The Privilege Trap

 

I find it interesting that one of the things mentioned in the video was whether students had attended a private school. I grew up going to a private Jewish school. It had nothing to do with my parents being rich and us being privileged. One might argue the opposite. As a minority group, we lacked the privilege of being able to attend a public school that was consistent with our values.

This is an example of how context matters. There is a danger with these kinds of exercises that, by focusing on certain privileges, they implicitly ignore other privileges. This opens the door for these exercises to function, not as tools for people to understand how they are privileged, but as an opportunity for some people to pretend that they are not privileged.

Another dangerous aspect of this exercise is that it treats the economy as a fixed pie in which whatever you get comes at the expense of someone else. Imagine that some slow kid won the $100 and refused to share. Would a fast kid, who was forced to start at the back have the moral right to take the money by force? If we agree that the slow kid does not deserve the money but the fast kid who would have won a fair race does then the slow kid is a thief and the fast kid should have the right to use force to get back what is rightfully his. 

Imagine a rich man who benefited from privilege and a poor man who did not. The poor man comes to the rich man's home, pulls out a gun and demands a share of the rich man's fortune. If the rich man goes for his gun and kills the poor man, is he a murderer? If the poor man kills the rich man, is he a murderer? Clearly, for either of them to claim self-defense, we would have to agree as to which of them had a legitimate claim on the money in the first place.    

This is not an idle question. Every day I put my life in your hands on the assumption that we fundamentally agree about the legitimacy of property rights. The moment that trust is breached, the consequences as they play out perhaps over years, are truly Hobbesian. 

Judaism As a Culture

 

When dealing with Judaism, it is very difficult to untangle what is culture and what is religion. Judaism is both an ethnic culture and a religion in which the two are inseparably linked. Part of the problem is that we have the same word "Jew" for both religion and culture. It is obvious that there is something called Irish culture as well as an Irish religion. This religion is called Catholicism. Even though the two are closely intertwined and Irish culture has been heavily influenced by Irish Catholicism, clearly these are distinct things. In differentiating Irish Catholicism from Irish culture, it helps that there are over a billion Catholics in the world who do not identify with Irish culture. In the case of Judaism, one is hard-pressed to find someone who practices the Jewish religion who does not also identify with Jewish culture. Even though Judaism does accept converts, in practice, the process of conversion also tends to involve taking on Jewish culture.

The main reason, I suspect, for this, is that the Jewish argument relies on a deep emotional connection to the Jewish nation as something that goes back to antiquity and has survived despite persecution. The Christian parallel to this would be whether you identify with the man Jesus of Nazareth. Without that identification, the theological argument of Jesus' godhood will not connect with the listener. Similarly with Judaism, if someone connects to the Jewish story then they are likely to be open to the argument that God has been using the Jewish people as part of a plan to enlighten the rest of the world with ethical monotheism. To be clear, one does not have to be Jewish to serve God and play a productive role in sanctifying the world.

As a Jew, I do not believe that I am spiritually better than anybody else. Here it is useful to apply Amy Chua's three rules for successful cultures. Judaism is something fantastic and it is a great privilege to be a Jew. That being said, I feel incredibly inadequate, as an individual, to live up to Judaism's lofty standards. While I am far from perfect, I do try to practice the discipline of Jewish ritual in an attempt to be worthy of Judaism.

Christian Microaggressions

 As a Jew whose academic training largely revolved around history, I have a complicated relationship with Christianity. On the one hand, Christianity is very similar to Judaism and shares the Hebrew Bible. That being said, there is a bloody history of Christian persecution. More importantly is the legacy of the doctrine of Versus Israel, the True Israel. The idea is that Christians have replaced the Jews as God’s chosen people and all the blessings of the Hebrew Bible now apply to Christians. An extreme version of this kind of thinking can be seen today among White Supremacist groups like the Christian Identity movement. Not all Christians subscribe to Verus Israel theology. Many Christians believe in a dual covenant theology where Jews remain the Nation of Israel with all of its blessings. Vatican II’s Nostra Aetate is a good example of this kind of thinking.  

