Are the Jews a nation? Can they hit a curveball breaking low and away? Major League Baseball (MLB) says yes to both. And Commissioner Bud Selig will prove it by allowing a team comprised solely of Jewish ballplayers to compete in the 2013 World Baseball Classic (WBC).
The plan is to recruit Jewish minor leaguers, college players, and recently retired and current major leaguers, to join a few token Israelis in order to enter the tournament as the Israeli national team. This is, of course, a bizarre circumvention of the rules of international sports competition. The stated goal of Major League Baseball, which produces the WBC, is to promote the sport in Israel, where it has had little popularity despite the glove dreams of various groups of American immigrants and a few quixotic Jewish-American promoters.
The Israelis already have recruited former major league star, Brad Ausmus, to coach the team. Shawn Green, arguably the most accomplished Jewish player since Sandy Koufax, is ready to suit up. Although he has retired from active competition, at 39 years-old, Green is still fit enough to pack the wallop of a Merkava tank at this level of competition. Another recently retired major league Jew who has expressed interest in joining the “Israeli” team is Gabe “The Hebrew Hammer” Kapler.
The Israeli Association of Baseball (IAB) website lists the names of eight Jewish baseball “stars” among the current crop of major leaguers. (That webpage is no longer available, also see jewsinbaseballnews.com) All have been contacted by the IAB, which is the organization charged with putting together the Israeli national team. At this stage, there have been no public commitments from any of these players in regard to playing on the “Israeli” team. However, Met first baseman, Ike Davis helped raise money (Hebrew) at an IAB event and has said he wants to play for Israel one day. Two players that could be forced to choose between playing for Israel and for the USA are Ryan Braun and Ian Kinsler. Braun, last year’s National League Most Valuable Player, has already stated that he is considering this “difficult choice.” Talk about having dual loyalties! If Braun picks the Jewish State over his home state, this act would become as legendary among Jewish-Americans as Sandy Koufax refusing to pitch in the World Series on the holy day of Yom Kippur.
Israel will have to win a qualifying round against France, South Africa and Spain to play against the top teams. As opposed to the two previous Classics, both won by Japan, the Americans are now sending a major league all-star team. That fact will immeasurably increase the visibility of this international baseball competition. If the Jews win the qualifier, the hope is that they will face the USA team, which will mean big publicity, interest and promote baseball b’aretz (in Israel). Unfortunately for the “Israelis,” the qualifier was moved from November to September 2012. This means that the Jews will be without any big leaguers until the March 2013 championship round.
Baseball in Israel has been a passion for a small group of mostly Jewish-American immigrants. Israel had a professional league that played and flopped miserably in 2007. The commissioner of that league was the ex-American ambassador to Israel, Daniel Kurtzer. In an email response to me, Kurtzer, who now teaches at Princeton, wrote, “I hope there’s a future for professional baseball in Israel. To restart it will require substantial funding and a multi-year commitment.” Despite its past dismal failure, the IAB is currently raising 3 million dollars to build a new stadium which they hope will help invigorate interest in the sport.
There is precedent for the Jewish-American run on the Baseball Classic. In 2006, the rules were bent to permit Mike Piazza to play for the Italian team. Then in 2009, the Italian team consisted of 13 Italian-American major leagues players whose eligibility did not appear to conform to the Classic’s own rules. When I asked Kurtzer about Jewish-American eligibility for the Israeli team, he pointed to the “qualification for citizenship” clause in the rules of eligibility and the fact that all Jews are eligible for Israeli citizenship. However, the limitations on eligibility appear to be more clearly defined in the WBC rules by the three initial bullet- pointed criteria, which require citizenship or birth of the player or one parent in the country he seeks to represent. Still, I imagine the “Israelis” will refer to this clause in their hasbara explaining why their team is kosher.
Although the idea of a group of American Jews representing Israel is contrary to all rules and logic, it will be pointed out that the Italians did it. Also, it will be claimed that athletes have long been exploiting tenuous connections to foreign countries in order to represent those countries in international competitions. But this is a whole team! And Jewish is a religious designation, not a national one.
The idea of fielding an all- Jewish team appears to be less about promoting Israeli baseball and more about a misplaced effort at displaying Jewish pride and pro-Israel support by a small group of rich and powerful people. According to the LA Times, seven of 30 major league teams have Jewish owners. The current baseball commissioner, Bud Selig, who is a former owner, is Jewish. Ironically, the LA Times article opines that these Jewish owners are reluctant to have their own Jewishness in the public eye. If this is the case, they may not have thought out the bad publicity that may be the result of this outrageous “all Jewish-American team” wearing the Israeli blue and white.
This article first appeared on July 27 at Counterpunch.org
Five thousand years of beautiful history from Moses to Sandy Koufax, you’re goddam right I’m livin’ in the past.
- Walter Sobchak (big lebowski)
Weirder and weirder.
Why call it a Jewish-’American’ team?
Just call it a Jewish team.
What’s the point in attaching American to it?
They aren’t playing for or representing America, they are representing the Jews or Israel.
Seriously… I don’t get it either. If they wanted to be Israeli, they could move there.
I say bring back the House of David — link to peppergame.com
Redemption will follow.
“Five thousand years of beautiful history…..”
Yes, and it is mostly invented by storytellers, putting the Grimm Brothers and Christian Andersen to shame!
