#Jewish groups

[girlactionfigure]

In the wake of the murder of a 6-year-old Palestinian-American boy in a Chicago suburb, Jewish groups across the religious spectrum are pleading with Americans to not allow anti-Muslim hate to spread because of Israel’s war with Hamas.⁠ ⁠ Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist umbrella bodies have joined a statement spearheaded by the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, a national public policy group, and two Orthodox groups have released their own statements.⁠ ⁠ “This is a moment of deep Jewish pain, mourning the lives taken and praying for the safe release of the hostages in Gaza – and this pain and fear is compounded by a horrific rise in antisemitism here in the United States and around the globe,” said the JCPA statement, which in addition to the religious movements was also signed by the American Jewish Committee, J Street, Hadassah and the National Council of Jewish Women, among other groups.⁠ ⁠ “We also know that we are not the only ones being targeted in this moment,” it said. “Our Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian American neighbors are facing bigotry, threats, and violence – including the despicable murder of a six-year-old child this weekend outside Chicago, by a man who reportedly espoused anti-Muslim hate.”⁠ ⁠ Police on Saturday charged Joseph Czuba, 71, with stabbing the boy, Wadea Al-Fayoum, to death, and seriously injuring the boy’s mother, in Plainfield, Illinois. Police said Czuba was motivated by anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian bias. Reports quoted Czuba’s wife as saying he was moved to rage by conservative media coverage of Israel’s war with Hamas.⁠ ⁠jtanews

[ultrachoppedpenguinbouquet]

Herodians

[sunbeamedskies]

If you see articles and tweets about how the Star of David is now a symbol of fascism and think to yourself "maybe they have a point," then whatever you define as your antizionism has absolutely crossed the line into antisemitism

The Star of David is one of the most important symbols in Judaism. The fact that it is on the flag of Israel does not make it fascist. The government of Israel is separate from the symbol. Labeling such a widely used symbol by a marginalized people as fascist is incredibly dangerous and seeks to conflate Jews as a whole with the Israeli government- something antizionists continually claim people shouldn't do. So why are some doing it?

High control groups slowly ease you into believing nonsensical things. They provide "reasoning" and "logic" which goes largely unchallenged within echo chambers. People in these echo chambers are prone to believing it because they start to see it as real logic instead of bigoted, twisted reasoning. Even otherwise intelligent people can fall for their prejudices as they begin to view it as a form of justice

It is a fantasy that high control group leaders go from 0 to 100 in five minutes or refuse to answer any questions- they are usually much more manipulative

Please confront your biases. The Jews are tired

[vigilskept]

this whole idea in both the fandom and the games themselves that being a people attached to their past & a lost civilization is a failing whereas a celebration of the present is something to strive for wrt elven & dwarven culture is something that reads as fundamentally western & liberal to me.

[yossibutnossi]

Something to address is standing up for Jewish women. Jewish women have always been seen as loud, annoying, dramatic, etc; I'm too tired now but you could definitely connect that pervasive antisemitic trope that Jewish women are somehow more dramatic than non-Jewish women to how a large number of feminists discredit Jewish rape victims from Oct. 7th— you saying a Jewish woman is talking too loud or aggressively on any topics nowadays is just what mysoginists say to any woman who speaks her mind.

[a-s-fischer]

I saw a post by another Jewish person on this site that said Christianity and Islam stole their culture. That isn't a popular opinion among Jews is it?

I mean it's not an opinion, it's historical fact. But also most of us wouldn't care if they didn't blame everything bad about their appropriated and heavily altered cultures on us, and also spent over a thousand years each killing us for not going along with and joining their appropriated and distorted versions of our culture and religion. Christianity was a creation of the Roman empire and its religious system. Once it moved beyond a handful of Jews to a religion of mostly gentile converts, it changed rapidly into something that was only on the surface like Judaism. That superficial version of Judaism with Roman culture underneath is an example of how imperial cultural theft is not a modern phenominon.

Islam is a similar situation, in which a non-Jewish man built a new religion out of the bits and pieces he liked from both Judaism and Christianity, set out to create an empire for that religion, and when Jews had the temerity to not convert, to this new religion, he branded them as deceivers and traitors, and led a massacre of them in his conquered territory.

This happened long enough ago that generations upon generations have been raised in these cultures founded on appropriation, and most Jews would never think to say that these modern people are responsible for this appropriation or should give up their cultures. However, the murder and oppression both Islam and Christianity as institutions have inflicted on the Jewish people is made that little extra bit more galling by those original acts of cultural appropriation.

