#National Museum of American Jewish History

[totallyhussein-blog]

“Iraq, you are in our hearts”

The Awafi Kitchen is where Arab and Jewish cuisine are one. They are part of the Iraqi Jewish community and are based in Boston, USA. All of their family were displaced from Iraq between 1950 and 1970. The following statement and photograph were posted on the Facebook page of the Awafi Kitchen, and was titled ‘Our Return to Iraq’.

“Last month, after five decades away, members of our family finally walked the streets in Baghdad, the city they once called home. Out of hundreds  of us in diaspora across the world, we were the first in our family to set foot in Baghdad since our waves of displacement between the 50s and 70s.

The trip was every feeling all at once. Pure joy, gratitude, and reconnection, inextricable from the grief and pain of facing our decades of separation, and seeing much of our family’s hometown deeply changed. 

Our whole lives we’ve dreamed of witnessing the beautiful Baghdad we have been painted in memories. We found beauty, but also bore witness to the impact of decades of war, the US occupation, and ongoing resource extraction, and how this has limited the place’s ability to thrive.

That being said, the people we met were incredible. We spent two weeks surrounded by an abundance of love and warmth everywhere we went. There's beautiful new realities rebuilding. Iraqis returning, Iraqis who have stayed through it all. 

Tender moments of mutual curiosity and excitement: younger Iraqis eager to learn about the old Baghdad of our family’s youth, the lost Jewish history of the city, and in turn our family eager to learn what it’s like to live as an Iraqi in the contemporary world. And ultimately, as friends reminded us, we accomplished our goal: it was just about touching foot to earth, and that we did.

For any Iraqis considering returning like we did, know that you can count on us for advice or perspective. Don’t hesitate to reach out. And for Iraqis with a reluctance to return, for those who still cannot, we empathize with you. Iraq, you are in our hearts.”

[sabistarphotos]

January 7th, 2023

Weizman National Museum of American Jewish History, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

[rotzaprachim]

some smaller bookstores, presses, and museum shops to browse and know about! Most support smaller presses, diverse authors and authors in translation, or fund museums and arts research)

(disclaimer: the only three I’ve personally used are the Yiddish book center, native books, and izzun books! Reccomend all three. Also roughly *U.S. centric & anglophone if people have others from around the world please feel free to add on

birchbark books - Louise Erdrich’s book shop, many indigenous and First Nations books of a wide variety of genres including children’s books, literature, nonfiction, sustainability and foodways, language revitalization, Great Lakes area focus (https://birchbarkbooks.com/)

American Swedish institute museum store - range of Scandinavian and Scandinavian-American/midwestern literature, including modern literature in translation, historical documents, knitters guides, cookbooks, children’s books https://shop.asimn.org/collections/books-1

Native books - Hawai’i based bookstore with a focus on native Hawaiian literature, scholarly works about Hawai’i, the pacific, and decolonial theory, ‘ōlelo Hawai’i, and children’s books Collections | Native Books (nativebookshawaii.org)

the Yiddish book center - sales arm of the national Yiddish book center, books on Yiddish learning, books translated from Yiddish, as well as broader selection of books on Jewish history, literature, culture, and coooking https://shop.yiddishbookcenter.org/

ayin press - independent press with a small but growing selection of modern judaica https://shop.ayinpress.org/collections/all?_gl=1kkj2oo_gaMTk4NDI3Mzc1Mi4xNzE1Mzk5ODk3_ga_VSERRBBT6X*MTcxNTM5OTg5Ny4xLjEuMTcxNTM5OTk0NC4wLjAuMA..

Izzun books - printers of modern progressive AND masorti/trad-egal leaning siddurim including a gorgeous egalitarian Sephardic siddur with full Hebrew, English translation, and transliteration

tenement center museum -https://shop.tenement.org/product-category/books/page/11/ range of books on a dizzying range of subjects mostly united by New York City, including the history literature cookbooks and cultures of Black, Jewish, Italian, Puerto Rican, First Nations, and Irish communities

restless books - nonprofit, independent small press focused on books on translation, inter and multicultural exchange, and books by immigrant writers from around the world. Particularly excellent range of translated Latin American literature https://restlessbooks.org/

olniansky press - modern Yiddish language press based in Sweden, translators and publishers esp of modern Yiddish children’s literature https://www.etsy.com/shop/OlnianskyBooks

https://yiddishchildrensbooks.com/ - kinder lokshen, Yiddish children’s books (not so many at the moment but a very cute one about a puffin from faroese!)

inhabit books - Inuit-owned publishing company in Nunavut with an “aim to preserve and promote the stories, knowledge, and talent of Inuit and Northern Canada.” Particularly gorgeous range of children’s books, many available in Inuktitut, English, French, or bilingual editions https://inhabitbooks.com/collections/inhabit-media-books-1

rust belt books - for your Midwest and rust belt bookish needs! Leaning towards academic and progressive political tomes but there are some cookbooks devoted to the art of the Midwest cookie table as well https://beltpublishing.com/

[hard--headed--woman]

Rose Valland !

