This is part seven of Marc H. Ellis’s “Exile and the Prophetic” feature for Mondoweiss. To read the entire series visit the archive page.
Beautiful morning. Low tide. Swimming in the ocean. Cool water. Before the heat. Dealing with anger. George Harrison’s admonition running through my mind: “Beware of darkness.” Translated Jewishly, beware of exile?
Again, particularity rather than the universal is important here. Though exile is also universal. So many individuals and communities have felt exile’s sting. Still exile has a certain resonance in Jewish history. Or rather, it is essential to Jewish identity. Like the prophetic. Though it is secondary to the prophetic, since without the prophetic, how can we discern meaning in exile?
Jewishly speaking, exile is darkness. It can also be light. Jewishly speaking, exile is never frivolous. There’s a reason for exile. Punishment is one reason. Exercising the prophetic is another.
I can hear it now and appropriately so. The issue of Palestine is not about Jews. About the Jewish ethical tradition. About the loss and possible recovery of the Jewish soul. I agree. That’s Progressive Jews naval gazing. The “politics of meaning.”
But then look at the place Norman Finkelstein has landed. He’s so taken with the idea of International Law that he’s trapped there. The argument between BDS and Finkelstein seems trapped there, too. Which side better represents the thrust of International Law, as if that law had been handed down from heaven? Is International Law carved on Sinai-like tablets?
The admonition here is clear, at least to me: Don’t get stuck in any ism – International Law(ism), Universal(ism), Particular(ism). Why not use them all, mixing and matching, where one enhances the other, multiplying the possibilities. Of justice around the corner. Because none of them as they are has provided much leverage, politically speaking. Or, to be honest, all of them combined. When we realize that we have lost everything and that there is no victory on the horizon, we are free to spread our wings and fly to our next destination.
Contradictions are everywhere. Appealing to Presbyterians who aren’t risking anything in their material world. Often linking with other Jews who aren’t risking anything in their material world. Infighting about International Law/BDSers. Two states versus One state. Struggling together, we shouldn’t demand a purity of arms. As if any of us have a lock on purity.
This infighting leaves us stuck somewhere and sometimes everywhere. Being stuck is a blind alley. You have to think again.
Being stuck encourages anger. The longer one is stuck, the more the anger. Being stuck in anger means we argue for positions that we wouldn’t ordinarily argue for. We’ve all been there. When it happens we need a prodding. We have to move on.
The singular and then evolving configuration of our stance on politics has to be complimented by a deeper engagement – a deeper encounter – with our backgrounds and the primal sense of who we are and what we should be about in life. This geography of essences is disputed territory, specifically, the issue of essentialism, which in terms I can understand, means simply the question of whether or not there is some kind of enduring substructure to our identity. For example, is there an essence to Jewish identity? Are there primal areas of Jewish identity which, more or less, are unchanging or, in different contexts, orients the change that different environments demand? Like chosenness/special destiny/being singled out. Like exile. Like the prophetic.
Obviously I am going against the modernist grain here. Yet from my vantage point – and in my personal journey – it is clear that there are thoughts and actions, intentional trajectories, that are colored by our backgrounds/inheritance/history/culture/foundational texts and so on. I certainly don’t agree with Harold Bloom’s sensibilities that American – or Jewish – culture is in a downward spiral and that without the classics, culture is doomed. That is a superficial sense of identity formation.
What is fascinating about Jewishness is that the classics, for Jews that is usually considered to be the Rabbi’s writings gathered in the Talmud, is somehow within our Jewish being regardless of our specific “Jewish” knowledge. Rather than the Rabbinic writings, our classic is the Bible, specifically the Biblical prophets. Jews “know” these prophets without having a detailed knowledge of them individually. Learning about the Biblical prophets is an add-on, a way of learning why we are like are. This means that the prophetic is already there within Jews.
