Thank you, Dr. Lewis. This is a fascinating insight into the Jewish psyche.
There seem to be three strands here.
Isolationist: Jews who happen to be living in Britain or France, and are happy to keep the threatening and potentially antisemitic world at bay as much as possible.
Assimilationist: Jews who try to forget they’re Jews, as they disappear, chameleon-like, into the background.
And universalist: citizens of the world who justify their existence by contributing to humanity on a global scale.
If Dr. Lewis is right, Jews seem to make very heavy weather of being Jewish. Let me suggest a less onerous alternative. They should see themselves defined principally by where they are born: British, French, and so on. They happen to be British Jews, just as there are British Christians, British Muslims and British Hindus. Just one national culture, but no one should feel isolated and alone. Think of it as an integrationist model. Would be a less angst-ridden way to live?
Racists don’t allow Jews to define themselves by where they are born. I was born in England, my father too, but I heard this at a polite dinner party of a couple who weren’t there: “He’s American, but she’s Jewish.” To these polite middle-class racist “antiracists” Jews are allowed no belonging other than to the “race” of Jews. This is what Norman Lewis calls the “self-delusion of assmmilation.” Or as Jeremy Corbyn put it in 2013: “They [Zionists] clearly have two problems. One is that they don’t want to study history, and secondly, having lived in this country for a very long time, probably all their lives, don’t understand English irony.” What is someone who has lived in England all their lives other than English? Not to JC, if he’s a Zionist. Of course, what JC meant was Jews. This is made patent by the fact that Keir Starmer describes himself as a Zionist, so was JC saying that Starmer, who of course has lived in England all his life, is not English.
Why do you define your national identity by virtue of what antisemites say? Where is the positive case for your identity as a people? You can’t integrate because people won’t ‘let’ you? It sounds like the worst form of victimhood mentality to me.
I don’t define my nationality by what antisemites say. All I’m demonstrating is how racists/antisemites see Jews as a separate “race,” denying them belonging to the country of which we are citizens. That doesn’t stop me from integrating, doesn’t stop me from being English, doesn’t stop me from feeling English, nor from feeling lucky that I am and that my forebears found sanctuary in this country that has given us a home. They’re the ones with the Jew problem. How is that “the worst form of vicitmhood?” The victims are the ones who didn’t make it out of Germany, Russia and Poland.
It’s the reaction of a people that was targeted for extermination and whose centuries-old communities in Eastern Europe — where the majority of Jews lived before 1939 — were all destroyed.
What is someone who has lived in England all their lives other than English?
I understand the reasoning in your comments, and I hope you won’t object to my lifting this sentence out in the context of the discussion.
That is to say, whether a person is English (or whatever) is properly considered not only in the light of what others say about them, but also what they say about themselves.
I have known people born, brought up, and educated in England, with English accents, who variously describe themselves (quite emphatically, even defiantly) as Irish, Scottish, Welsh, African, Black, Muslim.
I do appreciate that those attributes are not all in the same category, but the point is the same: they are very clear about what their own identity is. And it’s the identity that they have decided for themselves.
Other people – including, of course, English people in general – I think would quite naturally have assumed that they were English. Until, er, ‘corrected’, that is.
My friends mother is Scottish, her father English and she was born here in England too. However, depending on the day or sporting season or who she was talking to, depended on where her loyalty lay. Mostly Scotland, but at a push, England. This is where mixed heritage comes a cropper, especially when it comes up against those who aren’t mixed heritage. My friend could have just been happy to be British, but she felt that she was more Scottish, she actively “others” herself.
Look far enough back and most people have some kind of mixed heritage and it isn’t always an issue, until some form of battle line is drawn. People want to know where loyalties lie.
Jews believe that they are special, with many of them making a point in reminding us of that repeatedly. I can’t count how many times I have been told that no people has produced as many Nobel Prize winners as the Jews, and also that no people have suffered as much, ever in the history of humankind, as the Jews. Okay, fine, I got it.
Surrounding this, or undergirding this, is the notion of “chosen people”.
One has to believe in god (the chooser), otherwise “chosen” does not make sense. And it has to be a specific god, all other gods be damned! Naturally, this does not sit well with people who believe in different specific gods. The whole thing is nuts! It’s so B.C.!
I put forth the argument that there is no god. One need look no further than the Holocaust itself for reasonable support of this perspective. No Jewish god, no Christian god, no Muslim god, no Hindu god, etc. Nobody got chosen, nobody is better, nobody is worse, nobody is special. Or we are all a little bit special in our own ways, and we are all human beings and we need to get along.
TBF given their achievements it is quite hard to escape the impression that Jews are special – and that this might be the reason their not-so-special neighbours hate them so much.
I’m a little wary of talk of Jewish exceptionalism, but that’s only because I’m even more intelligent than most other Jews, despite the fact I’m only half a one. Just imagine what I could achieve if I was a whole Jew. Nevertheless, I would use my extraordinary powers for the good of humanity just as soon as I’ve got myself a very large yacht.
The adjective ‘chosen’ doesn’t mean necessarily favored, stronger or smarter. The story is, God the creator of all wanted to differentiate man from animal so He commanded behaviors for that purpose. Don’t murder. Don’t steal, etc. Somebody had to deliver these behaviors to mankind and Jews were chosen for that.
FYI People weren’t commanded not to make war although there are laws concerning wars. First, give the enemy the option to surrender. Another is allowing a safe route for civilians to evacuate during a siege. Israel is doing that in Gaza.
Maybe you will remember Hamas reporting 500 killed at a hospital. A day or two later the real story was about 50 killed in a parking lot by a rocket fired by Hamas that landed short. How can you believe a word they say? Many Hamas fighters dress in street clothes. As Victor Hansen says, where are all the graves? That’s a lot of graves.
If they were that inflated then Israel and America would be publishing their own figures, as it’s not in their interest to have wildly exaggerated numbers of civilian deaths being reported. The fact they haven’t done so, and the figures in past flare ups have always proved to be fairly accurate I think it’s safe to assume the numbers are broadly correct
How can Israel and America know? What we do know is Islam teaches it’s not just permitted but encouraged to lie to non-Muslims in the interest of Jihad. It’s called ‘takkiyah’.
What Normal Lewis calls the “self-delusion of assimilation” struck home to me at a dinner party where someone said of a couple who weren’t there: “He’s American, but she’s Jewish.” Yikes, not one of these liberal, card-carrying “antiractists” raised any objection, as the thought sank in that to these racist “anti-racists” I, although only half a Jew, am not truly British, although I have a passport that says so. The idea that Jews cannot truly belong to a nation other than the “race” of Jews is pure racism. Imagine if someone round the table had said of another couple: “He’s English, but she’s black.” There’d be a right old pile-on, but not a sausage when it comes to “othering” Jews right in front of them. I’d felt like I’d been tele-ported back to a smart Berlin salon of the 1920s. I don’t got to dinner parties any more.
I am very sorry to hear you say that you think you are not fully British. If you were born here, I would say you are as British as I am. So why do you think you’re not fully British?
I am fully English, but not to anyone who can say things like “He’s American, but she’s Jewish.” If I’d not been in the room the person could just as well have said of me and my partner “She’s English, but he’s Jewish.” To these people you’re not British, German, American or whatever, but a Jew.
My apologies, I misunderstood. OK, I get it now.
Well, people like that have a very odd outlook on life. They think they are so enlightened, they can put people in little boxes of their own design. They are astonished and outraged when people like you and me refuse to cooperate.