She was a French Resistance fighter who rescued and recovered more than 60,000 works of art and cultural property stolen by the Nazis from public institutions and Jewish families during the German occupation!!! For that, she was nicknamed "Capitaine Beaux-Arts"

Rose was born in 1898 and died in 1980. Although she never spoke publicly about her private life and sexual orientation, she never married, and the only relationship she ever had was with a woman.

She was able to study thanks to her mother, who applied for grants for her daughter. In 1914, she entered the École normale d'institutrices in Grenoble, graduating in 1918. Gifted for drawing and encouraged by her teachers, she left to study at the École nationale des beaux-arts in Lyon.

She gained a good reputation there, because she was talented and serious, and won a lot of prizes! In 1922, she entered the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts in Paris. She then passed the competitive examination for teaching drawing, coming 6th out of more than 300 candidates.

During the 1920s, she studied art history at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, the École du Louvre and the Institut d'Art et d'Archéologie. In 1931, she obtained her diploma from the École du Louvre on the evolution of the Italian art movement up to Giotto. At the Institute of Art and Archaeology at the University of Paris, she obtained three postgraduate certificates in modern art history, medieval archaeology and Greek archaeology. She was so intelligent and cultured, with so many diplomas, it's impressive! She published some studies and articles too, and she even learned to speak some languages like German without even studying it.

From October 1940, at the request of Jacques Jaujard, Director of the Musées Nationaux, she remained at the Musée du Jeu de Paume, officially as a curatorial attaché, unofficially instructed by Jacques Jaujard to report to him on the actions of the Germans, who had just requisitioned the museum to store works of art extorted from private collectors.

During the Occupation, the Germans began systematically looting works from museums and private collections across France, mainly those belonging to Jews who had been deported or had fled. They used the Jeu de Paume museum as a central depot before sorting and directing the works to various destinations in Germany, Austria and Eastern Europe. During the Nazi looting, Rose Valland discreetly recorded, as accurately as possible, the movements of the works passing through the Musée du Jeu de Paume, the names of the looted victims, the number of works, their destinations, the names of the agents in charge of the transfers, the names of the transporters, the marks and writing on the crates, the numbers and dates of the convoys, not forgetting the name of the artist, the work and its dimensions.

For over four years, she kept track of all the works' movements, origins and destinations. She scrupulously drew up dozens of index cards, deciphered German carbon paper discarded in the museum's garbage cans, and discreetly listened in on the conversations of Nazi officials. She provided the Resistance with essential, detailed information on the trains transporting the works, so that these convoys could be spared by the Resistance. In autumn 1944, she gave the Allies the names of German and Austrian depots (Altaussee, Buxheim, Neuschwanstein, Füssen, Nikolsburg, etc.) to avoid bombing, secure them and facilitate the recovery of stored works.

After the liberation of Paris by Allied troops, and until May 1, 1945, she worked with SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force), providing the Americans with vital information on storage sites for works transferred to Germany and Austria.

From May 1945, she was seconded from the Ministry of National Education to the Ministry of War, then from 1946 to 1952, seconded as a 3rd class administrator to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, occupying the Secretariat of State and then the General Commissariat for German and Austrian Affairs. Nicknamed "Captain Beaux-arts", she was appointed Captain in the 1st French Army, while also serving as Head of the Service de remise en place des œuvres d'art (SROA) within the Public Education Division of the French Group of the Board of Control.

She was sent to the various Allied occupation zones, British, American and Soviet, from where she repatriated a large number of works. She cooperated with American agents to conduct investigations and interrogate the Nazi officers and merchants responsible for the looting.

She played a decisive role in the February 1946 Nuremberg hearings on the plundering of art by Nazi leaders.

Between 1945 and 1954, she took part in the repatriation of over 60,000 items of French cultural property taken from public institutions and persecuted Jewish families.

Her courageous and heroic actions during the war and post-war years earned her numerous French and foreign decorations. In fact, Rose Valland was one of the most highly decorated women in French history.

She was :

-> made an Officer of the Legion of Honor

-> made a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters

-> awarded the French Resistance Medal

-> awarded the Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian decoration in the USA

-> made an Officer of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany

-> awarded the Latvian medal of the Order of the Three Stars in recognition of her involvement in the Latvian Art Exhibition (painting, sculpture and folk art), held at the Jeu de Paume from January 27 to February 28, 1939.

Unfortunately, as is often the case with women in history, the role she played in the Resistance, protecting French works of art and the property of deported Jewish people, was quickly forgotten, and her name is hardly ever mentioned today when this part of history is evoked. Insane, when you know everything she's done and how many decorations she got...

At an undetermined time, perhaps in the post-war years, Rose Valland met the British woman Joyce Heer, secretary-interpreter at the U.S. Embassy, who became her lover until her death. The two women shared an apartment on rue de Navarre in Paris. Rose Valland reserved a place for her beside her in the family vault.

