"presumably means that Israel must be destroyed." Indeed.
I wouldn't expect anyone holding a "PhD in Intellectual History at the Department of Middle Eastern Studies in Columbia University, specializing in Zionism" to think otherwise.
If you came from another planet to Columbia U. you would think "Intellectual History" means warning your students about the evils of Zionism, which is the worst of all possible -isms, a sort of Nazism, Communism, nationalism, colonialism, imperialism, racism, Satanism and sadism all rolled into one.
And I thought "Whiteness Studies" (the pseudoscholarship that records all the ways white people are evil) was hateful!
Academic Leftism in our time has devolved into rich white liberals lauding and paying demented black or brown people to perform their hatred and desire to murder those OTHER white people, who are the embodiment of evil. And thus scholarship is replaced by ritual performances of deceitful jargon whose entire purpose is to give Western Leftists a frisson of radical violence, while they sit at a safe distance collecting checks and citing each other.
"what we use to agree was the political left" aka the Old Left—based on labor, wages and Marxist materialism—is more or less dead or about as spry as its two most famous living avatars, Bernie Sanders (age 83) and Noam Chomsky (age 96).
The old Left has long since been supplanted by the New Left, which swapped out the proletariat for the "marginalized", swapped out wages and working conditions for Identity groups and their self-esteem and replaced the COMINTERN with DEI. (Though of course there are some commonalites, like both the old and new Lefts absolutely hate Israel.)
"what we use to agree" is constantly shifting and changing, you gotta keep up.
Or, as I was going to say, Salo and Jeanette Baron are rolling in their graves. Hopefully, being "nominated" for their Jewish Studies prize means no more than some of the cockamamie nominations that have been made for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Truly unfathomable. Nothing could be more of a distortion of the life work of Salo and Jeanette Baron. Have there been voices raised against this abomination?
However, perhaps the more insightful point is her manifest projection. Her characterization of Zionism is precisely well suited for our opponents led by the PLO/PA, Hamas, etc., and its state sponsors, which, in accordance with their own stated goals, is "predicated on dispossession, where violence against the natives [by any means necessary] ... constitutes the regulative norm governing this process of ... dispossession … the narrative of honor is part of the engineering modus of [their culture], [which] does not allow for any form of cultural, political and social co-existence with the native population.
I curious to explore what this implicates based on the psychology of projection. The inversion is remarkable.
To me this just shows once again that your real agenda is Malthusian thinking: you can't stand the idea of strong growth of the Jewish nation - even if it means that we will always be stuck in a never-ending war with the Palestinians (because they don't have this stupid Malthusian attitude and have had high fertility for a while).
Can someone please explain how the the panel of professors on the review committee that had to read the crap accept it has legitimate scholarship. Are they also brain dead?
I don't understand how you consistently and correctly call out hate in anti-Zionist activists and show their logical fallacies, yet turn around and do the same thing again and again to Chareidim.
Yes Chareidim should join the army. Yes, Chareidim don't do their fair share.
No, that doesn't make them not part of klal yisroel, others, worthy of being hated or demonized as a group. They are by and large people who would happily die for klal yisroel if they thought it was halachically ok. They don't. They're wrong. But they are "chayalim balev". And the frantic efforts of their rabbonim trying to demonize chayalim is precisely because the younger generation respects them despite the fact that they personally will not go for cultural reasons.
It's charedim who have declared themselves to be not part of the wider nation. And don't kid yourself into thinking that it's about them thinking that it's not technically halachically okay to serve in teh army. The leadership and many of the masses simply don't care.
"It's charedim who have declared themselves to be not part of the wider nation."
is the same thing as
"Its Jews who have declared themselves to be not part of the civilized world"
I am chareidi. Never declared myself as such. Nor have most chareidim. You assume they don't care.
Again and again, the reason you are inspiring hate is because you are condemning a varied group as a monolith. That always leads to hate, be the group blacks, palestinians, or chareidim. At least write "some" or "many".
Also, for a guy who claims to have read the Righteous Mind, you sure have not learned any of its lessons!
Right, I didn't mean all charedim. Just all the rabbinic and political leadership and most of the masses. What percentage of charedim had any changes in their lives as a result of the war?
You have zero proof regarding "most of the masses". It's just projection and hate. You keep using the extremist leadership to demonize against the klal. It's no different than assuming Ayatollah Kohameini demonstrates something about "most" Iranians.
You are a BT who managed to leave the community unscathed as you and your family are largely not from there. The fact that you keep assuming that everyone else can just leave and demonizing them for not is just hatred. There's no other word for it.
There's no more rationalism here than there is on David Duke's website. You are changing no minds. You are just calling for rhetorical lynchings day after day after day.
"zero proof"?? Where are all the charedim who signed up for the army? Who are working on farms and visiting hospitals and helping on the home front? By the way, what does YOUR family do for the country?
