Who Counts as a Jew? An Epic Debate of Mystic Vs. Fundamentalist
Who Counts as a Jew? An Epic Debate of Mystic Vs. Fundamentalist
My apologies in advance for the absurd length of this installment...
This post is the twenty-ninth in an ongoing series on antisemitism and culture. See the previous installments here:
What It Means When the Leader of the Republican Party Dines With THREE Antisemites
When & Why Conspiracy Theorists Sometimes Stumble Onto the Truth
The JFK Conspiracy Theory Which Makes the Most Sense & Why It Matters Today
An Open Letter to Elon Musk Thanking Him for the Correct Decision Shutting Down Neo-Nazi Kanye West
4 Stupid Reasons People Don't Take Antisemitism as Seriously as They Should
Obsessing Over 'the Left' Sabotages the Fight Against Antisemitism
Elon Musk Brings Onboard 'How to Fight Anti-Semitism' Author Bari Weiss to Twitter 2.0
Even the Smartest Brains Can Become Infected with Antisemitism
Is Qatar the Most Terrible State in the Middle East? Or Is Iran Worse?
Indifferent to Racist Hate in America, Indifferent to Genocidal Hate in Ukraine
Please, My Jewish Friends: We Desperately Need You Here in America
7 Reasons This Christian Hippie Became a Zealot Against Jew Hatred
Bipolar Disorder Is Not an Excuse for Kanye West's Jew Hatred
Why This Bible Thumper Is Going to Keep Using Plenty of Profanity
Kevin McCarthy Makes a Deal with the Devilish Far Right Allies of Antisemitism and Genocide
How Multi-Faith Mysticism & Maimonides Can Bring Peace to Jews, Muslims, Christians, and Everyone
RIP Paul Johnson, a Catholic Warrior in Defense of the Jewish People
These writings are part of my ongoing effort to overcome my PTSD by forcing myself to try to write and publish something every day commenting on and analyzing current cultural affairs and their impacts on politics, faith, and, well, everything. “Politics is downstream from culture,” the late Andrew Breitbart popularized among conservative bloggers while he was alive. I’d go a step further: Everything is downstream from culture. The cultures you embrace determine who you are and who you become. You become what you worship.
I usually will only publish a single installment in this series each day but now I’ve decided to offer two since today is Saturday and this one feels like a distinctly Jewish debate I had with someone who is Jewish himself. For tomorrow’s installment - Sunday’s - I hope to write more deeply on the implications of what I argued so passionately here from a Christian perspective.
So when I was feeling pretty lousy on Thursday as I was recovering from my seizure on Wednesday night I did something I often regret later but felt I could justify doing given the subject matter and since it was supposed to be a day of rest: fall into a seemingly fruitless Twitter debate that lasted the entire day.
I’ve often argued with this guy before about stuff and it usually goes nowhere but it’s instructional about a particular kind of mind type which I’ve come to despise over the decades: the fundamentalist. The member of all faiths - or even of no faith, this guy describes himself as a non-religious Jew - who wants to focus on “the fundamentals” and understand seemingly everything as simply and clearly as they can.
As a self-described “Judeo-Christian mystic” - which I ended up explaining to my interlocutor near the end of the debate - I abhor fundamentalism. I can’t stand people who think they have the one, true, correct interpretation of scripture or the singular best way to analyze the world.
Being a Christian since childhood and a serious engager with Jewish/Israeli issues since 2009, I’ve see with such clarity the internal debates and myriad ways of interpreting the Bible. And I’ve often had a hard time taking firm sides in the intra-Christian and intra-Jewish theological debates. Both the “liberal” theologies and the “conservative” theologies seem to have some legitimate points which the extremists in their midst then take too far.
Having embraced the mystic current I largely feel like I need to hold both in my mind at the same time. On the one hand I share the “liberal” reading of scripture which acknowledges a broad range of interpretations. On the other hand I share the “conservative” reading that on some matters we do need to just take a “leap of faith” and believe literally in at least some of the Bible’s claims. Otherwise we fall into moral anarchy.
One of my favorite occult aphorisms for a long time has been attributed to Hassan I Sabah, whose biography by James Wasserman I’ve been reading and blogging about here:
Nothing is true, everything is permitted.
Now that statement is not at all a nihilistic endorsement to go and do anything. Rather, it’s a warning that when we choose to believe nothing is true, we are defenseless to oppose any form of cruelty and violence.
