#I just so often see goyim only reblog something like this

[tiredandsleepyaf]

Ok, so let me explain why rebloging posts like these do little to nothing to assure Jews that they’ll be safe around you.

Goyim reblogging this stuff don’t typically listen to Jews (which is apparent because we’ve said stuff like this doesn’t actually do anything to help us many times) about their experiences with antisemitism or listen when Jews try to educate them on things like antisemitic dog whistles or blood libel. Most of them are way more enthusiastic about punching Nazis than they are about showing any compassion to Jews. I’d venture to guess the majority of Jewish people know that often the goyim who reblog this stuff are just out for blood and don’t give a damn about us, because we’ve seen this many times. Not to mention that the desire for a violent revolution that some leftists seem to have has led to Jewish people facing a lot of antisemitism (at their hands). I would bet that some of the people reblogging this act similar to Nazis themselves. I know at the very least the goyim rebloging this don’t listen to Jews because we’ve said many times that this sort of thing doesn’t really do anything to help us, and we’d much rather goyim call out and learn about antisemitism. Overall, it’s just very performative activism, and it’s pretty obvious that the goyim reblogging this are just doing it to try and make themselves look better, and not for the sake of Jews.

[edenfenixblogs]

This is just terminology but regarding asking goyim to ID ourselves as such, may I ask if there's a specific reason you prefer that phrasing? Asking because I've previously heard that hearing someone self-describe as goyische can be a bit jarring due to Connotations from white supremacists "reclaiming" the term (scarequotes bc that's obviously not how reclamation works) so I'm wondering if you have an alternate perspective I should be taking into account or if it's just like, personal preference/not that deep.

Ah! @faggotry-enjoyer, My friend! I did not see this message from you until today! My deepest apologies!

I didn’t mean that every goy had to specifically call themselves goy. I’m just descended from Hungarian, Russian, French, and Mongolian Yiddish speakers and that’s more familiar a term to me than “gentiles.”

Personally, I’ve always found “gentiles” a little awkward as a term anyway. As I’ve stated repeatedly, goy is a fully neutral word with no positive or negative connotations. But the word “gentile” seems to have a weirdly positive connotation that I find off-putting. It seems far too close to the word “gentility” for me.

It feels like “gentile” is a person of “the gentility,” thus inherently socially, behaviorally, and aesthetically superior to non-gentiles (aka Jews). Perhaps this is just because of my relationship to Hebrew (and its use of root constructions that convey connotations in the base structure of the word) that this seems to be a term that is inherently critical of Jews in a pretty blatant way. But it always seems just…idk. Uncomfortable for me to use I guess. It feels like I’m putting myself down to elevate someone else and acknowledging their inherent superiority over me.

That said, I am in no way suggesting that this is how all Jews relate to this word. I have studied Hebrew since I was very young (I’m not a fluent speaker anymore, but I was once), and I’m a writer and love words and etymologies. It is extremely likely that I am thinking more about this than someone else would or does.

So, I say goy because it is the most neutral to me. It doesn’t convey that I’m better than a goy or that a goy is better than me.

When I said “goyim identify yourself as such,” I meant more generally, “if you’re not Jewish, please indicate that in your reblog or tags when reblogging from a Jewish person.”

And to anyone who is new to my blog, the reason I asked goyim to do this is because Jews feel very alone and hated right now and a very easy way to help us feel better is to just let us know that someone outside of our community sees and hears us. It so very often feels like we are shouting from inside a soundproof room and we can only hear and be heard by each other.

There are so very few Jews left in the world. It is simply impossible for us to survive if we advocate for ourselves alone. We need goyische voices alongside our own if we hope to be heard at all amongst those who outnumber us.

One thing about Jewish culture though, we all disagree a lot about a lot of things. Someone probably does find it offensive to self-label as a goy. Someone else probably finds it offensive to reject the idea of self-labeling as a goy.

However, by and large, I think most Jews won’t be concerned that you’re appropriating our language and culture if you are using our language to identify yourself as someone who supports our culture. Yiddish isn’t a religious language, but a cultural one. While Judaism is a closed-practice religion, Yiddish is the language of our culture in exile. It is the language we used while existing in a goyische world that was and remains hostile toward Jews.

