#because he’s also jewish

[moonshadowslament]

CAN SOMEONE PLEASE EXPLAIN SOMETHING FOR ME BECAUSE THERE IS TWO WAYS THIS SHIT CAN GO

i read a lot of stories about the band, from sexcapades to overdoses to just weird stuff they did. i was perusing tiktok and heard a ton of stories involving the 70s lineup for KIϟϟ—mainly being antisemitic towards gene and fatshaming him.

so you can kind of see my (very fucking angry) confusion with this next thing.

i heard the word “oven”, along with paul’s name & gene’s name. again, this can go two ways, & one of the options is very, very bad.

i love KIϟϟ with all of my heart & i know all of them have done at least two or three not-so-okay things, but i really want to know what the fuck paul was referencing.

its either just a shitty joke about gene’s weight or the worst fucking thing imaginable.

[doberbutts]

Recently Youtube's algorithm really wants me to watch Schindler's List and I never had so the other night I sat down and actually watched it.

Having a lot of thoughts about it but a major one I keep coming back to is how even an immensely and deeply flawed human being can go against "just following orders" and instead put in the work to actually help.

It may never be fully enough. It may never save as many as you'd hoped. But when you have a choice to either follow orders or save your fellow humans in front of you, I hope you choose the latter.

Schindler died in poverty. He was not a renown war hero nor was he at all famous or widely beloved. But he saw that he could help, even in some small way, and so he helped.

He was a Nazi who saw what the Nazis were doing to Jews and said no more. Enough. If I can even spare those under my charge, maybe a few extras, then at least I will have tried to do something about this.

I think a lot of people do not fancy this type of activism. It is messy, dangerous, and often completely thankless. Schindler survived as long as he did after the war due to those he saved helping him with donations. He was not popular in his hometown due to his association with Nazis, he was not popular in Germany, he was not popular in Argentina. His businesses all failed. His wife left him. A movie about his deeds was released several years after his death, where he would receive none of the benefits. He went to prison multiple times for simply refusing to hate Jews.

I think a lot of people like to think they're activists, but are sorely unprepared for doing this type of work, and then in truth become activists in name only. This is hard work. But without him, another thousand or so people would be on that death toll.

He took his position of extreme power- a Nazi owning a factory almost entirely operated by Jews, making oodles of money off that cheap slave labor- and said you know what? No. I'm not doing that. I can't save everyone, but as long as they are within my factory, you will not kill my workers. As long as I'm here you aren't harming one hair on the head of any Jew under my care. You're not sending or keeping them in Auschwitz. You're not randomly executing them for entertainment. They're people. You're not murdering them.

"Just following orders" they say. But they didn't have to. They could have helped. They could have did what he did, look around and say "what the fuck am I doing here", and stop. He did. They could have. They didn't.

[milolovesbmc]

The "I do too" from Marvin after "Do you take this man to be your husband?" in In Trousers absolutely destroyed me so here's this!!!

[slyandthefamilybook]

Once there was a boy who was a shepherd. He kept watch over a small flock of sheep in a pasture at the edge of town. He loved his sheep. He had been born to a shepherd from a family of shepherds, and had so grown up amongst his flock. He knew all of the sheep by name and would great them one-by-one each morning. "Hello Dolly," he would say. "Hello Steven and hello Betty."

Now these sheep were undoubtedly useful: the townspeople would eat their meat and weave their wool and gnaw on their bones as they worked the fields. But these sheep were also alive. They had a glittering intelligence in their black eyes, and they would commune every so often to discuss the harvest, and the shepherd boy, and the townspeople. The sheep loved the shepherd boy and they loved the town and the townspeople, and the people loved them back. They were good sheep.

Now one day the shepherd boy overheard one of the townspeople talking about his flock. The man said he thought the sheep were ugly, and that they smelled bad. This upset the shepherd boy, because he loved his sheep, and he thought the people loved his sheep as well. The shepherd boy, being no more than 12 years old at the time, wanted to remind the people of how much his sheep mattered to them. So one night as the moon hid behind the clouds the shepherd boy stood on a stone in his pasture and cried out: "Help! Help! A wolf!"

