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New York has always been a Jewish city. Spencer Platt/Getty Images
I grew up in a tiny Jewish enclave on Chicago’s South Side. When I first saw New York, in the Sixties, I was awed as by no subsequent marvel of nature: stretching north from Columbus Circle, up the West Side, was a Jewish metropolis.
New York, in my lifetime, had always been a Jewish city: the rhythms, the accent, the humour always felt to me like home. Because they were home. The populace, of whatever ethnicity, was formed or noodged by Yiddishkeit, much as the Chicago of my youth was by the culture of the Irish and the Poles.
The New York Times and The New Yorker were run by Jews; they were both our Rialto and our Bible. New York Theatre, in my lifetime, had always been Jewish. The playwrights were Miller, Odets, Elmer Rice, Ben Hecht, Sidney Kingsley; and, later, Arthur Laurents, Lillian Hellman, Neil Simon, Woody Allen, Norman Mailer, Wallace Shawn, and myself.
We New York Jews have always voted for the Democrats, as their policies appealed to the immigrants and the first generation (my parents). A Fair Shake, a safety net, and unionism were manna to the newly arrived — in spite of (in both their and my lifetime) quotas and antisemitic discrimination. The immigrant Jews did well here, and voted for Franklin Roosevelt. And we are voting for him still.
His Advisor on Jewish Affairs (jude-suss, or “house-Jew”) was Rabbi Stephen Wise, the “dean” of the American Rabbinate. He referred to FDR as “Boss”, and brought home to his community Roosevelt’s assurance of aid to the dying Jews of Europe. Yet Roosevelt’s aid stopped with his assurances, and tens of thousands of Jews died because of his restrictive immigration policies, and millions in Europe because of his refusal to interdict the Holocaust.
Still, today, Jews vote Democratic: electing Presidents who refused to meet with the Israeli Prime Minister (Obama and Biden) in times of “peace”, who gave and give aid to the terrorist state of Iran in exchange for some semi-specified “deal”. American “Aid” to Iran pays for the equipment and ordnance, which is, at this moment, eradicating Jews.
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SubscribeLarge parts of most western left wing parties are now in thrall to the religion of “social justice” which will brook no criticism of any minorities or causes on the approved list.
No matter how grotesque the actions carried out in the name of a Free Palestine and Islamic “anti-colonislism” in general, the fault in the eyes of these ultra-Progressives will always be with Western oppression through the instrument of Israel.
That Hamas slaughtered babies, that the Taliban throw gay people off buildings, that teenage girls are publicly beaten into brain-death in the name of morality in Iran, and that Christians who 100 years ago made up 20% of the population of the Middle East have been persecuted into virtual non-existence. All these things can be safely excused, mitigated or simply ignored because the ultra-Progressives’ creed tells them its white male capitalists who are the bad guys really.
The hypocrisy of Leftists who consider things like “misgendering” a hate crime but cannot unequivocally condemn men who display the naked, broken body of a young woman as a trophy is sickening.
It could be argued that when Jewish people were categorised as ‘white colonialists’ by Left wing academics their fate was sealed and the Left turned from them and embraced a new constituency of ‘victims’ to champion. It happened with the Labour Party too following the success of the anti-apartheid regime, they switched their focus to Palestine. Identity politics followed swiftly on the heels of mass immigration and the white working classes found themselves similarly abandoned and castigated.
And most of us sat comfortably at home watching it happen…..with apologies to those who didn’t. There were not enough of you & other Jews didn’t want to hear your cries of ‘Never Again’ & so, it is happening again but you did not teach your children to be proud of their faith & so they have often been missing from demonstrations against antisemitism because it was not happening to them (shades of Martin Niemöller) & now it is happening to them in Israel & abroad & they, mostly, can’t cope with it so, they run with the majority, supporting those who want to murder them!
One of the greatest heresies to be accused of now is racism for it leads to swift excommunication and most are silenced by the fear of this judgement.
There’s that “we” again. Please speak for yourself.
Will you change your mind when they come for you?
No, she won’t ever change her mind. She’ll be coming with them.
I DID teach my children, and when they became teenagers, my liberal father, who likes to ‘call’ himself a Jew, while he denies everything that goes with that, including God, UNtaught them…his money apparently became stronger than the truth. I haven’t given up on the children OR him, I pray.
David, THANK YOU for your article!!! May it give ALL of the fence-straddlers, the deniers and doubters, a real Zetz in their hearts and minds!!!
More insidious than that. They do this also to other ethnicities and races that mess up their neat equation. If your world view is that oppression and racism breeds poverty and despair and that you (the lefty saviour) are there to fight against racism and for the oppressed and lift them from poverty and oppression, then Jews, Chinese, Indians, Koreans and others are a problem. Despite specific laws banning Chinese people from owning property in some states as recently as 1948. Despite the internment and property, business losses, forced displacement of Japanese Americans in WW11. Despite Koreans and Vietnamese arriving more recently literally with nothing, Despite Jews literally being excluded from elite universities in living memory and shoved into gas chambers likewise, they still don’t seem to need a lefty saviour. In fact, a little bit wary of the saviours. They do quite well educationally, and economically. And that’s a problem for a left saviour. A massive problem. Because if racism is systemic and oppressive then how do you explain how well these demographics are doing? And so, you need a new theory, an addendum which keeps your ideology intact when it comes up against evidence which disproves it. So, you need to make sure that Jews, aren’t counted as an oppressed racial minority. You make them white. (see comments by Whoopi Goldberg about the holocaust not being a racist thing just a dispute between some white people) Ditto ethnic Asian Americans they are “White Adjacent”. That’s a new version of a racist slur for successful black people.
Because if Jews and other minorities who have suffered oppression aren’t white in some way then the whole race industrial complex comes crashing on down round their ears and their livelihoods. Even Joe Biden telling a black American on TV that if he doesn’t vote for Joe Biden “He isn’t Black” was letting the cat out of the bag.
That’s an odd thing for Whoopi to say, considering she has built her image on being a Jewish black woman… Then again, I’ve seen some very strange alignments of Jewish intellectuals in recent days. “Acting against one’s own interests” indeed!
Odd? Do bear in mind that this is the same Whoopi Goldberg who said that Rachel Dolezal could identify as black if she wanted to, and that Jill Biden would make a great Surgeon General, despite having no medical qualifications whatsoever.
She picked the name “Goldberg” out of a hat, and I’ve seen nothing to indicate she associated it with Jewishness. All she is, is a know-nothing with an oversized mouth — and ass, going by recent video.
In California, they are going for successful Indian immigrants using caste – a concept they barely understand- to bring them down.
The screaming crowds of the left, guided by ideological fervour, and even their quieter supporters, hardly understand any complex concepts. It’s not just the Indian caste system, but also the role of tribalism and patriarchal hierarchies in many African cultures, and of course religion.
My acquaintances on the left know very little to nothing about Islam, its founding phase, its expansion, its basic tenets, etc. One woman, mid30s, told me that she thinks the Iranian regime deserves support because it is anti-Western and anti-Capitalist! The fact that women and men have been brutally abused and killed by this regime doesn’t matter to her. This is a woman who considers herself a feminist, and an anti-capitalist despite living in an expensive house, and whose investment banker (yes, I know!) husband enables her to live a very comfortable lifestyle!
Yes, the way those east Asian Americans with their strong family structure, great respect for education, business sense and work ethic that all help them to thrive in the new country are now seen by the left as the new ‘whites’ is so telling.
Increasingly common African American violence against east Asians, sometimes even fatal, has even been characterized by the left as ‘white supremacist’ even though the perpetrators are black. It does not fit the left race narrative so they resort to outright lies rather than face the uncomfortable truth.
That started with the Soviets in the 1970s. It was they who coined the term Palestinian as distinct from Arabs so that the Israelis were not a minority among Arabs but a majority oppressing Palestinians.
Yes but wen it came to turning the guns on whitey large parts of the Jewish media and academic establishment were cheerleading. It could be viewed as reaping what you sow
Translation: “I’m not gonna say the Jews deserved it, but it could be viewed as their fault.”
Well that’s not what I said but since you raise the point lets examine the evidence.
Large parts of the Jewish media and academic establishment were heavily engaged in pushing BLM, CRT, white privilege and large scale immigration of non-whites to the West. At the same time they were pleading a special case that while we may look white we are not really white and we really are victims too.
This was not harmless politicking. It was divisive, vicious, demonising and violent, and an impartial observer could be forgiven for thinking that it borrowed from the race hate playbook.
An impartial observer might also be forgiven for finding Jewish shock and horror that large parts of the immigrant population it campaigned to bring into the West are anti-Semitic a touch ironic.
