#I can’t really imagine Judaism without Israel

[princeofwittenberg]

I’ve been thinking about something I saw the other day, where a Jew online was discussing how they were extremely anti-Israel to the point that it sounded like they were arguing that the state of Israel should be dissolved. This has me really curious about why they believe that.

For me, when I think about a hypothetical future in which Jews no longer have access to Eretz Israel, I feel a deep pain. That feels tragic to me. I feel like it would be as if the Temple is being destroyed again. To not be able to visit our ancestors’ land, to not be able to touch the wall of our holiest place, to not be able to walk the paths of our patriarchs and matriarchs, would be a deep, gut-wrenching loss for me.

So I wonder why another diaspora Jew would disagree.

Is it that 1) they don’t feel connected to the land themselves or maybe 2) they are picturing an ideal scenario where Israel is dissolved but Jews can still live there or visit? Or is it something else completely?

I’m curious to know.

[writingwithcolor]

Gingerbread man as golem

@yaronata asked:

I would like to write a character who is Jewish and uses a Golem. She's based on the D&D class of the artificer which looks magic but isn't, because they produce all their effects with inventions, like the "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" quote. Her story is that her very Jewish town was under attack from a terrible monster when she was little. Her Rabbis made a Golem to protect the town, and it succeeded but was torn to pieces in the process. She was fascinated by the Golem and as a kid didn't see a big difference between it's sentience and person's so was really thankful for its sacrifice like you would a person's sacrificing their life for you. They thought all the pieces had been devoured by the monster before it died, but she went looking and found the piece used to animate the Golem, which she, kinda misunderstanding called its "heart". She kept the piece and grew up to be an incredibly skilled cook, specialising as a baker in the town. I imagine she would make a lot of really good food for the Jewish holidays, or to break fasts on ones like Yom Kippur or Tish'abav. But she also made a town specific holiday to honour the Golem's sacrifice and the town still being alive, because I feel "we are not dead woo" is a big theme for Jewish holidays from my research, so it could fit, for which she invented ginger bread men to be the golem, and gave them little "hearts" of fruit or honey, and you're meant to eat them limb by limb like the beast did before eating the heart. This would be the inspiration for using the "heart" piece later to make her own giant gingerbread Golem to help her save the world.

These are my questions 1) would it be considered bad or disrespectful for someone who isn't a Rabbi to make a Golem, or is this method of taking an animating piece someone else made disrespectful? 2) Her journey will take her far from her town and her Jewish family and friends and she will likely travel with gentiles. Would it be disrespectful for a Golem to be used to protect a lot of gentiles and one Jew in the course of saving the world? I don't want to fall into the stereotype of someone putting all their effort into valuing and protecting very specifically the group that in real life is oppressive to them. 3) While she is not using magic and is actually mimicking its effects with technology she invents, is this drawing too close to the line of "magical Jew"? 4) I like to "play test" my characters in ttrpgs to really get a feel for them before I write. Would it be disrespectful to play a Jewish character when I am a gentile, and would it be disrespectful to play a Jewish character in a setting where there are demonstrably real gods other than the one of Judaism?

I really like this character idea and I think it's cute and fun and rooted in Jewish culture but I really want to make sure it's respectful and as good as I, a gentile researching on the internet, thinks it is. Thanks so much! Have a nice day!

My answer to this is very complicated because there are things I both like and do not like about this premise. First of all, I love the idea of a cookie golem, and I'm even imagining the magic word that brings him to life (EMET/truth) would be written in icing. And I'm okay with the part about how she found a piece of the old golem and used it to build a new golem, because that makes sense for a golem made from a baked good when you think about how people use sourdough starter to make a new batch of sourdough.

However, here are the thing that make me cock my head to the side like my little sister's German shepherd:

1. re: "magical Jew" - that's not a trope I've ever heard of. Remember, marginalized groups don't receive identical disrespect across the board. It is indeed a trope to use Black people or disabled people as supernatural plot devices who exist only to further the stories of white main characters or able-bodied main characters. But I can't say as I've ever seen anyone using Jewishness that way. Usually if we are someone's one-dimensional plot device it's as someone's lawyer, fixer, "money guy", etc, not a supernatural force. So this isn't something you have to worry about.

2. I have a certain level of discomfort with you playing as a Jewish character just because playacting as a marginalized culture you're not part of strikes me as off, but I understand that that's how you gain insight into a character you're about to write so it's more of a writing exercise than anything else. (I wonder if D&D regulars from marginalized groups have written about this -- I've only played a few times casually with family so if I did run into this type of discussion in my social justice reading I wouldn't have absorbed it. If anyone is curious I played first as Captain Werewolf, and then switched to playing as Cinnamon Blade because lawful good was too hard. :P )

3. I would prefer you omit the detail about eating the cookies piece by piece symbolically, for two reasons: a. it unintentionally evokes Communion by having appreciative people consume a baked good symbolic of an entity who sacrificed his life for theirs, and b. focusing on the details of flesh consumption reminds me too much of Blood Libel (yes, a gingerbread man is in the shape of a person but how many of us actually think about it literally, the way this act would cause?)

As to your first question: I'm fine with her making a golem even though she's just a rando. Second question: I see what you're saying and maybe it could be more okay if it's really clear how well these gentile folks are treating her? And questions three and four are answered above.

I really do love the idea of a giant gingerbread man golem. Cookie golem T_T <3

--Shira

I would like to second Shira’s point about not ripping apart the gingerbread cookies. I honestly would prefer they were used as decoration, and other cookies eaten instead, since that part just feels so not-Jewish to me, but I don’t have golem-specific issues other than that. It seems like you have already been doing a lot of research, which is appreciated.

As far as the ttrpg/DnD aspect… I bounce back and forth on the topic of playing characters that are so very different from our experiences, other than in fantasy-related ways. However, I am aware that a lot of people will play with, and experiment with gender in game, and learn something about themselves in the process (the number of trans players of ttrpgs who tried out their gender in game before they were out is high). It’s different with Judaism, and even more significantly different when it comes to things you can’t convert into, like various actual, real-world races. But because people do sometimes experience growth from experiences like this, I’m hesitant to dissuade players completely. I do urge you to, at a minimum, bring the same care, research, and willingness to learn, that you brought to this question.

--Dierdra

This sounds like a creative storyline that you could have lots of fun with 😊

At first I was confused by this part:

She also made a town specific holiday to honour the Golem's sacrifice

But then you really got me thinking about different types of Jewish holidays and how they come about, so thank you for that!

Because it’s often the little details that either make a story super powerful or kind of nonsensical, I think it would be a good idea to decide what type of holiday is being created here:

A full-blown chag with restrictions on labour and halachic obligations? These are commanded in Torah and new ones can’t be added.

A minor yom tov with halachic obligations but no restrictions? These were instituted by the rabbis prior to the destruction of the Temple, so again new ones can’t be added.

A public holiday or equivalent? This would usually be declared by the Knesset in Israel, and filter to the rest of the Jewish world from there.

A community-based yom tov with specific customs only for people in the know, such as certain Chasidic groups celebrating the birthdays of their deceased leaders? I asked around, but no one can really tell me how these holidays get started, which is probably a good indication that they arise quite organically from a group of people who all just feel that it should be celebrated. Probably not created by a single person, as such.

Something she runs from her bakery, not religion-based, but more like a day of doing special products and deals the way many small businesses do on their anniversary?

Now, if the people of a modern-day town were actually saved by a real live Golem, that would arguably be the most overt miracle for many generations, so there would be a decent chance of options 3 and/or 4 happening. It’s entirely plausible that there could be special foods for this day that become a tradition, including Golem cookies. People who directly benefited might also return to the site where the Golem fought the monster and recite the prayer, ‘Blessed is Hashem, Master of the Universe, Who performed a miracle for me in this place.’

Alternatively, if it’s important that your MC created the holiday, something like option 5 might be the best. Hopefully this will still fulfil what you need: you describe her as incredibly skilled, so I can imagine the day when she goes all out on the Golem cookies being one of the most exciting events of the year for the townspeople, just because her baking is that good. Plus, they already have a personal stake in the Golem’s sacrifice, so I definitely think it could be a thing without being an official holiday. Also, if she is outside of an all-Jewish environment, don’t forget that she would have to decide whether to commemorate the anniversary in the Hebrew calendar or the local one.

Coming back to the cookies, sorry if we’re getting a little repetitive on this point! But I don’t see the cookies being torn limb from limb as part of a celebration. First of all, this doesn’t sound like a very celebratory thing to do, to say the least. Can you imagine explaining that to a three-year-old on their first Yom HaGolem? They would be terrified! (I don’t read this suggestion as accidental anti-Semitism so much as getting carried away with a metaphor, which I’m sure as writers we have all done!)

But also, it’s worth pointing out that our commemorative foods aren’t usually that literal. If you think about hamantaschen, maror, or apple in honey, they’re all symbols. That’s not to say that having Golem-shaped cookies is a problem, as this sounds like just a bit of fun that the MC is having and not something that is directly at odds with Judaism or Jewish culture. But it’s worth bearing in mind that the more literal you go from there in terms of tying the cookies to the event they commemorate, the less culturally aligned your holiday food becomes.

Finally, about the Golem protecting non-Jewish people: I like this idea! There’s a stereotype that we only use whatever is at our disposal to help ourselves and other Jewish people, so a Golem being created by Jews but helping others as well is a big plus for me. Of course, as has already been pointed out, this would be an odd choice if her Saving The World team were anti-Semitic or otherwise disrespectful to her/her community, but I don’t think you were headed that way!

-Shoshi

I have to come back in here just to squee over the phrase “Yom HaGolem.” Well done :D

--Shira

[doomedandstoned]

Lowen Return with Stunning EP, ‘Unceasing Lamentations’

~By Reek of STOOM~

Art by Hervé Scott Flament

London-based Doomters LOWEN return with an incredible, stripped back-to-bare-bones release next month. "Unceasing Lamentations" consists of 3 evocative, alluring tracks based on ancient Middle Eastern texts and highlighting Nina Saeidi's incredible vocal talent.

First track, "The Exalted One Who Walketh" shimmers with the arid heat of the desert, vocals soaring, plaintive and mesmerising, like a melding of Ofra Haza and Diamanda Galas, backed throughout by Shem Lucas' soulful Oud-style playing. Indeed, the lone vocal combo stretches across all three tracks, bringing a sultry and beguiling presence as powerful and majestic as the heaviest Doom out there.

