I've had a mix of emotions these past few days, seeing the desecration of the Holy Land, the State of Israel to most of the outside world, who do not fully understand the significance of what it means to many different people. As a religious, ethnic and visible Jew, I take a lot with a very large pinch of salt (kosher, obviously). We live in a very precarious time when the question of one's 'Jewishness' and even the concept of what is and isn't a Jew can be a pertinent issue, and rather ironically, it doesn't involve many people who are actually Jewish. For this, we have to think about a variety of terms and why they mean a lot in the context of what has been happening, from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv; Lod and Jaffa to even the UK and beyond.
First, let's think about Jewishness as a concept. Jewishness is a meaningless term, when you really think about it. For the past year, since the murder of George Floyd, we've been hearing about a concept of universal 'whiteness': a way of thinking, monolithically amongst supposed 'white people' that means that they have a preconceived notion about black people and other ethnic minorities and that 'white people' are inherently racist from birth. White children are being taught an unfounded and unsupported claim, given to them by sociological 'experts', that they have inherit privilege (despite socio-economic status, cultural background, etc.) through Critical Race Theory (very much lacking any a posteriori evidence) and that their existence is a threat to minorities. I also criticise that there is universal idea of 'blackness' or 'Asianess', and yes, this also includes a universal 'Jewishness'. What connects Jews together, is a shared ethnic and cultural heritage that is brought together by a shared faith. What is and isn't a Jew is not up for debate in this sense. A Sephardi Jew will have a different ethnic, cultural and perhaps socio-economic status to that of a Ashkenazi or Mizrahi Jew. 'Jewishness' isn't monolithic as one may say. To assert that Jews behave in the same way as other Jews is just as dangerous as believing that all white people think the same way, or have the same set of circumstances, or that black people think the same way. It is the same kind of subtle racism that is used to call only Chinese, Japanese and Korean people 'Asian', whilst also forgetting that people from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, etc. are also from the same geographical and political region, and yet on a census and to the progressives, 'Asian' is almost entirely exclusive to a select region of the Far East.
The next term I want to address is Jew and Judaism. Without Jews, there would be no Judaism, that is a known fact and one that would go without saying. When Abraham came to Canaan, as told in the parashot, he brought the Hebrews close to G-d and the establishment of the land upon where the lost were now found came to be. The Jews of that time would be one with their creator, and so establish important sites upon the land that exist to this day. Despite what the naysayers, 'progressives', Marxists and Critical Race Theorists might tell you, Judaism did not begin in Brooklyn or in Poland. Only a racist will tell you that. Holy sites such as the Tomb of Rachel, the Mount Zion and yes, even the site of Solomon's Temple at Temple Mount where the Western Wall now sits, are all very important sites to Jews all over the world, regardless of political or cultural persuasion. How do I know this? Well, let's even if you're part of Neturei Karta, an ultra-orthodox, anti-Zionist cult, who hates Israel with a passion and can't wait to see the Mad Mullahs in Tehran drop an atomic bomb over Tel Aviv...you still pray facing Jerusalem. The NK even established a synagogue in Jerusalem in 1938. This is the same group that also attended a global Holocaust Denial Conference in Iran in 2006 (as if to say that the Iranians know more about the Holocaust than the very people imprisoned and murdered there, along with their descendants) and condemned a Chabad chapter that had been purposefully attacked during the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Even this religious, anti-Jewish cult, still face towards and have relationships with Jerusalem. This is not what non-religious, anti-Zionist cultists like Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein do. They're still Jews, but do not follow Judaism.
Now, are converts Jews? Yes and no. They are religious Jews, just not cultural or ethnic Jews. Cultural means that one is Jewish in their day to day lives and may have differing cultural practises (like I mentioned before, Sephardi, Ashkenazi, Mizrahi, Ethiopian and countless others have these different cultural identities) but share the same religious connection. Converts are welcome into this circle, and even though they aren't ethnically like us, are still part of a spiritual community that you won't see in many other religious and cultural backgrounds. To assert that Palestinians are the original Jews and you'll say many Critical Race Theorists, progressives and Islamic fundamentalists say, and saying that Ashkenazi Jews like myself are 'fake', is an insult to all of us who practise this religion that we share and love. It's also a degrading insult to the millions slaughtered by the Nazis who were murdered for the simple crime of being Jewish, ethnically or not. Why is this? Because the Nazis did not care who was 'fake' and who was 'real'. The word 'Palestinian' is a Greek word, from 'Philistine' which means 'invader'. When the Romans conquered the Land of Israel and forced the Israelites into exile from the land, the Romans Latinised the region and renamed it 'Syria Palaestina', as a way of insulting the native population of Jews that had been living there for three millennia, and so the power vacuum was given over to various Arab war lords in the years that came. They tore down Jewish monuments and replaced them with Muslim ones, including insulting the Jews by placing a mosque on top of the holiest site to the Jewish people. I don't deny a cultural significance to the Muslim people over Jerusalem, but to say that it is a spiritual homeplace for them, on par with Mecca and Medina, is just historically inaccurate and idiotic when you consider that Muslims established 'spiritual' ties with the area for only the past five hundred years, when Jews have had ties to the region for nearly five thousand years. I say 'spiritual' because it is in the nature of Islam as a religion to dominate, oppress and silence the voices of the dhimmi in the lands that it rules (see my previous entry on 'Why Islam Is Dying' for a more in depth analysis on why Islam and Judaism could never be fully compatible.)
No doubt in the next few days, especially during the Sabbath, that synagogues across the Western World will come under attack (they already have) and that the mainstream media will turn a blind eye to it and expect the worse to come. They know this because many Jews like myself will be observing our own religious practises and we will remain silent during that time. The hierarchies that be want a civil war in Israel to give an excuse to wipe the people in the region off the map and have done with it. My question to those who seek Israel's destruction and have the capability to do so is why haven't they done it? And my other one is, if you call yourself an anti-Zionist, then where will your loyalties lie if Iran does drop a bomb on Tel Aviv? Because they have already done so, and you cheered.
References
Martin Sicker (2001). Between Rome and Jerusalem: 300 years of Roman-Judaean relations
A History of the Jewish People, H. H. Ben-Sasson editor, 1976, page 247: "When Judea was converted into a Roman province [in 6 AD, page 246], Jerusalem ceased to be the administrative capital of the country. The Romans moved the governmental residence and military headquarters to Caesarea. The centre of government was thus removed from Jerusalem, and the administration became increasingly based on inhabitants of the hellenistic cities (Sebaste, Caesarea and others)."
Ariel Lewin. The archaeology of Ancient Judea and Palestine. Getty Publications, 2005 p. 33. "It seems clear that by choosing a seemingly neutral name - one juxtaposing that of a neighboring province with the revived name of an ancient geographical entity (Palestine), already known from the writings of Herodotus - Hadrian was intending to suppress any connection between the Jewish people and that land.
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