I'm back home now (remember how I said I wouldn't be able to really edit JW stuff for a week?) and I have access to my personal library again, so I'm good whenever you're good to provide feedback. I figured I should let you know. If you're curious, I went on vacation to Victoria, BC. I've never really been on a plane or seen the ocean before so that was exciting. I had a fun time, particularly when it felt like like the universe was giving me signs... I came across an intersection of Clover Ave and Moss Street on a walk out to Clover's Point. I didn't choose the locale knowing of these potential destinations so it was a nice surprise. :) Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 16:00, 24 April 2024 (UTC)
- Congrats on your first flight and seeing the ocean! I hope you snapped a pic of the intersection sign. They have yet to rename any streets after me ☹️ Nevertheless, I'll prob get back to JW this weekend or Monday.
Levivich (
talk) 04:22, 25 April 2024 (UTC)
- No worries! We all do what we can when we can. And I did get a photo of that intersection with me by the signs because how could I not? :) Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 20:43, 28 April 2024 (UTC)
Thank you for your feedback again! I'll take a closer look sometime this week. But can I ask a favour? Please write Jehovah's Witnesses instead of Jehova's Witnesses. The latter makes my brain explode with a sense of wrongness I can't easily understand? The letter h is important. If you have something against the h to some reason, could you maybe just stick to the initalism? Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 00:37, 30 April 2024 (UTC)
With regard to Special:Diff/1220885464, I think at this point the most universal Jewish experience on all sides of the conflict is being called a disgrace to Jews by another Jew. signed, Rosguill talk 14:42, 26 April 2024 (UTC)
- Sad but true.
Levivich (
talk) 15:19, 26 April 2024 (UTC)
- Is this a special case, unique to the experience of being Jewish? I doubt it. An erstwhile Japanese girlfriend was stopped at the airport after some years abroad and roundly upbraided for what a pair of customs officers considered her unJapanese behaviour (her speech patterns lacked the appropriate feminine style of humility before superiors/officials/men), and one often read novels et., where people were taken to task for falling short putatively of living up to some abstract concept of Japaneseness. The point is, to what degree can anyone in a community defined ethnically, religiously, culturally or all three, make claims about who 'we' are, and rail at others in the community who fail to live up to this perceived standard? (
Self-hating Jew, is a case in point). There are powerful historic grounds for ethnic solidarity, whatever the circumstances among Jews, and the Irish to name but a few, but it takes little to have this communitarian defensiveness slip into a 'my (=our) ethnos right or wrong' , thereby transforming fellowship into a kind of emotional coercion. Sorry for the intrusion, but. . .
Nishidani (
talk) 22:34, 28 April 2024 (UTC)
- A few times in foreign countries I've found myself in a serious 'existential fix' which was, on these occasions, resolved by going to an Italian restaurant and, asking for advice, and got the help I needed. (Once, short of funds when a university that hired me to lecture said there were bureaucratic issues that meant I wouldn't be paid before my departure, and thus couldn't buy a ticket for my flight back home, a waiter I consulted at a nearby restaurant arranged for a truck coming from Poland back to Latina which regularly passed that way to give me a lift from Germany to Rome. In the end it wasn't needed since the payment came through in time, unfortunately since hitchhiking is always a more interesting way to travel). All that was needed was fluency in the language which indicated virtually a shared identity.
Nishidani (
talk) 22:49, 28 April 2024 (UTC)
- This is a serious discussion (or at least a discussion about serious things) so I hope Levivich will forgive a bit of Levivity: does '
no true Scotsman' apply here?
Girth Summit
(blether) 23:06, 28 April 2024 (UTC)
- There is nothing more serious than laughter. Anyway, I thought there was no true Scotsman because they all wear
skirts?
Levivich (
talk) 04:09, 29 April 2024 (UTC)
- I've never actually worn a kilt - I sort of imagine they'd give you tickly knees. Thinking about moving back to Edinburgh later this year though, so maybe I'll get myself kitted (kilted?) out in time for next year's beltane. Girth Summit (blether) 09:32, 29 April 2024 (UTC)
- There is nothing more serious than laughter. Anyway, I thought there was no true Scotsman because they all wear
skirts?
