Jews and Princesses: the Official WWPD Royal Wedding Post

This reminded me: if I were not writing my dissertation on Jews and intermarriage in 19th C France, it would be on the relationship between Jews and the nobility (in, obvs, 19th C France). I had had a hunch there was something there from mid-19th works on the Rothschilds as the new feudal lords, in particular Toussenel's book declaring Jews "the kings of the era." But I didn't have much to go on. This, however, has changed, to the point that I kind of am writing about Jews and aristocrats.

But first, to back up for a moment: what was the relationship between Jews and nobles in those years between court Jews and "Jewish American Princesses"? Because it's really the bookends of this we're most familiar with - Jews serving as money-folk for royals, and young American Jewish women, of new-money backgrounds, being compared, not-so-reverently, with genuine royals. What came between these? Was there any relationship?

Oh yes! And this can be divided into two categories.

First, Jews-as-aristocrats:

-From 1789 on, "parasitic" heredity castes were considered by many to be the opposite of what the new French nation was all about. Check, check.
-Jews represented a new order, in which wealthy bourgeois were the elites. Yet aristocrats were still hanging around. They got to be elites all together. (Because the existence of poor or even just not-rich-or-influential Jews was easily forgotten.) See: Proust.
-Romances between Jewish women and aristocratic men were huge - huge! - in literature. First as beautiful young girls having to choose between dashing suitors and the wishes of stubborn uncles. Then as rich but grotesque women of no particular age getting married off to penniless, decadent noblemen. (And I suspect that some combination of these tropes explains, along with the "Goldsmith" thing, why people were so intent on claiming, incorrectly, that KM is a Jew.)

Next, Jews-as-anti-aristocrats:

-Aristocrats alwaysalwaysalways owned land. Jews, not so much.
-Aristocrats, on account of keeping track of their bloodlines, had an especially firm claim on Frenchness. Jews, on account of having allegedly pure bloodlines, were assumed to have virtually no claims extending prior to the Revolution.
-Aristocrats represented the height of manners, social graces, proper French, etc. Jews, no.

What's above is either a) the outline to one of my many ideas for a book-no-one-would-read (Jews and Royals: from Court Jews to the "JAP"), b) the outline to a small portion of the chapter I'm currently writing, which at the very least five people will one day read, or c) the blog post that kept me busy during an especially good dinner of orrecchiette alla dorm-room.

"Obviously, it tends to work out."

I'm not sure if Prudie's historically accurate here:

"Over the course of human history, it has been the norm that the young couple gets hitched and then figures out afterward what to do in bed. Obviously, it tends to work out."

There were, I remember reading, times in France when the norm among peasants was to reproduce and then perhaps get married after getting pregnant. And that's not even getting into the altogether frequent Golden Age situation of brides but not grooms arriving untouched at their weddings. This still means "the young couple" first fools around post-wedding, but I don't get the sense that this is what Prudie has in mind.

Of course, there's also the matter of "it tends to work out" - "work out" as in the next generation of humanity gets produced whether couples were love matches or arranged, virgins or experienced at the altar? No doubt that's the case. "Work out" as in, the couple grows to at least mildly enjoy (rather than dread, fear, or altogether abandon) the physical aspect of their relationship? Do we have reason to believe this has been the case for most couples in this situation? I ask this not to pit Tradition against modern-day narcissistic libertines who believe you don't really know you're with the right person until you've had hundreds of partners simultaneously and weighed the pros and cons of each. It's that some relationships truly don't work on a physical level, and the fact that part of taking marriage seriously might, I'd imagine, include wanting to sort this out beforehand, to avoid divorce or, worse, divorce once there are kids. This is, at any rate, the Dan Savage line, and I find it convincing.

Disorganized thoughts coming out of the Nock post and discussion

-Jews and whiteness: Rather than just asking, are Jews white, we should also ask if this is really the question that tells you most about what it means to be Jewish in a given context. So if the context is one of heightened racial tensions, where 'race' means 'black' or 'white' only, then yes, this is of utmost importance. But if we're talking about one of very few Jews in a sea of Lilly Pulitzer'd WASPness, Jews 'whiteness' is really the least important thing about their experience. It's a bit like asking whether gay white people are 'really' white - yes, they're white, and yes, that matters, but no, that's not necessarily what you want to hone in on if trying to examine their experience. Meaning, it's hard to say that in America, any divide has mattered as much, elicited as much violence, as black-white (and if it has, it would be male-female and not Jewish-gentile, but as male-female is not a divide most wish wouldn't exist, it's a bit of a different story). There needs to be some way of understanding that the privilege inherent in being non-black does not necessarily translate into the carefree, unselfconscious, undifferentiated-American existence the word 'white' implies.

