Science refutes history??? No way ho-ZAY.

Totally predictably, an NYT article on Jewish genetics has compelled me to jumpstart the fallow blog. My only comment for now is regarding Nicholas Wade's claim that the new studies "refute" Schlomo Sand's argument in The Invention of the Jewish People that the "Jews have no common origin but are a miscellany of people in Europe and Central Asia who converted to Judaism at various times." I'm willing to concede that Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jews are more likely to be genetically related to one another than to their geographical neighbors, but this in no way indicates a direct descent from Ancient Israel. I'm not against the State of Israel as a Jewish State, but it is highly problematic to try to attempt to defend or refute this argument using genetic evidence. There's no way to absolutely distinguish between science, history and politics, but I do wish that people would just give up on claiming that science is "value free" and that it therefore serves as "unbiased" evidence in political-historical arguments. Science has never been value-free and it never will be. This is not to say that all science is politically motivated, but rather that all science has the potential to be politically used and abused... from BOTH sides, ALL sides, in the past, present and surely in the future. 

Why are we still talking about PASSING?

For some reason, this essay fills me with major frustration and nastiness. I won't go into that for the moment, but suffice it to say that the NYTimes Book Review has published a nice little literary essay on racial passing. Perhaps for NYTimes readers this is a new topic, but it is old old old and slightly tired within intellectual/academic/literary circles. Not that there is any problem with old old old... In any case, the essay concludes with the following paragraph:

I don’t hate the real or fictional racial refugees who abandoned the tribe. I can understand the desire not to have your life conscripted by race. What I can’t understand is the other side of passing, the road more rarely traveled. From my perspective, it seems many white Americans are entranced by blackness and drool over how exciting and dangerous and sexy blacks seem. So my question is: Why aren’t more white people trying to pass as black?

The problem with this paragraph is an assumption that we know who's "really" white and who's "really" black. This was the assumption of the last century. But come on, if people have one (visibly) black and one (visibly) white parent, why do we continue to speak about "passing" as white OR black? Shouldn't we be talking about... oh I don't know... something else... Inhabiting black or white roles? Stereotypes and categories? Embracing tics or fashions or lingo or pretensions? Or rejecting parts of one's family? While embracing others...

News (for now)

It's been a long while. Lots of news that I could report, but instead, a few quick impressions from the land that so many peoples call holy, including the people that some people call Jews. During my first week here, I had the luck to meet two very interesting Jews. 

First, I met a nice legless Japanese man who informed me that the Japanese people are one of the lost tribes. Yoshi, as he is now called, is trying to make aliyah (to gain Israeli citizenship by virtue of being a Jew). Though he knows that the Japanese were originally Jews, he officially converted, but alas not with the help of a kosherized Orthodox rabbi. My guess is he has a long road ahead. I have not seen him in a while, but he sure could talk a blue streak. (Why blue? Why not red or purple?) One night I sat next to him at a sushi bar (also called Yoshi's, but no relation); he talked and talked and somewhere along the way he asked me if my husband was also Jewish (husband back in the US of A). "How do you know that I'm Jewish, Yoshi?" He ignored me. The sushi chef (an Israeli also named Yoshi) interrupted the Japanese Yoshi's monologue: "Yoshi, how do you know she's Jewish?" "I just know," he said. 

Second, I met a nice young woman from Turkey who had converted to Judaism while living in Montreal. A post-doc in physics here in Israel, she is also struggling to "make aliyah," but she is also having a difficult time. Despite the fact that her extended family in Turkey is secular (albeit Muslim), they have apparently rejected her and refuse to speak to even her mother... 

This week I'm giving a talk on RACIAL FEVER (what else?!) at Tel Aviv University as part of the Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas.... (What a mouthful! They really need a catchy acronym... CIHPSI ... I suppose that could be "chipsy")...

Anyhow: 4pm 18:00 (6pm!) in the Gilman building, room 429. 

That's the news from here. For now. 

