Why Jewish History Is So Hard to Write
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
The history of the Jews (and the Jewish diaspora in particular) is fascinating. Between the typical opposing endpoints of assimilation/integration and separation there is this curious in-between state that seems both chaotic and stable over time -- the state of being "in a place" but not always being "of that place." The aforementioned podcast describes well the urge to assimilate or to remain distinct, positions held by both those in the Jewish community and those outside of it. The modern revival of the Hebrew language into a living tongue, both as a method of crystallizing identity and distinctiveness, is one example. Also interesting to consider how even small differences in "rules" between societies (like allowing usury or not, and to whom) leads to complex social consequences over time -- sort of a cellular automata analogy. Historical patterns of Jewish expulsion from various societies also make for interesting microcosms to understand tribe-based interactions: when the Jewish people were invited or allowed into a region, who was behind that change in policy and why? When pogroms or expulsions happened afterward, what were the causes and which segments of the population were the catalyst and why? It's an endlessly dynamic system that resists our efforts to create a simple static narrative -- and I suppose if anything it helps reveal that all of history is like that.
This is just, like, my opinion, man. I'm not trying to talk bad about it, I've just been curious if anyone else was disappointed or knows a better episode I should check out. I'm fascinated by Genghis Khan though, so I'm not sure how another topic could be more intriguing.
Are there other history podcasts you've enjoyed? I think something like The History of Rome might be more of your style.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Abraham_(novel)
I don't know if some would call it biased, but it made a strong impression on me as a young adult. I am not Jewish, but it is fascinating in and of itself.
https://www.amazon.com/Peace-End-All-Ottoman-Creation/dp/080...
Your idle curiosity has already yielded an important insight: the situation is complex. I think if everyone only knew one thing about the middle east, it should be that.
And if you’re even vaguely interested, his books on Russia are fantastic too - The Romanovs and the two on Stalin in particular.
So yeah, while Nina Parley is a terrific artist, be warned that this particular work of art distorts the truth, whether on purpose or not. The real story is that the Jews have a much stronger religious claim to the land than anyone else. Even more importantly, Israel is their only homeland, as opposed to everyone else who fought (and, arguably, still fights) for it.
I beg to differ. I live in Eastern Europe, at the crossroads of different migration waves, and I'd say we've been quite successful at integrating people over the millennia. Just look at this widely circulated genetic map of Europe (http://brilliantmaps.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/genetic-...), you can see that Romania (the country from where I'm from) is pretty diverse, and that happened because we're at the crossroads between "mainland" Europe, the Asian steppes, Anatolia/the Middle East etc.
And looking past genetics, I can give you countless examples of Transylvanian Saxons and Hungarians who, once they had passed the Carpathians into Wallachian and Moldavian lands, ended up by giving up their religion and language and completely assimilated (yeah, it took them a couple of generations or more, but the process was generally irreversible). The local Jews were also quite well integrated in terms of customs and everything, in fact one of the most famous Yiddish songs ("Roumania Roumania - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuj-qjyUjxY") mentions Romanian foods like "mamaliga" or "pastrama" (which we stole from the Turks, but everybody from the Balkans did that) in a melancholic way, like it also belonged to them, the Jewish people who used to live here.
> beside that "integration" ended up in violence anyway even before wwii, when romanians started persecuting them.
WW2 and the 1930s were very difficult times (and not only for the Jews). I like to look at those times as the exception rather than the norm.
humans have been a bunch of assholes, we living in a niche of limited peace on a few locations shouldn't give us the peace of mind that everyone else understand the value of integration. note that a person or a family by itself is likely to integrate, it's significant migration that end up into more or less pronounced isolationism.
again, just have a look at all the chinatown and italian quarters. the actual border may be fuzzy, but the sense of identity is definitely there. and while wwii was an exceptional time, smaller conflict are still very present and the failure integration models are popping up every day stronger.
Even with all the carnage of WWII, I have very little doubt we'd have been back at it 10 years later if it weren't for the specter of nuclear armageddon hanging over everyone's heads.
Current Romania was formed out of regions that were occupied by different empires. The Old Romanian Kingdom was formed out of the bits formerly under Ottoman control. In 1918 the kingdom expanded to include regions formerly under Austria-Hungarian and Russian control.