My debate partner, who calls himself “Tigger’s Dan” on Twitter, seems to intuit that concept - that without proper definitions chaos ensues and communication is impossible. He’s obsessed with the idea, and much of our discussion involved me trying to wake him up that in taking it to the extremes he did he was just oversimplifying the world.
Now, this debate took place over a whole day, across multiple threads, hitting on a variety of topics, so presenting it and summarizing it has been quite the task. I’ll do the best I can and eliminate redundant or irrelevant tracks of it.
MY APOLOGIES IN ADVANCE FOR HOW LONG IT IS! When I know that I’m right about something I tend not to give up until I’ve worn down my opponent to the point where THEY give up.
It began when Dan asked:
I responded linking to the 26th installment in this series and asking the question I would repeat endlessly in discussion. If Jews are to engage in “gatekeeping” who counts as a Jew and who does not, then who specifically has the authority to determine who gets through the gate?
I also stated my position right up front: in my view all that it takes to count as a “Jew” is that one chooses to identify as such. The contents of their beliefs and depths of their religious practice as a Jew is entirely up to them and nobody has the authority to cast judgment on them.
Dan argued that in setting the bar so low it drained the word “Jew” of meaning:
I pointed out that there was a type of Jews who did believe in Jesus and that I myself considered myself a blending of both traditions:
Dan seemed to think I was dodging his question, a charge he often makes in our discussions when I respond with too complex an answer for him to easily grasp:
He restated his challenge:
And then I explained the real challenge of the question, that the word has multiple overlapping meanings and that even among Jews it has engendered fierce debate for a long time:
Dan was trying to find a bare minimum definition of “Jew” and thought that mere belief in the Torah and its God or being born Jewish was sufficient:
Then someone else jumped into the conversation to support Dan’s point:
All one has to do is Google the history of the subject for 20 minutes and it’s clear just how complex the question is:
Dan is perpetually looking for “a simple concept” to grab hold of to make sense of an over-complicated world:
Then I laid out the basic faith divisions among Jews:
I restated my original point again, that as much as Dan wanted there to be someone who could end the debate, there really isn’t anyone of such power:
Dan kept on using the word “logic” and trying to say what my “logic” was and how illogical my ideas supposedly were. I had learned quickly with him this was just his form of fundamentalism:
This was an opening for me to again reference the essay in this series which explained Sufis who embraced Jewish ideas:
I again stated the question which he was just not getting:
Now we were starting to get somewhere when he finally answered the question:
Oh no Dan, don’t think that the “religious texts” outline the standards because they certainly do not:
Dan returned to his insistence that there had to be a bare minimum somewhere in order for someone to call themselves a “Jew”:
And I returned to my point that “Jew” transcends just a believer in the religion, that there wasn’t even a “the religion” when it came to Judaism, but many competing ones:
Dan then tried to specify that he was just talking about the religion and that converts needed to have some bare minimum of belief:
I was picking up on now just how fundamentalist his approach actually was. Fundamentalists always talk about “foundational aspects” of their religion and how everyone must believe in them:
Dan still wanted to insist that there had to be some bare minimums one embraced in order to count:
So he posed the question directly:
And I answered it directly:
I continued to emphasize the complexity of Jewish history to him:
He continued to push the point that one could not just self-apply the label “Jew” and then live as a Christian:
I again stated the problem of authority, which he still had yet to fully acknowledge but would eventually:
Then he reached for a simplistic comparison to try and make his point:
I threw his silly soccer argument back in his face emphasizing how even there it was a subjective label:
He shifted tactics now, toward his obsession that without clear definitions words cannot have meaning and communication cannot happen:
I knew that this person was insulting me but I decided to take their point seriously and throw it back in their face to show what a jerk they were being:
On another thread of the discussion Dan continued with his efforts to make me accept that words had to have simple meanings in order for communication to happen:
This concept that “if words mean anything, they mean nothing” was one of his mantras:
When it comes to arguing about language my years of studying Robert Anton Wilson have taken their toll on my cynicism about words:
He was still not getting my point about how no one has the authority to say what one must do or believe to count as a Jew:
Dan was still doing his very best to dismiss my point about the complexity of Jewish history on the subject:
Then I paid homage to Wilson and his influence on me here:
Dan and I weren’t really communicating even though we spoke the same language because he chooses to understand language in a much simpler way than I do:
He conceded my point that words’ meaning change over time but did not yet grasp the full implications of it:
In a new thread he returned to his original effort - insisting that there must be some bare minimum of belief in order for someone to religiously count as a Jew:
There was that give-away word “foundational” again:
Meanwhile we were having a debate about his incorrect use of “whattaboutism” which I tried to explain in the historical context and he kept rejecting was irrelevant to the conversation. Eventually I tied the two discussions together to show how his literalism was related:
He had attempted to claim that “whataboutism” meant trying to distract someone with a random subject in a debate. I had given him the historical background on it, that it wasn’t a random subject being chosen, but something somehow related to the subject tangentially. I had given him the traditional “whataboutism” of the Soviet Union trying to deflect from its own human rights record by pointing to Southern oppression of blacks in the pre-civil rights era.
