Ben M. Freeman > Quotes

“The upswing of Leftist Jew-hate which began in the 1960s was driven by the Soviet and Arab effort to reframe Zionism as a form of imperialism; this, in turn, shaped the emerging New Left’s perceptions of Jewish self-determination.”
― Ben M. Freeman, Reclaiming Our Story: The Pursuit of Jewish Pride

“The tragic reality is that, more often than not, minority groups cannot influence societal perceptions of them and it is not their responsibility to ‘fix’ skewed perceptions of their community.”
― Ben M. Freeman, Jewish Pride: Rebuilding a People

“Growing up in the shadow of such a catastrophe has an impact upon one’s sense of self, safety and security.”
― Ben M. Freeman, Reclaiming Our Story: The Pursuit of Jewish Pride

“Although we may be removed from it by several generations, Jews grow up knowing that, within living memory, many of the Western world’s governments conspired (either through direct action and the murder or facilitation of the murder of Jews or inaction and standing by) to murder every single Jewish man, woman and child they came into contact with.”
― Ben M. Freeman, Reclaiming Our Story: The Pursuit of Jewish Pride

“It is shocking to consider that a world, our world, the world in which we live, the societies to which we contribute, do not really accept us as our authentic selves.”
― Ben M. Freeman, Reclaiming Our Story: The Pursuit of Jewish Pride

“As we know, there is an important ancestral element to Jewishness which genetically connects Jews today to our ancient ancestors in the Levant. Thus, many Jews today could have inherited epigenetic trauma caused by events dating back thousands of years.”
― Ben M. Freeman, Reclaiming Our Story: The Pursuit of Jewish Pride

“This also represents another bind Jews are placed in: by warping themselves to be accepted, they no longer feel a connection or a kinship with their own Jewish community. However, neither are they permitted to be at home in the Christian world.”
― Ben M. Freeman, Reclaiming Our Story: The Pursuit of Jewish Pride

“I have often said that the Jewish community is very good at commemorating our dead, those who have been stolen from us through anti-Jewish violence. But we are not as good at understanding the impact thousands of years of anti-Jewish genocidal violence has on us emotionally and how this is passed on throughout the generations.”
― Ben M. Freeman, Reclaiming Our Story: The Pursuit of Jewish Pride

“Ultimately, the acceptance and internalisation of the modern non-Jewish post-Enlightened European idea that Jews must only be a religious group was one of the most damaging changes made to Jewish identity in the last several hundred years.”
― Ben M. Freeman, Reclaiming Our Story: The Pursuit of Jewish Pride

“The truth is though that, despite moments of apparent acceptance, Jews have never really been truly welcomed by non-Jewish society, not without huge caveats.”
― Ben M. Freeman, Reclaiming Our Story: The Pursuit of Jewish Pride

“To be a Jew in a non-Jewish world has always been and will continue to be a handicap in more ways than one.’24 Trude Weiss-Rosmarin, 1947”
― Ben M. Freeman, Reclaiming Our Story: The Pursuit of Jewish Pride

“The notion that Israel was an imperialist force akin to the Nazis was spread by Arab and Soviet governments during this period.”
― Ben M. Freeman, Reclaiming Our Story: The Pursuit of Jewish Pride

“To be Jewish is to be part of a four-thousand-year-old ancient civilisation that has contributed untold marvels to the world.”
― Ben M. Freeman, Reclaiming Our Story: The Pursuit of Jewish Pride

“It is also the case that the trauma of the Holocaust is not the only source of collective pain and trauma that Jews have to contend with: Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews living today understand the experiences of their families living under legal segregation and oppression. They understand what it means to be a dhimmi (second-class citizen). They know of the Farhud (the 1941 Pogrom against Baghdadi Jews that saw the murder of an estimated 1,000 Jews) and various Pogroms experienced by Jews in the Middle East and North Africa throughout history. They know that, despite their presence in countries like Yemen or Iraq for thousands of years, Jewish communities were ethnically cleansed and were forced to seek refuge in the newly formed State of Israel.”
― Ben M. Freeman, Reclaiming Our Story: The Pursuit of Jewish Pride

“Many Jews are indeed not able to process the trauma of our past experiences because we continue to experience new – albeit highly similar – threats and trauma.”
― Ben M. Freeman, Reclaiming Our Story: The Pursuit of Jewish Pride

“Despite all the accusations and myths about all-powerful Jews – which have been propagated for millennia – the reality is, we are a tiny minority which has attempted to interact, and navigate relations, with much greater powers. So, for thousands of years, Jews have constantly negotiated a world defined not only by a majority but a majority rooted in Jew-hatred.”
― Ben M. Freeman, Reclaiming Our Story: The Pursuit of Jewish Pride

“I am a Jew via my ancestry, my nationality, my connection to my indigenous homeland and the modern State of Israel, my culture and my religion. This is the exceptional thing about the Jews. Despite the fact that the majority of us were ethnically cleansed from our indigenous land 2,000 years ago, we maintained a connection to it. The beating heart of Jewishness was kept alive inside Jews who then spread all over the world. In the Diaspora, we developed iterations of our indigenous culture. We adopted cultural practices from the lands in which we settled, but the beat of Jewishness that we felt in our chests was never extinguished. It is this constant beat of Jewishness, deep in our hearts, that the non-Jewish societies we find ourselves a part of often try, because of their Jew-hatred, to extinguish if we are to join their ranks.”
― Ben M. Freeman, Reclaiming Our Story: The Pursuit of Jewish Pride

“When Jews absorb non-Jewish perceptions of Jews, Jewishness and Judaism and allow the non-Jewish world to define our narrative.”
― Ben M. Freeman, Reclaiming Our Story: The Pursuit of Jewish Pride

“Despite the instinct we have to fight anti-Jewish hate, there is nothing that Jews can do to truly defeat it; that is the work of the non-Jewish world. All we can (and must) do is fight to reclaim our dignity and to keep it at bay while encouraging the non-Jewish world to set upon its own task.”
― Ben M. Freeman, Reclaiming Our Story: The Pursuit of Jewish Pride

“Ultimately, as he asked, ‘From what do Jewish self-haters suffer if not an unhappy love for an enemy?”
― Ben M. Freeman, Reclaiming Our Story: The Pursuit of Jewish Pride

“Though the majority of the Jews were expelled from their indigenous land 2,000 years ago, we were consistently colonised since the Assyrian invasion in 721 BCE and since then have been forced to desperately fight for our survival.”
― Ben M. Freeman, Reclaiming Our Story: The Pursuit of Jewish Pride

“Almost all Ashkenazi Jews today are the descendants of 300 Jewish individuals who survived numerous genocides by the crusaders in the Middle Ages. Most Ashkenazi Jews today understand the continuous cycle of violent and often genocidal Jew-hatred faced by their families in Central and Eastern Europe, and why they had to flee this region in the 19th and early 20th centuries even before the Shoah.”
― Ben M. Freeman, Reclaiming Our Story: The Pursuit of Jewish Pride

“We cannot simply pass on feelings if they are not anchored by something more substantial. Whether we call our action ‘ritual’ or ‘practice’ and whether it is rooted in God, our peoplehood or both we must find a way to be actively Jewish.”
― Ben M. Freeman, Jewish Pride: Rebuilding a People