[infiniteglitterfall]

This is so cool and interesting

In what they called an “archaeological Hanukkah miracle,” a University of Haifa team discovered on Friday a rare hoard of some 160 coins, dating from the Hasmonean period, during a dig in the Jordan Valley, the university said Sunday.

The coins were discovered in what is thought to have been a roadside station, on what was then a main road along Nahal Tirzah that ascended to the Alexandrion Fortress, also known as Sarbata, north of Jericho in what is now the West Bank.

The coins were dated by experts to the reign of “King Alexander Jannaeus, whose Hebrew name was Jonathan… He reigned from 104–76 BCE. He was the son of Johanan Hyrcanus, [and] the grandson of Simon the Hasmonean (brother of Judah Maccabee),” the statement said, noting that the Alexandrion Fortress, near where the coins were discovered, was built by Jannaeus. ...The students and volunteer excavators were very excited to find such a Hasmonean hoard, especially during the Hanukkah holiday,” the researchers said. Dr. Yoav Farhi, part of the research team and an expert on ancient coins, had arrived on Friday at the dig site with a pack of “Hannukah Gelt,” the chocolate coins covered in gold foil that are a ubiquitous feature of the holiday, explained Dr. Shay Bar of the University of Haifa’s Zinman Institute of Archaeology.

Farhi passed them out to the staff and said, “This is so that we will find some coins today, and four or five hours later, the coins were found,” Bar said on Sunday, speaking to The Times of Israel....

This style of coin dates from 80/79 BCE and is extremely rare, the researchers said, who added that the cache is also one of the largest collections of ancient coins ever discovered in the Holy Land. According to Bar, in addition to the collection of 160 coins, other Hasmonean period coins were also discovered during the excavation, bringing the total number of coins found at the site to over 200.

...The site includes a mikvah (ritual bath), a cistern for storing water, and other buildings. It’s likely that the room where the coins were discovered was used as a kitchen or for food preparation, Bar said. “We discovered a Hasmonean site, on the ascent to Sarbata… It’s very Jewish. It’s important because this site was active for a limited period. The moment we have these coins, dating to the time of Alexander Jannaeus, with all the other finds there… it gives us a very exact time capsule, which doesn’t always happen in archaeology,” Bar said.

[halalchampagnesocialist]

This was just a random thought but thinking about the way Zionists act like lineage is always linear (when as Jews they should know its not for a variety of reasons) and therefore they keep making the argument that Palestinians are directly descended from Arab settlers from the peninsula which is such a weird hill to die on. Because if you put aside the fact that there is evidence of Palestinians being descended from peoples existing in the region prior to the conquests who at that time were very diverse themselves!

There is also evidence that Arab settlers did in fact settle in Palestine both prior to and during the conquest, but so did Kurds, so did Turks during the Ottoman era, and so did many other ethnic groups during different periods… after all it was quite a cosmopolitan and religiously important place with many people such as pilgrims and traders passing through… however for the people who chose to make Palestine their home, over time they converged to become culturally and ethnically Arab (of the Palestinian variety) prior to national identity existing, and then later that became Palestinian in name.

But the reason why it’s such a weird hill to die on is that this was not unique to Palestine at all. If you look at Europe, so many countries as we know of them today constituted many ethnic groups within their borders including many languages spoken but simultaneously there was steady migration too, but over time those groups also converged to form a common ethnic, racial or national identity.

And I understand in some cases people were forcefully assimilated and forcefully converted, regardless of where in the world, but the point is why are Palestinians the only ones denied their homeland based on this argument despite it not being a unique case to Palestinian Arabs?

[leroibobo]

really do not think people understand the extent to which palestinian sites/landmarks (especially muslim ones) were destroyed, beginning in 1948 until now, even in cities. the oldest extant mosque in jaffa (al-bahr mosque) was built in 1675, even though islam came there in the 7th century

[charleezard]

I'm so tired and sad. Everywhere I look I see Jewish people feeling lonely and isolated because they lost so many friends and they feel like they can't find anyone who actually cares and understands them. I wish I could just be everyone's friend.

