I can understand the hope, but what is the reality?

My sense is the basis of antisemitism is that tribalism is the third rail of humanity.

While we have gone from basically tribal societies to nations of hundreds of millions of people in the last 3000 years, those millions of years of tribal societies imprinted in our genes are not to be sneezed at.

The core, the gravitational center of Judaism, at least to my somewhat irreligious, Episcopalian eyes, is the Torah, the Old Testament. Which would seem to be a paean to the trials and tribulations of a Bronze Age tribe, whose tribal deity became the locus of Western civilization.

It seemed the Zealous members of this tribe had some issues with the Roman Empire and got sent packing, while the more moderate members remained, many remaining Jews, many converting to the new religion on the block, Christianity and some, with the passing centuries, to Islam.

While those Diaspora Jews clung to the dream of returning.

Though it does seem that lacking that 2000 years of civil evolution to give grounding to the cultural feedback loops, some basic connections to reality did not remain strong. Too many shamans and not enough chieftains.

Ancient Israel was a monarchy, remember?

Democracy and republicanism originated in pantheistic cultures.

Constantine adopted Christianity for the monotheism, to validate The Big Guy Rules, as he brought the sides of the Empire back together. The more pantheistic elements swept under the shroud of the Holy Ghost.

Catholicism became the eschatological basis for European monarchy. Divine right of kings, as opposed to consent of the governed.

When the West went back to democracy and republicanism, it required separation of church and state, essentially culture and civics.

Israel worked reasonably well for several decades, but now that split, quite evident before Oct 7th, between that seriously self centered, basically tribal core and its more cosmopolitan adherents was becoming evident.

Then the whole Chosen schtick has never really gone over well with the neighbors. Remember tribalism? When you make a big issue out of it, it tends to bring out similar responses in others.

Think magnets, you don't have attraction without repulsion, so from a sociological sense, it is playing with fire, especially if you are not the big kids on the block.

Better to balance it out, both nodes and networks. Synchronization and harmonization.

I realize hanging onto those old books gives some sense of history, but maybe a little less Torah and a little more Darwin, given Israel seems to prioritize guns over diplomacy. The law of the jungle is more cycles of rising and falling, not shining cities on a hill.

It's not bronze tipped spears and chariots anymore.

The Amaluks have cameras. A picture is worth a thousand words.

Better hope that light is not a train coming the other way.

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