How the prophetic gets there is an interesting question. I have thought a lot about this over the years. How is it that the Jewish prophets of today are, more or less, like the Jewish prophets who roamed the earth thousands of years ago? We can try to explain it sociologically, culturally and in a myriad other ways, all of which are of interest; they need to be factored in. Taken together, however, they fall short. These reasons also cannot explain the explosion of the Jewish prophetic in our time, against the grain and against our own best interests.
After the Holocaust especially, why would Jews of Conscience rail against the abuse of Jewish power, especially when embracing that power is their gateway to affluence and acceptance? It just doesn’t make sense, Jews coming out of the Jewish woodwork to say Not In My Name!
Most Jews of Conscience today would do extremely poorly on a Jewish “literacy” test. Equally fascinating – and telling – these Jewish literacy tests are specifically aimed at defusing the primal aspects of the prophetic Jewish identity that Jews of Conscience embody. The educational efforts of Empire Jews and Progressive Jews as well is precisely to tame the Jewish primal prophetic and convince them that the prophet’s companion, exile, is not what it is cracked up to be.
Think of the self-Rabbinic coronation some years ago of Arthur Waskow and Michael Lerner. One month I flip through the pages of Tikkun and read the always extensive editorial of Michael Lerner. The next month I flip through the pages of Tikkun and read the still extensive editorial of Rabbi Michael Lerner. Voila!
Progressive Jews got caught up in the Jewish Renewal movement to improve their Jewish literacy. In doing so, they lost their prophetic edge. True, they chanted newly learned Hebrew prayers and gathered for organic Shabbat celebrations. In turn, the cutting edge of the Jewish Left was grounded into a smooth surface. They thought it was better to do “battle” with the Jewish establishment on their own turf. Huge mistake.
Establishments are not about authenticity. They’re about power. All establishments. I remember being called in by Arthur Waskow when he heard I was writing a Jewish theology of liberation. He informed me that he was the Jewish theologian of liberation. No trespassing aloud!
In Catholic terms, playing the authentic card is like taking on the Vatican. To do this you have to become more Catholic than the Pope. Over the last decades, this has been more or less what we have witnessed, the “who is really authentically Jewish,” the Empire Jewish establishment or the would-be next Jewish establishment led by Progressive Jews? How do you feel about replacing Edgar Bronfman with Michael Lerner? Or Elie Wiesel with Arthur Waskow? I’m not going there.
To my mind, the struggle over “authentic” Jewishness is a vast illusion, apes Christian piety and dulls deep thought into a return to a virtual Jewish summer camp reality show. Now everyone should do what they need to do, including improving one’s knowledge of Judaism, but to follow the Rabbinic model of either the Empire or Progressive Jewish establishments is a dead end.
Why sign on the elites of either of the establishments since they are both fated, one to be remembered as war mongers, the other as leading a failed movement on the verge of extinction. In the end, there will be only two major groupings in Jewish life, Empire Jews and Jews of Conscience. As well, most Jews won’t be connected with either group. That’s another illusion – “the Jewish community.”
Which isn’t to down Waskow or Lerner. They did their thing for their time. Personal and cultic excesses aside, however, they made a wrong turn and brought many people with them. The wrong turn was being more “Jewish” in a certain defined way – a kind of New Age Rabbinic search for meaning and connection with a justice-edge sensibility. In practice it meant dulling the prophetic impetus that the Rabbinic system in its original formation had already accomplished. Why the Jewish renewal movement thought that dressing the old up with the new would change its dismissal of the prophetic I have no idea. It may be related more to the cult of personality than lack of thought, though the two may be tied together. Anyway, the Tikkun phase of the Jewish Left is over. In the end it became the Left-wing of Empire Judaism.
Why loiter here? It’s on to the next phase. But first, another memory. Several years ago, against the odds I was asked to serve on the Board of the Society of Jewish Ethics. It’s a long story but suffice to say that almost everything the SJE does programmatically is imbued with the Rabbinic. This includes holding Shabbat services on Friday night and Saturday morning even though the SJE is an academic society and meets at an academic convention it shares with the much larger Society of Christian Ethics and more recently the Society of Islamic Ethics.
