Culture, Global, Identity, Israel, Politics

The Real State of the Jewish People

Photo: Children’s protest, Bronx Workmen’s Circle shul #2, 1934

The Museum of the City of New York is now showing an exhibit called Radicals in the Bronx about the cooperative movement in New York. From the exhibit site:

“In the 1920s, four left-wing organizations launched a daring experiment in the Bronx. Seeking to create a better life for working people, they mobilized the resources of their members and proceeded to build their own versions of utopia. The communities that they founded were designed to foster political activism, artistic engagement, and collective values.

This exhibition explores four Bronx cooperatives – the Amalgamated Houses, the Farband Houses, the Sholem Aleichem Cooperative, the United Workers’ Cooperative Colony (“the Coops”) – that were built by groups of primarily secular Jewish immigrants who wanted both to improve living conditions and to create a basis for transforming society.”

I really like this exhibit because this is the scene where my family comes from. Actually my family is not from the Bronx though – we’re from the Seward Park Houses in Manhattan which was financed and built by the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. So much rich history.. My grandmother used to play mah jong with a woman named Ethel Rosenberg and my mother (as a young girl) awoke in the middle of the night in 1947 to find my grandparents boxing up world-war II rifles the many Jewish war veterans had brought home from the war as part of an effort to smuggle arms for the Jewish fighters in Palestine, under the watchful eyes of a framed photo of Theodor Herzl. The Herzl photo still hangs on her wall today though now it’s in Miami beach. She asked me if I wanted the photo not too long ago, and I thought about it for a bit, and told her I wasn’t ready for it yet.

37 thoughts on “The Real State of the Jewish People

  1. John Brown, a Jew after my own heart. L’Chayim. The “Real State” of the Jewish, when Israel is realized, will look like a Bronx Cooperative Movement. With my radical views, Jews often say to me, “You don’t believe in the Jewish state?” I sometimes retort quickly, “No, I believe in a Jewish world.” Of course based on Jewish values of justice “tzedek, tzedek, tirdof”, community, and of course that every man is created in the divine image. Not the fascistic and racist policies of the current Jewish state.

  2. I sometimes retort quickly, “No, I believe in a Jewish world.”
    Grin. Me, too. I like to call it the “umma”.
    Not the fascistic and racist policies of the current Jewish state.
    Exactly. Down with Mussolini!

  3. i’ll take the Herzl photo. don’t worry, i’ll give it back to you when you’re ready. i’m serious.
    nice post. very rich.

  4. i was living there from august 2004 to early january, living in Prenzl Berg, studying at the Freie Universitat and working with the Judische Gemeinde, und dir?

  5. Yeah, my grandfather read the Forwards and is buried in the section sponsored by his “Fahrbandt”.
    Nostalgia…
    These dreams have failed everywhere they have been tried – including Israel.
    And specifically, as a substitute for Judaism – like other assimilationist attempts to distill Judaism into big universal ideas – these dreams also failed. Many of these people’s grandchildren – including the children of Israel’s founders – cannot justify the very existence of the Jewish people.
    Now the “progressives” are antiques, free-market democracy has proven much more effective than socialism at growing working classes out of poverty and giving them representation.
    And the ideological genies the Jewish lefties uncorked have now come around and bit them in the behind. This entire blog is testimony to the inability of these Jews to handle unabashed Jewish nationalism – and of the dilemma they find themselves in as “supporting every underdog” increasingly means siding with the murderers of innocent Jews.
    This is is the bitter end of the cosmopolitan dream – Jews who don’t know why they’re Jewish getting slapped back and savaged by the movement of one-world fraternity… still no room in that dream for the Jews!
    Nostalgia…
    Sure looks rosy from a distance, though…

  6. Wow, my great grandfather was one of the founders of the Amalgamated co-op, and three generations of my family lived there. My father was born there and lived there until he got married in 1967, and my uncle is currently the president of the co-op. Wild. I’ll have to check this exhibit out.

  7. That should have read “my uncle’s brother”. Either way, this is my family’s history. I just called my father and he told me my aunt checked out the exhibit and that there are pictures of our family in it. I’ll definitely be checking this out.

