if you really want to know

Oct 15, 2023 11:55


As I say repeatedly... it is a curse to know a lot about all of this. By no means everything, of course. But I think the reason it corrodes my mental health is that being Jewish and following these things provokes a kind of existential anguish that is hard to bear alone. So I am putting all this here and you can read it or not. The fact that nobody ( Read more... )

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alsoname October 15 2023, 17:31:32 UTC

I feel I am probably more well-informed than average on these issues, and still feel like I know nothing, and have seen way too many conversations on Israel/Palestine go from civil to high-decibel over the course of just a few sentences. For that reason, I keep my trap shut on all of this. I will just say, you sound reasonable to me and I do read your stuff. I should probably comment much more often.

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lookfar October 16 2023, 01:39:17 UTC
Actually, I read everything you write, if I see it.

I am not a history person, but I agree in principle because it's a law of human nature; treat people like shit and they will get their own back.

This is where the Quakers are so interesting to me, because they say, I simply will not, I don't have a great answer than this, but I will not participate. In violence, anger or revenge. Maybe they are on to something.

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sanpaku October 16 2023, 03:52:36 UTC

I've always been interested in Quakerism as well (it's still a thing in Philadelphia). But I'm tempted to think of that quip someone once had about Christianity to the effect that it sounds like a good idea, and someone should really give it a try sometime.

Nonviolence has an odd place in Jewish thought because as a practical matter it is the ethic Jews have had to live with for most of Jewish history. Rabbinic Judaism really soured on violence in part because successive exiles and persecutions were the result of Jews taking up arms. And then since then, well, you surely know Freud and the cap in the mud story - he watched his dad get his hat thrown in the mud, and do nothing, and felt rage.

I think about this a lot with, say, the Civil Rights movement. The only way that many white Americans could accept an end to racial injustice was when Black people literally suffered torture rather than fight back. But MLK understood that this was putting an enormous and unjust burden on Black America. Of course you want to fight back. It ( ... )

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