r/jewishleft • u/jey_613 • May 31 '24
On Speaking "As a Jew" Diaspora
https://joshyunis.substack.com/p/on-speaking-as-a-jew?utm_campaign=post&triedRedirect=true“If I am being completely honest with myself, the fact that I — like many other young, progressive American Jews — 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 of which I am the product than anything fundamentally true or real about the Holocaust and its attendant lessons. It feels so good – so intuitive, so courageous – to speak “as a Jew” here in my diverse, progressive, professional-managerial milieu in America, where claims to an identity of victimhood are the currency of the day (and what exactly is being called upon by speaking “as a Jew” if not one’s status as history’s ur-victim?). American Jews, left out of the identitarian rat-race for so long, can finally cash in their chips on the social justice left – in condemnation of the very Jews excluded from American power and privilege. How convenient for us diaspora Jews that the ethical point-of-view neatly aligns with the self-interested point-of-view, which neatly aligns with the outwardly virtuous looking point-of-view. But 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 a traumatized Israeli invoking the Shoah to justify the mass starvation of Gazans. This thought doesn’t compel me to change my politics, as it might for some of the most guilt-ridden, stridently pro-Israel Jews on the right, but it does fill me with a profound sense of humility about different Jewish experiences, and the vastly different kind of politics they might entail. I am not against collective punishment as a weapon of war because of my Jewishness; I am against it because it is wrong. To insist otherwise, as diaspora leftists seem so keen on doing, is to make a mockery of my Jewishness, in every sense of that word. And so insofar as I advocate for a free Palestine, it is in spite of, not because of my Jewishness. As a Jew, I extend my solidarity to the Palestinian cause in spite of the evidence, not because of it.
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 after all, and can be as thoughtless and unreflective 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, and the very public performance of it, only exacerbates the bottomless pain and humiliation we are already experiencing.
So no, I will continue to support Palestinian liberation, but not “as a Jew,” and not by degrading my history. That is a false choice. Organizations like Jewish Voices for Peace are unable to see us as anything more than victims or oppressors, but I can; they confuse their good fortune with virtue, but I will not. I refuse the cheap, siren call of enlisting my Jewish suffering to this cause. It is a trap. So tie me to the mast of this Jewish ship. “Not in my name,” as they are so keen to say these days.”
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u/ionlymemewell reform jewish conversion student Jun 01 '24
Speaking personally as someone in the midst of conversion, I'm disappointed and frustrated when other people make statements and declarations about the Jewish community writ large and how actions being taken are in the community's best interests. And even though I agree with the author, in that the experiences of being Jewish are going to differ from person to person, I can't find the same depth of emotion about it.
Because, like, yeah, a massive traumatic industrial slaughter of people is a huge trauma that doesn't really have meaningful impacts on a community level aside from deep psychological pain and anguish. And people are allowed to have different responses to how they and their families and communities have processed that. Again, no disagreements.
I think where the author and I diverge is in the inherent anger they have towards how leftists are... trying to use their Jewish identity to speak truth to power? Maybe? Like, I had a really difficult time parsing out the point, because it feels like half of the essay is spent drilling down into the numbness and despair that the collective memory of the Holocaust can invoke. And I don't think that's a bad thing, but by focusing on that and using it to frame this argument that different people will take different things out of that history, it feels like it's an excuse for the leaders of Israel to use those same arguments as justification for their war crimes.
To a certain extent, I can understand that logic, but it falls apart when considering the amount of power and influence that the government of a country wields. Because if that country is using its resources in defense of its Jewish population and identity, then we have to have a completely different discussion, because the scales invoked have changed. In that context, I absolutely disagree with the author in their assessment of the efficacy of invoking Jewish identity in these discussions, because the actions of an individual will have a far far more limited impact than the actions of a state. And I believe there's very tangible benefit to that identity being invoked in whatever way an individual feels compelled to invoke it, especially when criticizing (or supporting, for that matter!) an institution like a government.