#fuck it I’m putting it on jumblr

[disgruntled-detectives]

I have Mondays off now from work, so I’m spending today making a big pot of homemade chicken stock. Let me tell you how I make it. Cause it’s soul deep delicious. And it’s fucking easy. Just takes a while.

I have a mesh soup sock (these things are a lifesaver. You can get a pack of ten for like. 7 bucks on amazon. I never make chicken soup without them now) filled with a chicken carcass and another sock with two large whole onions (the skins make for really good color and flavor) carrots and celery (make sure you get the leafy bits in if you can. There’s a lot of flavor in them leaves)

I stick them in the pot, and fill the pot with water. To it I add salt, black pepper, red pepper flakes, garlic powder, 3 or 4 bay leaves, lemon pepper poultry seasoning, dried dill. I never measure I just kinda throw seasonings that sound good in til the ghost of my grandmother and all the Jewish bubbies I’ve taken on as my ancestors upon conversion tell me I’m done. (I do go a little light handed on all the spices to start just cause I’m gonna taste test every couple of hours and you can’t take salt out but you can always add more)

Cover and bring to a boil on high heat on the stove. Once it’s boiling, lower the heat to a simmer and kinda watch over it for a bit. You may have to move the cover to let steam escape. Just make sure it doesn’t bubble over. Once you’ve gotten to the point where you’re sure it’s not gonna bubble over, but it’s simmering, lower the heat all the way down to low.

Let it cook for 8 hours at *least*. Taste it every two or so hours, adjust the seasonings to your taste. Some people skim the fat that floats to the top. I don’t bother. If you do this, your stock will be a nicer color but I’m lazy af. But the more time cooking, the better. Your chicken bones seriously need all day to leach out all that marrowy goodness. That’s why I started mine at 9am this morning.

Some of it will evaporate as it cooks. That’s okay. I supplement with splashes of boxed chicken stock and adjust the seasonings. Use STOCK. not broth. You’re making a stock.

When it’s done, toss out the soup socks and voila. Golden, rich and delicious chicken stock. Tonight I’m making matzo ball soup for Mr. Disgruntled and freezing the rest. That way I can use it for whatever I wanna make with it. Risotto, different types of soup, whatever.

[pettytiredandjewish]

Y’all- I swear these people have too much time on their hands…

(Thank HaShem for my sister who warned me about this) I was on my way home from Starbucks to drop something off when I started hearing chanting up ahead (and when I mean chanting it was so fucking scary and had neon- nazi vibes). These ass holes were right by my building (and over at the park)- chanting about how queers and trans people are pedos and how we all need to be saved. (I was also told by someone who was walking my way that they’ve been following/harassing people). I had one guy (the one who’s looking up at me) go on about how gays should not be around kids and that we are all pedos- how I need to be saved ( I told him that I was Jewish and did not need to be saved- he then told me well since I was Jewish, I really needed saving or I would burn in hell lol) had this other guy, who was carrying bag pipes go off on how he’s only protecting the kids from the gays and drag queens ( I then told him that the only thing that kids need protection is from him and his cult). So yeah that was a thing…

[autistic-katara]

lmao i’m not allowed to leave my house on friday or saturday for fear of a violent attack, wow i fucking love this situation/s

[jewish-vents]

I literally cannot educate myself on the transphobia going on in my own fucking country to try to prepare myself because every fucking non Jewish trans person is obsessed with pretending that they’re about to be sent on the cattle carts. The Holocaust is not yours, it is Jews’ and Roma’s and not fucking yours. It’s like a game to them, it’s like they’re excited of the prospect of the shoah happening to them, which it fucking isn’t, just so you know. I hate the whole trans community for loads of reasons but this is just the last straw, I’m sick of this and I’m leaving. All they know how to do is fetishise suffering instead of actually putting in the work to try to help things. I’m gonna stick around until I’m deep enough into transition that I don’t need a place to feel like shit about my dysphoria in and then I’m out forever. Fuck all of them

you can always look for queer Jewish spaces, r/gayjews is a wonderful little community on reddit, and there are several jumblr discord servers links floating around that have a lot of queer members. if you're Israeli or know hebrew, there's also r/ani_lgbtq and their discord server.

A lot of queer Jews feel betrayed by or angered at goyish queer spaces right now, but it doesn't mean you have to be alone during your transition, we're all here for you.

