On May 7, 2006, at 9:17 AM, Marvin Gandall wrote:
> Joel Shalit wrote:
>
>> This is why when I hear third parties who are not Jewish taking
>> such a
>> deep interest in my culture and my politics make such
>> generalizations, it
>> makes me bristle, like I'm being examined through a tourist's
>> eyes. I'm
>> not an advocate of the "you gotta walk in my shoes to know what
>> its like"
>> ethos, but I feel like that when i hear such crazy statements in an
>> increasingly Christian political environment.
> ===============================
> I've asked this question many times over the years with many
> friends, and
> they have never given me what I have found to be a satisfying
> answer: What
> precisely is "Jewish" culture and "Jewish" politics?
>
> Often, they've reduced "Jewishness" to "a concern for social
> justice and an
> emphasis on learning", values which they see embedded in the Torah and
> related commentaries. But these are universal strivings, even
> though all
> groups - not only Jews - make self-flattering proprietory claims on
> them.
> They surface within and between groups depending on historical
> circumstances
> rather than anything innate.
I completely agree. What this reduction of Jewishness is really about is just a community-specific example of a universal phenomena. To ontologize it as being an innately 'Jewish' exercise is wrong.
>
> There is, of course, a Hebrew-speaking culture which has arisen in the
> Middle East over the past century, and there used to be a Yiddish-
> speaking
> culture which existed in Eastern Europe, and the political
> appearance of the
> state of Israel in 1948 literally served to bridge them.
Sure - this is correct.
>
> However, I'm not able to identify a "Jewish" culture or "Jewish"
> politics as
> such. A Swedish-speaking academic in Stockholm might share a common
> set of
> inherited Jewish religious rituals with an Arabic-speaking cab
> driver in
> Rabat and an historical memory of persecution on those grounds -
> the same is
> true of all international religions - but I can't think of anything
> beyond
> that of any consequence where they would have more in common with
> each other
> than with their "non-Jewish" Swedish and Morrocan neighbours.
Yes, there's a lot of truth to this. I think that there are political traditions one can identify as being more common in certain immigrant communities than other. I similarly believe that there are remarkable parallels one can draw as well which make it possible to speak of pan-immigrant community traditions which contradict attempts to essentialize "Jewish" and "Muslim" immigrant politics and cultures as well. However, I also believe that there are historically unique and culturally specific moments to these experiences for each of these communities - as well as every other. Properly understanding them as both individual and greater communities involves being sensitive to both phenomena.
>
> Wouldn't you agree? You clearly share the culture and politics of
> the people
> on this list, even though you may have religious ties with the
> Morrocan cab
> driver, who is almost certainly a stranger to you in all other crucial
> respects.
Sure - nice way of putting it, Marvin. But regarding the Morroccan cab driver - I grew up in a Sephardi (not Ashkenazi) household in the seventies - Jews of Middle Eastern descent (Algerians).
> To frame the issue more directly in the context of the current
> discussion, aren't Yoshie's comments - or, even Mearsheimer's and
> Walt's,
> for that matter - more consistent with your outlook than those of
> Netanyahu
> and Perle and others with whom you claim a "Jewish" cultural and
> political
> kinship, and shouldn't it be their interventions on these matters
> rather
> than ours - including their calculated use of the the anti-semitism
> card to
> chill criticism of Israel - which should cause you to "bristle"?
Yes - one hundred and fifty percent, if not more. Let me clarify: I claim kinship, unfortunately, with the Netanyahu and Perle's of the world, simply on the basis of a shared cultural background - and in Netanyahu's case, because he was the Prime Minister of a country I am citizen of. That ought to be enough. Nevertheless, I still reject them morally and politically. I think its possible to do both, and to do so with an extremely clean conscience as a leftist. I don't reject identity outright, if that's what you're getting at. We are all products of the social and historical milieus out of which we emerge, and I believe that to ignore and not use the material inherent in our backgrounds for universal social justice purposes can be nearsighted.
However, I do think that the left has a problem talking about Jews and Jewish issues, and clearly both subjects remain of concern to progressives. I tend to find the way we talk about them is laden with a lot of misunderstandings that for for social justice reasons (like understanding anti-Muslim prejudice), need to be worked on. For example, the ideological invocation of anti-Semitism, like any invocation of racism, doesn't come out of nowhere. It has as many contemporary roots in the real life experiences of those whose opinions it manipulates as it does historical ones, and it might, in this instance, come from the same ideological reservoir that nourishes American religious hatred of Muslims. The point is to always be able separate all of these things out, weigh them carefully, de-legitimate their ideological uses, and then ask why such concerns still resonate.
>
>
>
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