Category Archives: Judaism & Jews

Australian Jews: Productive Merchant Class, Mostly. Maimonides Would Have Approved.

America, Anti-Semitism, Argument, Business, Canada, Capitalism, Communism, Judaism & Jews, Neoconservatism, The West

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Via Rob Stove, PhD., Australian author, editor extraordinaire and accomplished organist, come a few reflections, “stray remarks,” about Jews and Judaism in Australia. This little contextual analysis undermines the pat, crude, crass theorizing, regarding the immutable characteristics of the Global Jew, spewed by provincial ignoramuses like the American Andrew Uglin.

The vast majority of Australian Jews have been traditionally involved in small business. They’ve been quite often chefs, quite often café owners, very often chocolatiers, very often jewelers, watchmakers and pawnbrokers; sometimes accountants, sometimes owners of travel agencies, occasionally owners of bookstores and music stores ~Rob Stove

What they’ve almost never been, are devoted readers of magazines like Commentary. (The almost total lack of Jewish immigration from Tsarist Russia could account for this.) There’s no equivalent in Australia to the New York Jewish Intellectuals. Any Australian who maintained that John Howard supported the Iraq invasion because the Chief Rabbi of Australia told him to, would be regarded as a candidate for the nearest mental home ~Rob Stove

From what I can determine, Australian Judaism is as different from American Judaism as it’s possible for two Jewish groups to be who share the English language.

Whenever I happen to read (or read about) Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, and Norman Podhoretz, I realize that I really am confronted with a foreign country. I get the same feeling when I read Mordechai Richler describing Canada.

One factor separating Australian Jews from American Jews is that there are very few of the former. Of course Australia’s total population – 23 million or so – is itself tiny by American standards. Yet the Jewish proportion of Australia’s total population is a mere 0.4 percent (approximately 100,000 persons).

There were Jews in Australia from the start of white settlement in 1788 (several of the original convicts are known to have been Jewish). At least one synagogue existed in each of the biggest Australian cities from the 1840s onwards (some of these are still used), which suggests that even before the smallish influx of German-Jewish immigrants after the 1848 revolutions’ defeat, the Jewish community had grown to a size making such things viable.

But (and here’s the second big difference between the Australian and the American situation) Australia never had country clubs. Nor did it have the Ivy League. A numerus clausus (Jewish Quota) against Jews – whether it’s established by law, as with Admiral Horthy’s Hungary, or established by “gentlemen’s agreements”, as with Harvard – is scarcely going to be enforceable in a country like Australia, where (a) Jews hardly exist, (b) most of the few Jews who do exist have no discernible desire to enter universities or the professions in the first place.

I don’t wish to suggest that there was no Australian prejudice whatsoever against Jews. Individual Jews were probably given a hard time by individual Gentile malcontents.

But the number of Jews at the highest levels of Australia’s politics, judiciary, and military from the 1880s until now (Sir John Monash is the most famous instance of Jewish military success) implies overall Gentile apathy rather than overall Gentile hostility. A similar conclusion can be inferred from the fact that even though Australia was hit almost as hard by the Great Depression as any other country in the world, and it had the occasional demagogue (in particular Jack Lang, twice Premier of New South Wales), it never had a Father Coughlin.

The vast majority of Australian Jews have been traditionally involved in small business. They’ve been quite often chefs, quite often café owners, very often chocolatiers, very often jewelers, watchmakers and pawnbrokers; sometimes accountants, sometimes owners of travel agencies, occasionally owners of bookstores and music stores.

What they’ve almost never been, are devoted readers of magazines like Commentary. (The almost total lack of Jewish immigration from Tsarist Russia could account for this.) There’s no equivalent here to the New York Jewish Intellectuals. Any Australian who maintained that John Howard supported the Iraq invasion because the Chief Rabbi of Australia told him to, would be regarded as a candidate for the nearest mental home.

Nor are Australian Jews particularly prominent in the wider culture industry. As far as I can tell, our movie and theatrical milieux are very largely Gentile. Our communist parties did have occasional Jewish leaders – notably the Aarons dynasty – but the bulk of Australian commie activists were former Catholic altar-boys with Irish names!

These stray remarks demonstrate, I hope, that generalizing about the Australian Jewish experience from the example of the American Jewish experience would be a fool’s errand.

***********

Melbourne-based historian and organist R.J. Stove is the author of César Franck: His Life and Times and of a forthcoming book (When We Were Kings, scheduled for 2024) about Europe’s monarchist movements between the two world wars. Dr. Stove’s  innumerable disastrous career decisions include a total refusal to regard Rod Dreher* as the greatest Christian theologian who ever lived.