I think, personally, that if you’re not using our language to demean us, it’s not off limits. Like, call yourself a goy! You are one! It’s not a bad thing! But, like, don’t call Jews you disagree with schmucks or something like that. And, obviously, if someone is antisemitic then I do not want them using Yiddish at all.

If someone wants to condemn our culture, then I loathe the idea of them picking out the parts they can use for their own purposes. If you reject an entire culture, you do not get access to the parts of that culture you like, imho.

So, I guess (in answer to your question) it is personal preference but is also that deep. Jewish culture is old, deep, and complex. I'd never speak for other Jews, and I'm sure plenty disagree with me on this. But I have personally never heard of a Jewish person offended that a goy calls themselves a goy. Personally, I find it endearing.

[the-lincyclopedia]

Nothing about Christmas is secular.

This post is aimed at Christians or people who grew up culturally Christian who want to argue with the above statement. See, I’m seeing some of those posts about how Christians and non-religious folks steeped in cultural Christianity need to stop thinking that Christmas, or any of its trappings, can ever be secular. And I agree with that, but I didn’t always, and I think some clarification would be helpful for people who are hung up on the things that I used to be hung up on. And I’m not sure if adding that to any of the posts I’ve seen so far would be considered “goyim clowning in the reblogs,” so I’m making my own post. 

Here’s the thing: Christianity, as a religion, is largely about belief, rather than practice. There are religious practices within Christianity, to be sure, and they’re very important to some Christians and some Christian institutions, but Christianity as a whole tends to place more focus on intellectually assenting to certain propositional statements. 

This can lead people to view religion as a whole (often all religions, rather than just Christianity, though this is an incorrect view) as being solely about agreeing to theological tenets, rather than having anything to do with real-world actions and practices. I think that this, specifically, is how you get to people looking at a Christmas tree or “Jingle Bells” or Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer and saying, “This is secular.” A Christmas tree or “Jingle Bells” or a cartoon reindeer doesn’t inherently contain any propositions about metaphysics, and so, if religion is only a matter of propositions about metaphysics, then the imagery around a religious holiday is not itself religious. 

The problem is that this is wrong. Religions are cultural phenomena as well as matters of individual belief, and the cultural traditions that spring up around (or get co-opted by) a religion are very much still of that religion, even if they are not in themselves theological or devotional. This remains true even if some practitioners of the religion are upset that their religion is becoming commercialized, being watered down by non-devotional cultural practices, being misunderstood or misused, etc. 

This is the other place I got hung up for a long time: a lot of cultural trappings of Christmas get Christianity wrong. Obviously there’s the whole commercialization problem, but even setting that aside, there are details like this: Advent starts on the last Sunday in November, so any Advent calendar that starts on December 1 is not actually a calendar of Advent, and the 12 days of Christmas begin on December 25, rather than ending on December 25. Christmas-related merchandise and promotions make these kinds of mistakes all the time. This made me think, for a long time, that these things were not Christian. What I needed to understand was that, even if these companies are doing Christianity incorrectly, the thing they are doing (or trying to do) is definitely still Christianity. 

This point applies more broadly, too: people who are doing Christianity incorrectly by, say, using it to argue for a white ethno-state are still doing Christianity, if that’s what they say they’re doing. Those of us who are Christian don’t get to no-true-Scotsman our way out of this. While we can and should say, loudly and unequivocally, that we disagree with Christo-fascists and will work to stop them, we also need to admit that it’s our religion that’s being used as a weapon and a far-right organizing tool. If we’re more concerned with saving our religion’s reputation from association with ethno-nationalists than we are with being in solidarity with those at risk from ethno-nationalist violence, then we are also doing something wrong. 

In summary, the cultural trappings of a religion are part of that religion, because things don’t have to contain theological propositions in order to be religious. This applies even when the cultural trappings rely on what you believe to be a misunderstanding or misinterpretation of the religion.

[scrumpster]

Happy autism acceptance month. Let’s make it a good one by taking a minute to acknowledge that Hans Asperger, the doctor who did a lot of work researching autism, was a Nazi sympathizer, if not simply just. Outright a Nazi.

