Is this anti-semitism?

i wonder what the chief rabbi of copenhagen says at the end of his pesach seder

Probably the same thing I say, but I don't mean it literally, even as I bang on the table singing it, any more than I want Hashem to pour out his wrath on the nations that know him not.

pouring out the wrath is my fave part tbh lol

for me it's a close second to the stuff with the plagues and the fingers

Reading from the parsha to my kids is pretty interesting, actually, you forget (well, YOU probably don't, but a modern liberal American jew does) how much there is in Shemot about destroying all enemy tribes and how they will flee in weakness and terror before the advance of the Jews, and this is a bit hard to explain to children, if they are being raised in the liberal American Jewish tradition.

what do you use to read the parsha to yr kids? are you just using a translation (JPS or something?) or one of those collections specifically made for children like the little midrash?

JPS translation, supplemented by a kids summary, don't remember the name of that one

I'm all about the diaspora, up the diaspora.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AltyhmrIFgo

no idea about the legitimacy of this, though I've walked through ritzy parts of Paris with an American friend who was wearing full Hasidic dress, and experienced him getting hassled for it.

haha above video def not the ritzy parts of paris

yeah thats what I'm saying

Fucking hell how I hate Netanyahu. I've disliked him vehemently but abstractly for a while, the same way I dislike a bunch of politicians I disagree with, but his bullshit in this case is so fucking disgusting. To go back to the link mordy just posted, the problem in Denmark is to a large extent with people incapable of — or uninterested in — differentiating among the Israeli government, European Zionists, and Danish Jews. Those who confronted Krasnik, he believes, saw him as “symbol of Israel, and to be Israeli and Jewish is just the same.” [..] To differentiate between an ordinary Muslim and a knuckle-dragging Islamist is a distinction frequently underscored in Europe, but such nuance is rarely afforded to Jews. That job isn't really made easier when the prime minister of Israel goes out and says that Danish Jews don't belong, that their true home is Israel. A friend of mine tweeted this response from Lawrence Freedman, which I think is great: Would be grateful if Netanyahu could stop encouraging Islamists to believe that their violence can force Jews to leave Europe.

I have Danish Jewish friends, people who have lived here for generations, and they are obviously hurting. And it doesn't help, in the slightest, to be told that they don't really belong here. And quite honestly, it doesn't really improve their security in the face of fanatic anti-Israel muslim youth, more than willing to blame Danish Jews for Israel's policies. Fuck that guy.

tbf to bibi, for the most part europe is not the home for jews

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B97JV3UCUAAUtcT.jpg

like this is just talking about reality ^

on the other hand, the danish ppl were exceptionally protective of their jews during ww2 so i could see that as an exception to the general rule. personally speaking tho, and i've said this before on ilx, i would never live in europe, and i don't understand the [much diminished] jewish communities esp in places like hungary, poland, etc.

the truth is that nothing bibi says is going to sway european jewry (at least on a collective level). if europe wants to keep their jews, they will do so by making them feel safe. if they don't feel safe, they will leave, w/ or w/out bibi in office. it doesn't make a lot of sense to get angry at bibi bc jews in europe don't feel safe. that's just more conflation bullshit.

my wife asked me if there was an attack in our neighborhood on one of the synagogues here would we think about moving. i said i thought probably not - but more bc it would be an aberration, we don’t feel threatened every day, i wear a yarmulke on the street etc. but if an attack happened already in the context of feeling threatened and hiding being jewish etc? there was a synagogue attack in chicago some years back but the jewish population didn't emigrate en masse. it's the attack on top of the every day abuses + fear that makes it into a catalyzing moment.

i'm a little concerned that some ppl's response to an antisemitic attack in denmark is to get really angry at bibi. l'havdil but imagine an attack on a black church and al sharpton making a [maybe even inappropriate/self-serving] comment about it. what would you think about the guy who mostly gets angry at sharpton? at the very least it's a misplacement of priority.