So, they approach every situation with an open mouth, not an open mind. So far as they are concerned, people like you are not Americans or British, but Jews. I am Northern Irish, but I am not British, I am Irish. Women who object to sharing safe spaces with transwomen are terfs, transphobic bigots. Brexiteers are a bunch of empire nostalgics. It’s obvious that Scotland should be independent, so the Scottish unionists really need to wake up and smell the coffee. Black people are always victims of racism. Muslims are the victims of the enduring crusader mentality of Westerners. Australian aborigines are the dispossessed victims of a colonial settler state, and on it goes.
People who think like that are a confounded nuisance, but they form only a tiny faction of the population. They happen to be a very mouthy bunch, so it’s easy to think they speak for everyone. They don’t. There is no point in trying to reason with them, as they think that they are so enlightened, you could see them from space. I would say that ridicule is the best medicine for them. An Ulster playwright had a play running in London recently, “Ulster American”. It succeeded brilliantly in lampooning these people. Did you see it?
I basically do agree with you, but I have to say that as far as I am concerned it is a factual statement to say that “Australian aborigines are the dispossessed victims of a colonial settler state”!
I’m not Australian so neither really; although I was vaguely aware that it was Australia Day it rather passed me by. I doubt that if I was a native Australian I would be terribly keen to celebrate the ‘invasion’, but the history of humankind is the history of empires and invasions, so stuff happens and has to be dealt with.
So do you categorize them as victims only? Because the Australian aborigines are quite a violent bunch themselves. Apparently their violence and child sexual abuse continues today. However, authorities in Australia are reluctant to talk about it so it goes unreported. Consequently children as young as 11-years old get STIs and suffer in remote aborigine communities. Women too are abused in their communities.
Quite probably as a result of the destruction of their culture by the ‘dispossession’; who knows but that is certainly important. No ‘victim’ anywhere can be categorised purely as such, but that does not negate the description.
That might be factual or true in it’s own right but other things are true too (eg ‘Aboriginals commit crime disproportionately’ or ‘Aboriginals were as far as I know very violent before the arrival of Europeans’): the whole – rather than cherry-picked – truth is often hard or impossible to get at and requires a balanced mind (which is not the same thing as a moderate or conventional position).
At least modifies it, because as it stands this is unbalanced:
“Australian aborigines are the dispossessed victims of a colonial settler state”!
Are they just ‘dispossessed victims’? Was it/is it still a ‘colonial settler state’?
The truth is more than that, in which case better to either expand or hold your own counsel. There are innumerable facts in the world, innumerable things are true, it’s often a question of how we balance what might sometimes seem to be conflicting facts or highly complex series of facts. Woke ppl say lots of ‘true’ stuff but their dogmatic focus on some facts while ignoring inconvenient others is what makes them ideologues.
“Woke ppl say lots of ‘true’ stuff but their dogmatic focus on some facts while ignoring inconvenient others is what makes them ideologues.” If you substitute the other end of the political spectrum for the word ‘woke’ (horrible word which seems meaningless now it is used more as a generic label on ‘lefties’) then the very same statement is true. Meanwhile I can assure you that I am as far from being an ideologue, or what I take that to mean anyway, as I can possibly be.
Not quite clear what you’re saying. Are you saying that as an English man I, as a Jew, should go to a foreign country, ie Israel? I really hope you’re not saying England should be Judenfrei>
I think he’s saying that Jews, once absent a homeland, had an excuse for not assimilating into the culture of the country in which they resided.
Now, with the foundation of the state of Israel, they have no such excuse. If they choose to remain in [insert name of non-ethno-state] they should assimilate to the local culture, fully embrace it and stop keeping one foot in some Zionist camp somewhere. If they insist on keeping a separate allegiance to Zionism, they should go to Israel.
What a load of rubbish. Most Jews, and all secular Jews, are fully assimilated in the western countries they live in. Does that mean they’re supposed to not support Israel. Does this only apply to Jews. Because I see a vast number of Muslims in the UK who are prepared to vote for candidates based solely on their position vis a vis Palestine. Perhaps we should also cancel “Italian days” and the like. There’s an ugly strain of something underlying your ridiculous and nasty comment.
It does also work the other way though, as many Jews do prioritise their religion over their nationality/ethnicity. Maybe it’s a result of always being the minority in their countries of origin that they feel the need to cling to it over assimilation, in the same way many ethnic minorities in western nations do
I don’t like dinner parties and never have, but I doubt that one incidence of a thoughtless remark would have made me stop, if I enjoyed most such occasions.
Given your evidently prodigous flair for teeth-numbingly tedious self-absorption, I should think that Britain’s dinner party attending set will be relieved to hear it. Does it ever cross your mind that what ails you is not anti-semitism, David, but plain old garden variety human narcissism, which all of us are prone to, from time to time?
An overhead clottish remark at a posh nosh-up is hardly a brick through your shopfront window at midnight.
Benjamin Greco
3 months ago
If we could just stop for a moment competing for which of us has been the most victimized, we might realize that man’s inhumanity to man is universal. Christians were fed to lions; heretics were burned at the stake and witches were stoned. History is one long sad story of bombardments, massacres, mass starvations, enslavement and genocide. We are the end state of evolution on this planet because we are the best killers. We killed all the other predators and then started murdering each other.
We revel in it. Our culture is overflowing with violence. Just in the past few years Hollywood gave us four movies where the same character spends two thirds of each movie shooting people in the head in a stylized dance of death. There were four of them because the audience couldn’t get enough. They are likely working on a fifth.
We will never stop until we’ve killed everyone. For centuries we have been telling ourselves how terrible it all is and then finding excuses to keep on killing. Descartes was wrong but Ochs was right “I kill therefore I am”.
So, I am tired of hearing how Oct 7th, the bombing of Gaza and the Ukraine war are unique tragedies, when they are really just what we always do. If man were to stop killing, stop hating and make peace, that would be unusual.
October 7 isn’t a “unique” tragedy. What is “unique” is how so much of the world insists that this one single country that just happens to be the only one of Jewish majority, is uniquely not allowed to protect itself in a manner any other one would be.
Tricky to get rid of repeated atrocities from those who hide behind and among civilians. Perhaps you’d like to offer them some advice? Smarter smart bombs, say?
Indeed. They are appalled that Jews/Israelis are waging a war of self-defence in precisely the same manner that other countries have done, not just in WWII but in the much more recent past. And they’ve done so against an entity that is on their doorstep, whereas the British, Americans and the rest have done so thousands of killometres from home. So spare us your anti-Israel bullsh*t.
I suspect Germans of a certain era thought along these lines when they pursued a solution to their problems. It’s odd to see this heartily endorsed in this forum.
What a disgusting comment, but not surprising. It’s so interesting how those who talk about Israeli brutality and bombing etc never seem acknowledge that Hamas makes this inevitable by its use of human shields, of putting weapons depots and military HQs in or near hospitals, schools, mosques and residences, and how it shoots its own people if they try to flee after Israel warns them to evacuate. Nor do they ever mention the misfired Hamas rockets, the extremely questionable figures from the Hamas “ministry of health,” or the plain fact that Hamas has spent all of the generously donated cash from international donors not on improving the lot of its people, or even at the least building bomb shelters for them (why do so when you want your civilians to die for propaganda purposes so gullible morons like above can get outraged over what Israel is supposedly doing) instead of spending it all on rockets and tunnels.
It’s so tiring and boring.
