Dean's World

'm having trouble following te post, Ron. So, the problem was that black people in that neighborhood attacked Jews? And though those Jews voted for Dinkins rather than Giuliani? how are these related?

highly confusing post.

The Pearl piece was obviously about more than Jews. Did I say it was only about Jews?

Aziz, I'm sorry you were confused. I do my best.

I think everyone likes the biblical Israel, Brian. It's Yids they can't stand.

Animosity between American Jews and American blacks has a long and storied history. What's most fascinating about it--to me anyway--is how hurt Jews are over it. After all, Jews were all over the fight for civil rights for blacks, not just in the 1950s and 1960s but well before it. In fact the original founders of the NAACP included a number of fairly prominent Jews, although they and all other non-whites were eventually kicked out of the organization.

It's also interesting to note that animosity toward immigrants and other non-black races (latinos especially) also runs high in the black community.

For some people, misery does not love company I guess.

Jews are also big hypocrites about this, though. To some extent their interest in civil rights was of course sincere. But it certainly did not extend to "wanting their daughter marry one." Most Jews of my parents' generation and probably even later are quite prejudiced against blacks on a true personal level. You also cannot ignore the socio-economic strains, especially in the City, and the coalition began to fray seriously in the late 1960's when the "taught" began very much to resent the teachers in New York City's public schools.

Big topic.

Without answering for Ron, I would tell you that a devout Jew would not want their kid to marry a Christian or Muslim. Judaism is a tribal religion, not a universal religion; to them it's something you're born to, with conversions fairly rare and somewhat controversial (and technically if I remember right a Rabbi overseeing a conversion is supposed to make a minimum of three attempts to talk the potential convert OUT of it).

Yes, there are of course black Jews, and that's much less controversial than having a Jewish child marry, say, a Christian or Muslim.

Of course this doesn't mean Jews are never racist, but you're picking on a sensitive subject a lot of non-Jews don't really understand: Judaism is not a universal religion, and being born Jewish carries burdens and blessings others don't have. That's the way the faith works.

I've always thought that Judaism is similar to Buddhism in that it doesn't have a history of forcing or cajoling large masses of unwilling people to convert. That always seemed to be more of a feature than a bug.

My Irish Catholic father married my Polish Catholic mother, and neither family was pleased.

Tribalism is relative.

Of course this doesn't mean Jews are never racist, but you're picking on a sensitive subject a lot of non-Jews don't really understand: Judaism is not a universal religion, and being born Jewish carries burdens and blessings others don't have.

Well, that really wasn't what I was shooting at per se, but I kind of left it open and so I can see all different kinds of interpretations of my questions being meant. Like MacK said I meant no intentional malevolence, but I can see if some thought I might have.

I have Jews I'm closely related to, I'm not one though, and I married a black, and I'm not one of those either.

I guess my questions really have to do with alieness.
What do different people consider alien, and why, and what is it primarily based upon these days.

I think it is safe to say that in the 19th and 20th centuries, in this nation and elsewhere, much of alieness was based on race. In prior ages it has been based on class, and religion, and other things.

Race sees to be waning as a major motive of how most see others as being instinctively alien. (By alien by the way, I mean one individual sees another individual or member of another group so differently as to instinctively warrant either suspicion, or "I don't want them around me, and certainly don't want one in my family.")
And class, in most of the developed world, and in much of the developing world has gone the way of the caste system in India (though remnants remain there) as far as judging alieness in others. Though economic class, versus real class (nobility and status) is often played to, even in modern US elections.

But given the general WOT, the place of the US, the developing world, China (which is extremely xenophobic, both racially and culturally), internal US politics, religious sentiments, etc. I was kinda wondering how different people view alieness nowadays and what triggers it in different individuals and groups?

You see I think every age goes through certain stages and has certain overall historical themes attached to it. In my opinion we are in the Fifth World War right now, the first going back to Colonial Expansion among the original and nascent "Great Powers." That World War was fought all over the world (though not all at once) and involved Colonialism, and included things like the French and Indian War, and primitive societies (relatively speaking) versus developing and more advanced societies. It did not involve race as much as ethnicity and geography encompassing alieness. It also often involved religion and class. It was also the first set of modern nationalist wars. And of course they were also imperialistic, and many of the engagements were expeditionary in nature, rather than involving "fixed battlefields and battlespaces." It was an extremely light engagement, rapid, lightening strike, wide dispersal, expeditionary war. It was fluid and to a large extent also naval warfare projected globally. It was a trade war.

