A couple of weeks ago a media friend came to visit my wife for the day. I like the friend a lot but I am always aware that he is connected. He is Jewish and has a good job in the media... I had the same path and rode it as long as I could, so I can’t hold it against anyone else… Hey, it’s a good deal.
My wife and her friend went for a walk and my friend Dave stopped by with his son. Since I moved to the sticks my closest friend is a contractor. We spend a lot of time together. He is from the working class/middle class and from the beginning we have learned to navigate the class difference between us that is there and not there (he’s made a lot more money than me some years). We’re fine at it.
My wife and the friend came back, and we all had tea. I had out an the atlas because my friend's son is tracing the family's roots in southern Italy and they are thinking of going there on a visit. Naturally the subject turned to other people’s ancestry. The visiting friend said, “My whole family were poor Jewish peasants. They were in Poland and Rumania and Russia [same place I’m from, reader] and just as poor as dirt before they came over here.”
Everyone left, and my wife and I had the usual post-mortem. It had been a very nice visit. This guy is nice. I didn’t say anything till the next day. Then I said, “ I just want to say one thing. Jews weren’t peasants. They were privileged in Europe. This is what the histories tell us. So ------- didn’t come from peasant stock. He was putting on airs around Dave, and I don’t like it.”
My wife flipped out on me. It was about the issue, partly, but also about my obsessions shadowing our social life. She doesn’t read this site, and that’s fine, she sounding-boards my concerns 24/7. She has to put up with a lot. Some people appreciate this. Lately a friend from this site gave her a subscription to the London Review of Books. That made her happy.
My wife was upset by a, my stored-up intensity around her friend, and b, the tunnel vision. She decided to take me on. “Don’t be crazy. Don’t be so blanket.” Later she googled Jews and peasants, and when I came in her office, she said, “You said Jews were never peasants.” “Well I didn’t say they were never peasants,” I said. “Yes you did. You said never. [I don’t remember that part.] OK: When do you think they were peasants.” “Maybe in ancient times.” “What does that mean?” Etc.
She produced the fact that in Jesus’s time there were tons of Jewish peasants. Jesus was a Jewish peasant. I accept this.
The beauty of Mark Rudd’s paper on Jewish radicalism, identity and privilege is that the old radical quotes Israel Shahak on this issue. Jews were not peasants, Rudd said. We were the middle men between the landowners and the serfs-- "[for] almost one thousand years... which we occupied a middle position between the landlords, whom we served, and the peasants who despised us and whom we in turn despised. How could it have been otherwise?" A similar point is made in Paul Kriwaczek’s Yiddish Civilisation. He has a lot more Jewish pride than Shahak and he tells about Jewish achievement throughout central and eastern Europe. “The greater the Jews’ success, the more did anti-Jewish resentment spread and fester among many of their gentile compatriots, particularly.. the lower middle class,” he writes of the 19th century. In 1522 there was going to be a peasant uprising in Alsace. A leading court Jew went to the authorities to appeal for protection. “The peasants were in revolt in Germany. In Alsace they were bent on massacring us,” he wrote in his diary. The rage was directed at the urban population, not just Jews, Kriwaczek says, and in suppressing the peasant revolt, 20,000 peasant fighters were “left dead on one battledfield, and 6,000 more on another, perhaps one in ten of the population.”
Talk abut pogroms. Talk about fellaheen, the Arabic word for peasant. Herzl was repelled by the fellaheen. And on it goes...
This is an important discussion. It is about Jewish self-recognition. We are privileged people. It is part of the puzzle. I don’t think you can take a step in any analysis about the Israel lobby in the United States without reckoning with this issue. Don’t tell my wife.
Update: I think some of the commenters are right about the crudeness of my history; I'll undertake to be more careful next time, though I defend the thrust of the post. Also my wife tells me my sin was arrogance, my intellectual assumptiveness.
This is ugly Phil. This is flirtation with fascist thinking, both in your characterization (revision) of history, and in your current prejudice towards people that are Jewish and are successful.
You never heard of shtetls? You believe that all of the 5 million Jews in the pale were tax collectors? Or perhaps only a few?
I’m surprised you published this.
“and in your current prejudice towards people that are Jewish and are successful”
Jeez, Witty, at least you know you are safe from it! Try to look at the bright side.
Witty, this is not flirtation with fascist thinking. Phil’s view of history is true. I have heard of shtetls. I’ve seen Fiddler, I’ve checked out Chagall. You ever hear of court jews, of who was allowed to practice usury in the middle ages (let alone medicine)?
