In the DSA flavored left (and increasingly the mainstream as well), if you hate American Jews, you are an antisemite who deserves condemnation. However, if you only hate Jews in Israel, you are a member in good standing of the Democratic Party. These people are repulsive…
As human beings, all of our beliefs from our most superficial to our deepest core values are linked. If someone has a day off and ponders a simple question "What will I do today?", the answer may well eventually arise from that person's deepest philosophical beliefs. After their recent alliance, the left and followers of Islam, both of whom hate, fear, and try to destroy freedom and individual rights (FAIR). will unrelentingly try to spilt Jews in NYC and elsewhere from Israel because Israel is the one country in the Middle East in which there is respect for FAIR. In other words, the anti Israel and anti Semitic actions of Mamdami and other left wingers make perfect sense when viewed in the context of their core communist and Islamic beliefs. As I've said before, the left will make sure that Jews who are to any degree left wing will have to choose between supporting Israel and remaining with the left. Assuming that they stay, eventually the left will demand of them that they help establish the police state which the left is desperately trying to bring about in America and world wide. The destruction of Israel is a crucial part of the left's agenda.
Once Mamdani admits that Israel is the only real place of safety for The Jewish People, against the same Nazism he has said threatens all communities and which dictates his own Anti-Nazi politics, he has then acknowledged the Right of Israel to Exist as our place of safety. Our murderous Nazi Enemy has defined us thus, whatever lies Mamdani chooses to tell, and regardless of the Jews-as-race-or-faith debate. And he knows it. Start there.
Mamdani is a nasty piece of work. It is limiting, and offensive, to refer to Jews only insofar as religion is concerned. That's why he does it, of course.
Be much more specific. You are talking about American Jews, not other Diaspora Jews where there is much stronger connections to Israel. Or do you assume all Jews are clones of American Jews? Blame Reform which is negligible in the Diaspora outside the US. The Reform leaders and many rabbis demonized Israel for decades as well as hatred of religious Jews. Now it has had severe consequences. If you teach hate of other Jews, it is internalized and one starts hating one self as a Jew, and If one is brainwashed to hate Israel, then of course they will despise Israel.
Alas, the US is the default used for Diaspora Jews: I’m a born, lived all my life in Scotland Jew, grew up in an east end estate where religion meant Catholic or Protestant, and my Jewish background was very much through my grandmother. At school, it was Church of Scotland, as were all my friends, and on throughout my life. However, I always knew I was Jewish, felt very Jewish and that thread continued throughout my life: only in my later life did .i begin to do anything about it. I’m 71; throughout the last year, I taught myself to read Hebrew(sufficiently to be able to read aloud… along with English translations) I love that I am able todo that; it makes me feel more connected. I’m pretty much a ‘solitary’, physically, for various reasons, but online I have sources and resources and amazing friends. I cannot begin to understand the demonisation of Israel. There’s a lot I’d like to say, but words are no longer particularly easy to put together(cognitive stroke effect stuff)and it’s very frustrating to have what I want to say so clearly in my mind but not be able to flick the switch to get it to flow onto the screen/paper.
(Apologies for rambling… I really just wanted to thank you for picking up on “the Diaspora is *not* only the US”, which is a huge vexation for me)
Thank you for your response. I live in Canada which has a worse problem, because everything from Israel or even at Federation level is under the North American name, while Canadian Jews did a survey a couple of years ago, and showed such disparity between the two countries it is like living on two different planets. We are in fact very much in step with Jews from other English speaking countries with close ties to Israel, a negligible presence of Reform which I believe has destroyed American Jewry other than the Dati, have much higher degree of Jewish education for our children and much more involved with different organizations in our Jewish community.
Jews are the people. Judaism is the religion. A Jew can decide not to practice Judaism or can even choose a different religion, but that person is still a Jew. Take Bill Maher as an example—he was born to a Jewish mother, which makes him a Jew. Period. His father was not a Jew; his religion was Catholic, and he took Bill to church as a kid. Bill identifies as an atheist religiously, but he has stated numerous times that he’s not Jewish. I deduce the reason for that is because he has no real understanding of what being a Jew is—he relates to it as someone whose religion is Judaism, like someone who practices Catholicism is a Catholic. So, he conveniently states that he’s not Jewish since he never had any Judaism in his life. Either he’s simply just a denier, or he’s ignorant. He does not impress me as ignorant; quite the contrary. He’s clever, smart, and has a keen comedic sense. You listen to him for 10 seconds or less, and you know he’s a landsman. I appreciate that he’s very direct and unequivocal about his support for Israel, but I don’t get why he cannot just acknowledge that he’s a Jew.