I donated funds. Many of my cousins are soldiers. It's irrelevant.
The point here isn't whether your criticisms are valid. They are. It's the way you are expressing them. And you know it. You can criticize Black communities in racist and no racist ways, and the same applies to Chareidim.
You are othering a full community of people and inciting hate against them. Full stop. Calling out leadership and criticizing peoples ok. Hinting to them being parasites, grouping them as a monolith, and saying they all are a third wheel that should ideally be expelled from israel is hate.
So stop bringing up your correct criticisms. It's not your criticism that is my target. It's your othering, labeling, obsessive demonizing, and ragebaiting that is wrong.
There's no such thing as a "rhetorical lynching". Since having heard in great detail about things actually done to real people near me, not 2 years ago, I find I have no patience for chatter about things like rhetorical lynching or verbal violence. Some people here seriously need to recalibrate their metaphors; the only thing they prove is how incredibly sheltered their existence is.
Of course there is. Go to Unz, where one can read posts blaming the Jews for everything based on a few statements from the ADL or Jewish actors, and assuming the leadership reflects the whole. The same logic as this blog, unfortunately.
"I am chareidi. Never declared myself as such. Nor have most chareidim. "
Ash, my dear friend, you are so wrong again.
Are you familiar with the term Ultra-Orthodox? Supposedly a barb by those not U/O? Alas not. It was how the english speaking U-O's wanted to be known. Then when they decided that term was a pejorative, they wanted to be known as Cheredi.
My point is irrelevant whether it's called UOJ or Chareidi. I don't care and I don't find either offensive.
And to clarify, I do agree that the Chareidi leaders response to this war has been immoral. That does not give one the right to demonize the whole community.
This blog used to focus on calling out Chareidi leadership. It was often on target. For the last year, it's been calling out Chareidim as a whole and demonizing them as a whole. (Often slyly, such as when the blogmaster discussed whether they are parasites). That's what I am not ok with.
You once posted your daughters story here. She was open about how hard it is. Then she made the crazy suggestion that we need more religious people here to help, WITHOUT differentiating between those who are strong enough to help without being harmed spiritually themselves, and those who may fall spiritually themselves because of how hard she said it is.
Yes there are dangers. Very real ones. And YOU have never dedicated any real space to listing those issues and explaining in detail how they are not problems using halachic sources. No you never did. What are percentages of those who come back less religous? How many throw away all of religion there? How many engage in specific sinful activities and what are the remedies? What is the general attitude to halacha? Let's talk kashrut and shabbat.
Let's talk about michsholim in areas of kedusha. How many engage in behavior that is yaharog val yaavor? What are the halachic remedies?
You wrote about it being "technically" ok. Why only technically?
You are afraid to. So you restort to generalities and attacks. Why the hesitancy?
According to Ben Gurion the true heroes of Israel are the charedim.
Had the rest of the country followed the charedim's example 10/7 neve would have happened.
And if not for the Haredim only about 25% of births 'between the river and the sea' would be to Jewish mothers, and the fertility rate of the non-Jews would be significantly higher, completely delegitimizing Israel's existence.
The point is that the data shows that the dati community barely grows, due to an increase an extremely high attrition rate (and a low fertility rate in comparison to the Charedim).
I was responding to the claim that it's the army. Much of this otd happens in high school or college. Chareidim don't need to have the same tichonim datiim as datim do.
Based on conjecture that possibly a perfect system can be constructed combining army service with a low attrition rate and high demographic growth? Right now the data shows that such a system does not exist. So currently the Charedim are the true heroes of Israel.
And yes, eventually such a system probably will emerge and many Charedim will participate. Better yet, eventually Israel won't be in a constant state of war, because the reason for this constant state of war is the demographic crisis. By 2100 there will hopefully be over 1.25 million Charedi births in Israel annually and the crisis will be well past us. Israel will be able to annex any population which threatens them.
I bet you don't say that about chilonim (irreligious Jews) who are "Jewish in their heart" but are mechalel Shem Shomayim by refusing to observe the Torah.
Maybe we have different ideas about whether or not something is considered mechalel shem shomayim. But at least we are both (think) we're trying to follow the Torah (even if some of us are mistaken about what the Torah wants from us).
But you will apply the "road to hell" comment only to Charedim knowing full well that "chillul shabbos and be'ilos nidah" is certainly a path to hell (regardeless of their "Jewish" heart).
Thank you for reminding me of the disingenuousness because of which I mostly stopped commenting here.
You are either voluntarily delusional or straw manning me. Either way- you are being disingenuous.
I did not say that commenting here was a vice that I am struggling to keep away from?
What I said was simply that the disingenuousness of many of those who comment here shows me that it may not be worth it for me to waste my time commenting here.
(And this comment that I am writing at this very moment is not even for you, but for any honest person who might see your silly response and think that my silence is agreement with you.)