  8. by the way, to Holy Terror – if you’re reading this – in regards to your earlier claim that American Jews sat on their ass throughout the holocaust – check out the 5th photo down:
    “A Dime a Shine to Stop Hitler in Time”, 1941
    Teenagers at the Allerton Coops raised money to defeat Hitler by shining shoes.
    Photo by Harry Kulkowitz, courtesy of the Filmmakers Collaborative

  9. Ben-David, regarding “free-market democracy has proven much more effective than socialism at growing working classes out of poverty and giving them representation”
    Amen. The single greatest issue I have with Jewish History in the last century or so is the substantial embrace of socialism/communism. I can understand Russians who saw it as preferable to Czarist rule, but in other contexts, it baffles me. When the state forces us to “give,” it ruins our ability to freely engage in acts of tzedakah. Consequently, on the Maimonidean ladder of tzedakah, we are reduced to its lowest rung, if forced “giving” even counts at all. Of course, I am entirely ignoring all the pork (how appropriate that this type of spending is treif) and bureaucratic costs involved in government. Adding those costs in, the power of socialism to destroy the mitzvot of helping others is shocking.
    Of course the prohibitions on theft, the emphasis on human liberty, property rights, and the principles of self ownership in the Torah are even greater reasons to oppose socialism. I’ve never really understood the Jewish argument for socialism, aside from Perchik’s ridiculous interpretation of Jacob’s relationship with Laban from Fiddler on the Roof. Can someone “enlighten” me?

  10. Usually, when I have a discussion with Jewish “social justice”/ progressive types, they try to avoid any mention of, and hope I’m unaware of, people like the Rosenbergs. When I bring such people up, they feel some sense of embarrasment (this is usually shortly after they try to use Goldstein or Yigal Amir to try to delegitimize right-wingers). But John Brown’s article puts it up front and center. Refreshing honesty, or lack of awareness of what was wrong with the Rosenbergs and the other shills for Stalin?

  11. J –
    Did you ever wonder why political scientists have three different words for socialism, communism and stalinism ? Do you think it’s like eskimos with their supposed many words for snow?
    Or do you recognize that there is a difference between them?
    Or do you really want us to believe that jewish seamstresses who fought for better wages, fair housing, and a 10 hour workday really secretly wanted mass murder, gulags and the KGB having files on every citizen, etc ?

  12. Brown, emboldening state control is always a danger to liberty. Giving the government substantial economic control IS giving it substantial control over every aspect of a person’s life. There are well intended socialists. They are naive. The best way to improve your life is to be more productive and sell your services to the highest bidder (or the bidder willing to offer other qualities you desire). You cannot legislate productivity. “Better wages, fair housing, and a 10 hour workday” can only come if you are able to produce such things in a 10 hour workday. The only way around that fact is either through theft or another person’s freely given generosity.
    Systematically regulating and taking wealth belonging to others is at best a short term “solution.” People can hide wealth, and people with wealth have the option of working less and enjoying time off more. The short term “solution” is utterly devastating to productivity because it aggressively discourages it. That is why the Stalinists, Maoists, the Khmer Rouge, and other socialists impoverished and killed so many. That is why France is of shrinking importance in the global economy. That is why Germany has staggering unemployment.
    Israel is populated with some of the hardest working, smartest, and most entrepreneurial people in the world. Socialism, and nothing else, stops it from being the glorious nation it could be. The other problems of Israel would be small if it transitioned to a more liberal economy.

  13. sorry – private conversation continued.
    eli – i was kind of doing the same thing – i.e., studying at the FU, living in Prenzlauer Berg and doing a lot of stuff with the Juedische Gemeinde.

  14. John Brown-
    Of course I recognize that socialism, communism and Stalinism are three different concepts, at least in theory (the latter two can be hard to separate). It would be nice, though, if the left would extend the same courtesy to those of us on the right who are not Baruch Goldstein or Yigal Amir.
    The point of my earlier post, in part, is that I’ve noticed a reluctance (to understate) on the part of so-called progressives to acknowledge the seamy side of their history. In some cases, there is outright denial that there ever was a seamy side. (“The Rosenbergs were innocent, and if they weren’t then they meant well, and they didn’t know about Stalin, and what did they do that was so bad, and anyway McCarthy was worse, and why are you bringing this up, you fascist?”)
    “Or do you really want us to believe that jewish seamstresses who fought for better wages, fair housing, and a 10 hour workday really secretly wanted mass murder, gulags and the KGB having files on every citizen, etc ?”
    Cue the violins. Of course not, Brown. Most were just well-meaning if short-sighted activists (Yisrael above did a great job explaining that). A significant minority, however, couldn’t let go of their dreams of a radical utopia, and long after they knew or should have known what the Soviet Union was about, they continued to support it. If this behavior is not as culpable as that of Stalin and his henchmen themselves, it’s still awful. It’s clearly a stain on the legacy of Jewish progressivism (so significant that the dry cleaner suggests the garment be discarded), and arguably a stain on the Jewish secular tradition.