Rose Valland died in 1980 at the age of 81 in a nursing home in Ris-Orangis, outside Paris. She is buried with her lover in the family vault in her native village of Saint-Étienne-de-Saint-Geoirs, where the secondary school and a square bear her name.

She truly was a hero, and I wish we talked about her more !

[historicity-was-already-taken]

Today is the 80th Anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

In honor of this event, and Monday’s observance of Yom HaShoah, I’m posting a roundup of all of my writings, spanning 2011-Yesterday, on the topic of Jewish women, the Holocaust, the Warsaw Ghetto, and resistance.

A profile of Hannah Szenes, a Hungarian Jewish paratrooper who worked behind Nazi lines in services of the SOE (Special Operations Executive, same as Noor Inayat Khan).

Why Gender History is Important, Asshole. The post that started it all, that made me realize how many of you are passionately curious about the topic of women and the Holocaust, and how many of you share my righteous indignation over the fact that this knowledge is so uncommon.

We need to talk about Anne Frank: a thinkpiece about how we use and misuse the memory of Anne Frank. NOT a John Green hitpiece; if that’s your takeaway you’re reading it wrong.

An 11-part post series about Vladka Meed, a Jewish resistance worker who smuggled explosives into the Warsaw Ghetto in preparation for the Uprising, and set up covert aid networks in slave labor camps, among other things.

Girls with Guns, Woman Commanders, and Unheeded Warnings: Women and the Holocaust: an assessment of how Holocaust memory is shaped by male experiences, and an analysis of what we miss through this centering of the male experience.

Filip Muller’s testimony regarding young women’s defiant behavior in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. [comes with big trigger/content warning]

Tema Schneiderman and Tossia Altman: Voices from Beyond the Grave; paper presented at the Heroines of the Holocaust: New Frameworks of Resistance International Symposium at Wagner College.

A meditation/polemic on Jewish women, abortion, and the Holocaust, and the American Christian far-right’s misuse of Holocaust memory in anti-choice rhetoric. [comes with big trigger/content warning]

Women and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising; talk presented at the National World War II Museum’s 15th International Conference on World War II. Women of the Warsaw Ghetto; keynote speech delivered at the Jewish Federation of Dutchess County’s Yom HaShoah Program in Honor of the 80th Anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. 

[eretzyisrael]

by David Harsanyi

People love to bemoan the fate of dead Jews who were unable to defend themselves. They’re not too crazy about the living ones who do.

On Holocaust Remembrance Day, Israel entered Rafa in Gaza to clear out remnants of a modern-day Nazi organization that’s embedded itself among women and children. Joe Biden, who is giving a speech at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Days of Remembrance ceremony in Washington today, tried to stop them.

Holocaust remembrances can often be little more than empty virtue signaling. It takes no moral courage to condemn crimes of the past if you’re not willing to stop the crimes of today. Save your sympathy.

Indeed, perhaps the most self-destructive myth within the modern Jewish American community is that the best way to temper hate is to fund more Holocaust education. It probably causes the opposite reaction. If the Holocaust taught us anything, it’s that Jews can’t wait for others — not even the most educated people in the world — to protect them. As Jeff Jacoby notes, “Israel doesn’t exist because there was a Holocaust. There was a Holocaust because Israel didn’t exist.”

And if keffiyeh-wearing Hamas cheerleaders weren’t moved by Oct. 7 videos of Jewish women being sexually tortured and slain, they sure aren’t going to be shocked into decency by 80-year-old grainy black and white pictures of bodies piled in pits. Do we really believe the Hamas apologists on major newspaper editorial boards, in the State Department, on Ivy League campuses, and in Congress don’t know this history? Of course they do. They often appropriate this past Jewish suffering by risibly accusing Israel of Nazi war crimes.

For the left, even minor political setbacks can be likened to Nazi Germany—but don’t you dare point out that cosplay revolutionaries on campus are trying to reenact Kristallnacht. Oh, it’s not about the Jews? Where are the “peace” protesters when Syria deploys chemical warfare against civilians? Or when the Chicoms open internment camps for Uyghurs? Or when the mullahs crack down on Iranian women? On foreign policy, the social justice warrior has an exceptionally narrow focus. It is not happenstance.

Perhaps it’s because Jews are too “white.” Maybe it’s because Jews have been successful and capitalistic and thrive in meritocratic Western nations. Perhaps it’s because the alleged victims of fictitious Jewish “colonialism,” “apartheid,” and “genocide” are brown and poor and Muslims.

Or perhaps it’s because Israel is more powerful than its enemies. This, of course, is due to the Jewish state having to fight and win wars instigated by its foes. Every time Israel repels new aggression, as it has for seven decades, the would-be invaders demand everyone rewind history to a time more convenient to their cause. In this one case, Westerners always seem to oblige.

