Once again your courage to say what no one else will say fills me with awe and pride. I must admit, the coverage of what is happening in the Middle East and now worldwide has just exhausted and depressed me. I look to your column for both enlightenment and renewal of strength. It seems everyone has an opinion but few have depth and breadth of actual knowledge of history. Jews and Israel have the worst PR in history which certainly gives the lie to us controlling the media. I fear we are in a no win situation. We need to end Hamas but the spoils of victory will be an ugly mess in Gaza, a government in Israel in disarray and a world that will of course expect Israel to behave far more generously than any other nation would be towards its neighbors. This will be a long term quagmire with no easy out.
Isn't it amazing! We run the banks. We run Wall Street. We run Hollywood. We run Madison Avenue. We have space lasers!! But somehow we cannot communicate.
Wow. Powerful. There are Jewish families right now being broken because they spent fortunes sending their brilliant kids off to the best colleges, and those same brilliant Jewish kids have become stupid. They have become Israel hating Jews.
As Jewish parents it is our full responsibility to vet where our kids want to attend. My youngest is a sophomore now. I did not allow him to even apply to any school that I felt did not respond appropriately to antisemitism on campus and/or had an active SJP.
I think this is the way to do it. My kids are young, but in a few years, we will be looking at schools that support their Jewish students, not vilify them and radicalize the non-Jewish students.
And stay strong. There might be schools your kids want to apply to that are known for their antisemitism. Don’t even let them apply. Not one cent of my money was going to support them.
Wasn't sure how, or even if, to respond to this brilliant piece until the "Jews for Palestine" protesting at the White House showed me the way. Thanks, guys, I mean it. Where would we be without you? Better off, sure, but comedically poorer. Did you try joining forces with the "Palestinians for Israel"? Or were their "Gas the Jews!" chants a distraction from your own? You do know that Hamas slits the throats of the Zionists and anti-Zionists alike, don't you? You will, soon enough.
Gaza hasn't been an "open-air prison" since the last Israeli soldier, and every other iota of a Jew, left 18 years ago (and not even then). Open-air sewer, yes; but that'll happen when you convert waste pipes to rocket launchers. Leave it to Gaza Arabs to look at miles of priceless Mediterranean coastline and think "toilet". Oh, and do the Jewish hostages held for ransom--payable in death, cash, or freed terrorist prisoners--have open-air accommodations? Most of Gaza is underground, where open air is thinnish, and where I expect they're being held. You know how Egypt dealt with smuggling tunnels under its border? Flooded them, and anyone inside them, with seawater. Perhaps not on par with building the pyramids, but an engineering marvel of its own. Hell on the aquifer, however. And on hostages.
You Js for P don't have to worry about your arrest records or charges of insurrection. The Jan 6-ers were protesting for Trump; your lot for the Final Solution. Nothing like as bad.
The only good thing about the situation in Gaza is that all of a sudden people have discovered that, gee, Egypt has a great big wall on their border and closely restricts egress to and from Gaza and for exactly the same reason as Israel - bat-shit crazy terrorists. Funny how Egypt is never called out for being "apartheid" or creating an "open air prison".
Funny how the fact that Egypt closes its border tight and refuses to accept any Gazan refugees is reiterated every single time Gaza has attempted to fulfill their sick and depraved agenda, yet the media coverage feigns surprise and conveniently forgets that fact and act like it's not par for the course for Egypt. Every. Single. Time. Selective memory and blinders tightly affixed is rampant when it comes to coverage of Gaza and Palestinians. Yet centuries old libellous lies and tropes about the Jewish people and more recently Israel's right to exist never are.
King Wooly Bully of Jordan don't want no Gazans either. What, do they steal the towels when they visit? Leave the toilet seat up? It's almost like the people who know the Arab occupiers of Gaza, Judea, and Samaria aren't telling us something about them. He ain't heavy--but he ain't my brother.
