#Even if it is just 'So the name of God to jews is---' NO IT ISNT. 'Apparently you aren't even supposed to say it because it is rude'

[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

[whosplayerthree]

Me, a jew, the moment podcast hosts mention something even jewish adjacent

[soupcrouton]

Omg first time blocking a mutual for a petty reason that felt really good

[mariacallous]

“Did they really decapitate babies?” my 14-year-old daughter asked me yesterday. She was pointing to a text message on her phone from a friend. “They’re saying they found Jewish babies killed, some burnt, some decapitated.” And I froze. Not because I didn’t know what to say—though in truth I didn’t know what to say—but because for a moment I forgot what century I was in. All of the assumptions I had made as a Jewish father, even one who had grown up, as I did, with the Holocaust just a few decades past, were suddenly no longer relevant. Had I adequately prepared her for the reality of Jewish death, what every shtetl child for centuries would have known intimately? Later in the day, she asked if, for safety’s sake, she should take off the necklace she loves that her grandparents had given her and that has her name written out in Hebrew script.

The attack by Hamas on Israeli civilians last Saturday broke something in me. I had always resisted victimhood. It felt abhorrent, self-pitying to me in a world that seemed far away from the Inquisition and Babi Yar—especially in the United States, where I live and where polls repeatedly tell me that Jews are more beloved than any other religious group. I wasn’t blind to anti-Semitism and the ways it had recently become deadlier, or to the existential dread that my family in Israel felt every time terrorists blew up a bus or café—it’s a story whose sorrows have punctuated my entire life. But I refused to embrace that ironically comforting mantra, “They will always want to kill us.” I hated what this tacitly expressed, that if they always want to kill us, then we owe them, the world, nothing. I deplore the occupation for both the misery it has inflicted on generations of Palestinians and the way it corrodes Israeli society; when settlers in the West Bank have been attacked, it has pained me, but I have also felt anger that they are even there. In short, I wasn’t locked into the worldview of my survivor grandparents and I felt superior for it.

But something in me did break. As I was driving on Tuesday, I heard a long interview on the BBC with Shir Golan, a 22-year-old woman who had survived the attack at the music festival where more than 250 people were killed, her voice sounding just like one of my young Israeli cousins. She described, barely able to catch her breath, how the shooting had started and how she’d begun to run. She’d found a wooded area and tried to hide. “I got really into the ground,” she said. “I put the bushes on me.” Covered with dirt and leaves, she’d waited. A group of terrorists had shown up and called for anyone hiding to come out. From her spot under the earth, she’d seen three young people, whom she called “children,” emerge. “I didn’t go out because I was scared. But there were three children next to me who got out. And then they shot them. One after one after one. And they fell down, and that I saw. I saw the children fall down. And all that I did was pray. I prayed to my god to save me.”

I pulled my car over because my own hands were shaking as I listened. She then described waiting, hidden in the dirt under bushes for hours, until she saw the terrorists begin to light the forest on fire. “I didn’t know what to do. Because if I’m staying there, I’m just burnt to death. But if I go out they are going to kill me.” She crawled over to where she saw dead bodies and lay on top of them, but the heat soon approached, so she found more bushes to hide in until she could run again. Burnt bodies were everywhere, and Shir looked for her friends but couldn’t find them, couldn’t even see the faces of those killed because they were so badly burned. “I felt like I was in hell.” She finally escaped in a car.

Her story flung me back to my grandparents’ stories. My grandmother hid in a hole for a year in the Polish countryside, also under dirt, also scared. My grandfather spent months in Majdanek, a death camp, and saw bodies pile up in exactly this way. Stories are still emerging of families burnt alive, of children forced to watch their parents killed before their eyes, of bodies desecrated. How was this taking place last Saturday?

But these stories aren’t what broke me. What did was the distance between what was happening in my head and what was happening outside of it. The people on “my side” are supposed to care about human suffering, whether it’s in the detention camps of Xinjiang or in Darfur. They are supposed to recognize the common humanity of people in need, that a child in distress is first a child in distress regardless of country or background. But I quickly saw that many of those on the left who I thought shared these values with me could see what had happened only through established categories of colonized and colonizer, evil Israeli and righteous Palestinian—templates made of concrete. The break was caused by this enormous disconnect. I was in a world of Jewish suffering that they couldn’t see because Jewish suffering simply didn’t fit anywhere for them.

The callousness was expressed in so many ways. There were those tweets that did not hide their disregard for Jewish life—“what did y’all think decolonization meant? vibes? papers? essays? Losers”—or the one that described the rampage as a “glorious thing to wake up to.” There was the statement by more than two dozen Harvard student groups asserting, in those first hours in which we saw children and women and old people massacred, that “the Israeli regime” was “entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.” And then there were the less explicit posts that nevertheless made clear through pseudo-intellectual word salads that Israel got what it deserved: “a near-century’s pulverized overtures toward ethnic realization, of groping for a medium of existential latitude—these things culminate in drastic actions in need of no apologia.” I hate to extrapolate from social media—it is a place that twists every utterance into a performance for others. But I also felt this callousness in the real world, in a Times Square celebratory protest promoted by the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, at which one speaker talked of supporting Palestinians using “any means necessary” to retake the land “from the river to the sea,” as a number of placards declared. There were silences as well. Institutions that had rushed to condemn the murder of George Floyd or Russia for attacking Ukraine were apparently confounded. I watched my phone to see whether friends would write to find out if my family was okay—and a few did, with genuine and thoughtful concern, but many did not.

