Reposting from a Tumblr argument about how “leftists” only accept nonreligious Jews.

[feotakahari]

And I’m blocked now. Not surprising, I suppose.

Honestly, I don’t have nearly as much against Judaism as I do against some other religions. A lot of the things Jewish writers say seem to me like good things, or at least unobjectionable. I just don’t like the two-step between “it’s a religion” and “if you criticize it, you’re racist.” I could not care less who your mother was. It’s philosophy I argue about, not anything to do with “blood,” and I hate to see someone dodge out of the way so their philosophy can’t be criticized.

(There’s this one Jewish blogger I read sometimes who refers to Jesus as “Oily Josh” and openly hates him. I think every creed should be vulnerable to that level of criticism, and if you hate my saying that, I applaud you.)

Comments

[entanglingbriars]

Judaism isn't a religion in the way that Christianity, and only Christianity, is. The word "religion" comes to us through the filter of Christianity, but the collection of entities it refers to have almost nothing universally in common. In the case of Judaism, it is both an ethnicity and a system of beliefs and practices. And historically people criticizing one of those two aspects of Judaism have also criticized the other; one of the reason that Jews don't see our beliefs and practices as separate from our ethnicity is that our persecutors haven't. They've seen as evil both because we believe things they think are evil and because we are innately evil by nature.

It's definitely possible to criticize the beliefs and practices of Judaism without being racist, but if you're not Jewish it's extremely difficult to do so, because Judaism is constructed both internally and externally as both/and at all times.

[feotakahari]

I’m really struggling with how to respond to this. A few thoughts I want to get out of the way:

1): There are people who are not ethnically Jewish, but join the Jewish . . . I don’t know what word to use instead of religion. The Jewish practice. There are also people who say that those people aren’t really Jewish. I maintain that the second group is, and must be, wrong.

2): Regardless of the word “religion,” many of the people I have encountered who follow pagan or traditional belief systems have a certain framework in common with Christians under which their beliefs can be discussed. Same for Hindus and Muslims. This is NOT true for Buddhists, but that’s a separate issue for now. As for Jewish people . . . Sometimes yes, sometimes no?

3): It’s fair to point out that two people who identify as Jewish can have such wildly different beliefs as to be barely comparable. But I don’t think you, personally, are off in nowhere land with the Buddhists. I mean, that “And Aaron Was Silent” post isn’t that far from something C.S. Lewis would have written. I can engage with it in the same way I would engage with a Christian post.

4): I don’t have a very high opinion of any form of philosophy, theology, or metaphysics other than ethics. Which I realize is an open challenge, given that you write about metaphysics, but I’m not sure how else to word it. The only respect in which I care about a belief system is how it intersects with ethics, either by prescription or by violation. So my attitude will always come down to things like “giving babies brain damage is not ethical”: https://www.newsweek.com/rabbi-infant-penis-herpes-1460790 (I’m cherry-picking because like I said, I don’t actually have much to criticize about Judaism.)

I’m not sure where else to go from here.

[entanglingbriars]

The question of who is and isn't a Jew is enormously complicated and has been since at least the end of captivity in Babylon. But wrt conversion, it's not really an accurate term, "adoption" would be closer to what it means for someone to "convert" to Judaism.

You're probably going to be fine criticizing the ethics of giving babies herpies. Where it gets a bit more complicated is the ethics of circumcision more generally or of the nature of kosher slaughter. It's very difficult to separate condemnation of those practices from condemnation of the Jewish people for political reasons that are entirely separate from an ethical consideration.

[feotakahari]

I don’t have a position on circumcision, but surely there are penis-owning people who have Jewish ancestors and aren’t circumcised. You could say it’s a matter of Jewish culture instead, but this is a culture hateblog. I grew up learning all the reasons American culture is morally bankrupt, and I refuse to believe there exists a culture less deserving of scorn.

Edit: a lot of this comes from my whole “if it’s good for fathers to beat their sons, then it’s good for sons to beat their fathers” thing. I don’t like the idea of putting any one group in a higher position than others. The ways in which I’m respectful at all are the ways in which I think everyone should be respected.