When far right sentiment flared during WW2, the Jews in Basarabia (ex-Russian territory) were persecuted, even butchered. The ones in the Old Kingdom weren't.
In a weird way, they were "our Jews". They were considered different, yet still a part of our community.
I’ve heard the same thing from Ukrainians. Isn’t the world fun like that?
Any source for that? I'm pretty interested in the history of the Middle Ages and as such I've learned recently that some historians have even started to question the long-held believe that the famous Mongol invasion of 1241-1242 was that bloody. Yeah, they did ransack a couple of towns in Transylvania and present-day Hungary, but that mostly happened because those people put up a fight, on the other side of the Carpathians (Wallachia, Moldova) there are no visible "destruction markers", so to speak (like burned villages and such). A couple of centuries earlier the Pechenegs and the Cumans did cause some bit of a stir in their wake, but that was comparatively short-lived, as they were very rapidly (again, comparatively speaking) integrated by the Hungarians in their kingdom (there was even a king of theirs called Ladislaus the Cuman) and also by the Wallachian/Romanian population which was not part of any established State: to this day "Coman" is still a a pretty popular family name among Romanians, and some big name-places bear Cuman/Turkic names, like the county of Teleorman (meaning "crazy forrest") or the plains of Baragan (meaning "winter storm" or something of the sorts).
Invasion by the "Germans" is the explanation Caesar gives for the migration of the Helvetii; it's debatable how accurate he was being, and how motivated to find political justification for his actions, but something induced them to pack up and move for greener pastures. A similar explanation may be found for the movement south through the Balkans and into Asia Minor of the Celtic tribes that became the Galatians. There is perhaps more evidence of this effect in the series of great migrations towards the end of the Roman empire, where the Franks, Burgundians, Vandals, and Goths all were forced westward in front of the Huns and Alans, who were themselves pushed westward by other steppe tribes of central Asia, perhaps ultimately terminating in the Xiongnu and their conflicts with Han China. There appears to be another wave of migration some hundreds of years later, corresponding with the migration of the Slavs, Bulgars, Avars and others into eastern Europe and the Balkans, the expansion of the Rus, the rise of the various central Asian Turkic khaganates, and the expansion of Tang China. Then there is of course the expedition of Batu and Subotai, in which atrocity and total war was a favored tactic, and only a succession crisis after the death of Ogodei Khan spared the rest of Europe. Then there is German colonization under the aegis of the Teutonic Knights, the crumbling of the Byzantine Empire under assault from the Turks on the one hand and the Venetians on the other, incessant warfare as the Ottomans expanded and contracted northwards through the Balkans, culminating in the early 20th century "Baltic Question" tinderbox as that empire fell apart and led to hundreds of millions of deaths throughout eastern Europe and atrocity on a scale to rival Genghis.
It's a history of blood and sword; not perhaps categorically different than the history of most places, but amplified by virtue of being the crossroads of so many moving peoples.
How many generations does the ancestoral language usually survive? Two? Three? Integration succeeds en masse all the time, especially where religion doesn't interfere.
It's just that nationalist wars make more headlines than all the kids I went to school with who didn't even properly speak the language of their own mothers (something I find rather regrettable).
The USA is full of Chinese, Italian, Irish etc descendants, most of whom do NOT live in those ghettos. After a generation to learn the local language and culture, descendants leave the ghettos for success in the wider world.
I think you mean "race."
An ethnic group, or an ethnicity, is a category of people who identify with each other based on similarities such as common ancestry, language, society, culture or nation
common ancestry - genes.
And Ashkenazi happens one of the "tightest" ethnicities in the connected part of the modern world (Europe, America), since it is historically-long-insular low-population subgroup living within a large population.
These Wikipedia articles have a lot of good material for those who aren't aware: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_peoplehood and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_is_a_Jew%3F
I'm Tunisian and I consider myself Arab, but many other Tunisians consider themselves (ethnically) Maghrebi and/or Amazigh. Tunisia and the remaining Maghrebi countries are part of the Arab League, though.
I'm sure it's even more complicated for Tunisian Jews :P
For Lybian Jews, it's not complicated at all.
