Quite a lot of “oversensitivity and aggression” to deal with this early in the morning.
Since you once again have failed to back up any of your unsupported claims, resorting instead to hyperbolic Lewis Carroll-esque effusions about the meaning of language, obscure references to Ann Coulter, Patriotism and the like, we’ll just have to conclude that you’re stuck so hard in stubborn denial that you cannot extricate yourself. And we’ll pass over your continued output of ethnic slurs, as your use of the n-word is escalating with every post and you need a break from all the excitement that evidently brings you.
No, sorry, I don’t loan out any money, you’ll have to go to the bank.
If you have anything material to say about how “usurious materialism” contributes to present day anti-Semitism, by all means vent it here.
I think you might be a wee bit premature in gloating that suggests that DSeid has bought into all your nonsense in this thread. But he can speak for himself.
Quite likely I am different from all the learned Jewish sages you’ve interacted with through the course of your life, and who undoubtedly taught you to interpret Jewish culture via that collection of stereotypes you’re hauling around. I just have to wonder though - didn’t all those venerable Jewish teachers of yours realize that they were violating the Insularity Code by hanging out with you? I’ll have to report them to the AJC’s Cohesiveness and Clannishness Committee.
You’ll just have to accustom yourself to the new ways. In the immortal words of Kinky Friedman’s puzzled bigot:
“They ain’t makin’ Jews like Jesus anymore
They don’t turn the other cheek
the way they done before”
I see, more clumsy evasions in the hope that a swagger in your step and enough bluster will carry the day. Well that hardly needs to be addressed.
I asked you a simple question and you have been doing your best to avoid it for days. It’s good to see you exercise a little bit of caution. Nonetheless, this is an honest point that has direct bearing on this discussion: is the usurious materialism of some Jewish characters of Shakespeare and Dickens is consistent with historical reality? Not in the absolute terms you enjoy so much, but even in degrees? And also, what do you think was a leading contributor to the unpleasant stereotype that Jews engage in deceptive economic behavior with those not of their own ethnicity or religion?
All I said was that Dseid and I had reached some common ground. That doesn’t mean we have to buy everything the other says, but towards the end it appears we reached some understanding. I’m not gloating – and most certainly not towards a poster who proved big enough to say that he would take a step back after a heated discussion. In the sentence you so characteristically twisted out of recognition, I was merely pointing out how in spite of your categorical claims about my stereotypes (claims apparently invulnerable to any explanation I might issue), the poster who has been conducting the debate on the other side seems to have found common ground with me. Me being, according to your stern efforts at mischaracterization, a purveyor of evil stereotypes and anti-semitism.
You have written, for the first time in the thread, something that could be called funny. A bit mean-spirited, very hyperbolic, sarcastic, and deliberately dodging the fact that you still haven’t supported your accusations, but quite funny
I think that Abe could have avoided all this very easily by recognizing early on that he had poorly phrased his point. An early recognition of “Hey, I didn’t realize that ‘insular’ was a loaded phrase and that it was a synonym for ‘clannish’ - My bad.” would have been mature and saved a lot of electronic ink. But we all get entrenched in our positions sometimes and he felt obligated to defend the phrase as not necessarily a slur. And in that defense he said some things that were also ill considered and ill phrased.
However, he has agreed with a statement that makes clear that he does not endorse a position that Jews are now or have been clannish, and in fact agrees with a statement that Jewish culture has sought out the ideas of others and attempted to interact with wider society when possible, while tenaciously maintaining an individual identity at the same time. A reread of my post will also provide an explanation of the origins of the usurious materialist stereotype as well. That is good enough for me; I do not need the “abject apology”. Mind you, it would be nice.
OK Dseid, but I must note that I did readily ask for input on alternative terminology since the present ones were treated as offensive. I also did point out a number of times that I would have welcomed less combative dialogue (e.g., I said to Jack “if it was a question of you asking for clarification for any ambiguity in my posts, I could understand and comply readily enough”). And I did quickly reject the synonymity of insular and clannish.
I brought up the issue of usurious materialism and originally directed it at Jack because he seemed unwilling to consider that the origins, seeds, and causes of a stereotype are not themselves to be considered offensive, but are fair material for discussion (no matter how sensitive or bellicose he may feel about them). The principle of open discussion is also why I took to task the claims that I was alleging clannishness and, later, statements that I was engaged in Shylock slurs, etc., which, as I argued strenuously, was not at all the case.