-Jews as 'Orientals': Rather than just asking whether early Zionists were historically accurate in their claims that modern-day European Jews had hereditary roots in Palestine, we should also ask what about the idea might have seemed non-nonsensical to European Jews at the time. Meaning, casual discussions of Zionism, if they refer to the influence of non-Jewish Europeans at all, mention of European anti-Semitism, but rarely give a central role to the commonly-accepted (or so it seems from much I've read about France) view among European Christians that Jews, yes, even the modern-day ones, had an original homeland and that this homeland was Palestine. Because we can argue today that, aha!, the Zionists were wrong, the Jews were not, after all, an unchanging people of non-mingled blood. But if they were wrong according to our own myth-shattering ideals today, they were simply agreeing with what was common knowledge at the time. There was no great danger, for European gentiles up until the advent of modern political Zionism, in referring to the Jews as 'from Palestine' - it had no implications for the current residents of Palestine, and only served to reinforce the idea that the Jews living in Europe were fundamentally non-European. For Jews to be foreign, they had to be 'from elsewhere.' Elsewhere was sometimes Germany, Poland, etc., but ultimately came down to one spot: Palestine. I get that it takes away almighty Agency from the early Zionists to point this out.

In which Zionism is not racism

As an 'out' Zionist, I feel I must disassociate myself from the view, expressed by Withwindle, that the Palestinians are "gleeful butchers." There's enough confusion out there about what it means to be pro-Israel, to be a Zionist, to think Israel should remain a Jewish state, that I think it's important to point out that this is not the view of all (or, I would guess, most) who are on the 'side' I'm on in all this. No, we do not all hate the Palestinians.

But first, a word of (admittedly not-so-nuanced) background:

The following will seem beyond-obvious to some reading this, but perhaps not all, so here goes: Western anti-Semitism was not a blip in 1930s Germany, arising out of nowhere, only to vanish in 1945, Lesson Learned. For one thing, it didn't disappear, but that's irrelevant to this post. What's important here is that for centuries preceding WWII, preceding the coining of the term 'anti-Semitism', Jews were, often, a hated group.

The constant in anti-Jewish writings, more than usury, more than 'you-killed-Jesus', was that the Jews once had their own land but had not for centuries, making them 'guests' at best or 'parasites' at worst on the lands of others. Even anti-Jewish writers who did not literally use the phrase, 'Go back to Palestine!' had as a starting point that the Jews a) were not at home in any of the European countries, and b) that the home they once had was located in Palestine. This, above all, was the complaint against the Jews.

But let's take a turn-of-the-century anti-Jewish European urging his Jewish neighbors to 'go back to Palestine.' Do we hold him guilty primarily a) of bigotry against his Jewish countrymen, or b) of failing to consider the preferences of whoever might be living in Palestine, who would surely be displaced should the anti-Semite's wish come true?

Clearly it's (a). He believes himself to be telling Jews that classic line, 'Go back where you came from.' It doesn't bother him that he's yelling not at immigrants from Palestine, but at people whose families may well have been in, say, France longer than his own. If he stopped to acknowledge this, he might realize that perhaps by now someone else was living in the land he believes his multi-generation-French-Jewish neighbors recently emigrated from.

So, from the perspective of certain European Jews, the message to 'go back to Palestine' seemed the only answer to the 'Jewish question.' Does that mean Zionism was only a reaction to anti-Semitism? No, because the return to Palestine has religious significance for Jews. But, were it not for a new understanding of anti-Semitism's fundamental idea, it's possible Zionism would have never caught on. If the 'return to Zion' were primarily about fulfilling a religious dream, the moral case for Israel would be quite different. Many European Jews came to realize that refusing to work in finance, even converting, these were not enough to prevent Jews from being told to 'go back home.' It seemed, and ultimately proved, the only option.

