Comment by jacquesm
19 hours ago
Because some of these are clear choices, others are not.
You can be critical of Israel and I'm fine with that - and I'm plenty critical of Israel myself. But to say 'Most Jews are lunatics' is absolutely beyond the pale.
You could say this in more general terms about all people that are religious but you didn't do that and FYI Jews don't generally have a choice about their Jewishness, just like you don't have any choice about which family you were born into.
You could even make the case that most religious people had no choice in their adoption of that religion, but most people have the theoretical option of letting go of their religion if they so desire, but you can not stop being a Jew. This little detail was baked into the religion and it is a serious problem for those that are Jewish and that wish to get away from it - and these people really do exist -, but they can not change their identity to a degree that they themselves would recognize as sufficient, besides, their environment usually also does not recognize it.
In the interest of furthering your knowledge about this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off_the_derech
and
https://brill.com/display/book/edcoll/9789004331471/BP000006...
I get all this is complicated, and maybe you really can't follow this in which case my apologies but there is a significant choice between who you work for (say, Palantir, Facebook, OpenAI or Twitter) vs what family you are born into.
As for political beliefs: yes, I'm critical of those that carry water for Trump, Putin, Netanyahu and their cronies, they're out to destroy the world as we know it and if you help enable that you are imnsho part of the problem.
> But to say 'Most Jews are lunatics' is absolutely beyond the pale.
The misquote here does not feel accidental.
I said:
> We’re not allowed to criticise Israel because most jews are lunatics that consider such criticism an antisemitic attack on their person
If “Most Jews consider criticism of Israel to be an attack on their person” is true, then it certainly follows that “Most Jews are lunatics”.
> You could even make the case that most religious people had no choice in their adoption of that religion, but most people have the theoretical option of letting go of their religion if they so desire, but you can not stop being a Jew
Yes, I am aware that some people choose to believe this. However, outside of a specific religious community people will generally not consider you to be a Jew unless you identify as such.
I personally am not religious and therefore don’t subscribe to the belief that people can’t stop being Jews.