Fever, Zionism, Secularism

[tcpip]

Spent two days off sick from work this week. On Sunday afternoon fellow gamers noted that I looked decidedly off-colour, but I managed to participate in good humour just the same - having decided that the language of Middle-Earth's Dalish needs to be expressed in the accent of the Swedish chef from the Muppets (if Rohirric is similar to old Anglo-Saxon, then Dalish is Swedish). OK, maybe that was the first signs of impending delirium, because all through Sunday night and throughout Monday and Tuesday I was hot, felt cold and clammy, constantly dehydrated.

I have finally finished an essay on Apartheid and Zionism, which nobody of a partisan persuasion will agree with, and follows on somewhat from a previous essay The Country of Palestine : A Zero State Solution. Appropriately today I went to a small lunch in honor of Nigel Sinnott's 70th birthday at Halina Strnad's home; there's a four hour interview with Halina available on Youtube including her experiences in Auschwitz and Stutthof.

Nigel been a secular activist for his entire life, and is a former editor of The Freethinker. A truly intelligent atheist and committed liberal in the British Oxfordshire tradition, his opinions are deeply considered and balanced. Other attendees included a number of people involved in the Humanist Society. Halina too is a member and delighted attendees with a story of a local Jewish function where a younger member at her table (who obviously didn't know) called her self-description as a secular Jew as an oxymoron. "What right do you have to call yourself a Jew?", he asked the holocaust survivor. It's where gallows humour meets irony.

Comments

[iris]

Ahh, I hope you feel better now! Flus and fevers are the worst. I'm find with a cold, but for some reason when fever hits.. I become a huge baby. =

[(Anonymous)]

Jewishness as a 'race' or a religion is one of those things that keeps coming up in one form or another. Some genii out there tend to pull out their trump card with 'but the Nazi's said it was a race!'. Do we want to let the Nazis define our identities or form our arguments?

My view is that Jewishness is, clearly, a religion. You can read all about it in the Old Testament. There are many who are lapsed or entirely secular Jews and that is fine in the same way that most people who class themselves as Christians have no formal involvement whatsoever with any branch of the Church. Anyone can lay claim to membership of any religion with complete authenticity as no human authority can say otherwise with any certainty.

Fever, Zionism, Secularism

[livejournal.livejournal.com]

User zazoosr referenced to your post from Fever, Zionism, Secularism (http://zazoosr.livejournal.com/500591.html) saying: [...] Originally posted by at Fever, Zionism, Secularism [...]

[jonathankorman.livejournal.com]

nobody of a partisan persuasion will agree with

True of almost anything said about Israel ….

[mangled-packets.livejournal.com]

dang, you can write well.

[strang-er.livejournal.com]

Say, do you have any more information or links on discriminatory policies that are applied within Israel?