States of Exile

Boney M asked not to sing Rivers of Babylon at West Bank concert: Maizie Williams said she was asked by the Palestinian organisers not to sing the group's 1978 hit, a song originally written in 1970 by the Jamaican reggae group, The Melodians. The song's chorus quotes from the Book of Psalms and refers to the exiled Jewish people's yearning to return to the land of Israel. - New York Times By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down ye-eah we wept, when we remembered Zion. By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down ye-eah we wept, when we remembered Zion. When the wicked Carried us away in captivity Required from us a song Now how shall we sing the lord's song in a strange land When the wicked Carried us away in captivity Requiring of us a song Now how shall we sing the lord's song in a strange land Let the words of our mouth and the meditations of our heart be acceptable in thy sight here tonight Let the words of our mouth and the meditation of our hearts be accep...

An article in Tablet magazine discusses the phenomenon of Jewish anti-Zionists. Personally, I think the term Zionism should either be abandoned as a holdover of a now completed historical quest or expanded in universal terms . However, I would never join an "International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network" because in today's discourse anti-Zionism inevitably means "opposing the activities of the international Jewish conspiracy." Respectable Jews like Franz Rosenzweig were anti-Zionist when it was a matter of intellectual debate and not facts on the ground. To nowadays advocate turning Israel-Palestine into some binational Belgium, when even Belgium is falling apart, is prevarication or stupidity. Yet the article rightly distinguishes between people who should really be termed non-Zionists, who hold to a less Israel-centric Judaism, and the apparatchiks "who argued that Jewishness was relevant to the group’s mission primarily to the extent to which it could be us...

From The New York Times : This week, as Jews around the world observed the fasting day of Tisha B’av, commemorating the destruction of the First and Second Jewish Temples in ancient Jerusalem, a Brazilian megachurch received planning permission to build a 10,000-seat replica of Solomon’s Temple in the city of São Paulo. As Tom Phillips of The Guardian noted, a Brazilian newspaper, Estado de São Paulo, reported that the church will cost an estimated $200 million and should be completed in four years. According to a post on the blog of Bishop Edir Macedo, the founder of Brazil’s evangelical Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, which is building the replica, the structure will be 180 feet high, making it nearly twice as tall as the Christ the Redeemer statue that towers over Rio de Janeiro. Mr. Macedo also said that stones of the same type used by Solomon had been ordered from Jerusalem to be used in a complex which will also house 36 Bible schools, television and radio studios and a 1...

I've always (ok, recently) thought Hep-Hep Riot would be a good name for a Jewish noise rock band. Someone more talented than me go out and make it happen.

Michael Chabon writes : Now, with the memory of the Mavi Marmara fresh in our minds, is the time for Jews to confront, at long last, the eternal truth of our stupidity as a people, which I will stack, blunder for blunder, against that of any other nation now or at any time living on this planet of folly, in this world of Chelm. Here's a representative take from the "race realist" community: This claim has never sounded terribly reasonable to me, but it's been said that this is the real reason that liberals won't touch HBD: the fear that people will find out that Jews really are more intelligent. Despite Chabon's literary, unscientific protests, it seems pretty clear that at least the Ashkenazi branch is. If they aren't more intelligent, as Chabon insists, we've got a pretty good case of disparate impact here, with all the ingredients for a class-action suit. So Chabon wants to have it both ways: Jews are no smarter than everyone else, and please ignor...

From Christopher Hitchens' memoir Hitch 22 : There's a certain amount of ambiguity in my background ... but under various reading of three codes which I don't respect much (Mosaic Law, the Nuremberg Laws, and the Israeli Law of Return) I do qualify as a member of the tribe, and any denial of that in my family has ceased with me. But I would not remove myself to Israel if it meant the continuing expropriation of another people, and if anti-Jewish fascism comes again to the Christian world -- or more probably comes to us via the Muslim world -- I already consider it an obligation to resist it wherever I live. ... The Jews will not be "saved" or "redeemed." (Cheer up: neither will anyone else.) They/we will always be in exile whether they are in the greater Jerusalem area or not, and this is in some ways as it should be.

Have Jews learned anything since the time of Jesus about not creating martyrs? Actually I retract the term Jews. This flotilla debacle demonstrates the difference between Jews and Israelis. I may not be macho and extroverted, but I'm clever enough not to play into my enemies' hands. Israeli have been in the sun too long. It's wiped away their Yiddish cunning.