Oh, and the point of all this rambling? The preexisting non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine (because there were of course also preexisting Jewish residents) were, in effect, not consulted. Did the Palestinians deserve to be punished for European hatred of Jews? No. But that's what happened. Should the Palestinians be angry at European Christians, not Israel? In theory, yes, but it's hard to see how that would play out.

And rambling... done.

**************

As for the Palestinians today, they are at once some of the luckiest and the least lucky people on the planet.

Why lucky? Their enemy - for simple, geographical reasons - happens to be the most-hated people in the West if not beyond. If your enemy is The Jews, you have an immense fan base: among anti-Semites, among those who are indifferent to Jews but sick of being made to feel guilty about the Holocaust, even among xenophobes who'd otherwise hate you for being an Arab. On Canal Street in Chinatown, one store after the next sells, along with fake designer sunglasses, handbags, and the like, a wide array of keffiyehs. Do the Chinese vendors on Canal Street have a particular interest in the Palestinian cause? Anything's possible, but the more likely reason for the scarves is that they are, much like the latest retro-revival sunglasses, a trend. Aside from the odd Che shirts, how many trends with such political significance can be found in the knock-off shops of New York? Along the same lines, how many oppressed groups these days find their conflict among the list of issues taken up by earnest student protesters? There are other, more pressing issues in the world that no one gives a crap about, because The Jews don't enter into it.

Why unlucky (aside from hello, Gaza)? Basically for the same reason that they're lucky. Knowing how useful as a symbol any group 'oppressed by the Jews' would be for gaining international sympathy, the 'Palestinian cause' (to be distinguished from the cause of actual Palestinians, as individuals or a collectivity) has been embraced by Arab states and Western leftists - not to mention politically-ignorant Western hipsters (not that all hipsters are ignorant of politics, but anyway...) - for all the wrong reasons. They have a legitimate grievance, but it can't get properly addressed as long as the symbolism of their cause holds more power than the cause itself.

So here's what I'd say to Withywindle: someone pro-Israel has far more reason to be angry at those who've embraced the Palestinians as a symbol to serve their own ends/trends than to have it in for the Palestinians themselves.

Crackpot schemes involving the 19th century

-This afternoon Jo and I went to the Neue Galerie, a museum that is 10% about the art; another 10% about a tempting bookstore; 20% about the cake (oh, and the $85 cake server in the gift shop? wanty!); and 60% about the building itself, an Upper East Side mansion, filled with early twentieth century German and Austrian objects, along with two stunning, out-of-Belle-Epoque-Vienna cafés.

It occurred to me that the Neue Galerie should take the period-piece aspect of the place further, offering visitors to the museum or café some period-dress jackets or accessories. Jo remarked that this sounds like something that already exists, which is true. But, I want to know, if there are Renaissance fairs, why not turn-of-the-century Vienna (I'd also accept Paris) fairs, where you can eat strudel in the nude, or smoke a pipe, or whatever it was people did back in the day, should Expressionist paintings be believed? Why are there no historical reenactments, other than military reenactments, of the 19th or early 20th century? Or are there? If so, do tell.

-The most absurd reality show of all time, "The City", has plot-lines that could not be simpler (model might have eating disorder, rock star boyfriend might be sleeping around, etc.), but that are nevertheless driven home to the point that it is in fact impossible not to follow along. But what makes the series truly great is, as I've noted here before, that every time a character appears on the screen, his name pops up, as does his relationship to one of the main characters, assuming he's not among Whitney's inner circle.

My question is: Why can't this feature be added to long, nineteenth century (Russian and other) novels? Such that every time a character reappears, a little summary would pop up (if, as Clementine suggests, this were to go on a Kindle) or simply appear in parentheses, giving you the relationship of this character to the protagonist. There has to be a way to cross "The City" and Anna Karenina, "The City" and L'Education sentimentale. A show with three characters does not need to constantly remind us who's who, whereas a novel with 300, each referred to in five different ways, just might.

ShariaHalacha?

Religious courts have legal authority in the US? I had no idea. I figured with freedom of assembly, no one prevents a group of the faithful from voting on some internal matter, but did not realize secular courts considered any of this official. I also only recently learned who the governor is of New York, so who knows, but I found Adam Liptak's article fascinating. I definitely understand more about how religious versus secular law worked in colonial Algeria or Old Regime France than in 2008 America. So, please do not respect mah authoritah on this. But to me, most bizarre was this quote from the leader of a Muslim lawyers' group:

“'Muslims, Christians and Jews should all deal with their own family law issues in their own arbitration councils,' she said. 'The government should stay out of the bedroom.'”