That said, the 2014 Tunisian constitution and its protections for freedom of religion was a huge step forward, and gives me a good bit of hope for the future.
I recently had the opportunity to try one a few months ago. So good.
If you are looking for a standard Tunisian sandwich, I asked my wife and she said this one looks good: https://www.saveur.com/article/Recipes/Tunisian-Tuna-Sandwic....
Fricassee is another tasty Tunisian tuna-based sandwich, but it requires that you also prepare the bread: http://www.afooda.com/tunisian-fricassee-fricasse-roll/
I completely agree with your comment, and not only that but also find your view on the quote interesting as well.
A lot of Jews would say that any Jew who becomes a Christian is no longer Jewish (by ethnicity or religion) even if said "Jewish Christian" still abides by and observes many Jewish customs and holidays.
I would argue that there are also many atheist Catholics (e.g. in Italy) who would disagree that they were not also part of an ethnorelegious group.
The majority of Jews today (in the ballpark of 75%) are Ashkenazi Jews which is a sort of 'race' in that they share a very recent common ancestor -- which is also why so many Jews share common physical features. All of this is very different than other religions, even other Abrahamic religions. So it is not inconsistent that state that Jews are an ethnic group, but other religious groups are not.
> If you want to convert it's a big deal with study, testing, and culminating with a literal certificate of conversion - that can be revoked.
https://judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/50602/can-conver...
Only in narrow areas, such as modern State of Israel (which is a blip in Jewish history, and not the world government of Jews), which very special circumstances.
It's complicated.
Also, you can be a non-Jewish woman, marry a Jewish man, and have Jewish children, who an Orthodox Jew might call non-Jewish children, but those children and their descendants and neighbors may never think are "not Jewish"
For instance, in the past interfaith marriage was not only frowned upon but something that would likely result in individuals facing exile from the Jewish community. This, for instance, is why most Jews today share so many distinct physical and other characteristics. In searching for some interesting numbers I came upon this article [1] which you might find interesting - it discusses the ongoing "reformation" of Judaism. The reason I put reformation in quotes is because I think it's "reforming" in the way that most religions are today - it's fading. And I think a century it will probably make no more sense to refer to Jews as an ethnic group than it would to refer to Irish Americans as an ethic group today. However, as of today Jews most certainly remain an ethic group by most all facets of the word.
[1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/01/us/poll-shows-major-shift...
Of course, because both groups view themselves as belonging to the same group of people, with shared customs, history, religion and tradition, that dates back to the Kingdom of Israel. What you don't seem to understand is that ethnicity is a social concept - the criteria isn't "how much two people have in common", but whether a shared identity exists between them. You should ask yourself what makes you refer to both Ashkenazim and Mizrahim as "Jews", and what makes them refer to themselves as such, even among people who don't believe in Judaism.
> Well, Italians and Spaniards traditionally share a religion (Roman Catholicism), speak related languages, and share some biological ancestry – does that make them one ethnic group?
If they share the same ethnic identity then of course.
You want to focus on subjective questions of identity, but it isn't clear to me that all Jews have the same subjective sense of identity. Does a secular Zionist in Tel Aviv have the same subjective sense of identity as a Satmar anti-Zionist in Kiryas Joel? Certainly their "subjective sense of identity" has completely different ideological foundations. They likely wouldn't agree on who is a Jew either, since their different ideological foundations would lead them to different positions on issues such as conversion standards and patrilineal descent.
This doesn't of course mean that their "subjective sense of identity" is identical in its entirety, but that's pretty much the case with every ethnicity.
As a young boy my father used to take me to the Pergamon museum in Berlin - one major exhibit is the Babylonian street of processions (it dates to the neo-Babylonian empire) He used to say - here you see our heritage, we were around the show when Berlin (and all the other great capitals of the world) were still a swamp.
And secondly it's important to remember your roots, but in my opinion the focus was wrong (or maybe the conversation included this aspect, you just didn't present it): we were around back when Berlin was a swamp and we're still around now, prosperous and developed.
In my eyes that's the real achievement! (look at Iraq, Iran, Egypt, even Greece or India to some degree)
It's not necessarily bad, but it's still hubris :)
Greeks were still the majority in Greece and they were a well regarded minority in the empire. They were persecuted after WW1 (see the population exchanges and the Smyrna massacre).