Something to celebrate?

From Michael Feinstein:

It doesn’t take Freud to figure out that the sugarplums, holly and mistletoe all tap into a sense of comfort, longing, security and peace that so many fervently desire; that we all wish the clichés were true. As Jews, Christians, Muslims, Mormons, Buddhists and everything in between, we are all more alike than we are different. That’s something to celebrate.

Is it? Is it something to celebrate? Maybe it is. And maybe it isn't. I wonder.

Also: I wonder if the NYTimes will catch flack for the little drawing: 

totally inoffensive or perilously close to the German cartoons of the bumpkin Jew with the big nose?.... (at least the chimney-music-stand is not spewing dollar bills ... i.e. implying that the Jew wrings money out of everything, including Christmas... Anyhow, come on, people, you really think that Jesus is the only reason for the season?!)

Judgment: The Jews are Guilty

Ok, not all the Jews, but some of them, or rather, a few of them in the administration at the Jewish Free School in London, England.

Guilty of what you may ask?

Racial discrimination...

News at 11 people...

Why, I want to know, is racial discrimination any worse than religious discrimination? Don't tell me that you can choose your religion but not your race: Sure, I suppose that's true in some sense. But...for a lot of people-- especially people who see themselves as part of one of the monotheistic peoples, chosen by God and so on and so forth-- there is no choice: God chooses you. God chose you, or Jesus Christ, or Allah or your parents or whatever. That's the logic. If it can be called logic. (And I think it can.)

The problem here (ie at the JFS in the UK) is the fact that the state is funding schools that discriminate-- whether it's on the basis of "race," religion, nationality, eye color or height. Ok, I'm coming out as some sort of extremist Secularist, but don't expect me to be consistent!

Anyhow, here's the link. Last time the NYTimes posted an article about this case (in early November), I had 15 different people forwarding it to me. This time, I'm hoping to beat you to the punch.

Happy reading.

Endless re-re-re-re-production: Lieberman and Cultural Stereotypes

I still haven't figured out the purpose of a blog except that it is a place to re-re-re-produce and re-re-(etc)-distribute... A blog, I suppose, sort of highlights the general state of culture: it's just commentary on commentary on commentary. Well, not "just," because commentary is commentary and it's important. 

But enough of the commentary on nothing. 

Ta-Nehisi Coates is my hero: 

In response to more news that Joe Lieberman is f*cking up (and over) any hope that the U.S. will ever have anything resembling adequate healthcare, Jon Chait (of the New Republic) hits something on the head: "I suspect that Lieberman is the beneficiary, or possibly the victim, of a cultural stereotype that Jews are smart and good with numbers. Trust me, it's not true." 

Now that's sort of funny. But not as true (and hence not as funny) as what Coates has to say. Coates hits it out of the ballfield. Check it out.

RIP: Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi

Just to add to the chorus of mourners... I'll include the announcement of YHY's passing below



     I only met YHY twice: the first time for an hour in his office at Columbia: he smoked the entire time and was gracious, friendly and warm. And the second time when I delivered my book to him at his home (despite his having told me to just send it via mail). At that point, he was hooked up to oxygen and not looking so healthy. I handed him the book, apologized and quickly left. 
     His book Freud's Moses: Judaism Terminable and Interminable changed my life. It had already begun changing my life when I discovered that he was friends with my my mother's parents, Ruben and Elsa Farro, and that my mother had a crush on him--she was about 12 years old--when he was the rabbi at their synagogue back in 1952 or thereabouts... 

     I raced to finish writing my book in the hopes that it would be published while he was still alive. It was published. And now he has passed on to somewhere else. 

     Last night I had a dream that my father passed away. It took me awhile to wake up today and sort through what was a dream and what was reality. Thankfully, I received a phonecall from my father about an hour ago: he is still amongst the living. But something changed last night. In the world. In my psyche. In the air. 
     Yit'gadal v'yit'kadash...