When I first understood that this was the way they operated I was shocked. Everyone dressed in ritual garb. Our food was catered (quite expensive) Kosher. The demonstration of our Jewishness alarmed me. We wore it on our sleeves. Nonetheless I remained on the Board for three years. Most of the Board members were quite respectful of me. They even listened to my complaints.
One night I retired to my hotel room for some rest before dinner and heard noises from the street below. The conference was in Chicago. It was January 2008. When I looked out my hotel window, I saw a demonstration, several hundred strong, protesting the Israeli invasion of Gaza. At dinner that night the Board met to make sure everything was going right with the conference. We even spoke about the future. On the invasion of Gaza, silence. The Society of Jewish Ethics, good people, demonstrably Jewish. Silence.
Several years later, Reverend Jeremiah Wright was invited to speak by the Society of Christian Ethics. There wasn’t silence then. In fact, all hell broke loose. The Board sent an emissary to complain about his appearance and what he said about Israel and Jewish power in the United States. A joint panel of both societies was arranged for the following year to soften the tone. As you might imagine, I was asked to represent the “Jewish” point of view.
Perhaps the challenge is to decrease Jewish literacy. The most learned among us are too often the silent, the angry, complicit. Have you noticed?
Silence on Gaza. Fury at Reverend Wright. So typical, it goes without saying. Without thinking, what in God’s name is going on?
Yes, in terms of Jewish literacy, though, to end on a more positive note, did you see the new world Jewish population figures? A lesson in Jewish geography. Or a way of mapping Jewish history.
The demographics show 15.3 million Jews in the world. Can you guess the top five areas where Jews reside? The first two are obvious, the United States and Israel, followed by Argentina, with the Russian Federation ranking fifth. As Adam Horowitz points out, the fourth most populous Jewish area in the world isn’t even a country. Think! Are you ready? Number four on the list is the Palestinian Authority – it is listed as such – with the citation coming from the CIA Factbook. Over 600,000 Jews in Palestinian territory. This was in 2007.
A bold step it is for the CIA to list the area as the Palestinian Authority, though this is clearly the case. What they don’t say is that this particular population is a settlement population, a new nomenclature for Jewish demographics. So, just to let it sink in, after the United States, Israel and Argentina, are most populous Jewish community is living within internationally recognized Palestine. And according to international standards these Jews are living there illegally.
So, with South Africa starring us in the mirror, let it fly: our fourth largest population concentration of Jews are illegal settlers. Now, at least from the Palestinian side, Israel’s Jews might figure into that category as well. So rounding off Jewish demographics, from almost five to more than thirty percent of the world’s Jewish population are illegal settlers or dominate a land that once was someone else’s home. These are numbers to remember. What to do with these facts – on the ground?
So often I hear both Jewish establishments talk about Palestinian demographics. The only discussion about Jewish demographics I hear relates to low birth rates and intermarriage. Should the world’s Jewish demographics take on a new theme – Jews as illegal settlers?
Or how about this. Counting America and Israel as empires on the global and regional scene, more than two/thirds of the world’s Jewish population lives in empire. Ever heard that discussed and analyzed? No wonder Jewish identity is empire-oriented.
Map literacy. Jewish geography. Rather than Hebrew or Rabbinic sources – no matter how progressive – perhaps this is the Jewish literacy we need.
Jewish professionals listen up. The title of our next conference is: “Confronting the Problem of Jewish Demographics.” Topics to be discussed: Jewish birth rate, Jewish intermarriage, Jewish illegal settler population, Jews living in empire.
“Or how about this. Counting America and Israel as empires on the global and regional scene, more than two/thirds of the world’s Jewish population lives in empire.”
