#eastern european diaspora

[bxdtime-ceai]

diasporic eastern european culture is always yearning for home but never actually going back to live there bc its really not that great

[rotzaprachim]

before shadow and bone season 2 comes out i’m gonna say my least favorite parts of season 1 were the anti-shu racism in so much as it felt like that was Included because of some feeling that an appropriate depiction of an asian character required including some Racism as part of the whole package of asianness rather than because racism and alienation were topics they wanted to explore in any way and in any depth. 

[barnbridges]

every time i hear someone be like "im eastern european" and then they never talk about their home country or culture with any sort of pride or belonging im like are you actually an american bot thanks

[navramanan]

sorry but i'm so delighted over how diaspora arabs have been realizing that turkey is very hostile towards them which is why many of them thought twice about going on vacation there and decided not to. take this as a lesson to NOT idealize a country to absurd amounts like the muslim diaspora loves doing with turkey

[attila-werther]

well then

there's a borderline comical level of cognitive dissonance happening in this bio

[iamthetruenhaz]

ahhhh, the hated non-westerners, starting from "off-white"

they ruined politics

americans getting mad at poles, bosnians, and others criticizing the democrats, saying they helped the republicans... i'm sure there's nothing to learn here

[sorrymyrabbisaidno]

Goyim when Ashkenazi Jews formed in the European diaspora: *calls them middle Eastern Interlopers*

Goyim when Ashkenazi Jews move back to the middle east: *calls them European Interlopers*

It's almost like it's not really about where Jews live and it's really about antisemitism! Funny how that works huh?

[chanaleah]

Today's Israeli claim to self-determination has no sense, since the vast majority of Israeli are Askenazi. They are litteraly mixed! And, have emigrated back to their land after over A THOUSEND YEAR. How can we still take seriously a claim to a land, you, supposevely, have habitated after a thousend? Gheddafi was right. Israel is a Rhodesia who has been succeful to replace the native population with white Europeans. Again, Askenazi are to be considered white Europeans, as they lost all of their middle eastern traits and completely mixed up with Europeans

again y’all let’s use our bestie Google!

the vast majority of Israelis are not Ashkenazi, which again, you would know if you took 5 minutes to do a quote Google search. But that doesn’t matter, because indigenity doesn’t expire.

Again, indigenity doesn’t expire.

The ancestors of today’s Ashkenazim were forced out of our land and prevented from coming back. But they never assimilated, and this can be seen in the food we cooked, songs we sang, and languages we spoke and prayed in.

How long must someone be prevented from returning to their land before they lose their indigenity? Are the Cherokee no longer indigenous to the southeastern US because they’ve been forced out of their land?

Not to mention that Jews maintained a consistent presence in א״י throughout the diaspora despite the constant empires trying to force us out.

Furthermore, while indigenity is not determined by genetics, genetic studies consistently show Ashkenazi Jews as plurally Levantine, and most every other Jewish diaspora group’s DNA is majority Levantine. This is corroborated by pretty much every reliable study of Ashkenazim.

Also, self-determination doesn’t require being an indigenous people. For example, Italians aren’t considered an indigenous people, but they do deserve self determination, and they currently do self determine in Italy. Jews have remained a distinct ethnoreligious group for around 3000 years, so just like any other ethnic group, we have the right to self determination. And our right to self determination doesn’t and shouldn’t alienate the rights to self determination of any other group.

Your blood quantum BS isn’t appreciated here, anon.

[jewish-sideblog]

Are you fucking for real with this? Y’all have really been whipped into such an antisemitic frenzy like.

“Members of a non-European ethnic group were displaced from their ancestral land and forced to take European names in Western nations hundreds of years ago. Now they’re changing their names back to names that have historical precedent in their native languages. (Black people)” is universally accepted as a good thing by liberals / leftists / anti-racists. But for some reason

“Members of a non-European ethnic group were displaced from their ancestral land and forced to take European names in Western nations hundreds of years ago. Now they’re changing their names back to names that have historical precedent in their native languages. (Jewish people)” is considered a horrifyingly evil colonial tactic?

