Actually the term "chosen people" can have a theological meaning or a racial/hereditary meaning, or both. But they are not automatically together. The idea that Jews are a race didn't even arise until the 1800s and the German Anti-Semitic Party that echoed the ideas of Scientific Racism propounded by Gobineau and others. Some Jews then adopted the idea of a Jewish "race" as part of the very "modern" (1800s) idea of biological race which we now know was the social construction of race as separate from nationality. Racial Eugenics was taught at Harvard and MIT through the 1920s.
Kelley's suggestion about reading Imagined Communities is a good one.
Today, most Jews, including those that are Zionist, contest the idea that they are a specific homogeneic race. While White supremacists insist that Jews are a race that is inferior to the breeding stock of the Nordicist/Aryanist myths.
-----Original Message----- From: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com [mailto:owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com]On Behalf Of joanna bujes Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2001 4:43 PM To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com Subject: Re: race
At 02:23 PM 07/19/2001 -0400, you wrote:
>maybe you didn't mean it this way joanna, but still, there's just no
>"really" race.
I wasn't clear, but what I meant was that zionists DO speak of a jewish race.
I myself was educated before pomo, therefore I was taught that there were three races: black, white, and asian. However, since then I have realized that this concept is a product of the mind/culture rather than of biology. Nevertheless, just because I don't believe in it, doesn't mean that other people don't believe in it and I was particularly focusing on the zionist concept of the "chosen people" ... the jewish race and all that it leads to.
Joanna Bujes