The US census has added a MENA census category. While we’re still 4 years away from the census it has started to appear on various forms that ask that type of information. So I guess this question is primarily for other ethnic Jews. Most American Jews descend from people who came here from the pale of settlement and other places in Eastern Europe roughly between 1880 and 1920. I personally don’t feel a connection with those countries as my ancestors were treated poorly. But I’m not sure what the best way to answer. Obviously this is a fraught issue. For me personally, I look very Mediterranean and this has very much affected how some people have treated me. But I don’t think it really compares to how women wearing hajib are often treated. Have you all run across this yet and if so how did you answer or plan to answer?

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So r/jewishleft,

Whats on your mind?

Everyone’s falling for this manufactured outrage trap. I debunk it.

Well a very long journey this case has been him being a teacher at my college was scary for me when the death first happened.
I’m disappointed in the results but I hope he can help prevent people from repeating his actions in the future, if anything.

So, I am pretty sure you guys are aware that there has been an increase in gentile influencers talking about the Talmud, the Rambam, and other Jewish religious texts, usually by highlighting passages they claim insult Jesus, describe gentiles as inferior, or permit Jews to mistreat non-Jews. I have some familiarity with the Talmud (Both the Babylonian Talmud & the Jerusalem Talmud), and from what I understand, it is a vast collection of legal arguments/ disagreements among rabbis over the last 2000 years concerning Jewish law. In regard to the Rambam, I know that his magnum opus, the Mishnah Torah, was intended to systematically organize and codify Jewish law. However, I also understand that the Rambam was a medieval thinker whose views were shaped by the religious and political environment in which he lived, and that not every position he expressed was universally accepted by later Jewish authorities.

I know that there are some questionable or even offensive passages within the literature concerning Jesus, Christians, idolaters, and Gentiles. However, I understand that many of these texts are usually chosen selectively depending on the Hasidic dynasty or rabbi, and that some of these texts were formulated when Jews were experiencing persecution by the gentile world. At the same time, I have noticed that many of these influencers tend to present these passages as though they represent the beliefs of all Jews, regardless of denomination, level of religious observance, or historical period. They often treat the Talmud as though it were a single book with one consistent message, rather than a collection containing competing opinions, minority positions, hypothetical arguments, and debates that did not always become normative Jewish law.

I have also noticed that many of these influencers are Christians or Muslims who rarely apply the same standards to their own religious texts. They may criticize harsh passages concerning gentiles in Jewish literature while ignoring passages in Christian or Islamic texts concerning Jews, heretics, idolaters, apostates, or unbelievers. This makes me question whether they are genuinely interested in criticizing religious texts consistently or whether they are selectively using Jewish texts to promote hostility toward Jews. That being said, I do not think every criticism of the Talmud or the Rambam should automatically be dismissed as antisemitic. There should be room to discuss offensive or exclusionary passages honestly, including how they have been interpreted historically and whether any Jewish communities still consider them relevant today.

What are your thoughts on the growing popularity of this type of media/content, and do you think these influencers are mostly engaging in legitimate criticism, or do you think they are repackaging older antisemitic arguments for modern audiences? How should people distinguish between sincere criticism of Jewish religious texts and the selective use of those texts to portray Jews as inherently hostile toward Gentiles?

So most of my cousins have served in gaza and have some extreme opinions on palestinians. After research this doesn't seem rare and as someone on the far left I feel it is my responsibility to try change these opinions. The problem is that my way of talking is quite agressive when I am passionate about something. Anyone have the same problem or can help?

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Oren

I find that Zionists seem to avoid talking about this perspective like the plague on reddit. I’m hoping here at least, there are those that understand what’d being said by the title alone.

But to explain a further, the first thing that makes the rest of the logic happen is the idea that states don’t naturally have the “right to exist” at the expense of the rights and freedoms of individuals. A Muslim state doesn’t have the right to impose Sharia law on those that don’t agree with the theocratic basis not rooted in empirical reality, a majority-white state doesn’t have the right to exclude or even deport people based on their brown or black skin color in order to enforce whiteness only because it’s whiteness, and in the same vein Israel does not have the right to remove people from their homes and kill innocents to preserve a quasi-ethnic Jewish majority and expansion since its founding. All of this should be Secularism 101, and yet? If you want to talk Arabs, then I would also say that the UAE and Saudi doesn’t have the right to make slaves out of Indians for 20 years and then deport their children who were born and raised there, or create second-class citizens out of non-Muslims including Jews. It is something that applies to all countries everywhere. The rights of the individual are the default. A state’s right to invoke the monopoly of violence is invoked only when individuals are in the process of violating other individuals, or if other states and groups are in the process of violating the state’s people.

Once you understand this, then you can also understand how secularists see any colonial or genocidal activity. Just as someone who has a crime done against him is owed recompense for the injustice upon him, so too are those affected by imperialism and genocide owed something. This means pretty explicitly that I believe Jews, as descendants of multiple ethnic cleansings and genocides in the ancient land of Israel, have a right to return as means of reparation or restitution for that exact crime. That would be fine if there weren’t now millions between 1918 and now affected by the whole land theft thing, or unjust exile (nakba, etc.), or being a non-citizen with no rights in a country that your family has lived longer in, or even being an innocent person in Gaza killed as “collateral damage” (they don’t believe an innocent Palestinian life is equal to an innocent Jewish life).

I’ve literally WANTED Zionism to mean “The Jewish Right to Return” due to them being genocided from that land, really badly, but it is Zionists themselves that insist in the whole “Jewish State” thing. Very bizarre. I want to know what it would take for Jews to see what I’m seeing in this logic. The vast supermajority of Jews are still zionists. It makes no sense.