  15. J and Yisrael,
    Some education:
    http://www.infoshop.org/faq/index.html
    I don’t identify with “leftism” and feel no need to acknowledge Stalinism as the seamy side of some history that is in some way “mine.” The seamy side of anarchist history (i.e. Alexander Berkman’s assassination attempt on Henry Clay Frick, Leon Czolgosz) is enough for me, and I’m not really embarrassed by that either.

  16. habibi,
    that’s slick, i wonder if i ever met you…you know people like Michael May or Mario Offenberg, any teachers at the day school in grosse hamburger strasse..I studied with Wolfgang Wipperman at FU – send me an email if you like..

  17. J.B: Liked the photo of the children’s protest, Bronx Workmen’s Circle shul #2, 1934. Note that protests by Workmen’s Circle kids are still going on in the 21st century – in the Boston area, Workmen’s Circle http://www.circle.org , the Jewish Labor Committee http://www.jewishlabor.org and others have held anti-sweatshop demos http://babel.massart.edu/~fredless/stop-sweatshops for the last few years. For details, contact me [email protected] .
    You mentioned that your family is from the Seward Park Houses in Manhattan, which was financed and built by the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union. The Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America also had developed some low-cost housing on the Lower East Side of Manhattan as well, just across the park from the Jewish Daily Forward building, if I’m not mistaken. Yes, rich history indeed.
    Over the years, the historically Jewish garment unions have undergone mergers. http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/library/kheel/collections/bibliographies/uniteAndPredecessorUnions/about.html The Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America [the sponsors of the Amalgamated Houses] merged with the Textile Workers Union of America in 1976 and formed the ACTWU. That union merged with the ILGWU in 1995 to form UNITE, and in 2003, UNITE merged with the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees [HERE] into UNITE HERE http://www.unitehere.org . You can see some of the history online. http://www.unitehere.org/about/history.asp
    The Jewish labor movement as a whole has a diverse and rich history, from the alphabet soup of unions and allied Jewish labor organizations, and range from a [the Jewish anarchists] to f [Yiddishist social-democratic Farband and the Yiddishist labor Zionist Farband] through z [the labor Zionists and socialist Zionists] I’ve included on the JLC website – http://www.jewishlabor.org – a basic reading list on the American JLM http://www.ericlee.me.uk/jlcarchives/000036.html that might be of interest to some folks “here.” Take a look.
    That your grandmother used to play mah jong with Ethel Rosenberg and your my grandparents were boxing up world-war II rifles the many Jewish war veterans had brought home from the war as part of an effort to smuggle arms for the Jewish fighters in Palestine … well, that just shows how intertwined and fluid some of the personal and political boundaries were in those years.
    Daniel’s comments that “the `Real State’ of the Jewish, when Israel is realized, will look like a Bronx Cooperative Movement,” is a tad self-serving, what with his radical views and all.
    His retort to the question Jews often ask him — “You don’t believe in the Jewish state?” – that is, “No, I believe in a Jewish world,” is also self-serving. A Jewish world would be a good, fair and decent world? Hey, anyone involved in social change movements, as Rosen apparently is, a’la his web link, wants a world based on “Jewish values of justice” – but the expression “tzedek, tzedek, tirdof” – “justice, justice, shall you pursue – which is from the last book of the Torah [Deut. 16:20]is connected with the relationship between the importance of the pursuit of justice, that it is necessary for living, and that not just so one may live, but “inherit the land which the LORD your God gives you.”
    Rather than fulminate about “the fascistic and racist policies of the current Jewish state,” [hey, it’s called Israel], I’d recommend finding individuals, parties, and organizations within Israel and here in the U.S. who are working for a more peaceful Israel – not only in relation to Israel and the Palestinians and its other neighboring peoples/states, but also within Israeli society. For instance Shalom Achshav http://www.peacenow.org.il/site/en/homepage.asp and Meretz USA http://www.meretzusa.org , to pick two quickly. Or to support the work of the New Israel Fund http://www.nif.org and its colleague groups within Israel working for social change. Here’s a links page page of links to a range of Israeli and American groups, courtesy Meretz USA http://www.meretzusa.org/linkspage.shtml
    Eli is interested in the “rebuilding of yiddishe culture in new york.” Well, reach out to the Workmen’s Circle – 212-889-6800, ask for the New York Regional Office, and also to the Congress for Jewish Culture – 212-505-8040 – and Yugntruf – Youth for Yiddish http://www.yugntruf.org – 212- 787-6675. They all operate Yiddish language and culture activities in New York and other communities.
    Ben-David’s grandfather read the Forwards. It is still coming out, weekly in print and online, in English http://www.forward.com and Yiddish http://yiddish.forward.com
    As to Holy Terror’s “claim that American Jews sat on their ass throughout the holocaust,” let me be both informative and a bit self-serving and direct people to an online exhibit on the Holocaust era history of the Jewish Labor Committee http://www.nyu.edu/library/bobst/collections/exhibits/tam/JLC/opener.html [I work at the JLC.]
    >> Arieh Lebowitz