But I suppose the real question is not, as you suggested, whether it was their fault but what did they think they were doing in the first place and what did they hope to achieve.
On this point it is notable that the mainstream media and commentators have only really started to turn on BLM and to question what these people are doing in the West since al this kicked-off
Not even stupid people deserve to be murdered.
Absolutely true, but for God’s sake why would you invite you enemies into your country
Only if you’re as stupid as they were.
The Soviets noticed this in the 1970s and so their propaganda machines sprang into action and invented the term, “Palestinian” as distinct from Arab. This meant that the Jews were no longer an oppressed minority among the oppressive majority Arabs, but were themselves a majority oppressing the minority Palestinians. The Kremlin also forced Arafat to change his message from destroying Israel to freeing Palestine because they knew this would go down well in Western capitals. Seems to have turned out well for Russia.
I commented on your post just to get noticed and to receive more likes.
However, let me say that the article “How David Mamet Betrayed the Jews” would have been much more interesting.
A few weeks ago I was in Hungary. The owner of the apartment we booked was named Aaron. I remember he ended our short conversation with the phrase: “Here in Hungary, we Jews are completely integrated.”
“Till the first war” flashed through my mind…
It’s a real story
I’m confused as to why this comment was downvoted…was the content changed via the noted “edit”?
Hi Richard, I do my best to inform myself with facts and knowledge that counter the narratives of antisemitism. One of those persistent narratives is that Christians are under threat from Jews/Israel in the Holy Land (as promoted by Jerusalem Patriarch Theophilis III). His Christmas statement, and commentary on it, ignored the fact that the Christian population of Israel is growing, yet declining elsewhere in Middle East. Can you point to me somewhere I can nail the fact that, as you say, Christians who 100 years ago made up 20% of the population of the Middle East have been persecuted into virtual non-existence. Best, Dave
That information is easy to find, Dave.
As reported in no less an impeccable left wing outlet as the Guardian.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/02/persecution-driving-christians-out-of-middle-east-report
That’s a surprise. many thanks
See also the book: “The Vanishing – the twilight of Christianity in the Middle East by Janine di Giovanni”
2000 years of community being persecuted out.
It’s a very thorough and well researched book.
The Christian population growth in Israel has a curious origin: the Law of Return lets anyone whom the Nazis would have killed for being a Jew claim Israeli citizenship. That means one Jewish grandparent suffices. But to be Jewish by descent in the view of religious Jews means matrilineal descent: being child of a Jewish mother. Many Russian Orthodox Christians who had a Jewish grandparent took advantage of the Law of Return to escape from the Soviet Union and move to Israel. It is not Arab Christians whose population is growing.
There is a threat to Christians in Israel from Jews: the threat of being spat at by Haredim or roughed up by Israeli soliders. Of course, the threat to Christians in Israel from the Muslims of Hamas and Hezbollah is very much the same as the threat they pose to Jews in Israel
And who are the persecutors…….?
I am confused by this comment. Since everyone is on “fact checking”, let’s see some facts.
Last week, a Church building was bombed in Gaza causing 18 deaths. the World Council of Churches (WCC) condemned the attack while Patriarch Theophilus’ called it a war crime. In his words..:
“targeting churches and its affiliated institutions, in addition to the shelters they provide to protect innocent citizens, especially children, and women who lost their homes as a result of the Israeli bombing of residential areas during the past thirteen days, constitutes a war crime that cannot be ignored.”
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/global-christian-body-slams-israeli-air-attack-on-greek-orthodox-church-in-gaza/3028830
Moreover in his interview to “Osservatore Romano” Patriarch Theophilus clearly calls for peace..:
“Ultimately, our message is one of unwavering faith, commitment to peace, and the belief that, as Christians, we are called to be peacemakers in this land, embodying the hope for a brighter and more harmonious future for all its inhabitants. We continue to pray and work for peace, justice, and the well-being of every soul in this sacred and troubled region.
https://www.vaticannews.va/en/church/news/2023-10/greek-orthodox-patriarch-jerusalem-theophilos-interview-gaza.html
Ending the citations, last Christmas Patriarch Theophilus in his message called humankind to follow Christ who “taught peace, and love even towards the enemies.”
“…He healed the sick, fed the hungry, and raised the dead. By words and deeds, he taught peace, and love even towards the enemies and delivered the Church as a legacy to his apostles, which He redeemed with His own blood on the Cross. Ever since the days of His Resurrection from the dead and His Ascension to heaven, the Church obeying His command preaches His word “to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8) and reminds people that those alive on earth “have their conversation in heaven” (Phil. 3:20), they are predestined not to fight each other in “chariots and horses”, not to shed blood on the earth killing each other endlessly, but to ascend to heaven.”
https://www.greeknewsusa.com/christmas-message-of-patriarch-theophilos-of-jerusalem/
As for the number of christians in Israel “ignored in his message”, he also “ignored” to mention a lot of good things in Israel. This doesn’t mean he truly ignores them. Don’t twist his thinking please.
ps1. All the above, in my best intentions towards Israelis and Palestinians.
ps2. Peace on Earth..!
Can you please give me a single quoted and sourced example of where ANYONE left-wing supported the killing of Jews, or throwing gays off roofs, murdering gays, or the grotesue philosophy against women in Iran or Afghanistan? I will bet you can’t, in fact I’ll give you £50 if you can.
Well, first of all, that’s easy. The Democratic Socialists of America’s Salt Lake chapter’s response in support of the attacks (now deleted of course) was, “it is not terrorism or anti-semitism to fight against this injustice.”
I’m sure if you send the £50 to Unherd, they will forward it on to me.
However, let’s be clear about things. In my post above I did not say people on the Left “support” killing babies etc. I said that to many on the Left “All these things can be safely excused, mitigated or simply ignored”.
And that is exactly what we’ve seen following these attacks. A tsunami of whataboutery from the Left. Statements condemning Israeli “colonialism” which completely fail to mention Hamas’s brutalisation of innocents. And in so many cases, the kind of Left wing politician or celebrity who can’t wait to signal how virtuous they are by condemning everyone and everything as “fascist Nazis” suddenly forgetting their Twitter password when it comes to actual fascists killing actual Jews in the streets.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/18/opinion/trans-teen-suicide-judaism.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/13/opinion/is-god-transgender.html
Here are two articles in the New York Times written by rabbis telling us that transgenderism is part of the Jewish religion and repeating all the usual transactivist misinformation. For LBJ, Carter, Clinton democrats from the South it feels like the New York Jewish newspaper is stuffing the culture war down our throats.
Who is betraying who, Mr Mamet?
I have a 13 year old niece in TX who thinks she’s a boy. I have been watching the New York Times lie and lie to promote that shit. They havent printed any detrans stories. They repeat the suicidality lie over and over. They havent questioned gender-affirming care nearly enough. They havent interviewed any of the women abused by Lia Thomas. And they called Rachel Levine the first female admiral.
Working class democrats of all races hate transgender ideology. It comes out of elite academia and the New York Times. People like Judith Butler who proudly identify as Jewish. Why are you blaming us, David Mamet? Arent many of your people also to blame for destroying the modern democrats.
[note; I changed last line from “its largely your people who are” to “Arent many of your people also” because the far left radicals arent just Jewish. And tons of Jewish people are moderate democrats.]
I despise Hamas and their attacks on Israel. I support the existence of Israel as a Jewish state, or a state for Jews, (whichever they choose) and I believe in the ongoing right of Israel to exist, and to defend itself robustly. I entirely agree that Jews have often been appallingly treated by Christians and Christian societies, including most obviously the medieval pogroms and the blood libel.
But I do not accept that the mistreatment of Jews is based upon the gospel narratives: the idea, which the writer appears to support, that all of this started because of the early Christians making clear claims that the promised Messiah had arrived. The insinuation is that, to some extent at least, Birkenau, Jihad and the ‘woke’ anti-Semitic Left are all in some sense part of a long line of cause/effect that started with Christ’s followers ‘slandering’ their parent faith.
This, it seems to me, is just as simplistic and useless as the claims of the anti-semites. The early Christians were of course themselves Jews, and like Christians today they venerated the books of the ‘old’ Covenant as sacred prefigurings of the promised Messiah that they believed had finally arrived: to save them from ‘their father, the devil’. These Jews no longer believed that the benefits of the covenant existed only for Jews, but that in the New Covenant of Christ the benefits were opened up to all men. True or false, that is at the very centre of the claim of having ‘Good News’ to share.
If we say, simplistically, that anti-Semitism started from Christian claims, then we are in effect blaming Jews for the origin of Jew hatred. This strikes me not simply as obscene and incorrect, but also fairly stupid.
