Coming February 6, 2024 . . .
MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop
Coming February 6, 2024 . . . MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
On this site where at least some believe that it is appropriate to stereotype Jews running for political office by presuming their pro-Israel orientation at the threshold and without regard to prior political positions, and on a site where it's OK to trash 2000 plus-years of Torah study as having zero ethical merit because some of the stories in the Bible aren't appropriate for Romper Room or whatever, I think it's important to consider anti-semitism in its ugliest form, such that the attempt to shield it behind anti-zionism becomes absurd. These Students [allegedly] for Justice in Palestine, focused their ire on their fellow Jewish students, as opposed to their fellow Zionist students. Imagine, heaven forbid, that the antic they pulled on 200 Jewish students was copied and pulled against another discrete minority group.
Comments
Have you been fitted with iron bolts, too, Bruce?
by Donal on Mon, 04/09/2012 - 2:47pm
Sorry Donal, but I don't understand the reference.
by Bruce Levine on Mon, 04/09/2012 - 3:44pm
Did someone say this was appropriate? Or did they just say it's useful to clarify positions when groups someone belongs to have common attitudes towards politically significant issues? (like whether a born-again Christian into home schooling might be for gutting the public school system using vouchers)
Did someone do this? I'm not sure what this means.
I might as well, though I think this particular case is certainly not its "ugliest form".
Nevertheless, it's insulting and out-of-whack, such as self-nominated crusaders targeting SUVs for abuse without knowing why people might have chosen those vehicles - though being targeted for your Jewishness is more humiliating and personal than your vehicle choice.
A better approach might have been to send eviction notes to all students, regardless of any affiliation, with the explanation in fine print of, "how would this make you feel?"
While it doesn't change the core issue of why this was a bad tactic, many American (and Israeli) Jews are supportive of Palestinian rights, and against illegal settlements that disrupt the peace process. As such, the stereotyping is a huge faux pas, where they might have gotten support they instead get rightful indignation.
by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 04/09/2012 - 3:52pm
I'm in almost 100% agreement with you, PP. The first one was presumably targeted at you, so it's good that you were the one to respond to it. I disagree with your position (as we've discussed earlier), but I also thought that bslev misrepresented it. The second one gave me the same reaction as you. I think he's referring to something that Genghis wrote a while back (although I might have the wrong person) questioning the moral authority of someone/something that also told you to kill innocent children. I'm just guessing there.
And yeah, there are definitely uglier forms of anti-Semitism, but I agree (with you and bslev) that this one is ugly, as well as ill-informed.
by Verified Atheist on Mon, 04/09/2012 - 3:59pm
It appears that you consider Jews and "born-again Christians" to be an apples to apples comparison. Presumably (and perhaps I am incorrect), when you write of "born-agains" you are referring to folks who have declared and acted as such on matters political (e.g. school prayer, abortion issues, etc.). I think that's different than presuming stereotypes about people--based on what "group" they were born into--regardless of prior actions. I think the comparison of people who are born Jewish with people who have chosen to be "born-again Christians" is an apples to oranges comparison if there ever was one.
by Bruce Levine on Mon, 04/09/2012 - 5:42pm
He meant haredin a useful portmanteau into which we can put all manner of black-coated, woman hating piety.
by jollyroger on Mon, 04/09/2012 - 5:46pm
No, I consider Jews and "born-again Christians who home-school" as an apples to apples comparison.
Oh wait, that would be ridiculous. That would be a dates to apples comparison.
Except American Jews don't eat as many dates as Israeli Jews (if I might stereotype a moment)
So perhaps we can compromise on a tangerines to apples comparison? (do American Jews eat tangerines in any kind of predictable pattern?)
Now I'm confused. Oh now I remember - I was drawing an "analogy", but of the vaguer non-one-to-one type, of "people who with high frequency are passionate about a certain view or behavior". A good number of Rastafarians seem to like spliff, but certainly not 100%. Spaniards seem to like red wine on the average.
Except my analogy was focused on a behavior or preference that had political ramifications. Such as "an openly gay candidate will likely support gay marriage". Which is fine with me, but I like to understand the legislative agenda, as well as what it means for prospects for winning.
Though the reason I picked "home schooling" is because I home school, but from what I've seen, evangelical Christians who home school seem to me more likely to push a fundamentalist agenda for society. Even though I've met a wide range of evangelical homeschoolers, so I'd likely validate that attitude in a particular candidate who was an evangelical homeschooler.
Did I pick all the nits and beat this pithy subject into sufficient mush yet?
by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 04/09/2012 - 6:10pm
Beyond the anti-semitic generalities, what also gets me about it is the cluelessness:
As for the questionable method the group chose, she said: "We have the right to express ourselves. There is no reason for the Jewish community to feel afraid."
It's absurd how clueless saying that is. The counterproductive nature of the whole exercise is not even evident to them! No recognition that by blanket targeting of American Jews as being responsible, they are more likely to increase the number of Jews that are supporters of Israel. Why wouldn't non-Israeli Jews feel the need to always have a homeland when other people act like this toward them and assign collective guilt? It would be kind of superhuman to react otherwise, to not have fear of what will be next, to retreat into tribe.