Verus Israel can be seen as the ultimate act of cultural appropriation and the violent history behind this cannot be denied. Of course, Christians have the right to be Christians and that means that they have the right to make use of material that has its origins in Judaism. This raises a question though of where a line should be drawn and something becomes a microaggression, even an unconscious one, where our Christian engages in thinking that indicates a replacement theology that denies Judaism its cultural heritage. To make matters more complicated, our Christian may honestly be driven by a desire to show his respect for Judaism.

It seems obvious to me that Christians should be allowed to read the Hebrew Bible. It should also follow that they are allowed to read the Hebrew Bible in its original Hebrew. What about the use of Hebrew phrases? Is that a sign of respect or is it reflect even a subconscious desire to erase Judaism? What about the use of Jewish symbols like the Star of David? Can Christians make use of Jewish rituals that Christians have historically not practiced? For example, can Christians create a Passover seder for themselves? The Last Supper was a Passover Seder (unless you go with the Gospel of John) so why should Christians not take up the practice. The problem is that such activity can make it appear that the Christian is claiming the mantel of Judaism for himself.

A further wrinkle in this is Christian missionary activity. Obviously, Christians have the right to try to convince Jews to convert to Christianity just as Christians have the right to try to convert Muslims and Hindus. That being said, there are groups like Jews for Jesus who appropriate Jewish practices for themselves as part of a marketing campaign to make Christianity acceptable to Jews. There is the issue of Christians dishonestly trying to portray themselves as Jews to engage in missionary activity. Being a missionary is fine as long as you are honest about your intentions. On top of that is the issue of trying to replace Judaism.

The irony is that all of this could be dismissed over some laughs and drinks if it were not for the growing recognition of microaggressions. Considering the long and dark history of Verus Israel, any general discussion of microaggressions that did not include Christian appropriation of Jewish culture becomes its own form of microaggression. To say that microaggressions against other groups matter but that microaggressions against Jews do not, denies Jews their history as an oppressed group.

Part of the problem with microaggressions and other forms of sensitivity training is that it forces everyone into a grievance arms race. All of us have our prejudices and say things we should not. As such we are vulnerable to being discredited. This traps us into trying to discredit other people for their microaggressions before they can discredit us. In essence, this is the old noticing the speck in the other person’s eye in order to ignore the log in our own eye. This was taught by a great Jewish thinker named Jesus.

Why You Should Hire Me to Teach History

 

My chief strength is that I am very good at absorbing information, particularly when it comes to history, and organizing it in my head. Something that I regularly teach my students is that one of the best ways to remember information is if you can connect it to some other information, creating a network. For example, I can remember all the American presidents not because I sat down and tried to memorize a list of names because I associate them with things that happened during their presidencies. You can see a similar concept with music. People can absorb shocking amounts of information if it is set to a tune because that connects the different pieces together. Those who know me personally can tell you that I possess the dreadful combination of being able to sing my way through numerous musicals without actually being able to sing.

It is critical for students to start working on their storehouse of networked information early on because it sets up for a Matthew effect. The students who start off knowing more information are going to learn more. Hence, it is all the more important to make sure that students from disadvantaged backgrounds do not fall behind and are actively working to master their own store of information. 

A Paulo Freire follower would dismiss me as a banker teacher. My response would be that students are not going to be able to challenge anything unless they have a store of cultural information to begin with. Without that, they are doomed to become the puppets of the demagogue they see on TV or who stands in the front of the classroom.

To be clear, when I say that students need a store of cultural information that does not mean that I have all the information that is relevant to them. Students should turn to other teachers in school, religious and cultural leaders, and ultimately to books, including Freire's. Learning is a lifelong process. My job is to show students that it is possible to master vast quantities of information and to start them on the process of gaining their own store for themselves.

People might argue that, in a world of internet access, having a store of information, is useless. I would argue that the internet is not a replacement for memory. On the contrary, with so much information available, the more information you start with the more you can take in online. This is the Matthew effect again. Furthermore, the more you know the easier it becomes to avoid being swayed by the first thing you read on a topic. Information contradicts other information and there is reason to further explore. 

Something I have gained from my lifetime of reading is that I am at peace acknowledging that I know very little. Ask me a question and I will answer you to the best of my knowledge but then suggest that you read on for yourself. Put me in front of a classroom and that is what I will be trying to do.