ChatGPT gives Jews a particular primacy and importance. But this is not a simple preferring one person to another, this is a profound and fundamental issue that I will explain underpins the whole of the West going back to Plato and before.
ChatGPT starts all discussions on Jews with the presumed existence of Jews. With other groups however conversations are more relative saying things like "an English identity could be formed."
When questioned ChatGPT points to the extremely long and unbroken Jewish tradition, citing language, writings, protections against outbreeding and culture as reasons why we would consider the Jews a significant phenomenon.
However it is worth remembering that within Jewish belief the Jews have a fundamentally primary place. The world creator Yahweh chose Abraham, and his descendants the Jews, as the first nation and ever since the Jews have lived in a special relationship with God that no other people enjoys.
But that is just Jewish scripture. The period we are talking about is Abraham and later Moses. Abraham began the relationship with God that started the whole Jewish identity. He is a distant figure in time one that we would struggle to find historical evidence for. Moses is more recent. If we remember Moses was found in a basket on the Nile, adopted by the Pharaoh as a gift from Isis and grew up as a Pharaoh to be. Yet no where in Egypt is there any record of this event, nor of a Pharaoh having a son either called Moses or fitting any of the story details. It is fair to say that Moses never existed and like the first two books of the Pentateuch are written many 1000s of years after the supposed events, and really embody myths that developed in the Jewish people.
I personally use the example of King Arthur, the mythic king of the Britons, to illustrate how peoples and nations have these mythic figures that we wish were true, but we know are far more fiction than fact, and really exist as projections of culture. Like early maps which do not record real distance or directions, but instead put the most important things in the centre and relegate less important things to the hinter lands. Such maps are mental maps recording the cultural space rather than anything real. So too is the Torah.
So while the primary status of Jews may not lie in facts what we can say is this reveals a strong desire amongst these people to have a distinct identity. And this is the key feature of Jews, that it is the desire for a strong identity that makes them unique.
Now where this came from is speculative. And, perhaps I will discuss a bit later on, but an analysis of Jewish identity is not the point here. The point is to discuss what such an identity means for how we see the world.
Importantly we have two competing views here:
(1) The Jewish view which is that God chose the people of the 12 tribes of Israelites to be the first nation of the world. And in return the people so chosen accepted the laws of God.
(2) The World view is that there are literally 10,000s of tribes around the world. A Kenyan told me there are over 100 tribes and languages in his Kenya alone. The Near East is no exception with the 12 tribes of Israelites being just 12 of 100s of tribes in the area. The god Yahweh is not a "Jewish" god. Yahweh, Asherah, Baal and El are just some of the gods that existed in the area before the Hebrews even arose. But the 12 tribes adopted Yahweh and critically formed the mythology that this god was superior to all the others. Interestingly in so doing to Yahweh, they also promoted themselves to be the superior tribes of the area. There appears to be have been a critical belief formed in the Israelites that not all tribes and gods are equal and this seems to be the seminal moment when Jewish identity really formed.
We can see the impact of this Jewish belief that they are superior people a millennia later when Jesus encounters a Canaanite woman described in Matthew 15:21-28 and also Mark 7:24-30. The Canaanites of course being the original people of the Bronze age in the area. The modern belief is that the Hebrews evolved from the Canaanites, previously it was believed they migrated. But by Jesus' time the Jews felt superior and were showing hostility to these people. Jesus calls her a dog and not worthy to eat at the father's table. It looks to me like we have the beginnings of racism being developed here in the Near East when one people views another as inferior.
We see the exact same trajectory being played out today in Israel and Palestine. Jesus was a Palestinian. But where Jesus called the Canaanite woman a dog, modern Israelis view Jesus' own people in many cases as not even worthy of life. That initial desire for Jews to be superior has gradually evolved to an extremism now.
So why has this happened? Well ChatGPT says that over time various persecutions of Jews starting with the enslavement by the Babylonians have gradually hardened the Jewish identity. But of course I would say this is a two sided thing. The more you think yourself superior, the more you are going to be resented by the people you assume superiority over. There is a chicken and egg situation here.
Now these are the two competing views of Jewish identity. One places Jews at the centre, and the other sees Jews in the context of world evolution and many people.
Now we get to the critical points and the demonstration of the Jewish Fallacy.
In the Jew Centric world view, which ChatGPT either by accident of design leans very much towards, we have a fundamental belief in Jewish identity. Because it is ancient and has high integrity we like to argue that it is a solid and real part of the world.
