r/JewsOfConscience • u/AutoModerator • 10d ago
AAJ "Ask A Jew" Wednesday
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.
Please remember to pick an appropriate user-flair in order to participate! Thanks!
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u/acacia_tree Reform Ashkie Diasporist 8d ago edited 5d ago
To u/cineful who asked about who not to follow on social media, the people who come to mind immediately are Jackson Hinkle and Rathbone. They may have leftist aesthetics but they have reactionary views and Rathbone has said misogynistic things and platforms neo-Nazis on Twitter. basically just follow actual Palestinians since it’s their cause.
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7d ago
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u/Educational_Board888 Non-Jewish Ally 9d ago
What is the significance of doughnuts in Chanukah?
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u/Adept_Thanks_6993 Orthodox 9d ago
We're supposed to eat foods fried in oil to commemorate the miracle of the oil. It doesn't have to be a doughnut, but humans just really like donuts. Anything oil-fried is good
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u/MassivePsychology862 Non-Jewish Ally 9d ago
Where can I find good donuts? I’m in Raleigh North Carolina. Can I buy the donuts or is the appropriation? I’m not trying to be coy or offensive, I just really like donuts.
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u/loselyconscious Traditionally Radical 9d ago
It's never wrong to eat doughnuts! As far as I can tell (someone corrects me if I am wrong), Sufgonyot are just jelly donuts. I think in the "old country," it was common to fry doughnuts in lard, but Sufgonyot are fired in oil both for kosher reasons and for them of the holiday. These days most doughnuts are fried in oil anyway
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u/MassivePsychology862 Non-Jewish Ally 9d ago
Old country like where? My grandfathers family were actually Eastern European Jews who fled to the United States to avoid the Holocaust. I owe it to the Davids to eat these donuts. I did have the pleasure of eating latkes once (a coworker brought them in). What a magnificent experience.
I hope I don’t offend anyone, but I liked them more with sour cream.
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u/loselyconscious Traditionally Radical 9d ago
The article I read that talked about lard vs. oil compared them to paczki, which is Polish, but the borders of that region shifted all over in the 18th and 19th centuries.
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u/Thisisme8719 Arab Jew 9d ago
Why would it be appropriation? It's just a doughnut. There's nothing special about it. It's basically just paczki but kosher.
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u/Adept_Thanks_6993 Orthodox 9d ago
I couldn't tell you of a kosher bakery down there, but you're fine. Gentiles can eat Jewish food no problem, unless you're in the Beit HaMikdash I think-which you're not.
If you're ever in New York, stop by Queens Pita. They make a jam donut that looks like JFK's head when you bite into it. It's so good.
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u/MassivePsychology862 Non-Jewish Ally 9d ago
I…. That joke… needed that. I need some jfk head donuts. ASAP
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u/Educational_Board888 Non-Jewish Ally 9d ago
I’m a seeing a lot online about being a Jew as a race and not just a religion so antisemitism is also racism. How does this work when you have different ethnicities who are Jewish?
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u/specialistsets Non-denominational 9d ago
Jews are not a "race" but also "not just a religion". Jews are a peoplehood who have no inherent obligation to practice Judaism in order to be Jewish. Antisemitism doesn't mean "against those who practice Judaism" it means "against Jewish people", which is a very important distinction.
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u/douglasstoll Reconstructionist 9d ago
It doesn't. It's complicated, but being Jewish is not a race, in fact the concept of a racialized Jewishness was a unique invention of the Nazis.
Judaism is an ethno religion, and you're correct, there are multiple Jewish ethnic lineages, but ethnic heritage and ancestry is not the same as the social construct of "race." It is also quite possible for an individual human to be 100% Jewish and to have 0% ethnic Jewish ancestry. That person is no less and no more Jewish than someone 100% Ashkenazi descent. It appears paradoxical until one moves away from modern interpretations of race and ethnicity and studies true Jewish history and religious texts. Many of the most powerful, influential, and time-honored voices within Judaism were not ethnically Jewish at all!
It gets more complicated still once we understand racism as a social system of oppression and not merely as an individual character failing. In the US, racism began as a pseudoscientific idea and evolved into a de facto societal caste system largely but not solely based on skin color and assumptions from visible phenotype. In Germany, racism also began as pseudoscience and evolved more into a structure of human sub-species. Both are adept systems of oppression quite effective at justifying dehumanizing groups of people.