Now that the waters have calmed – between you and me at any rate – I will if you wish apologize for any unintentional offence, and ask you to consider a reciprocal apology to the effect that my arguments were themselves misinterpreted prior to our agreement phase. Either way, I’m equally happy this has been resolved (as for Jack, I’m not sure how he feels…).
Now seriously, please recognize Jack’s very legitimate point. It is not overly PC to be aware of how certain phrases are being heard by others and to choose the words used acccordingly. It is not a sign of weakness to recognize that one did not know how a particular word has very particular implications to some that one may have been unaware of.
Even taking your extreme case of “the pot calling the kettle black” … one could react to the lady by telling her that she is being ridiculous, or one could quickly say that they didn’t mean to cause offense, if it does cause offense that they will try to avoid the phrase, but to please explain why it causes such a problem. Which is more likely to leave both parties more informed?
In this case you’d have learned why many of us Jews would react to being called “relatively more insular than other ethnicities” as fightin’ words, and the discussion could have continued into exploring the historic and cultural roots of Jew hating without such a major digression. But what’s done is done, and it forced me to refresh my knowledge of Jewish history some. And I got to read that Rabbi Wein quote! That’s the first time I read a Jewish authority expressing the concept that I have been fumbling to articulate for a while now, the near heretical view that the Diaspora was the best thing possible to happen to Jewish intellectual culture. So it has its upside.
One last point - you have alluded to Jew hating before the onset of Christianity. There wasn’t very much, because before Christianity Jews were a traditional nation-state of the time. Israel was a Middle Eastern kingdom with a state tribal religion and was not much different than the other kingdoms of the time. Jews were an annoyance to the Romans mainly because they kept revolting and while they were able to be defeated each time it cost the Romans lots in terms of resources and manpower to accomplish the task. The Jews were annoying because, as you pointed out, the Roman tactic was to absorb other cultures (“Sure, tell the same stories about the Gods, but now use the name ‘Jupiter’ instead of ‘Og’ and we’ll all be cool.”) and Judaism was incompatable with that approach. The Jewish revolts took a lot out of the Romans at a time when they were finding themselves stretched quite thin. The Diaspora occurred after the failure of the Bar-Kokhba Rebellion (who many Jews believed was the messiah in the traditional Jewish meaning of the word, very different than the Christian one) in 135. The spread of Christianity, the creation of Jews as “the other” within European societies, and Jew hating were fairly contempory events.
What I originally responded to in this debate was this statement from Abe:
This had the distinct air of slipping in a bunch of typical anti-Semitic stereotypes (without mentioning Jews specifically - but let’s be honest, what other group has been blessed with this combination of predjudices?) and suggesting they might not “necessarily” be off base.
Combine that with the supposedly misstated remark about Jewish (a.k.a. Israeli) policy being all that was needed to stoke increased hatred, and I was not predisposed to accept Abe’s good intentions. DSeid is a greater believer than me in the basic decency of mankind, or at least of SDMB posters.
I think that at least on some level Abe wanted most to do a riff on the “If you want peace, work for (Mideast) justice” angle rather than focus on picking at ethnic sore points. It can be difficult to accept that things are vastly more complicated than that, and I apparently played a major red flag to his bull (in part related to some long-ago debate on another subject which he apparently remembers vividly, but which I confess that I have completely forgotten).
I suppose it’s possible that much of what he said was in an effort to bait me (and others) rather than an expression of bigoted beliefs. In the end, it doesn’t really matter. What you say and the concern you express for the impact of those words on others are what define you, at least here.
His pullback on the “insularity” question is a good start, and maybe it’s best to leave it at that.