I’m still trying to understand this feeling of abandonment. Is my own naivete to blame? Did I tip too far over into the side of universalism and forget the particularistic concerns to which I should have been attuned—the precarious state of my own tribe? Even as I write this, I don’t really want to believe that that’s true. If I can fault myself clearly for something, though, it’s not recognizing that the same ideological hardening I’d seen on the right in the past few years, the blind allegiances and contorted narratives even when reality was staring people in the face, has also happened, to a greater degree than I’d imagined, on the left, among the people whom I think of as my own. They couldn’t recognize a moral abomination when it was staring them in the face. They were so set in their categories that they couldn’t make a distinction between the Palestinian people and a genocidal cult that claimed to speak in that people’s name. And they couldn’t acknowledge hundreds and hundreds of senseless deaths because the people who were killed were Israelis and therefore the enemy.

As the days go on, the horrific details of what happened—those babies—seem to be registering more fully, if not on the ideological left, then at least among sensible liberals. But somehow I can’t shake the feeling of aloneness. Does it take murdered babies for you to recognize our humanity? I find myself thinking—a thought that feels alien to my own mind but also like the truth. Perhaps this is the Jewish condition, bracketed off for many decades and finally pulling me in.

When news broke of the Kishinev pogrom in 1903 that took 49 lives (compare that with the 1,200 we now know were killed on Saturday), it caused a sensation throughout the world. “Babes were literally torn to pieces by the frenzied and bloodthirsty mob,” The New York Times reported. “The local police made no attempt to check the reign of terror. At sunset the streets were piled with corpses and wounded. Those who could make their escape fled in terror, and the city is now practically deserted of Jews.” In response to that massacre, the emigration of hundreds of thousands of Eastern European Jews to the United States began in earnest; the call of Zionism as a solution also sounded clearly and widely for the first time.

In his famous poem about the massacre, “In the City of Slaughter,” the Hebrew writer Haim Naḥman Bialik lamented, even more than the death, the sense of helplessness (“The open mouths of such wounds, that no mending / Shall ever mend, nor healing ever heal”), the men who watched in terror from their hiding places while women were raped and blood was spilled. I can’t say I know what will happen now that this helplessness has returned—if I’m honest, I also fear that Israel’s retaliation will go too far, that acting out of a place of victimhood, as right as it may feel, will cause the country to lose its mind. Innocent lives in Gaza have been and will be destroyed as a result, and competing victimhood is obviously not the way out of the conflict; it’s the reason that it is hopelessly stuck. But in this moment, before the destruction of Gaza grabs my attention and concern alongside fear for my relatives who have been called up to the army, I don’t want to forget how alone I felt as a Jew these past few days. I have a persistent, uncomfortable need now to have my people’s suffering be felt and seen. Otherwise, history is just an endless repetition. And that’s an additional tragedy that seems too much to bear.

[vaspider]

Hi there! Hope you’re having a good day mama spider. Just dropping by to ask for some info on an addition to a post about Judaism you made. I chose to ask you and not op because i’ve sent you an ask before and know that you answer them. So real quick, why did you type out G-d rather than God or god? Does it have something to do with Judaism? Is it just for the faithful to follow and not goyim? As an atheist who was formerly Catholic i just wanna learn more and be respectful of others’ religions whenever i can. I know next to nothing about Judaism, even though they’re a good portion of my county’s population. Hope this ask isn’t insensitive in any way, and thanks for taking the time to read this <3

This isn't insensitive to ask. It's actually a great question, and I'm glad that you asked if you're curious.

Since those articles cover your asks pretty well, I'm gonna give you some free bits of info to help your quest for respectfulness, which is pretty rad, btw: we don't really use phrases like "the faithful" bc Judaism doesn't require faith in G-d. There is no conflict between Judaism and atheism & there are a lot of Jewish atheists and agnostics. Judaism is an ethnoreligion and a people in a way that a lot of religions aren't, and in fact, the symbolism for one of my favorite holidays emphasizes that we are not complete without all kinds of Jews:

The functions of the four species are defined by both their smell and taste, or lack thereof, along with some interesting imagery from the Midrash (Vayikra Rabbah 30:12): The etrog has both taste and smell, representing people who both perform good deeds and have Torah (knowledge). The lulav has taste but no smell, representing those who do not use their knowledge to perform good deeds. The hadass (myrtle) has smell but no taste, representing those who perform good deeds but lack the knowledge to excel at them. The aravah (willow) has no taste and no smell, representing those who lack both.

"Good deeds" here doesn't just mean "being nice to your neighbors" but refers directly to performing mitzvot/mitzvahs, the 613 commandments that observant Jews observe to varying levels of specificity and intensity.

