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Comment by js2 | Hacker News Reader

I submitted this because I am Jewish, had never read it before, and found it to be a powerful and insightful essay.

I would also add that this is an experience specific to Eastern European relationships with non Jews in general. Eastern European Jews in Israel, orthodox or secular, are perceived profoundly racist. Lookup extreme cases in Arthur Ruppin as a starting point.

Using “Jews” as a collective when referring to Eastern Europeans is offensive and ignores the ethnic diversity of the Jewish experience. It was only after the holocaust that being Jewish became equated predominantly with Eastern Europeans for obvious reason.

Our history though is much richer then what happened to people who escaped the Pale of Settlement to North America.

More info about the ethnic origins of Eastern European Jews https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms3543

Thank you, that's a very good point. I found the penultimate paragraph of this essay extremely powerful, but especially this: "I also know that if today I refuse to hate Jews, or anybody else, it is because I know how it feels to be hated." I am similarly baffled by racism, but especially racism by people who themselves have been targets of hate in their own lived experience.

When I see Eastern European Jews like Kushner, Miller, Idelson, Mnuchin and way-too-many others surrounding Trump, enabling him or writing racist and xenophobic policies, I ask myself the same questions. When I read about Epstein, Weinstein or Polanski, I immediately make the connection to Zvi Migdal. This is not Judaism and these people are not Jewish, culturally (or ethnically).

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