Let it never be said that I am not open to be proven wrong or even to proving myself wrong. Testing out the new www.scholar.google.com academic search engine I found this very interesting article on assimilation of different ethnicities in Canada. Now the basic premise of the article is that assimilation is not incompatable with the maintainance of an ethnic identity - as the authors conclude
But it nevertheless had some findings that showed that we Jews are perhaps a bit more insular than some other ethnic groups. In particular we were more likely than other measured ethnic groups to maintain freindships with members of our ethnicity
and less likely to participate in what was allowed to be self defined as host culture (Canadian in this case) functions, with the largest spead showing up at the third generation. I am an evidence based man - live by the data, die by the data - despite the insulting connotation of the word, and its use by antisemites for ill intent - the only data comparing ethnic tendencies to fully assimilate into host cultures that I can find actually do support Abe’s contention that we are relatively more insular.
Now he can gloat a little. But if he dances I’ll get pissed. Sorry Jack.
It is true that there was not “very much,” but it was not non-existant. Both the Seleucids under Antiochus IV and the Persians when influenced by Zoroastrian priests carried out persecutions of the Jewish people. (Antiochus might be looked at as making war only on the people of Judea, since that was his main point of conflict, but it was characterized as a religious war. The Persian/Zoroastrian conflicts, however, were aimed at the (first) Diaspora of the Mesopotamian region.) In addition, during the Bar Kochba revolt, the Romans imposed penalties on all the adherents of (what was becoming) Judaism throughout the Mediterranean, imposing heavy tax burdens on people living in Egypt, Libya, Mauretania, Iberia, etc. Earlier, Nero had also used the Jews as scapegoats during his attempts to avoid condemnation, little distinguishing between Jews and the heretical Jewish sect of Christians. Such actions by the rulers of those regions set the stage of identifying Jews as “separate.” (It is possible, though not yet proven to me) that the overflow from the Zoroastrain persecutions primed the East toward anti-semitism, which may explain why that took root earlier under the Eastern Roman Empire than it did in the West.)
While one study does not connote proof, universality beyond the frigid wastes of Canada or supersede demographic data leading to diametrically opposite conclusions, it’s at least better than making sweeping assertions without data.
If he’s as rigorous about maintaining an open mind as you, he’ll be too busy to gloat, since he’ll have a full plate trying to scrape up support for all the other bunkum he delivered in this thread.
Speaking of which, if anything definitively explodes the insularity myth, it’s the stunning news that Kinky Friedman is running for Governor of Texas!!!
Hey Tom! I wondered what happened to you in this thread. Just biting your tongue and seeing how it all shook out?
Anyway, tell me more about exactly when these Zoroastrian persecutions took place. If I understand it correctly, and I’m a bit sketchy here, even after trying to read up on it, Judea was conquered by Babylon sometime in 600 BCE or thereabouts and had a few failed revolts that led to a big exile (?slave?) class of Jews in Babylon. Was Babylon Zoroastrian at that time? Then Persia conquered Babylon, but I thought that Cyrus was pretty good to the Jews in his dominion and let many return to Judea. And then it was Alexander the Great’s turn to take over Persia and he was cool with the Jews. But his empire fractured after his death and we end up with Antiochus of Syria trying to forcibly Hellinize the Jews. The next I can find about persecutions in regarding Babylon/Persia or by Zoroastrians is in 224 CE on by the Sassanids (specifically King Shapur) and this is already after the onset of Christianity and the onset of the Diaspora.
As to Nero … well during Nero’s time Christians were mainly a Jewish sect and the situation in Israel was a bit anarchic, what with James leading the Jerusalum Christian contigency and Paul out there for a bit, and various Jewish revolts going on in various locations. Why Nero singled out the early Christians at all when Jews all over of all types were causing problems is a mystery to me. After Nero and after the Zealot fiasco had finished the Romans did indeed tax all Jews heavily feeling that their gods had whipped the Jews’ God’s butt and that Jews therefore had to fund a new Temple to Jupiter in Rome. Hadrian’s harshness helped set the stage for the Bar-Korkhba Rebellion but afterwards Severus wasn’t so bad. By 212 CE Jews had been granted citizenship in the Empire and by 250 CE Decius exempted Jews from an allegiance tax even as he pursued anti-Christian measures. Not exactly a situation of Jew hating; more like deciding to collectively reward or punish a subject people for actions that you liked or disliked.