The tragic history of the Jews is to have maintained a beautiful and truly impressive tradition of culture and faith as a people in diaspora: and that for this they have suffered time and again the injustices visited upon minorities by majorities. The heart of this problem is not some lines in the gospel of St John, but I think has to do with something utterly twisted and broken in the heart of man, which can be seen in every society and people on the planet: witness the treatment of Protestants by Catholic majorities, the treatment of Catholics by Protestant majorities, the treatment of the Celts by the Saxons, the treatment of everyone else by the Romans, the treatment of the Native Americans by the European settlers, the treatment of smaller Slavic States by Russia, the treatment of less warlike tribes by the Zulus, the treatment of Israel by its Muslim majority neighbours. Dare I add that unless the state of Israel is infallibly Just, this same human weakness is at the heart of any occasional failings in justice or compassion towards innocent Palestinian civilians? (And no, that does not mean Israel has no right to exist, or that Hamas represents anything remotely approaching a ‘just cause’).
It is this capacity for cruelty in Man, and its regular visitation upon Jewish victims, that means Israel must exist and must be defended. But the true battle still lies within us all: and it’s quite literally as old as sin.
Amen!
Excellent post. Thank you.
Thank you
All true and well said. There are also some other matters of fact that were incorrect in this otherwise excellent article: The Christian church did not begin in 77CE, it began on the first day of Pentecost after the Crucifixion; Jesus challenged the religious leaders who later engineered his death as Satan-inspired evil doers, not all Jews; Christianity did not slander its parent religion, but rather asserted the truth of its prophetic announcement of a coming Messiah. As so often happens, we are right about what we assert and wrong about what we deny.
If Christianity did not slander its parentbreligion, how do you explain the Good Friday prayer for the Jews (look it up on Wikipedia). I can recall references to ‘the perfidious Jews’ from my childhood in a Catholic community where no-one had ever seen, let alone met, a jewish person. I feel tainted, and shamed, by association, to be honest.
You’re correct, John, but at least the Roman Catholic Church revised that prayer in 1959.
That explains why I never experienced this prayer! It was revised almost 20 years before my birth. I grew up in a family with a Catholic mother and an Anglican father, attended mass at both churches, and went to a Catholic boarding school for girls in Dorset. Never did I hear references to perfidious Jews—in prayers or otherwise.
Well said. In my zeal to support Israel and unconditionally reject Hamas and the Palestinian cause entirely, I admit I missed how Mamet rather threw Christian Europe under the proverbial bus to make his point. Perhaps as a result of the regular and unquestioned criticism of Christianity from the mainstream media and intellectual community, I’ve become desensitized. Shame on me. You are right to point out that the Jews were by no means the only minority to suffer at the hands of majorities across all of Europe and everywhere since humanity has existed. Perhaps its easier to overlook other examples because most other groups are minorities in some places but majorities in other places, and tended to give as good as well as they got. Jews, on the other hand, were, until very recently, everywhere in the minority. This underscores the importance of Israel, the Jewish homeland. The small scrap of land on the Mediterranean coast hardly balances the equation, but it’s at least lessening the imbalance.
What country do you live in Greg Morrison? It’s self-evident to me, here in Catholic France, that one of the well springs of today’s anti-semitism is Christianity and the Church. This self-evidence is the fruit of many decades of casual conversation with people of all sorts as well as a familiarity with French letters going back to when French first became a written language. You see the same memes and themes repeated over and over again, it’s direct lineage. Mamet cites John 8:44 as the first instance of such and though I have no particular opinion on that, I’m certainly willing to entertain the idea that it may in fact be anti-semitic and am perfectly willing to further research how the early Church’s stances on Judaism prefigure modern anti-semitism. I do not understand your lengthy and impassioned objection.
Jacobin anti semitism has always been more dangerous and lethal than Catholic anti semitism. This is very hard for leftists, liberals and atheists to accept because it calls for humility and change. In many ways this is the history of the West since 1204 and the road that led us to our present moment. Do the anointed have the ability to see or the will to change? Only time will tell.
John 8:44 Almost 2000 years of either official or silently sanctioned and dogmatic Anti- Semitism Papal Concordat with Germany Vatican Rat Line Silent acceptance or encouragement of Ghettos
SERIOUSLY?!
John 8:44 is a quote from Jesus.
Might that be relevant?
Might it be worth noting, about a quote speaking “of the Jews,” as Mamet frames it?
(Jesus was a Jew, by the way, since you are from “Catholic” France.)
(See my longer comment in this thread.)
Beginning with Abraham God chose the Jews to be His ‘peculiar treasure’ a people He would love and be loved by, in return. The twists and turns of that relationship are to be found in the Old Testament. God sent Christ into the world to offer salvation to all by the remission of sin through Christs death on a Roman Cross. Sadly, the Jews rejected Christ and still await their Messiah, but they remain God’s Chosen People in perpetuity. Satan is the great enemy of God and of all the living. Above all, he hates the Jews who are the ‘apple of God’s eye’. That fact alone, is the reason why the Jews are so often viciously persecuted but those who touch the Jews do so at their peril.
Yes indeed.
I’m pro-Israel, have been all my life. Why? Mostly because as a Christian child, I was taught, in church, that the state of Israel per se represents the heirs of Abraham, and that those who bless Israel will be blessed, those who curse Israel will be cursed.
(I now think that that oversimplifies the case. But it still… pertains, and I can’t envision any likely scenario would cause a change in my attitude toward Israel.)
By and large, American orthodox Christians are the best non-Jewish friends that Israel has in the world. We certainly account for the pro-Israel tilt of the U.S.
(Or does anyone really suppose that American Jews have that much political influence, all alone?!)
Now, the Gospel according to St. John 8:44, cited by Mamet, is speaking “of the Jews” only in the sense that the Jewish authorities are there rejecting Jesus’ teaching and claims about himself.
Because it is Jesus who said those words, according to the text, and he was a Jew!
His mother, father, family, disciples, followers and everyone there listening, including St. John himself, were Jews.
My God is a Jew.
I cannot and will not defend many, many Christians’ misdeeds and sick attitudes towards Jews across Christian history.
But here’s an essential distinction: It is not antisemitism to think that Judaism—and therefore Jews as theological rivals—are mistaken about the identity of Jesus. Jesus is the Jewish Messiah, we believe, and we have often died proclaiming. That’s not gonna change.
I’m willing to give Mamet some slack. I love his writing, plays, books, even his odd-ball cartoons.
Plus, what does a gentile like me know about what his people have suffered, or what his loved-ones might be suffering now?
But it doesn’t excuse misrepresentation of essential facts.
(And it does nothing to keep friends for Israel. But he’s welcome, anyway. We’re here for Israel.)
Precisely. Things that persist into the future do so because they were provided support.
Thank you for saying this. I was trying to think of how to address it and then I saw your response.
Thank you. One of the very best comment pieces I have read. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.
Good luck with praying!
Please no not the generalization of “us” again. Please speak for yourself.
I think that you (and many others) have oversimplified the question of Christian anti-Judaism in relation to the New Testament. It took many centuries for that to become distorted by secular (racial) anti-Semitism. There is a historical link but not a direct or inevitable one.
It’s true that Jesus and his immediate followers, the earliest Christians, were Jews and neither anti-Jewish nor anti-Semitic. But within one or two generations, especially after 70 AD, when Rome destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem, the early church was already becoming largely gentile–that is, Roman converts–and soon became entirely gentile.
Moreover, it took another three hundred years for the church to canonize written versions (as distinct from oral ones) of the four gospels (while rejecting other gospels). By that time, Judaism and Christianity had long since gone their separate and increasingly hostile ways.
Traces of this spiritual divorce remain embedded in canonized texts of the New Testament, although many Christians no longer interpret these in anti-Jewish (let alone anti-Semitic) ways. On the contrary, many Christians now emphasize their spiritual kinship with Jews as a sign of Christian authenticity.
What I’ve just written about the canonical texts has been common knowledge among scholars of biblical literature in both universities and (many but not all) seminaries for well over a century. Those who believe that Christian teachings have always been exactly as they now appear in written and canonized texts, unsurprisingly, do not accept the possibility that these texts ever evolved within historical contexts. That is a theological perspective, of course, not a scholarly one. I mention the latter now–five days too late– only because it belongs in any open discussion of this topic.
Truly wonderful and beautiful instruction Sir! God bless you .
What struck me about this article is its style. I’ve read Mr. Mamet’s other Unherd articles and I sometimes found them to be impenetrable. His style is often discursive, at least for me. I simply assumed that’s a hallmark of a great writer.
This essay is different. The author’s prose is crystalline and he nails his principal thesis to a tree and shines a spotlight on it. There can be no misunderstanding his message. And perhaps that’s one hallmark of a great writer: the ability to fit style to context.
