There something I don’t get with all these accusations of Ethnocentrism. I went to dictionary.com and checked out a definition - “the belief in the inherent superiority of one's own ethnic group or culture”

Many a traditional Jew’s self understanding is that God mysteriously created a covenant with the Jewish people, not especially for any superior merit but just out of the mystery of God’s workings. Now though in fact I don’t believe in any supernatural anything (i.e. an atheist) there is nothing necessarily ethnocentric about such a self understanding. I would like to ask Michael Weiss or whoever what do they mean by this barb. (If individual Jews believe themselves inherently superior that’s their issue though I agree not a pleasant trait.)

Now if you mean some Jews are ethnocentric because they are not cosmopolitans like let’s say Arthur Koestler, Rosa Luxembourg and many more - ok. But it is not some moral offence to be tied to a life of particular loyalties and affections.  At most such Jews are guilty of the same sins that Swedes, Indian folk or Scottish folk etc.  

The agenda of cosmopolitan universalism is very attractive and many Jews and people of a Jewish background have been at the forefront of progressive social change it embodies and just plain urbanity. What I don’t care for is the need to ask or accuse other Jews who define themselves particularisticly to shed themselves of privileged loyalties to Jews or stand accused as some sort of ethnocentric reactionary.  This would only be ok if you looked similarly askance at every other nation.   

Long live the cosmopolitan Jews who have done so much to enrich the intellectual milieu of the last two centuries and this century.  However a fundamentalist campaign to define Jewishness as universalism – or liberal intellectualism informed by Jewish and modern history is not helpful.  Let those who call themselves Jews and define their lot in life the wellbeing of the Jewish people and the destiny of the Jews do their thing.  They are no worse as I said than other nations in this world. The other folk who call themselves Jews, the cosmopolitans, let them carry on too.  Fundamentally though the two identities in the Diaspora are irreconcilable (I think Israel is another story where you can have your cake and eat it). That is painful as many of the people from two groups are related, intimate and have shared a hell of a journey for many hundreds of years.

Hope I make sense here!