In the Forward, Isaac Luria, 26, of J Street goes after Foxman, David Harris and Malcolm Hoenlein, saying that the old guard don't get it, and young Jews are making a new identity. "Continuity" in this excerpt is the concern with Jewish survival, which usually translates to the organizational efforts to stop intermarriage (which grew out of the Jewish survey in 1990 indicating that over half of young Jews were marrying out).
Many of these new communities and organizations are more committed to making Judaism personally meaningful than to simply pursuing Jewish continuity, and aren’t necessarily housed inside traditional Jewish institutions (though they may be funded by forward-thinking Jewish philanthropies). Many of us who are active in these new endeavors are connected to and care about Israel. We hope for a lasting peace, and believe that both sides must play a role in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
For many young Jews, Obama embodies our values. He leads an interconnected world, dealing with myriad and difficult problems pragmatically and honestly. As a symbol of a new era of racial relations, he is uniquely positioned to help peacefully resolve ethnic strife and conflict abroad.
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Phil, I appreciate your continued postings on intermarriage, which is what brought me to your blog way back when. I intermarried to a Jewish girl, good times. She's wonderful, family is wonderful, relatives wonderful – all were and are for the most part totally accepting and loving and they mostly haven't given two shits that I'm not tribal and have no intention of becoming so. Man, let me tell you though, rounding up a rabbi to say the ceremony was worse than pulling teeth. Never have I felt more alienated, lower class, second class, call it what you will. Their rabbi of 20 plus years flat out refused to do it, didn't want to meet me, talk to me, etc – even to find out if I was interested in converting. A few guests at the wedding were a little horrified to find out I was Jewish, but I think it was too late, and who cares – certainly my inlaws didn't. I understand that organized Jewry has a vested interest in fighting intermarriage; it would be, I guess, like asking the pope to convert to Judaism. But it has a pretty rotten whiff of racism and especially the superiority that you often speak of. It's funny, but growing up the Jews I know always talked about how no one would marry them except for Jews. I can't understand if that's the truth or a pathology. My experience was totally the opposite.
Julio, good post. Similar experience for me, marrying a Jewish woman. My father-in-law told me flat out that he never trusted me, being a WASP. In his experience, the WASP country club had a sign that said "NO DOGS, NO JEWS." Somehow, I think he was making it up, but it really didn't matter one way or another. I was goyim and that was that, But I digress. Phil, this is one of the most important posts you've ever put up on Mondoweiss. Isaac's words perfectly capture the Zeitgeist of the Obama generation, and completely excoriate the old guard which tries to call any criticism of Zionism a form of anti-Semitism. Foxy Abe Foxman seems like a fossil, a dinosaur, a relic whose usefulness is greatly diminished in the age of the Internet. His whining after a face-to-face meeting with Obama seems petulant and irrelevant. J Street represents the new thinking, and hats off to Jeremy and Isaac for being at the forefront of the revolution.
Good post of your own. Sad to hear of your father-in-law's reaction, but I bet you've had a similar experience to this: recently I went to a wedding held at a phenomenal country club, knock-your-socks-off cool, oak bar, overlooked the ocean, leather chairs, etc. etc. etc. Really, really nice. A babyboomer father of a bridesmaid was there – he's worth 30 or 40 million, I think – and the very first thing he said to me (not that I know him) was, nice place, eh? They don't let people like me join, meaning, of course, as he clarified in a loud voice, no Jooos allowed. Weird, maybe, maybe not. When I told my father-in-law about the party a few days later, not mentioning this incident at all, I began gushing about what a cool place it was. The very first thing my father in law, also worth a shitload of money (though not in the same league as the earlier guy) said, no shit, was, They don't let people like me join, meaning, of course, as he clarified for all of us in the room, no Jooos allowed. When I protested that they would never let me join because I don't have any money and probably never will, he said that was an irrelevant point. When I protested that I'm catholic and that people who don't let jews join, if such clubs still exist, probably aren't big fan of catholics either, he snorted and simply disagreed. I don't get it. Both of these guys are HUGELY successful, have won the american career lottery, married hot women, ivy league kids, and so on. And they still have this bizarre chip on their shoulders about country clubs that they've never approached not letting them in. It verges on paranoia. Meanwhile I haven't got two nickels to rub together and have no interest in clubs. Life, ain't it great?
Intermarriage is inevitable. Faster, more powerful, and cheaper transport, mass electronic communication — you just can't maintain an identity that was forged in another time, to deal with another world.
Country clubs are really lame.
