When I was a young lad of 20 my father invited me to visit him in Israel. He was there pretty much just to get married (for the third time!) to a very good music teacher who found herself stuck in Israel doing musical therapy at a mental hospital. They did get married, got out of Israel and stayed together until my father’s death decades later. My father thought that I’d benefit from the experience of a trip to Israel — which I did.
We took in the sites together. He brought me to look at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. Who were these catatonic patients rocking back and forth in front of what looked like a retaining wall hastily constructed out of sandstone? “They are praying,” my father said with a wan smile and rolled his eyes. Nice!
We circled around the block and there was the Al Aqsa mosque in all of its glory, beautiful and pristine. My father wanted us to go in: “These are the nicest people in the world. You just need to follow some simple rules.” I somehow didn’t feel worthy, thinking that I’d need to study what this was before intruding.
Overall, Israel struck me as rather pathetic: poor, rude, shabby and highly militarized; more a colonialist outpost than a proper country. Rough and rude — very rude. I remember being nearly knocked over by a soldier forcing his way past the line into a falafel shop on Rehov Byalik in Jerusalem. As I found out later, he actually sort of apologized by saying “slekha”. The word sounded like a backslap and at the time I thought he said “Fuck off.” A thought that struck me almost immediately at the time was: “These aren’t Jews!” At least, these weren’t the Jews I had known growing up in Russia. They were some weird tribe speaking some weird language and acting abominably.
It took a while to get my father’s bride’s papers in order. My father whiled away the time by doing finishing carpentry work. He first tried to do jobs for the Israelis but found them to be disagreeable as clients: overly demanding, quarrelsome and relentlessly cheap. And so he started doing jobs for Palestinians on the West Bank. His Palestinian friends got him Palestinian license plates for his car (different-colored plates, because Apartheid) and he would switch plates as soon as he was past the Israeli checkpoint, so that local kids wouldn’t throw rocks at his car. My father found his Palestinian clients to be effusively polite, generous and appreciative. Once the papers were in order, he and his new wife left Israel and never looked back.
The Israelis weren’t exactly Jews — at least not as I understood them. The Jews I knew had been Russian Jews — doctors, scientists, scholars, engineers, writers and poets, artists, schoolteachers, simple factory workers... These were people who had escaped the shtetls in the Pale right after the October 1917 revolution, took advantage of the free and excellent higher education and moved into the professions in the burgeoning Soviet economy. While the US, and much of the “free world,” were wallowing in the Great Depression, the Soviet economy was growing at between 11% (oil production) and 17% (steel production) a year.
These people were secular, had left the ridiculous rules and strictures, the meaningless rituals and the stifling zealotry of the shtetl (good grief!) far behind, thinking them backward and bizarre, though they were not necessarily atheist or even agnostic. After World War II, during which Stalin (an Orthodox Christian seminary student) reopened the churches that had been closed by Marxist zealots, many of them Jews too recently from the shtetl to have lost their Judaistic zealotry and eagerly followed Karl Marx’s dictum “Religion is the opium of the people”) many of these Russian Jews took to Russian Orthodox Christianity — not via any sort of indoctrination but being drawn in through cultural affinity and spiritual belonging. That was my parents’ experience.
Full Disclosure
I inserted the following paragraph in the interests of full disclosure; feel free to skip over if you don’t care.
Three of my four grandparents later (much later) turned out to be of that extraction, having escaped from the shtetl of Zhiromir, immediately after the Russian Revolution of 1917. Zhitomir is currently in the (former?) Ukraine and was at the time part of the Malorussia ("Little Russia") region of the Russian Empire. They were absolutely, perfectly mum on the subject of their Jewish origins throughout most of their lives, took Russian surnames and spoke Russian perfectly. Two of them — an electrical engineer and an English teacher — never once breathed a word of their shtetl-bound past until they were quite old. Another grandfather, having a somewhat daft Yiddish-only-speaking mother in tow, didn’t hide his Jewish origins — but then he was a Soviet Communist party member since the early days, a professor of Russian literature and, eventually, a winner of the Stalin prize for literature (a fabulous sum at the time). But not only was he not Jewish; he styled himself after Russian aristocracy — spending summers in a stately home at a seaside resort and winters in Russian Empire-style city apartment in the historical center of St. Petersburg (then Leningrad). He and my grandmother employed a chauffeur, a cook and a nanny for the kids. One last grandmother was the only ethnic Russian, her grandfather having worked at the St. Petersburg Metalworks while her father ran the Trans-Siberian Railroad up until World War II, whereupon stress-induced stomach ulcers took his life. My grandmother, for her part, invented the method by which cancer cells in biopsies are tagged and identified using fluorescent dies (the subject of her doctoral dissertation). To summarize: I had one Jewish grandparent (according to Item 5 — nationality — in his Soviet internal passport). The rest were Russian, one not particularly devout Orthodox Christian, the rest just good, ethical Russians. I had two Russian parents, both Orthodox Christians.
