The other day in a post on atavistic Jewish feeling, I offended some readers by using the words “my people” to describe Jews. I did so because it’s a genuine statement of a persistent tribal allegiance that I feel, even in my mid-50s, in a largely gentile world.
But let me try and explain just where the feeling comes from, how many other Jews share it, and to what extent I regard it as defensible, which to some extent I do.
As I’ve written before, I grew up in a bookish household with a very strong sense of how Jews were different and superior. Let’s leave the superior out of it; that’s not really the point of this post. We had different values and we were keenly aware of who was Jewish and who was not. We were more comfortable with Jews. The inner circle were NY Ashkenazi Jews but it spread out to include all European Jews and then all Jews anywhere, we thought of them as kinspeople. My parents’ closest friends were other New York Jews with whom they could share points of reference, Yiddish, and general cultural understanding and values. My mother’s favorite story just about was of a Jewish friend, her closest friend, who later moved to Israel, telling her that before she got married to her scientist husband, the fiance’s mother took her aside and said, “Do you really love J? You really do? Well then if you really loved him you would not marry him and let him find someone rich.” My grandparents generation were often immigrants, usually poor, and knew that learning – in that story, J was a gifted student—was socially highly-valued. Thus the Jewish doctor of a generation back (replaced today by the Jewish investment banker of Chelsea Clinton's adoration).
I remember being instilled to feel a kinship to black people in Baltimore. I had black friends, my mther made connections to the black community. We regarded them as similarly outside and powerless, and also beneficiaries of civil rights legislation.
Pogroms and Holocaust shaped our view of our people. They had almost wiped "us" out in Europe with the connivance of the American State Department. My mother had six children, she often said, because she wanted to repopulate the world with Jews. We were in danger of extinction. We never realy went to synagogue, my scientist father looked down on rabbis, but big deal: we sought out the company of Jews, because they were smart and funny and shared our understandings. I have heard similar tribal attitudes expressed by a Jewish friend who dated non Jews in college but married a Jew because it was easier, and from a Palestinian friend who says she dates Arab men because there isn’t as much to explain personally.
I remember a non Jewish friend coming to my parents’ house to visit on Thanksgiving and getting very nervous within a few minutes. Where’s the liquor? He came up to me and murmured. I had to look in some old cabinet, for dusty bottles.
My sense of a Jewish people, of a continuous culture and understanding, informs my actions to this day. While I married a non Jew and have many non Jewish friends, I have a certain sense of loyalty to Jews, as an embattled people. When I go to Israel I generally don't recognize the Israelis, who are as Shlomo Sand has said, a people, but I do recognize Ashkenazi Jews, be they Israelis or European.
This affinity is true even of some of my leftwing non Zionist friends. We occasionally look at one another and say, We are here not just out of devotion to human rights, but because we don’t want our people, the Jews to be hurt. In fact, we see our representation here in the Palestinian solidarity community, as proud Jews, as guarding against the thing we have always been warned about, that They are going to wipe us all out.
The belief that They are going to Wipe Us All Out, which is supported by history, to some degree, I can tell you is shared by many powerful Jews. They’ve told me so. Shmuel repeatedly urges people to give up trauma as a form of self-definition, but I can tell you that many people don't take his advice, they are embracing it. Lately a friend when I asked him why he’s a Zionist said, Because they are always going to rise up against us, at some time or place. I don't share that feeling, but there it is.
My sense of my peopleness led me in college to seek out the company of other Jews at the Harvard Crimson newspaper, and to prefer the company of Jews in what struck me as an alien atmosphere. Yes, Ashkenazi Jews. Marty Peretz was a ringleader of the social studies Jews I knew, and there were haut German Jews, too, who were new to me, but still I had a sense of communality/caste identification. We saw each other as part of an elite with distinct values. When my mother asked me about my friends, I’d tell her about the Jews. My closest three friends were all Jews.
As I’ve said here often, I think that Jews hired other Jews. I know I’ve benefited from this full employment program on numerous occasins in my life. I think that Marty Peretz had me working at the New Republic when my work wasn’t that good in good part because I’m Jewish and was in the gang. I think that the editor who has given me more work than anyone, who will go nameless, loves me in part because we're of the same tribe. When you look at hives of Jewish writers, say the New Yorker Magazine, or the professors at Columbia University schools, I believe there is a strong kinship network at work. I've mentioned Lawrence Summers and Elena Kagan and Michael Walzer and Judith Shklar, their faculty networks at Harvard, as indicative of the same tendency.
Hey it was no different when the WASPs were running the center ring. Just read Digby Baltzell. Again, though, if you think it’s just a coincidence that David axelrod and Rahm Emanuel, the two men closest to Barack Obama, are Jewish, when the Pritzkers and Crowns were so essential to Obama’s rise, with financial backing, I think you’re livin in dream land.
How bad or good is this? I think it just is. I don’t feel that bad about it. I think people are tribal. My wife has autochthonous WASP feelings and attachments she'll never get over and I'll never completely understand. Go figure. I like to think I’m fairly evolved – though yes I know people who are much more postracial than I am – still I have this tribal component. James North, who spurred this post, says he feels no allegiance to the Swedes, but to Americans. Good for him, I admire that, I’m a little different. Jeffrey Goldberg is different. I may not think about Is it good for the Jews? As the defining question, but I do think about it. When I was working in Minnesota a few years ago, a Norwegian-American guy was arrested for combing the marriage notices every week and sending out vicious anonymous letters to the couples who combined Swedish or Norwegian names and Irish names, any intermarriages. Or when I was at the Daily News in Philly, we did a police item about a rabbi arrested at the airport for embezzling synagogue money, and a Harvard friend’s father railed at me for putting that in the paper. That is the essence of the issue. He thought that it would feed stereotypes of Jews even though it was true, and he felt I had the power to block it, as I did, and he felt kinship with the rabbi even though he didn’t know him.
I titled this post Notes on my racism and undoubtedly these feelings feed racism. But they are real. To argue my friend's father's side for a moment, in the rabbi case, it came out of fear and insecurity, the fear that we would be wiped out, which again I have heard from some of the most empowered people on the planet. I don’t share that fear, I dedicate a lot of time on this site to arguing that history is moving in a completely different direction, but I feel a kinship with people who do, and as such I know that I will always be responding to that concern. I will always be in that conversation, even with members of my own family. I will argue, as Shmuel does, that you should not put Yad Vashem at the center of your world view. And we will win that struggle, some day. Still the fears are there, they unite people who regard themselves as a people, and if you think that we can get out of the Middle East mess without dealing with these identity issues, well--
I feel lucky that from a young age my parents instilled in me a sense that we are all humans and that my community, my people are the human race. And for that, I am thankful to them and so I mix and mingle with whoever I’m comfortable and whoever shares my interests, hobbies, world view, politics, etc..
My loyalty and allegiance is toward my family and the people whom I care about and love. Allegiances to a country or to an ethnicity are very limiting and can sometimes become counter productive on social or professional levels.
Knowing as I do that none of us will be free until the last chain is broken, my support of justice for Palestine is partly gut feeling, partly an intellectual decision. My going to Lebanon ’82 during the U.S. backed Israeli invasion (and later to Palestine during the first Intifada) was motivated by the belief that as a Jewish-American my bearing witness to the crimes being committed by Israel (to the extent that such would help dispel Israel’s claim that it spoke and acted on behalf of Jews everywhere) would be especially helpful to the Palestinian cause. In addition I can’t deny that there was this feeling (still is) that, for a Jew, bearing witness and speaking out for Palestine was more than self-expression, it also was a matter of survival for self, family and, yes, Jews everywhere. Not sure, but perhaps what’s behind such attitudes and actions is a seven year old child’s memory of Adolf Hitlers voice coming over an upright two foot console in the family’s living room, the Fuehrer’s words unintelligible to this English only speaking child, but the anger and hate in that voice almost as menacing today as it was back then, realizing as that child did who that hate was directed at.
It’s inevitable that in some ways we all find it easier to communicate and relax with – ie trust – people who are like us in some way, or who contrast with others in the same way we do.
If the relevant feeling progresses from a pleasant sense of trust in those like us, mainly at the social level, to a painful sense of mistrust of those different from us, extending from the social to the political level, something is going wrong, is potentially disastrous. The basic purpose of society, as defined so convincingly by Hobbes as making people able to trust each other to keep their promises, is being destroyed.
Rousseau thought that the Catholic dictum ‘no salvation outside the Church’ would, if really believed, make society impossible. It turned out to be the anti-Semitic principle ‘You can’t trust a Jew’ that nearly brought us back to barbarism. The ultra-philo-Semitic principle ‘Only Jews can be trusted’ is nearly as dangerous.
I would have thought that Phil and those noble souls like him, Jewish people who have become critical of Zionism, are protected by their critical spirit from ever really taking the fatal step from being socially comfortable with other Jewish people from being politically suspicious of everyone else. I wouldn’t be so sure about the friend who thinks that ‘they will rise up against us.’
An eloquent and thoughtful post, Mr. Weiss. That being said, I fully agree with Avi’s comments:
>> … my community, my people are the human race. … My loyalty and allegiance is toward my family and the people whom I care about and love.