The short of it is that what you are seeing online is not a good-faith exploration of the concept of race and the system of racism, but rather a cynical manipulation of language and history to attempt to delegitimize critique of Zionism and the state of Israel.
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u/Pitiful_Meringue_57 Jewish 8d ago
Different ethnicities are jewish, but they r also often connected to one another and specifically jewish. Ashkenazi Jewish for example is an ethnicity, as is Bene and Beta Israel. The thing is that jews r different ethnicities than the people they often live near, like how jews in the arab world r ethnically distinct from non jews in the arab world both genetically and culturally of course. And there r studies that different jewish ethnicities actually have a good mount in common genetically.
It’s complicated, but it’s what happens when a religion does not seek to convert. Jews r almost always jews because their parents r jewish, which is what makes it an ethno religion. U can be jewish and non ethnically jewish but it’s much rarer.
Antisemitism is not the same thing as racism, though often they go hand in hand. Antisemitism is racism in kind of the same way that islamophobia is often racism in the western world, because islam is often associated with specific identities even tho anyone can be muslim and a lot of non-brown ppl r.
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u/loselyconscious Traditionally Radical 9d ago
If you want a deep dive into this, I would read the book "No State Solution" by Daniel Boyarin, a major antizionist scholar and Talmudist. He goes through the various models of Jewish identity; "race," "ethnicity," and "religion" all don't work.
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u/valonianfool Anti-Zionist 9d ago
I know the idea that the modern nation state of Israel is the same as the ancient Kingdom of Israel is completely ridiculous, but since religious zionists incl Christians use the argument that both the Quran and Torah mention "Israel" and agree that "the land belongs to the Jews" I still want to ask in what way ancient and premodern kingdoms and civilizations differ from modern states.
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u/specialistsets Non-denominational 9d ago
"Israel" is a biblical name for Jacob, the Jewish people have been called and have called themselves "Israel" (from "Bnai Yisrael", children of Israel or Israelites in English) since long before the terms "Jew" or "Judaism" existed. Thus, the land became known in Jewish culture and thought as "Eretz Yisrael" (The Land of Israel) for thousands of years. In traditional Judaism it is considered a great mitzvah to live in the Land of Israel, which is why hundreds of thousands of non-Zionists live there today. During the British Mandate, "Eretz Yisrael" was the official Hebrew name alongside Palestine in Arabic and English. Upon declaration of statehood they chose "Medinat Yisrael", State of Israel, to mean "a state for the People of Israel in the Land of Israel".
Religious Zionists don't believe they are resurrecting or continuing an ancient "Kingdom of Israel" as there is no inherent theological significance to that. They believe that the establishment of a modern Jewish state in the Land of Israel is divinely ordained and will hasten the coming of the messiah, culminating in the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem.
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u/valonianfool Anti-Zionist 9d ago
Is there any theological significance to a jewish state in historic Palestine for Christians?
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u/specialistsets Non-denominational 9d ago
I don't know enough about that type of Christian theology to answer. But I can definitely say that any Jewish messianic theology that relates to the Land of Israel is completely unrelated to anything Christian, and any similarities are coincidence.
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u/Adept_Thanks_6993 Orthodox 9d ago
Not really
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u/valonianfool Anti-Zionist 9d ago
I'm asking cuz there's someone who I used to consider a friend, who I've cut off. They're a conservative christian who comforted me when I was going through a bad time so I considered them a friend, but I've always been uncomfortable with their views, they're being radicalized into the far-right.
While debating them about Palestine, one argument they gave was that "jews, christians and muslims all agree that the land belongs to the jews".
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u/loselyconscious Traditionally Radical 9d ago
No, Christian Zionism is a very new phenomenon. Christians historically believe the land used to belong to the Jews, but we lost it because we rejected Christ. Remember that Christians fought many wars to take over and even briefly controlled the Hold Land. Not once in that period did anyone even talk about giving it to the Jews. There has never been, not even in the 20th century, when Christian Zionism was a thing, a Christian country that has used Christianity as part of its official justification for supporting Israel.
