Hi Skippy, thanks for responding. Unfortunately I'm not sure how productive of a conversation this will be, as I'm not sure we'll get to a point of understanding one another (which is okay, and mainly I'm grateful that we can at least just be respectful thus far). I mean no offence to this, but if multiple people are "misunderstanding" you, then there could be a chance that you either haven't been totally clear, or just that there are disagreements in philosophy and approach between you and "your people," which also again, happens to be the gist of what Judaism is about (longstanding traditions of rabbis arguing with each other over anything and everything because Jews historically disagree and are passionate about debating in order to deepen and expand perspective and wisdom).
It's okay to be misunderstood by your people. Few of us will ever completely understand one another, and that's part of life. The main reason I don't think this will be a productive conversation and why we are unlikely to find much more common ground is that A) you are approaching antisemitism as a problem that Jews have brought upon ourselves and must resolve ourselves by disproving other people's hatred (an impossible feat, as hatred is grounded in nothing but delusion and fear), B) you discuss antisemitism as if there were a singular, objective and accurate image problem facing Jews without any apparent reflection that this is a *projection* that YOU are fueling onto all Jews--even if it is parroting white supremacists across time and space who have spouted the same nonsense about us, and C) you are referring to victimhood as a "card" as if oppression were a game. And as much as many love to invoke the imagery of "oppression olympics," there is no game; all human beings experience trauma that we cannot help at some point in our lives--some more than others. To be affected by that, to struggle with it, for it to change your being is not a sign of "weakness" or indicative of a psychotic game that makes one wish to hold onto their perceived weakness in order to gain sympathy. it's part of the experience of the mammalian brain.
If you don't believe me, you can look to experiments like that of Pavlov; mammalian brains are wired to adapt to trauma (and vicarious trauma, watching or even hearing about things that happen to people around you or even around the world) and it's part of the experience of survival. Given that Jews have survived for thousands of years and we are one of the oldest cultures in human existence and complaining about bs that happens around us/to us is indeed part of our culture, I hardly think you are the authority on deciding whether or not any alleged victim mentality doesn't serve us. Many have already tried to wipe us out, and they have never succeeded. And they never will :)
I am of the mind that referring to any group of people as "playing a victim card" is indicative of one's own inability to cope with or have compassion for their own suffering and hardships. It's much easier and frankly lazy to simply avoid trauma and pain and accept some version of the status quo, and/or internalize the idea that "everything is what you make it!" which incidentally ALWAYS serves the power structures that are in place. And people, individuals and collectively, have profound power to shift those structures if they are willing to acknowledge their pain, feel into the injustice--sadness, and anger it has wrought, and mobilize to make change. That will never involve diminishing or undermining emotions and trauma.
Unfortunately Skippy, GROUPS are made up of INDIVIDUALS. So we need to be critical of individuals, and that's not a bad thing. I'm very unsure of where/how you arrived at the idea that critiquing individuals is a bad thing--especially in a rugged individualistic society as this one, I'm sorry to say I find that perspective extremely irrational and unproductive. Especially powerful individuals, like Chappelle, need to be critiqued AS INDIVIDUALS. He doesn't represent all Black people or all men; he is one person who happens to be a bigot, even if you find him funny.
Likewise, Judaism is made up of millions of Jews of different races, faiths, personalities, sexualities, genders and so on. We will never come together as a group in any monolithic way that would disprove your idea of the "image problem" that we have. And there's just no such thing as an image problem. Antisemitism isn't an image problem any more than racism is. What you're doing is subtly and unconsciously blaming us for how and why other people hate us, while proceeding to put the onus on us to "come together" to change that by "proving" to the world that we're not bad people. It's never going to happen, it's never going to work, and it's never going to be anything other than a projection of your own sense of inadequacy and shame about your Judaism. But you can't project that onto all of us and expect us to want to "come together" under that; look what happened when Bill Cosby spent his career blaming Black men for sagging their pants and thus not getting respect. His shaming words that blamed Black people for the racism they experienced were empty, and they were only vaguely and temporarily covering his own perversion and shame from the morally righteous pedestal he never had any business stepping on.
Your "tough criticism" of Jews is unhelpful and unwanted. If it moves you or Jews you know, that's great. But I'm here telling you just as someone else did, albeit in a much shorter format, that it just sounds to me like you have internalized antisemitism, and thus your perspective on how to "fix" antisemitism is not exactly credible. The fact that you could say Chappelle or anyone else picks "low hanging fruit" asserts some validity or tacit agreement with his words, which only furthers my point. I don't mean to upset or insult you. In a world that hates Jews, it's absolutely impossible not to internalize some self-loathing as a Jewish person. You can pretend that's not true, or you can work on it. I'm younger than you and maybe you think I'm full of shit and not helping us "COME TOGETHER AS A GROUP" and that's fine. We can lean into that time honored Jewish tradition of vehemently disagreeing and vehemently disagree with one another :)