Maybe we have different ideas about whether or not something is considered mechalel shem shomayim. But at least we are both trying to follow the Torah (even if some of us are mistaken about what the Torah wants from us).
But we all agree that "chillul shabbos and be'ilos nidah" is a path to hell, yet Shy Guy wants to apply the "road to hell" comment only to Charedim?
You decide whom to follow. If Chareidim as a whole did not choose this "immoral leadership" (your words) we wouldn't be in this situation. And any individual Chareidim who make a different choice automatically exclude themselves from this criticism.
Those furthest away from Zionism have the biggest problem with it. Hence, they are very religiously motivated to be vocal, active, organized, and trying to be influential. Those less so have more pressing issues and give it less attention, making it unclear who has the "many".
This is, for the moment at least, a non-story. The mechanics behind the award need to be understood.
First, the award is conferred once every four or five years. That means that nominations accumulate in the interim, unreviewed, so this thesis is just one of many.
Second, the method of nomination is, quite literally, a tick of the box by the thesis advisor - not any Department. That’s the sole qualification at this juncture. There is no outside quality or peer review to justify the nomination.
Third, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences convenes a panel of recognized scholars to review all of the nominated dissertations and, if past is prologue, the winner will be, as it has always been in the past, a scholarly, ground breaking and well written thesis.
Prof. Baron’s legacy for scholarship at and his long connection with Columbia is something the University will not be tampering with, regardless of the provocation (which this nomination might be), and especially given today’s climate of antisemitic and anti-Israel agitation.
From the acknowledgements in the thesis: "I further thank Professors Maurice Samuels, Madeleine Dobie and Gil Hochberg for agreeing to be on my doctoral committee, but more so, for their engagement and invaluable comments on my chapters. I am indebted to their commitment and their constructive feedback, which helped me re-enforce sections of my
work. I thank all members of my academic committee for unanimously nominating this
dissertation for the Salo and Jeanette Baron Dissertation Prize."
Gil Hochberg is Ransford Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature, and Middle East Studies at Columbia University and Chair of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies.
Gil Hochberg succeeded Rashid Khalidi as the head of MESEAAS at Columbia. She has a PhD in Hebrew Literature but not only has she produced no scholarship in that area, she has taken the position that there is no such thing, preferring to focus on “Palestinian” literature. Hence her somewhat misleading Chair title. She is a well known Israeli born anti-Zionist.
Madeleine Dobie is a French professor who, until very recently, was a reliable signature on any anti-Israel petition at Columbia.
Maurice Samuels is at Yale’s French Department and is the Director of Yale’s Program for the Study of Antisemitism. If this were a game of “guess who doesn’t fit”, he would certainly be the winning guess.
In any event, the key will be the composition of the award panel, not on who may have overseen a particular thesis.
Can someone on here more steeped in the Torah (and Talmud) than myself please explain how one gets away with claiming zionists, and especially religious zionists, don't believe not a racist ideology predicated on Jewish supremacy. This is an honest question and request. Please?
When bankers were Jews because of medieval Europe's weird laws, banking was seen as immoral, but when the Venetians and the Swiss got into the banking industry, it was a part of their culture and accepted. "Rootless cosmopolitans, capitalists, communists, pigs," whatever the insult de jure of the era, people have probably applied it to Jews.
In Pirkei Avot 4, Mishna 1, Ben Zoma speaks about changing your self and your perspective to attain four admirable traits (wisdom, heroism, wealth, and honor). For example, the Mishna says "who is wise? He who learns from every man." Learning from every man is something you can choose to do. If it were to say "who is wise? He who is called wise by others," well, you can't choose what other people think of you, only what you do.
Similarly, Berakhot 17a contains Mar, Son of Ravina's meditation that we say at the end of the Amidah; "to those who curse me, may my soul be silent, and may my soul be like the dust to all." Again, you can't choose what other people think of you, you can only choose how you react.
Circling back to Zionism and my first paragraph, Zionism is not "Jews are superior." It's "people have always hated Jews, and we can't change their minds, but we can choose how to react - we can choose to either die for being a Jew, or we can build something of our own."
Speaking to Religious Zionism specifically, Rav A.I. Kook ZT''L, widely viewed as the founder of what is today called Religious Zionism, taught that the love of all mankind is central to the Jewish people's spiritual role among the nations. This is demonstrated in his teaching of the Four Songs. The Zohar says that David's harp played four types of songs, one for each letter of the Ineffable Name. Orot HaKodesh volume II explains this as such - some "sing" the Song of the Soul (i.e., their spiritual fulfillment is found exclusively in self-refinement), others "sing" the Song of the Nation (i.e., they find spiritual fulfillment by cleaving to the soul of their nation), others sing the Song of Humanity (i.e., they revel in the grandeur of humanity and fully comprehend what it means that all humans are made in the Divine Mage), while others reach even higher and sing the Song of the World (i.e., finding spiritual fulfillment by living in harmony with all things that the Holy One created). The Song of Songs which is Solomon's is the complete union of these Four Songs, resulting in a song of holiness, peace, and completeness, "ישראל," the one who wrestles with God, becomes "שיר א-ל," the Song of God.