We really, REALLY need to stop using “Asperger’s syndrome” as an identifier. As an autistic Jew, it really bothers me to still hear it used so frequently. Full disclosure, it pushes me out of the community. In my experience, people do NOT like being told that something is harmful and they often will not take criticism from Jewish people. I do not see enough people talking about this, therefore, I am going to talk about it to the best of my ability. A little disclaimer. When my own diagnosis was explained to me, it was the first label I was given. I was told not that I had autism, but that I had Asperger’s. However, when my information was updated, the diagnosis had become defunct and was changed to ASD. I didn’t really care about this until later, when I learned the history of the term Asperger’s and probed around for information on its history. Anyways. Let’s stop using the term:

- Hans Asperger is a Bad Dude. I have two sources for you to read. The second source is graphic, so be careful. All around trigger warning for Nazism, child death, intense ableism, eugenics, and in the second source, abuse mentions, graphic descriptions of emotional distress and violence, a lot of very harmful rhetoric around autism and other disabilities, and mentions of hospitals. BE CAREFUL. I mean it. Source one: click here Source two: click here

- The diagnosis is not a part of the DSM-5. It’s a form of autism, a form of ASD. The term is no longer used by many health professionals (specifically in the United States), as of 2013. Anyone who was previously diagnosed with Asperger’s would now be diagnosed with autism. I am only bringing this up to support the idea that Asperger’s is simply another label for ASD. - The diagnosis doesn’t have anything attached to it that isn’t encompassed by ASD. Everyone’s autism can present differently, but that doesn’t make anyone less or more autistic. Additionally, looking at the criteria that’s used to separate Asperger’s from autism is eerily reminiscent of... looking at a list of traits that neurotypicals find to be “more tolerable” in autistic people. Tl;dr: Hans Asperger was a Nazi and we need to stop using ‘Asperger’s syndrome’ as a label.

reblogs are welcome and encouraged. thank you very much if you read through this. EDIT: I didn’t think I would have to say this, but goyim/gentile, DO NOT FUCKING CLOWN ON MY POST.

[b1rdonawire]

i talked about this in the tags of a post i reblogged earlier (the post is really important u should go read it) but i think something that a lot of antizionist goyim don’t understand about zionism is like..... why so many jews are zionists? and i think that’s just incredibly important context because often people skip over this explanation and leave others assuming that jews are just zionists bc like..... jews are simply evil or whatever you guys have convinced yourselves of. disclaimer that i am not a zionist.

modern zionism sprung out of the dreyfus affair, when an assimilated french-jewish military officer named alfred dreyfus was accused of treason, a charge that relied on forged evidence and turned dreyfus into a scapegoat for the failings of the french government. this event shocked the jewish world — many jews at the time believed that assimilation was protection from antisemitism, and that france was a nation of equality that had left its antisemitic past behind, and this incident had shattered their sense of security. zionism also took off during pogroms in the early 1900s, during the 30′s, and especially during and after the holocaust — all times that made it perfectly clear that jewish existence in any form was unacceptable, and that living as a jew among goyim meant death.  

i grew up in a heavily zionist environment where i was essentially told that israel was the only thing standing between me and a second holocaust, and that one day my luck would run out in america, and i’d have to go somewhere else. i was told that my desire to live as a jew would be constantly demonized, and that there was no way i could ever make myself and my jewishness acceptable to goyim. this was the largest roadblock to me unlearning my zionism, because, to an extent, it’s true.

similarly to the jews of dreyfus’ time, modern jews see constant evidence that we are not welcome/safe in our diaspora homes. even more, we see messages that our presence in israel is inherently wrong, and that our desire to move out of places where we are not welcome is also inherently wrong. i don’t think goyim understand that there are very few countries where it’s safe to be jewish. despite what twitter threads might have you think, jews did not wake up one day, decide that we’re better than everyone else, and become zionists. zionism grew out of european antisemitism. zionism thrives off the idea that jews are not welcome anywhere, that wherever we live we will be demonized and hated, and goyische antizionists that don’t fight antisemitism in their own countries only feeds this narrative. 

there are jews that support israel and zionism out of religious fanaticism or a belief in jewish supremacy, but a vast majority of jews that are zionists (specifically in the diaspora, but also many in israel) are zionists because they’ve been taught their whole life that they are not safe in the diaspora. when you ignore the reality and history of antisemitism, and instead accuse jews of simply being greedy and racist, you feed this belief. when kosher slaughter is banned, when jews are attacked on the street and in our synagogues, when jews are scapegoated time and time again and you do nothing to fix it but demonize jews for wanting to move away to a place that claims to be a fix to antisemitism, you feed the belief. none of this, of course, justifies israel’s colonialism or occupation or treatment of palestinians — nothing could ever justify it — but antizionism without legitimate understanding of and opposition to antisemitism will do nothing but strengthen zionism. 