What Middle Ages peasant could cross a bridge without paying a toll? Didn’t jews pass
without paying a toll because they were exempt by goy elite edict? No, not all Jews in the Pale were tax collectors–who were the tax collectors? Name a few gentiles.
I’m not surprised at your comment. It’s like pretending that jews had no significant
part in the African Slave Trade.
I think the Jew as tax collector in that part of the world was a phenomenon that preceded Russia’s takeover of the Pale in 1790. In fact for the century or so preceding the revolution Jewish poverty in the Pale was the rule and not the exception.
Noun, verb, personal attack against Phil Weiss.
Color me shocked.
Witty, you dont read history.
“You never heard of shtetls?”
Come off it, Witty! Like you’ve never herd of cows?
The Jewish niche in many societies in Europe was that of middleman. But just because Rothschild was a millionaire, doesn’t mean there weren’t masses who were poor. And just because they weren’t peasants in the literal terminology- workers of the land, one can be dirt poor in the working class as well. This was not a privileged part of society.
Many of our Jewish ancestors came from the Pale of Settlement. I’m not sure how many worked the land, but poverty was the rule rather than the exception. This was not a privileged part of society.
Compared to the larger gentile population, the jews were well off as a whole. No jew was ever considered a part of the land like a tree, or some ant hill there.
Perhaps part of the disagreement is a lack of clarity in definitions. Few Jews, in Poland at least, were peasants, i.e. someone worked the land. That doesn’t mean that many Polish Jews weren’t living in relative poverty. As for ‘Fascism’ and ‘Shtetls’, I am confused. Fascism, as I understand it, doesn’t necessarily include anti-Semitism, although Fascist movements typically have some racist component. And I thought a ‘Shtetl’ was just a segregated Jewish community. Again, in Poland, most shtetls were located within a large town or city, but maintained a separate religious, linguistic, and cultural identity. I understand that many (most?) Polish Jews in the pre-WWWII era did not speak any Polish.
If PM and his wife are anything like me and my wife, when an argument gets a bit emotional it feels like two separate conversations.
A shtetl is a little town. It is not a neighborhood in a big town.
If the poor were relatively poor, it was relative to starving to death. They were very poor.
wikipedia on poverty in the Pale of Settlement: 14% to 22% of the population was dependent on relief organizations.
Familiarity with Polish varied according to education, assimilation and generation. My grandmother told me that when she spoke to her father in Polish he refused to answer her and he would only answer her when she spoke in Yiddish.
A shtetl is a little town. It is not a neighborhood in a big town.
Well, there, I learned something. So ‘ghetto’ is the correct term for a forceably segregated Jewish neighborhood in a city?
If the poor were relatively poor, it was relative to starving to death. They were very poor.
Yes, the term ‘relative’ is very important in this context. My mother’s family were ‘potato eaters’. Not much by way of protein in their lives ’til they came to the States.
I need help from marc b. as well.
“So ‘ghetto’ is the correct term for a forceably segregated Jewish neighborhood in a city”
I thought the ghettos were set up by Jews to protect themselves from “contamination” by contact with Gentiles. Is this so, marc?
And “contamination” is a heavily loaded term, so please replace it with whatever the concept really is.
RoHa,
“I thought the ghettos were set up by Jews to protect themselves from “contamination” by contact with Gentiles”
According to Israel Shahak, yes.
“when she spoke to her father in Polish he refused to answer her and he would only answer her when she spoke in Yiddish.”
Live in Poland.
Reject the Polish language.
Complain when Poles get fed up.
Roha – Do you feel the same way towards the Amish in America, towards Spanish speaking people in America who try to keep their young ones speaking their tongue?
The context of the previous posts suggested that this wasn’t just a parent wanting his child to speak in the parent’s first language, but a rejection of the language – and thus the society – in which he lived.
And that is simply wrong.
People living in Australia depend on Australian society. They eat food grown by Australian farmers. They are protected by Australian law. The towns and cities they live in are run by Australians. And so on. It would be wrong for a group which received all this support to reject Australian society, to refuse to be a part of it, to hold itself separate, and to refuse the mutual support society depends on.
Australian society is not perfect, and not everything is run well. At least some of the Aborigines may well reject Australian society on the grounds that they receive no support. But for those who do gain the benefits, their duty is to support Australian society and to try to correct its problems and right its wrongs.
And now to deal with the Spanish speakers in the U.S.A.
First, the concept of “one’s own language”. The concept usually turns up in such cases as “Its no use giving them instructions in Welsh. You’ll have to translate the instructions into their own language.” Then it simply means “the language they usually use among themselves”. We can extend the idea to mean “one’s first language, learned from earliest childhood, and with which one is most comfortable”.
