#Jewish antifascists

[todaysjewishholiday]

23 Menachem Av 5784 (26-27 August 2024)

The 23rd of Av is the yahrzeit of the philosopher and activist Simone Weil, whose life and death reveal a great deal about the specific cultural milieu of secular Jews in Europe between the world wars. Weil’s Jewishness is complicated by her secular upbringing and her complex engagement with Christianity near the end of her life, but it is her Jewishness in particular that I intend to explore here.

Weil’s father was an Alsatian Jew, whose surname was a product of the wave of Jewish assimilation into French national identity following Napoleon’s emancipation of French Jews. Offered full citizenship rights but still subject to significant interpersonal antisemitism for any recognizable markers of Jewish identity, some French Jews traded clearly Jewish names for newly chosen ones— some of which were still able to signal Jewish identity to other Jews. Weil was one such name, selected by certain French Levi’s as an anagram (W being pronounced in both French and German as V is pronounced in English). Weil’s mother was a Russian Jew whose family had immigrated to Belgium to escape the cycle of pogroms which followed Czar Alexander II’s assassination. Her father accrued significant wealth as an import-export magnate, a large part of which he left to his daughter. Weil’s paternal grandparents were both religiously devout, and deeply distressed by their son’s turn to agnosticism and a secular identity (and particularly his abandonment of kashrus). Her maternal grandparents were less intently religious, but her maternal grandfather was not only fluent in Hebrew but composed Hebrew language poetry, and his widow lived with the Weil family until her death. Both Simone’s parents were deeply intelligent and well educated. Salomea (or Selma, as she preferred to be known) Weil had also wished to be a medical doctor but had been dissuaded by her father, so she settled for marrying a doctor instead. She poured all of her intensity into ensuring the best possible education for her children, Simone and André. The entire family were bibliophiles, and to provide intellectual stimulation to their children Salomea and Bernard Weil also introduced games such as speaking only in rhyming couplets or conducting dinner conversation in one of the family’s several other shared languages. They regularly discussed current events and political theory in the home and Simone became an avowed leftist activist at an early age. Like her husband, Salomea eschewed all Jewish religious practice, but their home life and general cultural outlook will be familiar to many within the Ashkenazi diaspora.

Bernard and Selma’s secularism was also of a distinctly Jewish variety. A significant portion of European Jewry in the fifty eighth century of the Hebrew calendar were deeply attached to the concept of secular culture specifically as an alternative to Christian hegemony, and an escape route from the persistent and violent antisemitism that was such a consistent aspect of Jewish life in Christian Europe. The brutally violent antisemitism of the modern secular governments of Europe, both fascist and communist, had yet to destroy Jewish hopes in secularism as an antidote to prejudice. And the rationalism of European secularism also appealed significantly to Jewish communities that emphasized scholarly pursuits and valued logical reasoning. And the emancipation of Jews which had been a fruit of enlightenment ideals in Christian nations gave Jews the newfound possibility of assimilation into the cultural mainstream without conversion to Christianity. Haskalah and the Reform movement both developed during this period of hopefulness of greater inclusion, and while many Jews, like Simone Weil’s parents, decided to jettison religion entirely, theirs was often a particularly culturally Jewish expression of secularism. This was the mold from which Simone’s childhood was cast. Weil’s parents had experienced antisemitism firsthand throughout their early years and were determined to shield their children from it, and who like many of their secular Jewish contemporaries made the pursuit of knowledge and of progressive social reform its own kind of sacred duty.

Simone’s own early dedication to activism is revealed in an anecdote from her childhood, where after striking up conversations with workers at the resort where her family was vacationing and learning more about their wages and the conditions in which they worked, attempted to persuade them to unionize. She determined early on to devote herself entirely to the cause of a more just world, and did so with a relentlessness that led her college classmates in philosophy to dub her “the categorical imperative in skirts” (It is worth noting that she was the sole female student in her cohort at the time). Weil was deeply impatient with the abstract inquiries of other philosophers, forcefully declaring that “one thing alone mattered in the world today: the revolution that would feed all people on earth” to Simone de Beauvoir. When the latter replied that meaning mattered more than material comfort, Weil retorted “It’s easy to see you’ve never gone hungry.”