This isn't a question to be answered online. You have to search out the right person who will discuss it with you. Till you find that person others will give you a hard time for asking. Good luck.
Isnt there a whole convoluted scheme that is offered by some in which converts to Judaism are people with Jewish souls trapped in wrong (non-Jewish) bodies and that conversion is them simply reaffirming something that already exists inside? Kind of like being transgender but for Jews?
Based on the chazal that all our souls were at Sinai. Not literal but shows that converts take on the national identity or "genes" of כלל ישראל just like those born into the nation.
it is sad that this is indeed the way some Jews think. They're obviously wrong that this a Jewish approach. That would invalidate the entire Davidic line (not to mention mashiach), and probably every Jew alive today has non-Jewish genes.
My understanding of Zionism, and I'm just talking general Zionism here, not any specific branches, is that antisemitism is a fact of life in Europe and the Middle East. We can't change that, but we can change how we react to it - we can die on our knees, or build something of our own in our homeland.
In a way, this does get into ideas that have existed in Jewish culture for a while. In Avot 4:1, Ben Zoma's list of positive character traits are things that you, yourself, can change, not things that are controlled by others. Mar, son of Ravina's meditation from Berakhot 17a, which is said at the end of the Amidah, also has similar themes to this - "let my soul be like the dust to all" (i.e., let me not get angry at people insulting me) because I can't change what other people think of me, only my reactions to what they think. To give an example cogent to this article, we can't change that a slanderous paper has been nominated for a prize in Jewish Studies.
Obviously, you get into the different branches, and there are differences, but generally, Zionism has nothing to do with "racial and genetic characteristics." There are Jews (and gentile allies) of all colors and creeds; I should know, half of my mother's family are black Sephardim and I've got a Jamaican friend who is studying in Israel right now to be a rabbi.
It's not that she's anti-Israel that bothers me (many people are anti-Israel). It's that she has a PhD in the subject and is nominated for an award on the subject while lacking any actual expertise.
I would argue that you have what seems to be an obsession. I have many Dati friends. None seem to hate them, but their actions. You seem to hate them as a whole. Even if you do not, what you wrote implies you do and does nothing productive.
"presumably means that Israel must be destroyed." Indeed.
I wouldn't expect anyone holding a "PhD in Intellectual History at the Department of Middle Eastern Studies in Columbia University, specializing in Zionism" to think otherwise.
If you came from another planet to Columbia U. you would think "Intellectual History" means warning your students about the evils of Zionism, which is the worst of all possible -isms, a sort of Nazism, Communism, nationalism, colonialism, imperialism, racism, Satanism and sadism all rolled into one.
And I thought "Whiteness Studies" (the pseudoscholarship that records all the ways white people are evil) was hateful!
Academic Leftism in our time has devolved into rich white liberals lauding and paying demented black or brown people to perform their hatred and desire to murder those OTHER white people, who are the embodiment of evil. And thus scholarship is replaced by ritual performances of deceitful jargon whose entire purpose is to give Western Leftists a frisson of radical violence, while they sit at a safe distance collecting checks and citing each other.
Columbia delenda est.
Best comment I’ve read today!!
lol thanks!
I seem to have to keep doing this here.
"what we use to agree was the political left" aka the Old Left—based on labor, wages and Marxist materialism—is more or less dead or about as spry as its two most famous living avatars, Bernie Sanders (age 83) and Noam Chomsky (age 96).
The old Left has long since been supplanted by the New Left, which swapped out the proletariat for the "marginalized", swapped out wages and working conditions for Identity groups and their self-esteem and replaced the COMINTERN with DEI. (Though of course there are some commonalites, like both the old and new Lefts absolutely hate Israel.)
"what we use to agree" is constantly shifting and changing, you gotta keep up.
Or, as I was going to say, Salo and Jeanette Baron are rolling in their graves. Hopefully, being "nominated" for their Jewish Studies prize means no more than some of the cockamamie nominations that have been made for the Nobel Peace Prize.
No, the nomination was from Columbia's own academic committee.
Truly unfathomable. Nothing could be more of a distortion of the life work of Salo and Jeanette Baron. Have there been voices raised against this abomination?
What would happen if Columbia's African American and African Diaspora Studies Department gave a prize to a study of race relations by James Earl Ray?
Wow. Somehow I doubt the Baron family had a 21st century version of Mein Kampf in mind when they established their endowment in Jewish studies
So nowadays, if you wish to make an endowment, you need to specify certain -- shall we -- say boundaries.
My eyes popped at the Aryan bit.