Most Jews living in European diaspora didn’t have surnames at all until a handful of centuries ago. Sephardim were forced to take on Spanish surnames to avoid being killed by the Inquisition following the Alhambra Decree in 1492. Ashkenazim were forced to adopt Germanic and Eastern European names in different nations at different times between the 1780s and the 1850s. Both Ben Gurion and Netanyahu’s “white” names were forced upon them by local Prussian, Russian, or Austro-Hungarian officials less than three hundred years ago. Adopting Hebrew-or-Yiddish-derived last names were banned by most of these laws. When Jewish families left the nations that had forced them to adopt white Germanic last names, they adopted indigenous Jewish last names instead.

David Ben Gurion was born David Güre. He literally just added a Hebrew patronymic prefix to his father’s last name. Meanwhile Mohammed Ali was born Cassius Marcellus Clay. Amiri Baraka was born Everett Leroy Jones. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was born Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor. When you commend black people for shaking off names that were forced upon them by Europeans three hundred years ago, but vilify Jewish people for doing the exact same thing, you’re antisemitic. There’s no other way around it.

[fromgoy2joy]

One thing I think that happens as we try to defend our existence in not only one specific land but globally as well is using the very real identities some Jewish people have as stand-ins for laughable stereotypes .

Two examples-

"When will they learn that not every Jew is some white girl named Rachel from Brooklyn lolol?"

"Not everyone came from Poland so why would we go back there?”

Absolutely, the diversity in Jewish culture is not as represented and discussed as it should be. However, that shouldn't find its place in the discourse here. yeah, there's more people than what American media depicts as the be-all-end-all of Jewishness. But that girl Rachel in Brooklyn is terrified and her community is being constantly threatened. Her "whiteness" or "Brooklynness" doesn't negate that. At all. Often, it excuses the damage when it does happen.

And what about those people who came from Poland or other Eastern European countries? Russia, Ukraine, Lithuania, etc. Whose grandparents escaped- or those whose family didn't ? Where they were always considered foreigners? Countries that were so influenced by its Jewish residents that now have so few because those same governments and people murdered them ? And in that case, would it be acceptable for the descendants of people with barely a connection to where their ancestors stayed in diaspora to go back to?

I know people don’t mean it like this. This is such a weird time with everything that’s been going on. I’m not trying to go after people coping with bad jokes or quips. But let’s not canabilize each other ? Let’s hold everyone and their backgrounds with equal value and love as we fight this plague of antisemitism .

[jewish-vents]

maybe more of a question than a vent, but it's a question without an answer - do you think if the goyim recognized that Jews are an ethnic group, an indigenous *tribe* of people, this would be treated differently, or Israel might be seen as land back for us after thousands of years of exile? because I keep seeing stuff like, "you can't just take land because some made up God promised it to you," which of course is intentionally degrading Judaism, but that's not the point. it's not a religious connection, it's ancestral. Am Yisrael is a TRIBE. maybe it's because of supersessionism and seeing Judaism as Christianity lite (Christianity sans Jesus, Christianity 1.0), and Christianity is mostly seen as "white" and as European colonialism and a "Western" religion, and Islam is seen as "brown" and exotified and an "Eastern" religion (and we're not supposed to talk about it being colonial and proselytizing and conquering people similarly to Christianity at all, I guess?). so Judaism is dismissed because they don't understand that it's an ethnoreligion. our holidays and calendar are tied to our homeland. UNAVOIDABLY, you can't magically extract that connection or pretend it doesn't exist, or you only have a shell of Judaic tradition. our prayers, our practices, they're tribal. they're tied to our history too. they can't be universalized easily, you can't just make up rituals. the reason Judaism is a closed practice is because we're a people, and converts literally become part of that tribe.

there are other indigenous people in the world who are recognized as indigenous, not because of skin color, but because of history and ancestral connection to the land. this obsession with race science and the American lens and the "oppressor" label being pasted over Jews simply does not work, especially after generations spent in diaspora where of course we had to adapt and assimilate and were threatened/assaulted/killed, so features we have changed and diversified. it doesn't change our ethnicity though. Jews are from Judea. we always have been.

even saying "goyim" and then people claiming that's a slur, it's not true because it's just "not one of the Jewish tribe," it's not about supremacy or othering. it only is to distinguish that we are our own people.

why don't they understand this? why is it such a hard concept to grasp? we're a tribe with tribal customs, language, practices, and heritage, and we came from a specific land. you'd think progressives could easily grasp this but instead we're demons, greedy killers who don't belong? that's what you all called us while living in diaspora too, so! where can we go and live safely that you won't decide makes us oppressive monsters? our history has been obliterated and stolen from us all over the world, we've been forced out and murdered time after time. what will it take for us to be recognized as human beings?

