I Meet 'Galut' Jews at a Christmas Party in L.A.
At a Christmas party of people in the movie business two nights ago, I talked to three Jews. 1 was a movie producer who said he welcomed Jimmy Carter's statements about the Middle East and couldn't believe the smearing he was getting, then went off to play with his child by a gentile woman. With 2 and 3 I had longer conversations about Jewishness.
2 was a producer married to a Jewish woman. He was the son of Holocaust survivors and in 1967 had been pressured by friends to move to Israel. He had refused and, feeling angry about the pressure, had come to the understanding he was American, and had moved west. He said he got along with his businessman father-in-law completely, agreed on all politics, till he'd had the worst argument ever with him over Carter's book. The father-in-law said Jimmy Carter was an anti-Semite. He didn't agree, he thought Jimmy Carter was saying important things.
3 was a beautiful woman who it seemed to me had traveled widely, using the powers of her beauty, and her mind. She had grown up here then gone to live in the middle of the country, where she had married and had kids with a gentile. Now she was going out with a non-Jew back here. She told me she felt really Jewish; it was her "core." I found that moving. And her father had said to her, "Israel is very important." But she was afraid to examine Israel. From what she had heard it was a place that prized violence and ethnic chauvinism. That wasn't her way. The soul of Jewishness, she said, was to participate in the modern world, and see the best in everyone, and reach out for greatness in other groups and add our greatness to the mix unselfishly. "High five," I said, mimicking Borat when the hotel clerk reads him the telegram saying his wife has been eaten by a bear. We high-fived. Her boyfriend came over, and our conversation petered out.
Comments. My focus group was self-selecting; of course this is a party an assimilationist like myself ends up at. In fairness to the body of American Jewry, it doesn't go to Christmas parties like this one, by and large, and has a stronger sense of Jewish chauvinism than anyone at the party. Still, we assimilationists have close connections to that more-conservative body. I bet that 3's father and 2's father-in-law both give money to Jewish organizations, maybe to arms of the Israel lobby. While notwithstanding their strong feelings, 3 and 2 are not having much effect on our foreign policy.
On the East Coast I feel a lot more pressure to be Jewish-identified in a chauvinist way. People who live in New York tend to be more particularist-Jewish than California Jews. (It's no wonder that Michael Lerner, one Jew to endorse Jimmy Carter, is in S.F.) And affluent Jews on the east coast form the heart of the Israel lobby. They have been given that role, by history, by the Jewish people, by Israel—someone—to stand with Israel and insist that America do so too, because they believe that America if left to its own devices would abandon Israel.
There is a Hebrew word for me and my Christmas-party Jews. We are galut. Galut means diaspora, homeless, exiled. To make aliyah in Israel (to emigrate) means to go up—because Israel is the highest spot. We are down. And galut is a judgmental word, it carries the hint, spiritually-alienated.
I'm still in that high-five moment with 3, a core Jew, not feeling alienated, offering a non-chauvinist way of identifying Jewishly to an America that, mimicking Israel, is mired in a bloody, racial clash with the Arab world. Happy holidays.
Phil, with Jews like you who needs anti-Semites? David Duke has more affinity for Hebrews than you do. Nice try, though.
Difficult to match this one for stuningly inane discourse
As usual I can sympathise with Phil's general perspective, but I feel the need to warn him that what (from inside the chauvinist camp) looks quite daring (like Michael Lerner) will eventually reveal itself to him as merely a more sophisticated form of manipulation. My advice to Phil would be to proceed directly to the perspective of Jeff Blankfort, whom he will find with a few mouse clicks. Blankfort is even less enamoured of the 'organised Left' than Lenni Brenner is : we are talking about serious Jewish 'burning down the house', here. Not that I myself am a Leftist - I use both Left and Right perspectives to approximate to an adequate description of what's really going on.
Microsoft founder and chairman Bill Gates is one of a number of executives of top global companies that appear in a promotional film produced by the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor. In the film, Gates praises "Israel's unique human capital" in four languages - English, French, Chinese and Spanish.
The Ministry has pinned considerable hopes on the promotional film, which it is distributing to the country's commercial attaches across the globe. Also taking part in the video are senior executives from Intel, Oracle, and HP, Cisco, General Electric and other companies, who talk about their success of their investments in Israel.
http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/docview.asp?did=1000165824&fid=942
Merry Christmas Phil. Your posts are the best and fairest around. Would you mind making a new year's resolution to ban the likes of "Bill Pearlman" from leaving commentary on your blog? He and his ilk are Irv Rubin-style bullies, and don't deserve the time of day.
