JODY: Hi, Looks as if you're sparking some interesting discussion (the other thread under "Debates with Cyberspace Visitors"). I'm sorry if my answer/lack of answer seemed rude. I'll try to explain more here.

EARLIER, JTR: If this seems like too much of an expense, I would be happy to buy it -- or the 'intro to logic' book of your choice. You state that "the best you can offer" in our little exchange is $30 towards a book you like. Think about that, what you're saying. That's not your best offer. Your "best offer" would be to reflect upon the issues stated to you earlier, which you insist upon ignoring. A dialogue is supposed to be an exchange of ideas. There's nothing coming back from you except "Read this book I like."

JODY: I reflected on the issues a lot -- before the exchange and after. The reason that I didn't forge on in the discussion is that you seemed to misread much of what I'd said, and you often responded to a distorted version or to some other issue entirely. Your comment here about "a book you like" is an example of what bothered me: I had said "or the 'intro to logic' book of your choice," emphasizing that I was promoting not a particular book but rather the principles of logic. In fact, I've never read that book; I couldn't remember the title of the one I'd studied in college, so I searched Amazon, read the summaries, and picked one that seemed like a good general introduction and also had gotten good reviews. The point was to save you the trouble of a search, if you were interested, by taking the time myself. By answering me as if I were just plugging some book I fancied, you were ignoring my real, clear intention.

Your real intention is a negation (or ignoring) of my responses to you, with a refocus towards your sense of "logic" per Jewish history and identity, wherein you advocate that my "logic" is flawed.

I don't think you're stupid -- not at all. But I think that you use rhetoric instead of logic, and this makes it impossible to have a meaningful discussion.

My sense is that your perspective is the problem to a meaningful exchange. Your fundamental system is to ignore what I'm saying to you and redirect the exchange into the realm of: "You're illogical." Period.

You're right that I was saying your responses lacked logical consistency. (I'll give a couple examples below.) But it has nothing to do with your intelligence.

I don't care what anyone thinks about my intelligence. The issue here between us is not "intelligence." Nor is it "logic." Nor "rhetoric." The real issue is being fully and honestly informed about the subject of Jewish history, influence, and identity. The real issue is having the COURAGE to face unpleasant facts and attempt to grapple with their social and political meanings.

The only reason that I don't argue the same way is because I studied logic, and once I learned the universal principles of logical argument, I had to stick by them. (Life sucks.)

Again, even the mentally handicapped exhibit some form of "logic." Again, Hitler had "logic." Ariel Sharon has "logic." Jack the Ripper had "logic." Even chimpanzees with sticks have some form of "logic." You are aiming towards -- purely and entirety -- a narrow scientism to define your life for you. Insofar that any system of "logic" and scientific results may be manipulated to evidence anyone's respective "logic," I really don't think that is the issue at hand. As I say. The real issue is honesty. And courage. And an openness to understand things that are troubling.

I slip up now and then, but only from stupidity.

No. Human beings are not "logical" robots. People "slip up" because they are human. And, again, being "logical" (whatever that means to you) isn't a pseudo-religion to me, as you make it sound for you. "Logic, " as an aside, does not explain "life." Even as you want to drag this discussion into metaphysical abstracts, human understanding of life itself has nothing to do with "logic," because "logic" can't explain it. But, please, the subject is Jews, Jewish power, and Jewish identity. And verifiable evidence about them, collectively.

A couple of your statements were along the lines of "I could turn the tables and say..." But if my statements in themselves -- not things that you imagine I'm thinking alongside them, that you assume all Jewish people think, or that some other Jewish person has said -- contain any hypocrisy, you've yet to point it out to me.

Examples, please. I can't respond to an abstraction like this. But the issue is not what "all" Jews think, EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM. That's only a tricky device to block out what I'm saying to you. The issue isn't every single Jew; the issue is the central currents in the ideology of "being Jewish." I do not have to prove by your notion of "logic" that every Jew on the planet thinks with one head. That's not what I'm saying.

In this latest reponse, though, you had two good points: - the bit about "intelligent people will have to take you seriously": you're right; a more accurate statement would be, "logical people will have to take your conclusions seriously." - a logic book being the best I can offer: true, a better thing would be to go through your previous response point by point and explain every logical inconsistency and fallacy. But because I didn't have the energy for that,

Nor, frankly can you do it. The "logic" is there. Here you are declaring that there's no "logic" in what I tell you, and you follow that up with your evidence: you're too tired to make your case. I beg your pardon? It's apparently enough for you to dismiss what I say as "illogical." That seems to be the beginning and end of everything you care about. I suggest that you do some honest introspection about the ideology of "being Jewish," "logical" or not.

I thought the next best thing would be to introduce you to the principles of deduction so that you could spot the fallacies yourself. I'll go through a couple of the logical problems now: (excerpts below)

--------- me: 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."

----------you: 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." you: 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.

---------me: 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.

--------you: 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.

My two statements are saying basically the same thing: that I believe you can't make collective moral judgments or blanket decisions about how to treat people based on their membership in a group.

Yes you can. Do you make a "collective moral judgment" about someone in the Nazi party? Do you make a "collective moral judgment" about someone in the Ku Klux Klan? There may be a huge variety of individuals in such groups, but you will surely make generalizations about the superstructure of the ideology of the group. Whatever your response to these questions, we live in a world where ANY individual in these groups is toxified as a bigot, racist, and worse. I'm pointing out to you that you're setting up a dual standard. On one hand a Ku Klux Klan member, in our mainstream modern culture, is decreed to be categorically condemned. On the other hand, an investigation of the tenets and ideology of Israel and Zionism towards collective criticism, and, for that matter, Jewish identity itself, is categorically "off-limits." Where is your "logic" here? The issue is social and political, not your sense of "logical." The issue, as always, is a dual moral standard.

Jews made categorical generalizations about Christianity all the time. More and more, Islam too.

I'm sorry. Israelis, for example, are known, world-wide, as an obnoxious, arrogant, rude, chutzpah-spewing people. Israelis' own folklore about themselves is that they are a cactus (sabra -- prickly to deal with) on the outside, and soft inside.

This combative, aloof, Israeli identity was consciously formed by the Zionist movement in Israel in direct response to what Jews were considered to be in Eastern Europe.

This collective view, and collective SELF-identity, by your logic, you'd condemn. Is every Jew in Israel obnoxious? No. But obnoxious arrogance -- even to fellow Jews -- is its mainstream current. Ask your Jewish American friends who have spent any time in Israel about it. Ask them about the "sabra." It's not myth. It's real.

Hell, Israeli tourists are notorious for their arrogance and chutzpah.

You must instead consider them as human beings.

I consider Jews human beings. Please.

To the first statement, you respond that I'm being "very Jewish", and to the second statement, that my viewpoint and Jewishness are "mutually exclusive." Both can't be true.

Look. You say later in this email that you love to argue. Come on. That's a Jewish institution. It's a cliche, it's a "stereotype," and it's true. Does every single Jew on the planet like to argue. That's not the point. The point is the culture's self-conception of itself, and what it does with this self-conception. How it is manifest. "Being Jewish" and "universalism," by the way, ARE indeed mutually exclusive. There's even Jewish scholarship about what is carefully referred to as Jewish "particularism" (in contradistinction to the concept of pan-human universalism). You should read some of that stuff.

In the other exchange I'm having with Matan Ariel, to his credit, he's already conceded that Jewish identity is loaded with hypocrisies, contradictions, and paradoxes. Hey. That's in large part what modern Jewish identity IS. You've got some serious thinking, introspection, and researching to do.

How can you champion all the abstract pan-human fluff in these emails and then turn around and say, as you do below, that you "support" Israel? That's a contradiction. Jewish identity itself, in its collective support of racist apartheid Israel in direct antithesis to all it champions in the West, is mired in hypocrisy.

