Jewish Identity Addendum

(Note: I don't use people's names in my blog entries unless they are public figures.)

My Jewish-Muslim neighbour criticized Jewish Identity & Prosetylizing on three fronts:

1. Many religious Jews recognize that the Holocaust is irrelevant to their salvation and have their priorities straight.
   
2. Many Muslims also have their priorities misaligned and truly understanding the Greatness of God above all things is something that most people fail at, not just Jews.
   
3. Remembering the Holocaust is a good thing, particularly to Westerners because it was a Western phenomenon.

Regarding the first point, I agree with him: the original post did generalize too much. I actually do see eye-to-eye with the statements of some Orthodox rabbis. Furthermore, my criticism was not directed towards religious Jews who magnify the Divine and that which is connected to it, such as the messengers of God and Scripture. Rather, I am criticizing those Jews who sit back and laugh at jokes about Moses, the Ten Commandments, and even God, but are all up in arms if someone denies the Holocaust. These are the people who have taken the Holocaust as their identity in place of God's Chosen People.

This brings me to the second point: yes, there are secular Muslims who don't have their priorities straight. However, you'd be hard-pressed to find a Muslim, even an extremely secular Muslim, who laughs at jokes about the Prophet Muhammad (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam), the Qur'an, or God. In fact, it would be blasphemy for Muslims to laugh at jokes about Moses or Jesus (peace be upon them). Using religion to justify one's agenda or not truly understanding the Magnificence of God is very different from openly mocking that which God has deemed sacred. Yet, we find that some secular Jews think they have an open license to poke fun at the Ten Commandments and Moses in the name of entertainment.

Regarding the third point, I agree that studying history, of which the Holocaust is one part, is important. I would also like to point out that the stubborn existence of the far-right in Europe is even more reason for Westerners to understand the Holocaust. However, aggressive prosetylizing while inflicting suffering on others breeds contempt. The world has seen many massacres and genocides, yet somehow, Jewish suffering is supposed to be greater than the rest of our suffering. And, in particular, given how much of an affront the state of Israel is to Muslims, having the world recognize Jews as being the objects of suffering without also recognizing how much they perpetrate suffering in Palestine is unpalatable at best.