#jew crew

[gay-otlc]

Sure you hate nazis but do you, like, actually respect Jews?

[when-wax-wings-melt]

jewish households tomorrow

[heyitsbramgreenfeld]

I’ve somehow never made Hamantaschen in my life, and I decided to change that yesterday. Cue spending hours of trying to make them perfect and still ending up with some burnt bottoms, some filling spilling out, and some of the triangles coming undone 😅 BUT I did it! They may not be the prettiest, but they are sooo good.

(oh, and I am bringing some to the friend I mentioned a few posts ago that really loves Hamantaschen!)

[corelliansunsets]

chag sameach! happy hannukkah!!!! 🕎🪬🔥🕯️

Ezra lights one every year just like his parents taught him :)

[sumeria]

CONTACT YOUR GOVERNMENT AND DEMAND A CEASEFIRE FOR PALESTINE

For Eu look up:

Voices in Europe for peace

For Usa look up:

US campaign for Palestinian rights

BOYCOTT FOR PALESTINE

FOA (Friends of Al-Aqsa) have organized a boycott in support of palestine. Here are the key companies to boycott:

HP (Hewlett Packard)

Coca-Cola

PUMA

Any produce labelled 'made in Israel'

(Please help to spread the word by sending this copypasta to as many blogs as you can OR going to FOAs website where you can find posters to download and print out)

ive already been contacting my govt and boycotting, thanks

[dreamofbecoming]

if i don’t immediately headcanon at least one of my favorite characters as jewish, did i really join the fandom?

[firsttraintovictoriaville]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Welcome To The Table - Ben Brainard (Web Series) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: New York/Miss New York (Welcome To The Table), New Jersey/Miss New Jersey (Welcome To The Table), West Virginia/Department of Education (Welcome to the Table) Characters: New York (Welcome To The Table), New Jersey (Welcome To The Table), West Virginia (Welcome To The Table), Department of Education (Welcome to the Table), Miss New York (Welcome To The Table), Miss New Jersey (Miss USA TikTok), Satanic Temple (Welcome To The Table), New York City (Welcome To The Table) Additional Tags: Hanukkah, Hanukkah Fluff, Jewish Holidays, Fluff and Humor, more like, Attempt at Humor, let's be honest with ourselves, Jewish Identity, WTTT Jew Crew, yes that is the name i am giving these set of characters <3 Summary:

New York, like most people, knew and believed that Hanukkah started at night. Unfortunately for him, almost no other Jewish personification in the United States agreed with him.

No one, especially me, can believe it but I finally managed to get my Hannukah fic done before Hanukkah ended. 

Jewish characters of The Table both canon and headcanon hanging out with each other my beloved. Recommend to be read while listening to your fave Hanukkah song and eating guava pastelitos. 

[adraughtofamortentia]

.

[batboyblog]

So the mob was looking for israeli's at an airport. HM. They were demanding "jews" in general and not only israelis. HM. Almost like jewish people would NOT be welcomed with open arms if they left israel in droves. HM. Almost like "every jewish person just needs to leave, you will be fine" isn't a viable solution.

Yeah it seems there was a plane from Tel Aviv and a rumor flew around that it was full of Israeli refugees so a mob showed up to Lynch them.

video of the mob shows them pretty clearly saying "Jews" "give us the Jews!" "where are the Jews?!" "kill the Jews" etc, they rampaged through the airport "looking for the Jews" ripped the place apart it'll be closed till next week because of the damage, the Russian national guard landed military helicopters on the runway to break them up. They went to local hotels and run around the halls screaming for Jews

any ways the plane was not full of Israelis, in fact it doesn't seem like it had any Israelis. It was full of.... sick children and their families returning from Israel where they were getting advanced medical care. There's video of them on a bus begging and trying to tell the mob they weren't Jews and please don't hurt us.