Not sure what you were yammering on about to be honest, but those people did think along your lines above regardless of whether you endorse this situation or not ultimately.
In England, ‘witches’ – approximately 70% women, 30% men from late 15thc to late 18thc were hanged, they were not burned.
In Scotland their bodies were only burned after they had been hanged.
Ian Barton
3 months ago
If asked to visually describe a Jew, many people would conjure up an image similar to the Hasidic Jews of North London. As these folk do not appear to have assimilated into the general population, then it is not surprising that their ethnic identity is more prominent than their national identity.
If you add to this the frequent references to Israel, then an apparently “non-British” identity is even more likely.
You do know (don’t you?) that the great majority of Jews you’ve ever known don’t dress like Orthodox Jews. I would imagine that you’ve known hundreds of Jews without even realizing that they were Jewish.
I can’t imagine why anyone would care.
Eventually, though, the assimilated Jews will likely disappear by ‘marrying out’ if they have children at all, while the Orthodox will continue to have large families. Assuming the trend continues, the Jew of 2200 A.D. will resemble the Jew of 1500 A.D. Except for the jet packs, I guess.
I have mixed feelings about this narrative. A Jew has to be a proud Jew as any other person being proud of what he is.
About the chosen people, the phrase is incomplete:chosen to carry the destiny of the world upon your shoulders. This means that if the world is not doing well then the Jews… The percentage of Jewish Nobel laureates is 22% not 32% of the whole lot.
I agree though that assimilation or conversion is no solution but a gate to tribulations. Schwer zu sein a Yid.
The percentage of Jewish Nobel laureates is 22% not 32% of the whole lot.
32% div 0.2% = 160, 22% div 0.2% = 110 – it’s not a big difference 🙂
UnHerd Reader
3 months ago
Thank you for this essay. I think that there is an additional point that you don’t present. It changes the discussion. This phenomenon was described by Prof. David Nirenberg in his impressive book “Anti-Judaism.” Nirenberg analyzes the phenomenon of using usually fictional constructs of Jews, Judaism, and actions of Jews as an intellectual tool to analyze what is wrong with a society with the church, with Islamic religious praxis, and so on. He tracks it back two millennia and more and shows its deep embeddedness in civilizations founded on Christianity and Islam. In Modernity, it became a tool in the hands of Marx to attack capitalism (“the god of the Jews is Mammon”) and Fascists to promote crackpot theories of racism. What we see in London’s streets and at American universities these days is another example, applied specifically to the Jews who broke the cycle of political helplessness by creating and maintaining a state. This time, it is used to assault perceptions of Western society as racist, sexist, anti-gay, Islamophobic, and so on. Nirenberg is very helpful in understanding why it continues as an intellectual tool, demonizing Jews on a new basis every few generations. It is simply damnably useful. Look at the size of the crowds demonstrating in GB. Look at the groups it pulls together. Gays for Hamas, Women’s groups who can’t bring themselves to condemn mass rape, and so on. Brilliant book! If you haven’t read it, you owe it to yourself. Anti-Judaism’s embeddedness in civilizations of Christian and Muslim origin is so profound. Nirenberg provides an explanation for the shocking times in which we live. One point that flows from his analysis: It’s not “self-pity,” as the breathless subtitle of the article suggests. It is a genuine affliction.
Edwin Blake
3 months ago
Being Jewish and “chosen” seems to mean being blind to the terroristic criminals in the Israeli government. Hamas and Likud with their far right allies depend on each other, and share a similar lack of morality.
Shame on you for only seeing the crimes of your enemy.
And also, shame on you for ignoring Isreal’s wholehearted support of apartheid South Africa. Kind of explains Mandela and ANC support for palistinians.
Mandela in 1993: “As a movement we recognize the legitimacy of Palestinian nationalism just as we recognize the legitimacy of Zionism as a Jewish nationalism. We insist on the right of the state of Israel to exist within secure borders but with equal vigor support the Palestinian right to national self-determination.” Plus, five of the 11 defendants on trial for treason alongside Nelson Mandela were Jewish anti-apartheid activists. So were key members of his defense team.Your point being?
My point is exactly as you say: both sides deserve a right to life. Not just one as the piece implies.
BTW many of the Jewish anti-apartheid activists would, and do, oppose Israel’s apartheid state and creeping, illegal, expansion into occupied territory.
Turned out the Jewish community is at the forefront of the struggle of old liberals and middle-aged centrists against the Maoism that the young West has embraced today. Truly the age of China!
Paul Monahan
3 months ago
South African whites were not anti semitic at least compared to the rest of the west; Jews were white and therefore allies against the black peril albeit a handful were fully fledged communists…… it’s only the black elite who’re anti semitic and this is only out of their attachment to the Soviet Union and love affair with Arafat and other great dictators- in fact SA Jews played the game just like the rest of us – to our utter shame and disgrace
K Joynes
3 months ago
I suspect there’s a fairly widespread belief that the Jews claiming to be chosen by God means they’re better than other people. Just for the record, the Old Testament makes it very clear that that really isn’t the case. One example (from the speech of Moses before the Israelites* were about to cross the Jordan to take possession of Canaan): –
“After the LORD your God has driven them [the Canaanites] out for you, do not say to yourselves that He brought you in to possess this land because you deserved it. No, the LORD is going to drive these people out for you because they are wicked.
“It is not because you are good and do what is right that the LORD is letting you take their land. He will drive them out because they are wicked and because He intends to keep the promise that He made to your ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
“You can be sure that the LORD is not giving you this fertile land because you deserve it. No, you are a stubborn people.” (Deuteronomy 9:4-6)(my emphases)
And there’s plenty more where that came from. (One of the things that convinces me the Old Testament is true is how brutally honest it is in reporting how often the Jews kept sticking two fingers up at God in response to His love and provision for them. If I were a Jew and had any say in it, I’d have pushed for a more flattering rewrite.)
On a related note: I’m a Christian, so I believe that God chose me. I can proclaim with joyful confidence that this says absolutely nothing about how amazing I am, and absolutely everything about how amazing God’s love, grace and mercy is (I know how much of a jerk I can still frequently be). I firmly believe God loves me, but I have no idea why. It certainly isn’t because I deserve it.
*I use the word ‘Israelites’ in the Old Testament context, i.e. children of Jacob (who God named Israel – Genesis 32:28).
Thank you for posting this. Most people do not acknowledge this, including some Jews.
Judaism is a religion of laws to be kept, Islam a religion of submission and glorification of death. Christianity is the only religion of commission where the decision is left to the believer and the work of salvation is complete.
Judaism and Islam point to Jesus in some form, and Jesus is the focal point of Christianity. All other belief systems point to a Jesus-like figure. So, I’m not sure why it’s not clear to some that believing what Jesus said about himself is a deal breaker.
There’s this strange quirk among some Christians that they continue to try to prove that their way is THE way and the other religions have missed the mark. It’s boring.
This opinion reminds me a particular scene from the film “Nowhere in Africa,” in which a German expatriate couple, displaced by the war, finds themselves being categorized as aliens by the Allies, in this instance, by the British in Nairobi. The couple, who are Jewish, clarify to the British officer compiling the list that they are Jewish, implying that they are not the Germans that the Allies are primarily concerned with. In a display of characteristic British irony, the officer retorts that he, too, is not English but Scottish. This scene poignantly captures the complexities of ethnicity, nationalism, and the interplay of these identities within the context of wartime, highlighting the intricate layers of personal and collective identity.
