Jews at the time of the Talmud weren’t not anti-Roman, they just weren’t particularly anti-Roman. The interactions between the Jews and the Empire sparked the most famous anti-gentile sentiments in the Talmud that are often repeated by people like NJF. On the other hand, Romans deported Jews from the city of Rome multiple times and had basically nothing good to say about them or their religion, and the Romans engaged in what can only be described as genocidal campaigns against Jewish populations during the second and third Jewish-Roman wars. The only nations the Romans devastated at any similar level was the Carthaginians and maybe the Gauls if we are to believe Caesar word for word. While it is true that Jews descend mostly from a population resembling urban Imperial Romans, virtually no Jews identify with this ancestry and most don’t even know about it. The connection between Rome and Esau might not be a result of direct interaction with Romans, but from interaction with Rome’s Idumean clients who were actually the descendants of the biblical Edomites in the early days of Roman influence over Judea.
The claim that the Greeks were “civic nationalists” is much more ridiculous than any of the above, though. Athenian citizenship was passed down through both the mother and the father, so a half-breed could not become a citizen. Aristotle, Alexander’s Greek master, was one of History’s first “race realists” and both he and most of Alexander’s generals disapproved of the intermarriage policy. After Alexander’s death, most of the Diadochi divorced their foreign wives, and some Greek kingdoms in the east developed a sort of ethnic hierarchy with Greeks above both ordinary locals and Hellenized locals. Irregardless, Alexander’s forced marriages have nothing to do with what you’re talking about. He wasn’t Hellenizing the Persians, he was in many ways Persianizing his own generals for the approval of local satraps! Alexander himself began waltzing around in Persian garb, and of course married the Sogdian Roxanne.
There were civic nationalists among the Romans, but other Romans viewed Roman ethnicity as blood-based, hence why the Romans often tried to slander each other by claiming another had barbarian ancestry. Augustus Caesar was accused of having African ancestry, and in turn Augustus spoke at length about the concern of Roman blood being replaced by barbarian blood.
Your evidence of naturalization being “western” is a handful of quotes from a few American founders who elsewhere expressed or enacted policy that ensured American citizenship be limited to ethnic Europeans, which was the undisputed reality of this country until after the Civil War, and even thereafter the only exception was towards Black African slaves until 1952. The European barbarians did not “become” Western, the West was a synthesis of characteristics from both Northern and Southern Europe that formed only around the late medieval period.
It's untrue that the Romans "had basically nothing good to say about them [Jews] or their religion." Historian Martin Goodman writes that "Roman comments about Jews were rarely hostile before the outbreak of war in 66. Far more common were amusement, indifference, acceptance, admiration, and emulation." As for the Jews in Rome, Goodman notes that "The Roman state seems to have treated the synagogues in the city much like other voluntary associations, to be controlled and occasionally suppressed, but generally tolerated." While Jews were expelled on occasion, this was never complete or permanent, and was not motivated by what we'd now call antisemitism. For example, the "expulsion in 19 CE was not of Jews alone but also of those who practiced Egyptian rites," based on a fear that foreign rites caused the death of Germanicus. Obviously, the Romans treated the rebelling Jews brutally, but again, we shouldn't anachronistically read antisemitism into the pre-Christian world. Even after the Jewish revolts, Roman attitudes toward Jews weren't uniformly negative. Julian the Apostate ordered the rebuilding of the Jerusalem Temple; Judah ha-Nasi, compiler of the Mishnah, was granted a high status as Jewish leader; and in general, per Goodman, "the effect of a more benign imperial regime in the third century CE seems to have been a licence to some Jews to manage their own affairs."
The larger point is that civic nationalism and universalism are deeply rooted in the Greco-Roman tradition. It's a massive cope by Fuentes and his ilk to blame the Jews for ideas that were already permeating the Hellenistic and Roman worlds. Here's Plutarch writing around 100 CE:
"[T]he much-admired Republic of Zeno, the founder of the Stoic sect, may be summed up in this one main principle: that all the inhabitants of this world of ours should not live differentiated by their respective rules of justice into separate cities and communities, but that we should consider all men to be of one community and one polity, and that we should have a common life and an order common to us all . . . This Zeno wrote, giving shape to a dream or, as it were, shadowy picture of a well-ordered and philosophic commonwealth; but it was Alexander who gave effect to the idea. For Alexander did not follow Aristotle's advice to treat the Greeks as if he were their leader, and other peoples as if he were their master . . . He bade them all consider as their fatherland the whole inhabited earth, as their stronghold and protection his camp, as akin to them all good men, and as foreigners only the wicked; they should not distinguish between Grecian and foreigner by Grecian cloak and targe, or scimitar and jacket; but the distinguishing mark of the Grecian should be seen in virtue, and that of the foreigner in iniquity; clothing and food, marriage and manner of life they should regard as common to all, being blended into one by ties of blood and children."
