Is this anti-semitism?

The tension between native majority and immigrants is real and not just the fruit of mindless chauvisnism or intolerance. For a secular French person, the right to secular education and religious tolerance is a touchy subject; the loi Ferry only dates from the beginning of the 20th Century and the some times monarchist but always right-wing, Catholic reaction was a very real threat from even before Dreyfuss. The Wars of Religion are something that the French remember at a level that I can assure you, most Americans of either side of the political spectrum, don't.

Should Muslims be able to continue male polygamy in Britain? Should Westerners be able to drink in Muslim countries or eat pork? Can the majority in a non-Jewish country ban circumcision as an act of child abuse? These are not necessarily idle or racist polemics. I tend toward the American libertarian norm and deplore the ban on ostentatious religiosity in schools, on the ban on the veil in public, on the hate-speech laws in France and the pre-emptive (or at least preclusive) bans on Dieudonné's performances, but i am almost very mindful of the national circumstances in which French attitudes arise.

I don't know if I agree with you. I've heard this argument many times from certain types of républicain un peu parfois tres à droite. The Wars of Religion are a traumatic event, yes. Secularity is important in the western european context, yes. However, we live in a globalized word in which immigration is a deciding factor. The goal posts have moved, at least culturally, and when it comes to certain things, the french are so attached to their roots they fail to understand why large numbers of immigrants don't have the time or ressources to be mindful of those national circumstances. Usually, the french jews sit outside this conversation, it's another context that is equally complicated.

re. baraka:

I don't know his work as well as I should, and I certainly haven't followed the coming and going (and coming again?) of his anti-semitism. it does seem like he wrote and said some outrageous, inexcusable things both as a young(er) man and, sadly, more recently.

that said, the ADL's web page that describes Baraka's anti-semitism is like the perfect encapsulation of the ADL's techniques. (see http://archive.adl.org/anti_semitism/baraka_words.html#.UtCMVfRDvTo) there's a ton of stuff taken out of context (by definition I suppose). for instance, there are passages taken from Baraka's own essay of self-criticism re. his anti-semitism as evidence of his anti-semitism (when Baraka's original, explicit purpose was to distance himself from those views). above all, there's the easy conflation and intermixing of genuine, if not often that thoughtful or sophisticated, criticism of israeli policy with statements casting strong bias on Jews as a group.

now, I'm no dummy. I know that the line between those two things can be blurry. there are certain ways of criticizing Israeli actions or "Israel itself" (ambiguously as a metonym for its government) in certain contexts and to certain audiences, that are effectively dog-whistles to anti-semites. it's regrettable that this is so. but there are also many many statements, made by baraka and others who were much less "outspoken" (to use a kind word) than he, that to my jewish mind contain no anti-semitic language at all, buut which the ADL gleefully dumps in along with everything else as evidence of anti-Jew bias.

the mingling of criticism of Israel(i policy) with anti-semitism is common and regrettable, but the ADL has been very clever and devious in using that truism to lump any form of criticism of israeli policy in the general category of "anti-Semitic speech." the irony of course is that many statements by even centrist members of the knesset would qualify as anti-semitic in the ADL's overbroad "definition."

I'm an American Jew, in whose name the ADL pretends to speak, so this angers me more than it probably does others. but I think their work-- along with that of national Hillel organization and other "mainstream" (ugh) Jewish organizations--does real violence to the possibility of adult, civil, open discourse on the topic of Israel and Israeli policy. they take one of the knottiest situations and give it a few more knots.

sorry I know this has all been hashed out earlier in this thread, and I hope it isn't a total derail. but just wanted to get this off my chest.

brief autobiographical aside:
I was on to the ADL's approach since back when I was a teenager. my Hebrew school actually brought my class into the ADL offices in NYC to have a "discussion" with some folks there. which of course was just a one-sided presentation (about the ADL's origins in B'nai Brith, their allegedly prolific and effective "humanitarian" work evidence of which I have yet to really see) until I raised some of the issues I mention above. i remember my Hebrew school teacher (Ray, a hateful chauvinist and racist--he once explained that the Palestinians "breed like rabbits") blanched and gave me a talking-to afterward. he said I had "ruined the experience" for my classmates. Ray, if you're out there somewhere, fuck you.

btw my hebrew-school and other childhood experiences (e.g. in my extended family's congregations) gave me such a horrible view of (at least a few slices of) mainstream jewish-american culture with its horrible chauvinism and racism and materialism that I find it very, very hard to attend any jewish event like a bar mitzvah, a wedding, even a seder without feeling deeply uncomfortable. and i doubt I will ever give to a jewish institution, even a jewish charity, unless it is very clearly one of the "jewish left". i recognize, very clearly, that I should detach my feelings about elements of Jewish-American cultures from my feelings about judaism and jewish ritual/practice in general. and I also realize that lots of non-Jews have similar experiences in other social-religious milieu; in a sense it's probably more a curse of the American upper-middle-class than anything specifically Jewish. but I cannot fully sever the link in my mind, it was reinforced over and over again in my youth.