- This is a serious discussion (or at least a discussion about serious things) so I hope Levivich will forgive a bit of Levivity: does '
no true Scotsman' apply here?
Girth Summit
(blether) 23:06, 28 April 2024 (UTC)
- Yeah, as another example, what it means to be "a real American" divides the US. Just ask Obama, who had his citizenship questioned. And I know from firsthand experience just how genuine such feelings can be. I'm not a Trump supporter and one of the reasons is that I do not believe Trump supports the US, loves the US, is what I'd consider a patriot, he's not what I'd call a "real" American, but of course that's just because we hold very different ideas about what kind of country the US should be. Meanwhile, neither of us are real Americans, as in indigenous people. The arrogance of colonization: people from Europe travel to America, kick out the people who are living there, rename it, and then for generations argue with each other about who is more of a real American. LOL
- But with Israel it's different this time. I don't recall there ever being as much vocal dissent within the Jewish community, or at least not in the American Jewish community, as there is now. And maybe I just never noticed it before, and I kind of can't believe I'm about to write something along these lines, but these past few months I've been shocked at how pro-Israeli the mainstream US media seems to be. I'm one of those people that reads a bunch of different newspapers every day and I can't believe how often I read a mainstream outlet publishing something that just seems like a Likud press release. Anti-Zionism = antisemitism seems to be the official editorial stance of certain outlets. And there's always this kind of variation in the reporting from different outlets, but you'd expect that from outlets on opposite sides of the political spectrum, like CNN and Fox News. But now I see a split within left-of-center outlets, I think more than ever in my lifetime. Today, for example, I was slackjawed at how differently NBC News and NPR News wrote about the same thing. NBC: "As antisemitic incidents mushroom on college campuses, some Jewish leaders and lawmakers from both parties are accusing President Joe Biden’s administration of taking a lax approach toward enforcement of civil rights laws, exposing Jewish students to continued harassment." NPR: "Universities across the country turned to forced removal of pro-Palestinian protests and encampments this weekend as more and more students mounted organized opposition to Israel's handling of the war in Gaza." NBC doesn't even mention the counterpoint to the protests-are-antisemitic line of argument, and NPR barely mentions that line of argument except as attribution to Bibi and a couple US Congressmen. I guess I'm not used to hearing so much dissonance from within my echo chamber :-) Levivich ( talk) 04:06, 29 April 2024 (UTC)
- It’s not unique, but the universality is contingent on there being an active war being waged where both the pro-war and anti-war camps see the other side within their community as having betrayed fundamental values central to their understanding of the community identity signed,
Rosguill
talk 05:39, 29 April 2024 (UTC)
- As I understand it, the abiding danger of this mainstream skewing of the narratives, with the automatic conflation of public criticism of Israeli policies with antisemitism is twofold. In ignoring the dissent within Jewish communities - from which some of the strongest analyses, as one would expect, are emerging - there is a real danger of creating what Merton called a self-fulfilling prophecy, in that many non-Jews will come away with the impression that every Jew thinks the same way, and that tacitly reinforces a fundamental premise in the antisemitic tradition, by disindividualizing the 'other' as a cypher in a lockstep monochrome mindset. Even worse, the caricature cannot help but play into another staple of classical antisemitism - that 'Jews' control the media (which would be news to figures like Rupert Merdehock).
