The latest New York Review of Books contains an ad for a book from Macmillan that says, "The politics of Israeli governments in recent years and a drift to neo-conservatism among segments of Diaspora Jewry have substantially polarized the Jewish community abroad."
This is true, and a great story; I wish the press would cover it. Though of course, the press's failure is my opportunity. Funnily enough, I just got a link in my inbox that speaks to the issue raised by the ad: neoconservatism and Jewish identity.
Five years ago, neoconservative David Brooks wrote about his son's bar mitzvah and said that Holocaust stories should be central to the bar mitzvah ceremony, which should mingle recent Jewish history with the Torah, which is also "history," he said.
[T]here will be reminders that we're mysteriously bound by things that
happened before we were born and to people, now dead, whose lives are
interwoven with our own. 'What their species is for animals and
plants, that is history for human beings,' the 19th-century historian
Johann Droysen observed.
In today's [bar mitzvah] ceremony the Book of
Exodus will mingle with the Holocaust…
Note that Brooks is suggesting that religion–the Torah, constituting "history"– is as strong as species is for plants and animals: an utter divider. (Don't marry a non-Jew!) And he uses the most anti-Semitic moment in history to anchor this point. And thus Brooks, a conservative and a religious Jew, constructs a Jewish identity out of a "mysterious" mix of history and myth, which binds his son, ala Abraham and Isaac. This is not just religious talk. Brooks is also a political actor; and as the neoconservative support for the Iraq war and for the Israeli occupation show, this construction of identity has political consequences.
This is not just a division between neoconservatives and non-neoconservative Jews. It is in American political culture. Identity is fluid, as Obama has demonstrated; and we don't have to construct identity from divisive elements.
RE: "this construction of identity has political consequences"
Precisely why all Americans need to know about it, and where it has taken their country, and the rest of the world. Why we can't simply "leave it to
the Israelis and Palestinians to sort out."
I don't remember, growing up Christian, any religious holiday or marriage evoking any sort of blending of ethnic historical narrative with a religious connotation, large or small. I guess one exception might be some historical reference to
early Christians being thrown to the lions in a Roman "bread & circuses" arena? Still, we were never told the victims' ethnic background, nor treated to how they overcame the Romans in some battle or another. As an altar boy, I was never reminded of my own ethnic history, true or false. I never learned any such dramatic either/or unless it was
you were to follow Jesus's parables, sermons, conduct your life accordingly–or you wouldn't join God in Heaven.
I never once heard the word "jew" from the altar. Hebrews, Romans, yes. No historical context regarding either
was ever given to suggest I should side with one or the other of those ancient peoples. Certainly, I never was given
any information to suggest, in comparison, a Roman citizen could be from any ethnic group, while a Hebrew was a more tribal actor. The only thing I gleaned from such information was that both groups had their own agendas with
the actor called Jesus on that ancient political stage. Was either taught if you masturbated you'd grown hair on your hands? I didn't know.
I don't see a good reason for Americans to internalize the IP situation, or to constantly make false comparisons between the U.S. and Israel in order to cement a relationship that most Americans could easily do without. Should Americans constantly be forced to hold their history and legitimacy as a people, culture and nation under a microscope so that Jews can have their little civil war over Palestine? That's what many would have us do. Is that how to form a stable, peaceful and just society?
Americans must hold their own hard-won nature and reputation in the world under a microscope to see that zionist
equation of the two is simply wrong, and not in the interest of the USA.