But Greeks don’t view themselves as a persecuted minority, historically. It’s all about the mindset and self-perception.
Saki, The Jesting of Arlingthon Stringham
I would be really interested if you could explain more your way of thinking about it, because to me when my father explains that we should be proud of having the same meal our ancestors did Xthousand years ago I don't feel impressed in the least.
Instead, it just feels like a long streak of spreading a meme.
People often get surprised when I tell them I don't consider myself Jewish anymore or that I don't intend to bring up any children I have Jewish. They often cite their surprise to the fact that Judaism has a long ancestral history. And I really just can't understand this frame of thinking that says Judaism is good because it's been going on for long.
So I would be interested if you could explain why this impresses you :)
I know that I did repeat the same statement several times with variations, but it is as far as I can get.
Also: If something prevailed throughout time, against all odds, then that's pretty impressive to me.
This is dangerous logic, because you're not comparing it to anything. For instance one argument I've seen for the existence of a god was the fact that many constants and other seemingly 'magic numbers' of our universe are set just as is required to maintain life as we know it. The problem there is that assuming this is true, it's still meaningless since the only way we could ever come to observe this fact was if it was true. This observation is known as the anthropic principle [1].
Basically considering the merit or probability of something happening when you would be unable to observe it not happening is impossible. You could say you're comparing it against the failure of other groups, but this is probably somewhat disingenuous as I think it's reasonable to hypothesize that the oldest persistent ethnic group is likely some group within Africa neither you or I have ever heard of, and you'd probably be unlikely to praise their longevity and persistence in and of itself, even if it too was likely ripe with strife throughout time.
"Against all odds" would seem to be the key words here. There are countless other ethnic and religious groups that were integrated into the larger Muslim culture when Islam was first spreading. The same is the case for Christian Europe. In fact, the Romani people may be a good example of what we would expect to naturally happen to a dispersed and oppressed ethnic group. They have no singular culture, principles, or beliefs; they assumed most aspects of the surrounding culture's mode of life and beliefs.
It isn't a stretch to call the survival of the Jewish people an unexplained historical exception. There are countless historians (Jewish and non-Jewish) who have researched and written on the topic.
Or, am I misunderstanding the application of the Anthropic principle as you are applying it in this context?
Oppression and dispersion takes on a different meaning for those of means, even more so when the shared genetic lineage also happens to provide a substantially higher IQ than average for the vast majority of the group.
I really think there is an undertone to this perspective that is colored by a narrative that is false at best and possibly something much worse.
I dont think there is any factual basis to claim Jews had great economic success or were of means outside of false narratives perpetuated by their enemies. Even if you can point to specific eras or individuals that had success, you certainly couldnt demonstrate it existed propritionately more so than others, or that it existed in all the periods where they were persecuted and oppressed...
https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/usury-and-moneylend...
You wrote a previous comment about jews distinctive physical features and now you speak of their means and share an article about rotschild and than view a Jew who calls you out on your false narrative a narcissist?!
Ascribing a few peoples wealth on a group of millions is the very definition of anti-semitism... I refrained from calling you out sooner to try to give you the benefit of the doubt...but the fact is the wealth on one person or a few people lending money hardly reflects on the entire Jewish people...it is a dangerous stereotype not based on actual facts...just a stereotype based on a fraction of a fraction of the population...
Your belief that jews arent poor or oppressed minorities without means throughtout history is patently false! Even if you can point to a few exceptions to the rules.
Or you can search for literally any source. The extreme success of the Jewish communities throughout time is extremely well documented. This success, paired with insularity, was often one of the big motivations for their oppression throughout history. Expulsions would generally involve direct or indirect confiscation of material possessions. Between the 13th and 16th century Jews were expelled some 15+ times, in some cases multiple times from the same places (such as France) where they would be expelled, invited as their absence proved problematic, expelled again, and so on.