In Israel, JEWISH scientists and archeologists are proving step by step that the Old Testament, aka the history book of the jews, is nothing, but myths, hearsays and outright lies, as are other myths in this world.
According to several their reports I read during the past year:
* there was not great empire of David and Solomon, no traces can be found,
* Moses never crossed the sea as the jews most likely never were in Egypt,
* no burning bush and the stone tablets with the 10 commandments,
* Noah and his arch was copied from sayings of a much older empire,
* so was Abraham and his story,
* Adam and Eva, Cain and Abel and all that nonsense is just that, nonsense!
* The only real descendents of the old israelis are the samariter, about 1,500 still living in Israel, who following the judaic laws did not leave the land and did not mix with other peoples, etc., etc.
Jews should concentrate on the past few centuries, where they were, and still are, leaders in science, arts, medicine, etc., no need to invent stories to make yourselves important.
I’ll care when they also support fielding a Palestinian team.
The situation would be interesting if there was a major league player of Palestinian extraction.
F Baseball anyway. It’s not that great of sport especially since the whole doping scandals these past decades. I only go to baseball games to drink overpriced beers and get a suntan.
“I hope there’s a future for professional baseball in Israel”
Very hard to run a professional sport in a country of 5 million chosen people, a good third of whom are dirt poor Orthodox. And that is before looking at the occupation. YESHA takes all the money and the oxygen.
Your comment reminds me of the book/movie “The Chosen”. It starts with a rather intense baseball game between a Hasidic yeshiva and a modern orthodox one. Later in the book, there is an even more intense conflict over the creation of Israel, between the Hasidic Rebbe (against, because they believe this cannot happen until the Messiah comes) and the Zionist parents of the modern orthodox kids. I don’t remember who won the ball game, but if only the other conflict had turned out differently!
being a former bosox follower, i never had the feeling that kapler or youkilis had much interest in discussing their ‘jewishness’. (a couple of good players amongst active players on the current ‘israeli’ roster, but i’ll root for france . . . or SA or spain, if those are my choices. and how did they set up these pools, anyway? beating france and spain in baseball entitles you to move on to the big leagues? what, kyrgyzstan and andorra aren’t fielding teams?)
and OT, but another serial fibber who writes/has written for the NYT:
link to mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com
too bad, i liked lehrer’s reporting, or at least i liked what i had taken at face value.
What’s a “former bosox follower”? Have you switched your loyalty?
And has anyone noticed that Youkilis, a Jew, was sent to the White Sox, President Obama’s team? Clearly , a Zionist operation intended to enlist the President’s support for a war on Iran.
The next thing we can expect to see is a football team made of IDF soldiers recruited in the US, where they wouldn’t dream of enlisting in their country’s military, and have that team face off against Army or Navy’s team. It’s the new patriotism to fight for another country while refusing to fight for your own.
“It’s the new patriotism to fight for another country while refusing to fight for your own.”
Exactly
Excuse me. I have a good friend who served in the IDF and then served two terms with the US Army in Iraq. And there are plenty of Jews besides him who have served in the US military. So stop demeaning their service. Who the hell do you think you are to demean the service of others?
there are plenty of Jews besides him who have served in the US military. So stop demeaning their service.
no one was demeaning the service of either your friend or jews who serve in the US army. les and caro were referencing types who “fight for another country while refusing to fight for your own.”…you know they exist. do you want us to name names?
Please. That is exactly what they were doing and what this site has done in the past by questioning the number of Jewish service personnel in the US Army. They assumed that someone from the US who fought for the IDF would not think of joining the US military. I have two friends who have done both, and two others who are Navy Chaplains. All are proud Jews. I’d like to hear Les’s credentials since he’s so fast to criticize the choices of others.
“Excuse me. I have a good friend who served in the IDF and then served two terms with the US Army in Iraq. And there are plenty of Jews besides him who have served in the US military. So stop demeaning their service. Who the hell do you think you are to demean the service of others?”
He doesn’t deserve to be condemned for his service to the US Army. He deserves to be condemned for taking part in the rape of Palestine as part of the israeli terrorist and occupation forces. And if he was so patriotic, why did he wait until after serving the villians in Palestine before enlisting in the US Army?
There have been cases of American Jews fighting in the IDF instead of the American army.
So nice try at changing the subject, putz.
And tell us how many American Jews serve in both armies? And what are we supposed to take away from that? It may be admirable, but it sure as hell isn’t prevalent!
Occam’s razor.
I have a good friend who served in the IDF and then served two terms with the US Army in Iraq.
really, and your ‘friend’, if s/he came across intelligence that s/he believed might be essential to the national security interests of israel while serving in ‘the US Army in Iraq’, what would s/he do with such intelligence? and you know that such things have occurred. do you want us to name names?
“Occam’s razor.”
How is this Occam’s Razor?
“There have been cases of American Jews fighting in the IDF instead of the American army. ”
It is not like people are forced to choose. Most people in this country do not serve in any army. So your comparison is BS.
“And tell us how many American Jews serve in both armies?”
No idea. I personally know of two who did.
” if s/he came across intelligence that s/he believed might be essential to the national security interests of israel while serving in ‘the US Army in Iraq’, what would s/he do with such intelligence? ”
Such as? If you’re serving in the US Army, you’re serving the US. There’s no dual loyalty issue. He wasn’t in both armies at once.
hophmi: “So stop demeaning their service. Who the hell do you think you are to demean the service of others?”
