Do you think that it would be acceptable for Jews in Israel and/or in the Diaspora to have Jewish-only communities?
- Thread starter WolfBear
- Start date
Yes, but specifically on a national level.
Midnighter13
Well-known member
I think this idea fundamentally misunderstands antisemitism. Jewish neighborhoods are not at risk because they have non-Jewish members. Instead, the risk is outsiders coming in and shooting up synagogues because they hate Jews and see us as threats to their 'white Christian nation.' Mandating that non-Jews can't live among us just means that there are fewer people who understand who we are, and have sympathy for what we go through.
Israel is a different idea. During the 30s and 40s Jews across Europe knew they were in danger, but couldn't find anywhere to go that would accept them as refugees. As a result, most of them were slaughtered. Israel accepts Jews from around the world because that threat is not gone. If white supremacists who want to slaughter the Jews as a fifth column come to power in the US, American Jews will go to Israel. If the antisemitism in France and Britain keeps getting worse, Jews in those countries have somewhere to run. The most important thing about Israel is that, unlike every other country, the Israeli government makes protecting Jewish citizens a priority.
Creating isolated communities in countries where the law is at best ineffective at protecting us is not going to help. Look at some of the neighborhoods in New York. Even in neighborhoods that are dominated by Jews, people still go into those neighborhoods to attack. So unless you are suggesting that all of these 'Jews only' neighborhoods set up walls and gates around themselves, driving out non-Jews wouldn't help, and would likely just make more people murderously anti-Jewish. Even if they did create walled neighborhoods, that just means that they would be under constant siege.
The ghettos of Europe didn't protect Jews, even though they were theoretically 'Jewish only.' The Christians would leave their churches and come into the ghettos to loot burn and kill. My great-great-grandmother and her family would board up her shop and move her entire family into the living room of a Christian neighbor for a week around Easter. Every Easter the local church would preach about Jews killing Christ, and then the Christians would go riot, loot, and kill in the ghetto after services. Her Christian neighbor sheltered my great-great grandmother's family from that. If she didn't have that friendly Christian neighbor, she may not have lived long enough for my great-grandfather to be born.
Isolating Jews by law from people who would give us aid does not protect us from people invading our communities. It just means fewer people willing to shelter us the next time we are targeted for destruction.
Israel is a different idea. During the 30s and 40s Jews across Europe knew they were in danger, but couldn't find anywhere to go that would accept them as refugees. As a result, most of them were slaughtered. Israel accepts Jews from around the world because that threat is not gone. If white supremacists who want to slaughter the Jews as a fifth column come to power in the US, American Jews will go to Israel. If the antisemitism in France and Britain keeps getting worse, Jews in those countries have somewhere to run. The most important thing about Israel is that, unlike every other country, the Israeli government makes protecting Jewish citizens a priority.
Creating isolated communities in countries where the law is at best ineffective at protecting us is not going to help. Look at some of the neighborhoods in New York. Even in neighborhoods that are dominated by Jews, people still go into those neighborhoods to attack. So unless you are suggesting that all of these 'Jews only' neighborhoods set up walls and gates around themselves, driving out non-Jews wouldn't help, and would likely just make more people murderously anti-Jewish. Even if they did create walled neighborhoods, that just means that they would be under constant siege.
The ghettos of Europe didn't protect Jews, even though they were theoretically 'Jewish only.' The Christians would leave their churches and come into the ghettos to loot burn and kill. My great-great-grandmother and her family would board up her shop and move her entire family into the living room of a Christian neighbor for a week around Easter. Every Easter the local church would preach about Jews killing Christ, and then the Christians would go riot, loot, and kill in the ghetto after services. Her Christian neighbor sheltered my great-great grandmother's family from that. If she didn't have that friendly Christian neighbor, she may not have lived long enough for my great-grandfather to be born.
Isolating Jews by law from people who would give us aid does not protect us from people invading our communities. It just means fewer people willing to shelter us the next time we are targeted for destruction.
But what if outsiders move into Jewish neighborhoods and then start shooting up synagogues for this very reason? Or launch other kinds of anti-Semitic hate crimes?
