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Why Jewish History Is So Hard to Write

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Re: Why Jewish History Is So Hard to Write

#111

Post by kolpa »

vasilipupkin wrote: post #29
School-Cotton wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Ethnicity” is a pretty broad and vague term. People don’t have to speak the same language or be the same race to consider themselves the same ethnicity.

it's not as vague as you think. Ashkenazi Jews literally share a lot of genetic material, for example, when two Ashkenazi Jews get married and want to have a child, they get tested for genetic diseases that only Ashkenazi Jews have.

And a lot of people (people who think they are Jews and also people who think they are non-Jews) are genetically mixed Ashkenazi with non-Ashkenazi.

And Ashkenazi happens one of the "tightest" ethnicities in the connected part of the modern world (Europe, America), since it is historically-long-insular low-population subgroup living within a large population.

Re: Why Jewish History Is So Hard to Write

#112

Post by kolpa »

TangoTrotFox wrote: post #89
kurthr wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an interesting interpretation. I assume you mean as decendents of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? I had never considered Catholics or christianity an ethnic group. Because to me it implied shared genetic features.

Judaism is very different than most religions in that it doesn't try to spread, but is instead quite insular. If you want to convert it's a big deal with study, testing, and culminating with a literal certificate of conversion - that can be revoked. It's also very unique in that Jewish Orthodoxy considers it 'genetic'. If your mother was a Jew, you are a Jew - regardless of whether you consider yourself e.g. an athei…

Orthodoxy is only one small part of Judaism and Jews.

> If you want to convert it's a big deal with study, testing, and culminating with a literal certificate of conversion - that can be revoked.

https://judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/50602/can-conver...

Only in narrow areas, such as modern State of Israel (which is a blip in Jewish history, and not the world government of Jews), which very special circumstances.

It's complicated.

Also, you can be a non-Jewish woman, marry a Jewish man, and have Jewish children, who an Orthodox Jew might call non-Jewish children, but those children and their descendants and neighbors may never think are "not Jewish"

Re: Why Jewish History Is So Hard to Write

#113

Post by bjourne »

MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #13
oyvey wrote: post #5

Wow amazing how the bound of religion and ethinicy can led people to survive thousands of years and still maintain an identity.

Indeed, this fact this makes me proud to be a Jew. (A happy Passover to all whom it may concern). As a young boy my father used to take me to the Pergamon museum in Berlin - one major exhibit is the Babylonian street of processions (it dates to the neo-Babylonian empire) He used to say - here you see our heritage, we were around the show when Berlin (and all the other great capitals of the world) were still a swamp.

I don't understand this infatuation with ones genetic material. Given that I am blond and blue-eyed and live in Scandinavia, I'm probably just as much Vikingish as you are Jewish. Should I be proud of being a Viking?

If your objection is that the Vikings were horrible people that just pillaged stuff. Then I agree, but the ancient Israelites weren't that kind to women and slaves either. If your objection is that the culture didn't survive. Well, the good parts, Christmas, Midsummer (the traditions are pre-Christian) and binge-drinking did...

Even if ancient Israelite culture is objectively superior to Viking culture, you didn't create it, so why be proud of it? It's like being proud of being the heir of a billionaire. :p

Re: Why Jewish History Is So Hard to Write

#114

Post by TangoTrotFox »

bradfordarner wrote: post #82
TangoTrotFox wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> " Also: If something prevailed throughout time, against all odds, then that's pretty impressive to me. " This is dangerous logic, because you're not comparing it to anything. For instance one argument I've seen for the existence of a god was the fact that many constants and other seemingly 'magic numbers' of our universe are set just as is required to maintain life as we know it. The problem there is that assuming…

I'm not sure the Anthropic principle can be applied here. There is a broader data set than that which is relevant for that principle, based on my understanding. "Against all odds" would seem to be the key words here. There are countless other ethnic and religious groups that were integrated into the larger Muslim culture when Islam was first spreading. The same is the case for Christian Europe. In fact, the Romani pe…

Who are you comparing Jews to? This is the point. I don't think there's any reasonable comparison. Judaism's pairing of extreme insularity with great economic success in most 'host nations' leaves them without any other group to compare against. Powerless minority groups are certainly not a reasonable comparison.

