On Sun, 31 Jan 2010 10:40:25 -0500 Marv Gandall
<marvgandall at videotron.ca> writes:
>
> On 2010-01-31, at 9:22 AM, Chris Doss wrote:
>
> > Being a chosen people is an intrinsic part of religious Judaism,
> which is most Judaism before pretty recently.
> >
> > Dammit Marv, you have stated in several posts that there was a
> Yiddish-speaking Jewish nation in Eastern Europe before the
> Holocaust. Are you now going to take that back? E,g,.:
> >
> > "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.htm
> =====================================
> There is no contradiction here. I'm not quarreling with the
> distinctive national characteristics of the East European Jews, with
> their own language, religion, history, and institutions. I'm
> objecting to the inference on this thread that they were an insular
> people with an innate sense of superiority who would not or could
> not develop wider allegiances - which was patently not the case. As
> you know, the Soviet Union was a multinational federation,
> comprising Russians, Armenians, Georgians, Kazakhs, Ukranians,
> Tajiks, etc. The Jews arguably identified more strongly with the
> USSR than members of some of the other national minorities. This was
> also the case outside of Eastern Europe, in the more bourgeois and
> cosmopolitan Jewish communities in Austria-Hungary, Germany, France,
> and Britain, where, like all second and subsequent generation
> immigrants, the Jews shed the language and culture if not the
> religion of their ancestors and sought to assimilate into their host
> countries. W!
> here they did not succeed in doing so, it was not because they were
> unable to transcend an overriding loyalty to their own "nation" or a
> sense of themselves as a "chosen people", but because the church and
> right-wing political parties and demagogues would not permit it.
There is the interesting case of Ludwig Wittgenstein. He grew up in a thoroughly assimilated Jewish family, where both parents had converted to Christianity. Young Ludwig was brought up as a Catholic. The Wittgensteins, like most Jews of Austria-Hungary, were avid supporters of the Habsburg monarchy, which was seen as protective of Jewish interests. The EmperorFranz Joseph, who reigned from 1848-1916, had been especially revered by Jews in Austria-Hungary. Not too surprisingly, when the First World War broke out, the young Ludwig Wittgenstein eagerly served in the army as an officer. Many years later, the now older Ludwig became a strong admirer of the Soviet Union. Indeed, during the 1930s, he sought to emigrate there, turning to his friend John Maynard Keynes, for assistance (since Keynes apparently knew all the important people in the Soviet embassy in London).
Jim F. http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant
>
> I'll address James' comments later.
>
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
>
____________________________________________________________ Senior Assisted Living Put your loved ones in good hands with quality senior assisted living. Click now! http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/c?cp=6GRYzhG0bfNVZtE4DJhm5AAAJ1DoEMrytxsVXKlEh0tvqeWlAAYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAADNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASUQAAAAA=