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What We Talk About (And Don’t Talk About) When We Talk About (And Don’t Talk About) antisemitism and Israel - 5

Posted by Richard Jeffrey Newman | March 1st, 2009

"Alas" Posts In This Series

  • What We Talk About (And Don’t Talk About) When We Talk About (And Don’t Talk About) antisemitism and Israel - 1
  • What We Talk About (And Don’t Talk About) When We Talk About (And Don’t Talk About) antisemitism and Israel - 2
  • What We Talk About (And Don’t Talk About) When We Talk About (And Don’t Talk About) antisemitism and Israel - 3
  • What We Talk About (And Don’t Talk About) When We Talk About (And Don’t Talk About) antisemitism and Israel - 4
  • What We Talk About (And Don’t Talk About) When We Talk About (And Don’t Talk About) antisemitism and Israel - 5

    • | This entry was posted by Richard Jeffrey Newman and is filed under Anti-Semitism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

    15 Responses to “What We Talk About (And Don’t Talk About) When We Talk About (And Don’t Talk About) antisemitism and Israel - 5”

    1. chingona Writes:
      March 1st, 2009 at 3:08 pm

      Thank you for this post and entire series.

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    2. iamefromiami Writes:
      March 1st, 2009 at 3:45 pm

      I don’t understand how any Jew, can still see Israel as a safe haven (unless they are religious and believe living in Israel is THE prerequisite for truly performing the mitvots per Rambam ). Israel is surrounded by nations that are not exactly that friendly . Amadinijad expressed a desire to see Israel no longer in existence. Maybe he just meant it should become Muslim Palestine but meanwhile Iran is getting nukes. Then there’s the existential threat from the inside via the various acts of legitimate resistance violent and non-violent. Plus condemnation coming from Venezuela S. Africa and basically worldwide. Pakistan has nukes and is merging Sharia law with Afghanistan . What safe haven? More like ground zero, more like THE MOST hated Nation on the planet bar none. The secular Zionist dream of creating a safe haven? Done. I think it was Natan Sharansky who said that Israel is the Jew of the world. Somewhere else I heard Israel referred to as the Warsaw Ghetto of the world. I think it was Amadinijad who commented on how conveniently all the Jews are gathering in one easily targeted space. Practically speaking if this anti-Semitism continues to gain speed and your concerned about safety, consider heading for the hills. Costa Rica is nice. Get out from under the radar, learn organic farming, and other survivalist skills.

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    3. Ampersand Writes:
      March 1st, 2009 at 4:12 pm

      As Chinonga said, thank you for the post and for the entire series — I’ve enjoyed and reread these pieces, and have thought about them a lot, even though I haven’t had much to say about them in comments.

      Incidentally, I was shown that same film — or one very much like it — when I was a kid in Hebrew school.

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    4. David Schraub Writes:
      March 1st, 2009 at 6:57 pm

      Ditto on Amp and Chinonga. Also, did you mean Uganda where you wrote Madagascar, or was that another option I never knew of?

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    5. Richard Jeffrey Newman Writes:
      March 1st, 2009 at 7:22 pm

      David, Amp, chingona:

      Thanks for the kind words. David, I meant Madagascar, because I think–though my memory might be wrong on this–that both Madagascar and Uganda were considered. I could be wrong, though.

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    6. David Schraub Writes:
      March 1st, 2009 at 7:37 pm

      You could be right, I’ve just never heard of it, which is hardly exhaustive of anything.

      Personally, I wish the Jewish Autonomous Oblast would get more love.

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    7. Richard Jeffrey Newman Writes:
      March 1st, 2009 at 8:07 pm

      Now that’s one I never heard of. Thanks.

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    8. chingona Writes:
      March 1st, 2009 at 11:44 pm

      Despite the initial willingness of the Zionist movement to consider a Jewish state in Madagascar, for example–and leaving aside the obvious reality that Madagascar was not uninhabited at the time–how could any Jewish nationalistic reading of Jewish history and tradition not have eventually lead the Zionists to conclude that the Jewish homeland they were pursuing had to be founded in the Middle East?

      South America is littered with the remnants of various utopian misadventures from the 19th century. Many of them were not even “failures” in the sense that the descendants of the founders live to this day in culturally coherent and economically successful communities, some of which have a fair degree of autonomy from the central government.

      If the Zionist project hadn’t focused so quickly and so intently on settling Palestine, it may well have ended up like one of those South American colonies. I can picture them quite clearly. There would be a cluster of Hebrew-speaking farming communities, in the middle of the jungle or plopped down on the Patagonian steppe. The residents would have a certain kibbutznik way about them. But that would be it. It would be just this weird anomalous thing in the middle of something else.

      If it’s not too trivial a question to ask after a post like this, does anyone know of any fictional treatments of this alternative history? And if it is too trivial, I blame David for bringing up the Autonomous Oblast (which I had never even heard about before).

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    9. Richard Jeffrey Newman Writes:
      March 2nd, 2009 at 5:18 am

      Oh man, I wish I could remember more about this, but I know that there is a book out there about a Jewish enclave living somewhere in the rain forests–that may not be right–of South America. I want to say it’s in Paraguay, but it might be Peru. I remember when I saw the book thinking I wanted to get it, but I never did. And there was also, interestingly enough, pretty recently a recording made of music by the Jews of Uganda.

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    10. chingona Writes:
      March 2nd, 2009 at 7:55 am

      Paraguay would make sense for the setting. Indeed, if I were to attempt it, I would be quite tempted to put it in Paraguay because there are an inordinate number of such colonies there, successful and failed. You would have quite a bit of historical information to draw on in developing your fictional colony. (As an aside, one of the more famous failed colonies in Paraguay was started by Nietzsche’s antisemitic sister and was based on her understanding of his ideas.)

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    11. Lara Writes:
      March 2nd, 2009 at 8:05 am

      There’s also a recent novel by Michael Chabon called The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, which is set in an alternate universe where a Jewish settlement was set up in Alaska - apparently it’s based on a real, although never seriously acted-upon, proposal from the 1940s.

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    12. chingona Writes:
      March 2nd, 2009 at 9:53 am

      Richard, could it be Barrio Palestina by Susana Gertopan? Poking around the Internet, I found a description of this book by a Jewish Paraguayan author that sounds like what you were describing.

      Edit: Regarding the Jews of Uganda, a few years back I came across a coffee table book in a used book store that was about the Jews of Uganda. The book was supposed to include a CD, but it wasn’t with the book, and both the book and the CD were by-products of a documentary film project. These Jews were black African converts, though, not European transplants. They were the descendants of a group of a families that converted together around the turn of the last century, though I cannot recall the circumstances under which they converted/how they came into contact with Judaism.

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    13. iamefromiami Writes:
      March 2nd, 2009 at 10:50 am

      Jewish Autonomous Oblast would be a nice name for a band

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    14. Richard Jeffrey Newman Writes:
      March 2nd, 2009 at 11:03 am

      chingona: The cover of the book you linked to is not the one I remember, but that doesn’t mean it’s not the same book. The one I remember was in English and so the cover would probably have been different even if they are the same book.

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    15. chingona Writes:
      March 2nd, 2009 at 12:50 pm

      I’m thinking it’s a different book, then. I can’t find any indication any of her work is available in English.

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