- Right wing jews .. Archived Message
Posted by Shyaku
on July 3, 2019, 2:29 am, in reply to "Useful comments by bev, but appalling article by Roddis."
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I feel that Atzmon speaks for a certain strand of jewishness. There are likely a number of inter-twined schools of thought and ideas in any ancient tradition. The problem is likely that there are maybe not many excellent expositions on these, their similarities and differences, e.g. Between the Torah and the Talmud, etc., for the world outside to digest. In this regard, I feel that having a good grasp of hebrew probably allows a lot of rare insights into some of the schools of thought that are largely Israel-resident. Probably Atzmon speaks to some of these rather extreme opinions, expressed in Hebrew in Israel. He maybe feels he has some rare insights as a hebrew-schooled Israeli ex-pat, and is eager to capitalize on his rather unusual insights, and contribute them to the debate, and wants to be recognized for bringing some of the more thoroughly unpleasant attitudes he has come across, out into the open. At the same time, this is probably part of a larger story. I think the key with Atzmon may be just to try to put what he says into a somewhat larger context, and avoid over-reacting and keep an open-mind on whether anyone has a monopoly on the concept of jewish identity. It ls likely a lot of different things to a lot of people. It can be a very domineering culture in some ways, but this notwithstanding, there are good and bad people everywhere. It is probably important to focus on the ideas, not the person who espouses them, otherwise you are in a position where you have to defend a person you really have no control over. I think you can say there are some very real questions on what jewish history really is, betwee the time of the maccabees and Herzog, and that it is a perfectly legitimate subject for respectful discussion. |