Remembrance, and the righteous among the nations

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day. So, remember. On Passover, we're injoined to remember as if we had personally been there, and we should remember this as if it had happened to us personally.

Last night there was a documentary on PBS with a Ukranian survivor, Fanya Gottesfeld-Heller. As a teenager, she entered into a sexual relationship with a man much older than she. If it hadn't been necessary to survive --he was her protector-- it would have been remarkably creepy. Her father softly encouraged her, "Be nice to him." With her parents and brother, she hid in a ditch big enough only for 2 people, for 2 years. Without even the most basic sanitation. Without the freedom even to get out of the ditch. With barely any food. And when the Nazis left and they could get out, her father disappeared. She'll never know what happened to him, but she's sure it was her lover who murdered her father.

My grandmother, born in Kiev, left after the Revolution, but it's not hard to imagine it could have been my family. Actually, I imagine my grandmother left some family behind. Cousins or such. If they were so lucky to survive, they probably had similar stories.

Tonight, PBS airs a show, The Righteous Among the Nations, about Arabs who saved Jews. There are clips here.

New research on Jews' (and non-Jews) language use

I just got email regarding a linguistic study on Jewish language use. Results are here. Many of the implications are fascinating. Language is a major site of contention with different Jewish cultures. Jewish culture is sometimes called Yiddishkeit, for example, though Yiddishkeit is only one kind of Jewish culture. But the researchers find that certain Yiddish words can denote level of religious observance:

Perhaps surprisingly, age also has an independent effect on most of these words: they are used MORE by younger Jews, indicating their rising importance in religious circles. This is a striking result when it comes to the Yiddish-origin words. We would expect that Jews who are younger and farther removed from the generation of Yiddish-speaking immigrants would be less likely to use Yiddish words than their grandparents. And this is the case for Yiddish words like macher, naches, and bashert. But Yiddish words in the religious sphere – bentsh, daven, shul, etc. – seem to be making a comeback. Even Jews with no Yiddish-speaking ancestors, including Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews, people whose ancestors spoke Ladino, Judeo-Arabic, and other languages, report using Yiddish words like these. Some elements of Yiddish have clearly become markers of religiosity, and they seem to spread from Yiddish-speaking Black Hat Orthodox communities to non-Orthodox religious communities.

So there's often more going on! That reminds me of the adoption of dating culture in New York circa 1900 (an example where the moral is probably clearer). Looking back, it's easy to see how dating culture put tremendous pressure on women to live up to mens' expectations, including for sexual behavior. Sometimes it's more difficult to keep in mind that young women chose this alternative over another set of constraints. The point being, it's important to take the choice seriously rather than simply criticizing it for regressive elements that might be present but aren't the whole story.

Another section deals with the use of the Yiddish word schmooze among Jews and non-Jews:

Another area of linguistic variation is how speakers understand words. When used in English, the Yiddish word “shmooze” can have several uses. In addition to its original Yiddish meaning ‘chat’ (“We stayed up ‘til 2am just shmoozing”), it is also used as ‘network’ (“There were lots of big-wigs there. It was a great opportunity to shmooze.”). And in addition to its original intransitive usage, it can also be transitive, meaning ‘kiss up to [somebody]’ (“He spent the whole party shmoozing the vice presidents”). Finally, it has become a particle verb: “shmooze up,” meaning ‘chat up’ (“He spent the whole party shmoozing up the vice presidents”).

We asked about these four uses of “shmooze” in the survey, and we found that the original ‘chat’ meaning is more common among Jews, especially Orthodox Jews, older Jews, and Jews who have more Jewish friends; the innovative meanings are more common among others

We can imagine stereotypes influencing the meaning as the word enters English. A simple chat acquires a manipulative quality, an ulterior motive. Non-Jewish users self-consciously use the Jewish word to emphasize that aspect related to gaining power and influence. Interestingly, a Yiddish influence on American culture, commonly assumed to be proof of Jewish acceptance, becomes a site of communicating antisemitic stereotypes. (I confess, I didn't realize schmooze in Yiddish simply meant "chat," and I've generally understood it in the less neutral way.) On the other hand, chutzpah seems to have shifted to a less specific meaning that becomes more positive -- a shame, because, it's a great word without any suitable alternative.

(Vaguely related -- or, actually, not, but still worth reading.)

A broad spectrum of Jewish views

From time to time, I'm dismissed as one among many Jews. Of course, I am merely one among many, but the implication is that my view is hardly representative. The person implying this almost always means that someone like Norman Finkelstein should be included in debate, even though most Jews find him deplorable. There are a lot of problems with this, including that this "wide spectrum" of Jewish views is expected to speak out against the supposed abuses of the Jewish establishment - suggesting that there must be a silent majority of Jews who disagree with the vocal majority Jews. If the vocal majority were actually an insignificant minority, why would there be a need for anyone to speak out? If the silent majority aren't actually a tiny minority, why the need to include them as representative of anything? I thought I'd present a more honest spectrum of Jewish thought. I'm maybe one standard deviation to the left of center. I think I'm probably a fair bit more radical on anti-antisemitism than most Jews, and because of a specific focus on that I don't always speak out against Israeli abuses as often as some others (it's simply a matter of focus), but when it comes to Israel I'm pretty solidly among the Jewish left. Yaacov Lozowick is maybe one standard deviation to the right:

There are a small number of well-known Jewish settlements on the West Bank - Yitzhar, Tapuach and the Jewish Quarter of Hebron spring to mind as the most obvious, but there are a few more, only slightly less malicious places - which are dominated by violent evil men, thugs of the worst degree. These thugs terrorize their Palestinian neighbors, and do so mostly unrestrained by the Israeli security forces who are in charge of those areas. The thugs are a blemish on our face and defilers of our honor, but the long-standing inability or unwillingness of our security forces to stop them is even worse, as they have the power to do so, but don't use it.

So, the vast majority of Jews lie - this should be unsurprising to any serious anti-racist activist - within a fairly reasonable spectrum of reasonableness. Instead of trying to pit me against other Jews as the representative of collective Jewish thought, which is how the demand for additional Jewish voices functions, someone who doesn't know if my views are representative of other Jews should probably settle for dealing with me as an individual.

The End of the Jews

Leonard Lopate had a great interview with author Adam Mansbach on Mansbach's latest, The End of the Jews, which touches on themes of assimilation which have been central to my thinking lately. In particular, it's interesting how Mansbach notes that some (most? important? who knows?) art comes from fringes, from people who don't quite fit in, with Jewishness providing a plethora of ways -ethnic, religious, national- of not fitting in.



(Steve G, however, is correct that there is a damaging myth of Jewish domination in the slave trade made reference to in the interview and book.)

Fein on Connectedness

Leonard Fein has a good essay at The Forward on being connected to the Jewish people and to Israel.

Does Obama Really Have a Jewish Problem?

The Forward asks the question.

Statistics show that Jews are one of Obama’s strongest white constituencies — a key base the Illinois senator is working overtime to shore up, rather than a uniquely problematic weak spot.

No, it's just an antisemitic press that likes to focus on the Jewish vote.