My parents’ cultures are not truly mine, no matter how much I enjoyed “being Italian” and “being Croatian” when I was younger. My parents’ fears are not mine, regardless of the hardships they suffered during WWII. My parents’ biases are not mine, because I have made it a point over the years to read and listen and understand and to come to my own conclusions regarding people and politics.
Injustices must be addressed by universal laws that are created for the good of all people equally, applied to all people equally and upheld for all people equally. Insularity, supremacism, self-righteousness and the manipulation of power and knowledge are not the answer.
A wonderful piece, Philip: honest, open, and compassionate, both towards yourself and towards others. I suspect some people won’t like it because you aren’t the person they would like you to be, but that is their problem really.
I share some of your perspectives (parents German/Austrian Jews) though modified by having people of all (and no) religions in my family. For years I would define myself as not Jewish, because I didn’t believe in the theology, but eventually I admitted how much of the ethic defined who I am.
Thank you for this
amazing failure of imagination. it does not seem so hard to get. feeling and acting embattled is alienating to others and causes the very things jews use as excuses.
this is the very truth that is won’t be dealt with. there is an immediate outcry of victimization when that idea is suggested. the fact is you don’t want to give up victimization because your identity is based on it. when you rule the world and have all the power you will still feel like a victim.
there is no end to it.
peters
You have touched the core of the problem here. Consider Phil’s statement about how Marty Peretz gave him work when his writing wasn’t good. Now step back and become the person who did not get those assignments, multiply that by tens of thousands of incidences. Personally, I could write half dozen such occurrences, and he left me feeling for those involved angry at the injustice.
What disturbs non-Jews is that when given positions of power this continues. When applying for a grant, is the grant officer Jewish, will he/she give your grant request consideration or to a Jewish friend in need, and then give them the grant. When hiring someone Jewish for a job, are the lists of previous jobs that sound so impressive, the result of some favor, were they just figureheads who then hired people who really knew what to do.
This is summed up in the remark General Franks made about Doug Feith.
he described him as “the stupidest fu**ing man in Washington”. I personally have no doubt Feith had no business being in the NSA, and I have a good idea how he got there.
Then you wonder about backlash. Thats why peters comment is so insightful.
It is really a self fulling prophecy.
I have a huge problem with your core issue. Networks aren’t especially Jewish. It seems in fact a rather human feature.
Why don’t you start with the outraging fact that Phil’s parents sent their son to Haward, were his specific network started? Now was this a ethnocentric Jewish decision?
Consider Phil’s statement about how Marty Peretz gave him work when his writing wasn’t good.
What interesting little item. Could this be a sign of Phil’s modesty? Why do you need to twist it into a fact. You think Peretz hires people that can’t write only for their Jewishness or only a Jewishness associated with Harvard, now what kind of selection would that be?
That said, while I considered Mooser’s reaction slightly exaggerated, I can partly understand it. Phil isn’t to his occasional heights around this topic. It feels Shmuel is better prepared for the larger subject. Couldn’t the commitment and the desire to make it, be an experience that large sections of immigrant communities whatever their ethnicity share, especially in America? So isn’t he talking in fact about an American Jewish experience, and not a specifically Jewish one. Now wouldn’t you find in all the diverse ethnicities over there in the US these partly “tribal orientation”. At least Saleema seems to easily recognize them as her own?
shit, this made me slightly angry, thus a hurried response:
correction: where his specific network started? Now was Havard an ethnocentric Jewish decision?
the correction of whatever else there may be, I leave to you to kindly correct while reading.
This feels wrong too, correction:
Couldn’t the commitment and the desire to make it be an experience that large sections of immigrant communities whatever their ethnicity share, especially in America, isn’t that the American Dream?
Believe it or not, LeaNder, many Americans value the concept of meritocracy so much they would never consider one job applicant over another on the basis of tribal, ethnic, or religious affinity. Many would not even defer to simple neopotism. That is part of the American Dream, not simply material success by hook or by crook.
“My loyalty and allegiance is toward my family and the people whom I care about and love. Allegiances to a country or to an ethnicity are very limiting and can sometimes become counter productive on social or professional levels.”
Yes Avi..100% with you..This ‘my people’ thing is rather offensive to my ears and I was, more or less, offended when I heard Phil using it… Because I make a choice. I chose my people as I often refer to the Palestinians as ‘my people’ in the sense that I, of Lebanese backgrounds, although not much difference (none actually) ethnically wise between us, that is not the main reason. It’s a connection taking place on a deeper level of humanity that I could equally feel with a Guatemaltec, a Tuareg or an African. It’s about a certain human condition, a just cause for example, a level of unbearable suffering .
By the same token I do not feel any connection to the Saudis to name only one case, though supposedly I should..Aren’t we all “Arabs”? Actually, I’m not even sure of that connection either..We’re far more complex than anyone may assume.
“By the same token I do not feel any connection to the Saudis to name only one case, though supposedly I should..Aren’t we all “Arabs”?”
Why should me and you feel a connection just because we are Arab?
Fine, there’s the shared connection of being in the same area and maybe noted similarities in our culture….but really, what, besides the food and maybe the religion and some culture, is there in common between Saudis and the rest of the region, even within the GCC? I would like to hear your response.
Occupyresist
You raised an important issue and that’s why I wrote “supposedly” and asked a more or less sarcastic question, “aren’t we all Arabs?” ..
If we call ourselves or are called Arabs, what, apart the food, the religion or beliefs, the language, the music, the geographic location, cultural heritage, shared history, holds us together under that often branded banner of nationalistic identification? Is it “genes”?
You do realise that it’s a very complex issue, lengthy to go through in one go but I’ll try my best in the shortest of times as I really have to attend to this painting to deliver in a couple of days.
I have to admit that I do not have a satisfactory answer in relation to the genetic component, not having studied this aspect well enough in order to talk assuredly and with authority.
My understanding of identity is that it’s a construct made up of all the above-mentioned common features. A product of a historical and cultural interaction among people sharing a geographically defined area.
This interaction comprises religious, cultural, linguistic and political components, each of which in isolation is insignificat but can only work as a part of a formed compound, a communality.
So is that Arabism, or is there more or something else? Common aspirations? A yearning (sounding a bit Jewish here) to a certain unity, a dream of more fulfilling sense of belonging? I’m not sure and my feelings of Arabness have never been very strong as I grew up in foreign lands (France), but I often think of what Sartre said “what makes the Jew is the anti-Semite” and I think that I started to feel more as I encountered anti-Arabs, bigots and racists..
I started to feel more Arab as I encountered etc..
Conversely, does the Jew make the anti-semite? A circular argument unless one posits anti-semitism as springing full grown from the head of Zeus. But logic is not everything. And it depends on context; what is the premise? Induce, deduce. Rules, exceptions to rules. Probabilites arise from experience; in pure science, experiments. Neither the match nor the match book, by itself cause the fire; it takes a strike by either on the other. Irritation. Multiple irritations. Rhetoric and rote learning do not ultimately make the day or night. That takes a resolve, an individual choice of POV that blocks out
inconvenient facts and the implications of rigorous logic that point out absurdities.
And are we to ignore the sense of proportion available to even those with low IQs or lack of education?
Empathy for the suffering of oppressed people is what makes those people mine. Realizing the rapes of African slave children by American slave owners and all of their other crimes against African slaves makes me Black. The Holocaust makes me a Jew, and informs me of what ‘never again’ really means. The treatment of Palestinians and the expropriation of their land through militant aggression with US arms makes me Palestinian. The passive resistance of Rachel Corie and the the crushing of her body makes me desire to become like her, and have the courage, strength and virtue to stand against the powerful’s assualt on the weak, no matter who they are, because they are just like me.
Jesus, what a crappy bunch. Phil, why do you constantly have to rub our noses in the fact that they happened to be Jewish?
Excuses for things you should have left behind, at the latest, early manhood.
And then the explanation for why you could marry a non-Jew is pretty pathetic. It’s pretty simple, you “own” Judaism because you have a full-employment program, and do a wonderful pretense of being a Jew.
I really, really wish you had kept this to yourself. It’s an insult to your readers.
Why, an ungenerous person might even say that you don’t like Israel because they hold Jews to a higher standard than just a pretense and a full employment program. Your Gentile-married, un-Bar Mitzvahed, no Hebrew ass would make you a second class citizen, and that must be an offense against everything decent and Jewish, huh?
Phil, it’s not Judaism or Jewishness you have too much of, it’s money and status. You would rather destroy Israel than cut your own apron strings.
And, oh my freakin Abraham-eating God, some of your best friends are colored? Pathetic. You need an editor, badly.
Mooser, cool down, cool down. Shouldn’t we expect some sort of heightened “tribal allegiance” after the Holocaust? Phil wouldn’t be trying to dissect his emotional Jewish layers without and yes, the Zionists. That offered their own solution to “to the problem” the only solution the Nazis could tolerate. Not that they loved Zionists, they were Jewish too after all, but they definitively preferred them to the assimilationists, the majority of German Jews, thus they found them helpful. I recently learned they even even supported illegal immigration to Palestine on a minor level. It is a complex story, but then, I was surprised. Maybe I shouldn’t have been.
To be on the safe side, I apologize for this in advance, in case this make you hyperventilate: In a way they helped to produce their worst nightmare.
