Ben Murane, an American Jew and head of New Generations for the left-wing lobbying group New Israel Fund, recently wrote an essay, under his blogging pseudonym KungFuJew, titled, "Reinterpreting Jewish communal service".
The essay attempts to "reinterpret" Jewish communal service in universal terms and represents the quintessential guilt of liberal diaspora Jews over Jewish particularism.
Writes Murane:
Accused, I was, of not caring enough for those other than Jews…of working only for Jews.
Murane has been accused of the sin of working for an organization which focuses primarily on the fate of the Jewish state and evidently felt the need to defend himself from the charge of "selfishness".
Instead of turning the accusation back on his interlocutors, and refuting the suggestion that Jews are unique in caring more about the fate of their own community than others, Murane immediately sought to assuage his guilt about being a Jew who cares about Jews.
There are plenty Jews in my world of the predominantly young and unaffiliated who are tired of the drumming of “Jew Jew Jew” and recoil from its incessant self-centered, self-referential, selfish concerns.
Murane, distinguishing himself from those parochial Jews who, triumph "selfishness", writes:
What I abhor about
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