#Jewish American Families

[rodeodeparis]

trump winning mostly due to channeling the economic concerns of american voters into a better campaign (and probably also a few bomb threats) being blamed by hardline dems on arab/muslim/jewish voter treachery is pretty medieval europe coded i have to say

[kick-a-long]

So I’ve been celebrating Shabbat for a few months (it’s unbelievably amazing btw, I rest, light candles, I limp through Hebrew but I can feel it getting easier to say and understand, have wine, feel like a winner because no one has killed me this week.) but I don’t always want/make bread. I love bread, I love making it, having bread all week, and braiding it but my husband can’t eat it so one loaf is a lot of bread. But I sometimes wonder if challah is the only option. Putting eggs, honey, and butter in a bread reads as a kind of cake to me. It also makes sense to me that cake is fitting for celebration and contemplation about the good in life.

My question is: does jumblr know if I can make babka or rugula instead for Shabbat? Can I make gluten free cookies as long as it has over 1/8th oat flour? Maybe even Cinnamon buns fit a lot of the same ingredients as challah? Not to get all rabbinical, but does the Hebrew for what bread you have on Shabbat specify bread as opposed to cakes (which I don’t think was a separate category of food from bread 3000 years ago? The internet says challah started in 15th century Eastern Europe.

The truth is I’m not following a lot of rules for Shabbat anyway, although I try to get close each Friday. I want it to be Jewish, not just a jew making a type of Shabbat type thing on Fridays. so is this: “in for a penny in for a pound” challah is traditional, it must be bread not cake, or is it: as long as you usually do challah you can make cake and treats every once in a while?

[notsocooljess]

Happy WIP Wednesday!

thanks for the tag @thelettersfromnoone! 🎅🏼

please share your last sentence; or, if you don’t have one, share a plot bunny or idea! (OR sketch for your artwork!)

last one before christmas! here’s a snippet of my everlark christmas drabble (that is of course much longer than i intended)🎄

“So remind me of our menu tonight?”

Peeta went on to describe the feast he had planned, which Katniss was already familiar with since she had helped gather much of the items. Roasted duck, brussel sprouts, mashed potatoes. Cheese buns and spinach pastries. Too many types of cookies and apple pie. Normally, Katniss’s mouth would be watering just from the conversation. Currently, the only thing that sounded appetizing was the cheese buns.

“Well if we’re gonna feed the town tonight, shouldn’t we get started?” Katniss asked.

“Soon, but not yet,” Peeta responded.

tagging: @atelierlili & @littlemarianah 🎁

[cruelsister-moved2]

i honestly think one thing gentile non-palestinian leftists need to do urgently is eradicate the idea from your mind that zionism is somehow good for jewish people. we pay lip service to the fact that antizionism isn't antisemitism, that jewish people aren't inherently associated with the state of israel, even that israel doesn't keep jews safe; yet the subtle implication that jews ultimately benefit from zionism creeps into our arguments.

zionism has fostered fundamentalism and pushed jewish communities globally to the right, marginalised and outright erased disaporic cultures, and has contributed to the near-disappearance of entire judaic languages. the zionist project exacerbates antisemitism and then warps discussions of it, encouraging the same dual-loyalty myths and racialised categorisation that were popular in nazi germany. it courts antisemitic christian fundamentalists who fund it because of their apocalyptic beliefs which ultimately involve the annihilation or conversion of all jews, and provides a smokescreen for antisemites who want to push jews from their own countries. and it isolates, incriminates, silences, and arrests the many, many jews who speak out against it.

i don't say this to try and decentre palestinian suffering at this time, hence why this isn't directed at palestinians, but i think it's incredibly important for the integrity of our arguments to recognise unequivocally that zionism is not beneficial to jewish people either.