people have good reason to get angry at him for using events like this to advance his own political agenda

'oh thanks for reminding us that israel exists, he was just reminding us that israel exists that's all'

looking at long-term risks there is probably no place where you are more likely to be killed for being jewish than israel

Ok fine he's a jerk but is he really the villain of this event? I expect to hear that ppl fucking hate Islamist terrorists, not the PM of Israel.

nobody here doesn't hate islamist terrorists

let me state my objection differently. i've read enough ppl on the internet who claim that this (and the kosher mart attack) were mossad false flags to convince jews to move to israel, or in its more polite wink-wink version say something like 'well, these certainly work to israel's benefit, right?' that i don't want anything to do w/ the argument that somehow bibi is to blame for islamist terrorists confusing diaspora jews w/ israeli jews. (<< btw this last part is particularly odious, as if attacks on jews in synagogues would be okay if it happened in israel. just this entire discourse is so sick and fucked it's not a surprise it's thriving so much in europe.)

as if this were just an innocent mistake. oh they didn't realize all jews weren't israelis but bibi convinced them otherwise. the poor dears, being misled by the tricky jew. like maybe this has nothing to do w/ bibi, or even israel, but rather w/ intense incitement and antisemitism that would persist whether or not there were settlers living in gush etzion.

"it doesn't make a lot of sense to get angry at bibi bc jews in europe don't feel safe. that's just more conflation bullshit."

Yeah, notice I didn't say this at all.

Also, fuck you, mordy. Quite honestly. This happened right where I live, don't imply that it's in any way our fault for not making Jews 'feel safe'. We're doing what we can in a quite honestly pretty chaotic and difficult situation, with thousands and thousands of refugees entering the country, fleeing the chaos in Syria, mostly.

Also, nobody knows if he was islamist yet. I know, it's crazy to hear, but the guy spent the last two years in jail, where he was for unprovokingly stabbing another guy in the leg. He was a psycho. And I fucking hate that guy, of course.

sure let's hold our judgement on whether he was an islamist. in the meanwhile tho, "Omar el-Hussein, suspected in twin Copenhagen attacks, loved to discuss Islam and Israeli-Palestinian conflict, newspaper reports."

well huh:
http://www.channel3000.com/news/police-respond-to-rash-of-derogatory-graffiti-complaints/31272850

i wonder what the chief rabbi of copenhagen says at the end of his pesach seder

― Mordy, Monday, February 16, 2015 8:50 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is why judaism is as bankrupt as any other world religion

i mean, sure call him out on it, i'm pretty sure bibi is made of more shit than the chief rabbi of copenhagen, but it's all BS.

I still don't get why people are so preoccupied with calling Judaism a "religion". And the concept of a "chief rabbi" is one that's pretty alien to my Judaism.

I mean I do get why but y'know rhetoric.

huh? among other things, it's a religion.

i mean, i don't see how you argue otherwise, even if you agree that it also describes a kind of nationality or ethnic group

from my pov judaism is 100% a religion. jewishness maybe some other things as well.

yeah saying "judaism isn't a religion" is kind of like saying "socialism isn't a political philosophy" -- i mean, judaism is an /archetypal/ religion.

on the other hand "religion" is kinda a nonsense paradigm which is why only christianity (the religion that hume used to design the term) is really the only one that doesn't seem chockfull of caveats + exceptions. but i'm not sure judaism is less of a religion than hinduism or buddhism or whatever tribal "religions" that hume tried to shove into his system.

i'm a little concerned that some ppl's response to an antisemitic attack in denmark is to get really angry at bibi.

I'm the guy who posted the thing about Bibi. Do you think that's my only response? Do you think I'm not angry at the murderer who killed innocent people? I am. But what would be the point of saying that on ILX? I talk to lots of people who sympathize with Netanyahu and I think a lot about whether my own reasons not for sympathizing with Netanyahu are good ones. And I think about how, if my reasons are good reasons, I can best express them to my Netanyahu-sympathizing friends.

