My wife and I spent the weekend socializing in our community in the Hudson Valley. One of the things I do in this blog is try and report on the life of an intermarriage. We are both from privileged backgrounds but distinct tribes; the life we've made together is a privileged one. And the thing that strikes me forcefully from this weekend is that in privileged circles, Jewish and gentile pathways are intermingling almost seamlessly.
The best indication of this is the numerous references I heard to Jewish stuff at the three parties we went to. When I was younger, this would have been more of a source of social awkwardness. Now it is not an issue, though Jews were in a distinct minority at these events. So at one party two gay guys said they were getting married by a rabbi. At another, a man spoke derisively of Abe Beame as being a "short Jewish mayor," like New York's current mayor. I think the speaker was Jewish, but who cared? At an outdoor party yesterday I was at a table of non-Jews and in a true Woody Allen moment thought that a woman at the table had used the word "alter kocker," which is Yiddish for old man. When I said something, everyone wanted to know just what alter kocker means. I tried to explain that it is both affectionate and derisive. At last I hit on the perfect explanation. "Older Jews are in a bind in this election, because it's between an alter kocker and a schwartzer." Raucous laughter, if I say so myself. People want to know Yiddish, it is a type of sophisticated lingua franca. The hosts of this party were also intermarried, but the sweeping view was that of an ancient estate on the Hudson.
I am saying that there is a comfortable acceptance of Jewishness in some high social circles in the U.S. It used to be that WASPs tolerated Jews because they were indispensable, as professionals, doctors and lawyers. When I was young, I remember visiting a high-WASP's house in the country and looking through his father's rolodex. My friend said that his father was antisemitic, but the doctors in there were Jewish. Now WASPs embrace Jews because we are such important players in American society. We have money. Consider this delicious phrase from the coverage of Congressman Eric Cantor, whom McCain is eyeing as a possible veep:
Cantor, 45, is a prominent Jewish Republican with a talent for fund raising, which he has used to help the McCain campaign in recent months.
Ah, euphemism. One consequence of the Jewish "talent for fundraising" is that Cantor's rightwing love of Israel is sort of taken for granted in establishment circles and not openly discussed. I think it's impolite to address it directly or questioningly. Israel is imbibed by all along with the Yiddish. So even gentiles are Zionist in a mild unthinking way (like Walter Russell Mead, the minister's son who attacked Walt and Mearsheimer in CFR's magazine). At one party I went to, a weedy gentile kid had just returned from a trip to Israel that his new Jewish stepfather had compelled him to go on. He went reluctantly, but had a great time.
Meanwhile, it's impolite to talk about Palestinians in American society. I noticed that last night on "60 Minutes" Steve Kroft interviewed Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, the Dubai dictator who is visiting Bush right now. Al-Maktoum said he loves everything about America, except our foreign policy. When Kroft asked him what about our foreign policy, Al-Maktoum said he would bite his tongue, but Kroft pushed him to mention the Iraq war and Iran. He did not mention Israel. A similar self-censorship prevails in establishment circles in the U.S. today. Do we have to bring that up? As I say, everyone's a little bit Zionist, because it's easier.
Last weekend I spent with my own tribe, in Cape Cod. My wife was back here, on deadline. Israel came up a few times, usually because I brought it up bumptiously, and the impression I got of American Jewish attitudes towards Israel is that they are not well-informed. One guy said that Israel's Arab neighbors have threatened it with extinction forever. A liberal woman said she knew little about the conditions of Palestinians, because she finds it too complex and upsetting. This is simply denial. Denial in one quarter, liberal Jews. Blank passivity in another. So no wonder the crazies rule the conversation.
"I remember visiting a high-WASP's house in the country and looking through his father's rolodex."
An admission of stereotypical intrusiveness.
What Phil says is true, but in similar circles in DC I have noticed a lot of hostility not far beneath the service, deriving from unspoken awareness on all sides of the neocon role in what everyone realizes are disastrous policies foreign and domestic. This hostility erupts occasionally, usually followed by silence and a change of subject.
