Seth Kulick: >I don't understand your reference to Yiddish here. The Zionists were opposed to the use of Yiddish. <
to quote Ed McMahon, you are right sir! That's the trouble with me being a non-Jew in a secular-Jewish group: I get confused sometimes by non-Irish-Welsh-Amurrican traditions and lore. The Zionists clearly preferred Hebrew for Israel as opposed to Yiddish.
Dave:>Did Jim mean Hebrew?<
yes.
Seth: >There were different ways that Jewish nationalism developed, not all of them Zionist. There was the "diaspora nationaism" of Simon Dubnow, the Jewish Labor Bund, and so on. There was indeed a heavy emphasis on Yiddish among the non-Zionists, exactly because Yiddish was the language that many Jews, to understate the case, spoke. What was "invented" about it? <
the group I belong to (the Sholem Community in L.A.) follows the non-Zionist Yiddish tradition. It's clear that the emphasis on Yiddish was "invented" in the sense that the dialect has been purified and clarified, combining some Yiddish from Poland, from Germany, etc., while separating it from other Polish, German, etc. Sholem didn't do this as much as some Yiddish writers and poets who lived in Eastern Europe did it a few years ago. NB: since Yiddish doesn't have an army or a navy, it's not a "language."
Seth: >Personally, I am sympathetic to some of these outlooks, and am mildly involved in some of the remnants that still exist today. Of course, when you come right down to it, it's basically incoherent, because actually trying to define "Who is a Jew?" is impossible, in my view. But so what? Why should anybody care how others define themselves, or how they like to celebrate holidays, or whatever, as long as it doesn't interfere with others' lives? <
you are right sir.
Seth: >Matters are different with Israel, of course, because there "Who is a Jew?" is an important question that cannot be ignored. The Avnery article is good, although I wonder how much of the initial compromise with the religious groups was because they needed to decide "who is a Jew", and so handed that over to the rabbis. <
the question "who is a Jew?" becomes crucial when there's an army and a navy attached. -- Jim Devine / Bust Big Brother Bush! "To be positive: To be mistaken at the top of one's voice." -- Ambrose Bierce, Devil's Dictionary. This email was cleaned by emailStripper, available for free from http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm