Is this anti-semitism?

put aside good jew or bad jew and consider whether 99% of jews relate to an org called Jewdas

I was about to genuinely ask your take on that particular organization, could you elaborate a little?

And yes, the name is definitely the kind of sarcastic thing that makes me feel like their approach is orthogonal to "serious politics"

they seem fine as a small group doing their own thing but as representatives of the broader jewish community idgi at all. first of all they're named after the figure who christiandom used as an excuse to persecute jews for centuries. second of all, they're a self-declared outsider group which, again, is totally fine but means that definitionally they can't speak for mainstream jewry. i think it's great that it exists for the participants but if you're a politician trying to signal to a larger community you should try imo to speak to someone who isn't doing an edgy fringe anarchist take on the religion. the whole good jew vs bad jew thing isn't the right take imo. it's not like he met with reform jews and the orthodox were complaining or vice-versa. he met with a tiny enclave of alienated and critical of jewry jews who seem primarily satirical in their aesthetic. and if it was a personal thing he was doing i wouldn't care but it's too obviously a PR move and as that it seems insanely idiotic.

it's not a precise analogy but it would be like meeting with Heeb Magazine. i didn't begrudge the existence of Heeb magazine at all but i would begrudge politicians treating Heeb magazine like a legitimate representative of the Jewish community. (it's not precisely the same bc i'm not clear that Jewdas is quite as vulgar as Heeb but in terms of antagonism to the broader community / fringeness / etc it's comparable i think.)

yeah it's a really weird thing to do, a sort of 'fine I'll do it but I'm not going to sell out about it' attitude, even though he says he was there only in personal capacity.

It was a personal thing - the group is based in his constituency, has supported him for years and the invitation had been open for weeks. The only reason it made the press in the first place is that a far-right blog got someone to secretly film it.

if he was really there in just a personal capacity why do any of us know about it?? maybe it's a bit much to ask for a politician to go to a Jewdas seder and no one find out but otoh it's a bit much to believe that he went bc he's just really into the Jewdas seder experience.

Anecdotal evidence Mordy, fwiw, but your comment about Labour that Labour have "completely lost the Jewish vote" is utterly wrong. You ideally need to get your information from sources other than the Centralist and right-wing press and media, because they are the only ones parroting that idea. My Jewish friends and their parents and relatives in London are not falling for the antisemitism bullshit, like, at all.

my take in general on corbyn is that he's probably not an antisemite he's just an idiot. but he's def not a guy who is really into Passover. the whole thing is bizarre.

xp what percentage of the Jewish vote did Labour get last election?

first of all they're named after the figure who christiandom used as an excuse to persecute jews for centuries

not that i agree w/their stupid name but i'm pretty sure that this ^ is the point of it

second of all, they're a self-declared outsider group which, again, is totally fine but means that definitionally they can't speak for mainstream jewry

i don't think they ever claimed they do?

if you're a politician trying to signal to a larger community...

corbyz is bad-to-hopeless at "signalling" i.e. PR moves

Well Corbyn is useless at anything to do with PR and the media, idiotic is a fair criticism, except this WAS a personal thing which got picked up by Guido Fawkes.

xps ...and it just so happened the day after a brouhaha about antisemitism. I'm being cynical here, but would he have attended if it hadn't have been for the antisemitism scandal?

http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/236063/why-just-13-percent-of-british-jews-say-they-will-vote-for-labour-in-the-general-election

if that's anywhere near accurate that's a brutal figure

if he was really there in just a personal capacity why do any of us know about it?

It was leaked to a far-right blog, as I said.

It’s difficult for anyone not familiar with the area to understand but Jewdas is very much within the tradition of a radical strand of Jewish politics centred around Highbury / Stoke Newington - Corbyn’s home and political base - that has been influential on the local party / political scene since the sixties, at least. It is not representative of the wider London Jewish community necessary but is absolutely a part of Corbyn’s left.

by comparison Trump got something like 25% of the jewish vote

https://www.timesofisrael.com/american-jews-voted-70-25-in-favor-of-clinton-over-trump-poll-shows/

xp what percentage of the Jewish vote did Labour get last election?

― Mordy, Wednesday, 4 April 2018 16:50 (five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Point being that it hasn't significantly changed anyone's minds. Jewish voters who intend(ed) to vote Labour will still do so, those who intend to vote Tory will still do so.

