Comments on: Jack Ross: you can’t take the Judaism out of Jewishness

By: RowanBerkeley

RowanBerkeley — Wed, 13 May 2009 09:08:32 +0000

My goodness, Rykart — you're Jewish? And here we were all thinking you were some sort of horrible Nazi.

By: yonahred

yonahred — Tue, 12 May 2009 05:59:18 +0000

food for thought: sometimes it is useful to see how other people deal with their ethnicity as a type of mirror to figure out how to deal with our jewishness. think of chris rock's "i love black people, but i hate niggers" routine. then think about lillian hellman referring to jews as kikes. read richard silverstein's ignorant comments regarding the compilation of jewish self mockery called "jewface" and then think of spike lee's film "bamboozled." obviously since many jews can pass and the intermarriage rates of jews far surpasses the intermarriage rates of black people the comparison between a race and jewish identity might be considered two different worlds. but these are things to consider. think of the "holy" trinity of freud, marx and einstein, their outsider status and revolutionary thought. think of einstien's "god doesn't play dice with the universe" and how jewish this statement is. think about all the jews who were burnt at the stake rather than give in to forced conversion and think of those who marry out and happily celebrate a secular christmas.

By: ThorsProvoni

ThorsProvoni — Tue, 12 May 2009 01:47:57 +0000

Possibly it is irrelevant to the discussion of Jewish identity, but It would be perfectly possible to construct a non-Zionist Hebrew-language curriculum

By: rykart

rykart — Mon, 11 May 2009 17:12:06 +0000

"Militantly left." That's code for someone who regards non-Jews as human beings. No Jewishness without Judaism? Lately, I am beginning to accept that perhaps this is true. I have zero interest in speaking Hebrew and the religious tenets of the Jewish faith are–as Einstein remarked–"pretty childish." I enjoy Kafka, Benjamin? Big deal. So do plenty of Navaho. Would Kafka lose his literary power if he were a Finnish protestant? That's just Jewish arrogance, exceptionlism, tribalism talking. At the end of the day, it wouldn't matter in the least. For every Arnold Schoenberg, there's a million talentless louts like Adam Sandler. No one is allowed to point this out, because it's taken as a given that Jews are a luminous race of uber-brains, who can't help creating masterpieces out of every household object we touch. What would change in my life if I woke up tomorrow to find my mother's maiden name was not Feldmann, but O'Malley? How would I be diminished through such an experience? Maybe it's time (horror of horrors!) to leave this thing called Jewishness–to surrender the field to these numbskulls who keep their noses buried in the Torah (when they're not busy punching Arab children and bombing hospitals). What is it we are really trying to preserve? The Yiddish theater? Most, if not all aspects of Jewish culture WORTH preserving are already long dead. Let it go.

By: Citizen

Citizen — Mon, 11 May 2009 15:14:15 +0000

Little Phil is battling the powerful replacement ignorance; you are supporting it.

By: Citizen

Citizen — Mon, 11 May 2009 15:09:47 +0000

Exactly. Phil is doing his best to avoid the current status quo powers, which have replaced one ignorance with another. Your "one criticism of the Zionist approach" speaks volumes. Why don't you listen? Phil is samizdat, you are status quo. He has a small blog, you defend the party boilerplate. You say Never Again as it pertains to the jews; Phil says Never Again as it pertains to all the people of the earth. Phil says take a chance–didn't you grow up in the USA, and don't you benefit immensely from that? You say, no–in fly-over country they live for the day they can knife me in the back. Phil responds, where's your evidence here in the USA? You say, implicitly, my tribal history tells me so; a division of human nature that clearly posits the eternal battle between good and evil–you live a cowboy story while wearing a beanie; Phil has no hat. My G-D, you do need that hat, eh?

By: Citizen

Citizen — Mon, 11 May 2009 14:58:57 +0000

You mean like Phil Maher? Maher looks at what Christians have done, are doing, while they self-identify as Christians. They come in for a good scolding because of their deeds, whether it's the Crusades, Salem witch trials, The Inquisition, the fact the Pope in The Vatican lives surrounded by enormous material wealth in his expensive ridiculous costume, etc–he merely points out that there seems to be a disconnect (obviously seen by Luther). Phil does the same with Jews (Maher does not). Witty is the minor Huckabee of the Jews on this blog. LOL.

By: Citizen

Citizen — Mon, 11 May 2009 14:44:48 +0000

The first is just gibberish, dependent on the mere word "transcendental," an adjective alluding to something other than form yet takes its root as the anti-thesis of form(s). It is senseless unless one draws implicitly from form or aggregate of forms. It is, simply stated, an irrational belief in G-D, that is, the yearning of logic for a first cause, an all-powerful being–else, as Descartes pondered, who made that watch found on that island? The second repeats the first, draws its essence explicitly from it. A Ponzi scheme. Look beyond logic to any particular logical thread's assumptions–always the Achilles heel. What's the difference between many gods and one god? Efficiency? Central planning. LOL. What is the lineage of the covenant? Accidental birth from a particular woman's vagina? Exodus from slavery? There's no proof this ever happened. There's more proof though, that the ancient Hebrews did not like it when they had to exchange their status as Egyptian warrior allies for being merely, like so many other conquered peoples, manual workers in the massive Egyptian Public Works Programs (with benefits). All religions have their assortment of mythical revelations. The third is nothing but a banality, that various forms, human and otherwise, repeat themselves–like breathing. The fourth, that via our independent will we participate in the co-creation of the world means merely that while we are alive our every action and inaction has butterfly consequences–so does an ant's or cockroach's. But only humans have the power to change things by thinking they will repair the world by re-welding it in weak spots, or by deconstructing it based on new assumptions–First, Do No Harm. History is full of nasty reaction from the Haves, and nasty results of the Have-Nots guided by good intentions. A "bad Jew" is a judgmental Jew? You mean like a Jew who judges another Jew based on conflicting views of parentage, community, philosophical identity, an aspiration? Does the Torah not provide us with a G-D that is then "bad" by this standard? Who is less judgmental than an agnostic? Who should draw the fine line between good and bad discrimination? Affirmative versus negative action? Who censors the censors? What is the index of maturity? The criteria? Is it a question of popular norms, of mere quantity of adherents? History has a problem with such a posture. When is a question "real" as distinguished from "unreal"? Is it merely a matter of grammatical form, a statement as distinguished from a question? No. This belies the underlying assumptions in each form of communication. Was Socrates mature? Or Plato? Is Rush Limbaugh, or Phil Maher? Perhaps they are both like children? Immature? Jesus? Saul? Or the old order?

By: Richard Witty

Richard Witty — Mon, 11 May 2009 13:32:34 +0000

Ask Phil if it is true. He is the one that referred to himself baitingly as the "bad Jew". Do you value the four relationships? I find them to be critical to my understanding of myself, the world, politics, inter-personal and inter-communal ethics. They are also critical in rejecting the dogmatic "critical analysis" method of dissent. Participation in the world is more personal than that. One criticism of the Zionist approach is that ignores the humanity, the ecology, of Palestinians, as if life on only a single and selective scale is relevant ethically or politically. It would be a failure for dissent to merely replace one ignorance for another, instead of replacing an incomplete thesis with a more complete one.

By: MRW

MRW — Mon, 11 May 2009 12:29:07 +0000

Dana! :-))))