Jack, of course one study, looking at only a few hundred people in one country, is hardly conclusive, and comparing Jews as a cultural group to Italians is a tricky business. Religion creates differences that other different “ethnicities” do not have; there is some discomfort in even characterizing Jews as an ethnicity on par with an immigrant from another country. But still if it is true in Canada where Jews hardly feel under attack, it is likely more so where Jews feel less secure. And if we really do have a tendency to hang out more with our own group than other ethnicities tend to, even in a secure setting (and even while highly intergrated into society and into societal cultural/intellectual life) does it in any way make antisemitic beliefs easier to flourish?
Very practically look at America today. Jews are a minority highly integrated into the culture. Maybe 5% of the US population? So one should say that the average Joe Christian American, who has say 20 to 40 associates, should know a Jew or two. but the reality is that for large swaths of this country he does not since Jews are concentrated in certain geographic areas (eg urban centers). Therefore many Red States are populated by people who, like our op, really do not know any Jews. Not too many Kinkys out there. It really does set up quite a Catch 22 for Jewish leadership. Self-association may foster a situation that allows anti-semitic beliefs to spread unchecked by real life experiences with real Jews; avoiding self-association would make the total assimilation and disappearance of a Jewish identity a virtual impossibility to avaoid.
Thank you for the additional points Dseid, very interesting and also please accept my previously mentioned apology. Good to see the return of Tom as well.
Since Jack persists with arguments that have already been addressed, I see little choice but to address them again as systematically as I have done to date.
Again you are reading into a neutral text your own particular fears and concerns. The above extract I penned applied generally to every instance of discrimination; not, as you suggest that I imply, to Jews specifically. It was a general remark on the nature of discrimination and it still reads like one, even if the examples I cited are obviously applicable to anti-Semitism. But not exclusively: the last two, arguably; the others are certainly universal.
Read the last sentence of my extract carefully, then read the dozen further clarifications I issued on this subject right from the beginning of the discussion, which should leave little doubt as to what was meant. For example, as soon as you complained I said: “All this doesn’t justify anything, of course, but it is naive in the extreme to ignore the causes of ethnic or religious tensions.” Immediately after that I explained that causality may exist without the assignation of responsibility you insist I was communicating: “the real problem [of the deicide accusation] is not whether the Jews are actually and historically to blame for the death of Jesus, but that a substantial number of people think they are.” In the message after that, I emphasized very clearly: “There is always a reason [for discrimination] – whether it is rational or irrational is irrelevant here, the question is emphatically not “what good, and valid reason to despise the Jews””. I also explained that “a cause or trigger may be rational or irrational, and still be in evidence.”
I could continue. In the light of this, and of a close reading of my assertion that you quoted above – which you did not address but instead derided with analogies to racism against blacks – do you insist that there was anything objectionable there and worthy of such sloppy attacks?
Just as with the generalized causes and triggers of discrimination, you never actually addressed the Israeli policy and anti-semitism link in any remotely meaningful manner. You simply derided it with blatant fallacies, dismissed it as anti-semitic, mischaracterized it (as you do above with “all that was needed” and conflation of “Israeli” and “Jewish” policy) and went on to assert that you were right. Feel like giving it another shot, or will you just avoid the argument as you have done when I have systematically addressed your objections?
“Bull” that you have not demonstrated to be bull; and I have supported the link between rising anti-semitic sentiments and Israeli policies with a pretty solid citation, reasoning, and example. I addressed your fallacious arguments every time you posted one. Then you dropped the subject (resurrecting it only en passant and ignoring my support for it) and focused on other avenues in attempts to impugn my arguments. It’s all still there, feel free to address it instead of swaggering and, yes, unwarranted gloating – rather hypocritical, considering you falsely claimed I was gloating just yesterday.
Also, your contention that establishing equivalence between a recent rise in anti-Semitism and “If you want peace, work for (Mideast) justice” is futile. It relies on your own particular reading, as you admit.
I was referring to Is the Death Penalty effective? from two or three years back. I mentioned it just because it reminded me of your techniques in this thread: the use of fallacies and mischaracterizations, avoidance of presented counterpoints and evidence, allusions (sarcastic and non) to the questionable character of your opponent and/or his arguments, and so forth.