Also, I think it's a big difference from thinking like this, and acting like this. That's where the fear rightly comes in. It's a big deal to make that step.
by artappraiser on Mon, 04/09/2012 - 4:52pm
Thanks AA. I still don't understand how one can condemn this kind of blatant anti-semitism and then see no link to this acceptable presumption some around here subscribe to that Jews, regardless of prior political or other record, deserve scrutiny on matters concerning Israel. It's really so fucked up to me, particularly when around these parts you have fourteen Jews with fifteen views. This notion, for example, that Genghis and I should both be subjected to special scrutiny were we to be foolish enough to run for office--because we are both Jewsh--is, to me, unacceptable. It stings and so I write about it now and then.
by Bruce Levine on Mon, 04/09/2012 - 5:09pm
You accidentally hit on a good point: "Jews, regardless of prior political or other record, deserve scrutiny..."
Now, how do I know what your "prior political or other record" is without some kind of scrutinizing? Unless you happen to have pasted your views around the internet or some other broadcast medium.
Actually, I can't remember Genghis making comments about Israel or if he did, maybe he wasn't so emphatic. He talked about some stories from the Torah, but as the tone was quite different from Israel-right-or-wrong, more like "the punch line of all these survival stories that you never noticed", I somehow doubt I'd feel a need to look closer. That doesn't mean I wouldn't vote for a pro-Israel Jew however - it means I'm unlikely to vote for a demagogic pro-Israel person of any persuasion. Or anyone demagogic pro-tax cuts, or demagogic pro-welfare, or a host of other areas, though obviously I might have to figure out priorities as the list gets long.
Regarding "special scrutiny", well, no, it's the same scrutiny everyone should go through - what informs your beliefs and actions, what your behavior and thought process be in office, how are you likely to handle X kinds of typical problems and issues.
I know it's terrible, but my prejudice is so ingrained, that I even suspect fewer office-holding women than men will photograph their genitals (or underwear-clad genitals) and Tweet it to a relative stranger. Or try to trick a journalist onto a boat full of sex toys for blackmail and embarrassment purposes. That doesn't mean I suspect every guy will do that - or that "girls gone wild" won't act like girls gone wild - I just have a set of expectations that I figure fall within a certain amount of accuracy until I have a need to recalibrate my meter.
by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 04/09/2012 - 5:35pm
I think it should be record-based and not based on what human group someone was born into. It sounds like you agree for the most part here. Respectfully, I don't believe that was the position you took previously. I would like nothing more than to be wrong about my understanding of your prior position.
by Bruce Levine on Mon, 04/09/2012 - 5:46pm
I think I'm arguing both (and haven't changed): our human groups (born and chosen) as probability indication, tied to evaluating actual record/beliefs/statements, and only where it's politically relevant.
by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 04/09/2012 - 6:26pm
Where the blank calls for "race", you can't go wrong with "human"
by jollyroger on Mon, 04/09/2012 - 6:47pm
I think I might have to step up vis-a-vis the dismissive of the bochurs charge...
I never read ynet, for obvious reasons.
I am, I suppose, the prototypical ashkenaz anti-zionist. It would certainly piss me off if someone were to mistake me for a zionist.
That said, and with an eye towards the cherokee, a symbolic service of eviction as an artifact of ethnicity does serve to concentrate the attention on the phenomenology attendant upon the event when really experienced.
Personally, I deplore all *S.O.S violence.
*Semite-on-Semite
by jollyroger on Mon, 04/09/2012 - 5:18pm
Hey JR,
I think you are an even better example than Genghis perhaps. In other words, anyone who has read you and me for a year or two or five on matters concerning SOS and stuff would never mistake us for two peas in a pod (except that we both got snipped back in the day in the midst of a sea of sable and whitefish salad).
by Bruce Levine on Mon, 04/09/2012 - 5:30pm
Anent which, I have recently stumbled into the dizzying concept of reversal of that bit of gratuitous mutilation--at the same time as some truly disturbing stats circulate re:the uncanny susceptibility of foreskin tissue to retrovirus infection.
Win some, lose some.
by jollyroger on Mon, 04/09/2012 - 5:40pm
This brings to mind a character in the funniest, and to me quite informative, book I have read in a long time. Actually only 3/4 through. It is called "The Finkler Question" and there is a character in it who is working daily through stretching exercises to reverse that bit of gratuitous mutilation.
I took your comment mainly as a chance to recommend the book.
by A Guy Called LULU on Mon, 04/09/2012 - 6:08pm
Read it, enjoyed it. Thanks Lulu.
by Bruce Levine on Mon, 04/09/2012 - 6:20pm
doh!
by Bruce Levine on Mon, 04/09/2012 - 6:20pm
Riffing on a link that I think came from G's chanukah for goyim, I came across an astonishing body of debate amongst early BCE jews as to whether one who had been circumcised could reverse, and having reversed, un reverse.
