Antisemitism in Venezuela

It's a typical feature of antisemitism that personally directed violence grows more slowly than antisemitic rhetoric, with disagreement about the seriousness of the problem. Pointedly, Germans argued over whether antisemitism was either "the new Judenhass" or something innocuous. I think Shulamit Volkov's Germans, Jews, and Antisemites (see this review at HNet) is a pretty important book, for Venezuela and elsewhere, but I wonder if people are aware of it outside limited academic circles.

Engage links to this story at Commentary on Venezuelan antisemitism. I'm particularly disturbed by this:

On television, Mario Silva, the host of a popular pro-Chávez show called La Hojilla (“The Razor Blade”), has repeatedly named prominent Venezuelan Jews as anti-government conspirators and called on other Jews to denounce them. “Rabbi Jacobo Benzaquén and Rabbi Pynchas Brener are actively participating in the conspiracy in conjunction with the media,” Silva has said. “So as not to be called an anti-Semite,” he added, “I repeat that those Jewish businessmen not involved in the conspiracy should say so.”

Though Silva might really believe that he is willing to spare "good Jews" from condemnation, that effectively means only those Jews who are willing to become increasingly antisemitic anytime any gentile questions their loyalty to the state.

Black and Hasidic

An interesting interview (audio):

The Abrahamson family of New York City has a unique binary reality. They are both African-American [the family does not identify as AA -ig] and Hasidic Jews. In this week's Faith Matters conversation, the Abramsons discuss belonging to two communities that often misunderstand one another.

The show, btw, is focused on race and race issues, not Jewish issues. Jewish sources seem to actively putting Black/AA Jews up front to challenge the stereotype of Jews as super-white, and I'm not sure if that will prove to be wise or beneficial for any of us in the end. It has the potential to make a fetish of black Jews. Also, perhaps less obviously, I wonder if white Jews are hiding behind others because we're afraid of speaking up? We are not any less Jewish or any less deserving of an end to antisemitism.

But the interview is interesting for a number of reasons. Jewish culture contains so many subcultures and every one of them has something important to tell us. And I don't think it's a bad thing that the Abramsons are able to sidestep some of the pitfalls other Jews might face.

fatally neither one thing or the other

Today, Nextbook tells me, is Franz Kafka's 125th birthday.

A middle-class Prague Jew ("the most Western-Jewish of them all") both enamored of and horrified by an Eastern shtetl life he never knew; a Jew in a period of virulent anti-Semitism ("I've been spending every afternoon outside in the streets, wallowing in anti-Semitic hate") who remained ambivalent toward the Zionist project; a German speaker surrounded by Czech nationalists. The impossible "gypsy literature" an aspect of an impossible gypsy self, an assimilated Judaism that was fatally neither one thing or the other.

Jewish Camp

No, not youth camps. This kind of camp:





There's a similarity between Jewishness/antisemitism and Queerness/homophobia. The average Jew and the average gay person are both able to pass. So we have gaydar and Jewdar. And those who hate us become obsessed with being able to tell who is gay/Jewish. And an attraction to theater. And, as a friend just reminded me, camp.

History is in the footnotes

At least, that's often the way it feels with the Isreali/Palestinian conflict. The JTA blog posts a footnote, explaining their conventions for describing someone from eastern Jerusalem as either Arab or Palestinians when most residents of eastern Jerusalem are accurate described either way.

Now, here’s where things get tricky. Eastern Jerusalem is code for the part of Jerusalem that was controlled by Jordan until the 1967 Six-Day War — i.e. Arab. But now Jerusalem is a united city, since Israel annexed East Jerusalem in the war’s aftermath (though almost no one in the international community officially recognizes that action). When East Jerusalem became part of Israeli Jerusalem (and we began calling it “eastern Jerusalem” — note the lowercase), the Arabs who lived there were offered Israeli citizenship. Some accepted it, but most did not. Virtually all, however, were granted Israeli ID cards.

Make sense? Well, unfortunately, a great deal of the way we talk about the conflict only kinda makes sense. It's convention to avoid footnotes.

Yitz Jordan cuts through the footnotes:

Mr. Dwayat benefitted no one, actions like his benefit no one, and no person or group of people has ever truly emerged “victorious” from a terrorist incident such as this. The only people who will see any positive effect from the carnage in Jerusalem are the propagandists who will use the spilled blood to fuel their mind-control engines, pumping this up in various media outlets as either a “victory” or a “strike at the enemy”.

Unfortunately, no matter how true, this observation doesn't advise anyone (who will listen) going forward.

Religion and ethnicity

Marko Hoare has an interesting post, entitled "Is Islamophobia equivalent to racism or anti-Semitism? The view from the Balkans."

Eve Garrard's open letter resigning from the UCU

In spite of my longstanding commitment to Union membership, the recent actions of the UCU are finally driving me out of it. I find that I cannot remain in an institution which sets out to discriminate against its Jewish members.

Read the whole thing.