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
3 months ago
“in our new moral universe”
Pray who was responsible for the creation of our new moral universe?
do tell. can’t wait to hear. don’t be coy. say it.
Skink
3 months ago
Discussions about Jews, and by Jews about Jews have exploded around the internet. I follow with interest, and am glad for it.
I have yet to see this addressed: the whole concept of chosenness, isn’t it at root of domination? “We are better than you over there, you goyim!” Or something like that. Jewish writings tend to gloss over it with vague talk about being noble “light unto the nations”. I have this uneasy feeling that this particular meme, which is several thousand years old, is full of mischief.
Thank you. I just did. Joynes does not address the real issue… the superiority in which certain people hold themselves as (in the world we actually live in). Whether or not Old Testament encourages this is a different question.
Bernard Brothman
3 months ago
I much of the western world, Jews are more and more assimilating and or leaving religion. Their intermarried or inter-partnered children have offspring who do not identify as Jewish and those with a non-Jewish mom, are generally not considered Jewish by Jewish law.
By mid-century people identifying as Jewish will be those in Israel and the more religious in the USA and western Europe. We see the trend here in the USA with synagogues merging and then closing. There is an organization that gathers the ritual and holy objects from closed synagogues for safe keeping or disposal. In the future we may have antisemitism without Jews.
It’s the orthodox who are having large families, and as the saying has it, the future belongs to those who show up for it.
UnHerd Reader
3 months ago
When I watched “progressive” people living near me scream that the Jews deserved to be beheaded, raped to death, burned alive, while the people who did it, after promising to do so for decades, are heroes, that’s when this whole thing changed for me as a Jew. My mother in law, who grew up in Krakow in the 20s and 30s, asked me 30 years ago why I thought Europeans had changed. Now I know she was right.
I wouldn’t base your ideas on the behaviour of ‘progressives’ ie the most clamorous and utopian but a relatively small part of the West.
Alan Osband
3 months ago
Who writes the headlines for the articles? Whoever it was clearly hadn’t read it .
Alan Osband
3 months ago
Hasn’t David Mamet already written this article , better .
Madas A. Hatter
3 months ago
Impossible to disagree with the case presented here, but on one point the writer is incorrect: the people killed on October 7 were not killed because they were Jews. They were killed because they were Israelis, insouciantly partying on land that had been torn from the hands of the attackers’ antecedents. Not quite the same thing.
D M
3 months ago
Quite interesting for me to see an article drawing parallels between South Africa and the recent (inexcusable, in my opinion) resurgence in anti semitism in the UK. My wife is South African, raised on a small farm in a p*ss poor one horse town in the north, so Afrikaans as a first language with English classes at school. When Nelson was locked up on robben island she wouldn’t be born for another 15 years, that hasn’t stopped a mass of people in the UK accusing her of being a white supremacist and apartheid supporter over the years. She, (Chef by profession) has that abiding quality of most Afrikaaners, quite simply put, they’re grafters, they expect to work for what they get despite what the Guardian would have you believe. My (recently departed) father on the other hand was a tailors cutter for most of his adult life (most of his many brothers were dockers), due to so many of the trouser & jacket makers (don’t kid yourself your “bespoke suit” is being made in the Jermyn St. shop where you got measured up) were Jewish, over the decades he developed a deep and abiding love and respect for the Jewish community in London. My favourite story of his habitual contrariness was when he was (finally) retired and playing golf in a 4 ball at his local public 9 hole course and one of the group asked him if it was true his daughter was married to a black man – Dad said “It’s a bit more complicated than that, my daughter is married to a black man, who’s English, and my son is married to a white woman, who’s African” no further questions were forthcoming… I’m not entirely sure this contribution will move the debate on, but it made me smile anyway….
Chipoko
3 months ago
“… that antisemitism existed in South Africa was beyond doubt.”
I was born in Southern Rhodesia and attended universities in South Africa and the land of my birth. At my primary and secondary schools we had Jewish pupils, and same again with Jewish students at university. At all three educational levels I was fortunate to have Jewish friends, with some of whom I remain in valued contact in advancing old age. No doubt antisemitism did exist in South Africa then, but no more so than elsewhere. Indeed, it is my experience living most of my life in the UK that antisemitism (and for that matter racism more generally) is more prevalent here than in my early years in southern Africa (“I’m not a racist but …”!).
South African whites (the ‘Settlers’) and their diaspora descendants around the World will forever be condemned, stained and vilified by association with the apartheid era (modelled on the much longer era of formalised/legalised discrimination against Blacks in the United States, where slavery endured for so long and officially condoned lynching continued until well after WW2) – the sins of the white South Africa settler fathers will continue to be visited on their innocent sons and grandsons for generations to come. However, antisemitism in South Africa then was no worse and probably less so than in the free West at the time referred to by the author, and since his departure from that troubled country; whose Blacks are materially worse off three decades after independence (except for the classic Black elite who have engorged themselves with plundered wealth far beyond that accumulated by the political, governmental and business leaders of the apartheid era); but who at least have their political ‘freedom’ under the new tyranny that now prevails.
The ultimate irony is that the Woke Era, actively promoting and formally condoning anti-White racism, now tarnishes Jewish people as being ‘White’ – the latest iteration of antisemitism! What a Foxtrot Uniform of a convoluted world we inhabit today!
Howard Kornstein
2 months ago
As a people exiled from their homeland centuries ago Jews have tried with extremely limited success to have themselves accepted (or at least tolerated) within the countries they lived in during their diaspora. Two different approaches were taken to survive – the first to be highly insular within their own Jewish culture and religion as a means to protect and isolate themselves from outside harm if possible, and the second alternatively to highly assimilate themselves into the local national culture so as not to appear “different” or foreign. Both strategies have failed. The first isolated them as “the other,” incurring the greatest of religious intolerance and subsequent persecution. The second, assimilation, never overcame latent scapegoating and persecution either – the Dreyfus affair being just one example. The assimilated Jew was instead perceived as a threat- an outside competitor intruding into a purer native culture and was hated as such. An alternative possibility that Jews would finally be seen as victims deserving some sympathetic treatment never has happened. Victimhood? -the greatest failure of assimilation occurred in the most Western and enlightened of cultures – in Germany, birthplace of Kant, Schiller and Goethe.
In all this Jews finally realized that there is no certain hope for them outside of having their own homeland back, and having their own army to defend them from attack. No more to be fearfully, passively loaded into boxcars but instead to establish a strong military presence for their own protection. The reaction of the world to this – nothing but blame. Perhaps the greatest absurdity of all is that after centuries of brutalization, persecution, pogroms and then the Holocaust, Jews are expected to behave with a restraint that no Western country has ever shown in warfare themselves. Moral outrage from the instigators of the bombing of Dresden and Hiroshima.
Solid piece.
Thank you, Dr. Lewis. This is a fascinating insight into the Jewish psyche.
There seem to be three strands here.
Isolationist: Jews who happen to be living in Britain or France, and are happy to keep the threatening and potentially antisemitic world at bay as much as possible.
Assimilationist: Jews who try to forget they’re Jews, as they disappear, chameleon-like, into the background.
And universalist: citizens of the world who justify their existence by contributing to humanity on a global scale.
If Dr. Lewis is right, Jews seem to make very heavy weather of being Jewish. Let me suggest a less onerous alternative. They should see themselves defined principally by where they are born: British, French, and so on. They happen to be British Jews, just as there are British Christians, British Muslims and British Hindus. Just one national culture, but no one should feel isolated and alone. Think of it as an integrationist model. Would be a less angst-ridden way to live?