.

[mariacallous]

Offal, aka organ meats, are about to make a comeback. Yes, I predict that brains, livers, spleens, tongues and testicles will feature heavily on the menus of Israel’s (and the diaspora’s Jewish/Israeli-style) hottest eateries by this time next year — if they aren’t already. Why? Because young chefs are increasingly inspired by traditional Jewish dishes, driving a return-to-roots style of cooking. And these old-school classics are notably innard-heavy.

Offal is an oxymoron; it’s both a poor-person food, which is why it was so popular in the shtetl, and a celebratory food, eaten on Shabbat and festivals. Many Sephardic cultures consider it a delicacy. Read on and decide for yourself.

Let’s start with an old Ashkenazi classic: chopped liver. While for me, it will always be in style, many of my contemporaries don’t feel the same. Luckily, young Jewish chefs have already set their sights on it, and may well have the power to convert millennial diners. Take Anthony Rose’s recipe in “The Last Schmaltz,” which sears the livers, then deglazes the pan with arak before blending, serving the chopped liver with thyme-scented caramelized onions.

Another well-known offal dish is the Jerusalem mixed grill. Made with chicken giblets and lamb parts, and seasoned with onion, garlic, black pepper, cumin, turmeric and coriander, this classic street food is believed to have originated sometime between 1960-1970 at one of two (now feuding) restaurants in Jerusalem’s Machaneh Yehuda Market. While the Jerusalem grill is far younger than most Jewish offal dishes, it originated in a similar way: Butchers had a surplus of unwanted offal so they sold it off cheaply, then some savvy chefs turned the offal into a desirable dish. The mixed grill was one of the first offal dishes to receive multiple modern makeovers. At his restaurant Rovi, Yotam Ottolenghi adds baharat onions and pickles, while Michael Solomonov included a Jerusalem grill-Southern dirty rice hybrid in “Israeli Soul.“

Of course, this is not the first dish based around grilled offal; Tunisian Jews liked to throw a selection of lamb or veal innards onto the grill, which they called mechoui d’abats, and Baghdadi Jews sought a similar smokiness, which they achieved by cooking chicken livers on the tandoor.

Roman Jews preferred their offal battered and fried, rather than grilled. Few know that their famed carciofi alla giudia (deep-fried artichokes) was often served alongside fried sweetbreads, livers, and — most notably — brains. North Africa’s Sephardi communities loved their brains, too, commonly serving them in an omelet called a meguina or menina on festive occasions. Meir Adoni referenced this love in his brain fricassee — a North African-French fusion dish of veal brains inside a croissant with harissa and preserved lemon — at his New York restaurant Nur.

Offal was also commonly used to add a depth of flavor to a soup or stew. Yemenite Jews — one of the few communities who continue to cook traditional offal dishes — make a soup with bulls’ penis and cows’ udders, while Eastern European Jews, particularly of Polish descent, continue to add kishke  — a sausage made of stuffed beef intestine — to their weekly Shabbat cholent. A slow-cooked stew called akod is one of the better-known dishes of Tunisian Jewish cuisine, where tripe flavored with cumin, garlic, harissa and tomato paste is the star of the show. Moroccan Jews eat a similar dish on Passover, which ditches the tomato paste but adds liver, heart, and beef dumplings.

Admittedly, there are some offal-based dishes that may find it trickier to stage a comeback. Ptcha – an aspic that reached its height of popularity in shtetl-era Ashkenazi communities — is arguably top of the list. However, it’s not without hope; ptcha was actually born in Turkey in the 14th century as a peasant soup made with lamb’s feet, served hot. This, I’d wager, is a more palatable gateway (it’s basically bone broth) to the Eastern European version, which opts for calves’ feet and allows the soup to cool and set into a jelly, thanks to the gelatin in the hooves.

It only takes one dish to change your view of offal from weird and unappetizing to tasty and versatile. If livers, brains and tripe were good enough for our ancestors, not to mention famed chefs, who are we to turn up our noses? Happy eating!