How about this: Stop creating (yet more) fictional labels and categories. The bigger question is why most Jews live in America and Israel, which, of course, you don’t deal with. It’s because of the Holocaust and the expulsion of Jews from Arab lands, because before then, 2/3 of the world’s Jewish population was in Europe, and many of the rest were in Arab countries. As I’ve said many times here, these arguments take advantage of the fact that Jews comprise a very small percentage of the world’s population and punish them for that fact. To talk of Israeli empire is obscene. There are 7 million Jews in the Middle East and hundreds of millions of Arabs. Israel comprises a tiny, tiny portion of the region. There isn’t a country in Europe that doesn’t have the borders it has because of territory that was gained or lost during war. We don’t refer to any of these countries as empires because they were on the gaining side in Europe.
An empire is “an empire is a geographically extensive group of states and peoples (ethnic groups) united and ruled either by a monarch (emperor, empress) or an oligarchy.”
Israel does not remotely fit that definition, and for that matter, America doesn’t either, though you are not the first to refer to America that way. But basically, your language is as fictitious and arbitrary as your categories are.
“Perhaps the challenge is to decrease Jewish literacy”
When I see things like this, I am reminded again that this thread of thinking on the left, which posits that it’s a great thing when Jews are less Jewishly knowledgeable or observant (I remember well when Lenni Brenner said, to raucous applause, at the launch of “The Politics of Antisemitism”, that because of intermarriage, there would be far less practicing American Jews in coming generations), is one major reason why Jews in the pro-Palestinian movement who talk about how they’re doing their activism in the name of Judaism cannot be taken seriously. They’re not. They’re doing it in the name of radical-left politics, and Judaism is something they’d like to see either destroyed or diluted into nothingness.
“How about this: Stop creating (yet more) fictional labels and categories.”
Thank God Zionists and Israel have never sunk to that!! ROTFLMSJAO!
(cough, cough, Levy coughmission)
“When I see things like this, I am reminded again that this thread of thinking on the left, which posits that it’s a great thing when Jews are less Jewishly knowledgeable”
Don’t worry Hophmi, technology to the rescue! There are several good Yiddish glossaries on the web, sites devoted to the classic (Minsk-Pinsk) Jewish jokes, and gosh, I don’t know how many sites with recipes. The Gentiles may smash your Meir Kahane cassette tapes, but that computer cloud is your silver lining! And what about J-date? That isn’t going anywhere!
In case you are still worried, Hophmi, old sot, let me tell you a true fact! My wife and I recently replaced (at our marriage, we swore we would have only a few material objects, but everything we did have would be of the cheapest possible quality!) our toaster with a Sunbeam 2 slicer. It has a button on the side labelled “Bagel booster”!
Don’t worry Hophmi, we aren’t going anywhere!
LOL
@hophni
Actually, they are ruling over one people–unless you accept the argument that the West Bank is not occupied, in which case it’s an apartheid state. Now if you want to make the argument that a state must rule over vast areas then perhaps Israel doesn’t fit the strict definition of Empire. Although it’s hard to see how the US doesn’t–what do Hawaii, Guam, PR, USVI have in common with US mainland culture? And Israel is a US client state so technically that makes it part of the American Empire. So Marc Ellis is correct.
Hawaii is a state. Guam, PR, and USVI are pretty small places; it hardly constitutes an empire, which is by definition extensive. Israel is not a US client state any more than any other Western state is.
You can invent as many new definitions as you want to make Israel look like something it clearly is not, but it will not make nonsensical labels any more accurate.
“they are ruling over one people”
That is not the definition of an empire. It’s not that it doesn’t fit the strict definition. It fits no definition of Empire. Calling Israel an empire is another attempt to apply anachronistic, inappropriate, bogeyman language to it in order to demonize it. Empire recalls a period of history where European countries occupied vast tracts of land outside of Europe inhabited by people who presented no threat whatsoever to them for the purpose of plundering that land of its resources and attempting to “civilize” the people through Christianity. Israel is a tiny country that at worst, occupies an area that is a small fraction of its own size that it came to occupy through a war in a region where it has been frequently threatened. The largest place Israel occupied was the Sinai desert, which it returned to Egypt. Not very empire-like.
Calling Israel an Empire is too ridiculous for words.
“Israel is not a US client state any more than any other Western state is. ”
Now that’s just plain fantasy. It’s way more than any other Western state. No other Western state receives billions a year in welfare from the U.S., and billions more in weapons.