Whatever drives the hate, it speaks to the violent stupidity and immorality of contemporary identitarian beliefs.

[fromchaostocosmos]

Please explain to me how vandalizing a sculpture made a Jewish artist 1) helps Palestinians in any way 2) is about anything other then targeting Jews and Judenhass

OY/YO was created by the Jewish artist Deborah Kass and originally installed in Brooklyn Bridge Park in 2015. A replica of it also stands outside the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia.  “I created OY/YO thinking about the American promise of equality and fairness and our responsibilities to make the country a better place for all,” Kass said in her artist’s statement. “With hate and division now on the rise, it is urgent to see our commonalities, what we share, and what brings us together.”

[mariacallous]

This summer, I traveled to Transylvania, on a Birthright-esque tour for young North Americans of Hungarian heritage. Almost everyone I told about the trip made some sort of Dracula joke. I rolled my eyes, knowing the region was much richer than this. But truth be told, I didn’t have too much yet to counter with. 

Here’s the history book version: Transylvania, now part of Romania, belonged to Hungary for more than a thousand years. It’s far larger than I had imagined – at around 100,000 square kilometers, the region is bigger than the whole of present-day Hungary itself, which ceded the region to Romania after WWI. There are currently around one million ethnic Hungarians who still live in Transylvania. The community speaks the language and passionately keeps their customs alive, from music to dance to crafts and, of course, food. 

And my version? It was easy to fall in love with Transylvania. From the moment I clambered off the small, tinny plane from Budapest at the small regional airport in Marosvásárhely, I was taken by its beauty. Rows and rows of golden sunflowers, framed by the verdant hills and rugged peaks of the Apuseni Mountains rolled by as we headed for our bed and breakfast. We spent a week learning about the Hungarian community in Romania, hiking, exploring cavernous salt mines and lakes, taking in medieval frescos and wandering cobblestoned streets.  

We also ate well — very well. 

Growing up, many of our cherished family recipes were very traditionally Hungarian (with a twist, to make them kosher), and the rich goulash, tender chicken paprikash and juicy stuffed cabbage we ate on the trip were familiar. Truth be told, aside from the dizzying assortment of wild blueberry and rosehip jams, I wasn’t really focused on dessert. 

That is, until I tried a pastry called somodi kalácsin a tiny village called Torockó. Lightly sweet and yeasted, with a cinnamon swirl, it’s as if cinnamon-raisin bread and babka had a baby. While every meal served by our grandmotherly hosts left us stuffed, I loved the folded bread so much that our guide got the inn to pack us a honey-glazed loaf to go. 

Transylvania was home to a sizable Hungarian-Jewish population. In 1910, according to The Museum of the Holocaust in Northern Transylvania, the Jewish population numbered above 64,000. By World War I, Hungary itself had the second largest Jewish population in Europe at almost one million. By this time YIVO’s Encyclopedia of Eastern European Jews notes Jews were “fervently assimilated” to the language and culture (and, rather sadly, looking back now), “passionately identified with Hungarian nationalism.” 

Upon my return home to Los Angeles, I made it my mission to find somodi kalács. I knew that Jewish immigrants to the U.S. and Israel popularized other classic pastries from Hungary, such as chimney cakes and monkey bread (aka aranygaluska), and was hopeful I’d succeed.

While I haven’t (yet) found somodi kalácsin my city, I discovered that it’s available at Zingerman’s Bakehouse, the iconic Jewish bakery in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Like me, the Zingerman team tried somodi kalács for the first time in Torockó. The recipe, they found, dates back 400 years, when the village was a flourishing mining town, whose residents could afford the luxury of cinnamon and sugar. It’s typically served for Christmas, Easter and Pentecost, and until the 20th century, Zingerman’s notes, somodi kalács was the customary wedding cake. Theirs is a pretty traditional version. However, like my own great grandmother would do often, they sub the traditional lard for butter when greasing the pans, explained Managing Partner Amy Emberling.

At Zingerman’s, Emberling told me, it’s a beloved special item that they only bake a couple days each year. “Customers order many loaves of it and stock them in their freezer,” she said. And it’s not uncommon for customers to “let us know that they have not seen this since their childhood days in Hungary.” 

It’s also not uncommon to see patrons shed happy tears. I may have felt like shedding a couple happy tears myself when she shared their recipe.

[determinate-negation]

Like the Israeli police have raised synagogues in Israel over the past week because those communities are anti-zionists, I'd rather take my chances in NYC than Tel Aviv

yeah they attack the anti zionist haredim... and theyre arresting israeli citizens for posting anti war stuff or supporting palestine. the u.s. is also a settler colonial nation and the position of ethnic/religious minorities in the us and their integration also reflects broader us colonial impetus, so im not coming at this from an american nationalist angle, but i just dont understand how you can live in the north east us, where we have a longer reaching history than most israelis, a strong cultural presence thats very embedded into society in every regard; food, comedy, movies, influence on fashion, art, music, just even like very famous stores and neighborhoods and museums in nyc, big jewish communities, like half of the people i grew up with are jewish, and feel more scared here. part of it is ingraining fear of antisemitism but still

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Noah Berlatsky at Everything Is Horrible:

In the Anglophone world, the intertwined issues of Jewish identity and antisemitism are connected in public memory obsessively, and almost solely, to the Holocaust. Occasionally, perhaps, people also mention the blood libels of the Middle Ages, or the pogroms of Eastern Europe.