OK, big derail and probably too personal. but I wonder if other folks here have similar experiences.

i guess the thread title applies to my post. :)

I was at an ADL fundraiser once where AF was the main speaker. My gf's Jewish and her dad and stepmother are pretty conservative and I was at the back of a room, somewhat tipsy after one martini too many and getting paranoid that the assembly could tell that I am not Jewish and treating me some like kind of infiltrator or something. AF's speech was utter horsefeathers, btw. To respond to yr question, though, amateurist, it's never been my experience that upper middle class Jews were any worse than upper middle class goyim in this country. Au contraire...

ADL does not have a huge presence in my life -- really the only time I hear them is in an article about anti-semitism where Foxman offers a quote. Which is not to say that there's no chauvinism in the kind of Judaism I am regularly exposed to - racism is certainly a problem in the very Orthodox community (though my particular Chabad synagogue is fairly pluralistic + open-minded). But there is a kind of institutional Judaism, or like professional Judaism, that is really the worst way to affiliate. You get none of the communal / ritual context and all of the political context. 45% of Orthodox Jews voted for President Obama in the last election iirc which means that while the majority of Jewish institutional opinion is aligned w/ a right-wing conservative worldview, there is a huge minority that dissents to some degree.

Tho that won't really help w/ your considerations about the radical pro-Israel position in the Jewish community which really is very broad and across the political spectrum. Half the world's Jewish population lives in Israel so it's not surprising that diaspora Jews would identify so strongly with the country, plus you really can't ignore the fact that the land of Israel is one of the most important aspects to Jewish culture. It's not like it was invented in 1940 and it's a relatively recent thing. It's like fundamental tenant of religion/texts/peoplehood/history/etc.

I was thinking the other day actually about how it's kinda surprising that there's no mention of the afterlife/world to come in the Old Testament. the only possible indication of early biblical belief in an afterlife is euphemistically from the verse, "And when Jacob had made an end of commanding his sons, he gathered up his feet into the bed, and yielded up the ghost, and was gathered unto his people." (Gen 49:33) by contrast the entire bible is basically a narrative about god creating the land of israel, promising it to the jewish people, and then the rest of the bible is the jewish people trying to get back to israel (which, my friend points out, is really the more fundamental element to judaism - not the living in israel, but the trying to return to it). by contrast the other major monotheistic religions heavily emphasize the afterlife and it is a major part of their theologies. idk.

my understanding was that the idea of an afterlife came relatively late to Judaism? within the context of the Bible i'm unsure as to whether any references in the OT to an afterlife aren't Christian interpolations of some kind. the Torah itself, as I know it thru the King James Bible, seems pretty solidly to be about the land of Canaan/Israel and not concerned with any rewards for faith after death

while the majority of Jewish institutional opinion is aligned w/ a right-wing conservative worldview

I'm not sure which Jewish institutions you're talking about. by "mainstream" I largely meant reform/conservative-(and some modern orthodox)-associated Jewish institutions/culture, not haredi/ultra-orthodox institutions.

w/r/t to "mainstream" jewish politics I think your comment is at best a grievous oversimpliciation, at worst just wrong. Jews are still, though less and less than in past eras, something like a Democratic voting block. only the most Israel-obsessed or otherwise politically coarsened of my extended family votes Republican, even on occasion. a few might be wary of Obama because they have bought the right-wing line that he is "not a friend of Israel" or whatever. but I'd say that most of them are vaguely left-of-center with a huge blind spot when it comes to mideast politics.

of course, one could argue that even the Democratic party effectively espouses a right-wing worldview and they wouldn't be entirely wrong. (personally, I think that's a little hyperbolic though it goes point to some essential truths.) but I don't think that's the argument you were making.

am I reading you right?