(Actually, the idea that I expressed is an essential American idea.) Second, you wrote: "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." That's a definition of discrimination that you'll find in any dictionary.

Madam. The notion of "discrimination" has been coopted by modern politically correct society to render free and honest thinking an antique. Again, is it OK for you to make any prejudgments about the Ku Klux Klan? How about, say, people on some remote island who practice cannibalism? How about the people of Iraq, GENERALLY, today, when you stroll down the street in Baghdad sporting a Star of David (or, yes, American flag) looking for a nice hamburger?

You can argue that discrimination against people is OK, but you can't say that you don't do it.

My dear. Everyone "discriminates." Including you. It is part of something called "life." You're not paying attention to what I've written to you before. The real question is: do you discriminate based upon verifiable information? THAT's the issue, not whether "discrimination" itself is right or wrong. As I have said to you, and you've ignored: if you declare yourself a "Jew," you inherently discriminate against all others who are NOT Jews. You notice they are NOT Jews, hence you "discriminate." And you make presumptions about the Jewish world and the non-Jewish world. If you say otherwise, you are being disingenuous with me.

If there was riot in your city among impoverished Blacks, and you're trapped on the street and had a quick choice of running for safety into a nearby synagogue or a Nation of Islam temple next door, which would you (almost instinctively) choose? Would you stop and say to yourself: "You know, I'm sure there's a lot fine people in that temple [which there may be], so to Hell with the synagogue, both are going to be exactly equal in acceptance to me, with exactly equal risks, so I choose the Nation of Islam temple." I know the honest answer, and so do you -- WHATEVER you tell me.

Third: when talking about discrimination, you shift between two different, distinct meanings of the word. Here is the complete definition of discrimination from The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition: 1. The act of discriminating. 2. The ability or power to see or make fine distinctions; discernment. 3. Treatment or consideration based on class or category rather than individual merit; partiality or prejudice: racial discrimination; discrimination against foreigners.

Madam. You don't get it. The dictionary is a pile of words. What do you think you prove with this replication? Our difference is not a question of what the dictionary says. Our difference is what discrimination "means." I don't mean a dictionary quote. I mean, socially, politically. I even mean when a butterfly "discriminates" and lands on YOU and not your neighbor. Do you have ANY clue to what I am saying to you?

I also note to you that dictionary terms change all the time, in response to word's changing social and political usage. Look at an old, old dictionary and you'll probably find different definitions. PEOPLE decide what goes into a dictionary, and, like anything else, these people are creating, and codifying, "meaning" as much as they claim to be merely objective transposers of culture. It is a social and political process, as much as it anything else.

Meaning #2 is what we mean when we say "discriminate between." Meaning #3 is what we mean when we say "discriminate against." It's inaccurate to say that "Each ethnic, religious, and/or racial group "discriminates" against all others based upon the very foundations of their own self-definitions." They discriminate *between* themselves and others, not necessarily against others.

Again, in the other exchange I've got going (with Matan Ariel) I noted from the start that I didn't want to get into this kind of silly exchange of dictionary citations. The dictionary isn't my Bible, nor should it be yours. I can AGREE with what the dictionary says. But I don't agree with YOU in that "discrimination" is inherently evil. Discrimination is perfectly "logical." We all do it every day, all the time. We discriminate in what we like to eat, and who we like to hang around with. Do you spend time with people you don't like, just to prove you don't "discriminate?" When you drag it into the social and political sphere (and PC correctness) it's an ideological issue, and not merely a bland citation. I don't think you grasp the moral and intellectual terrain of which I speak.

You proceed to give many examples of "discrimination between" as if it were the same thing as "discrimination against." But the biggest (hardest to analyze) flaw in your logic is that it rests on inconsistent definitions of what it means to be Jewish.

you write: "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."

