#christian appropriation

[former-leftist-jew]

NO.

Fuck that.

"The Prince of Egypt" is a JEWISH movie.

Every Jew in Hollywood at the time helped make it, Yocheved was voiced by an Israeli singer who recorded the song in several languages before she died, and the Hebrew lyrics during the song "Miracles" (that Christians love to sing) are from the prayer Mi Chamocha, which Jews still sing every week on the Sabbath, as we keep the Law of Moses, to this day.

If Christians had their way, the ancient Hebrew language and prayers would have been lost to time, as well as the teachings and ritual laws of Moses, in favor of the Greek-Romanified "Jesus of Nazareth," not Yeshua of Judea.

For crying out loud, the Jews' most holy text is the Torah, or the first five books of the Tanakh (what you dismiss as the "Old Testament of Jesus"), which Jews call, "The Five Books of Moses."

And some of the more devout Jews still have Daily Torah Readings, because the Torah is so important to us. And those daily readings add up to yearly reading of the entire Five Books of Moses--Hell, Jews have an entire holiday dedicated to finishing reading the entire Torah and then starting all over again for the next year.

That's how much the "Five Books of Moses" means to Jews--we have entire holidays dedicated to reading and restarting and re-studying it.

The Ten Commandments are still in effect, Jesus did not abolish the law but fulfilled it, and to get to Jesus we needed Moses.

But you threw out the Law of Moses as "old and irrelevant, because Jesus," right? And if you had your way, Jews would also abandon and replace the teachings of Moses with the teachings Jesus, just as you did.

And by God, most Christians throughout history have tried to make Jews discard the Law of Moses and replace it with Word of Christ, using every method from forced mass conversions to massacres. At best, Christians still mock and belittle us for "clinging to" the "outdated and irrelevant" laws and teachings of Moses, rather than discarding and replacing them on cue like you guys did.

... and you STILL try to pretend the predominantly Jewish-made movie honoring the Jews' most revered prophet means 'just as much' to you as it does to us?

Frankly, it adds insult to injury when a Christian who openly dismisses Moses as a lesser placeholder to Jesus, who tries to have Jews follow suit and discard Moses, turn around and try to claim, "Oh, this movie made predominantly by Jews about the Jews' most revered prophet means just as much to me, as a Christian who threw the teachings of Moses out like yesterday's trash,

(Like, I'm reading the New Testament right now, and I'm struck by how quickly Yeshua and his followers came into conflict with other Jews, partly because he disparaged and cherry-picked which laws of Moses he felt one should follow--he wasn't big on ritual hand-washing or divorce--which was ordered by Moses and thus considered a big no-no at the time. And the text treats his critics as BAD for saying, "No, the Laws of Moses are non-negotiable." A stance that most Jews have taken with many Messianic claimants, not just Jesus.)

Let no one rob it from the Jews, but us christians literally

Then please stop taking our stories and trying to make it about YOU and YOUR precious love for Jesus.

Especially since you openly consider Moses a mere placeholder until the oh-so-much-better Jesus arrived.

To Christians, story of Moses was just another part of the long, rambling prologue to the Main Event (Jesus).

To Jews, Moses IS the Main Event. Or rather, the story, teachings, and ritual laws of of Moses are the backbone and foundation of our entire religion--history, culture, heritage, ritual religious practices--not just a disposable footnote in the long history leading up to The Main Guy, Jesus.

So why the FUCK should you get to PRETEND that the film honoring the story of Moses and his considerable impact on the Jewish religion, history, and culture (that still exists to this day, despite the world's best effort) means "just as much/more to" you as a Christian than the people who DIDN'T abandon the teachings of Moses in favor of Jesus. (Mr. "We don't need to ritually wash our hands before we eat." Ugh.)

It's the ultimate, "I deserve a participation trophy just for existing," when not only did you not participate, but so many Christians actively mock and belittle Jews (at best) for continuing to honor the Law of Moses, and actively make life harder for us to continue to live by his teachings that the Christians cherry-picked and abandoned.

