A round of virtual applause for this amazing article, Mallory! You did a great job calling out the Diasporists and showing how nonsensical and bizarre their belief system truly is and how it is antithetical to the tenets of the Jewish faith. I fail to understand why R.B. Kitaj thought eternal homelessness and suffering were virtuous and noble things that would be preferable for the Jewish people to return to their ancient homeland, rebuilding and living in safety in a country with a Jewish majority where their faith and culture can thrive and live on. Art is why a Jewish homeland shouldn't exist? Huh? I guess R.B. Kitaj slept through history class. He never considered the many pogroms and expulsions they suffered not to mention discrimination, persecution, forced assimilation, religious repression, and genocide. Mr. Kitaj would've done well to read "Night" by Elie Wiesel or "The Diary of Anne Frank" or give "Schindler's List" or "Shoah" a watch. He and Philip Roth promoted and helped spread, a very toxic ideology that puts Jews in danger. An ideology that isn't rooted in Judaism might I add, but leftism. Bundists, Marxists and Socialists never accomplished anything on behalf of the Jews or anyone else for that matter other than killing hundreds of millions of people, destroying economies and nations, imprisoning millions in gulags, and squelching human freedom and creativity. That was the source that informed Kitaj's "Judaism" and informs the ideology and values that underlie what anti-Zionist Jews like those in Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow hold. Anti-Zionist Jews are totally misguided and historically illiterate. Disaporist Jews are a disgrace to the Jewish faith and have no understanding of reality. Do they not realize antisemitism has risen to 1930s levels in the West? Are they aware of the attacks on Jews in Britain, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Sweden, etc.? There was recently a pogrom against Israeli Jewish Maccabi Tel Aviv fans not in Cairo, Algiers, Khartoum, Damascus, Beirut, or Baghdad but in Amsterdam. Even in the United States, Jews find themselves often at great risk to face hate and violence. Israel is the eternal home of the Jewish people where the Western Wall, Temple Mount, the Cave of Patriarchs, and Rachel's Tomb are located, Abraham, Isaac, Joseph with his coat of many colors, Moses, Joshua, King David, King Solomon, and Jesus of Nazareth came from and the home of the eternal capital of the Jewish homeland, the holy city of Jerusalem. The rebirth of Israel in 1948 was absolutely the right course for the Jewish people. Theodor Herzl was right over a century ago when he concluded that western and liberal values would not to be enough to ensure the survival of the Jewish people-a country of their own was needed. The Diasporists are playing with fire and showing their ignorance, by going against Herzl's wisdom.
Very true. The wild thing is that Kitaj’s step-grandmother was a Holocaust survivor, and that did very much affect his thinking on Judaism and making Jewish art. And still, clearly there is something that he completely missed. Sadly this happens.
The other sickening thing I finally realized while researching this piece is that there are literally tons of stuffy intellectual self-proclaimed Jews who literally academically put advocate for ignoring antisemitism because they inherently reject it as a Zionist conspiracy and not a real issue. Depraved and deluded.
I know a Jewish woman living in Amsterdam who calls herself a “diasporist” who vocally defended the pogrom against the Israelis there. She truly felt there was a social justice explanation for it. She’s a sad person.
Frankly I’m slightly torn because I do understand all these people to be exceptionally lost souls, and yet, like a reckless and tormented person who drives drunk and endangers other people, self-loathing is never a valid excuse to actively harm other people. It’s just selfish, cruel and foolish.
I think it's important to see the connection to critical theory (including queer theory) - a way of viewing the world that accords moral superiority to suffering and otherness. By claiming eternal homelessness, these leftist fools are trying in their self-defeated way to stake out a position on the precarious pyramid of virtue somewhere closer to Black transgender sex workers and Palestinian children. (I know because I used to think this way.)
So good. These pseudo-intellectual, hate-filled hypocrites can string together a bunch of smart sounding words pretty well but can't actually address any points when confronted with facts. Thanks for taking the time to deal with these losers when most of us don't want to even think about what kinds of creepy cult-worship they get up to in their seemingly copious amount of spare time...
I have never seen the word “diaspora” used pejoratively.. To me, it is a beautiful concept that applies to most people, not just Jews. Diaspora = Dispersion is a human condition.
A diaspora is not necessarily a fundamentally bad or wrong thing— it is when people like these anti-Zionists try to play G-d by condemning people to an eternal state of homelessness and wandering and implicitly blame them for what is perceived as a punishment that we reach a place like this one.
Two things can be true at the same time; Jews can (ideally, and ideally by their own choice) thrive in the diaspora AND we can have self-determination in our homeland.