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u/Thisisme8719 Arab Jew 8d ago
Also to flesh that out, it wasn't even "belonging" like when we think of a modern concept of private property - eg Netanyahu talking with Jordan Peterson and alluding to Locke's idea of property rights; or a national right to the region that Ganz argues for (but even he thinks it's a limited right). It was a belief in conditional stewardship that God could grant or revoke.
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u/Adept_Thanks_6993 Orthodox 9d ago
To some extent it did, for an admittedly long while. But we were never the only people there, nor did we ever hold an exclusive title. Even when we had a King and a Temple we weren't the only ones there. Our right to develop a society in Eretz Yisrael was on condition we uphold our covenant of ethical monotheism with our Creator. We were exiled because we didn't hold up our end of the bargain. If we lose sovereignty in the Holy Land again, it'll be because we didn't hold it up-again.
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u/Artistic-Vanilla-899 Non-Jewish Ally 10d ago
What are some ways you or other Jewish people preserve different cultural and historical traditions and your experiences over centuries without being revised and sometimes erased by state propaganda coming from Israel and its allies?
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u/specialistsets Non-denominational 9d ago
Most non-Reform synagogues worldwide, including in Israel, maintain traditional diaspora religious and cultural practices from all over the world. Places with very large traditional Jewish populations (New York, Los Angeles, Israel) will have many more "unique" synagogue communities that follow localized diaspora traditions that have been largely lost in heterodox communities and smaller Orthodox communities. The main cultural influence from Israel that has become common in many non-Orthodox Jewish communities outside of Israel is pronunciation of liturgical Hebrew with an accent that more closely follows the modern Israeli pronunciation.
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u/loselyconscious Traditionally Radical 9d ago
I guess imposition of references to Israel in religious ceremonies, most notable in the Passover seder.
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u/valonianfool Anti-Zionist 5d ago
I still feel harrowed from an event that happened months ago, when I made the mistake of trying to debate a zionist after seeing a post listing supposed examples of hypocrisy from the pro-Palestinian movement.
The OP attacked and insulted me, but what really caused me distress is because they were a hypocritical ass who while claiming to stand in solidarity with indigenous people, support the dispossession and displacement of Palestinians, and promote racist, colonialist narratives.
After I brought up how fellahin (Palestinian subsistence farmers) have cultivated the land for centuries they called me "gross" for implying that "indigenous status can be obtained through farming" and how European farmers are still colonists despite farming the land. They claim that the fellahin and all arabs in Israel are "colonizers".
They called me an "antisemite" because I pointed out that for most parts of history during muslim rule, jewish life was peaceful and how the one massacre against jews they brought up in the post-the Hebron massacre-was motivated in part by Palestinian farmers becoming disenfranchised because of land sales to the JNF, claiming I'm somehow "excusing anti-jewish oppression".
However, their stance is hypocritical: while acknowledging it was unfair for the palestinian farmers who became landless and impoverished, they excuse it with "it was normal practice at the time" for absentee landlords to rent out and sell land, and how the landlords who sold land to the settlers were landlords in neighboring countries.
So according to them, injustice towards jews can never be excused or viewed in context to give a more nuanced picture, but injustice towards Palestinians is excusable.
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u/Artistic-Vanilla-899 Non-Jewish Ally 2d ago
A living example of Palestinian belonging to the land is the olive tree. That's why the Israeli state feels a need to destroy it. Its cultural genocide or memoricide, rewriting history and people from it.
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u/Fun_Swan_5363 Christian Anti-Zionist Ally 9d ago
How is Tanach different from Torah? Thanks.
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u/loselyconscious Traditionally Radical 9d ago
If your familiar with Christian terminology, the Torah is the Pentateuch, and the rest of the Tanakh is what Christians call "The Old Testament" (excluding the apocryphal/deuterocanonical book), and arranged differently.
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u/Weak-Doughnut5502 Reconstructionist 7d ago
Torah is Hebrew for 'instruction' or 'law'.
It can refer to the five books of Moses, the oral torah of interpretations and traditions that was written down in the talmud and midrash, and to the Hebrew Bible as a whole.
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8d ago
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u/PotsdamSewingSociety Atheist 7d ago
Within your circles what is the overall feeling towards anti-zionist jews, and how do anti-zionist jews feel about zionists claiming that the ideology represents them whether they like it or not?