I kid you not.
by jollyroger on Mon, 04/09/2012 - 6:46pm
The topic was also one of considerable debate in the infant Christian faith when there weren't many gentiles hanging with them yet......
But let's get back to the USA, 20th century.....it's a useless signifier here to sort out Jews from everyone else......as most baby boomer males were circumsised at the modern hospital soon after birth unlike nany of their Dads born at home on the farm. Growing up a boomer in a Catholic family with four brothers, and lots of Catholic cousins and all kinds of Christian neighbor kids I saw nekkid when their diapers were changed, and a Catholic father who was also circumsised (born at home but with a doctor attending,) I had no idea that's not what all male genitalia looked like until I was a grownup. Once I learned that it wasn't, the signifier that I got from the culture that surrounded me then was that uncircumcised meant the guy probably came from a lower class or poor background, uneducated and/or rural to boot, i.e. a "hillbilly."
by artappraiser on Mon, 04/09/2012 - 9:00pm
Which must be evidence of the international Zionist conspiracy--how would you get (at the high point) 97% of the population to mutilate a very important part of the body? For no immediately discernable benefit?
by jollyroger on Mon, 04/09/2012 - 10:53pm
Well, maybe if you were a student there, the FAU SJP would let you stay as a capo or something like that.
(All 23 members of em, who don't seem to have much time to put much else on their website but their names and a profile that says SJP welcomes and encourages civilized and productive open debates and discussions on the conflict in order to promote a better understanding and a heightened awareness about the Palestinian people in the region. Oh wait I forgot, kidz these days don't do websites, they do Facebook........hmmm that makes wonder what ethnicity is a name like Mark Zuckerberg? (not.) If he were a a student at FAU, would he get an eviction notice if he claimed on college forms that he's an Atheist? Or does one just go by the Jewish name? How in actuality do you figure out who to send the eviction notice to?)
P.S. Hoping the smilie qualifies as evading invocation of Godwin's Law!
by artappraiser on Mon, 04/09/2012 - 7:39pm
It would doubtless have been more artful (and ironic) if the palestinians had picked any other ethnicity to be the object of the lesson.
They could have done a "no irish need apply" redux, working from 19th century newspapers..
Or, like I said, the Cherokee.
Maybe too subtle?
by jollyroger on Mon, 04/09/2012 - 7:43pm
Genghis is a goddamned Jew???
Where's the unsubscribe button?
Can't find it!
Goddamn Jew probably hid it knowing I'd need it...
Unfortunately, the MJ Rosenberg Wars so burned me out on Jewish and Israel issues that I've lapsed into an intellectual torpor around these things.
I actually had to re-read this article, based on Bruce's comments, before I noticed that the notices were posted on the doors of ordinary Jewish students who might have no affiliation with Zionism or Israel. That is, students who were not making a political statement at all. Just living in a dorm or house.
This could escalate, I suppose.
AA is right: If anything, this kind of thing will push people to think they might need their own country some day.
by Peter Schwartz on Mon, 04/09/2012 - 5:32pm
Genghis is a goddamned Jew
Sure, don't you remember the Kazaks? (Was it Koestler who was on after them being Jewish?)
by jollyroger on Mon, 04/09/2012 - 5:49pm
WTF? Who outed me??!!!
PS to Bruce: Now you've done it. No more glancing blows in the comments. Get ready for a full blog post in which this blogger attempts to impeach the moral authority of the Torah. (It might take a little while before this blogger has time to write it, though.)
by Michael Wolraich on Mon, 04/09/2012 - 7:34pm
Hey, it's your nickel.
by Bruce Levine on Mon, 04/09/2012 - 8:35pm
Let me refine a bit...
Even if the posters were placed on the doors of Israeli students or Zionist Jews, this is incitement to...what next?
Certainly a flame war in flesh and blood.
The Jews paint swastikas on all the doors of the Palestine supporters?
And what did the Israeli students and Zionist students do to deserve this treatment? Nothing as far as I can see. Is this anti-Semitism? I can't tell anymore, but it isn't good.
The EASY thing is an action like this. The HARD thing is to find a way to have meaningful dialogue. Especially when these kids, and most other people, feel impotent to move the situation forward.
Still trying to recover a bit since learning of Genghis's true identity...
Genghis, I think, chose this moniker because he's a Hungarian Jew. Like Genghis Khan, the first Hungarian Jew. Or the first Jew to visit Hungary. Or the first Mongolian to visit his Jewish relatives in Hungary. Something like that.
I, too, am a Hungarian Jew and had a "mongolian blue spot" at the base of my spine when I was born testifying to my Asian bona fides.
by Peter Schwartz on Tue, 04/10/2012 - 10:51am
Oh come on, there's a whole lost tribe of Chinese Jews, which makes Genghis.... lost. Yes, the series was inspired by him (you know how Jews control media)
by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 04/10/2012 - 11:25am