Israel can’t exist without welfare and weapons from a Christian nation, and money and political support from us in the diaspora. No other Western nation is relient on us to the degree Israel is.
“Hawaii is a state. Guam, PR, and USVI are pretty small places; it hardly constitutes an empire, which is by definition extensive.”
And yet they are scattered across the globe. The only other countries I can think of that have a similar situation were, well – empires (France, UK) at one point. Regular countries don’t have a bunch of overseas possessions (and I won’t even mention our military bases).
I agreed with you that Israel in itself isn’t an empire, but as I stated it certainly is a part of the US empire, whether you call it a client state, protectorate or what have you. I can’t think of any other situation where money, weapons and settlers are being funnelled by one country into another quite like this. Israel could probably survive without the financial aid it receives from the US but it cannot survive without the political and military protection that we afford. Even our politicians admit that there is a special relationship (euphemism for client state).
Israel certainly plunders and exploits the territoritories it occupies in terms of resources and water. I’m not sure the Christian ingredient is necessary. As for you implying that Israel has held onto those areas for 45+ years because she felt threatened, that’s disingenuous at best.
“Empire recalls a period of history where European countries occupied vast tracts of land outside of Europe”
Don’t worry, Hophmi, there was plenty of horrible, violent colonialism, with legal and social aspects much like the Zionist and Israeli actions toward the Palestinians inside Europe, over small areas. We really don’t need to go much further than Mitteleurope to find examples. It’s a wide corridor with room for all.
Professor Ellis, I continue to be in awe of your commentary. Thank you for describing the geographical situation of the Jewish communities of the world as it helps to bring Jews down from their privileged pedastal. Don’t ever let anyone silence you. We need people like you before its too late.
“Jewish communities of the world as it helps to bring Jews down from their privileged pedastal.”
Oh, don’t be in such a rush, YMJ! I’d like to at least get to the lower steps of the “privileged pedestal” before it’s demolished. Or at least win a prize in a spelling bee.
“Over the last decades, this has been more or less what we have witnessed, the “who is really authentically Jewish,” the Empire Jewish establishment or the would-be next Jewish establishment led by Progressive Jews? How do you feel about replacing Edgar Bronfman with Michael Lerner? Or Elie Wiesel with Arthur Waskow? I’m not going there.”
I suggest MJRosenberg!
I second that Moose. He was great on channel 278 Bridges TV being interviewed by Dr. James Zogby until verizon (probably from lobby influence) pulled the plug on the whole thing.
And he’s true-blue on circumcision! He sees and understands the nexus of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia which pervades (I think that was the word, not sure) the anti-circumcision movement. And he’s got the fastest shiv in the business.
“To my mind, the struggle over “authentic” Jewishness is a vast illusion, apes Christian piety and dulls deep thought into a return to a virtual Jewish summer camp reality show.”
“That’s another illusion – “the Jewish community.”
I’ve never heard anything so crazy, irresponsible or so frightening. Where on earth do you get these ideas? Thank God I never think that way! Anyway, there was some other idiot who used to say things like this at Mondoweiss, but thankfully they banned the shmegegge. Or will soon, I bet! (He’s also so damnned pretentious, in an irritatingly precious Merrie Olde way, if you get my drift! Tries to be all Mayfair, but anybody can tell he’s all Whitechapel, strictly “old clothes”)
Mr. Ellis, what do you think would happen if young Jews started thinking this way, say, early in adolescence, or in young adulthood? Would you like to be responsible for the consequences?
I partly agree and partly disagree when you write: “To my mind, the struggle over “authentic” Jewishness is a vast illusion, apes Christian piety…”
An authentic religious Jewishness could go back to the tradition of the prophets and focus on the Lord, religious customs, and morality. And in doing so it wouldn’t be “aping” Christian piety, but a continuance of ancient Jewish religious piety.