yes, sorry - i meant that comment to refer specifically to orthodox Jewish institutions

well maybe not just orthodox but like - old school jewish institutions

what do you mean by old school?

btw I wouldn't call my relatives "professional jews" in a strict sense but their social identity is basically coextensive with the jewish community in their cities. well, maybe not coextensive but they seem to exist almost entirely within a jewish world. at the dinner table every name that comes up is a cohen, rosenbloom, etc. it's a genuine culture shock for me, who has plenty of jewish friends and colleagues but many other sort of folks too (and my partner is not a Jew). just once I'd like to hear about a smith or a d'emilio or a flanagan or a horvath or an anderson or an abadi or an alidou or a ravishankar or whatever.

frankly this sort of clannishness in a pluralistic society like ours feels like a terribly willful and backwards thing to me. especially for the upper-middle-class folks who aren't connected by language or intense religious belief (as for example the haredi can be)... or the bonds of recent immigration as with my grandparents and great-grandparents.

or more to the point, this sort of social exclusivity seems hazardous. its consequences are readily identifiable in the straightened and not-very-worldly political and culture outlooks of many of the younger members of my family.

but again, this surely applies to lots of cultures and not just American jews. but I'm Jewish so these are the experiences I have.

(btw it's quite possible that my notion of jews as a democratic voting block is a mesofact and that a large minority or even a majority of non-haredi jews are aligned, not just ideologically but in terms of actual votes, with the GOP. but I doubt it.)

one could argue that even the Democratic party effectively espouses a right-wing worldview

EVEN!

I congratulate the conservatives in that 45% on being intellectually honest.

ha! I have invoked Morbs with the merest mention of the Democratic Party!

or do you just read every thread? because that's possible too.

I think this is a testable research question, actually. I will set to work.

He was posting in this thread earlier today.

I'm just used to him popping up shortly after I say anything that might remotely be construed as controversial. it's cool though, i don't mind. but it's as predictable (I don't mean that in a bad way!) as bar closing time.

baraka seems to say antisemitic things and sympathetic-to-jewish-people in a 1:1 ratio

he was also tight bros w allen ginsberg fwiw

yeah it seems like he was a man of contradictions. got to hand it to the ADL for cherry-picking his statements to make him seem like a total devil.

frankly this sort of clannishness in a pluralistic society like ours feels like a terribly willful and backwards thing to me.

i feel like this is sort of the crux of the thing. you can make all kinds of dialectics + distinctions about the particularistic amid the pluralistic, the chosen ppl out in the diaspora - and there's def a truth to that - but if particularism is willful + backwards, and even terrible, then really the break w/ the community is inevitable.

lol guys, i think Baraka has his redeeming points but let's not gloss over his antisemitism bc it's pretty self-evident and on the record

like if not being a holocaust denier counts as a "sympathetic-to-jewish-people" thing then we're setting the bar super low

are you referring to his 9-11 poem?

yes, but even his supposed repudiation of anti-semitism was really not a repudiation at all

yeah you're roght and I'm not trying to gloss it over

oh i'm sure baraka was among other things an anti-semite, so I'm not really arguing with that, just using his example (a bad one I suppose) to show how the ADL's manipulation of discourse can work.

mordy:
i think there's a not-small difference between impoverished jews living amongst anti-semites in the pale of settlement, or even a bunch of immigrants living in tenements on the LES--- or even people a generation or two removed from these situations -- and the sort of "particularism" I'm pointing out among my relatives and their friends and neighbors. they live in intensely multicultural cities, in fairly wealthy neighborhoods where their neighbors are just as likely to be gentiles as jews, interacting with non-Jews day in and out -- but choosing to extend the hand of close friendship and collegiality primarily to other Jews. maybe they just found themselves there, through the same kind of quasi-invisible pull that draws most of us into the milieu(x) we've found ourselves in. but there are reasons I believe this is not entirely so, from my cousin nearly refusing to hang out with my black friends when he visited me (this is back when we were both in grammar school) to the look of glazed indifference I get from many relatives when I start to talk about anything non-jewish-related for more than a minute...

but there are reasons I believe this is not entirely so

what do you think those reasons are?

jews have been affiliating w/ other jews and identifying w/ others jews throughout jewish history btw - not just during time spent in the pale of settlement.

