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Jewish problems

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Re: Jewish problems

#91

Post by yters »

TheDroids wrote: post #59
tkahn6 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that Zionism has only existed as a coherent and codified ideology since 1896 and AIPAC has only existed since 1963. In fact Herzl published Der Judenstaat as a response to what he witnessed covering the Dreyfus Affair as a journalist.

Except, er, so since AIPAC has only be around since 1963 and the concept of Zionism over 100 years, that couldn't possibly be a reason why people have a problem with Jews? shrugs

Antisemitism has been around for much, much longer.

Re: Jewish problems

#92

Post by edanm »

TheDroids wrote: post #71
edanm wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point being made is that antisemitism has been around for thousands of years, and the groups you're talking about have been around for 100. So they don't explain anti-semitism.

Actually, they do. Assuming that OP hasn't been around for thousands of years himself, I could only point out modern day antisemitism which makes perfect sense. OP never asked for a complete history. However, if you're going to get to the root of things, you'd have to bring up religious prejudices passed down through the centuries as well as the origin of money lending and banking which undoubtedly cast Jews in a bad…

Firstly, I don't agree that modern day antisemitism makes sense because of those groups.

But even if that were the case, you're making a pretty ridiculos argument:

1) Antisemitism has been around for a thousand years, before certain organizations existed.

2) Antisemitism is still around now.

3) Now it makes sense, because those organizations exist.

Whereas it makes a lot more sense that these organizations are an excuse for antisemitism, not the cause. After all, antisemitism has been around non-stop for thousands of years, there's no reason to think that it would have stopped had these organizations not existed.

Re: Jewish problems

#93

Post by mannicken »

pavpanchekha wrote: post #56
adrianwaj wrote: post #49

I'd pack my bags and go so quickly, so whose loss would be it be? Then as a non-Jew, I think I'd do the same.

Haha, you think it was that easy to emigrate from the USSR, especially for Jewish men and women? There's a reason people didn't, and it isn't because everyone thought they were better off staying.

Actually, it was easier to emigrate from the USSR for Jewish men and women than for the rest of the nation due to refugee programs that US offers for minorities suffering persecution. I think other countries offer those two.

I am one of the people whose parents emigrated in 2004 as Christian refugees, btw. They had to prove they suffered from religious persecution (bible raids, not getting into colleges, etc).

The whole 'give me your poor and hungry' thing never really went away ;-)

Re: Jewish problems

#94

Post by toyg »

mturmon wrote: post #61
natasham25 wrote: post #31

Yep, that is why my family moved to the US from Russia. My mom wanted to be a doctor, but wasn't accepted to medical school even though she got straight As and was completely qualified. They just said they can't accept her because she's Jewish, and there is nothing she could do about it. I'm really glad I got to grow up here in America.

Here's a nice article about Grigori Perelman, Fields medal winner, solver of the Poincare conjecture, and mathematical genius/recluse. Perelman came up in the Soviet system in the 1980s, when the discriminatory practice you mention was in force: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/apr/29/he-conq... Relevant quote: "For a Jewish boy [sic] gifted in mathematics to be admitted to a university, there were three…

Moral questions aside, I wonder if forcing entire ethnic groups to "perform for the country" in order to earn social status is really that bad. A lot of countries have done it across the centuries (Rome, France, UK, Arabs... and more recently US and USSR); they were usually successful in "extracting value" from those groups in the short term, while in the long term fostering a sense of belonging to a non-discriminatory ideal of citizenship.

Even in this case, the Soviets might have discriminated generations of Jews, but then they produced a Perelman.

Re: Jewish problems

#95

Post by johnyzee »

mdasen wrote: post #46
cheez wrote: post #21

Can someone please explain to me what the hell is the problem people have with Jews? The only thing I can tell is maybe they're disproportionately financially successful? I guess that's a problem...

Answering as someone Jewish. . . Jews don't assimilate (fully). In the Passover story, one of the things we note is that even living in Egypt for a long time, they didn't assimilate and they were disliked for it. Heck, how often do you hear people talking about other immigrants "not assimilating these days". For centuries, Jews even spoke a language other than the vernacular. We're a much more tolerant world today an…

Great comment and the length of it just goes to show how complex the issue is.

If we were to add contemporary issues things would get even more complicated: Zionism and Israeli policies has created a lot of anger against 'Jews'. This has much less to do with ethnicity than historical anti-semitism, but the two get conflated which leaves everybody confused and talking past eachother. Add to the mix the fact that Jews dominate banking and media (I assume this is accepted as fact and not conspiracy theory), industries that get little love these days.

Re: Jewish problems

#96

Post by hasenj »

mdasen wrote: post #46
cheez wrote: post #21

Can someone please explain to me what the hell is the problem people have with Jews? The only thing I can tell is maybe they're disproportionately financially successful? I guess that's a problem...

Answering as someone Jewish. . . Jews don't assimilate (fully). In the Passover story, one of the things we note is that even living in Egypt for a long time, they didn't assimilate and they were disliked for it. Heck, how often do you hear people talking about other immigrants "not assimilating these days". For centuries, Jews even spoke a language other than the vernacular. We're a much more tolerant world today an…

Interesting.

Muslim immigrants in the west have very similar problems: they don't assimilate, their loyalties are brought into question, they only eat "halal" food, etc.

Re: Jewish problems

#97

Post by andreiursan »

Just want to say something about the math problems: I'm living in Romania, somehow closer to Rusia. Anyway, in Highschool I took private math lessons from an over 70 years old math teacher - man, he was so good at finding solutions to similar problems with those in the url. Sometimes the quickest solution is to construct your own function. I do enjoy the time when I had to solve problems like those, it is quite a creative process.

Re: Jewish problems

#98

Post by berntb »

johnyzee wrote: post #95
mdasen wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Answering as someone Jewish. . . Jews don't assimilate (fully). In the Passover story, one of the things we note is that even living in Egypt for a long time, they didn't assimilate and they were disliked for it. Heck, how often do you hear people talking about other immigrants "not assimilating these days". For centuries, Jews even spoke a language other than the vernacular. We're a much more tolerant world today an…

Great comment and the length of it just goes to show how complex the issue is. If we were to add contemporary issues things would get even more complicated: Zionism and Israeli policies has created a lot of anger against 'Jews'. This has much less to do with ethnicity than historical anti-semitism, but the two get conflated which leaves everybody confused and talking past eachother. Add to the mix the fact that Jews…

Would there be so much anger at zionism if they were Christian?

I doubt it, if you compare Israel with e.g. the surrounding dictators -- and (at least here in Europe). Israel gets at least two factors of ten more criticism (before March this year) for arguably much less.

The first time when I read criticism of Tunisia's dictator in Swedish media, was when he fled.

(I'm not claiming you can't criticise Israel, democracies with terror problems tend to throw out the law book (Germany, USA, England, Spain, etc). I'm comparing amount of criticism.)

Re: Jewish problems

#99

Post by netcan »

johnyzee wrote: post #95
mdasen wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Answering as someone Jewish. . . Jews don't assimilate (fully). In the Passover story, one of the things we note is that even living in Egypt for a long time, they didn't assimilate and they were disliked for it. Heck, how often do you hear people talking about other immigrants "not assimilating these days". For centuries, Jews even spoke a language other than the vernacular. We're a much more tolerant world today an…

Great comment and the length of it just goes to show how complex the issue is. If we were to add contemporary issues things would get even more complicated: Zionism and Israeli policies has created a lot of anger against 'Jews'. This has much less to do with ethnicity than historical anti-semitism, but the two get conflated which leaves everybody confused and talking past eachother. Add to the mix the fact that Jews…

Again this is more complicated than just that. The great bulk of responses and opposition to Zionist and Israeli policies comes from the Arab and Muslim world.

Since this opposition is shared by many westerners, I think a lot of westerners assume that it is shared based on similar reasoning. Human rights, international law, national freedoms. But the reality is that a substantial portions is nationalist/religious/xenophobic/nationalistic/scapegoating.

Belief in arab countries that Israel was behind 9-11 or some other local event (eg shark attacks in egypt)* is very common. Lots of easily verifiable made up stories are common knowledge. A lot of the old anti-semetic propoganda is distributed in the greater Muslim world via mainstream local media (I saw an article about the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion,' a Czarist propoganda document that has a special place in most Jews consciousness, discussed in an Indonesian magazine. It's also in the Hamas charter document* .

A lot of the complaints that are interpreted as objections to human rights violations or similar are (when seen in context) really objections to non Muslim rule in 'Muslim Lands' (as opposed to lands where muslims live) or various conspiracy delusions.

I'm not trying to justify Israeli policy. I think it's immoral and stupid. But the type of objection to it do not make me think that changing policy will result in substantial changes in attitude, though they might provide an incremental improvement.

http://blogs.news.sky.com/middleeastblog/Post:2c6bf5da-e006-... * *http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas_Charter

Re: Jewish problems

#100

Post by steve-howard »

dilap wrote: post #86
Alex3917 wrote: post #13

Whereas in the US the reason that colleges use essay questions is because jews score too highly on the SATs. We can thank Harvard for this, as usual. Gladwell has an essay about this here: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/10/10/051010crat_atlar... I forget what Gladwell is copying from, but I know that there is an earlier article that goes into even more detail.

Some would argue that this sort of discrimination continues into the present day, but sub asians for jews.

It's mentioned at the very end of the article (I skimmed).

"In the nineteen-eighties, when Harvard was accused of enforcing a secret quota on Asian admissions, its defense was that once you adjusted for the preferences given to the children of alumni and for the preferences given to athletes, Asians really weren’t being discriminated against. But you could sense Harvard’s exasperation that the issue was being raised at all. If Harvard had too many Asians, it wouldn’t be Harvard, just as Harvard wouldn’t be Harvard with too many Jews or pansies or parlor pinks or shy types or short people with big ears."

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