Well, obviously, the problem is that Journolist is going to CRUCIFY OUR LORD!

I thought the excerpt was out of context—no one could be so oblivious to the racism of that statement, it must be parody. Then I went there and saw Hitler cited as a leftist antisemite. I’m beginning to hate my nation.

The conservatives are trying to start a new McCarthyite campaign. It’s very stupid but it may be effective.

“secret cabals of powerful Jews out to pervert good Christian morals”

Christian morals are already perverted. They’re going to have to come up w/something else.

I’ll start by clearing something up for the conservatives and other ignorant people:  you don’t get to be not a Jew unless you convert to another religion.  Once you’re a Jew, you’re a Jew all the way from your first circumcision to your last…something that rhymes with “day” and is inherently Jewish.  You can call yourself a “lapsed Jew” or, as I do, “culturally Jewish”, and you can skip synagogue and religion altogether, as I do, but I’m a Jew and I don’t get to be not Jewish anymore than I get to be not bald even if I wear a toupee (I don’t wear a toupee and I am NOT bald…I am baldING).

Now, regarding that Jewish conspiracy thing.  I wish like hell there were a Jewish conspiracy.  I am now 52 years old, been Jewish all my life, and have never even caught a whiff of the freaking thing.  Hey!  Mishpochah!  Lansmen!  I’m Jewish and I want in!

If there’s a Jewish conspiracy, I want to be a part of it and I’ve said that often, loudly, and to many rich Jews.  I’d love to get in on a deal like that.  I’d love to control the media.  I’d love to live in Hollywood or wherever the Jewish conspirators hang out.  I blogged at my own site for years and had posting privileges at other, better-known sites, and I had some success at my own site, and I still wasn’t asked in.  My take is that there is no such thing because, if there were, you can bet your ass I’d be a part of it.  I tried to join, you see.  It just ain’t there.

And if it is there…call me.  You have a big circle.  You know how to get in touch.  I’ll be the best damned conspirator you ever saw.

OMG, the Jews are going to force Hasidic Law upon us!!! just like the Sharia Law!!1!1 They’re plotting with the musslims!111

They can have my bacon when they pry it out of my cold dead greasy fingers!

[qupte]OMG, the Jews are going to force Hasidic Law upon us!!! just like the Sharia Law!!1!1 They’re plotting with the musslims!111

I think the argument actually goes something like this: “OMG those evil secular Jews support social justice programs! And totally contradict our whole “Judeo-Christian” cover for being bigots! Oh noes! The socialism! Marx was a Jew you know.”

I love how these people think that they can decide who is Jewish, who is really Jewish, who is Jewish enough for their purposes, etc.  Due to name changes and intermarriage, there are Jewish people with all kinds of white-bread names, as well as people with Jewish-sounding surnames who are not considered part of the tribe.  And you can’t tell anything about someone’s background or level of observance from a name.  If anything, a first name tells you a little more, at least, about the level of observance of their parents at the time of their birth.  Maybe.

I’m a half-breed myself, with what is probably THE flagship Jewish surname, but not considered Jewish by, you know, the actual Jewish religion.  I wonder what dark motives could be ascribed to me if I worked for Journolist?

Come to think of it, I wonder what dark motives people ascribe to me in my own professional work.  Sigh.

You know, the Jewish interest in current political affairs ... which tends to mean more Jews get into journalism ... couldn’t have anything to do with a historic tendency to be the target of much propaganda and lies?

Naw.

Unfortunately, a few folks in Israel have crossed that line into propaganda and lies ... but that has nothing to do with a reasonable ethnic predilection for knowing and understanding what is going on at all times!

I particularly like the dumbfuck ignorance of what “Jewish religion” is.

It’s that this simple and otherwise routine act of people in a given field discussing related issues with each other has taken on the specter of a religiously-motivated conspiracy to do…something evil, although we’re not quite sure what. 

Well, we liberals are inherently evil, so anything we discuss and attempt to do is by extension evil. Because we’re liberal. And evil.

“I’m a half-breed myself, with what is probably THE flagship Jewish surname, but not considered Jewish by, you know, the actual Jewish religion.  I wonder what dark motives could be ascribed to me if I worked for Journolist?”