Very interesting posts. Thanks for sharing them. It's funny, when Jews grumble about WASPS and anti-semitism in the US, it often seems to come down to some country club or debutante ball that they couldn't get into. In the end it didn't even matter, because the Jews set up their own country clubs and debutante balls. Still, that apparently trivial social exclusion really grated on many Jews. This freedom of association may well be for the best, though. As Phil has commented, WASPS and Jews have different social styles that can grate on each other. You sure are right about Catholics being shut out of those types of things too. Catholics, though, are known for being forgiving. :) In the South, the Reform Jews often set up a whole parallel social world modeled after Southern Protestants. *Driving Miss Daisy* is a particularly delightful and historically accurate portrayal of that nearly vanished aristocratic Southern Jewish culture.
Although I think the Reform institutional establishment is batty about a lot of things, they have developed a very good policy about intermarriage. They emphasise accepting the non-Jewish partner in synagogue activities, welcoming any interest the non-Jewish partner has in converting, and focus their efforts on encouraging the couple to raise their children as Jews. Of course, I have no idea how that plays out in individual congregations. My own is very accepting, and we have a surprising number of converts (one who celebrated her conversion at the same time her son celebrated his bar mitzvah.)
Let me explain where the distrust of Jews among WASPs started. You have to come from one of those families that was WASP back then, that was powerful, that had the money, the connections. Mine was. One of the original shareholders on the Stock Exchange. The Jews’ fate in this regard was sealed between 1790-1800. This story has been repeated from generation to generation within the families — especially mine — ever since. As a warning. It is unto this day. It’s still a warning. Hushed. Your Father tells you privately, warns you, in a hale of cigar smoke when you’re both in tuxedos and it’s late at night. It is the basis of all the country club refusals; the decisions not to deal with the issue when setting up memberships in clubs or communities; it’s part of all the morphed “Thou shall not accept Jews” edicts, and it’s the basis of Balfour’s letter in 1917: he, Balfour, being of the greatest Anti-Semities that ever lived. Here it is: In the 1790s, when the Stock Exchange started, deals on Wall Street were sealed with a handshake. The deals were done in meetings on the street. Male comraderie and all that. Your handshake was your bond no matter what the subsequent outcome. You kept it. No matter what you lost or gained as a result. But the Jews did not keep their bond. They broke it if they lost money. They would not pay up. They could therefore not be trusted. The Jews themselves introduced the need for contracts on Wall Street among the stock exchange holders and were reviled for it because of the added expense it caused and the change it introduced, and the bother. The Jews’ Kol Nidre prayer tribally excused them — as I was told — but there was nothing that ascribed their behavior beyond their tribe. It therefore became easier to exclude Jews than to accommodate them. And this is where it began. Before 1800. This is the seed of it in the USA. Every single stock exchange family going back to 1800 can tell you whether I am telling the truth or not. And I am. This is past down from father to son to this day. And anyone who tells you different is lying. We are warned specifically: “Dont ever trust a Jew on his handshake. He lies. Seal him to a contract.” It began 209 years ago.
The idea that a man was as good as his handshake was a critical staple of America in the colonies. To violate it was unthinkable.
Well if you go back to Plymouth Rock, a handshake with a local tribe was good as gold (wampum)–but only so long as the Pilgrims were dependent for survival on the locals; after a generation or two, the whites violated the original handshake oral contracts and substituted new written ones, which they in turn violated whenever convenient and often on set-up excuses. Seems just as the Jews had a tradition of ethics that had a dual standard, so did the colonial Christians. As usual, the test of virtue is power.
You are spot-on, David. Anti-semitism means 'not getting into country clubs'. You nailed it. When I was a kid, we were taught that anti-semitism meant prejudice against Jews more or less of the same type that I saw practiced or harbored against blacks in the areas that I lived in. I thought it meant real disdain, distrust, dislike, and so on. I thought it meant kicking a Jew's ass in the street for no reason, or picking on him in class, or bullying him, and so on. I thought it meant really being a meal asshole to someone who did nothing to deserve being treated any differently. My experience has been the opposite. Anti-semitism means, they won't let us join their club. Well, that is prejudice of a sort, I guess, but I have to say it's pretty weak. I would guess those clubs don't let all sorts of people join – not least those that don't have huge money – but the truly bizarre thing is that virtually all of the Jews I know, and I know scores, are worth a lot of money, have nice houses, awesome jobs, and so on. Their one obstacle in life is (1) they can't get into a club, and (2) no Jew has ever been elected president of the USA. And here lies the great proof of American anti-semitism, which threatens to boil over at any moment into a second holocaust. I find the whole worldview sad and pitiable.