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u/Artistic-Vanilla-899 Non-Jewish Ally 3d ago
How has questioning Zionism impacted your worldview and identity? By questioning Zionism I refer to a critique of its political and ideological apparatus. Does being and/or becoming non or anti-Zionist shape your worldview, political leanings, ethics, and even identity?
For example, it has become obvious the government of Israel lies a lot, with my country, the USA, aiding and equally contributing to it, from all both dominant political sides. I have become skeptical and cynical about the ways the American state operates around the world and what the State says. I dropped the DNC and left the presidential ballot box blank this year. I also have a better appreciation and a little more understanding and curiosity about many historical Jewish voices and contributions the State of Israel and its allies have and continue to try to silence.
As Jews with a conscience, may I ask if anyone would like to share? My apologies if I asked something so broad and possibly naive from my pov.
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u/valonianfool Anti-Zionist 8d ago
Would it be fair to say that all jewish ppl have privilege over Palestinians? I've seen a popular palestinian blogger state that jewish ppl whether Israeli or American or zionist or anti-zionist are immensely more privileged than Palestinians as a whole because their voices and perspectives are taken more seriously by mainstream media, and I think that makes sense. While western countries have come to view jewish ppl as Western, whether they count as white or not, Palestinians are still seen as racialized threats like the terrorist stereotype.
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u/sudo_apt-get_intrnet LGBTQ Jew 8d ago
Americans and Israelis, Jewish or not, are going to have privilege over Palestinians over not being actively having a large scale genocide being actively committed against their people.
In terms of how the mainstream media is treating Jewish and Palestinian perspectives, I think there's a mixing of cause and effect going on. The hypothesis seems to be that the media listens to Jews complain about antisemitism, which they often conflated with anti-zionism, which then spreads this conflation towards the rest of society. That in order to fight antisemitism, the media boosts things that are also, sometimes, antizionist.
Instead its the opposite: the reason you keep seeing obvious conflation of antisemitism and antizionism in the media is specifically because the media nearly ONLY pushes and calls out antisemitic instances when it can then use that to conflate antisemitism with antizionism. For example, look at Amsterdam; no one cared about antisemitism in Amsterdam's football scene until they could use that antisemitism to fight antizionism. No one cared about antisemitism on college campuses until it could be associated with anti-zionism, even when Trump supporters were actively engaging in violence against Jews in some of them.
In short, yes a lot of Jews are more privileged than Palestinians. But its not because our voices and perspectives are taken more seriously by the media, but its because the media finds it useful to find Jewish bodies to regurgitate the opinions it wants to curate.
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u/reydelascroquetas Sephardic 4d ago
I agree
I am Sephardic, my paternal grandfather’s family were Arabic speaking Palestinian Jews living in Tiberias until the late 40s when they left. My grandmother isn’t Palestinian but she’s Sephardic Jewish too. My Mom’s side are White Christians.
I have definitely noticed throughout my whole life that I am treated differently when I align myself with Arab, especially Palestinian, culture. As I’ve grown (I’m 20 now) I’ve noticed that when I have facial hair AND I wear something related to Palestine, I get an insane amount of stares. That is not to say that stigmatization of Judaism & Jewish people doesn’t exist, ESPECIALLY for the more religious people in the Jewish community, even becoming violent. But if I wore a kippah to the airport I wouldn’t be any extra worried about being profiled. If someone harassed or God forbid attacked me, I would be almost certain the perpetrator would be arrested. I can’t say I feel as safe in a kuffiyeh.
I do think though that Jewish identity is unique in how conmplex and multi layered it is. There are various levels of religiousness, different Jewish cultural origins, and converts too. Different people relate to what being Jewish is to them in such immensely different ways, even varying between family members or individual people as their life progresses.
So overall I agree but I think they aren’t 1 to 1 identities and more nuanced is required.
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u/valonianfool Anti-Zionist 9d ago
While its often said that whiteness has for most of history completely excluded jewish ppl and even today white supremacists don't view any jewish person as white regardless of how "white" they look, why are ashkenazim the most privileged demographic in Israel? Do ashkie Israelis view themselves as "white ppl"?