OMG, your name is Emmanuel Goldstein?  Aren’t we supposed to hate you, 2-minutes at a time, on a regular basis?  I guess that was before a guy named “Barack Hussein Obama” came along to assume the mantle of “some guy secretly responsible for everything bad that happens here”...

“Then I went there and saw Hitler cited as a leftist antisemite.”

I hope J0nah G0ldberg get’s the karma he’s earned for trying to take every bad thing on the right and claim that it’s actually a leftist thing.

I would just love to see what would happen to somebody who went up to some St0rm-Fr0nt/Ary*n-N*tion/Wh1te-P0wer outpost, waving a copy of L1beral Fasc1sm, and told them all that a man with the name “G0ldberg” said they were flaming leftists, alongside Karl Marx, Franklin Roosevelt, Jane Fonda, and Ted Kennedy…

As a Jew who works in the media, I wish I had control over it instead of being a lowly copy editor. I have a FB friend who is Hassidic and is slightly to the right of Attila the Hun, always denegrating Obama, calling him “The Chosen One,” etc. I can’t get into his head that the right only likes Jews when Israel is involved, because that’s where their Armaggedon is going to happen. After that, all the ‘non-believers,’ whether they support the cause or not, are doomed. Good people to agree with.

Jesse, I remember you had an excellent post a while back about how the “atheist war on Christmas” used to be the “Jewish war on Christmas.”  It’s the same thing with the “liberal media” being the “Jewish media.”  Anti-semitism like racism, homophobia, sexism, and xenophobia is inherently conservative, especially Christian conservative.  Look at Hitler, big conservative Christian. 

I will add to that the reason why conservatives support Israel to the extant that they do is because they hate Muslims more than they hate Jews and if the Israelis treat the Palestinians like crap, conservatives will give their undivided support.  But when it comes to other issues of support to Jewish people, conservatives are absent.

Firefall at 4: The proper Hebrew term for Jewish law is Halacha, it translates as the Way to Go.

  Obsession about Jewish controlled media is something that is common among the Far Left and Far Right, evidence that the circle theory of politics might be correct rather than the linear theory of politics. You can find rightists obsessing about the Jewish controlled media forcing liberalism on the general population and leftists ralling against the Zionist controlled media censoring their righteous anti-Zionism.* This is despite the fact that you can find anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist screeds all over the place. Often the rightist and the leftists would use the same anti-Jewish tropes to make their “points”, materials right out of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. If the Jews really controlled the media, you think we would do a better job at silencing our enemeies but common sense and anti-Semitism never really went together.

  *Disclosure, I am a Zionist and tend towards being sympathetic towards Israel. I don’t think that anti-Zionists are by nature anti-Semites but I do think that they haven’t really thought about the full implications of anti-Zionsim. I also think that the anti-Zionist movement has a tendency to tolearate anti-Semites hiding as anti-Zionists in order to boast their numbers, including a tendency to excuse a lot of the anti-Semitism present in Muslim-majority countries.**

  **One of my pet peeves is the idealization of the Dhimmi system, which my ancestors on my mother’s side suffered under. Muslim statements about toleration they had for non-Muslims tend to be taken at face value a lot rather than more critically examined. Its like taking the statement of White Southerner about African-Americans under Jim Crow at face value, who don’t take statements of the majority about how they treat a minority at face value (yes the includes how Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs) ever. The Dhimmi system involved not only non-Muslims having to pay what amounted to a protection racket, the jizya tax, but the method of collecting the tax ususally involved hitting the Dhimmi on the back of the neck when the tax was paid. All sorts of humiliating restrictions where put on Dhimmis. In Yemen, the Jews were forced to clean the latrines, forbidden to ride horses and only allowed to ride donkey side-saddle, and could build houses no higher than two stories. In Morrocco Jews had to live in ghettos just like the Jews in Europe. It wan’t a nice system but it gets idealized for some reason rather than critically looked at.