If you're Jewish, or converting, and you need a friend, don't hesitate to DM me or get in contact in some way. I know it's not much, and I know most people won't even see this, but idk it's a start. Don't be shy, I won't judge you. Please reach out if you want to or need to

[chanaleah]

jews 🤝 stew

sephardim 🤝 stew

kaifeng jews 🤝 stew

amazigh jews 🤝 stew

bukharian jews 🤝 stew

mountain jews 🤝 stew

mizrahim 🤝 stew

ashkenazim 🤝 stew

teimani jews 🤝 stew

italkim 🤝 stew

musta'arabi jews 🤝 stew

romaniote jews 🤝 stew

beta israelis 🤝 stew

cochin jews 🤝 stew

[indecisiveavocado]

studying jewish history in various countries vs studying basically any other ethnic group's history in various countries

jewish history: they banned us and killed us, but only, like, once? amazing! truly awesome! go denmark! denmark is a refuge for jews! other history: they killed them? and banned them from coming in? dear god, how does anyone live there? they must be ragingly anti-[group]!

[shalom-iamcominghome]

I'm not in the mood to post, but there is a virtual candle memorial. Get a name, light a candle, and remember them 🕊️

[historicity-was-already-taken]

pixeljade: #it IS very much a complex issue and I feel like saying that has been pissing off a lot of folks on both sides #one fact i would add to the table is that the current actions against palestine DO constitute a genocide by definition #its a word i hear pro-Israel people get very upset by because they think it is inherently comparing this to the holocaust #but its not. some people DO and thats its own discussion. but calling it a “genocide” is simply accurate and undeniable

Speaking as someone who was that pro-Israel person in her teens and very early 20s, the reactions you're describing are 800% cognitive dissonance freak outs. Most of these people, like me, received either directly or indirectly from their Elders in the Jewish community a very trauma-induced and deeply emotional information about the history of this situation, which boils down to: "They tried to kill us all once and they didn't now we finally have returned to the Promised Land, the only place we have to shield ourselves against It Happening Again. Israel's detractors hate that Jews can defend themselves now, and if any of them, including the Palestinians, were to have their way, they'd see us all dead. We must defend ourselves at all costs, and not let anyone ever put us in existential danger as a people ever again."

And then to have some rando 19 year old who knows jack shit about your or your community or your community's trauma to get up in your face and start screaming at you about genocide? It's only going to trigger that intergenerational trauma, and cause the party being screamed at to dig deeper into their defensive, cognitive-dissonance fueled response. Which, if we were to boil that response down to a thought process, looks like "This person hates me and all Jews. They think we're a hive mind who don't deserve to live. Thank G-d for Israel."

What's complex, is that not everything in that trauma response is wrong, and not everything the dumbass 19 yo who has no interest in unpacking their own learned anti-Semitism was wrong.

Israel's actions towards Palestinian Arabs since 1948 does fit several definitions of genocide and/or ethnic cleansing. And many of the Westerners who scream about it the loudest are fairly openly anti-Semitic.

Now, as someone with big Holocaust intergenerational trauma in her family, I am sympathetic to the Jewish kid in this scenario. But cognitive dissonance is just that: the domain of a child. Adults understand that cognitive dissonance is a little voice in our head telling us "Hey comrade our discomfort with this is a little much. Maybe this is a learning opportunity?"

I mean, that's what I did. But it's difficult. Its uncomfortable, and that scares people. It's much easier to believe that "They call it the Naqba because they hate us and think our survival and access to national self-determination is a disaster,"* than it is to understand that "They call it the Naqba because it was the near total dispossession and ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Arab populations from their generational homes and properties."

And again, everything I'm saying here is a result of my journey from a hardcore Zionist-in-the-contemporary-sense child (though always left in terms of domestic US Politics), to a grown Holocaust historian who understands that Israel is no better and no worse than all the other nation states (for new readers, I understand the nation-state as a political entity, the logical end point of which is genocide and/or ethnic cleansing), and openly criticizes it on those grounds.

*A rabbi in a youth group I belonged to told me this almost verbatim when I was 15. And when you're 15 and somebody tells you they love you you're gonna believe them.

[rebellum]

The whole transandrophobia discussion thing is weird bc it feels like it's a bunch of poc and jewish trans people being like "here are my experiences of how specifically being MASCULINE had affected me, and the discrimination and violence I experienced based on that. And here is how that relates to me being a racial/ethnic minority"

And then a few loud white trans people going "ohhh you wanna be oppressed so bad you *slur*. This is why there aren't any poc in your movement it's because REAL poc understand intersectionality"