#jumblr discourse

[beemovieerotica]

anyway...I can't believe I'm getting anon hate for the idea that, yes, it is bad to selectively interrogate people of a specific ethnic group about the actions of a country they do not live in. like you can either ask everybody about their stance on an issue or don't ask at all. and if you're literally voicing your opinions as "i only dislike people of [ethnic group] if they believe in--" then just do not use an ethnic qualifier. just say you don't like people with X political stance if that's what you actually mean.

it should not be this difficult to understand with respect to jewish people, we all collectively get that if somebody were introduced to a chinese person and their eyes light up and they're like "Oh! Hello Chinese man. How do you feel about the Chinese government's treatment of the Uyghur people? Do you support that?" and they're literally not asking anyone else in the space and they do not behave like that around white people then they're definitely the asshole

[mylight-png]

I cannot even begin to express how horrifying the lack of outrage about this is.

May anyone who ever claimed "the hostages were treated well" be cursed. Such lies are absolutely disgusting and despicable.

This is not what being treated well looks like. This is psychological torture, abuse, and warfare. This is pure evil.

[infiniteglitterfall]

I do realize this is a real niche post but I cannot tell you how many damn times over the past 10 months I've seen gentiles tell Jews some version of, "Your own holy book SAYS God doesn't want you to have a country yet!"

And it's such an incredibly blatant and weirdly specific tell that they're not part of something that grew from progressive grassroots, but something based on right-wing astroturfing.

1. Staying in your own lane is a pretty huge progressive principle.

Telling people in another group that their deity said they couldn't do X is, I think, as far as you can get from your own lane.

2. It's also very clearly Not In Your Own Lane because I've never seen anyone actually be able to EITHER quote the passage they're thinking of, OR cite where it is.

It's purely, "I saw somebody else say this, and it seemed like it would make me win the debate I wasn't invited to."

3. It betrays a complete ignorance of Jewish culture and history.

Seriously? You don't know what you're referencing, its context, or even what it specifically says, but you're... coming to a community that reads and often discusses the entire Torah together each year, at weekly services... who have massive books holding generations of debate about it that it takes 7 years to read, at one page per day....

And saying, "YOUR book told you not to!"

I've been to services where we discussed just one word from the reading the whole time. The etymology. The connotations. The use of it in this passage versus in other passages.

And then there is the famous saying, "Ask two Jews, get three opinions." There is a culture of questioning and discussion and debate throughout Judaism.

You think maybe, in the decades and decades of public discussion about whether to buy land in Eretz Yisrael and move back there; whether it should keep being an individual thing, or keep shifting to intentional community projects; what the risks were; whether it should really be in Argentina or Canada or someplace instead; how this would be received by the Jews and gentiles already there, how to respect their boundaries, how to work with them before and during; and whether ending up with a fuckton of Jews in one place might not be exactly as dangerous for them as it had always been everywhere else....

You think NOBODY brought up anything scriptural? Nobody looked through the Torah, the Nevi'im, the Ketuvim, or the Talmud for any thoughts about any of this?? It took 200 years and some rando in the comments to blow everyone's minds???

4. It relies on an unspoken assumption that people can and should take very literal readings of religious texts and use them to control others.

And a sense of ownership and power over those texts, even without any accompanying knowledge about what they say.

It's kind of a supercessionist know-it-all vibe. It reads like, "I know what you should be doing. Because even if I'm not personally part of a fundamentalist branch of a related religion, the culture I'm rooted in is."

Bonus version I found when I was looking for an example. NOBODY should do this:

There are a lot of people who pull weird historical claims like "It SAYS Abraham came from Chaldea! That's Iraq!"

Like, first of all, a group is indigenous to a land if it arose as a people and culture there, before (not because of) colonization.

People aren't spontaneously spawning in groups, like "Boom! A new indigenous people just spawned!!"

People come from places. They go places. Sometimes, they gel as a new community and culture. Sometimes, they bop around for a while and eventually assimilate into another group.

Second: THE TORAH IS NOT A HISTORY TEXTBOOK OMFG.

It's an oral history, largely written centuries after the fact.

There is a TON of historical and archaeological research on when and where the Jewish culture originated, how it developed over time, etc. It's extremely well-established.

Nobody has to try to pull what they remember from Sunday school for this argument.

[newnitz]

Ashkenormativity

Ashkenormativity is the assumption that the default Jew is the Ashkenazi one. It is a term coined by Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews to explain our alienation from the rest of the Jewish community, from my lived experience specifically from the Diaspora Jewish community.