Well, Yeah. But this doesn't necessarily mean that Israel can't also care about non-Jews, such as by actively trying to seek non-Jews in the Diaspora who would be interested in converting to Judaism and then bringing them over to Israel:
Israel Should Open Judaism to Refugees
Talleyrand’s famous aphorism applies to Israel’s immigration policy: It is worse than a crime — it is a blunder.
jewishjournal.com
This would be a great way for Israel to both help (formerly) non-Jewish refugees and a way to show that Judaism is inclusive rather than exclusive like it was throughout much of its history. A big tent approach to Judaism, if you will.
I seriously doubt that a couple million Filipinos or Latin Americans or whomever who will convert to Judaism and then move to Israel are suddenly going to begin persecuting Jews afterwards--or launching pogroms against them, or whatever.
Well, Yeah, gated communities do exist. I don't know if you'd actually want this approach, but some people actually do like these kinds of communities.
But did that ghetto actually have secure borders/walls that were only opened with the Jews' consent?
Fair enough, though it's also worth noting whether Israel should be willing to allow Judeophilic gentiles to immigrate to Israel.
Midnighter13
Well-known member
These types of issue are so rare that trying to create policy based on them is silly. Is it possible for neo-Nazis or other hostile groups to move into Jewish areas? Yes. Does it happen? Not really. If it did, those people would be shunned as a threat to the community, and if they committed any crime at all, they would be immediately reported and arrested. Synagogue shooters are not one neighbor who is pissed at a neighbor. They are radicals from elsewhere who travel to Jewish areas in search of targets. People who want to kill Jews generally don't have the patience to move into an area before making trouble.
The only exception to that are Christian missionaries who pretend to be Jewish for the purpose of infiltrating the community and converting Jews. When discovered, such people are always shunned, and they generally leave to find another community to target. Creating a 'Jews only' contract won't prevent those people from sneaking in.
Judaism has pretty strict laws about proselytizing. Going up to refugees and saying 'convert and we will save you, don't and we will leave you here' is coercive enough that it would run afoul of those laws. Now, if refugees approached a rabbi about converting, and after their conversion they wanted to emigrate, that's different. But the desire to convert must come from the convert, not from someone trying to get them to convert.Well, Yeah. But this doesn't necessarily mean that Israel can't also care about non-Jews, such as by actively trying to seek non-Jews in the Diaspora who would be interested in converting to Judaism and then bringing them over to Israel:
Israel Should Open Judaism to Refugees
Talleyrand’s famous aphorism applies to Israel’s immigration policy: It is worse than a crime — it is a blunder.
Basically the only 'outside influence' that is allowed when it comes to conversion is a potential spouse telling their significant other (who they are already involved with) that they won't marry them unless they convert. Some rabbinic authorities look side-eyed at that even. So no, going to refugee camps around the world to convert them and bring them back is not a viable option. Its a decent idea, and I do think Israel should help more refugees, but making it contingent on conversion wouldn't work under Jewish law.
Again, isolated communities in non-Jewish countries just make Jews easier to target. Gates, walls, these things might slow down attackers, at the cost of pissing off all the non-Jews around and making us seem like legitimate targets to more people. Basically, as long as it is possible to make friends with the surrounding non-Jewish neighbors, that is usually a better method of defense than putting up walls and gates. It reduces the number of people who want to attack us, and makes them more willing to respond favorably in the event of a potential (or actual) attack.
Simonbob
Well-known member
If you check, say, the New York stats for this kind of thing? Mostly blacks.
I don't know what it was in other places, but please stop blaming whites alone. Plenty of other groups have attacked jews, and jews have attacked other groups, although rarely.
Agreed.
Let me point out here that prior to the rise of the Nazis, Germany had the most integrated and least discriminated-against Jewish population of any European nation, and the Nazis had to actively work for decades to promote antisemitic ideology in order to produce the Germany of the 1940s.
For that matter, pre-Nazi Germany was also the most LGBT-tolerant nation in Europe, and a significant part of the early popularity of the Nazi Party came from promising to crack down on "social deviants".
