[Oxymoron]

The story was written by a bunch of Jewish guys at Hebrew University in Israel. You need to get your facts straight before posting.

Right because Harvard gets behind any ol book.

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/BENHIX.html

History of the Jewish People presents a total vision of Jewish experiences and achievements--religious, political, social, and economic--in both the land of Israel and the diaspora throughout the ages. It has been acclaimed as the most comprehensive and penetrating work yet to have appeared in its field.

Six distinguished scholars at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, have set forth here for the first time the authentic story of the Jewish past that is relevant to the Jewish present. Special attention is paid to the significant historical sources that have come to light in the past decades, to the findings of archaeological research, and to source materials in Jewish studies such as talmudic literature--sources that have too often been ignored by historians.

[Scaramouche]

So now you've gone from claiming HUP wrote it to claiming it's awesome because HUP published it and is very selective? Maybe you should stick to something you know about, rather than bringing up these (arguements the poster finds to be of poor quality).

Stupid posts have been cut from thread. Be mature gentlemen - SD

[Sephardi]

QatzelOK said:

It was referring to the Palestinians, not the European superjews who ran Royal Finances for many centuries of suffering and backwardness.

Example of non-existent biblical text: "And Moses said to the Rothschilds: You must buy off all media so that your message will ring out, and all will be yours to take because of this constructed alternative reality."

1) I'm Sephardic Jewish, which means I come strait from the Jewish tribes, and I'm not Ashkenazi/European.

2) Dont blaim Jews for being so successful. Just because we are successful and you couldn't figure out how to keep your camel off your grass field (LOL).

3) Dont attack Judaism. Name another religion that was created in 1500 BC and still exists?

Are you FUCKIN KIDDING ME? I dont know if you are just talking about Ashkenazic Jews but Sephardics like me have been thrown around like we were pieces of meat. Do you even know the history of the Sephardis? Jews were practiced on during the Crusades. Jews were forced to convert if they had high positions (lawyer doctor etc). Meanwhile in India muslims keep trying to find ways to torture Hindus and Christians were launching attacks against women and Jews in Europe (especially in Spain).

[Rabble Rouser]

Name another religion that was created in 1500 BC and still exists?

Hinduism is older than that and still exists.

[QatzelOk]

The longevity of a religion isn't necessarily a sign of its usefulness. Why didn't these people change? Why are they still living in such an archaic paradigm?

Didn't Jesus exist to drag the Jews out of their failed paradigm?

And also, the success of a few doesn't justify the failure of many in a particular paradigm. Under Haiti's old government style, there were a few incredibly rich and successful people. Did their success justify that particular model?

Sephardics like me have been thrown around like we were pieces of meat

I know. That's why I qualify my post with "European superjews." This refers to upper middle class Azkenazis and the financiers who helped finance their upper middle class "causes."

[Sephardi]

QatzelOK said:

I know. That's why I qualify my post with "European superjews." This refers to upper middle class Azkenazis and the financiers who helped finance their upper middle class "causes."

Most Ashkenazi's weren't like this.
My mom is half Ashkenazi. That half is from my grandfather. He grew up in the slums, poor, while the Nazis invaded Ukraine. He ran down to Uzbekistan with most of his family (the rest were dead or missing) for safety. His family grew up without shit under communism, until he grew older, and got a little bit more money than the average communist citizens since he was a Head Baker in the capital city of Tashkent. He lives here with his other daughter (in America) with her husband and family. I see him a lot. He had a huge history of alcoholism because of his past.

My mom herself, who is half ashkenazi, whenever I talk about politics and religion she always says: "Everybody should just get along. War is meaningless to have people dieing like this". My mother is a nurse and works hours for some working class wage (I'm a teenager). She makes around $45,000 before taxes as a Medical Nurse (a step below registered nurse). She keeps telling me how everybody is equal and we should share land with muslims aslong as they dont bomb us. I'm like "WTF"?

And to the whole "SuperJew" statement, my dad is a Middle Eastern Bukharian Sephardic Jew, who grew up poor with his family. When he finished school, and his mother died, he went to college and eventually started a business in the Soviet Union (with its fake communism) and became kind of rich. He had to come to America because of Muslims threatning to kill everybody who doesn't convert to Islam in Uzbekistan (search that up in the History of Uzbekistan in Wikipedia or preferably the history of the bukharians). He was a working-class Assistant-Manager of the Shipping Department in this small business, which was owned by "religious Jews" that shut it down and claimed Bankrupcy when their business was doing GREAT. This shows the difference between those guys and my mom's family. I'm 25% Ashkenazic now, and not sad at all, but proud. Stop taking people and generalizing them. If this was true then you would be a terrorist.

Edit: Sorry for kind of going off and telling my families life story.

[Oxymoron]

Interesting story my Mom is from Tashkent as well, her family also fled there during the war.




Are Bukharians Sephardic? I always thought you guys were a sepate grouping.