But once there are "arbitration councils," isn't government involved all the same? Not the government, but if a religious council is the only court permitted to deal with these matters, it becomes just that. There's also, of course, the question of who gets to deal with the bedroom conflicts of the religiously unaffiliated. Is the choice thus between libertarianism (or really, anarchism) or religious law for all family-related matters?

On the one hand, I see the appeal of having the (secular, U.S.) government acknowledge only partnerships and let the "marriage" issue be left to individuals, whether these individuals gather to form religious groups or not. On the other, as Liptak's article shows, there are certain disadvantages to leaving religious groups with this much power. And what does it mean to consent to abandoning your national rights in favor of religious ones?

"Once consent is given, moreover, questions arise about whether and when it may be withdrawn. 'People have a right in Western systems to change religions,' said Douglas Laycock, a law professor at the University of Michigan. 'Can they opt out after the dispute arises or after the judgment is given?'”

This really gets at my confusion. In pre-1789 France, to be a Jew was to be a member of a 'nation,' not in the modern nation-state sense, but not in a sense entirely removed from that either. Though submissive to greater powers, these nations--there were several Jewish nations in France prior to the Revolution--had political autonomy, and so were not merely collectivities of people who shared an understanding of God. From what I understand, you could not simply change your mind and think, gee, maybe Jesus is the son of God after all, and switch sides, no questions asked.

Fast-forward to 2008 America. If a Jew wishes to convert out (does this ever even happen?) or, more likely, marry out, Jewish blogs and newspapers may declare a Singles Crisis or a War on Intermarriage, but this will only have as an impact lessening whatever influence organized Judaism has in this country. In all likelihood, an intermarriage will not lead to a fall-out with one's family, will not mean changing cultures or being forced to move to a different town. But what if someone from an ultra-religious Jewish family decides to marry someone outside of the Jewish courts' jurisdiction? And what, court-wise, happens in terms of Protestants? Again we're in territory I know little about, but aren't there many, many denominations? Does each have its own council, and if so, who regulates the bedrooms of the Methodist-Baptist couples? In other words, violation of religious law can be internal, but it quite often arrives at the border of internal and external. It seems to me that it's in these cases, when an individual breaks the laws of his own religion, that the secular government needs to make itself most available.

Everything the whole Upper West Side wanted to know about North African Jews

Contrary to popular belief (and to the number of comments on a recent post: currently at zero) everyone wants to hear about Tunisian Jews. So much so that by the time we got to Lincoln Center to see Villa Jasmin, a movie by and about Tunisian Jews, the showing was sold out. I was stunned, and hoped this was a good omen for someone whose research interests lie in this area, and who had some reason to be concerned. Luckily the standby line moved quickly, and we ended up with a second-row view of not only the film, but also director Fèrid Boughedir's pre- and post-movie discussion.

The movie, based on Serge Moati's novel, was made for French TV, and as such includes, near the beginning, a gratuitously bare breast of a beautiful, napping Frenchwoman, a character who is mostly irrelevant to film itself. The movie is ostensibly about a son's quest to find out his Tunisian Jewish family's past; the lovely woman is his pregnant wife, who prefers mild to spicy food and is otherwise non-Tunisian, but doesn't say much. Nor does the thirty-ish son, for that matter, who is also pretty but pointless to the story. An otherwise interesting movie about Tunisia around World War II is interspersed with close-ups of a moved-looking young man in surprisingly chic tourist clothes.

Most of what makes the movie interesting is the history. Who knew that there were once many Jews in Tunisia, and that of these Jews, there were two mutually antagonistic groups, the higher class also the newer arrivals, much like German versus Russian Jews in the US? Who knew that the Nazis showed up and made life difficult for Jews who were not even European? Not impossible, as in Europe, but still.