And I think the question of whether Diaspora Jews are really "at home" in the countries of their birth and their parents' birth is really a live issue, one I feel strongly about, and one I want to talk about.

I have NO friends who sympathize with people who murder Jews in synagogues. So I don't really have to spend any time working out my feelings about those people. My feelings about them are already worked out.

tbh i was responding more to "Fucking hell how I hate Netanyahu," which seemed bizarre to me

You were just too chickenshit to name me? And do you think that's my only response as well? It's what was going on in this thread, of course that's what I reply to.

i've read enough ppl on the internet who claim that this (and the kosher mart attack) were mossad false flags to convince jews to move to israel, or in its more polite wink-wink version say something like 'well, these certainly work to israel's benefit, right?' that i don't want anything to do w/ the argument that somehow bibi is to blame for islamist terrorists confusing diaspora jews w/ israeli jews.

This is of course a different story and I hope nothing I said makes it sound like I think Bibi is secretly rubbing his hands with glee when Jews get murdered in Europe. I do, to be honest, think the line that "a Jew's true home is Israel and only Israel" feeds anti-semitism, but I don't really think it feeds the kind of anti-semitism that drives the murders in Europe. Those people weren't killed for not being French enough or Danish enough.

my wife asked me if there was an attack in our neighborhood on one of the synagogues here would we think about moving. i said i thought probably not - but more bc it would be an aberration, we don’t feel threatened every day, i wear a yarmulke on the street etc. but if an attack happened already in the context of feeling threatened and hiding being jewish etc?

I get this, and I can't honestly say how I would feel if anti-semitic violence in the US became more than a very occasional aberration. Would I leave? I guess I might. But what I feel Bibi fails to grasp is that, if I moved to Israel, I wouldn't be coming home. I would be leaving my homeland and moving to a foreign country for the sake of my family's safety.

I feel both ways about this - in some ways I'd feel like I was leaving home, but in other ways I'd feel like I was coming home. Israel is not just a foreign country to me but a place intricately connected to the texts + prayers i've been studying + reading since i was a child. my middle name is "israel," i say "lshana haba b'yerushalayim" at the seder, i light candles, fast and read eicha on tisha b'av, like my whole life has been very intimately associated w/ israel (and not - or at least not just - as a political entity). when i've visited i've immediately felt welcomed + among family. but i understand this isn't true for all jews.

it probably helps that my hebrew language skills are good and that i have multiple friends + family who already live there that i'd be joining. it wouldn't really be like moving to a totally foreign country where i didn't know anyone and didn't speak the language.

that said, there's a reason i don't live there now. i love my home in the US - it's where my Rebbe lived and family for 3 generations and it has been warm and welcoming to me, and the fact that it's probably safer to be a jew in the Northeast US than in Israel definitely plays a role bc at the end of the day i'm extremely pragmatic about keeping my family safe + alive. not to mention i'm so totally acculturated into US culture, music + literature + television, etc. it would be a bummer to only get to see a band i love when they bucked the BDS vitriol and played their one israel show of the decade or whatever >> nb i feel like this last reason is very superficial but idk it feels substantial to me?

sorry frederick, i didn't mean to call you out personally bc tbh even tho i see the bibi-evocation as part of a continuum obv your post was barely participating in what really bothers me which is that the moment these incidents occur there's this almost knee-jerk gesture back towards the Jews. whether it's BBC reporter Willcox after the Kosher Mart attack, or Jimmy Carter, not to mention even less acceptable arguments like ppl saying that it was a mossad false flag, etc. so i'm kinda sensitive to any discursive shift that in anyway seems to blame (or assign culpability to) Jews, or Israel, or the government of Israel, for totally unrelated attacks in the diaspora. this kind of thing has a long history obv, from WW2 (jews were blamed for the German defeat at WW1 and the bad terms they got at Versailles), as well as this conspiracy i keep hearing about how post-1948 violence against mizrachi jews were mossad false flags intended to convince jews to move back to israel, or the really hideous suggestion that Zionists helped plan the Holocaust to force European jewry out of europe. that's the subtext i see when ppl talk about how bibi is cynically using these attacks to bring jews back to israel (w/ the double subtext that he's bringing jews back to israel so that he'll have a pretext to "steal" more land from the palestinians). when the more likely explanation is that bibi sincerely believes that europe is dangerous for jews (for very good reason, present + historical) and that israel is their home. nb i'm sure it doesn't need to be said, but i don't think europe in 2015 is remotely comparable to europe in 1938 - for one antisemitism is, for the most part, not coming from official governments and being backed by State militaries. that's obv a huge difference. but i don't think any jew who looks at europe and says, "jews might be safer elsewhere" can just be discounted as a cynical opportunist.