[Sephardi]

Bukharians can be either Sephardic or seperate. The Bukharians who have lived in that area for around 2000 years are Bukharians but Sephardic Bukharians are the people who get expelled from Spain 500 years ago and wandered over to Central Asia.

[Bella]

All the Bukharians I know consider themselves Russians

[Sephardi]

We are Jewish first. And we call ourselves Russian because that is our language, culture, and such. Bukharian Sephardics have the most mixed culture on the planet. It mixes Spanish, Arabic, Jewish and Russian culture into one. One big giant lulz.

[Order]

Is anybody genuinely suprised that Jewish nationalism is the usual case of invented tradition etc. Is there any nationalism that is not? Please....

[QatzelOk]

Is anybody genuinely suprised that Jewish nationalism is the usual case of invented tradition etc. Is there any nationalism that is not? Please....

Yes, but Jewish nationalism is radically different than most nationalities for two reasons: it includes a religious paradigm. and it has a biological/scientific/metaphysical text that has been grafted onto it (high IQ, chosen by God, birthright).

Other nationalities don't have the rich propaganda potential of "Jewish." The word, just like the concept, has so many layers of significance built, over time, by text.

[Oxymoron]

Yes, but gay pride is radically different than most pride for two reasons: it includes a cultural paradigm. and it has a biological/scientific/metaphysical text that has been grafted onto it (fashion sence, funny accent,decorating).

Other grooups don't have the rich propaganda potential of "Gay." The word, just like the concept, has so many layers of significance built, over time, by text.

[QatzelOk]

Other grooups don't have the rich propaganda potential of "Gay."

Sure they do.

Gays have no biological link to one another. In fact, the ring of iron that links gay men together is probably no stronger than the social bond between straight men.

The way you worship hetero icons like Steven Segal is more significant than gay pride.

Though your attempt to marginalize gays fits well into the way Jewish texts often try to do the same with non-Jews - accusing them all of being Nazis until proven otherwise.

[Oxymoron]

Gays have no biological link to one another.

Oh so there is no genetics behind being Gay?

In fact, the ring of iron that links gay men together is probably no stronger than the social bond between straight men.

So you are saying Gay marriage is a farce?

The way you worship hetero icons like Steven Segal is more significant than gay pride.

I care little for Segal post 1989.

Though your attempt to marginalize gays fits well into the way Jewish texts often try to do the same with non-Jews - accusing them all of being Nazis until proven otherwise.

Well you do a good job of villinazing Jews so I dont buy your victimhood persona.

[Bella]

It mixes Spanish, Arabic, Jewish and Russian culture into one. One big giant lulz.

Do Sephardic Bukharians speak Bukhari or only Russian? I guess I know more Mizrahi Bukharians since their culture is more of a Central Asian/Tajik culture along with Jewish versus Spanish or Arabic.

[QatzelOk]

Other grooups don't have the rich propaganda potential of "Gay." The word, just like the concept, has so many layers of significance built, over time, by text.

Yes, Oxymoron. Gay and Jewish are exactly the same. Gays should really start starting wars to get a gay country off the ground. But first, who's going to write all that supergay fiction? Who is going to "find" the stone tablets that give the gays their own continent?

[Oxymoron]

But first, who's going to write all that supergay fiction?

Like Will and Grace?

[Ideational Ontarian]

Couldn't this be solved by comparing the DNA of European and Arab Jews and DNA from the bones of ancient Israeli Jews? National Geographic did this a while ago to prove that modern Lebanese descended from the Phoenicians. I also so an episode of "the Nature of Things" which did this with a people of the Baja Peninsula.

Really though, this has no significance politically. That present situation is what we have and we have to deal with it. Academically the truth is what we strive for but if you try to apply this politically it just fuels the fire.

[Anothroskon]

All identities are indeed invented. But invented out of what? Why aren't the Jews considering themselves descendants of the Han Chinese say? So there are constraints. Delineating them will give us the answer. It was not inescapable that modern Jews would end up as they are, but it was not by chance either. There was a conflict between the westernizers who wanted to translate the ideas of the Enlightenment into the jewish world of ideas (Haskalah: the European Jewish Enlightenment) and the nativists. In the end the westernizers won and Zionism and the modern self-image of the Jews was born.

That is not in essence contradictory to Sand's argument except when viewed anachronistically through the perspective of modern Jewish nationalism. A medieval Jew would not be as concerned about his bloodline and ethnic descent as about his faith.

This is an excerpt from nationalism expert and LSE professor Anthony Smith's book "Myths and Memories of the Nation". Elsewhere I have posted the relevant excerpt for the Greeks which is very similar. Identities change and are reformed, but they change out of something and are thus constrained in their evolution.