- The other side of the coin is that the soi-disant 'philosemitic' mainstream endorsement of, for want of a better term, the general 'Likud' narrative - in which demonstrators are all bundled up as 'pro-Palestinian' agitators hostile to the very existence of Israel - works to set an extremely parlous precedent in the vigorous crackdown on the specific outcries of the new student generation at universities over what is going on in Gaza. That is only a step away from criminalizing any future form of public dissidence, as is occurring most distressingly in Germany itself, a form of generalized discursive intimidation that undermines one of the core pillars of democracy. Over this issue, unwittingly or otherwise, the 'West', in making an exception of what can or cannot be said apropos Israel, risks losing its vaunted (and often self-inflated) institutionally moralised value system as a 'unique' locus of tolerance. Or to adopt Rosguill's allusion, a civilisation ordered on a fundamental acceptance of universal principles can be seen to be losing ground over that particularism of pre-modern social ideas where any appeal to logical consistency is lost (
Ernest Gellner). Regardless of background, we should all be worried. Best regards
Nishidani (
talk) 07:55, 29 April 2024 (UTC)
- I agree with
Nishidani that
we should all be worried
but will not engage with specific points because of NPOV and also because that editor's intellect and especially their mastery of the sources is clearly superior to mine. I am 72 years old. I was a quite militant New Leftist in my teenage years and early 20s, saying some stupid things but mellowing I hope as the years went by. I have maintained friendships, some deep and sustained, with people I knew from that era. Moving a decade or so closer to the present, my wife and sons are indisputably Jewish and so I chose for very complex reasons to go through a formal conversion to Judaism and became deeply active in the small Jewish community of the Napa Valley, where I was well known, respected and served as a synagogue president in the 1990s. On to the aftermath of October 7, when I spoke out against Hamas and in favor of Israel's right to self defense. I was attacked quite vigorously and repeatedly on social media by a friend/fellow activist from the late 60s who was completely unwilling to try to find common ground and staked out what I perceived as an overtly pro-Hamas position while simultaneously arguing for atheism and anarchism, and making many harsh comments about me. As the miserable months of this brutal, ugly war rolled on, I began to voice criticism of the excesses of the IDF, calling attention to the humanitarian crisis and then openly criticizing the Netanyahu government as Passover began, calling for its replacement This generated a furious response from a local Jewish friend, a retired educator who had befriended my wife and I and our sons when they were young boys, and created original works of stained glass art for our home. He denounced my stance in sarcastic tones and called into question my Jewish identity as as a convert because I dared to criticize the Netanyahu government's war policy excesses. So, I have been denounced as too pro-Israel and as too anti-Israel within a few months, not by internet trolls but by friends I have known for decades. My personal experiences are far from unique and I mention them here only to indicate how catastrophic this war has been, both physically and emotionally, on countless levels. Cullen328 ( talk) 09:28, 29 April 2024 (UTC)- Thanks but the world is run by 'intellects' of a very high ord(ur)er and, hailing from an elitist school, where fortunately I wasn't considered too bright, I learnt quickly to be cautious of the association between intelligence and general human gifts (the latter is what cements society, not ideas). As often as not, a good intellect can be a disadvantage because the mastery of difficult things comes just a tad too easy, and one may artlessly succumb to the temptations of complacency. The plight you describe is terrible, and my deepest sympathies. If one has the esteem of one's spouse and children - people who know one intimately - all the rest of the rowdy rancorous gossiping and spiteful spitting the dummy beyond is mere noise, and not worth taking offence. I would suggest though that for both one's own equanimity and understanding, 'social' media should be avoided, both as time sucks and because they are an opportunistic megaphone for a massive instant grievance and resentment virtual 'community' (as Marshall McLuhan, that old Catholic, presciently foresaw back in 1962). Thinking with a book, a well-thought out article, within friendships that go too deep to be troubled by political or other differences, or even among the fellowship of wikipedians helps get that sense of proportion one loses when everything is filtered through the spectacularization of news and views. The noisier the world gets, the quieter I become (until indeed the great 'quietus' seals all this fretwork of anguish endlessly defacing the interface between our individual selves and the world):-)
