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in other words, holiness is a rejection of all other groups. This inevitably leads to hostility against the Jews, which further increases the separation in a feedback loop.
However, religions in general make their adherents 'special and separate' and use this premise to dehumanize non members, so that's kind of standard operating procedure for religions.
I find it interesting that the Armenian Orthodox Church maintains a separation from other Orthodox churches over fairly minor theological differences. This makes Armenian Orthodoxy a particular religion for a certain group of people, the Armenians. And they also have a history of genocide.
I'm not saying it's bad to discourage conversion, only that it alienates people.
And tend to be outspoken leftists, like Anita SarkeesIAN and Ana KasparIAN and Cherilyn SarkisIAN ("Cher"), "degenerates" like KardashIAN or Christy CanYON (real name: Melissa BardizbanIAN)
Again, why?
Add to this list Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley from KISS (I don't know their real "secret names").
Maybe it's just evolution. The Jews that are fans of the majority culture don't remain Jews very long, as their children and grandchildren intermarry.
I think that's because Parsis go out of their way to get along and be liked. There are supposedly many Indian charities and hospitals funded by Parsis.
- the Indians in Uganda dominated commerce there until they were kicked out
Right, I think there are huge economic benefits to being part of a very tight and very closed ethnic group which is inclined toward commerce.
Weinreich’s first innovation in the History was to argue, against apparent common sense and abundant personal experience, that Yiddish was formed not through isolation but through constant interaction combined with a chosen separateness. The walled-off ghettos of 18th-century European cities, although they preserved Yiddish, were not the environment that gave it life. Weinreich’s innovation was to argue that “Jewish otherness”—and the language that goes with it—“cannot be the result of ‘exclusion’; it is not even the result of exile.”
Where others had persistently told the story of confinement, prejudice, and persecution, Weinreich spoke of independence, self-government, selfassertion, and community building. It was undeniable that “without communal separateness there is no separate language,” and so the separateness of the Ashkenazi community was necessary for Yiddish to arise. But the modern explanation for that separateness, according to Weinreich, got the story exactly backward. Nineteenth-century Jewish activists, demanding rights of citizenship, created the story that the Jews had been locked in ghettos since the Middle Ages, “and thus excluded from society at large and its intellectual development; in this forced isolation”—an influential Jewish assimilationist argued—“both their mode of life in general and their language in particular became corrupted.” ...
For Weinreich, based on both the linguistic and historical evidence, there could be no doubt that up until the 18th century “the Jews wanted to be by themselves. … Separate residence (strange as this may appear in the light of present Jewish and general conceptions of rights) was part of the privileges granted the Jews at their own request” so they could worship together; provide for their own slaughterhouse, bathhouse, cemetery, and social halls; study together; run their own rabbinic courts; supervise tax collection; and when necessary, protect themselves from attacks.
Archeology supports this part of Weinreich’s argument. Befuddled tour guides in Prague struggle to explain why, given the expectation of exclusion of Jews, the city’s famous Jewish quarter, Josefov, is so central to the old town. (One misguided explanation is that the Jews were given land near the river that was too marshy for the other city inhabitants, prone to flooding and disease-bearing miasmas.) But Prague’s Josefov is not an isolated case—it is typical. Weinreich’s point is that exclusion could also be exclusivity; restrictions also came with designated privileges. In Trier, Mainz, Aachen, Cologne, Worms, and more than 100 medieval towns in Central Europe, the Jewish district was both a central and a prime location, close to the economic heart of the city. The German Bishop Rüdiger, granting a charter of the city of Speyer in 1084 wrote, “I thought that I would increase the glory of our city a thousandfold if I were to include Jews.”
The Jews are an ignorant and barbarous people, who have long united the most sordid avarice with the most detestable superstition and the most invincible hatred for every people by whom they are tolerated and enriched.
But that "sanctified us" (kidshanu) can also be read as "separated us":
So a core principle of Judaism is separation from other people. This is literally what it means to be holy.
In other words, holiness is a rejection of all other groups. This inevitably leads to hostility against the Jews, which further increases the separation in a feedback loop.
So my argument here is that Judaism itself creates anti-Semitism, which in turn helps to maintain Judaism.