Lowen have encountered many issues over the last 12 months, and this EP has been cathartic, heartfelt and deeply reconnecting with their roots. A Triumph!

I spoke with both Nina and Shem and posed some questions about the last year and their new release, out June 4th.

The new EP is obviously an accumulation of recent trials and tribulations for the band. How have you coped with such an acrimonious split?

Shem: It was a difficult situation but the core of the band has always been Nina and myself. The music is about her background and Lowen is a vehicle to explore that and always has been. Anyone that is unable or unwilling to accept that simply does not have a place within the band. There are many wonderful musicians that have approached us eager to work with us and that has been very touching.

Nina: As Shem said, it was a very difficult and sad situation that shocked us to our cores when it happened. The extreme nature of having a racially motivated hate crime directed at me by our ex-drummer has in a way allowed us to view it as a clean break from which we can move on without looking back. Shem and I have felt so much more positive and driven now that we can plan and write completely new material together and look to a much brighter future.

The support from our friends and fans in the immediate aftermath was really touching and we are so excited to work with some insanely talented new musicians this summer!

LISTEN: Unceasing Lamentations by Lowen

I'm also assuming that lockdown has played a part in the stripped-back sound? To what extent has this process changed the way you look at and create Music now?

Shem: Unceasing Lamentations is a result of Nina being invited to perform on a Solo basis by the Brighton Doomsday collective as part of their efforts to raise funds to keep the Green Door Store venue in Brighton open in the face of the pandemic. We were so happy with the results that we decided to have Magnus Lindberg of Cult of Luna master the audio so that we could release it.

The songs don’t represent a new direction so much as a pivotal moment in time for the band, we’re still writing our next album to feature big distorted guitars, drums and bass, though I would say that it was wonderful to finally release something that was a lot more eastern in terms of musical composition. It’s a nice bridge between the first album and the resulting musical studies we have undertaken to bring our sound closer to what we both hear in our minds.

Nina: It was so freeing to be able to improvise and really embrace the more Iranian and Eastern aspects of our sound and influence. It’s something I’ve been pushing to do more since we released our first album and I am so excited that we will now be fully putting that into the second one. This EP is more of a captured moment where I expressed the anguish and longing that I was experiencing at the time.

Due to the improvisational aspect of the performance we went in with no plan at all. Apart from the lullaby what you hear are musical choices that were made in that very moment. It can magical to simply give up all control of a creative situation and see what the body spontaneously produces musically.

LISTEN: A Crypt in the Stars by Lowen

The lyrics were based on folk tales or Eastern myths. How did you come to choose them?

Nina: The lyrics for the first two songs are directly taken from cuneiform tablets. The Exalted One Who Walketh is an arrangement of transliterated lines taken from a Sumerian city destruction lamentation referred to as “e-lum didara”. Against Evil Done by the Serpent is a transliteration of Akkadian from a clay tablet that directed the tuning of an instrument through metaphoric comparisons between gods and each string.

I met with renown museo-archeologist Richard Dumbrill and talked with him for several hours on how the words may have been pronounced and sung in the context of ancient music and modern interpretation. Though we will never know how ancient music and language sounded, it is thought that some of it has been preserved in folk music of the areas in which it originated when it comes to the music of the Middle East.

The third song is an Iranian lullaby that embodies the sorrow of war and abandonment felt by many children during the Iran-Iraq war and is still sadly apt for many children in the Middle East today. The lullaby centres on a child who has experienced the trauma of war being comforted by a mother who promises that she will not abandon them as they tread dangerous ground even in their dreams.

I chose all these because I am deeply interested in the history of language and culture in the Middle East. It moves me that music and lyrics that are thousands of years old can be resurrected and performed once more in a context where the sorrows and joys of multiple cultures that were geographically close can be viewed millennia apart.

How is the new line-up going? Any major differences or effects on the dynamic?

Shem: Lowen has always revolved around Nina and myself, but Richard Stevenson (our live bass player) is still very much a part of the band. We have been approached by other musicians who would like to work with us and we are excited to move forward with an array of incredibly talented musicians.

Nina: Our dynamic is stronger than ever as Shem and I are able to write and move forward with much greater speed and productivity than before. We always wrote the music in the past, but now we feel that we are able to be a lot more free creatively.

We are so grateful that we have Richard Stevenson, our live bassist, with us for what will be a very exciting summer in terms of shows. He always brings amazing energy to the stage and has been a dedicated member and friend for years now.

Soon we will be able to reveal who we will have drumming for us live and we can’t wait.

You have always been vocal about political and social issues in the East. What are your hopes for the future?

Nina: My greatest hope will always be for peace. War and political savagery has felt never-ending in the Middle East, and much of it is because of interference and backing from non-Eastern countries that profit from terminal instability and conflict. For example, we’re currently seeing horrendous atrocities in the news with the state of Israel attacking and tearing apart even more innocent lives and I hope that those who are actively campaigning for ceasefire and recognition of what is truly happening in Gaza and Sheikh Jarrah succeed. I’d like to clarify that my criticism of the state of Israel is not tied in with Jewishness or the nature of Judaism, I think it’s important not to veer into anti-semitism and anti-muslim sentiment when noting political matters in Israel.

My personal hope is to be able to go and see my family, who live in other parts of the Middle East, without fear of arrest and execution. I would be overjoyed if women were able to sing in public again and for the LGBTQ+ community in Iran to live without fear of death and persecution.

Will you be planning a tour or appearances at any festivals in the coming year?

Shem: we’re very excited to begin performing live again, the performances prior to pandemic had begun to feature increasing intensity, so we can only imagine what a renewed and focussed line up will add to that, as well as the prospect of playing new material.

Nina: We have a few more shows to announce in what is already feeling like a packed few months of shows around the UK but I can’t say anything yet.

What was the last thing you had to kick to get working again?

Shem: there was nothing to kick per se, but the many many hours of study into eastern music, rhythm and maqam are certainly paying off and the music we are composing now is focussed and features many techniques and devices not widely seen within western music, there’s also a lot of double bass drum!

Nina: A few cobwebs and a couple of boxes in order to find my stage mic after so long.

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[cosmiccalliope]

I have a lot of Hard Feelings when it comes to Christianity.

(Prior note, if I say anything offensive in this stream of consciousness musing on why I don't like Christianity, tell me. Everything that follows this is based on my personal experiences and thoughts that come from the 16 years of Baptist education I've been through.)

Let me start this off by outright saying that the feelings aren't towards Christians, but the Church and its History. I don't think a lot of Christians have an Ass To Shit With when it comes to their faith in general, don't care for it, don't care against it. They've just kind of always had it and never known anything else.

Christianity, as a system, has caused Global Scale problems, in my perspective. It started off as a branch of Judaism, one where the promised coming of a Christ figure happened, and the old ways could be completely done away with. As you can imagine, this wasn't super popular. You try telling people that everything they've always been doing can be done away with, cast aside, because now this New Thing is to be done.

You get a lot of angry people when you do that.

But then it became seen as a brilliant tool for control by Rome. It's simple, only having 1(3) God with a Captial G, and the rules can be read in a way where the Church becomes to absolute center of Everything. If the Church becomes the center of the Roman Empire, and if they control who knows what about the faith itself, that gives them the power to do whatever they want. They make the tithe mandatory and monetary, and now that's money coming in from everywhere under their empire. They call X a Sin, and can prosecute you accordingly.

And so, Christianity spread like a Plague upon the world, a scourge against all other Pantheons it touched. Gods died, for all intents and purposes, when Christianity came knocking. Systems these people had been engaging with for centuries, integral parts of their cultures and heritages, wrenched away in the name of the One True God of Christianity.

Nobody likes when you come in and tell them that they're doing everything wrong.

So what's at the front of the Bible? What is the central focus of Christianity? For all reason, who is that book about?

Jerusalem, Israel, and the Jewish people. The Old Testament is just a translation of the Tanakh. All the important Figures and stories? All Jewish tales about how the Israelites suffered and overcame struggles. So who becomes the focus of blame, who becomes a strong target to attack when people inevitably get upset that this strange foreign faith has just waltzed in and told them they're all wrong, despite not deserving any of the flack it gets?

Christianity, as a System, is inherently Anti-Jewish. On a fundamental level it paints the Jewish people as Outdated, still following practices and systems that the Christ has already fulfilled and nullified.

The Jewish people don't deserve it, they never have. It's not their fault Christianity exists, or did what it did, or became what it did. They aren't responsible for Christianity. Just as the Greeks are at the center of the original Greek Religion, and as the Maya are at the center of the original Maya Religion, so ar the Jewish people at the center of the Jewish Religion, and because Not-Jewish people were spreading it like wildfire, the attention and ire got shifted from the ones spreading it, to the ones at the center of the faith being spread.

And then, Christianity became the primary lens through which we viewed all other faiths, including Judiasm. Judaism, in and of itself, is nothing more than any other religion. It's a set of stories and beliefs that gives a culture their morals, gives them hope, explains the universe, and generally provides an identity for a group of people. It's history and cosmology from before history and astronomy. Religion is a set of stories that can be related to that imparts some message. If Christianity never mutated off of Judaism and then tore across Europe like a plague, I sincerely doubt the same issues of Anti-Semitism would be present nowadays. But because of Christianity, Judaism became a popular target and thing to rag on, despite the fact that it has done nothing wrong. The only people saying that the Jewish people are up to some shit are asshole nazis that want all Jews dead.

I do not know enough about Islam to comfortably say that it is to Asia, what Christianity is to Europe. But with my admittedly limited knowledge, I will say exactly that. Churches and Mosques are common in their respective reigns, predominantly so in different places. Temples to all other deities, all other stories and myths and legends, all of them have been destroyed, more or less. We know of the gods, but not how to worship and venerate them.

Because of this predominantly Christian lens, the only Faiths we typically see as Religions, are just Judiasm and Islam. Satanism is just Bastardized Christianity, which itself is Bastardized Judaism, making Satanism into Double Bastardized Judaism. Mormonism and the Jehova's Witness –alongside most Door Knocker sects– are genuine cults that are seen as legitimate because they're Christian In Origin. Hinduism and Buddhism are easily seen as these vaguely Asian Mysticisms, and entities from Native American Religions have become American Cryptids and widely used by people who have no right to use them (S**nw**k*rs and W*nd**o, censored heavily because I'm not part of those groups, are Navajo, and Non Navajo aren't even supposed to really know or definitely talk about them, which should not be hard to respect, just stop talking about the damned things if you aren't Navajo, come on. I think those are both Navajo, anyways, I know that if you're not part of the group that they belong to, you're supposed to shut the fuck up about them because they aren't yours to begin with).

