Readers of this blog must be aware by now--I am, anyway-- that I have only a rudimentary understanding of religion, and the difference between religion and ideology. Here is Jack Ross, who goes "to a nice little lefty shul in Park Slope but am completely unobservant in my personal life," responding to Jeff Blankfort on the question of whether Judaism is not damaged by Zionism.
I don't want to argue religion with him, so I'll just say this: It is
hard to think of a greater asset in Zionism's ideological arsenal than
the concept of the "secular Jew", i.e., that you are still a Jew even
if you reject the Jewish religion. The idea that there is some meaning
to being a "secular Jew" if you reject Jewish nationalism (Zionism) is
little more than a pitiful old left conceit.
I've told Jack I find this statement a little bit oracular. Though surely it bears study...
Catholic nationalism is what got the Muslims (1480s) and Jews (1492) ejected from Spain.
Hard to know what Jack is saying.
The bottom line is 99% racial. Yeah, there's few Jews who are black, and yeah, a few who convert after dancing on their head for a long while. Let's get to the main meat course.
Hitler knows.
So is Jack saying that if you're a) a secular Jew; and b) you're not a Zionist; then that means you're not a Jew? In other words, if you're secular, your connection to "Jewishness" is Israel?
I think that's an accurate description for many (most?) secular American Jews. But I just don't think it has to be so. There's lots more to being a Jew (high holidays, Jewish history, stories, humor, ethics) if you're not pious than supporting Israel.
I see what Jack is saying, Richard : he is saying that if one subtracts both the Jewish religion, and Jewish nationalism, the only thing left that can possibly lead one to continue to claim to be 'a Jew' is the 'pitiful old left conceit' that people fortuitously born Jews have played a progressive role in history, and thus made Jewishness, while still fortuitous, something worth maintaining.
I agree with John K.
Its a fallacious equation.
Jews self-identify for multiple reasons, or don't for multiple reasons.
Its our/their choice.
… an Italian barber …falls in love with a girl from Brooms Street, New York. The barber wants to marry the girl, but her mother would not hear of it. In the end, the mother says the two could be married if the barber converted to Judaism. He does; the mother makes him learn Hebrew and pray every morning with a yarmulke on his head. The couple live with the mother-in-law, and the barber doesn't get his breakfast until he has said his prayers. But that isn't the end of it. The girl happens to have a brother named Joe, and Joe doesn't pray before breakfast and still gets his meal. After a while, the barber becomes impatient, and he asks his mother-in-law. "Why doesn't Joe have to pray before breakfast?" The answer comes promptly: "Joe is a Jew. I know he's a Jew. You got to prove it!"
Also, LeaNder, the barber will stop being a Jew when he stops wearing the yarmulke, etc., but Joe's Jewishness is forever.
Technically it's not true that one can ever convert to "being a Jew".
Thats a funny story.
I have no idea what Jack is saying.
@ Lea
When Ruth converted into Judaism, she didn't just take the Jewish God as her own, but she had to take the Jewish people as her too.
It's a koan Michael, an oracular statement. You have to meditate about it.
And someone has to add 2. present civilizations; 2.1. United States of Amerika, Jack Ross in Wikipedia.
? so is this a blood connection thing, like being a Muggle instead of being pure blood in Harry Potter stories ? If a Muggle born is accepted to the Wizard world, they are still Mudbaths, inferior, but their children are considered proper wizards and not Muggles anymore?
I can't resist throwing this in, though I wrote it in a completely different context. It expresses a usually unwelcome awareness of the "Frankfurt" or "counter-cultural" strategy's Jewish affiliations – consider the prop 8 rumpus :
It's so very easy to arouse the natural human female contempt for the male, and the 'gay' contempt for the 'straight', both of which provide access to an enormous arsenal of culturally reinforced put-ons, poses, and postures not dissimilar from those that Jews would use if they wanted to display their (equally natural) contempt for goys.
