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I signed what's come to be known as the #JewishHarpersLetter supporting open discourse and I want to take a moment to explain why. You can read the letter and my fellow original signatories here: https://jilv.org/be-heard/
First, I should point everyone to this fantastic piece by David L. Bernstein, a veteran Jewish community official, about his role in trying to facilitate dialogue and being told to account for 'white' Jewish 'complicity' in racist systems https://jewishjournal.com/commentary/334702/my-cheshbon-hanefesh-for-cowardice-in-the-face-of-wokeness/
A major concern of mine is the way Jews do not fit in to America's dominant model of discourse on race. Few things can make US Jews so clearly 'otherized' than the erasure that comes with being told your participation is determined by the shade of your skin tone.
This isn't just an attempt to divide 'white Jews' from 'nonwhite Jews'--made-up categories to downgrade Jewish identity by making it automatically secondary--it's an attempt to further dictate *to* Jews their place in a capricious and changing system of Identity Calvinball.
The dominant version of social justice theory is, very simply, the bastardization of a Jewish concept with the intent to exclude Jews. The #JewishHarpersLetter is aimed foremost at US Jewish groups, which have, with very few exceptions, become enforcers of a new secular religion.
Some background is in order. (I recommend THE PRICE OF WHITENESS, by Eric Goldstein, from Princeton Press for a concise rendering).
Post-Civil War, American Jews also found themselves more socially integrated. They began adopting racial language to defend Jewish particularity.
Post-Civil War, American Jews also found themselves more socially integrated. They began adopting racial language to defend Jewish particularity.
That's because the social boundaries were beginning to blur, and Jews didn't want to fade into nothingness (what Jonathan Tobin has called America 'loving us to death'). This part is important, because history repeats itself.
Goldstein: "...Jews discovered that 'race,' a term widely accepted in the non-Jewish world, would allow them to express their desire to maintain a distinct identity without the unwanted political connotations."
That is to say, a non-'racial' justification for separation was viewed as a choice, and in fact a political one. What Jews wanted was to be granted their particularity with raising dual loyalty speculation by making separation *their doing,* esp if there was no obvious reason.
Jews were also already struggling with America's racial paradigm:
"Unlike Europe, where questions of national belonging often turned on the distinction between Aryans and Semites, here racial commentators emphasized the distinction between whites and nonwhites."
"Unlike Europe, where questions of national belonging often turned on the distinction between Aryans and Semites, here racial commentators emphasized the distinction between whites and nonwhites."
This was the 1870s. Long before the Nazis' rise. So what was a Jew? White or nonwhite? The question is historically and factually nonsensical, but it nonetheless became the organizing theme (for understandable reasons) of America's conflicts over particularity.
At the same time, Judaism itself was facing erasure from within:
"the founding of free religious societies in the 1870s and the interest in Reform Judaism shown by the Unitarian Church convinced some rabbis that non-Jews were ripe to accept Judaism as a universalized creed."
"the founding of free religious societies in the 1870s and the interest in Reform Judaism shown by the Unitarian Church convinced some rabbis that non-Jews were ripe to accept Judaism as a universalized creed."
But ultimately even a watered-down Judaism was rejected by non-Jews. And Jews were soon cast out of the "Great Caucasian Family" because they were no longer useful to a white-dominated racial narrative.
As time went on, however, Jews were seen by nonwhites as part of a racist power structure, and thus were rejected by all. (Those who remember the teachers union protests of mid-20th century know where this leads over time.)
Today, that is conventional wisdom among progressives.
Today, that is conventional wisdom among progressives.
But Jewish self-erasure never went away--see, for instance, the hostility to Zionism in social justice circles, an example of such profound irony as to read as though it is satire.
That Jewish self-erasure continues apace, while only convincing non-Jews that Jews are amorphous.
That Jewish self-erasure continues apace, while only convincing non-Jews that Jews are amorphous.
This is the exception. In the sphere of identity politics, identity groups are encouraged to be the most proud and particular version of themselves--except for Jews. This too is ironic, but also deeply dangerous.
In his writings on modern black emancipation, Ta-Nehisi Coates quotes Malcolm X: "Who taught you to hate yourself from the top of your head to the soles of your feet?"
It was, TNC writes, an 'implicit jab' at 'a systemic force that compelled black people toward self-loathing.'
It was, TNC writes, an 'implicit jab' at 'a systemic force that compelled black people toward self-loathing.'
TNC also has talked about the pressure on Michael Jackson to whiten his skin, on Kanye West to likewise fit in to a white-identity-politics-dominated sphere. His lesson: emancipation required the opposite.
The enforcers of 'The Torah of Liberalism,' of a progressive social justice religion, believe silencing and erasure of Jewish identity is the only way forward. But that way leads to the end not of conflict with Judaism, but the end of Jewish communal life and tradition.
Hats off to @DavidLBernstein and others involved in this effort, to Natan Sharansky and others for their public support, and to all for considering the points made above. Read more here about the Jewish Institute for Liberal Values: https://jilv.org/
(Thanks for listening)