Out came a crowd of people, blinking the sleep from their eyes and carrying torches and pitchforks and shovels and ladels. They stood in the pasture and looked about, but they could see no wolf. The townspeople became angry and shook their fists at the shepherd boy. "This is a serious matter!" they cried. The shepherd boy had to admit that his ploy was juvenile, but he was still a child, and so the people forgave him. And they continued to love the shepherd boy and his sheep, and the shepherd boy and his sheep loved them back, for the townspeople had proved that night how much they cared.

Five years later, when the shepherd boy was now a teen, he stood amongst his flock in the pasture and he said "good night, Dolly. Good night, Steven and good night, Betty." But as the clouds passed over the moon the shepherd teen saw a shape in the distance, and out of fear for his flock he cried out: "Help! Help! A wolf!"

Again came the great crashing crowd with their knives and their swords and axes and bows. They stood in the pasture and looked about, but they could see no wolf. The townspeople once again became angry, and they shook their fists at the shepherd teen. "This is a serious matter!" they cried. "We love you and we love your sheep, but you must learn to not be so frightened!" With great grumbling the townspeople returned to their homes, and the shepherd teen sensed that something had changed.

Five more years passed, and the shepherd teen was now a shepherd. He still passed through his flock every morning and said, "Good morning, Dolly. Good morning, Steven and good morning, Betty." And the sheep loved the shepherd and he loved them. But in his age he had grown cautious. The shepherd had learned from the townspeople that perhaps the wolves were not so great a threat as he had thought. And so at night when he would see their red eyes prowling at the edges of his pasture, he would stay silent and wait.

One night, as the clouds began to cover the moon, a wolf appeared. The wolf approached Dolly the sheep and snarled, its lips wet. "Away!" cried the shepherd. "Away with you!" But the wolf showed its fangs and said, "I want your sheep." "Why?" cried the boy. "Why must you take my sheep? You have your food in the forest!" But the wolf laughed. "I want your sheep because I am a wolf and they are sheep. That is how it is done." And the wolf parted its terrible jaws and snatched up Dolly the sheep and dragged her into the deep woods. And the shepherd remained silent.

The next night two wolves appeared, their eyes red and their tongues hungry. The wolves approached Steven the sheep who was with his family. "Away with you!" cried the shepherd. "Why do you hate my sheep so?" The wolves cackled and said with the same voice, "we hate your sheep because it is the thing for sheep to be hated. All wolves hate sheep, and they cannot all be wrong. Even the birds and rabbits of the forest will come around." And the wolves each took a leg from Steven the sheep and hauled him into the dark woods. And still the shepherd held his tongue.

The next night as the moon was new the shepherd saw a sea of red eyes at the edge of the forest. The wolves marched toward his sheep, their heads held high. And the shepherd saw that indeed the birds and rabbits of the forest were among them, their eyes bleeding and their teeth sharp. They approached Betty the sheep who cried out in terror. The shepherd stood on a rock in his pasture and called out with a loud voice: "Help! Help! The wolves have come, and all the birds and rabbits of the forest!"

But this time no one came. You see, although the boy had cried wolf before, his fear was now justified. But the townspeople had grown tired of him. Every time the flock was threatened they felt compelled to act, and that compulsion drained them. And they no longer liked the shepherd. He had spent too much time with his sheep, and they had begun to see that same glittering black intelligence in his eyes. Sheep are frightened of everything and cannot be expected to know when they are truly in danger.

What had the shepherd done for them? He kept his sheep mostly to himself these days. Perhaps the shepherd was the one really in control, and he had used his cries of wolf to bend the townspeople to his will. Anyone whose flock was threatened that often must be doing something wrong.