I'm half-Ashkenazi, but that half is pretty secular. When it comes to major Jewish holidays, I've always done them with my maternal grandparents, who, despite being secularized, still respect their cantor roots to the point of not wanting to skip on a holiday or even shorten the Seder(until one hilariously bad one). So the only minhag I've known was the Sephardi one.

In Israel, this was a non-issue.

The most I heard about differences is how Sephardim and Mizrahim emphasize table manners because unlike Ashkenazim, they actually eat on the table.

When I left Israel and moved to a place hundreds of kilometers away from the nearest Jewish community, I finally realized how much I need our community. So like everyone on lockdown, I sought it online, where Jewish cultures is bagels and casual use of Yiddish, two things completely foreign to me. I mean we have bagels in Israel, but they're not the meme they are among US Jews. They're nowhere near as popular as a pita. So when I had to look up what "davening", "shul" and "shanda" meant, I first got the sense I don't actually belong.

But the people using those terms as a day to day weren't the ones who actively made me feel unwelcome. In fact, those were more likely to acknowledge my confusion and explain. The ones who alienated me are the antizionist Jews from the Anglosphere, who ignore and revise non-Ashkenazi history and even history of Ashkenazim outside the Global North, who blame modern Hebrew for the decline of Yiddish which they frame as the traditional Jewish language, ignoring how that pushes down communities that traditionally spoke Ladino, Juddeo-Arabic, Amharic and more, and overall infantilize and dismiss families like mine who built a good life for ourselves in Israel and rose to the position to actively combat Ashkenazi hegemony, and remove the agency of my former classmates who take a stand against it, all in favor of superimposing the race politics of the Anglosphere onto Israel.

So the Columbia university definition of singling out "white Jews" is quite inaccurate. Under ashkenormativity, an Ashkenazi JoC would find themselves better represented than the white-presenting members of my Sephardi(or raised according to that half) family. It's another reductivist attempt to superimpose European guilt onto Jews by erasing half of us. Specifically, the half that lives in Israel.

Goyim, ashkenormativity doesn't belong to you. Stop using it as a shield to be antisemitic. Stop using it as anything regarding inter-community issues, it's our term to use within our community.

[etz-ashashiyot]

I did a poll the other day about this from the [Jewish] Zionist perspective; I'm now curious about the Jewish anti-Zionist perspective.

To answer this poll, you MUST identify as BOTH Jewish and anti-Zionist. Jewish non-Zionists, post-Zionists, refusetoidentifyniks, other assorted folks, and goyim of any political persuasion, please just choose the see results button. Thanks!!

Also: This poll is meant for genuine listening, learning, and seeing the true thoughts of other Jews. I stg if I see anyone attacking any people nice enough to respond to this poll and give serious explanations for their answers, like folks did on the original poll?

I will find you.

If you don't like it, keep scrolling. Thank you!!

Edit: Please do reblog for reach regardless of your background or views; I'd appreciate it!

[spacelazarwolf]

“christmas is pagan!!!!!!! easter is pagan!!!!!!!!” shut up please u am begging u shut the entire up PLEASE GOD PLEASE JUST SHUT UP

[goy-bullshit-translator]

Here's my real take. We are so desperate to assimilate into the general Christian vibes of this time of year that we churn out repetitive horrible pop music that aims to emulate Christmas carols and never will because modern pop hannukah songs do not play the same role in Hannukah culture as modern Christmas songs do in Christmas culture. Assimilation is killing our hannukah songs. We should have Channukah songs!! They just shouldn't sound like knockoff Jingle Bells

[unbidden-yidden-deactivated20240]

In light of the success of my first latke poll, allow me to make some extremely low-brow latke topping suggestions (I do not necessarily endorse these, but I would try them if sufficiently bribed.)

[rxvera]

repeat after me, it is antisemitic to make a jewish character christian because it is more palatable to you

[jewish-culture-is]

Jewish culture when you have one First Nations parent is taking on traditional tattoos that the government tried to ban and stamp out because Hashem will understand that I am not harming my body, I am honoring generations of people whose culture was stomped on by white Christians. Hashem will understand this even if other Jewish people don't. I don't answer to them anyway, I answer to Him. And my guess is He's way angrier at the historical and ongoing discrimination against First Nations/Indigenous North American people than He ever could be at something that is, at worst, still done with good and family-honoring intentions.

.

[radicalshadow]

Because Purim’s over, let’s try a poll

Please reblog around of course for biggest sample size

[edenfenixblogs]

Look what Google just recommended to me!!!!

