Posted on 02/07/2014 4:27:48 PM PST by nickcarraway
Yascha Mounk’s new book on Jewish identity leaves readers with a question: Are people destined to see themselves as the descendants of victims or oppressors?
It’s a perennially reoccurring question: What makes someone Jewish? Answers vary, touching everything from the blood in your veins to the prayer book on your shelf to the egg bagel on your plate.
Yascha Mounk, a 31-year-old German Jew who’s a doctoral candidate at Harvard, has offered another definition: You are a Jew if your parents or grandparents were called out as Jews, persecuted as Jews, and killed as Jews. “In a sense, this was enough,” he writes in a new book, Stranger in My Own Country: A Jewish Family in Modern Germany. “If to speak honestly about their life stories is to become, in the eyes of most beholders, a Jew—and if being a Jew, in turn, means not being a true German—then, so long as I lived in Germany, my family history made me a Jew.”
In his book, Mounk explores German attitudes toward Jews during the 70 years following the Holocaust (Mounk's parents and grandparents are Eastern European Jews, and he was born in Germany). But he also offers a broader theory about identity: that people understand themselves and others through their genetic ties to history’s victims and oppressors. This pattern develops repeatedly and in diverse contexts, Mounk argues: In Germany, there’s collective guilt about Jews and the Holocaust; in America, a similar phenomenon shapes discourse around blacks and slavery. Each new generation matures into its role as steward of historical hatreds; although the legacies of genocide and enslavement become refracted through time, young people can’t escape the grievances of prejudices past.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
Well.....if white men in America are still responsible for
black slavery (even though as many whites were enslaved as blacks in early America) then it would be logical to assume that the current crop of Germans are culpable for the conduct of those who committed atrocities before they were born. Liberal progtard logic.....it’s a strange and wonderful thing...but it’s not logical.
Gobbledygook!
Has the Atlantic ever asked if white Americans can still be held morally responsible for slavery?
Or Wounded Knee.
Are today’s Russians morally responsible for the Holodomor and the Gulag?
100 million dead want to know
Nope.
Supporters of 0bama? Guilty.
No, they are not responsible for the WWII Holocaust, their only responsibility is to not allow another. To prevent another Holocaust is the responsibility of us all.
What are Jewish traits? My answer would be that they are very close families that drive their children toward excellence. That, apparently, makes slackers uncomfortable, hence the backlash.
I would say they are not morally responsible for the
holocaust. They are however morally responsible to
see that it doesn’t happen again.
Thank You! I, as a White man in America who has no relatives in the country before 1890, am not responsible in any way for slavery or the enslavement of anyone black, white or other!
Today’s Germans are not responsible for the murders by their parents. That they have a sense of history and that many care for Israel is wonderful But they do not bear their parents’ guilt (as Christianity and Judaism teach).
“Are Today’s Germans Morally Responsible for the Holocaust?”....
No more than today’s white people are responsible for slavery years ago.
(If history reminds me, wasn’t it the blacks in Africa who rounded up some of their own kind and sold them into slavery?)
I don’t hold today’s Germans responsible for that, but I do hold them responsible for their actions today. In light of that, I have a very dim view of the E. U. as a whole, the way they clearly treat Israel unfairly. It’s a Jewish state, and if anything Europe should go out of it’s way to make it clear they won’t entertain any more antisemitism in their ranks.
Alas they do with a certain level of pride in it.
Can’t express firmly enough how much I detest that contingent in the E. U. ranks.
You are correct sir!
“Don’t mention the war.”
The current crop of Krauts has less responsibility for the last Holocaust than we do for the next.
Whatever anonymity Mounk may have found, though, he should know that it’s an artificial refuge. He himself has argued persuasively that identities are inextricably bound to past persecution. Leaving Germany doesn't diminish his ties to the country's conflicted history, and arriving in New York won't keep him from becoming part of the United States' own set of racial tensions. All his life, Mounk has felt like a stranger in his own land, but unfortunately, every land bears the weight of historical wrongs.
A persuasive argument against multiculturalism and diversity. We have already entered the era of tribal politics in the US.
We have 45 million foreign-born in this country, not counting their American born children. In 1970 one in 21 was foreign born; today it is one in 8 the highest in 80 years; and within a decade it will be one in 7--the highest in our history. 87% of the 1.2 million legal immigrants who enter annually are minorities as classified by the USG. By 2043 we will be a minority-majority nation for the first time in our history.
We are sowing the seeds of our own demise.
“Are Today’s Germans Morally Responsible for the Holocaust?”
NO!
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