You are in the right place to make a stand, Alan. There is still a basic decency in Americans that confounds the ultra-Zionist in me, because I do not believe that things will ever be that bad in the USA, and for that reason the beloved Jews of America do not make Aliyah. I pray that the Aliyah of America's Jews will be one of free choice, without pain or regrets.
Why would I leave to Israel when it's run by Netanyahu, Smotrich and Ben Gvir who have utter comtempt for democratic norms? The world may be going to hell in a handbasket, but Israel is just one more of those democratically backsliding countries. All Western countries hold dangers for Jews including Israel.
From,
A supporter of Israel but not this gang that runs it now.
Because even Netanyahu's government are Jews, while you live in a place where Jews can definitely have their businesses boycotted, vandalized without the law doing fuck all about it, where Jews have to pass through violent masses of "anti Zionist" protestors, or turned by police because they're "agitating the crowd", where Jews are under mental assault in every space (universities, the arts, news media) that has an allegedly progressive majority, where a violent Islamist minority keeps growing to threaten your safety and existence (and you don't have an army or police that care one iota). Some Israelis may find Netanyahu loathsome, as some Americans find Trump loathsome, as some Brits find Starmer loathsome, but that's something that gets fixed during elections. Being under assault socially, career-wise, mentally and physically, that's the firehose of bullshit of living in the diaspora. Having been both and lived in both, I promise you that Israelis are successful because they don't grow up in as oppressive an environment as being a Jew in a "progressive nation". Luckily growing up as an Israeli before moving to the US at 24 inoculated me to not give a flying fuck about progressives. Also, owning guns is a right and knowing how to use them is a duty.
The American girlfriend I was dating in Israel was returning to California after volunteering and working in Israel for a year. I followed her to California. We’ve been married for 27 years (I’m nearing 30 years since I came to the US).
Planned to move back to Israel, but that was scuttled by the second Lebanon war (plan was to live near the border). My wife had no fear of the Hamas bus bombings in 1994-1995, but moving with a toddler and pregnant to a town under weeks of rocket fire was a different thing. I regret not moving back with our kids, to be honest.
Makes total sense. And congratulations on 27 years! 😊… I understand your argument about Israel, progressives, the importance of a Jewish state, and the rest. I agree with most of it. But I can make the case for why Diaspora Jews matter, that we all don’t need to ingather to be good Jews. We’re all between the proverbial rock & hard place, Jews and non-Jews alike. Question for me is: does the Biblical narrative have any light to shed on our collective crisis? (My answer: yes, I think so.)
There will always be diaspora Jews, and they will always be important both to the Jewish people in general, and the Jews of Israel in particular. Ezra and Nehemiah, need I say more.
Still, Judaism revolves around the restoration of Israel and the centrality of Israel and the story of Jews in Israel in crafting what is Judaism. It’s not fucking “Tikkun Olam” and it’s definitely not Jews for (Arab) Palestine. I understand the urge of all diaspora Jews to escape the antisemitic psychosis the progressives are putting the world’s democracies through. 1 million MENA Jews escaped the same development in the Arab world, and it is how they managed to survive and thrive. Before them, it was nearly all Jewish survivors of the Holocaust getting the fuck out of Europe that allowed them to survive and thrive. This has come to North America and Australia - like it or not it is very real. The elites (nearly all of them progressives) have been captured by antisemitism of the most violent kind - they excuse and support discrimination against and assaults of diaspora Jews, and they support genocidal Islamist terrorism against Israeli Jews.
Yes I agree with you on the Bible having great narrative models for the modern era.
אמר יהוה אל אברם: צא מארץ מולדתך ומבית אביך לארץ אשר אראה לך
If we all went ta Israel we're one easy-peasy target. Heck, Israel is already one huge target (tiny country, surrounded by killer-chaos). Look at 10/7 indeed--that warn't chopped liver... More joos there more to harm.... Iran would lurve ta see all've us in one spot, united under one mushroom cloud (ya don't think so?). Hitler nearly had that... All of YourUp in schpittin' distance from one an'nuther. Piece 'a kuchen fer the Naz-ease then.