  18. Sam, Thanks for the link to the book. My comparable argument is go to Washington University in St. Louis and get my degree in economics.
    Anarchism that also promotes the abolition of private property is so patently ridiculous it hardly deserves a response. The bottom line is that if, for a brief moment such a state of the world did exist, it would quickly degrade into thuggish criminal syndicalism. Private property is inherent to humanity. We are covetous of that which belongs to others. A worldview that denies the private property invites widespread theft and destruction of property. Look at Somalia for a good example of anarchy. Your worldview is but a dream.

  19. Come on Sam, you can do better than that. One cannot simply will that human nature be repealed. Creating a Jewish state can be willed. Creating an anarcho-socialist utopia is just a pipe dream, not a dream that can be willed into existence. Take my perspective on anarchy. Anarchy is a psychological issue, not a political one. Once you DECIDE that no one is above you, then no one is. Your employer exchanges money for your labor. End of description. The payor for services is not your owner of master. Employment is not slavery. The hierarcy of capitalism is in your head. Mao tried to destroy private property, and 40 million Chinese died as a result of lost productivity. Yet, he still ruled. That is a better example of hierarchy than anything capitalism has to offer.

  20. Yisrael, I disagree. The structure of the modern corporation is as hierarchical as anything the medieval, feudal period had to offer. The hierarchy is almost perfectly pyramidal and there is little accountability at the top, even if the company is publicly traded. In any event, ten percent of the population owns over 90 percent of the stock, so we shouldn’t exaggerate the influence of that. The corporation is basically a feudal lord that puts a gun to your head and controls you for eight hours a day. I don’t think that’s an imaginary hierarchy at all.
    To say nothing of the countless people in our society who have the most mind-numbing, drudgery-involving jobs and yet get paid the least, i.e. janitors, sanitation workers, etc. If our economy made any sense no one would have to do a job like that for their whole lives, and everyone would have some opportunity to develop some specific skill or talent as an individual.
    By the by, African countries embroiled in civil or guerrilla wars are not examples of anarchism in action. They’re just failed states. Try the Spanish collectives of the mid-30’s or the early Russian Soviets (before Lenin crushed them in the name of, uh, Soviets) for better examples.

  21. “The hierarchy is almost perfectly pyramidal and there is little accountability at the top, even if the company is publicly traded. ”
    Little accountability? To whom? Shareholders? Do top executives work 80-hour weeks just for the hell of it? Lack of accountability to the government? Ever try wading through securities statutes or practicing corporate law?
    “The corporation is basically a feudal lord that puts a gun to your head and controls you for eight hours a day.”
    Sure, except that the corporation can’t screw your new wife on your wedding night, can’t imprison or behead you if you decide to work elsewhere or start your own company, and can only tell you what to do in the context of the work you do for the company. But other than that, just like the feudal lord. And if the Queen had balls, she’d be King.
    “If our economy made any sense no one would have to do a job like that for their whole lives, and everyone would have some opportunity to develop some specific skill or talent as an individual.”
    What if someone’s talents or skills, even when developed, only qualified them for a drudgery-involving job? But I’d be willing to experiment with job rotation. Why don’t we start by having the janitors and sanitation workers serve as surgeons for anarchist patients?

  22. Little accountability? To whom? Shareholders? Do top executives work 80-hour weeks just for the hell of it? Lack of accountability to the government? Ever try wading through securities statutes or practicing corporate law?
    In the early days of this here republic, corporations had to be chartered by the states. To make sure they performed useful functions, and didn’t harm the commonweal. After Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad, in which the precedent was set that corporations are people, it all started to plunge even further downhill.
    What if someone’s talents or skills, even when developed, only qualified them for a drudgery-involving job? But I’d be willing to experiment with job rotation. Why don’t we start by having the janitors and sanitation workers serve as surgeons for anarchist patients?
    Sure, it makes tons of sense that at 18 years old, we give people this choice: either you can spend some more years at school, benefiting from further education, or you can go straight into the workforce and become a janitor! After nine years, the student will be a doctor, and you can still be a janitor! Therefore, the person who spent your nine drudgerous years as a janitor should be paid much more than you! Because, you know, of all their sacrifices.

