Judaism

well once when i was alone in my bedroom in bournemouth i was reading in the local newspaper about some hooligans attacking and damaging and drawing grafitti such as stars of david and swastikas on jewish gravestones in that city...

well i had previously seen with my own eyes similar, seemingly less focussed but very considerable and accumulated vandalism in a church of england church and graveyard in streatham in london... [although i am not a christian, the CofE was obviously the traditional religion of england for more than a thousand years and my ancestors are buried in such graveyards] ..... so feeling a moment of empathy/sympathy for those who might have some attachment to the jewish cemetary in bournemouth i spontaneously and angrily exclaimed [unheard, i believed at the time] in Eisenhower-esque fashion "i am a yid!"!

in fact i am not a jew or "yid", although i don't think that it is impossible that i could have some jewish ancestry, although a minority. but there is no tradition or history in my family of anyone being jewish..... however since that time i suppose i must have been heard because a few times since then people asked me why i dont go to the synagogue! in fact i know only of judaism what any human might know... from the old testament, which i believe the jews call the 50 books and from a little reading of some of their philosophers.....

much of it seems excessively brutal, bloody and illogical to me, eg kings, some of deuteronomy for example in fact plain wrong and i believe that if i had been born a jew, i would by now be in a position where i would acknowledge the community attachment but deny the religion. i also hope, but anyway for me myself it is true anyway, that i believe any talk about any people being "special", "chosen", master-races", etc etc ad nauseum is not only wrong, proud and obnoxious but is also the type of thinking that leads to genocides. i believe in fact that there are some terrible ideas in the "old testament" and therefore in many strands of judaism, and latent or present also in some christian thought - and is not christianity merely a branch of judaism that through proselytization and imperial and royal patronage evolved along separate paths? - or available through individual conscience through reading the bible, that are in fact unfair, unjust, cruel and wrong, and indeed make for a world more miserable than otherwise...

so in fact whilst i believe i was correct to feel sorrow and anger at what was probably some foolish and ignorant nasty people damaging sacred monuments to the dead of a major religion here in britain, i do in fact regret the words i used, although i regret far more that they were heard!!!

for those who don't know look up "ich bin ein berlinner" and "eisenhower" on wiki..... or "berlin airlift"

perhaps if it had not been for those vandals, i would have thought half as much about judaism as i have done over the intervening years... but in fact as with many complex subjects an increased knowledge has not led to any great eureka moments, and i still feel as i believe i probably would have thought, if asked, even 20 years ago that the relationship between their primitive tribalistic paternalistic but now rather matriarchal creed and a on the other hand relatively high "density of acheivement" in the more rarefied and intellectual spheres of life, such as science, philosophy, finance, music, literature, is obscure, difficult to determine or even unconnected with it, although to an outsider these are the two things that appear to delineate that people...

i as an englishman, living in a post-imperial nation that, mostly voluntarily withdrew from its hegemonic position in the globe, although perhaps doing so due to the effects of two enormous wars with germany in terms of loss of young men, and the spending of treasure on weapons and ammunition leading to completely different priorities in the national life, do not really want to spend too much time and thought on the issues around judaism... but in fact they are a fairly substantial number of jews in britain, and they, like a lot, i believe, of the minorities that reside here, regard themselves and the issues concerning them particularly as not only very important to themselves but also of a dispropotionate importance, in relation to their numbers, to the whole world, as it were.

so in fact it seems that by these events and attitudes of others a thinking person is not forced, but falls easily into contemplating the issues surrounding this people. and what of the others, the irish, enemies of old, and the scots, cunning rulers of the UK by gerrymandering, trickery and an education system [the scottish] that acts to overqualify in order from a smaller population to fulfill all the roles of society and economy and hence exports its people easily to positions of relative advantage within england... what of the peoples of the empire and colonies? well for the most part it is very easy to dismiss very many of those, mentally at least, "back to where they are from". home is where the heart is, people say and one has only to listen to an irish rebel song eg almost anything by the "wolfe tones" to feel the proud, savage, hearty, patriotic, courageous and unyielding love of land and nation of the gaels of "erin" or ireland..... if you ever want to stir up patriotic fervour with music i suggest you can take the tunes of the irish rebel songs and simply change the words to reflect whichever country you want to arouse!!! they certainly had that effect on me.

with the jews it is not really so. so they seem to have a different position to those peoples listed above who for the most came here from countries proudly and determinedly freed from British rule, eventually by political means, but involving violence, strikes, mass protests and riots and even armed insurrection... in other words a struggle, a conflict and the invocation of a profound anti-British sentiment that only slowly diminishes, and sometimes increases in those populations that have been admitted to the UK more so than in those that remain at home, although it changes its form over the generations.

of course a profound anti-british sentiment, whether in rastafarianism, memories of gandhi, the irish "cause" of which i suppose the proudest moment is thought by them to be the easter rising of 1916, or even the scots denying that they are priviliged and dreaming of robert the bruce, william wallace or the pretender stuarts....this sentiment even if not expresed explicitly can be felt, by the people of british origin in our society, and naturally arouses some similar resentful attitude as a backwash, a reflection... but intellectually it is not difficult to resolve this to the position of "home is where the heart is".