Gentiles are not the only ones walking on eggshells. Jews will generally avoid Israel-related subjects in mixed company, in my experience; some will even take it upon themselves explicitly to dissociate themselves from Israel. I remember one dinner a couple years ago where a jewish member of the company stood up to announce that he had no loyalty to any country but the USA.
"I remember visiting a high-WASP's house in the country and looking through his father's rolodex."
An admission of stereotypical intrusiveness.
What Phil says is true, but in similar circles in DC I have noticed a lot of hostility not far beneath the service, deriving from unspoken awareness on all sides of the neocon role in what everyone realizes are disastrous policies foreign and domestic. This hostility erupts occasionally, usually followed by silence and a change of subject.
Gentiles are not the only ones walking on eggshells. Jews will generally avoid Israel-related subjects in mixed company, in my experience; some will even take it upon themselves explicitly to dissociate themselves from Israel. I remember one dinner a couple years ago where a jewish member of the company stood up to announce that he had no loyalty to any country but the USA.
The remake of The Planet of the Apes may provide a relatively easy means to introduce the issue of Palestine to gentile Americans.
Just show it at a gathering. I've been thinking of using it in the college environment.
Weiss writes of the Jewish/WASP collaboration as if it’s a good thing; it’s not. Bush, the Jewish Neocons and the Iraq war are just the latest poisonous manifestation of the relationship. Continuing Euro-American blank-check support for Zionism was a precursor. Look how each of those have turned out.
One thing this blog entry makes clear: Phil Weiss is no revolutionary. Although sometimes advertised as such, the vast majority of Jews aren’t, either. They are not truly interested in changing or reforming the existing order, but rather substituting themselves at the helm, and then asserting an even stronger authoritarian iron grip over the hierarchy than that of the elites they replaced. No wonder so many on the Left feel betrayed by the Jews, but the outcome was predictable given the nature of organized Jewry.
I was amused by the yiddishisms also until about 5 years ago. I fell in love with Jewish culture way way back as an escape from what I deemed my own whitebread background. I loved Jewish worship of intellectual culture and general hipness, outspokenness and, emotionality. Isn't it getting a bit too much though? Does anyone else feel that way? Leaving aside the neocon debacle, doesn't it seem like Jewish humor has taken over? We are all experts now in Jewish neuroses, Jewish mothers, Jewish drivennesss, not to mention Jewish victimhood. It was funny, compelling, whatever, for a while, but now it's the dominant cultural zeitgeist. It IS the culture. Wait a minute , I don't want to be colonized like that.
It is worthwhile to mention that both kaker (shitter) and shvartser (nigger) are offensive terms that should not be used in polite company among people that actually speak Yiddish.
"It IS the culture. Wait a minute , I don't want to be colonized like that. "
Write, publish, produce something yourself.
Talk about a victim culture.
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/08/why-is-joe-klei.html
Andrew Sullivan: (and there's more…)
On the Iran question, there can be little doubt that waging a pre-emptive war on the Persian regime is now the principal policy objective of the neocon right. To elect McCain is almost certainly to endorse a new war with Iran within the next four years. Again, this could be justified on the grounds of America's interests and not Israel's. But again, the case is getting a little harder to make. The world and the West can live, after all, with a deterred and contained nuclear Iran. Israel cannot. McCain and Lieberman hold the Podhoretz position on Iran; Obama is a few pragmatic notches away. Those notches – minor to most observers – nonetheless render Obama unacceptable to the Jewish right. Even after his AIPAC speech.
Mondoweiss: you need to do a daily links round up on this issue.
Witty: "Write, publish, produce something yourself."
…and hope that the US State Department's office of global anti-Semitism doesn't come knocking on (or jackbooting in) your door.
But yes, Witty. You do make a good point. We should all stop whining and follow the late, great anti-Judeofacist writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn's example. Here is my obituary of him, and a partial list of his many anti-Judeofascist accomplishments:
http://members.boardhost.com/libtoday/msg/1217885056.