In particular in this view we argue that Jews are not just an arbitrary collection of people like for example Liverpool Football Club supporters, we take the critical step into thinking that Jews are a real entity. This is to argue that there is something about Jewish people that we could call the essence of being a Jew. It means that all things Jewish have a Jewishness about them which is real. In the mythology this is cemented by the fact that God even went so far as to recognise Jews and claim them for himself, forming a covenant with them and claiming them the first nation. To do this God is recognising Jewishness. This promotes Jews from an arbitrary collection of people into a fundamental unquestionable group. I worked briefly with a Jew and when we first met he introduced himself as "Daniel and unfortunately a Jew." Being a Jew appears to be no small thing for Jews, they carry it as close to their heart as their own name. And that stems from this belief that they really are Jews, and Jewishness is a real immutable thing.
Now I'm avoiding using philosophical language here, but this is a massive claim that pulls in a lot of other belief. To have a solid, fixed and immutable identity like Jewishness that remains unchanged over the 1000s of years to which people either belong or do not belong is the same as Creationism where animals are believed to be fundamentally different. As children we learn about Lions and Tigers and Hippos and Sharks and Dinosaurs and they are all fundamentally different. We can buy little plastic models that are all completely different. The belief that the plastic model of a Tiger is fundamentally different from that of a Shark is called "essentialism." We think that somehow there is something actually Tigerish about the tiger, and something Sharkey about the shark. In philosophy this is most famous expounded by the later philosophy of Plato. He went even further to say that the Tigerishness and the Sharkiness existed solidly in a magical realm of "Forms". If you wanted to know how a Tiger was different from a Shark you would access the Forms to see that indeed there are two forms and these things are different. That belief that difference comes about because of some concrete substance or feature is also called "essentialism."
"The Jewish Fallacy" is really just the fallacy of essentialism, but I am naming it to draw attention to probably its most famous application in that of the Jewish People.
Essentialism has been discussed to exhaustion in the literature but in general it fails because of a circularity. We note that Tigers and Lions are different. Great no one has an issue with this. Tigers have stripes and live solitary lives and Lions do not have stripes and live in prides. But the Jewish Fallacy is when we say that Tigers and Lions differ because inside Tigers is some essence or magical ingredient that is "tigerish" and Lions the same but with "lionish." The reason we might do this is because there are 1000s of lions and tigers. Yet we clearly divide them into two groups Lions and Tigers. Why do we do this? It is because all the Lions have something in common that differs from all the Tigers. That "something" is its essence, the magic ingredient which we call "tigerishness." This is what Jews have done with their identity. Blessed by God they have some divine essence that makes them different from other people.
So what is wrong with essentialism? Well we have explained the difference between all the tigers and all the lions by identifying two essences: one that makes something a Tiger and one that makes something a Lion. But we still have a problem. We have explained how all the tigers are the same, and we have explained how all the lions are the same so the problem is reduced to just one special essential Tiger and one Lion. But we still haven't explained what makes that essence into a Tiger or a Lion. The trail goes cold here. A tiger is a tiger because it contains the essence of Tiger but we are still completely clueless what a Tiger is. And an essentialist would say well we know what the essence of Tiger is by looking at all the tigers. Unfortunately it is circular. Which ever way the essentialist goes we are stuck with this idea of Tiger and no way of cracking what makes it a Tiger. It turns out that Essentialism is just a way of cementing prejudice. I believe in Tigers, and so I am going to prove they exist by inventing an essence. This is what Jews have done. Starting with a cultural desire to separate themselves from other tribes they formed the idea of Jew and then cemented this into reality by believing that Jews have some essence that makes them Jews and different from Gentiles. But actually it is just a trick. We knew what Tigers were before the theory and essentialism does not help us at all. Jews knew what Jews were before cementing it into a fundamental reality.
So how do we escape the Jewish Fallacy?
The clue is above. When even ChatGPT discusses the Jews it justifies their primacy by referring to the length of history and the integrity of the people and culture. But this like filling a bag to try and become the bag. The "Jews" already exists as an essence, and then evidence is sort to back that essence up. However "Jews" is not a scientific word created by ethnologists like for example the " La Tène culture" which describes a particular Celtic culture in Switzerland. This name exists and gains it meaning from the evidence uncovered. However "Jew" is a word that exists in a mythology, like "Titan" in Greek culture, and only then do people try and fit it to reality. This classic activity of trying to find evidence to fit and already existing idea is indicative of an essentialism. I mean how many Lions do you need to see to know the essence of Lion? Presumably to complete see it you need them all? Or do you not need any because you already have the essence?