The reason Jews have distinctive features is because today about 75% of Jews are Ashkenazi - a very distinctive group with a variety of distinct features, both physical and nonphysical. For instance Ahskenazi individuals show an average IQ average nearly a standard deviation above the mean. The reason for the genetic relationship is that historically Judaism was far more insular than it is even today. For instance interfaith marriages is an extremely new phenomena. Pair a religion that makes it extremely difficult to join (and was only more difficult in the past) with extreme restrictions on things like marriage, and you end up with strong genetic similarity. It's not dissimilar, in effect, from geographic isolation which yielded most distinctive traits of various groups today.
Im not a rabbi or in kiruv or anything, so take this with a grain of salt...but I would point to Jordan Petersons position about the longevity and survival of the bible stories and his response to atheists around it all sounding made up. There is a reason these stories survived through the ages. There is wisdom and much to learn from the ideas in the Torah even if you dont buy into their accuracy. It's just too shallow to dismiss it as superstitious ancestors who werent as smart as us.
From a purely pragmatic standpoint, the very fact that we are finite beings in a world that will survive our existence means that our life will face tragedy...and the best way to cope with a tragic existence is to find meaning in life and in our actions.
Most fundamentally is buying into the idea that we can bargain with the future and that decisions we make today matter and have an impact on the future and future generations.
From that context, ritually connecting with the past and exploring how things that happened to your ancestors have an impact on your existence today is about the best way I can think of to get you to internalize the idea that what you do today matters to tomorrow.
The idea of mesorah(transmission from generation to generation) is framed as a way to verify the validity of the stories...but I really think its more along the lines of showing the unbroken chain between the past and the present...so you can internalize the responsibility of the chain between the present and the future...
It sounds like you've decided to start a new chain for your children and sever that connection to your past. For me, I think the responsibility and ramifications of that decision are massive and at the very least deserve a reckoning with the significance of how the decision impacts future generations regardless of what you finally decide...it feels to me that because you werent able to internalize the ideas (regardless of the factual nature of them) of "Hashem took ME out of mitzrayim" or "had the exodus not taken place, we would still be slaves" ...and never connected with the powerful idea that we eat matzah to commemorate what our ancestors ate rushing out Egypt...you either feel the decision for keeping your future generations connected to the past is inconsequential, or the past is blatanly wrong.
Considering you grew up religious, I am assuming you had a modern Yeshiva education...like many others, it sounds like they failed to show you the pragmatic wisdom in yiddishkeit and instead left you feeling unconnected with your brilliant history.
I would encourage you to try to pass on the parts that you did connect with and the pragmatic wisdom in much of the torah and halacha to atleast give your children the chance to make their own decisions.
You can reject the bible and reject religion and put science on a pedestal...but the idea that what you do matters and that you can bargain with the future...and that who and where you are today is a product of decisions your parents and their parents made...that lesson is too important not to pass on. It would be a shame to be passedover!
>From a purely pragmatic standpoint, the very fact that we are finite beings in a world that will survive our existence means that our life will face tragedy...and the best way to cope with a tragic existence is to find meaning in life and in our actions.
Agreed.
> Considering you grew up religious, I am assuming you had a modern Yeshiva education...like many others, it sounds like they failed to show you the pragmatic wisdom in yiddishkeit and instead left you feeling unconnected with your brilliant history.
This is condescending, in my opinion. You're presuming to know why they don't accept the religious narrative. It's great that it speaks to you, but it doesn't speak to them and it doesn't have to. I might be reading too much into this, but it seems you're invoking the common meme that "if you would only have had the wonderful opportunities to learn in this yeshiva or that one, or to appreciate the 'true beauty' of this stream or another of Judaism, you'd agree with my point of view." Maybe, maybe not. Maybe GP had a superior education than you did, and if YOU would have had the education GP had, you'd reject religion too?
> I would encourage you to try to pass on the parts that you did connect with and the pragmatic wisdom in much of the torah and halacha to atleast give your children the chance to make their own decisions.
Maybe the opposite is true? Maybe the only way to give children a fair choice is to NOT indoctrinate them with ideas they didn't choose, and instead give them a blank slate from which to start?
No matter what you do for your children, you're making decisions for them. Raise them religious, you're exposing them to X instead of Y. Raise them secular, you're choosing Y instead of X. There's no way to give them everything, you have to make choices for them.