MOOSER- Jeez, cut Phil some slack here. He’s leading us into an important topic that needs discussing, but doing it in his own way. This isn’t really about Phil getting over anything. It’s about Jewish kinship, tribalism, success, and power. Although these topics seem to push some of your “hot buttons,” they are critically important for understanding social/organizational dynamics and power acquisition, essential elements for understanding political economy. To not discuss these issues, to keep power in the shadows, would be to turn our backs on reality and abandon hope for the future.
On the other hand, I always enjoy it when you call Phil to task, saying things which if I said them would never survive “moderation.” As it is, about one in eight of my comments bite the dust of moderation and I’m starting to get peeved.
Maybe he even had a family maid that was colored as Witty did?
Phil dear,
Why is your affection for your people racist? I don’t understand that. We love our family above our other relationships and in my view that is perfectly fine.
I feel a sense of family with Muslims, no matter where they are. I once met a Chinese Muslim and I felt immediately ‘at home’ in her presence. If it was just a Chinese girl then I would have taken out my invisible feelers and taken a couple of more visits to feel comfortable.
My brother married a Canadian, white, Catholic. As soon as he married her, she became part of the family. Before the marriage we acted politely around her. In our family and community personal space is a little different than how Americans define it.
We will eat from each other’s plates and drink from the same glass. We stand way too close to each other while socializing. My sis-in-law was uncomfortable with all of that but now she’s used to it. The other day she put food in my daughter’s mouth with the same fork that she was eating with. Our eyes met and we both laughed.
I am going to say something very, very honest. My first reactions to a Jewish person is one of being uncomfortable. And that is because I wonder what they really think of me as a Muslim and what they think of Muslims generally. I don’t get the same feeling when I meet other non-Muslims.
Growing up, we were taught to love other Muslims, but not if they were wrong. Another subject that never came up was of superiority. The only way someone is superior to another is in piety and morality. Those were the lessons our parents taught us and it is true of our other Muslim friends and their families.
Cheers, Phil. I certainly give you credit for discussing these issues.
I do have to raise a few issues of my own: I get the sense that, like the fear of being “wiped out” being somewhat irrational, so too is the estimation of where “the Jews” lie in the social order, here in America especially- but also throughout the West. Jews have long “lived like episcopalians” in this country, I find the idea of affinity to blacks based on some equivalency standard to be a bit puzzling. What about Catholics from western and southern europe? Irish immigrants who were also systematically discriminated against? no? What about south americans, pacific islanders, asians? Have the ancestors of these people not been “wiped out” by some of the same hordes? No mention of Native Americans either. If there was ever a people an American Jew should have an affinity to, it’s Native Americans. You think you “might” get wiped out? These people have lived it. My point is that even your very mild feelings about impending doom are manufactured, and have been, for a very long time. The Torah has competition, you know- it aint the only game in town. So, if Im one of the leaders of the faith, it’s perfectly rational to want to keep my tribe together, so I make the “others” out to be blood thirsty demons. Don’t stray from the flock, you’ll be swallowed up by the horde. Have there been cases of this type of thing coming to fruition? Yes. But for those of us wanting to remember only the Jews who died in the Holocaust, I would say 20 million people were put to death by the Nazi’s, many also for their ethnicity. I would say that over a million Armenians were put to death by the Turks. I would say that millions and millions of Africans- this decade- have been killed for who they were. Relative to all of these other people, the Jews have lived far better in the last 100+ years.
I would also say, for those Jews who are so worried about anti-semitism and “how things look” ( thinking of the embezzling rabbi anecdote) – instead of trying to root it out by way of intimidation, slander and blackballing, why not go after guys like Joe “I’m Shifty” Lieberman? Why not say “Mort Zuckermn doesn’t speak for Us.” Rabbi’s should have asked to take care of being Bernie Madoff themselves ( kidding); or say, Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, who ( I love Seinfeld) did alot to portray Jews as neurotic, obsessive and tribal people. Woody Allen is another obvious example. Have you seen a Judd Apatow movie? How can a people who have so clearly staked their claim to a whole host of professions and power circles be so paranoid about extinction, but not care when their people are consistently being portrayed and are protraying themselves so stereotyopically? And that’s the point, Joe Lieberman doesn’t think of his “Jewishness” when he votes against his own ammendment, Bernie Madoff wasn’t thinking of his ancestory or possible extermination when he ripped all those people off. And Judd Apatow doesn’t think ” is America really going to want to watch all these shlubby Jews?” He feels no urge to gentilize his movies. All of this to me is a good thing.It means your living outside of a tribal view, where one person speaks for all. You can’t have it both ways, you can’t belong to mainstream society and claim “oppressed people” status- I apologize if I offend, but that ship has sailed. Great Post though, Phil- I agree this should be discussed- but it should be done in a way that says, ” Alright, moving forward………”
Having very partially grown up with Philip, I can testify/speculate (somewhere in between) that he was also very strongly brought up with a feeling that human kinship was also a very strong component.
I think there is a difference between inter-marrying (and not having children), and those that desire to continue to be part of Jewish community, and into the future.
And, that it is valid, and does not ultimately conflict with a view of universal sympathy with those in other families, communities, nations.
The psychological kinship that Phil described of seeking those that “one does not have to explain to” describes my life very much.
Growing up, I lived in an upper middle class Jewish “ghetto” in suburban New York (with sympathy and some conflict for all of us rising grandchildren of immigrants and oppressed). I went to college first in Eugene, Oregon where there were very few Jews, Italians, blacks, a strong culture shock. (I had already traveled through the states widely).
Then in Vermont (also few Jews, though half my teachers were Jewish). Then again in Oregon.
The shift to noting persecution came from hearing my mother’s stories of being harrassed pre and during WW2 in Worcester, MA (40 miles from alternately cosmopolitan and viciously racist Boston). And, most prominently from marrying a child of a holocaust survivor, born in Jaffa, and getting to know her mother and aunt and uncle.
I became profoundly aware that the experience of Israeli and European Jews, was VERY different than the experience of American Jews.
We are sheltered, by our families, by our community’s affluence, by our distance from war, from our island status.
For dissenters, it gives even idealists the latitude to judge harshly. In Europe, there is still conspicuous and strong mixing of actual anti-semitism with idealism.
The difference between American and Israeli/European Jewish experience also gives latitude to American Jewish dissenters to think of Israelis as “them”, that the birthright and neo-orthodox migrations breaks down.
But, there are recent progressive Jewish American immigrants to Israel. Consider Harvey Stein who posts here.
Its a useful exercise to reflect on every usage of “we”.
I have MANY. Witty’s, my neighborhood, my profession, my ideology, New Englanders, former hippies, Jews, humans, living beings.
Only “living beings” has none that are excluded.
You forgot your number one self-identity: Zionism. You’ve displayed your own prioritization of your many “we” self for a long time here on this blog.
Zionism is not one of my personal “we’s”.
Zionism is a “they” for me, a “they” that I respect.
Oh, so you no longer identify as a “liberal zionist?” One who refers to oneself as “they” or even “he or she or it” has a problem unless that one is writing literary fiction.
Yes, a description of my attitude towards Israel is “liberal Zionist”.
You divorce yourself from you attitudes and proclivities like a serial killer or insane person does, as if your attitude is somehow an operator independent of you:
“Zionism is not one of my personal “we’s”.
Zionism is a “they” for me, a “they” that I respect.”
By your own logic you are part of “they” who believe in zionist ideology. Congrats for respecting yourself.
Witty: “I think there is a difference between inter-marrying (and not having children), and those that desire to continue to be part of Jewish community, and into the future.”
When I was growing up, the Catholic Church would not support intermarriages unless the bride and groom promised to bring up the kids in the Catholic faith. I myself intermarried and we had off-spring. I never promised to raise any future children as a Jews, and my wife never promised she wouldn’t try. We got married by the clerk of the Chicago court. He didn’t bother with such details. Neither did we. None of us are sorry. Our son has no enemies. He is judged by who he is as a person. So what were you saying about the future?
Thats a choice that individuals make.
That some DO desire to remain Jews, that desire their family to remain Jewish, is their right.
You should respect that right, rather than rationalize demeaning it.
The world is served by intermediate associations, Individual/family/community/nation/world – more than they are disserved.
Individual/world is the view of humanists (not patriots) and junk commercialism.
Community/tribe has the potential of other multi-generational values and forms. Even anarchism of the mutual aid variety is tribal, not universalist.
“Individual/family/community/nation/world”
But what sort of community?
The local communities (suburb, town, borough, state) are not just the administrative intermediaries between family and nation. They are also the intermediary levels of support. You are served far more by the Gentiles who collect your garbage, who keep the water and electricity flowing, who grow and distribute the food, who teach in the schools and work in the hospitals in your area than you are by the Jews on the other side of the country or the other side of the world.
You owe them.
And yet you don’t care about them.
The “community” you care about is the “tribe” of Jews. If this lack of appreciation and of support for the society that sustains you is one of your ” multi-generational values “, then the sooner it is lost, the better.
An individual may choose to be a criminal. The individual’s choice usually impacts only a few people; the extreme is the serial killer. A tribe may decide to negatively impact many people for its own ends. History is the witness as to which is more dangerous, individual thought or group think. Free will is the base of responsibility. It is normally associated with the individual, not the group. I respect that notion because the individual is primary, the group or tribe is secondary, derivative. An example of the demise of individual responsibility, of the very notion of individuality, is Imperial Japan.
