#anyways back to your regularly scheduled shrimp posts

[ceasarslegion]

honestly i think if this site finally dies to a ceo meltdown (which might be the only thing that can kill it lmao) i think... it would be for the best to just leave this place and the communities it fostered buried

I won't go to cohost, or bluesky, or anything. Y'all can catch me on my already made social (1) (discord. Im not giving anybody my facebook account with my full name on it after the death threats ive gotten over the years here) if you want, but this site has been going downhill ever since the advent of cringe culture and ace discourse circa 2015. It feels like recent months have been hurtling towards the logical conclusion of the turbo-echo chamber this site exists in. I seriously miss the era where it was just superwholock jokes and the only drama you'd hear about was the occasional bone-stealing witch level shit that everybody would go "lmao what" about and then go back to their regularly-scheduled movie discussions. Maybe i'll go back to pinterest at most and spend the rest of my time in fandom and furry forums and AO3. It would compel me to write and draw a lot more.

And honestly, I think tumblr finally getting the plug pulled on its long-dying life support may be legitimately helpful for a lot of the users who yanked this site's culture away from that and into the echo chamber. They might like, go outside for once. I know "touch grass" is a cliche or whatever but I do think a lot of this echo chamber can be chalked up to sitting on the computer all day and never getting exposed to anybody outside of your self-imposed internet echo chamber. Go outside, get some fresh air.

Also, it won't be the end of the world. If your free time and happiness is really that contingent on any one social media site then it may be for the best to take it away from you. Learn how to entertain yourself without it. There's a whole world out there to explore. Find something else to do. Pick up new hobbies, look into events in your area. Get really into some weird niche hobby and spend all that time doing that instead of just posting on a different website if this one's finally done. Remember that 4chan guy whose life turned around after he got really into raising shrimp instead of discoursing on 4chan all day? Maybe it's time to find your shrimp raising hobby instead of just posting the same things and perpetuating the same cycles on a different site.

I'm not saying to go full amish and abandon the internet altogether but i am saying that if this website has consumed so much of you that the prospect of it imploding is this upsetting to you, maybe you need to start raising shrimp for a while. I think it would be good for you.

Idk man, I'm chilling in my chair here but if it goes, she goes. I'll find something else to do, but this site hasn't been the tumblr I stuck around for for a long time now, so it won't be the end of the world for me if it ends. I'd just grab my favourite mutuals discords and head out to get more into the furry fandom and write more fic instead. I never wanted to be exposed to this much of the everything on this site anyway, I joined for the memes and the fandom content way back in 2010 and then just never really left.

[mileheitcity-blog]

So a Reform Jew goes to Antwerp...

The air smelled faintly of exhaust and concrete as I stepped out of the station, and the sky hung low in a faded shade of brooding grey.  It reminded me a little of Seattle, but somehow far more distant, more detached, the tall trees of the Pacific Northwest only giving way here to tall grey and yellow buildings and row houses. Seattle’s always been a bit of a strange place to build a city: the footprint of the city isn’t very large, it shouldn’t be able to fit very many people, at least not in such close quarters. The giant trees that make up the expansive forests are indeed gorgeous, but create an effect that’s almost closed in, crowded out.  But today nearly the whole Puget Sound region teems with activity and life, the three million or so people who live there make sure of that.  I grabbed my bearings and took another deep breath, this time followed by a long look around.  The bustle subsided into a rolling hum, and the feelings of home had somewhat dissipated.  And yet, there was still something in the air.  I wasn’t anywhere near my home.  I was on the other side of the world, and all the Dutch signs wouldn’t let me forget it.  But somehow, as I walked down Pelikaanstraat towards absolutely nothing in particular, I knew I was walking home. 

What was a Reform Jew like me doing heading to Antwerp anyway? The Reform movement has always been somewhat of a thorn in the side of more traditional Jewish communities ever since its conception in the late 19th century.  Reform synagogues were the first to institute mixed-gender seating and to publish siddurim (prayer books) in the vernacular. At the founding of the Reform Jewish seminary, Hebrew Union College, the movement’s leader served shrimp cocktail, causing a number of other prominent scholars to get offended and walk out and start their own organization. By the middle of the 20th century, Reform Jews were using musical instruments in their services, and some congregations were even building pipe organs into the sanctuary. In 1972, the Reform seminary ordained its first woman into the clergy, Rabbi Sally Priesand, and mom was less than a decade behind.  Our world is still deeply Jewish, but deeply untraditional, and yet...

