"As a Jew, no place but Israel is home "

Yes, as part of the whole text that is. On it's own it doesn't have much to do with anything other then someone longing for home.

 

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Home being the place where he spent the last 18 months as opposed to being the place where he spent the rest of his life. Bizarre. Do you have personal experience of this? Do you feel less Dutch than anything else? Does seeing Dutch signs feel foreign to you? Maybe I should ask Inzy if she feels more German than Indonesian, she's been there for over 18 months now.

 

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Well, that would include the rest of the text, wouldn't it?

I don't feel Dutch. I feel like me. What does it mean to 'feel Dutch'? I don't know.
I think you are referring to someone feeling comfortable within their own environment. It doesn't make any difference what nationality that someone has.
Apparently the guy from the article has quickly adopted Israel as his environment and he feels more comfortable there than anywhere else.
As to why and how he managed to do that so quickly, I don't know. It's a psychological question.

 

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I don't see anything bizarre about feeling comfortable in a different environment. I was comfortable in Jeddah, I was comfortable in London, I was comfortable in Chicago. None of that made me uncomfortable in Mumbai. Its the feeling uncomfortable with the sights and sounds that made up a large part of your life that I do not understand.

 

I don't understand it either.
Don't you agree that the nature of your question is psychological? Anyway, I can't answer it for you.

 

Have you lived away from your country for an extended period? You don't feel Dutch, so maybe you haven't. Nothing like immersion in a foreign culture to appreciate the sensation of returning home.

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Nope, I haven't

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Of course. But what does that have to do with being Dutch? An Englishman would feel the same way upon returning home, so would an Indian etc.

 

If you've never been away you wouldn't understand what it means to come home. There is something incredibly heart wrenching about seeing the smog and slums of Mumbai whenever I come back. Gets my heart racing to see that dear old pile of industrial jungle [or whats visible of it through the thick smog] everytime I fly in. :bawl:

As for feeling Dutch, ever walk into a womens rest room and realise that you're in the wrong place? Then walk into a mens and feel the relief?

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Unless you're like the OP and feel unhappy when you walk into a mens room because you felt so much at home in the ladies for the short time you were there.

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Well SAM, the way I think about it is that the idea of a home in Israel is a place where all Jewish people are accepted and connected to each other. What I mean by that is that in every other country around the world there are to some degree Jewish prejudices and it has been like that for a long time, some a lot less than others, some a lot more. That sort of thing is true for every country, there are countries where certain religions are accepted and others to some degree are prejudiced against. Take Islam in the US, that is a moderate example because there are no laws against Islamic people, but you can see it on so many people's faces that when they see an Islamic person they may not be outwardly insulting, but you can tell that they are very suspicious. Or even Judaism in Afghanistan.

The idea of Israel is it is the one place on earth where there is absolutely none of that for the Jewish people. The Islamic people have many countries where they aren't prejudiced against, the Christians also have many, all that the Jews want is one tiny piece of land to enjoy that freedom.

That explains why there is so much fanaticism to protect it and you consistantly see patterns of overkill in military retaliations. But SAM, you have to see it through our eyes. This is our last bastion, this is our last ground, the last time we were exiled we very nearly went extinct, we had to live through 2000 years of pain, of sorrow, and of tears in order to just get back what we need. SAM, the Jewish people are so defensive because they cannot go through what the world put them through again, we cannot survive it again. This is all we have, this is the only thing we can call our own. If Israel were to take all of the Middle east Islamic people would still have a home with zero prejudice. Same thing goes if the arabs were to invade all of Europe (yes these are hypotheticals and both are extremely unrealistic) and throw the Christians out. Christianity would still have a home where there is zero prejudice, like the US for example. If the arabs invade Israel and throw out the Jews, we have no place to call a home.

That SAM is the anthropoligical explanation why the Jewish people are often very aggressive towards threats and extremely defensive, the world shaped us as a people not to make mistakes, not to take risks, because the smallest risks and mistakes brings us ever closer to the brink. We already fell down that brink once, and by some miracle we climbed up in almost 2000 years, we refuse to be thrown off the brink again, come hell or high waters.