From: Jonathan D. Sarna [mailto:sarna@brandeis.edu]
Sent: Tue 12/8/2009 4:33 PM
Subject: Passing of Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi

We mourn the passing of the pre-eminent Jewish historian, Yosef Hayim
Yerushalmi (1932-2009), who died today following a lengthy illness.
Yerushalmi served as the Salo Wittmayer Baron Professor of Jewish
History, Culture and Society  at Columbia from 1980-2008.  Before then,
he taught for fourteen years at Harvard, where he rose to become the
Jacob E. Safra Professor of Jewish History, Culture, and Society.
Yerushalmi was one of the most creative and influential  Jewish
historians of his  day.  His wide-ranging  books -- From Spanish Court
to Italian Ghetto, Haggadah and History,  Zakhor, and Freud's Moses
-- generated significant discussion and paved new areas of scholarly
investigation.  He also personally trained a generation of creative
Jewish historians, most of whom contributed to the important
festschrift in his honor, Jewish History and Jewish Memory.  That
volume featured an illuminating article by David Myers entitled "Of
Marranos and Memory:  Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi and the Writing of Jewish
History,"  which is now available online at
http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/history/myers/CV/Of_Marranos_and_Memory.pdf.

David Myers sent the following announcement concerning Yerushalmi's passing:

Dear Friends,

It is with deep sadness that I pass on the news of the death of
Professor Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi a few hours ago.  Yosef had been
suffering from multiple illnesses in recent years and months, and his
long struggle has come to a peaceful end.  I need not belabor the point
that he was the towering Jewish historian of his generation, as well as
an inspired teacher and revered mentor.

There will be a private funeral service tomorrow on Long Island.  The
family has asked friends not to call until after the funeral and the
family's return to Manhattan on Thursday.  Details about shiva and
visiting hours will be forthcoming.

May Yosef's memory be for a blessing to his family, friends, and all
those privileged to have had him as a teacher.

Sincerely,
David Myers

We extend our deepest condolences to the family.

Jonathan D. Sarna
Chair, H-Judaic

. 

Is Judaism inherently racist? And is anti-racism inherently anti-semitic?

After 15 people forwarded me the NYTimes link to the article, "Who's A Jew?..." last week, I began working on this OpEd piece... Finally submitted it to the NYTimes on Monday, but they passed... poo on them. Was thinking of submitting it to Salon or Slate... but instead I'm submitting it to the blogosphere... so here it is:

Is Judaism inherently racist? 

And is anti-racism inherently anti-Judaic?

            For most people, race and religion probably seem like separate matters. But an ongoing legal case in Britain suggests that this is a false dichotomy. State-funded religious schools in Britain may base their admissions policies on students’ faith, but not on their race. However, one of the most salient distinctions between Judaism and Christianity rests upon their distinct understandings of the relationships between faith and race. Christianity is built upon the idea that faith in Christ negates racial and national distinctions; by contrast, Judaism is built upon the identification with Jewish ancestors, particularly those described in the story of Exodus. Anti-racist movements have often invoked Christian notions of universal brotherhood to argue for the rights of all humans, regardless of their ethnic or racial ancestors. While Christian understandings of the irrelevance of race have become the norm in most secular Western societies, the question of who’s a Jew complicates this norm.

            Last year, administrators of a London Jewish school rejected a student (“M”) who they regarded as not Jewish. M’s mother had converted to Judaism under the supervision of a liberal rabbi, but according to the Office of the Chief Rabbi (OCR), such a conversion was not valid. And since M had not himself converted, the Chief Rabbi did not regard him as Jewish. The school uses the Chief Rabbi’s criteria to prioritize Jewish students’ admission, so M was not at the top of the list. M’s family sued, and in June 2009, the court ruled that the school’s rejection of the student was in contravention of the laws against racial discrimination. The school has since appealed and the parties are currently awaiting a decision.

