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Hello, I stumbled onto your website and am responding to the posting "Reply to a Jewish Query." You (I don't know if you are the writer, but for the purposes of this reponse I'll assume so) are intelligent and articulate, and so it seems worthwhile to respond. Thank you for your reasoned attempt at dialogue. There are very few Jews who are interested in such an exchange. For most, critical commentary about the Jewish community -- however framed, whether in flowers or venom -- is vehemently and instantaneously condemned as "bigotry," "racism," "anti-Semitism," "Aryan Nazi" stuff, and the like. Thanks for the compliment that I seem "intelligent and articulate." But what troubles me is that the VERY standard Jewish reaction to criticism of the Jewish community is that such criticism CANNOT, by definition, be "intelligent and articulate." To criticize Jews (especially a sustained criticism) is held to be irrationally "anti-Semitic." My problem is with the presumptions that underly a blanket condemnation of Jews -- or Muslims, or Americans, or any other individual member of a complex, multifaceted group. Collective judgment and punishment of any group fits the dictionary definition of discrimination: "treatment or consideration based on class or category rather than individual merit." Muslims are not Jews. Jews are not Palestinians. Christians are not Hindus. Malaysians are not Somalis. There are significant, DEFINING differences between ethnic, racial and religious groups. These differences are distinct. They are important. They are undeniable, for all their intra-group diversity. If there were not such differences, there would be no need to call Jews "Jews," or Guatemalans "Guatemalans." All people would be ethnic, racial and/or religious clones. I do not have to belabor this with you. It is obvious. People are DIFFERENT from each other. We all have noses. We all eat food. But the specific world view of variant social groups are not echoes of each other, except in the most simplified, abstract sense. And I'm not God. I didn't create this situation. For each group, their distinct identity is self-determining. The notion that there I am guilty of "discrimination" merely because I dare to consider people "by class or category rather than individual merit" is, upon logical reflection, absurd. Each ethnic, religious, and/or racial group "discriminates" against all others based upon the very foundations of their own self-definitions. A Jew "discriminates" against all others, starting with the very fact with he/she perceives that all others are not "Jews." So do Muslims. So do the French. So do Kenyans. You yourself wake up in the morning and discriminate against all others, merely from the fact that you recognize that you are you and all others are not you. The notion of "discrimination" has been hijacked in today's PC culture to the point of absurdity. "Discrimination" is a fundamental of human existence. You discriminate light from dark, good from bad, sand from soil, Jew from Palestinian. I'll start by telling you something about myself and the sense in which I am - and am not - "Jewish." I apologize if this runs on, but your response to the writer of the "Jewish query" began with "Since you have not defined what exactly the term "Jew" means to you, I will have to make some presumptions...." These presumptions are not true of me or my family, so I want to start with what is true. For a long time, when people asked me about my religious background, I said: "My family is Jewish. My personal beliefs are..." I found to my dismay that many people's ears closed after the word "Jewish." No matter what I believed or how I lived, I was then and forever "the Jewish girl." Madam. If I asked you what you were, and you said "My family is Martian," forever to me you would be the "Martian girl." If you told me you were from a Hindu family, I'd mark you forever as formulated in your early years by Hinduism. If you told me that that your family was "communist," that would provide relevant information to me, whatever you considered yourself today. One's family is not a trivial piece of information: it is a crucial part of the formation of personal and social identify. On the humorous side, it meant that no matter what I said about not being religiously observant of Judaism, people froze in horror if a slice of ham was dropped on my plate. With all due respect, I think the issues at stake are for more important than Judaism's denouncing of pork. Frankly too, I do not think many non-Jews even know about the Jewish (and Muslim) prohibition. How would they know, unless a Jewish acquaintance socializes them to it? On the not-so-humorous side, a boyfriend's Catholic mother disliked and rejected me before ever meeting me, though ironically, I was reading Christian theology and attending church, and the boyfriend was a staunch atheist. If your boyfriend's mother knew you were a communist, isn't it her right to formulate opinions about you based upon her own knowledge of communism? It's her mind. It's her life. Not yours. If you were from Saudi Arabia (with its notorious reputation for treatment of women) why would she reasonably expect that you could be virtually anything, including a go-go dancer? If his mother discovers that you are a "Jew," why is it not her right to anticipate, based upon some demonstrable norms, and probably her own life experience, what you might be? Such pre-perceptions