All these contempts employ passive aggression to provoke their targets into behaviour that can then be made the object of endless complaint and counter-propaganda. One wishes they could find something positive to do with their lives, but clearly they cannot, so the general right-wing complaint about Jews, feminists and gay activists all being in cahoots to make life as unpleasant as they can for everyone else is indeed justified.
http://www.haloscan.com/comments/andy8/5368541228463581192/#350599
Rowan, you may want to read the Magnus Opus of Hans Mayer: The outsider
The investigation, Außenseiter,[The Outsider] which appeared in 1975, was considered by many to be his main work. In this volume, he deals with the literary portrayal of three groups, which have commonly been discriminated against in history: women, male homosexuals and Jews. He had his own experiences with belonging to two of these groups – as a Jew and as a homosexual.
Maybe one shouldn't put two links next to each other?
The outsider
I have just finished rereading it.
It sounds good. One of the most disturbing and enlightening books of the 'outsider' genre I have ever read was Hannah Arendt's study of Rahel Varnhagen, you know the one:
Rahel Varnhagen : The Life of a Jewess by Hannah Arendt, … Rahel Levin Varnhagen (1771 1833) occupied a unique place in German intellectual history. …
Arendt gives me a really strange feeling, as if someone was walking on my grave, so at least to that extent, I am obviously Jewish too.
Good you remind me. No, I haven't. She is not the only "Jewess" in Romantic circles, but the most important one no doubt. Another "self-hating" Jew or Jewess. (identity)
Reminds me of the problems facing the translator, German Jude – Jüdin. I wonder how our dear Richard would "balance" these two opposing points of view [I can't link, last time I did, I may have caused the list troubles]:
contra Jewess
Professor Almog of Hebrew University comments on his perception that the use of the word "Jewess" is not regarded by him as much different from the term "female Jew." On one hand I understand him completely, and on the other I hear the word with the same reaction I get to fingernails on a blackboard.
Since English is a language that ordinarily does not distinguish masculine and feminine in the noun form, the word "Jew" is ambiguous since one does not know if one is referring to a man or a woman. But that is equally true with the word "plumber."
In French, were sexual differences are part of the word form, indeed "Juif" and "Juive" are part of the language. This is true in many languages but that are grammatical differences built into the language.
It is the apparent willingness on the part of some people to use the unnecessary and ungrammatical "Jewess" when referring to a Jewish woman that causes one to investigate the matter, though my comments to Professor Almog are not by any means an attack on his motives, only his English.
If one is going to use Jewess, then one must also use Catholicess or Protestantess or Baptistess or even the unpronounceable Seventh Day Adventistess. There is no effort whatsoever to describe the sex of
a Methodist by the choice of word form.
To make the matter uglier, the sexual form of a word is mostly used with animals: lioness, pantheress, tigress, etc.
The only other human who is given a sexual form to the noun describing them is negress, an equally pejorative term.
The word is now and has always been an insult to Jews in general and to Jewish women in particular. It is medieval.
Notice that in Ivanhoe, for example, the woman Rebeccah is referred to as a Jewess when she is referred to as a witch or else as an object of sexual desire. The term Jewess is used to deprive her of her humanity.
This is not an issue of being politically correct such as "chairperson" or "mail person." It is a matter of using an ugly medieval and now anachrnonistic word that has only been used pejoratively.
counter-point quarrelsome:
pro Jewess
No, … I don't agree with you. What about 'actress', 'empress', 'princess', 'duchess', 'Englishwoman', 'Frenchwoman', 'aviatrix', 'executrix' (the latter two old-fashioned but surely not offensive)? … We simply have pre-packaged feminine/masculine forms of some words and not others:'Dutchman' and 'Dutchwoman', but 'American' or 'Dane', with no separate gendered forms. You'd have to say 'American woman' or 'Danish woman', but I don't see why one should not use the shorter gendered terms if they are available. I don't see any virtue in 'female actor' over 'actress', for example, and 'female Duke' would be downright ludicrous. Likewise I don't see why 'Jewish woman' is different from 'Jewess', except for being longer.