[gemsofgreece]

Do greeks consider themselves as eastern european/balkan or do you hate that ? In france, the greek diaspora consider itself eastern euro and feels a bond with other balkaners, unlike the italians and french e.g, BUT on the english speaking internet it is the whole opposite, you seemed to be offended being called something else than southern european. I remember having an argument on reddit where i was saying that greece is EE because commie times arent a good indicators as it was 30 years ago for only 45 years while the old latin west greek east (catholic vs orthodox, rome vs constantinople) division was better as it lasted 2000 years, on top of being ottoman for 4 centuries which was the OG meaning of balkans and that in southEAST europe there is EAST. But all of the greeks said that they were 100% south europe only like the pigs and not e.g montenegro and that they were actually closer to WE.

The average greek and your thoughts on this ?

I can't speak for the average Greek because there's a joke saying "in the room there are three Greeks and seven opinions", you know...

Balkans and East Europe are not synonyms. The Balkans are a small part in the south of East Europe. Greeks are Balkaners to the core but the more you reach into the north fringes of the Balkans and farther towards North East Europe, the similarities start falling apart. In this sense, Greece is indeed more South Europe than East Europe because Greece has similarities with pretty much all South European countries, even Portugal, and it has fewer similarities with, say, the Baltic countries or Poland or Hungary. Personally, I think the region of noticeable similarities to Greece end somewhere across Croatia and Romania. In the East the similarities may extend farther in the countries where Orthodoxy is the prevalent religion so well into Southwest Russia and then towards Caucasus. Anyway my point is, a Greek will likely get more easily along with a Catholic Spanish or a Portuguese person than with a Catholic Slovenian or Hungarian person who are far closer geographically. Therefore, Greece is indeed more South Europe than East Europe.

The Greek people you noticed who did not get along with French or Italians, that's probably incidental. Typically Greeks get along with both South Europeans and other Balkaners, with the southern Greeks and islanders gravitating towards the former and northern Greeks gravitating towards the latter. Perhaps those Greeks were Northern Greeks. Perhaps they also bonded with other Balkaners on the basis of both being immigrants, as opposed to the local French.

Greece is Southeast and Balkan Europe, therefore it is East Europe by definition. The problem is that a) nowadays Greeks have very poor knowledge of history and b) there is this unfortunate stereotype permeating across the continent that tRuE Europe = Northwest Europe and that the east is backwards and underdeveloped. And because Greece is ALSO a honorary member of West Europe, Greeks have latched on this “convenient” opportunity to at least verbally distance themselves from East Europe, losing parts of their identity and their understanding of it in the process.

Now you may ask “what the hell is a honorary member of West Europe”. Well, Greece. Because of this whole “cradle of western civilisation” thing, the West honorarily accepts Greece as part of Western Europe. I don’t know if people realise that while it’s good when someone tells you “I want you to be part of us out of honour”, it’s extremely problematic in its essence because it screams the inherent superiority syndrome of West Europe. “We have picked up your entire culture so we allow you to be considered West Europe.” Well, thanks, but no thanks, folks.

Take a look at that:

See? It was not just angry Reddit Greeks. This is technically the "official" international stance on the matter.

There are in fact even foreign people who don't think Greece is part of the Balkans at all, which is insane because why would you even call it Balkan "peninsula" if not for Greece being in it??????? I repeat, Greece is 100% a Balkan country. Not only that but Greeks are one of the four Palaeo-Balkan peoples (Greeks - Thracians - Illyrians - Dacians).

And here’s where I am going to add one more layer to your mail, the biggest misconception about the Greeks, the one that the foreigners are just as guilty of, if not even more; you said, Greeks are more Eastern Europeans because of East Rome / Byzantine Empire and Ottomans. Well, that’s only part of it. There is simply no part of Greek history that is not eastern because the Ancient Greek was an eastern civilisation! One of the major ancient civilisations springing from the culture hub of the Near East and its periphery. Greeks interacted for centuries with Egyptians, Persians, Hittites, Phoenicians etc before they finally interacted with westerners, the Romans, and to whom they culturally gave more than they took. But even that was forgotten in the Middle Ages in the west (but not in the eastern - of course - Roman / Byzantine Empire). The Ancient Greek heritage was only re-discovered in West Europe during the Renaissance and the Enlightenment and that’s when West Europeans “remembered” suddenly that they are cultural children of the Ancient Greeks (well they aren’t, at least not organically) and therefore they now have to suffer modern Greece being acknowledged as part of the west because they don’t want to spell out that “Western Civilization” is just the formation of several western contemporary societies using elements from the foundations of an ancient Eastern Civilization. Westerners would love to think West sprang from a parthenogenesis but in truth the West sprang from the East.