Aldarion
Neoreactionary Monarchist
Yes. In fact, monoethnic communities should be a standard - something akin to stem duchies of Eastern Francia.
Midnighter, have you personally had rightwing people come and shoot up your synagogue? Do you know anyone who has?
Just asking...
I think an important point has to be made here: the world we live in today is not the world that your great-great-grandmother lived in, and we don't want it to be. Neither, I should hope, do you.
Christians being so poorly taught in their faith that they think it requires them to go out and do violence against your people for what your remote ancestors did back in the 1st century? What denomination was that, anyways?
At Easter our churches preach about God's love for humanity, expressed in sending Jesus to Earth to die for our sins. If Jesus had not been crucified, we would all be going to Hell. It's time of reflection, and gratitude, and celebration. Especially we focus on the Resurrection, on Christ overcoming death, both for Himself, and ultimately for all of us.
Using a sermon as time to wind people up to go attack other places of worship sounds like the behavior of an Islamic Imam from some backwater part of the Middle-East, not of a Christian preacher!
Germany was not some monolithic sameness. It wasn't even one country prior to its unification in the 19th century. Prussia and Bavaria had very different cultures, for example.
KilroywasNOTHere
"BEEP!"
to be frank as much as I give other countries leeway as far as ethnonationalism goes, I really shouldn't. I don't think it helps in the long run. Being protected by a wall and having only Jews in their country hasn't kept enemies both within and out from attacking, plus if you keep things in the tribe for too long it's only going to be a matter of time before you start inbreeding.
What's going to help the middle east is not walls but getting their heads out of the Iron age. But asking them to do that at this point would be about as effective as asking humans to be more than clever apes. Since they won't do the thing that will actually help them. I throw my hands up and say "Do as you will. Don't be surprised when there is resistance."
What's going to help the middle east is not walls but getting their heads out of the Iron age. But asking them to do that at this point would be about as effective as asking humans to be more than clever apes. Since they won't do the thing that will actually help them. I throw my hands up and say "Do as you will. Don't be surprised when there is resistance."
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Aldarion
Neoreactionary Monarchist
Which is why multiethnic states are so peaceful and stable... oh wait.
Also, inbreeding is only an issue once you get into low thousands of people. There are very few countries which need to be concerned about that.
I think here we need to point out that that sometimes, the perfect is the enemy of the good. It's no use rejecting viable solutions just because they don't measure up to some ideological ideal of yours, when all the other options are even worse.
Sometimes one must pick the least bad course, while recognizing that in the real world, there's unlikely to be an option that doesn't involve trade-offs.
There are people in this world whose beliefs and values are so different from yours that you and they cannot live together in peace. They're not going to change their valuesystem to yours just because you wish for it.
So if you can't live together - what are the options?
Option 1: live apart
Option 2: one group lives and the other dies
Option 3: the two groups exist in perpetual enmity, constantly making each other miserable
Personally I pick 1.
KilroywasNOTHere
"BEEP!"
The problem is I think option 2 is inevitable. Option 1 works for a brief time before time causes it to turn into option 3. which results in a conflict that causes option 2 to happen even if you reverse the order where option 3 turns into option 1 you still end up with option 2 as a result because one side either wants the land and resources the other side has OR just the thought of one side existing makes the other side so disgusted they can't bear the thought of one side living on the same planet as the other.
In order for option 2 not to occur period human nature is going to have to fundamental change. Anything else is just putting a band-aid on an infection. if human nature can't change then we're going to have to accept that what we thought was bleeding from an infection is merely just humanity going through it's time of month, and as disgusting and painful as it might feel, you can't stop it any more than you can stop a hurricane or a tornado. I'd like to think humans are more than just animals but hey as I child I used to think money grew on trees and food came from the store. Maybe the idea of peace and justice is another childish thought.
I've made it a point on another post that merely outlawing war didn't actually do anything to stop war or bring about peace, rather it merely monopolized the use of force and the "Right to life" in the hands of a handful of elites, elites in which of whom we are at the mercy of their bored and ever-changing whims.
