Fear and Tribalism

Amconmag has a great article about Philip Weiss' struggle between humanism and tribalism.

Actually, Mr. Weiss is not struggling, he has chosen humansim. But he is now dealing with the consequences for making that admirable, but surely difficult, decision

[My editor] has a stronger Jewish identity than I do. A few years back, we were sitting in his office when he said, “You know what the most important question is about your wife’s [Gentile] family?” “What?” I asked. “Would they hide you?” “Huh?” “Would they hide you?” he said again. Oh. He meant if there were pogroms in America.

Wow. This is from a powerful editor of a widely read news source. There is lots more good stuff here:

When Jews left the ghettoes of Europe during political emancipation in the 1800s, they underwent a “spiritual crisis” that fostered messianic movements, as the Jewish historian Gershom Scholem has written, and today the Jewish advance into the American power structure was setting off similar crises. The Jewish community had defined Jewishness as attachment to Israel, and it was not coming to grips with the effect of that attachment on the Arab world or the United States.

Please take the time to read more at Amconmag