Athens did indeed have jus sanguinis citizenship, and Alexander's own successors mostly retreated from his intermarriage policy. But that universalist current was consequential even when it lost out politically in the short term. Cosmopolitanism became increasingly influential in later Hellenistic and Roman practice, as with the expansion of Roman citizenship via the Antonine Constitution in 212 CE. It also influenced Christianity itself, which has led to its deepest impact on Western thought.
My evidence for naturalization being Western includes a handful of quotes because they illustrate deeply rooted philosophical ideas coming to political fruition. When George Washington declared that he hoped "that this land might become a safe & agreeable Asylum to the virtuous & persecuted part of mankind, to *whatever* nation they might belong," is it so surprising that later Americans would take him at his word? The long-term significance of an idea unfurls over time. As I wrote, the Western tradition doesn't dictate open borders or preclude racism. But it's clear from any judicious reading of history that Western civilization has a long-standing universalist movement. Sometimes that universalism was expressed brutally (see, for example, the Northern Crusades that imposed your Western "synthesis" across the Baltic region), sometimes nobly.
"Yes, the Romans responded to the uprisings with unnecessary brutality, but—no matter how bad some of Judea’s governors were—the Jews shouldn’t have taken on the world’s mightiest empire in the first place."
And to think, you've only done about seventy years and two intifadas, and you're already here. Give it about another five hundred years, and another four major uprisings (depending on whether you count the Samaritan revolts or not). At some point the sword starts to get hungry.
Bloom ain't the only one--how 'bout Irving Howe, and George Steiner, Lionel Trilling! Alter, Auerbach... many more! Ruth Wisse (the best dang professor in the WESTERN Velt!) has an entire lecture series on how joos SAVED the Western Canon & created literary journals that celebrated / shared it! Heck, even the tony New Yorker wuz co-founded by a joo--Raoul Fleischmann of "YEAST" fame (I wish I were jokin' lol). Look up William Shawn (woke Wally's daddy-o--jooze!). Our people have EMBRACED Western Civ. like a beloved slice've apple cake. Foo Auntie's / Aunt Tease... (if he's straight I'll eat mah socks) dunno bupkis.
Jews at the time of the Talmud weren’t not anti-Roman, they just weren’t particularly anti-Roman. The interactions between the Jews and the Empire sparked the most famous anti-gentile sentiments in the Talmud that are often repeated by people like NJF. On the other hand, Romans deported Jews from the city of Rome multiple times and had basically nothing good to say about them or their religion, and the Romans engaged in what can only be described as genocidal campaigns against Jewish populations during the second and third Jewish-Roman wars. The only nations the Romans devastated at any similar level was the Carthaginians and maybe the Gauls if we are to believe Caesar word for word. While it is true that Jews descend mostly from a population resembling urban Imperial Romans, virtually no Jews identify with this ancestry and most don’t even know about it. The connection between Rome and Esau might not be a result of direct interaction with Romans, but from interaction with Rome’s Idumean clients who were actually the descendants of the biblical Edomites in the early days of Roman influence over Judea.
The claim that the Greeks were “civic nationalists” is much more ridiculous than any of the above, though. Athenian citizenship was passed down through both the mother and the father, so a half-breed could not become a citizen. Aristotle, Alexander’s Greek master, was one of History’s first “race realists” and both he and most of Alexander’s generals disapproved of the intermarriage policy. After Alexander’s death, most of the Diadochi divorced their foreign wives, and some Greek kingdoms in the east developed a sort of ethnic hierarchy with Greeks above both ordinary locals and Hellenized locals. Irregardless, Alexander’s forced marriages have nothing to do with what you’re talking about. He wasn’t Hellenizing the Persians, he was in many ways Persianizing his own generals for the approval of local satraps! Alexander himself began waltzing around in Persian garb, and of course married the Sogdian Roxanne.
There were civic nationalists among the Romans, but other Romans viewed Roman ethnicity as blood-based, hence why the Romans often tried to slander each other by claiming another had barbarian ancestry. Augustus Caesar was accused of having African ancestry, and in turn Augustus spoke at length about the concern of Roman blood being replaced by barbarian blood.
Your evidence of naturalization being “western” is a handful of quotes from a few American founders who elsewhere expressed or enacted policy that ensured American citizenship be limited to ethnic Europeans, which was the undisputed reality of this country until after the Civil War, and even thereafter the only exception was towards Black African slaves until 1952. The European barbarians did not “become” Western, the West was a synthesis of characteristics from both Northern and Southern Europe that formed only around the late medieval period.
