Bardon Kaldian says:
I don’t want to write long stuff, so just a few c/p notes & I’ll go…
1. Are Jews a separate, non-white “race” ? In all likelihood, they are, phenotypically -not “people of color”. They’re, visually, Mediterranean types we can find in Greece, southern Italy etc. Of course, some Jewish racial nationalists will disagree: http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/yes-ashkenazi-jews-including-gal-gadot-are-people-of-color/
Well: a) not all Caucasians are white. You can be both Caucasian & non-white- for instance most Iranians and Arabs. b) Jews are a mixed bag & most of them look white. And now we come to the “social construct” element of race: those Jews who look white & identify with Western civilization will sign for white race/identity; on the other hand, nationalist, Judaist Jews who identify “whiteness” with their historical enemy, Europe, both pre-Christian (Greece & Rome) & Christian will opt for non-white MENA “race”.
2. Can we conflate ancestry & identity ? So, for instance, Karl Marx was not a Jew in his own eyes, only a person of Jewish ancestry. For his opponents like Bakunin and Duhring he was a “Jew” because they saw Jewishness as a genealogical stain, and therefore Marx could be a “Jew” without knowing anything of Jewish culture, either religious or secular, or possessing a sense of loyalty toward “real”, Judaistic Jews.That was label they put on him, not manifestation of his self-consciousness.
Also, atheist Jews can claim Jewish identity (tribal secular culture), but I’m skeptical about Jewish converts to Christianity. Judaist Jews, generally, don’t consider them to be Jewish anymore. Cultural gap is too wide.
And now summing up- I don’t see hyper-analysis of various areas would change much..
Jews are an ethnic religion or religious culture. They are not a “race” (except in the 19th C sense), but they do have a non-negligible genetic homogeneity (apart from Ethiopian “Jews”, most Jews are Europeanized Middle Easterners).
Theirs is a tribal ethnic religion, similar to Parsis or Sikhs: that’s why Ivanka Trump is not a Jewess, although she may think so. If a William Bond from Tuscaloosa converts to Sikhism, he won’t become a “Sikh” (although he may consider himself to be, similar to James Jesus Angleton’s progeny). Due to the tribalism, Jews remain something like a people (which is impossoble in universalist religions like Christianity, Islam or Buddhism).
In past two centuries, European Jews – with Haredi & a few other exceptions- have
assimilated into host societies: German, Russian, French, British, Austrian, Italian, Polish,..
The highest level of assimilation had been achieved in pre- Hitler Germany where most German Jews had considered themselves to be Germans primarily, and Jews only
secondarily. This can be seen from their high participation in all-German national efforts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judenz%C3%A4hlung & high percentages of intermarriage, which fluctuated from 25% to 40% during 1920s.
How it all ended, we know.
American Jews, most of them, have their roots in Russian Empire (they’ve swamped earlier, more “European” German Jewish immigrants). They have retained their national culture (Yiddish, written in Hebrew script), numerous dietary laws & other customs. In short, US got mostly unassimilated ghetto Jews.
Due to their work ethics, culture, slightly higher IQ & ethnic networking, they thrived in the US in various areas & became very influential. From early 1900s to, perhaps, Six Days War in 1967, most of them tried to assimilate & become virtually indistinguishable from WASPs.
But then, things changed & many US Jews had recovered their primary ethnic-cultural identity as Jews first. Because this is a sensitive issue, there is no profusion of reliable sociological investigation data, graphs, categorizations. Just, as a rule of thumb, we can divide Jewish Americans into a few categories:
1. JINOs. Many US “Jews” are assimilated & don’t think of themselves as Jews primarily. They account for anything between 20% and 50%.
2. secular & religious Jews who possess partial Jewish identity, but for them it is blended with broader American loyalty. It is hard to tell how many people belong to this category.
3. religious Orthodox Jews who may be annoying as neighbors, but are not too politically minded.
4. the last segment would be American Jews (as different from Jewish Americans). They can be secular or religious; rich or poor; intensity of their commitment to Israel or Jewish ethnic activism may vary, but they are basically cultural aliens in US & Europe. For secularists, Auschwitz & Israel have replaced Torah & Talmud as chief emotional anticorrosives that shield them from assimilation.
My guess is that they are somewhere between 15% and 25% of all US Jews. This segment can be further divided into subsegments (for instance, some are anti-Christian, while others are not). But, what is common to them is their clear differentiation from host national cultures, stubborn insistence on their ethnic-national individuality & a sense of being an “endangered species”. Some subsegments of this portion of American Jews are true aliens in the US & through their ethnic activism, frequently masked as moral universalism, try to subvert dominant cultural values & change host society into a shapeless mess.
This is a minority of Jewish Americans, but they have economic, societal, cultural & political impact by far surpassing their numbers. And they seem not to learn from history: Brazilian Jews, because of slow but inevitable future collapse of multiracial Brazilian society are just trying to “get out”. Jewish elites, across the world, are still in thrall to Nazi-Aryan iconography & mythology as the central threat to their existence, while the world has moved past it long ago.
In this, last portion of Jewish Americans one can find typical traits of cultural alienation, ethnic paranoia, “us” vs. “them” mentality, ..basically, a sense of being a perpetual stranger who wants to shape the dominant discourse & identity in order to avoid- in their eyes- future pogroms & genocide. Because in the fevered mind of pathological Jewish nationalists, Europeans & whites, virtually all of them, possess the inner Nazi screaming to get out & finally finalize the Final Solution. This is an illustration of such a mindset:
http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/ashkenazi-jews-are-not-white-response-to-haaretz-article/
http://www.historytoday.com/robert-carr/nazism-and-christian-heritage
It’s not blonde beast they should be afraid of, but brown camel-shtupper & his ebony lapdogs. But- they seem to be unable to grasp it ….
