It’s the successor to the Tony Karon weblog and email commentaries that I sent out from 9/11 onward to a list that eventually grew to several hundred friends and colleagues in different parts of the world. Initially, they focused mostly on that slow-motion catastrophe known as the “war on terror” (including Iraq) but as this new state of affairs became our permanent reality, the commentaries also began covering more quotidian obsessions such as football (soccer!), pop culture and cuisine. It’s a kind of en famille commentary from an exasperated journalist watching the unfolding of a tragedy foretold. If Rootless Cosmopolitan were a cocktail, the recipe, with apologies to Gramsci, would be equal parts pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will.
Explaining the Name
“Rootless Cosmopolitan” was Stalin’s euphemistic pejorative for “Jew” during his anti-Semitic purges of the late 1940s. But as an African Jew with roots in Eastern Europe and before that France, raised under the cultural aegis of the British empire but living in the great global transit lounge that is New York (still playing the odd game of tennis-ball cricket with Jamaicans or Kashmiris in the parks of Brooklyn), I’ll happily answer to “rootless cosmopolitan” – even wear it as a badge of honor.
Rootless cosmopolitanism may describe my experience of Jewishness, but its hardly exclusive to Jews: It applies equally to most of the people I love and respect from every corner of the planet who see themselves as citizens of the world, their identities defined by multiple affinities formed in their movement through the spaces between cultures, their instincts including a disdain for racism and cultural (and geopolitical) arrogance, and a tendency to understand and respond to events through a global prism, rather than via the ties of blood and soil. Whether they were raised Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist or atheist; whether their origins are Jewish, Indian, English, Scottish, Irish, German, Chilean, Persian, Basque, Israeli, Palestinian, Australian, Serb, Libyan, Midwestern or what have you, they are always most at home among people of similar heart and spirit.
All of the great Jewish intellectual, philosophical, moral and cultural exemplars I can think of were products not of a separate Jewish existence, but of the Diaspora, our dispersal among the cultures of the world. Whether it’s Maimonides or Spinoza, Marx, Freud, Einstein or Derrida; Kafka or Primo Levi; Serge Gainsbourg or Daniel Barenboim; Lenny Bruce or Bob Dylan; Mike Leigh or Ali G; kneidlach or rugelach or so many of the brooding operatic tunes I heard in synagogue as a kid; all are products not of Jews living only among themselves, but of our interaction with diverse influences in the Diaspora.
I’m a proud South African, and a proud African. I spent my youth there and had the privilege of working for a decade as a full-time activist in the liberation struggle against apartheid – an experience I wouldn’t exchange for anything. Frankly, it was that experience, more than any other, that taught me how to be a Jew in the world, and affirmed my rootless cosmopolitan instincts. I’m not at all religious, and certainly no Zionist (Israel in no way “represents” me, nor do I believe that it should hold a place for me, and others like me who’ve chosen to live elsewhere — the majority of Jews, actually — at the expense of others.) But I am proudly Jewish, my own sense of the meaning of that term captured in that famous comment by the great rabbi Hillel, who when challenged to define Judaism while standing on one foot, said: “That which is hateful unto yourself, do not do unto others. All the rest is commentary.”
Hey Tony Baloney,
a really moving essay….
by the way, I notice that you like Jimmy Carter. It is easy to see why:
the Georgia of Jimmy Carter’s boyhood really was “an apartheid state” and the south africa of your boyhood really was “an apartheid state”.
the two of you have a great deal in common when you criticize Israel, which really is NOT an apartheid state.
But that is not all, Jimmy Carter was in the american military while georgia was still practicing apartheid and you were in the south african military while south africa was still practicing apartheid.
I mean: Isn’t that right Tony Baloney, you were in the South Africa armed forces before 1993, were you not?
Please enlighten us as to what exactly you did there? Did you fight in angola against the cubans? didn’t to patrol black shanty towns at night?
Please Tony Baloney, tell us what you did….
P.S. Don’t you think the ANC should have used the money the Americans gave them for HIV medicine to actually buy medicine, rather then build football stadiums for the world cup? how many south africans died slow painful deaths as a direct result of those stadiums, Tony Baloney?