SV: radical Jewish politics have a long tradition not just in the UK but throughout Europe and the US but often that tradition is antagonistic to traditional Judaism (often itself veering into antisemitism - nb I'm not accusing Jewdas on this tho the name is certainly troubling) and represents small percentages of the Jewish community. i think you have to consider when dealing w/ small radical splinter groups that you're potentially poking the community in the eye even more than not engaging at all. you're dealing w/ a group that is openly hostile to most Jews and Jewish groups/practices. i don't have a problem with internal dissent but when an outsider sides with them it gives the impression that *they're* the one playing good jews vs bad jews.

xp i don't know how you can say that. 13% is an extremely low and ahistorical figure for the Jewish vote iirc. (nb i haven't researched this since the election but iirc Labour used to be able to count on a far higher percentage of Jewish voters.)

"jews who mock and dislike mainstream jewish organizations and communities? those are the jews for me."

by comparison Trump got something like 25% of the jewish vote

Is this really a worthwhile comparison??

it's pretty damning imo but explain to me what i'm missing. Trump, a guy who openly fraternized w/ white supremacists, got a higher percentage of the Jewish vote than Labour.

By Yair Rosenberg
May 30, 2017 • 2:06 PM

White supremacists or no, aren't the republicans considered far more pro-likud than democrats?

Oh, and if you want clickbait about Jewish voters:

https://www.spectator.co.uk/2015/04/how-ed-miliband-lost-the-jewish-vote/

Somewhat dubious of a poll in The JC (!) but that figure doesn't sound inaccurate based on my North London centric Jewish experience. Most middle-class Jewish parents I know have been Tories - not their kids, though.

Any thoughts on the phrase MILITANT JEWISH GROUP appearing on the FRONT PAGE of the Mail?

i didn't see the headline but i did look at the jewdas website yesterday and they didn't seem militant to me

more just snarky and irreverent

So for those who israel is *the* issue, that'd be a reason to vote for trump. Clearly that's a minority, however.

This NS (usual caveats etc) article seems to suggest that Miliband picked up a fairly low % in 2015 too?

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2017/07/can-jeremy-corbyns-labour-win-back-jewish-vote

For reference

https://i.imgur.com/uJJpBgs.png

This NS (usual caveats etc) article seems to suggest that Miliband picked up a fairly low % in 2015 too?

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2017/07/can-jeremy-corbyns-labour-win-back-jewish-vote

― gyac, Wednesday, 4 April 2018 17:06 (six seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Exactly

i think it's a mistake to break it all down to israel. trump got a lot of orthodox voters who share other things in common with republican party than just israel affection (and some orthodox don't even like israel cf satmar). like they love school vouchers (bc they all send their kids to private schools) and they share certain culture wars tenets. but even if you said israel was the primary motivation surely you're not arguing that as a whole UK jews are more pro-israel than US jews? i mean maybe they are but i see no reason to assume that. & if they are it could only be because they feel more precarious than US jews but that's a whole other thing then where israel is just a surrogate for general feelings of safety/unease etc.

i wonder if w/r/t Trump's percentage of the vote if maybe the primary campaign of Clinton vs Sanders came into play there as well, meaning the bad feelings held towards Hillary on behalf of Sanders by the progressive left, feelings that clearly carried over to the general election, were also shared by a decent chunk of Jewish voters.

I'm not seeing how Corbyn is supposed to appeal to a massively centrist-to-right-wing voting base, short of turning into Tony Blair.

i'd be surprised. ime Orthodox jewish voters (who comprised most of trump's jewish vote) strongly disliked sanders xp

they held the beetroot aloft and shouted fuck capitalism !

Fwiw, the post-election survey with a much larger and less self-selecting sample size suggested that the 26% of Jewish voters opted for Labour in 2017, down from 29% in 2015 (when the Labour leader was, himself, Jewish). The argument would be that, with a broader swing to Labour across most groups, going backwards with Jewish voters indicted that Corbyn was a disincentive for some - and that seems to be highly likely. The vote share has not cratered though.

if you guys would like i could try and take a look at the jewdas haggadah at some point and give my opinion. if it really is openly derogatory and mocking towards judaism (which based on what i read on the website is at least possible) it would be worse than just hanging out w/ some fringe jews and that mail sub could be accurate (even if militant is obv inaccurate and i assume here being used more metaphorically - i doubt anyone believes they're actually armed?)