A modern example is the evolutionary belief of apes evolving into humans. Now "Apes" and "Humans" have a long essentialist history. It was believed that God made "Apes" and "Humans" as separate entities and it took a very long time for the idea that their similarities come not from conservatism in God's design (why does God always use a backbone, 5 fingers, 2 eyes, and 1 heart) but to a common ancestry. Now armed with these ancient ideas of "Humans" and "Apes" people have tried to fit fossils into either camp. For a long time there was the "missing link" and Pilton Down Man was a famous fake that exploited this search for a midway between Apes and Humans. Is there really a midway between 2 separate things? The key issue here is the boundary: did an Ape ever give birth to a Human? Well of course not, the change is continuous.
Perhaps this is what confuses essentialists like in the Jewish Fallacy. The argument would go: are Apes the same as Humans? Everyone answers No! Therefore Apes are different from Humans. Everyone says Yes. And therefore you are either an Ape or a Human. QED.
And now we get into the key issue of Essentialism and the solution
Meaning comes from context. In a silly example when someone says "can you bring me that" it makes no sense outside context. You have to be there to know what they mean. Context can be a tiny ad hoc situation like this, or it can be a huge cultural phenomenon spanning 1000s of years. When the Hindus light candles before the New Moon around Autumn Equinox for Diwali this is not to light the room in a physical sense like usual, the light here means "goodness" and is meant to chase away any badness that might make the coming year unpleasant. This is embedded in much mythology as well, something we are all familiar from our own cultures.
So in the Ape/Human example when someone says "are Apes the same as Humans?" they mean in a very specific context of for example whether you would invite an ape to a party. This context is what motivated American researchers in the 1960s to train Apes to live as humans. Seeing an Ape using sign language, wearing clothes, using the toilet and living alongside humans was a novelty to the essentialist Americans. No more scientific than a performing animal in a zoo, and revealing the essentialism that exists in US culture. Equally intriguing was the idea of Humans living as animals as exemplified again by the American Tarzan in 1912. When we ask "are Apes the same as Humans?" it is in this social context we say no. You would not marry an Ape, and Apes are very much excluded from Human society not just because their abilities are so different but because of social rules also. David Attenborough says "There is more meaning and mutual understanding in exchanging a glance with a gorilla than any other animal I know" but I think humans would find Apes boring very quickly because the do not live in a symbolic world like us. So there are definite big differences. But are they "DIFFERENT" in an absolute contextually independent way?
Are these two really that different? Are we focusing too much on differences and not the similarities?
Now the next picture is different! The compound eye of a fly.
And of course that inspired the famous 1986 film The Fly where a human is fused with a fly and we wonder whether the resulting creature is both or neither. What is troubling here for the essentialist is whether there is any human "essence" left in the creature. It is the tragedy of Frankenstein told again, because this is a creature without context: it cannot join human society any more and it is not a fly either. Apart from that I would imagine Brundlefly would be quite happy,
So we are exploring that "outside" context is really what gives things their meaning and "essence" and it is not some immutable and fixed substance that exists "inside" the entity.
Here is a picture with multiple levels of interest. Even the most hardened essentialist who thinks Apes and Humans are oil and water and fundamentally different cannot avoid seeing the uncanny similarity between these two creatures reaching out to each other.
Of course this has another context in the West: Angelo's "Creation of Adam" in the Sistine Chapel in Rome.
This is an essentialist painting. The essence here however is not "type" of organism but "Life" itself. It is a dominant essentialist idea even in the heart of modern science that the world is split into inanimate and animate things. This painting shows the moment where God takes the inanimate body of Adam and gives it the spark of life, filling it with the ghost and fire of both life and being human. But are we saying--like with the split between Apes/Humans--you are either alive or dead, one or the other, and are these contextless, absolute and fundamental states?
So we are seeing here that "The Jewish Fallacy" is a really profound mistake that affects literally everything. Our whole belief about the world can be built on top of this fallacy.
Returning to Apes and Humans when asked now "are Apes the same as Humans?" hopefully we will see some complexity here. On one hand of course they are not the same. I absolutely would not invite an ape to dinner. I expect an ape to be in a cage in a zoo, or perhaps roaming wild in Africa. But in a different context of life on this planet we would say the difference is really very small. We can even exchange a look with an Ape and know something is looking back at us. Indeed we could invite one to dinner and it would be an experience far more engaging than inviting a fly.
