The Dartmouth Observer |
|
|
Commentary on politics, history, culture, and literature by two Dartmouth graduates and their buddies
WHO WE ARE Chien Wen Kung graduated from Dartmouth College in 2004 and majored in History and English. He is currently a civil servant in Singapore. Someday, he hopes to pursue a PhD in History. John Stevenson graduated from Dartmouth College in 2005 with a BA in Government and War and Peace Studies. He is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago. He hopes to pursue a career in teaching and research. Kwame A. Holmes did not graduate from Dartmouth. However, after graduating from Florida A+M University in 2003, he began a doctorate in history at the University of Illinois--Urbana Champaign. Having moved to Chicago to write a dissertation on Black-Gay-Urban life in Washington D.C., he attached himself to the leg of John Stevenson and is thrilled to sporadically blog on the Dartmouth Observer. Feel free to email him comments, criticisms, spelling/grammar suggestions. BLOGS/WEBSITES WE READ The American Scene Arts & Letters Daily Agenda Gap Stephen Bainbridge Jack Balkin Becker and Posner Belgravia Dispatch Black Prof The Corner Demosthenes Daniel Drezner Five Rupees Free Dartmouth Galley Slaves Instapundit Mickey Kaus The Little Green Blog Left2Right Joe Malchow Josh Marshall OxBlog Bradford Plumer Political Theory Daily Info Andrew Samwick Right Reason Andrew Seal Andrew Sullivan Supreme Court Blog Tapped Tech Central Station UChicago Law Faculty Blog Volokh Conspiracy Washington Monthly Winds of Change Matthew Yglesias ARCHIVES BOOKS WE'RE READING CW's Books John's Books STUFF Site Feed    |
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
Diaspora and the Jewish Contribution to History Eric Hosbawm concludes in the London Review of Books: "there are those [Jews] who wish to withdraw from it into the old segregation of religious ultra-Orthodoxy and the new segregation of a separate ethnic-genetic state-community. If they were to succeed I do not think it will be good either for the Jews or for the world." These sentences conclude an excellent essay reflecting on Jewish success, and lack thereof in some centuries, as it relates to diaspora, integration, antisemitism, and the ghetto. He offers that the Jews have benefited most when they lived with Gentiles and when they were not experiences discrimination. However, the most productive moments came when emancipated and secularized Jews were the most aware of their perpetual otherness in the gentile, white imagination. One of the ironic effects, he notes of the Holocaust, is that it has greatly reduced the Jewish diaspora among the Islamic countries and destroyed most of the vestiges of Western antisemitism. This has produced a concentration of Jews in Israel, a move by some Jewish theocratic communities to withdraw again from the world, and widespread acceptance. A very good essay from an amazing historian. |