 

wow, fedr808 ... that was so touchingly gay.

 

Hey Dream eater, stuff it up your ass.

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Get a life...

 

i love stuffing things up my ass!

i think me and you are going to get along juuuuust right.

 

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well i say their homa is a cimitry, they live on the dead bodies...

 

the problem is the want of that the problem is they were willing to commit ethnic cleansing and genocide because of that want. or to put in better terms they were perfectly willing to deny others their rights because they wanted. You pushing the idea that people need a place they have complete iron fisted control over to be safe and that's simplely not the case.

they essentially took away another people ability to feel safe and protected so they could.

 

Well, what goes around comes around, sometimes, pj. I don't agree with Israel's actions in the West Bank...but one wonders what tolerance they should have learned at the hands of their overlords the past 1400 years.

 

I disagree that it should be in Human Science.

As for why some Jews might feel this way: well, why should any group feel some overriding impulse to return to their "homeland"? A significant fraction of Muslims, notably, in just about every survey ever taken feel strongly that their religious preferences should trump those of the home country, or that their religion should be made superior over that of any of the native religions. The difference being, in reference to the title, that Jews have a historical claim to the region.

 

So they attack the people that through out history treated them the best???

 

We've been over this. If your neighbour throws shit at you, but I only throw slightly watered-down shit at you, does that make me your friend?

As for the uncomfortability: Sam, you're pushing a red herring. Merely because he prefers Israel for religious reasons doesn't mean he disavows his country of origin. This is related in degree to the above.

 

No. And even if you want to view this individual's experiences as an instance of ethnocentricism, that still doesn't tell us much of anything about "being Jewish" in general.

You should stop hanging entire threads about Jewish identity on your own pigeonholing of the experiences of single individuals. In addition to being unpersuasive, it's a propaganda exercise - start with a preconception, find some isolated case you can cram into the preconceptions, and then sermonize about how that validates your preconceptions. If you're going to do that, at least display the honesty to phrase it as a diatribe and not pretend it's an honest inquiry that the unbigoted have some interest in.

? Nobody has "wiped out" anything, here. The diversity remains right where it was.

The author is pretty clear about what caused his feelings: after a short period of residing in an environment where his appearance and behavior do not mark him as "different," he became sensitized to the aspects of American society that cause him to feel "different." These factors were previously invisible to him, as he had no other frame of reference.

Which has nothing in particular to do with "Jewishness," other than to point out that the diversity present in American society does not extend so far as to render outwardly observant Jews unexceptional. People routinely stare at Hasidim on the street in LA, as far as that goes. It's only a subset of American Jews that don't stand out, and that type doesn't wear yarmulkes or worry about kosher dining or speak Hebrew, etc. You only find out that they are Jewish at all if you ask or, more often, you work with them and note that they are taking off Jewish holidays.

More generally: the fact that American society is diverse doesn't imply that every minority feels accepted and unexceptional here. I know plenty of minorities who've lived their entire lives here - and feel "different" when they visit the homes of their ancestors, where they don't speak the language or know the culture - who are still bothered by being constantly made to feel "alien" or "different" here. They are frequently vexed by ignorant white people asking them "what are you?" and other such taxing displays of ignorance. Or people who assume their religion based on skin color, etc. There's a million examples, and lots of them apply within the United States, to white Americans. An NYC urbanite who visits rural Texas is going to stand out, and be made aware of it, and this could well make him uncomfortable.

And to your own experiences: you don't stand out in Mumbai to begin with, so you have no way to compare. But the same probably couldn't be said for the Cochin Jews (back before they all emigrated, that is).

 

There is no basis for scientific discussion in this thread. It should remain in Free Thoughts if you're feeling cheritable, or else go in the Cesspool where bigoted trash like this belongs.

Note that your stated reason for moving it here - psychoanalysis - is itself psuedoscience, which suggests another possibly suitable home for this thread.