After my Kindergarten era best friend, a Danish/Irish ancestry kid surnamed Anderson, moved away to the Bay Area in 1963, all of my childhood friends were Jewish, of Russian ancestry (which I now find interestingly coincident with when Kennedy was replaced by Johnson, apparently with the assistance with some involvement of a vehemently anti-communist Russian exile community in Texas which "handled" Oswald for the CIA...perhaps I was being "handled" by the CIA as well, and this is only one of several cases where political swings coincided with unintended departure of my best friends in curious ways).
Sometime not long after my mother put me in Lutheran bible school. But while I found many of the kids there entertaining, somehow none of them ever became my friends.
The Jewish kids were cooler. Perhaps it was also they took much more initiative in making friends, inviting me to their homes, on their outings.
I might have converted to Judaism. Except for one thing. Sometime around 1973 I became aware of the occupation of the west bank. This did not fit my childhood myths about Israel: that the Palestinians within Israel to the west of Jerusalem were equal citizens in a democracy, and that the West Bank and Eastern Jerusalem were Palestine, where Palestians were free citizens a somewhat backward but picturesque country with many of the most interesting sites to Christianity.
Vision having been thusly shattered, by some voices on Pacifica Radio, I tried to ask all my Jewish friends about Israel and Palestine. Or, at least three of them. The most important ones at the time. It was pretty much the end, or at least at the ending point, of all 3 friendships.
I think now, if my Jewish friends could ever have answered me satisfactorily, I might well have converted to Judaism. Christianity had nothing for me, my friends were Jewish, and Jewish girls were usually the most attractive. So, one way I could classify myself would be would-have-been-Jewish, a kind of Jewishness.
And there are other angles, such as one having been called a Jew, and defending Jews at that time.
Jewish ancestry likely also. My mother, who had been adopted during her infancy, looked vaguely Russian-Jewish, herself always proclaiming the now-discredited Twelve Tribes theory, of being among best children of Israel. A discredited theory...but perhaps the truth in her undocumented ancestry includes Jewish maternity or something like it.
So, in the fashion of any Marque, I declare myself a Jew, under my own authority., all other worldly authorities being hopeless corrupt Actually, as it turns out, as I could expound upon in greater fashion another time, the King of Jews. But not exclusive of other categories, nationalities, and causes, including Palestinian, Iranian, and Russian, for example.
But, anyway, I prefaced one of the most relationship-fatal questions to a Jewish girl I had been in great lust with for a long time, with the ill chosen and immediately regretted words, which slipped off the tongue so easily I must have been primed by endless TV programming, "As a Jew"
"As a Jew, what do you think about Israel and the Palestinians?" Or something like that.
Immediately offended, at great length she critized the phrase "As a Jew", not identifying otherwise, or even at all, but with the notion that Jews should be expected to have, as a group, an opinion on this or any other matter. Some Jews, she noted (setting the stage for what I have become) there were anti-Zionist Jews.
After a minute or two of this backlash, I tried to rephrase my question. "Well I'm sorry for putting it that way. But...what do You think about Israel's treatment of the Palestinians?"
I continued not to get an answer, just more backlash for asking the question as if Jews should have a collective opinion on it.
Now, gazillion years later, I'm listening to the great orthodox rabbi on Youtube describing the opposition between Zionism and Judaism. At some point in this previously terrific little lecture, he veers off into the badness of being asked about Israel's treatment of the Palestians as a Jew...he doesn't therein delve deeply in the semantics or philosophy, just with the rhetorical response, "Why don't you ask me about China and how it treats it's citizens."
As far as I'm concerned, this is one of the worst forms of argument, begging the question to get off from having to make a hard statement with respect to a group one self identifies as.
"As a Jew" as I declare myself to be, I can answer the question. Or "as a human being" or "as a leftist" as I describe myself in those ways also.
And, it's quite simple. The treatment of Palestinians by Israel is abominable. It must be stopped. The best way to stop it would be to stop US imperialism, and the hype that sustains it. BDS is another perfectly legitimate tactic, and there is no good reason why a religion supremicist state needs to exist for Jews or anyone else, and it's peculiarly oximoronic for Judaism. "The Jewish State" is a contradiction in terms, and the Israeli government not only doesn't speak for me, it speaks for what I deeply oppose, and vice versa. The creation of "The Jewish State" without coincidentally solving the displacement and refugee crisis was a terrible mistake, for which my country was a key facilitator and still is, to the great loss of many including Palestinians, and for which minimal justice requires a full right to return for all displaced Palestinians as well as full equal rights for all Palestinians in Phisreal.