I'd rather live in the honest chaos of the wild than the deceitful "peace" of a lobster tank.
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Midnighter13
Well-known member
I stopped wearing my kippah in public after a white nationalist shot up a synagogue in Pittsburg. I learned about the shooting in Poway while I was on vacation in San Diego only a few miles away when my girlfriend's parents called her frantically to learn if we had been visiting that synagogue that morning. The synagogue I attended in college had armed guards every high holidays because the local Nazis had threatened it a few years ago during the holiday period, and no one was willing to take chances (even after the Nazi leader got his head blown off by his own kid).
So yes, while I've been lucky enough not to be personally hurt (yet) by antisemetic violence, most of the serious threats I have experienced or affected me in the US have been driven by rightwing attackers.
Does that mean that I've only faced antisemitism from the Right? Far from it. I was on campus when the local SJP got the entire university to pass a BDS resolution and then try to ban any foods that were associated with Israel from being sold on campus (including Kosher food). But as scary as those things were, and as hostile as the campus became, I didn't fear the SJP crowd was going to shoot me. Beat me if they thought they could get away with it? Possible. Drive me off campus or out of the University entirely? Certainly. But the only time I've needed to worry about getting shot in the US for being Jewish it was because of the radical right.
Honestly, I really wish I could believe that. The shtetl was in Russia, so I assume they were Eastern Orthodox Christians, though the Polish were Catholic and did much the same. The Germans were Protestants (mostly) and that certainly didn't stop the Nazis. Nor did the Catholics have any compunction about 'saving' Jewish children and then refusing to return them to their surviving relatives because they had decided the children were their good little Catholic converts. No one knows just how many Jewish children the Catholic Church stole during the Shoah, but we do know that many (maybe even most) were never recovered.
Even in the modern day, Evangelical Christians are very pro-Jewish, right up until you mention that you don't believe in Jesus and don't plan to convert even if Jesus shows up. Then they get very hostile very fast (I once had an evangelical preach to me and try to convert me for an entire four hour bus ride for that exact reason, in the end other passengers had to step in to stop him).
Christian missionaries still try to convert Jews by infiltrating our communities and indoctrinating our children in both the US and Israel (where such practices are illegal, and they still persist).
So honestly, while Christians may be a bit more civilized about things these days, I think they are just as eager to 'save' us as they've always been, regardless of our views on the matter.
No to say all (or even most) Christians fall into that camp, but boy are they loud and in your face when they pop up.
I am aware of the issues in New York. And as I mentioned before, many of those attackers (white or black) come from outside the Jewish neighborhoods to find targets. Some of that is based on anger over gentrification, but most of it is the same old antisemitism we've always faced.
To get back to the original point, violence directed at our communities is a significant issue, but turtling up and shunning the world makes us easier targets, not harder ones.
The thing is that keeping people in the Third World against their will is already unpleasant enough as it is. Here, you're at least giving them a choice to escape the poverty, misery, and oppression of the Third World by converting to Judaism. This is similar to allowing a poor person to escape poverty by selling one of their kidneys, for instance. Jewish law can be changed in regards to this if necessary. But what I'm trying to do is find a compromise where Israel helps non-Jews while Israeli Jews avoid the risk of becoming persecuted in their own homeland. Some Jews whom I have talked to have argued that Israel shouldn't accept non-Jewish refugees because these refugees will simply repay Israel for its hospitality later on by persecuting Israeli Jews--and frankly, I want to minimize the risk of this outcome ever actually occurring.
KilroywasNOTHere
"BEEP!"
what you're talking about is essentially a "sell your soul to the devil" contract and that won't fly with any die-hard believer keep in mind you're talking about an area where several different secs believe God gave their ancestors the world and the infedels either stole their birthright, (Radical Islam) or God is simply letting the infedels rent the planet (Radical Judaism and Fringe Radical Christianity) and are simply waiting till their true champion comes along and reunites the different secs of their respective religions and once that time comes it'll time for the "True children." to reclaim it. As to when that time will be, they conveniently don't say.
the only Abrahamic religion where converting foreigners is common is Christianity (and as I said above even it has its fringe groups) whereas Judaism and Islam is more about being of a certain bloodline and it'd argue said religions are more about politics than spiritualism. All this to say while your idea sounds good on paper it's not going to be very effective upon implementation.
