#Jewish trauma

[fromchaostocosmos]

any other Jews super duper nervous for Pesach due to the history of Blood Libel and Pesach and the amount of Blood Libel and overall antisemitism that we have been seeing increasing exponentially lately. And being seen in both Right and Left extreme fringes as well in main stream.

Also super duper nervous for Easter because again the antisemitism and Blood Libel that we would happen in the past around Easter and how much we are seeing it the same things now.

Just very nervous and nerve wracking time. I really am worried on top the worry that I already have about the safety for Jews and communities.

I just have a terrible feeling that something bad will happen on Pesach.

[garlic-and-cloves]

How can people look at Hamas and think they are good?

How can they see how Hamas violently raped, murdered, and took hostage Israeli civilians on October 7th and support that?

How can anyone read how Hamas continued sexually assaulting, starving, and torturing those hostages and not say anything?

How can anyone hear how they just murdered 6 hostages 3 days ago so they'd be dead instead of rescued and not hate Hamas and what they've done?

How can anyone know how many ceasefires Hamas has broken, how they've launched rockets from hospitals, how they've prevented aid from getting to their own civilians and still see them as having done no wrong?

[mylight-png]

I've been wondering how to put this feeling into words but then came across this post. I still want to write my own take but I'm in the trenches of exam week so I'm sharing this for now instead.

[historic-meme]

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day. This whole week l have been thinking alot about the Holocaust. So last night I re-read maus. One panel really stuck out to me during this reading. For context this is in Maus 2 when Art is talking to his therapist, a Holocaust survivor, about how he feels he could never measure up to his father who survived Auschwitz. At this point in the story his father had already past. May his memory be a blessing.

The dialogue, “but you weren’t in Auschwitz. You were in Rego Park,” hit me like a punch to the chest. I have no better way to explain the paradoxical guilt I felt and continue to feel as the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor. I did not live during the Holocaust. It had ended before my grandmother reached eighteen years old. And yet, the Shoah seems to loom over me. Forever a reminder, that I am alive by sheer luck. My great grandfather’s parents as well as two of his brothers were murdered in Auschwitz. My great grandmother’s twin sister was also murdered in the Holocaust. Despite hours of research, I still have no idea where exactly she died.

Using the term guilty for what I feel doesn’t seem exactly right but there is no better word in the English language. Maybe if I was smarter or more articulate I could find better words.

A key theme of this chapter is intergenerational trauma. This is the same chapter that has this iconic image.

On this Holocaust Remembrance Day, I simply want to acknowledge the real and extremely painful intergenerational trauma and inherited survivors guilt felt by descendants of Jewish survivors. I know I struggled in the past with feeling like I even have any right to feel this way considering I am three generations removed from any of my family that were murdered in the Holocaust. If any other Jews struggle with thoughts like this, I want to assure you that your feelings are valid and real. Intergenerational trauma is complicated and the feelings that come with it don’t simply disappear once a certain number of generations from the event pass.

This post is specifically about the Holocaust and jewish intergenerational trauma stemming from our persecution and genocide. If this post resonates with you as a non-Jew who has intergenerational trauma I am glad, but please do not derail this post.

[random-internet-teen]

[zoi-no-miko]

Taking my politics hat off - because I know we're not on tumblr for that terrible and scary propaganda soup -

For anyone that's struggling to personally connect with our friends effected by this senseless tragedy but afraid of saying the wrong thing - I highly recommend this short but really effective read.

(And for my dear Jewish friends, I hear your suffering and wish my love for you could help more. I hope this can help do some heavy lifting with the goy you are struggling to talk to.)

[glitzy-dynamite]

Please STOP comparing Israel government to h*tler. I don’t want to talk about my opinion on Israel and HAMAS war but comparing Jewish people to the person who COMMITTED HOLOCAUST is a spit in the face to all Jewish people.

