The nod, the smirk

What the As-a-Jews and Un-Jews threaten

A Zionist Jew and an anti-Zionist Jew are sitting at a bar.

A Nazi walks in.

He kills them both.

Refute vs Renounce

I wholly disagree with the popular characterization of Jonathan Glazer’s acceptance speech at the Oscars on Sunday evening.

I think a few people heard him say something unclear and triggering, didn’t consider the entire context of his remarks, and this was repeated ad nauseum on social media without people actually considering what he said.

When Glazer accepted his Academy Award for Best International Feature Film for the Holocaust film The Zone of Interest, he didn’t “refute” his Jewishness. That’s not a thing, and that’s not the right verb. He said the following:

All our choices were made to reflect and confront us in the present, not to say ‘look what they did then’ — rather, ‘look what we do now.’ Our film shows where dehumanization leads at its worst. It shaped all of our past and present.

Right now, we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people. Whether the victims of October 7 in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza — all the victims of this dehumanization, how do we resist?

I’ve watched this speech about 15 times. He did not say that he refutes his Judaism period. He said that he refutes his Judaism and the Holocaust being hijacked. It’s different. If he had said what apparently all of Jewish social media seems to think he said, he would have said that he disavows or renounces his Judaism. He didn’t.

Jonathan Glazer accepting his Oscar

I’m obviously not the only person to point this out (X’s community notes is making this clear too), but I think it is important to repeat it for several reasons. Primarily, because on March 1, I made a speech and said that we as Jews have a duty to the truth. We have a duty not to have knee-jerk reactions and misconstrue facts - that is what our enemies do. The truth supports our cause. We have no reason to double-down on misunderstandings. And for the love of God, please don’t start making, “I don’t refute my Judaism!” t-shirts and bumper stickers.

Let me be clear: I am not defending Glazer. I think his speech was despicable, repulsive, and reprehensible. It’s been enough to make me Google his past works, so as to be sure that I don’t watch anything he’s made, and not watch Zone of Interest despite it receiving rave reviews and even, now, an Oscar. His speech was bad without misconstruing his “refuting” remarks.

This is why: the virtue-signalling Ashkenazi Jewish Glazer accepted an award after directing a movie about the Holocaust by:

(a) not mentioning the memory of the victims of the Holocaust;

(b) not mentioning the Israelis held hostage by the Nazis-of-today Hamas; and

(c) using his platform to allege that the Jewish State is using the excuse of the Holocaust as a pretext for killing innocent Palestinians.

As Brett Gelman wrote on X:

My take on the remarks is akin to what the British comedian Josh Howie wrote:

I think this is exactly what Glazer did: he has denigrated the Holocaust for claps (which the audience did), or popularity (everyone is talking about it today), or to virtue signal to the Hamas-friendly base in California, or to increase sales to his movie. As Howie also hilariously wrote:

My words can’t do justice to the outrage we ought to all feel about what Glazer said. So, here is a letter written to him from Holocaust survivor David Schaecter:

Glazer should be ashamed of himself for using Auschwitz to criticize Israel. Not only are his thoughts and feelings towards Israel repulsive, but I cringe when I think of the ammunition he has just given to Hamas-sympathizers. “See! Another Jew turning on Israel! We were right to support the rape and murder of Israeli children!”

The “As a Jews”

All this episode has done is further strengthen my belief that a massive schism is coming soon to the Jewish community: Zionists vs. anti-Zionists. This isn’t new, but I am certain the scope of it will be.

Since the formation of political Zionism in the late 19th century, there has never been 100% of Jews who are all on board with Zionism. But it’s been pretty darn close. As of 10/6, the vast majority of Jews were Zionists.

I am certain, however, that events since 10/7 have changed some of those numbers. Some Jews have been able to convince themselves that the Israelis deserve what happened. That the left-wing Peace Now kibbutzniks who lived in the Gaza Envelope who drove sick Palestinians to Israeli hospitals somehow had it coming, because of the so-called “occupation.” That the underdog Palestinians have the right to resist, even if doing so involves kidnapping and murder. That the Israeli response has been overwhelmingly disproportionate. That the Palestinians deep down want to live side-by-side with radical Israel. That Israel is to blame.

And of course, many of these anti-Zionist Jews, whether closeted before, or only speaking in hushed voices, are empowered: Independent Jewish Voices, Jewish Voices for Peace, and If Not Now, are staging sit ins in the US House of Representatives with celebrities like famed-not-antisemite-just-anti-Zionist Linda Sarsour. They have other Jews speaking out in the media about Israeli atrocities. They are emboldened by the silence of Jewish celebrities in support of Israel, by rabbis and purported rabbis who speak out against Israel, and they of course have Jewish directors of Holocaust movies slamming Israel for hijacking the Holocaust to perpetrate atrocities against the Palestinians (to Hollywood’s applause).

Almost three years ago, in June 2021, Gil Troy and Natan Sharansky called them “Un-Jews”. In a piece in Tablet Magazine, they wrote:

The anti-Zionists know exactly what they are doing, and what they are undoing. They are trying to disentangle Judaism from Jewish nationalism, the sense of Jewish peoplehood, while undoing decades of identity-building. In repudiating Israel and Zionism, hundreds of Jewish Google employees rejected what they call “the conflation of Israel with the Jewish people.” The voices of inflamed Jewish opponents of Israel and Zionism are in turn amplified by a militant progressive superstructure that now has an ideological lock on the discourse in American academia, publishing, media, and the professions that formerly respected American Jewry’s Zionism-accented, peoplehood-centered constructions of Jewish identity.