It's not offensive to use a phrase like "the faithful," just isn't ... correct, you know? Instead, you'd just say Jews or Jewish people. If you're trying to refer specifically to Jews who are religious or believe in G-d... there isn't exactly a phrase for that, I guess you'd say "observant," because there are a lot of Jews who are observant but also atheists, since observant Jews may be observing mitzvaot for any number of reasons that have nothing to do with belief in the existence of G-d.

Anyway, there you go, with some bonus info. As always, I don't speak for everybody, 2 Jews 3 Opinions, etc.

[tikkunolamresistance]

I can't believe you just got that major holocaust denialism ask oh my god fuck them I'm so sorry you had that sent to you that was genuinely disgusting

It’s alright, thank you for your kindness— at this point I’m not even surprised that Holocaust denialism is so prevalent. Challenging the handling of Shoah is okay— why didn’t America intervene sooner? Why had it been used to sell Zionism?— but challenging the legitimacy of the Holocaust in the name of Palestine is so insulting to the cause.

To all Leftists, if you catch Holocaust denialism in conversation, wether that be whilst participating in online or in-person spaces, it is absolutely your duty to call it out and shut it down. Denying the Holocaust will not Free Palestine, because if we deny brutality and oppression, we will forever be blind to it. Denying the brutality Jews have faced will not Free Palestine.

[hindahoney]

If you want to code-switch so often that you are nearly incomprehensible to goyim, here is a list of my favorite and most-used Jewish terms:

Schvitzing - Sweating. (Ex: "I'm schvitzing so much it's showing through my clothes.")

Schlep - A tedious and long journey, depending on usage it can mean that you were carrying something. (Ex: "I had to schlep all the way across campus, my backpack was so heavy." Usually denotes a long walk, but other forms of transportation are acceptable too. "You drove all the way to New York from Florida? That's quite the shlep.")

Shtati - Something really cool. (Ex: "I visited my friend's place and they had a shtati mezuzah!")

Neshama - Soul. (Ex: "Mazel tov on your conversion, you have such a strong Jewish neshama!")

Balagan - A big mess, chaotic, confusing (Ex: "Moshe forgot to bring challah for shabbat dinner, and it turned into this big balagan")

Achi/Achoti - "Achi" literally means "my brother," but can also be used like bro or dude, "achoti" is the feminine equivalent meaning "sister"

Yalla - Come on, let's go (Ex: "Yalla yalla, you're going to make us late again")

Mishpacha - Family. Doesn't have to be literal blood relatives, usually a sign of warmth or friendship. (Ex: "I care about every Jew, they're all my mishpacha.")

Pshhh - Interjection sound, to express respect or agreement with what someone is saying, but can also be playfully poking fun at someone taking themselves too seriously, can be used sarcastically.

Achla - amazing, awesome, great, the best (Ex: "You graduated from university? Achla!")

Sheina Punem (Shayna Punim) - Pretty face (Ex: My bubbe kept pinching my cheeks and calling me a sheina punem) Can be used ironically, in which case it means "a disgrace."

Ahavat Yisrael - to love your fellow Jew (Ex: "I firmly believe in ahavat yisrael, even if it's hard sometimes.")

Schande - Shame, dishonor among the nations, meaning a Jew who represents Jews badly, a serious insult. (Ex: "He's a schande, he feeds into antisemitic stereotypes.")

Schmutz - Dirt, stain. (Ex: "Use your napkin, you've got schmutz on your face.")

Amalek - Any enemy of the Jewish people. ("[Fill in blank] is the modern Amalek, they hate the Jews.")

Lanceman/Landsmen - Two jews from the same place, a point of connection between two Jews who now live far away from their hometown. (Ex: "Your grandma is from Crown Heights? Mine too, our grandparents are landsmen!")

Goyisch - Something not Jewish (Ex: "I don't listen to Taylor Swift, her music is too goyisch for me.")

Goyischekop/Goyische-kop - Goyisch head, a jew who thinks/sounds like a non-jew. (Ex: "How could you say about your fellow Jew? Do you have a goyische-kop or something?")

Kindaleh/Kinderlach - Little children (Ex: "I passed by the school and saw the kindaleh on the playground, they're so cute!")

Chamud/Chamuda/Chamudi - Sweetie, cutie, usually aimed at children, but can be a term of endearment between a couple. Can be condescending when said rudely to another adult, like "Sweetheart" can be in English. (ex: "Goodnight, Chamudi. I can't wait to see you tomorrow.")

Daven - to pray ("Are you going to join us for davening?")

Frum - A religiously observant Jew. ("He's frum, he davens three times a day.")

Treif - Unkosher, generally something not good, doesn't have to literally refer to a food. ("I trained my dog to stop barking when I say 'treif!'.")

Bubkis - Zero, nothing, nada ("Moshe got a gift from bubbe and I got bubkis.")

Kvetch - To complain ("I'm just kvetching, I'm not that upset about it.")

Kvell - Extreme pride. ("I heard your daughter made it into her top school, you must be kvelling!")