>Maybe the opposite is true? Maybe the only way to give children a fair choice is to NOT indoctrinate them with ideas they didn't choose
If only that were possible. You're going to indoctrinate them one way or the other (as you correctly concluded in the following paragraph), and since you're going to do so, the best indoctrination I can think of is personal and intellectual integrity, which might lead them to decide to go back to your roots or take a different path, both being fine if they come from the right place.
This is commonly misunderstand point, as you hint at.
Our ancestors were about as smart as we are -- some smarter, some not, but on average they were far more ignorant of how the world works. There were plenty of brilliant ideas wrapped around less sure knowledge.
I don't think that all long lasting things are particularly interesting. Rocks have been around longer than the Jewish people but we don't celebrate that as extraordinary. It is considered perfectly natural. It is noteworthy when something is unnaturally long lasting; when other peoples/belief system were put under similar pressures the results have been drastically different. Imagine 50 people are dragged under water on a beach by a horrible undertow and held underwater for an hour. 2 out of the 50 survive while the other 48 don't; the 2 who survived are definitely of interest because we would want to know how they survived.
I was also raised religious (Hareidi) and am now entirely secular, by most counts. And I've spent many hours trying to argue that it's ridiculous to take pride in the fact that some arbitrary tradition lasted for a few thousand years. So a bunch of people did this or that ritual for thousands of years...sucks for them! Why should I? (Never mind that the tradition may have evolved/morphed to the point that Talmud-era Jews would barely recognize it, let alone second temple Jews or earlier.)
Moreover, if I've already rejected the notion that the Torah is the word of God, why would I consider myself Jewish? How does being born to one woman versus another determine my identity and fate? If I don't believe, why am I "in the club" at all? Because the believers say that I don't get to choose my own identity? Shouldn't I be able to just laugh that off?
I went through a phase in which I refused to identify as Jewish, but it didn't stick. There is too much of my upbringing that I _do_ connect with, or remember positively, and feel good about. So I can't quite shake the identity. And lord knows I've tried.
Instead, as the sun sets on Tel Aviv for the last day of Passover, I'm writing a comment on HN and enjoying the challah I just took out of the oven. Let me check...yeah, it took more than 18 minutes to prepare. But what can I say? I'm Jewish, and what kind of Jew celebrates a holiday without challah? Not this one.
I think the point here is that identity, belonging, nostalgia, and a sense of connection to a larger community - not just a generation alive today, but a chain of generations - can be a powerful emotional driver for people. Simply put, the idea that "our ancestors" did this or that and the tradition and identity lives gives many otherwise rational people a feeling of belonging.
And while there's no shame in choosing to forge your own way, independent of the social environment into which you were born, it's no great honor either. It just is. Some people feel imprisoned by the narrative, some empowered, and some just don't care. And some - I suspect more than might meet the eye - are forever caught between a prison of arbitrary rules and the discomfort of floating listlessly through a strange and uncaring secular society.[0]
So if you managed to leave the baggage behind, all the power to you. For others, the baggage is inescapable. And for yet others, the baggage isn't baggage at all, but a source of positive emotion.
[0] I can't remember the exact page, but somewhere in Chapter 9 of Brachot the Talmud briefly addresses this conundrum. Search for "אוי לי מיצרי אוי לי מיוצרי". Hope I got that right...it's been many years.
The weird uncomfortable part is understanding that the strange individualistic rejection of culture and interest in just taking the best ideas from everywhere is actually a common experience of secular American Jews. You know what it's like to be a minority, just not part of the same club as everyone around you, so you question things and easily find the conclusion that most of the old traditions and views are nonsense. You're left wondering whether it's okay to find a "tribe" you fit (political or cultural or whatever) or if really the concept of tribes is itself just bad. If everyone else would stop being tribalist, we could all just live in a post-ethnic, post-diversity world or something where no individual has any more claim to any worldview or idea or culture than any other… but that's fantasy too.
The fact is: most people on the planet haven't even had the chance to be in a situation where they truly separate themselves from their traditions and consider the possibility of just not being of the group they grew up identifying with.
Consider the trans-racial ideas of that controversial lady in Spokane… these things are not easy ideas to grapple with.