My son has two such languages. I nearly always speak to him in English. His mother nearly always speaks to him in Japanese. (Except when she makes pointed remarks that are clearly intended for my ears.) For him, then we would have to speak of “his own languages”.
But when he was born, he had no languages. There was no language which could be called “his own”.
It is perfectly acceptable for parents to bring up a child as a speaker of the parents’ languages. Often this happens automatically. The parents use their own languages to the child simply as a matter of comfort. And it is good for the for the child to know more than one language.
What is not good is to teach those languages as a way of maintaining separation, or binding the child to a sub-group in society, or insisting that the child learn the language of his/her ancestors simply because that was the language of the ancestors. Why should any of those give an obligation to teach or learn a language?
If the Spanish speaking people try to keep the children speaking Spanish for those sort of reasons, then they have the wrong motives, and the wrong attitude towards the country they live in.
(And if the children do not learn the ancestral languages, it is silly to say “they don’t know their own language”. How can it be “their own language” if they don’t know it? Their own languages are the ones they know and use.)
If Spanish is not the languages of the society and country in which the children live it is essential that the child learn the national languages as well.
Thus, there are areas in the USA where Spanish is the language used most often, but the children must learn English, so that they can be full members of and contributors to American society as a whole.
no one will ever read this, it being so late, but WJ’s comment must not go unrebutted.
The Amish in the USofA do not exert or seek to exert influence or power over the rest of the USofA; they do not maltreat USofAians, do not practice jujitsu on American values and institutions to cause American institutions to work for the benefit of another foreign nation to the detriment of the USofAian people.
Can you name the Amish counterpart to Stuart Levey?
Wouldn’t it be more to the point, and a hell of a lot more relevant, to discuss how the different classes of Jews, (and of course there was, and still is, a lot of room in the Jews for different groups within it.) relate or act on each-other?
When Jews were to some extant segregated and treated differently by law, of course some Jews were privileged, and some not, (and I would bet it would be the same old pyramid, lots more of the less privileged.)
Did anything in the relations those elite-er Jews had with the ruling non-Jews and the less privileged Jews ever indicate that a state based on it would be a good idea? I think not.
Where this idea comes from, that when it comes to the Jews we are dealing with one unified amorphous mass with no internal strains, I’ll never know. Maybe from Commentary?
Commentary and classical anti-semitism. I’ve never understood people who thought every Jew was in some Jew-wide network conspiracy.
Good point, Mooser. It appears that Phil agrees with you, but his wife doesn’t get the point. She seems to think it’s a fantasy that Jews ever were not simply the oppressed in Europe, as distinguished from a group of people who actually were oppressed by the tiny gentile elite, but, in turn, oppressed the gentile masses. This is a pattern.
She does not seem to grasp that the gentile elites over the ages, partnering with
the jewish elite (money, money, money), have exploited both the average gentile, and the average jew.
What I mean by “average” as to both jews and gentiles, is neither group has any real socio-economic power. Our hero from Fiddler, is not so different than our hero from
that US movie that always reappears around Xmas.
Citizen, unless you saw the Broadway original starring Zero Mostel and Babara Streisand you don’t know squat.
I did not see the Broadway original, only the film. So what did I miss, Mooser, please enlightened me and probably others on this blog who did not see the original Broadway show.
Also, how’d you like the Apprenticeship of Duddy Krawitz? Did that have a Broadway original too? Just curious.
Oh, and just remember, winners write history, even when they are the winners among the losers..
On course, there’s no denying that Jews have made tremendous gains (well, most of them, not me of course. Why, Lord?) in the US, and the gains made here really sorta obviate what came before. I don’t think any hint of the shtetl clings to us, and we’re loaded with pelf (gelt).
As for what American Jews have decided to do with their money and power, insofar as they do anything as a group, is support Israel in its intransigence. Probably not a wise decision in the long run.
And so the cycle of History, and so, the delayed historical counterpunch narrative. Agreed, not a wise decision in the long run.
You know, most groups have made tremendous gains. What is this thing that Jews have to place themselves above others in order to feel real? I dont want to hear the Holocaust or persecution through the ages. Most poor groups were persecuted, no matter what their nationality or religion. Millions of Chinese died at Japanese hands during WWII in the most barbaric killing sprees that you’ve never heard of. it is the way of the world
The ME-ME-ME-ness of Jewish existence is tiring.
We have Israeli and American Jews on this board whose intelligence, culture, and wit shine like a constellation on their words here. Ditto non-Jews. We are twentyfirstcenturians, and that should be enough and what’s important.
This make-me-apart-because-I-am-more-special-than-you-or-have-suffered-more-than-you-or-my-relatives-suffered-more-than-you is effrayant…a good French word for it, although not given it’s real usage if you search the Google meaning for it.
