as I remember it (Wikipedia needs experts on this term) it has to do with Russian or Polish Jewish communities, and yes it had to do with the self-government compared to "native" citizen.

Reminds me I wanted to study the Russian and Polish history more closely since I had the the impression that the self-government, or the legal realities of the kahals – e.g. that taxes had to be paid for the whole community rather than by the single Jewish citizen – gave rise to a some really peculiar anti-semitic myth. Myth that lead into the mental-protocol-universe.

This might interest you:
link to lrb.co.uk

"In the state of Israel, we have accepted responsibility for other people."

If he is referring to the Palestinians (which I am not certain of), that is a very odd way of putting it. I think the problem is that Israel has not accepted responsibility. The Likudniks who came to power in 1977 with the old dream of a Jewish state from the Mediterranean to the Jordan accepted responsibility for the land but didn't care a wit about the people living there.

To say that Jewish survival over 2,000 years is a credit to Jewish political acumen is wacko. What about the religion? Most of us are only a few generations away from the shtetl, where our grandparents or great grandparents were orthodox Jews living in poverty and political privation that most of us could not even imagine. What sustained them was their faith.

Phil, as a self-described assimilationist, what will an assimilated Jew look like two generations from now? What will define your great grandchilden as Jews?

But Walzer is wrong: there is an historical record of Jews holding great political power — Bolshevik Russia, Weimar Germany, post-war U.S.A., Russia under the oligarchs — and it hasn't been flattering.

Jewish contribution to culture has been considerable, but in the real of politics it's been a disaster.

I'd say that would take considerable political skill. The Israelis have political skill in spades.

(They need to be wiped out.)