The Forward Warns
For a long time, many of us have grumbled that Jewish victimology is a dead end, or worse. That promoting Holocaustism and lashing out at all critics of Israel and American Jewish policies were taking us to a place we do not want to go.
The Forward elucidates these concerns in its editorial, “Joe-Bashing and the Jews.� We can rail at anti-Semitism, or note it privately, or we can spend our energy and focus correcting where we have gone wrong communally. As always, defense groups who claim to speak for the Jewish community are disproportionately at fault. They have no right to speak on the Jewish community’s behalf. They are causing us serious harm.
The Forward notes,
Ironically, when Israel’s foes successfully present themselves as underdogs and victims of Jewish bullying, the very attempt by Jews to fight back becomes evidence for the prosecution. And the more the Jewish community’s advocates try to respond with their old, familiar weapons of self-defense — the historic claims of victimhood and vulnerability — the less effective the weapons become.
American Jews have long presented themselves as fighting allies of the embattled Jewish state. Now the other side is firing back, using the Jewish community’s own weapons. American Jews are caught off guard, unprepared for the counterattack[...]
American Jews still have vast resources. They have many more friends than enemies. But a critical milestone has been passed: The post-Holocaust taboo on demonization of Jews is very nearly gone.
Pretty astute, huh? Too bad the Forward didn’t take a more explicit shot at the Neocons, the Jewish defense organizations, and Jewish communal “leaders� and laymen who act like a bunch of whiny, hypersensitive crybabies. That would be badass, but I guess even the independent Forward doesn’t quite have the sack to…oh…oh wait…oh, my.
It doesn’t help when the biggest Jewish representative bodies allow themselves and their community to be identified in the public eye with a discredited administration and a larger conservative movement in terminal meltdown. It doesn’t help when Jews ignore or deny Israel’s genuine shortcomings. It doesn’t help when they overreact to criticism — hostile, benign or just clumsy — and intimidate their critics into resentful silence, reinforcing their enemies’ worst stereotypes.
6 comments
I didn’t know where else to put this, so I figured this post was as good as any. Have you seen this bag yet, Kelsey? I think you should get one.
http://www.jewlicious.com/?p=4012
Very funny! Some good stuff over there.
I think Israel siding with the far right in this country goes back to the Reagan days and their involvement with Iran/Contra. It is sad indeed that religious fundamentalists hold even more sway beyond their numbers in the knesset than they do in the U.S. Congress. Is there a blog here about that I’ve missed?
Recursive Prophet,
I generally stick to domestic issues because I don’t know the lay of the land there like I do here, so I haven’t usually addressed that in a serious way, though I got a lot out of a course I took in Grad school call “Comparative Fundamentalism,” which helped me understand fundamentalisms in a general way, as well as there roots and growth.
I would recommend that you read Dr. Samuel Heilman’s articles. He specializes in Jewish fundamentalism, and he is an Orthodox Jew, so he really understands his subject matter, but it is from a sociologist’s perspective, not specifically a political one, which may interest you more, or maybe not, actually, you seem quite interested in sociology as well.
There is a also book of essays called “The Essentials of Fundamentalism” which is great, and I believe another companion collection with a similar name as well…a library should have them.
Wow! I can’t believe it.
And I can’t wait to see the letters they get…
Or at least the ones they print.
I imagine they will somehow be blamed for causing the holocaust retroactively with this editorial.
Heilman is also the editor of Contemporary Jewry, the journal of the Association for the Scientific Study of Jewry (www.assj.org). They don’t make the issues available online, but, for some reason, the did with the 2005 issue, which contains an article of Heilman’s, How Did Fundamentalism Manage to Infiltrate Contemporary Orthodoxy, along with responses by two other scholars.
I’d also recommend books and articles by Martin Marty, a scholar at U Chicago who has been studying fundamentalism for decades. Has a website: http://www.illuminos.com.
At a more popular level, Karen Armstrong wrote a book a few years ago, The Battle for God: Fundamentalism in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. People complain about her - biased, not a thorough scholar - but I like her; I think she has important insights. A former nun who taught for a time at Leo Baeck College in London.
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