  23. “In the early days of this here republic, corporations had to be chartered by the states. To make sure they performed useful functions, and didn’t harm the commonweal.”
    They still are, as anyone who has formed a corporation recently knows.
    “After Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad, in which the precedent was set that corporations are people, it all started to plunge even further downhill. ”
    The Santa Clara case (from the 1880’s) was about applying personhood for the purposes of the 14th amendment. The notion that a corporation should be considered a person in some respects goes back to the beginning of the concept of incorporation itself.
    What does this have to do with regulation of corporations today? Are you aware of the abundance of legislation and administrative law, on both the state and federal levels, governing corporations and securities? You might have some specific problems with the regulation of corporations (I might even agree sometimes) but the notion that corporations simply run wild is absurd.
    “Sure, it makes tons of sense that at 18 years old, we give people this choice: either you can spend some more years at school, benefiting from further education, or you can go straight into the workforce and become a janitor! After nine years, the student will be a doctor, and you can still be a janitor! Therefore, the person who spent your nine drudgerous years as a janitor should be paid much more than you! Because, you know, of all their sacrifices.”
    I really have no idea what your’e getting at here. Do you believe that everyone has the same or similar levels of intelligence, talents and ambitions? Do you think medical school, or law school, or medical or law practice is a picnic? Do you think that of the janitors out there who have the talent to become professionals, all would choose to be professionals, with the greater stress levels that entails? Are you trying to say that there’s not enough opportunity in America? Even to the extent that’s true, wouldn’t relatively minor reforms (more rigorous grade schools and high schools) be preferable to dumping the entire system?

  24. They still are, as anyone who has formed a corporation recently knows.
    Right, but when was the last time a corporation had its charter revoked for being irresponsible?
    I really have no idea what your’e getting at here. Do you believe that everyone has the same or similar levels of intelligence, talents and ambitions? Do you think medical school, or law school, or medical or law practice is a picnic? Do you think that of the janitors out there who have the talent to become professionals, all would choose to be professionals, with the greater stress levels that entails? Are you trying to say that there’s not enough opportunity in America? Even to the extent that’s true, wouldn’t relatively minor reforms (more rigorous grade schools and high schools) be preferable to dumping the entire system?
    I do think that everyone has relatively the same level of intelligence, though not necessarily either talents or ambitions. But I don’t think the system as it is structured now offers enough opportunity for each person to develop their potential, and I’m not sure that it could even with better education due to the fact of economic inequality transmitted from generation to generation. Also, I think I agree with Michael Albert that it makes more sense, morally, to remunerate for effort instead of output. Law school might not be a picnic, but ask a law student whether they’d rather be in law school or clean a sewer and see what they tell you. I certainly don’t think that people who clean sewers are all ambitionless, talentless people who deserve to be doing those jobs their whole lives.