Amer-ick-ah (sadly bitter 'n yucky now... may we hope this'll change....) is at LEAST "Yuge." Distance is our friend.
Let's not repeat the error that made it easy peasy fer team-Hitler ta trample YourUp like it wuzza wet field aka Max Yasgur's farm. An' yes this fear mongerin' fella is kinda right...an' kinda wrong too. Ignorin' the signs this is REAL an' is yes, ever-again, is foolish. Movin' outta the light like the cock-a-roaches they think we are... is called self-preservation!
I wouldn't schtop folks that wanna make aliyah, by all means you do you. But the rest of us should stay put (in America, YourUp is too small...America can take a lotta EuroJoos though), learn "self defense / protection," an' consider either relocation' outside the shitties (an' Monsey too!), quietly findin' a place ta be ourselfs less overtly b/c fer now we're all in the crosshairs. Hate ta say it, it's troo.... No menorah in the windas y' know. We've been there....
IMHO, NOWHERE is safe now, NOWHERE ta hide (thanks ta AI an' cell phones).
Advice--disperse.... MORE!
Addin'....
Fer many reasons we tend ta be city folks.... those frum walk ta schul, those less so kin congregate, there are kosher delis, "kulcha" (our tushies fillin' seats at the FILLharmonic! on Broadway, yadayada). Our "shitties" are no longer safe (bein' a fambly of New Yawkers that left only 2 years ago, we feel safer an' have no regrets--only misses--many things we miss!).
Hittin' a target that's spread all over like poppy seeds is hard....imho we gotta disperse.
Last thought...
DJT is showin' he's not "rilly" a friend of we chews now... we thought so, his daughter converted....the Abraham Accords....the knee-jerk monkey bizness with the universities... but when it COUNTS he's got WitNit courtin' Qatar...
Israel cain't count on 'im nor kin we chews... BUT as long as we ain't bein deported....we can still (ha ha) "occupy" our US homes....
An' if pogroms come fer us here....we kin' say we got "Fuld"...again!
The problem is that even if every Jew in the world were to move to Israel, Israel is still too small of a country to defend itself against a world gone mad.
As example, imagine that Trump goes all out Nazi and decides to put all of American Jews in camps etc. What do you think is going to happen to the state of Israel in a circumstance like that?
The smarter move would be for all the Jews in the world to move to America, the world's leading superpower, and apply their impressive collective intelligence to doing everything they can to ensure America doesn't become a Nazi clone etc. Go to where the power is, and stand and fight, and win.
If there was a safe place on this planet for Jews to hide in, that would be the sensible move. But there is no such place. I'm so sorry to say this, but Zionism is an outdated 20th century ideology.
- Zionism (modern variant) isn't a 20th-century ideology as much as one from the 19th century. "Beginning in late 1895, Herzl wrote Der Judenstaat (The State of the Jews), which was published February 1896 to immediate acclaim and controversy. The book argued that the Jewish people should leave Europe for Palestine, their historic homeland. The Jews possessed a nationality; all they were missing was a nation and a state of their own."
- Zionism (ancient variant) is thousands of years old... all the way back to G*d's (mythic?) promise to Abraham -- "the land that I will show you."
- Re: "the smarter move would be for all the Jews in the world to move to America" -- you, Mr. Tanny, have a bright future in stand-up comedy. :-)
- Re: "if there was a safe place on this planet for Jews to hide in..." -- One thing is clear from Jewish history and from Jewish sources: we're not supposed to hide. G*d sends us into the world with a collection of neon signs that announce who we are: special clothing, special dietary laws, a special day of rest, a marker on our doorposts so that everyone knows there are Jews living inside -- no, He doesn't want us hiding. Putting us on a separate planet defeats the whole purpose of the Story: to demonstrate that there is a G*d of history, and that our lives have a point and a purpose. But that way of thinking isn't something that's forced upon us. It's a choice. As I've said countless times, we -- all of us, Jew and non-Jew alike -- are The Choosing People. "I call heaven and earth to record this day against you that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing. Therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live..."