Nishidani (
talk) 11:55, 29 April 2024 (UTC)
- Thanks for the advice about social media, Nishidani, but in all honesty, the vast majority of my interactions on social media have been positive. That's because I seek out positive interaction and stay away from trolls and flamers and other bitter people. It allows me to keep in touch with friends and family worldwide and to make new friends as well. Cullen328 ( talk) 23:24, 29 April 2024 (UTC)
- My apologies. There I went again, descanting like an airheaded pencilneck, and rather paternalistically, to a fellow of roughly my age about media I have no direct experience of. I was thinking of three studies, in England, Germany, and the United States, which yield startling different conclusions about antisemitism depending on what method one adopts. The German one said it was rampant, using emails and social media as a data base; the English one via polling and interviews concluding it was low-key; the American one highlighted the notable dissonance between newspaper alarmism and actual on -college experience by Jewish students. But enough. I'll spend my day more productively checking out this wonderful news. Since the name of the professor who revealed the discovery is Ranocchia, I expect some newspapers will inform their readerships about the breakthrough by announcing in headlines something like :'Professor Frog on how Plato croaked it':) Nishidani ( talk) 06:34, 30 April 2024 (UTC)
- Thanks but the world is run by 'intellects' of a very high ord(ur)er and, hailing from an elitist school, where fortunately I wasn't considered too bright, I learnt quickly to be cautious of the association between intelligence and general human gifts (the latter is what cements society, not ideas). As often as not, a good intellect can be a disadvantage because the mastery of difficult things comes just a tad too easy, and one may artlessly succumb to the temptations of complacency. The plight you describe is terrible, and my deepest sympathies. If one has the esteem of one's spouse and children - people who know one intimately - all the rest of the rowdy rancorous gossiping and spiteful spitting the dummy beyond is mere noise, and not worth taking offence. I would suggest though that for both one's own equanimity and understanding, 'social' media should be avoided, both as time sucks and because they are an opportunistic megaphone for a massive instant grievance and resentment virtual 'community' (as Marshall McLuhan, that old Catholic, presciently foresaw back in 1962). Thinking with a book, a well-thought out article, within friendships that go too deep to be troubled by political or other differences, or even among the fellowship of wikipedians helps get that sense of proportion one loses when everything is filtered through the spectacularization of news and views. The noisier the world gets, the quieter I become (until indeed the great 'quietus' seals all this fretwork of anguish endlessly defacing the interface between our individual selves and the world):-)
Nishidani (
talk) 11:55, 29 April 2024 (UTC)
- I agree with
Nishidani that
- A few times in foreign countries I've found myself in a serious 'existential fix' which was, on these occasions, resolved by going to an Italian restaurant and, asking for advice, and got the help I needed. (Once, short of funds when a university that hired me to lecture said there were bureaucratic issues that meant I wouldn't be paid before my departure, and thus couldn't buy a ticket for my flight back home, a waiter I consulted at a nearby restaurant arranged for a truck coming from Poland back to Latina which regularly passed that way to give me a lift from Germany to Rome. In the end it wasn't needed since the payment came through in time, unfortunately since hitchhiking is always a more interesting way to travel). All that was needed was fluency in the language which indicated virtually a shared identity.
Nishidani (
talk) 22:49, 28 April 2024 (UTC)
- Is this a special case, unique to the experience of being Jewish? I doubt it. An erstwhile Japanese girlfriend was stopped at the airport after some years abroad and roundly upbraided for what a pair of customs officers considered her unJapanese behaviour (her speech patterns lacked the appropriate feminine style of humility before superiors/officials/men), and one often read novels et., where people were taken to task for falling short putatively of living up to some abstract concept of Japaneseness. The point is, to what degree can anyone in a community defined ethnically, religiously, culturally or all three, make claims about who 'we' are, and rail at others in the community who fail to live up to this perceived standard? (
Self-hating Jew, is a case in point). There are powerful historic grounds for ethnic solidarity, whatever the circumstances among Jews, and the Irish to name but a few, but it takes little to have this communitarian defensiveness slip into a 'my (=our) ethnos right or wrong' , thereby transforming fellowship into a kind of emotional coercion. Sorry for the intrusion, but. . .
Nishidani (
talk) 22:34, 28 April 2024 (UTC)