{"id":46180,"date":"2024-02-22T08:41:20","date_gmt":"2024-02-22T16:41:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=46180"},"modified":"2024-02-22T08:41:20","modified_gmt":"2024-02-22T16:41:20","slug":"robert-lipsyte-what-kind-of-jew-am-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2024\/02\/22\/robert-lipsyte-what-kind-of-jew-am-i\/","title":{"rendered":"Robert Lipsyte: What Kind of Jew Am I?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

I grew up in the least-Jewish Jewish family around in the 1950s. We celebrated Christmas every year in a big-time fashion: tree, decorations, and all. And despite the desires of my dear grandmother, there would be no temple, no Sunday Hebrew school, no religion of any sort. I actually went to a Quaker school and I suspect that the first temple I ever entered was at 13 for a friend\u2019s bar mitzvah. I did have one Israeli buddy for a few years, a neighbor who got a black-and-white TV before we did and so I spent as much time as I could in his apartment until his family went back to the Middle East. Yes, sometime in those early years, I was on the street with my own father when a passing stranger made an antisemitic slur and, being a tough, no-nonsense guy (\u201cMajor\u201d Engelhardt as he liked his friends to call him from his years in World War II), my dad went right after him. And yes, one of my first roommates at Yale (which had only removed<\/a> its Jewish quotas a year or two before I arrived in 1962), someone I grew to like, later told me that his dad, undoubtedly a Yale alumni, had specifically warned him to watch out for any Jew at Yale whose father was in the insurance business. (Consider that a knife through the heart!)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

And none of that has ever changed. I married an ex-Catholic, brought my kids up without religion, and though there\u2019s a temple catty-corner to the apartment building I\u2019ve lived in for almost the last half-century, I\u2019ve only been inside it once (for a Pete Seeger concert). And yet, explain it as you will, I take what Benjamin Netanyahu and crew, the most right-wing government in Israel\u2019s history, are doing in Gaza in a strangely personal fashion. Yes, I was horrified when Hamas committed its grim crimes on October 7th, but somehow, somewhere deep in my heart, I never thought that the Israelis would respond not just in kind but in a fashion even more horrifying and without end.<\/p>\n

I mean, honestly, given the historic suffering of Jews, who the hell kills untold thousands<\/a> of children in a 25-mile-strip of land; attacks<\/a> every hospital in sight; instantly cuts off<\/a> food, fuel, and water to more than two million people; causes massive deaths<\/a> (a daily toll higher<\/a> than any other significant twenty-first-century conflict); destroys more than half<\/a> of that area\u2019s housing; and leaves untold thousands of Gazan civilians starving<\/a> to death and with untreated illnesses<\/a> of all sorts \u2014 and, after all of that, still isn\u2019t faintly done? Somehow \u2014 yes, call it the hidden Jew in me \u2014 I take offense at that. And in that context, let me turn to TomDispatch<\/em> regular<\/a> Robert Lipsyte who offers his own very personal look at what being Jewish has meant to him and means to him now in this all-too-hellish world of ours.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m Heartbroken by the War in Israel<\/strong>
\nBut I Know What Eyeless in Gaza Means<\/strong>
\nby Robert Lipsyte<\/strong><\/p>\n

Read at TomDispatch.<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I grew up in the least-Jewish Jewish family around in the 1950s. We celebrated Christmas every year in a big-time fashion: tree, decorations, and all. And despite the desires of my dear grandmother, there would be no temple, no Sunday Hebrew school, no religion of any sort. I actually went to a Quaker school and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-46180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46180"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46180\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46184,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46180\/revisions\/46184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46180"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=46180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}