Well, that’s one of the Brexit arguments I always found utterly baffling. “Keep those fucking gyppos out - they’re taking all the low paid unskilled jobs! But those highly paid foreign doctors and engineers - yeah they can still come in.” WTF? You want to become trapped in low paid wage slavery in your own country? Well … ok, i guess.
As I understand it, Jewishness carries through the female line, so if your grandfather married a non Jew, you are not a Jew.
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Maybe that’s easy for you to say because no one’s arguing that your friends, neighbors, and relatives are horrible human beings and should be excluded from our society because they have a different political opinion. Myself, I am in that position so I feel a little more urgency in considering such questions.
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Right, but the female line thing is arbitrary and completely socially constructed, so if true it means Jewishness is something you believe, not something you are. If Jewishness is something you are then it should presumably be genetic, and I am approximately 12.5% Ashkenazi Jew by genes.
Have you considered that when they have horrible political opinions, perhaps they should be excluded from polite society?
Maybe. But that’s the sort of thing I would expect to hear from someone who is absolutely confident that his own political opinions are certified to contain 100.00% non-horrible content.
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No, but I don’t believe I have an inate right to be welcomed everywhere, because of my various views and beliefs. I don’t, for example, expect to be getting a personalised invite to join the KKK anytime ever.
If your great-grandfather was Israeli and Jewish, you have about a 90% chance that you’re Sephardic, not Ashkenazi.
This whole “diversity” argument is bullshit. Facebook has 8 board members, none are people of color or hispanic, and only 2 are women (one of those women came from the Whatsapp acquisition). Maybe before we start whinging about diversity of political opinions that represent at most 30% of their American userbase (and which, last I checked, was not a legally protected class), they should find a better way to represent the diversity of their ENTIRE userbase.
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Typical antisemitism is less about their religious beliefs and more about their cultural and ethic identity.
If you think about negative stereotypes about Jews, I can’t think of any of it that has to do directly with their religion.
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He was an immigrant (twice over). There are appx 2.8 million Ashkenazi Jews in Israel according to google.
I don’t think a lot of Jews really recognize a difference between their religious beliefs and their cultural and ethnic identity, or where they do it’s usually because they don’t have any religious beliefs and Jewishness is all about the cultural and ethnic identity.
But cultural and ethnic identity is all about “what you believe”, not “what you are”.
I think the negative stereotypes about Jews stem from their way of life which includes religion as part of their ethnic and cultural identity. Indeed, the stereotype of Jews as covetous comes directly from a doctrinal difference between Judaism and Christianity whereby Jews disproportionately engaged in banking.
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Not really. You see, I know my friends, neighbors, and relatives personally – in most cases, I’ve known them for a long time. I know that they are fundamentally good people despite our differences in political opinion. The people painting Trump supporters with a broad brush do not know these people personally, so their opinion does not do much of anything to sway mine.
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Are you handling the nightshift for popabawa? 
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Given the number of non-practicing Jews I know, and even a few hybrids (active in the Christian faith, but still keeping Jewish traditions alive), I think a Jewish identity originated from religious beliefs, but has gone to encompass way more than just that.
In my observances, they are hated as a people, not because of their religious beliefs, even those who are just Jewish by blood, not religious practice.
When I see people criticize Muslims, they are often quoting the Koran. I have never seen someone quote the Talmud when criticizing Jews. In fact the only slur I can remember dealing directly with religion is they killed Christ - who was also a Jew at the time.
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He’s not just kind of an asshole, he’s a raging enoromous prolapsed asshole, and you’re absolutely right that this is not just about giving money to Trump, it’s a legacy of being a shitty person. Also, shame on Zuckerberg for totally not getting what diversity is about.
- We’ve seen that he will do whatever he can to destroy the press based on a personal vendetta with what he did to Gawker.
- He also has written about how he thinks that women shouldn’t have had the right to vote[1].
- He has been reported as having given $1M to NumbersUSA, an anit-immigration lobbyist organization.
- He wrote a whole book that basically denounces diversity.
And this is also not the case of a normal employee speaking out with words or money; Thiel is an investor and a board member of Facebook. He has say in organizations that he invests in, and has a lot of say at Facebook. I think having companies disassociate with Thiel because of his bad views is a good thing; they will be able to protect their attempts at diversity gains and not be hindered by Thiel.
Now, while what Zuckerberg was saying in his post is superfically true, allowing anyone and everyone to have a seat at the proverbial diversity table is not always condusive to having diversity. You get someone spouting shitty things that may be hurtful to a group, they are not going to want to join you at the table; and you cannot force them. Which leads to a choice, do you want to try and maximize the range of voices at your table, or do you want it to be monopolized by a few loud shitty voices? My choice is always to remove the bad apples who discourage others from joining in.
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Sounds like we just have a slightly different interpretation of how much “religion” and “cultural identity” overlap in the case of Judaism. I can live with that.
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Thanks for saying this. I completely agree with you (and, for once, Zuckerberg) mostly for the reasons stated in Zuckerberg’s post, but also because this country is going absolutely crazy with dogmatic certainties at the moment. People on the other side of a political debate are no longer merely “wrong”, they’re deserving of punishment. Its crazy when they chant “lock her up!”, and it’s crazy when we chant “boycot his supporters”.
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Except, one is collective action by individuals in the social space acting without the support or direction of the government, while “lock her up” is literally using the power of government to imprison one’s political opponents.
See the difference?
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Ahem. Judaism is an ethno-religion; it is possible to be ethnically Jewish (i.e. it’s what you are) without being religiously Jewish (being a practicing member of the Jewish faith). Case in point, I’m ethnically Jewish and an atheist, as is Cory (and, I believe, so is Zuckerberg). But there are still people out there that are bigoted against us because of who our ancestors were, and not what we believe or don’t believe.
Would you like to try another example?
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Of course. And I see lots of other differences too. But both reflect an irrational level of extreme political thinking.
And as someone above pointed out, it’s entirely possible to be an absolutely decent person AND be a trump supporter. It sounds like that’s a news flash to the lynch mob here, but like it or not it’s absolutely true. (And no, I’m absolutely not a trump supporter, but I definitely support people’s right to be one without losing their job).
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