The Dreyfus Affair, however, is almost entirely forgotten. It is not a moment revisited in movies or television shows. Politicians do not reference it; there are no public museums in its memory; it is not a part of school curriculum. Even Jewish people hardly discuss it. I doubt one in ten Americans, of any ethnicity or religion, could even tell you vaguely who Alfred Dreyfus was. The disappearance of Dreyfus memory is a real loss. That’s not because we need to remember antisemitism. We do, as I’ve mentioned, remember the Holocaust. The Dreyfus Affair, though, was a victory over antisemitism, and a victory particularly for the diaspora, in a way that World War II was not. The Holocaust has largely been interpreted as an object lesson in the untenability of the diaspora, and the necessity of a Zionist Jewish ethnonationalism. The outcome of Dreyfus’ story is considerably more ambivalent. As such, it is worth revisiting at a moment when Zionism is busily and horrifically delegitimizing itself.

The Affair

Since, the outlines of the Dreyfus Affair are probably little known to readers, it’s worth covering them briefly. My discussion here, and throughout the essay, is mostly based on Maurice Samuels new excellent biography/history, Alfred Dreyfus: The Man At the Center of the Affair, part of the Jewish Lives series. During the French Revolution, France put into practice its new ideals of liberty and equality by, among other things, making Jewish people full citizens of the republic. After legislation in 1791, Jews were suddenly—for the first time in any European country—able to live where they wished, attend the best schools, and work in every profession. The results were immediate and dramatic. Jews made rapid gains in political and economic life; some became quite wealthy and influential.

Among those wealthy Jews was the Dreyfus family. Alfred Dreyfus, born 1859, grew up, like most French Jews, with a passionate commitment to the French nation and to the principles of equality which had liberated them. Determined to serve his country, Dreyfus attended the French military academy. He excelled and became arguably the first Jewish officer ever on the General Staff. His future seemed bright. And then, it all fell apart. In 1894, the French army discovered that there was a traitor on the General Staff who had been passing top secret information to the Germans. Dreyfus was accused of treason. The evidence against him was weak to nonexistent; his handwriting was said to match that on the recovered documents, even though it obviously did not. Nonetheless, he was arrested, tried in a sham military trial, and sentenced to life imprisonment. He was sent to the horrific penal colony on Devil’s Island in French Guiana. He endured tortures almost certainly intended to kill him. His wife, contrary to law, was not allowed to accompany him.   Dreyfus was singled out because he was Jewish. The generals, once they had begun down the path of antisemitism, decided they could not turn back without undermining respect for the military. They forged more evidence, and stonewalled investigations as long as possible.

The Affair polarized sentiment in France, both on Dreyfus and on the place of Jews in French society. Liberal intellectuals like Émile Zola who believed in the Republic and a forward-looking, cosmopolitan, free and equal France sided with Dreyfus and demanded a new trial. The Catholic Church, the military, antisemites, and proto-Vichyites insisted that Dreyfus was guilty and should be punished—or, really, insisted that as a Jew he should be punished whether he was guilty or not. The hatred of Jews erupted into antisemitic riots throughout the country; Jews were beaten, their homes burned, their businesses destroyed. Several Jewish people were killed in Algiers, where there were violence against Jews occurred almost daily in 1898.   Dreyfus was brought back for a new trial in 1899; he was convicted again despite overwhelming evidence in his favor, and eventually exonerated completely in 1906. He was restored to the rank of Major, and served with distinction in World War I. He died in 1935. Jewish people in France still leave stones on his grave.

[...] It wasn’t just Dreyfus and Jewish people who fought for Dreyfus though. The Affair energized every corner of the left, calling them almost uniformly to their best selves. Zola, for example, believed in a number of antisemitic stereotypes at the beginning of the Affair; his first article on the case argued that Jewish people had an innate talent for making money. From that inauspicious beginning he quickly became one of the most passionate gentile opponents of antisemitism in history; his famous 1898 pamphlet J’accuse was a devastating denunciation of the military coverup intended to force a number of generals to sue for libel. They did, and Zola was forced to flee the country—but not before opening the case again and ensuring Dreyfus’ retrial.

