#Jews of Scotland

[edenfenixblogs]

Reform/ProgressiveJews of Glasgow:

How are y’all doing? I was potentially looking at a move to Scotland last year, but it looks like that won’t happen due to health reasons.

But when I was researching possible areas in Scotland to live I saw that there was only one reform synagogue in all of Glasgow and that most Jews in Glasgow are considered Progressive/Reform. How’s the community holding up there? You feeling ok? Any way for Jews across the pond help ya feel a bit better?

[nesyanast]

Early morning light in the synagogue.

Photo: Edinburgh Hebrew Congregation stained glass windows by me

[bimdraws]

Scottish Jews for a Free Palestine 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🇵🇸

[eretzyisrael]

Source

[totallyhussein-blog]

Take a journey with The Wolf of Baghdad

In the 1940’s, a third of Baghdad’s population was Jewish. Within a decade nearly all of Iraq’s 150,000 Jews had fled. 'The Wolf of Baghdad' is a graphic memoir of a lost homeland and a wordless narrative for a home never visited.

'The Wolf of Baghdad' is a unique audio-visual journey through a Jewish family’s memories of their lost Iraqi homeland and speaks to audiences about the little-known story of Iraqi Jews.

[autistic-katara]

lmao i’m not allowed to leave my house on friday or saturday for fear of a violent attack, wow i fucking love this situation/s

[docholligay]

Small temple announcement that requires a formal card:

SCOTTISH JEWS ARE COMING LOOK ALIVE, EVERYONE

[lilydvoratrelundar]

having Fun being the only jew at my dad's family's easter thing and basically having to provide a whole religious education about why I'm not eating the bread

[mhaccunoval]

well now i need everyone to tell me what letters from their wives they have open

leaving wikipedia tabs open to refer to later like rereading a love letter from your wife while you’re away at war

[jewishbarbies]

this is the dumbest fucking tweet. “Israel won’t make it to its 100th birthday” why? is it going to magically disband? disappear? where tf do leftists think whole countries go? this bullshit one or the other attitude is just fucking annoying at this point. like how do you not know how stupid you sound yet?

would love for leftists to go this hard for actual colonies that still exist or countries forced into partnership that they don’t want, like scotland and wales (or advocate for stupid fucking americans to stop voting against puerto rico’s independence). would love for them to put energy into literally any other cause that actually embodies everything they claim this one does with this much passion. but they can’t get this into a cause unless they get to hate jews. they didn’t even take blm this seriously. and there’s a reason for that.

[unsolicited-opinions]

Just saying like . Of your countries list a lot of these Are heavily criticised by those who take a stance against Israel’s government and current political status. Turkey and Northern Ireland being listed are banger examples. Also of the countries you listed with official religions, the depth of which religion is involved in general affairs varies drastically. I’m Scottish, you listed Scotland, the Church of Scotland has literally no influence on politics and laws, its heritage / a left over item by English Protestants more than anything. I do in fact, firmly think any country having an official religion meddling in state affairs is bad, actually, but the list you pulled together has such massive variety it’s not really making a big point imo. Afghanistan and like Scotland have very different levels of religious control over government and every citizens life. Both shouldn’t be there but, not comparable aside from the simple fact they have an official religion 😭

Cool. Tell me more about what level of ethnic or religious identity you think is okay in a modern nation state? Not joking - I think that's an important conversation to have and I'd like to have it.

I agree that the UK's level of religious establishment is mostly harmless. There is real freedom of religion, despite the fact that the Monarch takes vows to protect the Church of England and the Church of Scotland. There is real freedom of religion despite the fact that public funds go to religious schools. I don't think those circumstances are ideal, but I think the UK lives up to Enlightenment Liberal values by truly protecting religious freedoms for religious minorities and having laws against religious discrimination.

The same cannot be said, for instance (as you mention) for Afghanistan, Iran, or Egypt.

Meanwhile, non-Jewish Israelis have the exact same legal rights as Jewish Israelis. (If you would like to dispute this fact, please cite sources). As every citizen of the UK has equal rights of religious freedom, so do the citizens of Israel. Israeli non-Jews are judges and members of Israel's parliament, the Knesset.

So, how does this differ from the UK?

I totally agree with you that ANY establishment of religion is potentially problematic- But if Israel's identity as a Jewish state is bothersome while it has true freedom of religion which none of its neighbors have, I'm asking why Israel is singularly bothersome to its detractors for having an ethnic/religious identity.

And, again, I really would like to hear *answers* to this question which leverage facts and reason.

Lastly, thank you for offering a differing view without resorting to slurs or telling me to kill myself. I value and appreciate your civility more than I can adequately express.

It is one of my life's ambitions to visit Scotland. I loved how the Scots responded to Trump's visit. David Tennant made my week with this one.

Wishing you well in these awful times.

[nesyanast]

The Edinburgh Hebrew Congregation Orthodox Synagogue houses six stained windows by the distinguished Scottish stained glass artist William Wilson, RSA. These richly coloured works combine Jewish religious symbols with abstract and floral motifs with one depicting the act of Creation.

