The prodigal son.
My parents used to have this friend. He was a small chemist with glasses. Kind of Woody Allen-y, when I think about it. My Dad had served Communist Bulgaria’s mandatory military service with him, and our families would occasionally share holidays and parties. He was charming and intellectual. He also used to beat the shit out of his kid, including in front of guests. We’d all stare in silent shock, then awkwardly look away, while he’d scream and batter a 6-year-old.
His son was my age and I remember once they had a birthday party for him. He was boisterous; he was a 6-year-old boy hopped up on sugar. Our parents put us to bed (children’s bday parties in 1980s Bulgaria were largely an excuse for adults to drink and smoke).
The boy had misbehaved in some way (again — 6-year-old with cake in his system) and I remember his father came into the room, seething: “You think just because it’s your birthday you can act like a barbarian!?” He began to beat him so violently he accidentally hit me; not hard, but it was wild.
His wife was very sweet. And, obviously, an abused doormat, who worked full days at a factory and then came home to cook, and I assume, keep her husband from killing their children. On a recent trip to Bulgaria my mother went to dinner with them (again, his wife is very sweet).
Afterwards, my mother bitched to me, “He’s an anti-vax, conspiracy theorist Russia-phile! I’m never going to see them again!”
I snottily replied, “We probably shouldn’t have seen them again after we watched him beat the shit out of his son!”
Anyway. During the abusive father’s own childhood his single mother, when he’d misbehaved, called over his uncle, who beat the shit out of him.
I know I’m not saying anything new here. The idea of intergenerational abuse trauma is solidly fixed in US discourse. But then my mom recently made an interesting point, re: Israel’s war on Gaza.
For those of us without a horse in the fight—meaning no strong emotional attachment to Zionism—it’s been utterly surreal, in addition to horrifying, that as the atrocities pile up into an atrocity mountain that reaches the moon, people are still out there saying, “Well Hamas started it” and “It could be over if they release the hostages” (please) and any number of justifications for genocide. I don’t know anyone who follows the news who doesn’t cry. Good. We should cry, though I wish there were something more useful to do.
My mother pointed out that pro-Israel Jewish people have an intergenerational trauma mark, in their DNA, that makes them visit the same horrors on the Palestinians. It reminds her of the abusive horror their former friend had unleashed on his own son.
There’s also a factor of gender. Just like Nazi men, who’d been humiliated and then so turned on Jewish people, I’ve noticed a sense of “Never again” meaning “Never again will we watch our women and children killed and be reduced to weak skeletons in need of rescue.”
Understandable. But not moral or human, if you do it to other defenseless children.
one of the best, most succinct takes on the psychology behind this (literally) incredible mess. Unfortunately I've lost a lot of friends over this, even some non-Jews
or another take could be (historically to a degree in reports, but whether true?) that the Jewish people (some) were persecuted because they tended to exhibit an air of superiority. Certainly Ezra persecuted his own that did not follow his religious autocracy; The Maccabean revolt likewise; the Pharisees were persecuted by Herod and by the Sadducean-Roman alliance and themselves persecuted anyone who didn't include their own followers; including hassling (beating) Roman citizens and eventually Roman authority. Whether this remained true in the European dispersal, Shylock did not come out of nowhere.
But these are generalizations, as are such declarations of individuals in a group. It seems today in Israel many are opposed to the aggrresive treatment of the Palestinians. But the IDF is a citizen's army.
As to fathers who beat their kids---maybe they are beaten by their fathers---and perhaps they are just beaten down by an unjust system. The answer may be something wrong with the stresses put up on nuclear families instead of larger kin families, where the nuclear family tends to frequently view the kids belonging to them, while the larger kin family view children as a part of the kin group.
I'm sure there are "good" nuclear families. I didn't grow up in one---and I don't personally know anyone who did.