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An Epiphany
I’ve been keeping fairly close track of events in the Middle East ever since Hamas launched its horrific attack against Israel on October 7. Previously, when thinking about the Jews and Israel, and their struggles with the Iranian-supported Hamas in Gaza and Hizbollah in Lebanon, I tended to view them as ‘they.’ But this time around, while reading about the atrocious brutality displayed by Hamas since the conflict began, in my mind ‘they’ quietly became ‘my people.’
If you have read my author’s biography, you’ll notice my family name is Gallagher, a good Irish name. What my author’s bio doesn’t say, however, is that my mother’s maiden name was Libman, and I’m pretty sure that name was Americanized after my mother’s relatives emigrated to the USA after the 1918 Russian Revolution.
In other words, despite the fact that my father was Irish Catholic, I’m legally Jewish. So I’ve come to feel that I’m in the same leaky boat of tolerance that the rest of the international Jewish community now finds itself in after October 7. Pro-Hamas protesters in the supposedly ‘liberal’ West chanting “From Palestine to the Sea,” does, like Boswell’s saying about being hanged in the morning, tend to concentrate a person’s mind.
Still, at this point in time, it’s highly unlikely I’ll start wearing a yarmulke, put on a prayer shawl, fly off to Jerusalem, and bob up and down in front of the Wailing Wall chanting verses from the Torah. However, the deep hatred of Jews that has shown up in the last few days, not only in the Middle East but in much of the West as well, may have driven me into a psychological corner. Yes, I’m most definitely not a practicing Jew, and probably never will be, but that won’t matter to the anti-semites that have popped up in the media and on university campuses since the Hamas attack. From their standpoint, I’ll always have a target painted on my back.
My secularism wouldn’t have helped me with the Nazis, and it certainly won’t help me today with Hamas, Hizbollah, the mullahs in Tehran, or their hate groupies in the West. They’d all want me dead, and if not dead, at least down on my knees whining for mercy.
So with Hamas, the Israelis should take their cues from the books of generals William T. Sherman and Philip Sheridan (Crow rations and the Shenandoah Valley).
As for their supporters in the West, these people should all be offered lucrative employment opportunities in the fast-food industry in lieu of their current jobs.
Published in Politics
Amen!
You are naively too kind to those who would want you dead.
I’m a Scots-Irish Presbyterian, but I just ordered my Magen David pin today, and will wear it proudly to shown my identification with the Israelis in their life and death struggle with the Islamists.
I don’t think that having a Jewish mother makes you “legally” Jewish, or more Jewish than someone with a Jewish father and an Irish Catholic mother. It’s a religious matter, as far as I know.
Someone with one Jewish parent would be ethnically at least half Jewish regardless. But that’s just the ethnicity. I’m no expert, but what I’ve picked up over time suggests that someone with a Jewish mother could be automatically accepted into Judaism without any kind of special needs, but someone with only a Jewish father might have to “convert.”
Having a Jewish mother is what makes someone legally Jewish. By Jewish law. No such thing as half measures and no such thing as through the father. The liberal strains of “Judaism,” often referred to as “the Democratic party with holidays” and who don’t abide by Jewish law, include patrilineal. The State of Israel uses the one Jewish grandparent standard for right of return only because it was the standard Hitler used for his definition of a Jew, but a Jewish mother or legitimate conversion is the only Jewishly legal definition.
Mr. Gallagher, glad to meet you, achi.
When you say “Jewish law” do you mean religious Jewish law? Because that is what I said, in effect.
The remainder of your comment is offensive. How you saw fit to bring H and a sneering remark about Jewish Democrats is beyond me.
For the record, a person with a Jewish father is very likely to have a Jewish name, and is therefore more likely to be a target of antisemitism. People with Jewish fathers are no less likely to have a close affinity with the Jewish people or with Israel, no less likely to stick their necks out in support or defence of Israel, even in places where Israel is hated by the majority, and that hatred frequently translates into antisemitic words and actions.
In the 21Century, exclusionary definitions of Jewishness are self-defeating.
I believe Caryn is Jewish. And I did not find her comment at all offensive or vitriolic. There are plenty of “cultural” or “descent” Jews who do not keep the law, and in the US, most are aligned with the Democratic Party, despite how much many of their fellow travelers hate them. Her comment about Schicklegruber was simply to point out why Israeli law is as it is.
These facts are true. I have cousins whose father was a Jewish immigrant from the Russian Empire. He married a Methodist girl in Macon, Georgia, and they had a passel of children. My cousin I knew well from that family was very proud of her Jewish heritage. That did not make her Jewish by traditional Jewish Law, though, which was the original point.
