Bieganski Lives: "Poland is Safe for Jews. How Ironic." "You support Israel; What's the Catch?"

 

Michael Rubenfeld is a Canadian-Polish-Jewish actor, writer, festival producer, and YouTube content creator. He recently published a video in which he says it is "ironic" that as a Jew he feels safe in Poland, safer than he would feel in Canada or the US. You can view that video at the link below. 

The assumption that Poland should be unsafe for Jews could be attributed to a couple of different factors. The Nazis invaded Poland in 1939. Poland had Europe's largest Jewish population. The Holocaust occurred largely in Poland, in notorious death camps like Auschwitz, Birkenau, Treblinka, etc. 

There's another factor that might indicate to Rubenfeld that Poland is supposed to be unsafe for Jews. that is the Bieganski Brute Polak stereotype. 

I've encountered what seems to me to be the Bieganski, Brute Polak stereotype in responses to recent articles I've published. 

I support Israel. My support for Israel is clear from my articles. 

In a recent article, posted here, I argued that 

* When Christians commit anti-Semitic crimes, they are acting against the example of their founder, their scripture, and their highest teachings over the course of centuries. And yet, mass media and academia, when addressing Christian anti-Semitism, pay more attention to religion than historical context re: Christian anti-Semitism. 

* When Muslims commit anti-Semitic crimes, they are acting in accord with the example of their founder, their scripture, and their most authoritative teachings over the course of centuries. And yet, mass media and academia, when addressing Muslim anti-Semitism, pay more attention to historical context than to religion re: Muslim anti-Semitism. 

I recommended a reversal of this approach. 

Most online comments were positive, but a couple reflected, it seemed to me, the domination of the Bieganski stereotype in the mindset of the person making the comment. 

One person said, "You didn't mention the Polish numerus clausus!" Another person said, "You didn't mention John Chrysostom!" 

The implication of these complaints is that I was hiding something or lying or just plain stupid. In short, that I am Bieganski. 

This is unfortunate. I want to be an ally. And two readers could see only an enemy. 



View Michael Rubenfeld's vlog here

How We Understand Anti-Semitism

 

How We Understand Anti-Semitism, Christianity, and Islam
 Let's avoid popular misconceptions

 

The atrocities Hamas committed on October 7, 2023, and subsequent worldwide support for the genocidal "judenrein-from-the-river-to-the-sea" ideology revealed the prevalence of widespread anti-Semitism. Terrorism has a worldwide reach. The Israel-Hamas war affects international markets and geopolitics. Anyone on the planet, Jewish or not, might suffer from anti-Semitism. It is important, therefore, to understand anti-Semitism.

 

This essay rejects supernatural or genetic explanations for anti-Semitism. Jews are not a different species of human being. Humans are more alike than different. Children born black or white, Muslim or Jewish, offer the same potential.

 

Both anti-Semites and philo-Semites repeat the same formulaic phrases: "Jews are the most persecuted minority," and "Anti-Semitism is the world's oldest hatred." Anti-Semites like these phrases. There must be something wrong with Jews, they insist, since Jews are hated everywhere. My friend Alex, a philo-Semite, repeats these phrases as well. He sees them as proof of a unique and romantic quality to Jewishness. The pharaohs of ancient Egypt, the seventeenth-century Ukrainian leader Bogdan Chmielnicki, and Hamas are all identical because they all killed Jews. I disagree. The pharaohs, seventeenth-century Ukrainians, and Hamas are not magical reincarnations of each other. They had different motivations, methods, and goals. No supernatural thread connects them. To understand them, one must understand their particular historical context, not presumed supernatural curses.

 

Anti-Semitism isn't the world's oldest hatred, nor is it the hatred with the highest body count. Misogyny has a longer history and has claimed more victims. The caste system in India "has existed in some form for at least 3000 years." Recent estimates are that there are 200 million Dalits, aka untouchables. The suffering Dalits have endured is unspeakable.

 

Westerners, living in a world strongly affected by Christendom, associate anti-Semitism with Christianity. The standard approach is to blame Christianity, the religion, and to ignore historical context. If discussing anti-Semitism among Muslims, the standard position is to argue that historical context, rather than religion, caused the anti-Semitism. This essay argues for a reverse of these approaches.

 

These approaches distort reality. When Christianity is understood as inherently anti-Semitic, Christians, even those who support Israel, are assessed as inescapably anti-Semitic. Anthony Weiner is a former congressman who currently broadcasts via WABC. In October, 2023, he made a comment that shocked me. I requested clarification. Did he really say that "Christians support Israel because they want all the Jews to be in one spot so that God can kill them all more easily"? Weiner did not respond with a yes or a no, but with a link to a Washington Post article.