Norman Tebbitt put this somewhat one-dimensionally but neatly i think when he spoke of the "cricket test". his argument, i believe is that people would choose to live, to acquire passports, property, employment etc wherever they felt their own personal or family advancement would, for that time and in those circumstances be best served, but that an activity such as international sport-supporting, which appears on the whole to be an activity with almost absolute free choice - ie no penalty whatever the choice (lets hope) allows individuals or small close groups of people to show, if we can knowof it, where their heartfelt and perhaps longterm loyalties lie...

this may not be quite true as sometimes people (like me occasionally) will support a team for quirky reasons, such as style, performance, coming up from below or simply the colours of their shirts

in fact within the "cricket/rugby/olympics/football int'l etc test lies the cultural assumption, true for britain and indeed many countries that sport is a matter of significance

these long term loyalties might, it is often argued, and often argued against, affect actions taken by minority persons or families in times of trouble such as war and indeed in their attitude to public order and crime issues and issues around honesty in public life - eg corruption.

on the other hand the few it seems anglo or welsh mixed persons that have returned to this country have clearly got a long history of heavily paid for loyalty to britain and most often i believe returned and made once again a great contribution to the national cause.

but what matters to me in the immediate sense is the sense of resentment that emanates from more than a few members of many of our minorities, which lessens the joys of day to day life, and if one goes out a lot can make it a little more unpleasant..... certainly this would come within the "cricket test" if that is as good a guide as many think. or should that be the "cricket test test"?!

whilst jews on the other hand came here also for the most part as economic migrants and some came later as refugees from persecution. but none seem to have had a history of any resentment or enimity towards either the british people or the british state. it seems from reading history in a general sense that they had no particular loyalty to their countries of immediate origin, except for a taste for their foods and music, with which they enriched somewhat the mix available here...

and then the jews progressed to participating in the ventures of britain, which much as might think that i would done differently are far from being their responsibility, as i see it. after all disraeli was not palmerston, was not gladstone, but what difference did that make in india and jamaica? or indeed malaysia...

by the time jews started to participate fully in that imperial venturing, the position of the colonies proper as i would call them - australia, NZ, and canada was already settled... 1867? anyway these were destined from then to be independant nations

jews seem to have participated in trade and administration and have been just as loyal as indigenous britons to the country. so why now after about 150 years of a substantial jewish population being present in this country do i, and evidently many others including they themselves still find it, if not an ever present thought at least a political issue that quite frequently recurs to mind?

One reason is that quite a few of them, as with several other minorities these days do in fact put, in their own minds and either implicitly or, perhaps explicitly, in their published and private communications their own conditions, experiences and ambitions as being of a much higher priority and as of a far greater general global importance than an objective observer might think fair on the basis of population etc. so part of a modern trend in britain towards "tribal" loyalties, perhaps due to the recent presence of distinct and fairly well organised groups of immigrants.

Another reason is the idea of distinctness which they appear to have, or rather to hold in mind... briefly - "they" which clearly does not incude all jews, but a substantial number of those amongst them who are prominent or fairly active political and social commentators, seem to adopt a peculiar [although perhaps this type of thinking could be discovered in other groups if it was sought] type of universalism, in which almost all issues are considered according to universal values and measures, with the exception of those instances where they themselves or most often the state of israel is involved.

as an englishman, i have found in fact that i have considerable sympathy with their positions as taken in israel itself... their political parties, for example - beit netanyu and kaduna according quite closely to policies i might myself be able to endorse across a broad spectrum of ministries... likud i feel a more emotional sympathy with, although i do not endorse even for here any of their extra-legal methods... (labour i think are a little soft, although compared to any current mainstream british party they are probably solidly patriotic and far more truly socialist)

in fact it would be great if we, here, had that spectrum of parties to pick from, and not as here no choice except the conservatives who are probably closest to israels labour party...

the universalism that "they" these commentators that i describe espouse is very interesting to read... as "they" examine for example the affaires of mongolia wiith much the same criteria as they examine those of brazil or france or denmark or the sudan, even... but it is in fact more i believe the fact of the exception to this universalism, and its occasionally sharp contrast as a shadow on a clear day with an entirely different, yet still intellectually argued in the same style, attitude and set of beliefs concerning themselves.

so i have described my impressions of a sense of distinctness and a sense of exagerated global significance... the only thing more i can add is an occasionally prominent but somewhat pervasive sense of vulnerability, understandable perhaps due to the historical facts regarding that people but amounting to a paranoia, and i believe in fact a self-endangering paranoia which can from time to time arouse the indignation and resentment of various peoples around the globe...

going back to the distinctness issue, just to give one little example which many readers would find upsetting, i suppose if they were for example christians and were friends with the person expressing these opinions... i overheard a jewish person saying that he belived that if a jew killed a jew the killer would spend 1,000 years in a purgatory type torture cell, but if it was a non-jew that killed a jew the killer would have their immortal soul actually devoured and would not be reborn and not exist! i think it was mentioned as a tariff of about 3 years for a jew killing a non-jew!!!

of course, that is certainly not true, and indeed many other religions also put forward this kind of preference system for the afterlife but it seems that apart from primitives still living isolated existences, such as yemeni tribesmen few have had this sunk into their psyches so deep as some jews.

off topic but another interesting anecdote, yemeni tribesmen and many mohammedans, used to believe that there was no penalty, nothing wrong at all with killing non-mohammedans and used to shoot at such travellers for sport - that was 50-150 years ago, i believe, obviously they were wrong as well, i suppose.

now whilst these types of attitutudes might be understandable due to history and the books people study from and the type of upbringing they have, it is surely wrong to be like that and might be unhelpful even to themselves. is it reasonable for the citizens of a modern and assumedly integrated country such as the UK to debate in such a divided way? i ask mainly in reference to those who write on british and global political topics.