It seems there were a few Jews or Israelis or both at the airport unclear if they were the flight crew or just locals or what, but they were locked up in a safe room in the airport while the riot went on, thankfully no one was murdered

it seems this kind of thing is happening all over the Russian controlled Caucuses, a Jewish cultural center in Kabardino-Balkaria was burned out and defaced with "death to the Yahudam." in Karachay-Cherkessia and Kabardino-Balkaria there have been protests demanding the authorities expel Jews or hand over the names of Jews so they can be hunted down

[greenflower21]

I would love to see religious Jews in Star Trek. I would love to see a bridge officer commanding while wearing a long skirt and a mitpachat. I would love to see another bridge officer wearing tzitzit under his uniform and a kippah. I would love to see him wrap tefilin before going to his post. I would love to hear someone offhand mention how those officers both can’t operate their replicators on Saturdays. I would love to see them search for the chabad house on every planet or starbase they visit. I would love to see them say Kaddish for fallen comrades. I would love to see them davening on the Holodeck (except for shabbos). I would love hearing them sing “Gesher Tzar Me’od” while their crew mates look on joyfully confused.

I would love to see at least a few of those things some day

[gay-otlc]

Sick of this bullshit

[a-very-tired-jew]

Reaction to recent Shifa Operation

If you haven't heard by now, Israel conducted a raid on the Shifa hospital due to it being used (again) as a base for Hamas. I have not seen any reports regarding civilian casualties, but there are 40-50 combatants killed and another 180-200 captured. One of those killed was a senior Hamas official in charge of internal security and distribution of aid. We all know how well that is going (and if you don't, Hamas recently executed members of a Gaza clan that were distributing aid to civilians outside of Hamas's authority. Hamas keeps aid for itself and affiliates) However, one of the things I have seen go around the various activist groups I am in is that the IDF also arrested/detained the Al Jazeera crew that was stationed at the hospital. Now, we know AJ has been pumping out propaganda for Hamas for quite some time. They even write articles in English that will appeal to Westerners that say one thing and say something different in Arabic (again, this follows the 93 meeting rhetoric of using the Westerner's language to manipulate them and garner support). As such, I have suddenly seen a number of these spaces turn to Anadolu for their news.

That's right.

Anadolu.

The state sponsored news agency of Turkey.

You know, Turkey.

The country that has been ethnically cleansing the Kurds for years and continues to do so. But they're totally on the right side of things because they're against Jews Zionists. Now excuse me, but I'm going to roll my eyes so far back into my head I see my brain cause people insist it's about Zionism, ethnic cleansing, and other such things while allying with countries currently conducting such activities openly.

[heyitsbramgreenfeld]

Chag Pesach Sameach! And welcome a week full of Matzah.

[sunbeamedskies]

I've seen a lot of troubling antisemitism in the Our Flag Means Death fandom lately regarding Taika Waititi. Please hear me out.

A lot of people want everyone to comment about the Israel/Palestine war. It's understandable. What Palestinian civilians are going through in Gaza is a nightmare that no one deserves. They are overwhelmingly paying the price for Hamas' actions- a group they have no control over and are also harmed by. Thousands have been killed.

After October 7th, Taika signed a letter asking for the Israeli hostages to be released. It did not endorse any specific actions taken by the Israeli government- it was simply in support of the hostages.

But you know what he was immediately accused of?

Supporting genocide. Even though what he signed was about Israeli civilians- including the elderly, disabled, and children- who were being held captive by Hamas.

On October 7th, Jews died in a single day in numbers that hadn't been since the Holocaust. Israel contains half the world's entire Jewish population. The majority of its population are descendants of Jews from middle eastern and north African countries who were forcibly kicked out in violent pogroms and had nowhere else to go. Many are descendants of Holocaust survivors as well.

I think most non-Jews would be astounded at how much the majority of the worldwide Jewish community is still mourning and reeling from October 7th. It triggered a lot of intergenerational trauma in many of us, yet I hear barely any non-Jews talk about it.

And yet you immediately accused Taika, a Jewish man, of supporting genocide just because he didn't support hostages being taken and random civilians being murdered. Do you really think he trusts people not to twist his words if he attempts to talk about Palestine too, when you turned a moment of legitimate pain for members of one of the persecuted groups he's apart of into accusing him of being a genocide-supporting monster?