 

In the "Christianity is anti-Semitic" worldview, Christians who are not anti-Semitic are understood to be "modernized." In this view, the more Christian you are, the more anti-Semitic you are, and the more "modern" or "secular" you are, the less anti-Semitic you are. Data does not support this assumption. In Russell Middleton's peer-reviewed publication, "Do Christian Beliefs Cause anti-Semitism?" Middleton concluded that "Religious orthodoxy was uncorrelated with anti-Semitism" and that "the well-springs of anti-Semitism today" may be "largely secular." A 2019 Gallup poll suggested that those who attend church regularly are more likely to be sympathetic to Israel. "Highly religious Americans continue to be much more sympathetic toward Israel than those who are less religious." Worldwide anti-Semitic protests in autumn, 2023, are not populated by visibly Christian protestors. Rather, these protesters appear to be more Woke than Christian.

 

This distortion of Christians and Christianity matters. Some start from this false assumption and go on to apply a distorted lens to Islam. That distorted conclusion goes like this, "Christians were anti-Semitic when they were devout, but as they modernized they became less anti-Semitic." We can't assume that anything like this process will change the hearts and minds of Muslims. "Modern" Muslims might turn out to be just as anti-Semitic as "old-fashioned" Muslims.  

 

This essay will argue that to understand anti-Semitism among Christians, one must factor in historical context. To understand anti-Semitism among Muslims, more attention must be paid to religion.

Splinters from a Broken Heart: Israel, Hamas and Social Media

 

Splinters from a Broken Heart
Israel, Hamas, and social media

Pieter Bruegel the Elder was a sixteenth-century star in the Dutch and Flemish Renaissance. He's most often associated with paintings of peasants and other common people doing everyday things: hunting in the snow, ice-skating, dancing at a wedding, eating, sleeping, and playing children's games. In one painting, a peasant is doing what peasants have been doing for over ten thousand years. He is plowing. The earth rises up in furrows. The horse trudges forward. The plowman keeps his gaze directed at the ground beneath his feet. On a terrace beneath the plowman, a blank-faced shepherd, surrounded by sheep, leans on his staff and directs his gaze toward the sky. Further down, a fisherman casts out his line. In the distance, the wind puffs the sails of a galleon. Only after learning the name of the painting does the viewer search the scene beyond these prominent features. And there the viewer finds them: two pale, naked legs are plunging into the water. This is "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus." Icarus was a character in Greek mythology. His father manufactured wings so his son could fly. The wings gave way and Icarus fell to earth. Many other artists have depicted Icarus' fall. They usually place him in the center. Bruegel did not.

In 1938, almost four hundred years after "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus," poet W.H. Auden visited Belgium's Royal Museums of Fine Arts. He wrote a poem about the paintings he saw there. Auden observes that the Old Masters were never wrong in their artistic depictions of human suffering. In Nativity scenes, there are some children who don't much care about the birth of the Messiah; they are off ice-skating. In scenes of martyrdom, "the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse scratches its innocent behind on a tree."

And then there is that boy falling out of the sky.

"the ploughman may

have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,

but for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone

as it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green

water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen

something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,

had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on."

The human ability to ignore shocking data and to carry on with the business of every day life is an important survival skill. Perhaps nothing is as shocking to an individual as losing a loved one to death, and yet we get up the next morning, make breakfast, clock in at work, and march dully forward into a future void where our departed loved one will never again play any part. The problem is, of course, that evil people count on this human ability to stroll past atrocity. The internet seemed, at first, to promise that that most precious of commodities, human attention, would be focused on wrongdoing. Evil people, thus exposed, would hesitate to commit crimes, or would stop committing crimes once those crimes were filmed and witnessed by others.

Der Spiegel "Wir Haben Angst" Jews are Afraid

 From the New York Times: 

“Wir Haben Angst,” or “We Are Scared,” was the headline across this week’s cover of Der Spiegel, the leading German newsmagazine, over photographs of four German Jews, one of them a 90-year-old Holocaust survivor, Ivar Buterfas-Frankenthal, who said, “We Jews are once again easy targets.”

Full article here

American Anti-Semitism is Off the Scale; NYC Anti-Semites Carry "Keep World Clean" Sign

 

Source

UC Davis African American Studies Professor Jemma Decristo Threatens Jews and Their Children

 

To folks (Jan) who will say, "What does this have to do with Bieganski the Brute Polak Stereotype"? I can only reply. Read the book. Thank you. 

There are many subgroups in America. Religious, racial, ethnic. You can't talk about how Poles and other Bohunks are stereotyped in America without also talking about how other groups are talked about. African Americans are a major subgroup. Compare how anti-Semitism among blacks is talked about with how anti-Semitism among Poles or other Slavs is talked about. If a Polish Catholic posted this threat, it would make headlines around the world. I learned about African American studies professor Jemma Decristo's threat only by chance. It is not making headline news at all. 

"The End of Jewish Life in Western Europe"