The Erasure of Jews from American Life
tabletmag.com
tabletmag.com
2.4% of adults identify as some kind of Jewish; 1.7% by religion. The article mentions that 21% of “elite boomer American academics” are Jewish. 20% of federal judges used to be Jewish. It laments that it is not considered very acceptable to hope for a return to these numbers and for 15-20% of undergraduates to be Jewish. It’s true, it is not. I don’t have a nuanced and researched opinion on affirmative action, but I’m pretty sure it’s ok if a religious group is not as over-represented as it used to be.
It seems like the baseline expectation here is for Jews to be 10x overrepresented in “positions of power” and use that power to sustain or increase the percentage? I’m not trying to read anything into the article, there are just a lot of mentions of power and percentages and a lot of lamenting.
I know there is still lots of anti-semitism alive and well, in the US and elsewhere, today. There’s also a valid and earned backlash against Israeli nationalism. Personally, I am spiritual, not religious. Religious groups have agendas, of course, like for some religions it is converting people to that religion. I think these agendas are more understandable and relatable if you are inside the group.
On the other hand, being conflated with "Israelis" is a long-term problem for the "Jews", whether they be 'Zionists', 'Israelis' or not.
During WW2 The Allies happily conflated "Nazis" and "Germans", so that every dead German was considered to be a 'Dead Nazi'. The point here is that it took at least a whole generation, about 30 years, before Germans were considered 'Germans' again, and not automatically 'Nasty Nazis'.
Likewise, I believe it will take the "Jews" probably more than a generation to throw off that epithet of "Israeli Apartheid" and all the opprobrium that goes with that after the "Israelis" eventually learn to reintegrate with the rest of the world. Something which could easily have been prevented by the Jews themselves not accepting the conflation of "Israeli" and "Jew".