*Image is of General Sir John Monash

Editor: *Barely A Blog has an archive dishing on Rod Dreary. Read the milder stuff before you broach Juvenal Early‘s “The Dissident Right Has An Idiocracy Problem.” You’ve been warned!

UPDATED (8/12/022): WATCH: My Talk With The ‘Jolly Heretic’ About The Future Of America

Africa, America, Anti-Semitism, Democracy, Judaism & Jews, Juvenal Early's Archive, Race, Racism, South-Africa

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Dr. Edward Dutton of the popular “Jolly Heretic” podcast interviews me about my 2011 book, “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons For America From Post-Apartheid South Africa”; what it portends for America—has the tipping point been reached?—and much more.

Ed quipped that the book has held up “quite well.” I, of course, wrote “Into the Cannibal’s Pot” with a view to boldly outlining for Americans the contours of the anti-white society that will materialize in America if… if…

Alas, that society is upon us.

I suffer the usual glut of Jewy questions and taunts, but I get the last word. A spontaneous one-upmanship, if you will. But don’t go skipping to the end.

Still, Ed and I have a jolly good time of it. Watch:

UPDATE II (8/13/022): I have uploaded the video with Ed’s kind permission to my own YouTube channel. You can now watch the joust minus the offensive “Jewy” comments below it.

https://lnkd.in/gZeXmsuE

Nothing personal, Mr. Sheer. But I’m up to my eyeballs–had it!–with brooding, sour, judgmental puritanical scolds—species prevalent in North America—lying in wait to take offense at me, my jolly fun use of English (“off with her head!”)–and my persona; simply because it’s not flat-lining. The “F” word when used judiciously is fabulous. Ask D.H. Lawrence. Being an alive, if demure, personality among the walking dead isn’t fun.

UPDATE I (8/12/022): The Mercer fan page praises me for turning in a good performance and has some mild, fussy and unfocused words (the worst kind) for the Jewy stuff that occupied the segment.

Reply: You find “Jew, Jew, Jew” “boring”? What an understatement. Try enduring it for decades. As someone who has written in depth, well-developed works on the defining issues of the day, since 1998–I was having to speak not about my writing; but rather, to defend my character on the grounds that I was born Jewish; and in response to the  irrational hate of low-IQ, emotion-driven mouth-breathers for someone they don’t know.

Here is a simple statement from a man with an obvious urge to do the right thing and an ability to say the right thing:

Robert Dolan @UnzReview says:

She takes a lot of abuse here and never whines.
Her book is actually very good.
Everytime she writes a piece we get to hear about how she’s jewish…..as if we didn’t already know….
C’mon. Judge people by their work and their accomplishments.
Consider also the fact that the people facing the harsh (and usually unfair criticism) are public figures…..they have the courage to speak their minds in public and reveal their thoughts to the world at large, inviting not only social ostracism but financial ruin.

As to the comment about “financial ruin,” Robert gets it. My income—syndication dropped—was lost after I came out against the ConOink’s Iraq War in September of 2002. And burned as hot as molten lava against it for years. Dissident in 2001; dissident now. No change.

UPDATE III (8/13/022): Juvenal Early Dons His Shining Armor: 

A woman is lucky to have a friend such as Juvenal Early (nom de plume naturally), writer extraordinaire, and all-round fine human being. That my toil—and persona—inspires such a valiant defense in someone so kind and gifted means a lot—and offsets unkind cuts and slights from other quarters.

Oh, Jew! Jew! Jew! To paraphrase Scarlett O’Hara, is that all you guys ever talk about.

ILANA expressed herself in this long interview with all of intelligence, class, & erudition that she usually brings to her podcasts, and was, as always, great fun to listen to. But I’m afraid she didn’t speak to the issues I was hoping to hear about: CRT, black crime, the morass in Ukraine, the utter worthlessness of the GOP, etc. For that I blame the interlocutor, Mr Dutton. He seemed to be more interested, in the first half, to hear about South Africa, in the most minute details too, & we got a little bit more about tribal traits than we bargained for. Or perhaps that’s just me. ILANA has been in America for 20 years, & few writers understand better than her what’s happening here, & it was that I was led to believe would be the host’s agenda. But no, we got a lot of Xhosa & Zulu & Buthelezi—& the inevitable Jew questions. The patient lady rolled with the punches, & handled herself with aplomb.