So, yes, the Greeks started as Easterners, kept being Easterners and they are still Easterners. This however does not mean that they have all that many similarities to Eastern Europeans who expand on the north. Greeks have more connections to the south, the southwest and to the true east. They are technically less now though compared to all past periods of Greece because it is only after the independence and the formation of the modern state that Greeks became so west-oriented. The reason for this was their urgent need to distance themselves as much as possible from Turkey and find allies and supporters in the west, who would be willing to aid and support in the basis of protecting “the cradle of the West”.

Here I must add that the West has indeed taken a lot from Ancient Greece and respects it way more than the East (due to the recent historical and religious developments there). All I say is it was not organic, it was not the natural evolution of the western culture. And I am not saying Greece should distance itself from the West. No, I do think we should have strong bonds and be companions and co-members and allies but that doesn’t mean we should rewrite history and erase our identity in the name of this alliance. I am fine with Greece being the most west-friendly country of East Europe, which it already is. I just wished Greeks celebrated more their Eastern identity, rekindled their relations to any potential alienated eastern friends and did not fall victims into one of the biggest historical propagandas and misconceptions there are: Ancient Greeks = Western and powerful versus Byzantine and Modern Greeks = Eastern therefore useless and different people.

To end this far too long ongoing discourse, Greeks are all the following:

Europeans

South Europeans

Balkaners

Mediterraneans

(not applying to everybody) descended from Anatolians - Greek Asians - from Asia Minor

East Europeans

currently so politically and financially western allied and so influential to the west that they are essentially perceived to function more like West Europeans than East Europeans, without however being true Western Europeans

[leroibobo]

some notes on specifically "middle eastern" (mashriqi + iran, caucuses, and turkey) jewish communities/history:

something to keep in mind: judaism isn't "universalist" like christianity or islam - it's easier to marry into it than to convert on your own. conversions historically happened, but not in the same way they did for european and caucasian christians/non-arab muslims.

that being said, a majority of middle eastern jews descend from jewish population who remained in palestine or immigrated/were forced (as is the case with "kurdish" jews) from palestine to other areas and mixed with locals/others who came later (which at some point stopped). pretty much everywhere in the middle east and north africa (me/na) has/had a jewish population like this.

with european jews (as in all of them), the "mixing" was almost entirely during roman times with romans/greeks, and much less later if they left modern-day greece/italy.

(none of this means jewish people are or aren't "indigenous" to palestine, because that's not what that word means.)

like with every other jewish diaspora, middle eastern jewish cultures were heavily influenced by wherever they ended up. on a surface level you can see this in things like food and music.

after the expulsion of jews from spain and portugal, sephardim moved to several places around the world; many across me/na, mostly to the latter. most of the ones who ended up in the former went to present-day egypt, palestine, lebanon, syria, and turkey. a minority ended up in iraq (such as the sassoons' ancestors). like with all formerly-ottoman territories, there was some degree of back and forth between countries and continents.

some sephardim intermarried with local communities, some didn't. some still spoke ladino, some didn't. there was sometimes a wealth gap between musta'arabim and sephardim, and/or they mostly didn't even live in the same places, like in palestine and tunisia. it really depends on the area you're looking at.

regardless, almost all the jewish populations in the area went through "sephardic blending" - a blending of local and sephardic customs - to varying degrees. it's sort of like the cultural blending that came with spanish/portugese colonization in central and south america (except without the colonization).

how they were treated also really depends where/when you're looking. some were consistently dealt a raw hand (like "kurdish" and yemenite jews) while some managed to do fairly well, all things considered (like baghdadi and georgian jews). most where somewhere in between. the big difference between me/na + some balkan and non-byzantine european treatment of jews is due to geography - attitudes in law regarding jews in those areas tended to fall into different patterns.