On the other hand, if it is understood merely as the “authentic” traits of an ethnic community, then in some cases it could be confused with religious- including Christian- piety, because the ethnic community largely overlaps with the religious one. And if the ethnic traits are purposely presented as the same as religious ones, then it could be “aping” piety: I mean for example if ethnicity is treated with the same reverence as spirituality.
RE: “after the United States, Israel and Argentina, are most
populous Jewish community is living within internationally recognized Palestine. And according to international standards these Jews are living there illegally.
So, with South Africa starring us in the mirror, let it fly: our fourth largest population concentration of Jews are illegal settlers. . .” ~ Marc Ellis
MY COMMENT: But, but, but, they are not illegal settlers according to Jonathan Tobin of Commentary magazine!
VIDEO (12:36) – Are Israeli Settlements Legal? Electronic Intifada’s Ali Abunimah vs. Commentary’s Jonathan Tobin, Democracy Now!, 7/11/12
An Israeli government committee has affirmed the country’s self-proclaimed right to build settlements throughout the occupied West Bank and recommended the legalization of dozens of settler outposts that have not received government authorization. The International Court of Justice has already ruled that all of Israel’s West Bank settlements are illegal, but Israel has said it would only consider dismantling scattered outposts that it has not officially approved. The settlers have used the outposts to seize even more Palestinian land than has already been taken. We host a debate between Jonathan Tobin, senior online editor of Commentary magazine, and Ali Abunimah, co-founder of The Electronic Intifada.
LINK TO VIDEO - link to democracynow.org
RE: “The most learned among us are too often the silent, the angry, complicit. Have you noticed?
Silence on Gaza. Fury at Reverend Wright. So typical, it goes without saying. Without thinking, what in God’s name is going on?” ~ Marc Ellis
CONSIDER THIS: “How to Think”, by Chris Hedges, TruthDig.com, 7/09/12
ENTIRE COMMENTARY – link to truthdig.com
Marc Ellis- I suppose telling you that this is interesting would be like telling Pablo Picasso that his pictures are kooky. But it is interesting.
There is no such thing as a Jewish community- A visit to Tel Aviv brought that home to me. In Jerusalem there is a Jewish community, both Haredi and national religious and because the secular Jewish community is a minority in the city (Palestinian, Haredi and national religious, in that order? form the majority) (My first impulse is to write Arab rather than Palestinian in the last sentence, but I wrote Palestinian, so as not to offend, and I wrote this, so as not to mislead with masked semantics.)
to continue, because secular Jewish is a minority in the city, they also, like most minorities, have a feeling of community. Or is it, Palestinian, Haredi, national religious, Arab country origin, aka Sephardi or Mizrachi Jews, that give the white secular Jews a feeling of community, one wouldn’t feel in tel aviv.
Question: Is Marc Ellis read by the left in Israel? Would the writers of 972 feel that his thoughts have contributed? Off hand he seems a very American or diaspora writer. i guess that means very exile and very prophetic, in the context of this post.
the proposition that literacy tames the primal, seems like Rousseau and hearkens back to an ideal that cannot be cultivated, but must be allowed to stay in some primitive state in order to develop. all told his thoughts ring of the idea- we must destroy the old to build the new. i suppose continuity and change are opposites and continuity by definition is not creative and revolutionary and thus: burn all the books. of course, i exaggerate in this last.
My memory & Professor Ellis’ diverge about my thou9hts about his work, as I expressed them about 20 years ago. What I remember saying is that liberation theology as practiced by the classic Latin American Catholic liberation theologians came out of their direct relationships with the poor of Latin America, and their interpretations of biblical text emered with those folk. Professaor Ellis, I said, at that point seemed to have very little contact with any Jewish community, not a havurah or other groups of Jews. For me, that suggested his theology was divorced from the life experience of the people, and though provocative and for me often attractive, was not in the same world-process as the Liberation theologians whom I had known and read.
