First, thank you for your thoughtful reply. It does help.
See, I don't know if I am an insider. That's sort of one of the problems, one of the harder issues to articulate. I identify as a Conservative Jew, which is approximately the centrist Jewish movement in America. I'm sort of towards the leftward end of the movement in observance level and all the way into the leftward end in social issues. The blog commenters insulting Miriam Shear for not being a good enough Jew would be as grossed out by me as I'm grossed out by them. The models of Judaism being raised and compared in the debates over this incident exclude me almost entirely. I don't think I'd always want to be included.
And yet, and yet -- Judaism is a huge religion, with more movements and submovements than I think I could count, and it matters to me to think of us all as, in some sense, one people. I want to believe that there are some underlying values we all share, at least the desires to love God and love our fellow humans. I don't ever want to be this enraged, and, well, to be honest, this full of hatred for people whose religion has the same name as mine. I find myself asking whether we are really one people, whether I would want us to be, and what on earth I should be doing now as a liberal Jew in the year 2007. So. Sorry for spouting all that on you.
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momijizukamori
no subject
Date: 2007-02-23 02:03 pm (UTC)See, I don't know if I am an insider. That's sort of one of the problems, one of the harder issues to articulate. I identify as a Conservative Jew, which is approximately the centrist Jewish movement in America. I'm sort of towards the leftward end of the movement in observance level and all the way into the leftward end in social issues. The blog commenters insulting Miriam Shear for not being a good enough Jew would be as grossed out by me as I'm grossed out by them. The models of Judaism being raised and compared in the debates over this incident exclude me almost entirely. I don't think I'd always want to be included.
And yet, and yet -- Judaism is a huge religion, with more movements and submovements than I think I could count, and it matters to me to think of us all as, in some sense, one people. I want to believe that there are some underlying values we all share, at least the desires to love God and love our fellow humans. I don't ever want to be this enraged, and, well, to be honest, this full of hatred for people whose religion has the same name as mine. I find myself asking whether we are really one people, whether I would want us to be, and what on earth I should be doing now as a liberal Jew in the year 2007. So. Sorry for spouting all that on you.