Comment by someotherperson
Comment by someotherperson 2 days ago
> What are you even talking about? Do you think a country of 9 million that's existed for 70 years doesn't have any unique identity?
Yeah. It has no unique national identity. There's a lot of Jewish culture, sure, but I'm hoping we can distinguish Jewish culture from Israeli culture (i.e, Iran is a Muslim country but Iranian culture isn't a subset of Muslim culture).
> There's Israeli cuisine, a lot of which is based on other cuisines imported from countries that Jews fled from or were kicked out of
Agreed. That's the point here.
> What do you think Israelis are doing on a daily basis, sitting around worrying about existential threats on their life?
Israel as a nation, yes. You sort of reaffirmed that by adding "countries that Jews fled from or were kicked out of" in your reply. The existential threat quite literally shapes all of Israeli day-to-day culture. The agriculture, tech and everything else is based on that existential threat.
As I've mentioned elsewhere though, this lack of culture isn't unique to Israel, it's just heavily multiplied due to the population being a collection of diaspora. This might change over the next couple hundred years but it's equally wild to assume that a 70 year old country is somehow going to have anywhere near the same level of culture (and cultural resilience) as undisturbed groups.
> As I've mentioned elsewhere though, this lack of culture isn't unique to Israel, it's just heavily multiplied due to the population being a collection of diaspora. This might change over the next couple hundred years but it's equally wild to assume that a 70 year old country is somehow going to have anywhere near the same level of culture (and cultural resilience) as undisturbed groups.
This statement makes sense - of course Israeli culture, being younger than, say, US culture, is less developed.
But that's not your original claim that I disagreed with, what you originally said was this:
> If conflicts were to go away, so would Israel. Israeli Jews would just be absorbed into whatever local culture they're in, just as they were prior to the formation of Israel (and just like they are outside of Israel)
There's a big difference between saying "the culture isn't quite unique" and implying that without conflicts, Israel would somehow disappear, and Jews would be absorbed into the surrounding culture (of what, Lebanon? Jordan?).
> Yeah. It has no unique national identity. There's a lot of Jewish culture, sure, but I'm hoping we can distinguish Jewish culture from Israeli culture
First of all, 20% of Israel's population isn't Jewish.
Secondly, I think the Israeli culture, even if only focusing on Israeli Jewish culture, is different from, say, American Jewish culture or other Jewish cultures around the world.