Mensch - A good, admirable person. ("He volunteers every week, he's a mensch.")

Chillul HaShem - Disgracing God's name, someone who does something that makes Jews look bad.

Kiddush HaShem - Something that sanctifies God's name, brings honor to God. ("I love seeing you wear a kippah, it's a kiddush HaShem!")

Bubbe meise - Little white lies ("He told his teacher a bubbe meise about his dog eating his homework.")

I should acknowledge that these are mostly Yiddish words, as my experience is primarily with Ashkenazi Jews. If you would like to add common slang from your community (like Ladino phrases, Judeo-Arabic, Italki, etc) I would love to learn about them!

[writingwithcolor]

Judaism, Angels, and Monstrosity

@neapolitangirl asked:

I'm writing a story about the angel Muriel traveling through a world inspired by American folklore (Ex. The Bell Witch, Fearsome Critters, etc) while hunting demons. I wanted to draw inspiration from the legend that says Muriel and Abaddon are one and the same because I thought it was interesting. However, I also know that Abaddon is important to Jewish cosmology and wanted to avoid any unfortunate implications. Muriel is very skittish and kind of a coward, but turns into the more violent and vengeful Abaddon in the presence of demons. Appearance-wise both Muriel and Abaddon are tall and skinny, but Muriel is more like an owly-human while Abaddon is a spiky skeletal being. Would this be connecting Judaism to monstrosity? Also, is there anything else I should try to avoid?

So…angelology, the whole idea of angels with names and personalities and individual jobs, is just…not something the average Jewish person thinks or cares about, even the ones who know a little about it. Not that it’s bad, it’s just not something that is prominent enough that it would have tropes attached that we might be able to warn you against.

That said, we’re posting on the Niche Scholarship and Special Interest website, so if there’s a reader who happens to have a lot of knowledge and feelings about Jewish angelology we would welcome the contribution and specialized expertise.

As it stands, my instinct is to give these more general considerations:

Balancing Jewish and Christian Elements

To what degree are you trying to tell a Jewish story, a Christian story that does not harm Jewish readers, or a story strongly influenced by Christian ideas about the heavens in a way that does not harm Jewish readers? How does deciding where you fall among those distinctions affect how you construct your story, and how you portray your angels?

Jewish Concept of God and Angelic Appearances

To Jews, God Godself does not have a physical body or visible appearance. If you’re describing the appearance of God as you’re navigating your angel-centering narrative, you’re squarely outside the territory of inclusivity toward Jewish readers. That’s okay, if you’re clear with readers that you’re not telling a Jewish story. It’s not okay if you’re trying to conflate Jewish and Christian ideas into a single narrative when they are often incompatible.

Angelic Appearances and Jewish Scripture

Angels might have appearances, and some descriptions of some types of angels in some Jewish scriptures have body parts of various animals. I haven’t the foggiest clue if it matters to anyone what appearances belong to which angels, so if it matters to someone reading this I hope they will speak up.

Are angels Jewish? This is a subject that could make for a fun discussion among Jewish people as a way of exploring the nature of Jewishness, but in your narrative you will have to think this through in your own way. If your angels engage in Jewish practices, then what does that look like and why, and if they don’t, why don’t they? The answer to that may of course be “Because I’m not actually telling a Jewish story.”

Christian Themes and Sensitivity to Jewish Culture

It’s okay to not be telling a Jewish story. But in that case keep in mind what demonstrations of Jewishness you include in a Christian story.

Especially, if you’re depicting a divine Jesus, or a Jesus character with any type of more-than-human powers or ancestry, or you are including any reference to the idea that Christianity might be in any way objectively correct, then you must tread EXTREMELY CAREFULLY with including any depiction of Jewish practice in your work, as the line where depiction turns to appropriation is in that case extremely near.

In all things, try and avoid depicting Jewish humans and any character who might be Jewish or be seen as Jewish in ways that are otherwise harmful: we’ve often talked about tropes around greed, sneakiness, power-grabbing, gender and sexual dynamics, and other tropes that apply to portrayals of Jewish characters. If your angels are Jewish, or Jew-ish in flavor, that goes for them as well.

Again, I know absolutely zero about Muriel and Abbadon and am not very interested in learning more as their lore has zero bearing on my Jewish practice in any way, and that’s a somewhat important point to me to be making because…2J3O. Two Jews, three opinions. So again, if a reader does in fact have knowledge and opinions about the specific angels themselves, please speak up.

–Meir

[determinate-negation]

I'm sorry but having token jew(s) in your student movement does not absolve you of antisemitism and does not grant you a free pass from engaging with this problem. While I'm willing to believe many of these groups do actually advocate for Palestinian liberation without dabbling in the old jew hate, the reality is that the last weeks have seen some Very, very hateful and concerning targeting of Israeli and Jewish students, the Cornell forum and blocking of the kosher food court, whatever the fuck is happening in Columbia to name but a few. Many of my Jewish and Israeli friends in American universities have voiced major concerns, regardless of their political stance (yes! Even anti zionist aka the "good jews"!!)

