An Old Song.

Since the Jewish holidays are upon us once again, as they have been every years for the last 6,000 or so, and since Jew Hate is resurgent around the world--I thought today I'd write a little bit about being Jewish in the ad industry and the Jew Hate that afflicts us all.

By the way, I call it Jew Hate not anti-semitism. The former is visceral and true. The later is anti-septic and almost academic.

I'll start with the words below from a book review on Friday in The Wall Street Journal by Dominic Green on a book Mark Mazower titled "On Antisemitism: A Word in History." 

Here's the opening of Green's review:

The word “antisemitism” is the most successful and destructive of all the political terms that, as George Orwell wrote in 1946, seek to “make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give the appearance of solidity to pure wind.” The sound and the appearance suffice: define political language, and you define the terms of political reality. The reality is that antisemitism is the most popular ideology of the age of mass politics. 

An inerrant harbinger of disaster, first for Jews and then for everyone else, antisemitism is institutionally entrenched on the American left and increasingly noisome on the podcast right. In a divided America, hating Jews is the sour spot that unites Islamists and Christian nationalists, white supremacists and black nationalists, college professors and the criminally insane. America the exceptional, the only Western society where Jews have lived as normal people, is now exceptional only in the diversity of groups with Jews on the brain.

Admittedly, Green's review is more than a little right-wing for my taste, but nonetheless.

As for advertising, or amerika, while just two people out of every thousand claim some Jewish heritage, Jews are not considered a minority. Jews do not figure in any calculus of diversity. Even when this benighted nation was pretending to care about that concept.

When Jews were murdered and raped in Israel--not one agency changed it's logo on social media--which seems to be the empathetic apotheosis of performative recognition. BTW, Israel was a recognized nation over 3,300 years ago as seen in the Egyptian Merneptah Stele below. 

I can't tell you how many meetings I was forced to attend on the Jewish holidays. Or how many meeting I had the strength to not attend. No provision being made for people of my faith. And you're some sort of zealot if you want to take New Year's off.

Just as it seems collectively we've forgotten the slaughter of October 7, 2023. Not to mention the slaughters of Europe and the Crusades that have gone on for over 2,000 years. While there are nine member nations of the Arab league that recognize Israel's right to exist, 28 nations in all don't accept that right. Half a dozen, representing almost 200,000,000 people, dwarfing Israel's 10,000,000 population are currently "in a state of war against Israel." That's a declared state of war, which Israel is expected to accept as situation normal.

Algeria, Bangladesh, Brunei, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Yemen do not accept Israeli passports. No one knows facts like these. And thanks to multi-million dollar PR and ad campaigns, we're supposed to think of places like Saudi Arabia as a tourist destination and a business partner. In Saudi Arabia, they teach the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

I'm kind of tired of all this.

I'm not religious. 

But I'm Jewish.

I understand the smallness and relative success of my tribe leads to hatred and abnegation. Even the early 20th Century Tsarist concoction, "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," is still today in wide circulation. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and the Education ministry of Saudi Arabia have endorsed them as authentic.

Judaism, by the way, is/was one of the few religions, perhaps the only religion ever, to demand that its congregants read aloud in public. This began at a time when just about all the world was illiterate. If you ever attribute the prominence of Jews in various fields to some sort of cabal or conspiracy, maybe it's because for 3000 years Jews read. They self-selected their way to advancement.

It's Jewish New Year, so forgive these facts.

​In 64 C.E., sage Joshua ben Gamla issued an ordinance mandating universal schooling for all males starting at about age six.​ Within about a century​ the Jews​ had effectively established universal male literacy and numeracy.​ 

This rise in literacy occurred at about the same time as the destruction of the Second Temple—64 C.E.  ​I​t marks the moment when Judaism began actively to transform itself from a religion centered on rites and sacrifices at the Temple in Jerusalem to a religion centered on prayer and the study of the Torah at decentralized synagogues and study houses. Worship of God involved not only prayer but study, all Jewish males had to read if they were to practice their faith—and not only read in private but be able to read aloud in the presence of others.

The Torah and the Hebrew prayer book are not simple texts; even to be able to read them mechanically requires fairly advanced literacy. To study the Talmud and its commentaries with any understanding requires considerable intellectual capacity. 

La distruzione del tempio di Gerusalemme. The destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in 70CE. -Francesco Hayez - gallerie Accademia Venice

  

In short, during the centuries after Rome’s destruction of the Temple, Judaism evolved in such a way that to be a good Jew meant that a man had to be smart.

You can attribute Jewish strength and prominence and success to conspiracy, space lasers, the Rothschilds, George Soros, and the Christian blood we use to bake our bread.

Or you can try to understand history.

One path offers an easy explanation. The other takes a bit of work.

Like I said, I'm tired of all this.

Maybe even mad.