As for the prophetic element: I am, not hostile to the existence of the state of Israel, and VERY hostile its govt’s policywhich seems to be why Prof. Ellis rules me and Michael Lerner out of his version of “prophetic.” And in accord with my sense of prophetic Jewish values, I vigorously opposed the Israeli wars against Lebanon and gaza and the Occupation of the West Bank, gaza and East Jerusalem as I did the US imperial wars against Iraq & Afhanistan, and I have organized opposition to Big Oil, Big Coal, & Big gas as the Pharaohs of our day. Not prophetic enough? Too bad. Shalom, salaam — Rabbi Arthur Waskow, dir., The Shalom Center http://www.theshalomcenter.org
Well Waskow, when you tell us how on earth Israel can be anything other than what’s it’s been, what it is, and what it very obviously plans to go on being. When you can show me that Israel has the slightest intention of submitting to the judgement and supervision of the organisation that chartered it, (or anybody else for that matter) maybe I’ll consider the fact that you plan to do anything other than equivocate, placate, and dissimulate until the Palestinians disappear. And then the mourning and self-recrimination can really get good! But take heart, at this point it won’t take all that long.
Not prophetic enough
Oh, prophet would have had no trouble predicting you would be just as effective at those things as you intended to be.
“as the Pharaohs of our day.”
Gee, you don’t think maybe the Sanhedrin or Pharisees are a better comparison?
Or maybe we could call them the “Chief Rabbis”?
“For me, that suggested his theology was divorced from the life experience of the people,”
Yes, Comrade, that often leads to faults in the dialectic, doesn’t it. If only Ellis would put himself under the influence of a commisar who could properly interpret “the life of the people”!
“Professaor Ellis, I said, at that point seemed to have very little contact with any Jewish community, not a havurah or other groups of Jews. For me, that suggested his theology was divorced from the life experience of the people, and though provocative and for me often attractive, was not in the same world-process as the Liberation theologians whom I had known and read.”
Unfortunately, I think that’s generally true with most Jews who identify with people like Ellis. Either they don’t have any actual experience with the Jewish community, or they pretend the bulk of it doesn’t exist, or like Ellis, they totally distort what it is, what people think inside of it, and so on. It’s very easy for Ellis to throw around terms like “Jews of Empire” to describe what he doesn’t like, but, as I’ve said here many times about people who bash the American Jewish community, it’s not credible because he isn’t of the community and doesn’t really know it. And his ideas will never gain any traction because he prefers to speak past people rather than engage them.
“Either they don’t have any actual experience with the Jewish community, or they pretend…” (Hophmi)
Shorter Hophmi, as usual : ‘A jew is whoever and whatever I think it is. And any Jew not willing to subject himself to my judgement is not a Jew’
Oy Vey Hophmi’s got deJewsions of Grandeur!
AWASKOW- “I am, not hostile to the existence of the state of Israel….”
Although you don’t specify, I assume that this indicates that you support Israel as a Jewish state. Would you feel hostility to Israel as a state of all of its citizens?
It seems pretty clear that with Mr/Ms Mooser there is no dialogue, but in case anyone else cares abt this conversation: If one claims to be doing “theology,” (theos=god) then a community of prayer and — for liberation theology — prayerful action should be the context in which one creates a theology. In the last 40+ years, since let’s say the original Freedom Seder, many Jews have done that. Feminist Judaism, Eco-Judaism, meditative Judaism, and liberatory/ transformative Judaism, have all been rooted in new theological approaches. All from the grass roots, not a commissar in sight.
Shalom, salaam, peace — good Shabbos — Arthur
Of course, I’m ready to have a dialogue Waskow, old horse. Don’t get all famished I get grouchy when I’m hungry, too. So let’s start by discussing the most salient fact in the article, the fact that will have the most impact on my life: The astounding fact that Zionism has made criminals out of more Jews at once than either the Holocaust, or the Goldenah Medina ever did.
Your thoughts on that? I don’t have any significant criminal experience. Am I missing out on an important part of Jewish life?
“All from the grass roots, not a commissar in sight.”
Ah, Waskow, you have me there! “Comissar is not the word I wanted. It is, frankly, the bum mot. The word I should have used, padre, is “cadre”.