Whenever I feel tempted to kvetch about anti-Semitism, I just pull out my lynching postcards and read the Alien exclusion Act. Then I don’t feel so bad, although those are by no means my favorite things.
Atta boy, Mooser, keep things in perspective. Don’t wanna be a pimply-faced teen-ager who thinks the world’s crashing down around him and/or everybody’s pickin’
on him. No Charlie Brown, you. Huh.
This is somewhat factually incorrect. German Jews did indeed tend to be well-off and assimilated, but that was not as true in Russia. There were large class discrepancies between Russian Jews (particularly Yiddish vs. Russian speaking) in the 19th century. And the German Jews looked down upon the “Ostjuden” who were poorer and, it was said, classless and unrefined. To say that Jews were a privileged people then depends on who you are speaking of – the Yiddish-speaking shtetl Jews in the Pale or the Russian and German speaking assimilated Jews. My family was in that area as peddlers – basically middlemen, yes, but they had a pretty meager existence. Why would so many have come to the U.S. if they were privileged in Eastern Europe?
This is still true in the U.S. There are a lot of Jews in the establishment, but for every one of them there are 2 Jews that aren’t. There is a significant portion of the Jewish community that is really struggling; it’s only the most elite in the community who wield power and attention.
Read Solzhenitsyn. They were many many privileged Jews in Russian society, just as there were peasants. Stalin also relegated rich Russian Jews to the Ukraine, which had the largest number of rich rich Jewish bankers and intellectuals just before the war. this was recorded in the appendix to Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky. Check Amazon.
Yes, it is clear that Phil’s wife never read Solzhenitsyn, especially the book de facto effectively banned in the USA, the book that describes 200 years of Jewish and Russian relations. Obviously, Phil’s wife is not intellectually curious about her own husband’s deepest obsessions. Sorry Phil.
“Obviously, Phil’s wife is not intellectually curious about her own husband’s deepest obsessions. Sorry Phil.”
Citizen, I’m sure Phil knows when he’s well off.
Mooser, quit projecting from your own evaluation of your own circumstances.
about 10 years ago I was doing some research that involved studying census records. I discovered that, in the 1990s in the USofA, the largest ethnic-origin group (categorized by language) was of English ethnic origin; the second largest was German ethnic origin.
The wealthiest group in the USofA in the 1990s was of Russian ethnic origin.
This would have been in the period just after the USofA had paid Israel to assist in the release of Jews from FSU.
Those Jews who migrated to Israel from FSU took with them extensive education provided by the people of the FSU. One of the bones of contention between the Soviet state and those migrating Jews was the refusal of those emigres to compensate the FSU for the education they took with them.
Russian Jews are the core of Israel’s current technological strength and economic well-being. In the late 1980s, Israel was in an economic slump; today, on the strength of intellectual capital brought to Israel by Russian Jews, and paid for by the Russian people those Jews left behind, Israel is prospering.
That’s a pattern: Jews in Amsterdam specialized in diamond trade because diamonds were readily portable. Education — intellectual capital — is the ultimate portable asset. Jews have understood ever since their exile in Babylon — an ‘exile’ that lasted from 586 BC until 1950 AD — to absorb the best a nation has to offer and to turn it to the benefit of the group.
Jews are not the only group to make that calculation. In the period between the fall of Rome and Italian unification, Italian city states warred against each other for control of favorable Mediterranean trade routes, ports, and, significantly, control of the universities, such as the University at Padua.
I think there is a lot of truth to what you say, JSC–I have extended Jewish in-law relations that tell me this; however, there is no comparison with the plight of the average American, many of whom also I keep in touch with do to my (Gentile) family history.
Most American Jews are average Americans – it would help us if we did not refer to American Jews as some entity separate from the rest of society as this is one of the fundamental ideas of political Zionism. In what way is there no comparison? Are you talking about wealth or suffering in the current downturn?
I’m not going to debate poverty rates between different groups, but of course some of my family members and (Jewish) family friends are suffering from this economic downturn. I don’t see Ashkenazi (90% or so of American Jews) American Jews having any special privileges other than white privilege. Yes, there are networks on some level but even those are mostly family and friends based. Networks in general are more based on kinship rather than ethnicity or religion.
“By 1984 41% of Jewish households had an income of $50,000 or more, four times the proportion of non-Hispanic whites. [SILBERMAN, p. 118; SILBIGER, S., 2000, p. 4] And while Jews constitute just 2.5 per cent of the American population, by 1990 more than twice as many Jews as non-Jewish whites had household incomes over $50,000 a year; the average Jewish American’s income was also two to three times higher than the average of all other Americans.”
link to jewishtribalreview.org
link to home.comcast.net
That site (Jewish tribal review) is more than a bit sketchy, but I’ve also seen similar facts on Wikipedia (which also can be sketchy, but in this case was balanced out by the census).