I already own (and love) Shabbat and Portico.

But I am OBSESSED with the rest and must acquire them immediately.

Top of my list is Love Japan because LOOK AT THIS BEAUITFUL BOWL OF MATZO BALL RAMEN!!!!!

We hear a lot about Jewish people in Europe and MENA, but we do not hear a lot about Jewish culture as it blends with East Asian cultures, and that’s a shame. Not just because it erases the centuries of Jewish populations there, but also because there are plenty of people of mixed decent. People who may not have come directly from Jewish communities in East Asia, but people who have a Japanese Father and a Jewish Mother, for example. Or people in intercultural marriages. These are all real and valuable members of the Jewish community, and we should be celebrating them more. This cookbook focuses on Jewish Japanese American cuisine and I am delighted to learn more as soon as possible. The people who wrote this book run the restaurant Shalom Japan, which is the most adorable name I’ve ever heard. Everything about this book excites and delights me.

And of course, after that, I’m most interested in “Kugels and Collards” (as if you had any doubts about that after the #kugel discourse, if you were following me then).

This is actually written in conjunction with an organization of the same name devoted to preserving the food and culture of Jews in South Carolina!

I’m especially excited to read this one, because I have recently acquired the book Kosher Soul by the fantastic, inimitable Michael J. Twitty, which famously explores faith and food in African American Jewish culture. I’m excited to see how Jewish soul food and traditions in South Carolina specifically compare and contrast with Twitty’s writings.

I’m also excited for all the other books on this list!

A while ago, someone inboxed me privately to ask what I recommended for people to read in order to learn more about Jewish culture. I wrote out a long list of historical resources attempting to cover all the intricate details and historic pressure points that molded Jewish culture into what it is today. After a while I wrote back a second message that was much shorter. I said:

Actually, no. Scratch everything I just said. Read that other stuff if you want to know Jewish history.

But if you want to know Jewish culture? Cookbooks.

Read every Jewish cookbook you can find.

Even if you don’t cook, Jewish cookbooks contain our culture in a tangible form. They often explain not only the physical processes by which we make our meals, but also the culture and conditions that give rise to them. The food is often linked to specific times and places and events in diaspora. Or they explain the biblical root or the meaning behind the holidays associated with a given food.

I cannot speak for all Jews. No one can. But in my personal observation and experience—outside of actual religious tradition—food has often been the primary means of passing Jewish culture and history from generation to generation.

It is a way to commune with our ancestors. I made a recipe for chicken soup or stuffed cabbage and I know that my great grandmother and her own mother in their little Hungarian shtetl. I’ll never know the relatives of theirs who died in the Holocaust and I’ll never meet the cousins I should have had if they were allowed to live. But I can make the same food and know that their mother also made it for them. I have dishes I make that connect me to my lost ancestors in France and Mongolia and Russia and Latvia and Lithuania and, yes, Israel—where my relatives have lived continuously since the Roman occupation even after the expulsions. (They were Levites and Cohens and caretakers of synagogues and tradition and we have a pretty detailed family tree of their presence going back quite a long time. No idea how they managed to stay/hide for so long. That info is lost to history.)

I think there’s a strong tendency—aided by modern recipe bloggers—to view anything besides the actual recipe and procedures as fluff. There is an urge for many people to press “jump to recipe” and just start cooking. And I get that. We are all busy and when we want to make dinner we just want to make dinner.

But if your goal isn’t just to make dinner. If your goal is to actually develop an understanding of and empathy for Jewish people and our culture, then that’s my advice:

Read cookbooks.

[mylight-png]

Do people understand that the reason Israel is seeing so many fewer casualties is because of all the defense infrastructure?

And do people realize that this defense infrastructure was made necessary by the frequency of attacks against Israel?

And do people realize that if Hamas actually cared about Gazans they'd build defense infrastructure too?

The iron dome, alarm system, bomb shelters, all of these are made out of necessity to protect Israeli civilians and it's working.

Meanwhile, Hamas builds tunnels for terrorism and uses water pipes to make more rockets. They initiate wars they know they can't win, and they hide their offense infrastructure within civilian infrastructure, thus making their civilian infrastructure military assets by law.

People want equivalency and use Disney ethics without applying any critical thinking as to why things are the way they are.

If Israel didn't have the defense infrastructure that it has, we'd be seeing huge amounts of casualties, because Hamas is continually firing rockets into Israel. People seem to forget that fact.