[magnetothemagnificent]

Jewish trauma: Hillel security guard finds an unidentified bag at the entrance. A few moments of panic until it turns out it belongs to one of the Mashgichim for the deli. Thank G-d.

[tetedump]

Because that's the other part of being a Jew in Europe— each step I take is in defiance of everyone who didn't want me here.

- The Ghosts of Rose Hill, R. M. Romero

[philosopherking1887]

Genocide is never a lesson for the victim.

I feel like that one needs to be emphasized on here especially, because I have actually seen people saying that the Jews must be especially evil because we "had an opportunity to learn from our genocide that genocide is bad." What the fuck?! History is not a kids' afternoon special. Aside from the fact that Israelis do believe that genocide is bad, and generally don't understand what's happening in Gaza as genocide (i.e., as an attempt to eliminate/eradicate Palestinians as a group) -- unlike many other instances of genocide, which are often explicitly conceived as an effort to eliminate a certain despised ethnic or religious group, or to erase its group identity (as in Ukraine, or with the Uyghurs in Xinjiang) -- it's absurd to think that what a people will take from a nearly successful genocide is a moral lesson. What they will take from it is collective trauma and the determination to preserve their own group identity, to never let that happen to them again.

a list of don'ts for goyim in regard to jews and jewishness

do not ever ever compare jews or a jewish person to vermin. i don’t care what the context is. it is an incredibly historically loaded thing

do not under any circumstances alter our magen david or call it something dirty or awful. it is a symbol of all jews, and if you call it something like “satanic”, you are hurting all jews

do not insert israel or palestine in conversations about jewishness or jews when it has nothing to do with either subject

do not blame the actions of israel on world jewry

do not think knowing a jew gives you authority on anything. having a jewish SO or friend gives you authority on nothing

do not think that your country does not have an antisemitism problem.

do not think that antisemitism is isolated to one region or one people

do not think that antisemitism today is harmless or dead or a “political tool”

do not ever source nazi/neonazi material for any of your social justice work. i don’t care how “spot on they are for this one issue”, if you do that, you are trash and your social activism is trash too.

do not celebrate our holidays because you think it would be a fun thing to do. would you think it’s fun or interesting to walk into a synagogue surrounded by cops on yom kippur, weak from fasting, knowing that your chances of experiencing violence on this holy day have increased a hundredfold because of your jewishness? 

do not respond to accusations of antisemitism with “i bet you’re a zionist”. 

do not ever speak over a jew on jewish identity. 

do not erase or ignore our suffering

do not call our genocide a white people’s genocide

do not use our genocide against us. genocide is never a lesson for the victim

do not forget the various genocides and suffering of jews outside of europe and the holocaust. 

do not forget that we are as subject to various -isms as gentiles. your social activism is not intersectional if you forget jews. 

do not forget the jewish history of various social movements

do not forget that we are a varied people—jews are never a monolith. 

[fromchaostocosmos]

Lets talk about trauma

I know that on the many years I've been on this site that the Jewish users of tumblr have discussed, explained, broken down, and shown over and over the multiple ways we are all effected by our generational and communal trauma.

The way that Jews from all over world and varying backgrounds yet all shared the same fears, learned the same survival mechanisms, played the same "games" that were not games, but rather ways to teach children how to survive, just the same everything.

Ask any Jew if nightmares about pogroms and/or the Holocaust and being taken or dying in it and they will tell you yes.

The amount of trauma Jews carry within us is, withing our DNA, within our bodies, within our brains in is immense. We carry several thousands years worth of trauma.

We carry it all. The hypervigilance, that stress cycle, the paranoia, the various of hormones that keep us in semi permanent state of stress, the tension, and more. If you have ever done any research into what trauma does the body, the brain, to a person then you can understand.

Currently Jews who stressed and traumatized people doing our best are being severally stressed and traumatized on a whole new level.