Again, you cling on to an either-or fallacy in an indirect attempt to impugn my efforts. There is a third alternative supported by my posts and explanations, Jack: that I was neither baiting nor expressing bigoted beliefs, but discussing bigoted beliefs and their origins and triggers. My point, as I have said and repeated, was that you jumped at what you falsely perceived to be a series of slurs, automatically assuming that they were. You didn’t ask for clarifications, you engaged in aggressive assertive efforts and are still attempting to do so after the discussion has progressed.
Indeed. But that relies on the ability of others to read. If you can’t do that, and (much more importantly) if after numerous clarifications you still can’t do that, I am not too concerned about the impact my words may have. As I said, I am not out to pander to special sensibilities. You will find employing the same approach in other threads (most recently, I said that a GD thread on obesity should not be treated as a support group for the overweight. Am I discriminating there too?).
What pullback? My actual position has not changed substantially, I have clarified with Dseid the intent of my words and he has gone on rather skilfully to advance the debate along similar lines while you have kept sniping from your trench. He and I have come to good terms and moved on. You are still stuck asserting items about me and my arguments that you have been unable to demonstrate.
There is a solution. I posted it earlier. You can admit that you jumped the gun in attacking me: I’m not asking you to recant for the use of fallacious or otherwise questionable arguments, since I have systematically addressed those. Simply admit that you jumped to assumptions, and I am more than ready to admit (per my numerous existing clarifications) regret that a dispassionate treatment of the subject and the use of terms that may be loaded in addition to neutral have caused others anguish. If you attack me in the manner you have, do not expect meek submission on any topic, no matter how sensitive, when my posts could be read either way.
For interest, this Wikipedia entry summarizes Mediterranean (including some ex-Roman and pre-Christian) prejudices along with following developments, though it does not discuss other histories.
It goes on to mention codification of prejudices in the Roman empire. No discussion of what happened outside the Mediterranean basin though.
That was by Nebuchadnezzar II, the greatest of the Chaldean monarchs of Neo-Babylonia. He first took Jerusalem in 597, but the deportations followed a second conquest in 586.
The Chaldeans were Semitic ( the original Chaldeans were actually nomad invaders from Arabia ) and the Chaldeans/Neo-Babylonians followed a Semitic faith ( with Marduk as its principal deity, though the last Chaldean king Nabonidus, disastrously in the eyes of his subjects, favored the Moon-goddess Sin ), then and thereafter for some time, including throughout the Achaemenid and into the Seleucid and even Arsacid periods. It isn’t precisely clear when that faith died out as a cohesive entity and Arsacid records are pretty spotty in general, but the last recorded service at Marduk’s principal temple at Esagila was in 93 B.C.E…
Possibly, even probably. Though there is still some debate on that, as Cyrus was for a few reasons a convenient figure on which to hang a lot of positive traits and make him over into an instrument of God. Generally though Jewish-Achaemenid and Jewish-Parthian relationships were pretty good.
Actually the Sassanids more often had good relationships with the Jewish community as well. The persecution under Ardashir Papakan, founder of the Sassanid state, likely revolved around the long-standing Jewish support for the Parthian dynasty he had overthrown. His son Shapur I for the most part reversed his policies and the Jews of Babylonia probably drew closer to the Sassanid state during his reign after an invasion from Palmyra destroyed their religious center at Nerhadea.
I imagine the Sassanid period is what tom was referring to when he spoke of Zoroastrian repression, but really when it came to the Jews real religious persecution seems to have been less of an issue than it was for other religious minorities ( though tom is certainly correct that some Zoroastrian fanatics, like the 3rd century religious figure Kirdir, had nothing good to say about any religious minority, including the Jews ). Still…
Despite Kirdir’s assertions to the contrary, we hear nothing about persecutions in the Jewish records until the fifth century. In the wars between Roman and Shapur II, the Jews, unlike the Christians, were decidely loyal in their attitude, with the exception of a few Messianic groups. The later massive repressions by Yazdgird II and Peroz was not a sign of religious intolerance, but was clearly the result of political actions by which the Jews expressed their attitude of imminent anticipation of the Messiah, whose appearance they connected with the 400th anniversary of the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. On this occasion, Iranian sources mention attacks by the Jews of Isfahan on the city’s Magi. Later persecutions were also politically motivated. Khosrow’s general Mahbad killed the Jewish followers of the pretender to the throne, Bahran Chubin, and a further Messianic revolt in Babylonia was ruthlessly put down in 640. At the beginning of the seventh century, the Jews watched the Sasanian offensive against Byzantium with great expectancy and joyfully welcomed the conquest of Jerusalem.