True dat! It's like the obnoxious drunk relative that everyone insists must be invited to the wedding because they're "family" but who no one wants staying with them because they'll start arguments, trash the place and puke on the carpet.
I have a few friends who are cool Jews. I just can’t be friends with them anymore. We (the non cool Jews) aren’t morons, we know there are abhorrent living conditions on ‘both sides’ BUT Israel is fighting for her life today. So I’m sorry, I can’t do this with them anymore.
“The cool girl” monologue from Gone Girl.” She makes no demands and doesn’t care if you call. Etc.. I can’t remember the rest. But same idea. I don’t know if we had cool Jews in America when I was growing up. I did have a Hollywood agent who rightly told me to change my last name if I wanted to work. She said it regretfully but realistically. We had “hiding in plain sight Jews.” Like Larry David who was told Seinfeld had too many Jewish characters so he changed Elaine’s and George’s last names and then went right on writing them culturally Jewish. People argue with me about Elaine and George—they’re not Jewish! Look at their last names! I slap my forehead. Look at their timing. Look at their rhythm. Of course they are Jewish. As are the actors who play them. (Dreyfuss of the Dreyfuss affair, yes that Dreyfuss!) you want our humor to brighten your day but you don’t want to give us credit for it. Anyway, I don’t think we had cool Jews. My mother was an iconoclast through and through and scarred from a childhood of living among gentiles on the Upper East Side. She wanted me to embrace what the Jews had done in America: become “American” above all else but secretly use their Jewish culture and heritage to make great works of art. Sondheim, Gershwin, rodgers and Hammerstein, etc… I internalized this dissonant way of understanding my Jewishness.
Jews are the original oppressed minority. Jews were among the earliest documented indigenous people to be forcibly removed from their ancestorial lands. We need better PR.
I'm sure that there were a lot of Germans who thought that they were the "cool Jews" too. Who, us? We're educated. We're cultured. We like the same things you do, have the same views that you do. We're not like those "other Jews" in the black clothes and weird side locks. We're just like you. Yea, and how did that work out? It was the people who saw themselves as the elite who were among the first to go. The universities purged their Jewish staff early on. It's like the Communists. The intellectual fellow travelers who helped them succeed are the first against the wall in front of the firing squads. I'm talking to you, lesbian Intersectional Studies professor in the artfully arranged keffiyeh. Have any of them even bothered to read the charter of Hamas or any of these other terrorist groups that they insist upon ennobling as some sort of "warriors against colonial oppression"? And they call everyone else "Nazis".
My world continues to "shrink". I have eliminated from my life or defriended/unfollowed even more self-hating Jews, let alone their anti-Semitic benefactors.
Name the University ones, professors and students all adults, trying to earn progressive chic points for the CV from Brooklyn to Berkeley. They won't care, it's so cool.
I know you know this, but you are in good company: “Uncoolness is Judaism’s brand, going back to the ancient Near East, where everyone else was worshiping a Marvel Cinematic Universe of sexy deities, and the Jews were like the losers in the school cafeteria, praying to their bossy, unsexy invisible God. And over many centuries as a minority in places around the world, Jews have made the choice over and over again to remain uncomfortable: to distinguish themselves from their neighbors in any number of ways, to cling to those distinctions and, over the course of their lives, to learn and understand what those distinctions really mean. They made that choice even when they had easier options, and even when it meant risking their lives.
…The only way people learn and change is by being uncomfortable, by choosing to put themselves into situations that push them to the very edge of what they think they understand.” Dara Horn
In pre Christian times there were quite a few non Jews who were adherents of the Jewish faith precisely because they also believed in one G-d. They would worship and practice the faith alongside their Jewish brethren. Zoroastrians were also monotheistic. There were some non Jewish people who also didn't believe in what you brilliantly called the pagan "Marvel Cinematic Universe of sexy deities".