I fear for what this will do to us in the long term. I will not be surprised if Jewish people come out this all with PTSD. I know that I've already had a nightmare where I was at some nebulous Jewish place and a bunch people who came and shot and killed us including me and did so claiming to so in name of freeing Palestine.

Which is sad that I nightmare like that because I shouldn't have to experience that. And Palestinians deserve better than to have antisemites hijacking their cause and needs so that these antisemites can pretend that they are not antisemities.

It is honestly very sad to watch how much of the pro-Palestine movement/people do not actually listen to Palestinians themselves. How much they do not care about what Palestinians want, think, or need. How much this movement supports Hamas despite Gazans direct statements and feelings that say don't support Hamas. How much these groups still will push "charities" that send funding to Hamas or not credible instead of ones that give help to Palestinians.

The self-immolation of the air force man really cemented for how much this movement has been over taken and how little they care for what Palestinians think, say, or want. Because these people have been praising, lionizing, and glorifying this man death is direct defiance of what Palestinians have said.

The way this man death has been treated and talked about makes me extremally worried, and I know other Jews are too, that we may see suicide bombers attacking Jewish centers of life and community. Which in case it isn't clear then I want to make clear this not something I blame Palestinians or Muslims for.

No, this is something we are seeing from people living in the west who culturally Christian.

The way these people talk about martyrdom is terrifying. The way that they talk about Jews is I want to say horrifying and I want to terrifying because it is and it is all not anything new or suprising.

It is horrific, it is disturbing, and there are moments of shock, but not surprise.

I don't know if it is because I've just become numb or because it is the shit gets regurgitated over and over or maybe some combination of both.

Here is a picture of pomegranate for making to the end of this rather depressing post. Pomegranates are wonderful and make things better.

[random-internet-teen]

Having feels again. Unfortunately sad ones.

Thinking about judaism, motherhood, relationships.

It’s Chanukah, and my mom is no longer suicidal. This most recent resurgence was caused by many things but one is that it was recently his birthday on the Hebrew calendar. And it’s been around five years since he’s been able to talk to his own mom.

And with all that baggage finally not making him suicidal, he’s starting to teach me the prayers associated with Chanukah.

Tonight we watched fiddler on the roof. A Jewish classic and the source for many tears over the years.

So well cooking latkes, we watched fiddler. It’s later now but I can’t help but miss a Jewish community i barely ever had. And probably never will

To day i drove past protesters waving flags for organizations founded by nazis (the nazi party of germany)

These protesters were quite obviously trying to prevent the public menorah lighting.

I miss living in the Jewish ghetto I spent so much time in. Because well they hated me and my family for being queer at least they didn’t want to kill me.



I want to have kids. I really really want to have kids. Not necessarily biological kids or my own kids. I’ve been planning on fostering for a long time now. But my current partner gags at the mention, I mean I knew this was probably going to happen.

I’m a butch bisexual, and I won’t find the magical perfect person. But seeing motel and tzeitel… g-d I want that.

I want to fall in love with another Jew. I want to help keep my culture and religion alive. In the weird queer way I participate in it

I want to have sabbots and bake challah,

I think this rant is over for now. Thanks for reading

[zaprowsdower27]

Once, Babylon seemed an invincible threat. Babylon is gone now; only archaeologists remember it.

We're still here.

Once, Rome seemed an invincible threat. Rome is gone now, only tourists remember it.

We're still here.

Once, the Crusaders seemed an invincible threat. The Crusaders are gone now, only historical dramas remember them.

We're still here.

Once, scapegoating for plague seemed an invincible threat. Those who scapegoated us are gone, long forgotten, the plague slain by antibiotics.

We're still here.

Once, the Inquisition seemed an invincible threat. The Inquisition is gone now, only comedians remember them.

We're still here.

Once, the rise of exclusionary nationalism seemed an invincible threat. Those nations have risen and fallen, the political movements that forged them remembered only by historians.

We're still here.