It's untrue that the Romans "had basically nothing good to say about them [Jews] or their religion." Historian Martin Goodman writes that "Roman comments about Jews were rarely hostile before the outbreak of war in 66. Far more common were amusement, indifference, acceptance, admiration, and emulation." As for the Jews in Rome, Goodman notes that "The Roman state seems to have treated the synagogues in the city much like other voluntary associations, to be controlled and occasionally suppressed, but generally tolerated." While Jews were expelled on occasion, this was never complete or permanent, and was not motivated by what we'd now call antisemitism. For example, the "expulsion in 19 CE was not of Jews alone but also of those who practiced Egyptian rites," based on a fear that foreign rites caused the death of Germanicus. Obviously, the Romans treated the rebelling Jews brutally, but again, we shouldn't anachronistically read antisemitism into the pre-Christian world. Even after the Jewish revolts, Roman attitudes toward Jews weren't uniformly negative. Julian the Apostate ordered the rebuilding of the Jerusalem Temple; Judah ha-Nasi, compiler of the Mishnah, was granted a high status as Jewish leader; and in general, per Goodman, "the effect of a more benign imperial regime in the third century CE seems to have been a licence to some Jews to manage their own affairs."
The larger point is that civic nationalism and universalism are deeply rooted in the Greco-Roman tradition. It's a massive cope by Fuentes and his ilk to blame the Jews for ideas that were already permeating the Hellenistic and Roman worlds. Here's Plutarch writing around 100 CE:
"[T]he much-admired Republic of Zeno, the founder of the Stoic sect, may be summed up in this one main principle: that all the inhabitants of this world of ours should not live differentiated by their respective rules of justice into separate cities and communities, but that we should consider all men to be of one community and one polity, and that we should have a common life and an order common to us all . . . This Zeno wrote, giving shape to a dream or, as it were, shadowy picture of a well-ordered and philosophic commonwealth; but it was Alexander who gave effect to the idea. For Alexander did not follow Aristotle's advice to treat the Greeks as if he were their leader, and other peoples as if he were their master . . . He bade them all consider as their fatherland the whole inhabited earth, as their stronghold and protection his camp, as akin to them all good men, and as foreigners only the wicked; they should not distinguish between Grecian and foreigner by Grecian cloak and targe, or scimitar and jacket; but the distinguishing mark of the Grecian should be seen in virtue, and that of the foreigner in iniquity; clothing and food, marriage and manner of life they should regard as common to all, being blended into one by ties of blood and children."
Athens did indeed have jus sanguinis citizenship, and Alexander's own successors mostly retreated from his intermarriage policy. But that universalist current was consequential even when it lost out politically in the short term. Cosmopolitanism became increasingly influential in later Hellenistic and Roman practice, as with the expansion of Roman citizenship via the Antonine Constitution in 212 CE. It also influenced Christianity itself, which has led to its deepest impact on Western thought.
My evidence for naturalization being Western includes a handful of quotes because they illustrate deeply rooted philosophical ideas coming to political fruition. When George Washington declared that he hoped "that this land might become a safe & agreeable Asylum to the virtuous & persecuted part of mankind, to *whatever* nation they might belong," is it so surprising that later Americans would take him at his word? The long-term significance of an idea unfurls over time. As I wrote, the Western tradition doesn't dictate open borders or preclude racism. But it's clear from any judicious reading of history that Western civilization has a long-standing universalist movement. Sometimes that universalism was expressed brutally (see, for example, the Northern Crusades that imposed your Western "synthesis" across the Baltic region), sometimes nobly.
This is just cope
I’m sorry to break it to you but your racialist view of America and Europe is irrelevant.
>How about deists like Voltaire and Thomas Jefferson
No, we do not want them.
"Yes, the Romans responded to the uprisings with unnecessary brutality, but—no matter how bad some of Judea’s governors were—the Jews shouldn’t have taken on the world’s mightiest empire in the first place."
And to think, you've only done about seventy years and two intifadas, and you're already here. Give it about another five hundred years, and another four major uprisings (depending on whether you count the Samaritan revolts or not). At some point the sword starts to get hungry.
Bloom ain't the only one--how 'bout Irving Howe, and George Steiner, Lionel Trilling! Alter, Auerbach... many more! Ruth Wisse (the best dang professor in the WESTERN Velt!) has an entire lecture series on how joos SAVED the Western Canon & created literary journals that celebrated / shared it! Heck, even the tony New Yorker wuz co-founded by a joo--Raoul Fleischmann of "YEAST" fame (I wish I were jokin' lol). Look up William Shawn (woke Wally's daddy-o--jooze!). Our people have EMBRACED Western Civ. like a beloved slice've apple cake. Foo Auntie's / Aunt Tease... (if he's straight I'll eat mah socks) dunno bupkis.