Anthony D. Smith Myths and Memories of the Nation, pp.80-83, Oxford University Press, 1999, ISBN 0198295340

As with the Greeks, a myth of descent was preserved among the Jews, enshrined in their sacred traditions. It traced Jewish origins to the land of Canaan, whither Abram of Ur had wandered at God’s command; it preserved the memory of collective slavery and deliverance from Egypt, a return to Canaan under Moses, the promulgation of a divine Law, and the flowering of a golden age under David and Solomon. Thereafter, despite the efforts of Temple priests, the land was divided, Israel carried into Assyrian captivity and oblivion, and Judah ultimately also deported for its sins to Babylon. The myth suggested a second renaissance after the return to Jerusalem, another war of liberation under the Maccabees and a final decline and captivity under the Romans in A.I). 70 (Baron 1960: ch. 7; >4oth 1960).

Thereafter, a bifurcation appears. The traditional interpretation, advanced by most rabbis, traced the line of descent through Talmudic Judaism to the medieval and Polish (Ashkenazi) rabbis; likewise, they traced the descent of their Fast European communities in the Diaspora through the fleeing German medieval communities back to those late Roman exiles in Gaul and Germany. On the other hand, during the early nineteenth century the Jewish enlightenment intellectuals (Maskilim) tended to omit the medieval genealogical links and extol the cultural renaissance of Iberian Jewry, in which it saw a later reflection of that of ancient Israel and Judah in its own land (cf. Greenberg 1944: vol. L chs. 2—3; Fiscnstcin-Barzilay 1959). Thus, the nineteenth-century conflict between rabbis and enlighteners, between a ‘western’ and ‘eastern’ outlook in Jewry was guided and given meaning by two contrasting myths of descent, one more genealogical in character, the other more cultural and ideological in intent.

Again, as in the case of Greece, it was the secular and more ideological of these images that provided the main stimulus to territorial innovation and social regeneration. During the epoch of the Berlin and Galilean enlightenment in the early nineteenth century the Davidic kingdom and the Mosaic liberation assumed the status of the golden age for thinkers and novelists alike; it was re-education in that (more secular) image that was to be the key to national regeneration (Meyer 1967; Eisdllstein-Barzilay 1959a).Again, the parallel with Korais is illuminating; both in matters of education and language reforms the Jewish and Greek intelligentsia pursued similar courses sustained by their interpretations of history especially the myth of origins and descent. In this development, they received unexpected support from the wealthier sections of Western Jewry, whose Reform Judaism likewise sought to return to ‘purer’ forms and dispense with rabbinic accretions (Plaut 1963; Meyer 1967); in this they followed the ‘evolutionary’ thrust of philosophers and historians like Zunz, Graetz, Krochmal and Samuel I.uzzatto, who began to forge the notion of a ‘Jewish community’ divorced from ‘Judaism that is, of an ethnic community one of whose creative expressions is the Jewish religion (Katz 1958; Dinur 1*9). Such a separation was an essential precondition of any political movement of the Jewish people1 including the Zionism of Moses Hess and, later, Leo Pinsker; in this context Hess’ revolutionary concern with the liberation of the Exodus and with the ‘Sabbath of History’ to be achieved by a mass return to Jerusalem, becomes a natural extension of the ‘ideological’ myth propounded by the Jewish intelligentsia which he had temporarily forsaken for world socialism (Hess 1958).

Since that time, two currents have been at work within Zionism: a strictly secular myth, at once territorial and liberal, such as Herzl and Nordau embraced; and a more socio-cultural myth, based upon a return to the Zion of traditional hopes of which Achad Ha’am and Russian Jewry were the exponents (Vital 1975: chs. 6—7, 9—10). These two currents reflected differing concerns and the demographic split in European Jewry: on the one hand, a ‘Western’ outlook (based upon western European Jewry) whose object was to save individual Jews in a ‘homeland’ of their own, be it in Uganda, Argentina, or any politically convenient territory as Zangwill argued; on the other, an ‘Eastern’ concern with ‘Jewishness’ as well as Jews, and therefore, a commitment to Palestine as the only ‘homeland’ capable of regenerating a distorted’ Jewish Diaspora into a true nation (Halpern 1961:4—5; lkribcrg 1960, Introduction). TI the Western vision was attuned to the needs of wealthy, educated elites in process of assimilation (albeit chequered), the Eastern ideal spoke to and for the Jewish masses of Russia and Poland.

Within the latter ideal, however, two historcist myths were at work. The one was a traditional, religious myth o Jewish descent which we have traced; it was represented by a variety of Orthodox Zionists from Mohdever and Kaltschcr to Rabbi Avraham Kook. (llcrtzbcrg 1960: Pt. Vii) Its focus is the continuity of Israel. It refuses to reject the millennial Diaspora, or the divinely-ordained two thousand year exile that links ancient Israel with its modern rebirth. It even seeks to reinould the modern state into a quasi-theocracy, using the medieval Diaspora canons of Orthodox Judaism; under the 13e&n government, and especially through the vanguard Gush Ernunim movement, this myth has succeeded in moving and guiding both territorial policy in the West Bank and social and cultural programmes of