Once, the rise of Eugenics rendering us inferior vermin seemed an invincible threat. Eugenics has fallen, only historians and the scorned remember it.

We're still here.

Once, the Tsars both White and Red seemed invincible. The Tsars of both colors are gone now, and only a pale and thinly stretched shadow remembers them.

We're still here.

Once, the third Reich of Germany seemed an invincible threat. The Third Reich is gone now, and only desperate fools remember them.

We're still here.

Now, old new dangers have risen, those same desperate fools and former friends seeking scapegoats, who together seem invincible and inescapable.

But they, as with all things, will pass, in time.

And we will still be here.

[hilacopter]

leftists' all lives matter approach whenever antisemitism is brought up is extremely hypocritical and straight up disgusting. it's always "antisemitism is bad BUT ALSO-" no. no "but also". that's the end of the sentence. imagine saying that shit about any other form of bigotry.

[trying-to-jew]

Constantly torn between my desire to convert and the crushing weight of knowing that I won’t be able to exist in the wider fandom spaces that I love without being constantly reminded that Jews are always guilty until proven innocent post-Oct 7.

[still-searching-for-something]

Today was Yom HaShoah, the day that Jews remember the Holocaust. The Holocaust was the industrialized genocide of the European Jewry by Nazi Germany and its collaborators from 1941-1945.

This is a really simple opening statement, but bear with me--I think it gets a lot more... 'yeah, buts' than most people may realize. And I think a good way of illuminating that is to break down the difference between how gentiles and Jews commemorate and remember it.

In my experience, gentiles seem to view the Holocaust as the ultimate example of mankind's barbarity to mankind. Like, the distillation of evil, the most obvious example of dehumanization and bigotry brought to its horrifying and extreme conclusion. They emphasize Nazi Germany's responsibility, elevate the instances of non-Jewish Frenchmen and Poles and Germans who made efforts to save Jewish lives, and generally view Nazi oppression as a catastrophe of whom Jews were one of many victims. And they emphasize the Allied Powers' role in ending it by liberating the camps and invading Germany. Hence why International Holocaust Remembrance Day falls on January 27th, the day Auschwitz was liberated.

But Jews have a different perspective.

We view the Holocaust as the most extreme manifestation of--but far from the conclusion to--mankind's barbarity to Jews. Not to his fellow man, per se, not to some universalized insert minority here slot, but to Jews, particularly and deliberately. The Nazis could never have accomplished their genocide were it not for the two millennia of anti-Jewish hatreds and dehumanization embedded deep in the institutions and political structures of European society. They didn't have to persuade Europe that the Jews were incurably evil, the Europeans already believed that. The Nazis had 99% of their work done before they'd even come to power, work that was done by the the Russian Empire, the Romans, Martin Luther, Christian Passion Plays, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the centuries of blood libels, the Fourth Lateran Council, the New Testament, the Spanish Empire, and on and on and on and on. It's as if some people think Hitler just woke up one day, out of the blue, with a total hatred of Jews and managed to use propaganda to convince the previously 100% tolerant Germans to hate Jews, too. Antisemitism did not begin or end with the Holocaust.

The sole responsibility of Nazi Germany in the Holocaust is also just... not true. Vichy France rounded up 13,152 Jews in the Vel' d'Hiv roundup, with not a single German participant, and sent them off to be murdered in Auschwitz. Vichy passed antisemitic legislation without any outside coercion--French Jews were hiding as much from the French police as they were from the Gestapo. France, of course, was the home of the Dreyfus Affair--antisemitism was and is a deep part of French society. And it isn't just France. Ukrainian nationalists participated in the Lviv pogroms, killing maybe around 8,000 Jews, Poles perpetrated the Jedwabne pogrom, and that doesn't even bring in that countries like the US, Switzerland and Ireland and Britain blocked Jewish emigrants, and I could just keep going on, but I think you get the point. Quite simply, six million Jews interspersed throughout Europe don't get murdered if it isn't without the collaboration of--or at minimum, silent assent and indifference--of all of their neighbors. The Nazis were the primary perpetrators of the Holocaust, of course, but almost all of Europe collaborated on some level, too. And this is a history that gets wiped away in favor of the comforting narrative of the Allied Powers bursting into Auschwitz, killing Nazis, and being horrified by what they've found, and then the poor people in the surrounding towns having NO IDEA about what had been going on. I think this narrative is why gentiles have International Holocaust Remembrance Day when Auschwitz was liberated--when they 'came to the rescue'--and why we have Yom HaShoah on the day in the Jewish calendar that the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising began--when we died on our own terms in spite of our murderers.