You don't get to have it both ways. You don't get to dismiss Moses as an expendable placeholder for Jesus in one breath, and then try to act like that the story of Moses means "just as much to you" as it does the Jews who made the film and still revere the teachings of Moses to this day.

Need this site to understand that "The Prince of Egypt" is BOTH a Jewish and Christian movie. Let no one rob it from the Jews, but us christians literally owe our faith to the same God who saw to and led the Exodus. The Ten Commandments are still in effect, Jesus did not abolish the law but fulfilled it, and to get to Jesus we needed Moses.

[onenakedfarmer]

[ainsi-soit-il]

Regardless of religion, people are allowed to be ticked off and uncomfortable when their customs and holidays are stripped down into a vague, distorted, and easily-marketable husk.

[ghostlyarchaeologist]

"I work in the field of violence. Not knowing Eliot Spencer in our line of business, it's a bit like not knowing Rembrandt."

Leverage Redemption S01E01 The Too Many Rembrandt's Job.

Bonus:

[angryjewishcockroach]

#every damn day i think about this#bitches will be named sarah#and discredit the hebrew language as a colonial one (via fuzzytheduck)

it is so so so jarring meeting a gentile named like Rachel who introduces you to her children David and Levi and her husband Noah who also like... goes to church. or just generally doesnt realize how stereotypically jewish their whole family sounds. especially when half the time they hate jews

like imagine a white christian family naming their children fatima and mohammed or something. kinda weird right? youd never see that happen, because it makes no sense for them to name their children names from a culture (arab or muslim or what have you) that they don't belong to, at the very least without facing criticism. but it happens every single day with jewish people and jewish names and jewish everything bc jews arent allowed to have anything to themselves

trying to imagine an american (or even western in general tbh) society where all remnants of stolen judaism are removed is practically impossible because everything down to baby names are jewish and people dont even know it. its just so strange to think of

[cynautica]

a silly workaholic shrimp and his even sillier primate companion

half.alive - creature

[magnetothemagnificent]

I've seen goyim push back against us Jews rightfully telling them they can't learn Kabbalah by saying "b-but learning isn't the same as practicing!!"

Congratulations, you just showed your culturally Christian ass.

In Christianity, practice is only about belief and acts of faith, like praying and attending Church. While Bible study is important, it's not integral to being a Christian. Most Christians don't have a library full of medieval Christian literature.

In Judaism, learning material is *part* of practice. If you walk into the home of a practicing Jew, chances are they will have bookshelves of books, even if they're not Rabbis or educators. Learning Torah is part of practicing Judaism, just as learning Kabbalah is part of practicing Kabbalah. We collect books because books are part of our practice.

In Judaism, learning is a holy act. Before we start learning, we say a special prayer thanking G-d for gifting us His words. In some communities, learning Torah is forbidden on days of mourning like the Shiva period and Christmas Eve, because the holiness of Torah shouldn't interact with the sadness of the time. We also have times when learning Torah is especially meritorious, such as the night of certain holidays and before one's wedding. When we complete our study of a book of Jewish texts, we have a special celebration to commemorate it.

We have a holiday called Simchat Torah where we celebrate completing the reading of the entire Torah scroll all year, and celebrate re-rolling the scroll to the beginning, where we begin reading it from the start all over again. A Torah scroll, on that note, is given immense status. Many times Jews will risk their lives to save Torah scrolls- for example, after the recent earthquakes in Turkey and Syria, Jews risked entering an unstable historic synagogue to rescue the Torah scrolls inside.

And all Jewish texts are treated with care- if a book or text is damaged beyond repair, it can't be thrown out, it must be buried like a human body. On first glance, a mass-printed Tanakh and mass-printed Christian Bible may look similar. Except if a Tanakh is dropped accidentally, it is kissed, and if it's damaged beyond repair, it is buried with full respect. This is because learning is *integral* to Judaism. Studying our texts is integral to our practice. It's not enough to attend synagogue, you must make yourself familiar with the texts.