I’m sure you can think of others. Another is slavery.
“You don’t care about them”
That is an ignorant statement on your part, a malevolent speculation.
How so, Richard Witty? Declaring something by personal fiat does not make it so–yet such is your custom.
link to rwitty.wordpress.com
link to rwitty.wordpress.com
link to rwitty.wordpress.com
The more individuals make a conscious decision to abandon the seductive but pernicious notion of “my people” and to see all humanity as their people, the fewer horrors human beings will have to endure.
“My sense of a Jewish people, of a continuous culture and understanding, informs my actions to this day.”
You sound an awful lot to me like a guy who is wondering why he can’t have his cake and eat it, too. And I would substitute the word “illusion” for “sense”.
What shines through loud and clear to me, is that you think Judaism owes you something, something which can’t be taken away from you.
It doesn’t owe you anything, especially if you attack Israel.
Holy Mackeral, I wish I hadn’t seen this post.
Oh, and a nice little poke at Gentiles as drunkards, too. So the guy wants a drink on Thanksgiving? Jews don’t drink?
hahahahahaa!!!! Yea, WTF? Also, Phil makes Jews out to be pretty frickin lame right there, who wants to hang out with a bunch of sober sisters?!?!?! haha.
Dan, until Generation X & Y most Jews looked on alcohol as purely a goy disease; they preferred prescription pills or grass, etc. I imagine Phil would be surprised how much young Jews today drink. If he had a kid, he’d know for sure.
The “non_Jewish friend” asking for liquor comment was bizarre. Would he say he had a “non-white” friend come over who got nervous and starting asking where the liquor was? Phil has got some issues here.
Oh no question, I understand the dynamic. I grew up in a Jewish neighborhood and my dad often commented on the lack of beer at the BBQ’s. And later on in my life he remarked on our neighbors affinity for weed, which he thought was really really cool. hahaha.
Phil has unwittingly lifted the veil on a long-suppressed secret: Manischewitz is actually the tipple of sweet-toothed gentile winos, since Jews are all teetotalers.
Jackie mason has a whole schtick about what happens after a Broadway play. The Jews go out to eat. The Goys go out to drink.
How many Seinfeld shows depicted the key cast eating? How many depicted them eating? How about in the episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm? Compare Cheers.
For the gentiles with a more robust tongue there is Smirnoff vodka, real rot-gut; in the best tradition of historic Russian/Ukraine/Polish–Jewish relations.
On relation to Muslims.
I experience some elements of the foreign-ness and similar fear to what you express.
That pole is further than discomfort though. I fear verbal and even physical violence, anonymous violence.
And, at the same time, having read some Koran and explanations, and some theological conversations with some Muslims, I feel an affinity, a comfort.
Both.
That was in response to Saleema’s post above.
Witty, why do you think Saleema wrote: “I wonder what they really think of me as a Muslim and what they think of Muslims generally. I don’t get the same feeling when I meet other non-Muslims.”
You can actually read with I wrote. It was not condemnatory or anything besides respectful candor.
After getting to know a Jewish person, there is an “in” feeling of belonging to a group that respects monotheism. And yes, it’s a good feeling.
With Christians, I’m more at home. Even the religious ones. The intense love that religious Christians feel for Jesus is understood, appreciated and admired. As long as we don’t get into the trinity…then that just makes me fidget. :)
My mom used to invite the Jehovah’s witnesses and Mormons in for tea whenever they knocked on our door. She couldn’t speak English fluently so she used to do the best she could, listen, offer thank you and then give them all tea and cookies. She took their literature. Then one day my dad scared them off, he didn’t mean to. That’s another long story.
You didn’t address Saleema’s comparison at all. Read your own writing.
I do the same thing with the JWs and Mormons. I even read their literature, although I don’t serve them tea and cookies; I put their literature in with magazines–in the john. I am aware of how their
co-religionists once suffered for their faith. I like to see how they field any questions I ask. Never know what you might learn, right?
Citizen,
I’m like that, too. I like to learn about others belief systems. We grew up in a house where books were valued above the TV. We read like crazy, still do.
In my mom’s house, the JW Bible and the Mormon Bible are on the top shelves of the bookcases, along with the Quran, and various Hadith literature. And all the other religious literature.
It’s interesting that this sense of “they’re going to rise up against us” becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. What was the excuse always used against the Jews – that they were too powerful, that they controlled too much, that they used their money to leverage that power and control.
What, then, do US Jews do? They seek power, they seek control. Successfully. They use their money to leverage that power and control. Haim Saban has laid out this strategy explicitly.
And when someone like Rick Sanchez points out this obvious fact – that Jews in the US are not an oppressed minority – his instant ouster is a red flag showing how much control they do have, and instilling resentment.
When you say, “They will rise up,” it suggests that “we” are on top and “they” are on the bottom with a Jewish foot on their necks. It says, not that Jews are not on top, but that they know they are on top and plan to keep it that way.
“And when someone like Rick Sanchez points out this obvious fact – that Jews in the US are not an oppressed minority – his instant ouster is a red flag showing how much control they do have, and instilling resentment.”
The continental divide.
Its as if you are saying ‘This proves that the stereotypes are not only valid, but the way people SHOULD relate to Jews’.
Are you saying that Potsherd?
Potsherd seems to me to be saying look at what happens to relatively high profile careers once anything is said in public that is critical of Israeli activity. And that this is being increasingly noticed. You, Witty, are projecting. How should people relate to this pattern–just ignore it? Should we also do away with the tax-funded US agency devoted exclusively to monitoring anything, anywhere, remotely smelling like
“anti-semitism?” Is that the way people SHOULD relate to Gentiles?
Take your smear tactics and innuendo and stuff it, Witty.
What did you really say Potsherd?
“What was the excuse always used against the Jews – that they were too powerful, that they controlled too much, that they used their money to leverage that power and control.
What, then, do US Jews do? They seek power, they seek control. Successfully. They use their money to leverage that power and control. ”
You did write those two sentences, yes?
What did you mean?
here here
He meant what he said. What do you think he inferred or implied?
If that’s not the applicable question, what do you mean by your one sentence?
I perceived it as a pejorative generalization, a rationalization for fascist approaches.
I believe they have classes in remedial English comprehension in local school districts. Why don’t you sign up?
Rather than you clarify.
You do get how I concluded what I did?
Not playing your game. I don’t give a damn what you conclude.
“a rationalization for fascist approaches.”
Bummer, a fascist cloud is approaching. My planned day at the beach may well be ruined..
Good response Potsherd.
What game do you imagine that I am playing?
You think that it is a “truth” that Jews control the media, and intentionally censor?
Is that accurate?
Someone had to rise up against the Germans and the Japanese and stop their attempt at institutionalizing terrorist societies. The same thing needs to be done against the Israelis. It should be noted that the unconditional defeat of Germany and Japan did not result in the destruction of their nations or the annihilation of their peoples, and created the most peaceful and prosperous times in their history. Rising up against Israel would mean imposing the boundaries of the 1948 UN Mandate and returning all other territory militantly expropriated to Palestinians. One hopes such an imposition would also create the most prosperous and peaceful time in Israel’s history, as well as for Palestine.
I’m saying that sometimes the truth reflects the stereotypes. Antisemitism-hunters” think they are combating the stereotypes, but what they’re doing is suppressing the truth. When the Jewish doctor actually is stealing body parts, that’s not a blood libel.
I’m also saying that when Jews act in a way that reinforces the stereotypes, they can’t demand at the same time that no one will notice and no one will point it out. And their attempts at suppression only make it more evident what the truth is.
“Methinks the Foxman protests too much.”
“Truth reflects the stereotypes”.
Somehow, Dick Witty, I feel like if someone said, ” I heard Jewish men have enormous penises” – you wouldn’t really care about truth reflecting stereotypes or any such thing.
Witty, you mean as in why some Jews say they need Israel as a safe haven forever?
potsherd, you’re on a roll today. Well put, here and above. As I said elsewhere, it’s like being trapped in the tale of the Emperor’s new clothes. With every mouthy kid being told to shut up and removed from the room, the charade becomes more obvious and only feeds the conspiracy theory such actions seek to suppress.
“Jews control the media” is a fascist statement, whether Phil says, Potsherd, Crowther, others.
Its a generalization, that is true twice a day and therefore is “proven” (like a clock that is stopped).
And, its a condition that can and does change. You want to start a publication, and sell it, go ahead. I’ve done it.
“Truth is fascist.” R Witty
Generalization is prejudice – R Witty
How about “most heavily influence the media?” Anyone can find out who owns the important media and who most populates its opinion-making. And let’s not forget that topic recently on this blog involving what news and entertainment celebrities get canned aruptly. The jews don’t control Hollywood either, nor do they heavily influence the general entertainment media. Read Eddie Fisher’s autobiography.
Generalization is prejudice – R Witty
Thus proving that R Witty is prejudiced, as his statement is a generalization.
link to articles.latimes.com
potsherd, I recently read an highly interesting study of the so-called antisemitism debate in the late 19th century Germany.
It was triggered by an article of a Berlin prof of history: Heinrich von Treitschke , and resulted in responses by mainly Jewish Germans (apart from another historian) which led to the larger debate.
