It’s hard to know what to say about Jeffrey Goldberg’s latest piece. Drawn to racial territory by the Fox News trailblazer who said that Santa is white, Goldberg says in “I’m dreaming of a white Jesus,” that it is important to remember that Jesus looked Jewish; that Hanna Rosin, author, Atlantic editor, and (Goldberg alleges) his friend, also is “classically Semitic in appearance”; and Palestinians are an invention of the last 100 years.
Goldberg takes on Reza Aslan, author of “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth,” who told the Washington Post that Christ can look however you want him to. Not so fast, says the ethnologist.
It is important, however, to understand how the historical Jesus — who was a Jew of Israel, born in Judea, raised in the Galilee — might have looked and how he dressed and ate and thought and prayed, because Christians have labored for many centuries, in a not-benign way, to Europeanize, and de-Judaize, their savior’s image. This campaign was an indispensable component of the church’s age-old project to separate its savior from his faith, and to therefore turn Christianity against its mother religion.
The most recent manifestation of the desire to de-Judaize Jesus has come not from European Christian churches, but from anti-Israel activists in the Arab world, who have engaged in a campaign to assert that Jesus was, in fact, a Palestinian (in other words, a member of a people that did not come into being until roughly 100 years ago), and that the Jews are guilty of deicide and genocide, among other -cides….
The genetic truth, as best we know, is more complicated and interesting than Aslan suggests. Jesus might have looked like a Palestinian; he might also have looked like a Bedouin, or a Druze or a mizrachi Israeli, those Israelis descended from the Jewish communities of the greater Middle East. He might have even had the physical characteristics of Ashkenazi Jews, descendants of the Jews who found their way to Europe from the land of Israel. The reason Jesus could have looked like a member of any of these groups is simple: Today, they all share an enormous number of overlapping genetic characteristics….Hanna [Rosin], whose mother is from Aden, in southern Arabia, and whose father’s origins are in Syria and Turkey, is classically Semitic in appearance…
As a matter of faith, Christians should picture Jesus any way they want; as a matter of history, though, it’s important to recognize that Jesus was Jewish, in multifarious ways.
All these assertions only show how much Goldberg looks at the world from a tribal standpoint. I wonder what Rosin thinks of the oafish shout-out.
H/t Max Blumenthal:
Jeff Goldberg fears Palestinians will steal Jesus http://t.co/IZaN0BZ88C
— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) December 16, 2013
For. Heaven’s. Sake.
Goldschmutz Holidays.
As I wrote previously, note that Goldberg is very comfortable acting as the universalist liberal when he can attack non-Jews, preferably goyish White Christians.
He says Kelly is “afraid of change”. That’s a stretch. Racially biased? Sure. But so are most people. Kelly’s outburst was just very telling of her own racial preferences.
Goldberg, in an Op-Ed a few days before that, wrote that Kerry is Israel’s “best friend” because he understands “the necessity to maintain the demographics”.
So I asked: who is really afraid of change? And isn’t it amazing how fast a masquerading liberal like Goldberg turns into a nativist using language Lou Dobbs wouldn’t even use – as Max wrote – when it comes to Israel. The only difference? In Israel, Goldberg is part of the majority population.- That’s when your liberalism is really put to the test. And Goldberg is defrauded as a hoax; an ethnic nationalist using the cover of liberalism in America to advance what he perceives to be Jewish interests, which lends itself to take the opposite position in Israel.
Some may think this is inconsistent, but it is not. This is how an ethnic nationalist functions. Not according to liberalism, but to race.
By the way, re: Goldberg’s racialist world view.
Notice how he stereotypes Jews in a certain way. Goldberg himself is dark blonde, blue-eyed. Apparently he is less Jewish because of it, in his own eyes. Is Max Blumenthal less Jewish?
This racialist world view harms non-white Jews. Blonde Jews, with all due respect, are not exactly very oppressed people. But ask black or Asian Jews how it is like to being constantly, constantly, being quizzed and questioned on your Jewishness, with the nagging sense of being viewed as a fraud at best or an enemy at worst.
I didn’t know people felt like this until I started to read blogs by Jews of Color. I had to overcome my own racial myopia, my own “Jewishness = whiteness but different culture than the majority” world view. Goldberg is still deeply wedded to this, but in order to seperate himself from the white mainstream he invents a world where all white non-Jews are blonds and all Jews – or excuse me, real Jews – are dark-brown haired and have big/pointy noses.
I wonder if Goldberg ever looks himself into the mirror, wishing he didn’t look so WASPy. He got a very Jewish last name but that’s about it.
I’d say he’s mostly right, even about Hanna. No big deal. Important too to remember that Jesus was a rebel against the religious establishment of his time, that’s the crux of the matter. But the Palestinians can certainly claim Jesus; I’d bet many Palestinian Christians have some Jewish forbears.
(No expertise in these matters, just what I think.)
I think Jeffrey Goldberg must be pescitic. He has that classically puffer-fish-esque appearance.