tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20077444.post7127980006421052420..comments2024-03-26T04:21:43.535-05:00Comments on Free Association: A New Look at the "Jewish People"Sheldon Richmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15672237234580563637noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20077444.post-19056417207346419432010-08-12T22:22:22.519-05:002010-08-12T22:22:22.519-05:00How many countries have come into being without cr...How many countries have come into being without creating "resentment and resistance"? Does being resented mean one lacks legitimacy? Jews have been resented for many millenia, should they have ceased being Jews for that reason? Surely the Native Americans very much resented the presence of the "settlers", and today few remain to argue their case. Yet I do not see you relinquishing your citizenship so quickly. Is there some statute of limitations on bloody acts that I am unaware of? I don't see how the Jews are any less deserving of a state than any other people. If anything, their presence in their ancestral homeland is more legitimate than your presence in what today is known as the United States of America.<br /><br />Fwiw, Sand's politically charged book (he was a member of the Communist party in the past) has been discredited by many non political historians and scientists.S. Kleinnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20077444.post-25795267974107467662010-08-12T06:46:21.891-05:002010-08-12T06:46:21.891-05:00S. Klein: Zionism was launched in the late 1800s a...S. Klein: Zionism was launched in the late 1800s and the program was quite clear. But even if you're right about who started the violence, that would make the Zionist movement a particularly bad idea. Why provide a valid justification for resentment and resistance? Countries do not gain their legitimacy from ethnic purity. So you can't use Sand's work to blunt criticism of Israel. The fact is that Zionism is based on the "Jewish people" theory, and that theory seems to be wrong. The Reform movement said this from the start -- in the late 1800s, when they warned that Zionism would incite Arab-on-Jew violence.Sheldon Richmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15672237234580563637noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20077444.post-19520588608226957392010-08-12T06:29:27.845-05:002010-08-12T06:29:27.845-05:00No nation is ethnically pure. On these grounds mos...No nation is ethnically pure. On these grounds most countries would have no legitimacy. Physical violence against the Jewish population of Palestine was already well underway since the late 1800s - at the time there was no confiscated land... Israel is deeply flawed in many ways, but I wish the level of opprobrium was shared with other offenders. The fact that it is not calls into question the motivations of the accusers.S. Kleinnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20077444.post-44447253917247278962010-07-09T16:38:09.205-05:002010-07-09T16:38:09.205-05:00Whatever genetic base adherents to Judaism might o...Whatever genetic base adherents to Judaism might or might not have had a millennium or two ago, the faith acquires a people as the religion is passed down via biological offspring. Judaism shows a hard realism in its approach to this in its reliance on the maternal line of inheritance.<br /><br />Even just that (matrilinealism) intensifies the fact of accumulating peopleness over time vis-a-vis the same dynamic in any religion doing this along patrilineal (or both) lines.<br /><br />Recent DNA analyses have in fact disclosed that there are recognizable "Jewish" genetic makeups, not that these are necessarily quite pure or in any way exclusive of other genetic makeups.<br /><br />The relative paucity in recent centuries of mass conversions to Judaism has given this dynamic the opportunity to develop its effect, and endow Judaism, more-so than most religions, with "its own" people.N. Joseph Pottsnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20077444.post-47701658077909163722010-07-05T13:55:46.702-05:002010-07-05T13:55:46.702-05:00Isaac Asimov's Bible commentary treats all the...Isaac Asimov's Bible commentary treats all the eponymous Abrahamic peoples surrounding Palestine -- Edomites, Ammonites, Moabites, etc., as well as the Canaanites in Palestine itself -- as essentially Hebrew. He argues that the main difference between them is that the tribes assigned to Israel belonged to an amphictyonic confederacy centered on the cult of El at Bethel, and later converted to Yahwism. He also points to considerable textual evidence for Edomitic origins of the tribe of Judah (e.g. Reuel/Jethro, the priest of Yahweh who converted Moses, being an Edomite). That the Yahwist tribes felt some ongoing cultural pull from the older religion of their neighbors is indicated by the difficulties the official state religion had in suppressing continued worship at Bethel, the "high places," etc.Kevin Carsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07525803609000364993noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20077444.post-32161396132727004582010-07-05T09:41:37.813-05:002010-07-05T09:41:37.813-05:00In 1976 Arthur Koestler published his controversia...In 1976 Arthur Koestler published his controversial book <em>The Thirteenth Tribe,</em> which speculated that most European (Ashkenazi) Jews descend not from the ancient Hebrews but rather from a Turkic population in the Caucasus and northward, the Khazars, that converted to Judaism in the 8th or 9th century. Needless to say, the book was not well received by advocates of Zionism. It was looked on more favorably by by both anti-Zionist and anti-Jewish interests. (These two are not to be conflated.) Sand apparently revives Koestler's thesis.Sheldon Richmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15672237234580563637noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20077444.post-25360895533194655672010-07-05T00:56:06.121-05:002010-07-05T00:56:06.121-05:00It makes more sense to me to think of speakers of ...It makes more sense to me to think of speakers of Yiddish and Ladino as two separate European ethnic groups who happen to share the same religion.Kevin Carsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07525803609000364993noreply@blogger.com