There is only one item or motif he withdrew from his “statement of claim” after being presented with specific evidence. It concerned the economic factor. The people who responded to him made him aware of the troubles German immigrants in Russia around the same time were in. They did enormously well there, which in turn led to prejudices. Interestingly this was an argument Treitschke accepted and he never ever alluded again to this part of his tale.
Very good point, Leander. There is also the case of the Chinese, who have been very successful as merchants throughout Asia and reaped a lot of resentment for it.
In other words, this is a universal social phenomenon, not some sinister instance of “Jew hate.”
in other words, if even Treitschke could be convinced on the issue, I think I can be too. ;)
I vaguely remember that there was something about South African Indians, some kind of felt over representation in entrepreneurship and trade. Am I wrong?
That was Gandhi’s set. He got tossed off a train for trying to travel on a first-class ticket. To the Brits, he was just a “brown” but they filled a niche that kept blacks out of it.
Considering everyone else a ‘gentile, ‘ a uniform other, is racism at its worst.
The argument is in part that there’s no racism because jews themselves are a varied lot ethnically and you can always convert to Judiasm–it’s slightly harder (LOL) than, say becoming a Baptist or a Muslim, but the earnest rabbis want to make sure you know what you are getting into and that your newfound faith is strong. It’s not in the Jewish culture or religion to unilaterally try to convert anyone to their faith. Who’s that at my door? Oh, it’s my friend the Jehovah Witness again. He’s relentless, but always nice and polite–I don’t think there’s a rascist bone is his body–they died like flies in Adolph’s camps. I’m not much on blood ties, whether via my mother or to keep the doctor away. Of course, there’s that dispute about who’s a real jew going on over there in Israel (and even here), and then too, the Talmud and its passages speaking of two types of souls.
Oftentimes, such feelings are imposed by one’s own views. If you were brought up to feel different, brought up to see yourself as different — culturally, socio-economically –then you will feel alien around a group of people who could very well be welcoming and warm, but whom you pushed away due to your own prejudices. That’s what feeds this paranoia that permeates throughout the Jewish-American community. I didn’t feel this paranoia in Israel — sure, it exists in regard to Palestinians — but it wasn’t the same paranoia Jewish Americans feel within their own country, among their fellow citizens. And I think most of the paranoia comes from the oral history — i.e. the indoctrination at home which often includes past collective traumas and history — where parents instill it in their children that they are special because they are Jewish, or that they are to be secretive and guarded lest they fall victims to the WASPs.
I find it ironic that as an immigrant I am accepted and welcomed among Christian Americans all the while Jews who are born in this country FEEL as though they are rejected by the same Christians. To me, that’s proof that “your people” have issues. That chip rears it’s ugly head again.
I’m a little disappointed to read this as I thought that you were past that phase.
What I don’t understand is how you reconcile your feelings toward Ahskenazi Jews while at the same time assert that:
This seems like a contradiction.
Avi, I got the same sense of contradiction as you did. But I think I know wherefrom it comes: In America, all these years, Jews associated like with like – but it wasn’t limited to Jew v non-Jew. It was also Ashkenazi with Ashkenazi, Sephardim with Sephardim and the two hardly ever mixing. What Phil knew of “Jews everywhere” was probably an abstract notion of “everywhere”. In reality, he would have had very little kinship, if any, with Mizrahi Jews, for example. They were not “western” in the mode and the sense he was raised to be comfortable with. From what I gather there was virtually no inter-relation between the two communities in the US, and it was only over time (many decades) that even Germanic Jews came to be more comfortable with, say, Polish or Russian background Jews.
So he goes to Israel and realizes that there are many Mizrahi there, and in reality, they feel alien to him. So, what else is new? the ashkenazi and mizrahi Jews were totally alien to each other in Israel too, and even now the relationships are not as close as all that. Besides, it was the Mizrahi culture that got wiped out, rather totally in Israel. Just as the Yiddish culture was. Which mean that those Israelis who came from Arabic countries have little by way of history or culture to derive pride from. They are, in truth, fostered (as opposed to adopted), with all that mean in term of self-esteem.
I can also second your comment about the lack of a feeling of persecution in Israel, or the collective trauma about which Phil speaks. Replaced, by another kind of insecurity with regard to Arabs and the legitimacy of the entire zionist exercise, all coupled with a sense of entitlement toward everyone else. Which is something I now regard as an extremely toxic mix.
I am kind of working up to a counter-post to address just how different things look from the viewpoint of an Israeli ex-pat in America. I bet Phil’s parents’ circle did not include any israelis – temporary or permanent US residents. The two communities – Jewish and Israeli – mix very little, in my experience. And what mixing they have it’s done at armed length (but then I know nothing about the orthodox communities…perhaps thing are different there.).
Danaa, to add to your mix. It was the Sephardim that helped found this country. They went from Spain/Portugal to the Netherlands to the Caribbean to Louisiana and up the east coast to Montreal (also south to Recife, Brazil). The oldest synagogues in the USA are Sephardic, some over 400 years old and still operating today. They helped fight in the war against the British in the 1700s, and the Civil War, helped create the stock exchange, universities like Columbia (NYC) and the great museums and libraries. The first Spanish explorer on current US soil was Juan Ponce de Leon in La Florida (1514). The de Leons were Spanish nobility and Jews from Northern Spain.
The Ashkenazi are the johnny-come-latelies with their shtel stories and ghetto life and Zionism, and arrived 300-400 years after the fact.
shtetl
The Sephardim also brought the slave trade and started the cotton business.
MRW, yes; I don’t think most folks realize that Jews were an integral part of the growth of the USA from the start; much assimilation happened too. If memory serves, the Ashkenazi entered the USA picture in the 1840-50s
(German Jews) and the great jewish (Yiddish) immigration from Eastern Europe
came 1880-1920.
Love your honesty, Phil. I feel the same thing regarding my brother, and to a lesser extent to my twin sister and older sister–our nuclear family grew up in many states, separated from our larger extended biological family. Our little family motto, through thick and thin in each new hostile neighborhood was, voiced by my father [who was transfered a lot, and on the road a lot, and mother had developed medical problems from the daily struggle, which took her away for some key formative years to rest from "a nervous breakdown" bringing up five kids alone in strange neighborhoods] was “Youse kids gotta stick togetha! Rememba dat!” When we were all loaded up in the car going to yet another new neighborhood, Dad joked, “Here comes Coxie’s Army!” Further, for example, I feel an affinity with all young army and marine grunts from combat outfits–even when they are louts. Why? I was a teen army grunt (my unit was 50% black), my brother a teen marine grunt. Too we sometimes faced hostility because of our religion, for example, on Ash Wednesday when the Protestent kids would diss us; similarly when we were allowed to leave class early for Catholic catachism class. Ethnic issues surfaced, for example in Cleveland–in junior high Mafia kids ruled the school corridors–they roamed in gangs during non-school hours–I was attacked a lot and I lived in fear every day. In other neighborhoods, other states, the enemy was small town white (mostly WASP)–they preferred ganging up on me to nib-twist instead of the more lethal stilletoes and bike chains. I learned to fight. I learned what a laugh Queensbury boxing rules were–and to take my father’s idealistic advice with more than a grain of sand. My father felt pride in being Irish. He knew what his people had been though. I learned I was also German and Austrian; I learned the exact percentage of each, including 1% Scot. Dad never identified with Germans; I am guessing because of WW2 it had been suppressed. His only reference was a jocular negative one, on the rare occasion his mother’s conduct would be brought up, whereupon he’d blurt “Whatta ya expect? She’s a joyman!” Us kids had no clue what he meant by that. By my later twenties I constantly found myself surrounded–by Jews. They definitely had power, were always better off than my running buddies of the past of whatever ethnic background. I learned the insular bigotry there too. I briefly dated in secret the Jewish valadictorian of my university graduating class (mostly Jewish). In my early thirties I began to study world history (I had already learned a lot indirectly from the study of world literature), most especially European history.
I’ve never stopped, I’ve gone way beyond the typical academic text books and the History Channel. I’ve wound up with an outlook that is akin to Avi’s: “my people” are the human race. That even includes the Pritzker woman I dated in my forties.
Phil: ” I think people are tribal. My wife has autochthonous WASP feelings and attachments she’ll never get over and I’ll never completely understand. Go figure.”
I’m not sure I fit Phil’s bill. I gave you all the facts. Do I sound tribal to you? Most people I am in contact with now have the same outlook as I do–are they tribal? I wonder about the nature of your wife’s WASP feelings that are so apparently difficult to fully understand. I cannot imagine what they might be.
au·toch·tho·nous
[aw-tok-thuh-nuhs] Show IPA
–adjective
1.
pertaining to autochthons; aboriginal; indigenous ( opposed to heterochthonous).
2.
Pathology .
a.
found in the part of the body in which it originates, as a cancerous lesion.
b.
found in a locality in which it originates, as an infectious disease.
3.
Psychology . of or pertaining to ideas that arise independently of the individual’s own train of thought and seem instead to have some alien or external agency as their source.
4.