could be changed upon meeting you. But you implicitly condemn this woman as a bigot for being purely human and not matching your idealistic standards of an airy, wishy-washy, anything-goes, open-minded attitude that NO ONE on this planet honestly has. I'm sorry. Anyone who claims to NOT have social preconceptions is a liar. Dead trees and rocks might be that purely objective. But not human beings. (Regarding a Jewish "persecution complex": it may be part of many Jews' upbringing, but it wasn't part of mine -- You say that the "persecution complex" was not part of your upbringing. I take you at your word. But do you mean to suggest that this world view is not part of normative Jewish ideology? Do you further mean to imply that, if the woman in question presumed you had this victim complex, she was "discriminating" in presuming the high likelihood that you DID have it? It seems to me that we all play the chances in the world by percentages. We make presumptions upon our life experience and knowledge. You could go visit Afghanistan as a tourist tomorrow and come out of it unscathed. Let us not make any biased or generalized statements about the Afghani people. But you'd probably do well to "discriminate" and stay out of there. so I agonized over what that man's mother might dislike about me: I'm a nice person, I'm smart, I don't do drugs, etc. He explained uncomfortably, "She dislikes the idea of you," and I still didn't get it -- "what, she doesn't want you to have a girlfriend?" Duh.) Again, with all due respect, there are many, many, many reasons why someone might be worried about their son's "Jewish" girlfriend. You do not know with certainly which reason this was. (Conversely, as you well know, Jewish parents have been notorious for outrage when finding out their child has a non-Jewish partner. In fact, recent studies have found that Jewish parents are far more upset about their kids marrying Christians, than the other way around. We cite the study at this web site). More benignly, Christian friends often give me gifts of Jewish poetry, folk tales, etc., in the hope that I'll take more interest in where I come from. And so, in one sense, I'm Jewish simply because the world doesn't let me not be Jewish, and I'm not willing to skulk around and evade questions of my origins. But YOU affirm to these people that you are "Jewish" and, still to this point, you have not defined for me exactly what this identity means to you. In this sense, it's perfectly reasonable for anyone to presume the norms of Jewish heritage about you. Until they learn otherwise, why not? Why do you see this as so unreasonable? Your "Christian friends" seem to be falling over themselves to make you comfortable, and you fault them for it. I remind you that your irritation against these Christians who won't let you "not be Jewish" may be displaced. As you should well know, by traditional Jewish communal dictate, if you're born a Jew you'll die one. You could become a Christian tomorrow, and became the first female Pope, but Judeocentrism still will claim you: it is -- by Jewish dictate -- a web of no escape. Your complaint should be aimed in that direction. The question is, do I simply bear this as a burden (laying blame for *why* the burden has been foisted on me makes no effective difference in how I experience it), or do I try to make something good of it? My answer is to go ahead and say "I'm Jewish" -- You could say, "I was raised Jewish, but ..." or something. You could distinctly avoid accepting a Jewish identity if you don't subscribe to it. But you don't. You find fault with these people (they are "discriminating" against you?) even as you assert to them that you are Jewish. Still, what does the term "Jewish" mean to you? You still don't say. Yet you affirm clear allegiance to it when posed with the essential question: What is your identity? It is a reasonable question from those who are curious as to who you are. If they ask who you are, and you say you're Jewish, I don't understand what you're complaining about. and to show, by how I live in relation to other people and to God, that this doesn't always mean what people think it means. You wrote: The "Jew," whatever his understanding of this term, thereby defines himself in antithesis to the non-Jew; most typically this is understood as the "antisemite." In Jewish self-conception, this irrational "antisemitic" nemesis nourishes the Jewish sense of intrinsic self-worth. It is true that this kind of self-concept is a self-perpetuating form of isolationism, and I see it often in Jewish culture. Forms of it also permeate Islamic culture, American culture, and many other groups. At root it's the same old tribal concept of "us" and "them": the "us" being the good, important people, and the "them" being everybody else. Ethnocentrism is intrinsic to humanity, yes. But modern Western society has long been in the vanguard in self-consciously vanquishing it (to the degree that is humanly possible). Comparing Jewish ethnocentrism to Islamic ethnocentrism is not the same thing. Islam is a religion, and, yes, a culture has grown from it. But Jewish identity functions at many levels: as a culture, a race, a religion, an ethnicity, and a nationalism: all or part of this at any one time. There is no equivalent notion to Jewry's "anti-Semite" in Islamic culture. If so, what is its name? Likewise in Christian culture. Again, the notion of the demonic "anti-Semite' informs Jewish identity in a profound