Why are jews hated and/or mocked so much?

[carnivorousplant]

@FE3O4ENAIL

The " bag of shit " part , after some thought, is no where in the book.
It is a completely erronous interpretation of what was written.
I admit that the error is fully mine, and I apologise for making it.
I deeply regret my lack of understanding.

That’s what I thought wouldn’t be in that book.
Thanks!
And, do you know why most Jewish husbands die before their wives?
They want to!

[DSeid]

As an aside, portions of that book are available via google books on-line. The author certainly does make the point that there were many phrases similar to the insult of having a goyishe kopf. Yiddishe also referenced the Catholic concept of transubstantiation, wine turning into the blood of Christ, as a substitute for calling someone’s ideas bullshit. Yiddish speakers did not think highly of the Catholics around them all the time. But the author’s point was that they got away with blasphemy because it was such a private code of a language. No, the denigration of Catholic practices by some elements of Yiddish culture did not provoke anti-Semitism; it was a private kvetching reaction to it.

[FE3O4ENAIL]

@carnivorousplant

That’s what I thought wouldn’t be in that book.
Thanks!
want to!

And I thank you for letting me be wrong.
(note to self, think before you post, ok?)
Growing up, I never understood the hate that was felt for the Jews.
I still don’t.

[MinkyBinks735]

@FE3O4ENAIL

And I thank you for letting me be wrong.
(note to self, think before you post, ok?)
Growing up, I never understood the hate that was felt for the Jews.
I still don’t.

either do I. thats why i posted it

[tomndebb]

@njtt

Why do you think it is FE3O4ENAIL’s misinterpretation? Why could it not be an explication of the sort of misinterpretation of the concept of “the chosen people” commonly made by anti-semites?

FE3O4ENAIL specifically linked the reference to a book that had a specific Yiddish connection. I have read quite a bit of Yiddish literature, (in English ranslation), as well as many books by people whose first or second language was Yiddish, and I have never encountered a meaning similar to “better than the other guys” for “Chosen people” in any of those works. Therefore, I presume that an interpretation of “Chosen people” to mean “better than the goyim” is an error in interpretation.
As implied by several of FE3O4ENAIL’s subsequent posts, there may, indeed, be an attitude within the Jewish community that they–being the victims of persecution–may be morally superior to their persecutors, (an attitude that is probably fiarly common among all humans), but until I see an actual quote that links that attitude to the phrase “Chosen people,” I am going to be skeptical of a claim that Jews actually hold a belief that their relationship to God, (as opposed to their suffering in the face of persecution), makes them superior to other people.

[carnivorousplant]

I heard the author interviewed on NPR. What I remember was his describing something in the Torah/Old Testament. G-d gave some unpopular commandment to the the Jews while they wandered in the desert. The King James version erroneously translates it as “The people of Israel murmured” while the correct translation is, “The people of Israel Kvetched”.

[FinnAgain]

@Tamerlane

Right.

Oh, and thanks. As usual your level of knowledge and facility with the topic is an example of what makes this message board an awesome place. I’d like it if Zombie would retract his false claims too, but I suppose I shouldn’t be greedy.

[Belowjob2.0]

Kevin MacDonald, tenured psych prof at Cal State Long Beach, has built his career on explaining why people hate Jews, and why Jews deserve to be hated. It’s shocking to see otherwise rational, well educated men in positions of authority advocating such hateful ideologies. Well, it used to be shocking. Now, not so much.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture_of_Critique_series

The first three books constitute what is known as MacDonald’s “trilogy.” This trilogy he describes Judaism as a “group evolutionary strategy” to enhance the ability of Jews to out-compete non-Jews for resources. He argues that Judaism fosters in Jews a series of marked genetic traits, including above-average verbal intelligence and a strong tendency toward collectivist behavior. MacDonald also notes a negative shift in tone from the first book to the third, and attributes it to having learned more, read more, and “changed greatly” in that time. Macdonald’s trilogy has been described as significant for “its potential to forge a standardized anti-Semitic critique in the far right.”[6]

“Toward the end of the third book, MacDonald lays out his solution for restoring what he calls ‘parity’ between the Jews and other ethnic groups: systematic discrimination against Jews in college admission and employment and heavy taxation of Jews ‘to counter the Jewish advantage in the possession of wealth’”.[8] MacDonald replied that in the actual passage from The Culture of Critique quoted by Shulevitz, he was speaking hypothetically of the consequences of competition between ethnic groups of differing abilities.[9]

[Lust4Life]

@MinkyBinks735

yes, my point exactly. As well as on south park. I don’t think that there are jewish writers on the show but instead, it is another group to mock. And I never really understood why.

The voice actor of Lois. (can’t think of her name this minute is Jewish)

[Little_Nemo]

@Lust4Life

The voice actor of Lois. (can’t think of her name this minute is Jewish)

Alex Borstein

[FE3O4ENAIL]

On page 175 of Born to kvetch by Michael Wex there is:
“As the voice of a system of thought designed to keep Us Jews from turning into Them Goyim, Yiddish has developed an unusually comprehensive vocabulary of exclusion. Differences between yidish and goyish, sacred and profane, proper and improper, are built into the structure of the language, nowhere more deeply than when Yiddish deals with food.”