We Jews not only have to deal with the memory of October 7th, but also with people conflating any support for the hostages with support for the Israeli government. When we say that criticism of Israel can at times get antisemitic, this is the kind of thing we're talking about.

Many of us are simultaneously mourning for Palestine and horrified that a right-wing fascist government that has little care for Palestinian lives has taken over Israel. Innocent lives taken shouldn't justify the killing of other innocent lives, and we are watching it happen, feeling powerless.

And it gets worse, because targeting Taika specifically because he's a person of multiple marginalized identities, when you don't attack white members of the crew nearly as much, is ironically racist.

Unintentional antisemitism and unintentional racism is still antisemitism and racism.

Take a deep breath and please reflect on how you have no idea what it's like to be Jewish right now, and how some of your own antisemitic criticism about his signature has likely contributed to his silence about Palestine. If no matter what he says his words and actions are twisted by so many of his "fans", he might think there's nothing he can say that will do any good.

[edenfenixblogs]

Well, tuned into the Drawfee stream...

I promised I'd check it out before determining if I'd ever be able to give Drawfee another chance after this...

Verdict TL;DR: Maybe one day, but not in the foreseeable future, especially not streams. Certainly never through my financial support ever again, unless they are fundraising for a particularly worthy charity (like in the Trans Rigs stream). But luckily, I don't think they give a shit if I watch or not, which is totally fair.

Overall: The Drawfee YouTubers didn't do anything wrong. However, their lack of acknowledgement of any Jewish pain or concerns served to further digital ghettoization and social isolation of diaspora Jews in a way that many (but definitely not all) Jews will probably find painful. Between that and the really bad faith link-sharing from the mods, I'm personally too fragile to imagine engaging with the channel again.

This conclusion is geared toward fellow Jews seeking escapist content or content that doesn't make them feel erased during this time. This is not a prescriptive recommendation for anyone else. It is simply my reasoning, should anyone else be on the fence and need insight.

The Good (There was a lot of it!):

I didn't see any Drawfee folks parroting antisemitic conspiracy theories, which is good. An extremely low bar, but one that many, many people fail to clear.

They kept their tone fun and light and didn't turn anything into a diatribe

They kept their focus on humanitarian aid and an end to violence.

I think they made a few statements generally about keeping chat civil.

They kept chat limited to people who already subscribed to the channel, which was SO smart. It kept bots and bad actors from making the chat hostile.

While they all joked about silly stuff, they never jokes about real issues or the pain of anyone involved in the conflict. This is very important!!!

Chat in general was a very good place to hang out. Most people were just happy to be there and commenting about funny and fun art and it had the (mostly) typical Drawfee vibes, which I miss.

There was nothing performative or disingenuous about the team's intent: They wanted an end to violence. They wanted aid to reach Palestinian refugees. They wanted to encourage voter turnout in upcoming elections, and they wanted people to pressure their representatives to call for a ceasefire. These are all unambiguously good things.

Most importantly: They raised WELL over $100,000 for PCRF, which (despite not being totally perfect) is a very well-rated charity that has no history of its funds falling into Hamas' hands and is geared toward helping children. This matters much more overall than the stream's impact on me personally.

Ultimately, I believe the stream did more good than harm by a large margin.

The Iffy (Neither good nor bad; just things that I noticed):

Basically, none of the actual Drawfee crew did anything antisemitic that I saw. But they had a lot of missed opportunities -- to affirm solidarity and support with Jewish viewership, to acknowledge Jewish pain in any way, to advocate for a peaceful solution that left room for any negotiated peace between Jews in Israel and Palestinians in any capacity (whether that meant as Israel or as a newly formed state of some kind), or to be specific and directed in how they wanted people to approach a ceasefire.

I didn't hear any call to specifically keep the chat free of antisemitism. I tuned in a few minutes late, so maybe I missed it.

No substantial knowledge of the conflict demonstrated. Just that the current situation is unacceptable and should stop. I don't know anyone who disagrees with that (who I consider to be acting in good faith), but no language from the team about how to bring about that end to violence other than demanding a ceasefire.

