#doykeit

[neighborhoodjewishaunt]

[flamingkorybante]

Like many of my comrades I have been heartbroken by the nationalist fervor coming at me from all directions over the last week. I know it’s difficult for many diasporic Jews to imagine a praxis that integrates all of the ancestral trauma that we carry with the drive for peace and justice for all peoples to which we are commanded, and I want to offer as a possibility that tikkun olam will come when ALL borders fall and ALL states dissolve.

Rabbi Shmuel Alexandrov wrote that in olam haba’a, all borders and laws will dissolve before the light of the divinity present in all things – that even the border between Shabbat and the other days of the week would crumble, allowing the holiness of the Shabbat to infuse into every day (as Jill Hammer writes, this vision of sacredness infused into every day, every place, deconstructing artificial boundaries of space and time, “does not reject the Temple but rather enlarges it”). To divest from loyalty to the state and become instead a cosmopolitan – a citizen of the universe – “testif[ies] to the unity of the Creator and his creation – just as the former is one and undivided, so too the latter.”

“Every border implies the violence of its maintenance.” - Ayesha A. Siddiqi

There is no border between peoples, and consequently no state, that is not created and maintained through dehumanization. When we accept the existence of any state as good or even as a necessary evil, we are accepting the proposition that the people on the other side of the border are not people in the same way as we are, and that their suffering does not matter in the same way that our suffering matters.

It is only when we reject such a fantasy that we can rise together. We do not need the state to protect us from our cousins; we need to join with our cousins to protect each other from the state.

We are in a climate of unbearable propaganda; we are being thrown bodily into the memories of generations of screaming ancestors who yearn for sanctuary. This is being crafted intentionally by agents of states who need us to be too dissociated, too triggered, and too terrified to connect across difference so that they can get on with their work of exploitation and domination. Our only job right now is to resist that, to push through the dissociation and the fear and the trauma to reach out for each other, to dismantle the borders and walls and protections that the fear and trauma spring up around us, to remember that we are not each other’s enemy.

When we tear down the walls around our hearts, we are making ourselves into channels through which olam haba’a can be born, and when we tear down the walls in the world, letting the sacred peace of Shabbat rush in like undammed water, letting the artificial mechanisms of the state -- ANY state , all states -- be washed away by a river of solidarity, we are bringing it to pass.

[tin-tweezers]

Alexis Mitchell, excerpt from interview with Radio613, June 1, 2009. Transcribed and published in Issue 2 of the Doykeit Zine, “Diaspora” (2014), edited by Solomon JB Brager. Highlights added by me.

[TEXT:

ALEXIS: I’ve noticed that especially working with a Pakistani-Canadian (Sharlene Bamboat) who has lived half of her life in Pakistan and half of her life in Canada. Yeah, I've noticed a very distinct, obvious difference of how we experience diaspora in any way. I think this notion of queering diaspora is really important, but it's also, obviously very specific to each person. Like, I went to Hebrew School growing up whete I would paint Israeli flags in art class and be forced to celebrate Israel's birthday every year. And, when we would trace our family trees and I would ask where my familv's from and what does Israel have to do with me? Why is this considered my homeland when my family's Eastern European?

Everybody I guess can be traced back somewhere, but, even from a very young age, I didn't feel that connection - it kind of felt really forced to me.

AVI: Yup.

ALEXIS: It's not that I feel that I am Eastern European - ya know, my mom's family is from Russia, my dad's family is from Poland - and that is my experience cause I've been living in a separate culture from that for generations. So, it's not that I necessarily feel that, but living in Canada and knowing that I'm not native to this land there's sort of that feeling of having an every place and no place. But, in order to be critical of where we exist, or where we don't exist, I think it's really important to not hold something on a pedestal and say "this is that perfect untouchable land" and nothing can be critiqued of it because that's where I belong and it's where my home is.”]

It’s always fun to be reminded how recent European national identities are. Peasants in 1860’s Sicily had never heard the term “Italy” before, the majority of people in France didn’t speak French at the time of the French Revolution, etc.

[stabbedthrutheeye]

ptsd is like playing fucking whack a mole with your subconscious. every time i think i have all my trauma shit sorted some new trigger pops up and throws my shit off completely

[tamamita]

What's your opinion on the idea of jewish self determination?