It's the 'Jew' part of it that grates, if anything, not the '-ess' part, because 'Jew' has traditionally been a term of abuse ('jew him down', etc.), just like 'Negro'. 'Negro', once the normal word, is now felt to be offensive mainly because it can phonetically slip easily into 'nigger', especially via the Southern pronunciation 'nigra'. There is also the fact that Blacks were once treated like animals, with terms like 'bull nigger' and 'negress' ('nigress?') being used like animal terms. The Black community has therefore gone the route of looking for synonyms or euphemisms (none of which are really satisfactory, but that's another question).
Jews however were never bought and sold like animals; 'Jew' and 'Jewess' have never had animalistic connotations except in the minds of the worst antisemites, and we have never wanted to be called anything but Jews. And if 'Jew' is ok, there's also nothing wrong with 'Jewess'. Certainly on this side of the Atlantic, it's still very much felt to be a normal word.
The 'Jewess' question may, in short, have more to do with American hypersensitivity on the race issue than with anything more universal or rationally defensible.
In my own work, I have to deal with German, Polish and Yiddish sources, all of which have gendered versions of 'Jew', and there simply isn't another translation for Jewish woman that quite catches the flavour.
RB: "All these contempts [by Jews, feminists and gays] employ passive aggression to provoke their targets into behaviour that can then be made the object of endless complaint and counter-propaganda. One wishes they could find something positive to do with their lives, but clearly they cannot, so the general right-wing complaint about Jews, feminists and gay activists all being in cahoots to make life as unpleasant as they can for everyone else is indeed justified."
LeaNder citation: "In this volume, he deals with the literary portrayal of three groups, which have commonly been discriminated against in history: women, male homosexuals and Jews. He had his own experiences with belonging to two of these groups – as a Jew and as a homosexual."
—–
But we now know that most Jewish complaints were exaggerated, overwrought, and designed to leverage themselves into political power so they could impose their own dysfunctions on society, and that the Jewish Bolsheviks, Neocons and Zionists epitomize the kind of power they exercise when attained. I have no doubt the other two groups, who suffer from the eternal victim mentality as well (not all women, but certainly most feminists and most gays), would exercise power similarly if ever granted the reins of power (as many left-liberals want and seek). The Jewish experiment discredits left-liberalism in its entirety.
But we now know that most Jewish complaints were exaggerated, overwrought
I am assuming you have the Holocaust in mind, Chris? You are aware by now, that we agree to disagree on this topic. I am not saying that the matter is not complex, but exaggerated, overwrought???
But strictly I wondered a while ago, if you and Bill Pearlman have similar views concerning women and gays.
Once again, the test of virtue is power. Considering their small numbers outside of Israel, look at the power of the Jews in the USA.
And, considering their small numbers in any land, consider the power of the gays in the USA and Western Europe… The very definition of historical Marriage is up for grabs.
And the power of females? In the USA & Western Europe and Canada and Australia, their power is now immense. This should be, in keeping with their numbers.
Ed comments on the Jewish Bolsheviks, Neocons and Zionists epitomizing the kind of power they exercise when attained.
Again, the test of virtue is power.
If the feminists, gays, and Zionists take over, it will be the usual
case of the King is Dead, long live the King…err, maybe that's Queen with a jockstrap, whip, and your child in tow.
Also, what's the difference between a shiksa and a Jewess?
LeaNder: "I am not saying that the matter is not complex, but exaggerated, overwrought???"
When the Holocaust is successfully employed as rhetorical leverage to propagate massive, murderous wars against the enemies of Jews, largely for Jews and for purely ambitious purposes, it has indeed reached the level of “overwrought.” In terms of exaggeration, I was suggesting that the Holocaust has been way disproportionately documented relative to the number of comparable state organized systematic mass murders perpetrated in history, particularly those committed by Communists.