I’m a former naval officer who never met another person in the United States Navy who thought the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty was an accident.
To address your other issue, I honor every American Jew who served in the US military. The ones I don’t honor are those who would never join the US military but gladly volunteer for the IDF. It seems to me, when they finish their service, they ought to stay in the country they care about most.
LOL Occam’s razor on MW, love it….
“All are proud Jews. ”
What’s the difference between a proud Jew and any other Jew?
The issue of are Jews a nation is not so clear cut as this article suggests.
1) Jews are a nation, at least according to the self understanding of most Jews. (That is an empirical fact despite the atypical views of the most writers on this web site.) That’s how virtually all Jews thought of themselves (and thats how non-Jews thought of them too) until the 1830s. Only then – with the establishment of Reform Judaism – did the idea of Jews as primarily a religious designation get any traction. And Reform Judaism, though big in the U.S. was never a majority of world Jewry, and in any case over the last 40-50 years Reform Judaism has reversed itself completely on this issue and now are officially Zionists.
2) “Jewish is a religious designation, not a national one.” It is certainly not exclusively or even primarily a religious designation. Otherwise how do you explain Phil Weiss’s self affiliation, or so many others who hang around this web site. Not to mention, dozens of secular Jewish organisations, from “The Workman’s Circle” to “Humanistic Judaism”.
3) In general there seems to be confusion over the difference between the terms Nation and State. Often there is a tight correlation, but not always. China, Russia, Canada, Belgium, and the UK are all officially multi-national states. The UK even sends separate sports teams to world cup football (soccer) from its constituent nations (England, Scotland, …) Even the U.S, it could be argued, is a defacto multi-national state. (There are a lot of American citizens who celebrate Cinco de Mayo.) Sometimes, in my more optimistic moments, I dream that Israel/Palestine could evolve into a multi-national federated state.
4) Nations often have diasporas. These people often have a degree of dual loyalty to both the state they live in and their “original” nation. (Hence all those Italian-Americans who played for Italy in the 2009 WBC.) There is nothing wrong or unusual about that.
5) On the other hand the WBC is set up as a competition between States, not nations. But clearly they too are confused about the differences between states and nations, and their eligibility rules just highlight that.
6) Why are Ryan Braun “dual loyalties” in this regard more problematic that Mike Piazza’s?
braun described his personal ambivalence. i don’t know that piazza ever did. and the ‘problematic’ part of it may come from others who use this issue as further evidence of the unity of the ‘jewish nation’ as it transcends state boundaries. i don’t recall italy making any sort of grand political and racial pronouncements about the interstate ‘italian nation’ in response to piazza’s decision.
“1) Jews are a nation, at least according to the self understanding of most Jews. ”
But what do they think “nation” means?
If Jews are a separate nation why do they vote in American elections?
“If Jews are a separate nation why do they vote in American elections?”
If Greek-American identify Greece as their homeland, why do they vote in American elections?
“If Jews are a separate nation why do they vote in American elections?”
unfortunately, because some congressional legislation changed american policy to allow dual citizenship.
“unfortunately, because some congressional legislation changed american policy to allow dual citizenship.”
Just plain wrong. There has never been a law against holding dual citizenship in the United States.
As Teddy Roosevelt once observed, if you insist on being a “hyphenated-American” this country, which depends on assimilation, obviously isn’t the place for you.
Syd,
It is true that the Reform movement stressed the fact that Judaism is “merely” a religion, but I think that should be understood in the context of the struggle for emancipation and equality within German society. The famous Reform concept we were taught in school (as further proof of the short-sightedness and wrong-headedness of the anti-Zionist Reformers) – “Germans of the Mosaic faith” – had far more to do with a vision of German than Jewish society. It was primarily a response to those who insisted that Christianity was an essential component of German identity and a sine qua non for membersip in German society. It also provided an ideological framework for the developing sense of German national identity among Jews in German lands.
Jews may have, for the most part, viewed themselves as a “nation” before 1830, but what did that concept mean prior to 1830, or 1730, or 1530 or 30, in Europe and elsewhere (See e.g. Sa’adia Ga’on’s dictum: “We are not a nation but in our Torah alone”)? The way that (many? most?) Jews self-identify today is pertinent, but it is an anachronism to assert that this very identity stretches back to early modern and even pre-modern times.
The fact that there are secular Jews does not necessarily mean that Jews are a nation (again, the term itself needs defining), but merely that they are a culture (or group of associated cultures, to be more precise). In the North American context, Judaism is often perceived as an “ethnicity”, comparable to other immigrant groups, but that perception generally relates to the cultural characteristics (foods, language [Yiddish, or what's left of it], religion, etc.) and immigrant experiences of Ashkenazi Jews, rather than to any sense of “nationhood”. Phil is a cultural Jew by virtue of the fact that he was raised in a certain Jewish milieu (one of many), not because he is a member of the “Jewish nation” (which he may or may not be, depending on how you define “nation”).
I think your comparison to the national identity of other diasporas is misleading. An Italian-American has a clear and direct link to a modern nationality (beyond her/his” ethnic” culture). An Italian-American is “Italian”, because s/he or an immediate ancestor (generally 2 or 3 generations back, at most) was born in Italy and holds/held Italian citizenship. The same cannot be said of Jews.