This isn't a racial or religious issue, it's a power dynamic issue at a fundamental level. One I doubt is going to end short of an extinction level event.
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I thought that Islam is also very hungry for potential converts?
KilroywasNOTHere
"BEEP!"
it's less conversion and more submission. Go to any country ran by a radical Islamist and you'll find they treat non-native's like 2nd class citizens whether they "convert" to islam or not. Which is already quite a feat considering they treat 1st class citizens like garbage. A lot of European Isis converts found this out the hard way.
Midnighter13
Well-known member
I think you are conflating racism, especially among Arabs and Persians, with the religious dictates of Islam. Much like Christianity, Islam in theory holds every believer as equal under god. In fact, I would argue that Islam as a religion is actually less hierarchical (in doctrine anyway) than Christianity (in general). If you convert to Islam, all Muslims are supposed to treat you as a brother/sister under god.
In practice, yes, there is serious discrimination and racism in most Islamic countries. But lets not pretend that Christian nations didn't (and don't) do much the same. Religion is an excellent way to justify racism whether you are discriminating against Arabs, Irish, Italians, African Americans, or any other ethnic group that is primarily of a different religion or race.
The Sunni/Shia divide is no more (or less) bloody than the Catholic/Protestant divide. The Sunni/Shia issue has just been going on for about 500 years longer.
Jewish law regarding what counts as a legitimate conversion is a massively thorny issue right now. But few if any rabbinic authorities (let alone the Rabbinate) would accept conversions made for the purpose of immigration. That sort of transactional conversion would be viewed at best as a false or invalid conversion, at worst as an active attempt to infiltrate Judaism. Any rabbi that performed conversions based on the premise that their conversions would grant Israeli citizenship would get into a lot of trouble, both with secular state officials and with rabbinic authorities. It would probably be considered a form of fraud on the part of the rabbi, even if the refugees were legitimately interested in conversion, because of the transactional promise involved.
Don't get me wrong, I agree that Israel should accept refugees, and if those refugees choose to convert, they should be able to receive citizenship. But making safety contingent on conversion is a pretty major violation of Jewish law that I don't see even the most radical rabbi breaking without a damn good reason.
As much as I hate to make this argument, why is it on Israel to deal with the refugee issues around the world? Yes, Israel has a duty to refugees, just like other nations, and yes, for ethical reasons they should accept as many as they reasonably can. But the rest of the world needs to pick up the slack too. Israel is a tiny state with delicate demographic issues as is. Refugees, especially those who stay for several generations will inevitably complicate that. It may not be harmful in the end, but there's no real way to know without rolling the dice. Given where the Israelis are right now, risking their existence as a country and a people to help those not their own is a hard sell. I wish they could and would help more refugees, but I also understand focusing on the massive problems at home first.
There are plenty of Christian and Islamic countries where converts could become citizens. why should refugees need to convert to a religion that explicitly makes it difficult to convert to get to safety? Christianity and Islam take pretty much anyone who wants to convert, and they don't have any rules against proselytizing.
Taking a step back, I think in general the idea of saying to any refugee 'I will only save you if you convert to my religion and change your belief system to match mine' is pretty ethically problematic. In principle, if people can help those in need, they should do so, regardless of the beliefs of the person (or people) they are helping. Both Islam and Christianity (especially the latter) have a history of these sorts of 'services contingent on conversion' practices, and historically they are looked down on as unethical and scummy by most people in the modern-day. Still, Christianity and Islam allow those sorts of practices under their religious laws. Judaism explicitly bans proselytizing or luring in converts with promises of material goods (in this case citizenship in a foreign country).
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FWIW, I actually do think that the West, Muslim world, and other countries actually should accept a fair share of refugees as well just so long as these refugees are actually willing to sufficiently assimilate, as in the Israeli case.