The political left in France was also, initially, wary of standing with Dreyfus because of antisemitism. For many socialists, Jewish people symbolized the banking industry and the upper class. Dreyfus, a wealthy Jew serving in the military, seemed the wrong man to rally working class parties. But eventually Socialist leader Jean Jaurès, and others in his party, recognized that Dreyfus had become the man, and the issue, on which Catholic monarchist and capitalist forces had decided to fight for France’s soul. In 1898 Jaurès gave a speech in which he denounced antisemitism as a threat to France; shortly thereafter he published a book defending Dreyfus and presenting the Affair as a matter of socialist solidarity. Some on the left refused to join Jaurès, and the Socialists split. But as Samuels’ biography of Dreyfus notes, “Jaurès helped ensure that a large part of the political left in France would align itself with republican values and against antisemitism for decades to come.”

Noah Berlatsky wrote in his Everything Is Horrible Substack about how the Dreyfus Affair served as a victory against fascism and antisemitism, and how it gave the left a tool to fight back against oppression.

[dojewishuponastar]

Geometric Silver Shin Necklace

via

Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History

[keshetchai]

Hi! I read your replies about ethnicity and I hadn't realized it was defined so broadly. In your readings, would all religious groups be considered ethnicities? Example, I'm ex-Catholic but still consider myself "culturally Catholic" since I was brought up in that environment.

Well, no. Not just "Catholic" alone.

I mean, put it this way: in North America, Catholics specifically syncretized catholicism into existing ethnic identities (ex: mexican-catholic is different from Metis Catholic, and the ethnic identities began to incorporate unique folk catholicism that is specific to these ethnic groups, not universally Catholic. As in, it's all Catholic, but not "catholic.")

OR groups developed ethnic enclaves wherein catholicism was part of their shared identity. (Ex: Italian or Polish neighborhoods in the US tended to emphasize their identity and connections to other Italians and Poles on their basis of their being Catholic. They tended to exclude/other Jews with the same national origins (which is what happened in the "old country" as well, so...this didn't suddenly change).

basically people didn't stop marginalizing people they used to marginalize back home. So a historical neighborhood of Polish Jews was/is often viewed as a Jewish neighborhood, an Ashkenazi Jewish neighborhood, etc, but if you just look for a "polish neighborhood" then the majority of the people there will be polish Catholics and catholicism will play a larger role in the shared polish identity, even though not all Poles are Catholic.

Like if I look up polish neighborhoods and find Chicago's massive polish downtown neighborhood on Wikipedia, it says this:

"this district was not exclusively Polish," and "Italians, Ukrainians, and Jews each possessed their own enclaves within the area."

Which might sound fine but also is revealing of the fact that say, the majority of poles (who were/are a majority Catholic!) didn't see Polish Jews as identical to other Poles. Further, it's very vague — there are Polish, Ukrainian, and Italian Jews. But the ethnic identity of being Polish, Ukrainian, or Italian immigrants in the US wasn't solely defined by country of origin.

So. Could I say that "Polish Catholic" is an ethnic group? I think it's context dependent in some ways: if someone American tells me their family is descended from Italian, or Polish, or Irish immigrants I can usually assume they mean their ancestors were catholic++

and they usually don't identify with being a polish or italian national — instead, they're identifying with the history of x nationals immigrating and developing ethnic enclaves/assimilating or not/and the culture they brought with them as an ethnic group/identity. An Italian American usually identifies as proudly Italian in the sense of a solidarity based on an ethnic identity within the US context, theyre usually not like, identifying with being an Italian national.

But in Italy, surrounded by Italians, the ethnic grouping of "Italian" is pretty unspecific. Are they Latin? Sicilian? Sardinian? (There are roughly 30 languages native to Italy, so it's not like we can go off of "they speak Italian"!)

++ in my singular individual experience: most Jews don't phrase it like this without first establishing some baseline understanding of aforementioned ancestors being jews. by this I mean when I go to the Jewish museum and folks start talking about where their family left in order to come to the US, they might say "my ancestors fled Russia." Or "they came from Ukraine and Lithuania." Because in context it's clear already this is in relation to the Jewish experience. But if you were talking with a group of people who may not all be other Jews or who don't necessarily know you're Jewish, I find people usually don't just say: "My family's polish," they usually instead say "oh my grandparents are Polish Jews," or "my great-grandparents were Jews who left/fled Poland."

...anyways anon I suspect your ex-catholicness has some kind of regional identity beyond that which is a part of your ethnic identity (shared culture, including religion!) but no, being Catholic is not the ethnic identity itself. Especially since catholicism as a religion has a few millennia of espousing universalism beyond ethnic identity and in the earliest church outright rejecting the notion of ethnic belonging to the Jewish people. To the point where a lot of the Greek biblical uses of "ethnos" specifically meant "people who are not-catholic —meaning the heathens and Jews."

So the religion itself is pretty anti-being an ethnic identity but I would say can be a fundamentally big point of community commonality in existing ethnic groups.

[softmatzohtruther]

There's something I've been thinking about, and since this is my personal blog, I figured I'd write it out and maybe share it -- maybe I'll get to the end of this post and close it without saving, maybe I'll tuck it away into my drafts. I don't know yet.

