On "AsAJew"

This is about the reaction to Jonathan Glazer's speech at the Oscars.

We’re back!

Housekeeping notes: Next Monday, paid subscribers will get this month’s ET Watch Home, a series I’m running in 2024 in which I write a little essay about a Czech New Wave movie and its director every month. To mark Women’s History Month, I’ll be writing on Věra Chytilová and Something Different. If you’d like to watch it ahead of time, it’s available on Criterion.

Paid subscribers also get the premium version of The Election Tricycle, a weekly podcast I co-host on this year’s elections in the United States, United Kingdom, and India.

With that! Onto news, views, and Jews. 

THE NEWS

• For Slate, I wrote about the State of the Union and Biden’s Israel policy.

• This week on the Election Tricycle, we spoke about India’s decision to move ahead with implementation of the Citizenship Amendment Act mere weeks before India’s election and, more generally, on the connection between immigration policy and domestic politics in India and the United States. 

• I thought this Financial Times essay on German memory culture was thought provoking and worth reading. 

• My sister, whom some of you may remember from the time she was my ET Ask Home guest, has launched her own Substack. Hers is not on global affairs and Jewish politics but on style and styling (she’s a lot more fun at parties than I am). If you’re interested, take a look here. 

MY VIEWS ON…

…one set of reactions to Jonathan Glazer’s speech!

On Sunday, Jonathan Glazer accepted the Oscar for Best International Feature Film for The Zone of Interest (you can, if you are so inclined, read my own thoughts on the movie here). In his acceptance speech, he said,

“All our choices we made to reflect and confront us in the present. Not to say ‘look what they did then’ — rather, ‘look what we do now.’ Our film shows where dehumanization leads at its worst. It shaped all of our past and present. Right now, we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people. Whether the victims of October 7 in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza — all the victims of this dehumanization, how do we resist?”

I found this quite moving, and also considered it as insight into Glazer’s own motivation for making the movie. I think this is what was upsetting to some: That they had thought of the movie one way, but he had made it with something else in mind. But if I write this newsletter and then say, “When I wrote it, I was thinking of xyz,” and you had thought my motivations were otherwise, that’s fine, but you can’t counter, “Actually, it’s about abc.” Perhaps that’s what you got out of it! But it wasn’t what I, the person who made it, put in. And I thought that was interesting on Glazer’s part. 

Anyway, and predictably, there were a range of reactions to the speech. Some loved it. Some thought it didn’t go far enough. And some, of course, hated it. Of those who hated it, some zeroed in on, “we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness,” insisting that that was the entirety of what Glazer had said, which it was not. I will grant you that Glazer’s was not the most straightforward way of making the point that he made, but also, claiming that you can ascertain the meaning of a sentence by ignoring the second half of it is disingenuous.

But there was another type of response, and that is the type I wanted to focus on in this newsletter: There were those who dismissed Glazer as an “As a Jew” (or “AsAJew”). You can find numerous examples on social media. Some even wrote articles based on the premise.

To call someone an “AsAJew” is basically to say that the person in question is only superficially tapping into Jewish identity to make a political point; often, the person saying this will add that the person is making a political point that will appeal to non-Jews, and that this person is a “pick me Jew.” As a Jews” are often assumed to not go to synagogue, or not keep kosher, or have had a certain kind of Jewish education, or hang out in certain social circles. But when you get beyond the caricatures, the core of what is being said is that the target of this label is using their Jewishness to make a point that is unappealing to other Jews. 

And the thing is: They are indeed doing that! It’s true, Glazer was calling on his Jewish identity to make a point. But here is the other thing: So were his Jewish detractors. 

To take another example: In 2022, former ADL head Abe Foxman accused then-Congressman Andy Levin of “using his Jewishness” to push his position on Israel. Foxman found Levin’s position to be too soft. Levin was using his Jewishness, which he cited often in making his case. But so was Foxman. Foxman was saying that, based on his personal Jewish history and sense of Jewish identity, he felt that Levin was insufficiently supportive of Israel. Foxman is, of course, entitled to that. But Levin, in turn, can use his Jewishness to say that he doesn’t think that’s correct policy.

Glazer was speaking as a Jew. His detractors and denouncers are also speaking as Jews. They are saying that they were upset and offended in what he said about Jewishness and the Holocaust—and that they were upset and offended as Jews, specifically. Perhaps they could say theirs is the majority and his the minority opinion. That’s probably true. But one doesn’t stop being Jewish because one has a minority opinion on something. Most American Jews don’t vote Republican, but those who do are still Jewish. It would never occur to me to call them “AsAJews” when they say, for example, that as Jews they think that any Jew who is serious about Jewishness needs to vote Republican. 

As with “bad Jew” or “not really Jewish,” I think “As A Jew” is mostly a little phrase meant to end discussion or debate. You do not need to argue with your interlocutor if you dismiss them. But your interlocutor will still exist. Their argument will still be there. And they will still be free to make it, and to do so as a Jew. 

AND SOME STUFF ABOUT JEWS

• UCLA and Haaretz are putting on a conference about Israel after Oct. 7 next week. I am on one of the (pre-recorded) panels speaking about Jews and the diaspora. You can learn more about the conference here.

• Hundreds of additional rabbis have joined calls for a ceasefire.

• The Netherlands now has a national Holocaust museum.

• Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, the highest ranking Jewish official in the United States, said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition no longer “fits the needs of Israel” and called for new elections. 

• The Biden administration sanctioned two illegal settlement outposts and three additional settlers. Meanwhile, the West Bank’s chief of police has alleged that “half of the complaints that Palestinians in the West Bank have filed against settlers since the war in the Gaza Strip began have proved to be false.”

-ET

Image from A24.