In my case my (eventual mother in law) told my (eventual wife) that she wouldn't even meet me because I was a goy, and that if I ever came to her home she'd "pour boiling hot chicken soup on him!" We got married by the local municipality–took about five minutes. Eventually my mother in law grew to like me; in her dying months she favored me above everyone in her extended family. Ditto for her husband, who died around the same time and who always silently went along with his wife except sometimes when it came to his business operations (and he demanded his weekly poker time with his cronies).
I just love this classic piece of plainly antisemitic false-history. TRUST was CRITICAL to international trade before electronic communications and international treaties. This is why JEWS were so PROMINENT in International trade in previous centuries. JEWS WERE ESPECIALLY TRUSTED in handshake deals before enforceable contracts. I spent a long time on Wall Street. While there I found non-Jews to be way more stingy and crooked than even the worst antisemitic STEREOTYPE of Jews, so I won't tolerate your pathetic, slanderous antisemitic libel here without comment. But, hey, you fit MondoLies to a tee.
Yes, international Jewry could rely on a handshake as between MOTs. Nobody here has said differently. Otherwise, a signed contract with all implications of the transaction nailed down was shown to be needed. Nothing new here–except Madoff. He broke ancient MOT trust as between themselves, especially even trust expressed in Jew Only country clubs. While it long lasted it was nice to get a steady 10% despite any shaky market. No due diligence required on the part of the smug investors nodding "in the know." Fore!
"After a generation or two…" they had intermarried with Jews. Dual traditions, dual standards. This too is a possibility.
My experience has been the opposite. Anti-semitism means, they won't let us join their club. Well, that is prejudice of a sort Don't be silly. It is exactly prejudice. You may not like those who are "rich". That's fine, but it does not change the nature of discrimination. What you are describing is the systematic attempt to prevent Jews from reaching positions of responsibility – to keep Jews out of the halls of power. Jews are not discriminated against because there is not a Jewish president. They would be if it was impossible for there to be a Jewish president. When country clubs say "No Jews" that is clearly an indication that it is impossible for there to be a Jewish president. It is not just the rich Jews that are discriminated. It is all Jews – Jews are expected to know their place and not bother others. virtually all of the Jews I know, and I know scores, are worth a lot of money Get real. Obviously you know nothing about Jews. If the information you get about Jews is from the paper you will only get information about "newsworthy" people. Poor people tend to not be "newsworthy" – including Jews. The US has a long history of discrimination. The major form of that discrimination has been based on skin colour. My mother grew up in a sundown town. [N**** don't let the sun...] In such towns Jews were not liked either – not to the same extent as those with dark skin color. The obstacles Jews have faced is that we have been treated as outsiders [even as we have treated people of colour as outsiders]. Equality means being able to fully take part in all the American dream. As you inadvertently note – the American dream was for whites – and Jews were not considered white. Are Jews more successful than other people? Quite possibly. It comes from a strong cultural emphasis on education. Poor families would scrimp and save to send one member off to university. My impression of some other poor cultures is that the emphasis is on getting jobs even at the expense of education. Jews are not the only group which stands out. Within Christianity there is the Religious Society of Friends. (Their numbers are small enough that their success no longer stands out) As one example – [blockquote]The Quaker Fry, Cadbury and Rowntree families dominated the British chocolate industry for two centuries.[/blockquote] Within Islam there are the Ismailis who were recently expelled from Uganda – looking rather like some of the treatment Jews have received in the past.
Inter-marriage is a personal choice, as is the choice to not have children (and therefore not have to face the question of what you believe in beyond your own lifetime). My Jewish marriage, originating from connection to a yoga practise, yeilded a musician and a chasid. Both Jewish, the chasid clearly extremely likely to marry within the faith. He's a catch. Tall, handsome, intelligent, kind, probably more questioning than most chasids, likelihood of a good career. The musician is more likely to inter-marry, for love and ethical values more than association. There's value in BOTH. The main value to me for not inter-marrying is in VALUING the religiously described purpose of Jewish community, to SERVE as a nation of priests. (NOT a privilege, but an obligation) It is similiar to the concept of "sadvipra samaj" in the theology of Ananda Marga, a community committed to social service from small to large. It doesn't remain unless nurtured. Dissent is a small part of the commitment, but is a part.
"SERVE as a nation of priests" – Dicky, do you comprehend at all the arrogance in this statement? Thank you very much but I will keep my own counsel.