- 🐬

[determinate-negation]

what are your thoughts on this post? (i hope the link doesnt kill this ask, i’m not sure how to edit it so it doesnt so that):

https://(…)www.tumblr.com/(…)tributary/(…)732119807094390785/(…)maybe-i-do-if-it-isnt-the-tea-youve-been

(if this ask goes thru, deleting the parentheses-ellipses should make it work)

brendanicus sucks bc he’s an anti-Black pos, so i’m not seeking to defend him. but i feel like claiming it’s anti-semitic to criticize US media (which has imperialist and capitalist reasons to be pro-israel) is somewhat of a reach, as well as saying the use of the term “blood money” (which we all know is a common term, and an applicable one with how much international funding israel gets to support it’s military violence) is an anti-semitic dogwhistle… i’m not jewish, so i’m not an expert. i sent an ask to a different jewish tumblr user about this post, but they decided i was anti-semitic (for disagreeing with the post, but also bc apparently i was accusing jews of being liars). however, that user seems to have some pro-israel bias and thinks anti-zionism is rooted in anti-semitism, so idk how much stock i can put in their assessment. i’ve been trying to remain self-aware, but things are getting confusing for me when leftists that i thought were anti-zionist are claiming it’s anti-semitic to support palestine

i think im blocked by op because whenever i try to put in the link it says theres nothing there. can someone send me a screenshot?

dont mean to start beef but brendanicus is mad annoying ngl, and his posts are not always the most informed. but anyways. i think i saw his post earlier so ill try to infer, though i dont know what the persons comment is. i dont think "blood money" is antisemitic. as you said its a common term and its also an accurate description. i find this so fucking ridiculous for people to keep getting accused of antisemitism just for basically pointing out that israel is violent and a lot of western money goes into supporting israel- these have to do with capitalism and imperialism not secret jewish plots.

im probably blocked for antizionism crimes tbh, which shows you all you need to know. quite frankly a lot of so called leftists are actually liberals who never really interrogated their beliefs and dont care to study and engage with history and theory. they maintain a liberal mentality, on power and violence and ideology, and especially the jumblr users on here really still believe a lot of zionist propaganda. thats why theyre claiming its antisemitic to support palestine. thats simply it. ive been really trying show why its not antisemitic to criticize biased imperialist media and its just a basic part of marxist analysis and its doing more harm than good to call this antisemitic.

[adelle-ein]

“based on my likes” huh

i know twitter is rightfully getting flack over the for you page but why is this open deliberate antisemitism being placed on my dashboard bc i liked jumblr posts as a jew, tumblr staff? i have no clue what this moron is even going on about and i don’t fucking care

also no i’m not censoring op’s url bc a) come the fuck on b) pretty sure they deleted their acct like as i was making this post

anyway staff do better and don’t put random antisemitism on jews’ tls as punishment for liking posts about being jewish

[avonsdrabbles]

(Below cut is venting about Palestine/Israel.)

Putting this under the cut because I don’t even want to see this shit on my dash but I need to get some stuff out.

At this point, I trust anyone who doesn’t mention anything about the conflict more than a single person who mentions the word “Zionist.” I don’t trust anyone using that word anymore. I have never seen it used in a sense that was not antisemetic. I have never seen it used in a good context. 

Some of you out here are really happy to finally have a new slur — sorry, a new “political stance” to label others with.

“The zionists are-“ Stop. Hush. Stop right there. Can you replace the word “Zionist” with “Jews” and, if yes, would it be horrifically bigoted for someone to say? If the answer to that is yes, then fucking shut up.

You can support Palestine without bashing on Jewish people. You can support Palestine without calling every Jewish person on jumblr a Zionist. You can be against people dying without calling people on tumblr “Zionist supporters” (and what the fuck is anon hate on tumblr going to do for people who are genuinely actually losing their fucking lives, I swear to god do you have NOTHING better to be doing-)

Just. Fucking Christ I’m tired of it, and I cannot even comprehend how hurt my Jewish friends are, since they have to deal with this far, far more closely and often than I ever will. I’m so sorry for this bullshit.

[starlight-edith]

Can I ask what happened with the rose fisted glove person? Just curious tbh u don't have to answer

I made a post because I’m trying to get in contact with someone who doesn’t use their discord anymore and that happens to be the only way I know how to contact them. Rose jumps in and says no one should give me a way to contact him because that’s a super common abuse tactic and I could be putting him in danger. I then reblogged it trying to explain that I was in no way attempting to put anyone in danger, as well as asking if they remembered me because we used to be friends years ago (or so I thought, we talked about Judaism and I confided my deepest traumas in them and given they gave me advice and never at any point asked me to stop, I, being 13, assumed that meant they actually gave a flying fuck about me).

They then ignored this reblog.

Then others starting coming having seen it from their add on which was insinuating that I was an abuser and reblogged it too. I tried to explain to the new people but they ignored me as well.