Christianity killed many, many religions and many, many, many more people. It killed Religions and stories and cultures and histories, and superimposed itself wherever it went. It destroyed the identities of whoever it found to not be them. Religions change, pantheons definitely so, but that happens organically as their people do. Christianity's spread is artificial and forced. New gods entered the Greek pantheon somewhat regularly, for example, with Aphorodite being theorized to originally be Ishtar of Sumerian origin.

Because of Christianity, all other religions have an almost negative connotation to them, and the word Relgion generally ends up being used anonymously with Christianity specifically. Every Pagan/Non Christian Faith? Wrong and Bad and Witchcraft and Evil and Satan is in their hearts and "we must preach the name of the Lord Jesus Christ to them so they might be saved from the evils of their ways."

After 16 years of Baptist education and indoctrination from the schools I've been in, my only feelings towards Christianity are just that the faith has done some unforgivably shitty shit and has been used as a tool for Colonization and Genocide since basically its inception. I can't look at Christianity without seeing Everything It Has Caused, all the hate and blood and war and genocide, the fact that war and crusades are the single common thread through history for this so called "Religion of Love and Peace" where if you question any of it, that means Satan is infecting your heart.

Oh, but Christianity allows and encourages you to mock and ridicule all other religions, as it is "the One True Faith, and all others are sinful devil worship". Their are no other gods, after all, but the Christian god, Muslims and Jews are to be treated a little nicer, because they're just misguided, following the functional same God, just in the "Wrong Way".

If you can't tell, I don't like how Christianity does things, and as someone who has gone through 16 years of Baptist centric education in total, I think I'm qualified enough to complain about Christianity. Are all Christian Chruches this way? No, but it is undeniable that mine were not outliers, given the history of Proselytizing and Missionary work and Violent Crusades that is so present in Christian History that it Can Not Be Ignored.

[eretzyisrael]

JC: I’m glad you raised the issue of education a moment ago. You’re particularly troubled, I know, by the BDS movement, partly I imagine because you have two children now on college campuses and two more on the way. What can be done through the law or otherwise to address the campus crisis today?

DW: First, the law must deal firmly and forcefully with violence and with threats of violence. Second, university administrators must act and speak vigorously against Jew-haters on their campuses. It’s been very disturbing to see how weak and cowardly many college presidents have been in confronting anti-Semitic events and expressions occurring right under their noses.

And there’s another dimension as well. It’s even more disturbing, because it cuts close to home, because it’s about us.

Part of the campus problem today lies at the feet of Jewish parents for failing to educate their children to be committed, proud Jews. To be Jews who speak up for themselves, who advocate for Jewish interests and who support the U.S.-Israel relationship. If those who hate Jews see that many Jews themselves are ashamed to be Jewish, those haters are only encouraged to express more anti-Semitism, more anti-Zionism. Many of those who attack Israel and express anti-Semitic sentiments on campus are emboldened by the cowardice and the ignorance of Jewish students who are ashamed to be Jewish. That is the fault of the parents of those Jewish students. The university often is an echo chamber in which Israel is demeaned obsessively and fashionably. The remedy is counterspeech, countereducation, counteraction. Too many Jewish students and faculty don’t speak up. They’re intimidated. That’s unacceptable.

JC: We’ve sort of almost been using the concepts of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism interchangeably. Are they really interchangeable?

DW: Yes, I’m convinced that they are. Anyone who knows Jewish and world history should know that an attack on the Jewish state as a Jewish state is an attack on the Jewish people. Anyone who has ever read the Bible knows you can’t separate it from Eretz Yisrael. When Jews pray, they pray about Zion and the land of Israel. Unfortunately, many Jews today are brought up knowing nothing about Judaism. That’s not to say that Orthodoxy is favored over Conservative or Reform Judaism. I’m certainly not an Orthodox Jew. But every Jew should be brought up with an appreciation of Jewish heritage. Some understanding of our Torah. Some understanding of our history. If every Jew had some sort of Jewish education it would be impossible to grow up without cherishing Eretz Yisrael. It’s central to Jewish heritage and identity—whether you pray to God or not. It’s ironic to think that many people on campus and elsewhere invoke their own Jewish identity to attack the Jewish state. I’m entirely confident that the grandchildren of these people will not be Jews.

JC: Still, when non-Jews on campus are troubled by the treatment of Palestinians by the Israelis you see that as being anti-Semitic—even if they aren’t arguing that Israel shouldn’t exist?

DW: People have an absolute right to criticize any government, including that of Israel. It’s curious, though, that these criticisms are only ever about Israel, and obsessively so. You never see or hear any protests about China or Syria or Sudan, or Hamas torturing Gazans, or massacres in Congo or Yemen or anywhere else in the world. I’m not fooled. Are you?

JC: True, but does that mean that they’re anti-Semites because they criticize Israel over the Palestinian issue but not over these other regimes?

DW: I think that’s one point of proof, yes. When a person or a group compulsively and habitually criticizes only Israel and ignores all of the massive atrocities elsewhere in the world, that’s an indication to me that they’re obsessively focused on Israel and likely anti-Jewish, yes.

[ruminativerabbi]

Hatred, Fear, Hope

Like most Jewish Americans, I was caught off-guard back in 2017 by the sight of white supremacists marching in Charlottesville, Virginia, and carrying aloft the flags of the Confederate States of America and Nazi Germany. (That they were also carrying the so-called Gadsden Flag that was originally used by the Continental Marines during the American Revolution—the one designed back in 1775 by Christopher Gadsden featuring the words “Don’t Tread on Me” beneath a coiled-up, scary-looking rattlesnake—struck me primarily as a sign of how little these people know about the values upon which the nation was founded in the first place.) The sight of those flags being held aloft proudly and defiantly was beyond upsetting, but not particularly confusing. But what was confusing—to me and I suspect to most—was the chant “Jews will not replace us,” which I hadn’t ever heard before and which I now realize I misunderstood, taking it to mean something entirely different than what it apparently does mean.

Taking the slogan at what I thought was face value, I understood the marchers to be declaring their determination not to allow themselves to be replaced by Jews eager to take over their jobs and leave them without work and eventually destitute.  In other words, I imagined this somehow to be tied to the marchers’ skittishness about the job market and their need to find someone to blame in advance for losing jobs they fear they only haven’t lost yet and in which they fear they will eventually, to use their own word, be “replaced.” It hardly seems like a rational fear, but that’s what it felt like it had to mean, and so I ended up taking it as just so much craziness rooted not in anything corresponding to actual reality but in the malign fantasy that, left unchecked, we Jewish people will somehow take over the world and install our own people in whatever jobs we wish without regard to where such a move would leave the people currently holding them. And that is what I sense most Jewish people—and maybe even most Americans��hearing this chant took it to mean.

But now that I’ve read more, I see that that is specifically not what “Jews will not replace us” means and that the slogan specifically is not about Jews replacing Christians at work at all. Instead, the chant encapsulates the marchers’ fear that we Jews are working not to take over their jobs ourselves but to replace them at work with third-party others chosen specifically to deprive them of their livelihoods and their places in society. And who might these other people be? That, it turns out, is where anti-Semitism and racism meet: the hordes of jobseekers the marchers fear turn out not to be Jews at all, but hordes of dark-skinned immigrants feared already to be pouring over our borders and insinuating themselves into an already-tight job market. And it is those people who, because they are presumed ready to work at even the most menial jobs for mere pennies, are imagined to be threatening the white (i.e., non-immigrant) people who currently hold those jobs and who earn the American-sized salaries they use to support themselves and their families.

To say this is crazy stuff is really to say nothing at all. Yes, we have a huge and so-far-unresolved issue in this country with illegal aliens living in our midst and I’m sure that those people do take jobs that legal residents might otherwise have. And lots of non-crazy people, myself definitely included, are eager to find a way out of this morass that we ourselves have created by failing to police our borders adequately and by allowing the number of undocumented illegals in our midst to grow from a mere 760,000 or so in 1975 to something like 12.5 million today with no obvious solution in sight.

So wanting a reasonable solution to be found—one that is fully grounded both in settled U.S. law and in our national inclination to be just, fair, kind, and generous, and one that doesn’t make after-the-fact chumps out of all those countless millions of people who followed all the rules and immigrated here fully legally—is not crazy at all. What is crazy is the fantasy that Jewish Americans somehow possess the secret power to order Walmart’s and Costco and every other American business to fire specific employees and replace them with pre-selected others regardless of whether those others are or are not here legally. Crazier still is the contention that American Jews somehow control American immigration policy, and that we are somehow able imperiously to issue instructions that must be obeyed both to Democratic and Republican administrations. But craziest of all is the belief that, precisely because American Jews are so supremely powerful, we must be attacked violently before we order the administration to let even more immigrants into our nation. That, after all, was the specific reason the Pittsburgh shooter gave for his savagery in a comment posted online just before the attack: to give the officers of HIAS pause for thought before they work to bring in any more “invaders [to] kill our people.” My post-Pittsburgh proposal is that we stop dismissing that line of thinking as aberrant looniness that no normal person could actually embrace and start taking it far more seriously.

It feels natural to consider the various kinds of prejudice that characterize our society as variations on a common theme. And in a certain sense, I suppose, that is true. But these pernicious attitudes are also distinct and different, both in terms of their root causes and the specific way they manifest themselves in the world: misogyny, racism, and homophobia, for example, are similar in certain cosmetic ways, but differ dramatically in terms of the specific malign fantasies that inspire them and thus should (and even probably must) be addressed in different ways as well. And we should also bring that line of thinking to bear in considering anti-Jewish prejudice: similar in some ways to other forms of prejudice, anti-Semitism also has unique aspects that it specifically does not share with other forms of bigotry. Indeed, the fact that the anti-Semitism put on public display in Charlottesville was rooted in the haters’ groundless yet powerful fantasy about the almost limitless power imagined somehow to have wound up in the hands of the hated is all by itself enough to distinguish anti-Semitism from other kinds of prejudice. And not at all irrelevant is that it appears not to matter at all how impossible it feels to square that fantasy about Jewish powerfulness with the degree to which powerless Jews have suffered at the hands of their foes over the centuries, and particularly in the last one. In that regard, I would like to recommend a very interesting essay by Scott A. Shay, the author and Jewish activist, that was published in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette a few days after the shooting at Tree of Life Synagogue and which readers viewing this electronically can access by clicking here.