When Dr. Dutton turned to the listeners’ questions, it became really evident that the fix was in. The first 3 questions came from the same guy. And they all had something to do with the so-called JQ. The rest of the questions were of a similar mouthbreather sort. The final question posited one those hypothetical situations that is completely irrelevant to the way we live now (& will be living a millennium from now), something about a world where Jews can’t hold office. ILANA’s jolly “Fuck off” was triumphant & completely appropriate, under the circumstances. It shouldn’t have been, but it was the best moment in the whole 98 minutes.

ILANA is an individual, coming at issues from an individualist’s perspective. At one point, she did say that, as far as identity was concerned, she was an Old Testament (she would call it the Hebrew Bible) Hebrew, with all that that implies with respect to embracing the truth, & raining hellfire down on your enemies. I thought that was pretty cool. Certainly an original perspective. She’s always been an original, you know. I scarcely know where the second-handers would be without her.

Now a lot of you will say how she ignores the elephant in the room, doesn’t say who’s behind all the evil in the world. You have the right to do so, & it’s a testament to Mr Unz’s love of free speech that you can do it here in the most colorful & imaginative ways possible. Personally, I get the enjoyment of a weekly wager with a friend, who also reads ILANA’s columns. We each try to guess how many JQ questions will turn up in the Comments before the next column is posted. The loser buys. We’re both getting pretty soused.

UPDATED (12/28): I Met Archbishop Desmond Tutu Twice: Con Inc. Should Just Hush Their Mouths About Him

Christianity, Conservatism, Iraq, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Judaism & Jews, Neoconservatism, South-Africa

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Archbishop Desmond Tutu has died (this BBC “stellar” news report does not “report” whether it was today or yesterday). I had attended the Archbishop’s inauguration with my father, the late Rabbi Ben Isaacson, who had been friendly with Archbishop Tutu.

My father and I also took a gracious (and sumptuous) afternoon tea with the Archbishop decades back in his official residence in Cape Town. (These events are mentioned briefly in my 2011 book, Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa.)

However, the tracts being written about Tutu by American conservatives and neoconservative—and what a resurgence we are witnessing in this reflexive mindset!—are laughable. (Americans must refrain from writing about cultures that are not American; they are simply too insular and chauvinistic to shed anything but darkness on these matters.)

For example, the authors of Black Skin Privilege and the American Dream, reviewed years back by Jack Kerwick on FrontPage Magazine, had picked on Desmond Tutu as an example of black privilege in South Africa! Of all things. Again, this is as laughable as it is to bang on ignorantly and endlessly about Tutu’s criticism of Israel, as if that’s never valid or permissible.

It must be an authorial tic peculiar to neoconservatives, and applied to anyone with an anti-Israel position, for which Archbishop Tutu is famous. He also opposed the Bush travesty that was the war on Iraq. It is also typical of the neoconservative’s ahistoric approach, where a proposition or an idea (black privilege) is applied without context or nuance, to any and all annoying blacks (Tutu became that alright).

In truth, Tutu embodied the old-style, old-school African gentleman. The Archbishop grew up in wretched poverty, received—and gladly accepted—a decent education courtesy of the Church, and worked his ministry so hard as to reap the rewards. (In “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa,” I discuss the wonders done by the white-run churches in South Africa. What good equalizers were some schools in the old South Africa:  Desmond Tutu, myself, and hundreds of thousands of other Africans, belong to the same alma mater: UNISA.)

Sure, Tutu was left-liberal and a critic of Israel and of neoconservative project (God bless him for that). But to me, as I said in “King Tut(u) Not So Terrific,” his impiety stems from never having piped up about the ethnic cleansing of rural whites, Afrikaners mostly, from the land in ways that beggar belief. Saint Mandela certainly remained mum about farm murders that are Shaka-Zulu worthy in grisliness.

And so, by the way, had our conservative and libertarian friends remained silent about farm murders until quite recently when talking about anti-white South Africa has become all the rage.

In any case, my meeting with the Archbishop Tutu was memorable. From that occasion I took away that Desmond Tutu was fond of my father and respectful of dad’s Jewish faith and scholarship. The two had a brief and lively exchange about a philosophical difference between Judaism and Christianity. My father was a redoubtable debater. Ditto Tutu. But both men were far better religious leaders than they were political activists, for which they, alas, became known.

UPDATE (12/28/021): In the tackiest manner, legal scholar Alan Dershowitz, who is currently using his analytical prowess to justify forceful, aggressive vaccination, deployed a visit to a Fox News set on an unrelated matter, to libel the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu. As follows:

“The world is mourning Bishop Tutu, who just died the other day,” hissed Dershowitz. “Can I remind the world that although he did some good things, a lot of good things on apartheid, the man was a rampant antiSemite and bigot,” spewed Dershowitz.