And what was this about the birds and rabbits of the forest? They were peaceful! They could never be convinced to join with those who preyed upon them. Flocks of sheep are old and backwards and they are a drain on the town, the people thought. If the birds and rabbits hate the sheep they must have good reason to do so.

Again the shepherd called out, but the townspeople rolled over in their beds and stuffed their ears with sheep's wool. The shepherd's cries of wolf had made them feel guilty, and so they had found reasons for why they did not have to listen. And besides, the townspeople thought as they pulled their wolf skins over their heads and their eyes glowed red, the sheep really were delicious...

[crippled-peeper]

I feel weird admitting this but I picked the female neurosurgeon out of the 5 other men they suggested because I feel like there’s a bigger chance she’ll actually listen to me and talk to me like a human person and not just an academic oddity

[bijoumikhawal]

hello! i hope it's alright to ask you this but i was wondering if you have any recommendations for books to read or media in general about the history of judaism and jewish communities in egypt, particularly in ottoman and modern egypt?

have a nice day!

it's fine to ask me this! Unfortunately I have to preface this with a disclaimer that a lot of books on Egyptian Jewish history have a Zionist bias. There are antizionist Egyptian Jews, and at the very least ones who have enough national pride that AFAIK they do not publicly hold Zionist beliefs, like those who spoke in the documentary the Jews of Egypt (avaliable on YouTube for free with English subtitles). Others have an anti Egyptian bias- there is a geopolitical tension with Egypt from Antiquity that unfortunately some Jewish people have carried through history even when it was completely irrelevant, so in trying to research interactions between "ancient" Egyptian Jews and Native Egyptians (from the Ptolemaic era into the proto-Coptic and fully Coptic eras) I've unfortunately come across stuff that for me, as an Egyptian, reads like anti miscegenationist ideology, and it is difficult to tell whether this is a view of history being pushed on the past or not. The phrase "Erev Rav" (meaning mixed multitude), which in part refers to Egyptians who left Egypt with Moses and converted to Judaism, is even used as an insult by some.

Since I mentioned that documentary, I'll start by going over more modern sources. Mapping Jewish San Francisco has a playlist of videos of interviews with Egyptian Jews, including both Karaites and Rabbinic Jews iirc (I reblogged some of these awhile ago in my "actually Egyptian tag" tag). This book, the Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry, is avaliable for free online, it promises to be a more indepth look at Egyptian Jews in the lead up to modern explusion. I have only read a few sections of it, so I cannot give a full judgment on it. There's this video I watched about preserving Karaite historical sites in Egypt that I remember being interesting. "On the Mediterranian and the Nile edited by Harvey E. Goldman and Matthis Lehmann" is a collection of memiors iirc, as is "the Man in the Sharkskin Suit" (which I've started but not completed), both moreso from a Rabbinic perspective. Karaites also have a few websites discussing themselves in their terms, such as this one.

For the pre-modern but post-Islamic era, the Cairo Geniza is a great resource but in my opinion as a hobby researcher, hard to navigate. It is a large cache of documents from a Cairo synagogue mostly from around the Fatimid era. A significant portion of it is digitized and they occasionally crowd source translation help on their Twitter, and a lot of books and papers use it as a primary source. "The Jews in Medieval Egypt, edited by: Miriam Frenkel" is one in my to read pile. "Benjamin H. Hary - Multiglossia in Judeio-Arabic. With an Edition, Translation, and Grammatical Study of the Cairene Purim Scroll" is a paper I've read discussing the Jewish record of the events commemorated by the Cairo Purim, I got it off either Anna's Archive or libgen. "Mamluks of Jewish Origin in the Mamluk Sultanate by Koby Yosef" is a paper in my to read pile. "Jewish pietism of the Sufi type A particular trend of mysticisme in Medieval Egypt by Mireille Loubet" and "Paul B Fenton- Judaism and Sufism" both discuss the medieval Egyptian Jewish pietist movement.

