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.