            So far, the case has focused on whether the school used race or religion as its admissions-criteria. While Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks insists that the decision was a matter of “pure theology,” the court maintains that the school’s decision was based on racial grounds. Neither is correct. The case cannot be solved by deciding which criterion was used because it is not the criteria themselves that are problematic. Rather, the question is whether such criteria were used to withhold power and resources to individuals of a particular community, specifically one that has had less power and resources than others, both historically and presently. Though exclusion and discrimination may be unethical, the criteria themselves are not to blame.

            Judaism and Christianity are generally categorized as religions, but their definitions of communal membership have been radically opposed to one another from the very beginning. Collected at the same time as the New Testament, the Talmudic texts became the foundational documents of Judaism, establishing both an interpretive approach to the Hebrew Bible and a distinct understanding of the relationship between Biblical characters and contemporary Jews. The Rabbis of the Talmud declared that anyone with a Jewish mother is him- or herself Jewish, regardless of belief, practice or affiliation. Yet the Rabbis also welcomed converts who, by converting, become bar or bas Avraham, thereby claiming a Jewish genealogy.

            Meanwhile, in the New Testament, Saint Paul proclaims, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ's, then are you Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” In other words, regardless of ancestry, nationality, class or gender, anyone and everyone can and should join the universal brotherhood of Christ by proclaiming their faith in Him. Where Jewish authorities might disagree about what sorts of evidence are necessary to determine one’s genealogy, Christian authorities disagree about which authority--eg. the Church or the individual--has the power define one’s faith. Neither is a simple matter. And neither definition of community is more egalitarian than the other.

            The irony is that while Christianity insists upon a definition of community that disregards ancestry, gender and class, it has no place for individuals who refuse to embrace Christ as their god and thereby reject Christian universalism. It is no surprise, then, that Christians have often criticised Jews for their insularity, exclusivism, and more recently, racism. With the emergence of secular societies, Christian universalism was re-invented as secular rationalism and universal humanism. Though Jews have often been vociferous spokespeople for secularism, they continue to use genealogy to define themselves (and their ancestors) as Jews. 

            American conversations about race have tended to focus on overcoming racism based on physical differences. But overcoming racism is not the same as overcoming race. In America and elsewhere, concepts of race have never been limited to the perception of physical differences: In the eras both of Jim Crow and of Affirmative Action, for example, a person could be legally regarded as X (black, Jewish, Asian-American, Native American etc.) if she had an X parent or grandparent, or even a great-grandparent. To this day, our perceptions of who’s who are often shaped by what we know, assume or discover about a person’s ancestors. Such knowledge is not (only) used to pass judgment, but more importantly to understand the ineradicable traces of history with which we all live. Thus, it is undeniable that a white person lives with the accumulated effects of white domination of the past, while a black person--even our 44^th president--lives with the effects of the history of American racism.

            Since the Holocaust, Jews and non-Jews alike have shied away from acknowledging the inherently racial self-definition of Jewishness because of its obvious associations with racist anti-semitism. Not surprisingly, it is this definition of Jewishness that has been most criticised by universalists-- whether Christian or secular--for at least fifteen centuries. It is also this definition that compels Jewish parents to send their children to Jewish schools, despite the fact that the parents may know next to nothing about Jewish tradition. Ironically, then, Judaism has survived both despite of and because of the racial definition of Jewishness.

            The British case demonstrates a tension that is rampant amongst liberal and secular Jews. M’s case depends on the argument that by using the parents’ (in particular, the mother’s) identities to distinguish between Jewish and non-Jewish students, the school, and by extension Judaism, commits the crime of racial discrimination. If Jewish institutions are to avoid further legal actions, then, they will need to act more like Christian institutions that follow Paul’s dictum that since faith determines membership in the religious community, ancestry--whether Jewish or otherwise-- is irrelevant. Rather than hoping to radically transform modern Judaism, it seems more likely that M’s family (and others like it) implicitly accept the notion that to be Jewish is to have Jewish ancestors:  This is demonstrated by the fact that the mother converted (rather than simply insisting that she was Jewish by dint of faith).