However, perhaps the more insightful point is her manifest projection. Her characterization of Zionism is precisely well suited for our opponents led by the PLO/PA, Hamas, etc., and its state sponsors, which, in accordance with their own stated goals, is "predicated on dispossession, where violence against the natives [by any means necessary] ... constitutes the regulative norm governing this process of ... dispossession … the narrative of honor is part of the engineering modus of [their culture], [which] does not allow for any form of cultural, political and social co-existence with the native population.
I curious to explore what this implicates based on the psychology of projection. The inversion is remarkable.
When there's that many charedim, the economy collapses and we're all dead.
I assume you meant to reply to me.
This is stupid Malthusian thinking.
I don't even know how to begin addressing it.
To me this just shows once again that your real agenda is Malthusian thinking: you can't stand the idea of strong growth of the Jewish nation - even if it means that we will always be stuck in a never-ending war with the Palestinians (because they don't have this stupid Malthusian attitude and have had high fertility for a while).
Can someone please explain how the the panel of professors on the review committee that had to read the crap accept it has legitimate scholarship. Are they also brain dead?
They are of like mind.
I don't understand how you consistently and correctly call out hate in anti-Zionist activists and show their logical fallacies, yet turn around and do the same thing again and again to Chareidim.
Yes Chareidim should join the army. Yes, Chareidim don't do their fair share.
No, that doesn't make them not part of klal yisroel, others, worthy of being hated or demonized as a group. They are by and large people who would happily die for klal yisroel if they thought it was halachically ok. They don't. They're wrong. But they are "chayalim balev". And the frantic efforts of their rabbonim trying to demonize chayalim is precisely because the younger generation respects them despite the fact that they personally will not go for cultural reasons.
It's charedim who have declared themselves to be not part of the wider nation. And don't kid yourself into thinking that it's about them thinking that it's not technically halachically okay to serve in teh army. The leadership and many of the masses simply don't care.
"It's charedim who have declared themselves to be not part of the wider nation."
is the same thing as
"Its Jews who have declared themselves to be not part of the civilized world"
I am chareidi. Never declared myself as such. Nor have most chareidim. You assume they don't care.
Again and again, the reason you are inspiring hate is because you are condemning a varied group as a monolith. That always leads to hate, be the group blacks, palestinians, or chareidim. At least write "some" or "many".
Also, for a guy who claims to have read the Righteous Mind, you sure have not learned any of its lessons!
Right, I didn't mean all charedim. Just all the rabbinic and political leadership and most of the masses. What percentage of charedim had any changes in their lives as a result of the war?
You have zero proof regarding "most of the masses". It's just projection and hate. You keep using the extremist leadership to demonize against the klal. It's no different than assuming Ayatollah Kohameini demonstrates something about "most" Iranians.
You are a BT who managed to leave the community unscathed as you and your family are largely not from there. The fact that you keep assuming that everyone else can just leave and demonizing them for not is just hatred. There's no other word for it.
There's no more rationalism here than there is on David Duke's website. You are changing no minds. You are just calling for rhetorical lynchings day after day after day.
"zero proof"?? Where are all the charedim who signed up for the army? Who are working on farms and visiting hospitals and helping on the home front? By the way, what does YOUR family do for the country?
I think that according to Ben Gurion the Charedim are doing their fair share.
https://www.rationalistjudaism.com/p/gaza-wins-and-losses/comment/86729275
I donated funds. Many of my cousins are soldiers. It's irrelevant.
The point here isn't whether your criticisms are valid. They are. It's the way you are expressing them. And you know it. You can criticize Black communities in racist and no racist ways, and the same applies to Chareidim.
You are othering a full community of people and inciting hate against them. Full stop. Calling out leadership and criticizing peoples ok. Hinting to them being parasites, grouping them as a monolith, and saying they all are a third wheel that should ideally be expelled from israel is hate.
So stop bringing up your correct criticisms. It's not your criticism that is my target. It's your othering, labeling, obsessive demonizing, and ragebaiting that is wrong.
There's no such thing as a "rhetorical lynching". Since having heard in great detail about things actually done to real people near me, not 2 years ago, I find I have no patience for chatter about things like rhetorical lynching or verbal violence. Some people here seriously need to recalibrate their metaphors; the only thing they prove is how incredibly sheltered their existence is.
Of course there is. Go to Unz, where one can read posts blaming the Jews for everything based on a few statements from the ADL or Jewish actors, and assuming the leadership reflects the whole. The same logic as this blog, unfortunately.
"I am chareidi. Never declared myself as such. Nor have most chareidim. "
Ash, my dear friend, you are so wrong again.
Are you familiar with the term Ultra-Orthodox? Supposedly a barb by those not U/O? Alas not. It was how the english speaking U-O's wanted to be known. Then when they decided that term was a pejorative, they wanted to be known as Cheredi.