Nor is this a problem solely of one extreme end of the political spectrum. In the wake of Pittsburgh, the spotlight is on the anti-Semitism that characterizes the extreme right, but the same light could be shone just as brightly on the anti-Semitism of the extreme left…and particularly when it promotes hostility toward Israel’s very right to exist and to defend itself against its enemies. Indeed, the assumption that Israel—instead of being perceived as an outpost of democracy smaller than New Jersey trying to survive in a region in which it must deal with nations and political terror groups that openly express their hope to see Israel and its Jewish population annihilated—is perceived as an all-powerful Goliath seeking to eradicate its innocent opponents militarily rather than to negotiate fairly or justly with them, is part and parcel of this fantasy regarding the power of the Jewish people. Coming the week after Hamas fired over five hundred missiles at civilian targets in Israel, each capable of killing countless civilian souls on the ground, the image of Israel as the aggressor in its ongoing conflict with Hamas sounds laughable and naïve. But maybe we should stop laughing long enough to ask ourselves how this myth of Jewish power—whether focused on American Jews imagined to be in control of American foreign policy or Israeli Jews imagined to be intent on crushing their innocent victims for no rational reason at all—perhaps we should ask ourselves how we might address, not this or that symptom of the disease, but the disease itself.

Distinct (at least in my mind) from theological anti-Semitism rooted in the supersessionist worldview promoted for so long by so many different Christian denominations, this specific variety of anti-Semitism seems rooted not in messianic fervor but in fear. And that, I think, is probably how to go about addressing it the most effectively: by pulling that fear out into the light and exposing it as a fantasy no less malign than inane. By forcing young people drawn to the alt-right to look at pictures of the innocents murdered in Pittsburgh and to ask themselves if they truly have it in them to believe that U.S. government policy was until two weeks ago being dictated by 97-year-old Rose Mallinger or by Cecil or David Rosenthal, both gentle, disabled types whose lives were built around service to their house of worship. By forcing young people poisoned with irrational hatred of Israel to look at the portraits of the 1,343 civilians murdered by Palestinian terrorists since 2000 and to see, not predators or fiends, but innocent victims of mindless violence. By insisting that young people drawn to fear Jews and Judaism be exposed to the stories of Shoah victims—and, if possible, to surviving survivors themselves—and through that experience to understand where groundless prejudice can lead if left unchecked and unaddressed.

To hope that no one is drawn to extremism is entirely rational, but it really can’t be enough. Just as young people who seem drawn to a racist worldview should be forced—by their parents and their teachers in school, or by society itself—to look into the eyes of those poor souls gunned down in the Emanuel A.M.E. church in Charleston on June 17, 2015, after welcoming their murderer into their midst for an hour of Bible study, so should society itself rescue young people from themselves once they are perceived to be embracing the kind of anti-Semitism that led directly to Pittsburgh…and be forced to confront the bleak hatred that has taken  root in their hearts and to see it for what it is: a fantasy rooted in fear that can be overcome and eradicated by anyone truly willing to try.

[theculturedmarxist]

Deceptive Deceptors and the Deceitful Deceptions with which they Deceive

I wouldn’t say I’m surprised that an article about Marxism from Mises is trash, but it certainly grates on me.

Marx and Marxism deserve criticism, both from within by Communists themselves, and from without. It’s imperative for the success of the Communist project that it isn’t subject to decay or crumble atop a shoddy foundation of poor theory and ideas left unscrutinized. Everything done in order to progress towards Communism should be tested and retested both on the drawing board and in the practice.

The failure in the linked article is that David Gordon doesn’t take Marx either on his terms or really even in von Mises terms, but instead fabricates a position Marx didn’t hold and then uses it to dispute an argument that he didn’t make.

Marx’s “On the Jewish Question” is a favorite among reactionary charlatans, particular because of the language Marx uses in it. For example, the old chestnut:

“What is the secular basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-interest. What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money.” 

Hack-fraud David Gordon apparently ignores the content of the rest of the essay and builds his rickety argument on a few stones scattered throughout the text. The essay itself is a response to Bruno Bauer’s “The Jewish Question.” The subject matter is the political emancipation of Jewish populations within the then occurring European states, particularly Germany.

Marx constructs throughout a rhetorical argument regarding whether or not Bauer’s thesis supports itself. In it, he refers frequently to the Jew and Judaism. Bauer asserts that the only route toward emancipation for the Jews is to give up Judaism, and further for all of humanity to give up religion. To get rid of the contradictions created by religion (Christian v Jew, etc), one must get rid of religion, specifically by banishing it be the machinery of the state. Marx responds regarding the relationship between Religion and The State. From there he discusses the difference between political emancipation and human emancipation.

The establishment of the political state and the dissolution of civil society into independent individuals – whose relation with one another epend on law, just as the relations of men in the system of estates and guilds depended on privilege – is accomplished by one and the same act. Man as a member of civil society, unpolitical man, inevitably appears, however, as the natural man. The “rights of man” appears as “natural rights,” because conscious activity is concentrated on the political act. Egoistic man is the passive result of the dissolved society, a result that is simply found in existence, an object of immediate certainty, therefore a natural object. The political revolution resolves civil life into its component parts, without revolutionizing these components themselves or subjecting them to criticism. It regards civil society, the world of needs, labor, private interests, civil law, as the basis of its existence, as a precondition not requiring further substantiation and therefore as its natural basis. Finally, man as a member of civil society is held to be man in the proper sense, homme as distinct from citoyen, because he is man in his sensuous, individual, immediate existence, whereas political man is only abstract, artificial man, man as an allegorical, juridical person. The real man is recognized only in the shape of the egoistic individual, the true man is recognized only in the shape of the abstract citizen.

After this, part two begins where he critiques Bauer’s conclusions on Jews. This is where lies the often quoted but seldom read lines referencing the Jews; or rather, this is the part that David Gordon skipped to in order to write his tabloid bullshit.

Let us consider the actual, worldly Jew – not the Sabbath Jew, as Bauer does, but the everyday Jew.

Let us not look for the secret of the Jew in his religion, but let us look for the secret of his religion in the real Jew.

What is the secular basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-interest. What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money.

Very well then! Emancipation from huckstering and money, consequently from practical, real Judaism, would be the self-emancipation of our time.

There you have it, proof positive that Marxism is antisemitic! Pack it in guys, Communism’s finished.

In actuality, this passage is just part of a larger rhetorical argument. It would be much too long to c/p, but in essence, Bauer is considering the emancipation of The Jew—not the Elders of Zion Nazi bogeyman The Jew, but rather the abstract of the idealized ‘Jew,’ the same sort of idealized prescription of ‘the Christian.’ Marx wants to move beyond the religious ideal to the concrete situation of ‘the everyday Jew.’Here, he isn’t espousing the antisemitic vitriol of the ‘money hungry Jew’ stereotype and so on, but instead ‘the Jew’ as has been shaped by society, and how their religion has evolved with Jewish society as its circumstances also changed. Shut out from the machinery of state and secluded from the rest of society (except when this or that tyrant needed a convenient scapegoat to punish) they have no choice but to engage in hucksterism in order to survive. The conforming of Judaism to the material circumstances of the Jews is not due to some sort of inherent greed of Jewish people, but rather their circumstances incentivize the accumulation of money before other considerations, and the social mores that evolved along side that.

What this means is, it isn’t Judaism per se that is itself self interested, egotistical, hucksterism. Judaism has taken on these aspects as a response to the needs of the Jewish people, just as Judaism evolved with the Hebrews’ changing circumstances through their long history.

The contradiction that exists between the practical political power of the Jew and his political rights is the contradiction between politics and the power of money in general. Although theoretically the former is superior to the latter, in actual fact politics has become the serf of financial power.

Judaism has held its own alongside Christianity, not only as religious criticism of Christianity, not only as the embodiment of doubt in the religious derivation of Christianity, but equally because the practical Jewish spirit, Judaism, has maintained itself and even attained its highest development in Christian society. The Jew, who exists as a distinct member of civil society, is only a particular manifestation of the Judaism of civil society.

Judaism continues to exist not in spite of history, but owing to history.

The Jew is perpetually created by civil society from its own entrails.

What, in itself, was the basis of the Jewish religion? Practical need, egoism.

The monotheism of the Jew, therefore, is in reality the polytheism of the many needs, a polytheism which makes even the lavatory an object of divine law. Practical need, egoism, is the principle of civil society, and as such appears in pure form as soon as civil society has fully given birth to the political state. The god of practical need and self-interest is money.

Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist. Money degrades all the gods of man – and turns them into commodities. Money is the universal self-established value of all things. It has, therefore, robbed the whole world – both the world of men and nature – of its specific value. Money is the estranged essence of man’s work and man’s existence, and this alien essence dominates him, and he worships it.

The god of the Jews has become secularized and has become the god of the world. The bill of exchange is the real god of the Jew. His god is only an illusory bill of exchange.

The view of nature attained under the domination of private property and money is a real contempt for, and practical debasement of, nature; in the Jewish religion, nature exists, it is true, but it exists only in imagination.

There’s a lot going on in this essay. The rest of it culminates in Marx concluding that there is no emancipation for Christian or Jew without the conditions which necessitate and make Christianity and Judaism possible. Without the societal and personal circumstances which enable Judaism, it can’t persist. If it can’t persist, there will be no more Jews. There won’t be a need to be Jewish, because Judaism no longer responds to the circumstances of the world around it. It is the same conclusion reached for the dissolution of the proletariat: how can the worker be emancipated? By establishing the conditions where owner and worker become impossible.

But does the brainlet Gordon engage with any of this? Does he examine and undermine its assumptions, use its own logic against it, or illustrate holes in its reasoning?

How are we to evaluate Marx’s argument? It suffers from two main problems. First, Marx fails to establish a connection between selfish, egoistic behavior and the Jewish religion. Why is egoistic behavior distinctively Jewish? It is no doubt true that Judaism looks favorably on a person’s pursuit of his own interests. In the famous saying of Rabbi Hillel in the first chapter of the Ethics of our Fathers, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?”