and as israel was partially founded as a response to european antisemitism (both from the pov of early zionists + the UN countries who voted for its existence) it's not insane at all for bibi to respond to european antisemitism by saying, 'hey, this is why we founded israel.'

"Europe is dangerous for Jews" seems to me to be demonstrably false, given that by any indicator Western European (at least) societies are safer by pretty much any measure than either the USA or Israel, and so far as I am able to tell this applies to Jewish communities as much as any others. This does not mean that there isn't a problem with anti-Semitism in Europe, of course.

http://dsadevil.blogspot.com/2015/02/outward-bound.html

Last week, a former colleague of mine from Illinois emailed me about a German decision where torching a synagogue was not anti-Semitic, just "criticism of Israel" (not the first time I've heard that argument). And earlier this week, a law school classmate sent me an Austrian prosecutor's conclusion that putting up a picture of Hitler captioned with "I could have annihilated all the Jews in the world, but I left some of them alive so you will know why I was killing them..." was likewise just a means of exposure displeasure with Israel. Seriously, this argument has to be bounded somewhere, yes?

Oh, and half of all racist attacks in France are directed at Jews, who constitute one percent of the population. Makes me glad to have the #JewishPrivilege of living in the United States, where we're only the second most common (per capita) victim of hate crimes.

Yeah, honestly, I've not looked at the statistics/numbers (and maybe I should), but last I heard the US was the safest place for Jews, not Europe.

Neil S seems to be conflating general safety with where are Jews least likely to be victims of racism, hate crime, etc., which albeit is sometimes hard to quantify (racism comes in many ways).

Thanks, mordy. I am quite on edge at the moment, I don't mean to be too much of an asshole. Realizing that one of the guys talking at the attacked meeting was an old professor of mine from college. A girl from work was at the synagogue just a few hours before the shooting - it's at one of the most crowded streets in Denmark. And the murderer was killed a few blocks from where I used to live. It does all of a sudden become pretty close, and pretty stressful.

But the attacks on Bibi weren't 'kneejerk'. Nobody was talking about Israel until he inserted himself in the conversation, with his stupid comments. And I would be okay if he said 'hey, this is why we founded Israel', but that wasn't what he said. This is me cutting and pasting, but he did say: 'Obviously Jews deserve protection in every country, but...' Like, that isn't a sentence that anyone should put a 'but' behind, no matter what is the followup (the followup is ...'but we say to the Jews, to our brothers and sisters: ‘Israel is your home') He said 'Israel is the home of every Jew.'

Also, with the other moves Netanyahu is making at the moment, I don't think it's unfair to accuse him of cynisism. I just read his speech about the speech in Washington. I hate him.

Jews have been in Denmark for hundreds of years. They were made citizens back in the beginning of the nineteenth century. Most of them survived the German occupation. We haven't had a deadly terror attack on anyone in almost thirty years. The standard of living is high, and the murder rate is low. I don't think Jews are much safer elsewhere but here.

According to estimated numbers of populations in the US and FBI data, per capita, Jews make up the largest, not second largest, group of hate crime victims in the US:

(as a percentage of each group)
Jewish Black LBGT
0.00012 0.00004 0.000091