[Edited Message Follows] [Reason: Spelling errors.] I understand Judaism to be a world religion.
I believe there was a Yiddish-speaking community with a common history and culture concentrated in Eastern Europe which corresponded to the modern definition of a nation. Arguably, a Hebrew-speaking nation was formed in Palestine by settlers mainly originating from that Eastern European community. But observant Jews from Sweden to Morocco no more constitute a nation than do the practioners of other international religions. Of course, this has not prevented many descendants of the East European Yiddish-speaking community from continuing to self-identify as “Jewish” even though they do not speak the ancestral language or practice the religion or congregate together and have only varying degrees of second-hand acquaintance with the history and culture of the shtetls. This has unfortuntely fed into the Zionist nationalist narrative that Israel is the homeland of the Jewish people worldwide. Even those who reject the centrality of Israel believe they belong to a distinctive ethnic group, an inherited or imposed social construct which represents a form of false consciousness. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#31849): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/31849 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/107980589/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