Dan often wanted to do this in our discussions. He would claim that when I brought up related subjects the they had nothing to do with what “the topic” was which he wanted to discuss exclusively.
This was his common complaint with me - “you always get lost in the weeds when we discuss something”:
I’m a mystic - what he dismisses as “the weeds” is my religious tradition:
In a new thread I pointed out what usually happens when he and I engage with each other:
Then I made a key decision in the debate. I was just going to openly start calling him a fundamentalist:
I decided at this point I had enough clarity in the discussion to explain what was really driving our disagreements:
Then I hit on a key point that he didn’t understand: subjective concepts like language and religion were not “objective” sciences where one could prove meaning:
OK, with that insult it was time to invoke my credentials and professional experience to refute:
It was akin to someone raised by a doctor arguing with someone who had been through medical school and was now doing their residency.
It’s almost as though my point that words can have infinite meaning was scary to him. He again tried to pronounce victory, as though something I said was actually conceding agreement to his overarching argument:
He again brought up my challenging him on his misuse of “whataboutism” as though that contradicted my point that words can *potentially* have infinite meanings:
I must have really been frustrating him at this point with my unwillingness to give in to his oversimplifying:
I again brought up how we weren’t really communicating since our understanding of words was so different:
I point this out often in online debates - that there’s a world of difference between having a “debate” - in which one argues endlessly for their point - and a “conversation” where ideas are actually being exchanged:
I returned to my point again about how I was a mystic and he was a fundamentalist, a point he had yet to acknowledge:
The obsession with proper following of the rules and strict use of language are trademarks of fundamentalism:
In a new thread, Dan tried again to refute my point that being a Jew was primarily about choosing to self-identify as such:
And I called him out for another too simple comparison:
Now he was beginning his “fighting retreat” - indicating he was getting tired of the debate but not yet ready to give it up:
I again brought up the Mystic vs Fundamentalist point to explain our disagreement:
Now we were starting to get somewhere finally as he was addressing my point about the lack of authorities to enforce the rules of religion like a sports referee:
In a new thread I emphasized that he was more just expressing his opinion and not proving any objective point:
He was continuing his “fighting retreat” again:
It seemed necessary again to bring up that this was how fundamentalists thought:
I’m not really a “contrarian” in the Christopher Hitchens tradition nor in how real contrarians I’ve engaged with behave. And I explained why:
Our thread about “whataboutism” and its relation to the Jewish debate continued:
Dan was perpetually looking for ways in which I supposedly contradicted myself. And I wouldn’t have it.
