"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.

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[u/loselyconscious]

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.

[u/Rulninger → u/loselyconscious]

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.

[u/Pitiful_Meringue_57 → u/Rulninger]

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).

[u/Rulninger → u/Pitiful_Meringue_57]

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.