Why are you so quick to dismiss these people's claims, the *are* the marginalized group, they are the ones feeling threatened, calling them delusional won't make them feel safe, unless, of course, you do not care for Jewish wellbeing and existence.

I must say that for the time being, as a jewish student, I thank God im not in American academia.

i wasnt gonna even respond to this but its so annoying how people refuse to interrogate the framing of things because youre falling for propaganda and im going to show you.

when i say that there are jewish students in palestine organizing, these are not “token jews,” although that seems to be the only lens through which you can view standing with liberation instead of violent ethnonationalism. but anyways, these are not token jews these are people making leadership decisions in sjp and jvp chapters. in new york specifically, not that you would know i guess, and which is misrepresented in the media, the issue in some chapters is having only a few “token arabs” and mainly white jewish members. if any of the reporters actually did their fucking job the articles they write about sjp would reflect this.

the incident you mentioned at cornell, someone making violent antisemitic threats, which is actually scary, has nothing to do with pro palestine organizing. in fact, quite the opposite, according to his lawyer.

so this was actually meant to vilify pro palestine students, and its working on you.

and i dont know what youre referring to about columbia, because whats mainly happening is pro palestine students and arab students in general who are completely unaffiliated are being doxxed by right wingers and the administration is taking extreme measures to shut down political speech. lets be fucking real: antisemitism on college campuses exists and is an issue, but is mainly coming from right wingers or opportunists, not the leadership of palestine organizations. conflating them when its actually a different story is serving a specific political purpose of slandering the palestine movement. its also ignoring the real root of the problem. and more cops on campus and administrations destroying academic freedom cynically framed as “preventing antisemitism” is actually a bigger threat for us in the long run. its just wrong to consider pro palestine people as the biggest threat to jewish students on campus, they simply arent the people behind most of this increase of antisemitism. if you joined sjp you would most likely find people committed to justice and liberation and would completely welcome you if youre equally committed, and who are vocal about not equating jews and the state of israel. stop fucking buying all this propaganda. my post specifically was about the misrepresentation of college palestine organizations as antisemitic terrorists, and nothing i said in it was incorrect

[jewish-vents]

I’m Jewish through my dad but I wasn’t raised in the community(i learned what Purim was two weeks ago, i was fully not in it), so when I got to college last august I decided to really dive in and it’s been a beautiful sort of homecoming for me. I joined SAEPi and got into Chabbad leadership at my campus, and I’m almost at the point where I can do the Chabbad Shabbat prayers before and after dinner without stumbling over my words. Gonna surprise my grandma if I see her in the summer. Anyways.

When October 7th happened it was a shock to my system, because I was a baby Jew barely getting my feet. My parents never mentioned antisemitism to me as something that could affect me in the future, it was always a thing of the past. But I was right there standing in the doorway between jew-ish and Jewish, and it pushed me over the edge. I had many friends with family in Israel. I had a couple friends whose friends died in the attack. Everyone in that group was my family. It felt personal.

When the march in dc happened I went with one of my friends, and it was sad, but amazing to see in person how strong we are. In the plane terminal on the way home he and I got cornered and called baby killers, among other things, because he was wearing a kippa and his Israeli first responder coat. That was my first time experiencing antisemitism and it was terrifying, even though I didn’t get hurt. It was terrifying even though my friend was built like a tank and would’ve protected me. It was terrifying just to sit in the train car with him and watch a woman stare at him with wide eyes like he was some kind of criminal. I stepped closer to him as if to remind her he’s human. I stared back at her with just as much fear and watched her snap out of it, confused.

Last week was holocaust awareness week at my college, and one of the things I did was spend a couple hours in the plaza reading the names of people that died. I found 34 Feldmans and Fotts. I found family names, Chana and Fayge and Jeshua and Sophia Feldman one after the other, and still am wondering if that was part of my family that didn’t make it to the US in time.

I called my grandma and asked for everything she could remember about her family lineage and how we got here, everything she had from that part of her life. I thought that there would be plenty to lean into, family recipes and heirlooms and stories, but there was barely anything. She has a Star of David necklace and a ton of repressed memories, next to nothing else. The recipes I could find were through my great aunt, some short instructions from my great grandmother on the back of a letter she sent to the aunt about what to ask for from a kosher butcher.

My family made it here in 1915 and 1921, they escaped before the holocaust, but they still weren’t untouched because of the ways they were ostracized and othered when they got here. My grandmother will barely admit she’s Jewish because none of her kids passed it on, it’s easier for her to let it go. I didn’t understand this until I realized that one couldn’t be hurt by the grief and pain of a family they aren’t part of.

Even those that survive are not left unscarred.

How could this not be personal? How could it not be generationally affective when it’s pushed so many to minimize their Jewishness out of self preservation? Raise their kids thinking they aren’t Jewish and hope their names never end up on a list of living or dead Jews? People still don’t see us as human. the antisemites still want to scar us. They want us to forget who we are.

It’s unreal to me when goyim act like American Jews in the current day are unaffected by the past and safe from antisemitism. I’ve been here less than a year and have been screamed at in an airport, have uncovered serious intergenerational trauma, and realized that of my Jewish family I have nothing to hold on to but a torn in half piece of paper with a sentence long tangent about brisket.