As for the Democrats, all I can add is Biden had to appease the progressive extremists in 2020 to get elected, and he’s having to do it again if he hopes to be elected in 2024. The Devil demands his tribute.
Biden didn’t have to appease anyone, or do anything at all, to “get elected” other than be breathing. He was installed for the very reason that he would do as he was/is told.
Yes, this article is very clear. I hope the resident UnHerd commenters who spew their hatred for Israel in favor of the terrorists calling themselves “Palestinians” will reflect a bit on the history of the Jews.
It’s crystalline and unhinged. It is pure Christian hatred for the most part
What’s unhinged is David Mamet. Whatever your political beliefs, to express such uncritical support for such a useless waste of cells as Donald Trump tells me that Mamet is suffering from early onset dementia. That would explain his often impenetrable prose, as well as the fact that sometimes he’s still somewhat coherent. https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2022/feb/23/trump-great-job-president-david-mamet-free-speech-gender-politics-election-rigging-woods
Again, willing to die a believer while the flames of your beliefs consume you.
Paul,
I feel sorry for you, it seems hatred has consumed you.
What Mamet fails to appreciate or notice – which an author and playwright of his capacity is fully capable of – is that the anti Christian passion he feels and acts on is the very force that has brought America and the Jewish Community to the ground it stands on today. The Nemesis is staring him in the face yet he refuses to see it – but that would mean nuancing the victimhood narrative of 77 AD to 1946 AD and Mamet refuses to be nuanced less the enemy use it to hurt his people. Understandable but not Wisdom, more like Rhetoric.
Like you I sometimes struggle with Mamet’s discursive style and am left uncertain of his main point. In this case, I take his main conclusion to be that anti-semitism is deeply embedded in western and specifically Christian culture.
I do not disagree but I think another factor behind anti-semitism is sometimes neglected. Other clearly identifiable ethnic minorities who enjoy disproportionate economic success have sometimes become similarly hated – without the two millennia of religious antagonism. Two twentieth century examples are the overseas Chinese in Indonesia and the Ugandan Asians. The former were subjected to officially orchestrated massacres in the 1960s that left perhaps a million dead. The latter were expelled and ended up in Britain to the great benefit of the latter.
The Holocaust was a uniquely evil historical episode. The wider phenomenon of anti-semitism is, however, not without parallels elsewhere. It remains abhorrent but i do not see it as unique.
I don’t think being “impenetrable and discursive”is the hallmark of a good writer. On the contrary. And yes, I agree this essay is more readable.
I have no idea why the Jews have stuck with the democrats over the last 30 yrs.
I kinda get how philosophically they would fit with the old school democrats but this new generation, this new version of the democrats? It makes no sense to me at all. It just does not.
When I think of Jews, I think of education and enlightenment and being articulate. I think of art and literature and science. I think of bravery in all those areas. Then, and only then, do I think of the atrocities perpetrated against them for centuries. Then, I marvel at how they have maintained their humanity.
But it seems to me that the modern left, the left of the democrats in the US and I suppose Labor in the UK, exists in complete contradiction of the values that I associate with Judaism.
If I ever questioned the need for a Jewish state, which, as an American the idea that any religion would or should have a state is contrary to my core beliefs, I do not now.
Maybe I had hoped that we had progressed far enough that the Jews, like some endangered species in need of a preserve, would not need a religious state of their own. Regardless, it appears that that was a hopeful and naive position.
If we in the west have any humanity left, we need to assure that Israel continues to exist and thrive as best it can.
That is not to say that Palestinians are not human, or that they too are not in need of a safe space to exist and thrive, but to say that Israel, set in the Kingdom of David, is where it needs to be. But the Palestinians are, if even inadvertently, the colonizers if one is willing to look back to the roots of the land. We can blame the Romans, the Ottomans and the British if we want, for the situation of both the Jews and the Palestinians. But at the end of the day, the land is intrinsically Judea, it is Jewish and the Jewish homeland.
The question before us today is how we preserve that and find a way to establish a Palestinian homeland and how do we keep the forces of evil like Hamas and Iran from exploiting it?
Why have the Jews in Britain, especially prominent ones in the arts and entertainment, stuck with Labour?
Precisely-for such a smart bunch they seem irredeemably stupid, blind or naïve when it comes to voting for a Party whose current claim is that it is no longer quite as anti Semitic as it was under Corbyn.
It is instructive to read this article and substitute Democrat with Labour.
Labour used to be very keen on Jews when the kibbutzim were the best model in the world of socialism in action.
Then Labour types decided they preferred Muslims instead. This still baffles me, because if you like women’s equality, tolerance of gays, religious pluralism and free speech then your new friends seem problematic, to say the least.
Labour decided they preferred the Muslims because there were more votes to be had from Muslims and because, like with Blacks and Jews in the US, they knew that most of the spurned supporters would still keep voting for them.
And the Muslims fitted the ‘Victims needing saving’ hole very well. Soon however the Muslims will crush the Labour Party just like they will crush ‘Queers for Palestine’
It is simple: Labour is a party of the Left, and one of the most fundamental commitments of the Left since it got that name from the seating arrangement in the French National Assembly has been antipathy toward Christianity. Leftist Islamophilia is an enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend phenomenon.
No, that’s not it. The British Labour party doesn’t descend from any French faction.
It descended from trade unionists who were mostly Methodists.
Many Labour people today will be atheist, but they have much to fear from Islam in the future.
The propensity of turkeys to vote for Christmas is profoundly depressing.
Jews remain Democrats from social conditioning, fear of ostracism, rationalization in the face of contrary evidence, and have you ever looked at and listened to the Republicans?
fwiw, I am a Reform Jew in Chicago. I was born in 1950, by 1972 I knew the Democrats were full of sh*t and not my friend, but couldn’t overcome my upbringing until 1996. And I am considered an independent thinker. (Myers-Briggs INTJ if you are into such things.)
I’m into such things, I’m an INFJ. Also into The Enneagram (type 4/5) How about you?
“Have you ever listened to the Republicans?” Exactly, say no more!!
Well Jesus Clare…..I am an INFJ too. Only, being male, I am even more rare. LOL
Like Mr. Mamet, I too am a NY-metropolitan Jew, born a decade after the first B&W photos of the liberated concentration camps were released from horrified GI photojournalists representing the British, American and, yes, the Russian armies. I remember as a boy, sitting in the basement of my synagogue where Holocaust survivors, members of our congregation, unabashedly displayed their Nazi registered arm tattoos, some telling their brutal stories, others unable to recount their hellish experiences aloud. An 8MM movie projector showed a bootleg film of dead Jewish bodies stacked like cordwood, focused in on blank-faced living corpses who didn’t quite comprehend that they were free, panned mountains of shoes and other personal belongings that once belonged to the now murdered Jews of Europe.
I grew up a classic “liberal Jew”, like Mamet, in a State that’s rarely elected a governor that wasn’t a Democrat, within a gorgeous urban melting pot, a large city that has only ever had a Democrat major. I now live in The Catskills, a place where Jewish-Americans have vacationed for over a century, and where Hasidic Jews take over the town a mile down the road during the summer, their distinct clothing and religious styling clashing, yet coexisting, with the locals who have Dutch names traceable to the 1600’s when New York was called New Amsterdam, and where a new, large immigrant Hispanic community have found sanctuary (and excellent employment opportunities) in the middle of a forever wild forest preserve.
In closing, I’m still liberal, a 1960’s liberal, but I’m no longer a Democrat. As a Jewish American I can no longer vote for a party that when it’s not overtly supporting antisemitism (and anti-Zionism), is quietly condoning it. And, the worst thing, as I come closer to ending my 7th decade as an American, I’m thinking that it might be time to exercise my 2nd Amendment right to bear arms. For the first time I’m actually contemplating purchasing a firearm to protect myself in this the land of the free and home of the brave. You have no idea how this saddens me.
I’m very happy to learn that you are finally coming around, even if it took you 70 years!
Heart-wrenching – and bless you. Your comment kinda echoes my sentiments as a liberal English half-Jew who formerly voted Labour and has never yet voted Conservative. In that respect I feel disenfranchised by the antisemitism of the Left. Who is there for me to vote for? In fact, all the antisemitism I’ve experienced in my small town, where I know no other Jews, is from the liberal left who’ve moved out from London and brought their bigotry with them. The final wake-up call was at a dinner party where someone I believed to be one of my dearest friends said of someone else: “She’s English, but her partner’s Jewish.” Wow! until then I was under the illusion that I was English. But not to these people. Hearing that conjured up an image of a dinner party in a Berlin salon in the 1920s. It also made me a feel a fool for having dared to share my Jewishness in what I thought was a safe place to do so. Suffice to say, I’ve stopped going to dinner parties.