I feel that the Jewish poverty rate is going to increase. This is because the Jewish elite is not reproducing at replacement rates. The only groups that are really increasing are Jewish immigrants, who face language and cultural barriers like other immigrants, the elderly, and Hareidim, most of whom are poor. Those are the demographic trends in the community, which is why I think Jews will be less of the elite in a generation or two. It’s also why I think the lobby will fizzle out. Nonetheless, there is a substantial and disproportionate part of our community that is well off, like you said. That won’t last, IMO. There have always been class differences between Jews, like I said in my original comment, rather than one cohesive community.
Links here:link to haaretz.com
and here: link to forward.com
But the delightful thing for the Jewish elite is that they can count on the acquiescence and silence, the passive ratification, of the non-elite.It is always Halachically wrong to rat out a fellow Jew unless more Jews will suffer due to not snitching. This is an almost a biological imperative.
Nonsense. Every group have some level of ethnic loyalty involved, but 95% of American Jews probably have no idea such a halacha even exists. To say it is a “biological imperative” is just bigotry.
Then, Phil, you need to print out Tony Karon’s December 22, 2006 article for your wife and leave it by the tub.
Israel and Apartheid: In Defense of Jimmy Carter
link to tonykaron.com
I’ll quote the salient bit for this thread for the benefit of others.
The rest is interesting for the photo of Menachem Begin, Moshe Dayan and Yitzhak Rabin feting South Africa’s unrepentant Nazi Prime Minister B.J. Vorster at the Knesset in 1976
It won’t help. Phil’s wife is WASPy, mine is JEWy but in either case you can leave it by the tub and it won’t be seen. It’s not a question of good will toward all who need it.
I’m a WASPy. She will read it.
Citizen, the problem isn’t WASPy. The problem is being an American. Non-Millennial aged Americans, of which I am one, were raised to think their shit doesn’t stink and that America rules the world.
Knowledge of the Other in the world does not come easily to them. Nor their history.
As I thought I implied (WASPY or JEWy), it doesn’t matter, some people are less
intellectually curious than others, even about their spouse’s preoccupation. I don’t think that’s peculiar to Americans, no matter what generation they are. Regulars
on this board know something about the individual differences between Phil and his Wife because he has often enough sketched them.
The excerpt absolves Jews of any moral culpability: they were “placed in authority over another people”. They were compelled by Evil White Gentiles to exploit.
The writer missed his calling. He should have been a PR flack in Postville, Iowa for the Rubashkins.
In addition, Phil, you might point out to your wife: if the Israelis could lie to the degree that they have — according to the vast majority of people who contribute to this site — about Gaza and the Palestinians, think about the degree they’ve lied about their past.
I have to admit that my knowledge of Jewish relations to power prior to the 20th century is pretty superficial. The few things I have read in the past quickly veered into anti-Semitic nonsense.
Any recommendations?
marc b, u need to study some history. Fiddler On The Roof is a start–then move on to serious business–I admit, it might be hard since Solsinitysn’s 200 years book has been effectively banned in the 1st Amendment USA.
marc b, u need to study some history.
yup. i’m trying to catch up having spent high school and university having a drink or three instead of studying.
Wiser move, marc b, because you’ll learn more now. i spent my time studying. Fuck lot of good that did me. What I was taught, and what I learned, was insufficient. Would have been better off drinking.
Same here, MRW, very insufficient. I learned a lot more reading on my own way after school days.
marc b.,
Check my post above and Tony Karon’s suggestion.
thanks. kriwaczek looks interesting, although he admits he is no professional historian. or so says Amazon. i’ll check out his bibliography as well.
Yep, MRW that’s a great suggestion to marc b.
I think Apocalypse: The Great Jewish Revolt Against Rome AD 66-73 gives some interesting perspectives on Jewish struggles with assimilation, nationalism, peasantry, elite cooperation with ruling powers, etc.
Amazon blurb says “This event was a milestone in Jewish national consciousness.”
Seven years 2,000 years ago was ‘a milestone in Jewish national consciousness’? Pathetic. It’s as if nobody grew since that time in either perspective, intelligence, or self-awareness.
RE: “my wife and I have an intellectual disagreement about peasants”
I suggest your wife actually learns something about the historical role of peasants. They were no more than actual trees on the landscape of the tiny goy elite. The jews were the middleman, that’s more than any tree.