I am ethnically Jewish, but I wasn't raised in the culture. My family situation is complicated, due to divorces, remarriages, and relocations, but I usually just tell people that I'm patrilineal, raised secular, and that I'm reconnecting with the community, with a potential conversion in my near future. After nearly 10 years of independent study and hanging around with other Jewish people both online and offline, and then moving into a city that has a large Jewish community, I decided this year to take a more earnest stride into Jewish communal and religious life.

This started with me signing up for social events around the High Holidays, and that's how I found myself in the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History on the evening of Yom Kippur. I'd been to the museum a few years before for a film festival, so I had seen some of the things they had on display, but I've not yet actually toured the building. This time I was there for an event being held in one of the empty conference rooms, meeting with a friend to have a pre-fast dinner before sundown and then joining in group prayer. It was an emotional evening for me for many reasons, particularly because it was my first time observing the holiday in the ritual sense, and that it seemed like an appropriate time to meditate on the nature of the new life that I'm trying to live. But it was also a memorable evening for me for another reason.

If you ever find yourself in Philadelphia, you can visit this museum yourself. Admission is free. On the ground floor, there is a piece on display across from the elevator, and I noticed it there as I was leaving the event. At first, I thought it was misplaced, because the display is a chair, and a cup of tea.

These items were donated by the Congregation of Beth Israel, a reform synagogue in Colleyville Texas. It was a somber sight for me on that night in September. I had only really heard a vague overview of what had happened there barely two years ago -- if you read the Wikipedia article linked above, you will notice it happened in January of 2022. And I remember that the one thought that crossed my mind as I stood in front of that chair is that when you enter a history museum, you expect to see things that are old, maybe from the 40s or something. And you will. But you'll also see the chair a rabbi threw at a man who was holding his synagogue hostage in 2022. Because this part of our history is still ongoing.

Read this part of the article:

A livestream of the synagogue's services on its Facebook page streamed the ongoing situation, including the forceful taking of hostages. In the livestream, Akram could be heard speaking to authorities, who attempted to negotiate with him. At one point, Akram claimed (apparently falsely) to have a bomb. The livestream also streamed Akram saying that he had flown to the city where Siddiqui was imprisoned with the intent of taking hostages. He also said that he chose to take hostages in a synagogue because the U.S. "only cares about Jewish lives" and because "Jews control the world. Jews control the media. Jews control the banks."

And that has been in the back of my mind constantly since a group of people in this city decided to protest outside of a fucking falafel restaurant chanting "we charge you with genocide." It's this idea that Jews are responsible for the acts of every other Jew, and on top of that, Jews are responsible for everyone else, too, when convenient. Like a sort of universal scapegoat. It makes me furious, of course, but mostly it just makes me sad.

I have zero regrets about throwing my lot in with this side of my family, my heritage, my history... but it is unbelievably heavy at times. Still, I feel like I have to carry it. Stronger people than me have died for it, but I will do what I have to do. I do have hope for the future, and more broadly speaking I have hope for the world, too.

מיר וועלן זיי איבערלעבן. עם ישראל חי

[lboogie1906]

Pearl Bowser (née Johnson; June 25, 1931 – September 14, 2023) was an author, collector, television director, film scholar, film director, producer, filmmaker, independent distributor, and film archivist. She researched and curated “The Black Film” retrospective at the Jewish Museum in 1970. This prompted a new wave of public interest in “exhibiting, producing, and engaging with African American cinema beyond borders”. She is credited for having helped rediscover some of Oscar Micheaux’s rare surviving films. She is the founder of African Diaspora Images, a collection of visual and oral histories that documents the history of African American filmmaking.

She studied both genders because too few Black women were among the earliest African-American filmmakers. She gifted her library of films to the Smithsonian Institution’s Center for African American Media Arts. Some of the works in her collection include Hands of Image, Statutes Hardly Smile, and Four Women. They can be found at the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

She was born Pearl Johnson in Harlem as the youngest of seven children. She frequented the movie theaters of Harlem along 125th Street watching “Hollywood Westerns, B-movies, and whatever Black films were out at the time.” She did not let this racism affect her love of reading and learning. She attended Brooklyn College on a scholarship. She became disappointed with the level of education she received and dropped out to work at CBS as a Nielsen rating analyzer.

Bowser discovered and joined the Paul Robeson Club. She was able to find a sense of identity and pride from Robeson’s club where he would share information about culture, art, and film.

She married LeRoy Bowser (1955) and they were both working on the Civil Rights Movement. LeRoy was active in Brooklyn CORE and Pearl “along with other production activists, took to the streets documenting African American culture and issues—working to bring these films to schools”. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence

[deborahdeshoftim5779]

Israeli-American journalist Caroline Glick gives her take on the recent controversy concerning Yad Vashem director Dani Dayan. In this video, she explains the key role that Jerusalem Mufti Hajj- Amin al-Husseini played in the Nazi Holocaust and subsequently as a leader of the Palestinian national movement.