As for the “Jewish national team”, I presume that the principle behind the famous “basketball conversions” of the 1980s (see e.g. LaVon Mercer) applies to baseball as well. In other words, we can recruit anyone we want! I’d like to see the Italians top that.
Shmuel,
There are so many distortions, misrepresentations and non-truths in your post, one does not know where to begin. Are you serious or just repeating toxic somethings that was drilled into and poisoned your mind by others.
Your words feed — even attempt to confirm — the shameful and disgusting ideas of that Jews hold dual loyalties to states, with the idea of loyalty to a “Jewish Nation” as primary.
No Jews anywhere viewed themselves as part of a physical Nation before 1830. That is in your dreams, a modern myth. In fact, many people of the world did not consider themselves as part of any nation. The “nations” of the Middle East are the result of the scribblings of British Cartographers and their ideas of transport and territorial control.
In 1841, at the dedication of Temple Beth Elohim in Charleston, South Carolina, Rabbi Gustav Poznanski affirmed: “This country is our Palestine, this city our Jerusalem, this house of God our temple.”
South Carolina had a relatively large population of Jews and were among the first group of white settlers in the 18th century. They sure were not concerned about the golden calf fetish of the Palestinian region in the middle east or ideas of a nation. Their Judaism was spiritual.
Ahad Ha-Am, a Russian Jewish intellectual, and leading member of Hovevei Zion (Lovers of Zion) but subsequently became an ardent critic.
wrote after his visit to Palestine in 1891 wrote:
“As for building a ‘spiritual center’ for Judaism, such advocates reveal a failure to grasp the nature of Judaism. For Judaism at root is not some religious concentration which can be localized or situated in a single territory … Neither is Judaism a matter of ‘nationality’ in the sense of modern nationalism, fit to be woven into the famous three-fold mesh of ‘homeland, army, and heroic songs.’ No Judaism is Torah, ethics, and exaltation of spirit. If Judaism is truly Torah, then it cannot be reduced to the confines of any particular territory. For as Scripture said of Torah: ‘Its measure is greater than the heart …’ (Job 11:9).”
link to acjna.org
Ellen,
I thought that’s what I had said.
Shmuel,
Apologies if I mis read your post. I read it three times and am still not quite sure of the point.
If you point is that the idea of “nation” in traditional Judaism is a spiritual and symbolic one, yes.
That — in my mind — is a positive feature of Judaism: that it is not bound by earthly ideas of physical land and institutions for self understanding.
Mixing Zionism with Judaism and ideas of a physical “Jewish nation” with an army and occupation over others is a tragic apostasy of Judaism.
The question of what ‘nation’ means is quite important. Sand has been pushing Renan’s subjectivist view, whereby a nation is a group of people who share certain ideas about having done great things together and hoping to do more. I believe that Renan added that a nation has also to forget many things, which implies (though I don’t think he drew this conclusion) that nationalism is always a kind of lie. The idea of having done great things ‘together’ is quite a surprising one – in what sense can I claim togetherness with Shakespeare or Newton? – but it isn’t inherently aggressive or territorial.
I read it three times and am still not quite sure of the point.
Ellen,
I was replying to sydnestel, who asserted that Jews are and have always been a “nation” (without defining that term, but implying its modern sense), and that it is the idea that Judaism is “only” a religion that is the innovation – conceived by the Reform Movement, in the 19th century.
My point was that it is an anchronism to say that Jews self-identified as a [modern] nation, before the concept itself existed. It is true that pre-modern Jewish sources, going back to the Bible, refer to the Jews/Israel as a people (am), nation (ummah) or ethnos (goy), but these words did not have the same meanings they have today. I gave the example of Saadia Gaon (9th-10th century; also known as “Al-Fayyumi”), who would appear to have understood “nationhood” in a purely religious sense.
Sydnestel cited the existence of secular Jews (Phil Weiss, The Workman’s Circle) as proof that Judaism is a national, rather than religious concept. I disagreed, suggesting that Judaism is also a cultural identity. He also argued that the existence of a “diaspora” does not mean that Jews are not a nation, because other nations (in the modern sense) also have diasporas. I pointed out the difference between Jewish and other diasporas.
In other words, there is nothing in my comment (and I apologise if I failed to make myself clear) that contradicts any of your assertions.
Shmuel,
your words are very clear and well said. I’ll work on reading comprehension!
;)
Ellen -
‘I’ll work on reading comprehension!’
I think you should try working your way through Mooser’s posts. They’re often multi-dimensional, uncannily suggestive, and open to a variety of interpretations.
Much like divine revelation.
[LanceThruster to Mooser] – “Are you…the Messiah?”
“…Mixing Zionism with Judaism and ideas of a physical “Jewish nation” with an army and occupation over others is a tragic apostasy of Judaism…”
It does strike me that way. Zionism could be defined as an attempt to redefine Judaism in the terms of the whole complex of ideas involved in Nineteenth Century European nationalism.
Well, it doesn’t work. I don’t see how it could be a fit for Judaism, and Jews themselves don’t really fit the criteria assumed by European nationalism. It’s like trying to play a game of baseball with the equipment of a football team.
Even if one is prepared to grant that Israel is a nation — which I am not — it still doesn’t work. Israel doesn’t seem to capture any essence of Judaism in any sense. It’s merely this place where a whole lot of Jews have been corralled and set to fight their new neighbors.
@ MHughes
I believe that Renan added that a nation has also to forget many things, which implies (though I don’t think he drew this conclusion) that nationalism is always a kind of lie.
