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Thursday, April 28, 2016

Staying Classy in San Diego

I'm happy to announce I'll be spending this month guest-blogging at The Faculty Lounge. I may still post independent content here -- we'll see how things go -- but I'll certainly be sure to provide pointers to any content I put up over there. I opened my stint with a reflection on the talk I gave (with Analucia Lopezrevoredo) this past Monday at San Diego State on Mizrahi Jews and intersectionality. It's a bit of a heavy opener, but I've never been afraid to come out swinging.

5 comments:

  1. One of my Facebook contacts attempted to post this comment (in response to your passage about 'Ashkenazi Europeans') after I shared your article on my wall, but I was told that it was immediately removed/rejected. Assuming you are in contact with whoever runs that page, she wants to know why it was removed.

    Here is the comment in question: "Whether Ashkenazi Jews "are" or "look" white - this is irrelevant to antiSemitism and irrelevant to reality. Genetically, and by history, we are all a tribal people of the Levant, indigenous to the Middle East regardless of how many times we were exiled from our homeland."

    My two cents: while it's certainly not my place to dictate Ashkenazi identity, I know I would be extremely peeved if people started referring to me as a "Mizrahi Arab" (as opposed to a Mizrahi Jew/Judean/Israeli). I imagine this is how most of my friends interpreted your passage. And I agree that it only serves to reinforce anti-Israel propaganda (i.e. modern Jews are indigenous to the countries they recently lived in or immigrated from, not to Israel).

    Great article, otherwise. Don't get me wrong here.

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  2. I'm the one who tried to post that. I also attempted:"Jews are historically and genetically a tribal, indigenous people of the Levant regardless of how many times we have been colonized and expelled from our homeland. Race is a social construct and does not exist as a scientific reality. Thus skin color is not relevant to the issue of Jews and antiSemitism."

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  3. FYI, your comments are out of the spam filter on TFL (which has a notoriously oversensitive filter -- it captures all of my comments, for example).

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  4. So only certain people can post comments there?

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  5. It really is just an overactice spam filter. My comments are caught in it all the time.

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