Can a Jew be French or German or will he always be regarded as a member of an alien tribe? I do think a Jew can belong to a Protestant country such as the USA, Britain and Australia, but as the WASPs lose power, Jews face a more precarious future.
Chaim Amalek: “Agreed. And those liberal Jews who agitated to change the West clearly did not think this through.”
Steven Ben-Off: “French identity was supposedly based on acceptance of French language and culture, but that hasn’t worked out so well. German identity was always based on blood (Jus sanguinis). Part of my family were German Jews who lived there for generations but never felt “German.” From what I have heard about the German side of my family, they were prosperous and hoped to be secure there, but never expected to be accepted as “Germans.”The other side of my family is from Lithuania (whose capital was called”the Jerusalem of the North”) and Jews would have to out of their minds to want to return there. I say this here on Facebook because my support for Israel (and of course the United States) is directly related to the family experience of coming from somewhere you can never go back to. I envy people who can go back to the old country and find their roots. For a lot of Jews that’s an impossibility.”
“I couple of years ago a met an elderly Ashkenazi Jewish lady from small town rural Quebec (how her family ended up there, I didn’t ask), and she totally reinforced your point, Luke. Growing up in Catholic Quebec in the 1920s and 30s, she experienced lots of Antisemitism and hostility from her Québécois neighbors and as soon as she was old enough, she left there and moved to a Protestant, WASP (heavily Scottish) province of Canada, and she said the contrast could not have been more stark – there was virtually NO open Antisemitism there, People may have had Antisemitic attitudes in Anglophone Canada, but they never expressed it (and in fact she said many Anglo Canadians were pro-Jewish). Unlike the openly Jew-hating French.”
* Comments on my Paul Gottfried interview: “What is important for us is to recognize how muds see Christian forgiveness. They don’t respect us more for turning the cheek, rather they see it as a sign of submission and license to do whatever they want.”
* “Christian forgiveness is basically a white thing. If you’re dealing with human beings or even jews it’s far better to be feared than liked.”
