Self-Hating Jew? No, I Only Hate Other Jews, Not Myself

I hate religious Jews, and I’m not one, so how could I be self-hating?

North Tel Aviv, September 13 – You people need to stop the name-calling. When I oppose the sale of apartments in my neighborhood to Jews who maintain their traditions, even in public, it makes no sense to call me a self-hating Jew. I love myself. It’s those other people I hate, and sure, they’re Jews, but you can’t accurately call me self-hating. Sheesh.

We North Tel Aviv residents have established certain norms, one of which is an abiding secularism, with the tolerance born of that secularism. When people move into this area but do not toe the line on secularism, that violates those norms, and we cannot accept that. The point isn’t my discomfort with a way of life that I’d rather see disappear because it challenges the validity of my secularism by its very existence, but the established character of the neighborhood, which is sacrosanct.

When I assert that the character of the neighborhood must remain unchanged, realize that I mean only my neighborhood. You will note that I made no such protestations when tens of thousands of East African migrants took up residence in the southern part of our fair city, a safe distance away from our bastion of tolerance. No, it was imperative upon the native Israelis in those areas to welcome the stranger, the refugee, the foreign worker. Far be it from us, whose people endured centuries of persecution, to treat the stranger with anything other than warmth. Such warmth extends only as far as the borders of those other neighborhoods. Chabad Hasidim here, though? Unacceptable. I dislike them. Not myself, you understand. So please stop bandying about the inaccurate slur “self-hating Jew.” I hate that I’m Jewish, certainly, but only that aspect of my heritage. The rest of me I adore.

No, it is the so-called activists in South Tel Aviv who are the bigots for protesting the demographic changes in their neighborhoods. When an enlightened person such as I demonstrates antipathy to sharing streets with religious people, that is an entirely different phenomenon. It is a noble defense of values, of a way of life, to which we in the affluent northern neighborhoods are entitled. We who can afford to live wherever we choose can also afford to tell the lesser folk what values to maintain, even if those values appear to clash with the ones by which we ourselves live. It is a privilege that comes with the pricey territory.

So please, enough with the “self-hating” canard. I hate religious Jews, and I’m not one, so how could I be self-hating?

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