Do you lack reading comprehension? I have never declared myself not to be part of the Jewish nation.
is that reply to me? I never suggested you were not.
So Im misunderstanding you.
My point is irrelevant whether it's called UOJ or Chareidi. I don't care and I don't find either offensive.
And to clarify, I do agree that the Chareidi leaders response to this war has been immoral. That does not give one the right to demonize the whole community.
This blog used to focus on calling out Chareidi leadership. It was often on target. For the last year, it's been calling out Chareidim as a whole and demonizing them as a whole. (Often slyly, such as when the blogmaster discussed whether they are parasites). That's what I am not ok with.
There are halachic issues.
You once posted your daughters story here. She was open about how hard it is. Then she made the crazy suggestion that we need more religious people here to help, WITHOUT differentiating between those who are strong enough to help without being harmed spiritually themselves, and those who may fall spiritually themselves because of how hard she said it is.
Yes there are dangers. Very real ones. And YOU have never dedicated any real space to listing those issues and explaining in detail how they are not problems using halachic sources. No you never did. What are percentages of those who come back less religous? How many throw away all of religion there? How many engage in specific sinful activities and what are the remedies? What is the general attitude to halacha? Let's talk kashrut and shabbat.
Let's talk about michsholim in areas of kedusha. How many engage in behavior that is yaharog val yaavor? What are the halachic remedies?
You wrote about it being "technically" ok. Why only technically?
You are afraid to. So you restort to generalities and attacks. Why the hesitancy?
https://www.rationalistjudaism.com/p/the-religious-risks-of-idf-service
That post is silly because of this
https://chotam.org.il/media/37347/demography-of-religiosity.pdf
https://www.shoresh.institute/publication.html?id=Pub034 Figure 15 pg. 14
and this https://www.academia.edu/12088627/David_Ben_Gurion_and_the_demographic_threat_His_Dualistic_Approach_to_Natalism_1936_1963
https://nonzionism.com/p/the-basic-problem-with-zionism
According to Ben Gurion the true heroes of Israel are the charedim.
Had the rest of the country followed the charedim's example 10/7 neve would have happened.
And if not for the Haredim only about 25% of births 'between the river and the sea' would be to Jewish mothers, and the fertility rate of the non-Jews would be significantly higher, completely delegitimizing Israel's existence.
https://www.rationalistjudaism.com/p/gaza-wins-and-losses/comment/87182509
Most of the OTD seems to be coming from those without a strong background and foundation in Torah.
The point is that the data shows that the dati community barely grows, due to an increase an extremely high attrition rate (and a low fertility rate in comparison to the Charedim).
https://chotam.org.il/media/37347/demography-of-religiosity.pdf
https://www.shoresh.institute/publication.html?id=Pub034 Figure 15 pg. 14
I think it is irrational to just brush this off the way you do here without providing any data to support yourself.
I was responding to the claim that it's the army. Much of this otd happens in high school or college. Chareidim don't need to have the same tichonim datiim as datim do.
You are defending and justifying the vitriol of the OP against the true heroes of Israel (according to ben Gurion https://www.academia.edu/12088627/David_Ben_Gurion_and_the_demographic eat_His_Dualistic_Approach_to_Natalism_1936_1963 ).
Based on what?
Based on conjecture that possibly a perfect system can be constructed combining army service with a low attrition rate and high demographic growth? Right now the data shows that such a system does not exist. So currently the Charedim are the true heroes of Israel.
And yes, eventually such a system probably will emerge and many Charedim will participate. Better yet, eventually Israel won't be in a constant state of war, because the reason for this constant state of war is the demographic crisis. By 2100 there will hopefully be over 1.25 million Charedi births in Israel annually and the crisis will be well past us. Israel will be able to annex any population which threatens them.
The road to hell is paved with (by?) "chayalim balev."
I bet you don't say that about chilonim (irreligious Jews) who are "Jewish in their heart" but are mechalel Shem Shomayim by refusing to observe the Torah.
You lose.
Your thinking is very crooked (to put it mildly).
Maybe we have different ideas about whether or not something is considered mechalel shem shomayim. But at least we are both (think) we're trying to follow the Torah (even if some of us are mistaken about what the Torah wants from us).
But you will apply the "road to hell" comment only to Charedim knowing full well that "chillul shabbos and be'ilos nidah" is certainly a path to hell (regardeless of their "Jewish" heart).
Thank you for reminding me of the disingenuousness because of which I mostly stopped commenting here.
You lose again.
You have no idea who I am and what I think outside of my handful of comments here on the subject.
Good luck with you Yetzer Harah to keep on commenting here.
"Yetzer Harah" ?
You are either voluntarily delusional or straw manning me. Either way- you are being disingenuous.
I did not say that commenting here was a vice that I am struggling to keep away from?