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u/sudo_apt-get_intrnet LGBTQ Jew 9d ago edited 9d ago
Due to a variety of sociopolitical factors the richest and most active Zionists in the pre-Israel era were Ashkenazim. This then snowballed with Ashkenazim, like most people, subconsciously (or sometimes consciously) preferring people more "like them" over people less "like them", combined with people generally preferring people with traits they associate with higher-status individuals (which, again, were mostly Ashkenazi since rich non-Ashkenazi Jews didn't start getting on board the Zionism train until post-48). It didn't help that Mizrachiim were for a long time looked down on as poorer and less "civilized" than the Ashkenaz Jews.
Things get a bit more complicated nowadays though since a) Mizrachi-descended Jews are now the plurality in the country, b) Mizrachi Jews are, on average, part of the more Zionist political parties in the country, and c) the invention of a distinct "Israeli/Sabra Jew" in Israeli politics makes even Ashkenazi an "insult" since it implies you're more connected to Europe than Israel.
I'd also like to point out that not all ethnic/blood/appearance-based privilege is white privilege, and just because a group has a privileged place in a society doesn't make them white. The Americo-Liberian people colonized Liberia under the banner of the American Colonization Society, and then proceeded to dominate the country until the late 20th century; they were also all black descendants of former slaves. They didn't "become white" when they engaged in colonization and exploitation.
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u/specialistsets Non-denominational 8d ago
Adding to what others have said, there is a wide range of physical diversity in Ashkenazi, Sephardi and Mizrahi populations and it can often be impossible to determine one's ancestral background based on skin color alone. There were early Ashkenazi Zionists with darker skin and 1950s Mizrahi immigrants with fair skin. There has also been multiple generations of mixing in both secular and traditional religious populations (for many reasons, ultra-Orthodox Ashkenazim and Mizrahim are the most likely to marry within their own community). And in Israel today, recent Russian and Ukrainian immigrants are far more underprivileged than Mizrahim.
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u/loselyconscious Traditionally Radical 9d ago edited 9d ago
I am not sure why the prelude to your question is necessary
Zionism began as a movement in Central and Eastern Europe, and the period when Zionist and Israeli institutions were being built when the state was accumulating capital, the vast majority of Jews in Israel were in Israel. In short, Ashkenazim got their first and got control of the capital first.
Mizrachim were also looked down upon as being "too arab" and too religious.
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u/Teninten Jewish Anti-Zionist 9d ago
History! The first Zionist colonies (i.e. political Zionist settlements, not just the Old Yishuv) in Palestine were set up by Ashkenazim. Zionism was essentially a Jewish response to European nationalism in the 18th and 19th centuries, and so the majority of its adherents were European Jews. They were also the communities most able to envision and build a European-style Jewish settler-colony in Palestine; for many European nations, Zionism was seen as a solution to the Jewish Question, and a convenient way to wash their hands of a minority community.
The Mizrachi communities that make up the majority of Israeli Jewry largely arrived in occupied Palestine a generation later, in the aftermath of the Nakba. They arrived/fled/emigrated/were expelled for various combinations of push factors (rising violence and discrimination as tensions rose between Israel and SWANA nations) and pull factors (political or religious motivation, economic prospects). As more recent, and typically less affluent arrivals, they were relegated to a second-tier status within Israel, outside the predominantly Ashkenazi political/leadership class that had founded it.
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u/Rulninger Non-Jewish Ally 9d ago
So I think you might already have touched on it a bit. But as someone on the left, one of the more controversial parts of Judaism, have always been this question of who is and isn't a Jew and the whole chosen people thing. I guess it mainly becomes problematic when Jews become the dominant group in a society.
There is a broader discussion about the dangers of ethno-nationalism, but Jews of course, were some of the main victims of nationalism in Europe. Antisemitism runs as long current through European history.
I guess what I am asking for is Jewish perspectives on these dilemmas. Jewish thinkers were and are a huge part of the left, but leftist ideologies were meant to be universal.
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u/loselyconscious Traditionally Radical 9d ago
I'm not really sure what your question is. Who is a Jew is a matter of internal Jewish law and not really for non-Jews to discuss. That's why we oppose a "Jewish state". It should not become a matter of power. As for Left ideologies being "universal," who are you accusing of being "not universal" "Universalism" is actually a major target of critique from the left, and a servent of colonialism and European cultural hegemony
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u/Rulninger Non-Jewish Ally 9d ago
Sorry, I didn't want to accuse anyone. It was just ask a question wednesday. Religions are ancient things and most of them have aspects, that we in a modern context, might see as problematic.