Well, you article seemed to be addressing the subject of Jews being safe. I was addressing that. You write...
"I’m here in Maryland hoping that the modern nation-state of Israel isn’t necessary"
My point is, if the nation state of Israel is necessary, it's not viable. If America were to become a Jew oppressing nation, the state of Israel is over. Thus, an idea of Jews fleeing America to seek safety in Israel doesn't make sense.
Imho, Israelis and Jews in general would be wise not to confuse their impressive victory over their inept, corrupt, and confused neighbors with an ability to resist American power, if it was ever turned against Israel.
And should America remain more or less as it currently is, it will remain the safest place for Jews in the world, as it has been since WWII.
Now, if we are to change the subject to religion instead of security, then ok, that's another ball of wax, agreed.
You write: "If America were to become a Jew-oppressing nation, the state of Israel is over. Thus, an idea of Jews fleeing America to seek safety in Israel doesn't make sense." --> I don't expect the United States to become "Jew oppressing" But there's a certain kind of "Jew love" that adores Israel and welcomes the prospect of a complete "ingathering of the exiles." Partly because it fulfills Christian (and Jewish) prophecy, and partly because it gets the Jews out of [name of country here].
"And should America remain more or less as it currently is..." --> I thought the reason so many people are so anxious right now is because America and most of the West are NOT remaining the same. Something is changing. Something has broken.
My general shtick is that the modern nation-state of Israel is, in some miraculous way, a culmination or a turning point in a Story that Jews (and some Christians) have been telling themselves for 2,000 years. But the idea that ***all*** Jews need to "ingather" is not a good one, at least the way I read the Story. Gathering all Jews in one tiny nation amidst a sea of hostile Muslim countries is a recipe for disaster. However, gathering ***some*** of the Tribe in the Holy Land already achieves what I think it's supposed to do, narratively speaking. Israel poses a question to the world (which drives the world crazy): Does the G*d of Abraham really exist? The answer, I think, has enormous consequences.
If I wanted to read Hillel Fuld's dumb opinions I wouldn't have blocked him.
The questionnaire assumes Judaism is a religion, not an ethnicity, and I don't think its the job of health care to litigate the complex question of what is Jewish identity.
The existence of Palestinians who identify as Palestinians is not something that is inherently threatening to Jews, and if that's his big evidence that Jews have to make aliya he's dumber than I thought and I already think he's an idiot.
I'll admit that I'm not as familiar with Fuld's ramblings as you seem to be, Akiva. And maybe he is an idiot, but he's an idiot with an audience. ... And if the "questionnaire assumes Judaism is a religion," well, that's a problem too, isn't it? Perhaps not one that a hospital can resolve, but still.
I guess I shared his thread because it carries an air of panic and desperation that I sometimes feel: Why do I blindly believe that this chapter of Jewish exile will end differently than all the other ones? More to the point: Why do you?
As an European non jew living in France, I see the signs all over - the world is falling for the antisemitic "pro-p" narratives & propaganda that has bought it's way into educational institutions since at least the 90's by Quatar and other authoritarian governments, and into politics. I don't watch TV but what I see on mainstream and social media scares me. The silence of the peaceful Muslims scares me too, as does the silence about the prosecution of Christian and other minorities in Africa and the ME. I've been reading about history and the beginning of antisemitic incitement by the Mufti of Jerusalem since 1920 through the report of the Shaw Commission, and I observe how the media are ignoring and changing history while blindly repeating Hamas narratives and centuries of antisemitic propaganda.
You are in the right place to make a stand, Alan. There is still a basic decency in Americans that confounds the ultra-Zionist in me, because I do not believe that things will ever be that bad in the USA, and for that reason the beloved Jews of America do not make Aliyah. I pray that the Aliyah of America's Jews will be one of free choice, without pain or regrets.