What I said was simply that the disingenuousness of many of those who comment here shows me that it may not be worth it for me to waste my time commenting here.
(And this comment that I am writing at this very moment is not even for you, but for any honest person who might see your silly response and think that my silence is agreement with you.)
Just like you wouldn't say that chareidim are מחללי שם שמיים by not serving.
Your thinking is very crooked.
Maybe we have different ideas about whether or not something is considered mechalel shem shomayim. But at least we are both trying to follow the Torah (even if some of us are mistaken about what the Torah wants from us).
But we all agree that "chillul shabbos and be'ilos nidah" is a path to hell, yet Shy Guy wants to apply the "road to hell" comment only to Charedim?
The road to 10/7 is paved with (by?) those with a small family and communities with low demographic growth.
https://www.academia.edu/12088627/David_Ben_Gurion_and_the_demographic eat_His_Dualistic_Approach_to_Natalism_1936_1963 https://nonzionism.com/p/the-basic-problem-with-zionism
https://chotam.org.il/media/37347/demography-of-religiosity.pdf https://www.shoresh.institute/publication.html?id=Pub034 Figure 15 pg. 14
https://www.rationalistjudaism.com/p/gaza-wins-and-losses/comment/87182509
The road to hate, genocide and lynching is paved by nonstop blog posts bashing people for situations they didn't create and cannot change.
These blog posts are mostly a response to precisely what appears to concern you in your comment.
Or do you wanna go with the "vicious cycle" argument.
They are a response to nothing. Call out Chareidi leadership. Don't bash the Chareidim as a group whole.
You decide whom to follow. If Chareidim as a whole did not choose this "immoral leadership" (your words) we wouldn't be in this situation. And any individual Chareidim who make a different choice automatically exclude themselves from this criticism.
Not true. Chareidim are a sociological group just like Blacks. Criticizimg a group as a whole leads to hate be they Jews, Chareidim or blacks.
"to Chareidim."
Many Charedim are anti-Zionist activists. In the United States they are the best organized and most politically influential.
Those furthest away from Zionism have the biggest problem with it. Hence, they are very religiously motivated to be vocal, active, organized, and trying to be influential. Those less so have more pressing issues and give it less attention, making it unclear who has the "many".
This is, for the moment at least, a non-story. The mechanics behind the award need to be understood.
First, the award is conferred once every four or five years. That means that nominations accumulate in the interim, unreviewed, so this thesis is just one of many.
Second, the method of nomination is, quite literally, a tick of the box by the thesis advisor - not any Department. That’s the sole qualification at this juncture. There is no outside quality or peer review to justify the nomination.
Third, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences convenes a panel of recognized scholars to review all of the nominated dissertations and, if past is prologue, the winner will be, as it has always been in the past, a scholarly, ground breaking and well written thesis.
Prof. Baron’s legacy for scholarship at and his long connection with Columbia is something the University will not be tampering with, regardless of the provocation (which this nomination might be), and especially given today’s climate of antisemitic and anti-Israel agitation.
From the acknowledgements in the thesis: "I further thank Professors Maurice Samuels, Madeleine Dobie and Gil Hochberg for agreeing to be on my doctoral committee, but more so, for their engagement and invaluable comments on my chapters. I am indebted to their commitment and their constructive feedback, which helped me re-enforce sections of my
work. I thank all members of my academic committee for unanimously nominating this
dissertation for the Salo and Jeanette Baron Dissertation Prize."
Gil Hochberg is Ransford Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature, and Middle East Studies at Columbia University and Chair of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies.
Gil Hochberg succeeded Rashid Khalidi as the head of MESEAAS at Columbia. She has a PhD in Hebrew Literature but not only has she produced no scholarship in that area, she has taken the position that there is no such thing, preferring to focus on “Palestinian” literature. Hence her somewhat misleading Chair title. She is a well known Israeli born anti-Zionist.
Madeleine Dobie is a French professor who, until very recently, was a reliable signature on any anti-Israel petition at Columbia.
Maurice Samuels is at Yale’s French Department and is the Director of Yale’s Program for the Study of Antisemitism. If this were a game of “guess who doesn’t fit”, he would certainly be the winning guess.
In any event, the key will be the composition of the award panel, not on who may have overseen a particular thesis.
the story is the fact this is even being considered, but it would be even crazier if it won
Oh come on. Most Jewish zionists do believe in superiority of Jews — both spiritual and genetic. For a rationalist you really don’t like the truth.
He doesn't want to agree to open verses in the Torah that make him uncomfy
Can someone on here more steeped in the Torah (and Talmud) than myself please explain how one gets away with claiming zionists, and especially religious zionists, don't believe not a racist ideology predicated on Jewish supremacy. This is an honest question and request. Please?
When bankers were Jews because of medieval Europe's weird laws, banking was seen as immoral, but when the Venetians and the Swiss got into the banking industry, it was a part of their culture and accepted. "Rootless cosmopolitans, capitalists, communists, pigs," whatever the insult de jure of the era, people have probably applied it to Jews.
