States of Exile

From a Tablet magazine article on the magazine trade : Although I disagreed with the late Irving Kristol, the so-called godfather of neoconservatism, on many things, I think he was onto something almost existential when it comes to magazine publishing. “A lot of New York intellectuals”—which is to say, Jews—“have roots in Eastern Europe, where, unlike in England or France, there was no tradition or civility,” he told me once when I was interviewing him about intellectuals and magazines. “In England or France, you operate within a framework of existing institutions. In Eastern Europe, we wanted to change existing institutions, to improve them. The Cossack was the existing institution, so ideas were more important than institutions. That is why if you disagree with someone, you stop talking to him and start your own magazine.” Like the author, I think Kristol is onto something here. One does not have to be a proponet of Kevin MacDonald's theory of Jews-as-cultural virus to note a Jew...

Zionism is not synonymous with Jewish nationalism. The Zionist revolution that meant to uproot diaspora culture is more accurately termed Hebrew nationalism. Like all revolutions, the Zionist revolution was forced to compromise with the (Jewish) establishment to achieve its goals; thus the current identity crisis of the state of Israel. Israel's secular socialist and nationalist pioneers would look in horror on the millennialist settlers who have a strangehold on contemporary Israeli politics. Radical Zionism meant to create a new Jew, not provide a home for the old one. Yet history had other plans, as Israel emerged after the Second World War as the de facto home for all Jews. And yet I've always been intrigued by the lost alternative to Hebrew nationalism: Yiddishism, or Ashkenazi nationalism. Here are some excerpts from a book review that deals with the topic: Yiddishism can be defined as a romantic nationalist ideology in which Yiddish reflects the Jewish spirit--a concep...

I define myself as a six-thousand-year-old European. - Irving Layton The name Kafka is both Hebrew, from Jakov-Jacob , and Czech. Kavka , spelled with v, is the Czech word for black bird. . . . The Jews' gratitude to the Emperor was enormous and their loyalty to Habsburg intense. Kafka's first name offers a good example. His parents named him Franz, token of their affection for Franz Josef. - Walter H. Sokel, "Kafka as a Jew" Of course "Semite" refers to the speaker of a language group and was turned into a racial epithet by a German pedant. That being said, "Semite" in the broader sense has its use. Middle Eastern nationalities that share certain linguistic, cultural and yes, racial affinities can be categorized as Semitic. These include Arabs and Hebrews, but also other nationalities that were either assimilated or decimated in the wake of the Islamic wars of expansion: Assyrians, Arameans, Chaldeans, Phoenicians (arguably still around in Lebanon...