Why would I leave to Israel when it's run by Netanyahu, Smotrich and Ben Gvir who have utter comtempt for democratic norms? The world may be going to hell in a handbasket, but Israel is just one more of those democratically backsliding countries. All Western countries hold dangers for Jews including Israel.
From,
A supporter of Israel but not this gang that runs it now.
Amen, Brother Daniel. You & I are on the same page.
Because even Netanyahu's government are Jews, while you live in a place where Jews can definitely have their businesses boycotted, vandalized without the law doing fuck all about it, where Jews have to pass through violent masses of "anti Zionist" protestors, or turned by police because they're "agitating the crowd", where Jews are under mental assault in every space (universities, the arts, news media) that has an allegedly progressive majority, where a violent Islamist minority keeps growing to threaten your safety and existence (and you don't have an army or police that care one iota). Some Israelis may find Netanyahu loathsome, as some Americans find Trump loathsome, as some Brits find Starmer loathsome, but that's something that gets fixed during elections. Being under assault socially, career-wise, mentally and physically, that's the firehose of bullshit of living in the diaspora. Having been both and lived in both, I promise you that Israelis are successful because they don't grow up in as oppressive an environment as being a Jew in a "progressive nation". Luckily growing up as an Israeli before moving to the US at 24 inoculated me to not give a flying fuck about progressives. Also, owning guns is a right and knowing how to use them is a duty.
Why did you move to the United States, AB? Are you still here?
The American girlfriend I was dating in Israel was returning to California after volunteering and working in Israel for a year. I followed her to California. We’ve been married for 27 years (I’m nearing 30 years since I came to the US).
Planned to move back to Israel, but that was scuttled by the second Lebanon war (plan was to live near the border). My wife had no fear of the Hamas bus bombings in 1994-1995, but moving with a toddler and pregnant to a town under weeks of rocket fire was a different thing. I regret not moving back with our kids, to be honest.
Makes total sense. And congratulations on 27 years! 😊… I understand your argument about Israel, progressives, the importance of a Jewish state, and the rest. I agree with most of it. But I can make the case for why Diaspora Jews matter, that we all don’t need to ingather to be good Jews. We’re all between the proverbial rock & hard place, Jews and non-Jews alike. Question for me is: does the Biblical narrative have any light to shed on our collective crisis? (My answer: yes, I think so.)
There will always be diaspora Jews, and they will always be important both to the Jewish people in general, and the Jews of Israel in particular. Ezra and Nehemiah, need I say more.
Still, Judaism revolves around the restoration of Israel and the centrality of Israel and the story of Jews in Israel in crafting what is Judaism. It’s not fucking “Tikkun Olam” and it’s definitely not Jews for (Arab) Palestine. I understand the urge of all diaspora Jews to escape the antisemitic psychosis the progressives are putting the world’s democracies through. 1 million MENA Jews escaped the same development in the Arab world, and it is how they managed to survive and thrive. Before them, it was nearly all Jewish survivors of the Holocaust getting the fuck out of Europe that allowed them to survive and thrive. This has come to North America and Australia - like it or not it is very real. The elites (nearly all of them progressives) have been captured by antisemitism of the most violent kind - they excuse and support discrimination against and assaults of diaspora Jews, and they support genocidal Islamist terrorism against Israeli Jews.
Yes I agree with you on the Bible having great narrative models for the modern era.
אמר יהוה אל אברם: צא מארץ מולדתך ומבית אביך לארץ אשר אראה לך
Israel or bust. For whatever my two cents are worth.
Wow. I'm here as long as my elderly parents are around, because they need my help. After that ... I'm thinking about it.
If we all went ta Israel we're one easy-peasy target. Heck, Israel is already one huge target (tiny country, surrounded by killer-chaos). Look at 10/7 indeed--that warn't chopped liver... More joos there more to harm.... Iran would lurve ta see all've us in one spot, united under one mushroom cloud (ya don't think so?). Hitler nearly had that... All of YourUp in schpittin' distance from one an'nuther. Piece 'a kuchen fer the Naz-ease then.