For "ancient" Egyptian Jews, I find the first chapter of "The Story of the Jews: Finding the Words 1000 BC-1492 AD” by Simon Schama, which covers Elephantine, very interesting (it also flies in the face of claims that Jews did not marry Native Egyptians, though it is from centuries before the era researchers often cover). If you'd like to read don't click this link to a Google doc, that would be VERY naughty. There's very little on the Therapeutae, but for the paper theorizing they may have been influenced by Buddhism (possibly making them an example of Judeo-Buddhist syncretism) look here (their Wikipedia page also has some sources that could be interesting but are not specifically about them). "Taylor, Joan E. - Jewish women philosophers of first-century Alexandria: Philo’s Therapeutae reconsidered" is also a to read.

I haven't found much on the temple of Onias/Tell el Yahudia/Leontopolis in depth, but I have the paper "Meron M. Piotrkowski - Priests in Exile: The History of the Temple of Onias and Its Community in the Hellenistic Period" in my to be read pile (which I got off Anna's Archive). I also have some supplemental info from a lecture I attended that I'm willing to privately share.

I also have a document compiling links about the Exodus of Jews from Egypt in the modern era, but I'm cautious about sharing it now because I made it in high school and I've realized it needs better fact checking, because it had some misinfo in it from Zionist publications (specifically about the names of Nazis who fled to Egypt- that did happen, but a bunch of names I saw reported had no evidence of that being the case, and one name was the name of a murdered resistance fighter???)

[historicity-was-already-taken]

a very niche vibe

but is there anyone out there who does extensive work on the jewish ghettos in eastern europe who doesn't mutter "fucking Rumkowski" whenever his name comes up??

Like

[lucradiss]

I know I’m the only one ever and thisll be an unpopular opinion but I hc Adam Stanheight as Jewish. He just is to me. I don’t need to explain myself

[communistkenobi]

I’m curious if other communists have like a religious relationship to their political beliefs for lack of a better word? That’s not a good word to use but I don’t know how else to describe it. I’m solidly atheist but all of the feelings and emotions religious people talk about, revelation and spiritual connection to community and so on are all things I experience pretty regularly and I interpret those feelings as fundamentally communist. the way I take in and absorb information in particular feels revelatory in a religious sense. I’m pretty sure this is fairly common with MLs but I’m curious about it in general

[ollyvoilesrandomblog]

My hand slipped. (I missed Kakashi’s birthday and it’s his bad luck that the very next day is a major Jewish holiday.) Happy Rosh Hashanah!

[lawbreaker13]

I may be ten years late to this take but Schmidt is sincerely the best Jewish representation anywhere in the media

[dramatic-dolphin]

every time i hear about unitarians i have to hold myself back from saying "my grandpa's favorite branch of christianity!" because people who didn't know my grandpa wouldn't get why this is funny

[ineffablecrisp]

Do I or do I not want to make Tom Kazansky a Soviet immigrant

[piedoesnotequalpi]

Despite my best efforts, I have to name another character

[ink-the-artist]

That rabbit comic is brilliant because it can apply to more than just to terfs and misogyny:

During WW2 there were Jewish people of privileged status who sided with the Nazis, hoping to be spared only to be turned on. Same with homosexuals, communists and any who thought surely they would be spared if they cooperated. They met the same fate as all the others if not worse.

There have been many times in which PoC became class traitors who helped pass legislation hoping it wouldn't affect them only to be hurt by the changes as well.

The list goes on and on, in which instead of standing in solidarity, some would try to selfishly try to save themselves by throwing their brethren to the wolves only to perish along with the rest.

Sadly the cycle continues because by the time the wolves are done eating, there are few if any that survive to pass on the story.

Oh for sure, I’ve heard of the gay Nazis before they are probably one of the most extreme examples of this I can think of. I believe they justified themselves by referencing how the Greeks, who were their ideal aryan civilization or whatever, were famously gay. Didn’t work for too long they were eventually killed by the other Nazis

[doyouknowthisjewishcharacter]

Do you know this Jewish character?