[sephiroths-stuff]

Something I relearned today

Cishet, able bodied, white, well off, educated, neurotypical, christian/a-religious* men, and this goes for cis/het/NT/able-bodied/white christian/a-religious, well off, and educated women** too, will never understand the pain that those who are different from them go through, and they will generally think your claims of bigotry, persecution, and attacks being leveled against you are being exaggerated, because they have never been attacked for existing the way you have.

Never let that dissuade you from speaking out, calling out injustice, taking action when it needs to happen, and being unrelenting in standing up for yourself when at all possible. When people call you a liar for exposing injustice, hold your head high, and cut them from your life with no regrets.

To my siblings of color and other minorities: are not obligated to tell anyone anything to prove your experience as a minority is valid. You should not have to defend your voice in spaces when it belongs there.***

Those with privilege who do not actively try to embetter those who suffer are part of an oppressive system. If you have privilege, you are obligated to help others, because having great power comes great responsibility and having the ability to help and choosing not to and that inaction leading to suffering puts the blame in your court.****

EXTRA THINGS TO NOTE BELOW:

* a-religious just means the general deist/agnostic/atheist etc.

**People who are some subset of the privileged I listed above obviously have different amounts of privilege than someone who is all of the above types of prigileged, and women are generally less privileged than men of the same race who have the same other categories of privilege, meanwhile, a white cis woman inherently is generally more privileged than a black cis man etc.

I am in none of these categories of privilege outside of education, and I only have that because I got scholarship haha and I might not even get to finish college due to illness and money. I'm a trans, asian/pacific islander, bisexual, Neurodivergent (autistic/schizophrenic), disabled, poor, and Sikh but also looking into Jewishness as an exploration of my adopted family's ethnicity and religious background (I personally don't feel like any one religion holds all answers for me, plz don't start discourse with me abt that on this post this isn't the place)

*** this is in reference to gatekeeping people, not, for instance, people claiming to be things they aren't for clout. For instance, people (mainly goyim) have attacked me for saying I'm of jewish descent because my adopted family is Jewish. (Which would imply that they don't see me as actually related to my own family) Jewish beliefs through the ages have mixed opinions on adoption, but MY JEWISH FAMILY had me take their last name (which did but no longer sounds jewish because it was anglicized for... Well they immigrated in the early 1900s so take a guess), and I have been told by multiple people of my family as well as other members of the Jewish community that especially as I'm exploring the religion and have Jewish parentage, I have the right to say I am Jewish. I shouldn't even have to say that but this is Tumblr and someone's gonna take this out of context someday on my resume lmao. But anyhow. Don't gatekeep. This goes for white passing poc, closeted people, ace inclusion, people with invisible disabilities and illnesses who want accommodations, etc. They are all valid and members of their communities.

**** If that was worded weirdly, basically, if let's say someone knew someone was dying and was the only one who could save them, and knew this, and still actively chose to let them die, they would be responsible for their death. Same concept.

~ being poor/uneducated/disabled is a weird issue because it's something that could happen to anyone, even white, able bodied and or educated people, especially with our medical system, but it disproportionately effects bipoc/poor/disabled people and often intersects them and is because of one or both things. White people can be poor and be an oppressed group due to it, but their poverty is NOT due to their race, which is an important factor. It's the poorness that's oppressed not the race.

~ if you are white or otherwise privileged and feel that this post is calling you out for treating your bipoc/disabled/lgbtq+/etc friends poorly, it probably is, and you should step back and rethink your internalized prejudices~

There is no TLDR. Because people need to read and fucking understand this. To be a good ally you don't just reblog posts that say "fuck terfs" and "I hate nazis" and "eat the rich" you amplify minority voices, you aid people when you can materially or even by giving time or emotional support if that's your capability (EMPHASIS ON IF YOU CAN. IF YOU ARE UNABLE TO DUE TO A VALID ISSUE I'M NOT GUILTING YOU). And above all, you let the people in your life know that you are there not as someone who will silence them when they say uncomfortable truths or call out injustice, but boost them up and help them and defend them as they make the best of a world determined to tamp out the lesser privileged.