Don't suppose these articles mention that the Jewish vote here constitutes about half a percent of the electoral total at best? Not a reason to ignore or indeed offend a majority of it but still, as with many other (demonised) minorities here the number is usually thought of as higher than it really is.

not necessary i think everyone understands that jews constitute a tiny minority of a given population even in the US where about half of world jewry is concentrated let alone the UK. it's more indicative of jewish attitudes rather than any kind of pragmatic concern about winning vote totals. nb some ppl would argue that jewish money is important even tho jewish numbers are not but as you can imagine i find that line of thinking creepy at best.

the situation may be very different on the ground in the UK but this seems to sit firmly on the line in US politics where groups that defend Israel's state actions, or have a semi-religious zionist stance (including the weird christian dominionists) are quick to brand anyone not on their side as antisemitic

the plethora of links claiming Corbyn has antisemitic tendencies seem to lean heavily on Daily Mail articles

if anyone successfully rhetorically untangles that particular ball of twine in my lifetime I'll be pleasantly surprised

here's how i break it down more or less: he doesn't have antisemitic tendencies. he's an idiotic ideologue who basically will hang with any fellow traveller no matter what odious views they may personally hold. he isn't particularly sensitive to antisemitism (why should he be tbh) - but it doesn't speak well of anyone's intellect i think who finds useful allies among holocaust deniers or fundamentalist actually militant organizations.

I only heard about jewdas yesterday (thx guido) but the impression that they have given me (as non-Jew) is that they seem quite invested and respectful towards judaism (running free religious lessons in their community, free yiddish lessons etc) certainly there were a number of personal attestations on twitter yesterday from people who had been previously dislocated from their judaism but had found a way to reconnect with it through the prism of jewdas. as I say though I am not jewish and so wd obv defer to experts. just my impression from 24hours as an outsider

like does it make him antisemitic to say hamas and hezbollah are "friends"? no. judith butler called them members of the international left. it's just so fucking dumb (for corbyn and butler). sanders sometimes got dinged for not being appropriately sensitive to racism at times and in some way i think it's similar. it's not really fair to call a lack of concern for an issue synonymous w/ being a bigot, but it is fair to assume such a person might not adequately represent your concerns in such an area.

It's a good job british voters don't give a shit about his intellect in comparison to his policies and human rights record, then. None of the smears about the IRA or the Holocaust or whatever tf have landed on him yet. You do get the odd Spectator write complaining he hasn't done PPE at a Russel group uni though

one of the jewish labour activists from my part of the world (“proudly”) used the jewdas haggadah at her seder. she has been an outspoken advocate for further work within UK labour on combatting and educating about antisemitism

you're dealing w/ a group that is openly hostile to most Jews and Jewish groups/practices.

This is, of course, nonsense. From the post that started this:

Although we enjoy the anonymity, it is a fairly open secret that nearly all of us in Jewdas are synagogue-going Jews, most with either paid or voluntary positions within our communities. With members across the country, for the last thirteen years we have been the only place many people could come to be both left-wing and religiously Jewish.

https://www.jewdas.org/?p=4780

Haaretz seems fine with them: https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/europe/.premium-no-one-gets-to-say-who-are-good-jews-not-even-jews-1.5976112

re jewdas religious beliefs i don't feel like i know enough about them to say but "yiddish" alone isn't indicative of much since much of yiddish tradition is actively hostile towards judaism (except in chassidic circles it is a secular competing tradition that was meant to replace traditional judaism). it's important to distinguish between judaism and jewry since they're not synonymous. nb that they very well could be well versed in jewish traditions and texts and drawing from those but otoh their website is explicitly anti jewish parochialism and pro universalism so a move away from judaism per se seems likely. ultimately you do find groups in 2018 in the jewish world who are explicitly jewish but anti anything in traditional judaism. you have to determine to what extent you think that's a legitimate expression of judaism or apostasy whatever. like if you only like that quote about loving the stranger but find the rest of the Torah pretty worthless idk how keyed in you actually can claim to be. sorry this is a bit ot and nb nb i really should emphasize that i don't actually know enough jewdas to comment specifically - just to give a broader topography of the current environment.

daily mail says they’re a hate filled group who mock judaism tho so

Disgusting from Corbyn. He should not be mocking Judaism by raising a beetroot in the air and shouting "fuck capitalism." pic.twitter.com/wlP90mn4lZ

— heartbeeps (@hrtbps) April 4, 2018