Geology . (of rocks, minerals, etc.) formed in the region where found. Compare allochthonous.
allochthonous (əˈlɒkθənəs)
— adj
Compare autochthonous (of rocks, deposits, etc) found in a place other than where they or their constituents were formed
[C20: from Greek allokhthon, from allo- + khthōn (genitive khthonos ) earth]
I think David Duke has a persistent tribal allegiance too, and it is heartfelt.
But he and his type have been relegated to the fringe of society. This could not have been done without the support of a substantial number of whites. Nor can his cage be kept intact without same. His like do not hold any of the handles of power in this country. I wish Hagee et al had as little power too. Pat Buchanan? He’s a joke to TPTB.
Phil’s wife defined a bully as someone who took his/her insecurity out on somebody else in a violent way. I’d like to ask her if she thinks this definition might be applicable to the issues her husband speaks about here, and often in terms of her government’s foreign policy.
And if someone says ‘I can’t trust you; whatever you say, I know you want to kill me’ how can I trust him?
Hey, you just invented a new version of Hillel.
PHIL- First of all, thanks for the post. You are delving into an issue which is extremely important to discuss. Although you couch it in personal terms, you provide an excellent springboard for further discussion.
You indicate that “…we were keenly aware of who was Jewish and who was not.” This is a critically important point. One of the important components of Jewish “success” is the fact that Jews are a highly organized minority not easily recognizable to non-Jews. It is somewhat akin to invisible nepotism, where the son-in-law and cousin of the boss keep getting promoted, but you
aren’t aware of the favoritism until you learn of the relationship. You can’t connect the dots until you can see the dots. This is why all talk of Jewish power is met with shrieks of “anti-Semitism.” Power is more potent when hidden. There are few things more important to understanding the political economy than an understanding of power- who has it, how they got it, and what they are doing with it.
“…we were keenly aware of who was Jewish and who was not.” This is a critically important point. One of the important components of Jewish “success” is the fact that Jews are a highly organized minority not easily recognizable to non-Jews.
———————————-
All my gay friends and relatives possess the uncanny ability to instantly identify all gay people in a room full of strangers. I sure don’t have it. Maybe some ‘invisible nepotism’ accounts for the disproportionate representation of gays in certain professions? So, are gays ‘tribal’?
As a former painter, one who has worked for and in a major art gallery, the answer is “yes” gays are tribal. This is not a huge problem most of the times
‘The belief that They are going to Wipe Us All Out, which is supported by history, to some degree, I can tell you is shared by many powerful Jews. They’ve told me so. Shmuel repeatedly urges people to give up trauma as a form of self-definition, but I can tell you that many people don’t take his advice, they are embracing it. Lately a friend when I asked him why he’s a Zionist said, Because they are always going to rise up against us, at some time or place. I don’t share that feeling, but there it is.’
Oy, caramba! The first time I saw this formulation baldly stated — by the proprietor of a forum, in response to a fairly innocuous political criticism of Israel — I was shocked and appalled. I had met him personally on a couple of occasions; thought we had a good rapport. Then one fine morning he wrote, ‘We know that you people will come for us again, and kill us.’
In a message explaining why I would no longer participate in his forum, I told him that I felt sorry for someone with such a profoundly paranoid, crabbed worldview — who believes that 99.8% of the planet’s population are incipient mass murderers, just waiting to unsheath the long knives against the Jews.
One could regard such an extreme claim about non-Jews as profoundly insulting — and it is. But I prefer to frame it as a collective paranoia — understandable in light of history, but flagrantly maladapted and irrational in a world in which most people are not antisemitic fanatics.
As potsherd said above, by precluding any possibility of interreligious trust, Jewish paranoia actually increases the likelihood of its becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Philip’s description of his childhood cultural world is strikingly alien to me. But he has detailed how attitudes are changing in a younger generation of Jews. One would hope that the ‘paranoid generation’ was a one-time, post World War II phenomenon. But since zionism predated it by two generations, this may be a forlorn hope.
All my wife’s male relatives were brought up the same as Phil. Early during our marriage a bunch of us went to see Fiddler On The Roof. The movie was charming, so full of warmth–the theatre radiated it back to the screen–how could anyone not like the characters, and their little village (created by an Irish set maker). Who could warm to the Czar and his troops–nobody could. I wished there was more of that young Russian guy who was devoted to one of the milkman’s daughters. I felt like a cardboard character come to life but unable to move. I’d like to see a less romantic sequel–for one thing, the milkman would have a different job.
The Apprentice of Duddy Krawitz movie was a treat to see with my in-laws too.
Sometimes I think life in America, especially the suburban, middle class variety, is so bland and banal that some Jewish people cultivate all this paranoia in order to make their lives more dramatic and interesting.
Phil Weiss wrote:
“How bad or good is this? I think it just is. I don’t feel that bad about it. I think people are tribal.”
I think, Phil, that strong tribal loyalties often serve to benefit the tribe, rather than humanity as a whole. Universal values are endorsed when they benefit (or at least do no harm to) the tribe, but disregarded when they act to curb tribal influence. So, I think that a tribal mentality can at times be maladaptive in a pluralistic and multi-ethnic society. But, you’re really talking here (I think) about your sense of yourself and how you became the person you are today. As individuals, we usually don’t have much control over the factors that shape our personalities–especially during the pre-adult years. If we are thoughtful people, we reflect on those factors in order to develop a reasonably integrated identity–but as you imply, perfect integration is seldom (if ever) possible. Your honesty about the conflict that thoughtful persons can experience when faced with conflicts between tribal and universal values is quite courageous. Moreover, your work here has been wonderful and personally inspiring. Thanks for sharing.
It is acceptable to have pride in one’s ethnic and/or religious heritage. All people do. When that pride becomes nationalistic triumphalism backed up by the force of arms and defines everyone else not a member of that group as alien, then it becomes a dangerous movement for those outside it. Militant Zionism backed with American arms is not just dangerous to Palestinians, Arabs and Iranians, it is dangerous to all people identified as gentiles.
great post phil. previous engagements prevent me from elaborating on all the thoughts that crossed my mind while reading it but until i have a chance to revisit later i thought i’d point out not all of the feelings you’re relating are racist, they just are. feeling ethnic identification and camaraderie is not in and of itself racist.
that said i wasn’t raised to identify w/a group. we didn’t go to church, we were mutts, and my parents friends generated from their college years and early neighbors regardless of ethnicity (although most were white). the people next door on the culdesac in palo alto when i was a baby and they were young and made friends for life were herb and hoosie (last name omitted) and their son larry was my first kiss under their kitchen table when i was 4. we’d moved away by then but our families used to visit . i didn’t know they were jewish because i didn’t know what jewish was, even years later when i went to larry’s bar mitzvah i didn’t know what it was about. why would i? when my first boyfriend in college took me home to meet his parents in van nuys over christmas break i couldn’t figure out why for no reason his mom wasn’t nice to me. he said it was because she didn’t want her son marrying a shiska. i’d never heard of this and ask why. he said because jews are supposed to marry eachother. i was 18 and totally clueless.
i have to amend that, we had a group. we were in the cool crowd. my dad was friends w/herb caen and benny bufano (i don’t know what ethnicity they are but i know benny’s italian). my dad was pres of the SF press club for years and all sorts of people came thru our doors. both my parents families lived in other states and our cousins were weird. so we made our own tribe and it wasn’t determined by ethnicity. but everybody was cool and smart and funny and creative. especially my dad.
As a WASP of the liberal kind, I think I’ve had most of my “tribal” clannishness beaten out of me. That’s not to say I haven’t profited from my background of relative privilege, but I have (apparently unlike Phil) a standard sense of white, liberal guilt.
The funny thing is, half my friends and people I’ve lived with (in communal situations) and my favorite cousins have been Jews. I don’t know why I end up living with Jews or having them as friends, considering I’ve turned more into what’s sometimes called “anti-semitic”, i.e., anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian. Lately, more and more of my Jewish friends have been of the anti-Zionist type. Whatever. I’m generally perfectly comfortable around Jews unless the subject of Israel or Palestine comes up. Unless they’re my “anti-semitic” Jewish friends, some of whom are even more “anti-semitic” than me.
Well, I was rather hurt one time when my Jewish friend and my Jewish cousin who was visiting started going all Jewish clubby on me. Of course I love both of them still. It’s really bad since I’ve been getting more and more “anti-semitic” over the years.
While it’s true WASPs have been the beneficiaries of privilege, in this country and in a lot of historic periods/places, so have Jews. To be sure that made them easy targets for scapegoating and envy when the peasantry started really suffering from oppression by the ruling classes (which didn’t generally include Jews). A lot of the posts on this site (including by Phil) have delved into that history. They didn’t come to be over-represented among the wealthy and influential a-historically. And other “tribes”, e.g. native Americans, blacks and all victims of colonization around the world have suffered too, including forced religious conversions and the whole gamut of slavery and slave-like working conditions. Some of the victimization was by Jews.
Of course I don’t blame most Jews for the the fact that some tiny number are among the exploiting class. Nor does it automatically follow that wealth and privilege were attained by exploitation. I don’t know personally have any Jewish friends who aren’t more or less the same middle class as me – and absolutely liberal and anti-exploitation and racism.