In Nazi Germany, if you were half Jewish and half German you would have been given the option of either being forcibly sterilized or sent to the death camps. Being half Irish and half Jewish likely would have foreclosed one of those options. Niels Bohr (half Jewish half Danish) fled Denmark in advance of the Nazi occupation of that country.
With respect, the phrases “Jewish Law” and “Israeli Law” don’t necessarily have the same meaning. Maybe they do in this particular context, but I am not clear in my own mind about that.
I have nothing further to add or remove from my earlier reply.
No, they do not have the same meaning. That is what we are saying. Jewish Law is the old tribal law from the Torah. Israeli law is the law of a modern and extant country that has been influenced by modern events. That is what Caryn was saying here:
Two laws, two colors to show a little better.
What in the world is offensive about matrilineal Jewishness? I’ve known about this all my life, and not knowingly being Jewish, I never cared. It’s very similar to patrimonial Italianness which is law in Italy. How are you offended?
Israel is a Jewish nation. Judaism is largely a hereditary religion, and the heredity involved in being Jewish is rightly defined by the religion itself. But there would have to be a national legal definition of what constitutes being Jewish, at the very least to establish Jewish eligibility for citizenship by Law of Return.
I don’t see your problem with this.
“Ethnicity”, “religion” and “nationality” are not coterminous, important though they all may be.
A person’s identity is also extremely important and is deserving of respect, at least as much as any of their other characteristics, as long as that identity is genuinely grounded, felt and expressed.
Just because Jewish or Israeli law might prefer one class of people with one Jewish parent in certain respects doesn’t mean that an individual’s partly-Jewish identity should be seen as inferior in terms of their identity, to those who happen to have a Jewish mother, rather than father. Many Americans treasure their connections with the countries of their ancestors, and would probably take offence if someone said they weren’t “really” Polish, or Irish or Italian, or as the case may be.
Life is difficult right now for Jewish people in my part of the World, including people who are perceived to be Jewish. Maybe that leads to a heightened sense of Jewishness, or part-Jewishness. In my own case, I was raised by my parents to be proud of my Jewish identity and I believe that I show that pride here and in every other area of my life.
Charles,
I used to have a supervisor who loved the phrase, “I believe we are in violent agreement.” I agree with you. Caryn and I were merely stating what the “official” laws are, tribal and Israeli national, and a snippet of the history behind the Israeli law. That does not take away the reality of perceived Jewishness, either external or internal of anyone. It also does not take away the prejudice.
Actually, Charles, Mike is correct. A person could say their mindset determines their faith, but “legally” according to the Jewish religion, he’s a Jew if his mother was Jewish.
Keep reading, Susan. ;^D
Well, yeah, I was late to the show. You guys did great without me.
Nah, I’m not too naive, Nohaaj. I just don’t want to create too many martyrs. Gross underemployment would send a clear enough signal to most people in Western countries.
@Charles Mark, I admit I’m not familiar with the finer points of Jewish theology. I was just trying to make clear that the more murderous anti-semites wouldn’t care if I was a practicing Jew or not. I still would have wound up on the train to Auschwitz.
@caryn, I’m not all that conversant with the finer points of anybody’s theology. I was trying to make clear that even though I’m not a practicing Jew, that wouldn’t have spared me from the tender mercies of the SS and Hamas.
Dear @Nanocelt TheContrarian, I think you may be wrong on this one. Wasn’t Bohr smuggled out of Denmark in the belly of a high-speed RAF Mosquito fighter bomber because he was naively talking too much with German scientists about atomic theory? It was Enrico Fermi who used his Nobel Prize money to move to the USA with his Jewish wife. And that was before WW2 actually started.
@caryn, @Charles Mark, People seem to be drifting away from the main point of my post. Anti-semites wouldn’t care how little or much of a Jew you are. They operate on the principle that “Nits make Lice.”
Before the Hamas-Israeli war broke out and the atrocious anti-semitic outbursts that followed, I viewed my Jewishness as something of an interesting curiosity as did the Koreans (I’m an ex-pat living in Seoul) around me.
As I recall, Bohr fled Denmark when it became known that the Nazis planned to round up all Jews.
Wikipedia says he escaped first to Sweden by boat and later was flown to England on a Mosquito.
Thank you Michael. In my case, the fault- line between my Irish-Catholic and Jewish identities has been the subject of some pretty horrible comments, both from thoroughbred Jewish and thoroughbred Irish people I have encountered. It’s a sensitive issue for me, as I suppose is very obvious now.