What are the Jews anyway?
Having disposed of the question of whether I, having had, in some vague and ill-defined sense, three Jewish grandparents out of four, am a Jew (not!), we next tackle the question of What are the Jews anyway?
Are Jews a race? They are often called Semites, but what are Semites? Is the term genetic, anthropological, historical, political — what? No, it is mythical. “Unto Shem also, the father of all the children of Eber, the brother of Japheth the elder, even to him were children born.” (Genesis 10:21). But Genesis is not a historical text but a creation myth, originally of Mesopotamian origin but edited and augmented by Hebrew scribes.
As a linguistic term, the term “Semitic” does refer to a group of languages. Speakers of Northwest Semitic were the Canaanites (including the Phoenicians, Punics, Amorites, Edomites, Moabites and the Hebrews), Arameans and the Ugarites. South Semitic peoples include the speakers of Modern South Arabian languages and Ethiopian Semitic languages. (Wikipedia.) Is Yiddish (a German dialect once spoken by most European Jews — some of whom went on to become Zionists — a Semitic language? No, it’s a Germanic language. Therefore, linguistically, Jews are not Semites. The fact that some Jews (Israeli ones) later went on to artificially revive and learn Hebrew doesn’t mean much; they could have learned Esperanto instead, saving themselves loads of trouble, or stuck with Yiddish. Putting on leopard-skin underwear does not one a leopard make.
Are Jews a genetic designation? No, by Jewish law, all that’s required to be a Jew is to have a Jewish mother. This is similar to how the Gypsies operate, except that Jewish women are far more likely to take “goyim” (non-Jewish) husbands. Thus, the father of a Jew can be anything, even !Kung. But most often the father was just some European shlemazl who took a liking to a slightly exotic Jewish girl, not realizing that this woman was a cuckoo bird that would lay cuckoo bird eggs in his family nest.
Accordingly, genetic tests show Jews to be mostly European with random bits of this and that. But some Jews were also socially isolationist, and often ostracized, causing them to become inbred and to accumulate an inordinate load of genetic abnormalities: 14% of them carry the genetic gene that causes Gaucher disease when expressed; Down’s syndrome is also unusually common. Thus, genetically, Jews are random Europeans but the more isolationist groups are distinguished by an odd clustering of genetic pathologies and abnormalities.
Are Jews a tribe? Perhaps they were tribal some time in the dim past, but at this point the vast majority of them do not adhere to any sort of structure of tribal governance or allegiance. The vast majority of them are citizens of some modern state.
Are Jews a religion? This is a particularly odd feature: the majority of Jews are either atheist, agnostic or just generally disinterested in matters of faith. However, in order to maintain their Jewish identity they must not be of any other religion. Thus, for Jews, religious identification is mostly a matter of rejection, not inclusion: Jews may or may not espouse Judaism, but they must not espouse any other faith. A Jew can marry a gentile, never set foot inside a synagogue, eat “tref” (non-Kosher food), work all day on every single Sabbath, not bother with “bris” (circumcision) or Bar/Bas Mitzvah for his children and be a militant atheist — and still be a Jew, but... he cannot be baptized! Given that the vast majority of Jews have come to inhabit Christian or Moslem lands and that they are by a solid majority atheist or agnostic, their religion can be reduced to a rejection of Jesus (whom Moslems accept as a prophet).
Are Jews a Master Race?
Given all of the above — that Jews are not genetically distinct, not linguistically distinct, not culturally distinct and have a mainly negative religious identity (just say no to Jesus), this might seem like an altogether ridiculous question. And yet various well-informed people have judged that the vast majority of Israelis believe that Israel is theirs by dint of God having told them so. What gives?