My own sense of “tribe” extents to my extended family and personal friends. I don’t have any loyalty to WASPs as a group. Should I be proud of white power (success in this country)? Absolutely not. I don’t exactly think Phil should give up his privilege, but I think he should have a little more “privileged” person’s liberal guilt over it (at least the economic aspects of it), and just learn to accept people for what they are. I’m sure we all have victimizers and victims among our collective heritages, it’s just that most of us seem to identify with the victims, which can be terribly dangerous also.
Every time I read posts like these I come out a little sadder. Being of a certain age, I’ve experienced many ethnic inner circles in America through close friendships and romances; muslim, hispanic, black, jewish, philipino, african, slavic, and on and on and on. Coming from a teetotalling Christian Science family, I can tell you that we are probably the closest thing to Jews in America wrt moralizing, work ethic, scrutiny of others’ habits and so on. That said, I quit going to church when I was 12, partly because of the above reasons.
I guess it’s just overwhelmingly depressing to read how alien some types of people still perceive themselves to be in a more or less homogenized era, in these times of information overload and near abolishment of cultural secrecy. As if we don’t all celebrate holidays, have frank or contentious conversations with calcified family elders, hold humanistic moral outlooks in high regard, etc. Really depressing.
“Do you really love J? You really do? Well then if you really loved him you would not marry him and let him find someone rich.”
laughing ironically.
Our sons’ parents are, respectively, Roman Catholic & Mennonite.
Son #1 dated a Jewish girl for over 7 years — hs & college, +1 year as they began their first jobs, he as an investment banker, she as a college counselor.
Then families started to pressure to marry, and she broke with our son to marry “in the tribe.”
Roughly a decade later, my son is a multimillionaire; he’s travelled all over the world and maintains apartment-share arrangements in NY, Austria, and London.
She married a (Jewish) bureaucrat for a Kiwanis Club-like organization; she works as an assistant in a dental office; they live in a 1950s era house in an inner suburb near to her Jewish grandmother in a Midwestern city.
so much for stereotypes.
A delicate reflection.
Yes, it is true that everybody has “tribal” feelings, belongs to an identity, nay, multiple identities – family, local quarter, region, nationality, etc., at different levels.
By the way, it is not necessarily only community, it is also sexual: males belong to the “tribe” of men, females to that of women.
The identity seems to me to be made up of the sum of the historical experiences of the group. For example, to look outside the community area, although now liberated, women still decorate themselves, although the origin of the practice was men wanting to prove their wealth by decorating their women.
Of course no individual necessarily follows the rules, though they may be subject to community pressure, as you say.
What is striking in the case of the Jewish community is how much stronger it is than other identities of the same level. It is said to be the strongest community identity in the world. The nearest approaches are the Armenians and the Chinese. You don’t mention this vital point of strength of identity. I am a Brit, even an Englishman, an identity probably reinforced by the fact that I work in France, but I don’t feel we are going to be wiped out if Britain leaves the European Union, as they are always threatening to do.
In my view, identity is built of a series of historical experiences, which refine and define the community. According to what I understand, the Hebrews were not different from other Near Eastern peoples before the Babylonian exile. The Romans and the destruction of the Temple, created the non-territorial Jewish community, with an ideal of Jerusalem. The separate Jewish community was confirmed in Poland (and Russia), though I don’t know much about that. The techniques used by AIPAC today are derived from those used by the Jewish community in Ottoman Istanbul.
It is the details of history which have sent the Jewish community in one direction, and Christianity and Islam, both derived from Judaism, in others. Of course, no one individual necessarily follows the rules. Most communities are defined by a core. And there are many others who connect to a greater or lesser extent.
The “tribe” of Jews in the US, facing no particular opposition, may be tending to dissipate. Others, such as in Israel, may find the identity more useful.
A thought has just crossed my mind and I figured: Why not share it?
I wonder how many American Jews feel the same way Phil does. Is it a majority? If so, then what hope is there that the average American Jew might change his/her opinions on Israel and Palestine?
In other words, if tribal identity is deeply ingrained in the average American Jew, absent some political epiphany, what hope is there that allegiance to, and solidarity with, Israel will change in the near future?
Despite the fact that I deeply appreciate Phil’s honesty and courage to share such private and personal thoughts, I can’t help but feel a little depressed, perhaps “frustrated” is a more apt description of my feelings. Why? I don’t know. I suppose I would like to think that people have a capacity to change.
On a lighter note, a quote from William Monahan’s The Departed is quite fitting for this occasion:
The protagonist addressing his date, a psychologist by profession.
Here’s a taste of the younger generation not unrelated to this subject, sort of younger versions of Phil:
link to jewcy.com
Don’t forget to read the 35 comments, lots of them relative to hip-hop. One of them offers a cure: join the IDF; this takes us back to that article a few days ago here, and Eli’s cartoons about the Israeli guy and the Diaspora guy.
Keep chipping away at that stone, Phil, you’ll end up with a nice sculpture.
One of my best friends was my downstairs neighbor Charles. Charles went to Grad School at Yale. He was Jewish and very cosmopolitan. Charles never achieved his professional dreams due to some bad choices and a bit of bad luck (losing both his parents when he was young). When he started to hit hard times financially later in life, his Jewish friends felt no “kinship” with a poor failure. Actually he told me many of his friends found him an embarrassment because he had not achieved success. But to me he was a success as a human being. In my family Charles was loved and accepted completely by everyone, not for what he accomplished or what tribe he was but because he was a good, kind person. He was also the smartest person I ever knew. Until she died my Mom loved Charles and he was always invited to every family event and holiday.
When his financial situation became dire, I tried to find a Jewish organization here in NY that would help him but could not. None of his ‘very well off Jewish friends’ offered to help him. They didn’t flock to him in his declining days. The person that took the most responsibility for Charles was a friend who was not Jewish. What kind of tribalism does not take care of all of its members? The kind of tribalism Phil talks about sounds an awful lot like elitism with a Jewish flavor. And like all elitism, if you don’t measure up, you are never really in the club.
In America, the German Jews took care of the wretched from the East of their tribe; Jewish American charity to its own grew as part of the Jewish culture here–maybe today Jewish charities mostly focus on giving to Israel, not the relatively few jews who aren’t successful enough in terms of material wealth, such as Charles. What was that joke again? When is a human born? Christian minister: At birth. Rabbi: Upon graduation from medical school. I guess nowadays the Rabbi’s answer would be: Upon getting a good job in finance like Chelsea Clinton’s husband. (You can tell which way the success wind blows by where the key ivy league school grads flock.)
LAREINEBLANCHE- Nicely put!
Another brilliant soul searching piece by the indefatigable Phil Weiss. Keep them coming Phil. Whether we admit it or not, you are speaking for many of us here on this blog, because regardless of our ethnicity/religion, we have been struggling to break away from our tribe while also benefiting psychologically (sense of camaraderie) and materially (job bias and networking) from affiliation with that tribe.
There are obviously no easy answers. However, the only thing that is depressing about all this discussion is that the soul searchers in every community/society are a minuscule fraction of their population, so I’m not sure to what extent they can effect the flow of history. I believe it was George Bernard Shaw who said that, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
In other words, regardless of our religion, all of us on this site are stereotypical 19th century Diaspora Jews bobbing along the raging river of history, unable to direct its flow, nor find a permanent safe harbor where we can rest and recover.
I thank you for writing candidly.
The greatest tragedy for me about the Judaization of Israel, is that it is so commercial, as much as Judaic.
I’ve experienced two forms of “mush”, of “equality”. One is of various flavors of political and/or spiritual universalism, each stating that identity as reference, or continued identity as means, deters the utopian/dystopian. “Imagine there’s no countries”. Characterized by the virtue of giving up one’s identity (past and present) to purge racism or other ism’s.
The second is of commercialism, in which one’s identity is “refined” to self-pacifying consumer and supplier/career.
Two forms of modern mush.
Witty, I am sure you will be delighted to know that Adolph too explicitly recoiled against those two forms of “mush” and/or “equality.” Maybe you should read him. Both Mein Kampf and his speeches. Modern mush indeed.
>> One is of various flavors of political and/or spiritual universalism, each stating that identity as reference, or continued identity as means, deters the utopian/dystopian. “Imagine there’s no countries”. Characterized by the virtue of giving up one’s identity (past and present) to purge racism or other ism’s.
Only a “humanist” would even think to refer to egalitarianism or universalism as “dystopian”. Hevven forbid that all human beings should be completely equal to one another and that Jews should not longer have the privilege of self-proclaimed, gawd-derived superiority and self-righteous supremacism!
Its dystopian because it destroys what is rich in the world, in favor of a dogma, often viciously imposed.
“I’ve seen their ways too often for my liking”.
Here is something I wish we could define as soon as possible to avoid painful misunderstandings: where is the dividing line, the frontier, where “Jew-fatigue” or “Jew-overload”, becomes “antisemitism”? I say this because the majority of humanity suffers under a condition that I would call, “Asemitism”, which could be simply defined as the state of “not being Jewish”. This means that a certain point, with all the good will in the world, one simply gets a little tired of such a massive presence in one’s daily life of a group of people one doesn’t belong to, no matter how much one may initially like or admire that group.
I would really like to open up a separate thread to discuss this more thoroughly.
I just blogged this at greater length:
http://seaton-newslinks.blogspot.com/2010/10/rick-sanchez-affair.html
David S.,
It is your right to tune out and/or get pissed off any time you like. I have no interest whatsoever in sports for example, yet I get them shoved down my throat at every opportunity. Mostly I tune out; sometimes I voice my irritation. I’d probably watch myself in a sports bar and avoid comments about the protocols of the elders of FIFA, but otherwise I’m good.
The reasons for western fascination with Jews are legion. If you are an a-Semite, more power to you, but why are you reading and commenting on a blog that defines itself as “a news website devoted to covering American foreign policy in the Middle East, chiefly from a progressive Jewish perspective”?
People who are constantly making it clear that you don’t belong.
It works in both directions.
Philip Weiss’s wonderful blog is the most sensitively tuned of all the Internet to this potentially very destructive, but avoidable problem: the birth of a new and viral American antisemitism. That is why I read him all the time and have for years.
DAVID SEATON- Preoccupation with potential anti-Semitism is part and parcel of the cultivated Jewish sense of eternal victim-hood. For a variety of reasons, I cannot conceive of a serious outbreak of anti-Semitism in the US. On the other hand, anti-Arab Islamophobia is a serious problem which could get much worse. Irrational fear tends to distort one’s perspective.
I think that you could have simultaneously anti-Muslim and Antisemitism outbreaks in the USA… Remember that this was Christianity’s default position for centuries. If Israel starts a war in the Persian gulf and Americans cannot afford to put gas in their cars to go to work (if they still have a job) I can easily imagine Joe Sixpack hating both Muslims and Jews at the same time.
DAVID SEATON- Large scale pogroms have historically been incited/organized by elites for power seeking reasons. Joe six-pack rarely, if ever, initiates this type of activity on his own, except, perhaps, in isolated instances of longstanding smouldering discontent. In view of the power relations amongst US elites, combined with political and media influence, I cannot imagine any configuration of Gentile elites attempting to do this, or succeeding if they tried. Of course, minor instances of anti-Semitism, such as swastikas painted on synagogues, seem a possibility, particularly if the Mossad is up to it’s old tricks of creating the appearance of anti-Semitism. However, I cannot imagine any sort of anti-Semitism remotely comparable to Islamophobia (encouraged by Zionist Jews), or to anti-immigrant hysteria. Jews, however, due to a lifetime of
indoctrination in Jewish victim-hood, will likely continue to be obsessively focused on (negligible) anti-Semitism while ignoring much more serious problems of US racism and victimization.
The oliarchic power structure/system and US tradition of civil rights
would not allow any broad-based antisemitism as a viable political approach. Christianity in the Middle Ages is not Christianity today; except as to Christian Zionists who automatically are pro-Jewish. OTH, the spreading of Islamophobia is a very real threat as few Americans have any personal relationship with anybody of Arab or Persian descent and said power structure/system has an interest
in furthering this slander as part of the profitable war on terror, the new cold war, the gift that keeps on giving (to the elite).
“DAVID SEATON- Large scale pogroms have historically been incited/organized by elites for power seeking reasons.”
And Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Limbaugh and team continue to fuel the hate and anger fires
david, i will check out your blog post. i just want to say i suffer from the same. i tune out holocaust movies now ( and i want to say i have read 50 books at least on it, because of the HUMAN problem, not jew-fascination), and i tune out the jokes which used to seem cute.
Really honest post Phil. Appreciate your honesty. And your willingness to expose these feelings.
1. Phil “Let’s leave the superior out of it; that’s not really the point of this post. ”
Just do not think you can keep these feelings out of it. Seems to be a critical component as well as the historically oppressed piece.
2. Phil “I remember being instilled to feel a kinship to black people in Baltimore. ”
How much of this feeling of “kinship” was a reaction that many of us were feeling and acting upon at that time and still to this day?
3. Phil “We never really went to synagogue, my scientist father looked down on rabbis, but big deal: we sought out the company of Jews, because they were smart and funny and shared our understandings.”
Now this is an issue that I have never been able to understand. When people refer to their Jewishness but do not participate in the Jewish faith. What is this “tribal sense” based on? Cultural practices? Ethnic history? What? Just do not get this? I have lots of Jewish friends and many announce that they are Jewish within minutes of meeting someone. I grew up Catholic (not practicing) Am a Heinz 57 American (Irish, Polish, Russian and French) and I do not announce any of this within minutes of meeting someone. Maybe never unless these topics come up? Just do not understand the need to identify one’s self with a cultural, religious or ethnic group. Find that only feeds the perceived differences and individual struggles
4. Phil “This affinity is true even of some of my leftwing non Zionist friends. We occasionally look at one another and say, We are here not just out of devotion to human rights, but because we don’t want our people, the Jews to be hurt. In fact, we see our representation here in the Palestinian solidarity community, as proud Jews, as guarding against the thing we have always been warned about, that They are going to wipe us all out.”
What ever your reason or your “non Zionist” friends are there for this “tribal” self preservation or the “devotion to human rights” It is so good.
And while I personally work on being focused on “human rights” not based on a “tribal” preservation. I will be honest that I judge that intention of focusing on “tribal” preservation to be somewhat shallow and selfish. Sorry but just being honest. Would like to be free of this judgment but it is there.
5. Phil “They’ve told me so. Shmuel repeatedly urges people to give up trauma as a form of self-definition, but I can tell you that many people don’t take his advice, they are embracing it.”
I agree with Shumuel. While being honest, factual and compassionate about the pogroms and horrific holocaust and seeking justice has been critical. Clinging to or “embracing” these traumas internally is terribly self destructive.
6. Phil “My sense of my peopleness led me in college to seek out the company of other Jews at the Harvard Crimson newspaper, and to prefer the company of Jews in what struck me as an alien atmosphere. Yes, Ashkenazi Jews. Marty Peretz was a ringleader of the social studies Jews I knew, and there were haut German Jews, too, who were new to me, but still I had a sense of communality/caste identification. We saw each other as part of an elite with distinct values.”
“part of an elite” This sense of ‘”elite” is what I have talked with Jewish friends (40-85 in age) about whether they were told that they were “part of an elite” While a few of my friends were somewhat offended at first when I asked this question only one person out of many people asked said they were brought up not only with this sense but with these very words “chosen people” often being used in reference to what they were also brought up to be considered a “tribe”
This weekend I traveled over to D.C. for the One Nation gathering with two very good friends who have been married for 47 years. He is a retired Professor of Sociology and she is a retired social worker. He was raised in the a non denominational environment, of Scots/Irish ancestry and she is Jewish and was raised in the Jewish faith. They were describing their meeting in College and then their marriage. Her family completely freaked out that she was marrying a non Jew. Her family was very upset and barely talked to them for quite some time. When I asked her if she was brought up being told she was “chosen”. She quickly answered “yes” I then went on to ask her if she thought her families feeling of being “chosen” and their negative response to her marriage to a Gentile was prejudicial in nature? She answered with an affirmative “yes” That in her family the feelings of being “chosen” were elite in nature.
Now this is not the first time that I have heard this answer from those who were brought up in the Jewish faith or the Jewish culture. Now I am not saying that this sense of “elitism” only exist in the Jewish faith or culture. But from my view and question asking it is a dominant focus. I think it is dangerous and only serves in a destructive way
7. Phil “As I’ve said here often, I think that Jews hired other Jews. I know I’ve benefited from this full employment program on numerous occasins in my life. I think that Marty Peretz had me working at the New Republic when my work wasn’t that good in good part because I’m Jewish and was in the gang. I think that the editor who has given me more work than anyone, who will go nameless, loves me in part because we’re of the same tribe. When you look at hives of Jewish writers, say the New Yorker Magazine, or the professors at Columbia University schools, I believe there is a strong kinship network at work. I’ve mentioned Lawrence Summers and Elena Kagan and Michael Walzer and Judith Shklar, their faculty networks at Harvard, as indicative of the same tendency.
Hey it was no different when the WASPs were running the center ring.”
So because “Wasp” were and are sometimes assholes about this does being culturally or religious selectivity make it o.k? Hell no!
In the MSM NPR’s Fresh Air’s Terri Gross is one of the worst abusers of being culturally and religiously selective with her guest. Some one could do a graduate study of her choice s of guest on her program.
8. Phil “I think people are tribal.” I do not agree with this at all. I believe “tribalism” is taught and fueled. Some of it good. I believe much of the fueling of “tribalism” is negative. Fuels racism, elitism, and dehumanization of others. Danger.
9. Phil “To argue my friend’s father’s side for a moment, in the rabbi case, it came out of fear and insecurity, the fear that we would be wiped out, which again I have heard from some of the most empowered people on the planet.”
This “fear of being wiped out” combined with a historical taught and believed sense of “elitism”
Interesting read Phil. Some good responses too. Hearty topic. Hollywood. Media. Israel. USA. Jews. Americans. Who’s doing what and why.
I see the United States as an end in and of itself, something to be perfected. That’s because it is my country. Some of my fellow nationals see the United States as a means to an end someplace else.
Socially and culturally, Jewish zionists and neocons often come across often as snide and superior. The abuse of media privilege is getting brusque lately, in their attempt to force Americans to see the world as an Israeli, something Americans are not, something counterproductive and dangerous for the United States.
Exhibit A = Jacob Weisberg on Meg Ryan. link to newsweek.com
“nose-crinkling, conventional Democrat”??
Wonder why he left out “blonde”?