The bustle filled the air as I grabbed my bearings.  The ride to the Antwerp had been an pretty uneventful.  I slept a little later than I wanted to, but was still able to snag the last couple crepes from the hotel on my way to the train station. One transfer in Breda, and just like that I was in a new country, a place I had only heard about in whispers.  It was traditional, old school, Europe’s last shtetl. Restaurants were all Kosher, Google said.  Men and women sit in different sections at services. The shops are all closed on Saturday, but active on Sundays when the rest of the city was asleep or in church. This was a community that worked hard to maintain its traditions and it way of life, and that way of life wasn’t going anywhere. 

Both in Hebrew School and in the home, Jewish kids like me are given more than a few lessons on the survival of our people.  We’re taught our traditions and listen to the Torah once a week not for fun, but to ensure our continuation.  We teach each other to read Hebrew and to wrap tefillin because we always have, because it defines us.  We sprinkle in phrases in Ladino or Yiddish because they’re funny or descriptive, yes, but also to make sure the next generation knows it.  By choosing a new path, by ignoring some of the traditions and precepts, by not keeping kosher and shaving our beards and going out on Friday night and sitting with (gasp!) women in services, we could be ensuring the destruction of our own people, or at least the community as we know it. In a Reform synagogue, it’s different, sure, we’re taught to at least know what we’re choosing and why, but the subtext is often quite clear.  Our traditions define us, and our traditions will be what sustain us.  As the saying goes “More than the Jews have kept the Sabbath, the Sabbath has kept Jews”.  Reform Jews, like me, were considered a slap in the face to much of that tradition.  How can you read the liturgy in the vernacular? How can you allow women to sit with men, and even be on the pulpit? Why don’t you keep kosher, wear fringes and kipot, or speak in Yiddish? What do you mean you drive on Shabbat?!?!?! And HOW DARE YOU serve traef at a Jewish function? Don’t you know what the consequences are?

I turned behind me and started walking along the diamond shops.  The jewelry in the window shimmered in the artificial light, that’s what diamonds do.  But that’s not what brought me there.  I turned the corner into the Jewish district, and immediately knew what brought me here.  The gentleman behind the counter looked like he was straight out a painting that hung in my synagogue: a long salt-and-pepper beard adorned his lean and bony face, his eyes enlarged by big round bifocals.  The women behind me each had strollers in tow and rocked some pretty gnarly sheitels.  A tallis rack sat proudly next to the seating area, and a basin sink for hand washing was easily visible and available for anyone who wanted to use it.  The menu featured the seven-branch candelabra, the menorah, on the front page, but no announcement was necessary. I turned to the menu on the wall, and despite it being written in Dutch each dish was more than familiar.  I wonder if the kugel and kishka were as good as Bubbe’s.  Despite being in a foreign land, among foreign Jews, I had never felt a sense of familiarity as I did in that place.  As I told the kind gentleman what I wanted, my soul started to sing. 

Shtetls of Europe are mostly gone now. The towns that weren’t destroyed by Russian Cossacks were abandoned when the Nazis sent us to the gas chambers. After the war, the few Jewish people who remained in Europe did so far outside of the small communities they called home, choosing instead to go to the more cosmopolitan cities. Most of the survivors, though, went to America or Israel, and who could blame them.  America has no shtetls, we’re as assimilated into society as anyone.  I went to public school for godsakes, which was unheard of a century and a half ago. In Israel, we carved out our own home (with the help of the UN, at the expense of people already living there, I know, but I’ve said before I’m not having that debate on this platform), so we didn’t need to set ourselves apart, to build our own towns. No longer were we forced to live in between arbitrary lines on the map on the outskirts of the Empire.  Now, we could live anywhere we wanted to.  Any why would we go back to the shtetl? We were poor, life was rough, and living in close proximity made it easy for the Russians or the Germans to sweep through with torches and ill intent. Keeping your traditions alive can only do so much against an army intent on your destruction.

I walked over to the basin sink, filled the mug, said the prayer, and sat down. The gentleman behind the counter appeared a few minutes later with my selection, but the contents of my plate barely mattered.  The pungent note of the gefilte fish stung my nose as I reached for the horseradish.  I closed my eyes and heard a conversation in Yiddish from across the restaurant.  At that moment, I knew.  I was, indeed, home. 

Writer’s note: this post is dedicated to Hoffy’s Restaurant in Antwerp, thanks for making such an outright amazing meal. You really did make my soul sing. I could probably write another blog post or two about this district, but pairing this with the previous post seemed more appropriate. I will, without question, come back to this district someday. 

Up next: Library at the Technical University in Delft, a return to the regularly scheduled school-related posts.