Caroline Glick points to Dani Dayan's refusal to hang a picture of al-Husseini meeting with Adolf Hitler in 1941 in the Yad Vashem museum, as he confirmed during an interview with Haaretz in 2022. This refusal, she argues, is political-- even though Dayan claimed he would not hang the picture because that request was political.

This is information that western pro-Palestinian self-described allies will never mention (nor will the mainstream media), as it exposes precisely why Palestinian terrorists and leaders (who are often one and the same) have consistently rejected peace in favour of war, even if their own people suffer as a result.

When you understand the depth of al-Husseini's hatred for the Jewish people (he condemned groups of European Jewish children to death by preventing them from being transferred to Mandatory Palestine) and the admiration with which he is held by subsequent Palestinian leaders, there's simply no way to heap the blame on Israel, or even the territorial dispute over the West Bank, for there being no Palestinian state. There's also simply no way to separate anti-Zionism from antisemitism either, once you understand why al-Husseini is revered to this day by Palestinian leaders and presumably many Palestinian civilians.

And, unfortunately for UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, there's no way to equate Arab suffering during the 1948 War with the Holocaust by claiming they are both defining events. The displacement of Arabs between 1947-1949 came as a direct result of the Arab desire to destroy the Jewish State and kill its citizens, and al-Husseini was one of those who urged that desire, which is precisely why he was supportive of Hitler's extermination plan in 1941.

There's also no way to accuse European Jews of colonialism, either. While al-Husseini was in Iraq, he incited a massacre of the Jews in Farhud in 1941, the very year Hitler planned his 'Final Solution'. Glick says that around 900 Iraqi Jews were murdered. Over the next few decades, over 800 000 Jews would be persecuted and violently expelled from Arab lands in plain violation of the Balfour Declaration. Many of those Jews naturally moved to Israel. This is why today, a slight majority of Israelis are descendants of Jewish exiles to neighbouring lands.

Holocaust education can only succeed if the whole truth is told. While we live in an age where people are constantly demanding that such-and-such a history be re-examined in light of modern views, it's strange to see the director of Yad Vashem conceal vital facts for fear of causing offence.

Glick says that Dayan isn't even a scholar of the Holocaust; it appears his appointment was political.

Perhaps it is time for Yad Vashem to find a director who will tell the truth without fear.

[eretzyisrael]

by Michael Kaplan

I assume, because the exhibit provides no context, details, or examples, that words like “oppressive” and “tyrant” refer to the very controlling, top-down management style employed by these Jewish moguls.

Such a management style may be unpleasant for some to work under; it may be either effective or ineffective from a business standpoint (and given the studios’ success, I would argue it was very effective). But it is not inherently immoral, as the use of the words “oppressive” and “tyrant” would seek to imply.

The panel featuring Warner Bros. includes a paragraph describing one of the studio’s films, The Jazz Singer. It is the only film featured in this manner in any of these studio descriptions. The brief paragraph ends with the claim that The Jazz Singer invoked “a popular symbol of racial oppression [i.e. blackface] that further harms another marginalized group.”

The documentary that is part of the exhibit builds upon this theme of discrimination: “Hollywood films of [the era of these Jewish moguls] generally excluded, stereotyped or vilified people of color and LGBT+ characters and perpetuated ableism and sexism with rare exceptions. In Hollywood, to become American was to adopt and reflect oppressive beliefs and representations.”

It is true that the United States of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s was a very different place, in terms of equality, inclusion and representation, than it is today. But was this really the fault of Jewish movie moguls? Why pound this point home in the one section of the museum supposedly dedicated to their accomplishments and contributions? After all, the movie The Jazz Singer did not invent Al Jolson’s blackface character; he had been performing it on stages across the country for many years and to great acclaim.

An exploration of the history of racism and sexism in Hollywood could be a perfectly valid topic for the museum to explore. Was it necessary to make it part of the exhibit on Jewish contributions?

The exhibit’s display includes a section describing the origins of United Artists, a studio formed in defiance of the Jewish-run studios. It mentions DW Griffith among its non-Jewish founders, but does not mention Griffith’s film Birth of A Nation (originally titled “The Clansman”), arguably the most racist film in the history of American cinema.

Why does Warner’s The Jazz Singer receive an entire paragraph but not Griffith’s Birth of A Nation? Because The Jazz Singer was produced by Jews?

The Museum’s mission statement, published on its website, includes the following goal: “The Academy Museum tells complete stories of moviemaking — celebratory, educational, and sometimes critical or uncomfortable.”

The “Jewish Founders” exhibit definitely falls under the heading of “sometimes critical or uncomfortable.” I was curious to find what other displays or exhibits could similarly be described. It was very difficult to find any. There are numerous exhibits that celebrate the work of Hollywood actors, writers, directors, and producers. All of the subjects of these exhibits are praised in glowing terms and hailed for their artistry and accomplishments.