Marx connects Judaism to Capitalism on account of their similar needs, that Capitalism takes on a ‘Jewish character’ because it mimics the same logic of self interest that the Jews had to develop to survive in hostile countries. Being the ones that have the disposable capital to facilitate Capitalism, the Jews exert outsized influence not because of some shadowy cabal of child murdering kikes, but because of their unique position in society, and the way that society has changed in order to make money and its accumulation more important than it had ever been for society as a whole than any other time in history.

A more deep-seated failing besets Marx’s account of Judaism and capitalism. Marx characterizes both capitalism and Judaism as based on self-interest, practical need, selling, and money. Surely it would be difficult to find throughout recorded history many large-scale and complex societies in which these features did not play a prominent role. Contrary to Marx, neither self-interest nor the pursuit of money is distinctively either capitalist or Jewish. 

Dumb-dumb is again arguing against propositions that Marx never made, as explained above. It’s pretty easy to win when your adversaries are made of straw.

In seeking to exorcise self-interest as a feature of the human condition Marx is beguiled by a fantasy in which human beings abandon all antagonisms. Murray Rothbard has aptly noted the influence of this fantasy: “To Marx, any differences between men, and, therefore, any specialization in the division of labor, is a ‘contradiction,’ and the communist goal is to replace that contradiction with harmony among all. This means that to the Marxist any individual differences, any diversity among men, are contradictions to be stamped out and replaced by the uniformity of the anthill.”6 

I’m sure Murray appreciated Gordon taking time out from his article to blow him. The only one here beguiled by fantasy is David Gordon. Marx proposes and imagines no such thing. Apparently Rothbard hasn’t read or understood a word of Marx either, which explains a lot.

I haven’t read the second part of this... dreck, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was as ridiculous as the first. This is how the right BTFOs Communism le epig style xD, by making up a bunch of shit that Marx never said, and then lying about how their fantasies disprove Communism.

[jewish-education]

Does someone have to be certain in their faith that g-d exists before converting to judaism? I've got a history of religious abuse in the catholic church (of which i am no longer a part of ) and struggle with our faith in g-d but i feel like he exists, i just? can't feel certain? I'm interested in looking into converting to judaism, but idk if i'm wanted with my baggage?

I’m so sorry that you’ve had this experience. I hope that you’re able to come to a comfortable relationship with yourself and your understanding of the world regardless of whether Judaism is a part of it. Every conversion student comes to Judaism for a reason, and there are plenty of Jews-by-birth with baggage around religion and G-d too. Our people-group’s namesake “Israel” got his name by wrestling with one of G-d’s angels, so struggling with G-d is a big piece of our tradition. 

And coming to a conclusion that involves uncertainty in G-d’s existence–or even a certainty that G-d doesn’t exist at all–is okay in many Jewish communities. There are many, many Jews-by-birth who are agnostic and atheist, and I at least know of some conversion students and Jews-by-choice on here who are agnostic. Depending on your branch, it isn’t strange at all. Sometimes I feel a bit like a bad Jew for not doubting G-d a little more :)

I know some Modern Orthodox and Conservative agnostic/atheist Jews, but I’ve found agnosticism and atheism to be more common in Reform (talk to @progressivejudaism if the movement seems of interest to you) and Reconstructionist communities. In fact Humanistic Judaism (talk to @humanisticjudaism if the movement seems of interest to you) is atheist as a movement! I can’t guarantee that a rabbi from any of these branches (besides Humanistic) would be willing to work with a decidedly atheist conversion student, but I imagine most would understand a degree of agnosticism as someone develops a new relationship with G-d. (Other conversion students and Jews-by-choice here on jumblr might be good resource in terms of general rabbinic comfort level if they’d like to pitch in.)

I’d recommend that you read up a bit on Reform, Reconstructionist and Humanistic Judaism (and maybe Conservative and Modern Orthodox Judaism too) to see which speak to you, and try to get in touch with a rabbi in your area. Especially because you’ve had some negative experiences with religious authority figures in the past, finding a rabbi you feel personally comfortable with might be just as important as finding a branch you agree with. 

Branches also aren’t of ultimate importance for many people because 100% agreeing with a branch’s declared perspective probably won’t happen. Within a branch, there are at least as many perspectives about G-d, relationships with text/tradition, and ideas about how to live life as there are Jewish people! A rabbi will best be able to help you navigate some of these challenges. 

(paragraph in which I word-vomit because my blog title should warn you I’m a nerd) If (and after) you get to the stage of meeting with a rabbi, it might be helpful to look into Jewish understandings of how to live an ethical life. This might seem like a strange response since you’re asking about relationships with G-d, and maybe I’m completely off-target. I don’t know your experience, but I have a friend who struggled with Catholicism (and others who have found it a healthy scaffold for life and self) and I know concepts of sin and ethics were an issue for this friend. Personally, reading Pirkei Avot (a traditional ethics text often read this time of year) was a real bridge into religious Judaism for me. Teshuva, often translated (and simplified) as forgiveness or repentence (it can also mean return, and I could keep going), also might be really interesting to learn about coming from your background, and you’ll find lots of perspectives on it. (I want to make sure that you see this perspective on teshuva and abuse because I kind of think everyone should, but this article or a conversation with a rabbi might be a necessary background for it. On other notes, I’ve found having a nuanced opinion about teshuva to be a good litmus test for good rabbis? But I digress…) There are also many other Jewish perspectives on ethics outside of Pirkei Avot and the topic of teshuva, like numerous books on mussar (which I don’t know nearly enough about). You should have help from a rabbi or experienced study partner before delving into these concepts or texts too much since navigating them alone is tough, especially without an understanding of how texts, perspectives and authority fit together in Judaism (hint: none of these authors have an ultimate truth about the world, just some occasionally insightful ideas).

One thing that’s helped me in my own relationship with G-d and understanding of ethics is that both are simultaneously personal and communal. Yes, I can have a personal relationship with G-d, and personally do good and bad things, but I also function as part of a community. We need to work collectively in order to fulfill obligations to each other and in some cases even to G-d (i.e. you need a minyan – 10 adults or men – to say certain prayers). There’s a great quote from Pirkei Avot (one of texts that I mentioned above!) by one of its many authors, Rabbi Tarfon, saying “It is not your responsibility to finish the work [of perfecting the world], but you are not free to desist from it either" (2:16). In other words, while I have the power (and obligation) to make change and do good, others need to be pitching in for it to succeed. I should never feel like the weight of the universe or my covenant with G-d is completely in my hands. Regardless of what branch someone joins, they’re joining the Jewish peoplehood, and even now you are part of our human peoplehood (forgive my clumsy phrasing). Regardless of your relationship with G-d, go out there, do good, and know you aren’t alone

I also don’t want to stick up Judaism as perfect. There will be folks who twist Judaism into something harsh and abusive the same way any philosophy or belief system can be corrupted. I like to think Judaism is a bit “safer” in the sense that in many branches, power is decentralized among many rabbinic authorities (and sometimes even lay-leaders like gabbaim, or learned folks within a community). 

P.S. While Chabad can be a great resource for many people, given your background I’m going to recommend you give your local Chabad house some space for a while and potentially forever. Chabad is a Jewish group that while having many beautiful ideas has a more centralized authority and philosophy that, given your background, might be really uncomfortable for you. If you need help finding alternative welcoming Jewish resources in your area, feel free to message me. (My messaging inbox is open, and I know y’all don’t see it but I get at least as many questions/comments through there as through anons so it isn’t at all weird to message me.)

[halalchampagnesocialist]

(1)hey there, i was hoping i could ask you something if you're open to it. i'm ethnically jewish raised w/o my heritage, & for the past year & a half or so i've been learning more about judaism & educating myself on israel & palestine (& trying to find resources on jewish identity that isn't zionist). i'm anti-zionist, anti-israel, & pro-palestine, though sometimes i get like... a gross feeling in my stomach? b/c zionists have absolutely NO right to take the land, claim it as theirs & claim it-

(2) -belongs to jewish ppl only, but idk sometimes i have a gut reaction like 'that was my ancestors' homeland that they were forced out of'. & that doesn't excuse anything, that's YOUR homeland that you were forced out of too & i can't BELIEVE zionists don't see the hypocrisy, but i guess sometimes i'm afraid some ppl don't. acknowledge that? & idk if jewish ppl wanna like, connect with the land of our ancestors is that a valid thing to feel obvi as long as it's not occupation or forcing out-

(3) -palestinians or destroying palestinian ways of life? like, coming to visit or people wanted to live there LEGALLY, again not as occupation nor under zionism but for a sense of closure & connection, humanely, living normally side by side w/ indigenous palestinians b/c our ancestors lived there long ago & they were forced out & that was wrong, but palestinians have always lived there too. that was my ancestors' home, but it's your home more than mine. but would wanting to go find a home for-

(4) -oneself as a jewish person, living alongside palestinians, is that. okay? is any of that okay? because i truly want to dedicate myself to being an ally and comrade to palestine and its people. is feeling that tug in my gut a valid thing to feel? or is that internalized zionism to unlearn? (sorry this was so long)

(5) oops i also don't mean to come across as like 'um :) shove over our land too' i'm really sorry if i sounded like that. just kinda more like... idk, immigrating? peacefully making a home for oneself there (whether actually moving there or just visiting or smth) without it being like. barging in and being all 'sure ok u can have SOME land over there but THIS is MINE' cause no. one state solution and everythin. u feel me? i hope this makes sense lmao

hey!

this is a valid feeling imo, and i think it’s okay, as a jewish person, to feel a connection to palestine (or eretz yisrael) because it’s a concept that exists not only in the torah but in the jewish consciousness and imagination.

i’m not sure how long you’ve been following me, but i’ve always stated that i’m okay with jews living in palestine, just not as israelis (in a class sorta sense where they have privilege and power over palestinians) and this is one of the reasons i support the one state solution and part of that is also sustaining jewish cultures and peoplehood alongside the palestinian one.

so i think it’s not really internalised zionism at all. i think moving there while israel continues to occupy palestinians though is an entirely diff matter, but if you mean post-liberation then that’s fine. many jews lived in palestine prior to the existence of the state and many of them non-zionist, even anti-zionist.

[mackthai]

The Layers of Jerusalem

Jerusalem is literally built on top of history. It’s hilly so the houses are all terraced and they’re all made out of limestone so they’re all the same color (it’s the law). The tight streets run through the neighborhoods. You can tell if it’s an Israeli or Palestinian neighborhood by the street names and signs, Hebrew or Arabic. It’s built up on and around the Mountain of Olives, which I learned is the place where all three main religions (Judaism, Islam, and Christianity) believe the savior will come to (next time he comes).