way and, with the demise of Judaism for many Jewish people, forms a kind of pseudo-religion. Again, too, if Jewish ethnocentrism was the scope of, say, the Amish, no one would pay any attention to it. If Jewish ethnocentrism was self-contained and folded in on itself, who would care? But coupled with Jewish ethnocentrism is Jewry's profound social, economic, and political power to advance its tribal aggrandizement. If you deny that Jewish ethnocentrism is a major political force in today's world (especially per Israel), you are in denial. The seeds of injustice, hate, fear, and violence are sown anytime people place their group/tribal identity over their human identity.Do you have any argument with that statement? If I tell you I'm a member of a professional bowling association, do I have any less "human identity" for it? If I'm a Muslim, am I surrendering part of my humanity? Is allegiance to Christianity an allegiance to "injustice, hate, fear, and violence?" Are seeds of all this sown if I insist to you that I'm Navajo? On the other hand: when my mother was a child in Maryland, restaurants still had signs that said "No Jews" along with "No Negroes." How could people who grow up in such conditions not feel discriminated against? Please name for me the group in human history that cannot lay claim to being "discriminated against." Would the Eastern Europeans who were sold as slaves by the dominant Jewish slave business in medieval times count? Don't you think your deck of cards is a little too much aligned in your equation of Jews and "Negroes" when Jewish exploitation of African-Americans as slave-owners, slumlords, ghetto store owners, talent agents, et al is part of urban Black folk legend? Want to know about discrimination against Blacks? Check out the information at our web site about the famous Brooklyn "slave market" where Jewish wives used to "hire" impoverished African-American women as weekend maids and servants. Louis Farrakhan's mom was one. It was a reality. Yet my parents never conveyed to me a sense that anti-semitism lurked around every corner. They conveyed that the important thing was who I was as a human being, and who other people were as human beings. I still expect everyone to be basically well-meaning and to respond to kindness and reason. If you are solely a generic "human being," and it transcends all other identities like winged Goodness into the cosmos, then why are you bringing a discussion of your Jewish identity to my door? Is it part of the ideology of "being Jewish" to live in this benevolent Wonderland you herald here? The answer, as you know, is an emphatic "No." It is a polar opposite. "Being Jewish" and the angelic universalism you describe are mutually exclusive. Reference, for starters, modern Israel -- the pillar of modern Jewish identity. "the Jew, whatever his understanding of the term, thereby defines himself in antithesis to the non-Jew" is not true -- because it is not true of me. That's something like saying because there's no snow on my sofa in my house in the Arctic, there's no snow in the Arctic. Or because this oak tree is taller than the norm, it can't be an oak tree. I define myself as a human being who was born Jewish If I, in turn, define myself a human being who was born Palestinian, there we have it. In direct antithesis to your statement about "being a human being," the attendant qualifiers in our respective statements point the way to conflict. In other words, by throwing the term "Jewish" into your "human being" brew, you charge it with an enormous social and political dimension. "Being Jewish" isn't a neutral term. Nor is being Christian, or Muslim, or anything else. If I say I'm a human being who loves Ariel Sharon or Adolf Hitler or Osama Ben Laden, even if I say I was born loving them, you can see the problems that arise. With all due respect, I don't think you've got both feet on the ground about this. The clouds are nice to aspire towards, but they will not support the spot you wish to sit. and who finds some beautiful, worthwhile things in Judaism -- as well as in other traditions. There are "beautiful, worthwhile things" in virtually ANYTHING. A shark is a source of wonderment, no? As is, for that matter, a hyena. The issue at stake in the struggle for justice and moral fairness is what's NOT so pretty. Scholarship, mysticism, poetry, humor, praise of God and humility before God -- these things also are part of the Jewish tradition, as much as any rabid, neurotic isolationism is. But which qualities dominate within it? Look around you, with open eyes. I'm not in denial about appalling things done in the name of Judaism and Jewish interests. Nor, I would guess, are peaceful Muslims in denial about the roots of Islamic terrorism. But they are not responsible for it, and it does not invalidate their faith. Madam. The "roots of Islamic terrorism" may be found in the brutal, colonial nation of Israel. People faced with hopelessness and degradation react with desperation, whether they are Muslim or anything else. And why do you singularly subscribe "terrorism" to Islam? Why not look for the "roots of terrorism" also in Judaism? Or the oppressive policies of the Jewish state? Likewise, my gentle grandfather who gave free dental care to poor people of any race or color, and the remarkable doctor and storyteller Rachel Remen and her grandfather -- and I -- are no less Jewish than the Israeli government. Congratulations to your grandfather. Are you suggesting we balance the deeds of a dentist with the enormity of the Jewish state and world Jewry's support of it? "If Jews call themselves "Jews," and Israel calls themselves "Jews," that's good enough for us. We'll criticize what Jews call themselves: Jews. It shouldn't be good enough for a reasonable, just person. At the heart of your statement -- and of all racial or religious discrimination -- is a faulty syllogism: 1. All [subset of X] are X. 2. All [subset of X] are such-and-such. 3. Therefore, all X are such-and-such. Logically identical to: 1. All bananas are fruit. 