Learning Kabbalah is practicing Kabbalah, which is why we say that no, goyim shouldn't learn about Kabbalah. Is it not enough that we say it's wrong for you to listen to us? I think part of the reason goyim are so entitled to our texts is because deep down, they believe that we're hiding something in them, and they don't trust us. We're not hiding something, we just have our privacy and our boundaries and you are not entitled to everything.

[deer-with-a-stick]

I wonder how many people know that Maria's animals are the Four Symbols from Chinese/East Asian mythology. Didn't pick it up until the turtle appeared but when I tell you I screamed

[the-catboy-minyan]

nothing makes me more furious than when atheists call Jewish characters from the fucking Tanach "bible characters".

no. Abraham isn't yours. Jacob isn't yours. Noah isn't yours. Moses isn't yours. they're OURS. this is OUR HISTORY and OUR PEOPLE. they don't come from the bible, they were STOLEN FROM JEWS.

I recently saw a poll on tumblr that asked were do you know the name Ishmael from, bible was listed as an option, the Tanach wasn't. Ishmael is clearly a Jewish name, it's a HEBREW name, it's not Christian in any way, why wasn't the source material listed as an option???

the Tanach doesn't belong the Christians, our history and religion needs to stop being appropriated, this is OUR history, not Christian histroy.

[agnesandhilda]

as far as christian-themed art goes I'm of the opinion that you cannot meaningfully appropriate mainline western catholicism (it's a massively powerful branch of a religion that has been spread by imperialism and that actively seeks out converts as a core tenet. how could you appropriate it?) but that it is possible to engage with it shallowly and that that's fair game to make fun of. I will not be taking questions at this time

[a-very-tired-jew]

A trend that I have seen lately from the antisemitic anti-Zionist crowd is to latch on to the concept of Christian Zionists. I've seen a good number of the big accounts across social media talk about Christian Zionism as if it's the same thing as Zionism as it relates to Jews.

For example; take one of the GFM "verifiers" and big anti-Zionist blogger el-shab sharing from palistani (who is a raging antisemite).

This is one example and follows the standard I've seen across ProPal social media. They will typically introduce Christian Zionism as a whataboutism to distract from the fact that their movement is full of Nazis, antisemites, and supremacists. They will not explain the differences between Christian Restorationism Zionism and Zionism, nor explain how it came about, and then drop the "Christian" modifier and just call refer to it as Zionism from then on. This is part of how they are and have been spreading the "Zionism is a White Supremacist Colonizer ideology".

Most people don't know the difference between Christian Zionism and Zionism. Most people don't know that Christian Zionism is Christian Restorationism and that they changed the name of their belief/ideology to "ally" with Jews and garner support. But that "allyship" with Jews is conditioned on the fact that they need us to be in our homeland so that they can get their Second Coming Apocalypse ending.

That's it.

That's the whole thing.

We need to be in Israel so the End Times can happen and that's why they're (Christian) Zionists.

It has nothing to do with Zionism as it relate to Jews, Jewish safety, Jewish identity, Jewish indigeneity, and so on.

It's just another appropriation by goyim.

Now, End Times style Christians in the USA tend to be right wing bigots. They're typically the ones ranting about how *insert hated group* are a sign of the End. They push for legislature that is discriminatory and hateful. Many of them are White Supremacists and proud of it. This is a common tactic used by the mouth pieces of the anti-Israel movement; distract and redirect.

Do they have Nazis in their movement? Yes. But don't focus on that. Focus on this other thing that I'm holding in front of your face that is totally the worse thing so that you don't question why we have Nazis, antisemites, and other bigots in our group.

Jews are not Christian Zionists and cannot be. Zionism as it relates to Jews is completely separate with its own subtypes couched underneath it. But to conflate their Christian beliefs with a Jewish ideology is a fallacious argument that really shows how desperate antisemites anti-Zionists are.

After all these months it appears that people are listening to Jews about what Zionism actually is vs what these protesters have been telling them it is. They need to go "well what about this Zionism?! huh? huh?" as if it's another gotcha. But just like they've been defining Zionism as if it was Kahanism, this new talking point will just be another nail in the coffin of "it's anti-Zionism, not antisemitism!"

