"Ask A Jew" Wednesday

[u/AutoModerator]

It's everyone's favorite day of the week, "Ask A (Anti-Zionist) Jew" Wednesday! Ask whatever you want to know, within the sub rules, notably that this is not a debate sub and do not import drama from other subreddits. That aside, have fun! We love to dialogue with our non-Jewish siblings.

[u/GreenIguanaGaming]

Hi guys! I'm an Arab Muslim. Always enjoy passing by here.

My question relates to this video.

Quick intro: you can skip to the question part if it's TLDR.

So I think we all saw the Lucas Gage video where he uses a gladius to "make his ancestors proud" while tearing up the Israeli flag. He very quickly starts antisemitic tropes and blames everything on "The Jews" even mentions 9/11 🤦‍♂️ - - I'm atleast pleased to say that most of the comments under that video were calling it out.

Someone combined that video with one from Shahid Bolsen, he's an American Muslim revert who has interesting insights on politics and Islam.

Here's the question

On the topic of Antizionism being conflated with antisemitism.

Shahid speaks about the identity of Jewishness.

Classically, he says, in Islam and rabbinically, "a Jew" is one who follows and participates in Judaism. That the identity should stop there but it doesn't. He adds that the Historian Shlomo Sand says that non-religious Jews identify strongly as Jewish in one or more of 3 ways:

1. By "Jewish blood" (which is more or less an antisemitic concept according to Sand)

2. By the collective trauma of the Holocaust.

3. The State of Israel. Which presents them with a place to go to be safe.

Shahid adds that this means that the non-religious Jewish identity is a construct forced upon them by Antisemites.

A Jewish person who does not believe or follow Judaism is still Jewish because non-Jews who hate Jews insist that they are Jews and won't allow them to be anything else.

I started to understand Jewishness as an Ethno-religious identity but I'd like to know how accurate Shahid's conclusion is to understand the concept further.

I am aware of the origins of JudenHass and Antisemitism which caused a shift.

Hate towards the people of the Jewish faith became a racist association between a language and race which made hate against Jewish people unavoidable. Even if a Jewish person became Christian, they'd still be considered Jewish.

Any opinions, thoughts or insight would be greatly appreciated. Thanks guys.

Edit: clarification

[u/TheRoyalKT → u/GreenIguanaGaming]

Obligatory caveat: I’m just one Jewish atheist among many and absolutely not an expert.

I can see his point. I agree in some ways and disagree in others. The main point of agreement is that whether I say I’m Jewish or not has absolutely no effect on the two groups of people who really care: other Jews, and antisemites. Both will make their own decision, and my opinion is largely irrelevant. However, I disagree with the idea that this means my identity is being forced on me. Just because others have their own opinions about me doesn’t mean my view should be disregarded. This is a bit of a clunky comparison, but to put it another way: white and black people in America will have their views on whether someone with one white parent and one black parent counts as white or black, and many won’t bother listening to that mixed-raced person’s own thoughts on the matter, but that doesn’t make that person’s identity meaningless. I’m not just a Jew because others call me one.

Now regarding the three points:

1. I don’t think the idea of having Jewish “blood” is antisemitic, although I would prefer the word “genes.” I’m a very white Ashkenazi Jew, but I am very clearly genetically linked to Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews, as well as Arabs. We are a collection of related ethnicities descended from the tribes of Israel, and anthropological evidence suggests that our ethnicity predates the modern Jewish religion.

2. This feels like a bit of an oversimplification for two reasons. First, it’s worth noting that treating all Jews as Holocaust victims or their descendants isn’t accurate, and at worst it can be completely dismissive of non-European Jewish groups like the Mizrahi. As I said before, though, I’m an Ashkenazi Jew, and I don’t know a ton about non-European Jews’ views on this matter, so I’ll leave any further elaboration to people more qualified to speak on it. The other reason this feels overly simplistic is that Jewish collective trauma extends far beyond the Holocaust. There’s a joke that almost every Jewish holiday can be summed up with the phrase “They tried to kill us. They failed. Let’s eat!” Jews have often been persecuted minorities in their own homelands for thousands of years. This is not at all meant to diminish the impact that the Holocaust had on the Jewish psyche, but just to point out that it didn’t create an identity. My family fled Europe for America before Germany was formally unified as a country, but trust me, they were still fleeing. The Holocaust is seen by many Jews (or at least many Jews I’ve spoken to) as just another example of a trend that has happened for millennia, and that one day will happen again.

3. Do I even have to say it? While this is true for many, many Jews, it is absolutely not true for all of us.

[u/GreenIguanaGaming → u/TheRoyalKT]

I love how you broke everything down to its nuance and explained it. Thank you so much.

What you said about point 2 is very true. It really does erase many histories of persecution but also ignores non-European history. I think it was Israeli Historian Avi Shleim that said that there is a Jewish history that is often overshadowed by the "lachrymose" history of the European Jewish people. He was referring to Jewish people that lived in relative peace in the middle east. (not to say that the Jewish people of the middle east didn't face persecution and other kinds of oppression).

[u/GreenIguanaGaming → u/[deleted]]

Thank you for outlining this. BTW my usage of the word lachrymose in quotation marks is because that's the word Prof. Avi Shleim used.

I do know that Jewish people were afforded more protection in some parts of Europe than others like Britain for example.

[u/GreenIguanaGaming → u/[deleted]]

That's incredible thank you. I never knew.

[u/DurianVisual3167 → u/GreenIguanaGaming]

England didn't really start affording Jews more protection until the late 18th century-1830s. Jews were banned from the country for centuries and the population that had lived there at one point was genocided (they've recently found mass graves of the victims in Norwich). Even when Jews were allowed to live there again they were considered foreigns regardless of if they had just arrived or their family had arrived generations before.

[u/GreenIguanaGaming → u/DurianVisual3167]

Horrific... I remember reading about the protections afforded to Jewish people by the British police and press in the past, such as protection from printing antisemitic articles and such.

I read Churchill's and Balfour's letters that called Jewish people a threat to western civilization. I don't know why I thought this wasn't connected to societal dynamics of the time.. And if it was this bad during the early 1900s then I imagine it was much worse before.

Thank you so much for enlightening me and correcting me. Another commenter mentioned that Jewish people were given protection in Poland, I think that would be a much better example.