Try again @
http://members.boardhost.com/libtoday/msg/1217885056.html
I have to admit that I am tired of having Jewishness forced down my throat. If mainstream humor is Jewish, then I'm not too fond of it. And Yiddish does not sound sound sophisitcated. Nothing drives me up the wall more than hearing Yiddish words spoken as if they belong in an English sentence.
I have to admit that I like Woody Allen much more lately. But that's because he doesn't come off nearly as Jewish as he once did.
'If mainstream humor is Jewish, then I'm not too fond of it.'
Some of it's great, but there's not enough other perspectives. My children force us to get all this Hollywood kid fare and what I'm sick of is how all the characters sound as if they walked out of Seinfeld. Talking animals and machines, aliens and supernatural beings, all wisecracking New York Jews apparently. It's claustrophobic. Like I say, much of it is good, but you can have too much of a good thing.
'I have to admit that I like Woody Allen much more lately. But that's because he doesn't come off nearly as Jewish as he once did.'
Well Woody has taken at least one potshot (that I know of) at the uber-Zionists in his community. I think it was Crimes and Misdemeanours which had a minor character (a brother or cousin) who was a Daniel Pipes lookalike, with the beard, the faux military mien and the barely suppressed Angry Ant attitude. The characterisation was far from friendly.
I empathized with all the comments on this thread very much–even Witty's. My answer to Witty is that more and more American Gentiles are freeing themselves from the cultural bondage produced by Hollywood's ethnically-controlled system, along with the one-sided companion slant bombarding us daily from the half-dozen or so media conglomerates. If we add mainstream Hollywood and mainstream news, we come up with only about a dozen in the combined propaganda system.
How about a new movie, something like Bubba Butts Heads At The Federal Reserve? Or Two PALs (Palestinian-American Lads) Go To White Castle? Yentas At Walmart? A new PBS tv version of the series, Upstairs, Downstairs? The series is divided into three sequences pre & post 1945, and post 1965. A new cartoon version of Underdog? A remake of All In The Family? That show would reflect the current culture clash in America. Any more ideas? I'm thinking a parody of Larry David's show, Curb Your Enthusiam.
Or, how about, instead of the usual beautiful tow-headed kids parented by a dad who looks nothing like the kids, we'd get the reverse… Another flick, The Way We Were, updated? With Sarah Silverstein and her Ex?
A teen flick where the main nemesis isn't called Brad? But Moshe?
I have written two screenplays based on Jewish narratives (The Heartbreak Kid — original Elaine May version — and Schindler's List) as examples of subverting Jewish narratives:
Well this post by Phil I think reflects that he lives in a social set in a unique area and is applying his experience to society at large.
In the elite set, for want of a better description, outside of cities that have large populations of Jews, neither Yidish nor Jews are discussed much or their culture incorporated into society. I have never noticed Jews in most parts of the country displaying or push their jewish culture or identity or gentiles paying any attention to it. This is not to say that Jews are excluded but that other societies not like the circle Phil lives in don't have any interest in making a deal out of things particular to the Jewish community. The picture of the NY Jew or Jews immersed in their Jewish identity is not the typical Jew in most of the country. Just as the NY and other Northern or Calif societies represented by large numbers of Jews isn't representive of other cities that don't have those populations.
One of posters above described the same experience I have had with jewish friends…once when I raised the subject of the ME and Israel at a dinner party early on in the Iraq invasion every jewish person at the table suddenly dropped their napkins and disappeared under the table looking for them until the subject was changed.
None of this is neither here nor there but to make the point that Phil speaks only of his experience in his own circle.
What he describes about cultural inroads among his set could be said about the Cuban influence in Miami… but outside of Miami and Hollywood it is barely noticed by rest of the country's elite. Right now in Atlanta there is more cultural crossover in the new Latin American society doing business there and reflecting the growing population of them.
In other words it all depends on where you are.
American, I don't your personal experiences. But the "
American heartland" is more than that.
Consider, the average German view between 1918 and 1938.
Is the American character formed so different between 1965 and
the present? If so, how?