by Ben Spatz
After watching the _Prince of Egypt_, I really wanted to feel like a Jew. This movie is actually one of the only things I've ever seen which gave me truly positive associations with Jewish identity. My general association with the word "Jew" has always been somewhat negative. Of course, I've always had positive associations with Jewish humor, Jewish food, jewish love, etc. But all of this doesn't contradict my other stereotypes of Jews as bookish, nerdy, socially awkward, and unnattractive. It was the nerdy Jew archetype that I spent all of high school trying to escape.
This movie created in my a Jewish warrior archetype. Not having ever studied the Bible except in irony, my main association with the name Moses was my dad, or some bearded guy named Moshe. Here was a fresh warrior Moses. Here were the Hebrews as warriors. Even the name Hebrews sounds so much more powerful. The "w" in "Jew" has always felt weak to me. There is no "w" of weakness in the word Hebrew. So I got all pumped up and wanted to be a real Jew. I even fantasized about visiting Israel.
Oh right, Israel. The place where Jews rule, put there by the West, kept in power against all the surrounding companies by the world-ruling might of America. The place where Palestinians used to live until the Western industrial countries decided to kick them out. The other day I saw a guy on New York Public Television ranting and raving about how fantastic the Israelis are for having won so many hard battles, and why don't they teach that in schools? The League of Nations should have given Rhode Island to the Jews instead. Heh.
Of course, the problem isn't just that the Jewish situation in Israel is too complicated to allow for an idealizing of the Jews as warriors. The problem is with the warrior archetype itself. The warrior archtype is a complex mix of some great things (determination, independence, persistance, skill, integrity) with some horrible things (patriarchy, violence, discrimination, over-simplification). The truth is that there is no "just war" and there are no "bad guys" or "good guys." You NEVER get to fight with 100% confidence. You ALWAYS have to feel complex about war, you ALWAYS have to hate hurting people, you ALWAYS have to reexamine yourself for complicity.