The Holy City is in the middle, with a big wall around it. There are 9 entrances or “gates” into the Holy City, but only 8 are used because one is a golden entrance, meant to be used by the Savior when he comes strolling down the Mountain of Olives. The Holy City is holy for all three religions. Within the gates, there are neighborhoods or “quarters” for each religion: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It’s like the rest of Jerusalem with the tight cobblestone streets and terraced homes, lots of stone staircases, but there are very few cars within the Holy City and lots, and lots of markets. Jesus would’ve been pissed I think because when he was at the Temple in the Holy City back in his day, he flipped over the tables of all the people making sales in the holy place.

The coolest thing about the Holy City is that there are so many layers underneath it. It’s the place where Abraham went to sacrifice his son, Isaac, and it’s also the place where the 10 commandments were found (supposedly). The first temple to be built there was back in King David’s time when it was still “The Kingdom of Judah.” He built David’s City, but the temple there was destroyed. A while later, Herod was king and he wanted to make the Jews like him so he re-built the temple as this beautiful grand structure all would come to see. It was a hilly area so he had his workers basically cut off the top of a tall hill and use it to fill in a valley part to make a platform for his Holy City to sit on, a quarter of a mile wide. This is the temple Jesus visited that outraged him.

My brother modeling his most recent purchase outside a Holy City home

Later, it was destroyed by the Romans. The land of Jerusalem went back and forth for a while between the Crusaders and the Muslims – it was valued land. Finally, the Muslims came out victorious and decided to rebuild there. However, they didn’t like the valleys surrounding the city because they felt that if there were intruders coming up that way, they wouldn’t be able to see them. So they filled them in by building new layers. This is the basic development of Jerusalem as it is today.

In 1948, the Jews finally got Israel, but it wasn’t until 1967 that they got Jerusalem. There was a section of the original West Wall of Herod’s temple remaining. There’s something in the Jewish Torah about the West Wall of the temple never falling and it was also the closest wall to the place of the Covenant of the Ark (the 10 commandments – people believe the original ones are still buried under Jerusalem somewhere). So the Jewish people flooded into the city and cleared some buildings to make a plaza – The Wailing Wall now.

The wailing wall plaza from above 

Washing our hands before we approach the wall

At The Wailing Wall, you have to go through a security check with x-ray machines and metal detectors. We split up because one side is for men and the other for women. There’s a place where you wash your hands to cleanse yourself before you approach the wall. Then, you write a wish and when you go to the wall you’re supposed to stick it in between the stones. Up close, there are so many tiny sheets of paper shoved into every little nook and cranny and even little indents in the wall. Some of them are pressed so hard into the wall that they look more like gum than crushed paper (I looked closely to assure they were not, in fact, gum).

Women were crying or rocking back and forth in prayer, touching the wall, putting their heads against the stone. It seemed like some divine power or rush of emotion had washed over them just by being in the presence of the wall, something I personally did not feel. I watched them cry and put the notes in the wall, some women pressing them with all their might as if trying to make the words they’d written peel off from the paper and permanently attach to the wall. I wondered what they’d written down. I kind of wished I felt that strongly too.

Photo at the Wailing Wall, taken by Lizzy

When the wall fills up with notes, they take them and bury them all in the Mountain of Olives. Jewish people used to pray towards Jerusalem all over the world, the same way Muslims pray towards Mecca. They technically believe that all your prayers will first go to Jerusalem before they go to Heaven.

I left a note in the wall.

When we left, we had to walk backwards because you can’t turn your back on the Wall.

It’s so interesting to be in a place where all three religions come together. It’s holy for everyone. The mosque, though, is cut off from the rest. The quarter where their markets are and their people live is open. However, to enter the mosque you have to go through a separate security. They will let people of other faiths go in, but you’re not allowed to bring any books of faith in with you. Apparently, if they catch you with one it can start a riot.

However, we also had an Israeli guide so I’m not sure if his explanation was biased or exaggerated.

At the Catholic quarter, we saw the rock where Jesus was crucified and touched the stone where he was cleaned and saw the little cave where he’d been buried (“in accordance with tradition” – i.e. the places they generally believe all this happened). It’s all built up inside a church with extravagant decorations and mosaics and it’s so, so crowded. The wait to get into the burial cave was around 3 hours.

Papa Kev touching the stone where Jesus’ body was cleansed

My parents and Lizzy said they felt a jolt of energy when they touched the rock Jesus had been cleaned on, but I didn’t feel anything. My brother, Rudd, kept complaining the whole time about how it probably wasn’t really the rock where he was cleaned and how all of this was probably bogus. My dad got annoyed at him. He said it’s not about that. It’s about absorbing the spirituality of where you are.

I think I would feel more connected to the place if it were closer to its original state. I found it didn’t feel genuine or even very spiritual and special because it had become such a pompous tourist attraction.

Outside the church, up on a scaffolding there is a wooden ladder. Five different Christian denominations own the church together and used to argue a lot so they finally signed a contract saying nothing could be changed without the others’ approval. At the time they signed, someone had been using a ladder by the window. So, they left the ladder there as like a freezing of that moment of their agreement. Now, the key to the church is held by the Muslims and 5 representatives from the Christian faiths go over to the Muslim side every morning, promise to behave, and get their key to open the church. It’s all a little ridiculous.

Also ridiculous was Rudd trying to put our 8-year-old family friend through a window of Jesus’ tomb. The priest inside did not like that one bit.

Everyone in our group seemed to have something they connected with most that day. For me, it was the Stations of the Cross – the real Stations of the Cross. In the Holy City, the places Jesus walked, where he fell, where Mary met him, etc., are all marked in the spot where they actually happened.

Disclaimer: These marks spots are where the evens of the crucifixion “actually happened” according to tradition, and technically the whole thing occurred on ground that is now buried far beneath the currently streets.

But still! I was standing in the streets where Jesus himself had taken his final steps (pre rising from the dead). The tour guide moved quickly past these, not even stopping to show us each of them, but I stood on the side while he rambled. I stared at the spot where Jesus met his mother and tried to imagine what it must have been like to be a part of the crowd standing there watching them.

Touching a stone Jesus leaned on for support (according to tradition)

But before the image could fully formulate, we were whisked away to the next thing. I wish I had gotten more time in Jerusalem – just a day trip isn’t nearly enough. I certainly intend to go back.

The next stop: Bethlehem, in the West Bank – Palestine.

[jennyschectersghost]

So I'm mostly over the whole CDM mess at this point, but some of these defenses are truly incredible. I...I really should stop reading them, but I can't fully look away.

In fact, out of morbid curiosity, I checked @projectqu*er's blog to see if they'd said anything further on the matter---and they'd actually posted a statement "in solidarity with Chicago D*ke March" from an affiliated Jew who is attempting to stick up for them, you know, so the white goy running that blog can feel justified in talking over the rest of us.

First of all, it's nothing short of absurd that people are seriously giving CDM the "solidarity" they've been calling for (SOLIDARITY!), as if they are somehow being oppressed or in any way mistreated by being widely held responsible for their antisemitic actions, which they still haven't apologized for or even acknowledged.

Secondly, I'm...I'm really just fucking floored by huge swaths of this statement, wow. I mean, it pissed me off at first, but now I mostly feel sad for this person and all the antisemitism she seems to have internalized, which is pretty easy to do in that sort of environment from what I've seen (sadly). I hope someday she can truly, unequivocally *know* that it is possible to support Palestinians as an unabashedly Jewish person---without forgetting all our Jewishness entails, without rewriting our histories or glossing over so many legitimate realities of the diasporic experience. I hope she can reconnect with her own Jewishness someday. I hope she's okay.

I mean, she basically frames the whole thing as if wanting to exist as a Jew in public is seriously akin to White Fragility, as if *public existence* is actually a thing that fucking white goyim would *ever* have to worry about...ever, in any fucking universe, at least on the basis of being white goyim. Like?! When is the last time anyone was kicked out of an event because of an explicitly pro-LGBT cross, even though white Western Christianity has persecuted and oppressed countless groups of people pretty much since its inception (DEFINITELY including Jews)?

But the MAGEN DAVID is ALSO on THE ISRAELI FLAG!! Yeah, and as much as plenty of leftists (myself included) might verbally shit on the American flag or whatever, CAN YOU IMAGINE a white goy EVER actually being expelled from an event because of an American Pride flag, the likes of which can literally be seen at comparable fucking events constantly, even though this country is itself undeniably violent and imperialistic?

Anyway. She also attacks both Ellie Otra and Lauren Grauer on a personal level, effectively demonizing both of them, characterizing and dismissing both of them as Fragile Whites obviously---acting as if they were both affiliated with A Wider Bridge (and as if A Wider Bridge is something much more insidious than it really appears to be) when only Lauren Grauer is actually affiliated with AWD, and this was discovered after the fact as far as I know, and it was not brought up by her as far as I know, and it definitely had nothing to do with her flag or why she was fucking there---ignoring the Persian part of Ellie Otra's Jewish background and all the ways in which that could further complicate goyische perception of her, especially white goyische perception of her---and mysteriously making no mention whatsoever of Eleanor Shoshany-Anderson, the Iranian Jewish woman who would most certainly be considered a woman of color by anyone's standard, who also had a Jewish Pride flag with a [*gasp*] Magen David on it and was booted precisely the same way, you know, for having *the audacity* to be visibly Jewish. She is just...unnamed, forgotten. Erased. How convenient.

And like...fuck, you know? Fuck.

It's hard to know exactly what to believe at this point, since CDM's Official Story has changed several times now. But this person does also assert that Magen Davids, arguably the mostly widely recognized symbol of Judaism and Jewishness in general, were effectively banned because Palestinian marchers were triggered by seeing them on a few rainbow flags.

Um. Okay. Giving her the benefit of the doubt and assuming that isn't just a bullshit excuse, like assuming there really were Palestinians there who really were triggered by that image, triggered as in legitimately having a *trauma response*...I can think of at least a few alternative means of supporting them without infringing on anyone else's rights (you know, just off the top of my head):

-They could have explicitly reassured the triggered marchers that they were safe and supported there, reminding them of where they were.

-They could have marched alongside the triggered marchers and made space for hearing them out---directly, intentionally making themselves emotionally available to the triggered marchers if they needed to talk through any thoughts or feelings.