            It is high time that Jews and non-Jews alike begin to confront the inherently racial definitions of Jewishness that directly contradict Christian definitions of community. This is not to say that Judaism is inherently racist, or that anti-racism is inherently anti-Judaic. But when secular courts rule that any judgments made on the basis of one’s genealogy or ancestral origins is by nature racist, they dangerously suggest that to do away with racism, we must also do away with one of the core elements of Judaism, if not Judaism itself.

Obscenity: A semi-serious post about scholarship and porous walls

            OK... I’ve been totally remiss: just returned from Montreal where I attended the annual conference of the American Academy of Religion (AAR) and also did a lecture on Racial Fever at McGill University’s Institute for the Public Life of Arts and Ideas (IPLAI).

            Up next: The British court case on the (Jewish) question of race vs. religion... (The short version?: Please read Racial Fever. Or maybe that’s the long version... The short version [with specific commentary on the present case] is imminent. I promise.)

            I’ve been promising to do a blog-post on something other than male genitals...  so... without further ado:

            A couple of weeks ago, I listened to a fascinating talk by Josh Lambert, drawn from his dissertation on obscenity in Jewish American literature. He definitely made me want to go back and read Henry Roth’s Call It Sleep, and he certainly taught me a thing or two (or three or four or more) about obscenity: the legal definitions (and their ramifications), the purposes and motivations and more... Josh gave a super-presentation, with lots of interesting details and facts and questions and citations... it was an academic presentation, but I sort of felt like there was something just a tiny bit missing.... the juiciness or the graphics or the grossness or erotics or disgustingness... but then, I may be more interested in those things than most people. Or I may just enjoy talking about such stuff because it’s the uncomfortable stuff that I find most interesting...

            Afterwards, we got engaged in a heated discussion about the relationship (or lack thereof) between a) serious critical scholarship on literature, and b) writing on literature that allows affect—the effects of reading, the rhythms and associations and textual sensuality—into the scholarly conversation. In this conversation, all quotations are approximate—no tape recorders or phonographic memories...

            From what I understood, Josh sees the second kind of reading as something that is great in undergraduate classes—“you have to excite them somehow and show your enthusiasm etc.”—and fine in journalism or creative autobiographical writing, but irrelevant in the context of serious scholarship. As Josh humbly explained it, since he is not an “ideal reader,” he can’t pretend that his responses are “valid” (not sure if he used that word), or representative in any way. “You’d have to do a sociological study of how people read this book in order to use those responses in scholarship,” he explained. “I’m interested in actual material things that can be substantiated through archival work or reviews from the time period and so on. Not ‘how it made me feel’—that’s just not relevant.”

            Here’s where I got a bit huffy and puffy (and perhaps a tiny bit defensive): First of all, there is no ideal reader. Second, even by avoiding affect, Josh (and all other readers) are taking a particular position vis a vis affect. Third, I realize it’s dangerous to suggest that all texts are completely open—a la Alice in Wonderland—but it is important to realize the mechanics of what makes a particular interpretation valid—the work of literary scholars often validates (or presents) particular ways of reading—sometimes this means incorporating archival documents, sometimes this means studying the author’s neighborhood or notes or boats or coats. The real challenge is to convince others that one’s own interpretation is valid—this, I think, is really difficult to determine: what makes a reading convincing? (It’s a question I’ve often asked of my students.)