Thank you for introducing me to the thought of Renan.
I’m curious about Renan’s regional loyalty which looks like Shlomo Sand’s Tel Aviv identity and his loyalty to his neighborhood. An identity of one’s immediate, knowable surroundings is contrasted to the abstract construct of a “nation.”
Regarding your post, wasn’t it Karl Deutsch who added the piece that nationalism requires one to hate one’s neighbors? Renan, apparently, held a milder view of nationalism.
I think you are overstating the issue of memory in nationalism. Amnesia is essential to any identity – personal, familial, tribal, communal and so on.
Most people, most of the time bury their failures and build a narrative linking their points of success. No Democrat wants to remember Jimmy Carter’s one term presidency; Bill Clinton’s two-terms are much preferrable.
Nationalism’s problem is not one of memory but one of fabrication and the privileging one’s own narrative over those of others.
‘I think your comparison to the national identity of other diasporas is misleading. An Italian-American has a clear and direct link to a modern nationality (beyond her/his” ethnic” culture).’
This distinction between Jewish ‘national’ loyalty and that of other American ethnic groups is often lost. I think it’s sometimes muddled on purpose so that the Jewish situation will not seem anomalous. The fact is — other immigrant groups lose the sense of identification with a ‘homeland’ after a generation or two and make little effort to preserve this identification as a value in itself (I’ve noticed that Armenian and Greek Americans are mild exceptions, with religion, unsurprisingly, playing a role). Under any circumstances, after a couple of generations it’s difficult to consider Italian, Irish etc. – Americans as coherent ethnic groups.
In the 1st half of the 20th century American Jews had a sense of ethnic rootedness and coherence similar to that of other American immigrant groups. They all brought it with them and it took some time to wash out. There’s been an attempt to seamlessly make over that natural (now fading) Jewish cultural identity into affiliation with Israel, treating Israel as if it were the ‘old homeland’ and considering this affiliation as nothing different than the sentimental attachment of other American European ethnics to their old homelands. Of course, these other affiliations began differently and have almost totally disappeared, but nobody seems to question the relevance of the comparison.
I’m not sure, however, that ‘culture’, ‘milieu’ or a ‘group of cultures’ entirely captures the Jewish-American situation. There is some sense of peoplehood or whatever-hood that seems more than mere culture, neighborhood, religion or biology. It is perishable but still persists to a degree that Irish or Italian – American identity does not. Hard to know what to call it.
Well, I don’t know about any other Jews, but I am a nation! I contain multitudes (how I pack them all in this stunted carcase I’ll never know). And their names are lesion!
‘Well, I don’t know about any other Jews, but I am a nation! ‘
We’re letting you do it for us — just hold on tight and keep up the good work
You give me lesion to live.
Hobsbawm’s withering take on the Zionist “nation” argument deserves wider currency in anti-Zionist circles:
[…] While the Jews, scattered throughout the world for some millennia, never ceased to identify themselves, wherever they were, as members of a special people quite distinct from the various brands of non-believers among whom they lived, at no stage, at least since the return from the Babylonian captivity, does this seem to have implied a serious desire for a Jewish political state, let alone a territorial state, until a Jewish nationalism was invented at the very end of the nineteenth century by analogy with the newfangled western nationalism. It is entirely illegitimate to identify the Jewish links with the ancestral land of Israel, the merit deriving from pilgrimages there, or the hope of return there when the Messiah came – as he so obviously had not come in the view of the Jews – with the desire to gather all Jews into a modern territorial state situated on the ancient Holy Land. One might as well argue that good Muslims, whose highest ambition is to make the pilgrimage to Mecca, in doing so really intend to declare themselves citizens of what has now become Saudi Arabia. [pp. 47-8]
Nations and Nationalism since 1780 Second Edition (1992)
The obvious once you think about it analogy with Islam and Saudi Arabia is as amusing as it is devastating.
I don’t think we are even allowed to read Hobsbawn these days, let alone invoke his name.
well they made up a phony ass history out of absolutely nothing…why not?
Jew scholars admit that most if not all the hogwash about jewish history in the Bible or whatever is absolutely nothing but tall tales borrowed from just about everybody who was anybody in the mideast…including monotheism…
Any camel driver who passed through whatever dump the jews were living in, had some yarn to spin so they wrote it down…
Sorry to inform these yokels…but can put together a 100 baseball teams of Cubans, Hispanics or Blacks who would clean anybody else’s clock…
“Jew scholars admit”
Gosh, chuckcarlos, don’t you think that’s an unfortunate locution, which can only be put down to haste, and lack of facility with the “edit” function? It’s really worth correcting to “Jewish scholars” If for only the reason that Jews can be great boxers, as well as baseball players?
“…Sorry to inform these yokels…but can put together a 100 baseball teams of Cubans, Hispanics or Blacks who would clean anybody else’s clock…”
Aside from the inherent (if self-righteous) racism of this proposition, I don’t think it’s true.
It may well have a lot to do with the fact that we’ve been the ones playing this game the most, but at most positions, the greatest baseball players I can think of have been white…American…gentiles.
The irony of this is that personally, I suck at baseball. But here I am, taking at least a rhetorical pride in accomplishments I actually have no share in at all — as would promptly become appallingly obvious if I took the field.
