What causes antisemitism is that certain jews are indeed arrogant and too obsessed with their own jewishness and all injustices done to jewish people while basically ignoring all the other tragedies of human history. A jew can be born in Stockholm by swedish jewish parents who lived in Sweden for 200 years and one day realize he's so "proud" of being jewish that he has to go become a settler in Israel.
I met bad jews and I met good jews and the good jews are those who don't make a big thing out of being jewish. They don't obsess with it.
If I met an italian or british person who walked around all day talking about their own nationality and history and ethnic identity with everyone they met, I would want to punch him in the face.
The exception is "ultra-orthodox", I met a lot of them and as long as you're somewhat interested in judaism they will treat you in a very nice way. The worst jews I met are ashkenaz conservatives and "modern" orthodox from Sweden, Denmark, Britain etc. These are the ones who don't even want non-jews to visit their synagogues and act both arrogant and superior. They don't rule the world with a secret conspiracy but they do have smaller communities based on nepotism and elitism on a local level.
I know of a polish jewish holocaust survivor who was thrown out of the Holocaust museum in Stockholm because the conservative jews of mainly german ancestry (who lived safely in Sweden while jews were slaughtered all over Europe) didn't like that she thought it was wrong that people had to pay to witness some of what she had been through.
Ashkenazim of german origin are in my experience unbelievably arrogant and ignorant. I feel a sting of antisemitism when dealing with those but my good experiences of "ultra" orthodox kind of makes up for it and prevents me from becoming totally antisemitic based on just select experiences.
So basically you could say I like the two extremes, either secularised atheist jews or jews in black hats and coats. I really dislike the identity-obsessed and "nationalist" jews in between. Those who are basically like any other person in the country where they live but make an extremely big thing out of being jewish, act elitist, act superior. I also think that a "Salmander", "Berliner" or "Posener" will generally be a bigger as*hole than a "Kazimierska" or a "Gwrtz".
It's a well known fact in Sweden that when the polish jews immigrated in the early 1900 and after WWII, they were treated with racism and skepticism by the already established and very arrogant german-ashkenazi families dating back to Aaron Isaac, the first jew in Sweden.
If you read books by Isac B Singer or actually talk to people who lived in pre-Hitler Warsaw, you learn about how much certain jews actually thought of themselves as "better" than others.
The cause of a lot of antisemitism can be traced back to a few german jewish elite families and their descendents today.
Last edited by Zoonic on 06 May 2009, 1:55 pm, edited 3 times in total.
06 May 2009, 12:53 pm