I just finished an article by Konstantin Kisin, where he says, ” A friend of mine joked that she woke up on October 7 as a liberal and went to bed that evening as a 65-year-old conservative. But it wasn’t really a joke and she wasn’t the only one. What changed? “
Well said; reminds me of the cliche, “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me.”
It’s hard to imagine Hasidic Jews having a holiday. Do they frolic and have fun? Do they swim in swimsuits?
HA!! I’ve never actually witnessed any frolicking, but I see the Hasidic walking the streets of town, ignoring traffic, the men wearing their long black coats, black pants, white shirts, and black hats, all bearded and side-curled (called payas), even in the heat of summer. The women, many with babies or small children, have their heads covered, and they wear ankle length dresses, which again isn’t summer friendly.
The Hasidic community is very insular, and ultra religious. They don’t mingle with anyone but their own. They could be having a rip-roaring time in the privacy of their summer homes and apartments, but I’m not privy to it. They don’t eat in the local restaurants, or shop at the grocery store, because they follow strict Kosher rules when it comes to ingesting food & beverage. Their food is transported from their (mostly) Brooklyn neighborhoods on a weekly basis.
It’s all very creepy. When one thinks of the brain-washing, inbreeding, and repression that goes on in this cult.I’ve seen documentaries about a couple of young men who kind of escaped. And a woman who was trying to get away from her husband. The men had no education and were finding it very hard to adapt. I doubt society would allow this kind of abuse if it wasn’t being done in the name of religion. It’s cruel and tragic.
Clare,
How many of them are you actually closely associated with?
How many do you know personally?
Seriously, you are coming across as bigoted and racist.
When they start murdering young female concert goers in foreign lands is when you really want to start worrying. Though perhaps the left will start to like them when they do that?
Would you write this of conservative muslims? If not, ask yourself why.
Yes, I would write that, why not? The same applies to any cult.
Just don’t do a Salman Rushdie and write a book about it and then make public appearances. They’d get you at one of them, eventually.
I would, we have similar Christian cults in New Zealand and the public views are a combination of disgust and ridicule
Sounds as though the only way to distinguish them from Islamists is that they don’t blow up English Concert halls full of young girls.
Actually, the Hasidim probably experience more joy than most other people. They just don’t express it in the ways that you take for granted.
At the very heart of their tradition is the search for holiness in everyday life. And holiness, by definition, involves an ecstatic experience. Even though they follow the same commandments as other traditional Jews, they do so not so much as acts of duty but as acts of joy. It’s because they have absorbed ancient mystical traditions (such as kabbalah) but applied these to everyone in ordinary contexts, not only to mystical adepts during meditation. They make a point of praying not with solemnity or sobriety, for example, but with singing or humming wordless melodies and vigorous dancing. On Friday nights in the summer, passersby on the street can hear them welcoming Shabbat in these ways.
I am very sad you feel you need to purchase a gun to protect yourself in your home in the US.
Here in the UK I was suitably shocked by the open hate-fest I witnessed first hand in central London last Saturday and I am unhappy to see the pressures this puts the UK Jewish community here which is unwarranted and deeply offensive.
I would wish all of the Jewish faith the best in these trying and distressing times.
Odd how the memory of Ariane Grande’s Manchester Concert fades into the background when it comes to reporting on these people, or the Rotherams, Oldhams and Telfords.
Brother, there is nothing silly or reactionary about wanting to own a firearm for protection.
Just sad it took so long for you to understand the risks that I and many like me have been seeing for 15 yrs or more.
I am a sport shooter. Clays, trap and skeet mostly. But, never thought I would want to own a pistol. Shotguns were fine for the clays. Had rifle to for target practice just cuz I enjoy it. Never thought I would have a reason or a desire to own a pistol. Absolutely never thought I would ever want a permit to carry. Just seemed like a lot of risk for something I would likely never need.
BUT…then I put a Trump sticker on the back of my car!
The crazies that confronted me at the super market, the gas station, even at the pharmacy. This one group of 3 ppl in their 20’s followed me to my car haranguing me as I left Wendy’s. One of the kids, a guy, got up in my face screaming as I tried to get into my car. Kept telling them to back off but they would not. The kid that got in my face started pulling on my car door and slamming it back into me. I finally told them to get the hell away from me or I would start the car and run them over. The girl in the group talked some smack and finally dragged the two guys away.
That is a situation that could have gone very differently and to this day I wish I had had a pistol on me.
You are not crazy to believe that in this day and age you need to be able to protect yourself because there just may not be anyone there to do it for you or a cop close enough to make a difference.
The left has opened up for the world to see. Im glad. After all the sheepish retreats during the anti semitism scandal in the Labour Party a few years ago the truth is now laid bare. As far as I can tell the only people who stand to benefit from the Democrats in the US and the supposedly imminent election of Labour in the UK are Trans activists. They don’t seem to be interested in enabling anything else. The rest of society is to be destroyed. Everyone else from mothers of yet to be born babies through to pensioners is a target for disdain from the Left. I’m baffled as to why anyone is giving them a moments consideration.
You are wrong about only the Trans activists benefiting ftom Labour /Democrats. The pedophiles will (are) too.
Rubbish.A huge generalization.
‘Generalisation’ suggests even you accept there is reasonable cause 😉
Trans & Paedophiles belong to the same club.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26352378
This is quoting the NT out of context – It isn’t “of Jews”, it is a Jew speaking “to Jews”, speaking to them as he did all people about the misdeeds of their forefathers. Criticism of jewish law (by a person who was himself Jewish and whose disciples were all from that background) isn’t a “horrific attack” and doing so demeans the writer’s argument. Similarly the statement that “Christianity came into being with the destruction of the jewish state” is historically illiterate as is the ridiculous claim that it is “libel” to say that the jews killed Christ. They did. To the Romans this was just another religious squabble between two groups of ‘reformist’ and ‘consevative’ jews. I agree with many of the writers points but these do him a disservice.
That is a fair point and the one part of the article where I thought he over-extended himself.
Thank you for writing this, as the author’s comment about this struck me immediately like a hammer on my head. Completely out of context indeed. Anyone needs to read the entire 8th chapter of John before moving on. In no way, shape or form did Jesus of Nazareth ever disparage his own people. Shame on Mr. Mamet for attempting to throw gasoline on a fire!
Thanks. I agree, and came down here to make this same point. Jesus was a Jew, all the main characters in the gospels are Jews – there is no concept in the gospels of a non-Jewish Christian. It was the Jews first and foremost, that Jesus came to save (Matthew 15:24 Jesus answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”)
hmm, what about Paul?
He was jewish — I admit that the first thing that springs to mind abou him is ‘Roman citizen’ but that is a political status, not an ethnicity.
It was at that point I had to ask myself if I was reading yet another brilliantly and passionately written diatribe, or a parody.
Absolutely! I was going to comment something similar; like it or not, it was the Jewish establishment who wanted rid of Jesus, the Romans just wanted an administratively easy ride. I don’t think this has led to condemnation of Jews in general though, as we all know the unfortunate characteristic of all large scale, authoritarian bureaucratic religions is that they will brook no dissent.
Dostoevsky wrote a marvellous parable about the fate of a risen Christ as a story contained within The Brothers Karamazov (The Grand Inquisitor).
The causes of anti-Judaism (and indirectly of modern anti-Semitism) are many: economic, political, theological and so on. But I draw your attention to a psychological one that might well underlie some of the others.
Jews have no need theological to explain the rise of Christianity, but Christians do have a theological need to explain not only the origin of Christianity within Judaism but also the survival of Jewish communities within Christendom.
Christians have claimed since they gained state power under Constantine not only that Jesus was the Messiah but also that his church was the new Israel, the new Chosen People. To some Christians (though not all), this meant that Christianity had replaced Judaism. Worse, for rejecting Christ’s sacrificial atonement on the Cross, Jews had been cursed to live in exile and at the mercy of Christians. No one needed to be a theologian, much less a sociologist, to see that Jews were a politically fragile minority.
And yet, the Jews continued to exist in spite of everything and therefore cast doubt on the ultimate victory of Christianity and therefore on the hope for Christian salvation (and the efficacy of Christian sacraments). I think that this lingering uncertainty, more than any passage in the gospels, is what many Christians found so disturbing or threatening. This is why bishops, especially in late medieval Spain, often forced rabbis into public “disputations” (which were disasters for local Jews whether their rabbis won or lost) to prove over and over again that, yes, Christians were right and Jews wrong.
It would appear that the Jews, like everyone else, have their politics shaped young-ish and then continue to support their side no matter what.
