[lbo-talk] Jewish "nation"? (Was Armenian genocide?)

[Russell Grinker]

I prefer Abraham Leon's 'people-class' idea (see his *The Jewish question: A
Marxist interpretation*). And I tend to go along with his argument that this
people-class was already being wiped out (as a social formation) by the
erosion of pre-capitalist social relations in the east in the late 19th
Century as it had been at an earlier stage in Western Europe where Jews had
long been assimilated. Dispersed across Eastern Europe and moving into the
west, these 'luftmenschen' became a visible and easy scapegoat in an era of
economic depression and social dislocation which was also eroding other
archaic social formations. In other words, the shtetel was already on its
way out before these communities bore the brunt of the Final Solution.

-----Original Message-----
From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]
On Behalf Of Marvin Gandall
Sent: 18 October 2007 07:19 PM
To: LBO-Talk
Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Jewish "nation"? (Was Armenian genocide?)

Chris wrote:

I think if one redefines "Jew" as "Eastern European
Yiddish-Speaking Jew," the Nazis were very successful.
A few stragglers made it through, but the nation is
dead...
=============================
I think that's very true. The East European Jews lived in their own
communities and had a distinctive Yiddish-speaking culture, qualifying them
as a nation, albeit an oppressed one which didn't enjoy sovereignty over its
own territory. That Yiddish-speaking nation was destroyed, replaced by a new
Hebrew-speaking nation in the Mideast. Elsewhere, Judaism is simply a
religion like Catholicism, it adherents dispersed among many nationalities.
Swedish and Algerian Jews are still bound by the ancient religious rituals
and symbols, but that is about all they have in common.