When Sandy Koufax didn’t pitch on Yom Kippur (first game of World Series against Minnesota Twins in 1965) it was a great day and an important moment in American Jewish history.
The thing that always bothered me about that story is that Drysdale, who piched Game 1, hadn’t pitched at that poin in 6 days, but Koufax pitched 4 days before. (Indeed, Claude Osteen, who starteed Game 3, had pitched more recently than Drysdale) I’ve always suspected (but not cared so much to look into it) that the story of Koufax not pitching on Yom Kippur was a nice story to explain why the ace wasn’t starting Game 1, but, in reality, the manager feared that if he sat Drysdale for game 1, his arm would be dead cold and/or that Koufax’s arm, which was falling apart at that point in his career, needed the extra day’s rest.
Woody, you know so much about baseball, and I know very little. But I’ve heard that on rest days, Koufax would wrap his pitching arm in Dead Sea scrolls. Ever read this?
Mooser, I don’t know what Koufax did on his off days, but whatever he did it sure worked (at least until the arthritis took it toll…)
I defer to you more expert knowledge. I’ve always had (for better or worse) a weird mental block for sports names and statistics. Other kids could recite entire rosters and averages, I couldn’t even retain the names of the teams.
Why couldn’t Sandy have gotten that exemption that Mormon football players get that allows them to play ball on Sundays?
And the way some people would bet on their local teams, Sandy could have justified it by insisting that it was needed to save a life.
Now that’s funny.
That must have as many members as the De-orbiting Satellite Scrap Metal Collectors Club of Mongolia.
I just can’t see the jews as the function toward Israel as being a nation. all the connections are based in the religion. hell even when accepting who comes into the state Israel chooses to accept people based on religious definitions of judaism rather than anything resembling ethnic or nationality based. that right there is sort of damning to the idea of jews as a nation.
in my mind for the jews to be a nation you would have to see widespread connections that have zero link to the faith.
Weird, but not very important. It will matter more when they start doing this in major sports like football (soccer) and cricket.
With respect: it matters enormously.
I know it’s easy for knowledgeable people here to forget, but it needs to be said.
The majority of white, and indeed black and Hispanic goyim in America have only the faintest idea that Jewish Americans constitute a separate nation. Where should they find out this useful nugget of anthropological information? Not the media. Not their schools. Not the popular culture.
Oh, I can’t wait until we try to transmit the story of anti-Semitism in America to Afro-American, Asian and Hispanic Americans. ‘Man, what the hell is your problem? I face worse than that every day of my life and don’t see all that much change in sight. And stop blubbering!’
“1) Jews are a nation, at least according to the self understanding of most Jews. ”
People of Jewish background have neither language nor culture nor territory nor even religion in common. The “Jewish national history” of Zionism is pure myth. Believing such myth, with all its destructive power, is not a “Jewish lifestyle choice.”
One might more persuasively argue that the “self-understanding of most Jews” is racism, ranging from the genocidal variety of official communal Jewry to the voelkisch idealism of the Jewish left, its loyalty to the Jewish Volk, expressed in truncated criticism—”solutions” discourse; anti-occupation rhetoric; ahistorical law and rights discourse; strategic asset dogma. This is the strict form; there are variations.
Years ago a reporter asked the father of tennis player Aaron Krickstein if he hoped his son would play Davis Cup for Israel. Krickstein’s father bristled and said, I’d like to see him play for the U.S. No “Jewish nation” for him.
More whining. This has been done with other countries before, as Ira points out.
So hoppy when are you going to reply to my copy/paste rebuttal of my earlier comment wherein I quoted you calling Palestinians, Nazis, without specifying the Grand Mufti until after the fact. And then without substantiation?
The only whiner here is you. You only slither to MW to whine about Jewish-identity related topics or when some Zionist Jew and/or religious Jew reflects poorly on YOUR own self-image.
I suggest you take some Xanax and smile a bit more. Torrent ‘The Office’ – season 1 to 6 (downhill from there). During the Gaza massacre, there’s even an asinine Zionist/Brand Israel plug through Dwight K. Schrute’s character in spite of the fact that he has probably never left the tri-state area, has an ex-Nazi grandfather (who’s travel visa was protested by the Shoah Foundation), and frequently admires and exudes fascism (at one point, saying he’d think he’d be good at picking which prisoner would have been ideal to kill next at a Japanese POW camp during WW2)…
Actually on second thought, that’s not out of the ordinary for Dwight at all. He’s totally Zionist.
Cliff, I recommend you read the The Farhud: Roots of the Arab-Nazi Alliance in the Holocaust by Edwin Black.
Also Chapter to of Hitler’s Shadow (an e-book I attached here) may shine some light on the relationship.
link to archives.gov
“This has been done with other countries before, as Ira points out.”
No, hoppy, Ira pointed out it was done with one other country, Italy, not countries, plural. And he also noted that it went against the WBC’s own rules. So the correct response for any real American would be to boo traitors like Piazza as well as Ausmus, Green and anyone else who goes and plays against his country.
There are American citizens who play for Latin American teams during the WBC. Alex Rodriguez, for example, chose to play for the Dominican Republic in 2009, though he ultimately missed the tournament because of injury. Even though he has Dominican parents, according to you, he should be booed (along with the other Latin players who are American citizens) for playing against the United States, where he has lived just about his entire life and where he has made his immense fortune.