[docholligay]

These are messy, disorganized, and ANGRY thoughts for Holocaust Remembrance Day (Israel) .I don’t get sad about this, I get fucking angry. If there’s anyone I could insult, or blame, that would hurt your feefees, I highly, highly recommend you not click on this. I am not responsible for how you feel. Got it? 

Given the preamble I feel I shouldn’t have to say this, but do NOT reblog this, I’m not having this conversation with some 21 year old with an anime icon who’s never met me. 

There’s a cloud over every Jewish head, and it’s always the goddamn crematorium. 

Today is Holocaust Rememberance Day.  I light a yahrzeit candle every year, and I say Kaddish, every year, and I always do it alone, because I think if God wanted me to have minyan to say it with he shouldn’t have let so many of us die. 

One third of the Jewish population on earth was murdered. Think of three Jews you know, if you even know of three of us, and imagine that one of us, gone. Imagine your friend’s Jewish family of six, and imagine knowing that soon it will be four. Imagine. 

It was worse in some places. In Poland, it was ninety percent of us. A family of ten, with one left, that was the story of the Polish Jews, told over and over again. 

But get over it. It’s fine that we’re talking about the collective trauma of an indiscriminate virus, of the idea of losing ten percent of us, but losing one third of your people is something that you shouldn’t be pulling out anymore. Never mind that we were directly targeted, never mind that this was not the first time and will not be the last that the call to arms is against us specifically. Jews just love to complain. The trauma should be long past. 

And I think the numbers were inflated anyway, and other people were killed too, it wasn’t just the Jews. Never mind that the numbers probably are inaccurate as some of us were mowed down into ditches in Poland by the side of the road, and who knows how many there were, never mind that in Russia they lacked equipment and hired farmers to drown us by hand, and they happily took the money. Never mind that I sat in a second grade classroom as we passively discussed how people wanted to murder me, and how my teacher reduced it to a few hours where kids with brown eyes weren’t allowed to use the water fountain. Never mind that they burned us, against our laws. 

“Jews never stop bringing up the Holocaust” but my great grandmother only ever said of Ukraine, “There is nothing left.” I knew she meant no one, but that to say that was too hard. Better to think of the buildings, of the oxen. 

People love dead Jews. Dead Jews can be exactly the pawn you need them to be, proof of whatever it is that you’re saying is right, and it was the way the other guy thinks that killed the Jews. It’s so easy to make someone the big bad, to remember Jews as weak and simpering mice who simply went to their deaths. That’s how people like us, weak, and dead, a cliff note in history. Something to be used.

They accuse us of relying on the Holocaust, but I’ve spent my whole life watching goyim trot it out whenever they fucking feel like being dramatic. Poor Anne Frank is never going to know rest, the spectre of a child who never got to discover who she was and so is the most convenient Jew of all. Her father was criticized for stripping out parts of her diary that contained sexual thoughts, but he knew what I know, that to make Jews worth protecting, we must be stripped of inconvenience, or complication, or difficulty.  As long as we keep burning, there will always be something to keep them warm. So long as we can be refined to the pile of ash they can mix with any material they wish to build their argument. 

Live Jews are inconvenient. They are a messy and complicated and difficult people. They can still fuck up. They can, and will, disagree with you, with each other, and they won’t be quiet about it. Sometimes, we’re unkind to each other! I more than once have accused another Jew of being judenpolitzei, of siding with those who would let us be destroyed for their own ends. On both side of the aisle. We don’t behave. Supporting us doesn’t give you enough points. 

I can hear the crackling, the burning. It’s been in my chest since I was a child, 

I’m so angry, all the time. Anger has been my bondage for years and years, and I try to remind myself that anger can itself be a form of idol worship, and that anger can cause us to become something we don’t want to be. 

Besides, Jews aren’t allowed to be angry. We’re supposed to be quiet and agreeable and patient, and nod along with however the right or the left wants us to be. We have to have the right opinion on Israel, on the mining of our culture, on Anne Frank, on the Holocaust and its causes, on what is Anti-Semitic, and these are the same for the right or the left. All these topics, a goy will tell you how you should think, and Jews that agree with them are the good Jews to protect, and Jews that disagree with them are the bad Jews. I am fucking tired of only deserving protection when I’m agreeing with someone. 