As for Mamdani, he knows what Jews are, and he knows he’s deliberately promoting a lie. He knows where the strength of the Jewish people lies—an incredible history as a nation and a steadfast religion that has stayed true to its roots. He also knows that many American Jews don’t know their history or their religion and he’s preying on that ignorance and disconnection to weaken the nation state of the Jewish people. Jews without a nation are rendered weak and unable to defend and define themselves. The haters do not want Diaspora Jews to be inexplicably bound to Israel. I personally don’t understand how a Jew cannot be all in for Israel and feel personally bonded to Israel.
Jews are a people. A people with a religion, but still a people. We’re an ancient civilisation that predates the modern ideas of race, religion or nationality. I think many people have a hard time wrapping their heads around anything that came before modern norms that we take for granted. I live in London and we have a similar situation to the one with Mamdani and his followers. Mamdani and others are trying very hard to slot Jews into a category that they decide and can understand. Perhaps more importantly it must be one that they can control. It’s been tried before. They want to reduce us to personal, private beliefs only, instead of what we are, a living civilisation with all the things that make up that peoplehood in terms of shared history, ties to a homeland, culture, politics, religion, debate etc. In fact any way that they can reframe Jews in order to control, undermine and erase us they’ll do. They don’t want Jewish self determination. It’s always been a threat. How dare they determine who and what Jews and Judaism are. Trying to erase our history as a people is important to their strategy. There are millions of secular Jews that are no less Jewish than religious Jews, who still exist as Jews without strict religious observance. Jews have always been a people and not simply a religion. Why else every year for roughly 900 years would we’ve been saying, Next year in Jerusalem. And what about the “Am” in Am Israel chai! ? I think it’s all about needing Jews to behave themselves, conform to the dominant western standard or structure. They are desperate for us to assimilate, to disavow our living civilisation, our peoplehood, our deep connections to Israel. By labelling Jews/being Jewish/Judaism as religion only they are part way to achieving this. We all have to assert and remind others of what being Jewish and part of a people is about. It was either last year or maybe 2024 when the BBC ran a short piece on radio 4 about hannukah. They explained (sort of) all the rituals. What they didn’t do was to give people much of the history surrounding it and therefore little context, particularly about Jews resisting. They sort of glossed over it quickly. In other words it became a nice friendly piece around Christmas time about another religion, but only a religion. It also showed the beeb as some kind of tolerant benefactor. But that story and history of hannukah as an example of resistance is just as relevant today. We must tell our stories. Not just the ancient ones but the modern ones, the questions asked during pesach, how important children are and how they’re involved in rituals, how all rituals and history connects us to today.
Thanks for this. It's important to point out what ZM is doing here. Reporters who interview him always fail to ask the right follow up questions when he refers to Jews as a religious group and Israel as a country that preferences one religion over another. But I think this piece should be called 'The new antizionist trick' not 'The new antisemitic trick.'
Also, the California legislature just passed a bill to include Jewish as an ethnicity people can choose on California state forms, and sent it to the Governor's desk. It's the first of its kind, and obviously diametrically opposed to Mamdani's attempt to deny Jews are a people.
I like that option, but at the same time, my mind immediately goes to the big red “J” on Jewish ID docs under the Nazis and their sympathizers countries.
Z-man is a snake. ANYTHING out of his mouth is highly suspect because to me he plays word games with every issue and obviously thinks that the rest of us are too stupid to understand his "nuance." He's making de Blasio look good in comparison.
"We are members of a creed, a race, an ethnicity, a nation, a people, or maybe some amalgamation of all of these? — but no conclusive answers."
An alternative for your consideration:
The essence of Jews is their Peoplehood. As any ancient indigenous tribal people rising from a land and intimately connecting with it, drawing their essential self from earth, air, water, and all its living creatures over time will tell you, we evolve a creed, a distinct culture, an ethnicity, inextricably connected to each other in and through and because of the land beneath our feat, which the West calls a nation. In a word, like all indigenous peoples worldwide, we are a Peoplehood. But most definitely we are not a race. Calling Jews a race is creating a false equivalency to those whose differentiating characteristics are based on skin pigmentation and distinctive physiological features.
"what once was a tool for Jewish assimilation is now an expression of Jewish exception."
How would the implications of privilege, entitlement, and elitism shift if the excerpt read "what once was a tool for Jewish assimilation is now an expression of Jewish distinctiveness?
Could your main thesis therefore be reduced to the following statement: the problem is not criticism of Israel as such, but redefining Jews as merely a religious community, because such a definition makes it easier to politically separate Jews from Israel and from Jewish national identity? I am asking because the subsequent characterization of this as an “imperial” or “woke” mechanism seems to me to be another step that requires separate justification.
It’s not just Mamdani. It’s the entirety of the so-called Red/Green alliance and an ever-growing segment of the Democratic Party.