Schlomo:
I'm not feeling the love here.
Pearlman, here's a New Year's resolution idea for you. Try to go an entire year without using the word "anti-Semite." Feel free, however, to use "Jew-hater" or "Jew-basher" any time it seems appropriate. I have a feeling that by February 2007, if not sooner, you'll realize how very little real "anti-Semitism" there is in the U.S. and in particular in MondoWeiss.
Matt: I never said there was some sort of epidemic of antisemitism iin the US. Not at all, But is Phil Weiss anti-semitic, Jimmy Carter and quite a few of the denizens that inhabit this site, absolutely.
I liked the anecdote. BTW Phil, welcome to LA. Nice to have you in town.
Sometimes it's just a case of who we run into, whether our circle of friends or other associations. But sometimes we are in meaningful contact with persons from another worldview, but they ensure that no meaningful dialogue takes place. I have seen it through sticking to the agenda obsessively knowing that certain voices/issues are kept out. I have also seen it where differing worldviews are treated as totally unacceptable to hold without actually making a case for it being so. Both conditions are used to the advantage of the accepted narrative.
I am fortunate in that my friends are by and large rational, decent people. In my associations with non-like-minded people, they appear on the surface decent, but I cannot speak to their rationality because they seem to avoid addressing difficult issues, preferring to go with the default position that they hold the correct view.
In one sense, that makes Bill Pearlman a bit of an oddity. Wrong (or more wrong) or otherwise, he is willing to lobby for his views. Amidst the inevitable screeching, there is occasionally a kernel or two worth examining. True, separating the wheat from the chaf can often be the same exercise in futility as digging through a pile of horse manure hoping to find a pony. Still he doesn't use CAPS like a drunk working the brakes though his addiction to the term "douchebag" could use some work. The suggestion that he switch for a year to Jew-hater or Jew-basher is a good one as 'anti-Semitic' almost sounds clinical. In fact, it is used as ubiquitously as ketchup to smother whatever merits an offering has on its own.
I've always found it interesting that to label someone an anti-Semite is thought to be one of the most vile charges one can imagiine, yet there does not seem to be the same revulsion towards false accusations bandied about. Try accusing someone that they or their significant other is having sex on the sly with someone else and see if they just laugh it off should it prove to be wrong.
Lance, why am I not surprised that your in California. What happened, a bad LSD trip in 1974 and you just stayed.
Definitive Blankfort interview. Wrong end of California, presumably:
http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2006/11/1733088.php
Pearlman,
You're a bore.
End of story.
little phil is not galut.
he is kaput.
Pearlster - I should be surprised that you're able to tie your own shoes considering the strained effort you put into being 1) funny or 2) learned. Zero for two IS bad. And I think that for you to try to keep a civil tongue in your head would makie it explode.
You're the very essence of those things which you decry. Californians are, in your mind, all remnants of the Manson family. I did decide to stay here, even though born and raised in SoCal. I'm thinking of buying out of the area, and then coming back and throwing out whoever is then on my property based on the right of return. Seems there's been a precedent set.
I'm sure that whatever enlightened burg you grace with your presence, its imperfections can be explained away in the same manner that you do with everything else (i.e. someone else's fault).
Why is critizeing the Israeli Govt Anti-Semitic,we cop the same thing in Australia,most of it come from the same place and names,the Israeli Govt properganda Dept is fairly widespread.
I think most of the people like Pearlman just dont like the truth about what is going on is Israel with the Palestinians and land theft among other things
How sad. You are so disconnected from Judaism that you mistake the closeness the rest of us feel with chauvinism. First of all galut is not what you or your friends are, it is not something anybody is. We all (those of us who do not live in Israel) Live In galut, which is to say exile. And we feel especially close to each other not because we think we are better, or smarter or more deserving, but simply because we see each other as family. Wouldn?t you go the extra mile for your family?
I?m sorry you felt pressured to move to Israel, maybe you should have told the person who was pushing you to move there himself, before advising you to do the same. Most of us live outside of Israel, and even more did so in the 60s, so there is no shame in it.
I feel you and your Christmas party Jewish friends know little about the history what is really going on in Israel. Number 3 said that ?she was afraid to examine Israel. From what she had heard it was a place that prized violence and ethnic chauvinism.? Well you can tell her she need not be afraid to examine Israel. Because if she did she will find a country and a people that, while flawed, are building a beautiful society despite the obstacles that history has put in their way, not the ethnic chauvinists that she has been Told they are. If you compare Israel with any other society objectively, even America, you will not find them lacking.