[tabithatwo]

mirrors and reflections in yellowjackets (part one: the pilot)

yellowjackets pilot (2019) / behind the draped mirror by colin dickey (2015) / on dionysus by svetlana kirute (2022) / venus in venice by anne hollander (1998) / venus with a mirror by titian (1555) / aphrodite and mirrors, author unknown (2009)

[chicago-geniza]

At the register and the info desk all day tomorrow. Brainstorming a Cora Levinson backstory fanfiction because assimilated, first-gen upwardly mobile child of nouveau riche parents, with a Jewish immigrant dad and a Midwestern Christian mother, who grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio during the Reconstruction Era, is such historian bait to me, specifically, I actually cannot resist the premise

[the-first-man-is-a-cat]

Chaim Gross, Happy Children, 1973

Website Description:

“Chaim Gross grew up in a large and loving Jewish family with ten brothers and sisters. When he was very young, Gross saw his parents nearly beaten to death for their religious beliefs by Cossack soldiers. As an adult, he compensated for this trauma by sculpting large families, as in Happy Children, which shows two small children emulating the adults who dance with them. The larger figures and the ring of bronze symbolically protect the children, as Gross's parents had been unable to do”.

[cherryblossomshadow]

Hallmark movies are fascist propaganda

Excerpts (all bolding mine):

Hallmark then flip-flopped, apologizing for pulling the ads and claiming they have been "a progressive pioneer on television for decades" and "committed to diversity and inclusion." Which is, of course, laughable to anyone who has even glancing knowledge of the channel's offerings. Running down this year's schedule of Christmas movie offerings is like a trip into an uncanny valley of shiny-teethed, blow-dried heteronormative whiteness, with only a few token movies with characters of color. It's like watching "The Stepford Wives," but scarier, since the evil plot to replace normal people with robots is never actually revealed. None of this should be a surprise, because Hallmark movies, as cloying and saccharine as they are, constitute the platonic ideal of fascist propaganda. That is probably a startling statement to some. When most of us think about fascistically propagandistic movies, we think of the grotesque grandeur of Leni Riefenstahl's films celebrating the Third Reich — grand, but cold sweeping shots of soldiers goose-stepping and flags waving, all meant to inspire awe and terror. But the reality is, even in Nazi Germany, the majority of movies approved by the Nazi minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, were escapist and feather-light, with a Hallmark movie-style emphasis on the importance of "normality."

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Instead of characters driven by real feelings, therefore, the guiding hand of "normalcy" pulls the characters along through narratives — and unsurprisingly, that idea of "normalcy" doesn't have a lot of room for the true diversity of American experiences.

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Sadly, it's hard to imagine it being any other way. The qualities that people cite when they defend Hallmark movies — comforting, formulaic, soothing — are all a result of the aggressively conformist impulse that drives them. And that impulse and fealty to the dominant culture stands in direct contrast to the values of diversity Hallmark facetiously claims to hold. Hallmark movies, with their emphasis on returning home and the pleasures of the small, domestic life, also send a not-at-all subtle signal of disdain for cosmopolitanism and curiosity about the larger world, which is exactly the sort of attitude that helps breed the kind of defensive white nationalism that we see growing in strength in the Donald Trump era.

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If you don't believe me, listen to authoritarians themselves. At the Federalist, which is ground zero website for generating frankly fascist "culture war" arguments, Hans Fiene argues that, "culturally speaking, Hallmark Christmas movies are noticeably Christian." By this, Fiene isn't talking about characters who actually go to church or pray — even self-identified conservative Christians don't want to see that — but a set of patriarchal and authoritarian values that are more about white evangelicals defining themselves as an ethnic group, and not about a genuine feeling of spirituality. The movies always depict a "heroine who begins the story loving her self-involved life in the city chooses family and a life of self-sacrifice in her hometown," he writes, arguing that it's the "last remaining hideout" for those who want a fantasy of a world where "the cynicism and immorality of modern life aren’t allowed." By "cynicism and immmorality," Fiene explains he's talking about "fornication" and acceptance of "sexual deviants," by which he means LGBTQ people.

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None of this, of course, means that everyone who watches Hallmark Christmas movies is some kind of fledgling fascist. These movies are not for me, but I believe people when they say they find it relaxing to watch these predictable movies that have low stakes because none of the characters feel like real people. I've got my own flavors of trashy entertainment I fully enjoy without mistaking it for high art. (Baby Yoda, what's up?) Still, it's critical to be mindful of the role that Hallmark movies are actually playing in our society. The very fact that they're presented as harmless fluff makes it all the more insidious, the way they work to enforce very narrow, white, heteronormative, sexist, provincial ideas of what constitutes "normal."