  Sorry but I needed to rant. Generally, I think that the Left and the Right are both bad when it comes to Jewish issues. The Right for obvious reasons but I don’t think the Left historically as a better record with Jewish issues. It tends towards a lot of requests for support based on the historical persecution of the Jews but actual abandonment when we need help. The treatment of the Jews in the Soviet Union wasn’t a cause celeb in the same way that Freeing Tibet is or Freeing Burma is. Not that the latter aren’t worthy causes but the Communist states in Eastern Europe waged a really big culture war against Jewish identity in the post-WWII era and it didn’t seem to attract a lot of interest outside of Jewish circles.

Wow. “Jewish names.” That’s some careful phrasing right there.

Does the “Jewish name” thing mean that nice Jewish girls like me with Irish last names are sleeper agents? Afterall, Judaism is matrilineal and names are patrilineal.

Paging Mr. Stein, Mr. Ben Stein…

something that rhymes with “day” and is inherently Jewish

.  “‘Oy’ and ‘vey’?”

This obsession with “Jewish names” does not only occur among Gentile antisemites.  There’s a “Kahane Chai” group who has a “Self Hating Israel Threatening” list online, naming and condemning Jews who have at one time or another criticized Israeli policy; and the “Jews” listed include Jimmy Breslin and Barbara Ehrenreich!

Excellent, Josh, and thanks.  And I’ll make it even Jewier (and get the stereotypical circumcision reference out of there):

When you’re a Jew you’re a Jew all the way
From your first mandel breit till your last vexed “Oy vey!”

I love how these people think that they can decide who is Jewish, who is really Jewish, who is Jewish enough for their purposes, etc.

And then there are those so blind in their christian-nation assumptions that no name can pierce their obliviousness to the existence other kinds of Americans.  I have a friend who was actually told by a doctor that she should look to Jesus to help her quit smoking.  My friend’s last name is Goldberg. 

(she says now that she wishes she’d reported that doc to the relevant professional association, but at the time was miserable and just wanting some flu meds. And also was not the master’s-degree helping professional she is now, with knowledge about boards and licensing and such)

I’m pretty sure that the right believes most atheists are Jewish.

Amanda:

Too bad it’s a halakhic absurdity—we could all convert and give them aneurysms…

Right Amanda, because to them if they don’t believe Jesus is the son of God, they are going to the same place as atheists.

Its very possible to be a Jew and an atheist at the same time. Emma Goldman, David Ben Gurion, Vladimir Jabotinsky, were atheists and proud Jews. My parents are Jewish atheists.* Jewishness is just as much as an ethnic identity like being Italian or Arab as it is a religious one and secular Jewish culture is not an oxy moron but secular Christian culture is. Nobody would question that Philip Roth is a Jewish author who writes on Jewish themes but nobody would call him a religious author.

  *This has caused problems. Most Jewish atheists are very comfotable with being a Jew and an atheist but others aren’t exactly pleased that they can’t shed their Jewish identity in the way that an atheist coming from a Christian background could shed their Christian background. Leon Trotsky and Rosa Luxembourg are prime examples of the latter set.

David Cross has a really funny routine about how being an atheist doesn’t mean you’re not Jewish.  His take on atheism is pretty much like mine—-kind of annoyed that people don’t see Bible stories as the straight bullshit they clearly are.

Also, he’s got a funny bit on growing up Jewish in the South.  It’s a really bizarre phenomenon, but a lot of evangelical Christians treat Jews with an exaggerated graciousness that stems from their twin beliefs that Jews are literally the Chosen People and that they’re still going to hell.

This has caused problems. Most Jewish atheists are very comfotable with being a Jew and an atheist but others aren’t exactly pleased that they can’t shed their Jewish identity in the way that an atheist coming from a Christian background could shed their Christian background.

Except for when the Christians in our families or circle of friends won’t let us.  My mother still babbles at me about it incessantly, and my aunt’s spouse said to me of a dinner prayer thing, “Are you up for tossing the prayer dice” as though not joining them in their silliness was an act of cowardice. (They have some fucking thing where they toss a die with themes on it and pray over those.)

I do not believe the Bible is true but I really don’t think that its bullshit either. Its no more bullshit than the Illiad or the Odyssey is bullshit, its still some of the most powerful literature ever written in a good way and a bad way. Also, the Song of Songs is absolutely beautiful erotic poetry. Most of the ethics in the Jewish part are sound and liberal leaning. The Tanakh is the Jewish national epic and the foundation of religious and secular Jewish culture. Most Jews really don’t believe in Judaism in the same way that an Evangelical Christian believes in Christianity but they still at least partly participate in Jewish festivals and life cycle events because its a folk custom, a way of remaining one people.