Hunger was something that Weil herself knew well. Despite her affluent and indulgent upbringing, she lived a rigorous life of extreme self-denial driven by the belief that she did not deserve to be comfortable while others were suffering. As a young child during the First World War, she refused all sweets after hearing of the deprivations of troops on the front. As Weil grew, she also regularly refused other food, due to a mixture of sensory issues, fears about germs, and moral scrupulosity about the injustice of eating well while others starved. This last trait— of being certain that she ought not to have any comfort which was denied to others— made all social injustices deeply personal matters for Simone. She never learned the art of looking away from other’s suffering that enables a sense of complacency about the state of society, nor did she ever attempt to persuade herself that others deserved their misery.

During her university years, Weil, who had first identified herself as a Bolshevik at the age of 10, persuaded her parents to host Leon Trotsky briefly early in his exile from the Soviet Union. Reportedly, the budding moral philosopher was one of the few people able to silence the revolutionary firebrand in a debate.

Simone’s childhood acts of labor solidarity were also only the first signs of things to come. While many college students enjoyed theorizing about the sufferings of the working class, Weil participated regularly in union demonstrations and preferred the company of striking workers to that of her fellow students. This continued for the rest of her life, and led to the most targeted antisemitic pushback she was to personally experience, as her committed labor activism and extreme commitment to social egalitarianism were interpreted by the conservative press as proof of their theory of Jewish Bolshevism, with educated radical Jews stirring up a laboring class that in the eyes of conservatives clearly would otherwise be perfectly accepting of miserable conditions and pay. Weil eventually became convinced that solidarity with the working class was not sufficient, and that to truly understand the struggle she should become a laborer. To this end she quit her post as an instructor and worked backbreaking shifts on an automobile assembly line, which persuaded her that the physically and mentally draining conditions of modern labor were the greatest obstacle to revolutionary action. The same convictions about direct action and self sacrifice led her to join an anarchist faction in the Spanish Civil War, though her poor eyesight and lack of physical coordination made her more of a liability than an asset in combat. A severe injury in a cookfire accident led to her departure from Spain for medical recovery, and her unit was nearly entirely massacred a month after her departure.

It was in the aftermath of her horrendous and personally devastating experiences in Spain, wracked with survivor’s guilt and a a persistently frustrated desire to sacrifice her own life for a worthy cause, that Weil’s parents took her on holiday in the Italian village of Assisi in an attempt to bouy her spirits, and she wandered into the basilica, where the Catholic Saint Francis had renounced all earthly possessions, and offered up a prayer for the first time in her life. It seems that that root of Weil’s interest in Christianity was the way its most praised figures and its founder and central figure practiced and promoted the exact kind of unrelenting self denial and self abnegation that she herself sought. Another observation of hers, upon seeing a peasant religious procession in Portugal, is telling: “the conviction was suddenly borne in upon me that Christianity is pre-eminently the religion of slaves, that slaves cannot help belonging to it, and I among others.” While at description of Christianity as a religion of slaves was popular among European secularists of all backgrounds, there is a particularly Jewish tradition of associating Christianity with bondage in contrast to Judaism’s emphasis on collective liberation. But Weil, who was certain that she herself should suffer so long as anybody was suffering, also could not conceive of herself as free. Her association with Christian mysticism is thus extremely complicated by her secular Jewish upbringing and personal relationship with suffering and self sacrifice. Weil’s personal flirtation with Christianity continued for the rest of her life, but she repeatedly refused baptism, pointing out the Christian refusal of salvation to atheists and Jews as central to her refusal. She described herself as somebody who loved Jesus but had no love for the church— and it seems entirely obvious why a European Jew on the brink of the Shoah, as deeply aware as she was of the history of European antisemitism and the numerous strands of Christianity at that very moment making their peace with the rise of fascism would be unwilling to reconcile herself to a tradition and community that was not willing to reconcile itself to her without insisting on her erasure through conversion. Weil could be tolerable to Christians only as an ex-Jew, and despite her lack of a religious Jewish upbringing or identity that was farther than she would go. She was willing to sacrifice her life, but not her sense of self or solidarity with her family and all the imperiled Jews of Europe.

