r/jewishleft

Interesting statement from 972+ mag explaining how they were able to coordinate the Israeli publication of a Hebrew translation of Sally Rooney's novel without violating BDS.

This should also be useful for anyone curious about how exactly the criteria of BDS compliance are spelled out. Apparently PACBI was actually involved in coordinating the process.

On one hand, I suppose it's good that there are paths for non-Israeli culture workers to interact with Israeli institutions, but on the other, you could argue that this goes against the spirit of BDS by circumventing isolation--especially since the book itself is not political, making it a suspect choice of 972 to focus on this for five years. Arguably, in positing a "dissident Israeli" cultural segment that barely exists, this sort of work has a kind of normalizing effect of its own.

I really appreciated their news about Palestine too. They just sent me bunch of links to sources that supposedly debunked the claims of mass rapes. I basically said that I don’t like denying atrocities no matter who they happened to and I was blocked. I had agreed with the post I was replying to as well.

It gives me the same ick as people who downplay Palestinian suffering by going “but what about October 7th and Hamas?”

Idk if this is ok for me to post as someone who isn’t a Jew but I can’t think of where else to post this.

It just seems pretty appropriative to me. Because like, I know the people who repost this stuff probably know little to nothing about Judaism and are just sharing this content because they are pro Palestine.

And like overall I feel like the haredi(not necessarily NK) view on Israel does resonate with me. We should be cautious to not conflate religion with nationalism.

That said, Neturei Karta aren’t the arbiters of Judaism. It is vexing to see non-Jews act like they know more about Judaism than Jews just because they’ve listened to some stuff from Neturei Karta.

Personally, I do think so, and usually their reasoning is quite justified because talking about such things could lead to providing conservative fascists with more ammo in othering populations different from their own, especially those who come from the Christian West, who many of you already know are the leading contenders for the present injustices going on right now, both domestically and internationally. However, I do think this can create a problem in which historical complexity is flattened for political convenience.

I understand why people are cautious. If someone brings up slavery in the Islamic world, Native American societies owning enslaved people, or the sexual enslavement of Circassian women in the Ottoman Empire, it is fair to ask what their intention is. Are they trying to understand history honestly, or are they trying to deflect from European colonialism, the transatlantic slave trade, Indigenous genocide, and modern Western imperialism?

However, I also think there has to be room to discuss these histories without automatically assuming bad faith. I consider myself a person who operates within a deontological framework, specifically when it comes to analyzing history, and not my personal politics, which is more oriented towards utilitarianism, meaning that I think certain actions are wrong regardless of who commits them, even if the broader political context changes how we understand power, responsibility, and consequences.

For example, slavery, sexual exploitation, ethnic domination, forced conversion, conquest, and patriarchy are morally wrong whether they are committed by Europeans, Muslims, Indigenous societies, Chinese, Jews, Christians, atheists, socialists, monarchies, empires, or colonized peoples. That doesn't obviously mean historical context matters. Scale matters. I am not saying that every form of harm is identical or that all societies have caused harm in exactly the same way. However, I do think our moral analysis becomes weaker when we only acknowledge oppression when it fits a politically convenient narrative. Like, for example, I have been recently associating with some of my Christian peers, and they consider me to be a breath of fresh air when it comes to discussing history and politics because I am willing to condemn the historic wrongs of Christian societies without acting as if Christians are uniquely evil people, or as if Christianity is the only civilization/religion/culture that has ever produced domination, conquest, or hierarchy.

At the same time, I do not want to become the kind of person conservatives use as a token to say, “See, the West was not that bad,” because that is not what I believe. The Christian West has committed enormous harm through colonialism. Christianity in the Philippines, for those who do not know, was initially introduced through violent means, especially during the various stages of warfare between my pagan ancestors and the Spanish Empire. However, Spanish colonial rule in the Philippines did not operate exactly like settler colonialism in much of Latin America. The Philippines was not a migratory colony in the same way; large numbers of Spaniards did not permanently settle and replace the native population. Instead, much of the long-term work of Christianization was carried out by priests and religious orders who embedded themselves into local communities, interacted with various Indigenous groups, and would slowly convert the natives by syncretizing Christianity with our pagan beliefs (still very common til this day). So even in my own background, I can recognize both the violence of Christian colonialism and the complicated ways colonized people adapted, transformed, and indigenized what was imposed on them.

How do we talk about the full complexity of history without giving ammunition to reactionaries?

What are your thoughts?

Once upon a time so much of our content circled around critiques and defense of JVP that it was distracting from all else so we made a temporary rule to contain all JVP based arguing to one thread.

Its been a minute and the topics perculating again so I'm getting ahead of things:

Any discussion about JVPs merits as an org positive or negative will be contained to this megathread. Any other conversation of it elsewhere will be removed. This does not include headlinea involving them or actions they take but rather the derivative "they arent even Jewish" conversations that follow.

Under normal circumstances wondering about the Jewishness of orgs is straying into grey areas with the rules around questioning others Jewishness. Nominally the rule is to do with individuals here not orgs in general but that becomes a blurry like when members of orgs are subs here. Understand that this topic is fair game in this space and no where else and disparaging the Jewishness of members of this sub will still be verboten.

Thanks for your attention to this matter.

Oren

TL;DR: The scrutiny and denial of people hood and belonging, against Liberal Jewish converts, from Israeli governmental and Orthodox Religous authorities, and hasbara influencers, has slowly eroded and now obliterated my desire to keep being a dedicated Zionist and practicing Jew. I now find part of myself wanting to give up this Jewish journey of mine entirely, just to save myself any more pain from rejection of such a core part of who I've become. I'm now too Jewish for an antisemite, and not enough for places where I'd need to seek refuge.

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So I've posted a fair few comments here from a rather pro-Zionist perspective, mainly because until the dam broke in my mind today, I've felt strongly attached to the idea that a Zionist state could include a Jew like me in being a place of refuge. But for the reasons listed below, I feel increasingly alienated from that theoretical reality, and from the people and faith I chose as a whole.

So as the sentence above implies, I wasn't born into the Jewish people. I am a convert who made the possibly wrong choice to convert into Reform Judaism, the immersion being 2 years ago and the whole conversion process was longer than that. It wasn't a possibly wrong choice due to a lack of belief in Jewish beliefs, practice, or love for my people. In fact, it was exactly the opposite, that my desire to increase my observance and dedication to Jewish matters seems to have eclipsed what my shul can seem to provide.

So I then turn to other more halachic/mitzvot related resources and liturgy, especially from the Sephardic world where some of my ancestors come from.But they dont even consider me Jewish because of the movement I converted into. And then I realize, neither do any of the Israeli Jewish religious authorities that have actual power. I also don't even believe at this point that most Israeli Jews, even many secular ones, would accept me as a real Jew either. Establishing an Egalitarian Sephardic minyan is no easy task either, especially with the halachic stain on my Jewishness that lurks in the back of my head whenever I reference the prayers I wanted to use to make that happen.

To some, this whole argument might seem like an overreaction to a simple difference in halachic opinion. But for me, its far more than that, its a debate of the most core part of my identity that exists, and it being constantly on the knives edge of halachic and political debates is utterly exhausting. At this point, I'm tempted to just give up and stop even trying to advocate for a state (Israel) that will never accept me, and give up my new faith to avoid rejection moving forward.

It'll make little real halachic difference either way, so maybe I should just embrace my depressive tendencies and embrace the Rootless Cosmopolitan label to describe my current condurum. I'm Jewish enough for antisemities, but not even close enough for the one country that could allow me true refuge from antisemitism as a part of a Jewish majority.