[lbo-talk] Help! Need historicall info!

[andie nachgeborenen]

Who are you, Socrates? No, your mother suddenly telling you she was Jewish wouldn't make you Jewish. she'd have to be Jewish, means, her mother would have to be Jewish. Practically speaking whether you qualify for membership in this or any other group is a matter of whether most of the people inside it agree that you qualify, but it's not just intersubjective. They probably would agree that you're not in if you couldn't point to anyone in your mother's line of descent in the last eight or ten, or maybe threeor for, generations who ever practiced Judaism, lived in and identified with the Jewish community, etc. But being Jewish is no more difficult (or easier) than membership in other groups, and just because there are hard cases doesn't mean most cases aren't easy ones. If you insist on a set of necessary and sufficient conditions that must be strictly, I guarantee you that you will end up with the conclusion that there are no groups, just individuals with sets of properties. For a conclusive demotion of this position, read the first few chapters of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, following the chpater on Sense Certainty. (Really!) I think the section is called Perception. jks

Bill Bartlett <billbartlett at enterprize.net.au> wrote:At 6:50 AM -0700 1/5/03, andie nachgeborenen wrote:


>Going postmodern us us, Bill? Jews define Jewish as having a Jewish mother. (Yeah, it's an infinite regress. But is it a vicious one?)

Not vicious, it just doesn't answer the question. If my mother suddenly told me she was Jewish, would that make me Jewish? Or is there some way for a doubting Thomas like me to confirm or deny this? I mean, I know she was born in Tasmania, so if for argument's sake you take that as a definition of being (amongst other things) a "Tasmanian", then so be it - she is a Tasmanian. If the definition of "Tasmanian" was, rather, that one's mother was born in Tasmania, then that would also be an objective criteria.

But if the criteria were simply that your mother had to be a "Tasmanian", without any way of determining whether or not your mother actually was a "Tasmanian", the concept of being a "Tasmanian" seems totally devoid of any meaning. Every man and his dog could call himself a "Tasmanian", without fear of contradiction. (Which might tend to clutter the place up.) Its not a vicious circle, because it doesn't go around and around. It is, instead, a logical black hole, with a singularity of infinite meaninglessness at its core.

I just find it interesting that's all. It often seems to be the case that ethnic identity is so vague as to be meaningless. I recall trying to understand a Polish guest recently, after he explained to me that Poles were "Slavic". he explained that it was all about language, religion and cultural heritage. But when I enquired how this could be so, given that the Polish language, religion etc heritage appeared to be quite distinct from that of the other Slavic areas, he just gave up on me.

I must be too dense to grasp these things.


> jks (Jewish in the relevant sense).

But how do you know that, if you can't define "Jewish"? Surely there must be a more objective test, otherwise anyone could emigrate to Israel? Surely the Jewish state doesn't just ask potential immigrants if their mother was Jewish and wave them in if they answer "Yes". What's to stop all those Palestinian refugees suddenly asserting that their mother was "Jewish"? How do they check up if they get suspicious?

Bill Bartlett
Bracknell Tas

PS: Define "Postmodern". ;-)
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