Think of the tiny, unwritten, centuries old minhagim of small Jewish shetls and towns like Trochenbrod, which were entirely annihilated. The end of the burgeoning Yiddish cinema. Yiddish going from 13 million speakers to 600,000 today. See how many entries in this list of shetls end with "town/city survived, but all/most Jews exterminated." Imagine for a moment, the potential rabbis and scholars and actors and scientists and artists who could have lived, had they survived or been born of Jews did. Three and a half million Polish Jews, to around 15,000 to 20,000 Polish Jews today. Imagine if Thessaloniki were still a majority Jewish city. How many Jews worldwide would be alive today had the Holocaust never happened? I've heard estimations of 32 million, compared to the real life 16 million. To kill such a massive number of people from an already tiny minority group--that has real consequences. The cultural loss for the Jewish people is staggering and beyond human comprehension.

And yet, the Nazis deliberate targeting of us is, in many ways, being pushed aside. Magnus Hirschfeld was gay, yes, and advanced the Institute of Sexology way ahead of its time and yeah, the Nazis were homophobic. But they were homophobic for antisemitic reasons. They viewed his work as Jewish perversions BECAUSE Dr. Hirschfeld was Jewish. In fact, they viewed homosexuality as a creation of the Jews. But so many progressive queer people, especially those who run in antizionist circles, seem to be trying to co-opt the Holocaust as being their trauma, downplaying Hirschfeld's Jewishness and holding the Institute up as proof that queer people were the 'real' victims of the Holocaust, entirely shutting out the millions of Jews, Sinti, Roma, and Slavs who were murdered. You can also see this in anti-mask conservatives comparing masking mandates during the pandemic to anti-Jewish legislation in the Holocaust, or the comparisons of the ongoing war against Hamas as being a 'modern day Holocaust.'

This phenomenon, Holocaust universalization, gets so much pushback from Jews for a reason--it downplays the anti-Jewish character of the Holocaust. It's softcore Holocaust denial. And it's so ridiculous we even have to say that, as the whole point of the Holocaust was to be anti-Jewish, to be the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question." It's 'All Lives Mattering' the Holocaust. Holocaust universalization, and Holocaust inversion--the phenomenon of talking about Jews, Zionists, or Israelis as perpetrating a 'new Holocaust'--minimizes and trivializes the astounding damage and traumas and death and destruction wrought by the Holocaust. It's a polemical lie, so incendiary and so insulting--imagine telling a sexual assault survivor that they're morally no better than their rapist--that the only thing it can be is antisemitic. It is beyond reprehensible to talk like that, but it's so mainstream and acceptable to do it. Activists who say these things need to examine their own rhetoric, because it's dangerous, antisemitic, and adjacent to Holocaust denial. Not a place I think anyone should want to be.

The Holocaust is not a lesson Jews should have learned, an educational seminar, a 'card' Jews play, a choose your own adventure novel, a philosophical meditation on the nature of mankind's evils, or an empty slate upon which to project modern politics, warfare, or your ideology onto.

The Holocaust is, quite simply, the industrialized genocide of the European Jewry by Nazi Germany and its collaborators from 1941-1945. And today was Yom HaShoah, the day we remember that.