Not that I’d like to be any Gentile serf, or poor jew in the Chagall painting or Fiddler movie,
but the point is, Phil, your wife is well meaning, and sensitive in all the right ways, but she’s no deep thinker; nor does she have the intellectual curiosity you have–although if she did, she’d be more moral in action than you.
peasant
Any member of a class that tills the soil as small landowners or agricultural labourers. The peasant economy generally has a simple technology and a division of labour by age and sex. The basic unit of production is the family or household. Peasant families traditionally consume what they produce, though a portion of their output may be sold in the market or paid to a landlord. Productivity per worker and yields per unit of land are usually low. Peasants as a class tend to disappear as a society industrializes, though peasantlike social structures may persist under new economic regimens. See also ejido; feudalism; hacienda; serfdom.
One reason that Jews were peasants, either residing as serfs and/or owners of subsistence land, is that they weren’t permitted to be.
Its a falsehood in fact, and a falsehood in implication, something else to inject that Jews should feel ashamed of.
More blame the victim, that is only contradicted in a limited period of time and very limited range of acquaintences.
That was “weren’t” peasants.
There were no Jews who were peasants in Europe. They were never looked on, nor did they have the same life situation, as serfs.
Thats false. In shtetls, there were a wide variety of roles and situations, some working land, some trading (and hated for it), nearly all impoverished, struggling.
We need more of the same?
Read the Tony Karon quote.
And dont forget English history books are only as old as the USA. The victimhood you’re peddling is false. You obviously dont read Spanish or you would be aware of the position of Jews in Spain and their history gives a gigantic lie to that -hankie-in-the-hand-woe-is-me history you’re trying to pass off as true.
From your favorite site Wikipedia, Witty: Spanish Jews once constituted one of the largest and most prosperous Jewish communities under Muslim and Christian rule in Spain, before the majority was forced to convert, expelled or killed in 1492. Of course, that was 10 years after Isabella forced the majority of Muslims to convert, be expelled or be killed in the 1480s.
And that was over 800 years in Spain, Witty.
Yeah, Witty, here’s a tad more:
The Economic and Social Circumstances of the Jews within the domain Munkacs–Szentmiklos in the 18th century–goes into the intricacy of jewish manor lessees–managers for the elite nobility. Basically, basically it was exploitation process: top down Elite, Jews, peasants. The peasants were
constantly struggling to be able to do more than simply survive to produce
for the managers, and the managers knew that if they didn’t meet the lessor’s
demands, they’d lose their comparative materially better life, and independence–this arrangement eventually led to pogroms.
www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/…/Munkacs_SzMiklosArticle.rtf
This pdf contains a large section on the Jews in medieval europe–says the Jews had it best in Poland:
link to nccur.lib.nccu.edu.tw
RE: “an intellectual disagreement about pheasants” – Weiss
MY COMMENT: What’s not to like? They sure as hell beat sushi!
PHIL: Are you using this site to ‘test market’ an exciting, new sitcom about a couple that doesn’t really do anything aside from ‘splitting hairs’? Where nothing ever happens because everyone’s always busy ‘recapping’ (the nothing that’s just happened)? I’m jus’ gonna come right out and ask you, Phil. Are you in cahoots with Larry David?
P.S. Sometimes ‘Lady Weiss’ reminds me of ‘Weezy’. I couldn’t stand that Bermuda shorts-wearing neighbor with the faux British accent. Oh, I almost forgot. Phil is right about the peasants. The Garden of the Finzi-Continis is unquestionably dispositive of the “peasant issue”. And it’s so très magnifique! But very, very sad! Right, Woody? If I was a rich man…Yabba-Dabba Do!
WIKI – link to en.wikipedia.org
Il giardino dei Finzi Contini (1970) – link to imdb.com
the garden of Finzi-Contini (VIDEO – 05:35) – link to youtube.com
I think this conversation is veering off into a bit of extremism. It’s hard to take a blanket like “there were no Jewish peasants in Europe” very seriously. European history comprises a wide variety of societies and social relations, and Jews functioned differently in different parts. While they may have served as middlemen for Ukranian nobles and their serfs at certain points, at others, in the Pale of Settlement, they comprised entire towns and villages and occupied every rung on the economic ladder, including farming the land.
Jews occupied some privileged positions in some parts of Europe at certain times, and at other times and other places were quite discriminated against.