Simone did in the end give up her life for her beliefs, though not in any of the heroic ways she had dreamed of. She took her parents to safety in America prior to the Nazi invasion of Germany, fully aware that they too would refuse to leave if doing so meant abandoning their daughter to death. But she did so for their security, wishing herself to be back in France, again heartbroken at the thought that she should have any comfort or safety which was denied to others. She returned to Britain and threw herself energetically into aiding the war effort, serving as a translator for British forces working to aid the French Resistance. Her poor health however kept her from being able to do as she wished and be a radio operative parachuted behind enemy lines. Distraught, she reduced her food intake further and further, convinced that many people were no doubt starving in France under the Nazi occupation. Her associates were convinced that she was overestimating the severity of rationing within France but Simone’s conviction that orders suffered more greatly than she and that she should do all she could to suffer with them was unshakeable. She died on the 23rd of Av 5703 from a heart attack brought upon by starvation.

[antifainternational]

July 24, Washington DC - Arrest Netanyahu for War Crimes Against Humanity!

[nando161mando]

COUNTER COUNTER PROTEST SUN 11.30AM PARLIAMENT

NEVER AGAIN MEANS GAZA 🇵🇸

This Sunday, racist opponents are holding a "Never Again Is Now" rally in solidarity with the Zionist entity currently enacting genocide in Palestine. Politicians addressing the rally will reiterate that they stand with Israel while it drops bombs over Gaza.

Western nations failed to prevent the Holocaust and "again" are failing to prevent the systemised torture, starvation and mass murder of a people.

We must directly counter Zionism, fascism and the political forces that express support for genocide and racism in society.

Zionism is a racist, colonial ideology. As Jews and Palestinians, we stand against all forms of racism and all colonial, imperial violence justified through dehumanisation and hate and allowed to be mainstream.

Join the counter counter protest to the Free Palestine rallies, to say that today, "never again" includes Gaza.

Never again means respecting the memory and lessons of the Holocaust.

@antifainternational @anarchistmemecollective @radicalgraff @kropotkindersurprise

[whereserpentswalk]

Wow. Just found out one of my (now ex) mutuals supports genocide.

I want to be very clear to anyone reading this that if you support attacking people or forcibly removing people from where they live because of their ethnicity you are a supporter of genocide. You have no place on the left. Ethnostates are an inherently right wing concept. The idea of an ethnic group having control over a certain peice of land and getting to decide what happens to other people living there is inherently right wing.

I don't care what an ethnic group did, I don't support genocide agaisnt them. I am agasint all genocide. In any circumstance. That's what being anti genocide means.

[barleyteanghibli]

Seems like a good time to repost this to jumblr. If you’re Jewish and looking for a Zionist, antifascist space for community and learning, come join Cable Street Chavrusa! We’re a small group right now but we host events, discussions, and provide support for all things Jewish with people who understand. Systems, queer people, BIPOC supported and welcome!

[rebel-girl-queen-of-my-world]

[sonohtigris]

what zionism and isreal thinks of my culture of Yiddishkeit

My culture is Yiddish. My family is Lithuanian, and German Jews we have no connection to the apartheid state of Isreal. Isreal is not a safe place for all Jews just for zionist fascists. Being against zionism and isreal is not antisemitism erasing our history is. How can we as Jews who suffered the Shoa, endorse a new genocide

[hey-casandra]

My niche queer Jewish Good Omens head cannon is that Crowley had a hand in the surrealist movement and was friends with Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore.