Amer-ick-ah (sadly bitter 'n yucky now... may we hope this'll change....) is at LEAST "Yuge." Distance is our friend.
Let's not repeat the error that made it easy peasy fer team-Hitler ta trample YourUp like it wuzza wet field aka Max Yasgur's farm. An' yes this fear mongerin' fella is kinda right...an' kinda wrong too. Ignorin' the signs this is REAL an' is yes, ever-again, is foolish. Movin' outta the light like the cock-a-roaches they think we are... is called self-preservation!
I wouldn't schtop folks that wanna make aliyah, by all means you do you. But the rest of us should stay put (in America, YourUp is too small...America can take a lotta EuroJoos though), learn "self defense / protection," an' consider either relocation' outside the shitties (an' Monsey too!), quietly findin' a place ta be ourselfs less overtly b/c fer now we're all in the crosshairs. Hate ta say it, it's troo.... No menorah in the windas y' know. We've been there....
IMHO, NOWHERE is safe now, NOWHERE ta hide (thanks ta AI an' cell phones).
Advice--disperse.... MORE!
Addin'....
Fer many reasons we tend ta be city folks.... those frum walk ta schul, those less so kin congregate, there are kosher delis, "kulcha" (our tushies fillin' seats at the FILLharmonic! on Broadway, yadayada). Our "shitties" are no longer safe (bein' a fambly of New Yawkers that left only 2 years ago, we feel safer an' have no regrets--only misses--many things we miss!).
Hittin' a target that's spread all over like poppy seeds is hard....imho we gotta disperse.
Last thought...
DJT is showin' he's not "rilly" a friend of we chews now... we thought so, his daughter converted....the Abraham Accords....the knee-jerk monkey bizness with the universities... but when it COUNTS he's got WitNit courtin' Qatar...
Israel cain't count on 'im nor kin we chews... BUT as long as we ain't bein deported....we can still (ha ha) "occupy" our US homes....
An' if pogroms come fer us here....we kin' say we got "Fuld"...again!
The problem is that even if every Jew in the world were to move to Israel, Israel is still too small of a country to defend itself against a world gone mad.
As example, imagine that Trump goes all out Nazi and decides to put all of American Jews in camps etc. What do you think is going to happen to the state of Israel in a circumstance like that?
The smarter move would be for all the Jews in the world to move to America, the world's leading superpower, and apply their impressive collective intelligence to doing everything they can to ensure America doesn't become a Nazi clone etc. Go to where the power is, and stand and fight, and win.
If there was a safe place on this planet for Jews to hide in, that would be the sensible move. But there is no such place. I'm so sorry to say this, but Zionism is an outdated 20th century ideology.
Short reply: #122
Longer reply:
- Zionism (modern variant) isn't a 20th-century ideology as much as one from the 19th century. "Beginning in late 1895, Herzl wrote Der Judenstaat (The State of the Jews), which was published February 1896 to immediate acclaim and controversy. The book argued that the Jewish people should leave Europe for Palestine, their historic homeland. The Jews possessed a nationality; all they were missing was a nation and a state of their own."
- Zionism (ancient variant) is thousands of years old... all the way back to G*d's (mythic?) promise to Abraham -- "the land that I will show you."
- Re: "the smarter move would be for all the Jews in the world to move to America" -- you, Mr. Tanny, have a bright future in stand-up comedy. :-)
- Re: "if there was a safe place on this planet for Jews to hide in..." -- One thing is clear from Jewish history and from Jewish sources: we're not supposed to hide. G*d sends us into the world with a collection of neon signs that announce who we are: special clothing, special dietary laws, a special day of rest, a marker on our doorposts so that everyone knows there are Jews living inside -- no, He doesn't want us hiding. Putting us on a separate planet defeats the whole purpose of the Story: to demonstrate that there is a G*d of history, and that our lives have a point and a purpose. But that way of thinking isn't something that's forced upon us. It's a choice. As I've said countless times, we -- all of us, Jew and non-Jew alike -- are The Choosing People. "I call heaven and earth to record this day against you that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing. Therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live..."