Oppression and dispersion takes on a different meaning for those of means, even more so when the shared genetic lineage also happens to provide a substantially higher IQ than average for the vast majority of the group.

Re: Why Jewish History Is So Hard to Write

#115

Post by kolpa »

LoSboccacc wrote: post #7
oyvey wrote: post #5

Wow amazing how the bound of religion and ethinicy can led people to survive thousands of years and still maintain an identity.

Not strange at all, integration is an exception more than the norm. The various chinatowns, italian quarters, irish quarters etc should be a testament to that: communities always tried to stick together thorough time and space, now and in the past. There are comparatively few cases of succesful long term non violent integration.

Ethnic ghettos are as much or more imposed by external oppressors than internal separatism.

The USA is full of Chinese, Italian, Irish etc descendants, most of whom do NOT live in those ghettos. After a generation to learn the local language and culture, descendants leave the ghettos for success in the wider world.

Re: Why Jewish History Is So Hard to Write

#116

Post by placebo »

throwawayjewis2 wrote: post #78
davemel37 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I really just can't understand this frame of thinking that says Judaism is good because it's been going on for long. Im not a rabbi or in kiruv or anything, so take this with a grain of salt...but I would point to Jordan Petersons position about the longevity and survival of the bible stories and his response to atheists around it all sounding made up. There is a reason these stories survived through the ages. There…

> There is wisdom and much to learn from the ideas in the Torah even if you dont buy into their accuracy. It's just too shallow to dismiss it as superstitious ancestors who werent as smart as us. >From a purely pragmatic standpoint, the very fact that we are finite beings in a world that will survive our existence means that our life will face tragedy...and the best way to cope with a tragic existence is to find mean…

I doubt there is only one correct way to find meaning in our life and actions (though my take on it is that while paths may differ, an honest pursuit would lead to similar insights regarding the ultimate meaning). I also don't think you have an obligation to remain with a way you don't connect to. The only thing I disagree with is judging a path that doesn't resonate with your specific frequency when obviously (at least as I see it) it brings a net positive to civilization. While I'm not religious, I can understand how on the surface things can be seen as primitive (especially when practiced at face value) while holding deeper truths underneath.

>Maybe the opposite is true? Maybe the only way to give children a fair choice is to NOT indoctrinate them with ideas they didn't choose

If only that were possible. You're going to indoctrinate them one way or the other (as you correctly concluded in the following paragraph), and since you're going to do so, the best indoctrination I can think of is personal and intellectual integrity, which might lead them to decide to go back to your roots or take a different path, both being fine if they come from the right place.

Re: Why Jewish History Is So Hard to Write

#117

Post by dmix »

dbt00 wrote: post #85
Parsifal18 wrote: post #81

This article reads like a glorification of the kind of ethnocentrism and tribalism that most here categorically condemn when it's engaged in by white people. Seeing as HN is supposed to be rational, pro-science, and skeptical, it's pretty strange to see an article on the front page so sympathetic to a religion--especially one that has infant genital mutilation as its core sacrament: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar…

That's because "whiteness" is an invented category. There are no historical threads that bind together just the people you think of as "white" that don't include many others that you exclude based solely on a modern historical understanding of "white". Write a history of the Irish diaspora, Sweden, the Balkans, or Russia and nobody is going to call you racist. Claim some sort of tribal group that incorporates all of…

> Write a history of the Irish diaspora, Sweden, the Balkans, or Russia and nobody is going to call you racist.

What about generalizing "western" history? There are significant trends in history like the Enlightenment, Renaissance, early Industrial Revolution, the rise of Protestant Catholics, the collection of countries who worked together in the Crusades, etc, etc that crossed regional boundaries like England, France, Sweden, German, etc but were still very much a homogeneous definable group among a wider Western population. Whose societies were very similar and evolved on a similar and distinct trajectory.

Even extending across continents from Europe into North America and South America, where simply using countries is to ignore plenty of higher-level context and wider cultural trends.

