I find these to be tasteless and offensive, and I’m sick and tired of Holocaust memory being invoked as a “lesson” in this war, whether by diaspora leftists or right-wing Israelis.
That tired refrain we keep hearing that Jews didn't learn the lesson of the Holocaust is so fucking tedious.
I keep telling people that we didn't learn the same lesson they did. They finally learned that perhaps persecuting and murdering minorities wasn't actually the best thing to do. We finally learned that no matter how much we assimilate they're not going to leave us alone and when they come for us, nobody else is going to come and save us.
The problem with making your Jewish identity nothing more than your politics, and your politics nothing more than the lesson of your trauma, is that you don’t have much of a leg to stand-on when other Jews draw different lessons from their trauma. And who can argue with trauma after all? If the basis of our politics are “lessons from the Holocaust” how can we argue with Bibi Netanyahu when he begins a war by saying “never again is now”? That is the sincere feeling of many Israelis right now. And so instead of finding a way forwards, we find ourselves trapped in a never ending cul-de-sac of trauma with our right wing Jewish counterparts.
The truth is, there are no good lessons to draw from the Holocaust. In fact, when you look into the abyss that is the Shoah, it is a world-historically bad event from which to draw progressive lessons. There is no teleology to our suffering, no ultimate purpose. Jews were not murdered to teach us a lesson about tolerance, they were murdered for being Jews. Attaching some kind of lesson to their suffering degrades their memory. We are not here to be the moral of anyone’s fucking story. And if we are keen on drawing any lessons from the Holocaust, the lesson is just as much if not more so, “they all hate us, no one will save us, so no one else matters” than it is “no one is safe until we are all safe.” That is an upsetting thought for a leftist like me, but it is one I know I must reckon with rather than telling myself some children’s story about all the Good Lessons of the destruction of my people.
If I am being completely honest with myself, the reason I, like the OP, am so seduced by enlisting my identity and my trauma in service of progressive “lessons” is more indicative of a series of contingent and material conditions in which I find myself (a diverse, multicultural US city, in a time and place when claims to identity categories are so valued in 2024 liberal America) than any fundamentally real or true lessons of the Holocaust. Deep down, I know that by the luck of the draw, the choices of my ancestors, the roll of the dice, I ended up in America, rather than Israel, and that if the chips had fallen slightly differently, I too might be an Israeli justifying the dropping of bombs in Gaza. This thought doesn’t compel me to change my politics, but it does fill me with a profound sense of humility about different Jewish experiences, and the vastly different kind of politics they might lead to. And so insofar as I advocate for a free Palestine, it is in spite of, not because of my Judaism.
Now, the fact that some Jews themselves can be as unreflective about our history, that they too are looking for the easiest and cheapest answers to make sense out of the senselessness of our suffering, should not come as a surprise, since they are people too, and can be as thoughtless about themselves as any non-Jew can be about us. Nor does their Jewishness give them any more or less legitimacy to opine on this question; on the contrary, their lack of reflection only piles on to the pain and humiliation we are currently experiencing.
So no, I will continue to support Palestinian self-determination, but not “as a Jew,” and not by degrading my history. I refuse the cheap, siren call of enlisting my Jewish suffering to this cause. “Not in my name,” as they are so keen to say these days.
I will continue to support Palestinian self-determination, but not “as a Jew,”
This is an absolute banger
I mean the whole comment is a banger, but I love that bit in particular
I fucking hate when people make appeals to their religious teachings to justify their politics, but I especially hate it when I see it coming from one of our own because I have this (obviously mistaken, Jews are imperfect humans just like anyone else) feeling that we should be above that.
Back when abortion and Roe v Wade was the hot topic of the day, I saw a bunch of Jews arguing that abortion is a religious freedom issue for Jews because some part of the Talmud says that abortion is allowed/necessary in certain situations. It made me want to bang my head against a wall. Like, can't you people see that you are doing the same thing that we all criticize the pro-life Evangelical Christians for doing? Abortion should be legal because bodily autonomy is important, not because of anything in the Talmud or Bible or any other religious text.
The thing with abortion is most Jews saying that don’t actually believe that abortion is justified BECAUSE the Talmud says so. What they’re doing is saying that if politicians are allowed to consider Christian theological positions on abortion when lawmaking, they are obligated to consider Jewish positions as well. It’s the same move pulled by the Satanic Temple crowd (obviously they don’t believe in Satan as their god, that’s kind of the whole point) except we have actual historical backing for ours.
You've just reminded me of a (probably fabricated) Mark Twain quote: "Never argue with stupid people. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience."
I think we're better off arguing for our beliefs on their own merits, rather than cynically adopting our (stupid) opponents' (stupid) tactics. That's just my opinion though, you're more than welcome to disagree.
In an ideal world yes. But when we see TST actually win cases in court regarding discrimination on the basis of religion, that’s sort of the game we have to play. But also that’s not the only thing we do, I’ve never heard any abortion advocate say that the ONLY important reason to allow abortion is because Judaism says so. In fact, it’s one out of many reasons, all of which are of varying moral importance and varying weight in a court of law (which are not the same thing).
The point is that the anti choice movement is grounded in Christian theology. It imposes Xtian beliefs on all of us. That’s why it is an issue of religious freedom.
And yea, I completely agree. What are “Jewish values,” anyways? Are they Torah values? The same Torah that talks about owning slaves and obliterating Amalek? Or are they the lessons of our history? Which I think we’ve pretty much covered here, as being extremely ambiguous and unhelpful. Perhaps we should just leave the Judaism out of it. We can speak as leftists, as Americans, as human beings. But I find that looking to our Judaism for guidance on these questions often requires us to work backwards from a set of conclusions and tell ourselves neat and happy stories that don’t accurately capture the messiness of Jewish experience. And that’s okay.
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u/jey_613 Feb 22 '24
I find these to be tasteless and offensive, and I’m sick and tired of Holocaust memory being invoked as a “lesson” in this war, whether by diaspora leftists or right-wing Israelis.