The cancer of antisemitism has no limits and mastastasizes globally.
In the DSA flavored left (and increasingly the mainstream as well), if you hate American Jews, you are an antisemite who deserves condemnation. However, if you only hate Jews in Israel, you are a member in good standing of the Democratic Party. These people are repulsive…
As human beings, all of our beliefs from our most superficial to our deepest core values are linked. If someone has a day off and ponders a simple question "What will I do today?", the answer may well eventually arise from that person's deepest philosophical beliefs. After their recent alliance, the left and followers of Islam, both of whom hate, fear, and try to destroy freedom and individual rights (FAIR). will unrelentingly try to spilt Jews in NYC and elsewhere from Israel because Israel is the one country in the Middle East in which there is respect for FAIR. In other words, the anti Israel and anti Semitic actions of Mamdami and other left wingers make perfect sense when viewed in the context of their core communist and Islamic beliefs. As I've said before, the left will make sure that Jews who are to any degree left wing will have to choose between supporting Israel and remaining with the left. Assuming that they stay, eventually the left will demand of them that they help establish the police state which the left is desperately trying to bring about in America and world wide. The destruction of Israel is a crucial part of the left's agenda.
Once Mamdani admits that Israel is the only real place of safety for The Jewish People, against the same Nazism he has said threatens all communities and which dictates his own Anti-Nazi politics, he has then acknowledged the Right of Israel to Exist as our place of safety. Our murderous Nazi Enemy has defined us thus, whatever lies Mamdani chooses to tell, and regardless of the Jews-as-race-or-faith debate. And he knows it. Start there.
Mamdani is a nasty piece of work. It is limiting, and offensive, to refer to Jews only insofar as religion is concerned. That's why he does it, of course.
Be much more specific. You are talking about American Jews, not other Diaspora Jews where there is much stronger connections to Israel. Or do you assume all Jews are clones of American Jews? Blame Reform which is negligible in the Diaspora outside the US. The Reform leaders and many rabbis demonized Israel for decades as well as hatred of religious Jews. Now it has had severe consequences. If you teach hate of other Jews, it is internalized and one starts hating one self as a Jew, and If one is brainwashed to hate Israel, then of course they will despise Israel.
Alas, the US is the default used for Diaspora Jews: I’m a born, lived all my life in Scotland Jew, grew up in an east end estate where religion meant Catholic or Protestant, and my Jewish background was very much through my grandmother. At school, it was Church of Scotland, as were all my friends, and on throughout my life. However, I always knew I was Jewish, felt very Jewish and that thread continued throughout my life: only in my later life did .i begin to do anything about it. I’m 71; throughout the last year, I taught myself to read Hebrew(sufficiently to be able to read aloud… along with English translations) I love that I am able todo that; it makes me feel more connected. I’m pretty much a ‘solitary’, physically, for various reasons, but online I have sources and resources and amazing friends. I cannot begin to understand the demonisation of Israel. There’s a lot I’d like to say, but words are no longer particularly easy to put together(cognitive stroke effect stuff)and it’s very frustrating to have what I want to say so clearly in my mind but not be able to flick the switch to get it to flow onto the screen/paper.
(Apologies for rambling… I really just wanted to thank you for picking up on “the Diaspora is *not* only the US”, which is a huge vexation for me)
Thank you for your response. I live in Canada which has a worse problem, because everything from Israel or even at Federation level is under the North American name, while Canadian Jews did a survey a couple of years ago, and showed such disparity between the two countries it is like living on two different planets. We are in fact very much in step with Jews from other English speaking countries with close ties to Israel, a negligible presence of Reform which I believe has destroyed American Jewry other than the Dati, have much higher degree of Jewish education for our children and much more involved with different organizations in our Jewish community.
Jews are the people. Judaism is the religion. A Jew can decide not to practice Judaism or can even choose a different religion, but that person is still a Jew. Take Bill Maher as an example—he was born to a Jewish mother, which makes him a Jew. Period. His father was not a Jew; his religion was Catholic, and he took Bill to church as a kid. Bill identifies as an atheist religiously, but he has stated numerous times that he’s not Jewish. I deduce the reason for that is because he has no real understanding of what being a Jew is—he relates to it as someone whose religion is Judaism, like someone who practices Catholicism is a Catholic. So, he conveniently states that he’s not Jewish since he never had any Judaism in his life. Either he’s simply just a denier, or he’s ignorant. He does not impress me as ignorant; quite the contrary. He’s clever, smart, and has a keen comedic sense. You listen to him for 10 seconds or less, and you know he’s a landsman. I appreciate that he’s very direct and unequivocal about his support for Israel, but I don’t get why he cannot just acknowledge that he’s a Jew.