I decided I had to do more to explain to him how he was being a fundamentalist:
I decided at this point to start hammering away at the fundamentalist point and see what happened:
He again repeated his condemnation of postmodernism, that if something doesn’t have a clearly defined meaning then it cannot have any meaning:
I decided to stick to the point about fundamentalism and expand it to emphasize fundamentalists of other religions:
Finally he seemed to pick up on my using “fundamentalist” so much and tried to dispute it:
Then I just asked him the question outright:
When he failed to answer as quickly as he had been I decided to pronounce victory, having figured out that he didn’t even understand what the word “fundamentalist” meant:
His answer was a dead giveaway:
I’ve gotten this a fair amount lately with fundamentalists of all sorts of ideologies:
The fighting retreat continued, signaling to me that I’d hit on the key issue and he didn’t know how to respond:
Having now come across the term he wasn’t able to refute I was going to hold onto it:
I again tried to explain why we were arguing:
Since he claimed again that I’d failed to give him the context I repeated myself and tried to get us back to the discussion of Jews:
He again tried to claim that a Jew couldn’t believe in Jesus:
Now we were making progress again:
Dan was willing to concede my point that some Jews counted according to their genes, and not their beliefs, and tried to refocus the conversation on religious converts:
I wasn’t going to let the comparison to other ethnic groups slide. Jews are a unique people since their religion, culture, and ethnicity are so intricacy tied together. It was also time to bring antisemitism into the discussion to emphasize the point about this:
In a new thread I restated my position now that he had admitted one could ethnically be Jewish while religiously Christian:
I chose to emphasize then how some groups of Jews regard others as having rejected the Torah and the Jewish God, a point he still didn’t get:
I brought up fundamentalism again:
He didn’t and we continued on another thread:
To throw him off a bit I decided to agree with him:
I knew he would try to then claim overall victory:
But I disputed again, rejecting the idea of “gatekeeping” who counts as a member of which religion:
I’m perfectly willing to concede that one converting to Judaism should believe in the Torah and its God, but must? Not quite:
And then we’d come full circle again back to what I’d originally said:
Now we were making progress again. He was asking a question to learn something instead of just continuing to endlessly argue his point:
But we’ll get to my answer on that shortly. We were still arguing about something else on another thread and I was explaining why I was so resistant to his idea of “gatekeeping”:
Now we were making progress again:
Again he tried to make an oversimplified comparison to other subjects to try and expose me as a postmodernist who believed in nothing:
Then his deeper objection to me and my approach came out:
I was tired of him constantly insisting that without having a clear, agreed upon definition of “Jew” that it made the term “meaningless.” I offered another word instead:
I again brought up the “historical context” to this gatekeeping discussion to explain why it made me so uncomfortable:
I again restated my original position:
It seemed an opportune time to inject more cultural and historical context that I was educated on into the discussion. Click here for a fantastic overview of the Black Hebrew Israelite phenomenon and the diversity within it
I could already see the trap he was trying to set for me:
I was already aware of the diversity within the BHI movement and used it to again make my point for complexity:
He wasn’t going to trip me up here at all. With all the time I’ve spent dealing with groups of far-left anti-Israel Jews I was more than prepared:
In another thread Dan again demanded simplicity on a subject filled with nuance and complexity:
And so the fighting retreat began again:
And I again challenged him that his “logic” was actually fundamentalism:
In another thread we got back to the question of my own peculiar religious identity:
This was the first time in the whole conversation in which his own religious views had come up and he admitted to not being religious:
I took the chance to again emphasize Jewish diversity of culture:
AGAIN I stated my original position that choosing to identify that way had to be the key:
In another thread I started talking about my own mysticism and why my embrace of it caused me to bristle at his need for simple definitions:
I was starting to count it as progress anytime Dan would ask me a question. It was a sign he was willing to learn and I wasn’t wasting my time beating my head against a wall:
In another thread Dan disputed my claim that I was just talking about the world factually instead of just spewing opinions:
Then we got to a key bigger context of the discussion. Dan was just talking in theory and focused on the labels, I was more concerned about what one did with the labels after they embraced them:
Again he tried to dismiss my broader point as irrelevant to the narrow conversation he was wanting to have, a tactic he’d employed regularly whenever I tried to show greater complexity than he liked:
Now he was just repeating himself again, dismissing what I was saying as “lost in the weeds.”
As the debate was about to come to a close I knew exactly what I was doing provoking him at this point:
Oh an insult? Why you don’t say. Yeah, at this point I was ready to insult him for his insistence that history and broader context could always just be dismissed as “weeds”:
I couldn’t resist using one of my favorite gifs at this point:
He wanted to claim that I’d insulted him first when really he’d insulted me:
And that was that. 500 points to you if you made it all the way to the end!
Look for one of the next installments - maybe THE next - in this series to explain why I choose not to identify as a Jew even though according to my own preferred definition I very much could if I wanted!
Ever since I was a kid in the '60s and saw the movie Zulu, I've felt very British. I always loved English under statement, the being in control in every situation, the stiff upper lip, you know.
If I feel British and do some British things, does that make me British? Can I claim British citizenship? I would make a much better prince, than Harry. Just thinking. —Sir Glenn