WHY WE NEED JUDAISM, PART I :

We here at Brothers Judd are big fans of Libertarian Samizdata and have the highest regard for Perry de Havilland. But today he wrote something, in regard to our post about using school vouchers to preserve Jewish identity, that seems terribly silly :

But maybe it is just that Jews in America (and Britain for that matter) have just grown up and evolved away from a narrow tribal collective mindset. They realise that their identity is not primarily I am a Jew, but rather I am David Cohen. In fact, perhaps the reason for this Jewish 'problem' is that due to hundreds of generations of being free from the limiting delusion of 'blood and soil' has made Jews uniquely suited to embrace individualistic notions of identity. Jews have a Jewish nation state in Israel now if they want it... and it is just another messy nation state like any other, better than some and worse than others. Few people are better placed psychologically than the world's Jews at this point in time to see the world for what it really is: the 'Promised Land' is Jewish again and the world still sucks.

Perhaps the only thing that made the Jews a collective 'tribe' at all was being forced together by the hostility of host societies who despised them for not being part of their 'Volk'. The Jewish 'problem' of a loss of identity in the larger cosmopolitan society is not a problem at all... it is a blessing! Just as 'everyone can be Irish on St. Patrick's Day', there is nothing wrong with letting Jewish identity (and every other limiting ghetto-of-the-mind) become little more than a bit of cultural spice of only passing significance. As other people have stopped regarding Jews as a people apart, it is not surprising that Jews have started to do the same.

Now Perry and I have in the past had an entire discussion over whether Libertarianism would even exist in the absence of the Judeo-Christian tradition and whether it is tenable as a political system in a society where Judeo-Christian morality does not obtain. This all may cause your eyes to glaze over, but, especially in light of yesterday's other discussion with href=http://englandssword.blogspot.com/2002_07_14_englandssword_archive.html#85257587>Iain Murray, concerning whether manners can be restored in post-Christian Britain, it seems worth resurrecting.
Posted by Orrin Judd at July 19, 2002 5:10 PM