that they'll disown jewish christians as no longer being jews, yet they'll consider Karl Marx the founder of communism who wrote that religion is the opium of the masses as still being jewish.
Karl Marx was no friend of religion or God. If the jews consider jewish christians to be meshumadim, then I'm waiting for jews to be consistent and call Karl Marx a meshumad.
6 comments:
I was under the impression Marx had Jewish ancestry but wasn't actually Jewish.
At any rate, there is a difference between Jews who have embraced the wrong faith and Marx.
Jews who become Chrisians actively reject Judaism. Marx didn't so much reject it for another religion as he did abandon it.
There's a world of difference there
"Karl's mother, born Henrietta Pressburg, was a Dutch Jew" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx
Secondly, there's no real difference between "embracing the wrong faith" and actively rejecting "the right" faith.
It would seem to me that jews who go to athiesm is a bigger rejection of judaism than jews who go to christianity. At least jewish christians believe the old testament even though it gets interpreted differently.
From what I seen from the OU's web page that I pointed out a while back, the talmud has a much wider definition of meshumadut that would have included Karl Marx, liberally affiliated American jews, and Israel's secular jews if it were applied honestly.
Nothing's more Jewish than angst, SJ!
If it makes you feel better, I don't consider Karl Marx Jewish. Yes, he may have been more Jewish, than, say, the Pope, but what he actually was was an atheist of (assimilated) Jewish descent, and a jerky anti-semite, to boot. Not exactly a paragon of religious or cultural affiliation with the community.
You, on the other hand, are a Jew who has chosen a different religious path. More power to you. The big questions are not whether the Talmud considers you Jewish, or whether various bozos on the internet consider yourself Jewish. Do you consider yourself Jewish? Do you consider yourself NOT Jewish? Those aren't questions other people can answer.
Jewishness, for me anyway, is largely self-defined. If you feel a connection, there is one. God knows what Marx felt-- but given that both parents converted before he was born and he spent his life bashing Jews as capitalist pigs, I can't imagine he was connecting his identity with klal yisrael.
"If it makes you feel better, I don't consider Karl Marx Jewish."
Finally. It's about time jews start saying that about Karl Marx.
Honestly, SJ, my impression is that the "Marx was Jewish" meme has historically been pushed by non-Jews as a way of delegitimizing socialism/communism (Marx wasn't a "real" European, etc, he was a foreigner, Socialism is a "Jewish" idea, etc.) as well as the Jewish community (from the Russian civil war to the Red Scares of the 50s to today on the internet, accusing Jews of "socialism"-- and therefore all the ills done in its name-- is a great way of painting with a broad brush.) Anti-Communists did the same thing with Lenin, who had both Jewish as well as Mongolian ancestors.
The "Marx is Jewish" line then trickled down into Jewish society, where people had to respond to it. Either they ran with it either as a compliment (the left) or recoiled in horror (the right). The center probably shrugged and got on with life.
If it hadn't been for so many anti-socialists pushing Marx's ancestry over the past 100-plus years, I don't know that the Jewish community would necessarily care about his roots. After all, he was born a baptized Lutheran and rebelled by becoming a vocal atheist. His family never practiced or identified as Jews during his life, and neither did he. Other than his last name and DNA, there's just not much Jewish content there.
Ok fair enough. It would be great though if traditional jews were honest about the Talmud's wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiide definition of meshumadut.
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