Racists don’t allow Jews to define themselves by where they are born. I was born in England, my father too, but I heard this at a polite dinner party of a couple who weren’t there: “He’s American, but she’s Jewish.” To these polite middle-class racist “antiracists” Jews are allowed no belonging other than to the “race” of Jews. This is what Norman Lewis calls the “self-delusion of assmmilation.” Or as Jeremy Corbyn put it in 2013: “They [Zionists] clearly have two problems. One is that they don’t want to study history, and secondly, having lived in this country for a very long time, probably all their lives, don’t understand English irony.” What is someone who has lived in England all their lives other than English? Not to JC, if he’s a Zionist. Of course, what JC meant was Jews. This is made patent by the fact that Keir Starmer describes himself as a Zionist, so was JC saying that Starmer, who of course has lived in England all his life, is not English.
Why do you define your national identity by virtue of what antisemites say? Where is the positive case for your identity as a people? You can’t integrate because people won’t ‘let’ you? It sounds like the worst form of victimhood mentality to me.
I don’t define my nationality by what antisemites say. All I’m demonstrating is how racists/antisemites see Jews as a separate “race,” denying them belonging to the country of which we are citizens. That doesn’t stop me from integrating, doesn’t stop me from being English, doesn’t stop me from feeling English, nor from feeling lucky that I am and that my forebears found sanctuary in this country that has given us a home. They’re the ones with the Jew problem. How is that “the worst form of vicitmhood?” The victims are the ones who didn’t make it out of Germany, Russia and Poland.
It’s the reaction of a people that was targeted for extermination and whose centuries-old communities in Eastern Europe — where the majority of Jews lived before 1939 — were all destroyed.
I understand the reasoning in your comments, and I hope you won’t object to my lifting this sentence out in the context of the discussion.
That is to say, whether a person is English (or whatever) is properly considered not only in the light of what others say about them, but also what they say about themselves.
I have known people born, brought up, and educated in England, with English accents, who variously describe themselves (quite emphatically, even defiantly) as Irish, Scottish, Welsh, African, Black, Muslim.
I do appreciate that those attributes are not all in the same category, but the point is the same: they are very clear about what their own identity is. And it’s the identity that they have decided for themselves.
Other people – including, of course, English people in general – I think would quite naturally have assumed that they were English. Until, er, ‘corrected’, that is.
In short, it depends on the individual.
My friends mother is Scottish, her father English and she was born here in England too. However, depending on the day or sporting season or who she was talking to, depended on where her loyalty lay. Mostly Scotland, but at a push, England. This is where mixed heritage comes a cropper, especially when it comes up against those who aren’t mixed heritage. My friend could have just been happy to be British, but she felt that she was more Scottish, she actively “others” herself.
Look far enough back and most people have some kind of mixed heritage and it isn’t always an issue, until some form of battle line is drawn. People want to know where loyalties lie.
In a nutshell.
Jews believe that they are special, with many of them making a point in reminding us of that repeatedly. I can’t count how many times I have been told that no people has produced as many Nobel Prize winners as the Jews, and also that no people have suffered as much, ever in the history of humankind, as the Jews. Okay, fine, I got it.
Surrounding this, or undergirding this, is the notion of “chosen people”.
One has to believe in god (the chooser), otherwise “chosen” does not make sense. And it has to be a specific god, all other gods be damned! Naturally, this does not sit well with people who believe in different specific gods. The whole thing is nuts! It’s so B.C.!
I put forth the argument that there is no god. One need look no further than the Holocaust itself for reasonable support of this perspective. No Jewish god, no Christian god, no Muslim god, no Hindu god, etc. Nobody got chosen, nobody is better, nobody is worse, nobody is special. Or we are all a little bit special in our own ways, and we are all human beings and we need to get along.
TBF given their achievements it is quite hard to escape the impression that Jews are special – and that this might be the reason their not-so-special neighbours hate them so much.
I’m a little wary of talk of Jewish exceptionalism, but that’s only because I’m even more intelligent than most other Jews, despite the fact I’m only half a one. Just imagine what I could achieve if I was a whole Jew. Nevertheless, I would use my extraordinary powers for the good of humanity just as soon as I’ve got myself a very large yacht.
Please don’t – we have George Soros for that. Just enjoy the yacht.
The adjective ‘chosen’ doesn’t mean necessarily favored, stronger or smarter. The story is, God the creator of all wanted to differentiate man from animal so He commanded behaviors for that purpose. Don’t murder. Don’t steal, etc. Somebody had to deliver these behaviors to mankind and Jews were chosen for that.
FYI People weren’t commanded not to make war although there are laws concerning wars. First, give the enemy the option to surrender. Another is allowing a safe route for civilians to evacuate during a siege. Israel is doing that in Gaza.
20k dead civilians suggest the safe routes out aren’t that safe
Maybe you will remember Hamas reporting 500 killed at a hospital. A day or two later the real story was about 50 killed in a parking lot by a rocket fired by Hamas that landed short. How can you believe a word they say? Many Hamas fighters dress in street clothes. As Victor Hansen says, where are all the graves? That’s a lot of graves.
If they were that inflated then Israel and America would be publishing their own figures, as it’s not in their interest to have wildly exaggerated numbers of civilian deaths being reported. The fact they haven’t done so, and the figures in past flare ups have always proved to be fairly accurate I think it’s safe to assume the numbers are broadly correct
How can Israel and America know? What we do know is Islam teaches it’s not just permitted but encouraged to lie to non-Muslims in the interest of Jihad. It’s called ‘takkiyah’.
Amen.
That’s us told.
What Normal Lewis calls the “self-delusion of assimilation” struck home to me at a dinner party where someone said of a couple who weren’t there: “He’s American, but she’s Jewish.” Yikes, not one of these liberal, card-carrying “antiractists” raised any objection, as the thought sank in that to these racist “anti-racists” I, although only half a Jew, am not truly British, although I have a passport that says so. The idea that Jews cannot truly belong to a nation other than the “race” of Jews is pure racism. Imagine if someone round the table had said of another couple: “He’s English, but she’s black.” There’d be a right old pile-on, but not a sausage when it comes to “othering” Jews right in front of them. I’d felt like I’d been tele-ported back to a smart Berlin salon of the 1920s. I don’t got to dinner parties any more.
I am very sorry to hear you say that you think you are not fully British. If you were born here, I would say you are as British as I am. So why do you think you’re not fully British?
I am fully English, but not to anyone who can say things like “He’s American, but she’s Jewish.” If I’d not been in the room the person could just as well have said of me and my partner “She’s English, but he’s Jewish.” To these people you’re not British, German, American or whatever, but a Jew.
My apologies, I misunderstood. OK, I get it now.
Well, people like that have a very odd outlook on life. They think they are so enlightened, they can put people in little boxes of their own design. They are astonished and outraged when people like you and me refuse to cooperate.
So, they approach every situation with an open mouth, not an open mind. So far as they are concerned, people like you are not Americans or British, but Jews. I am Northern Irish, but I am not British, I am Irish. Women who object to sharing safe spaces with transwomen are terfs, transphobic bigots. Brexiteers are a bunch of empire nostalgics. It’s obvious that Scotland should be independent, so the Scottish unionists really need to wake up and smell the coffee. Black people are always victims of racism. Muslims are the victims of the enduring crusader mentality of Westerners. Australian aborigines are the dispossessed victims of a colonial settler state, and on it goes.