There were not so many Jews in the USA before 1800, and the vast majority were Ibero-Berbers, who followed the Sephardic liturgy, which has a different Kol Nidre prayer, which in any case refers to vows and oaths to God: The Anti-Semite's Favorite Jewish Prayer. For promises between one person and another, Jews are supposed to make sure that any obligations in breech are either fulfilled or forgiven in the period from Rosh Hashanah (New Year's Day) unti the Yom Kipur (Day of Atonement) aka The Ten Days of Repentance: Pious Degenerates: Repentance and Religious Hypocrisy. The real issue is Jewish taqiya:
You fail to understand what I was relating. I am telling you the tales told internally in old WASP families to their progeny about why Jews were excluded. I heard these stories myself, and on more than one occasion and from more than one family. We used to laugh at the uncles who still believed this shit.
Witty says Jews have an obligation to be “a nation of priests.” A nation of holy men. But what is to be done when they fail in this obligation, when they become a nation of institutional racists (Israel)? A nation of warmongers (the Israel lobby)? A nation of money worshippers (Jewish bankers, smut peddlers and swindlers?) What is to be done when they embrace the opposite of holiness? Don’t holy Jews then have an obligation to God to flog them from the seats of power? In fact, to thrash them for their ungodliness in the name of God? The Witty’s of the world want credit for being “holy” as a mere function of their Jewish identity, but don’t want to do the heavy lifting of keeping their own Jewish nation holy. This is why modern organized Judaism has itself become a swindle, a scam perpetrated by charlatans posing as holy men for self-advancement and profit. So called “anti-Semitism” is more often than not the mere act of holding these swindlers accountable for their crimes. By Witty's definition of Judaism as a nation of holy men, all Jews are today obligated to be anti-Semites.
There were many Jews in the USA since the 1650s. Yes, there were Sephardic but they were the great merchants of the South, of the cotton mercantile business, furs, slave business, banking, etc. The oldest synagogue (1600s) in the US is Sephardic and still in operation in Manhattan. These great families had industries from Louisiana through the Carolinas to New York, Massachusetts to Montreal before the USA was even created. Touro in Louisiana was one of the them. De Leon is another one of the great families, and some think that Juan Ponce De Leon, the real discoverer of America at St. Augustine in 1514 and who left Spain in 1492 aboard Columbus' ship was Jewish. An ancilllary article by Tony Horwitz that's interesting to read: that the early history of what is now the United States was Spanish, not English. (And many of those Spaniards were Jews.) Immigration — and the Curse of the Black Legend http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/09/opinion/09horwi...
I forgot to include the punchline:
Let me reply to this point: "virtually all of the Jews I know, and I know scores, are worth a lot of money Get real. Obviously you know nothing about Jews. If the information you get about Jews is from the paper you will only get information about "newsworthy" people. Poor people tend to not be "newsworthy" – including Jews." I'm afraid you're wrong. My wife and inlaws are all Jewish, and so are many of my friends. They're all wealthy and/or have awesome jobs. I certainly grant I may have a skewed view of wealth/Jews, since I don't know any poor Jews. But I know a hell of a lot of unwealthy goyim. I'm not saying Jews are all rich, or that those who are rich shouldn't be rich. That just happens to be the folks I know, and I don't begrudge them their success. My earlier point wasn't that being denied membership in a club isn't a form of discrimination – of course it is. But it's no more or no worse a form of discrimination than not letting Catholics or Indians or what have you into a club, either. The difference I see is that I never hear about anti-catholicism or anti-indianism, certainly not as a quasi-mystical force that infects the hearts of otherwise good people and makes them want to kill catholics or indians. So I think we're saying the same thing. The difference – as you note – is that I couldn't care less about the forms of discrimination that are practiced against me — and that includes the legalized discrimination that has stopped me from getting a couple of jobs or scholarships I would have liked to have.
The older I get, the more I appreciate my father. My father didn't give a rats ass about country clubs. In fact, he was disgusted by exclusivity and hierarchy. His disgust may very well have come from exclusion, but he came to a very different conclusion than those people who invented their own exclusive clubs or fixated on being excluded from others. And while he probably would have liked if my sister and I married nice jewish doctors, his deeply held beliefs in the equality of human beings overwhelmed any instinct toward self preservation of jews. My parents ended up being the ones to talk aunts and uncles into accepting the non-jewish spouses of my cousins.
Richard, I appreciate your attitude. My experience a few times was different. When I married in, I heard tell of a 'silent holocaust' in which I was unwittingly participating by ruining the good genes of my wife's eggs. I was bastardizing Jewry out of existence by making love to my wife. Pretty horrible term, no?