That being said, for me the Jewish tradition is immensely powerful, even though I'm not a believer in God. Sitting together with your family at the Seder table and talking about what it means to be free vs. to be slave is an amazing experience. It would be very hard to re-create that experience without the frame given by our Exodus narratives and the surrounding traditions.
I'm sure other cultures have their own powerful traditions for keeping values alive and transporting them across generations. But as you are already very familiar with Jewish traditions (probably much more than me), why not make use of this treasure?
>As you I don't see why someone should be proud about anything inherited. It can be a gift (or a curse), but it is certainly not an achievement.
One way to look at this is if you believe achievements are worthy of pride, or that pride is an 'incentive' to achieve, than recognizing how significant everything you do can be is a great way to inspire maximizing achievement... One way to do this may be to recognize that your achievements can have a positive impact on future generations, even in simply creating positive and breaking negative parenting cycles in your family, or how smiling at someone can have a ripple impact elevating numerous peoples days and possibly lives... its possible that training us to be proud of something that is as insignificant as being a product of our parents will nurture a sensitivity to take our ability to impact others with the seriousness and responsibility it demands. Just a thought.
Put things in context, mate.
And in case anyone hasn't heard: There's reasons pride has been considered a sin. There's nothing redeeming about the emotion of pride. You can have pride in your belief about your ancestors or pride in your accomplishments. Either way, pride is not doing anything positive. There are healthier ways to feel positive about things, and pride can go the hell away, period.
If your objection is that the Vikings were horrible people that just pillaged stuff. Then I agree, but the ancient Israelites weren't that kind to women and slaves either. If your objection is that the culture didn't survive. Well, the good parts, Christmas, Midsummer (the traditions are pre-Christian) and binge-drinking did...
Even if ancient Israelite culture is objectively superior to Viking culture, you didn't create it, so why be proud of it? It's like being proud of being the heir of a billionaire. :p
And you know well of the political movement in Sweden to restrict the definition of "Swedish" to those who have obvious Swedish ancestry. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjand84BBKM
Yes, I know of the political movements you talk about. Yes, I think you can be grateful of being born in one of the best places on earth. Yes, you can enjoy have physical appearance that most women of the world consider very attractive. But being proud of it? Nah...
It's being impressed our ancestors have been holding on to a religious and cultural identity for two thousand years. Years in which they were were a minority in different countries, spoke in foreign tongues, were forced to denounce their Judaism, and sometimes were haunted without even that choice.
It's that as a modern Hebrew speaker, I can pretty easily read a piece of text as the Bible - written thousands of years ago. And that even though my ancestors were from Syria, Iraq, and Morroco - they shared the same ethos as the jews from Hungary, Germany, and Russia.
Although, being a Viking is also very cool.
I was born into a particular family but that's nothing to be proud of, it wasn't exactly my achievement.
I'm Dutch by birth, but I'm not proud to be Dutch.
I'm a European by birth, but it doesn't make me proud either.
What I an be proud about is those things that I've achieved that were not 'normal' for a person of my birth station and privilege level. (And that's not a whole lot, given the fact that I was born in one of the wealthiest countries in the world as a 'white male' which means I had just about all the lottery cards picked just so.)
Yeah, I puff my chest when I think of my personal achievements. But that doesn't mean I don't feel a sense of pride when I read I piece of text written thousand years ago in the same language I speak today.
There's nothing wrong with being proud of being a part of something, as long you don't disparage others. But I guess it's easier to think in collective terms when you're born of a minority that for the larger part of history was oppressed.
Anecdote: I was once in a conversation with a fellow who was a rabbi and this topic came up. He said, "well...the way I think of it is, if you can think of ten characteristics that are 'Jewish', anyone who has any six of them can claim the title." I guess that's one way to be flexible.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0398rkj/the-story-of-...
I actually started watching last night after never really been taught (or remember being taught) much about them.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Figurine_from_Egypt_of_se...
He sees Elephantine as countering widely held beliefs about ancient Jewish life (that it was all in Israel, homogenous, etc), containing interesting analogues to the present day, and being an altogether interesting story.
It can be more difficult to spin a good yarn from the older material.
> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
It appears to have gratified at least 159 people's intellectual curiosity (at the time of making this post).