Friday, May 13, 2005

The End of Jewish Guilt

During Yoga lunch with Alex we stumbled upon a topic which has since plagued me all day, all night, and sometimes during the afternoons. It connects with my Anti-Semitism class, chronicles the roots the Holocaust in Austrian and German literature and racist theorists from the mid 1800s.

Then came the Holocaust- the brutal epitome of Jewish suffering and survival. Even looking back at history, we see that the Jews' history is not a happy one. Egypt, Pogroms, Exile, Inquisition, Holocaust-all these events have shaped Jewish identity and taken root in the Jewish experience.

But what happens when it's all over? When there's nothing to complain about? When the Jewish kids from Beverlywood and New York just don't know what the hell their Bubbeleh is talking about? I can't find meaning in your suffering, Auschwitz is just a place (though I know it happened), Israelis suffer more deaths on their highways than on busses bombed by terrorists, my neighbor is NOT an Anti-Semite, and the agriculturist farmer type who in the 40s would have helped the Nazis and had shot me with a KAR if given the gun, now engages me in an insightful discussion on soil erosion and proper care needed to grow healthy basil. My only concern is that my cell phone doesn't work properly, I can't find a decent job with a Global Studies Major, and birds keep crapping on my car.

So how're things gonna roll for use Jews of the future, who live without hardship, struggle, pain? We're just like everyone else in America, except we don't pork. Or we do, but we don't tell our parents. What should we do? Come up with new reasons for people to hate us, and hopefully (god-willing! or god forbid!) they'll act on it? Maybe THAT will give us enough reason to keep surviving, and live as Jews. Or will we completely assimilate like everyone else, eventually dying off because those threatening forces which form such a necessary part of our culture have disappeared? We can't go on citing the Holocaust and swastikas as a means to an end, or any means at all, because they've become irrelevant to the Jewish psyche.

Oy. All this gives me such a headache.

2 Comments:

At 5:19 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Shut your anti-semite ass up, you nazi

 
At 5:19 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

just kidding,

just read your ipod article, hilarious...

 

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