Next came the Second World War and the American Revolution and Democracy versus Autocracies and Tyrannies, and yet strangely enough this also often involved race, and ran through the Civil War and the American's Frontier's Wars and the Spanish American Civil Wars and so forth, on into the start of the Twentieth Century. The Second World War was also about abolishing class, and replacing it with economic class. It was the second stage of the colonial wars, and the start of the modern independence wars.

Then the Third World War which was really what we call the First and Second World Wars and they heavily involved race, ethnicity, nationality, and even by proxy, religion again. It was also Democracy and Tyrannies versus Fascism and modern Imperialism. It was also the de facto end of the great powers colonial wars, and the start of the modern super-coalition alliance wars.

Then the Fourth World War, which was an international Cold War (very like the first world war in that sense), and fought by the US, representing the Great Republic, versus the Soviet Union, representing Communisms. It was fought largely by proxy in several different theatres, and was to a great extent an Ideological political war. It also involved ethnicity heavily (race very little, but race could explode at certain points along the axis, like with the Vietnam War and the internal US Civil Rights movement) and sometimes sex and religion versus atheism, especially near the end in places like Afghanistan and Africa and South and Central America. Most of the time however it was not an alliance war, but proxy fighting mano a mano.

Now we come to the Fifth World War, in modern times, our war an the so called War on Terror (but in really started at the end of the Fourth World War in Afghanistan and in some pales in Africa), which is an accurate description to some extent, and very misleading in others because it is hardly all this war is about. This war also heavily involves ethnicity and tribalism versus nationality versus globalism. It also involves, peripherally to this point, though probably that will change over time, Rogue States versus "Collated and Collective States." It also involves religion directly, economic class, terrorism of course, and I can see very little evidence of race as a factor per se, except in some smallpockets of engagement and political unrest. In every world war I think technology develops to the extent that methodology allows and is usually an expression of the underlying factors of what the war involves and how it is being fought and by whom. It is no accident that the most highly developed technological power in the world with the most weapons of mass destruction (the US) is the most reluctant to use those weapons, though it would be easy for us to do so technologically, and instead that we (the US) concentrate ever more and more on precise, pinpoint weaponry designed to minimize causalities and collateral damage. And yet our primitive (relatively speaking) terrorist and guerilla opponents seek every technological means possible to inflict mass causalities and to secure weapons of mass destruction, specifically to make use of them.

But I say all of that to come to this point. Every world war and every age and era has underlying themes and motives and issues of involvement which drive the way it unfolds and operates.That includes a fundamental idea of "alieness" that I don't want to say is the cause or even the focal point of the conflict of any given age, because it may or may not be, but I suspect it is always there as at least an underlying subconscious psychological motivation.

So in this age, in this war, I was just wondering what would be the focal point of alieness? What do other people think; race, religion, nationalism, ideology, ethnicity, sex, etc? Of course it can be more than one thing, and always is to tell the truth, but I'm talking about the primary driving force of alieness? I would say religion but I'm not sure religion isn't a kind of mask for certain larger, for lack of a better term, spiritual (rather than political) ideologies. the spiritual ideologies of cooperation versus independence, the ideologies of discipline versus tolerance, tradition versus innovation, orthodoxy versus change, and so forth, that religion in this age is really a sort of persona for. And of course internally a situation is very different form externally. The internal situation(s) in the US, or in Saudi Arabia vary greatly from one another, and although sometimes overlapping motives may be in play, of course, very different motivations will also be evident.

Anyways I got way off topic.
I'll do that from time to time and it's a bad habit.

My real question to you is, if you wanna answer it: "What's alien to you and why and what does that mean to you?"

Let's put it this way:

1) Jews are traditionally very much against intermarriage with someone with a non-Jew. This is simple self-preservation, as in most such cases, Judaism is the minority religion, and the kids will probably not be Jewish. You could call this tribalism if you want to.

2) Judaism traditionally comes with loads of obligations (unlike Christianity), so you can't credibly "make" a non-Jewish fiance Jewish if he/she doesn't really want to adopt a new religion, and he/she almost always doesn't want to.

So it's hard to come up with a way to intermarry that isn't considered problematic.