The Melting Pot

Maybe cumin?

Watch this video; it isn’t long.

Are you confused? You should be confused, but I’ll hold your hand as we piece things together.

First, this video takes place in Uman, a city in the Ukraine more or less due south of Kiev, and, for four and a half hundred years home of a Jewish community, though not one of much note. Ukrainian Jews historically were kind of the ostjuden of the ostjuden, the people that Polish and Lithuanian Jews make fun of for being poor and ignorant. Not unrelatedly, Ukraine was kind of a wasteland of Jewish scholarship, with no prominent scholars hailing from there until the 18th century, when everything starts kicking off.

About three and half hours drive west of Uman is Medzhybizh, site of the court of the Baal Shem Tov and the first home of the Chassidim. Back then, both Medzhybizh and Uman were part of Podolia, a weird chunk of territory that changed hands between Poles, Lithuanians and Turks at various points, and became a free-for-all zone for religious oddities exploiting the political instability and absence of a settled religious establishment, thus the global centre of Sabbateanism and the birthplace of Chassidus. The relationship between Chassidim and Sabbateans is a bit of a thorny issue that won’t overly detain us here. Suffice to say that the official position of orthodox Jewry today is that the rabbinical leaders of Eastern Europe who unanimously denounced the new movement of מתחסדים were completely wrong about everything and falsely condemned a completely kosher movement but that, on the other hand, we have a pristine mesorah passed down from generation to generation which means it is quite impossible for the rabbinical leaders of any generation to make a mistake like this and … and … look a segula!

Anyway, as Chassidus spread like syphilis throughout Eastern Europe, its character changed to meet the new terrain. In Poland and Lithuania it became distinctly highbrow and intellectually sophisticated, after a fashion, and in Galicia/Hungary it became a vehicle for aggressively reactionary traditionalism. In Ukraine itself, it retained its more original form, which was just kind of crackers. The epicentre of that crackery was Bratslav/Breslov, another medium-sized Podolian town of no particular importance until it became a Chassidic centre led by Rabbi Nachman. I don’t need to write much about Rabbi Nachman, whose thought, honestly, is seriously over -studied, and has a good Wikipedia page. However, to go over the basics, Rabbi Nachman was great-grandson of Baal Shem Tov and was born at the place of his court in Medzhybizh. He travelled to Eretz Yisrael, returned to set up a court in Zlatipol, from whence he was run out of town, and then had more success in Breslov. Near the end of his life, he moved to Uman, where he requested that his disciples visit him once a year, and continue to do so after his death. Unlike other Chassidic movements (until recently), he neither sired nor appointed an heir, and Breslov became characterised by an intense and unique devotion to a dead man’s teachings and tomb.

The point here is that Uman represents a chapter in specifically Ashkenazi Jewish history. It’s a niche chapter too. Breslov were treated with the same suspicion by ordinary Chassidim that Chassidim in general were treated with by traditional Jews.¹ If Ukrainian Jews were the ostjuden of the ostjuden, they were the Chassidim of the Chassidim, the ones that Gur or Sanz looked at and said ‘I dunno man, that kind of comes off as antinomian and demented’. Nachmanite teachings were very enchanting to the Martin Bubers of this world, and thus obviously not very appealing to Jews of orthodox disposition who were doing OK mentally. In any case, Breslov, if pathological, was a specifically Ashkenazi pathology, the desperate desire of the chronically nervous and restless mind to escape the terrible burden of thinking all the time. However, since this a racist blog, you obviously will have noticed that everyone in that video is brown, and not just in a skin deep way either.

Falafel, prostitutes and crying a lot

As I mentioned, one of the characteristic practices of Breslov Chassidim, that unites nearly all of the different factions is an annual pilgrimage to the tomb of Rabbi Nachman for the Jewish new year, which was last week. I don’t need to go into too much detail about the goings on there, which are more or less a printout from Ezekiel’s more over the top rants, only somehow much dumber. A friend of mine who sort of dropped out of yeshiva went once, something very common for that demographic. He asked at the hotel desk for some headache pills and they said they didn’t have any, but they’d send up some when they did. A few hours later, a hooker knocked on his door and he had to pay her to go away. On the other hand, everyone who goes there agree it’s legitimately a very intense spiritual experience and, as the Torah says, if it makes you feel good do it, or something like that.