Mods had a chance to add links to AllMEP charities, A Land for All, and some other Palestinian-Israeli and Arab-Israeli and Muslim-Jewish charities that support either inter-faith healing OR even just solely pro-Palestine charities that have inter-faith or inter-cultural backing. They did not add these to the shared links that I saw. (This would have been fine if they had a rigorous evaluation process and couldn't moderate and evaluate quality at the same time. But based on the links that WERE shared, I severely doubt that was the case)

Someone in the chat was repeatedly giving the very good advice that when writing your representatives to demand a ceasefire, you should demand that the US offer to facilitate a negotiated peace and permanent ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Again, my feed crashed a couple times, so I may have missed it. But I personally did not see any of the mods or the Drawfee crew acknowledge this or mention Israeli suffering or Hamas violence once.

A least one of the mods should have been assigned fact-checking duty. Not many falsehoods were posted, but some were and community-members had to address them.

As expected there were lots of people posting watermelons, flags, and FtRttS. But, surprisingly, nobody was spamming it. I've written before about why the phrase FtRttS is upsetting to me personally, but I'll probably do a larger breakdown about i in the coming week. I appreciate that in general, people did seem to use it respectfully, in good faith, and without clear aggression toward Jewish people. There was some clear aggression toward Israelis (as in citizens not politicians), in general, but not too much or from too many people.

The Bad and Pretty Ugly (This is why I ultimately have to step away and other Jews might have to as well. At least for awhile):

Honestly, for all the care that people put into this stream, there was a general apathy toward and invisibility of Jewish people suffering in this crisis. Like I said, nobody on the on-screen Drawfee team did anything antisemitic. That was nice. Unfortunately, it didn't really seem like any actual effort was put in to determine what links were worth sharing. It was more of a "the mods like this one so it's allowed" sort of thing. Even cursory research on most of the links shared involved blatant instances of antisemitism, historical revisionism, or that just in general fell apart on any inspection whatsoever.

They could have made a lot of Jews feel seen and heard by mentioning the hostages even once, acknowledging 10/7 even once, acknowledged even once that Israel continues to be bombed from Hamas and Hezbollah daily, acknowledging that this is a war with two sides that both require an end to violence...literally any ONE of those things would have made a difference. But it was all just ignored, which is far too common when dealing with this conflict. This is especially painful for Jews who, like me, have experienced social isolation and digital ghettoization during this time. I think a lot of Jewish viewers will struggle to reconcile how this echoes a lot of the erasure that we all feel in our daily lives and in our digital spaces and in our hybrid digital and in-person communities. (<- Reblog 2 contains the accounts of The Jewish Experience of antisemitic erasure and ghettoization)Like, I do understand the argument that this is about providing humanitarian relief, but I also don't know why so many creators (and this is NOT unique to Drawfee) pretend like Jewish suffering is not relevent to ongoing discussions.

The mods posted links that supported UNRWA and some chatters spoke up in support of the UNRWA without any consequence. (All links here are verified as highly credible with high factual reporting standards via Media Bias/Fact Check and represent analysis from left-leaning, right-leaning, and least-biased sources)

One mod also posted a link to decolonizepalestine(.)com (not including the link because i don't want to support blatant propaganda). I have shared information about this terrible, bad-faith website before but there's so much more to pick apart here that I will reserve an evaluation of it as a source for a whole post of its own, unrelated to Drawfee. This website does cite its sources, but it provides no mechanism for readers to evaluate those sources. They are not hyperlinked and each individual citation must be looked up individually. I don't even have remotely enough time to do that right now. But if any of my bookwormish allies wish to tear apart those sources or the website in general, be my guest. Tagging y'all for visibility, but do not feel like I am actually asking you to do this work. It is simply something to add to the list of bad sources that we'll have to tackle at some point. cc: @comradevo @the-road-betwixt @faggotry-enjoyer @arandomshotinthedark et. al.

The mods also shared arab.org a few times. It is weird to me that they could have recommended AllMEP, which routinely emphasizes interfaith and intercultural and international cooperation and peace, but instead chose this much less evaluate-able source that excludes any efforts to find cooperative peace between Israel and Palestine. I had not heard of Arab.org before this stream and when I started to look into it, I fell into a bit of a rabbit hole:

So, first of all, Arab.org is a charity? organization? network? based in Beirut, Lebanon. I can't find them on Charity Navigator. The homepage didn't have a clear mission statement, so I navigated to the About Us tab. That gave me a little more information.