Here’s a tweet I read on the weekend:
Quite mad, of course. But symbolic of my firmest held opinion on politics: Politics is sport, it all depends who you barrack for.
All “hooray for my side.”
I note that claim is mirrored exactly on both sides. The left lies all the time, the right lies all the time. There may be some truth in that, but for me, the difference is that the left’s lies go right to the ground. Everything they believe is founded on lies. That’s not the case on the right. There may be lots of liars, but there’s way more truth underneath it all.
1300 jews were slaughtered last week in a country with a population of 9 million. That is a kill rate of 144 per million. For 9/11 to have had the same kill rate in USA, with a population of 330 million, 47,500 would have had to die. That fact illustrates the scale of the slaughter.
Now run the numbers for Gaza
You mean the number of Gazans killed by Hamas? I don’t think they’re likely to be accurate.
You must run the Gaza numbers against the whole Israel hating Muslim population in the near East and North African Arab countries.
The IDF spent a week telling the women, children and civilians to move – Hamas spend about 9 hours seeking them out to murder them. The again, check out how many of their rockets hit their own people. Even this week Egypt got bombed by Islamists in Africa aiming for Israel.
By your logic, then, 1,300 Israelis are equivalent to 47,500 Americans, but only about 10,000 British citizens….or six Faro Islanders? In any case, by your own systemic reckoning, Israel has now killed in Gaza and the West Bank a number of civilians – perhaps 5,000 equivalent to about five times its own proportional losses. The Laws of Armed Conflict specifically allow for ‘proportionate’ reprisals. By any objective measure, Israel has already gone well past that.
There’s no such thing as a ‘proportionate’ response in war.
Maybe Peter Joy thinks that ‘proportionality’ required Israel to sent a squad of psychopaths into Gaza to butcher 1400+ innocent civilians, men women and children.
Anyone who thinks that there is any comparison to be made between the deliberate targeting of civilians for butchery, and the unintended civilian casualties which are the inevitable concomitant of armed conflict between state actors, is either cretinous themselves, or is just parroting a line they hope will convince the cognitively and ethically challenged, in the pursuance of another Jewish genocide.
No, ‘proportionality´ in this case evidently requires the extirpation of Hamas from the planet, including as many of its operatives and functionaries as possible. It, and no-one else, is responsible for all the civilian casualties in Gaza. It issued a death sentence on them almost when it perpetrated the horrors of Oct 7th. It knew this very well. It is rubbing its hands at the prospective photo-opportunities that will be provided to it by a servile and anti-semitic Western media. Haven’t they said often enough that they love death?
I notice that there is little outrage that Jordan and Egypt both fail to allow women and children ‘refugees’ from Gaza into their war free lands. Ironically Jordan was supposed to have been part of Israel until the British sliced and diced the land to the point Israel got a rump. Jordan is where ‘Palestinians’ were to form their own state. Jordan ended up fighting them, Lebanon too fought them, and Egypt. The only time the Islamic world is in favour of Palestinians seems to be either their leaders in very small numbers in their lands but in large numbers on Israel’s borders or massacaring Israeli civilians.
By your logic, the allies should have never bombed German cities killing many millions. Most of Germany was flatted, old and young were killed in firebombs and legions of women raped. It was biblical, an eye for an eye, no mercy… Was it justified, probably yes, because Germany under Hitler started the unbelievable bloodshed.
Nürnberg trials happened afterwards, but not many ask nowadays, if all the innocent lives lost were proportional or justified. But at least afterwards Europe had a long lasting peaceful period and most historians agree, that the bloodshed in Germany was justified.
Will the coming Middle Eastern war and destruction end in a new lasting peace process? I am pretty pessimistic.
But Israel can‘t walk away with over a thousand people butchered in the most horrific way. Should they just give up and pack up and hand their country over to “Palestinian Refugees” (of 70 years!?) , who no country wants, least of all their Arab brothers, and who sheltered the terrorists? Nobody so far has given a satisfying answer. Seems none of the solutions, tried by Israel in accord with other nations, worked: Oslo Accord of a two state solution was in ruins as Arafat walked out, and now Abraham Accords seem to be put on ice for the foreseeable future…
By the same logic the 1998 IRA/NORAID Omagh bomb would have killed approximately 5,800 US citizens.
I upticked yr comment but only increased the red figure.
That is because this is a ‘web site’ ie lots of people can read it and tick at the same time, what you get is the ‘latest’ situation from the server, so IF you uptick, but 2 others downtick in the time span, the number goes 1 more into the red. Which is an interesting digression on reality. People can comment on world events like this yet not understand a simple bit of logic regarding web sites and computers.
OK, so how many Palestinian women should the IDF rape before executing them – each in front of their next victim? How many babies should they deliberately kill? What do you think is a ‘proportionate response’ to mass murder of this kind?
I think the sexual depravity of Hamas (grounded in Islam, of course) makes them particularly beneath contempt and undeserving of mercy.
They didn’t target them, they even gave them a week to move out, AND so far the only hospital hit was a blue on blue by a Islamist rocket – though they even lie about that.
In international law, “proportionate” doesn’t refer to numbers. It refers to the amount of force necessary to achieve a legitimate military goal, such as self-defense, but no more.
I agree wholeheartedly with Mr. Mamet’s basic point, that antisemitism is rife in the West, and that this is intolerable.
However, things are not going to be helped if people like Mr. Mamet misunderstand Christianity. His quotation of John 8:44 is accurate. However, Jesus was talking to the Pharisees, not Jews in general (John 8:12), in a fractious debate that ended up with Jesus’ attempted murder (John 8:59). The Pharisees were a group of people who delighted in using Scripture to bolster their own privileged position in society, even if that made life a misery for everyone else.
If it comes to that, Jesus could be very scathing about non-Jews (Matthew 15:21-28). The ‘gentle Jesus, meek and mild’ caricature never existed.
Yes, David, but the interpretive context of these passages changed very quickly. Once the church consisted mainly of Romans instead of Jews (within the first century), passages that had been about arguments within the Jewish community were heard as arguments between “us” (Roman Christians) and “them” (Jews or Pharisees).
When will Jews (and all decent Democrats) learn that written and spoken words are not enough? The Democratic Party is NO LONGER your father’s party. Nor is the modern Republican Party his bogieman. People need to take this threat seriously or the Illiberal Left will spiral toward the same Final Solution that reared it’s head in Germany. If this isn’t a wake up call, then “Good Jews” will suffer the consequences.
I very much enjoyed Mamet’s article, but his criticism of Christians quoting John 8:44 in the NT is misplaced and quoted out of context. Jesus had lots of philosophical arguments with Pharisees, especially about Jewish law, therefor they threatened to stone him and he actually had to flee. Also it is unhistorical, that Christians had anything to do with the destruction of Israel.
Too much popular fretting about the morality of war – the post-Christian West’s fatal weakness (and for our mentally stunted broadcast MSM, the sole frame of reference).
Our enemies will have noticed our all too conspicuous eagerness to rush to the peace conference in search of some conscience-salving compromise. They could hardly have failed to notice our obsession with comparative levels of victimhood in the current war. Conspicuous too will be the narcissistic delusion of “Western moral leadership” that has taken hold of our cultural elite. [How’s that moral leadership looking after the ignominious abandonment of Afghanistan?]
If the once powerful West had any long-term strategy and any fighting spirit left we might realise this is a good time to seriously undermine Iran’s ability to wage jihad. Iran is a long-term enemy not only of Israel but of the West itself. But alas, our very own elites have not merely enabled Iran but put it on the threshold of becoming a deadly nuclear-armed state. A nuclear-armed Iran – now that will really have our elites clamouring for a peace conference! Just think what concessions the Mullah’s will be able to wring from us when they have those weapons to hand!
‘Our enemies’. ‘Our’. ‘Enemies.’ Yeh, deh hate our freedums’
‘We’ – from the taxpaying schmuck in a trailer park in Baton Rouge to the one on the bus in Carlisle – wouldn’t have any ‘enemies’ if our political leadership hadn’t spent the last five or six decades bombing, battering and subverting its way round the globe, making them.
if only the truth were that simple, Peter Joy.
Ironic that your surname is “Joy.”
Some peoples just hate others even if they have never been badly treated.
Many Muslims hate us just because we, heretics, exist.
So true. The world’s bloodlust is truly something to behold.
According to Mr Schroeder yesterday (IIRC) the West/EU/US/UK/NATO ‘rushed’ away from peace in the Ukraine – when Zelensky was in favour of it.
“Christianity came into being with the destruction of the Jewish State — the adherents were Jews whose Temple and culture had been destroyed.”
This is a staggeringly dishonest account of the origins of Christianity, and entirely ignores the debate between Jewish Christians and gentiles that raged in the early church.