The idea behind the WBC is to give baseball a wider international audience, and there are plenty of fans in Israel. So why wouldn’t MLB attempt to put together an Israeli team?
In any event, Ira is dead wrong. The rules state that “If a player is qualified for citizenship or to hold a passport under the laws of a nation represented by a Team, but has not been granted citizenship or been issued a passport, then the player may be made eligible by WBCI upon petition by the player or Team. Such petition must include documentary evidence showing to the satisfaction of WBCI that the player would be granted citizenship or a passport in due course under the laws of the nation represented by that Team, had the player applied for such citizenship or passport.”
Therefore, it is not against WBC rules to have an Israeli team made up of Jewish-American ballplayers.
Go and boo like an idiot. It’s your right as an American. It’s my right not to care.
“Even though he has Dominican parents, according to you, he should be booed (along with the other Latin players who are American citizens) for playing against the United States”
Yes, he should. He’s American. He should play for the USA.
“In any event, Ira is dead wrong. ”
No, he’s not. Ira points out that these players/traitors are not eligible. They can be made eligible, by the rule you mentioned, coupled with the Judeo-supremacist bigoted citizenship rules of the zionist entity, but they are not yet eligable.
“So why wouldn’t MLB attempt to put together an Israeli team?”
Because a league which prides itself on anti-discrimination, it should not align itself with an Judeo-supremacist apartheid state.
“Are the jews a nation”?
No they’re not a nation. They’re followers of an old desert religion.
Christians are not a nation either. They’re followers of an old hill-and-lake religion.
Moslems are not a nation either. They’re followers of an old desert religion.
Buddhists are not a nation. They’re followers of an old mountain religion.
Hindus are not a nation. They’re followers of an old river religion.
Atheists are not a nation. They follow the great allure of nothingness and nowhere.
>> Atheists are not a nation.
I agree.
>> They follow the great allure of nothingness and nowhere.
Perhaps some do; I don’t. I am fortunate enough to be able to appreciate and enjoy life – which is everything and everywhere – and, so, I do. :-)
“They follow the great allure of nothingness and nowhere.”
I take it you’ve never actually talked to one of us, have you?
Woody woody woody woodaaaaaaay! Where’s your sense of poesy and what’s wrong with “nothingness and nowhere”? And can my atheist parents join your club?
“what’s wrong with ‘nothingness and nowhere’?”
It denies the proper appreciation of the here and the now; it’s the same mistake the religious make by dreaming of a life after they’re dead, rather than living this one.
Stripped of religious indoctrination, man arrives at “nothingness and nowhere”. And without arriving at “nothingness and nowhere”, there is no realization or appreciation of the “the here and the now”.
Let’s not enter into the philosophical hall of mirrors here, Woody. I think in essence we’re saying the same thing really – and you know, getting entangled in semantics is a fool’s game.
The phrase “nothingness and nowhere” can be interpreted in so many ways – and in this instance, I intended it poetically, no more and no less.
Taxi,
I’ll trust your statement of intent. But please be wary of the nihilism slur. It is a favorite of the religious against us.
“…“Are the jews a nation”?
No they’re not a nation. They’re followers of an old desert religion…”
Well — just to try to nudge the ol’ discussion along a bit — this is an appealing but rather sterile over-simplification.
Judaism — unlike the Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and atheism — is not simply a religion in the sense the other faiths I’ve just named are. I can become a Muslim in about four seconds. ‘God is God and Mohammed is his prophet.’ There. All I need to do is take out the quote marks and I’ve done it. I’ve become a Muslim.
Judaism connotes more than just a profession of faith. It is inextricably linked with a whole matrix of cultural and historical ideas in a way that the other religions are not. I know a Scots carpenter who has decided he’s a Buddhist. This is reasonable in a way that would not be possible if he’d decided he was Jewish.
That the cultural and historical ideas are horribly vague, fractured, and even erroneous is interesting — but doesn’t mean that the essence of Judaism can be divorced from them. Judaism cannot be reduced to simply a profession of faith. Indeed, as many of the Jews here could demonstrate, one can cheerfully refuse to make the profession of faith and still remain a Jew.
So announcing that ‘Judaism is a religion just like…’ may satisfyingly simplify and define the discussion — but it’s simply not true, and so not particularly useful. It’d save time if the pronouncement could be skipped in the future.
“Judaism connotes more than just a profession of faith. It is inextricably linked with a whole matrix of cultural and historical ideas in a way that the other religions are not.”
Really now? Go pull the other mate. An extra ritual or two does not make followers of a religion into a nation.
“one can cheerfully refuse to make the profession of faith and still remain a Jew.”
You can apply this to all religions.
Save your own breath Colin – I ain’t buying your gaudy and useless “pronouncements” either.
It’s like you’re building a spiral staircase in a tent – there ain’t no floor above and there ain’t even a roof there dear.
“…Save your own breath Colin – I ain’t buying your gaudy and useless “pronouncements” either.
It’s like you’re building a spiral staircase in a tent – there ain’t no floor above and there ain’t even a roof there dear.”
And what you are doing is vaguely akin to some of the social sciences at their worst — building an artificial system of cubbyholes where every phenomena has to be shoved into its cubbyhole.
Judaism is a religion, Christianity is a religion. Ergo, they are different examples of the same general type.
No they’re not. Whatever the similarities, each is sui generis — with its own attributes, areas of extension, cultural dimensions or lack thereof, etc. They can’t be directly compared.