There, they state that their vision is to, "Empower people & organizations to do good." - Vague, but inoffensive. OK.

They state that they have three objectives:

Raising awareness, which they define as, "Civil society’s active role and through active collaboration." -- Vague but inoffensive.

Raising hope, which they define as, "Enabling the use of technology to innovate ways of contributing to the wellness and welfare of society." -- Vague but inoffensive.

Raising standards, which they define as, "Education, Reporting, Communication to & from civil society in the Arab World." -- Unclear, but inoffensive. Are they trying to raise the standards of these listed items within the Arab world or are they trying to raise international standards to be more inclusive of these listed items that originate from within the Arab world. And how do they define increased standards? Whose standards? IDK. This doesn't tell me anything really, but it also doesn't tell me anything bad, necessarily?

So what about their principles? Well, they list 5:

"Collaboration: Only together as a collective, can we bring about real change and betterment to society." -- OK, fine, but this still tells me nothing.

"Transparency: We conduct our business with a high level of transparency and a simple development model and we publish our impact publicly." -- Great! Excited to explore that!

"Innovation: We use our skills and creativity to make the world a better place. We want to make it possible to both inform and take action to solve the problems we discover." -- Intriguing, but how?

"Inclusion: We champion the inclusion of everyone in society, whether it is part of civic inclusion or charitable inclusion." -- This sounds really promising!!!! I'm excited to learn more!

"Leadership: We believe in taking the lead whenever wherever required by empowering individuals and organizations to influence others towards common goals." -- Gonna be honest, this just sound like vague buzzwords to me, but if they actually accomplish what they set out to do, great.

Luckily, each of these principles was clickable.

Let's start with "Collaboration"!

This takes me to a weirdly vague page with a gif of various men helping each other climb out of frame. The text below it says "We are currently on the look out for the following technology/platforms/businesses relevant to civil society" and then a list of pretty random things, some of which have checkmarks near them. Why is the formatting so strange? Why don't they all have checkmarks? Why is only the indicated section clickable but none of the other things? Where is more info about any of these items?

But fine, lets click that one clickable link about online marketplaces.

It doesn't actually take you to a marketplace but a page where artisans in the Arab world can submit their information. Submit heir information for what? Well, this is what the website says:

We understand how difficult life is for craftsmen & craftswomen to compete with mass-producing giants. We’re here to change all that. We are creating a win-win-win relationship whereby all sides benefit from our new platform “Shop to Help"

The "Shop to Help" is not clickable. I have no further information on what this is.

Fine, there's one more thing to click on this page: a list of Arab.org's partners.

First up: The Arab Institute for Women at Lebanese American University. Clicking on the info there takes me to the AIW:LAU website. Arab.org says the organization used to be called "Institute for Women’s Studies in the Arab World," but I couldn't find anything on Charity navigator for them either. Cursory research on them shows they've been around for 50 years. Fine. I'm not doing an evaluation on them right now (anyone who knows anything about them feel free to comment. I just don't have time) I was just investigating how they partner with Arab.org. I didn't find anything about that aside from a list of AIW's partners, which lists Arab.org amongst them. Clicking the link to Arab.org just takes me back to the homepage. I've learned nothing.

Next: They list Bayt.com, which is a job search site. Clicking that link takes me to the Bayt homepage. I couldn't find that addressed partnerships of any kind was their affiliate links page? But becoming an affiliate helps the affiliate make money, not Bayt. So I'm unsure what's going on or if this is even related.

Third: Building Markets. As far as I can tell, this is a real organization. I also cannot find them on Charity navigator, nor can I find any information about how they partner with Arab.org from their website. They do clearly share their financial information, though, which is great. I neither endorse nor condemn this organization. I'm not investigating them right now.

Fourth: Takreem Foundation. I CAN FIND THEM ON CHARITY NAVIGATOR! But they aren't rated. A search of the Takreem website shows no affiliation with Arab.org or accessible financial information.