Not to mention the mixed European heritage of early North Americans, which developed an identifiable wider culture (even if much of it was built on top of slavery). Or the fact even England was largely a mix of Celtic, Scandinavian, Roman, etc which can be distinguished by going back in history but merged into one culture over time, much like America did.

I get the flaws, risks, and hostility to lumping them all into "white" though, so I'm in agreement there. All analysis requires context and race is a very poor category to work with. Even the neo-nazis and Hitler seem to struggle to define what "white" means and invent categories like Aryans, to exclude obviously white people like Slavs.

But still the human brain largely works via patterns and lumping groups into categories, whether that's socially acceptable or not. So even if it's not ethically "right" I can still see why it's such a common phenomenon, despite being a poor categorization.

We should all be using cultures rather than race, ethnic group, OR country/geographic area.

"Albion's Seed" or "American Nations" should be required reading for anyone obsessed with race to really understand the flaws of racial categorization:

https://www.amazon.com/Albions-Seed-British-Folkways-cultura...

https://www.amazon.com/American-Nations-History-Regional-Cul...

It should even be in high school history education IMO.

Re: Why Jewish History Is So Hard to Write

#118

Post by psyc »

davemel37 wrote: post #77
astrojams wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is great. I’ve dismissed my Jewish heritage and the teachings of religious texts, but this perspective gives me pause. Maybe I’ve been hasty in my assessment that religion doesn’t offer me anything for making a better future.

Give Jordan Petersons bible lectures a try (on youtube or his podcast)...they might open your eyes.

I ignored these for the longest time because they were about the bible. Well, they aren’t really. They’re kind of about everything, and now I wish I’d watched them a lot sooner.

Re: Why Jewish History Is So Hard to Write

#119

Post by quadrangle »

throwawayjewis2 wrote: post #74
throwawayjewish wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was born Jewish and was pretty religious for most of my life, but even when I was religious I never understood why we should be proud of this, or why this is a good thing in and of itself. I would be really interested if you could explain more your way of thinking about it, because to me when my father explains that we should be proud of having the same meal our ancestors did Xthousand years ago I don't feel impres…

Well, I can't answer for GP but I can relate to both of you, because I swing back and forth between the two modes. I was also raised religious (Hareidi) and am now entirely secular, by most counts. And I've spent many hours trying to argue that it's ridiculous to take pride in the fact that some arbitrary tradition lasted for a few thousand years. So a bunch of people did this or that ritual for thousands of years...…

We're not blank slates. There really are genetic differences. It very well might be that stereotypes about arguing and having opinions etc. are genetically-connected personality traits, who knows? Maybe some science has brought us a smidgen of understanding just enough to be dangerous…

The weird uncomfortable part is understanding that the strange individualistic rejection of culture and interest in just taking the best ideas from everywhere is actually a common experience of secular American Jews. You know what it's like to be a minority, just not part of the same club as everyone around you, so you question things and easily find the conclusion that most of the old traditions and views are nonsense. You're left wondering whether it's okay to find a "tribe" you fit (political or cultural or whatever) or if really the concept of tribes is itself just bad. If everyone else would stop being tribalist, we could all just live in a post-ethnic, post-diversity world or something where no individual has any more claim to any worldview or idea or culture than any other… but that's fantasy too.

The fact is: most people on the planet haven't even had the chance to be in a situation where they truly separate themselves from their traditions and consider the possibility of just not being of the group they grew up identifying with.

Consider the trans-racial ideas of that controversial lady in Spokane… these things are not easy ideas to grapple with.

Re: Why Jewish History Is So Hard to Write

#120

Post by dang »

Parsifal18 wrote: post #81

This article reads like a glorification of the kind of ethnocentrism and tribalism that most here categorically condemn when it's engaged in by white people. Seeing as HN is supposed to be rational, pro-science, and skeptical, it's pretty strange to see an article on the front page so sympathetic to a religion--especially one that has infant genital mutilation as its core sacrament: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar…

Religious flamewar and racial flamewar are not allowed on Hacker News. We've banned this account.
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