You are absolutely right. But if there is anything essential to the definition of "Jewish", then it must be true of every single Jew, including me (since you've already defined me, in your terms, as being Jewish),

NO! This exchange is turning into a Fellini movie. YOU have defined yourself as Jewish. You come to this web site as a self-described Jew. I FOLLOW YOUR LEAD. In "your terms," you're a Jew. Good enough for me.

not just some or a lot. If you claim certain qualities and values as essential to Jewishness, and I don't possess those qualities or values, then you'd have to say that I'm not (in your terms) Jewish, right?

Already, by a third brief email, you proclaim yourself to be Jewish, then divorce yourself from any generalization about being Jewish. If I cannot make a generalization about you as a Jew, then why are you not a Muslim? Or a Kurd? or an Australian aborigine. I'm sorry. But your position in this email exchange appears to me to be VERY Jewish. You say soon in this email that you like to argue. And here we are, arguing, at this point over really nothing. It's a form of Talmudic sophistry: splitting hairs. You say you're a Jew. I follow your lead and say you're a Jew. You say I can't make ANY presumption about you being a Jew. Then I say on what grounds can you possibly call yourself a Jew, if there is no standard for being called one?

And you're the one who claims to be in love with "logic?"

The thing that you can't do is say: "Since you define you yourself as Jewish in your terms, then I can condemn you as Jewish in my terms."

Madam. I'm sorry. But I can do whatever I want. Your idea of "logic" is not my dictator. (I'd go mad with "illogical" confusion if it was). You aim to make "being Jewish" stretch like a giant Gumby, covering all and everything. But, hey. Being Jewish means this, this, and this. Or it doesn't mean this, this, and this. "Being Jewish" isn't as nebulous as you'd like. I can play your game too. How about this: I can say "I think that I AM Jewish. And I think YOU are not." Based on what? Nothing, since -- in your view -- there are no firm generalizations that can be made about being Jewish. Your position is the road to Looney Tunes.

Again, that's switching definitions midstream, a logical inconsistency. It looks something like this: Premise: I define Jewishness to include the acceptance of an immoral ideology. Premise: Jody defines herself as Jewish in a cultural and ethnic sense. Conclusion: Jody accepts an immoral ideology. or: Premise: I define Jewishness as the ideology of the Israeli government. Premise: Jody defines herself as culturally American-Jewish and ethnically Jewish. Conclusion: Jody is accountable for the actions of the Israeli government.

Again. You have yet to define AT ALL what the Hell "being Jewish" means to you. But, for sake of argument, OK:

Premise: Judaism is the origin of Jewish identity. So I must examine the Talmud and the Torah to understand it.

Premise: Jewish identity, by definition, stem from this historical root.

Conclusion: The moral tenets of the Torah, and the Talmud's interpretation of them, have something important to do with Jewish identity.

Conclusion: The Talmud and the Torah have informed Jewish morality.

That same dictionary, by the way, gives 3 distinct definitions of "Jew": 1. An adherent of Judaism as a religion or culture. 2. A member of the widely dispersed people originally descended from the ancient Hebrews and sharing an ethnic heritage based on Judaism. 3. A native or inhabitant of the ancient kingdom of Judah.

So? There's plenty of "definitions" of "Jew." Jewish identity includes a religious dimension, an ethnic dimension, a nationalist dimension, a tribal dimension, and on and on. What do you prove with all these citations? I'm sorry. Nothing. I don't disagree with your three dictionary definitions above.

Amongst all this, I ask you again: what are the enduring threads that hold "Jewish" identity together? That is the question you need to ask yourself, and lay aside your dictionary for a while. What do you have in common with a communist atheist, a Chassid, a Jew from Morocco, a Falasha, a Jew from modern Russia? Why are they all called "Jews?"

There is more to say about logic and consistency, but I'm tired.

Me too!

Do you see my points, though?

No. I think your demonstration of "logic" is absurd. Sorry.

