The Goy Gaze
Does simultaneous hatred and fascination accurately describe how people deal with the Other? I think this is especially pronounced regarding Jews. It’s okay for non-Jews to obsess over Jewish history (though not our history in Israel/Palestine, of course) and our religion and culture, but they never really like current incarnations of our religion or our politics. This seems roughly parallel to the idea of “token” minorities, how it’s okay to like individual Jews or black people or whatever, but not groups of them; liking Jewish history allows the goy to defer liking actual living Jews, or deflect claims of anti-Semitism.