We are strong and we will outlive them, but god are we still fucking fighting for our lives.

.

[tanadrin]

The Gish Gallop was a term coined I think on the 2000s internet for a rhetorical maneuver where to buttress an argument you provide a ton of low-quality evidence; that the evidence is bad means it should be easy to refute, but the very large volume means it will take much longer to explain why it's all wrong than it did to copy-paste a bunch of links, and to a certain kind of very naive onlooker, it looks like the galloper is winning--after all, the one interlocutor has presented a ton of evidence! The second interlocutor has to spend so much time bending over backwards to refute it! Surely the first guy is more knowledgeable and authoritative. You aren't going to look at all that evidence yourself, of course--who has the time?

But listening to Dan McClellan talk about the Gospel of John this morning, it occurs to me that I don't think this is disingenuous. Not entirely. I think this is just the style of argumentation a lot of Christians (of a particular religious flavor) are used to. And I'm not just talking about in non- or para-religious matters like evolution. This is how Christianity understands the Bible.

This week's Data over Dogma is about the theology of John, and why it is non-trinitarian (because the Trinity is a much later doctrine developed as a kind of political compromise, maintained only because it had state backing) and does not actually identify Jesus with God (the theological developments are more complicated here; but suffice it to say it was not at all a given that "authorized bearer of the divine name" and "actually God" were the same being in 1st century Hellenistic Judaism, and indeed the distinction between the two had developed in Jewish thought precisely to avoid the awkwardness of anthropomorphic figures proclaiming themselves God in some of the older sections of the Hebrew Bible).

The funny thing is, there are a ton of passages in John that get trotted out as proof texts that Jesus is God. There are very good reasons in the case of each one to doubt that that is actually the correct reading; but of course, if you don't know anything about Greek, all you have are modern translations produced under the assumption of the dogma of the Trinity--mostly for devotional readers of the Bible who would be outraged if the Trinity wasn't in the New Testament--and you have been raised in a cultural and/or educational milieu where it is simply a default assumption about the way the world works that the Trinity is a timeless concept that has been in the Bible from the beginning, it sure looks like one side is spinning up tendentious arguments based on silly semantics that have nothing to do with the religion you learned as a kid.

But this exegetical approach (really, eisegetical) is common to many topics in traditional Christian theology. There are a ton of passages from the Septuagint that the Gospels warp to be about Jesus, even though, in their original context, this doesn't make any sense; sometimes even they're based on obvious mistranslations, like having Jesus ride into Jerusalem on the back of two animals simultaneously because you don't understand appositives. And you can poke holes in any individual bit of this exegesis, but psychologically having a ton of low-quality evidence for a thing is a pretty effective bulwark against thinking critically about that evidence; for every individual argument you knock down, the person you are arguing against is probably thinking, "yeah, but what about all that other stuff," even if they can't actually name all that other stuff in the moment.

And it's not mendacious! This is the stuff of true belief; this is how you get breathless Christian commentators saying the Bible couldn't possibly be written by human hands, because it so perfectly predicted Jesus even in the Old Testament--and the evidence they point to is, to anyone not steeped in traditional Christian exegesis, and especially to Jews who have their own exegetical traditions, absolutely barmy. Like really pants-on-head crazy stuff. But of course even now it is still being processed, in many parts of the world, through a two thousand year old tradition trying to reconcile it all and to normalize it all, and--to bring it back to discussions of evolution on the internet in the 2000s--I can't help but think of all those people who talk about the experience of thinking evolution was so obviously nonsense, because all they were exposed to was the fundamentalist strawman of it. When they finally sat down and began to read about it on their own, from unbiased sources--often with the intent of criticizing it--they realized how distorted their understanding was, and how limited their supposed outside view.

(If there are general lessons to be wrung from this situation, I think it's simply "beware of echo chambers." Social consensus in a bubble can make bad arguments feel much stronger than they really are, especially if you are not exposed to the actual opposing view. Be on guard against mistaking "quantity of evidence" for "quality of argument," especially if you're not gonna evaluate that evidence yourself. Also all religious traditions are fundamentally eisegetical, because in order to keep holy writ relevant to the community its meaning has to be constantly renegotiated. So, uh. If you want high-quality exegesis, ask an academic, not a theologian.)

[unbidden-yidden-deactivated20240]

An incomplete list of unhinged things I want to create, mostly for the hell of it:

A flag

A coat of arms

A seal

A unique staff

A unique scarf, sash, &/or headcovering

A conlang, complete with its own alphabet

A name for my estate (small shitty house in a suburb)

Journals written, bound, and stored in such a way that they will be preserved long beyond my lifetime.

I used to want to create my own religion and pantheon of gods, and I even had a good start on it, but then I had an actual numinous religious experience and became a Jew.

So, now I just want to record my spiritual experiences, textual commentary, and theological ramblings in the same manner as my journals so that it can be found generations later and hopefully dissected and argued with/about by Jews well into the future.

