Can you identify yourself?
1. Stand-up of Judah Friedlander: America Is the Greatest Country in the United States (59:36 -1:00:35)
https://www.netflix.com/se-en/title/80208273
https://vk.com/video?z=video-53358766_456239657%2Fpl_cat_updates
About it: In this stand-up Judah Friedlander in very sarcastic way speaks about USA, Russia, Europe and Israel. Judah reinterpretes different facts about health care, politics, racism, chauvinism etc. In the end of the hour he questioned his own identity that before supposed to be shown by his outfit. He did not tell what he thinks about himself, but in this story his jewishness was declined by the other (Halakhic) Jews. He is talking about the Nuremberg Laws that was used to identify who can be Israeli and who can not.
Questions:
1. Are we identify ourselves or we are all were identified before?
2. Can anybody give us identity with which we will struggle?
3. Is it allowed to make a joke about the group with which you are identified? Do you make this kind of jokes? What are laughing about (stereotypes, problems, etc.)? What is better to joke or not to joke?
2. Can you divide your identity?
Descendents – ’Merican
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-pkNQa2u3E
About it: Descendents were one of the most popular punk band in late 70th and beginning of 80s till frontman and symbol of the band Milo Aukerman decided to leave for university to get Ph.D in biochemistry. Than band reunited for short periods every few years. This song was recorded in 2004, but it relevant to this day.
We flipped our finger to the King of England
Stole our country from the Indians
With God on our side and guns in our hands
We took it for our own
[Chorus]
Listen up man, I'll tell you who I am
Just another stupid american
You don't wanna listen
You don't wanna understand
So finish up your drink and go home
A nation dedicated to liberty
Justice and equality
Does it look that way to you?
It doesn't look that way to me
The sickest joke I know
I come from the land of Ben Franklin
Twain and Poe and Walt Whitman
Otis Redding, Ellington,
The country that I love
But it's a land of the slaves and the Ku Klux Klan
Haymarket Riot1 and the Great Depression2
Joe McCarthy3, Vietnam
The sickest joke I know
I'm proud and ashamed
Every fourth of july
You got to know the truth
Before you say that you got pride
Footnotes
1 - Aftermath of a bombing that took place at a labor demonstration on Tuesday May 4, 1886, at Haymarket Square in Chicago. Because of it Worker Unions were attacked and prosecuted by Police and Socialist movement in USA became a scapegoat
2 - The market crash in 1929 marked the beginning of a decade of high unemployment, poverty and low profits.
3 - McCarthyism is the "witch hunt", practice of making accusations of subversion or treason without proper regard for evidence
Questions:
1. Why Milo is singing about himself as about 'Merican?
2. Milo remember about the shameful events in USA history as well as about the great writers and politicians. Why it is important for him to develop his identity on both?
3. Do your country/nation/family/etc. have this kind of "shameful" events in its history? Is there any country that do not have it? How did you forget about it?
3. Is there Self-hating Talmudic Jews?
TALMUD Sotah Daf 22a
The Sages taught: Who is an ignoramus [=am ha’aretz(people of the land)]?
Rabbi Meir: It is anyone who does not recite Shema in the morning and evening with its blessings. Rabbis say: It is anyone who does not don phylacteries. Ben Azzai says: It is anyone who does not have ritual fringes on his garment. Rabbi Yonatan ben Yosef said: It is anyone who has sons and does not raise them to study Torah.
Aḥerim say: Even if one reads the Written Torah and learns the Mishna but does not serve Torah scholars, he is an ignoramus. If one read the Written Torah but did not learn the Mishna, he is a boor. With regard to one who did not read and did not learn at all, the verse states: “Behold, the days come, says the Lord, and I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of man, and with the seed of beast”(Jeremiah 31:26) . One who has not studied at all is comparable to a beast.
Rabbi Yitzḥak says: These are individuals who repeatedly learn the halakhot but do not know the reasons behind them. The tanna’im, who recite the tannaitic sources by rote, are individuals who erode the world.
Questions:
1. Am ha'aretz (people of the land) is the offensive name for Ancient Jews who did not obtain all rabbinical mitzvot and did not accept authority of rabbis. Do we have this kind of people now in Jewish and non-Jewish communities? What are they indicate?
2. Why do you think tannaim said that am ha'aretz erode the world?
3. Is it possible that everybody will be Torah scholars?
4. How to touch history and do not hurt yourself
Shmuel Yosef Agnon ”To this day”
About it: Agnon wrote his last book in 1952 as a diary about his travel in Germany after the WW1. On the surface it is a comically entertaining tale of a young writer - a Galician Jew who has lived in Palestine, returns to Europe on the eve of World War I, and is now stranded in Berlin - who wanders from rented room to rented room in a city with a severe wartime housing shortage. On a deeper level it is a profound commentary on exile, Zionism, divine providence, human egoism, and other concerns.
In the book it is the answer to Agnon's postcard with apologies to the death of Dr. Mittel's son
“I'll tell you in a whisper what a German professor, the pride and joy of German science, said to me when I sent him my condolences for a son killed at the front.
“For this war”, he wrote, “we can thank a generations of German teachers who instilled in their pupils the absurd belief that they were the heirs of ancient Greece and Rome”
Questions:
1. Why, according to German professor, teachers were responsible for war?
2. What Germans as "the heirs of Ancient world" supposed to do and why did it lead to the wars?
3. Did the German professor blame himself as a teacher?
Self-critical and/or self-hatred?
About it: Terms "self-hatred Jew" (Theodore Lessing) or “disguised anti-Semites of Jewish origin” (Theodor Herzl) was used by different Jewish and non-Jewish movement to call the critics of Jewish politics since the beginning of Zionism. Sometimes it was used to emancipated Jews who had troubles with assimilations in Europe and USA. But mostly it was used as the name for people who did not agree with positions of Zionism, Israeli governments and Jewish communities all over the world. The one of the most famous "self-hatred Jew" is American linguist, philosopher and political activist Noam Chomsky
From Noam Chomsky's interview at United Nations
Abba Eban, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, in an article that he wrote about 45 years ago, which I urge you to read, which appeared in an American Jewish journal, Congress Weekly, a major journal of the more liberal wing of the American Jewish community.
He wrote an interesting article in which he advised the American Jewish community that they had two tasks to perform. One task was to show that criticism of the policy, what he called anti-Zionism—that means actually criticisms of the policy of the state of Israel—were anti-Semitism. That’s the first task.
Second task, if the criticism was made by Jews, their task was to show that it’s neurotic self-hatred, needs psychiatric treatment. Then he gave two examples of the latter category. One was I.F. Stone. The other was me.
So, we have to be treated for our psychiatric disorders, and non-Jews have to be condemned for anti-Semitism, if they’re critical of the state of Israel. That’s understandable why Israeli propaganda would take this position.
I don’t particularly blame Abba Eban for doing what ambassadors are sometimes supposed to do. But we ought to understand that there is no sensible charge. No sensible charge. There’s nothing to respond to. It’s not a form of anti-Semitism. It’s simply criticism of the criminal actions of a state, period.
Questions:
1. Is there could be any reasons to do not criticize your community if it is wrong?
2. Why Abba Eban prefer to name Noam Chomsky sick than to have a proper conversation? Coul Chomsky be responsible for this turn?
3. In Jewish society we have a such a thing as "chutzpah" (extreme self-confidence or audacity), because of it people sometimes accuse each other just to have an argument to prove their point. Are you usually sure who is wrong and who is right or you have to be loyal to your side anyway?