Letters to the Editor
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Classic. CLASSIC! This is why i don't want to be part of your club.
eastern europe explains a lot, LeCastor
1)the atheism and 2)the "New Soviet Man" ("All human beings are your people"). there are (roughly) 300 million arabs and 10 million jews. by that logic, if there were 310 million arabs and no jews, it would make no difference. nice to know. it explains your attitude viz a viz the israelis and palestinians. i've changed my mind, the sooner you forget your ancestors were ever jewish, whatever that means in an eastern european frame of mind, the better.
-- david sugarman
So, you find out that I believe the horrifying radical idea that "Palestinians are people too" and now you don't want me in your club anymore. The sooner I cut all possible ties to your club the better.
This kind of attitude, this kind of thinking among American Jews regarding Israel is one of the main reasons I would never ever convert or join this club officially. As i've written many times, American Jews seem like normal-thinking liberal, humanitarian people who believe ind democracy, the rule of law, human rights, etc. all the good stuff, except when it comes to Israel. On the Israeli question, they are as authoritarian of fascists as you can imagine, not tolerating any criticism or disset, or deviation from the official party line. They criticize for not standing together "as one" "against the enemy" and so on.
Well, maybe it would be best if you all just moved to Israel and stopped telling people like me that we're deficient Jews and not members of your exclusive club. Please, go enjoy your Xanadu on earth! Leave me and Woody Allen, Sigmund Freud, Franz Kafka, Gustav Mahler, Boris Pasternak, and Tony Judt alone!
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Non believing Christians - I believe!
"Christianity isn't cultural the way Judaism is ...'
Yes it is, it's just that we live in such a cuturally Christian world we can't see it. It's the very water we swim in. If you lived in China, or Israel, people of Christian background, NOT belief, would realise how culturally Christian they are. And mark my words, people who aren't of Christian background - eg Hindus, or Muslims, are very well aware of who is christian and who is not in the US, no matter what yoga position or esoteric strain of Buddhism they're studying this year. To many of these people white = Christian = belonging = entitled = oblivious. And they're right.
Just as white people can pretend they're 'colour blind', people-whose-ancestors-would-have-been-Christian can pretend everything about their world is not underpinned by a Christian world view. They get to keep their luxurious illusions of being 'nothing', tabula rasa - although why anyone would really want that is bizarre to me. I guess it's that feeling of entitledness being 'natural' brings to some.
Secularism itself grew out of Judeo-Christian traditions, as did humanism. But that's not to say there was ever anything particularly spiritual about Christianity.
First there was Jesus, and then there was Peter. Peter's the one who turned a spiritual revelation into an institution of power and control, that would create enormous wealth and have real staying power. A hierarchy and set of rules that began in the bedroom and was enforcable in every village, and went all the way to the top. In medieval England for example you were punished if you didn't show up at church every sunday. Clerical positions were bought and sold.
In the modern Judeo-Christian state, the functional parts of the religion that used to be fought over within the vatican for example, have been externalised into congress, the courts, a bill of rights, etc. Leaving the spiritual aspects of the Christian tradition under the umbrella term of 'Christian'. That's why we can hear the word Christian and think it means only spiritual belief. But that is a very modern point of view. Before now people wouldn't have experienced it that way. And if you lived in Indonesia or Israel you wouldn't experience it that way now.
For people who are more self aware it's not just a matter of being culturally christian. It's a matter of what brand of Christianity you're descended from. Catholics have a whole separate and different lot of traditions, beliefs, habits and ways of looking at things from Episcopalians or Lutherans. Naturally, because until very recently, if not still, these labels encompassed and enforced class and ethnic differences as well.
May the rise of secularism continue.
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Questions ...
David Sugarman what strange brand of belief do you hail from that is against capital letters at the start of sentences? It makes your posts hard to read.
LeCastor you don't have to convert to say you're a Jew. You don't have to convert to participate in Reform Jewish events, either.
If you don't think DNA matters then it probably has a lot less meaning for you. For the same reason some orphans go looking for their biological families though, a lot of people find meaning in the story of their 'tribe'.
Finally, I'm far more threatened by people who want us all to belong to 'one tribe' than those who celebrate and maintain the particular cultures and differences between tribes. The One Tribe point of view so often goes down the road marked 'fascism'. Many tribes, but equal, seems far more hopeful, and to reflect reality better as well.
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"No other creature on planet Earth understands that it will die."
This one is a no-brainer. Ever wonder why an injured cat crawls off to dark, cool place? Because it knows it's going to die. Of course it actually won't if taken care of, and that demonstrates the difference between "sentience" and "intellect."
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of *your* club, LeCastor, only one, Tony Judt is both alive and political
he favors a one-state solution, a free democratic palestine. (maybe he would call it israel - a sop to the jews). the palestinians have the highest birthrate in the world(4.7%) how can they have such? it's not a rich state like saudi arabia. at one end they get charity from europe, the gulf states and the UN. on the other they have the palestinian women, ruled with an iron fist. clitoridectomized and kept in bags as breeders - preferably to first cousins, on both sides. where would the money come to continue their democracy? there's always the dhimmi-tax, another benefit of sharia. that's judt's way. like it? *advocate* it? you think Jews are tribal?! you ought to see how arabs live. go for a vacation in gaza - you won't be hurt, you'll be feted. *hundreds* of young arab men will vie for your attention.