A lot of these things with who is in or out, can be solved with tolerance. It doesn't have to lead to division, unless we want it to.
When I talk about universality, I do it from a background of having grown up in an area, were many people or their parents, had immigrant or refugee backgrounds. A lot of politician have tried to define these people as something other and in different ways discriminate against them, use them as scapegoats and exclude them.
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u/loselyconscious Traditionally Radical 9d ago
Religions are ancient things and most of them have aspects, that we in a modern context, might see as problematic
You can say that about literally everything. Countries are ancient things, Philosophies are ancient things, etc. Religion is not uniquely "problematic," and Jewishness is not confined to religion.
A lot of these things with who is in or out, can be solved with tolerance. It doesn't have to lead to division, unless we want it to.
There is nothing inherently wrong with cultural groups maintaining the boundaries of their groups. It's when resources are withheld from one group or power reserved for another, that the boundaries become problems "Tolerance" is also irrelevant to the question of "who is a Jew" since it has nothing to do with behavior or belief
When I talk about universality, I do it from a background of having grown up in an area, were many people or their parents,
The answer to bigotry is not assimilation; targeted groups are rarely ever truly allowed to be assimilated, nor should it be taken for granted that the broader culture is something they should have to be part of.
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u/Rulninger Non-Jewish Ally 9d ago
Second comment: But yeah, you are right. The easy answer to nationalism on the left, have often been to stop having ethnic identities. That these identities are there to create false divisions were there are none. But that's also a bit of a blindspot, thinking of one self as neutral, when in actuality we (Europeans) come with eurocentric views on most things. Still from a European leftist perspective, European ethnic identities are seen as negative, as something problematic and dangerous and they have also clearly been used that way in the past too. But just because we see those identities as negative, does not make us neutral or unbiased.
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u/loselyconscious Traditionally Radical 9d ago
That these identities are there to create false divisions were there are none.
No, these identities can be used to stoke vision, but the identities exist because different groups of people are different. The Irish are not British, Jews are not Christians, and Italians are not Germans; those differences are fine and even good.
till from a European leftist perspective, European ethnic identities are seen as negative, as something problematic and dangerous and they have also clearly been used that way in the past too
Which European leftists think this, none I have read from the last 30 years.
ut just because we see those identities as negative
Again, who is "we"
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u/Rulninger Non-Jewish Ally 8d ago
The event is over and you are a lot more knowledgeable than me, so apologies for this, but in my words:
I think, it's a difference between America and Europe. Europe, to a large extent, consist of nation states, that at least historically, have used nationalism (and invented historical myths) and before that religion, to create coherence and rule. I think that was why they saw Jews as such a treat. Jews were the one group who refused to assimilate or before that convert. These nations states would tell people, how they were different from the people living in neighboring countries and thus ultimately might have to go to war with them, to reclaim or defend some ancestral land. The left (socialists, communists, anarchists (not usually liberals in Europe)) would instead tell workers, that they had far more in common with workers in neighboring countries, than the rulling class in their own countries.
In these European nationstates your ethnicity/cultural background was a tool, the state and rulling class, would use to control you with and make you act against your own interests. From a socialist perspective, nationalism is a divide and rule strategy. Instead of fighting against my boss, I am fighting fellow workers, whom I believe are fundamentally different from myself.
The most scary example of what nationalism might become, if taken to extremes, is what happened in the 30ies and 40ies. But that ideology (Nazism) didn't just magically appear out of nowhere, most European states used aspects of the ideological toolkit previously, just to a much less extreme degree.
(As for which leftist thinkers, well it's everywhere I think. The international etc Working Men of All Countries, Unite!
"The working men have no country."
Karl Marx
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm
Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg sponsored this resolution at the second international
"Wars are favored by the national prejudices which are systematically cultivated among civilized peoples in the interest of the ruling classes for the purpose of distracting the proletarian masses from their own class tasks as well as from their duties of international solidarity."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proletarian_internationalism
https://en.internationalism.org/pamphlets/nationorclass/
A much less prominent person, but here Scottish folk singer Dick Gaughan sums up many of my points
https://youtu.be/pB9fb3lIXko I am not a hardcore academic, like you, but given time i can come up with more sources if you like)
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u/Pitiful_Meringue_57 Jewish 8d ago
This is an interesting perspective from a european. I don’t know if that’s the dominant view there but it definitely isn’t in America. I have noticed it tho, europeans getting mad when americans call themselves irish or italian or whatnot.
