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Michael Lipkin's avatar

I think the specific criticism in a case like this is that the guilty party adopted this identity because they saw it as an upgrade in status--therefore, it was self-serving, strike one--and that they thereby contribute to the fiction that victimized groups actually the privileged ones and privileged groups are victimized. Agree, in any case, that it's a shame there's no Roth around to write about this.

For what it's worth, I went through a similar experience when I was a kid. I went to one of those Jewish Borscht Belt bungalow colonies where you'd see seniors with numbers tattooed on their arms playing tennis and doing the backstroke. Since it was the Catskills, these Hasids would come around periodically to proselytize us; something no one really objected to, I think out of Jewish guilt for not being more observant. Most of the other kids would avoid them like the plague, but I was pretty into religious education, and I thought what we were learning was pure unadulterated Judaism (the Hebrew alphabet, etc.), and so I was obligated to learn it. Eventually, it came time to get tefillin, and one of the dudes asked me if my mother was Jewish. I told them she wasn't, and they booted me out of the whole program with a lot of tsk-tsking. Really confused me for a very long time.

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Prickly Bear's avatar

I was accused of being a pack of Jews while arguing with Holocaust deniers on Stormfront a little under 20 years ago. I liked the accusation and would've liked to be, considering the stakes, but I'll always be a nothing white dude, far as that goes. That led me into a history undergrad and eventually to follow your substack. It was nice to be a Jew for a time. Sadly it was short.

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