Thread by @HusseinAboubak

Who is a Jew? The Jewish intellectual giant Philip Rieff, whose penetrating intellectual production came to an early halt caused by his heavy heartbreak from where American culture is heading, provided what I think as one of the most profound expositions of Jewish identity. /1

More accurately, Rieff's work, "The Jew of Culture," was more of an account of what is a Jew, not who. The "Jew of Culture" is a man of dissent, an addict of the tension of contradiction; he is not a member of the crowd but the one who stands against the crowd. It's not an /2

ideal-type but rather a counter-ideal-type, an ontological contrarian, and an adversarial corrective to the common type, the Philistine. Unlike the Philistine of culture, the Jew of culture plainly refuses to heed the urge of the mobs and crowds to justify their vanity, /3

narcissism, and barbarism even at his own peril. The Jew of Culture is that who refuses to participate in the social and cultural competitions of the crowd over vanity and taking the lonely place of minority and dissent. Yet the adversity of the "Jew of Culture" is not /4

antagonistic, on the contrary, it is genuinely and selflessly sympathetic while the imitative sympathy on the common ideal is selfishly antagonistic. In Reiff's work, the tables are turned, the Jew of Culture is the man for culture while the common ideal is the Philistine. The /5

self-differentiation, the cultural adversity, the standing out, are not acts of a selfishly willed dissociation but acts of loving education. If one ponders Rieff's idea, one will find that the "Jew of Culture" is indeed the central ego ideal of the Bible. In the world of /6

literature of antiquity, the Bible stands out of the crowd. As Rene Girard pointed out, the Bible is the first work from antiquity that takes God from the side of the angry mob and puts him on the side of the lone victim and often transforms the lone victim into the prophet /7

ideal, the voice of God on earth. The Bible gave humanity a new perspective, an adversarial perspective, and honest mirror to man's destructive vanity. The prophets of the Bible are men who wrestled with their own crowds more than they did with God-hating villians. Noah, /8

Joeseph, Isaiah, etc. are were all Jews of culture. Wasn't Moses the embodiment of the Jew of culture? Didn't he wrestle against his own people more than he did with mine (Egyptians?) Perhaps the only difference between the Biblical prophets of culture, the angry Moses of /9

culture, and Rieff's Jew of Culture is that they wrestled both their people and with their God. The genius of the Bible was in its affirming the eternal reign of a mighty God, not through his presence in power, but in meek loneliness, with the crushed Psalmist and persecuted /10

prophet. In the Christian addendum, the Jew of Culture, the voice persecuted by the crowds, the crushed soul of the lonely, the prophet who is disowned even by his own family and his closest disciples, the victim of the crowd, becomes no less than God manifest in flesh. /11

Theologians may quarrel about whether the Jew of Culture is the voice of God in flesh or the word of God in the flesh, however, doesn't change that those Biblical ideal are meant to be the source of our imitation, that we all, Jews and gentiles alike, are called on to be Jews /12

of culture. But didn't Rieff himself give up? Didn't he himself abandon trying to confront the rising American barbarian hordes, give up writing, and end his life in silent isolation? Those are valid questions, yet maybe the answer lies in the other fight the Bible asks us to /13

have, for the Bible doesn't just demand us to wrestle with the crowds, but also with God. Maybe it's not just a firm voice that we need to have, but also faith.

In the age of the triumph of pathological identity-seeking, of self love, self fulfillment, self realization, self care, self worship, self obsession, self, self, self, self, etc. you need to become a Jew of both culture and faith.

To be a Jew of Culture is to willingly mature in an age of eternal adolescence. It is to willingly age to sagehood in a world of youth worship. It is to turn done the music and talk in a time where everyone is done with conversations. It is to insist on meaning in tht time /

that most of us no longer believe there is anything there to mean. To do all of this and accept the pariahdom that comes with it all. And to be a Jew of faith is to believe that there is actually a point to all of this.