Talk:Jewish anarchism

message: This page needs so much work, which I'd love to do but don't have time. In the meantime, I'm wondering how useful the Jewish anarchists list is. Some of these people are Jewish by origin, but with Jewishness playing no part in their anarchism, while others were much more fundamentally shaped by Yiddish popular culture or by Jewish religious traditions. BobFromBrockley 11:26, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There is a category Jewish anarchists. Wouldn't it be better to use that? BobFromBrockley 17:25, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  What is a Jewish anarchist? 

message: I don't quite get the point of the article.  Some Jews have embraced anarchist ideas, true enough.  But does this make their anarchism "Jewish anarchism"?  I find it  hard to imagine a person following the Jewish religion with its strict laws and being an anarchist in the political sphere.  If a person left the religion and then became an anarchist that sounds more like normal human behavior.  But how does that make his or her anarchism Jewish?  Thanks. Steve Dufour 05:54, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with this, although I think some of the above logic rests on how you define Judaism. In my understanding, many people define Judaism also as a cultural phenomenon, where one might stop practicing the religion but remains part of the culture -- hence, still a Jew. I don't necessarily support that argument personally, but it exists. Also, not all types of Judaism have "strict laws" -- particularly Reform Judaism can be very lax, but still considered Jewish. There's also a genetic argument that (particularly Ashkenazi) Jews are a "race", not only a religion, since they stem from a very small gene pool in the not-too-distant past. So that might make this article akin to, say, "South Asian anarchism" or "Eskimo anarchism". Not that I necessarily think those articles should exist either.... Finally, I think "Jewish anarchism" in this case means "Jewish involvement with anarchism", not some particular flavor of anarchism that only Jews have. So maybe the title should be changed, at the least. Organ123 16:40, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It might be better to call it: "People who are both Jews and anarchists: their ideas and their activities"  :-)  Steve Dufour 19:18, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Personally, I think the article needs a lot of work, particularly in the "secular Jewish anarchism" section (which, if it were done, would answer your criticisms). Historically, there have been mass Jewish secular anarchist movements - in Britain, France, the US, Argentina and elsewhere. The content of this movement's ideology had little or nothing to do with Judaism as a religion. But the movement was fairly homogeneously Jewish by ethnicity, and articulated itself in a Jewish language (Yiddish), and often specifically in terms of Ashknenazi Jewish working class cultural traditions. In its early period, the movement was aggressively secular (although less so than the equivalent Yiddish-language Social Democratic movement), but closely connected to the growing Yiddish modernist culture and literature (e.g. the sweatshop poets). In its later period, it was more folkist in orientation, and sometimes came close to supporting Zionism. As a final point, as the article (and the article Anarchism and Orthodox Judaism) make clear, there have been religious Jewish anarchists too, whose anarchism included elements of Judaism. BobFromBrockley 20:40, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

text: Do anarchists refrain from eating rotten meat or getting hooked on heroin? If one believes that something is a dangerous practice, either for physical or mystical reasons, she may avoid it and encourage the others not to do it. From Hasidic and Kabbalistic panentheist/non-exactly-theist theory, the laws of Judaism are just as natural as the laws of physical nature. Some very Orthodox Hasidic authors declare that the word "Mitzva" means an "connection channel" or is itself a Divine name, rather than a "commandment".   IMHO, channeling spiritual energy through a strict system of mystical rules has little to do with the rejection of the State, class struggle and other anarchist principles. Most contemporary Hasidim are very statist and authoritarian, not familiar at all with the underlying theory of their own movement and might even ban it as "heretical", but that's another very unfortunate story... Laplandian 20:38, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

text: Agree. Have slightly changed second section to reflect this. BobFromBrockley 08:52, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Point of article?

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: This article has unresolved scope issues. Unlike Christian anarchism, which has a clear tradition and movement, no such analogue exists for Judaism. If anything this article would discuss Jewish individuals and groups as they pertain to anarchism, of which there are many we could discuss, but they don't cohere as a tradition of "Jewish anarchism". As a result, this article is (and will continue to be) a magnet for original research. I would suggest, as an alternative, that we redirect this topic to List of Jewish anarchists, which is fully sourced, and additionally we can list Jewish anarchist groups as well. This is how the sources cover it, more as a collection than a narrative. czar 04:35, 20 August 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: @Czar While I think the listed groups in this article are interesting, I was more looking forward to an encyclopedic summary of the question of what differentiates Anarchist Jews (which this article has plenty of) from Jewish Anarchism and what the different academic/political debates are on that. I am not opposed to trimming names of specific (modern) Jewish anarchist groups (Jewdas, Anarchists Against the Wall etc..) from this article, and moving them to List of Jewish anarchists though. So in short, I partly agree with you on the mess, but do not agree this article should be redirected. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 22:54, 21 August 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd be interested to see sources on that latter part ("Jewish anarchism"). My understanding is that most coverage is about Yiddish-speaking anarchist communities and not a Jewish tradition of anarchism. czar 22:59, 21 August 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Scope