I have a couple of thoughts about Zoya Cherkassky-Nnadi.
1. Her work is unique in that it is popular both among Israelis (at least in some circles) and pro-Palis. When my Tel Aviv tour guide on Birthright used one of her paintings to illustrate some point about Soviet Jewish assimilation I could barely hold back my laughter at the absurdity of it because while I do not know the reasons for her popularity in Israel, paintings like "Itzik" fit right into the pro-Palestinian narrative of how "Arab" Jews are perceived by "White" Jews.
2. As a Russian Jew myself, I doubt Zoya perceives nerds as negatively as you suggest. For one, irrespective of how the Russians or any other Europeans felt about the matter, Ashkenazi Jews held on to the importance of "book smarts" regardless of where they lived. More importantly though, the Soviet Union placed a lot of emphasis on education, and in all the major cities, where most Jews lived, including Zoya, being an academic came with a lot of prestige. Even things like being fit were valued because of the "healthy body, healthy mind" mentality. You could always feel the dormant Slavic masculinity (and antisemitism, for that matter) in the native Russians but Soviet Jews did not acquire this mentality. There are exceptions to this, of course.
i) Of course, if you have to pick just one option between brains and brawn, brains will serve you much better in the modern world, but the ideal is to have both. The people who built Western civilization were both resourceful and assertive, and they frequently and successfully repulsed aggressors by force of arms. I think one of the critiques against the modern left to which you are referring is that they're too effete and wishy-washy to stand up to people with clearly hostile intentions, and that is not incorrect. If you're incapable of defending yourself on the battlefield, you'll end up subjugated or exterminated, even if you can quote Shakespeare by heart or solve differential equations.
One pillar of the Zionist ethos was creating a new kind of Jew - muscular, virile and confident, as opposed to the stereotype of the skinny and pale Jew who spends his entire day studying. The Zionists were not at all dismissive of erudition, but they also realized their mission would be unachievable without thews and sinews.
ii) Your opinion of Russia is very cartoonish and incorrect. The contributions of the Russian people to world culture[1] and science[2] have been significant, and it is definitely not a third world country. You're not completely wrong in describing a certain culture of machismo, but then this culture exists not only in Russia, and it is not as wholly predominant as you might think. The Soviet Union had a cult of education, and academics were held by society in high regard.
I'd substitute "Cossacks" for "Russians" in your analysis, since Russia has a strong intellectual-scientific tradition. The Jew vs Cossack dichotomy is deeply ingrained in Ashkenazi cultural memory. I'll quote Lionel Trilling:
"The Jew conceived his own ideal character to consist in his being intellectual, pacific, humane. The Cossack was physical, violent, without mind or manners. When a Jew of Eastern Europe wanted to say what we mean by 'a bull in a china shop,' he said 'a Cossack in a succah'—in, that is, one of the fragile decorated booths or tabernacles in which the meals of the harvest festival of Succoth are eaten: he intended an image of animal violence, of aimless destructiveness."
Yet the Jew must imbibe something of the Cossack to survive in this world, without at the same time losing his yiddishe kop. That is a lesson of Zionism.
It was Ashkenazi egghead technocrats that kept Israel a poverty stricken socialist dump, while it was the mizrachi vote that broke that stranglehold on Israel (by voting for different Ashkenazim, who reduced the stranglehold to a hold you can just barely breathe through).
While I don't disagree with anything, the overall impression here is that this is a self-indulgent internet fad rather than a real process happening in Israel, which is already in a sufficiently advanced state that its proponents are gloating about an imminent exodus of the nerds.
An interesting piece, even though as a Sephardi writer I’m compelled to disagree with much of what you said.
What you realistically could have argued is that the reason Mizrahi Jews ultimately emerged less privileged in Israel’s early era is because:
1. We were used to being the economic and cultural bedrock of the places from whence we came.
2. The fundamentally Ashkenazi intellectual foundations of Zionism made use of our culture to advance its cause in Europe, but discarded us once it was actually faced with the real thing.
There is a wealth of pro-Israel (or at the very least non-Zionist) literature on this very issue that confirms the assumptions I’ve made above. See John Efron’s “German Culture and the Allure of the Sephardic” (2016).
This whole antiashki business has been a side project of old soviet “long war” design to sow strife within free societies. It’s how some Nazis try to whitewash their bs this week “it’s not ALL Jews we want to exterminate, only the khazars” - hence the original karaite “acceptance” and later attempts to pit mizrahi (known to the old as Sephardi but don’t let the purists know) against ashkenazi. In general Jews used to be a little immune to the identity based supremacy ideologies because 1. we knew too much and 2. we’ve seen it all already
But lately I’m afraid whatever intellectual head start was there is being rapidly squandered in favor of this performative masculinity - thank you for the term
Fascinating article! I thought from your memes you were just crude and racist, but it turns out you're crude, racist, and stupid! Thank you for sharing.
I have a couple of thoughts about Zoya Cherkassky-Nnadi.