Sometime not long after my mother put me in Lutheran bible school. But while I found many of the kids there entertaining, somehow none of them ever became my friends.
The Jewish kids were cooler. Perhaps it was also they took much more initiative in making friends, inviting me to their homes, on their outings.
I might have converted to Judaism. Except for one thing. Sometime around 1973 I became aware of the occupation of the west bank. This did not fit my childhood myths about Israel: that the Palestinians within Israel to the west of Jerusalem were equal citizens in a democracy, and that the West Bank and Eastern Jerusalem were Palestine, where Palestians were free citizens a somewhat backward but picturesque country with many of the most interesting sites to Christianity.
Vision having been thusly shattered, by some voices on Pacifica Radio, I tried to ask all my Jewish friends about Israel and Palestine. Or, at least three of them. The most important ones at the time. It was pretty much the end, or at least at the ending point, of all 3 friendships.
I think now, if my Jewish friends could ever have answered me satisfactorily, I might well have converted to Judaism. Christianity had nothing for me, my friends were Jewish, and Jewish girls were usually the most attractive. So, one way I could classify myself would be would-have-been-Jewish, a kind of Jewishness.
And there are other angles, such as one having been called a Jew, and defending Jews at that time.
Jewish ancestry likely also. My mother, who had been adopted during her infancy, looked vaguely Russian-Jewish, herself always proclaiming the now-discredited Twelve Tribes theory, of being among best children of Israel. A discredited theory...but perhaps the truth in her undocumented ancestry includes Jewish maternity or something like it.
So, in the fashion of any Marque, I declare myself a Jew, under my own authority., all other worldly authorities being hopeless corrupt Actually, as it turns out, as I could expound upon in greater fashion another time, the King of Jews. But not exclusive of other categories, nationalities, and causes, including Palestinian, Iranian, and Russian, for example.
But, anyway, I prefaced one of the most relationship-fatal questions to a Jewish girl I had been in great lust with for a long time, with the ill chosen and immediately regretted words, which slipped off the tongue so easily I must have been primed by endless TV programming, "As a Jew"
"As a Jew, what do you think about Israel and the Palestinians?" Or something like that.
Immediately offended, at great length she critized the phrase "As a Jew", not identifying otherwise, or even at all, but with the notion that Jews should be expected to have, as a group, an opinion on this or any other matter. Some Jews, she noted (setting the stage for what I have become) there were anti-Zionist Jews.
After a minute or two of this backlash, I tried to rephrase my question. "Well I'm sorry for putting it that way. But...what do You think about Israel's treatment of the Palestinians?"
I continued not to get an answer, just more backlash for asking the question as if Jews should have a collective opinion on it.
Now, gazillion years later, I'm listening to the great orthodox rabbi on Youtube describing the opposition between Zionism and Judaism. At some point in this previously terrific little lecture, he veers off into the badness of being asked about Israel's treatment of the Palestians as a Jew...he doesn't therein delve deeply in the semantics or philosophy, just with the rhetorical response, "Why don't you ask me about China and how it treats it's citizens."
As far as I'm concerned, this is one of the worst forms of argument, begging the question to get off from having to make a hard statement with respect to a group one self identifies as.
"As a Jew" as I declare myself to be, I can answer the question. Or "as a human being" or "as a leftist" as I describe myself in those ways also.
And, it's quite simple. The treatment of Palestinians by Israel is abominable. It must be stopped. The best way to stop it would be to stop US imperialism, and the hype that sustains it. BDS is another perfectly legitimate tactic, and there is no good reason why a religion supremicist state needs to exist for Jews or anyone else, and it's peculiarly oximoronic for Judaism. "The Jewish State" is a contradiction in terms, and the Israeli government not only doesn't speak for me, it speaks for what I deeply oppose, and vice versa. The creation of "The Jewish State" without coincidentally solving the displacement and refugee crisis was a terrible mistake, for which my country was a key facilitator and still is, to the great loss of many including Palestinians, and for which minimal justice requires a full right to return for all displaced Palestinians as well as full equal rights for all Palestinians in Phisreal.
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