As for Mamdani, he knows what Jews are, and he knows he’s deliberately promoting a lie. He knows where the strength of the Jewish people lies—an incredible history as a nation and a steadfast religion that has stayed true to its roots. He also knows that many American Jews don’t know their history or their religion and he’s preying on that ignorance and disconnection to weaken the nation state of the Jewish people. Jews without a nation are rendered weak and unable to defend and define themselves. The haters do not want Diaspora Jews to be inexplicably bound to Israel. I personally don’t understand how a Jew cannot be all in for Israel and feel personally bonded to Israel.
Jews are a people. A people with a religion, but still a people. We’re an ancient civilisation that predates the modern ideas of race, religion or nationality. I think many people have a hard time wrapping their heads around anything that came before modern norms that we take for granted. I live in London and we have a similar situation to the one with Mamdani and his followers. Mamdani and others are trying very hard to slot Jews into a category that they decide and can understand. Perhaps more importantly it must be one that they can control. It’s been tried before. They want to reduce us to personal, private beliefs only, instead of what we are, a living civilisation with all the things that make up that peoplehood in terms of shared history, ties to a homeland, culture, politics, religion, debate etc. In fact any way that they can reframe Jews in order to control, undermine and erase us they’ll do. They don’t want Jewish self determination. It’s always been a threat. How dare they determine who and what Jews and Judaism are. Trying to erase our history as a people is important to their strategy. There are millions of secular Jews that are no less Jewish than religious Jews, who still exist as Jews without strict religious observance. Jews have always been a people and not simply a religion. Why else every year for roughly 900 years would we’ve been saying, Next year in Jerusalem. And what about the “Am” in Am Israel chai! ? I think it’s all about needing Jews to behave themselves, conform to the dominant western standard or structure. They are desperate for us to assimilate, to disavow our living civilisation, our peoplehood, our deep connections to Israel. By labelling Jews/being Jewish/Judaism as religion only they are part way to achieving this. We all have to assert and remind others of what being Jewish and part of a people is about. It was either last year or maybe 2024 when the BBC ran a short piece on radio 4 about hannukah. They explained (sort of) all the rituals. What they didn’t do was to give people much of the history surrounding it and therefore little context, particularly about Jews resisting. They sort of glossed over it quickly. In other words it became a nice friendly piece around Christmas time about another religion, but only a religion. It also showed the beeb as some kind of tolerant benefactor. But that story and history of hannukah as an example of resistance is just as relevant today. We must tell our stories. Not just the ancient ones but the modern ones, the questions asked during pesach, how important children are and how they’re involved in rituals, how all rituals and history connects us to today.
Thanks for this. It's important to point out what ZM is doing here. Reporters who interview him always fail to ask the right follow up questions when he refers to Jews as a religious group and Israel as a country that preferences one religion over another. But I think this piece should be called 'The new antizionist trick' not 'The new antisemitic trick.'
Also, the California legislature just passed a bill to include Jewish as an ethnicity people can choose on California state forms, and sent it to the Governor's desk. It's the first of its kind, and obviously diametrically opposed to Mamdani's attempt to deny Jews are a people.
I like that option, but at the same time, my mind immediately goes to the big red “J” on Jewish ID docs under the Nazis and their sympathizers countries.
Z-man is a snake. ANYTHING out of his mouth is highly suspect because to me he plays word games with every issue and obviously thinks that the rest of us are too stupid to understand his "nuance." He's making de Blasio look good in comparison.
"We are members of a creed, a race, an ethnicity, a nation, a people, or maybe some amalgamation of all of these? — but no conclusive answers."
An alternative for your consideration:
The essence of Jews is their Peoplehood. As any ancient indigenous tribal people rising from a land and intimately connecting with it, drawing their essential self from earth, air, water, and all its living creatures over time will tell you, we evolve a creed, a distinct culture, an ethnicity, inextricably connected to each other in and through and because of the land beneath our feat, which the West calls a nation. In a word, like all indigenous peoples worldwide, we are a Peoplehood. But most definitely we are not a race. Calling Jews a race is creating a false equivalency to those whose differentiating characteristics are based on skin pigmentation and distinctive physiological features.
"what once was a tool for Jewish assimilation is now an expression of Jewish exception."
How would the implications of privilege, entitlement, and elitism shift if the excerpt read "what once was a tool for Jewish assimilation is now an expression of Jewish distinctiveness?
Good point! It is like someone telling you that they don't hate you; just your entire family.
Maybe it's a Charedi trick, too
Could your main thesis therefore be reduced to the following statement: the problem is not criticism of Israel as such, but redefining Jews as merely a religious community, because such a definition makes it easier to politically separate Jews from Israel and from Jewish national identity? I am asking because the subsequent characterization of this as an “imperial” or “woke” mechanism seems to me to be another step that requires separate justification.
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