A round of virtual applause for this amazing article, Mallory! You did a great job calling out the Diasporists and showing how nonsensical and bizarre their belief system truly is and how it is antithetical to the tenets of the Jewish faith. I fail to understand why R.B. Kitaj thought eternal homelessness and suffering were virtuous and noble things that would be preferable for the Jewish people to return to their ancient homeland, rebuilding and living in safety in a country with a Jewish majority where their faith and culture can thrive and live on. Art is why a Jewish homeland shouldn't exist? Huh? I guess R.B. Kitaj slept through history class. He never considered the many pogroms and expulsions they suffered not to mention discrimination, persecution, forced assimilation, religious repression, and genocide. Mr. Kitaj would've done well to read "Night" by Elie Wiesel or "The Diary of Anne Frank" or give "Schindler's List" or "Shoah" a watch. He and Philip Roth promoted and helped spread, a very toxic ideology that puts Jews in danger. An ideology that isn't rooted in Judaism might I add, but leftism. Bundists, Marxists and Socialists never accomplished anything on behalf of the Jews or anyone else for that matter other than killing hundreds of millions of people, destroying economies and nations, imprisoning millions in gulags, and squelching human freedom and creativity. That was the source that informed Kitaj's "Judaism" and informs the ideology and values that underlie what anti-Zionist Jews like those in Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow hold. Anti-Zionist Jews are totally misguided and historically illiterate. Disaporist Jews are a disgrace to the Jewish faith and have no understanding of reality. Do they not realize antisemitism has risen to 1930s levels in the West? Are they aware of the attacks on Jews in Britain, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Sweden, etc.? There was recently a pogrom against Israeli Jewish Maccabi Tel Aviv fans not in Cairo, Algiers, Khartoum, Damascus, Beirut, or Baghdad but in Amsterdam. Even in the United States, Jews find themselves often at great risk to face hate and violence. Israel is the eternal home of the Jewish people where the Western Wall, Temple Mount, the Cave of Patriarchs, and Rachel's Tomb are located, Abraham, Isaac, Joseph with his coat of many colors, Moses, Joshua, King David, King Solomon, and Jesus of Nazareth came from and the home of the eternal capital of the Jewish homeland, the holy city of Jerusalem. The rebirth of Israel in 1948 was absolutely the right course for the Jewish people. Theodor Herzl was right over a century ago when he concluded that western and liberal values would not to be enough to ensure the survival of the Jewish people-a country of their own was needed. The Diasporists are playing with fire and showing their ignorance, by going against Herzl's wisdom.
Very true. The wild thing is that Kitaj’s step-grandmother was a Holocaust survivor, and that did very much affect his thinking on Judaism and making Jewish art. And still, clearly there is something that he completely missed. Sadly this happens.
The other sickening thing I finally realized while researching this piece is that there are literally tons of stuffy intellectual self-proclaimed Jews who literally academically put advocate for ignoring antisemitism because they inherently reject it as a Zionist conspiracy and not a real issue. Depraved and deluded.
I know a Jewish woman living in Amsterdam who calls herself a “diasporist” who vocally defended the pogrom against the Israelis there. She truly felt there was a social justice explanation for it. She’s a sad person.
Frankly I’m slightly torn because I do understand all these people to be exceptionally lost souls, and yet, like a reckless and tormented person who drives drunk and endangers other people, self-loathing is never a valid excuse to actively harm other people. It’s just selfish, cruel and foolish.
I think it’s a solid point — they are (appropriately) worshipping these arbitrary pyramids of inborn, fixed pseudo-virtuousness like they are idols.
They put this manufactured, quasi-fascist posterity ethic well above and beyond any law or ethic of Judaism or g-d.
I think it's important to see the connection to critical theory (including queer theory) - a way of viewing the world that accords moral superiority to suffering and otherness. By claiming eternal homelessness, these leftist fools are trying in their self-defeated way to stake out a position on the precarious pyramid of virtue somewhere closer to Black transgender sex workers and Palestinian children. (I know because I used to think this way.)
So good. These pseudo-intellectual, hate-filled hypocrites can string together a bunch of smart sounding words pretty well but can't actually address any points when confronted with facts. Thanks for taking the time to deal with these losers when most of us don't want to even think about what kinds of creepy cult-worship they get up to in their seemingly copious amount of spare time...
Did you see the event Simon Wolff held for "hospicing Zionism"? It's as bad as it sounds.
🤢🤢🤢
I have never seen the word “diaspora” used pejoratively.. To me, it is a beautiful concept that applies to most people, not just Jews. Diaspora = Dispersion is a human condition.
A diaspora is not necessarily a fundamentally bad or wrong thing— it is when people like these anti-Zionists try to play G-d by condemning people to an eternal state of homelessness and wandering and implicitly blame them for what is perceived as a punishment that we reach a place like this one.
Two things can be true at the same time; Jews can (ideally, and ideally by their own choice) thrive in the diaspora AND we can have self-determination in our homeland.