[whencartoonsruletheworld]

Okay so since there’s soooo much fucking transphobia rampant, here’s a post for those of you who either are Christian and/or surrounded by Christian queerphobes. Here’s a list of rebuttals to when they start talking about how being trans is ungodly.

Most of these rebuttals are religious as that is the base they will be arguing from; however I did include  bit of a science to make their heads spin.

“Genesis also says that God made morning and evening. Are morning and evening strictly binary? Is there nothing inbetween? Can you define 'morning'? How about the binary of darkness and light?”

“So if we're born the gender we are, what are intersex people?” [when they inevitably say there's just "so few of them"] “There are more intersex people than there are redheads. 1.7% of the population are Intersex, while roughly 1.5% are redheads. Does that mean that redheads do not 'count' when discussing hair color?”

[to “God doesn't make mistakes”] “Yes, of course. They just do impossible things. After all, if God could put a baby into a virgin, or could bring life to the dead, why could they not put a boy's soul into a girl's body, or vice versa?”

Feel free to also say “God literally made such a mistake with all humanity that they flooded the planet.”

This line is from a Jewish source, Something That May Shock and Discredit You by Daniel Mallory Ortberg: “As my friend Julian puts it, only half winkingly: 'God blessed me by making me transsexual for the same reason God made wheat but not bread and fruit but not wine, so that humanity might share in the act of creation.'”

Galatians 3:28: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.“

If they're using the Deuteronomy verse (22:5, about not crossdressing or w/e), know that line is mistranslated. Quoting https://hoperemainsonline.com/index.php/transgender/, “A more literal translation from Hebrew reads 'The weapon of a warrior shall not be on a woman, nor shall a warrior put on the robe of a woman, for all who do these things are a hateful thing to the LORD thy God.' The word “robe” is translated from the Hebrew word simlah, which was a garment worn by both sexes. Clearly, this cannot be referring to cross-dressing. What could it be referring to then? A much more likely answer to that question is that it is about ritual purity and the mixing of blood. Both warrior’s swords and women’s garments would get blood on them, one from battle and the other from menstruation. To have a man wear the robe of a woman, or vice versa, would mix blood, which was considered an abomination under the law.”

Similar mistranslations result in the homophobic verses they spew as well. just browse through hoperemains for some inspo

This last one is long, but it talks about how all humans, including women, were created in God's image; therefore, God is both male and female. If it's wrong for humans to be, why is God enby themself? 

From The Africana Bible, edited by Hugh R Page Jr:

“The term occasionally translated as 'human beings' in the NRSV and generally as "man" in most other English versions is  'adam or ha'adam. Now this is clearly not a personal name (that is, Adam) as the KJV ill-advisedly begins to indicate at about Gen. 2:19. A better translation of this term, however, would be “the earthling” since the term is derived from the term ‘adamah, meaning “land” or “earth.” Such a translation clarifies better than “man” or even “human being” that the original intent of the author is to emphasize that God made “earthlings” as a whole, not just males, in God’s image[...]”

[...]“Such a translation takes into consideration that the term ‘adam is meant to function as a collective term referring to both the male and the female. Thus, we should note that ‘adam here is not a name or an ascription of gender but a collective term for “earthlings” in general; this is emphasized by the author’s choice of the plural pronoun ‘otham, and the use of the plural verbs veyirddu and urdu, meaning in 1:26 and 1:28, 'let THEM have dominion,' further reiterates the inclusive nature of the term ‘adam. [...] In Genesis 1 and 2, both genders were created with equal expressions of God’s image, equal authority over the earth, and equal value as human beings.”

[joannerowling]

God I’m so fucking tired

JK Rowling screenshotted a comment someone made under one of her Tweets that said: “The Nazis burnt books on trans healthcare and research, why are you so desperate to uphold their ideology around gender?”

And she responded with: “I just… how? How did you type this out and press send without thinking ‘I should maybe check my source for this, because it might’ve been a fever dream’?”

And she’s being called a Holocaust denier for this.

I just. I’m. Okay.

First of all, as a Jewish woman, I’m so fucking sick of people comparing everything to the Holocaust and comparing anyone who hurts their feelings to Nazis.

Second of all, no they fucking didn’t. This bullshit gender cult wasn’t a thing back then, and if anything, mutilating genitals, removing breasts, flaying arms to make “penises” and permanently sterilizing patients actually sounds like something Josef Mengele would’ve done.

Third of all, homosexuals were indeed sent to the camps but no, it wasn’t because of their “gender identity”, it was because they were homosexual. And considering how the gender cult LOVES conversion therapy (since they’re constantly telling homosexuals to “unlearn their genital fetishism” (aka trying to tell them that their same-sex attraction which is innate and unchangeable is bigotry)), the Nazis would absolutely have loved to do what the cult is doing today.

I’m sorry but my thoughts are rambled, I’m just seeing red so my brain is too outraged to function.

I've seen. You read my mind, i don't have much to add.

