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Politics : World Affairs Discussion -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ChinuSFO who wrote (247)	7/12/2002 12:21:03 AM
From: Nadine Carroll	Respond to of 3959

Nadine, I have never understood the formation of Israel, a nation formed for people of a specific faith. Nations are formed for people of a specific race I don't think you mean "race" here; you mean "ethnicity"; nations are formed for people who consider themselves one people, a nation. (This may or may not have anything to with considering themselves a separate "race".) As the Jews do; Judaism is an ethnically based religion. Jews are Jews by birth, by matralineal descent. Judaism allows converts but does not encourage them. If the Jews had no common culture or self-identification as a separate people, they would have been completely assimilated many centuries ago. It's not as if being Jewish was, generally speaking, advantageous for them. If you don't get this about Jews no wonder you have trouble understanding Israel. The Russian Jews, the Ethiopian Jews, the Fillipino Jews, the European Jews, the American Jews and so on. Each have a distinct culture. In this Israel is like America. People immigrate, and then they become Americans/Israelis. Or if they don't, their children do. The biggest barrier to cultural blending is the east/west divide, between Jews of European/American descent (now a minority), and Jews from the Arab world. But this blend seems to be happening, more or less, with what degree of success I'm not sure. Actually, it even happens among some of the Israeli Arabs (who are 20% of the Israeli population), as well, there are a number of them, mostly young people, who have chosen to become modern Israelis. Ha'aretz had an article on this the other day. When the driver for unity, which is the existence of a common enemy (the Arab world), goes away, it would be interesting to see how there various cultures play out and whether the faith in the Jewish belief will still continue to be a cementing force. Since the main divide inside Israeli culture is currently between the secular (about 80% of Jews) and the haredi (orthodox) cultures, I kinda doubt that "faith in Jewish belief" will be the cementing force, it's going to be faith in Jewish peoplehood or nothing.