As with everyone else, self-determination does not necessitate the creation of a nation-state. For example, Doykeit is an interesting concept within Bundist thoughts that addresses Jewish self-determination without the creation of a nation-state.

[beaniegender]

"we have always been a wandering people" ok but we didn't want to be. We kept getting ethnically cleansed out of places where we spent centuries building culture and history. It was full of grief each time and I want that grief to end. "wherever we live that's our homeland" well I WISH it was but my family actually fled the specific city that phrase emerged from in the specific year it was used on political posters to escape pogroms and we're still mourning that! Yes, doykeit over ethnonationalism always, but the slogans of doykeit just make me feel so angry about what was taken from us bc, genuinely, the majority of diaspora culture and community got destroyed in the last century. I'm glad my family survived but our lives fundamentally changed and for me these slogans inspire anti-goyische rage, not pro-palestinian solidarity or passion. Anyways.

[genuine-hotel]

prev tags:

^^^^ i can't say enough how much i feel all of this to my core. i was thinking about this when i posted that short thing about neturei karta but couldn't figure out how to word it to make it fit then.

the yiddish concept of doykayt (or doykeit)—"hereness"

(via twitter)

source: Jewish Women's Archive

all i can say forever

i'm jewish. as a child i moved from a rural town where my family saw acts of rage and hate, emigrated from a country with a horrifying history with jews. you know the one, though there are many. i'm 31 now and i have seen and experienced antisemitism my whole life, in the many places i've lived, to varying degrees. not that i should need to qualify this before everything i have to say - but i know what that looks and feels like. in my life there have been times at which i have been in danger. i choose to stay out of danger in all the ways i was taught. (part of that is not moving into someone else's house uninvited (more in a sec))

(well-meaning?) people want me to have a relationship with israel. they are very invested in assuming i have some connection to this shifting space, this project. they associate my german jewishness with a place i have never been and never felt. home, for me, is the uncle i haven't seen in too long, the ailing brother of my mother, the same red nose. it's fresh sheets hung over dry summer grass, it's bavarian farmland, it's thick liptauer on pumpernickel bread warmed over the wood stove. it's my grandmother's dining room and rough fenceposts, borders we disrespected as kids. home is also here and there and where my family is, where my friends are, where i've built myself.

in a geopolitical sense, it is clear that the antisemitic position is to sequester jews into a partitioned state conceived of by non-jews after the sunset of our most recent attempted decimation. antisemitic, to tell jews "move here, be at home in this space of constant war. impose war on others. fight for a tenuous link to an ancestry you've never seen or studied." in a religious sense, sort of a key feature of judaism since the second exile is that - we're in exile. this is an orthodox argument, but i have to admit that rabbinical discourse is pretty convincing. the secular establishment of the israeli state in an attempt to accelerate any so-called redemption has left us at a point where i really don't know what hope we have for that to occur. if you believe in god, how can you believe they are looking down at us, impressed

because beyond theoretical or spiritual reasons, the bloodlust, the vengefulness, the racism, the violation of law (i know that laws are agreed upon, are broken all the time by those who grant themselves impunity), the evil of this continuance, the evil which grinds babies and text and memory, gnashes it all in its droning machinery, its cold horror and inhumane (unhuman) practice, seemingly perfected... it is obvious to anyone with a single thought that it is an ethnic cleansing. the forcible "movement" (murder) of people of one group from land people of another group want. is ethnic cleansing. we are watching it in real time, and the world stands by and in many cases, it endorses, it beats and imprisons those who are brave enough to stand up to it, it rewards cowardly men in war rooms who having read fukuyama and arendt and maybe even voegelin conveniently forget themselves, because they can afford to, and wave their hands and make calls and decimate entire families cities sovereignties. and liberalism - that fickle ideology whose sole search is for the justification of atrocity - sends its thoughts and prayers, and emphasizes how just horrible both sides are, and conveniently forgets the histories that have led each "side" to this. convenient.

and i can't do anything about it. i can perfectly articulate every well-thought-out argument, i can cry the most frustrated tears from the well of my chest and i can scream that this isn't right, because it isn't, but nobody fucking cares. those who matter have decided for those who don't.

if you align yourself with israel, or feel any sympathy toward the supposed plight of active settlers (not a neutral spot to be in, by the way - another rational argument), i hope you know how thoroughly you've been manipulated. how successful the project of those with the power to decide we don't matter has been. you and i don't matter. so-called free thinkers meme. you fucking idiot. you genocidal maniac.

not putting this under a cut. fuck you. read it all and remember my jewish name and keep it far out of your mouth the next time you tell someone why the people you've told me are my neighbors deserve a flattening.