  25. “Right, but when was the last time a corporation had its charter revoked for being irresponsible? ”
    Happened to one of my clients a few years ago, for not paying taxes (of course, he wasn’t my client when it happened). True, it was a small privately-held company, not a large publicly traded one. But did it occur to you that the reason revocation is rare is because it’s an extreme sanction likely to destroy the entity entirely? Most corporate wrongdoing is confined to one or a few executives, one line of business among several the company is engaged in, and/or a specific crooked practice conducted amid a generally honest business. Does it make sense to destroy a mostly healthy and legitimate business, bankrupt the shareholders, and throw thousands out of work (which of us supposedly supports the working man?) when more limited punishments can solve the problem?
    “I do think that everyone has relatively the same level of intelligence…”
    Bravely taking on both common sense and science in the name of ideology.
    “But I don’t think the system as it is structured now offers enough opportunity for each person to develop their potential, and I’m not sure that it could even with better education due to the fact of economic inequality transmitted from generation to generation. ”
    So are you advocating economic equality? If so, maybe you should be taking some of the (dis)credit for the Rosenbergs, et. al.
    “Also, I think I agree with Michael Albert that it makes more sense, morally, to remunerate for effort instead of output.”
    Michael who? Sounds like “from each according to his ability, to each according to their needs”. But as an anarchist, maybe you’re allergic to quoting the Big M.
    In any case, let’s consider how moral this is. For one thing, you’ve now asserted that members of a society have very strong ownership rights on each other (in other words, the right to sell one’s services and receive reward for them would have to be forcefully abolished). Let’s not hear any more nattering about liberty from the anarchist peanut gallery, then. And you would have to make a case that such an ownership right exists, which I doubt can be done.
    But even before that discussion begins, the practical effects of instituting your system would be so disastrous that it could not be called moral. Remunerate for effort? Which Commissar, er, commissioner, is going to judge the effort? Why would the most talented members of such a society bother working more than 40 hours or take on a stressful job? If they don’t take these jobs, who will? Why would anyone bother doing more than the absolute minimum amount of work necessary to avoid being shot by the Commissar, er, fined by the Commissioner?
    It’s okay to have idle daydreams. But when you transform these daydreams into political action, don’t wonder why so many of us oppose you so vehemently.
    “Law school might not be a picnic, but ask a law student whether they’d rather be in law school or clean a sewer and see what they tell you. ”
    If I could work a 35 – 40 hour week cleaning sewers for the money I make now, I’d gladly clean the sewers. And I’m hardly the only lawyer who would say that. I’m willing to get dirty for less stress and more free time. And in your world, where the money would be the same, that’s what I would do.

  26. A flight of fancy: while reading through Quentin Skinner’s The Foundations of Modern Political Thought , the arguments among sixteenth-century northern humanists about the aristocracy and the plebes reminded me of this argument. Maybe conservatives throughout history and in completely different contexts are really similar in at least this way: they tend to think that people in the current society are for the most part where they deserve to be. And usually, this is because they have some kind of lofty position themselves, though in some cases it is because they hold the hope of attaining such a position. In the sixteenth century, the argument was that although virtue, and not blood and heredity, constituted the only true title to rule, it was nonetheless the case that noblemen had more virtue than “the rascal rabble,” and that the aristocracy could “accomplish more copiously and plentifully than the dregs and dross of men.”
    Cut forwards a few hundred years, and we have “science,” which is certainly not at all ever tinged by “ideology,” telling us that hey, some people just accomplish more than others because they’re born that way.
    By the by, I don’t see how you read “remuneration for effort” as the same thing as “remuneration for need.” One is effort, the other is need. Those are two completely different metrics! Our society’s metric is output, which I think is immoral for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the opportunity we offer to each individual and the fact that if indeed we accept the more obvious of science’s genetic divisions (i.e. a tall, strong guy can pick more grain than a short, skinny guy) then we’re simply rewarding another facet of luck, the genetic lottery. Since most moral philosophers agree that luck is morally irrelevant, we should find other ways of distributing remuneration.
    Oh, and in the hypothetical system I am referring to, which is not by any means the only proposal for an anarchistic system (and in fact, many anarchists contest its anarchistic nature), effort is evaluated by one’s co-workers in a regular fashion. Assuming everyone comes in and works the same hours at the same pace or level of effort, remuneration would turn out relatively “equal.” If someone noticeably slacked or noticeably put in more effort, they would get more. If you want you can read about some of these ideas here: http://www.zmag.org/parecon/indexnew.htm
    And if we did remunerate according to effort, I’d love to see you in the sewers. You’ve answered the usual “why your system would never work” question, which is “who would clean the sewers?” The answer, it seems, is that stressed-out lawyers looking for jobs that were less mentally taxing would do it. We could leave the lawyering to people who were actually into the job.

  27. “my mother (as a young girl) awoke in the middle of the night in 1947 to find my grandparents boxing up world-war II rifles the many Jewish war veterans had brought home from the war as part of an effort to smuggle arms for the Jewish fighters in Palestine”
    Do you have any mor info on this as I know a very similar story/situation that happened over here.

  28. Well, I grew up in the Amalgamated too – and I can tell you one thing – those of us who grew up there remember it fondly, love our experience of Judaism (unlike many other Jews) and most of us carry the values we learned there proudly. You folks can argue politics all you want, and go off the intellectual deep (or shallow) end about capitalism and the Rosenbergs or whatever – but you can’t imagine the richness of our experience, and what you missed. It was a great community – vibrant, intellectual, compassionate, activist, close knit, culturally alive, open-minded, ethical. You can take your self-serving capitalistic money-centered values and shove them – you have lost all concept of what Judaism is about. Long live the Amalgamated, long live the Co-ops. Those of us who grew up there are still changing the world

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