  Recent scientific research has shown that Jewish ethnic identity is about as real as any other ethnic identity, revealing that Jews are mainly cousins regardless of what Jewish community they came from.

  No question about Evangelical Christians have troubling attitudes towards the Jews. I’m wary of them but Fred Clark of Slacktivist is a really righteous person.

Lee:

Most people don’t know what “Zionism” means, exactly. A lot for example think a “Zionist” is someone who wants to annex the entire West Bank and Gaza to Israel and ethnically cleanse the Palestinians, rather than just someone who believes the Jewish people have a right to national self-determination. You can believe this while simultaneously believing that the Palestinians have the same right, which a lot of people seem to miss!

Obsession about Jewish controlled media is something that is common among the Far Left and Far Right, evidence that the circle theory of politics might be correct rather than the linear theory of politics.

The farther you go off the beaten logic path the more likely you are to see dogmatic lies spread.  antisemitism is so part of American culture as a undercurrent like racism it is bound to pop up in crazy beliefs. 

Its very possible to be a Jew and an atheist at the same time. Emma Goldman, David Ben Gurion, Vladimir Jabotinsky, were atheists and proud Jews.

This gets into the idea that Jewishness is an ethnicity and not a religion mainly supported in eastern-European Jewish circles.  I’m not Jewish, but I can understand how it is an ethnicity more so than a religion because of the forced association in a culture that is anti-non-Christianity.

Ultimately though, the whole argument that Israel is good and yet they walk around as anti-Semites is a bit much.  They want their Jews in a convenient biblical box and not in a realistic liberal left they’ve been in since the early 20th century.  This is just another touch of the bigotry that conflates the right.

Afterall, Judaism is matrilineal and names are patrilineal.

  And feminism never happened and reform Judaism doesn’t count.

I’m a half-breed myself, with what is probably THE flagship Jewish surname, but not considered Jewish by, you know, the actual Jewish religion.

While I obviously don’t and can’t take issue with what you say, as I know nothing about you, you presumably mean you either weren’t brought up with a specifically Jewish education/acculturation, or don’t care to identify as a Jew now, or both.  But the way you phrased it, it is worth noting that ignorant readers might misunderstand you to mean that only having a Jewish dad is itself the thing that disqualifies you.  As if Reform Judaism weren’t somehow “the actual Jewish religion,” and if their consideration of who is Jewish weighs less than the consideration of someone Orthodox.

I am sure you didn’t mean anything like that, but there is enough of that brand of toxic and frankly antisemitic garbage going around on the right-wing side to make me unable to leave ambiguity of that sort alone.

I’m reminded of the time I went to Japan. I went with a group from Murray State University in Kentucky, with a girl from Hawaii, a boy from Indiana, ~25 kids from Kentucky, and little Californian-with-a-year-in-a-PA-college me (and, I gotta say, I learned more about Kentucky than Japan on that trip!).

On this trip, there was a couple, boy- and girlfriend, who loved Japan. Loooooooooooooooooooved Japan. I mean, most of us were interested in Japanese culture (duh!), and quite a few were anime fans (more duh!), but these two… they wore hakama pants, bokken, and asian cone hats around their college campus. They lived as “Japanese”-y as they could. They idolized Japan.

Or, rather… they idolized what they THOUGHT Japan was. They really seemed to expect that they’d arrive in the mythic land of their dreams, of samurai and daimyo and shogun. They wore their “Japanese” outfits to ride the metro in downtown Hiroshima, and while they couldn’t see the double-take-freakout that passers-by did behind their backs (those of us trying to distance ourselves, of course, could), they did have it painfully brought home to them that, NO, the reality of Japan is not what they wanted.

When I see fundies act like this about the Jews, I get the same feeling. Modern-day fundie/evangelical Christians appropriate the Jewish god, trappings of Jewish culture, Hebrew language, and project their own interpretation of how holy God’s Chosen People are into an image of the Idealized Jew… and the existence of actual Jews, who see things about their religion and scriptures very differently, kinda fucks that fantasy up for them.