I remember a few years ago, Giles Coren, a Jewish English food writer of Polish extraction, getting into trouble for saying, essentially, “fuck the Poles’. Essentially but also, literally. I remember reading that, and how immediately I thought that he had told one of our secrets, and it was terrifying and gratifying all at once. I’ve been in Jewish groups more than once where someone quietly admitted “I don’t care what happens to Poland,” the names of every family member they would never know unsaid.  I remember feeling pride at how hard Coren went, how he got nasty, how he was angry, how he brought up that the Holocaust was so successful in Poland because Poland already hated Jews. It my first time ever seeing that bitterness, that desire to hit back, to be filled with that flame. Not making it a quiet secret.  I went and found the direct quote from the whole thing that stuck with me forever, because I knew it was true, and I knew it was what would happen when the whole thing started. "I wrote in passing that the Poles remain in denial about their responsibility for the Holocaust. How gratifying, then, to see so many letters in The Times in the subsequent days from Poles denying their responsibility for the Holocaust." He was so angry. People hated him for it. 

I remember being afraid, too. Shut up, Giles. This is going to come back to bite us in the ass. We aren’t allowed to do this. We aren’t allowed to hate the people that murdered us, even though some of them are still alive, even though Poland murdered the survivors who came back. We aren’t allowed to be angry about it. We have to be good Jews. We have to say we forgive them, oh how they fetishize survivors who say they forgive. Please, don’t tell them about that burn inside of us, like whiskey in your chest. Don’t tell them my great grandmother watched Russia’s horrors unfold with a smile on her lips. Don’t tell them she said they got what they deserved. We aren’t allowed. 

Don’t get angry about America sending a ship full of refugees back in 1939, don’t get mad about Ireland only letting in refugees who agreed to convert, calm your fury about Jewish children being taken into Catholic homes, never to be returned to Jewish communities. The British government stopping a trade that would have saved a million Jewish lives. Of course it’s tragic. But there’s no need to be angry. There’s no need to yell. There’s not need to shame anyone over their culpability. 

We have to cry about what happened to us. We are not allowed to rage about it. 

Besides, if it’s everyone against you, you cannot be mad at the whole goddamn world, Holligay. 

There’s a part of Indecent, a play tumblr and facebook reduced to “lesbians!!” while completely missing the point of what it was about, about Jewish identity and struggle, the search of legitimacy and the role of stories. Sholem, the writer, goes into a deep depression, and is sitting in a doctor’s office, while all of them are acting like this is so clinical, and he snaps. How can he not be like this, in a world where to be a Jew is to be like this? I felt that same flush, that acknowledgment of fury, of the world never getting it. 

Even writing this, I feel I’m letting some secret out. They’ll hate us if they know.  They’ll hurt us if they know. Smiling Anne Frank, who believes people are truly good, that’s what we have to be. Shut up, Doc. This is going to come back to bite us in the ass. 

I light the yahrzeit candle and realize there’s no match in my hand, that somehow it has been kindled from my own anger, from my own white-hot hate. It burns me, too, and the pain of it pricks my eyes with tears. I do not often generalize, about Jews. This is because I actually know them, and we evade an easy box to be put in. We are an asterisk of a people. But I guarantee damn near every Jew you know has this burn inside them, that they might not even themselves understand. Maybe it’s quieter in Jews who got out early, whose families don’t carry the burden of knowing there’s a burnt patch of earth where your family stops. But I don’t think so. 

I think we all know it could happen to us, at any time. And every goy who thinks they are so brave would do nothing in the face of true danger. They would turn you in without a second thought, because that’s what their families did. 

I guarantee some of y’all reading this have your back up right now. Why is she so angry at people who could not have themselves done it? Isn’t she just as bad? Shouldn’t she just let it go? 

Exodus tells us that children and their children will be punished, to the third and fourth generation, and if all God can scrape up is my anger as a punishment, 

My rage is inconvenient to me, too. I tell myself things of all the Jewish philosophers I’ve read, about how we must love mercy, about how the world is desperate need of our loving attention, about how rejoicing in someone’s pain and failure is to spit in the face of what God has made us for. I tell myself these things all the time. I want to find a place where I can hold the truth of this anger, and not let it burn those who hold the community shame of the past. I want to use this fire to warm, and not to burn.

But I will also be honest with you. 