As for the ways in which I'm Jewish...

Ah!

I'm not sure what you think I'm evading. I examine my character and see a whole laundry list of faults -- 'laziness,' 'self-indulgence,' etc. -- but I don't see any of the ones that you attribute to Jewishness.

I don't even know you and you declare, precisely, soon in this email, an aptitude to argue. I'd call that a Jewish cultural (and Talmudic-based) trait. We can start there.

Neither do I see any that I can trace to a 'Jewish' source. They're my faults and my responsibility. If you're wondering whether I'm more likely to excuse Jewish people's bad behavior than others', the answer is no. If you're wondering whether I support Israel uncritically, the answer is no.

IMPORTANT QUESTION: Here we go: how DO you "support Israel?" And WHY do you support Israel in the first place? Not we're cooking. The pot's beginning to rattle on the stove. We get past the fluff, and now we can examine "being Jewish." It's taken you this long to say anything whatsoever about your Jewish identity, all the while insisting that generalizations about Jewry is "illogical." And here you are: one of the first things you note about being Jewish is your "support" for Israel. Voila! You float down out of the sky into the landing port. Like a bird migration.

But basically, I have my hands full trying to make myself into a better human being -- my first priority since I'm the only person I have real control over. So how am I Jewish?

"Support for Israel" is a good start.

I like potato latkes and the sound of Yiddish. I like (and, I'm told, have) a kind of humor that seems unique to Jewish culture. According to my mother, my love of debate also is part of Jewish tradition.

True. True. True. But wait. You've laid out a schema that says you can't say this. How can you say that a "love of debate" is part of being Jewish? That's a stereotype. That's "discrimination" against those Jews who DON'T like to debate. You're representing Jewry unfairly!

Isn't this where your "logic" implodes? Generalizaitons I dare to make are taboo. Generalizations you make are kosher.

I could name a hundred cultural details, but what's the point?

The point is that the more you talk about your Jewish identity, the more your very premises of "logic" fail you. Tell the hundred cultural details. I am interested.

I don't attend synagogue, though I enjoy talking/arguing with the rabbi when I see him. Morally, I've been influenced more by the New Testament, Sufi poetry, the Declaration of Independence, and myriad other sources than by the Talmud.

Good for you.

But here's an interesting thing: you ask me to tell you about who I am, yet you reveal nothing about yourself. You don't even sign your first name. It creates a kind of imbalance in any dialogue. Who are you?

Who are YOU? What "imbalance?" I haven't the slightest idea who you are. We're exchanging ideas about Jewish identity. That's the subject.

How were you shaped by your ethnicity and your family? What are your personal beliefs about the right way to live? You don't have to answer these questions, of course -- I just wonder.

The answers to these questions are informed by the entirety of this web site.

In a funny way, I suspect that you and I have basically the same values. I think that you're a moral person.

I try to be. Those who have founded, and contribute to, this web site are morally propelled. There is no money in it. There is no personal reward. There is only the satisfaction in the struggle for JUSTICE.

You're struggling with vast problems of evil in human society, attempting to identify a primary source and a solution. (This beats, any day, sitting in front of the TV.) I wish you the best in this search even though I think you've taken a logical wrong turn and, as a result of voicing it publicly before a not-so-discerning audience, are causing some harm. (a reflective enough response? long enough, certainly.) Take Care, Jody

We differ. This is indeed the righteous path. Judeocentrism and its attendant political force, Zionism, is leading the world to catastrophe. All truly moral people should start to take a look at this and start discussing it. This web site is an effort in that direction.

Your moral task, as a "Jew," is to start examining Jewish identity and Jewish power and its destructive impact in the world. If you do not, if you categorically refuse the entirety of the criticism of Jewry at this web site, if you're only response is that it is I that am "illogical" and "biased," I'm sorry. Alas, you as a self-declared "Jew" thereby fulfill with further evidence another generalization for me.

to Jody 4