Doris:
"We all (those of us who do not live in Israel) Live In galut, which is to say exile."
ex?ile
n.
1.
a. Enforced removal from one's native country.
b. Self-imposed absence from one's country.
2. The condition or a period of living away from one's native country.
3. One who lives away from one's native country, whether because of expulsion or voluntary absence.
I don't see any room in the definition of the word "exile" for the notion of living in exile from a land you personally never lived in. I don't see any room for the idea of a whole people living in exile from a country no one in their immediate families or their recent ancestry ever lived in. I am certainly not living in exile from Scotland or England or Ireland or Norway, just because those are countries my linage traces back to.
If a Jew has to feel that he/she is living in exile because he/she is Jewish and doesn't live in Israel... sure sounds like indoctrination to me.
And as long as we're there, so to speak, let's get to grips with the word "native". As in "one's native country".
Our word "native" comes from the Latin words "nativus" - "nasci", "natus", meaning "to be born".
It's cognate with "nativity", "natal" (as in "pre-natal"), "national", "nation", etc.
The dictionary definition of "nativity" reads (in part): "belonging by birth: having a right by birth: born or originating in the place: being the place of birth or origin: belonging to the people originally or at the time of discovery inhabiting the country".
That's the adjective. The dictionary definition of the noun is: "one born in any place: one born and long dwelling in a place". Etc.
Oh dear.
But never mind. After all, as Alice in Wonderland put it, words can mean anything you want them to mean.
So why shouldn't some Brooklyn-born and raised Jew turn up in Hebron and say to the, er, natives, "get the hell out of here, this land is my land".
Chutzpahllah goes with the territory, so to speak.
And as long as we're there, so to speak, let's get to grips with the word "native". As in "one's native country".
Our word "native" comes from the Latin words "nativus" - "nasci", "natus", meaning "to be born".
It's cognate with "nativity", "natal" (as in "pre-natal"), "national", "nation", etc.
The dictionary definition of "nativity" reads (in part): "belonging by birth: having a right by birth: born or originating in the place: being the place of birth or origin: belonging to the people originally or at the time of discovery inhabiting the country".
That's the adjective. The dictionary definition of the noun is: "one born in any place: one born and long dwelling in a place". Etc.
Oh dear.
But never mind. After all, as Alice in Wonderland put it, words can mean anything you want them to mean.
So why shouldn't some Brooklyn-born and raised Jew turn up in Hebron and say to the, er, natives, "get the hell out of here, this land is my land".
Chutzpahllah goes with the territory, so to speak.
Wow, people really don't like me using the word exile. I might point out that galut is not an English or Latin word, it is Hebrew. The closest translation into English is exile. Hebrew words mean what they mean in Hebrew, not English. Galut is the term Jews have applied to themselves for 2000 years. it is deeper than exile because it is spiritual as well as physical. It is that tradition which give the word Galut its meaning, not an English dictionary, nor a Latin source.
But of course. Not English, Hebrew. Well that's all right then.
Verbal prestidigitation. It's the burning bush for our times. just like that eyes are averted from the incandescent core of the matter: namely by what right - in whatever language - do Brooklyn Jews go half way round the world, plop themselves down on someone else's land and say, "you have to leave because this land is our land"?
That's the question. And of course you can never get a straight answer to it.
I know what my response would be were a bunch of foreigners to turn up in my street spouting some nonsense about my and my neighbors' land and property really being their land and property because the great realtor in the sky gave it to them thousands of years ago.
I'd reach for my 30-06.
But of course. Not English, Hebrew. Well that's all right then.
Verbal prestidigitation. It's the burning bush for our times. just like that eyes are averted from the incandescent core of the matter: namely by what right - in whatever language - do Brooklyn Jews go half way round the world, plop themselves down on someone else's land and say, "you have to leave because this land is our land"?
That's the question. And of course you can never get a straight answer to it.
I know what my response would be were a bunch of foreigners to turn up in my street spouting some nonsense about my and my neighbors' land and property really being their land and property because the great realtor in the sky gave it to them thousands of years ago.
I'd reach for my 30-06.
Really A.C., why do you keep posting twice? Just because you say it again, doesn
Doris, there may not be an English equivalent for Galut but I'm sure you can explain the concept Galup symbolizes using English words. Would you kindly attempt to explain the concept, in English? I would like to understand. Thanks.