Jon Stewart discusses the new movie he directed and the accusation that he's a "self-hating Jew."
I used to hear and not understand that last term. It seemed to me that if someone had self-hatred, that was a problem that didn't have much to do with their religion. They just had very low self-esteem, the way lots of non-Jews have. Then someone told me it doesn't mean that. It denotes, or is supposed to denote, a Jewish person who holds antisemitic beliefs.
Okay, fine. But as the wise scholar Inigo Montoya once said, "I do not think that word means what you think it does." When I've heard the term used, it's used by folks who either think it means what I used to think it meant (i.e., very low self-esteem) or who hurl it at anyone who doesn't support every single action by Israel 110%.