Wikipedia claims that the current Jewish percentage in 1.4% According to American Jewish Population in 1800 the Jewish population percentage was 0.03%. The absolute and relative growth of the Jewish population has been considerable since the early independence period.
i think this talk of "young jews" and their idealism is silly. the "young jews" of my generation didn't seem to give a damn about exclusivity either yet they all returned to their roots. the importance of their jewishness just grew with time. i imagine this happens every generation. it is just a function of youth to be idealistic.
I suspect that you are projecting antipathies backward in time. From the founding of the major German American Jewish investment banks in the 1850s, there was stiff ethnic competition with the gentile banks like Brown Brothers and Harriman (later Brown Brothers Harriman). The 1873 Financial Crash which had serious repercussions in the USA was blamed not without some justice on the machinations of Central European Geldjuden: Nineteenth Century Madoff: Bethel Strousberg, and certainly the German American Jewish investment banks with ties to German Jewish investment banks helped spread the damage from Europe to the USA, but the animosity between American Jewish and gentile investment reached its highpoint in the 20s: Great Crash and Great Depression.
Not to be forgotten, Aaron Lopez (born Duarte Lopez; 1731–1782), one of the largest slave traders of Newport,RI. With the family names of Lopez, Levy, Rivera, Seixas, deToro (Touro), Gomez and Hays, these men and women represented the merging of old and new worlds through the tradition and culture of colonial Sephardic Jewry. ..Within twenty years, Lopez owned or had interests in over 80 sailing vessels. Lopez was also one of the original founders and contributors of Touro Synagogue and by the end of his life was recognized as one of the "Merchant Princes" of early America. His merchant trading interests included rum, molasses, dry goods and African slaves.
You're still laughing?
I agree that it isn't young v. old. My father was born in 1929 and didn't subscribe to exclusivity, nor did he "return to his roots." I think the difference lies in how much a community feels it needs to defend itself. My father lived through WWII, but wasn't personally devastated by it. Young american jews are further away from holocausts and pogroms than ever. It is a lot more difficult to reconcile the contradictions when those emotions aren't so high.
In certain parts of the South–particularly the Delta (the section of the state of Mississippi between Memphis and Vicksburg)–Jews were entirely welcomed into the white, planter aristocracy of country clubs and balls–Greenville, Mississippi comes to mind. That was the Mississippi of Hodding Carter, Walker Percy, and Willie Morris. Basically you were either black or white–those were the ethnicities, and Jews were white.
Yes, I think that's the way Jews will ultimately survive in American culture. By adaptation.
Judaism is not for mass consumption. If proselitism cannot be employed, the only other option is tribalism with racism as de facto law. I have put aside the question of how bad jewish racism is to non-jews (though particular cases like Julio's are indeed disgusting.) For now it only matters if this particular human reserve of neurotics called judaism is producing good value to humans as a whole or has become a burden. To americans I have no doubt the jewish surplus has become a burden and nothing can be done about it. The increase of antisemitism in America is a consequence of it's decadence. Israel, on the other hand, is clearly an aberration which must cease to exist. It exposes what judaism is all about and nobody really wants to spend all the time watching the ultimate jewish method for disintegrating unarmed innocents. My suggestion, as always, is the formalization of Judonia and the creation of oficial colonies in several countries. I think jews are very useful for humanity, but they must not possess (or do research on) weapons nor be part of government. They must interact with humanity, but never disguise as a common citizen. I'm not against judonians being judonians, but I'm against judonians being allowed to pretend to be good citizens who happen to have two minds: one of a citizen, one of an enemy. Let them wear priestly robes and priestly bearings if them will, but never again let them use the innocense of the common citizen as springboard whom pretending to care about human rights considers only their own continuity a value above all others.
That's an interesting idea, but we've seen how Jewish colonies behave vis-a-vis local gentile populations with the Postville Jews.
It's been tried before by Catherine the Great. It was called the Pale of Settlement, but you know that.
The oldest synagogue in North America is the Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island. Not New York, at all. Jews in North America were NOT SPANIARDS. Jews were expelled from Spain during the Spanish Inquisition. From Spain, they mograted elsewhere in Europe and to South America. With the increased Spanish influence in S. America, they moved north to the Carribean and to the British colonies.
If you would really know something about slavery and deToro, you would know (and tell us) about their efforts to free slaves. Instead you deliver your false history, blaming Jews for slavery. Some Jews may have engaged in slavery, but not moreso than their Christian neighbors. Overall, Jews opposed slavery and worked to free them. Check out the Touro Synagogue in Newport RI and see what their efforts were in freeing slaves.
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