[infiniteglitterfall]

I guess this might be why the UK seemed to go so antisemitic so quickly

I'm researching the 1947 pogroms in the UK. (Actually, I'm researching all the pogroms and massacres of Jews in the past 200 years. Which today led me to discover that there were pogroms in the UK in 1947.)

From an article on "The Postwar Revival of British Fascism," all emphasis mine:

Given the rising antisemitism and widespread ignorance about Zionism [in the UK in 1947], fascists were easily able to conflate Zionist paramilitary attacks with Judaism in their speeches, meaning British Jews came to be seen as complicit in violence in Palestine.

Bertrand Duke Pile, a key member of Hamm’s League, informed a cheering crowd that “the Jews have no right to Palestine and the Jews have no right to the power which they hold in this country of ours.” Denouncing Zionism as a way to introduce a wider domestic antisemitic stance was common to many speakers at fascist events and rallies. Fascists hid their ideology and ideological antisemitism behind the rhetorical facade of preaching against paramilitary violence in Palestine.

One of the league’s speakers called for retribution against “the Jews” for the death of British soldiers in Palestine. This was, he told his audience, hardly an antisemitic expression. “Is it antisemitism to denounce the murderers of your own flesh and blood in Palestine?” he asked his audience. Many audience members, fascist or not, may well have felt the speaker had a point. ...[The photo of two British sergeants hanged by the Irgun in retaliation for the Brits hanging three of their members] promptly made numerous appearances at fascist meetings, often attached to the speaker’s platform. In at least one meeting, several British soldiers on leave from serving in Palestine attended Hamm’s speech, giving further legitimacy to his remarks. And with soldiers and policemen in Palestine showing increasing signs of overt antisemitism as a result of their experiences, the director of public prosecutions warned that the fascists might receive a steady stream of new recruits.

MI5, the U.K. domestic security service, noted with some alarm that “as a general rule, the crowd is now sympathetic and even spontaneously enthusiastic.” Opposition, it was noted in the same Home Office Bulletin of 1947, “is only met when there is an organized group of Jews or Communists in the audience.”

The major opposition came from the 43 Group, formed by the British-Jewish ex-paratrooper Gerry Flamberg and his friends in September 1946 to fight the fascists using the only language they felt fascists understood — violence. The group disrupted fascist meetings for two purposes: to get them shut down by the police for disorder, and to discourage attendance in the future by doling out beatings with fists and blunt instruments. By the summer of 1947, the group had around 500 active members who took part in such activities. Among these was a young hairdresser by the name of Vidal Sassoon, who would often turn up armed with his hairdressing scissors.

The 43 Group had considerable success with these actions, but public anger was spreading faster than they could counter the hate that accompanied it. The deaths of Martin and Paice had touched a nerve with the populace. On Aug. 1, 1947, the beginning of the bank holiday weekend and two days after the deaths of the sergeants, anti-Jewish rioting began in Liverpool. The violence lasted for five days. Across the country, the scene was repeated: London, Manchester, Hull, Brighton and Glasgow all saw widespread violence. Isolated instances were also recorded in Plymouth, Birmingham, Cardiff, Swansea, Newcastle and Davenport. Elsewhere, antisemitic graffiti and threatening phone calls to Jewish places of worship stood in for physical violence. Jewish-owned shops had their windows smashed, Jewish homes were targeted, an attempt was made to burn down Liverpool Crown Street Synagogue while a wooden synagogue in Glasgow was set alight. In a handful of cases, individuals were personally intimidated or assaulted. A Jewish man was threatened with a pistol in Northampton and an empty mine was placed in a Jewish-owned tailor shop in Davenport.

And an important addendum:

I've read a whole bunch of articles about the pogroms in Liverpool, Manchester, Salford, Eccles, Glasgow, etc.

Not one of them has mentioned that the Irgun, though clearly a terrorist group, was formed in response to 18 years of openly antisemitic terrorism, including multiple incredibly violent massacres. Or that it consistently acted in response to the murders of Jewish civilians, not on the offensive. Or that at this point, militant Arab Nationalist groups with volunteers and arms from the Arab League countries had been attacking Jewish and mixed Arab-Jewish neighborhoods for months.

I just think the "Jewish militants had been attacking the British occupiers" angle is incredibly Anglocentric.

Yeah, they were attacking the British occupiers. But also, that's barely the tip of the iceberg.

Everyone involved hated the Brits at this point. If only al-Husseini and his ilk had hated the Brits more than they hated the Jews, Britain could at least have united them by giving them a common enemy.

[blastlight]

the anti-loophole christians are gonna be so mad when they hear about selling chametz

[anchorsnreignbows]

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