We call these critics “un-Jews” because they believe the only way to fulfill the Jewish mission of saving the world with Jewish values is to undo the ways most actual Jews do Jewishness. They are not ex-Jews or non-Jews, because many of them are and remain deeply involved Jewishly, despite their harsh dissent. Many un-Jews are active in forms of Jewish leadership, running Jewish studies departments, speaking from rabbinic pulpits, hosting Shabbat dinners. For many of these un-Jews, the public and communal staging of their anti-Israeli and anti-Zionist beliefs appears to be the badge of a superior form of Judaism, stripped of its unsavory and unethical “ethnocentric” and “colonialist” baggage.

Ben Freeman, of Jewish Pride, calls this internalised anti-Jewishness. He writes:

These various understandings lead us to my definition of internalised anti-Jewishness:

When Jews absorb non-Jewish perceptions of Jews, Jewishness and Judaism and allow the non-Jewish world to define our narrative.

This definition is rooted in the erasure of Jewish identity and experience which, as we will learn, has a variety of manifestations. It can explain, for instance, how a Jew could identify as, say, an antizionist. Antizionist Jews have absorbed non-Jewish ideas about the State of Israel which delegitimise and demonise the Jewish state and hold it to standards to which no other state is held. They have internalised the propaganda that was designed to strip Jews of their indigeneity to the Levant. These Jews, in turn, reject any Jewish connection to our homeland in the Land of Israel. However, this definition can also be used to explain why someone who is a Zionist and who feels pride in their Jewishness may also feel shame about their Jewish practice or why they may feel compelled to demonstrate that they are “just like their non-Jewish friends.” Jewish specificity has been shamed for hundreds of years and many Jews can feel embarrassed about the particularities of our practice and experience. They feel Jewish Pride, but they also want to fit in with the wider world by denying elements of their Jewishness. (Reclaiming our Story, Ben M. Freeman, pp. 13-14).

Many of us more widely call them “As a Jews.” As in, they begin each sentence by establish their bona fides “as a Jew,” and then try to hit Israel or the Jewish community where it hurts.

Here are some of my recent favourite Tweets from this crowd:

or

and

and this doozy

And yes, Glazer has already been referenced many times as an “As a Jew.” As Jonathan Tobin, the editor-in-chief of the Jewish News Syndicate wrote,

[W]hat Glazer said wasn’t merely deeply offensive. It marked a new low in Hollywood’s descent into fashionable rationalizations of hatred for Jews. It also showed us how the new woke antisemitism works, especially when its standard-bearers are Jews with little or no connection to their heritage. As such, it was the quintessential “as a Jew” moment in which persons invoke their Jewish identity to denounce other Jews.

We live in a world where it is easier to take the path of least resistance. Where we seek instant gratification and have difficulty standing up for ideals. These “As a Jews”, those who exhibit internalised Jew hatred, and those Un-Jews, have surrendered. They have looked at the fight of us versus them, Jews versus the world, Israel versus Hamas, and have surrendered. Our cause is no longer worth fighting for. The amplification of their voices and their worldview is worrying. Their voices are, sadly, contagious.

Brotherhood

I was recently traveling in a place where there weren’t many Jews. But while there, I did spot one fellow MOT (Member of the Tribe), who, like me, was wearing a Star of David necklace. I didn’t talk to him, but while walking past each other at the buffet one evening, we clearly noticed each other’s necklaces. A small smirk formed on the side of my mouth, and I nodded at him, him nodding back at me. There it was - we found each other, and we acknowledged our brotherhood in an instant.

This smirk, this nod, is something I’ve experienced countless times. We all have. Whether in Downtown Toronto, South Africa, England, Dubai, or even once in Kenya, each time I’ve come across someone else who identifies as Jewish, there is that instant connection established just below the surface. Whether we speak or not, engage in the mandatory game of Jewish geography, or actually share a meal together, that solidarity is immediately established. We come from the same heritage and traditions, share the same values and ideals, and believe in the unifying power of the State of Israel.

This peoplehood, however, is threatened by the forthcoming schism between those Jews who love and those who hate Israel. Those who believe that Israel is a real-world state like any other, and those who create standards for Israel that are impossible to meet. Those who will give Israel the benefit of the doubt, and those who never will. This is not simply a disagreement about geopolitics. It is a fundamental dispute about who we are, what we identify as, and what sort of a force we believe Judaism to be - and can be - in the world.

If this schism continues to grow, at what point will we stop greeting our fellow Jews, feeling estranged from them as we are from others?

It is therefore imperative that we muster all our respective courage to be vocal about the need for a strong and united Jewish community and Israel. Israel is a part of Judaism just as much as Judaism is a part of Israel. We cannot, and will not, allow ourselves to be taken in by faulty logic and ahistorical premises simply for the claps, popularity, or virtue signalling. We have always withstood those vices in the past, and it is now existentially important for us to withstand the same in the future.