Jews, Anti-Semitism, and the "Other"

One of the astonishing things about the Jews is how they have managed to maintain a religious/tribal identity from whenever.

And, remember, for most of this period, Jews have maintained this separate identity as tiny minorities within larger, hostsile political units.

How did they do it? Because, if you look at the broad sweep of history, all the eternal nations and tribes and empires and religions are not eternal at all. They are born, they grow, they squabble, they divide, they combine, they die. 

But the Jews have kept their identity going against all odds, let us say, ever since the Romans made Palestine a part of the Roman Empire.

How do you do that, when you are a tiny minority in a much larger political unit?

I think the answer is that you create a culture of perpetual innocence.

Of course, all nations and cultures do this. And I supposes it relates to the notion of "fault" in the primitive mind. If something goes wrong, there must be a fault. And the fault must be the other guy.

But if we, whoever we are, are perpetually innocent then whatever happens can't be our fault. Therefore we should soldier on, and never falter.

Of course, the Jews, who, we can say, came out rather on the wrong side of the nation-state movement of the last millennium, have now created the most nationish nation state in the world with the nation of Israel.

But when your define yourself with such determination, you define yourself as the "Other" to the rest of the world.

And when things go wrong, people usually blame the "Other." Because there must be a fault, and it can't be that "we" are at fault.

Having a bit of a problem with the Black Death? Blame the Jews. Or, as a convenient backup, the witches.

Having a bit of a problem in Germany after the disaster of World War I? Blame the Jews.

You see this with the current WuFlu. There are all kinds of conspiracy theories flying around, from the Chinese did it deliberately in their Wuhan lab in Wuhan to the US did it and seeded the offending viruses in the unsuspecting Chinese lab in said Wuhan. And then all the blame games, from Trump doing too little or too much, too early or too late, to the Dem governors deliberately wrecking their state economies in order to get Trump defeated in November.

And don't get me started on all the mostly peaceful protests over the death of the black innocent George Floyd.

One of my tentative notions is that the innocence culture of almost all left-wing groups issues from the fact that intellectual Jews have been their leaders, from the workers and communism and socialism to blacks to the current wokey AntiFa and Black Lives Matter.

See, I have a problem with innocence culture. I think that in the modern era with the market economy and the city culture people have to get beyond a reactive innocence culture and grow up a little. Because nobody is innocent; nobody is perfect. We all have to rub along and put up with people that, given our druthers, we would rather not.

Hmm. Maybe I need another leg in my Great Reaction concept, something along the line of "identity politics is a re-assertion of innocence."

Notice that one of the things in Christianity is its notion of Sin, that we are all sinners, and that we all have to work for salvation. Nobody is an innocent. The Jews have a similar concept, the Book of Life, in which God records who's the good guy and who's the bad guy.

The point is that all politics depends on "Us" and "Them." And all politicians establish their tribe by demonizing the "Other."

Obviously, if we humans are to ascend from the dusty plain of political conflict to the ethereal heights that soar above such petty squabbles, we all have to shed the armor of innocence.

And I don't know how that works. Well, I do, but I don't know how to get there.