There is something of a hard and fast rule: if you talk to God, that’s called prayer and is normal and acceptable; if God talks to you, then you are a schizophrenic, are hearing voices in your head and need strict medical supervision. And yet many Jews believe that God told them that the land of Israel is theirs. Furthermore, they use this “God told us” rationale as a justification for forcing Palestinians — residents of Palestine — off their land and segregating them on ever smaller parcels of land on the West Bank or the world’s largest concentration camp called Gaza.
It all comes down to the formative Hebrew myth, mostly contained in various books of the Old Testament. “The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession.” (Deuteronomy 7:6) "The Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” (Genesis 12:7)
The Bible is a book and book contents vary from works of fantasy — entirely whimsical and magic — to, for instance, this: ▻https://www.ircwash.org/sites/default/files/341.0-75PR-19228.pdf. What is universally true of all books is that, in order to be understood, they have to first be interpreted. Part of that interpretation process involves placing them on a continuum between the real and the imaginary.
The real and the imaginary
Materialistically inclined people tend to believe that the imaginary does not exist, but that’s definitely untrue: anything that is imagined does exist — within the imagination. And if something exists within the imagination of billions of people over thousands of years, then it becomes particularly nonsensical to argue that it somehow doesn’t exist.
The realm of imagination is different from the material realm but not altogether separate. For instance, we can imagine Pythagorean solids — Tetrahedron, Cube, Octahedron, Dodecahedron, Icosahedron — these are the only such ideal shapes known to exist, and they can exist both within the imagination, without any reference to a physical model, and as representational models. Saying that they don’t exist is just silly — what, sugar cubes don’t exist? You don’t say!
In short, an imaginary entity may or may not have material manifestations. But going the other way is “wrong way” — pull over and collect a ticket. That is, it is ridiculous to claim that a particular dodecahedron made of sticks or spaghetti or whatever is That Very One Holy Dodecahedron and there shall never be any other. That is, again, schizoid.
Some imaginary entities are not just nice to have but are absolutely required for modern technological civilization. If you are reading this on a glowing screen of some sort, then this text has been brought to you by a phenomenon known as quantum tunneling. Electrons are particles that under some conditions act like waves, and this wavelike behavior allows transistors to work. But here’s the really interesting bit: the particles may be real but the waveforms that represent them are imaginary, in a perfectly strict, mathematical sense. Consider the time-dependent Schrödinger equation:
Note the use of the variable i: that, my friends, is the square root of negative one. What number, multiplied by itself, produces negative one? Why, an imaginary one! Thus, real particles are represented using imaginary math. The imaginary projects onto the material world: the amplitude of a complex waveform can be computed as the modulus of a complex number z = x + iy, denoted by |z|, which is given by the formula |z| = √(x2 + y2), where x is the real part and y is the imaginary part of the complex number z. Efforts by materialistically inclined people over many decades have failed to obviate the need for the imaginary in quantum math; without it, quantum computing and quantum cryptography would not be possible.
A particularly striking imaginary object is the Mandelbrot Set, which is a fractal image computed based on a very simple formula. The set is defined in the complex plane as the complex numbers c=x+iy, where i=sqrt(-1), for which the function f_c(z)=z^2+c does not diverge to infinity when iterated starting at z=0.
The Mandelbrot Set most definitely exists, and its existence can be ascertained by anybody with access to a computer. But claiming that a particular rendering of the Mandelbrot Set or some tiny piece of it is The One Absolute and Holy Rendering ordained by God is, yet again, schizoid.
Similarly, claiming that the Land of Israel mentioned in a 3000-year-old book is the modern chunk of real estate known as Palestine is patently ridiculous. Attempting to adjudicate its political status based on the contents of that book is manifestly insane. This fact was recognized by some Jews, called the ultra-Orthodox, meaning that they adhere closely to the Torah as a spiritual document without imposing any political interpretations on it. Arguing that the political State of Israel is an abomination, a sacrilege and an act of blasphemy, they wield Biblical quotes such as “Unless the Lord build the house, its builders labor in vain; unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman keeps vigil in vain” (Psalms 127:1) and “The Lord shall rebuke you–the Satan who has chosen Jerusalem” (paraphrasing Zechariah 3:2). Similar reasoning can be found in the New Testament as well: “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” (Mark 12:17)
Governments of, for and by the Jews
Without delving too deeply into Jewish history, which contains generous helpings of myth, fable and fiction, it is fair to say that Jewish kingdoms, governments and states have been none too stable. The Jews’ most recent attempt at statehood ended very badly almost 2000 years ago: Rome ruled Palestine from 63BC to 66AD (130 years), but the Jews made troublesome, quarrelsome Roman subjects and it all ended badly with their temple in Jerusalem destroyed and the population dispersed.