-They could have physically helped the triggered marchers stay away from the triggering images---marching around them, in front of them, or behind them as the case might have been, you know, whatever---just making sure the flags weren't especially visible to them or at least trying to block those triggering images from their direct view(s).

Did they even *try* taking any of these sorts of measures, by any of their own accounts? No. Of course not. And as far as I'm concerned, it is still indefensible and completely uncalled for to just...jump right to interrogating and booting people for visibly taking pride as LGBT folks within their own marginalized cultural background, ethnicity and religion, you know, to *literally expel* them for being visibly Jewish. Fuck.

I used to be pretty frequently triggered by people grinning at me the wrong way, bringing me back to a sexually traumatic incident from my adolescence, but I would never tell any of the people around me they're not allowed to smile.

Sometimes I'm triggered by the sight, smell and taste of bananas because my abusive ex forcibly shoved one in my mouth before dragging me across the kitchen floor, but I would never banish anyone for eating a banana.

Sometimes people in ED recovery are triggered by the mere sight of Very Thin or Very Fat bodies; and if you knew this was the case for someone in your space, would you *actually* tell someone else to "cover up or get out" because you knew *their physical form* could be triggering? I would sure as fuck hope not. Because that is no way to behave.

And despite the particular form of hypocrisy that I mentioned earlier, I *could* understand kicking them out if those flags had in fact been Israeli flags at an explicitly anti-Zionist event, if those flags were *actually* supposed to be making any kind of statement about Israel/Palestine or if those flags had been, hm, I don't know, anti-Palestinian in any way.

But the fact remains that they were Jewish Pride flags. They were quite obviously Jewish Pride flags. And goyim have absolutely *no right* to decide what an ancient Jewish symbol means.

That's the thing, though: any awareness of more general goyische/Jewish dynamic seems to immediately evaporate in these sorts of anti-Zionist spaces, if it was ever there at all (which ultimately helps no one). Suddenly there is no discernible memory amongst *non-Palestinian* goyim of the Crusades, the blood libel, the Inquisition, the countless murders, the multiple expulsions, the pogroms, the forced assimilation, the Venetian ghetto, the historical segregation in numerous countries, the Holocaust, the Farhud, the discriminatory laws, the ongoing hate crimes, all the current ways in which our religion most definitely isn't regarded as the default in *every country except Israel,* none of it. None of it at all.

Because having or maintaining any active awareness of that sort of stuff makes all the most accepted narratives too messy, too multi-faceted. So suddenly all Jews (or "Zionists" as thinly veiled code for "Jews," as the case *sometimes* legitimately is) are framed as privileged oppressors in every context *in the world,* and I have literally had this kind of thinking espoused to me by people whose ancestors very likely persecuted mine at some point.

But it's fine in the name of anti-Zionism, right? It's all just anti-Zionism for sure!! Because Jews have ~never~ existed before the contemporary state of Israel and still don't exist outside of it, clearly, except in Evil Zionist Cabals. In fact, I am pretty obviously typing this from the Globalist Zionist New World Order Illuminati clubhouse. Duh.

From this person's statement:

"...Zionism is a system of power and control places Jews in a position of privilege vis a vis Palestinians.

This means that when Jews enter an anti-Zionist space, we accept that we are entering it under certain conditions. As beneficiaries of the system of power and control that those spaces were set up to combat and dismantle, we may be held to a higher political standard. We may be required to affirm certain political positions in order to remain in the space. We may be asked certain questions about our politics because of our positions of privilege. ... That is our role as accomplices, and privileged people in that space. Other privileged groups of people are treated the same way in social justice spaces, and that is the norm in our corner of society."

As beneficiaries. As ACCOMPLICES. I just. Wow. WOW. Other privileged groups of people? That would all be well and good if *all Jews* were in fact "the beneficiaries of the system of power [of Zionism]," (holy fuck), but that is certainly not the case. I mean, *how* are any Jews *here* at all privileged on the basis of "Zionism's" existence, or on the basis of our Jewishness specifically? Name one way! One fucking way! Without relying on those good old antisemitic tropes!!! I bet you fucking can't?!!

Of course some of us *are* privileged on the basis of our (debatably conditional) access to *whiteness* which is important to remain cognizant of, but we're certainly not privileged in any way specifically *because* we're *Jewish*---and the access some of us do have to whiteness is really in spite of our Jewishness, not because of it.

Of course we would have privilege as Jews in Israel. Israel is the one nation-state in the world where we would be privileged specifically on the basis of Jewishness, but we are not living in Israel. This is not Israel. Regardless of how any individual American Jew may or may not feel about it, we are not living in Israel. Even in radical circles, even at an explicitly anti-Zionist American q*eer event, this is still the United States---and the actual implications of our Jewishness here in this "Christian nation" don't magically vanish when we enter an "anti-Zionist space" for one LGBT March or any other kind of event.

Pretending otherwise to suit your agenda, however well-intentioned it might be in regards to supporting Palestinian folks, is really bizarrely dishonest if not outright absurd. It is not just forcibly, violently rewriting our people's entire fucking history, it is also erasing the ongoing context of how diasporic Jews very much do still exist as a marginalized ethno-religious group in the entire rest of the world (including here, unfortunately, as we are being so blatantly reminded of now with the emboldenment of literal Nazis). And would you deny this completely? Or do you somehow truly believe that it can be ignored?

[swawesome-wow]

If you wanted people to be informed, you'd have mentioned Palestinian terrorists and Hamas. You'd have mentioned the suicide bombings and hundreds of murdered innocent Israelis. You'd have mentioned the Palestinian leadership that first declined coexistence in 1948 and rejected every offer of peace since then. You'd have mentioned lies and propaganda and blood libel against Jews, thought in Palestinian schools. You care about playing the victim. But it's an old game. And you'll lose.

I wasn’t going to take the time to respond, but it’s summer break, and I refuse to let you hide behind anonymity and not learn a little something while you’re there.

1. “If you wanted people to be informed, you’d have mentioned Palestinian terrorists and Hamas. You’d have mentioned the suicide bombings and hundreds of murdered innocent Israelis.”

Oh yes, how could I forget to talk about Palestinian terrorists and Hamas. The thousands upon thousands of innocent Israelis killed. Wait, what’s that? 1,213 Israelis have been killed since September 29, 2000. 9,478 Palestinians have been killed since September 29, 2000. I have never claimed that Palestinians have not killed innocent Israelis. Those numbers are only since the year 2000. Israel has occupied Palestine for 50 years, give or take, as you yourself aptly admitted by bringing up the conference in 1948. There is immense loss on both sides, though one has lost nearly 9x as many lives. However, comparing it numerically is extremely reductive, not only are you wrong numerically, you’re ignoring why people have been slaughtered on both sides, and what brought everyone to this point. There is no “justifying” the murder of Israelis by Palestinians, there is only understanding why these killings happened, holistically, and understanding the context.

People refer to it now as the Israeli-Palestinian “Conflict, Divide, etc.” But before recent, heavy political and monetary support of Israel, it was called the Palestinian Genocide, for good reason. 

2. “You’d have mentioned the Palestinian leadership that first declined coexistence in 1948 and rejected every offer of peace since then.”

Let me make this very, painfully clear. 

Palestine does not owe coexistence to Israel. Israel is an occupying state, an oppressive state, and one that has committed genocide against the Palestinian people. 

To bring it down to your level of understanding, the Palestinians were there first. Palestinians of EVERY religion, including Judaism, though I’ll touch on that later. The Palestinian leadership has been lamentable, no one is denying that. But let me put it this way:

Let’s say America was invaded today, by, say, Canada. (Sorry Canada, you were the first country to pop into my head, since I owe half my citizenship to you.) After things calm down enough for the leaders to meet, Trudeau says to *shudder* Trump (or even Obama, in this fake scenario, would make the same decision), “Hey man, I know you were here first and everything, and I know we bloodily invaded you, but like, let’s just coexist, like on that bumper sticker you guys are so fond of.” Do you honestly think the President of the United States of America, would EVER agree to something like that? Seriously? Of course not, that would be ridiculous. Even 50 years later, America would still be fighting for its freedom from its maple-drenched oppressors. So why are you holding Palestine to such ridiculous standards? 

I am truly saddened by the violence that has stemmed from this entire situation, but until Israeli soldiers stop wrongfully arresting, imprisoning, and killing Palestinians, even children, I don’t think you can possibly hope for “peace.”

My grandmother, a few years back on a return visit to Palestine after she fled so many years ago to Canada, was stopped at the border wall (yes, there is a wall there, in case people were unaware) for eight hours, for no reason. She was not charged with anything, neither were her daughters, my aunts, that were with her. Her crime was being Palestinian. I wonder what that sounds like. 

Oh yes, and because of that wall, the already pitiful economy of the Gaza Strip has crumbled, and they have no way of rebuilding it. Even if Palestinians find jobs in Israel, they’re backed up for hours each day just trying to get processed through the wall in either direction. They’ve been economically choked off from the rest of the world, yet Israel continues to receive monetary aid as if they’re in desperate need.

3. “You’d have mentioned lies and propaganda and blood libel against Jews, thought in Palestinian schools. You care about playing the victim. But it’s an old game. And you’ll lose.”

Once again, I need to make something crystal clear. So listen up. \

Palestinians do not hate Jews. They hate the Israeli government. Not Israelis, not Jews, the Israeli government, because that is the body that is responsible for Palestinian suffering. 

Since I was in elementary school, any time someone found out I had Palestinian parents, they immediately made quips or even stated directly that I must hate Jewish people. I had someone say “oh, so you’re anti-Semitic.” I’ve had people ask me if myself or my parents are terrorists (and I used to be Christian, now I don’t practice anything, my point being that I can’t imagine how hard it is for any Muslims). This misconception is so widespread that it’s toxic, killing any reasonable discourse on the subject by people stamping me with the anti-Semite sticker. So, I’m sorry, I haven’t had the chance to play the victim. Let me know how that goes for you. 

What I said earlier, about all religions coexisting? Let me elaborate.