That wasn’t my turn of phrase. As indicated by the quotation marks, most of the post was a quote from Dara Horn (from remarks she delivered to the 18 graduating Jewish cadets of the West Point class of 2023, as printed in Tablet magazine)
Your voice, your words, your powerful and important writing and most of all your courage - for all of that, thank you! We need you. Oh - and I’m now obsessed with this man in London!
This post hit home more than any others, because I have so many family members and friends in the "Cool Jews" camp. I have tried psychoanalyzing them, deciding that their rejection of Judaism, the Jewish people and the Jewish state comes down to a kind of bending to the pressure of the liberal, secular Christian societies we exist within the US and Europe, to essentially erase ourselves. Why won't those stupid Jews just assimilate or die, the "Cool Jews" ask, because they have annihilated a part of themselves.
We cannot save them. They can call for our blood, alongside those actually killing us, but they will be attacked by those people eventually as well. It happens every time. And it will be too late by then. In the meantime, we Jews who refuse to assimilate or die must stand together as one people, a powerful people. And I believe we do and we are.
I wrote about this as well. Thanks for all your writing this week. I became a paying subscriber because I know this has not been easy for you, professionally!
Thank you Eve, for Blacklisted. Just signed up with a paid subscription. Something that I have been meaning to do for a while now. Just saw Rolling Stone's October 15 2023 "Inside Story" on the massacre at the Supernova music festival. They called Hamas ..."fighters", "militants", and ... "soldiers". Wait, what did you call them?! Good for RS to feature this article, but at the same time the article obscures and whitewashes the context. Your writing is inspired and courageous. Thank you.
We used to call the cool Jews the asajews because they’d always say as a Jew when the spew their anti Jewish rhetoric.
oh yes - they're still asajews
Once again your courage to say what no one else will say fills me with awe and pride. I must admit, the coverage of what is happening in the Middle East and now worldwide has just exhausted and depressed me. I look to your column for both enlightenment and renewal of strength. It seems everyone has an opinion but few have depth and breadth of actual knowledge of history. Jews and Israel have the worst PR in history which certainly gives the lie to us controlling the media. I fear we are in a no win situation. We need to end Hamas but the spoils of victory will be an ugly mess in Gaza, a government in Israel in disarray and a world that will of course expect Israel to behave far more generously than any other nation would be towards its neighbors. This will be a long term quagmire with no easy out.
Israel's PR is truly shite, you're right.
Isn't it amazing! We run the banks. We run Wall Street. We run Hollywood. We run Madison Avenue. We have space lasers!! But somehow we cannot communicate.
Wow. Powerful. There are Jewish families right now being broken because they spent fortunes sending their brilliant kids off to the best colleges, and those same brilliant Jewish kids have become stupid. They have become Israel hating Jews.
As Jewish parents it is our full responsibility to vet where our kids want to attend. My youngest is a sophomore now. I did not allow him to even apply to any school that I felt did not respond appropriately to antisemitism on campus and/or had an active SJP.
I think this is the way to do it. My kids are young, but in a few years, we will be looking at schools that support their Jewish students, not vilify them and radicalize the non-Jewish students.
And stay strong. There might be schools your kids want to apply to that are known for their antisemitism. Don’t even let them apply. Not one cent of my money was going to support them.
Wasn't sure how, or even if, to respond to this brilliant piece until the "Jews for Palestine" protesting at the White House showed me the way. Thanks, guys, I mean it. Where would we be without you? Better off, sure, but comedically poorer. Did you try joining forces with the "Palestinians for Israel"? Or were their "Gas the Jews!" chants a distraction from your own? You do know that Hamas slits the throats of the Zionists and anti-Zionists alike, don't you? You will, soon enough.