long story short: most european governments didn't consider anyone who wasn't "christian" a citizen (sometimes even if they'd converted, like roma; it was a cultural/ethnic thing as well), and persecuted them accordingly; justifying this using "race science" when religion became less important there after the enlightenment.

most me/na and the byzantine governments considered jews (and later, christians) citizens, but allowed them certain legal/social opportunities while limiting/banning/imposing others. the extent of both depend on where/when you're looking but it was never universally "equal".

in specifically turkey, egypt, palestine, and the caucuses, there were also ashkenazi communities, who came mainly because living as a jew in non-ottoman europe at the time sucked more than in those places. ottoman territories in the balkans were also a common destination for this sort of migration.

in the case of palestine, there were often religious motivations to go as well, as there were for some other jews who immigrated. several hasidic dynasites more or less came in their entirety, such as the lithuanian/polish/hungarian ones which precede today's neutrei karta.

ashkenazi migration didn't really happen until jewish emancipation in europe for obvious reasons. it also predates zionism - an initially secular movement based on contemporaneous european nationalist ideologies - by some centuries.

most ashkenazi jews today reside in the us, while most sephardic or "mizrahi" jews are in occupied palestine. there, the latter outnumber the former. you're more likely to find certain groups (like "kurds" and yemenites) in occupied palestine than others (like persians and algerians) - usually ones without a western power that backed them from reactionary antisemitic persecution and/or who came from poorer communities. (and no, this doesn't "justify" the occupation).

(not to say there were none who immigrated willingly/"wanted" to go, or that none/all are zionist/anti-zionist. (ben-gvir is of "kuridsh" descent, for example.) i'm not here to parse motivations.)

this, along with a history of racism/chauvinism from the largely-ashkenazi "left", are why many mizrahim vote farther "right".

(in some places, significant numbers of the jewish community stayed, like turkey, tunisia, and iran. in some others, there's evidence of double/single-digit and sometimes crypto-jewish communities.)

worldwide, the former outnumber the latter. this is thought to be because of either a medieval ashkenazi population boom due to decreased population density (not talking about the "khazar theory", which has been proven to be bullshit, btw) or a later, general european one in the 18th/19th centuries due to increased quality of life.

the term "mizrahi" ("oriental", though it doesn't have the same connotation as in english) in its current form comes from the zionist movement in the 1940s/50s to describe me/na jewish settlers/refugees.

(i personally don't find it useful outside of israeli jewish socio-politics and use it on my blog only because it's a term everyone's familiar with.)

about specifically palestinian jews:

the israeli term for palestinian jews is "old yishuv". yishuv means settlement. this is in contrast to the "new yishuv", or settlers from the initial zionist settlement period in 1881-1948. these terms are usually used in the sense of describing historical groups of people (similar to how you would describe "south yemenis" or "czechoslovaks").

palestinian jews were absorbed into the israeli jewish population and have "settler privilege" on account of their being jewish. descendants make up something like 8% of the israeli jewish population and a handful (including, bafflingly, netanyahu and smoltrich) are in the current government.

they usually got to keep their property unless it was in an "arab area". there's none living in gaza/the west bank right now unless they're settlers.

their individual views on zionism vary as much as any general population's views vary on anything.

(my "palestinian jews" series isn't intended to posit that they all think the same way i do, but to show a side of history not many people know about. any "bias" only comes from the fact that i have a "bias" too. this is a tumblr blog, not an encyclopedia.)

during the initial zionist settlement period, there were palestinian/"old yishuv" jews who were both for zionism and against it. the former have been a part of the occupation and its government for pretty much its entire history.

some immigrated abroad before 1948 and may refer to themselves as "syrian jews". ("syria" was the name given to syria/lebanon/palestine/some parts of iraq during ottoman times. many lebanese and palestinian christians emigrated at around the same time and may refer to themselves as "syrian" for this reason too.)

ones who stayed or immigrated after for whatever reason mostly refer to themselves as "israeli".

in israeli jewish society, "palestinian" usually implies muslims and christians who are considered "arab" under israeli law. you may get differing degrees of revulsion/understanding of what exactly "palestine"/"palestinians" means but the apartheid means that palestinian =/= jewish.

because of this, usage of "palestinian" as a self-descriptor varies. your likelihood of finding someone descendent from/with ancestry from the "old yishuv" calling themselves a "palestinian jew" in the same way an israeli jew with ancestry in morocco would call themselves a "moroccan jew" is low.