Precisely. Just like every other group. The pecking order has varied throughout history and according to societal likes and dislikes. But it is wrong to say that in every single society in every spot on the earth that Jews were persecuted or discriminated against to the exclusion of other groups. That is simply wrong, and Witty is dead wrong about that. Muslims, Christians, Jains, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists, etc, you name it, have been persecuted against; ditto Swedes, Finns, Russians, French, Brits, Chinese, Germans, Japanese, Tamils, Mexicans, Hondurans, Americans, etc. have been discriminated against. The persecution of various Asian groups has gone on for over 5,000 years at different times and in different places. It’s just that most people dont know because they can’t read Mandarin and because they dont care and because they dont have have a history of screaming about it for centuries, or keeping score.
I agree completely.
This sounds strangely like the Southern white defense, doesn’t it? “There were poor white sharecroppers as well as poor black sharecroppers, so what’s the beef?” “There were all-white towns in the South where white folks did all the jobs” (left unspoken that black folks could never, ever live there).
Really, can you even hear yourself? What all of them had, even the lowest one, was the security and knowledge that they were superior and set apart. Like poor whites in the South with their white skin privilege, the Jewish peasants had “Jewish skin privilege”, pretty much like Israel, writ small.
I disagree completely. I don’t think Jewish peasants had “Jewish privilege” at all. I don’t think they were protected in any way. You’d have to come up with some real history to back up that claim.
P.S. Solzhenitsyn was an anti-Semite in the true sense of the word, in that he believed “world Jewry” had a nefarious ideological purpose for the world and for Russia. He tried to refute the idea that he was anti-Semitic but it’s there. I wouldn’t trust his 200 Years as a history.
And why are we to trust your denounciation of Solzhenitsyn as an “anti-semite”? because he believed in some conspiracy theory or other? and who exactly says that he is an officially-designated ‘anti-semite”? some Jewish people? maybe because they didn’t like what he said? I really distrust these official designations.
BTW, those of us who see and know about jewish influece peddling in the US and are alarmed to see the suppression of speech in Canada, AND are cognizant of the unrelenting hasbara campaigns by Israel – are we also believers in the protocols and therefore, “anti-semites”?
Actually, as I said before, I think it’s an amazing irony that Israel and its extreme zionist supporters around the world have done so much to turn that which was a libel in the early part of last century into something that has the ring of truth, just 100 years later.
EH–you are impeaching the name and works of a great man. I am sure you have never read any of Solzhenitsyn’s works, let alone the pertinent work revealing the
200 year relationship between Russia and the jews. You haven’t even read the few excerpts available in the USA, nor the reviews of that. Otherwise, you could not
slam him as an anti-semite. I urge all here to check this slur out. EH’s remark doesn’t amount to even the chance dirt under one of Solzhenitzyn’s fingernails.
Another insightful reply, Danaa. February 17, 2010 at 1:06 pm
I, for one, expected to read an anti-semitic screed in the few chapters translated in The Solzhenitsyn Reader. It absolutely WAS NOT. It was measured and fair, and full of context, and Ethan Heitner’s comments tell me he hasn’t read those pages.
MRW, Citizen, I wish there was a way to get more readings from that book. Now I am really curious. I’ve been hearing mutterings about S for some time in Jewish – and Russian-israeli circles, but there was never any back-up or actual quotations to put any meat into the mutter. Just like EH comment above. Makes me wonder whether it’s one of those “among-us-Russians-we-know-all-about-those-darn-so-called-christians” kind of things, where it’s innuendo, bluster and code words taken out of context. Nothing I personally read from S was in the least bit anti-semitic, but then there were all these winks and nods. Kind of reminds me about the smears against Heidegger. The more one digs, the less one finds….
In virtually all locales in Europe and many in North Africa and Asia, Jews at some point were discrimminated against and in most forcibly expelled at some point.
Spain, England, Germany, France, Russia.
NEVER permitted to regard their homes as permanent homes. That recognition is what gave rise to the aspiration and then need for Zionism.
The rationalization of “privilege” and acceptance is recent, and not nearly as general as Phil implies, experiences, or imagines.
Hopefully not temporary. If Phil’s themes of focused ethnic “disclosure” expand, it may be temporary. Once at prejudice, its not within his control.
This is bullshit, historically and every other way.
“In virtually all locales in Europe and many in North Africa and Asia, Jews at some point were discrimminated against and in most forcibly expelled at some point”
Phrase it like that and it looks like “Lots of different neighbours over two thousand years, and couldn’t get on with any of them. And it’s all the neighbours’ fault.”
Are you sure that’s what you want to say?
“The rationalization of “privilege” and acceptance is recent, and not nearly as general as Phil implies, experiences, or imagines.”
Historically, this is a very ignorant statement.
1.) I hope no one is able to reconstruct Tevya as a fantasy; this goy loves the guy and his family.
2.) What’s the Solzhenitzyn book that’s banned in the US, as if such a thing were possible?