Most of the jews in the sub r probably American just based on demographics and i can only speak from my experience and knowledge as an american but ethnic identities r very much accepted and celebrated on the left in America. Ethnicities come from something real, shared history, culture, language, food etc, whereas race is pretty much entirely made up. If someone were to look at my DNA they can tell fairly easily that i am ethnically jewish, where as again, race is fake (socially though it is very much real and that’s the problem).
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u/Rulninger Non-Jewish Ally 8d ago
It guess it depends on how seriously one takes it. And I also think it's different when one group is dominant. If you start taking pride in being Anglo-Saxon, in England, for example, then suddenly you start to see a lot of groups as something other and a possible treat to your identity and then suddenly immigrants are a problem and not just competition, but also a potential existential treat. I think part of the reason it gets so bad in Europe, is that nationstates also draw legitimacy from these identities and although it is no longer spoken about, there is an underlying blood and soil framework. European states have committed countless crimes across the globe, I am gentile splaining, but still, the Holocaust is the moment, that definitely proves, without doubt, that european nationalism has to be kept in check and can't be allowed to grow strong.
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u/Rulninger Non-Jewish Ally 9d ago
Sorry, I was also vague. But that's because it's a difficult subject and that was also why I wanted to have the conversation. I don't think I am arguing for assimilation ?
I have just seen how european ethnic identities, have been used to judge who is in or out with. To descriminate against other groups and see them as something foreign, thus I am highly sceptical of people who take pride in a specific european ethnic identity. (By these identifies, I don't mean Jews. Jews were often the people who were defined as something other as outsider etc and europes history is full of atrocities against Jews)
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u/loselyconscious Traditionally Radical 9d ago
If you don't mean Jews, what are you even talking about. And there is nothing wrong with taking pride in your heritage, arguably it is even more important if people are weaponsing your identity against others to create an alternative non-bigoted form of identity
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u/Rulninger Non-Jewish Ally 9d ago edited 9d ago
First of all, Thanks for taking the time to respond to all this, you have helped me reconsider some things.
I already said some of what I was talking about in the second comment I made. In my experience on the European left, taking pride in a European heritage and cultural identity, is seen as highly problematic and very much potentially racist.
If a guy started talking to me, about his pride in belonging to some white european cultural identity, that would be a major red flag.
But you're right, that just thinking about european cultural identities as negative, does not make us (European leftists) neutral or unbiased. We are undoubtedly blind to a ton of eurocentric bagage we bring with us and structures or ideas we think are neutral, might not be so. If I start demanding that other groups should throw off their cultural bagage, I become the racist and Jews are one of the groups, that clearly crystalizes that.
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u/alyesque Reconstructionist 9d ago
Your question is a bit unclear, but there are Jewish thinkers that have questioned or rejected the idea of choseness. This is a pretty distinctive aspect of reconstructionist Judaism and the ideas of Mordecai Kaplan, though he should be seen as a minority voice on the question within the broaderjewish tradition.
Plenty of more mainstream Jewish thinkers have conceptualized choseness not as a some sort of superiority, but rather as a specific relationship we have which actually just imposes more rules on us. I do not think choseness as a concept has to necessarily imply superiority.
While leftist ideologies do tend to be universal in nature (though there are forms of left wing nationalism which are not universalist) Judaism itself cant be understood as universal, or at least not as purely universal. Judaism has universal aspects within it and I would argue you can derive universal ethics from it, but its practices are general particular in nature. I think that is fine. Particular doesn't mean better than, it just means distinct.
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u/Carlsen021 Anti-Zionist 9d ago
What went wrong in Yeezreal?
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u/Cineful Non-Jewish Ally 9d ago
As people who support the Palestine cause, who should you warn people not to follow on social media? Thinking of people who are drifting off the cause or plain old antisemitic. Think of people like Dan Bilzerian, who is using the genocide in Gaza to spread legit antisemitic rhetoric.