2. All bananas are yellow. 3. Therefore, all fruit is yellow. Madam. Your little theorem here may be balanced on its head and pointed back in your direction. Because your grandfather (X) and you (Y) are swell people (and you are, at the moment, the sole testament to that), therefore ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWZ must be presumed to be swell too. Or more correctly, because ABCDEFGHIJKLMJNOQRSTUVWZ subscribe to a racist "Chosen People" ideology that funnels many, many billions of dollars heading in horrible Israel's direction, and you and your grandpa don't fit the mold, it is illogical to make a generalization about ANYTHING regarding the alphabet. I think your little proposition of logic, as I have demonstrated for you, is the foundation of modern PC (politically correct) culture. With all due respect, it's premises are absurd. It is an ideology of thought control, social engineering, and avoidance of phenomena in the real world. It also infers that to make a truly accurate observation in the world, per Jews, all Jews on the planet must be surveyed, per their beliefs. And if, say, two Jews differ in opinion from all the rest, any generalization about Jews is faulty because there are exceptions to every rule. Madam. NO ONE LIVES THIS WAY. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO LIVE THIS WAY. It's political hoodwinking. It's illusion-making. It's propaganda, a way to stifle progress in directions that the politically-empowered forbid. "So don't complain to us. Do something to steer the "Jewish" community off the immoral course it calls home. In other words, you'll condemn me as a Jewish person until I manage to achieve this impossible task? Again, if you let ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWZ speak for you, defining
what a "Jew" is or isn't, don't complain to me. Again,
if you, defined, say, as an American, go to visit Afghanistan and get
killed because you're an American, it's not fair. It's not just. But who's
fault is it? The enraged Afghanis, after being bombed to crisps by American
robot weapons? I'm sorry. I don't think so. You have defined for me that
you are a Jew (but you still haven't defined what a "Jew" is
to you). The Jewish Machine is rolling in your name. It's up to you to
change it's course. Or not. Doing nothing is a choice. I don't ask the average American to steer the Bush administration away from its increasingly fascistic policies. I demand it. If no one listens to me, there's nothing I can do. But I expend the time and energy. If one other person is influenced by my protests, it might be contagious. He/she might influence one other. The train must start from somewhere, even if it arrives into the correct station without me, lost on the way. Moreover, there is no single "Jewish community" -- there are many, many small communities composed of people with widely varying opinions and beliefs. I'm sorry. You're dissimulating. I hear this argument all the time, and it's totally bogus. The term "Jew" means something. If not, it would be an extinct term, not even in the dictionary. What is its spine? What is the root that unifies Chassids, atheists, Sefardim, Ashkenazim, et al beneath the distinctly Jewish umbrella? Whatever it is, THAT is what a Jew is. And that's what this web site is about. And, again, in this regard, you have never really explained your allegiance to the term "Jewish," except that it is emotionally reactive in you: it's what Christians call you. Please think about this. There's a lot of hidden history in your position, and it is very, very Jewish. I'm sorry, but I don't think you've thought this through deeply enough yet. I can only affect the people within my sphere of influence -- by setting an example of treating all people with respect. Treat all people with respect. That seems reasonable. It's a universalistic premise. But it is not a traditional Jewish perspective. Don't take my word for it. Go to the Talmud. Look these things up. Again what do you mean when you say: "I am a Jew." I believe that the best way for you to change things that bother you
about Jewish culture is to make friends with some Jewish people -- to
open a real, fruitful, respectful dialogue. But I realize how unlikely
that is. Best Wishes, Jody It is an enormous stereotype that those who criticize Jews have never
seen one. I'm sorry to disappoint you. I have been around many, many Jews,
in a wide variety of activity. That should be apparent by my knowledge
about them. Knowing Jews has been a large part of the inspiration of this
web site. The avenue for dialogue is right here. Reasoned discussion from Jews with the Jewish Tribal Review is pretty sparce. It is the Jew who avoids it. Not us. Your indictment, too, on this point is misplaced. Further discussion from you is welcome. It is refreshing to hear something
from a Jew other than hysterical condemnation. JODY RESPONDS: ROUND TWO |