Careyrowland,
Re: 2) the book is called “Two Hundred Years Together.”
The Solzhenitsyn Reader 1947-2005, published last year, has a few pages the editors translated from the Russian book. God, the stuff is great. I mean his voice as a writer just lifts you. But you can’t get the book in English.
Meaning you can’t get the full translated book “Two Hundred Years Together” in English; no one is allowed to print it. Only the few chapters in the Reader. The book is translated into Italian, and other languages, however.
the racist Weiss exposing his true self yet again. I read this blog for slip ups like this post. look even his so called “Jewish” supporters and lackees that comment on his every post (you know who you are…) they are even disgusted by Weiss’ true racist self.
Keep posts like this up. it helps clarify the issues. like bronner’s kid joining the IDF.
“Keep posts like this up. it helps clarify the issues. like bronner’s kid joining the IDF.”
Sure, I see how Phil’s personal posts contribute to the dispossession and death of Palestinians, sure I do. Have another hit of that seven-percent solution, genius.
My mistake, Einstein, sorry. In America, Ziocaine is distributed in ampules filled with a two-percent solution.
I thought Bronner is the poster child of dual loyalty. But since his “kid” joined the army of thugs whose entire purpose now is to persecute the palestinians, I see him as having a single loyalty from now on. and it is not to the US. I doubt we can ever read anything he cares to write from there as something written by an american. bronner is an Israeli and maybe should be hired to write for an israeli paper, like maariv, instead of the NYTs.
I hope NYT gets a more objective reporter to run the office in Israel.
An “intellectual dispute” is one in which the participants are committed to, if not know the truth, than at least, as Socrates put it, “love wisdom”. That is defer their conclusions until they have studied the question they engage in, and discuss it with a certain level of artisanal commitment to the quality of what they have to offer. As someone who fashion’s himself now America Jewishness ‘s internal tribune, isn’t it time to reflect whether a superficial knowledge of Jewish history from scraps of prejudices, hearsay, limited personal experience and works most charitably called “polemical” (or simply put, stinking to heaven), while perhaps good enough to start asking questions, is not enough for an intellectual (as opposed to a purely demagogical) attempt to answer them?
That’s what I said, Evildoers, the winners write history, including the winners among the losers.
And it looks very much to me like Phil is counting on some kind of Jewish exceptionalism, some latent nobility he’s convinced is there, which will allow us to solve the problem among ourselves. And it always makes things easier if you can spend you time worrying about ‘who are we as Jews?’ instead of ‘who am I as a Jew?” Cause it’s a nasty realisation that your favorite and most comfortable social and activist (in the general sense) milieu is the one that insures corruption.
It’s a lot like that note from the tooth fairy your parents used to leave under your pillow (mine didn’t, they just left the dentist’s bill) . People just can’t help doing that, (But he says that is God’s command for the Jewish people, why nobody would dare make up a thing like that, ergo, our leaders must talk to God)
That is not what I say. That is what you seem to be saying, which is that knowing what you talk about is not worth the effort because the only thing you can know is what the winners want you to know. I disagree. The winners write history, but not everything they write is false because of that, only a crucial portion, and because they write it incompletely, one can always see through the cracks something worthwhile. It takes however an ethical and intellectual commitment to the cracks and to the people glimpsed in them.
When you make the demand on others to spend time listening to or reading you, you have an obligation to have yourself spent time to know what you’re talking about and reflecting on it honestly, and that time should be a little more than the time it takes you to say your mind. This is the foundation of the idea of the “public space” as a democratic space of representation and decision. Without it, there is nothing but automata pretending to be people pulling each others’ legs and noses. An animal farm masquerading as a public. Which is what we mostly encounter these days, including on the web unfortunately.
The real question is, was and will always be this: What is there about Jewish history (the facts, ma’am) which could possibly give anyone the idea that Jews putting their lives, fortunes and futures in the hands of “Jewish leaders” is a good idea?
Pick out any period, from the Diaspora, up to America, and find me the evidence that “the Jews” produced leaders, whether they were from the elite or from the masses, which it would profit us to follow, and whom we can trust? You can’t. And you know why? This is why: When a Jew gets a social consciousness, or wants to help people, he is inevitably concerned with all mankind, and loses ethnic favoritism. It’s the first prerequisite. When a person becomes a “Jewish leader”, it’s because he is playing that old middlemen game between “outsiders” and “the Jews”, and has a big stake in that situation continuing in that form. Happens every time.
When a Gentile gets a social consciousness, or wants to help people, he/she is inevitably concerned with all mankind, and loses ethnic favoritism. It’s the first prerequisite.
Wise perception, Mooser.
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