Various other experiments in Jewish governance have tended to run their course rather quickly. Jews were very prominent in the Bolshevik administration following the Russian Revolution. They caused a great deal of damage with their Marxist zealotry and were then reigned in and partially disposed of by Stalin, together with their zealot-leader Trotsky who succumbed of a blow from an ice pick. And now Jews are remarkably prevalent in the Biden cabinet. How is that going, do you think?
The current Zionist effort in Palestine, running since 1948 until present (76) years can be described as American Rule. The two major Jewish population centers are in Palestine and in the US, more or less evenly divided, and American Jews have successfully used political leverage to extract somewhere in the neighborhood of $40-60 billion a year (estimates vary) of American largess for maintaining their Palestinian outpost.
Their leverage was much enhanced by association with American millenialists — another bunch that can’t tell the difference between the meat and the flies — the imaginary and the material, that is. Reading the Book of Revelation as if it were a how-to book for dummies, these nominally Christian zealots have decided that the way to mechanically trigger Christ’s second coming is to herd all the Jews into Palestine and trigger Armageddon. If you think that this approach is rife with primitive idolatry and fetishism, then you are correct. Yes, Zionists are not the only schizoid political group on the planet and, apparently, schizoid minds think alike. What these American millenialists fail to grasp is that the site of Armageddon isn’t going to be Palestine; it’s going to be the formerly united states of America, and it won’t be any sort of religious event sponsored by Jesus, although Satan is likely to be on hand to supervise as needed. But that’s an entirely separate topic.
In any case, the US financial-military machine is now scraping the bottom of the barrel and will no longer be able to maintain its Mediterranean beachhead in Israel. The mechanism for exporting inflation has failed; the mechanism for generating endless amounts of new debt is failing as we speak; and, as for American militarism, any number of shady entities can now take pot shots at US military bases around the world without suffering any undue consequences, any US ship can be sunk without bothering to get up close and, in general, the US military is growing enfeebled — no match for the Russians or even the Chinese, afraid of starting a conflict with Iran and pretending that North Korea doesn’t even exist (because even thinking about it is far too frightening).
And if Israel’s American masters have grown weak, what about the Israeli military itself? Yes, they can still kill tens of thousands of unarmed civilians in Gaza and the West Bank (many people are calling that genocide) but can they win the peace? I don’t think so! What the Israeli military has done so far is unspeakably bad from every possible angle. In trying to counter the Hamas incursion in the south, next to Gaza, the Israelis managed to kill around 1400 of their own through “friendly fire”. It is difficult to imagine a more dismal performance.
The majority of October 7th Israeli deaths were soldiers. Of the rest, many, if not most, were killed by the IDF itself in crossfire, Hannibal Directive actions (not caring about the lives of hostages), and just plain panic with lots of cases of mistaken identity. Following their incursion into Gaza, the Israelis have been losing large numbers of their Merkava tanks due to ATGM fire from shoulder-launched rockets provided to Hamas by the Ukrainians. The Israeli government has approximately zero public support. If, as expected, the Gaza escapade ends in shame and the money dries up, the Israelis will do what birds do when the bird feeder runs out of seed: they will fly away.
A real Jewish homeland?
By far the most stable Jewish political entity in modern times has been the Jewish Autonomous Region in southeastern Russia, on the Chinese border. Slightly larger in territory than Israel but incomparably richer in natural resources, it has never seen any sort of armed conflict or ethnic or religious strife. And it is ideally situated in the fastest-developing region of Russia, right on the doorstep of the economic powerhouse that is China.
It was formed in 1934 and is Russia’s great gift to the Jewish people, containing everything that a wandering tribe could possibly want to settle down. But it is down to less then a thousand ethnically Jewish inhabitants, most of them having moved to Israel during the difficult late Soviet and initial post-Soviet years. But perhaps they will be back when Israel reverts from its bizarre political form back to the realm of pure spirit. In spite of their low numbers, the Jews of JAR did provide an exhibit and send a Jewish dancing troupe to the great National Fare currently running in Moscow, complete with a live Klezmer band for accompaniment.