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Ultimately, there's a reason that authoritarian religious right groups like One Million Moms and American Family Association — who made the initial demands on Hallmark to end the lesbian-inclusive ads — believe that the Hallmark Channel "belongs" to them. They may use euphemisms like "family friendly," but as there is nothing more family friendly than light PDAs from loving couples at weddings, we can say for certain that is not what bothers them. Instead, it's because they believe Hallmark is "safe" because it excludes people who don't fit their extremely rigid ideas about what constitutes "normal." "So many people feel betrayed because this is one of the very last channels that families could go to and not be bombarded with politically correct commercials and the LGBTQ agenda," the American Family Association griped in a press release. Note that the language is solely that of exclusion. This isn't about Christian conservatives wanting more Hallmark movies that show characters who actually go to church or anything like that.

What makes something "family friendly" and "Christian" is who is not allowed inside the fantasy land of impossibly expensive rural houses and women who are realizing that they wanted to just get married to the boy next door all along.

Ultimately, there is probably no way to square the claim to believe in "diversity" with fascistic impulse that guides the current crop of Hallmark movies, which center always around these frankly MAGA-style ideas about what constitutes "real" America. As the Jewish movies show, the best that Hallmark can do is some token "diversity" that wipes out most of what makes people actually diverse. Their money comes from selling a vision of America that increasingly authoritarian conservatives wish to believe once existed and can be restored again — an America that excludes most of an increasingly urban, racially diverse, cosmopolitan nation. That won't change no matter how many inclusive Zola ads the network airs.

[jacks-weird-world]

Jack annoying Ed, his dad: The Return!

[basingstokemercury]

Serious question what's up with everyone making fun of country nowadays and invoking tropes I don't think I've even seen

"it's backwards and conservative" Do you have any familiarity with Johnny Cash? An activist for Native American rights whose iconic image is the Man In Black as a symbol for the disadvantaged? The songs Folsom Prison Blues? Man In Black? And I know Tumblr loves Dolly Parton as a person, for good reason - 9 To 5, her signature workers' rights protest, isn't quite country, but most of her discography is.

"it's too religious" Fair - several musically excellent songs lean too heavily into Christian themes for me to enjoy as a Jew (though I'm sure Christian audiences love them, progressive ones too). But many of those religious songs evoke more universally applicable ideas of brotherhood, hope, and justice - and are those really things worthy of mockery?

"the emotions are shallow" I See A Darkness is one of the most authentic portrayals of depression in music I know of. Many country songs have themes of love, heartbreak, and drama/tragedy - but those are common to music across nearly all genres, even if specific songs don't land for everyone.

At the end of the day it's just a music genre, yes, but one that does have emotional significance for many people, cultural significance for many others, and as much diversity in content and performer talent as any genre of entertainment.

And it's not very fun to have cherished childhood memories and music that genuinely resonates with you mocked just about everywhere you turn aside from people who are actually fans of it.

[sarishim]

really wish people would stop throwing around the word n.azi to just describe anything/anyone they dont like.

[sootyships]

the fact that yankee movies and shows consistently use not-even-light-haired people to play blonds and, like, targaryens, just honestly genuinely gets on my nerves.

like i love orlando bloom as legolas as much as the next person but for fuck's sake you'd have such an easier time if you actually used blonds???? it's not like blonds are cryptids?!?!?!?!?!?!

[mossboys]

i’ve been trying to stay off social media in general but honestly nothing has radicalized me like this has. i think about it constantly. i’ve never been on the verge of tears almost constantly because of anything in the news before

[garlic-and-cloves]

It just occurred to me how my parents "be a computer scientist or an engineer! It pays really well!" Is just the current iteration of the doctor-or-lawyer stereotype

[via-the-ghoul]

The Wolf siblings are scaremerican

Clawdia is one of them

She’s introduced in Frights Camera Action

She’s unliving in Londoom.

Clawdia Wolf is an Scaremercian Werewolf in Londoom