Fifth: #GivingTuesday Woohoo! They are on Charity Navigator and have a pretty high rating! However, there's no evidence of a link between them and Arab.org, and the organization claims to have no list of official partners or participating organizations. Odd. Did Arab.org run a #GivingTuesday campaign and highlight #GivingTuesday instead of the organization they were giving to? Idk. And I don't have time to figure it out.

Sixth: CSR Engine. It's just a website with nothing on it except the statement "World’s first business for good solution to assign & align CSR activities seamlessly using AI and blockchain technology," which is the same text available about it from the Arab.org partners page. It does show it's affiliation with Arab.org...by listing Arab.org as a customer and then linking back to the Arab.org homepage. WHAT IS GOING ON.

Finally, and buckle up for this one cuz its a doozy, Greenpeace: I'd actually heard of this one, but I don't really know anything about it. Clicking Greenpeace doesn't even take you to the real Greenpeace MENA site. It just takes you to Arab.org's really weird write up page about Greenpeace. So, instead, I searched for Greenpeace on Charity navigator, where it got a 100% rating. Awesome! I clicked the charity navigator link, which took me to the Greenpeace Fund website. But wait a second. What's their connection to Arab.org? Well, there was no search function on the GreenpeaceFund website. So, I typed Greenpeace into google and uh?????

What?

That was surprising. I clicked the link and...

It showed me a totally different website...

Than the one I was just on...

Mods and the Drawfee crew stopped people from sharing links unless those people were mods. That was a super good choice which I fully support. But why did the mods share THESE links?

Well, I had the websites both open in side-by-side tabs.

That's...odd... So I studied the URLs more closely...

The lighter green G that's less pixelated? THAT ONE is the Greenpeace Fund. That is the one with penguins and a 100% charity navigator score.

The one with the lime green, pixelated G? That's Greenpeace International, a conspiracy/pseudoscience website with low crediblity.

But hey, the Greenpeace International website says there's a MENA-based branch. And, upon closer inspection, the Greenpeace International MENA website is the one that was linked on the Arab.org page. Maybe that one was better?

Clicking it took me to the Greenpeace MENA site...

which gave me another blinking Conspiracy Alert Icon from Media Bias Fact Check.

Just to be safe, I typed Greenpeace MENA into google, and fam... it is not better.

PS: searching ANY Greenpeace website for Arab.org showed no results.

In one last-ditch effort, I checked the Transparency page, where Arab.org claims to be "leading by example" in sharing all their documentation for charitable donations. And y'all it's fucking weird.

Let's stick with Greenpeace cuz they're already open tabs on my computer.

First of all, Arab.org's "leading by example" financial disclosures...

...are literally just the "Thank you for donating" receipts that you get whenever you donate to any cause. It's fucking weird.

And yeah, you read that right. For all of the 4th financial quarter of 2023, Arab.org donated just $109 TO THE ORGANIZATION WHICH THEY CALL A FEATURED PARTNER.

"OK," you say. "Well, there was a fucking lot going on in the fourth quarter of 2023. They were probably more focused on Palestine." Sure, lets check out their donation history to UNRWA (which, btw, is still a not great charity)

In case you don't want to click another link--Spoiler alert, they only donated $380. For the whole quarter.

And before you say, "But Eden! You must have missed it Arab.org is another organization called The Olive Tree (The Olive Tree SAL). That must be where the REAL work takes place!" Look at the mission statement of that one! The call themselves, "A mission-driven social enterprise startup making an impact for the common good.''

No.

The Olive Tree SAL is not on Charity Navigator. It's just another nothingburger website that links back to Arab.org and has no search function or further information.

This is the entirety of the website:

And a weird little LinkedIn logo that takes you to the organization's business page on LinkedIn.

From what I can tell, Arab.org just uses Ad revenue to generate minimal donations for charities and organizations of varying credibility that mostly don't even seem to know that Arab.org is even doing anything related to them. And that are designed to make people who are basically uninformed on the whole topic feel good for clicking on a link.