From Ancient Persia, from 550 B.C. to 650 A.D. by Josef Wiesehofer, translated by Azizeh Azodi ( 1996, 2001 I.B. Taurus & Co Ltd ).
ewww… enough of all that nasty sugar, you had a good catfight going there – don’t ruin it by making up. Can we go back to the clannishness of the Jews now?
It was my impression that the Nazi party’s rise to power coincided with an unprecedented level of integration and assimilation of German Jewery into German society, to the extend that if they had just let the Jews be there wouldn’t have been any left after two or three generations anyway (well at least religiously/culturally). If relative insularity was an important element in this instance one should have expected the reverse. Indeed if the origin of anti-Semitism was to be found inside Jewish culture/society one should expect it to have decreased as Jews became fewer and less conspicuous, whereas the direct opposite was observed.
I heard this small story the other day:
A couple of Hitler Jugen going door to door asking for donations to the cause accidentally rings on the door of a Jewish home. The owner says tartly:* “This is a Jewish home.”* When the boys realized their mistake, they apologized profusely, “Sorry sir! We couldn’t see from outside that it was a Jewish home”. The owner replies “And neither could you, if you were inside.” Supposedly it was a true story. The sad part actually, is that most likely everybody in the story suffered a premature and violent death within a few years; the Hitler-Jugen boys, the Jew, the Jew’s family.
Hannah Arendt, who nobody seems to want to talk about, had a theory that went something like (it has been some years since I read her): the masses will accept wealth when it serves a purpose, i.e. has power. What they’ll not accept is wealth that serves no purpose. Wealth without power is despised, hated. The wealthy European Jewery (or court Jews as she called them) of the 18 and 19 century was tolerated, encouraged even, because they served an essential political and financial purpose. (If we didn’t have Jews we would have to invent them, as one prominent leader expressed) The emancipation and normalization of the Jews meant they could no longer serve this neutral part and the rise of the nation state put the financial necessities of the state outside the reach of even the most wealthy Jewish financiers, rendering them political irrelevant – but still wealthy and increasingly despised & hated.
Bannings update for the course of the thread: 2. Pretty much average for this sort of topic.
(sigh). And I suppose it bears repeating once again that I initially gave you the benefit of the doubt:
Followed by requests to you in subsequent posts for clarifications, such as
And:
Pretty rough, I know.
People who continually make unsupported allegations, particularly in an area such as this, and handle challenges with vitriol, do tend to face harsh scrutiny. That’s how the forum generally works.
Do not expect pandering in return.
Abe’s remarks about refusing to tender “abject apologies” or “meek submission” (when neither have been requested) reminds me of a recent incident with my brother-in-law. We were out at a nice restaurant with other members of the family when he told a story about a business deal he was engaged in. Seems that he impressed the other side with his toughness by telling them a story about how he’d bested some n*****s* in a confrontation. (This was related loudly, in clear earshot of nearby tables, including one at which a black man was dining). I apologized to the other diner and have since avoided eating out with my brother-in-law. He is apparently furious at what he perceives as being unfairly ostracized and refuses to acknowledge that he was out of line or even pledge that nothing like this will ever happen again (he has derided my for my naivete and stated that he simply has an alternate “world view”.
Hell hath no fury like someone who has convinced themselves that they have been wrongly charged with bigotry.
Not that I called him a bigot, I just made it clear that I never again wanted to be subjected to the embarassment of being with someone who’d do that in public.
So, call me oversensitive.
*Like my pandering to the sensibilities of people who would find it offensive to see the n-word spelled out.