Staggeringly is a great description, but still falls short! I’m not sure there is a word that can capture this level of ignorance.
Sure there’s a word: lying.
Actually, what came into being with the destruction the Jewish State and with it the Temple, was modern rabbinic Judaism. The elaborate ritual and sacrificial cult was replaced at that point with the study of the Torah and commentaries on it. and it was soon after that the rabbis settled on a Babylonian text of the Scriptures now known as the Masorete as the authoritative version.
Christianity had been a going concern for over 40 years at that point: all of St. Paul’s missionary journeys took place before the destruction of the Temple, as did his and St. Peter’s martyrdom at Rome (c. 67AD). Bishops had succeeded the Apostles as chief hiearchs of major sees throughout the Empire (Simeon I succeeding St. James “the Just” also surnamed “the brother of the Lord” at Jerusalem, Evodius and Ignatius succeeding St. Peter at Antioch, Anianus succeeding St. Mark the Evangelist at Alexandria, Linus and Anacletus succeeding St. Peter at Rome) before the destruction of the Jewish state.
Your point is very well taken, David. But it would be more precise to say that rabbinic Judaism actually began much earlier, during the Babylonian exile. It was the early rabbis (known at various early stages as Pharisees or Scribes) who created the synagogue to replace (at least temporarily) the Temple in Jerusalem and turned the study of Torah into a non-cultic form of worship.
A very powerful piece, executed with precision and passion. This Christian stands with my Jewish brothers and sisters. My only request is that Mr. Mamet recognize that most Christians – not speaking of Evangelicals here – support Jews and the State of Israel, and that the passage from John which he quotes is Jesus talking specifically to the Pharisees, who do not represent all Jews. Jesus was a Jew after all, as were all of his disciples. Whatever religious differences Jews and Christians have, we share the same basic values that unite us. I hope Mr. Mamet will still welcome the love and support of good Christians. I thank him for this amazing essay, and for his plays and contributions to our culture.
Evangelicals have been very supportive of Israel and many take it upon themselves to visit the country and donate to projects that protect holy sites.
And the clowns don’t seem to realise that Jews hate them
I can’t think of a more foolish group people on the planet than American Evangelicals
The Jews hate them? Not true, D Walsh, or not always true in any case. I recently discovered an organisation of Evangelical Christians and Orthodox Jews working and praying together to defend Israel, they’ve even got a YouTube channel. I found them very cute which is possible, I guess, if you don’t feel threatened yourself by other people’s religions.
Try looking thinking about the left. 😉
Good to remember that we describe our culture as Judeo-Christian.
In David Mamet’s film Homicide, Bobby Gold, a Jewish detective, the key character, remarks of the antisemitism he is being accused of: it’s being going on for 4000 years; we must be doing something wrong.
I don’t know whether 4000 years is accurate, but we can all agree that no population that is still with us has suffered anything like the persecution which the Jews have suffered and survived. And certainly not just survived. As the most persecuted population in history, the Jews are in the top decile of every group with which you would want to be associated.
This is a very difficult truth for socialist/identity politicians to contend with given that victimhood is their basic sustenance. Jewish strength and success at every level – personal, family, community, state – contradict everything on which socialist/identity politicians rely for votes and motivation. The mystery which David Mamet addresses so clearly is why Jews still determinedly support Labour in the UK and the Democrats in the US.
What is the Democratic Party without Jewish money? I look forward to finding out.
More to the point, where is the so-called “progressive movement” without Jewish money? If the latter dries up, so will the former.
Chinese money.
Ha!
And Saudi and Qatari and…
IF the rumours are true regarding their economy, they may not have as much as you think.
Jews don’t speak with one voice. They are very diverse in thought. Some deranged far left among their ranks to right and far right and everything in between. Even in Israel the woke and the seditious reside among them. Siding with the enemy. Many of whom came to a grisley end at the hands of those in whom they could see humanity that perhaps they shouldn’t have. Until Jews unite behind Israel, divorse the Democratic party and scream with one voice then maybe then they can be on the front foot and stop being polite. It really is existential for Israel.
All the horror has been brought into the light with these terrible events and we now see what a monstrous thing this party has evolved into over the last decade.
David Mamet: “Christianity came into being with the destruction of the Jewish State — the adherents were Jews whose Temple and culture had been destroyed. Every new religion, in its foundation myths, slanders its parent faith.” I agree. Christianity saw itself as a replacement religion, to supersede and ultimately displace Judaism from existence; the church therefore has some responsibility for the Holocaust. “The murder of six million Jews by baptized Christians, from whom membership in good standing was not (and has not been) withdrawn, raises the most insistent question about the credibility of Christianity”; a quote from Littell, F.H. (1975), The Crucifixion of the Jews: The Failure of Christians to Understand the Jewish Experience, New York: Harper and Row. It didn’t go unnoticed that the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, retweeted the false BBC News report ‘Hundreds feared dead or injured in Israeli air strike on hospital in Gaza, Palestinian officials say’ on 17 October, adding his own response with the words ‘May the Lord God have mercy’. Shame on him.
Not so much a replacement as an evolution. You’ll notice the Old Testament (which includes the first five chapters of the Torah) are included in every King James bible.
Right, and Mormons are another “evolution” by that logic.
… the ‘Old’ Testament rather suggests it’s had its day, words matter.
Between the Fall of the Temple and the foundation of modern Israel, there have been Jewish States in Judea (even if it did last only three or four years), in Yemen, repeatedly in Mesopotamia, and for 200 years in the Caucasus, and there may also have been one in Ethiopia.
Sshhh! You’ll ruin the narrative
Which narrative? The one which says that the Jews need a state to defend themselves in the face of their repeated experience, since the Fall of the Temple in AD 70, of being subject to massacre and pogrom at the whim of those whose lands they have inhabited since then?
How does the Himyarite Kingdom of Yemen, which converted to Judaism around AD 380 and existed for about a century and a half, the even shorter-lived Jewish kingdoms in Mesopotamia in the first century, or even the Khazar Khaganate, which adopted Judaism between the mid eighth and tenth centuries before succumbing to Muslim and Christian enemies, change or challenge any of that?
If there were any doubt about the need for a Jewish state, the sadistic butcheries of October 7 and the worldwide demonstrations of support for the butchers make that necessity amply clear. The only people who can object to it are those who cheerfully envisage a return to the situation when host populations could massacre Jews with impunity.
No one could disagree with your view that post 1945 it was imperative that the Jews were enabled to establish a Jewish state somewhere. It was unfortunate, however, that it was established in a region which was already fully occupied by others and prone to violent politics.
I have sometimes thought that the British government missed an opportunity in not providing sparsely inhabited Newfoundland as an alternative in the late 1940s. (At the time Newfoundland was under direct British rule). Although lacking the historical associations with the Israel of David, Herod, etc – and being as chilly as Poland in winter – one suspects the survivors of the camps would have found an even greater sense of security across the Atlantic than in the Middle East.
As it was the British policy of trying to prevent Jewish immigration to Palestine – in the absence of a better alternative – was as ineffective as it was unpopular. The last years of the British mandate created the fault lines that are still with us today.
I see some validity in your retrospective musings about the location of the Jewish State. But that ship certainly sailed the Dead Sea long ago, so to speak, and the “tribal” desire to return to their ancestral homeland is understandable at a minimum.
I admit I’m no expert on history, North American or otherwise, but as a Canada-born dual citizen I had to check on your Newfoundland claims and don’t think your characterization of its mid-20th century status is accurate. I understand that it had de jure commonwealth dominion status with de facto near-total self-government.
Also: Do you suppose the inhabitants of a sparsely populated but far from empty Newfoundland would have accepted this move, even if a weakened late-Imperial hand had ordered it? And how would that have gone over with the conquered remnants of Native tribes?
Rather easier, in theory, to place an entire people far away from your Atlantic shores, at a seemingly safe distance, which must be part of why the Middle East seemed to be a comparably good place for the world to “put the Jews”: “Enjoy this bountiful desert–and please stay out of Europe, Australia, and the Americas”.
In truth, nothing massive, protracted, and horrible–like religious and ethnic bigotry–fails to escape its borders at last, at least from time to time.
Newfoundland was a separate self governing colony and then “Dominion” from 1834 to 1933 but then went bust during the Great Depression and was ruled 1933-48 by a British appointed Commission. It then chose in a referendum to be absorbed by Canada.
How much the 250,000 odd Newfoundlanders would have objected is moot. Jewish immigration might have led to prosperity. The Beothuk, the main native tribe, died out in the nineteenth century.
Obviously, this is just a bit of ancient history otherwise useful only in a general knowledge quizz. I was using it to make a different point.