In Pirkei Avot 4, Mishna 1, Ben Zoma speaks about changing your self and your perspective to attain four admirable traits (wisdom, heroism, wealth, and honor). For example, the Mishna says "who is wise? He who learns from every man." Learning from every man is something you can choose to do. If it were to say "who is wise? He who is called wise by others," well, you can't choose what other people think of you, only what you do.
Similarly, Berakhot 17a contains Mar, Son of Ravina's meditation that we say at the end of the Amidah; "to those who curse me, may my soul be silent, and may my soul be like the dust to all." Again, you can't choose what other people think of you, you can only choose how you react.
Circling back to Zionism and my first paragraph, Zionism is not "Jews are superior." It's "people have always hated Jews, and we can't change their minds, but we can choose how to react - we can choose to either die for being a Jew, or we can build something of our own."
Speaking to Religious Zionism specifically, Rav A.I. Kook ZT''L, widely viewed as the founder of what is today called Religious Zionism, taught that the love of all mankind is central to the Jewish people's spiritual role among the nations. This is demonstrated in his teaching of the Four Songs. The Zohar says that David's harp played four types of songs, one for each letter of the Ineffable Name. Orot HaKodesh volume II explains this as such - some "sing" the Song of the Soul (i.e., their spiritual fulfillment is found exclusively in self-refinement), others "sing" the Song of the Nation (i.e., they find spiritual fulfillment by cleaving to the soul of their nation), others sing the Song of Humanity (i.e., they revel in the grandeur of humanity and fully comprehend what it means that all humans are made in the Divine Mage), while others reach even higher and sing the Song of the World (i.e., finding spiritual fulfillment by living in harmony with all things that the Holy One created). The Song of Songs which is Solomon's is the complete union of these Four Songs, resulting in a song of holiness, peace, and completeness, "ישראל," the one who wrestles with God, becomes "שיר א-ל," the Song of God.
Thank you, this was a joy to read.
This isn't a question to be answered online. You have to search out the right person who will discuss it with you. Till you find that person others will give you a hard time for asking. Good luck.
So do most orthodox jews. So what?
"Most Jewish zionists do believe in superiority of Jews — both spiritual and genetic"
So converts don't count as Jews?
Isnt there a whole convoluted scheme that is offered by some in which converts to Judaism are people with Jewish souls trapped in wrong (non-Jewish) bodies and that conversion is them simply reaffirming something that already exists inside? Kind of like being transgender but for Jews?
Based on the chazal that all our souls were at Sinai. Not literal but shows that converts take on the national identity or "genes" of כלל ישראל just like those born into the nation.
Would you be able to point me to the passage where this is discussed? Thank you.
I don't know it off the top of my head. I can get back to you later. You can probably Google it.
it is sad that this is indeed the way some Jews think. They're obviously wrong that this a Jewish approach. That would invalidate the entire Davidic line (not to mention mashiach), and probably every Jew alive today has non-Jewish genes.
My understanding of Zionism, and I'm just talking general Zionism here, not any specific branches, is that antisemitism is a fact of life in Europe and the Middle East. We can't change that, but we can change how we react to it - we can die on our knees, or build something of our own in our homeland.
In a way, this does get into ideas that have existed in Jewish culture for a while. In Avot 4:1, Ben Zoma's list of positive character traits are things that you, yourself, can change, not things that are controlled by others. Mar, son of Ravina's meditation from Berakhot 17a, which is said at the end of the Amidah, also has similar themes to this - "let my soul be like the dust to all" (i.e., let me not get angry at people insulting me) because I can't change what other people think of me, only my reactions to what they think. To give an example cogent to this article, we can't change that a slanderous paper has been nominated for a prize in Jewish Studies.
Obviously, you get into the different branches, and there are differences, but generally, Zionism has nothing to do with "racial and genetic characteristics." There are Jews (and gentile allies) of all colors and creeds; I should know, half of my mother's family are black Sephardim and I've got a Jamaican friend who is studying in Israel right now to be a rabbi.
It's not that she's anti-Israel that bothers me (many people are anti-Israel). It's that she has a PhD in the subject and is nominated for an award on the subject while lacking any actual expertise.
I never cease to be amazed at the Jew hatred that runs so deep at Columbia. I fine it terrifying.
wild. Ty for exposing her, Natan.
Columbia U.
Bir Zeit on the Hudson.
I would argue that you have what seems to be an obsession. I have many Dati friends. None seem to hate them, but their actions. You seem to hate them as a whole. Even if you do not, what you wrote implies you do and does nothing productive.
The convergence of Far Left with Middle Age Christian antisemitism. That's a new one.
And of course Islam explicitly stating that they are superior to the rest of humanity is somehow ok.