1. Her work is unique in that it is popular both among Israelis (at least in some circles) and pro-Palis. When my Tel Aviv tour guide on Birthright used one of her paintings to illustrate some point about Soviet Jewish assimilation I could barely hold back my laughter at the absurdity of it because while I do not know the reasons for her popularity in Israel, paintings like "Itzik" fit right into the pro-Palestinian narrative of how "Arab" Jews are perceived by "White" Jews.
2. As a Russian Jew myself, I doubt Zoya perceives nerds as negatively as you suggest. For one, irrespective of how the Russians or any other Europeans felt about the matter, Ashkenazi Jews held on to the importance of "book smarts" regardless of where they lived. More importantly though, the Soviet Union placed a lot of emphasis on education, and in all the major cities, where most Jews lived, including Zoya, being an academic came with a lot of prestige. Even things like being fit were valued because of the "healthy body, healthy mind" mentality. You could always feel the dormant Slavic masculinity (and antisemitism, for that matter) in the native Russians but Soviet Jews did not acquire this mentality. There are exceptions to this, of course.
Two notes:
i) Of course, if you have to pick just one option between brains and brawn, brains will serve you much better in the modern world, but the ideal is to have both. The people who built Western civilization were both resourceful and assertive, and they frequently and successfully repulsed aggressors by force of arms. I think one of the critiques against the modern left to which you are referring is that they're too effete and wishy-washy to stand up to people with clearly hostile intentions, and that is not incorrect. If you're incapable of defending yourself on the battlefield, you'll end up subjugated or exterminated, even if you can quote Shakespeare by heart or solve differential equations.
One pillar of the Zionist ethos was creating a new kind of Jew - muscular, virile and confident, as opposed to the stereotype of the skinny and pale Jew who spends his entire day studying. The Zionists were not at all dismissive of erudition, but they also realized their mission would be unachievable without thews and sinews.
ii) Your opinion of Russia is very cartoonish and incorrect. The contributions of the Russian people to world culture[1] and science[2] have been significant, and it is definitely not a third world country. You're not completely wrong in describing a certain culture of machismo, but then this culture exists not only in Russia, and it is not as wholly predominant as you might think. The Soviet Union had a cult of education, and academics were held by society in high regard.
References:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_of_Russia
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_technology_in_Russia
I'd substitute "Cossacks" for "Russians" in your analysis, since Russia has a strong intellectual-scientific tradition. The Jew vs Cossack dichotomy is deeply ingrained in Ashkenazi cultural memory. I'll quote Lionel Trilling:
"The Jew conceived his own ideal character to consist in his being intellectual, pacific, humane. The Cossack was physical, violent, without mind or manners. When a Jew of Eastern Europe wanted to say what we mean by 'a bull in a china shop,' he said 'a Cossack in a succah'—in, that is, one of the fragile decorated booths or tabernacles in which the meals of the harvest festival of Succoth are eaten: he intended an image of animal violence, of aimless destructiveness."
Yet the Jew must imbibe something of the Cossack to survive in this world, without at the same time losing his yiddishe kop. That is a lesson of Zionism.
It was Ashkenazi egghead technocrats that kept Israel a poverty stricken socialist dump, while it was the mizrachi vote that broke that stranglehold on Israel (by voting for different Ashkenazim, who reduced the stranglehold to a hold you can just barely breathe through).
While I don't disagree with anything, the overall impression here is that this is a self-indulgent internet fad rather than a real process happening in Israel, which is already in a sufficiently advanced state that its proponents are gloating about an imminent exodus of the nerds.
this began /years/ ago. I remember people talking about secular leftists emigrating as the land spitting out the bad guys over a decade ago
This is a better version of the speech that I'm no longer allowed to make at family gatherings. Well done.
An interesting piece, even though as a Sephardi writer I’m compelled to disagree with much of what you said.
What you realistically could have argued is that the reason Mizrahi Jews ultimately emerged less privileged in Israel’s early era is because:
1. We were used to being the economic and cultural bedrock of the places from whence we came.
2. The fundamentally Ashkenazi intellectual foundations of Zionism made use of our culture to advance its cause in Europe, but discarded us once it was actually faced with the real thing.
There is a wealth of pro-Israel (or at the very least non-Zionist) literature on this very issue that confirms the assumptions I’ve made above. See John Efron’s “German Culture and the Allure of the Sephardic” (2016).
Hen is good people and it's good practice to respect our Sephardic and Mizrahi kin. https://open.substack.com/pub/marlowe1/p/the-music-teacher-the-stories-of?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=sllf3
This whole antiashki business has been a side project of old soviet “long war” design to sow strife within free societies. It’s how some Nazis try to whitewash their bs this week “it’s not ALL Jews we want to exterminate, only the khazars” - hence the original karaite “acceptance” and later attempts to pit mizrahi (known to the old as Sephardi but don’t let the purists know) against ashkenazi. In general Jews used to be a little immune to the identity based supremacy ideologies because 1. we knew too much and 2. we’ve seen it all already
But lately I’m afraid whatever intellectual head start was there is being rapidly squandered in favor of this performative masculinity - thank you for the term
IDK about you guys but I'd rather be thought of as a wimp than a war criminal.
Better a live war criminal than a dead wimp.
Fascinating article! I thought from your memes you were just crude and racist, but it turns out you're crude, racist, and stupid! Thank you for sharing.