“Win condition”? Really?
I think the Jewish people, like every other ethnic group, deserves self determination and security. The American sales pitch is that we should have civic based citizenship so that everyone can have self determination and security, and that’s a wonderful idea in theory, but in practice that’s also what Weimar Germany promised, and we all know how that worked out.
Probably because they are the generation that saw exactly what happened to the anti-Zionists…
Because fulfilling “Next Year in Jerusalem” is equivalent to founding a cult and then converting to Islam? Alright. You’re entitled to your opinion I suppose.
So…this guy just keeps saying over and over that you don’t have to be religious to be Jewish and doesn’t seem to make any larger point. Which is true, of course, but so what?
I get that if you’re a Hebrew speaker born and raised in Israel, it’s incredibly offensive to be told you’re not really Jewish, and you will in fact encounter people on a regular basis who will tell you that. Presumably that offense is what’s driving this guy’s passion.
But it’s not really relatable in the diaspora, where secular Jews rarely encounter the kind of Jews who would thusly insult them. And where this guy’s secular children will grow up speaking Hebrew in Israel and are therefore unlikely to forget they are Jewish, our experience is that secular Jews in America usually have just plain secular children, so promoting religious engagement is the only way our community will survive in the long run. We recognize people’s right to withdraw from the religion, but we also know that their decisions weaken our community in a way that doesn’t really apply in an Israeli context.
(I mean, there are some secular Jews here who express their Jewish identity by getting involved in AIPAC or signing up for Yiddish classes at the Workers Circle or something. I am skeptical that this will work out in the long run, though)
I think the point of the exercise is to maintain the muscle mass and not get winded walking up two flights of stairs.
Speak for yourself. I’m in it for control of everything.
Sha, not in front of the goyim!
TBH, I wonder how things would have turned out if the Maccabees lost and Hellenistic Jewish philosophical thought prevailed.
Every dreidel would have a fifth side for “lamed.”
Your view of history seems to include only the smart Jews who became Zionists and the dumb ones who stayed in Europe and got genocided, but there is actually a third alternative.
In the USA, we currently have a 250 year streak of full Jewish citizenship with the right of religious freedom. We have never had pogroms, and we have only a tiny handful of violent anti-semitic incidents per year. The USA is not unique in that regard; many other Western countries can make similar claims.
Meanwhile, what has 80 years of “self-determination” got you? A heavily militarized pariah State where everyone needs to have a bomb shelter, governed by the criminally insane and with no good reason to expect anything to ever get better.
The future is unwritten and history has a way of surprising us, but your certainty that you are on the right path seems highly unfounded to me.
Had to google that. Well played. 
My experience very much varies from yours in that. I encounter plenty of religious Jews who have very strong opinions about other Jews not being “real” Jews. Plenty of Orthodox Jews who don’t think Reform Jews are real Jews, plenty of religious Jews who don’t think that secular Jews are real Jews, etc…
That’s where Ahad Ha’am and similar Cultural Zionists come in. Jewish secular culture is incredibly rich and dismissing it all as non-Jewish or non-“sticky” is silly.
The best parts of our community have very little to do with religion.
I’m not sure what branch of Judaism you are a part of, but I’m certain that you don’t agree with plenty that is in the faith, like women needing their husband’s permission to seek a divorce?
There’s tons and tons you can do to engage with Jewish culture outside of strict religious observance.
You can study the Torah, Neviim, and Ketuvim as historical texts written by our ancestors to describe their understanding of their world, rather than as the Word of God. You can study the Talmud as a fascinating record of the debates the leaders of our ancestors had, and honestly, there’s tons of wisdom there. You can read the secular writings of our ancestors, like The Travels of Benyamin MeTudela or Chachmei Chelem, or you can study the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza…
I think that is all much more relevant to a modern Jew living in a secular, liberal country than the 613 commandments. Understanding how those commandments impacted the development of Jewish culture is, of course, much more important.
Google is failing me…what’s the lamed stand for?
(Best Hijack Ever, btw!)
If I got it right, it not only means you lose, but you lose a turn, and have to pay a penalty into the pot.
…Amarite?
That’s fantastic for American Jews. Not so fantastic for the Jews whose boats were turned back from the shores of the US and sent back to Europe.
A modern, liberal, revitalized Jewish culture no longer dominated by regressive rabbis that has spread to the Diaspora as well?
You currently live in the US, right? Where are you hanging out that you encounter these Jews? I’m pretty sure the answer will be “places that most secular American Jews rarely or never go”. I mean, sure, everyone has a story to tell at Passover about the black hat guy who said something rude to them that one time, but it’s hardly an everyday phenomenon.
Nes gadol lo haya sham = “a great miracle didn’t happen there.”
Yeah, but the catered food is still pretty terrible.
That’s even better! LMAO.
Yes, places like Chabbad (although Chanbadniks in the US are a TON better about outreach to secular Jews without being dicks than Chanbadniks in Israel), but isn’t that part of the point? Secular Jews don’t go to these places in large part because they are often met with hostility
Our experience has been otherwise. Sure, Jewish secular culture is rich, but it doesn’t sustain community. With the arguable exception of the Zionist movement itself, there are no large, sustainable organizations of American Jews that meet regularly to discuss and educate about secular culture and pass their secular Jewish identity on to their children. Our Bundist-equivalent organizations weren’t killed off, they just withered away for lack of interest.
(Also, I think Ahad Ha-am actually had a horribly negative impact on Jewish secular culture, since he encouraged Jews to stop speaking the language that Jewish secular literature of the previous couple centuries had been written in, but that’s another story)
I mean, I would think secular Jews wouldn’t want to go to Chabad for the same reasons any other secular person wouldn’t want to go to Chabad; what goes on there is weird, inaccessible and extremely boring.