Your kind of thinking attempts to reduce all aspects of the human condition to something as precise as mathematics. It either is or it isn’t. It fits here, or it fits there. It is exactly like this in this respect, but not in that.
Humanity — and all fields pertaining to it — is not like that. One cannot say “the US interned the Japanese, so they were just like the Nazis.’ That sort of reasoning is simply inapplicable. There are degrees, nuances, matters of emphasis — a host of qualifiers.
Depending on your tastes, it is all either horribly or wonderfully vague, complex, and entirely open to interpretation. To return to the point, to announce ‘Judaism is a religion just like other religions’ is an over-simplification so gross as to be useless.
I guess the genius of simplicity goes right over your head, Colin.
You’ve fallen right into the mind-f-ck trap of pseudo intellectualism.
Now I can’t think of ANYTHING more useless than that.
Again, followers of a religion DON’T MAKE FOR A NATION. Even linguistically. And there’s NOTHING you can say or do about that simple FACT.
All your examples to back-up your ‘superior’ insight into comparative religion are lame – even a distraction from the above stated fact.
“Judaism is a religion, Christianity is a religion. Ergo, they are different examples of the same general type.”
Yes. It was only when I cottoned on to this notion I began to understand the relationship between Islam and the State. Islam is not an equivalent belief system. Islam is, by its nature, political – Gonzo religion if you will. The idea of separation of Church and State has no meaning.
“Judaism connotes more than just a profession of faith. It is inextricably linked with a whole matrix of cultural and historical ideas in a way that the other religions are not.”
The same can be said for Roman Catholicism. Being baptised into the Church as an adult requires quite a bit of study, contemplation and dedication. I presume the same is true of the other religions, regardless of whether they occur before or after the “event” which ushers one into the religion.
>> Being baptised into the Church as an adult requires quite a bit of study, contemplation and dedication.
That’s why, with religions, it’s always best if you get ‘em while they’re young…
;-)
“Atheists are not a nation. ”
We should be. And we should have our own state, too.
“Atheists are not a nation. ”
We should be. And we should have our own state, too.”
In the case of the more dogmatic ones, I heartily agree. And you are not to be permitted access to the internet.
“In the case of the more dogmatic ones, I heartily agree.”
But who would stop the religious looneys from taking over?
“And you are not to be permitted access to the internet.”
Only if the same restriction is placed on people who believe ancient fairy tales and superstitions.
“And you are not to be permitted access to the internet.”
That’s OK. Just as long as we can pick a prime chunk of real estate and drive out any religous types who are living there.
Seems to me that Judaism was an elastic or permeable religion back in the day of Jesus and Paul, looking for converts just like Christianity and Islam did/do at their heights of confidence. Although conversion is part of Judaism, in the aftermath of the destruction of the Temple and the defeat of Bar Kochba, the acceptance of converts became the exception rather than the rule. (Certainly Khazar conversion is a major exception, although some maintain that it was only the ruling clique or class that converted rather than the masses.)
In terms of having a geographical focus, the Jews always (since the inscription of their books) had that: whether religion or “people”. A geographical focus does not mean statehood, necessarily.
Reform Judaism was/is an attempt to get along in the world without the stringent rules of Halacha. Specifically in Germany and the United States, along with tossing Halacha out the window (sorry for rhetoric), for reasons of acceptance as full citizens of those two countries, they declared the prayers for Jerusalem or particularly regathering the exiles to be as relevant as animal sacrifices, that is of a previous age and not worthy of attention.
The Zionists were dogmatic, that is the nature of a group attempting to change history through the power of will. That dogmatism served them well. The time for that dogmatism has passed. Part of Zionist dogmatism was overemphasis of nation over religion and of course the Jewish nation’s rights over the rights of any other nation.
To use a term like apostasy to describe Zionism from a Jewish point of view seems to me to be a new dogmatism rather than an escape from dogmatism.
“Although conversion is part of Judaism, in the aftermath of the destruction of the Temple and the defeat of Bar Kochba, the acceptance of converts became the exception rather than the rule. (Certainly Khazar conversion is a major exception, although some maintain that it was only the ruling clique or class that converted rather than the masses.)…”
From what I’ve read, you’re mistaken — although obviously Jews stopped seeking out converts at some time…not, incidentally, necessarily the same time in all places.
Specifically, Frankish bishops of the seventh century or thereabouts complained of Jews converting their slaves and tenants. That has interesting implications about the status of Jews in Merovingian Gaul, and the status of Merovingian Gaul in general — but on the face of it, Jews there were still actively seeking converts then.
The second example comes from a society at a similar stage of development. One hears almost the same complaint from Christian bishops in eleventh century Kievan Rus.
Obviously, two examples don’t a documentary record make — but the suggestion is that under certain circumstances Jewish proselytism continued for close to a millennium after the time you offer.
I would think — just as casual speculation — that Jews tended to convert whatever dependents they acquired. And in societies where Christianity had probably not struck especially deep roots yet, that may not have been too hard. Peasantry that found itself with Christian overlords took up Christianity. Peasantry under the sway of powerful Jews took up Judaism. Certainly domestic servants would tend to become at least nominal converts.
Of course, how complete the conversion was is another matter. There must have been groups with just about every conceivable combination of pagan, Christian, and Jewish belief — something like the sort of confusion that I suspect inspired Mohammed to straighten it all out for everyone.