[comfortcomfortdeercat]

Mir zaynen doh

Flags are more annoying to sew than expected

[fanzines]

‘Doykeit’ is a zine series by Jewish zinester Solomon JB Brager about queer Jewish identity "in relation to anti-Zionist and Palestinian solidarity politics".

Read an interview with the zinester here.

[polpettedilupo]

New printing block in the works. #doykeit #hineni #linocut https://www.instagram.com/p/CTafpqZFF-L/?utm_medium=tumblr

[2percentsugar]

a part of it is that converts feel a constant pressure to color inside the lines in a way that someone who had a b-mitzvah probably won't. the "youre not a real jew" cries are just stupid if youre literally born of a jewish mother, but if there's any halakhic doubt about you it stings

and halakhic doubt is dirt cheap ! BTs have to do giyur lchumra like all the time man. so even ethnic jews can have a very hard time with it in a way that amounts to, "if being jewish means being accepted by a community, and saying this will cause me to be rejected by that community, which do i value more?"

it does not help, i suppose, that zionism means approximately 7 million things, and so antizionism is an inherently fuzzy concept. i have in the past week seen people say they are a zionist against the occupation, a zionist against a jewish nationstate, and any number of things that are on a practical level many antizionists agree with

and like, love it or hate it, at least one thing is true: israel is one of the centers, maybe the center, of jewish life. much of the diaspora no longer exists. throughout SWANA and eastern europe communities were decimated, and the refugees of those pogroms went to israel.

whether or not you believe that those pogroms were the ultimate fault of israel does not change the fact that, jews no longer live in those countries. disaporism and doykeit is great if you live in the West, but if your ancestors are from algeria? iran? yemen?

being a jew against the occupation, then, becomes a balancing act. how do you talk about the war crimes without condemning half of your ethnic group for being born in a certain place? i dont think there's a wrong way to do it, or at least like, i think people should have more understanding for people who do it in a non idiomatic way, or ones that are not immediately expedient for slacktivism

oh and to loop back to how i got onto this rant

dont lie to your rabbi! it is you who will suffer in the end!

while in theory there's nothing untrue about telling conversion students that they can be antizionists [just dont tell your rabbi!], since after all born jews can be antizionists too, i think it encourages people to put themselves into one of the most unfun situations ever without really thinking it through

[flamingkorybante]

The World That Is Coming: A Do'ikayt Teach-In - upcoming workshops!

NEW DATES FOR IN-PERSON LEARNING AND CONNECTION!

Saturday January 13th, 3-6 PM, Blackbird Infoshop & Cafe, 587 Abeel Street, Kingston NY (doors close at 4 for a protected circle practice, masks required and provided)

Wednesday January 31st, 6-9 PM, Bureau of General Services-Queer Division, The LGBT Community Center, 208 W 13th St, Room 210, New York, NY 10011 (doors close at 7 for a protected circle practice, attendance capped at 35, masks required and provided)

Neither conversation will be recorded or shared publicly, to allow people to share freely, to be courageous, to integrate the new.

Do'ikayt is the yiddish word for "here-ness." It describes a movement that came into being at the same time as, and in conversation with, the nascent zionist political project in the late 1800s, and it is based on the idea that wherever we are, that is our homeland; that our task as Jews is to build solidarity and fight for liberation in the places where we already live and work.

It’s difficult for many diasporic Jews to imagine a praxis that integrates all of the ancestral trauma that we carry with the drive for peace and justice for all peoples to which we are commanded. Do’ikayt offers as a possibility that tikkun olam will come when ALL borders fall and ALL states dissolve.