And when it comes to classifying the fossils we find of Human development we are not looking for a sudden switch from ape to human, but recognise that all these organisms taken as one are a huge family tree. We could meet with any of our ancestors and like with a modern Ape engage in a deep and meaningful way. The idea "I am a Human" is not a fundamental statement of essence that sets me absolutely in a different mould from other organisms.
And so it goes for Jews. There is no mould called the Jewish Mould. But this is not to say Jews are the same as other people. They have their own history, beliefs, practices and culture but this does not cut them off from other people. All people have their history, beliefs, practices and culture this is not unique to Jews. And much of what Jews do is the exact same as everyone else. A great example are the tribes of Samaritans. They have almost the same culture as Jews and even worship Yahweh. Jewish belief finds this hard to process so they invent the belief that Samaritans are really Jews but just heretical ones. But actually Samaritans are not Jews they are separate tribes from the Jews, but they are almost identical in practices. This is not a problem for ethnologists, but it is a problem for essentialists who believe you are either Jew or Gentile. The idea that some people are in the middle is impossible under the Jewish Fallacy.
Escaping essentialism is actually a profound move
Two famous Non-Essentialist philosophies are Heraclitus from 6th Century BC Greece (around the time the second temple was built in Jerusalem) and Buddha from the same time in India.
Non-Essentialist thought seems odd at first because of the Mind's tendency to try and hold discrete things. How can I hold a cup if it is not a cup. It is either a cup or not a cup and there is nothing else.
Heraclitus' most famous idiom goes:
"You cannot step into the same river twice."
So Heraclitus is not denying that you cannot step into a definite river. It is there and you can step into it like an essentialist thinks.
The difference is that Heraclitus recognises that the river is flowing. If you were the come back tomorrow all the water would be different. Perhaps a herd of cows had come down to the river in the evening for a drink and broken up the bank into a mass of mud pockmarked with hoof imprints. The river of yesterday could be almost unrecognisable. So the Non-Essentialist says see the river is not the same. You cannot repeat what you did yesterday.
Now the Essentialist may retaliate by asking but what is the name of the river yesterday? And you say perhaps "Tigris" and then they say and what is the name of the river today and you say "Tigris". So they say see it is the same river.
And here we see context again. Essentialist or Non-Essentialist we recognise that the Tigris river runs through Turkey into the Persian Gulf. But when Heraclitus is talking about the river he is referring to the "actual" river the real thing down there on the ground actually flowing, Not some static model of a river on a map, or in a mind.
The Non-Essentialist may counter with this questioning:
NE: Do all rivers flow to the sea?
E: well nearly all of them yes.
NE: Does the Tigris flow to the sea?
E: Well yes of course it has to go somewhere.
NE: Can you find me where it flow into the sea?
Now the problem is that the map looks like this:
The Tigris never reaches the sea. It joins with the Euphrates to form the Shatt al-Arab (circled) and that flows into the sea. So the essentialist is sure that the Tigris is a river they can go an swim in any day. And we can go up stream of down stream and still swim in this river. And yet if we carry on down stream eventually we find ourselves swimming in a different river called the "Shatt al-Arab." Suppose someone had a bucket list and wanted to swim in the Tigris and the Euphrates. Would a swim in the Shatt al-Arab tick off both desires or none?
The essentialist has a big problem!
And we can see from this that "reality" differs from how we talk about it. In the world of discourse and convention then it makes sense to swim in the Tigris, but in reality we can do no such thing. And if we ever try to swim in the river twice we will have two completely different experiences.
There is another much more profound side to this and this truly upends the Essentialist world. It is not just the river that fail to fit exactly to a name, you and I do not either! It is not just the river that changes between swims: it is ourselves as well! The river cannot accept the same person in for a swim twice! Just because we have the same conventional name all the time, it does not mean it names and ties us to be the same thing every time.
The Essentialist mind probably panics here and goes: well if we are not the same then are we really different each time? We imagine turning into a hippo before our next trip. Or worse finding loads of copies of our self taking a swim. This is the problem with essentialism it is forced to be Ape or Human and cannot be relaxed in the middle.
The Nui, Ikithe and Haole
To illustrate it is like the inhabitants of the Mokulua Islands below. On the left island, called Moku Nui, are the Nui and on the right island, called Moku Ikithe, are the Ikithe. The Nui and the Ikithe have proud heritage and see themselves as completely different people. While they boat between the islands they always return to their respective island at dusk to sleep. They never inter marry as this would mean partners sleeping on different islands.