“The man minimized the Holocaust. The man compared Israel to Nazi Germany. When we’re tearing down statues of Jefferson and Lincoln and Washington, let’s not build statues to a deeply, deeply flawed man, like Bishop Tutu. Let’s make sure that history remembers both the goods he did and the awful, awful bads that he did as well.”

Others on the Fox News panel looked on at the Dershowitz train wreck in horror. Aside his uncivilized and boorish timing, Dershowitz’ views are skewed. They are utterly Israel and Jewish-centric. Tutu was indeed pro-Palestinian, but this did not make him an anti-Semite. And he certainly was no “Holocaust minimizer,” what ever that means. As mentioned, I had visited with him with my rabbi father, who was friendly with the archbishop. Tutu was polite, warm and kind.

Far more illuminating and interesting than Dershowitz’ Israel compliance shtick is my account, in “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa,” of Israel’s friendship with Apartheid South Africa. Israel had refused to follow the West in isolating South Africa, and actively and productively—especially militarily—engaged with South Africa. Ronald Reagan tried the meeker form of “constructive engagement” before he was overridden by his Republican party, and told specifically that he was out of step in his wish to engage with South Africa, rather than punish her.

It’s not like Dershowitz ever met Tutu, but wait a sec, I had actually met the Archbishop, and even had the honor of attending his inauguration. Imagine! Mine is a real-life assessment that dares to fail the Israel First test. OMG!

 

NYC EMT & Fire Department Union Boss Presents Cogent, Comprehensive, Factual, Rational Argument Against Vaccines For Members

Argument, COVID-19, Critique, Ethics, Healthcare, Intelligence, Judaism & Jews, Labor, Race, Reason

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I believe uber-progressive anchor Alex Witt, of MSNBC, likely went easy on Oren Barzilay because she must have believed the president of Emergency Medical Services Local 2507 of District Council 37 (President of Uniform EMTs, Paramedics & Inspectors – New York City Fire Department) to be a working-class man of an acceptably exotic ethnicity.

To me of course, the name screamed Israeli. As did the clear, comprehensive argument style, and cogent replies to everyone of the woman’s arguments for vaccine mandates.

Barzilay argued against mandates for his members. These are arguments that not one of the dimwits usually entertained on the idiot’s lantern (the TV) has proven able to rattle off.

In arguing against the mandates, Barzilay told Witt:

        1. No conclusive evidence exists to show the vaccines are not harmful. On the contrary, the CDC website reports over 12,000 deaths from these vaccines and thousands injured, or having sustained some medical issues.
        2. The vaccines are not FDA approved and clinical trials have been limited and of short duration; no longitudinal data.
        3. In reply to Witt’s idiot question—which nobody in American media seems capable of refuting, and it is, “Have you and family not received the mumps, measles, polio vaccinations, and once the vaccines move from Emergency Authorization to FDA approved status, will you instruct your guys to take it?”—Barzilay did not miss a beat. He returned to Witt’s first point, emphasizing that older vaccines (I’ve recently gotten two Shingles shots) have over a decade of data behind them. The COVID vaccines went to market and into arms after 6 months of production, and even less time devoted to data collection and analysis.
        4. He is not telling his people not to get vaccinated; all Barzilay is insisting on is choice for his members, as to what they place in their bodies until the data are in.
        5. He wants to know (asking in a cynical, rhetorical manner) if the City will cover the expenses of those who have an adverse reaction. That’s unknown, argued Barzilay. I would argue one better: When admitted into hospital following vaccination, with a plethora of symptoms, you are more often than not subjected to batteries of tests that always appear aimed at ruling-out correlation with vaccination, instead of treating what could be dangerous symptoms.
          In the zeal to avoid implicating the vaccine in a reaction—individuals who suffer a reaction in proximity to vaccination might not even receive antidotes as soon as they need them. The aim of untrustworthy medical personnel seems to be to exonerate the vaccinators rather than assume a reaction and prevent a patient from dying.
          Essentially, medical personal have lost our trust that indeed they can spring into action, in the event we suffer adverse reactions to their ill-researched vaccines.
        6. Oren disputes that all his members are, as Witt assumed, grateful for the vaccines, since some have died following vaccination. He cannot definitively prove causation, but they died shortly thereafter. Two of Oren’s Local members died within 4 days of receiving the vaccine.

       

    3. RELATED READING: “Could Vaccine Resisters Be WACO’d?”