            I, too, do not like the kinds of writing on literature (or really on anything) that begins, expands, and ends with “how I felt.” “What it did for me.” And lots of flowery language about the erotics or beauty or warmth or any of those sorts of adjective-heavy ways of describing the effects of literature. Yes, sometimes, this kind of writing finds its way into “serious scholarly” journals, perhaps more so in the 80s, when many scholars seemed to have (re-)discovered that their arguments were being made from specific “subject-positions.” (Wow! Lo and behold, people read things differently, and this is sometimes somehow related to your socio-economic-ethnic-national-linguistic position in the world.) Yet there is no one African-American and no Chinese- or Jewish- or Latino- American mode of interpretation. Quite often our own sense of these categories and where we fit in them also subtly shapes our reading and our scholarship. And, our own sense of what is “valid” is shaped by our knowledge and experience of languages and dialects and jokes and foods and histories and so on. For awhile there in the 80s and early 90s, I think many people were thrilled to discover that they could reveal “who they are” in their scholarly writing—they could say, Hey! I’m a Latino-American woman, and I read this or that text differently than that there old white man who’s been reading Milton his whole life. I read in a Latino-American way! The way that everyone else has been reading is white and staid and old.

            But lo and behold: there is more than one Latino-American woman. And lo and behold, they think, read and write differently. And lo and behold, they even have different senses of what makes a particular piece of literature Latino-American as opposed to Mexican or Spanish or whatever. So to “announce” one’s position—I’m a straight-ish, Jew-ish, white-ish female from the suburbs who went to an Ivy League school—oy, now that’s just boring. But I won’t pretend that this background in some way limits me as much as it opens doors and avenues of understanding.

            I think perhaps that scholars have become a bit allergic to any elements of literary scholarship that don’t hold up in court. What is the court? Who are the judges? I’m not entirely sure of the answers to these questions, but most definitely it must have something to do with the sense that the humanities—particularly those loosey goosey subjects like art and literature and music—are no longer necessary, that they are not “productive.” The complaint runs as follows: “They don’t generate income or patents or cures or solutions. They simply muddy the waters and provide nice entertainment. So if we’re going to do serious scholarship, we should at least take ourselves seriously and work like serious historians (specifically, super-positivistic somewhat boring historians who use a particular form of science as their model), and at least then, we’ll be contributing to the collective knowledge of the world. We’ll produce new discoveries; we’ll show those historians and scientists, we’re very serious over here in the Literature department.” See, for example, Mark Slouka’s essay, “Dehumanized: When math and science rule the school” in Harper’s Magazine (September 2009). 

            I’ll admit that there are (at least) two sides of research (in the arts and humanities): a) the “serious” historical research, the reasoned comparisons to other literature of the same time period, genre, geography and so on... and b) our gut feelings, the ways in which a text depresses us, or reminds us of our parents, or turns us on, or grosses us out, or maddens or frustrates us....

            But try as we might, there is no way to keep these two sides separate. You can try to build a wall, but every wall is porous. Stuff leaks through whether you like it or not. Stuff that you can’t even see or sense leaks through. And the question is how? And what is this stuff? And what’s the nature of those holes in the screen that it slips through? The most interesting writing (or reading? or interpretations? or re-writings) are those that take us through the holes...

Bucking the post-racial trend...

I meant to post this one awhile ago... but in light of Colson Whitehead's fantabulous NYTimes OpEd yesterday, now seems as good a time as any... Apparently A.O. Scott (amongst others) are continuing to buck the post-racial trend...

I've been reading Richard Thompson Ford's book, The Race Card: How Bluffing About Bias Makes Race Relations Worse. Meanwhile, I received a heads-up from my friend (and ever-trusty NYT-alert-system), Mike Rubin... the subject-line?

"Who knew?! A.O. Scott's a Jew!" 

I'm not sure I understand what Scott means by a "recognizable type" and how that differs from a plain old stereotype. Or what he (or anyone else) means by "identity." That word is just like so over-used, it's like the word LIKE.

I know that older generations still feel the anticipatory sting of anti-semitism every time the word Jew is mentioned in public. The anticipation is laced with the question of whether it's a Jew saying "Jew" or someone-other-than-a-Jew (SOTAJ) saying "Jew." Why?! And why are people so sure they know who's-a-Jew? And why does anyone care: a Jew is a Jew is a Jew, nu?

No.