To claim that it’s “moot” seems either arrogant or dismissive to me. As a Canadian citizen, I continue to challenge your round assertions about the true operational status of Newfoundland. You’re providing footnotes, not a complete case. Maybe you’re closer to right than I’m inclined to allow, but I’ve not been shown so.
Perhaps the Jews should have been re-located en masse to the Isles of Man or Wight, where the locals–their moot reactions notwithstanding–could have learned to celebrate the influx of prosperity occasioned by a huge immigrant wave.
Welcome back, AJ.
Or what about Germany itself in the region of, say, Baden Baden? Great. They could have renamed it Bagel Bagel. But I doubt that many Germans would have welcomed them, not even those who felt guilty after the war. And I hardly think that Jews themselves would have welcomed the idea of going back either to Germany or to any country that had been either indifferent or hostile toward them during the war.
Anyway, do you really imagine that plopping people down in alien environments, almost at random, could be a durable solution?
Thanks, Paul. “Bagel Bagel”…haha!
Yes, I’ve always thought it was a huge mistake and was, obviously, the cause of what’s happening now.
Not just for the sake of pivoting from a too-recent to a overwhelmingly long view of cause, but I think we’d do well to examine the cause(s) of what’s happening now on a longer timeline, one extended by centuries or millennia.
It was in lands that were part of the now defunct Ottoman Empire, AND which had been discussing how those lands should be split into new ‘Nation States’ since WW1. The original size of Israel was far larger than anything they have now or even conquered. Jordan is where the Palestinians were to live, but even Jordan fought with the ones who went there, eventually they evicted them forcibly.
That part of the Middle East was never “fully occupied” by any one group. For hundreds of years, first under the Ottoman Empire and then under the British mandate, there were Turks, Arabs (including the Bedouin, who were nomadic) and Jews.
Could you elaborate on this please?
The Bar Kokhba revolt in the Judea of the 130s, the Himyarite Kingdom in Yemen from 390 to 525, Adiabene until 379, Al-Mada’in from 495 until 502, Khazaria from 750 to 950, and possibly Simien, behind the stories of which there was clearly something, anyway.
Especially, the ninth century Khazar empire which covered modern Ukraine and a large chunk of Russia and ruled umpteen millions. In fact there were a series of “beauty parades” by various steppe states in this period in which Christian, Jewish and Muslim envoys were interrogated about their religions as each group abandoned paganism and made a choice between the “civilised” religions. The Khazars went for Judaism, the Volga Bulgars for Islam and the Viking rulers of Kiev adopted Orthodox Christianity. Since the latter ended up on top and founded Russia, Eastern Europe became Christian – but it could easily have gone the other way and “Russia” ended up forever Jewish.
Don’t forget the Ugandan Jews. A very interesting story there.
Oh, that changes everything….
“Every cloud has a silver lining”.
The sack of both the Temple and Jerusalem ‘paid for’ the construction of the Colosseum, perhaps the most awesome building ever constructed.
The Roman Emperor Vespasian had an inscription recording this fact affixed to the exterior of the edifice in bronze letters.*
(*Long since looted by Papal banditti and others.)
Don’t you mean the Flavian Amphitheatre? Quite true but please give it the correct title.
Yes I do mean the Flavian Amphitheater but I suspect most UnHerd readers would be more familiar with the name Colosseum don’t you?
It usually goes right over my head.
Are they still around? IF not, why not, what happened to them?
One plays the Victim card whenever one can. That’s because, as the woke have it, Victims are automatically virtuous and are entitled to do whatever they want as they resist their Oppressors. BLM can burn down half of a city, Hamas can burn babies, … and Israel no doubt will now feel even freer to continue building settlements in the West Bank. Victimhood is a sort of blank cheque and both Hamas and Israel want to cash it. After the Hamassacre, Israel really does have Victimhood tho, and will cash the cheque — but that’s exactly what Hamas wants, because as Gaza is systematically leveled, and the bodies pile up, it will be Hamas that, increasingly, gets the blank cheque. Clever little buggers, aren’t they?
Why anyone would vote for the Democrats mystifies me. Turkeys often vote for Christmas; look at the Queers for Palestine support group.
“Afterwards, we find the Christian libel that the Jews killed Christ…” It’s not really a libel is it?
Off course it is NOT a libel, or are the Gospels just making it all up?
The Jewish religious mafia, otherwise known as the Sanhedrin wanted rid of JC because he was viewed, not without some cause, as a pestilential menace.
The Roman Prefect, one Pontius Pilate, the only man with capital powers, does not appear to have been convinced, but eventually acquiesced for the sake of good order and civil discipline. He was however decent enough to have JC crucified after lunch on a Friday.
This ensured only a few hours of writhing and squealing on the Cross rather than the normal few days. Sadly Pilate’s humanity is always ignored.
“This ensured only a few hours of writhing and squealing on the Cross rather than the normal few days.”
Please explain.
Under Jewish Religious Law it was NOT ‘Kosher’ to have dead or dying bodies dangling from crosses on the Sabbath, which technically started at sunset on Friday.Therefore JC had to be finished off before sunset, hence the broken legs and Lance in the side for good measure. Also very unusually, and if the Gospels are to be believed,Pilate allowed the body to be buried.
Normally a fit man or woman could survive on a cross for about three days, and they were then rarely buried but allowed to disintegrate and consumed by the local wildlife.
Thus Pilate might well have had JC ‘nailed up’ on say Sunday, to endure excruciating pain, plus assaults by voracious carrion birds until say Wednesday, before the process of disintegrating began.
So all in all a rather benign and unusual crucifixion for which poor old Pilate has received no thanks at all.
More tea Vicar?
He wasn’t crucified after lunch. He was hung on the cross at nine in the morning (Luke 15:25, “the third hour” is nine o’clock in our time).
His legs weren’t broken, either, because he was already dead (John 19:33).
Thank you for those ‘technical’ details.
Here’s another technical detail. Pilate was recalled to Rome for brutality.
Can’t you break the legs of a dead person?
You can, but why bother?
A lance was also thrust into his side just to make sure.
Most readable!
But is it accurate? 😉 Certainly in view of what the Jesuits explained to me and fellow pupils in many a ‘retreat’ during our years in a Jesuit college, ‘Screaming’ would not have been an ‘easy’ option. See my earlier post as to why. Grunting and gasping – more likely.
Given my understanding of crucifixion, ‘squealing’ would have been very difficult, as it needed breathing, and that was, in the accounts I read/had explained by Jesuits, extremely hard to achieve when nailed in the manner described.
Is it inappropriate to say that Pilate’s caving in to the mob for the sake of good order is prescient of the Met’s pandering to the muslims?
Almost identical I would say.
Yes, Jews are being crucified again.
It’s a shame to see a brilliant playwright like David Mamet fall in to such self-pity. The idea that American Jews are some beleaguered minority kept “in the Outer Office” by the Democratic party is fantastical, as is the contention that Westerners who do not fully support the position of Benjamin Netanyahu seek the elimination of all Jews. The conflict between Israel and Palestinians is as complex as it as tragic. There are no simple answers.
And it’s Stephen Wise, not Weiss.
Exactly.
Agree that clarity here doesn’t fall victim to style. It’s a well put together piece.
That is because his heart is in it.
But not his head.
His head is suffering from early onset dementia, I believe.
This reminds me of the arguments African Americans make about their history to stifle debate around race. I am not saying Mamet is wrong. Jewish history and African American history are horrific examples of man’s inhumanity to man.
But the people who write columns like this are not interested in shedding light on the problem at hand. We already know the history. They want to shut us up. It is all one huge guilt trip. Mamet doesn’t want anyone to criticize Israel.
Hamas is a terrorist organization that the world would be better off without. The problem at hand is how far Israel should go to eliminate them.
But what happened on Oct 7th was a huge clusterf**k caused by Benjamin Netanyahu. His policies strengthened Hamas and even helped fund their terrorist activities. His West Bank policies caused the UDF to move troops from the Hamas/Israeli border to the West Bank on the weekend of Hamas’s murderous attack to protect settlers who were unilaterally taking Palestinian land. His attempts to change the constitution roiled the country and the army.
But Mamet doesn’t want to engage on these points, so he uses history to browbeat critics of the Israeli government.
This headline is wrong and offensive. He is talking about progressives. I am a Bill Clinton democrat. Democrats did not betray the Jews. Southern and Center democrats are mostly moderate and dont have much say in anything anymore. NYT and Wapo are leading democratic papers and they have been pushing the Culture War, against the wishes of most democrats in America. The past 7 years, NYT helped elevate the spoiler Bernie Sanders, BLM, MeToo, Trans ideology and all the DEI stuff.