Basically, unlike many other World War II movies, this one presents a history not familiar to the general--or at a Jewish film festival, general-Jewish-- audience. This is not the only recent movie to show the North African side of the war, but it is especially strange to see a movie with Nazis and Jews both featuring prominently in which the Holocaust is not even the major problem the characters face. While the director explained that unlike Algeria, Tunisia still permits Jews to visit and even live in the country, the switch from a community of 200,000 to several thousand suggests that something happened around Tunisian independence. As is clear from the movie (based on a novel which is based on a true story, as the director repeatedly mentioned), some Tunisian Muslims thought the German invasion might help the cause of independence, while some Tunisian Jews truly believed the oxymoronic tenet that France is the bearer of universal culture. In other words, no good guys or bad guys (other than the Nazis, who fit the latter role too well), and no happy ending once the Nazis leave. (Is 'Nazis stole my villa' a first-world problem? I'd have to go with no.) There isn't even much time to reflect on the Nazi invasion, since the next struggle--what an independent Tunisia might look like-- had already begun well before their arrival.

The political message of the movie, if any can be deduced, is that Tunisian Jews were wrong in embracing French language and culture, and ought to have stayed friends with the Arabs, or else their history would not have turned out so bleak. But how bleak is it to live in France, visit Tunisia, Israel, or wherever else whenever you feel like, and have a stunning wife unafraid to show her breasts for no particular reason? For all his family tragedy, life in France, from what the movie implies, is perhaps a bit empty spiritually and culinarily (not a word, it seems) but still preferable to life in Tunisia. Preferable defined as where the main character and many like him prefer to live.

"But who am I? That's one secret I'll never tell."

This post, arguing that Judaism is a religion and not a race, means well but makes no sense. On a basic level, it's true, Judaism is a religion, for sure, and no one race encompasses all who are Jews (Ashkenazi awesomeness genes aside), thus Judaism is indeed not a race but a religion.

This was always something that stumped me growing up: who are Jews? It's a seemingly unanswerable question until you break it down. Who are Jews according to whom, when, and in which country? All Helen Jupiter's post on Jewcy explains is that to some progressive Americans in 2008, Judaism is a religion. This definition appeals to the open-minded, to the belief that no one should be held back from self-invention. But Judaism cannot be only a religion in a universal sense if not all believe it. One could argue that Judaism should be treated as just a religion, and in fact that's what Jupiter argues. It's just the "is" that fails to convince.

The idea that Judaism might be just a religion was invented in France at the time of the Revolution, in order to find a way to emancipate that country's Jews. Previously, where there were Jews, there had been "Jewish nations," not mini-Israels with tanned and toned soldiers, but communities with a specific place with respect to the state. Part of chucking the system of "privileges" and corporate groups during the French Revolution meant that "We must refuse everything to the Jews as a nation and accord everything to Jews as individuals." Quelle bonne idée! The issue at the time was not race, but nationhood in the pre-nation-state sense of a people with common interests, practices, what have you. Not a nefarious cabal with well-hidden lines of mutual support, but an all-out, out-in-the-open community. Sort of--there were also the "Portuguese" Jews who lived officially as Catholics until gradually "coming out" (in the words of Ronald Schechter) as Jews after some time living in France--but that's another story. The point here is that it was not racist, before 1791, to suggest that Judaism was more than just a religion. It was! Neither Jews nor gentiles would think to deny this. If anything, it was racist to ask Jews to give up autonomy before allowing them to great honor that is membership in the French nation. (Pierre Birnbaum and Arthur Hertzberg explain this all so very much better than I just did). One could even go so far as to say that Europe colonized the Jews, much as it did "Oriental" peoples in Asia and Africa, in asking them to shed all particularity in order to even hope for a nod of recognition from the so obviously superior French. (Here, Albert Memmi has some ideas, not that this is anything but an over-botched summary).

In other words, Judaism-as-religion-only is a relatively new invention in Jewish history, a history which goes back I would guess at least to 1700, maybe even before. French Jews accepted the religion-only definition, not always but often, and so it eventually became offensive to imply that there was anything more to it. Fast-forward a century. Political Zionism revealed that some Central, Eastern, and Western European Jews believed Judaism was more than a religion. Some Jews all over had never adopted this 'enlightened' definition. Yet many had. A racial definition (or any definition including more than just religion) would offend some, while a religion-only definition would not include all. This remains the case today.

The only way one could offer a convincing case for Judaism-as-religion-only would be to say that a Jew is a person the religious version of whom is an observant Jew. This definition includes atheists, but allows the converted-outs their free will and does not shove them into a racial definition.