You already have your cites, Jack, on top of the several arguments you refused to address. You also have an ensuing discussion with points and support kindly provided by Dseid as he himself examined the topic, not to mention previous input from other posters. You say:
I do admit to disgust at your attempts to manipulate the argument for your convenience and at your deliberate mischaracterizations, but it is purely revisionist to assert that I handled challenges with vitriol. Firstly, I answered the great majority if not all of your challenges, even though many were manifestly fallacious and worse. Secondly, you were unable to argue in good faith right from the beginning: even your “benefit of the doubt” was no more than a tactic for you to claim that my arguments were of a slurry nature and that the fault lay with me and not with your misinterpretation; that was a backhanded attempt that basically tried to establish your tenuous arguments as correct and mine as inappropriate. Particularly since by then I had already posted some of the explanatory notes I cite in my previous message that you appear to have deliberately ignored when trying to steamroll over my points with your “benefit of the doubt” (which, by the way, you later stated you were unwilling to provide anyway). I don’t need or want your benefit of the doubt, I simply expect honesty.
Vitriol would seem to me when you attempt to twist a sensible and well-established point (that you still haven’t scratched) on the causes and triggers of discrimination by issuing loaded questions that allude to my position as somehow equivalent to racism against blacks. That is a cheap, unnecessary technique, as I have pointed out a dozen times by now. And it is merely one of the documented and dissected examples I have already provided.
I repeat my offer in the last paragraph of my previous reply to you.
“uncomfortably close,” however, is not the same as “equal to” and since you have lumped “cohesiveness” in with “insularity,” without making a serious distinction, I do not see that you have done much more than hammer on Abe for your own personal reasons.
As noted, above, I am not sure that “insular” is a valid characterization. When I see “insular” I think of a self-selecting mechanism. To the extent that there is any separation between Jews and the surrounding culture, the connotation that such separation is either chosen by or embraced by the Jews runs counter to my knowledge of history. However, the “separateness” is a reality–even if imposed externally–and it does have the unfortunate aspect of breeding hostility in a “blame the victim” manner. Suggesting that there is no separation is not accurate, either. I am not sure whether a better word might be found among the following, or not: discrete, circumscribed, separate, distinct. However, insisting that Abe is using old stereotypes while refusing to even consider that he is remarking upon a real phenomenonm has done nothing to further the discussion. If Jews are not identifiable as a group in any way, then they clearly are not a group and so I would guess that no one has ever discriminated against them. Had Abe actually used the word “clannish” rather than another word that you insist means clannish while providing no alternative word to describe the phenomenon, then I would be challenging his position. I see nothing in history to indicate that the Jews have ever done anything to cause others to discriminate against them. However, it is one thing to recognize that it is not the fault of the victims and another thing to claim that nothing has ever happened, simply because the oppressors have used the results of their oppression to rationalize their continued oppressive actions.
On the other hand, the notion that there is no Jewish community (or, perhaps, communities) that maintain certain levels of “cohesiveness” is hardly borne out by anecdotal appeals to the diffusion of “secular” Jews. The Jewish community can see a lot of its members assimilate completely–even giving up their religion–and as long as some core group maintains the practices of taking off work in September, eschewing certain foods, declining to work (or play) on Saturdays, wearing yarmulkes, etc., there will continue to exist a group who can be identified by outsiders as Jews who will be at risk of being stigmatized for their differences. Prior to the late 1960s, Catholics in the U.S. were frequently identified by the way that they would decline to eat meat on Fridays. (Leo Rosten even described a political event that played on that phenomenon: a pork roast held on Friday evenings so as to eliminate both Catholic and Jewish participation.) I certainly do not claim that Catholics were not (at that time) relatively cohesive in their communities. A refusal to participate in common religious ceremonies, a choice to not use the KJV bible, choosing to not eat after midnight on Saturday evening, the carrying and use of rosaries, and a number of other practices made Catholics distinct and recogniizable. They did nothing to bring down the wrath of the larger population, but they could be identified as separate and they were subjected to several (rather mild) forms of persecution. If someone were to describe anti-Catholic discrimination in the 1940s as relying upon the “cohesive” nature of the Catholic commuinty, I would tend to agree that the description was accurate. Claiming that there are not similar phenomena in the relationships between Jews and the rest of society is silly and pointing to secular or non-observant Jews tends to miss the point.
I can’t help but wonder if a proposal to assimilate Jews more into mainstream culture–giving up religion, Saturday sabbath, the Torah, yarmulkes, circumcision, etc., is not the outgrowth of an ulterior motive–to eradcate the religion, as the Nazis, the medieval Catholic church, and the anti-Semitic Soviet government tried to do.