IDK, color me unimpressed. But I'm frankly a little mad that I spend so much fucking time trying to promote charities and organizations that promote peace between Palestine and Israel with actual detailed financial reports and disclosures that seeing this really makes me upset. Maybe if people actually listened to Jewish people with a lifetime of experience dealing with this conflict and trying to help solve or even Palestinian people on the ground who are affected by all this, they might instead focus their energies on one of the many organizations that are actually doing something to help alleviate suffering, increase empathy, encourage education and interfaith dialogue, learn to use language that is respectful of everyone undergoing and who has survived trauma, or build a peaceful future.

Whatever.

Donate to an AllMEP Charity:

And the craziest thing is that I'm gonna be the one who gets hate for this--even tthough I've been so driven out of most fandom spaces and discourse spaces that I can't even tag Drawfee here, let alone I/P, Palestine, or (G-d-forbid) Israel and get this to reach people who this could actually hep.

Because every time I try to engage, I'm inundated with messages like this:

[manonsmanicmind]

This is a compilation of highlights from a panel held at the National Museum of the Mighty Eighth Air Force with Kirk Saduski (executive and producer at Playtone), Donald L. Miller (author of Masters of the Air), and Nate Mann (you know who he is 😌). The whole discussion is very insightful and really fun to watch, especially because Don knew Rosie very well, so I highly recommend that you watch it in its entirety. You can watch it here. There's a summary below if you don't want to watch the compilation 😉

Don on Rosie and Nate: “I’ve never met a more impressive human being in my life… his poise, his coolness, his composure.” He thinks Nate “played [Rosie] to a T.” 

Nate on the cast getting to know each other and the friendships formed: “A mission like [Münster]… took probably three weeks in a replica cockpit… all the while, Josh Bolt, my co-pilot is sitting right next to me… this was going on for a year… I was just texting him today… that kind of friendship is really the foundation of something like this… because they’re really up there for one another.”

Don on the show: “What makes the film for me is what Kirk talked about… the attention to detail is incredible and the dedication on the part of the actors, they jumped into these roles… I never saw a group of actors so emphatically committed to the project as these guys were; it was really incredible.”

Don on Rosie and Nate: “Rosie was [the] kind of guy who walks into a room and commands the room.” To Nate: “I thought you did that brilliantly, in an understated way. It would have been so easy to overstate that.” —> Nate: *nods vigorously and mouths 'thank you'* 😊🙏

Kirk to Nate: “You’re at the beginning of what we know is going to be a brilliant career, Nate.” —> Nate: *embarrassed* 🤭🙈🙉🙊🫣

Nate on how playing Rosie affected his life: “Things stick around… It’s always a good sign when you keep coming up with questions you might ask of your character. I would love to just sit down and talk to [Rosie] about jazz… I still feel this curiosity about him.”

Nate on how the incorporation of Rosie’s love for music was helpful: “When I first encountered Rosie, the thing you’re struck by is the magnitude of what he went through and what he chose to do in spite of what he went through, and that warrior-spirit... juxtaposed with this incredible warmth and this grace, and that’s where the music lives for me... He had this sense of trying to bring a buoyancy into others’ experiences, and I think he did with his crew. That balance there, between that steel-headed courage and his effortless warmth with others, was kind of where I tried to pivot.”

During the pandemic, Nate found a letter from his grandfather on his father’s side: it was from 1941 and mentioned how “unhappy he was.” 

The letter said: “I just feel this frustration… this sense of wanting to do something with my life, this sense of responsibility, this sense of responsibility to you, to my parents, to my country, and to this society that gives me, a jew, a chance to live.” 

Nate thought of that letter when auditioning for MotA because “that personal sense of duty, for Rosie, was so pivotal to his inspiration and helping him fight.” He further said that “getting to explore that connection to [his] grandfather… it’s one of those unexpected great wonders of getting to do the work that [they] get to do.”

Nate on what stands out with this project: “This is unique in that, feeling connected to this history and being able to be part of sharing it with you guys and helping to educate the public on these men, on WW2, on that sacrifice, brings a whole other dimension of meaning to our work.”

The rest of the video is made up of clips of Nate being an adorable, sweet, thoughtful, and supportive human being 🥰