(i use it on here because i'm assuming everyone knows what i mean.)

samaritans aren't 'jewish', they're their own thing, though they count as jewish under israeli law.

[useless-catalanfacts]

Frequently Asked Questions

This post answers the following questions:

Who are the Catalans? Where are they?

Which are the Catalan Countries? (each Catalan country)

Where can I learn the Catalan language? (free online resources and where to find classes)

What social media accounts can I follow that post in Catalan?

Other Tumblr blogs similar to this one but for other cultures of the world.

If your question isn't answered here, you're more than welcome to send me an ask!

1. Who are the Catalans? Where are they?

Catalan people are a cultural group who come from the area known as the Catalan Countries. We speak the Catalan language (a language that descends from Latin) and have a distinct culture (cuisine, traditions, holidays, dances, music, literature, etc) and history since the Middle Ages.

Our nation is the Catalan Countries, located in the coast of the Mediterranean sea, in South-Western Europe.

As a result of past wars and invasions, most of the Catalan Countries are under Spanish rule and a part of it is under French rule (+1 city in Italy). In fact, Spain and France have harshly persecuted, illegalized and tried to exterminate the Catalan language and culture for a long time, well into the 20th century. But Catalan people have survived the ethnocide and we still exist, even though we continue to face discrimination and there are some settings where it's still not legal to speak Catalan (for example, public schools in the French-controlled part, or European Union ambits, among some others).

There is also Catalan diaspora around the world.

We are not a closed culture, we are very open to foreigners learning our language and culture, and the Catalan diaspora often organizes celebrations for our holidays or groups to do traditional activities (most famously the castellers, aka human towers) that everyone can join.

2. Which are the Catalan Countries?

We say the Catalan Countries in plural because it's made of different areas for historical reasons. The Catalan Countries are all the areas where Catalan is the native language, which have historically been part of a whole, and which share a common culture (with local variants, of course). Here they are:

From North to South:

Northern Catalonia. Capital city: Perpinyà. It's under French administration (part of the region Occitanie in the new French regions system, used to be Languedoc-Roussillon in the old one).

Andorra. Capital city: Andorra la Vella. It's an independent microstate.

Catalonia. Capital city: Barcelona. It's under Spanish administration (it's the Catalonia region in the Spanish regions system).

Eastern Strip, also called Aragon Strip. It's under Spanish administration (it's part of the region of Aragon in the Spanish regions system).

Balearic Islands, including Mallorca, Menorca, Eivissa (in English also known as Ibiza) and Formentera. Capital city: Palma. Under Spanish administration (Balearics region in the Spanish regions system).

Valencian Country. Capital city: València. Under Spanish administration (called Valencian Community in the Spanish regions system).

El Carxe. Tiny rural area. Under Spanish administration (part of the Region of Murcia in the Spanish regions system).

L'Alguer. One city in the island of Sardinia. Under Italian administration (part of the region of Sardinia in the Italian regions system).

3. Where can I learn the Catalan language?

We are thrilled that you want to learn our language. Catalan people love it when others learn our language. Here I'll link you to classes and free online resources.

If you want face-to-face classes outside of the Catalan Countries, you can check this website to find if there's a university that offers Catalan classes near you. There are 101 around Europe, 25 in North America and Cuba, 5 in Asia, and 4 in South America. Students from these courses can also participate in language stays and internships in the Catalan Countries.

If you're already in the Catalan Countries, you will easily find courses for foreigners which the government offers for free or for a cheap price (depending on the level and each person's economic situation). Check out your local CPNL (Consorci per la Normalització Lingüística).

If you want to learn independently on the internet, there are two resources I recommend the most, both are available online for free.

One is the book "Life in Catalonia. Learn Catalan from..." that you can find in various languages. Here I add the link to the official government page where you can legally download the PDFs for free, you only have to scroll down and click under where it says "text complet". You can find the book Learn Catalan from English, from Spanish, from Arabic, from Tamazight, from French, from Hindi, from Urdu, from Punjabi, from Romanian, from Russian, and from Chinese.