Fifty years ago, the pilgrimage was a fraction of its current size, but the demographics were also completely different. Breslov was a Ashkenazi movement, and the people who went were Ashkenazi. Now, white faces are a distinct minority, and an even smaller one if you take out the old timers, and the MO guys who are just along for the ride to feel something for the first time in their life.

The Great Replacement

As for what the guys in the video are rapping, beats me. Israeli pop music has two principal categories: aggressively kitsch crooning, and that kind of rapping. Someone who knows about this stuff can chime in with precisely what sub genre of American ghetto culture they are ripping off because I don’t know anything beyond Dr Dre.

Anyway, it’s a busy time, Yom Kippur and Succos and what not, and somehow I’m supposed to do my job too, so I’m not going to cut things short, but let’s make the obvious point. Whatever it is you just saw, it certainly isn’t traditional Ashkenazi or MENA Jewish culture. If you want to to define what it is, though, you really only have one option: it’s Israeli. Periodically, you just have to take a step back and reflect on on just how strange this all this. Go back and read through all the billion pages of words, words, words written by the supporters and opponents of Zionism; who amongst them thought that this, of all things, would be the most vibrant, dynamic and fast-growing cultural movement in the new state 70 years in (the second being Chabad messianism)? Everyone knows the famous Hannah Arendt quotation:

My first impression: On top, the judges, the best of German Jewry. Below them, the prosecuting attorneys, Galicians, but still Europeans. Everything is organized by a police force that gives me the creeps, speaks only Hebrew, and looks Arabic. Some downright brutal types among them. They would obey any order. And outside the doors, the Oriental mob, as if one were in Istanbul or some other half-Asiatic country. In addition, and very visible in Jerusalem, the peies and caftan Jews, who make life impossible for all reasonable people here.

To some extent, she knew the score, but if you had asked her what the Oriental mob would be doing in 2025, she definitely would not have answered that they would be tripping their nuts off and raving in Uman. If she had predicted a religious revival, I imagine she’d have depicted it looking kind of like old-school Shas from the 80s, but nowadays R. Yitzhak Yosef can, for example, reiterate the traditional Sephardic opposition to long peyos, and he might as well be talking to a brick wall for all anyone cares.

You will never be this cynical, and you will never be as rich as Aryeh Deri either ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

To this day, a large proportion of pro-Israel apologetic is based on the premise that it’s an island of western civilization in a sea of religious intolerance and barbarism. A large proportion of pro-Palestinian apologetic is based on the flipside of that premise, namely that Israel is a beachhead of expropriatory European settler colonialism among indigenous brown people who just want to tend to their olive trees while furrowing their brow and looking generally wizened as the wind rustles their well-worn keffiyeh. Yeah, well, you ****ing wish. The truth about Israel is that we don’t even know what it is yet. It will be the result of an attempt to build a common civilization in a gigantic displaced persons camp out of people with nothing much in common except they’re Jewish and they didn’t have anywhere else to go, in the centre of a warzone. Right now, we’re still in beta testing. The general trend we can observe so far is that, in the rush to form new cultural identities with mass appeal, the most unscrupulous and insane have the upper hand. An obvious question is just how bad it might get, but the more pertinent question is just how nuts it can get. I think we’re just getting started.

As I say, that’s all we’ve got time for right now, but I did get sent another video from over at 770.

If someone in the know can explain what’s going on here, you get a comp subscription. Over and out: גמר חתימה טובה. [EDIT: This offer is now closed]

1. And indeed, today, you can’t open up a Breslov sefer in a normal chassidish schul (as opposed to a neo-Chassidic cringe compound) without arousing the same kind of suspicion you might arouse by reading Rabbi Dovid Weiss haLivni.