Well, you article seemed to be addressing the subject of Jews being safe. I was addressing that. You write...
"I’m here in Maryland hoping that the modern nation-state of Israel isn’t necessary"
My point is, if the nation state of Israel is necessary, it's not viable. If America were to become a Jew oppressing nation, the state of Israel is over. Thus, an idea of Jews fleeing America to seek safety in Israel doesn't make sense.
Imho, Israelis and Jews in general would be wise not to confuse their impressive victory over their inept, corrupt, and confused neighbors with an ability to resist American power, if it was ever turned against Israel.
And should America remain more or less as it currently is, it will remain the safest place for Jews in the world, as it has been since WWII.
Now, if we are to change the subject to religion instead of security, then ok, that's another ball of wax, agreed.
You write: "If America were to become a Jew-oppressing nation, the state of Israel is over. Thus, an idea of Jews fleeing America to seek safety in Israel doesn't make sense." --> I don't expect the United States to become "Jew oppressing" But there's a certain kind of "Jew love" that adores Israel and welcomes the prospect of a complete "ingathering of the exiles." Partly because it fulfills Christian (and Jewish) prophecy, and partly because it gets the Jews out of [name of country here].
"And should America remain more or less as it currently is..." --> I thought the reason so many people are so anxious right now is because America and most of the West are NOT remaining the same. Something is changing. Something has broken.
My general shtick is that the modern nation-state of Israel is, in some miraculous way, a culmination or a turning point in a Story that Jews (and some Christians) have been telling themselves for 2,000 years. But the idea that ***all*** Jews need to "ingather" is not a good one, at least the way I read the Story. Gathering all Jews in one tiny nation amidst a sea of hostile Muslim countries is a recipe for disaster. However, gathering ***some*** of the Tribe in the Holy Land already achieves what I think it's supposed to do, narratively speaking. Israel poses a question to the world (which drives the world crazy): Does the G*d of Abraham really exist? The answer, I think, has enormous consequences.
If I wanted to read Hillel Fuld's dumb opinions I wouldn't have blocked him.
The questionnaire assumes Judaism is a religion, not an ethnicity, and I don't think its the job of health care to litigate the complex question of what is Jewish identity.
The existence of Palestinians who identify as Palestinians is not something that is inherently threatening to Jews, and if that's his big evidence that Jews have to make aliya he's dumber than I thought and I already think he's an idiot.
C'mon.
I'll admit that I'm not as familiar with Fuld's ramblings as you seem to be, Akiva. And maybe he is an idiot, but he's an idiot with an audience. ... And if the "questionnaire assumes Judaism is a religion," well, that's a problem too, isn't it? Perhaps not one that a hospital can resolve, but still.
As for evidence, he gestures to many examples that have been in the news. And he asks a question that haunts plenty of Jews, including me... and a local reform rabbi I know: https://outofbabel.substack.com/p/interview-rabbi-daniel-zemel
I guess I shared his thread because it carries an air of panic and desperation that I sometimes feel: Why do I blindly believe that this chapter of Jewish exile will end differently than all the other ones? More to the point: Why do you?
As an European non jew living in France, I see the signs all over - the world is falling for the antisemitic "pro-p" narratives & propaganda that has bought it's way into educational institutions since at least the 90's by Quatar and other authoritarian governments, and into politics. I don't watch TV but what I see on mainstream and social media scares me. The silence of the peaceful Muslims scares me too, as does the silence about the prosecution of Christian and other minorities in Africa and the ME. I've been reading about history and the beginning of antisemitic incitement by the Mufti of Jerusalem since 1920 through the report of the Shaw Commission, and I observe how the media are ignoring and changing history while blindly repeating Hamas narratives and centuries of antisemitic propaganda.
Hillel Fuld is not blind. He's got a good point.