The other resource I recommend the most is the online course Parla.cat. It has different levels for beginners or advanced learners. You have to create an account (it asks for an official document number, don't worry about it, it's not a sketchy site, it's because it's an official course paid by the government of Catalonia and if you immigrated to Catalonia having taken this course would officially count as a language course and can give you some benefits). You can either use it for free (all the learning material is available in the free version) or you can use the paying version. In the paid version, you will get assigned a language teacher from Catalonia who can help you and correct you.

There are many more resources. You can find more free resources in this post, this post, or in this link.

Here you have some recommendations to start practising. And remember that you can watch Catalonia's public TV streaming service 3Cat for free from anywhere in the world!

4. I want to follow social media accounts that post in Catalan. Can you tell me some?

Of course! According to the WWW Consortium, Catalan is the 35th most used language on the Internet, out of the more than 7,000 languages in the world.

Here's some lists with recommendations by topic:

Anime and manga

Cooking

Travel accounts

Videogames

Fashion and lifestyle

More lists will be coming soon

If your question wasn't answered, you can send me a question clicking here. 🙂 You can also browse this blog by topics here.

5. Can you recommend other blogs like this one but for other cultures of the world?

Yes, I made a list of recommendations in this post.

[hailmaryfullofgrace55675]

“Ashkenazi Jews don’t actually have Levantine genetic ancestry” has been floating around lately among naïve and conspiracy minded anti-Zionists, a problematic claim that undermines actually correct anti-Zionist principles and defense of Palestinian rights. This claim is

absolutely irrelevant, as “blood” originating on the “soil” does not grant anyone any right to an ethnostate on any land. Using area-native ethnicity to justify discrimination and mass killing is bad when it’s Yamato Japanese discriminating against Korean, Mainland Chinese, and Taiwanese minorities in Japan and it’s bad when it’s Celtic-Germanic descent Brits oppressing Celtic-Germanic descent Irish who they’re genetically undifferentiatable from. It was bad when it was Hutus killing Tutsis and it was bad when it was the Khmer Rouge killing Chinese and Vietnamese Cambodians. The actions of the Israeli state in immiserating and slaughtering non-Jewish Palestinians would be equally harmful and wrong if the diaspora had never happened and every Israeli could trace their resident lineage in an unbroken line back to the time of the Second Temple, because it is bad to destroy people’s homes, burn their crops, imprison them, and kill them.

incorrect, at least according to current scientific consensus. Most genetic studies seem to indicate that Ashkenazim are of majority European descent and also have ancestry in the Levant, that is: the Ashkenazi population had some Levantine founders and there’s been significant amounts of intermarriage over the hundreds and hundreds of years of the diaspora into Southern Europe and from there across Central and Eastern Europe.

irrelevant again because even if, through a combination of conversions, adoptions, intermarriage, and adulterous and out of wedlock pairings between Jews and local gentiles, the diasporic European Jewish population had become completely genetically indistinguishable from local gentiles, those Jews would still have been the children of Israel. They still would have learned to read the Torah and celebrate its festivals. They still would have learned, from their families and communities in an unbroken line, to pray “Sh’ma Yisrael, Adonai eloheinu, Adonai echad” (Hear, Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one) as the rabbinic sages of Roman Judea observed in the Talmud that they were commanded to do. They still would have spoken languages with Hebrew and Aramaic elements, and they still would have written them with letters recognizable in the Dead Sea Scrolls. They still would have had the same interests, affirmed daily and yearly, in the land that their people left so many hundreds of years ago.

One formulation of the claim is “Israel bans direct to consumer genetic testing because it shows that (Ashkenazi) Jews don’t have Middle Eastern ancestry”. The Israeli government does ban DTC genetic testing as part of a genetic information privacy and nondiscrimination law passed in 2000, before companies like 23andMe existed. DNA testing for ancestry can be interpreted and presented many ways, and the ancestry breakdowns given by DTC GT companies just do not correspond to the question “where, how, and through what migrations did this population originate?”.

Once again, Zionism is not bad because people residing in places their ancestors are not from is bad. That is fine. Zionism is bad because from its beginning the Zionist project has been one of violent dispossession and because that violent dispossession continues in and through this very present moment.