I do not want to hear a single solitary argument against my anger from any Non-Jew. 

You set me on fire. Now you have to let me burn.

[himbo-the-clown]

Hm. Slowly coming to the realisation that it’s infinitely easier as a Jewish person to talk about my opinions on Judaism than it is to talk about any other experiences I have as a member of any other minority group I’m part of. And I think it’s because every other minority I’m part of is majority christians or people raised in christian society (which is really every society that isn’t explicitly non-christian). So while other Jewish people can see the things I say about Judaism and wholeheartedly disagree with them, they don’t take it as me being a Bad Jew or an Evil Person because they understand that there’s no one way to be right and that there’s a lot of nuance and subjectivity in the world.

Whereas people who are christian or were raised in christian society often feel like if people don’t agree with them then those people are somehow inherently incorrect. Which is how we get people who try their best to be allies being “called out” for not listening to members of a group..... despite people being physically incapable of listening to and agreeing with Every Single Member of a group. Like individuals think that if the person listened to every side of an issue and then didn’t agree with them personally, they didn’t listen at all. And that they’re intentionally being bigoted and malicious.

Whereas with Jews there’s the whole “two Jews, three opinions” thing where even if one of us disagrees with another, we also know that there’s more than one way to look at things that can be equally valid and correct (as well as equally invalid and incorrect at the same time). Because our culture is heavily based around the idea of looking at every side of an issue and never coming to just one “true” answer, it’s much easier to disagree with someone without feeling like they must be wrong to make you right.

Christianity is so deeply rooted in all cultures that aren’t explicitly something else, and it convinces people that there’s right and wrong, good and bad, no such thing as nuance. That two people cannot hold different opinions and both be right. And that makes it really difficult as a Jewish person to interact on any meaningful level with christianised people that I share minority identities with who don’t work on unlearning this.

If I think doing something is antisemitic and another Jewish person thinks not doing it is antisemitic, we almost always can both acknowledge that our opinions can be equally valid and correct. We can respect a goy who has to choose whether or not to keep doing said thing, regardless of their choice, as long as they’ve actually looked into the issue and are making an informed decision, because we know that they can’t listen to both of us at once. And we care more that they’re listening to Jews in general and trying to educate themselves than if they made the “right” decision, in large part because we’re aware there is no objective “right” opinion about a lot of stuff.

Whereas if another trans person thinks doing something is transphobic and I think not doing it is transphobic, if they’re christianised there’s a decent chance that they’re going to get mad at me and decide that I’m not only “wrong” but also a “bad trans person” for thinking the way I do. And if a cis person inspects all the sides of the arguments and has to choose whether or not to keep doing said thing, if they don’t choose the other person’s side then that person will try to call them out as a transphobe who doesn’t listen to trans people rather than acknowledging that not all trans people agree on every trans issue always.

It’s really tiring sometimes, trying to talk about any identities I hold other than being Jewish. People are so eager to take things in bad faith as soon as they don’t agree with it, and to label people as “bad” or “good.” And you need a truly nauseating amount of explicitly stated caveats (speaking of, none of this is an excuse for terfs/nazis/transmeds/etc.) otherwise people will intentionally read malicious intent into everything you say. But thankfully the Jewish community always feels like a safe place for me to engage in good faith discussions about issues without feeling pressured to all agree with each other by the end of it.

Goyim can reblog this but know in advance that I don’t care about you “not being christianised because I’m an Atheist.” Cry all you want, if you weren’t raised in an explicitly non-christian society you’re still  christianised and your tears mean nothing to me. I will not debate you.

[leonawriter]

The amount of people on that one post I reblogged yesterday saying “Goyim/goy sounds like a slur to me! I don’t like being referred to by it!” or something along those lines, has always fascinated and confused me?

I remember the word ‘Gentile’ from when I was still going to church every Sunday, and sometimes going to Bible study on a weekday, too. It came up every so often in the Old Testament and the New, literally in reference to ‘people who are not of Israel/who do not follow the Jewish faith’. Literally, as someone else pointed out, ‘not of our nation’.

Even as a young person who although I thought of myself as liberal in my views really... wasn’t all that much, I could understand that much. I understood that it was basically the same as an English speaker calling someone from abroad a ‘foreigner’. The word ‘foreigner’ can be used in a derogatory way, but ultimately, it just means ‘someone who is not from this land’.

