On Thu, 1 May 2003 08:11:14 -0700 (PDT) Alan Jacobson
<alanjacobson at sbcglobal.net> writes:
> It's complicated (which is code for I don't have a
> good answer).
>
> Judaism is a both system of religious beliefs and the
> unifying cultural expression of a group of people
> (which some would say is the basis for nationality,
> that's also complicated). The mix of these two things
> varies within various strains of Judaism. And some,
> myself included, consider themselves Jews for
> cultural/historic reasons but not for religious ones
> (I am a materialist and a Marxist so the big guy in
> sky with a white beard thing doesn't work for me).
But as Marxists we do revere another famous guy with a white beard.
>
> Gentiles have had difficulty dealing with that
> duality. Sometimes cultural Jews are ok but religious
> ones are not ok, and vice-versa.
Yes, that's a curious phenomenon. For a long time, in the US it was the cultural Jews or secular Jews who were more accepted in American society, whereas religious Jews, particularly the Orthodox who were more likely to be marginalized. In recent years, it seems that religious Jews have become much more acceptable, indeed to the point that a guy who labels himself an Orthodox Jew, is running to be the Democratic nominee for the presidency. Also, evangelical Potestants seem to find religious Jews to be much more to their liking than the cultural kind.
>
> Another complicated variable is the question of
> Zionism, which many Jews currently subscribe to but is
> a relatively modern phenomenon. The eastern European
> Jewish socialists united in the Bund were not Zionists
> and fought against it as a political trend in the
> Jewish community. Unfortunately the Bund was basically
> wiped out in the Holocaust.
Talking about Zionism in reference to the differences between religious Jews and cultural Jews can be quite complicated because while it is the case that Zionism was largely started by cultural Jews (i.e. Herzl was not religious, and some of the early Zionists including the Labor Zionists, and the father of Revisionist Zionism were atheists or agnostics) and for many years the Orthodox rabbinate was largely opposed to Zionism, it is also the case that Zionism as a mass movement took root among largely religious Jews in eastern Europe. And now a days, it is the religious Jews who tend to be the strongest supporters of ZIonism, although there are some notable exceptions to that.
>
> I am sure there are others on the list who can speak
> with more authority on these issues but these are just
> a couple of thoughts.
>
> Alan Jacobson
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
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