Whenever I'm reading about historical intra-Jewish conflict, I imagine how those discourses and confrontations would have looked if they had occurred not via the political and ideological press, but via tumblr, instagram, tiktok, and the twitter diaspora.
It sounds funny, silly even, but whenever Jews disagree in this context, it's never entirely about the disagreement; it's about feelings of betrayal over fellow Jews thinking, acting, perceiving, and behaving differently. It's about feelings of insecurity borne of second-guessing your own perspectives. It's about that deep-seated fear, that if That One Group behaves improperly, it will bring the rage of the gentiles down upon us all.
The American Jewish community is in a....profoundly disunited state right now, and we're being deeply toxic to each other on social media; I assume you've seen my own interactions here, in which my coreligionists accuse me of engaging in blood libel and ignoring/downplaying the genocidal violence Hamas imposed on Israeli and other civilians on 10/7/23.
It's so easy to take it personally. To get mad. To think "omg please don't post that where the non-Jews can see it now they're going to hate us even more!" But being a modern Jewish historian allows me to take a step back, and remind myself: Jews have never agreed on how to do Judaism in diaspora. We have never even fully agreed on how to do it not in diaspora, but under the governance of a larger empire (see: Chanukah deep lore). This is a normal, established aspect of our historical continuum, and being part of that makes me neither a Good Jew nor a Bad Jew, but just another individual, contributing however I can to this eternal discourse.
It's easy to make "hurrr two Jews three opinions!" jokes, and I have/do. But those jokes aren't the result of some inherent Jewish proclivity towards internecine disagreements; they reflect instead of wide variety of factors Jews must take into account every day as we engage with the rest of the world as a lobal minority.
When I see a post about the history of, say, the genocide of Bosnian Muslims in the 90s, and a fellow Jewish person posts OH GOOD WE'RE TALKING ABOUT AN ACTUAL GENOCIDE in response. My first feelings are those of overwhelming fear and embarrassment. Because the gentile who see that will store it in the rhetorical ammo they deploy against all of us.
I am simultaneously living the patterns of Jewish history, while observing their longevity. It's weird, but cool. I think.
Non-Jews are welcome to interact with this post. This is not a jumblr post, but the personal reflections of a public scholar who both exists within and studies the history of her own ethno-religious group. Please simply refrain from condescension, -splaining, historical erasure, and blood libel/global Jewish hivemind rhetoric.