People who think like that are a confounded nuisance, but they form only a tiny faction of the population. They happen to be a very mouthy bunch, so it’s easy to think they speak for everyone. They don’t. There is no point in trying to reason with them, as they think that they are so enlightened, you could see them from space. I would say that ridicule is the best medicine for them. An Ulster playwright had a play running in London recently, “Ulster American”. It succeeded brilliantly in lampooning these people. Did you see it?
I basically do agree with you, but I have to say that as far as I am concerned it is a factual statement to say that “Australian aborigines are the dispossessed victims of a colonial settler state”!
Ah… so, last month on the 26th, did you celebrate Australia Day or mourn invasion day? (No right or wrong answer – just curious.)
I’m not Australian so neither really; although I was vaguely aware that it was Australia Day it rather passed me by. I doubt that if I was a native Australian I would be terribly keen to celebrate the ‘invasion’, but the history of humankind is the history of empires and invasions, so stuff happens and has to be dealt with.
So do you categorize them as victims only? Because the Australian aborigines are quite a violent bunch themselves. Apparently their violence and child sexual abuse continues today. However, authorities in Australia are reluctant to talk about it so it goes unreported. Consequently children as young as 11-years old get STIs and suffer in remote aborigine communities. Women too are abused in their communities.
Quite probably as a result of the destruction of their culture by the ‘dispossession’; who knows but that is certainly important. No ‘victim’ anywhere can be categorised purely as such, but that does not negate the description.
If you’d written ‘quite possibly’, it would not have missed the supportive data quite so much.
That might be factual or true in it’s own right but other things are true too (eg ‘Aboriginals commit crime disproportionately’ or ‘Aboriginals were as far as I know very violent before the arrival of Europeans’): the whole – rather than cherry-picked – truth is often hard or impossible to get at and requires a balanced mind (which is not the same thing as a moderate or conventional position).
Many other things indeed are true, which does not negate the statement.
At least modifies it, because as it stands this is unbalanced:
“Australian aborigines are the dispossessed victims of a colonial settler state”!
Are they just ‘dispossessed victims’? Was it/is it still a ‘colonial settler state’?
The truth is more than that, in which case better to either expand or hold your own counsel. There are innumerable facts in the world, innumerable things are true, it’s often a question of how we balance what might sometimes seem to be conflicting facts or highly complex series of facts. Woke ppl say lots of ‘true’ stuff but their dogmatic focus on some facts while ignoring inconvenient others is what makes them ideologues.
“Woke ppl say lots of ‘true’ stuff but their dogmatic focus on some facts while ignoring inconvenient others is what makes them ideologues.” If you substitute the other end of the political spectrum for the word ‘woke’ (horrible word which seems meaningless now it is used more as a generic label on ‘lefties’) then the very same statement is true. Meanwhile I can assure you that I am as far from being an ideologue, or what I take that to mean anyway, as I can possibly be.
The argument against a need for Jewish assimilationism ended when the Jewish state was refounded.
Not quite clear what you’re saying. Are you saying that as an English man I, as a Jew, should go to a foreign country, ie Israel? I really hope you’re not saying England should be Judenfrei>
I think he’s saying that Jews, once absent a homeland, had an excuse for not assimilating into the culture of the country in which they resided.
Now, with the foundation of the state of Israel, they have no such excuse. If they choose to remain in [insert name of non-ethno-state] they should assimilate to the local culture, fully embrace it and stop keeping one foot in some Zionist camp somewhere. If they insist on keeping a separate allegiance to Zionism, they should go to Israel.
Assimilation is not about Zionism, it is about Jewish identity. Not that I agree with the OP.
Would the same argument apply to British Muslims whose origins are in the 56 Muslim states around the world?
I think he was just explaining the earlier comment (rather than endorsing it).
Indeed, that was my intent.
I would think so, yes. Otherwise, the selective application of the argument to Jews would be sort of anti-Jewish, IMO.
What a load of rubbish. Most Jews, and all secular Jews, are fully assimilated in the western countries they live in. Does that mean they’re supposed to not support Israel. Does this only apply to Jews. Because I see a vast number of Muslims in the UK who are prepared to vote for candidates based solely on their position vis a vis Palestine. Perhaps we should also cancel “Italian days” and the like. There’s an ugly strain of something underlying your ridiculous and nasty comment.
Not at all. Israel is for those who don’t want to assimilate in order to be part of the majority culture. The rest can either assimilate or not.
What’s the majority culture in Israel ? Won’t it be Haredi in the not so distant future .
It does also work the other way though, as many Jews do prioritise their religion over their nationality/ethnicity. Maybe it’s a result of always being the minority in their countries of origin that they feel the need to cling to it over assimilation, in the same way many ethnic minorities in western nations do
And these are the same people saying Jews don’t have a right to a homeland.
I don’t like dinner parties and never have, but I doubt that one incidence of a thoughtless remark would have made me stop, if I enjoyed most such occasions.
Given your evidently prodigous flair for teeth-numbingly tedious self-absorption, I should think that Britain’s dinner party attending set will be relieved to hear it. Does it ever cross your mind that what ails you is not anti-semitism, David, but plain old garden variety human narcissism, which all of us are prone to, from time to time?
An overhead clottish remark at a posh nosh-up is hardly a brick through your shopfront window at midnight.
If we could just stop for a moment competing for which of us has been the most victimized, we might realize that man’s inhumanity to man is universal. Christians were fed to lions; heretics were burned at the stake and witches were stoned. History is one long sad story of bombardments, massacres, mass starvations, enslavement and genocide. We are the end state of evolution on this planet because we are the best killers. We killed all the other predators and then started murdering each other.
We revel in it. Our culture is overflowing with violence. Just in the past few years Hollywood gave us four movies where the same character spends two thirds of each movie shooting people in the head in a stylized dance of death. There were four of them because the audience couldn’t get enough. They are likely working on a fifth.
We will never stop until we’ve killed everyone. For centuries we have been telling ourselves how terrible it all is and then finding excuses to keep on killing. Descartes was wrong but Ochs was right “I kill therefore I am”.
So, I am tired of hearing how Oct 7th, the bombing of Gaza and the Ukraine war are unique tragedies, when they are really just what we always do. If man were to stop killing, stop hating and make peace, that would be unusual.
October 7 isn’t a “unique” tragedy. What is “unique” is how so much of the world insists that this one single country that just happens to be the only one of Jewish majority, is uniquely not allowed to protect itself in a manner any other one would be.
I don’t think anybody has said they shouldn’t be allowed to defend themselves, they’ve just been appalled by their method of doing so
Tricky to get rid of repeated atrocities from those who hide behind and among civilians. Perhaps you’d like to offer them some advice? Smarter smart bombs, say?
Indeed. They are appalled that Jews/Israelis are waging a war of self-defence in precisely the same manner that other countries have done, not just in WWII but in the much more recent past. And they’ve done so against an entity that is on their doorstep, whereas the British, Americans and the rest have done so thousands of killometres from home. So spare us your anti-Israel bullsh*t.
I suspect Germans of a certain era thought along these lines when they pursued a solution to their problems. It’s odd to see this heartily endorsed in this forum.
