"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. " http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2007/2007-October/020123.html
"I've also believed for
>some time
>that the Yiddish-speaking Jews in Eastern Europe constituted a nation, a
>part of which reconstituted itself as a Hebrew-speaking nation in Israel. " http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2006/2006-July/014419.html
----- Original Message ---- From: Marv Gandall <marvgandall at videotron.ca> In the predominantly Jewish neighbourhood in which I grew up, most immigrants described themselves as not simply as "Jews", but as "Polish Jews", "Russian Jews", "Romanian Jews" "Litvaks" (ie. Baltic Jews) etc., in the same way Irish immigrants identified themselves as "Irish Catholics". I don't recall the Jews being any more conscious of belonging to a "chosen people" than any other religious or national group which invariably flatters itself as possessing unique virtues. A large minority of left-wing Jews, in fact, insistently saw themselves as workers first and Jews second, and generally viewed ethnic affiliations as parochial and reactionary. They dwarfed the influence of the Zionists until the facts of the Holocaust became known. In any case, there's simply no basis to single out the experience and behaviour of Jewish immigrants and subsequent generations as being substantially different from that of other immigrant groups - certainly not after
they emigrated from the! shtetls to the cities. At worst, it can be construed as an echo of the old antisemitic trope of the Jew as Alien which was promoted outside of rather than within the Jewish communities. ___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk