When you hear “Jewish self-defense,” you probably think of the IDF, since that’s pretty much the best example around. Max Nordau’s promotion of “Jewry of Muscle” was a key (or at least memorable) part of early political Zionism. But Jews defending themselves as Jews, using physical strength to defend their rights both to be and to be Jewish, all of this both existed before and exists outside of the Jewish State. My favorite example of this from fiction has to be the scene in Fitzgerald’s The Beautiful and Damned, in which a successful and successfully assimilated Jewish character responds to being called a “goddamn Jew” not by running away or by complaining to others nearby, nor even by appealing to a Jewish organization, but by neatly punching the offender in the face. And it’s awesome.
It’s far more starting, and perhaps impressive, on an individual level, to see a WWI-era American Jew with a changed name and a precarious place in society punch an anti-Semite than to see an IDF soldier just doing his job. Of course, the many have certain advantages over the few, and Israel presumably remains the best response in terms of Jews defending themselves as Jews.
David Kopel of the Volokh Conspiracy has a great post up about “Jewish Boxing, Fencing, and Self-Defense.” The idea that, even in the Diaspora, some Zionist ideals of Jewish strength could be carried out is quite interesting, if dubious. What’s muscle without political power? And does muscle, physical or political, actually make Jews more respected in the world? Ideally, some combination of the two might do something along those lines, but who knows.
Tom Morrissey
9/6/2006
Fitzgerald also cast Meyer Lansky (dubbed Meyer Wolfsheim) as the dark, criminal source of Jay Gatsby’s fortune, a rather conventional anti-Semitic trope.
phoebe
9/6/2006
Isn’t punching back the ultimate assimilation?
Ellen Hymowitz
9/6/2006
The above comment was not from Phoebe. Not sure how that happened but it was definitely my own.
Jewish Mother
9/6/2006
If a BT may speak, Judaism is not pacifism and it is not ascetic. Neither is it hedonism. Judaism does not reject the world or the material, but engages the world in a way that makes the world, the material, holy, or holier, or elevates it.
So, if Truth with a capital T indicates that someone needs punching, to punch him is a Jewish duty, and is not assimilation at all. He can be punched if Justice requires it. And he can always be punched in self-defense, because to not punch him then would amount to suicide, and that’s not allowed in Judaism.
To be metaphoric, Jacob’s ladder ascended heavenward, but its bottom was anchored in the earth, the dirt, the mud, the material. The ladder connected the two, upper and lower.
OK, Phoebe, or Ellen Hymowitz?
But you should ask a rabbi.
phoebe
9/6/2006
Phoebe here, I’d just like to say that I am not my mother, even if we do sort of look alike!
phoebe
9/6/2006
And I’m not sure what makes punching back “assimilation,” unless it’s punching back while holding a gin and tonic in the other hand, wearing head-to-toe Lacoste. Is the only non-assimilated response a nebbishy, Woody Allen-esque sprint in the opposite direction?
Eric
9/6/2006
Personally, I like the punch from “The Sun Also Rises”, though I wasn’t huge on the Jew’s entire role in the book.