You’d think a people who had been through the Holocaust would be rather squeamish about collective punishment and ethnic cleansing, but apparently not
What a disgusting comment, but not surprising. It’s so interesting how those who talk about Israeli brutality and bombing etc never seem acknowledge that Hamas makes this inevitable by its use of human shields, of putting weapons depots and military HQs in or near hospitals, schools, mosques and residences, and how it shoots its own people if they try to flee after Israel warns them to evacuate. Nor do they ever mention the misfired Hamas rockets, the extremely questionable figures from the Hamas “ministry of health,” or the plain fact that Hamas has spent all of the generously donated cash from international donors not on improving the lot of its people, or even at the least building bomb shelters for them (why do so when you want your civilians to die for propaganda purposes so gullible morons like above can get outraged over what Israel is supposedly doing) instead of spending it all on rockets and tunnels.
It’s so tiring and boring.
You thought I was endorsing killing? Learn to read pinhead.
Not sure what you were yammering on about to be honest, but those people did think along your lines above regardless of whether you endorse this situation or not ultimately.
Witches weren’t stoned; unfortunate women accused of nonsensical beliefs were stoned (or drowned, or burned).
In England, ‘witches’ – approximately 70% women, 30% men from late 15thc to late 18thc were hanged, they were not burned.
In Scotland their bodies were only burned after they had been hanged.
If asked to visually describe a Jew, many people would conjure up an image similar to the Hasidic Jews of North London. As these folk do not appear to have assimilated into the general population, then it is not surprising that their ethnic identity is more prominent than their national identity.
If you add to this the frequent references to Israel, then an apparently “non-British” identity is even more likely.
It’s the wanting to have cake and eat it too of ethno-nationalism.
Funny, I picture Hedy Lamarr.
You do know (don’t you?) that the great majority of Jews you’ve ever known don’t dress like Orthodox Jews. I would imagine that you’ve known hundreds of Jews without even realizing that they were Jewish.
I can’t imagine why anyone would care.
Eventually, though, the assimilated Jews will likely disappear by ‘marrying out’ if they have children at all, while the Orthodox will continue to have large families. Assuming the trend continues, the Jew of 2200 A.D. will resemble the Jew of 1500 A.D. Except for the jet packs, I guess.
It’s a matrilinear religion, so it doesn’t matter if Jewish women marry non-jews, the children are still Jewish.
Even the great majority of Orthodox Jews don’t dress like that.
Yes I do know that. My comment was not about me.
I have mixed feelings about this narrative. A Jew has to be a proud Jew as any other person being proud of what he is.
About the chosen people, the phrase is incomplete:chosen to carry the destiny of the world upon your shoulders. This means that if the world is not doing well then the Jews… The percentage of Jewish Nobel laureates is 22% not 32% of the whole lot.
I agree though that assimilation or conversion is no solution but a gate to tribulations. Schwer zu sein a Yid.
The percentage of Jewish Nobel laureates is 22% not 32% of the whole lot.
32% div 0.2% = 160, 22% div 0.2% = 110 – it’s not a big difference 🙂
Thank you for this essay. I think that there is an additional point that you don’t present. It changes the discussion. This phenomenon was described by Prof. David Nirenberg in his impressive book “Anti-Judaism.” Nirenberg analyzes the phenomenon of using usually fictional constructs of Jews, Judaism, and actions of Jews as an intellectual tool to analyze what is wrong with a society with the church, with Islamic religious praxis, and so on. He tracks it back two millennia and more and shows its deep embeddedness in civilizations founded on Christianity and Islam. In Modernity, it became a tool in the hands of Marx to attack capitalism (“the god of the Jews is Mammon”) and Fascists to promote crackpot theories of racism. What we see in London’s streets and at American universities these days is another example, applied specifically to the Jews who broke the cycle of political helplessness by creating and maintaining a state. This time, it is used to assault perceptions of Western society as racist, sexist, anti-gay, Islamophobic, and so on. Nirenberg is very helpful in understanding why it continues as an intellectual tool, demonizing Jews on a new basis every few generations. It is simply damnably useful. Look at the size of the crowds demonstrating in GB. Look at the groups it pulls together. Gays for Hamas, Women’s groups who can’t bring themselves to condemn mass rape, and so on. Brilliant book! If you haven’t read it, you owe it to yourself. Anti-Judaism’s embeddedness in civilizations of Christian and Muslim origin is so profound. Nirenberg provides an explanation for the shocking times in which we live. One point that flows from his analysis: It’s not “self-pity,” as the breathless subtitle of the article suggests. It is a genuine affliction.
Being Jewish and “chosen” seems to mean being blind to the terroristic criminals in the Israeli government. Hamas and Likud with their far right allies depend on each other, and share a similar lack of morality.
Shame on you for only seeing the crimes of your enemy.
And also, shame on you for ignoring Isreal’s wholehearted support of apartheid South Africa. Kind of explains Mandela and ANC support for palistinians.
Mandela in 1993: “As a movement we recognize the legitimacy of Palestinian nationalism just as we recognize the legitimacy of Zionism as a Jewish nationalism. We insist on the right of the state of Israel to exist within secure borders but with equal vigor support the Palestinian right to national self-determination.” Plus, five of the 11 defendants on trial for treason alongside Nelson Mandela were Jewish anti-apartheid activists. So were key members of his defense team.Your point being?
My point is exactly as you say: both sides deserve a right to life. Not just one as the piece implies.
BTW many of the Jewish anti-apartheid activists would, and do, oppose Israel’s apartheid state and creeping, illegal, expansion into occupied territory.
F off.
Turned out the Jewish community is at the forefront of the struggle of old liberals and middle-aged centrists against the Maoism that the young West has embraced today. Truly the age of China!
South African whites were not anti semitic at least compared to the rest of the west; Jews were white and therefore allies against the black peril albeit a handful were fully fledged communists…… it’s only the black elite who’re anti semitic and this is only out of their attachment to the Soviet Union and love affair with Arafat and other great dictators- in fact SA Jews played the game just like the rest of us – to our utter shame and disgrace
I suspect there’s a fairly widespread belief that the Jews claiming to be chosen by God means they’re better than other people. Just for the record, the Old Testament makes it very clear that that really isn’t the case. One example (from the speech of Moses before the Israelites* were about to cross the Jordan to take possession of Canaan): –
“After the LORD your God has driven them [the Canaanites] out for you, do not say to yourselves that He brought you in to possess this land because you deserved it. No, the LORD is going to drive these people out for you because they are wicked.
“It is not because you are good and do what is right that the LORD is letting you take their land. He will drive them out because they are wicked and because He intends to keep the promise that He made to your ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
“You can be sure that the LORD is not giving you this fertile land because you deserve it. No, you are a stubborn people.” (Deuteronomy 9:4-6)(my emphases)
And there’s plenty more where that came from. (One of the things that convinces me the Old Testament is true is how brutally honest it is in reporting how often the Jews kept sticking two fingers up at God in response to His love and provision for them. If I were a Jew and had any say in it, I’d have pushed for a more flattering rewrite.)
On a related note: I’m a Christian, so I believe that God chose me. I can proclaim with joyful confidence that this says absolutely nothing about how amazing I am, and absolutely everything about how amazing God’s love, grace and mercy is (I know how much of a jerk I can still frequently be). I firmly believe God loves me, but I have no idea why. It certainly isn’t because I deserve it.
*I use the word ‘Israelites’ in the Old Testament context, i.e. children of Jacob (who God named Israel – Genesis 32:28).
Thank you for posting this. Most people do not acknowledge this, including some Jews.
Judaism is a religion of laws to be kept, Islam a religion of submission and glorification of death. Christianity is the only religion of commission where the decision is left to the believer and the work of salvation is complete.