So many of the people offended by things they see Jewish people do, and terms they see Jewish people use, are Christian, and that means they have either had the Bible spoonfed to them so that they never truly understood what well over half of it ever meant in even the most basic level, or they never read it and only base their beliefs on things they’ve seen and heard from other people, or they have read it and they just have no clue how to connect what they’re reading to, y’know, actual people who are still alive today.

SO many things in the Old Testament explain Jewish holidays. If you actually try and understand what’s going on from the perspective of someone who is taught ‘this is what our people went through, this is also your story’, then a lot of traditions make so much sense. Even going through the New Testament, the things Jesus did? Are Jewish traditions you can still see people doing today, often having changed not one bit in two thousand years.

I guess the thing that makes me feel soul-tired is that I, as someone who at that point was not a particularly open-minded person compared to me now, was able to understand this, as a child, and wanted to learn more, and yet there are adults on this site who seem to not have that in their capacity.

[themonsterblogofmonsters]

hi so i was just going over your stuff on golems & i'm a bit uncomfable with the calling the golem cats that and that under golem is talks about goyim making golems. golems were created for 2 reasons one by rabbis to use in connection with other rabbis and not really anything major there and two to protect jewish lives. golems have only ever been made by jews and in pop culutre is wrong that ppl call anything and everything golem when the only way it can be a golem is if created by jews (1/2)

i don’t know if you want to clarify that aspect of it in terms of golems. i do appreciate just how much research and effort you put in and just how much you got right and how respectful you were in that i’ve seen others not even attempt at being respectful and most fail at even getting the info right. so thank you for that. i mean technically we are closed culutre unless one converts, but since golems are pretty well known i like that u made sure to make sure your info was right & respectful 2/2

There appears to be two main points here? Correct me if I’ve missed one.

Point 1: the naming of the Golem Cats/Maneki Neko

Point 2: the mention in the Golem post of gentiles trying to make Golems

Point 1:

I get 100% why this would skeeve you out. I’d kind of intended it as people appropriating the term in much the way as so much of the world does? Taking terms for a culture to use in a more general sense that which actually refers to something very specific? But I do see why this would skeeve you out and I have a few alternate ideas for naming now. I’ll make some edits and change some stuff around on that post and reblog it this evening a half-hour after the usual post. Thank you for letting me know it made you uncomfortable, honestly, genuinely, you guys giving me feedback like this is incredibly helpful and means a huge amount to me.

Point 2:

That mention is the one in the first paragraph right? The point with that was that… the mechanism by which Golems are made - moulded out of clay and then bespelled by the written word - is something that technically could be done by someone who doesn’t believe or isn’t Jewish and I wanted to make clear that this was something that wixen Jews understood and had taken actions to prevent, in the aim of keeping Golems as something that could only be properly utilised by Rabbis and people who otherwise held significant importance in wixen Jewish culture - aka, not gentiles. To quote:

The use of other materials is by and large frowned upon, as is the creation of a Golem by gentiles and non-Rabbis or holy people to such a point that the secrets of creating Golems are closely guarded by the Wixen Jewish community, using an ancient and more binding method than the more commonly known Fidelius Charm.

The idea is that they’re aware it’s a possibility and have actively taken steps to prevent it using an even more powerful method than canon’s Fidelius. I intended this to preclude anyone trying to use Golems in fic without looking into the lore? Basically making it so if someone wanted to use the Golems from this blog they’d have to actually look into Jewish lore or be Jewish themselves to know the important parts, rather than using them as Stock Fantasy Creature Number Five Hundred and Whatever. So kind of a call out of people who use the as Stock Fantasy Creatures, and making it clear that they have origins that should be respected. I guess that wasn’t clear enough though? Again, I’ll make some edits and reblog that this evening fifteen minutes after the usual post to clarify.

As I say above: thank you for letting me know about this. I often miss things, I am not perfect, I am very much fallible, so you guys correcting me and telling me where I mess up or helping me identify things - all of these things are hugely appreciated. If I’ve missed something here, a point you were trying to get across that I missed or something that I’ve simply forgotten, feel free to send in another ask. Thank you @fromchaostocosmos, and I hope the edits this evening don’t let you down.

If they do, feel free to tell me where I’ve messed up and I’ll edit the posts again.