Ben D. at 32: I’ve noticed that most anti-Zionists define Zionism by the most extreme faction of Jewish nationalists rather than simply understanding Zionism as a belief in Jewish self-determination and right nation-state. I’ve found its really hard to correct people on this point. What is really weird are the people who see Israelis as genocidal when the Palestinian population is increasing. Compared to other ethnic conflicts the Israeli-Palestinian one has a very low fatality rate and other atrocity rate at both sides. This doesn’t make it good but it should put things in perspective. Israel is also the most liberal country in the Middle East by long shot. It has an active and open LBGT community, women involved in all sectors of society, and its one of the twenty-three countries in the world where any sort of physical punishment of children by their parents is considered a crime.

  Sophonisba: I’m technically a Reform Jew and I view the concept of patrilineal descent as a mistake. Jewishness was defined as matrilineal for nearly two thousand years when the decision to recognize patrilineal descent was made. It caused a really bad rupture in the Jewish community that simply wasn’t worth it.

  Xeranar: The Jews are the people who determine whether we are an ethnic group, a religious community or both and we have generally decided that Jewish is both an ethnic thing and a religious thing. What non-Jews feel about this is really irrelevant and they have no right to decide what group we belong in for their own convenience. Plus as I mentioned above, secular Jewish culture is not an oxy moron while secular Christian culture is an oxy moron. Since there is a secular Jewish culture than Jews are an ethnic group and a religious community. Plus other ethnic groups tend to define their Jewish neighbors as not being part of their group and belonging to a different group.

“I do not believe the Bible is true but I really don’t think that its bullshit either. Its no more bullshit than the Illiad or the Odyssey is bullshit, its still some of the most powerful literature ever written in a good way and a bad way.”

There’s a big difference, billions of people don’t believe the Illiad and the Odyssey really happened.  Christians believe the events of the Bible were true or at least based on the truth.  I think a better comparison would be to compare the Bible to Atlas Shrugged, except the Bible has more followers.  Instead of people running around going “praise Jesus”, they are running around going “I am John Galt!”

We’ve collectively accepted Greek literature as “mythology”, there will be a time when it happens to every religion especially Christianity.

I think its wrong to compare the Bible to Atlas Shrugged. The Bible has better writing and less bad teachings than Atlass Shrugged. It also is more entertaining.

#37

In general, Christianity makes much more sense than libertarianism/objectivism.

#35

I’ve noticed that most anti-Zionists define Zionism by the most extreme faction of Jewish nationalists rather than simply understanding Zionism as a belief in Jewish self-determination and right nation-state. I’ve found its really hard to correct people on this point. What is really weird are the people who see Israelis as genocidal when the Palestinian population is increasing. Compared to other ethnic conflicts the Israeli-Palestinian one has a very low fatality rate and other atrocity rate at both sides. This doesn’t make it good but it should put things in perspective.

I think part of the problem, the total cringing obedience to Likud that is enforced in Congress by AIPAC & other groups, gives a claustrophobic feel to any discussion of Israel in the US, and actually empowers extremists of all stripes.

Christianity isn’t the only religion that uses the Bible as a holy text, atheist.

  Also if you look at the situation in Europe, you will see that anti-Zionists in Europe also define Zionism by its most extreme elements even though Europe has no equivalent of AIPAC and discussion of Israel in Europe is less caustrophobic. If anything it ways more heavily on the Arab side of things, a mirror opposite of the United States. So I think that AIPAC’s effects on this are overrated. Generally, the anti-Zionists seem to have a really bad understanding of what inspired the Zionist movement in the first place for a variety of reasons and are titled towards not see anything about positively.

The Jews are the people who determine whether we are an ethnic group, a religious community or both and we have generally decided that Jewish is both an ethnic thing and a religious thing. What non-Jews feel about this is really irrelevant and they have no right to decide what group we belong in for their own convenience.

Put away your ethnic stick, I didn’t rain on your parade.  If we’re going to get into passive-aggressive talk then read some of the papers put out on the topic and see how the Middle-Eastern born Jews tend to view it as a religion and if you’re an Israeli national you’re an ethnic as well.  I’m merely replying to the concept as to what I read.  I’m not the author of it though I am probably a subscriber. 