Now this is not quite true. There is a small group of islanders who disobey the rules. They do not obey the rules to return to their island. As a result they are rejected by the islanders who call them the "Haole" (outsiders) and they are not allowed to use the boats. Instead the Haole have learned to swim well and actually move freely between the islands, sometimes meeting in the sea for games and diving competitions. This causes great upset to the islanders because they cannot work out whether a Haole they meet is a Nui or an Ikithe. At least some islanders believe that it is possible to decide what an Haole is by finding out from their mother which island they were born on. Even when the mother is dead and this information cannot be recovered some islanders still think that deep down people are either Nui or Ikithe because they must have been born on one island. They have Islander Spirit or Essence at heart. But even this gets into trouble because some Haole are born at sea. These Haole the Haole believe to be true Haole and they are neither Nui nor Ikithe. But this is contentious because many Haole also believe that "Haole" is just an islander term for those who ignore the whole island culture, and they aren't really Haole, Nui or Ikithe.
So here we see how custom and context throw up a whole series of identities out of nowhere. But they can be really deeply felt and in the hand of essentialists they can really believe they are really something. But actually the Haole here show that it is quite possible to get outside the essentialist space and exist in a fluid space.
A quick note that the above is fictional and the people of Hawaii do not engage in the name calling and customs described above!
Now obviously this is directed at Jewish identity which in many cases has fossilised into an essentialist belief that Jews really exist and are absolutely distinct from other people. This is nonsense.
But it has far reaching implications because belief in discrete alternatives like Ape/Human Tigris/Euphrates also leads to Truth/False. The very concept of an Objective World comes out of this essentialism. And this persists even into modern science where some people believe that one day we will know the truth and have a final theory of everything. Such a belief is based upon a belief that the world has some distinct essence that can be uncovered. But it is all Jewish Fallacy.
Again the Essentialist Mind will panic. What no Truth and False? Does that mean we can believe anything we like? No it is not an invitation to madness. It is an invitation to look much more closely at reality and see things first before imposing ideas. A really useful trip to see the Tigris is not having the tour guide point at a river out of the tour bus and go that is the Tigris. Take a picture and head off to the hotel. To really know the Tigris we would do well to sit and have tea with some locals and have them talk about what it means to them. Read some history. Have a swim. Go fishing in a junk. See the sun set on it, spend some time and get some real knowledge and experience of the river. Then we can start to know the Tigris. There is no essence here to swallow and know the Tigris in its entirely, you could spend your whole life on and by the Tigris and still not know it. There is no total truth here.
And in this is the key. The Essentialist imposes a fixed view of reality. The boundaries of their mind become boundaries in the world. But we forget that those boundaries were once based on evidence, a initial impression or something someone else thought. The world always comes first, our minds form some view of this and that is where it should stop. The Non-Essentialist is always looking and experiencing the world to inform their ideas.
But the Essentialist starts to think that their ideas are no longer derivative but promotes them to a status higher than the world which was the source. They start to think their ideas are "true" and that justifies imposing them on reality. They do not realise the contradiction. If the world really was discrete and true in the first place then why do they need to impose their ideas on it? The whole reason that the Essentialist needs to form ideas and impose them on the world is precisely because the world is not like this!
Before ending a warning. Fluid has developed a new meaning in modern culture. People say for example that gender is fluid and there is a move to reject Binary Sexuality. However if we impose mental constructs on reality we are actually Essentialist even if we are imposing non dualism. Is there actually evidence of more than two sexes? There is not. The world really does come in two sexes. Even plants have male and female sexes. So Non-Essentialism is really radical. You can't just say that dualisms are false and essentialist. Sometimes things are dual. The problem only happens if we form a fixed idea and impose that on reality to suggest that what we think is what is there. We should look at what is there and think it as well as possible. Gender on the other hand is more complex. It is socially constructed. If you wish to rebel against your culture and adopt atypical gender then just know what you are doing.
Conclusion
The Jewish Fallacy is the mistake of Essentialism but named here after its most famous application. The world is a real thing which is experienced. It is always changing, and we are always changing. But change does not mean chaos. The world exists between the islands of Chaos and Order. To shift beyond Essentialism and being limited to one thing or another we simply need to put down expectations and experience things again openly and honestly. Perhaps inviting the Ape to dinner would blow our minds and teach us so much more about what it is to be human that sticking to regular human dinner parties. But it is not chaos, it is a close and attentive experience of reality. By contrast The Jewish Fallacy is to ignore reality an experience and take up the stone tablets of scripture and dead belief instead.