like if you believe that Jewish identity is entirely a product of circumstances - desperate survival in the face of antisemitism, recent off-the-boat immigrants who only speak yiddish - then you are pretty alienated from Jewishness as I think it has been primarily experienced + practiced. I think there's some truth to the idea that Jewish identity has been constituted by oppression + survival, but I think that is a very small piece of it. there are shared communal/religious/social/etc values + ritual experiences (i think ritual performance is very very constitutive - even just going to synagogue for rosh hashana + yom kippur, let alone celebrating other holidays, passover, shabbat, etc within a community). there is reason to feel that judaism requires an engagement w/ the world and the ppl around u (tikkun olam/birrur nitzitzut/etc) but that's not unanimous within jewish ideology + it doesn't disavow particularism + peoplehood.

wasn't Baraka's first wife Jewish? not that that has much to do with anything.

i'm not consciously following you around, a'tist, u haven't reached that level yet.

Poppy Bush was about 100x harder on Israeli -- let's call them "excesses" -- than Obama has been. Any realistic conservative would take him over that shmendrik Mittens.

say what you will about obama - and i have plenty of complaints about him - he has always been a friend to israel. (i was a little worried when he let kerry loose in the middle east but it turns out that was much ado about nothing.)

sure has! that would be one of my major complaints about him if he wasn't the worst civil liberties president in modern times AND an accomplished war criminal.

yeah, from my perspective obama (like the rest of the presidents dating back--to whom? reagan? nixon?) has been an israel-enabler. (he clearly has a personal antipathy to netanyahu, but that's just good sense.)

also mordy i gave you a hint of my reasons for thinking that my relatives' quasi-exclusionary social milieu is partly willed/willful.

note that I'm not talking about "affiliating w/ other jews and identifying w/ others jews" -- that's to be expected, and certainly not to be disparaged. i'm talking, again, about a milieu in which people's social bonds are all but exclusively among other jews. and these are NOT super-religious people; they are seldom particularly reflective about religious belief or practice. once, when a relative, talking his son and myself out for dinner at disneyland, insisted that I keep kosher alongside them, I asked what the purpose of kosher dietary laws was, and he drew a complete blank.

i guess this all might make more sense if I were to discuss the history of my family, but I don't want to get into that here too much. so probably I'm generalizing from insufficient evidence. (though it's not like my experiences w/ my family haven't been echoed in experiences in hebrew school, hillel, etc.)

anyway, I think it's fair to describe me as alienated from alienated from anything resembling a jewish community, though I would never deny being a Jew and, for reasons I don't entirely understand, am occasionally even proud of this identity.

i think the bare fact that I have been subject to anti-semitism (and certainly heard enough of it, esp. in europe) concretizes my jewish identity, even if i still wouldn't walk into a hillel if you gave me a million dollars.

lol u make me want to invite u over for a shabbos meal

though I would never deny being a Jew and, for reasons I don't entirely understand, am occasionally even proud of this identity.

i find this sentiment very beautiful btw is what i mean

((actually doesn't israel-enabling go back to kennedy? certainly eisenhower was an ambivalent ally.))

ha let's take this thread back to baraka or something so it's not about me. sorry for derail. :(

i'd go to your shabbos if you don't make me feel like a turd for having lost most of my hebrew.

maybe i should just explode this thread with

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsA1-pS5UGs

V much enjoyed yr thoughts itt tbh

i suppose technically 'israel-enabling' goes back to truman.

(i was a little worried when he let kerry loose in the middle east but it turns out that was much ado about nothing.)

andrew cockburn's harper's piece about kerry in the middle east from a month or so ago is well worth reading btw.

ugh, my harper's sub just elapsed - worth resubbing for?

Is it anti-Semitic to be happy Ariel Sharon is dead?

the article was up free on their website for a while but looks like it isn't anymore. :(

i've kinda been craving chatting about sharon's legacy (i like him a lot, tho i'm not sad he's dead -- he was in a coma for a long time) but i'm not sure it would so satisfying - probably more upsetting

i think being happy that Ariel Sharon is dead is a lot like being anti-Israel - high correlation to anti-semitism but not 100%

I mean, I'm not talking about the 'is it okay to be happy someone dies?' stuff we got with Thatcher. I'm interested in whether or not Sharon was a good man.

what is a good man? i think he was loyal to his ppl and his country and an israeli patriot. it's kinda beside the point whether he's a good man (sabra and shatila certainly suggest that he was, like most military men, not totally in touch w/ value of all human life). his biggest legacy probably going to end up being withdrawal from gaza.