Gaza hasn't been an "open-air prison" since the last Israeli soldier, and every other iota of a Jew, left 18 years ago (and not even then). Open-air sewer, yes; but that'll happen when you convert waste pipes to rocket launchers. Leave it to Gaza Arabs to look at miles of priceless Mediterranean coastline and think "toilet". Oh, and do the Jewish hostages held for ransom--payable in death, cash, or freed terrorist prisoners--have open-air accommodations? Most of Gaza is underground, where open air is thinnish, and where I expect they're being held. You know how Egypt dealt with smuggling tunnels under its border? Flooded them, and anyone inside them, with seawater. Perhaps not on par with building the pyramids, but an engineering marvel of its own. Hell on the aquifer, however. And on hostages.
You Js for P don't have to worry about your arrest records or charges of insurrection. The Jan 6-ers were protesting for Trump; your lot for the Final Solution. Nothing like as bad.
The only good thing about the situation in Gaza is that all of a sudden people have discovered that, gee, Egypt has a great big wall on their border and closely restricts egress to and from Gaza and for exactly the same reason as Israel - bat-shit crazy terrorists. Funny how Egypt is never called out for being "apartheid" or creating an "open air prison".
mmhmm
Funny how the fact that Egypt closes its border tight and refuses to accept any Gazan refugees is reiterated every single time Gaza has attempted to fulfill their sick and depraved agenda, yet the media coverage feigns surprise and conveniently forgets that fact and act like it's not par for the course for Egypt. Every. Single. Time. Selective memory and blinders tightly affixed is rampant when it comes to coverage of Gaza and Palestinians. Yet centuries old libellous lies and tropes about the Jewish people and more recently Israel's right to exist never are.
King Wooly Bully of Jordan don't want no Gazans either. What, do they steal the towels when they visit? Leave the toilet seat up? It's almost like the people who know the Arab occupiers of Gaza, Judea, and Samaria aren't telling us something about them. He ain't heavy--but he ain't my brother.
True dat! It's like the obnoxious drunk relative that everyone insists must be invited to the wedding because they're "family" but who no one wants staying with them because they'll start arguments, trash the place and puke on the carpet.
Oh Evie, Zionists sure aren't racists or demented repackagers of history, as evidenced by comments like these.
I have a few friends who are cool Jews. I just can’t be friends with them anymore. We (the non cool Jews) aren’t morons, we know there are abhorrent living conditions on ‘both sides’ BUT Israel is fighting for her life today. So I’m sorry, I can’t do this with them anymore.
I was then, and continue to be now, so very grateful for your thoughts, opinions and voice. Thank you❤️
“The cool girl” monologue from Gone Girl.” She makes no demands and doesn’t care if you call. Etc.. I can’t remember the rest. But same idea. I don’t know if we had cool Jews in America when I was growing up. I did have a Hollywood agent who rightly told me to change my last name if I wanted to work. She said it regretfully but realistically. We had “hiding in plain sight Jews.” Like Larry David who was told Seinfeld had too many Jewish characters so he changed Elaine’s and George’s last names and then went right on writing them culturally Jewish. People argue with me about Elaine and George—they’re not Jewish! Look at their last names! I slap my forehead. Look at their timing. Look at their rhythm. Of course they are Jewish. As are the actors who play them. (Dreyfuss of the Dreyfuss affair, yes that Dreyfuss!) you want our humor to brighten your day but you don’t want to give us credit for it. Anyway, I don’t think we had cool Jews. My mother was an iconoclast through and through and scarred from a childhood of living among gentiles on the Upper East Side. She wanted me to embrace what the Jews had done in America: become “American” above all else but secretly use their Jewish culture and heritage to make great works of art. Sondheim, Gershwin, rodgers and Hammerstein, etc… I internalized this dissonant way of understanding my Jewishness.
Jews are the original oppressed minority. Jews were among the earliest documented indigenous people to be forcibly removed from their ancestorial lands. We need better PR.
