Makes sense. I looked at census forms going back to 1930 and didnt find that as an official option but did find various articles on the topic or referring to the topic. W/o being able to cite the census directly I decided not to link to meta discussion.
Are you quite sure itâs the census?
This book suggests that âHebrewâ was used on immigration forms, and other surveys, but not on the census itself.
You may have meant to reply to @anon67050589
I did clarify.
You havenât clarified or explained your position.
I think people have the right to live in their historic homelands, and to set up safe havens, but not to set up states. And the historic homelands of different groups almost always overlap. I donât understand nationalism so this is hard to rewrite.
But nationalists who try to take sole control of the entire homeland of their people âwithout ceding an inchâ almost always end up trying to âtake [areas that are part of both groups historic homelands] from [neighboring groups].â
I gave several examples where the above has helped lead to war. Without clarification, I donât know if that is your position, but the above is dangerous ultranationalism. If it helps cause wars it helps kill people and it is dangerous.
I wrote out another full explanation in case you missed the first, but it got eaten. Unreliable internet connection through monopolistic internet company, but thatâs another story.
As I said above, it depended on who filled out the census form; there doesnât seem to be any consistency, but Iâve definitely seen census forms with âHebrewâ as the race.
But yes, itâs also on a lot of immigration forms.
Ah, perhaps the book was oriented towards researchers who need consistency in their data. If it was left to the discretion of the census taker, the absence of âHebrewsâ cannot be indicative of the absence of Jewish residents.
1 Like
At face value that boils down to âSorry Jews but it sucks to be youâ in this case. Or really sucks to be anyone who didnt already set up a nation state before some arbitrary date which you havenât let us know of. I guess its a good deal for colonialist powers though. Should then large swathes of Africa and the Middle East be given back to various Great Powers of Europe? What right do those people have to their own nation states by this pronouncement? Or did I get the cutoff date wrong?
Obviously the above is not only rhetorical but reducto ad absurdum. The question of who has the right to self rule has no real cut and dried answer that satisfies everyone. There isnât a logic flow diagram which can account for all the variances of historical and present day conditions to arrive at a de jure condition so the reality is often the de facto condition. The nation states which were once Yugoslavia but are now a group of nation states representing different peoples is a recent example of balancing out the de facto and de jure whereas the partition of the nation state, former colony, former kingdom of Korea is more properly in the de facto category. You may not understand nationalism, but at least try to understand history.
Now as for clarifying my position, I did mention that there are paradoxes between the secular and theological aspects. The secular aspect of classical Zionism which I adhere to is the simple right of self rule in the historical homeland as outlined by Theodore Hertlz. While you do not agree to this principle, at least understand that it exists and that Jews are hardly alone in this, it presents itself as a general trend of people and history. This part is simple.
The theological aspects are a bit more nuanced. First off Jews are divinely commanded to take and settle the land of Israel (roughly parallel to the borders of the existing nation state including the area up to the Jordan). Similarly we are bound to defend this land, thus ânot cede an inchâ. We are furthermore commanded to govern ourselves in this land as a kingdom under Torah law.
It may help clarify your understanding that in the case of Jews, what looks like religion is often a matter of contract law between a specific people and God, thats how we see things so here when I say âcommandedâ for us that means the equivalent of bound by contract.
The theological aspect does recognize that the kingdoms of Judea and Israel fell and that we as a people ended up in exile with our historical homeland ruled by foreign empires. This does not invalidate the Divine contract that the land of Israel in the biblical sense is still ours, but rather that we did not fulfill our end of the contract and thus have been temporarily âlocked outâ (vast oversimplification). We understand that a time will come again when a Jewish king will return and restore the proper conditions of return of the people to the land, ejecting any foreign empires which rule of the land and restore self rule by Torah law. Obviously this has not happened and thus theologically we are not to setup a State of our own in the land of Israel however we are still commanded to dwell in the land and the various commandments which are conditional upon dwelling in the land regardless of who rules over it be it a secular State of Jews or a foreign empire, or as the present reality is, a bit of both.
Please understand Iâve left out quite a bit, there are volumes upon volumes written on this matter in various languages and Iâve tried to stick only to the highlights as this BBS isnât the place to get into the finer details of Torah or rabbinic law. You may not personally understand that others see things in the way that I describe but at least accept that it is a reality that others do see things this way. As I mentioned before there are seeming paradoxes here, however for those like me who enjoy Talmudics, being able to hold seemingly contradictory ideas on their own merit and find the practical balance is quite usual.
1 Like
I am against states, and against nation-states [not just after some arbitrary cut-off date], and against exclusive territorial claims which breed conflict and war.
2 Likes
You might as well be against sunshine and rain. Even as a self described autistic anarchist pacifist, you canât really deny the fact that nation states exist and that groups of people with a shared history, ethnic or other historical connection have an urge towards and a trend to act towards self rule. Things exist whether they meet our ideals or not and I have to wonder what your anarchist pacifist position says about when someone comes to do violence to you, say perhaps due to you identifying as a trans woman? Turning swords into plowshares is the ideal but we arenât there yet.
I think your conception of nationalism elides over a certain practical messiness.
Sorry, you canât be Cornish. But you can be English.
Sorry, you canât be Scottish. But you can be British
Sorry, you canât be Catalan. But you can be Spanish
Sorry, you canât be Breton. But you can be French.
If the minority is lucky, thereâs merely a slow loss of identity. If unlucky, various forms of violence and what we would now call âCrimes against Humanityâ. As a political idea, nationalism is flawed.
4 Likes
Indeed the practical matters are messy. Iâd hoped to convey that very point with the paragraph following the one you quoted. As to your examples, not every group either wishes to or manages to achieve self rule, life is messy and there is no clear flowchart. Perhaps Jews really are unlucky in this regard but despite empire after empire trying to dispel us of the idea of maintaining identity, we still do so, even the vehemently secular Jews. I guess you could say we prefer to be unlucky to being a footnote of history.
As for nationalism being flawed, well what political idea isnât? Since the word could mean different things to different people, for example:
patriotic feeling, principles, or efforts.
⢠an extreme form of this, esp. marked by a feeling of superiority over other countries.
⢠advocacy of political independence for a particular country.
Some will object to all of that definition, that any feeling of patriotism is âbadâ. The first bullet point certainly tends towards xenophobia which can lead to âbad thingsâ but as a mere idea, it like all other ideas merely exists. The second bullet point is probably more closely to what we are discussing here and this can be âbadâ or âgoodâ or a mere fact but of course the practicality or even the analysis can be messy.
Scotland is a nation on its own yet it is part of a confederation. It has historically resisted this idea by means of war and more recently by means of ballot but did not succeed either way. Both the de facto and de jure aspects exist in theory and fact. Things worked differently more recently for the Croats and Kosovars. I could go on but I think here and before I was pretty clear that I recognize the practical messiness of the situation.
1 Like
To return more closely to the subject of the article⌠This is exactly what Silicon Valley companies do today, when they ask in interviews about your hobbies and then donât hire you because you âwerenât a good fit for the company culture.â See, if hiring people based not on their job skills, but on whether they want to go work out together at the Cross Fit gym, ski Tahoe, drink craft beer, and eat paleo turns your workplace into one thatâs 95% male, only 2% black or Latino, and entirely under 35⌠well who can blame them for wanting someone who fits the culture, bro? Thatâs not discrimination, thatâs building a good team!
4 Likes
And entirely abled, too. Just ask yourself how those questions affect someone with various physical disabilities, dietary requirements, socia disabilities, and so on.
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
