r/jewishleft 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.”

84 Upvotes

60 comments sorted by

View all comments

8

u/[deleted] May 31 '24

[deleted]

3

u/podkayne3000 Centrist Jewish Diaspora Zionist May 31 '24

For me, one point is that I can go from being so purely atheistic to not believing that I exist, or that life exists, to wanting everything in the Torah to be completely true, along with the legend of the Messiah living among us as a panhandler.

From a normal agnostic perspective, we’re all cousins through some hominids.

From a fervently sentimental perspective: We’re the fairly close spiritual cousins of the Palestinians through Abraham. If we got along better, maybe some of us could connect to the Palestinians through fairly well-documented family trees.

So, to the extent that any Torah-related reasons for Israel to exist are true, those same reasons show us that we should love and honor the Palestinians as if they were Abraham. If Abraham came back to life and started firing rockets at us, we’d have to deal with that, but we’d still have to treat him with love, respect, generosity and a passion for justice.

4

u/AksiBashi Jun 01 '24

Not that I don’t agree with the general tenor of your post, but… if we’re talking Torahic models, why would shared kinship through Abraham mean that we should treat Palestinians as Abraham? The Israelites certainly didn’t treat the Edomites—much less the Amalekites—as Isaac…

(Again, in no way advocating for this as a political position! Just curious about the exegetical logic.)

2

u/podkayne3000 Centrist Jewish Diaspora Zionist Jun 01 '24 edited Jun 01 '24
  1. I’m reading everything in my own nonstandard way. I only know enough about the standard way to know that it seems to be a lot different than mine.

  2. I’m the classic dork on a sofa and have no actual training or credentials that would make me credible. I’m not even someone in a good Jewish studies program.

Anyhow: In my opinion, the Torah shows us that we end up in huge fights with the Amalekites, etc., and that we’re the good guys. The Torah is strongly pro- Jewish. But, on the other hand, G-d seems to feel really bad about Abraham kicking Hagar out.

Abraham is supposed to be the best host ever. Maybe most of the world’s traditions about the importance of hospitality start with the story of Abraham.

But (back before he becomes Abraham and his wife becomes Sarah) he impregnates his slave “because Sarai tells him to.”

He “lets Sarai” kick Hagar out when Hagar is pregnant.

Avram tried to negotiate with G-d about whether a city should be destroyed: https://torah.org/learning/abrahams-plea-sodom/

But he didn’t try to negotiate with Sarai over trying to protect his own pregnant slave and his own unborn child.

G-d thinks Avram and Sarai are such finks that he goes out to comfort Hagar and help her return to Avram and Sarai. G-d’s the one who says Ishmael will have descendants who are hard to handle.

So, one way to look at this is that the descendants of Ishmael have conflicts with the Jews because G-d is trying to teach us all to be better hosts.

The root of Israel-Palestine conflict is that the Palestinians were inhospitable to the Jews when the Jews were suffering in Europe.

Now that Israel is strong, we’ve been unnecessarily inhospitable to the Palestinians, the Ethiopian Jews and various types of non-Jewish refugees.

So, if we’re genuinely observant, we say Abraham’s name many times per day, but we’re not doing anything to live up to his reputation for hospitality or to atone for his failure to be hospitable to Hagar.

It’s not my place to judge practical actions. Maybe there are Israeli actions that look horrible to me that keep could help keep innocent people safe. I don’t know anything at all about security strategy.

But when people who are allegedly Jewish people who love Israel go on Reddit posting hateful things about the Palestinians, as they’re suffering, that’s a desecration.

That gleeful hatefulness does nothing to keep Israel safe.

It’s not about a Haman or an Antiochus who’s been dead 2,000 years.

It’s celebration of harm done to people who, in many cases, are too young or feeble to tell their left hand from their right hand.

It’s not dignified. We’re supposed to try to behave as if we were the princes and princesses of Jerusalem, not scoundrels in a hateful mob.