Plus as I mentioned above, secular Jewish culture is not an oxy moron while secular Christian culture is an oxy moron. Since there is a secular Jewish culture than Jews are an ethnic group and a religious community. Plus other ethnic groups tend to define their Jewish neighbors as not being part of their group and belonging to a different group.

Yiddish, Hasidim dress, and so many of the traditionally viewed Jewish cultural cues come from Eastern European Jews.  I can see where the secular Jewish Culture sprouts from.  I can also point to the fact that Western society shares basic moral codes with Judeo-Christian values compared to Eastern Philosophy.  The practicing of it isn’t perfect and the idea of locking the laws into some vague biblical law is insane but the practicing of the vagueness of individuality and certain other things come from the Christian aspect.  Then again this is really all up for debate, I am just throwing out my thoughts on the matter.

Eurosabra: That would be ignoring all the Jews from the Middle East, India, and Ethiopia in Israel. One of my favorite things about anti-Zionists, especially the Arab and Muslim ones, is their ability to simultaneously speak about how the Jews under Islam were treated better than the Jews in Christian Europe but ignore all the Jews from the Middle East in Israel and treat all Israeli Jews as Ashkenazim. “We have treated our Jews better than the Chrisitans did but we never had any Jews to mistreat.”

  The Anti-Zionists also spend a lot of time fighting Zionism but tend to ignore what caused Zionism to arise in the first place, the rejection of the Jewish population by their non-Jewish neighbors as fellow citizens. Happened in Europe, happened in the Middle East, and happend in Ethiopia.

Sophonisba (#33)

The Reform Movement did not officially adopt patrilineal descent as automatic until 1983, long after I and many other people came along. Since 1947, the Reform Movement had taken the parents’ intention to raise a child of a mixed marriage as Jewish as grounds for considering the child Jewish without a conversion ceremony, which is not exactly the same idea as patrilineal descent.

In other words, for most American Jews currently living, patrilineal descent as a matter of course came along years after their parents had to decide whether or not their new baby was Jewish, and that remains their/our reality.  And even in that case, we’re only talking about Reform or Reconstructionist Jews. (Reconstructionists adopted PL in 1968).  For most of the history of Judaism and for all other branches, matrilineal descent is the norm. 

It would not be ignorant for someone to assume that “having a Jewish dad” disqualifies you.  It disqualified me back in the day, though my lucky Jewish Reconstructionist children have no such problem.

“Once you’re a Jew, you’re a Jew all the way from your first circumcision to your last…something that rhymes with “day” and is inherently Jewish.”

dbk@6, the line you are searching for is obviously “...to your last Shiksa lay”.

Although actually the Jewish craving for Gentile women tends to weaken after the second or third circumcision.

#45, that’s a crappy line and the anti-Semitism isn’t appreciated.

Do you also talk to black people about black men craving white women?

I don’t know whether they practice the religion in a way that has traditional religious resonance,

Is he trying to say “eating the blood of Christian babies” without actually saying it?

there are those so blind in their christian-nation assumptions that no name can pierce their obliviousness to the existence other kinds of Americans.  I have a friend who was actually told by a doctor that she should look to Jesus to help her quit smoking.  My friend’s last name is Goldberg.
Comment 22—CalliopeJane

But is she Jewish?

I think a lot of sheltered Gentile-Americans don’t orget Jews exist so much as they forget Jews aren’t Christian. Normal people turn to Jesus for stuff like that, Ms. Goldberg is normal—she’s never been seen to kick a puppy or eat a baby (I assume, she’s your friend)—so there you go.

Modern-day fundie/evangelical Christians appropriate the Jewish god, trappings of Jewish culture, Hebrew language, and project their own interpretation of how holy God’s Chosen People are into an image of the Idealized Jew… and the existence of actual Jews, who see things about their religion and scriptures very differently, kinda fucks that fantasy up for them.
Comment 34—Falyne

Before I even read this post, I was thinking something along those lines. The idea that modern Jewry is somehow degenerate or decayed— “the so-called ‘Jew’”—provides cover to anti-semites who want to praise the “Old Testament.”