Judaism and Islam point to Jesus in some form, and Jesus is the focal point of Christianity. All other belief systems point to a Jesus-like figure. So, I’m not sure why it’s not clear to some that believing what Jesus said about himself is a deal breaker.
There’s this strange quirk among some Christians that they continue to try to prove that their way is THE way and the other religions have missed the mark. It’s boring.
You are an antisemitic pig!
This opinion reminds me a particular scene from the film “Nowhere in Africa,” in which a German expatriate couple, displaced by the war, finds themselves being categorized as aliens by the Allies, in this instance, by the British in Nairobi. The couple, who are Jewish, clarify to the British officer compiling the list that they are Jewish, implying that they are not the Germans that the Allies are primarily concerned with. In a display of characteristic British irony, the officer retorts that he, too, is not English but Scottish. This scene poignantly captures the complexities of ethnicity, nationalism, and the interplay of these identities within the context of wartime, highlighting the intricate layers of personal and collective identity.
“in our new moral universe”
Pray who was responsible for the creation of our new moral universe?
do tell. can’t wait to hear. don’t be coy. say it.
Discussions about Jews, and by Jews about Jews have exploded around the internet. I follow with interest, and am glad for it.
I have yet to see this addressed: the whole concept of chosenness, isn’t it at root of domination? “We are better than you over there, you goyim!” Or something like that. Jewish writings tend to gloss over it with vague talk about being noble “light unto the nations”. I have this uneasy feeling that this particular meme, which is several thousand years old, is full of mischief.
I have the feeling you are full of “mischief.”
Read above what K Joynes had to say about this.
Thank you. I just did. Joynes does not address the real issue… the superiority in which certain people hold themselves as (in the world we actually live in). Whether or not Old Testament encourages this is a different question.
I much of the western world, Jews are more and more assimilating and or leaving religion. Their intermarried or inter-partnered children have offspring who do not identify as Jewish and those with a non-Jewish mom, are generally not considered Jewish by Jewish law.
By mid-century people identifying as Jewish will be those in Israel and the more religious in the USA and western Europe. We see the trend here in the USA with synagogues merging and then closing. There is an organization that gathers the ritual and holy objects from closed synagogues for safe keeping or disposal. In the future we may have antisemitism without Jews.
It’s the orthodox who are having large families, and as the saying has it, the future belongs to those who show up for it.
When I watched “progressive” people living near me scream that the Jews deserved to be beheaded, raped to death, burned alive, while the people who did it, after promising to do so for decades, are heroes, that’s when this whole thing changed for me as a Jew. My mother in law, who grew up in Krakow in the 20s and 30s, asked me 30 years ago why I thought Europeans had changed. Now I know she was right.
I wouldn’t base your ideas on the behaviour of ‘progressives’ ie the most clamorous and utopian but a relatively small part of the West.
Who writes the headlines for the articles? Whoever it was clearly hadn’t read it .
Hasn’t David Mamet already written this article , better .
Impossible to disagree with the case presented here, but on one point the writer is incorrect: the people killed on October 7 were not killed because they were Jews. They were killed because they were Israelis, insouciantly partying on land that had been torn from the hands of the attackers’ antecedents. Not quite the same thing.
Quite interesting for me to see an article drawing parallels between South Africa and the recent (inexcusable, in my opinion) resurgence in anti semitism in the UK. My wife is South African, raised on a small farm in a p*ss poor one horse town in the north, so Afrikaans as a first language with English classes at school. When Nelson was locked up on robben island she wouldn’t be born for another 15 years, that hasn’t stopped a mass of people in the UK accusing her of being a white supremacist and apartheid supporter over the years. She, (Chef by profession) has that abiding quality of most Afrikaaners, quite simply put, they’re grafters, they expect to work for what they get despite what the Guardian would have you believe. My (recently departed) father on the other hand was a tailors cutter for most of his adult life (most of his many brothers were dockers), due to so many of the trouser & jacket makers (don’t kid yourself your “bespoke suit” is being made in the Jermyn St. shop where you got measured up) were Jewish, over the decades he developed a deep and abiding love and respect for the Jewish community in London. My favourite story of his habitual contrariness was when he was (finally) retired and playing golf in a 4 ball at his local public 9 hole course and one of the group asked him if it was true his daughter was married to a black man – Dad said “It’s a bit more complicated than that, my daughter is married to a black man, who’s English, and my son is married to a white woman, who’s African” no further questions were forthcoming… I’m not entirely sure this contribution will move the debate on, but it made me smile anyway….
“… that antisemitism existed in South Africa was beyond doubt.”
I was born in Southern Rhodesia and attended universities in South Africa and the land of my birth. At my primary and secondary schools we had Jewish pupils, and same again with Jewish students at university. At all three educational levels I was fortunate to have Jewish friends, with some of whom I remain in valued contact in advancing old age. No doubt antisemitism did exist in South Africa then, but no more so than elsewhere. Indeed, it is my experience living most of my life in the UK that antisemitism (and for that matter racism more generally) is more prevalent here than in my early years in southern Africa (“I’m not a racist but …”!).
South African whites (the ‘Settlers’) and their diaspora descendants around the World will forever be condemned, stained and vilified by association with the apartheid era (modelled on the much longer era of formalised/legalised discrimination against Blacks in the United States, where slavery endured for so long and officially condoned lynching continued until well after WW2) – the sins of the white South Africa settler fathers will continue to be visited on their innocent sons and grandsons for generations to come. However, antisemitism in South Africa then was no worse and probably less so than in the free West at the time referred to by the author, and since his departure from that troubled country; whose Blacks are materially worse off three decades after independence (except for the classic Black elite who have engorged themselves with plundered wealth far beyond that accumulated by the political, governmental and business leaders of the apartheid era); but who at least have their political ‘freedom’ under the new tyranny that now prevails.
The ultimate irony is that the Woke Era, actively promoting and formally condoning anti-White racism, now tarnishes Jewish people as being ‘White’ – the latest iteration of antisemitism! What a Foxtrot Uniform of a convoluted world we inhabit today!
As a people exiled from their homeland centuries ago Jews have tried with extremely limited success to have themselves accepted (or at least tolerated) within the countries they lived in during their diaspora. Two different approaches were taken to survive – the first to be highly insular within their own Jewish culture and religion as a means to protect and isolate themselves from outside harm if possible, and the second alternatively to highly assimilate themselves into the local national culture so as not to appear “different” or foreign. Both strategies have failed. The first isolated them as “the other,” incurring the greatest of religious intolerance and subsequent persecution. The second, assimilation, never overcame latent scapegoating and persecution either – the Dreyfus affair being just one example. The assimilated Jew was instead perceived as a threat- an outside competitor intruding into a purer native culture and was hated as such. An alternative possibility that Jews would finally be seen as victims deserving some sympathetic treatment never has happened. Victimhood? -the greatest failure of assimilation occurred in the most Western and enlightened of cultures – in Germany, birthplace of Kant, Schiller and Goethe.
In all this Jews finally realized that there is no certain hope for them outside of having their own homeland back, and having their own army to defend them from attack. No more to be fearfully, passively loaded into boxcars but instead to establish a strong military presence for their own protection. The reaction of the world to this – nothing but blame. Perhaps the greatest absurdity of all is that after centuries of brutalization, persecution, pogroms and then the Holocaust, Jews are expected to behave with a restraint that no Western country has ever shown in warfare themselves. Moral outrage from the instigators of the bombing of Dresden and Hiroshima.