We are in a climate of unbearable propaganda; we are being thrown bodily into the memories of generations of screaming ancestors who yearn for sanctuary. This is being crafted intentionally by agents of states who need us to be too dissociated, too triggered, and too terrified to connect across difference so that they can get on with their work of exploitation and domination. Our only job right now is to resist that, to push through the dissociation and the fear and the trauma to reach out for each other, to dismantle the borders and walls and protections that the fear and trauma spring up around us, to remember that we are not each other’s enemy.

When we tear down the walls around our hearts, we are making ourselves into channels through which olam haba’a can be born, and when we tear down the walls in the world, letting the sacred peace of Shabbat rush in like undammed water, letting the artificial mechanisms of the state be washed away by a river of solidarity, we are bringing it to pass.

If you want to open yourself to the possibility of do'ikayt as medicine, and want to do it in community, please join us to explore the history, tradition, and possibility of a way of being Jewish that does not accept the violence that we are being asked to tolerate in the name of our own safety.

[doykeitdyke]

my g-d the jewish world is so small, i just searched the term doykeit bc i wanna learn more abt the concept and the first result that came up is a project by someone i used to work with. hello ??

[minister-erik]

Purim 5779 Preview Show: A Matryoshka Purim: Loops, Lots, & Consequence by ERIK MCGREGOR Via Flickr: The Aftselakhis Spectacle Committee, in cahoots with Jews For Racial and Economic Justice, and Great Small Works, excitedly bring you: A MATRYOSHKA PURIM: LOOPS, LOTS, & CONSEQUENCE Lovers of the theatre! A more intimate version of the show awaits you at our Preview Show. Lots of seating available. Enjoy our 3-act shpil in its entirety, with music from the legendary Purim house band. Hamentaschen and berverages available. Be among the first in the known universe to ever see this play! This year in Brooklyn Shushan, the eternal party is overrun with tech bros. Bigsan and Teresh are stuck in a strategic disagreement, while Pony is stuck in glue. Will Mordechai monetize the data of his bodega customers, or will Esther reclaim technology for the community? Meanwhile, Vashti is caught in a loop of social deaths as she searches the Coccoon forest for her Syrian Jewish identity in Maqam Sigah, as well as her beloved cat, Haman... boo! You know what they say: you gotta get lost to be found... It's been described as "The Radical Queer Purim Spiel You MUST Attend" (thanks Jewcy!). All your favorite Purim characters will feature, but maybe not in ways you expect. Anticipate music, satire, irreverence, puppets, glitter, doykeit, joy, confusion and lots of fun. #AftselakhisSpectacleCommittee #Art #EastMidwoodJewishCenter #GreatSmallWorks #GSW #JFREJ #MatryoshkaPurim #NewYork #NYC #performance #PerformingArts #PURIM #Purim5779 #PURIMSHPIL #theater © Erik McGregor - erikrivas@hotmail.com - 917-225-8963

[tin-tweezers]

THIS

Doikayt

A Yiddish term, meaning “hereness,” conveying a sense of belonging despite tensions, described here:

“What do I mean by home? Not the nation state; not religious worship; not the deepest grief of a people marked by hatred. I mean a commitment to what is and is not mine; to the strangeness of others, to my strangeness to others; to common threads twisted with surprise. Diasporism takes root in the Jewish Socialist Labor Bund’s principle of doikayt—hereness—the right to be, and to fight for justice, wherever we are…Doikayt is about wanting to be citizens, to have rights, to not worry about being shipped off at any moment where someone else thinks you do or don’t belong…I name this commitment Diasporism.” (Melanie Kay/Kantrowitz, The Colors of Jews, 2007)

“Wherever we live, that’s our homeland!” (Banner made by @egowave)

[tin-tweezers]

Yes. Yes yes yes yes yes yes.

“Doykeit”

Page 1:  Contains a handwritten description of the word Doykeit and a type quote by Judith Butler about Jews speaking out against injustice, particularly in a post WWII context. Page 2:  Contains two pieces of handwritten text which describe the zine Doykeit itself and the motivations and intentions behind it.  There is also a typed quote by Rudolph Rocker from The London Years regarding social ideas, Jewish workers, and the libertarian movement in Britain.

Page 3-6:  Contain an essay entitled “My Grandma’s queer prayer or how to pronounce the name of god” by mjk, which discusses language, yiddish in particular, and cultural differences between Judaism and Israeli traditions.  The background of these pages contain photographs and illustrations.