[degengxrl]

This is where the "fuck Nazis" sentiment kinda falls short. Like, yeah, Antisemites suck, but do people love jewish people half as much as they hate Nazis? Like, anyone can say an overt bigot is bad, but can they unpack how they benefit from the oppression of others? Can they stand in solidarity with the marginalized?

[gryficowa]

Oh yes, I love how Zionists use "Anti-Semitism" because they consider themselves victims when in practice they themselves attack other Jews for supporting Palestine

As if it was our fault that a lot of the shitty people supporting the genocide were Jews (Ignoring Christians… Because Zionists like to leave them out)

No, we don't hate you because you're Jewish, we hate you because you're a fucking piece of shit with sadistic tendencies

[whitesinhistory]

[Intro] Woo Yeah

[Verse 1] The people, they won't leave What is threatenin’ about divesting and wantin' peace? The problem isn't the protests, it’s what they're protesting It goes against what our country is funding (Hey) Block the barricade until Palestine is free (Hey) Block the barricade until Palestine is free When I was seven, I learned a lesson from Cube and Eazy-E What was it again? Oh yeah, fuck the police (Woo)

[Verse 2] Actors in badges protecting property And a system that was designed by white supremacy (Brrt) But the people are in the streets You can pay off Meta, you can't pay off me Politicians who serve by any means AIPAC, CUFI, and all the companies You see, we sell fear around the land of the free But this generation here is about to cut the strings You can ban TikTok, take us out the algorithm But it's too late, we've seen the truth, we bear witness Seen the rubble, the buildings, the mothers and the children

And all the men that you murdered, and then we see how you spin it Who gets the right to defend and who gets the right of resistance Has always been about dollars and the color of your pigment, but White supremacy is finally on blast Screamin' "Free Palestine" 'til they're home at last (Woo)

[Verse 3] We see the lies in ’em Claimin’ it's antisemitic to be anti-Zionist I’ve seen Jewish brothers and sisters out there and ridin' in Solidarity and screamin' "Free Palestine" with them Organizin', unlearnin’ and finally cuttin' ties with A state that's gotta rely on an apartheid system To uphold an occupyin' violent History been repeating for the last seventy-five The Nakba never ended, the colonizer lied (Woo) If students in tents posted on the lawn Occupyin' the quad is really against the law And a reason to call in the police and their squad Where does genocide land in your definition, huh? (Hey; hey) Destroyin' every college in Gaza and every mosque Pushin' everyone into Rafah and droppin' bombs The blood is on your hands, Biden, we can see it all And fuck no, I'm not votin' for you in the fall (Woo) Undecided You can't twist the truth, the people out here united Never be defeated when freedom's on the horizon Yet the music industry's quiet, complicit in their platform of silence (Hey, woo)

[Verse 4] What happened to the artist? What d'you got to say? If I was on a label, you could drop me today I'd be fine with it 'cause the heart fed my page I want a ceasefire, fuck a response from Drake (Woo) What you willin' to risk? What you willin' to give? What if you were in Gaza? What if those were your kids? If the West was pretendin' that you didn't exist You'd want the world to stand up and the students finally did, let's get it (Woo)

[Outro] Brrt Woo

[nando161mando]

[whereserpentswalk]

If the average tumblr user was alive in the 1930s they would look at those fake ghettos the nazis made to claim they were treating the jews well, and then start saying that it's dangerous (possibly soviet) misinformation that the nazis mistreat jews, and that anyone claiming that the jews in Germany are poorly treated is actually antisemitic.

[barleyteanghibli]

popping back onto tumblr to tell people to come join my jewish antifacist discord server. safe for poc, systems, queer people, and disabled people (and run by three queer disabled systems)