I took that to mean that on one hand, Jews (yidish) are sacred and proper, and on the other hand, non Jews (goyish) are profane and improper.

[carnivorousplant]

@FE3O4ENAIL

On page 175 of Born to kvetch by Michael Wex there is:
“As the voice of a system of thought designed to keep Us Jews from turning into Them Goyim, Yiddish has developed an unusually comprehensive vocabulary of exclusion. Differences between yidish and goyish, sacred and profane, proper and improper, are built into the structure of the language, nowhere more deeply than when Yiddish deals with food.”

I took that to mean that on one hand, Jews (yidish) are sacred and proper, and on the other hand, non Jews (goyish) are profane and improper.

I believe it to be a literary reference to “us and them.” It is also often used to differentiate between religious and social practices or issues.

In Durkheim’s theory, the sacred represented the interests of the group, especially unity, which were embodied in sacred group symbols, or totems. The profane, on the other hand, involved mundane individual concerns.

[FE3O4ENAIL]

@carnivorousplant

I believe it to be a literary reference to “us and them.” It is also often used to differentiate between religious and social practices or issues.

Sounds accurate to me.
I just wanted to return with a quote, as I commited to.
Rereading the book also shows that The Chosen People is not about being better, but having many more rules and responsibilities.

[carnivorousplant]

@FE3O4ENAIL

Sounds accurate to me.
I just wanted to return with a quote, as I commited to.
Rereading the book also shows that The Chosen People is not about being better, but having many more rules and responsibilities.

Thank you.
You are a gentleman and a scholar.

[FE3O4ENAIL]

@carnivorousplant

Thank you.
You are a gentleman and a scholar.

Thanks, thats much kinder than “dumbass who needs to read a book twice to understand what was written”.

[hajario]

I appreciate that you were willing to go back, learn and reconsider, FE3O4ENAIL. In the passage that you cited, “Yiddish and Goyish” and “sacred and profane” are two different categories that don’t necessarily match one to one.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

I think that a lot of it is jealousy. Jews are a miniscule minority of most populations and are highly represented among the wealthy and professional classes. Same with competitive schools.

Add to that the fact that a lot of people don’t know a lot about Jews except that they don’t go to church (heck even the niggers, chinks and spics go to church) and you can convince some folks to believe anything about them, blame them for everything.

If Jews didn’t exist, the anti-semites would have to invent Jews in order for the world to make sense to them.

[BrainGlutton]

Whether “Chosen People” means extra privileges or extra duties, why is there such a thing? That is, is there any Jewish doctrine on why God has to have a Chosen People?

[Capitaine_Zombie]

@Damuri_Ajashi

If Jews didn’t exist, the anti-semites would have to invent Jews in order for the world to make sense to them.

You mean Jews were invented by the anti-semites? Darn, I always knew there was something fishy about them.

[DSeid]

The tradition is that one people was Chosen to receive the knowledge of one God, and by so doing to enter into a contract with the one God. Why God chose Abraham and his descendants is never made clear.

From the POV of thinking about why a culture would have a key aspect of its mythology be being Chosen to taken on special obligations? Well most religions share a founding story that identifies the in-group as being different than those who make up “the others”. It’s part of what religions, heck any -isms, do: define why the “us” is different than the “them”. And certainly the Torah (Old Testament to Christians) is full of examples in which being “us” justified lots of violence against various “thems”. The interesting thing is that modern Judaism, which really doesn’t get going until hundreds of years after the Diaspora began, uses it more as a means of maintaining an identity in Diaspora, not as a justification for poor treatment of others but as a means of maintaining their differentness spread out amidst many other cultures and in the face of persecution. The spin became that others are obligated only to follow a few basic rules but “we” have our own extra sets of rules, our own level of ethics and codes of behavior to follow because that was the deal we made and that is that.

CZ, Einstein made the point on many occasions: “Perhaps it is thanks to anti-Semitism that we can preserve ourselves …” If not for anti-Semites, he believed, Jews would have assimilated and disappeared as a people, many years ago. He also had this to say:

It seems obvious to me that Jews make an ideal scapegoat for any country experiencing social, economic, or political difficulties. The reason for this is twofold. First of all, there is hardly a country in the world that does not have a Jewish segment in the population. And secondly, wherever Jews reside, they are a minority of the population, and a small minority at that, so that they are not powerful enough to defend themselves against a mass attack. It is very easy for governments to divert attention from their own mistakes by blaming Jews for this or that political theory, such as communism or socialism.

For instance, after the First World War, many Germans accused the Jews first of starting the war and then of losing it. This is nothing new, of course. Throughout history, Jews have been accused of all sorts of treachery, such as poisoning water wells or murdering children as religious sacrifices. Much of this can be attributed to jealousy, because, despite the fact that Jewish people have always been thinly populated in various countries, they have always had a disproportionate number of outstanding public figures.

FWIW.