Hi Tony Baloney,
Since, obviously, no one cares what movies you like to watch I was wondering if you could just check some facts for me.
1) You live in Brooklyn, right ?
2) Brooklyn is 40 sq. miles with a population of 2.5 million people, right ?
3) Brooklyn had 200 murders last year, right ?
4) Gaza is 140 sq mi. right ? Gaza has 1.5 million people, right?
All these stories about Gaza being “the most crowded place on earth” are lies, right?
5) according to “the humanitarian monitor” 80 people were killed in Gaza last year (may 2010 to may 2011) , Do you agree with that ?
In other words, even if we double Gaza’s population and citizens killed it would still be less than Brooklyn, right?
It would be 3 million people and 160 dead versus brooklyns 2.5 million people and 200 dead.
Do you agree with all this Tony Baloney? Or: Have I deliberately lied here the same way Karl Vick (son of ventura) deliberately lied about those 20 Palestinians killed on Sunday?
Let me know, Tony Baloney
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Read more: http://globalspin.blogs.time.com/2011/06/10/couch-potato-briefing-sex-power-and-the-heroic-futility-of-war/#ixzz1P7ST9JEE
the Georgia of Jimmy Carter’s boyhood really was “an apartheid state” and the south africa of your boyhood really was “an apartheid state”.
Hi Tony Karon, Your Webblog Rootless Cosmopolitan is Great.
I’m the great fan of You – Very thanks For Good Blog Post Like This.
As a South African I’m ashamed to have had you as a citizen. Please people, I apologise on behalf of all Palestinians I apologise for the incoherent ramblings of this racist Jew.
Very thanks For Good Blog Post Like This.
So you worked tirelessly against apartheid but then you fled South Africa to safely dwell in NYC?
You speak against the “ties of blood and land” yet your blood ties are more racist than any and your people’s quest for land more violent and geopolitically strangling (the United States has lost almost 6,500 good, honest boys in the “war on terror” and 550 British and more than 200 otherss) than any war or theft in all of history.
So when Tony, when will you and your friends at AIPAC send us to the Zagros to fight the last proud people who don’t subscribe to your notion of the global village? How many Gentile boys will you send from other nations to do your bidding? Our BLOOD will be spilt on their LAND is that right, while the rootless lift not a finger and continue to attack old Palestinian women to steal their land?
How many more Rhodesias and South Africas will you destroy so that its builders can be driven off and it’s majority denizens can revert to WORSE conditions of poverty, lack of medicine, stability or education and a return to subsistence farming? How many more Americas and countries of Europe will you turn into backwater third-world crapholes?
When will it end Tony? And for the rest of you reading this: how long before you wake up?
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International
Dear Tony Karot,
According to the Israeli Law of Citizenship from 1952, citizens in this country are divided into two groups: Jews are “citizens by Law of Return”, non-Jews are “citizens by Law of Residency”.
I thought you may be interested to know that I initiated a court action demanding my right to be a citizen by residency rather than by religious affiliation, since in 1948 I officially declared that my Nationality in not Jewish and I do not have any religion.
I wonder if you will be willing to have a look at my suit against the Interior Ministry of Israel . You can find more details in the attachment, that unfortunately, is not included.
I’ll be glad to tell you more.
Faithfully Yours,
Uzzi Ornan
Emeritus Prof , Hebrew linguistics, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Visiting Prof, Computer Science, Technion, Haifa
ornan@cs.technion.ac.il
Skype UZZIOR
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Tony, pls don’t be rootless about America’s own worse enemy, her corpocracy. Pls go to http://www.uschamberofdemocracy.com to see what I mean. If you would be willing to let me add your blog site to The Democracy Coalition I would really appreciate it.
Best regards,
Gary
Author of The Devil’s Marriage: Break Up the Corpocracy or Leave Democracy in the Lurch
http://www.facebook.com/notes/ereader-international/amazon-kindle-touch-3g-now-ship-internationally-and-available-worldwide/263424430410585