I'm sure that there were a lot of Germans who thought that they were the "cool Jews" too. Who, us? We're educated. We're cultured. We like the same things you do, have the same views that you do. We're not like those "other Jews" in the black clothes and weird side locks. We're just like you. Yea, and how did that work out? It was the people who saw themselves as the elite who were among the first to go. The universities purged their Jewish staff early on. It's like the Communists. The intellectual fellow travelers who helped them succeed are the first against the wall in front of the firing squads. I'm talking to you, lesbian Intersectional Studies professor in the artfully arranged keffiyeh. Have any of them even bothered to read the charter of Hamas or any of these other terrorist groups that they insist upon ennobling as some sort of "warriors against colonial oppression"? And they call everyone else "Nazis".
To quote someone else’s quip, a keffiyeh is a hipster swastika. There is no difference between far Left and Neo Nazis when it comes to antisemitism.
Have to give credit where it's due for that superb quip. It's from Jim Treacher from Who the Heck is Jim Treacher on Substack.
My world continues to "shrink". I have eliminated from my life or defriended/unfollowed even more self-hating Jews, let alone their anti-Semitic benefactors.
Name the University ones, professors and students all adults, trying to earn progressive chic points for the CV from Brooklyn to Berkeley. They won't care, it's so cool.
I know you know this, but you are in good company: “Uncoolness is Judaism’s brand, going back to the ancient Near East, where everyone else was worshiping a Marvel Cinematic Universe of sexy deities, and the Jews were like the losers in the school cafeteria, praying to their bossy, unsexy invisible God. And over many centuries as a minority in places around the world, Jews have made the choice over and over again to remain uncomfortable: to distinguish themselves from their neighbors in any number of ways, to cling to those distinctions and, over the course of their lives, to learn and understand what those distinctions really mean. They made that choice even when they had easier options, and even when it meant risking their lives.
…The only way people learn and change is by being uncomfortable, by choosing to put themselves into situations that push them to the very edge of what they think they understand.” Dara Horn
In pre Christian times there were quite a few non Jews who were adherents of the Jewish faith precisely because they also believed in one G-d. They would worship and practice the faith alongside their Jewish brethren. Zoroastrians were also monotheistic. There were some non Jewish people who also didn't believe in what you brilliantly called the pagan "Marvel Cinematic Universe of sexy deities".
That wasn’t my turn of phrase. As indicated by the quotation marks, most of the post was a quote from Dara Horn (from remarks she delivered to the 18 graduating Jewish cadets of the West Point class of 2023, as printed in Tablet magazine)
Thank you for sharing these quotes by Dara Horn, Ruth!
Your voice, your words, your powerful and important writing and most of all your courage - for all of that, thank you! We need you. Oh - and I’m now obsessed with this man in London!
I have so much to say to this post I have to sleep first. Thanks EB
This post hit home more than any others, because I have so many family members and friends in the "Cool Jews" camp. I have tried psychoanalyzing them, deciding that their rejection of Judaism, the Jewish people and the Jewish state comes down to a kind of bending to the pressure of the liberal, secular Christian societies we exist within the US and Europe, to essentially erase ourselves. Why won't those stupid Jews just assimilate or die, the "Cool Jews" ask, because they have annihilated a part of themselves.
We cannot save them. They can call for our blood, alongside those actually killing us, but they will be attacked by those people eventually as well. It happens every time. And it will be too late by then. In the meantime, we Jews who refuse to assimilate or die must stand together as one people, a powerful people. And I believe we do and we are.
I wrote about this as well. Thanks for all your writing this week. I became a paying subscriber because I know this has not been easy for you, professionally!
https://open.substack.com/pub/squaringthecircle/p/assimilate-or-die?r=760ku&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
“Sure, just let me try some shrimp first.” Literally spit out my coffee
Thank you Eve, for Blacklisted. Just signed up with a paid subscription. Something that I have been meaning to do for a while now. Just saw Rolling Stone's October 15 2023 "Inside Story" on the massacre at the Supernova music festival. They called Hamas ..."fighters", "militants", and ... "soldiers". Wait, what did you call them?! Good for RS to feature this article, but at the same time the article obscures and whitewashes the context. Your writing is inspired and courageous. Thank you.