti-gay bigots as a non-threatening minority in the Republican party.)
Well, if they do, they’re deluding themselves. The anti-gay bigots may be a minority, but they’re distinctly threatening, and they include people with a lot of power in the party. The Republican blog Redstate endorsed open homophobe Jim DeMint, who publicly said that gays and lesbians should not be allowed to teach in public schools, because the government should not endorse homosexuality and “folks teaching in school need to represent our values” – on the grounds that Jim DeMint’s agenda is “a good agenda, and it’s a right agenda”. cite
And, perhaps helped in some small way by the money raised by Redstate, any Log Cabin Republicans in South Carolina can now enjoy having a Republican Senator who thinks that they can’t be allowed to be treated like equal human beings.
Granted, just one Senator. But how many other Republicans like the RedStaters who endorse and approve of homophobic candidates are out there?
If I find that book, or one like it, I’ll let everyone know 🙂
The Japan-Israel link has a lot (for an idea that is pretty bizarre) of adherents. It’s not much stranger than the theory that Jackmormon and there is always a deep-seated desire to connect oneself to the past, and that 12th tribe does the trick. (wasn’t that one of the premises of Battlestar Galatica?) Unfortunately, for the Japan-Israel case, linguistic similarities look at the modern day form of the words, and most of those words have changed their form, so the comparison is not really valid.
Related to this is the theory that Jesus’ tomb (yes, that Jesus) is in Northern Japan. Yes, stranger things have happened (I have a relatively well paying job and I found someone to marry me despite myself would be high on that list), but I really can’t see either of these.
For CaseyL, would _Historical Atlas of the Ancient World_ by John Haywood fit the bill?
Some of the coincidences in that Japanese-as-the-lost-tribes link are interesting, but they lost me when they started engaging in grade-school linguistics. For example, anta is indeed one of the four million second-person pronouns in Japanese. But it’s only a contraction of anata, which derives from the ko-so-a-do set of words (konata, sonata, etc), in this set of which only anata is really used these days. The rest of the word comparisons are more or less equally amusing.
Cultural origins aren’t really my area of study, so I can’t speak to the rituals. But a lot of the analysis struck me as fairly superficial, kind of the equivalent of saying, “Hey! You both have black hair!”
And for what it’s worth, the second person pronoun in Hebrew is not anta. (Atah/at//atem/aten, depending on number and gender, if my incredibly rusty Hebrew is right.)
wasn’t that one of the premises of Battlestar Galatica?
Yup. Not surprising, given that Glen Larson, who created and produced BG, is Mormon. This site has a ton of information about the Mormon imagery and themes in the show.
Catsy, Hilzoy, you go girls! To see y’all bust up linguistic fallacies gives me hope for the future.
To underline Catsy’s point, anata originally meant ‘over there’ and in the Heian period (800-1200), it became a _third_ person pronoun (kind like ‘and this one thinks…’). In the middle of the Edo period, it then became a second person pronoun for a superior. It now either has an implication of familiarity (women tend to refer to their husbands as anata so often that their are stories of japanese kids who think their father’s name is ‘anata’ and their mother’s name is ‘oi’ (sorta like ‘hey you’)) or an implication of rudeness (‘Anata donata desuka?’ ‘Who the hell are you?’).
My Japanese is heavily informed by hanging out with college kids and drunken oeru, so I have a more liberal impression of the use of anata and other pronouns than is probably appropriate. I tend to almost exclusively refer to myself as boku, for that matter.
Which is kind of a shame, since not only is keigo fun and interesting, but it allows for some of the world’s most fantastic puns.
…okay, I’m shutting up now before I further incriminate myself. :>
If you consider the Celts as a single ethnic group, which some do, they got around more than anyone else by, if you’ll pardon the pun, a country mile.
Sorry, a bit late, but I highly recommend _The Celtic Empire_ by Peter Berresford Ellis. As he notes in the preface, his use of ’empire’ is ironic, but the facts and information he marshalls are truly astonishing.
The belief that your people are the real heirs of the Ten Lost Tribes is really not that unusual: the Brits caught the bug too.
LJ – If that’s not exactly the one I’m thinking of, it certainly looks like one I’d be interested in! I’ll see if I can find it at a bookstore and leaf throught.
Thanks bunches!
CaseyL: I just ordered this book
この会談が面白いですねえ。日本語の歴史とイスラエルの世態と敬語、it’s really quite impressive.
PS: 残念ですが、ひさしぶりに日本語お使ったので、もうそれほど出きません。だから、英語に一寸書きました。済みません。
Sorry, couldn’t resist, what with so many Japanese language speakers on here. אנ מצטער.
זה בּסדר Abiola.
Just out of curiosity, what does Abiola’s 9:59 post look like?
It was written in Japanese–a remark on all the different subjects under discussion–Japanese language and history, Israel, etc. And an apology that it had been a while since he used Japanese, so the rest would be in English.
僕も。日本語をしゃべる事はしゃべりますが、長い間に使かってないのでだんだん忘れてしまいます。辞書がないとなにもけいないかんじ。
Sorry, Catsy, what I meant was that I was curious if everyone saw Japanese or not. I’d love to add the occasional kanji to my post if I knew that everyone (or almost everyone) could see it.
lj – here’s what I see: there’s a guy with two belts and a spear, then there’s a kinda sea-horse, and a hollow period, and a knobless two-drawer dresser, and a house founded on an inverted cross, and then a bunch of plates on a box next to an off-axis bell on a bigger box, and a guy jumping off one of those gymnastics bouncers, then a very plain seahorse, then…, and finally a whole lot of very simple squiggles. Talking about Catsy‘s 06:16 pm by the way.
rilkefan
I see. And what do you think it _means_?
Don’t forget to pay the receptionist on the way out…
lj: “what do you think it _means_?”
I went to spear a sea-horse,
but all I caught was water-drops.
I put them in two knobless drawers
inside my blasphemous house.
The plates will fall
at the dinner-bell.
I leaped into the blue
to catch a sky-horse,
and the wind whispered to me
in countless tongues.
and it whispered:
smash the plates
jump up high
but above all else
don’t forget to wear
your extra belt.