For the thousands of years that Palestine has existed, Christians, Muslims, Jews, ~whatever~ lived side by side, happily and comfortably. Another misconception is that the Israeli movement came from within Palestine, which is just plain misinformation. This is a very, very reductive explanation of what actually happened, forgive me for not being more detailed:

When the second World War ended, there were thousands upon thousands of displaced European Jews (mostly German as you might imagine, but elsewhere as well). When Europe (and America) tried to figure out where to help these people relocate, no one wanted to take them in, deciding it would be too difficult to reintegrate. Palestine had the room and the kind heart needed to take them in, so that’s where many were relocated, en masse. But it was a finite time that Palestine agreed to host these refugees as refugees, they would eventually need to either integrate with the Palestinian people (gain citizenship, etc), or decide where they would want to move, if not stay there. But the relationship began to change, as some began to perpetuate the idea that they belonged there all along, and that the Palestinians were the ones that needed to leave or integrate elsewhere. As with most conflict, religion took a match and set it to kerosene, as suddenly Jerusalem was the center of the occupier’s claims to the land. While I won’t try to argue about it as I’m not informed enough on religious history, I will say that it is entirely possible to create a religious homeland without literally invading the country and creating a religious state. Church and state are separate for a reason, and have to cooperate, not override one another. 

So there are plenty of Palestinian Jews that understand and are outraged at the Israeli government, though they have been left out of intentional eviction, arrests, torture, and killings. 

COMIC RELIEF BREAK that is actually somewhat related but I promise it’s funny:

One time my mom was telling me about something that happened over in Palestine to friends of our family so word made it back to us. Like I said, the three major religions were living pretty happily together, especially where these friends lived. The IDF was evicting all the Palestinians from a neighborhood to allow Israeli settlers to take over. Our friends were one of the families kicked out, and they were best friends with the Jewish family next door! So when the IDF came knocking on the Jewish family’s door to offer them the keys to their best friends’ house, (they were Jews so they were allowed to stay with the new Israelis coming in), the husband of the family was FURIOUS. He started to back-talk, offended at the very thought, but his wife (the really clever one in this story) shut him up and took the keys. The husband couldn’t believe his wife would betray their best friends like that, but she just rolled her eyes in a “you idiot” fashion. They had the keys now, and they promptly gave them back to their best friends so they could reclaim their property! I always thought that story was hilarious :D

While I am disgusted at the thought that you could somehow compare this entire subject to a game, if that’s the only way you can comprehend such a vast discourse, I’m happy to oblige the metaphor: The only “loser” here is the one who can’t think for themselves and hasn’t done a little goddamn research, you soggy walnut. 

Speaking of research! Here are a couple of resources for those who have been following along! I honestly can’t say that the second is an unbiased source, however if you’re looking for straight statistics and numbers, check out the first link! It’s where I got the exact numbers I used above. If you want the international law/human rights perspective, check out the third link. Thanks y’all!

http://ifamericaknew.org

http://www.globalresearch.ca/israels-genocide-towards-palestinian-arabs/5591341 (thanks canada)

https://ccrjustice.org/genocide-palestinian-people-international-law-and-human-rights-perspective (really good source explaining the international law and human rights perspective on the issue)

[ruminativerabbi]

Expanding the Civil Rights Act

Last week, on the same day as Jersey City, President Trump issued an executive order that brought American Jews under the umbrella of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It came as a bit of a surprise—to me, at least, but I think also to most—that prejudice directed specifically at Jewish Americans wasn’t already covered, but now it turns out that the situation is more complicated than I had understood. Title VI of that act specifically grants the Department of Education the right to withhold federal funding from any university—or, indeed, from any school at all—that discriminates against applicants or students based on “race, color, or national origin.” Religion was specifically omitted, apparently for fear that doing so would have constituted an unconstitutional breach of the wall between church and state. At the time, I suppose this seemed reasonable: at the height of the Civil Rights movement, the focus was almost solely on the eradication of institutional prejudice directed against black Americans. Looking back after all these years, though, that decision seems understandable without feeling fully cogent—and begs the obvious question why citizens who are being discriminated against because of any aspect of their identity at all should not be protected just as vigorously as people facing specifically racial discrimination?

And so, on the face of it, the President’s Executive Order of last week simply righted an accidental wrong and applied the protections inherent in Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to Jewish Americans. After all, it hardly seems debatable that Jewish Americans constitute an ethnically distinct minority within the larger American citizenry, thus falling precisely into the category of discriminated-against individuals the Act was intended to protect in the first place. Many have reacted warily to the President’s Executive Order, some even with hostility. But opposition to the Executive Order rooted in the sense that there is something offensive or derogatory about recognizing Jewish ethnicity as no less real a component in Jewishness than Judaism itself rings false to me. Just to the contrary, in fact, is the case: the reality is that the large majority of Jews on America’s college campuses who are facing open and, at least in some cases, virulent anti-Semitism understand their Jewishness in precisely that way: as ethnicity rather than as religion. As a rabbi, I can’t say that I applaud that aspect of reality. In fact, there are many ways in which I deplore it. And yet I also recognize it as the reality of our day and, as such, something entirely reasonable and rational for the federal government also to recognize as part of the status quo. Interestingly, the text of the Executive Order speaks directly to this detail when it says that “individuals who face discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin do not lose protection under Title VI for also being a member of a group that shares common religious practices.” That only seems rational to me.

Of great interest to me personally was the President’s specific reference to the definition of anti-Semitism developed and promulgated by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, an intergovernmental organization headquarter in Berlin that brings together the resources of thirty-three different nations to promote Holocaust education and to combat anti-Semitism. And, in that context, of special interest is the connection the IHRA definition makes between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, including in its set of examples of anti-Semitic behavior “the targeting of the state of Israel, [specifically when] conceived as a Jewish collectivity,” as well as behavior and speech rooted in a basic denial of “the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavor.” And also defined as anti-Semites are those who compare “contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.” That the simple truth that anti-Zionism—as opposed to opposition to some specific Israeli policy—is anti-Semitism is a truth we have long waited to hear accepted by people outside the Jewish community. So that too must be adjudicated as a positive development.

Of course, nothing regarding President Trump is ever that simple or cut-and-dried. The very fact that the President announced his Executive Order at a White House Pre-Hanukkah celebration featuring Pastor Robert Jeffress, a fundamentalist minister who has said publicly that he considers all Jews doomed to hellfire for their failure to embrace his own faith, only made the scene that much weirder and creepier, and only called the underlying motive behind the announcement more into reasonable question. And, indeed, the blogosphere is awash with dark theorizing regarding the “real” motives that led to the President’s Executive Order. I’d like to consider them one by one.

1.      It was just a play for Jewish votes in 2020. I don’t find it at all unlikely that there is some truth to this. But I also don’t care. Jewish students are under attack on America’s campuses in a way that is truly unprecedented and any effort to make them more secure, more safe, and less open to overt acts of prejudice and anti-Semitism are welcome. So what if the President’s motives were sullied by the hope of personal gain? That has become a hallmark of the administration anyway, so why not be pleased that it led for once in a positive, useful direction? When a wealthy skinflint makes a huge donation to charity not because he cares about its work but solely because he wants the tax write-off, the charity still benefits.

2.      It was really meant to stifle anti-Israelism on American campuses. This was the argument of many. But the reality is that the anti-Israelism on our campuses today, often couched in support for the BDS movement or as support for the Palestinians, veers regularly and ominously into anti-Semitism. It seems ridiculous to argue that there simply is no way to express one’s displeasure with some Israeli policy without libeling or insulting the Jewish people. But even if that were to the case (which it surely isn’t), it would still be just and right to forbid those who speak out against such policies from using anti-Semitic tropes in their speech.

3.      It was a way of making the Civil Rights Act less potent by widening it to apply to even more people. I saw this line of thinking pursued on several websites, but I still can’t quite understand how forbidding bigotry directed at one group weakens the parallel restriction forbidding bigotry aimed at a different group. At any rate, it’s hard to imagine how broadening the Act’s base could make it weaker instead of stronger.

4.      It was a veiled attack on the concept of free speech itself. This, at least in the blogosphere, was the big one. And, as far as I can see, it’s the line of argumentation most favored by anti-Israel types who are afraid that their right to protest this or that policy of the State of Israel will now be compromised. But that is not how this anti-discrimination thing words: the laws that protect people from hateful, libelous speech delimit (and are supposed to delimit) the rights of the speaker, not the spoken-about party. In other words, if someone protesting the decision to relocate the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem cannot find a way to express his or her displeasure without veering off into anti-Semitic tropes, then that has to be that person’s problem. And that too is as it should be.

5.      It was an attack on Christianity itself. This, I find particularly scary, rooted as it apparently is in the understanding that the right of campus-based ministers to preach anti-Semitic sermons should be protected by law. It is true—and more than true—that there are many passages in the New Testament that could reasonably be labelled as hostile to Judaism. The library of early Church features an entire sub-category called the Adversus Judaeos literature, which consists of sermons and entire books written to foment disrespect, in many cases verging on hatred, of Jews and Judaism. These are legitimately understood to constitute part of the literary heritage of ancient Christianity, but it is still reasonable to expect contemporary preachers to avoid preaching sermons that propose hatred of Jews as a reasonable spiritual stance. All religions, Judaism included, have as part of their literary or cultural heritage institutions, stances, and stories that are inconsonant with republican principles of modern democracies. The existence of these do not need to be denied. (Is lying about the past ever a good thing?) But to suppose that their existence should by itself constitute an override to the prohibition of hate-speech seems, to say the very least, illogical to me.

6.      It was just an attempt to deflect attention from the impeachment hearings. I suppose we can debate whether this is likely or unlikely, but the bottom line is that it didn’t work. Nor could it ever have worked. So I’m guessing this wasn’t a real factor.

The bottom line is that I am more than pleased that the protection of the federal government will now be extended to Jewish students on American campuses. As a mentioned two weeks ago, the list of schools that have witnessed serious acts of aggression against Jewish students includes some of the nation’s most revered institutions of higher learning. The ADL has determined that the level of on-campus violence directed against Jews has risen every single year annually since 2013. Protecting victims of prejudice or bigotry is precisely what I actually do think the federal government should be doing. With all respect to Jared Kushner’s op-ed piece published in the New York Times last week (click here), I am not at all sure that the President’s motives were pure. I could probably go so far as to say that it seems highly unlikely that he was motivated solely by the desire to right a historic wrong and thus only to do good. But whatever the “real” motive or combination of motives, the Executive Order of December 11 was a positive, helpful step forward for Jewish Americans of all ages and situations, but most of all for Jewish students on America’s campuses. Nor is this a shift I can imagine future presidents undoing on ideological grounds. Whether this will really make America’s campuses a safer, better place for Jewish students remains to be seen. But that this was a step in the right direction feels obvious to me.