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osewalrusI'm not sure how else to characterize articles like this one, written by folks who are suddenly discovering that being Jewish has implications beyond their personal identities.
https://medium.com/@danicabornstein/ive-been-quiet-the-past-few-days-due-to-overwhelm-and-very-big-feelings-and-am-still-struggling-218288ffe040
I don't mean this in a negative way. Discussing it at all is difficult. In fact, I'll mostly just copy a lengthy comment from FB.
But what it really boils down to is something I've meditated on for quite sometime.
The wonderful and terrible thing about being Jewish in America is that you get to choose. The ultimate privilege is the privilege to walk away. Anyone in America can simply decide they don't want to do this "Jewish" thing anymore. Or they can embrace it as an ethnicity. Or they can embrace it as a religion. It doesn't matter to America at large whether other people agree with you or not in your self-definition and self-engagement. Wall yourself off in a modern recreation of a Shtetle in Kiryas Yoel if you like. Decide that being Jewish means voting Democrat and feeling special sympathy for the oppressed. Whatever you want, you can chose to do.
And suddenly, for the first time, people are confronting the idea that they can't walk away. That being Jewish is not a choice, but a thing that someone else might decide for you or about you whether you like their definition of Jewish or not.
I think this is why those of us who never really regarded being Jewish as a choice. I include in that category people who have felt a religious calling to convert to Judaism, since that calling is the same core part of identity as for those of us born Jewish but don't think of it as a choice. For us, the idea that people will chose to treat us differently because of who we are is not particularly surprising or new. But for those who have defined their Judaism on their own terms, I think the shock of having others define their identity for them, and impose things on them as a consequence of this identification, is deeply disturbing.
So I'm depressed to discover how little I have in common with a large group of my co-religionists who are waking up to the fact that however you define yourself, others will also define you. And that unlike what you were told in school, that really does impact your life and have power.
But I'm also depressed at just how little these woke Jews seem to know about our history, or the history of anti-Semitism. The article linked to above was more painful than usual because the person in question is taking on the role of explainer to the rest of the world. But I'm like "no wonder you thought you were privileged. You weren't privileged so much as ignorant."
Ah well.
https://medium.com/@danicabornstein/ive-been-quiet-the-past-few-days-due-to-overwhelm-and-very-big-feelings-and-am-still-struggling-218288ffe040
I don't mean this in a negative way. Discussing it at all is difficult. In fact, I'll mostly just copy a lengthy comment from FB.
But what it really boils down to is something I've meditated on for quite sometime.
The wonderful and terrible thing about being Jewish in America is that you get to choose. The ultimate privilege is the privilege to walk away. Anyone in America can simply decide they don't want to do this "Jewish" thing anymore. Or they can embrace it as an ethnicity. Or they can embrace it as a religion. It doesn't matter to America at large whether other people agree with you or not in your self-definition and self-engagement. Wall yourself off in a modern recreation of a Shtetle in Kiryas Yoel if you like. Decide that being Jewish means voting Democrat and feeling special sympathy for the oppressed. Whatever you want, you can chose to do.
And suddenly, for the first time, people are confronting the idea that they can't walk away. That being Jewish is not a choice, but a thing that someone else might decide for you or about you whether you like their definition of Jewish or not.
I think this is why those of us who never really regarded being Jewish as a choice. I include in that category people who have felt a religious calling to convert to Judaism, since that calling is the same core part of identity as for those of us born Jewish but don't think of it as a choice. For us, the idea that people will chose to treat us differently because of who we are is not particularly surprising or new. But for those who have defined their Judaism on their own terms, I think the shock of having others define their identity for them, and impose things on them as a consequence of this identification, is deeply disturbing.
So I'm depressed to discover how little I have in common with a large group of my co-religionists who are waking up to the fact that however you define yourself, others will also define you. And that unlike what you were told in school, that really does impact your life and have power.
But I'm also depressed at just how little these woke Jews seem to know about our history, or the history of anti-Semitism. The article linked to above was more painful than usual because the person in question is taking on the role of explainer to the rest of the world. But I'm like "no wonder you thought you were privileged. You weren't privileged so much as ignorant."
Ah well.