The Holocaust is the name given to the genocide of Jews during WW2. Period. Any individual or political group seeking to deny this is actually engaging in Holocaust denial, which is to say, the denial of a Jewish genocide specifically. Even IF the modern version of trans people had been targeted by the Nazis in the way these tweets imply (which as you said did not happen; the trans victims then were mostly gay men, unlike today's trans activists), that wouldn't make them Holocaust victims.

[perrysoup]

Shit man, like Zionists really out here being like:

“Actually Judaism allows for murder, so what Israel is doing is fine and good and you should listen to them”

Here is the a text from Genesis in the Torah:

“Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.

— Genesis 9:6”

Israel has forgone any idea that it stands for Judaism, as the Torah explicitly says that anyone who murders should be murdered.

Let’s see that list of who Israel has killed, oh look it’s over 13k children.

Tell me Zionists, aside from your fear something MAY happen, why not tell me EXACTLY what murder these children, these babies, these unborn entities did to deserve that?

What did the doctors do?

What did the aid workers do?

What did the journalists do

They can’t tell you, because the only crime these people did was not die sooner to Israeli bullets.

They may make up history, try to revise what has happened but you have seen it. We have all seen it.

They will call you antisemitic. They will say you hate Jews. They will say everything under the sun to make it seem like their faith has anything to do with this.

It doesn’t.

The Torah says only kill those who kill, and last I checked checked that’s the exact t opposite of the what Israel has done.

So don’t come to me with your scripture as an excuse. Don’t come at me with saying it was some divine right by God. Don’t tell me history says it used to be yours.

Because it’s all false.

Learn your own scripture. Learn your own history.

And if you still side with genocide, well we already knew you didn’t care, you just confirmed that you won’t change.

You can try Zionists. You can kick and scream and claim whatever the hell you want.

But we know what you are, we have seen what you are.

Judaism has survived many abuses, and this one by Israel is no different.

Judaism will survive, as it always has in the face of oppression.

להתפלל לאלוהים

الحمد لله

Praise to God

Even those of us doubtful of any divinity can see abuse done in God’s name

[ystrike1]

Fell Into the Arms of a Mad Villain - By Ranin (7/10)

An unhinged villain. Is he even worth saving? Nevermind, you have to. If he dies, you die. How romantic and not forced at all. This one moves lightning fast, and the setting is a little bland. The yandere is front and center, from page one.

Edwin is an extremely powerful Duke. He's a dragon killer. He's handsome. He's strong. He's a megalomaniac that gets away with murder, because he's so special and privileged. One day he gets a wake up call. He will die an early death, unless he marries a woman who falls from the sky.

He kills a bunch of priests, but you can't hide from the truth. He's not actually perfect, and without his lovely bride he's toast. Coincidentally his bride is a Jeweli. A fairy blood woman with jewel eyes...and her kind is persecuted. They face discrimination because vague prophecies often claim they are the cause of disasters and disease. Edwin has always been weirdly obsessed with capturing, and even killing, beautiful Jeweli people. He's somewhat conflicted about the fact that his savior is a Jeweli.

He tries to turn on the charm though. He's not the most popular guy. He expects her to fear him, but she's confused. The Jeweli has no idea who he is. Well, she does. She's just lying to him. Edwin is seduced by this lie. He does want an innocent bride by his side. One that doesn't see him as a monster. He does a pretty bad job. He throws money at his bride, and flowery promises, but his obvious anger issues and his lust for blood are clear.

He kills a bunch of people before he even brings her home. Sure, her innocence is a novelty. He thinks its cute, but he wants her to know there is no escape. He tells her he is a powerful man, and she must marry him.

She has nowhere to go. This Jeweli woman has no memories. No family. No place to stay. She literally fell from the sky into his arms. She is terrified, but she gets dragged along.

It's implied that some people fear the Jeweli. Edwin will have to protect his wife from people who hate her kind, but that's no issue for him. She will save his life, and he quickly grows obsessed with her too.

He makes her drink his blood.

He drinks her blood too.

He cuts into her with an enchanted blade. The engagement ceremony gives him the ability to track her. He will know if she is ill. He will always know where she is.

Classic yandere stuff.

This is the world of a novel.

Please Bring Me Salvation is a cheesy, happy tale. Edwin dies in it. He torments Lillian, because she has white hair. He tortures her too. The Prince stabs him with a special sword to kill him. Edwin is supernaturally strong, which explains why he gets away with his homicidal behavior. That special sword was a major plot point.

Edwin names his bride.

He calls her Angelina. He likes her very much, and he thinks she looks angelic. He encourages her to act bratty, and terrible. She is his Duchess-to-be. She cannot be caught fraternizing with the poor, or her maids, or anyone below her status. He tells her the world is hers, even though that attitude is exactly what got him killed in the main story.

Angelina puts on her lovely Duchess clothes. She learns to respond to her new name, and she thinks. She thinks everything is wrong. Why would she be sent down to save such a madman? She has a few memories of her past life. She was an ordinary woman, and she has no interest in saving Edwin. What happened?

Why are the gods trying to save such a villainous man?

Angelina must protect him. She is his wife. If his hated and violent reign ends she will certainly be beheaded.