Photos by me

[bimdraws]

UK Jews for Palestine 🇵🇸🇬🇧

[ollywander]

Dutch Jewish Snape

I’ve been headcanon-ing Snape as Dutch, which sounds random, but hear me out.

Jewish!Snape is a very common headcanon; however, British Jews are not very common because they were purged from the U.K. multiple times throughout history. That being said, Jews were pretty common in the Netherlands before the Holocaust (many were Sephardic because the Netherlands was previously under Spanish control. If Snape is any kind of Jewish, it’s probably Sephardic. He doesn’t have traditional Ashkenazi features).

Snape’s hypothetical Jewish family:

Father:

Tobias being the Jewish one makes the most sense to me. Eileen attended Hogwarts in the fifties, meaning she was born in the forties or very late thirties. Tobias probably was also born in the forties. This could be the result of a Jewish mother moving to the U.K. before World War II as tensions and violence against Jews rose. Snape is an English location name, meaning Tobias’ hypothetical Jewish mother would have married an Englishman. Having fled the Netherlands, she might have been poor, down on her luck, which would make sense with the poverty of Snape’s childhood. After seeking asylum in the U.K., she would have had Tobias probably between 1935 and 1940, given that Snape was born in 1960 and in the Harry Potter universe, characters inexplicably almost always have kids around the age of twenty and the man is always at least a little older. She would have named this child Tobias, a very common name in the Netherlands; less so in the U.K. (though still normal). Tobias is also a Jewish name, symbolizing (the) goodness (of G-d). A reminder of home. Tobias, having Jewish ancestry, might have been more open that your average Church of England man to marry a witch because Jews are more closely connected with magic (the Kabbalah, for example, is an important book of magic in Judaism). Also, Judaism passes from the mother to the child. If Tobias were Jewish, his son would only practice Judaism if Eileen was also Jewish.

Mother:

Eileen Snape née Prince is less likely to be Jewish, in my opinion. She came from a pureblood family, probably well established already in England. Given the expungement and number of Jews in England, a well established Jewish family, let alone a wizarding one, is unlikely. She has dark hair, dark eyes, and thick brows. These features are stereotypically Jewish, but also stereotypically Scottish and/or Welsh. The name Eileen is Scottish. The surname “Prince” is common in Scotland. She probably has Scottish and/or Welsh ancestry; likely both given the long-standing history of magic within Wales, and the fictional town of Cokesworth’s location proximity to Wales (Cokesworth is right under Wales in south-west England. Lily Potter née Evans is from Cokesworth. Evans is a Welsh surname. There is probably a good sized Welsh diaspora in Cokesworth. Also, Eileen is not shown to have had a Scottish accent).

Side note: Tobias being Jewish rather than Eileen also makes sense because Judaism is passed from mother to child. Severus Snape does not practice Judaism. Tobias (and obviously, we don’t know whether he would have practiced or not) might not have practiced it because when he was born, there was a mass genocide of Jews and it would have been frightening and unwise to reveal that about himself. Also, British father, probably Christian, agnostic, or atheist — not Jewish.

TL;DR:

I think Tobias Snape’s mother was a Jewish woman from Amsterdam.

EDIT: OH MY GOD I forgot to add that Latin names are common in the Netherlands! A regular Englishman might have had some objection to naming his kid Severus, but in the Netherlands, though still pretty strange, it wouldn’t have been as weird. I wouldn’t blink an eye if I ran into a Dutch guy called Severus Tobias Something-or-Other.

EDIT II: Another thing. The parish of Snape, England is right across the channel from the Netherlands.

[totallyhussein-blog]

The taste of home. How Iraqi Jewish food ignites the senses

'The food of the Iraqi Jews tells our story. M’hasha is about community. The project of coring vegetables, stuffing them with herbed rice, and stewing them in tangy tamarind is made quick by many hands.

Tebit is a distinctly Jewish dish. Traditionally made to feed dozens of family members on the Sabbath, the spiced chicken and rice are placed in the oven on Friday night and cooked overnight on low through Saturday.'

'My grandmother’s kitchen was on the Upper East Side, but it tasted of Iraq.' Have you read the stunning article Cooking and Sharing Iraqi Jewish Food Helps Me Imagine a Place I Never Knew by Lucy Simon?

'As Ama brushed butter onto sheets of phyllo dough, she’d share stories of her girlhood in Baghdad.

“We’d swim in the Tigris with water buffalo,” she’d say with delight at my amazement, each layer of pastry unfurling more memories. "To escape the summer heat, we’d sleep on the flat rooftops in the cool night air.”

She’d yell to my grandfather in the living room in Arabic, give my dad instructions in French, and speak politely to my measured Methodist mother in English, but to me, she spoke loving words that needed no translation; she’d call me ayuni (my eyes) and qalbi (my heart).

I’ll never know my Ama’s verdant, cosmopolitan Baghdad, in the region my ancestors called home for 2,500 years. But in her kitchen, I could taste it.'