[leroibobo]

the armenian cathedral of the assumption of mary in lviv, ukraine. it was built in the late 14th century by an armenian merchant who modeled it on the cathedral of ani, the seat of the armenian catholicos from the mid 10th-11th centuries. armenians have maintained a consistent presence in ukraine and eastern europe in general since at least medieval times.

[onenakedfarmer]

[hindahoney]

Let's talk about appropriation of Judaism, and hijacking Jewish history

"According to Halacha, Jews who abandon their Jewishness by choice become 'meshumadim' (An example being messianic "jews" of Jewish ancestry). Though Jewish by lineage, they cannot claim any privilege pertaining to Jewish status. To make it simple: if we don't claim you, you don't get to claim us."

Credit: insta user @rootsmetals

[luckycl0ve]

durge art inspired by. well. i think some of you may know because we are on tumblr dot com

[audiblehush]

Listen, I’m on the “I’ll believe it when I see it” train with all these inconsistent S3 rumors because 1) LOL the fucking Sun, people, really?! and 2) “Well, the friend of my friend said… and they’re really reliable! Trust me!” 🙄

But even if it all ends up being true: I’ve already seen a handful of great posts talking about no, it’s NOT actually harming Colin’s character, thanks, and would make a lot of sense from what we know about where he’s at mentally so far - I’ll try not to rehash stuff they’ve already argued really well… and probably fail once i get going 😬

But I would also like to throw out that canonically… Book!Colin ALSO had experience prior to his relationship with Penelope?? Not to rakeish levels, but yeah, he had sexual encounters with women… That he then specifically mentions as meaning NOTHING once he compares it to what he has with Penelope because with her there is actual LOVE built over YEARS of INTIMACY.

And since Show!Colin is markedly younger than his book counterpart, it would make sense that this is something he is exploring, whether the initial choice is through coercion from his brother(s), or because he is curious, or… whatever he reason is?? It doesn’t matter??

He’s YOUNG. Being young means being curious about sex! It often means learning over time the difference between mere physicality vs intimacy. Learning about sex can be messy, confusing, wonderful, terrible, mediocre, not what you thought it’d be, etc etc etc.

Regardless of if we’re taking about Penelope OR Colin: Context is everything and WE. DON’T. HAVE. ANY. YET.

Penelope has her own coping mechanism for what she’s dealing with on her own throughout the show with LW; why is Colin any different, whether that’s drinking, tea, sex, etc? He’s clearly exploring different aspects of himself and finding what appeals or doesn’t appeal to him. And that’s normal!!

The IRONY of people claiming they’re furious at Colin treating women like sex toys… when that’s exactly how some people view Colin for Penelope. He is more than a prop for her! Their whole story is that they choose each other after years of self discovery and recognition of each others true selves… ALL of their past experiences included.

Even if the rumored second instance is true… 1) it would clearly be used as a way to prove that he’s miserable and NEEDS love and Pen and intimacy and 2) characters make mistakes... often ones they learn from. Pen has made her fair share of poor choices, too. Colin has and WILL make mistakes because that is what interesting, developing characters do, yet y’all act like he is unforgivable for being given his own plot scenes. He is NOT just there to have sex with Penelope!! He is a character outside of his romance with his own struggles to grapple with!

Also, please be real - this was SO NORMAL for men during this era, especially at his age! Why are MODERN DAY AUDIENCES acting so fucking scandalized?? One or two instances doesn’t even make him a real rake, ESPECIALLY if it’s being framed as him realizing it isn’t what he ultimately wants! Why are you even watching this show if something like this is so offensive to you?!

If all this ends up being accurate (which again, I doubt), I will admit I’ll probably be picky about how it’s handled… but I’ve always felt that way about this pairing in the short time I’ve been in the fandom.

But I NEED people to chill the fuck out until the season actually airs. You’re lambasting something you HAVEN’T EVEN SEEN YET.