So I made a new updated post in which I explained that I was in no way shape or form forcing anyone to do anything and all I was truly asking was for someone who knew him to let him know that I wanted to talk. Then rose jumps in again and starts saying my situation has a ton of red flags and essentially again insinuates that I’m trying to stalk and abuse him. I then explained that that was not the case and as we were friends they know damn well that I was the victim of not only abuse but also stalking. I also happened to mention that I was unhappy that they were making me cry on Shabbat which is meant to be a day of rest, so they came back with the same complaint.

When I came back and showed them literal video evidence that if anything the person I’m looking for is the abuser (he responded to being called an idiot by calling me slurs) they accused me of doctoring the conversation. Then they mocked me for becoming upset by saying that I had formed a “parasocial bond” with them and we were never friends, as well as saying something along the lines of “no matter how much you write in big text that doesn’t change that this is dangerous”

When I begged them to just drop it because they put this horrible insinuated accusation on their much larger blog which was resulting in several people literally thinking I’m an abuser because of their add on to my innocuous post that had nothing to do with them, they called me follower obsessed and claimed I was “ascribing a hell of a lot of power” to them (It’s not ascribing if it’s true??? They were literally the biggest blog in all of Jumblr in 2017 and I assume that hasn’t changed much)

The whole interaction is on my blog, just scroll down until you find the original post. The add ons will be in the notes and easily readable to you. The second post starts with “🎵here I am once again🎶” (it’s a quote from a song and I was trying to lighten the mood because I was feeling extremely upset) which you can find the additions in the notes of as well. I would link you to them myself but I’ve blocked everyone involved.

I can accept that I thought we were closer than we were but I refuse to accept being called abusive and then being told by everyone around me that that’s not what happened — you don’t have to say something outright to create consequences for the other party. I’m already feeling them.

I never even intended to make a second post about the person I was looking for, but I felt the need to because of the allegations (that rose swears up and down they didn’t make)

[ask-jumblr]

Goy Asks For Help Un-Fucking a Video Game

The game in question is “Crusader Kings 2: After the End,” which takes place in a post-apocalyptic North America which has regressed to a medieval state due to a deliberately-unspecified global disaster some six centuries ago.

Its an overhaul mod, with “Crusader Kings 2″ being the base game which takes place in the actual middle ages, but I’m only concerning myself with “After The End.” For clarity’s sake, I’ll be referring to the base game, which I will not be concerning myself with altering, as “CK2,″ and I will refer to the mod, which I am altering, as “AtE.”

So CK2 has a lot of baked in Cultural Christianity, much of which is carried over to AtE. I am creating a Submod, and as part of that I want to get AtE’s depiction of Judaism to be less, you know, christian. I want to carve out the ingrained antisemitism so that neither I, nor any Jewish players of the game, will have to look at it anymore.

I’ll be cutting this post up into several parts, each one dedicated to what I, as a gentile, think is probably an issue with the way the game portrays Judaism and my best idea of how to fix it. I’m posting this here with the hope of being corrected about everything I’m definitely getting wrong, and help figuring out how to go about actually fixing things.

Mod of @ask-jumblr briefly interjecting: (1) Putting the rest below the cut so this doesn’t clog dashes, and (2) submission is from @frustratedasatruar because tumblr doesn’t credit submissions once they’re posted.

Part 1: Orthodox, Reform, and… Meshichist?

So the way CK2 handles religion is cut up into a few tiers. The largest categories are the so-called Religious Groups, such as “Christian” or “American-Native” or “Muslim.” Judaism comprises one of these groups.

Then there’s the Heresy mechanic, which exists with the intent to model Catholicism’s whole snake-eating-its-own-tail thing with them, especially back in the middle ages. The way the mechanic works is that you’ve got one Religion that is considered the “main” religion with several others associated with it which vie for control. If things are shaky for the main religion, members of that faith may be prompted to join one of the Heretical movements.

I actually think the way AtE applies this mechanic to Judaism is fairly representative in practice. “Orthodox” is granted the position of main religion, with Reform relegated as a Heresy. But! Both Orthodox communities and Reform communities are scattered across the map at the start of the game. Further, Orthodoxy’s position at game-start is very fragile, so a Reform player can fairly simply supplant them as the dominant branch without even needing a military confrontation with any Orthodox factions.

This combination of factors creates a situation where Jewish communities within the game can ebb and flow between the different sects over time, which wouldn’t be possible if the two religions weren’t tied together with the Heresy mechanic.

One problem though, at least as far as I can see; there’s a third sect in the mix. Again, I’m a gentile, so correct me if I’m wrong, but its really weird for the Meshichists (explicitly the people who believe this man to be the Moshiach) to be depicted as a major faction within Judaism, literally on par with Orthodox and Reform, right?

As far as I, as a gentile, can tell from my research on this subject, the Meshichists are a subset of Chabad, which is itself a subset of Hasidic Judaism, which is a subset of Haredi Judaism, which has a complicated relationship with Orthodox Judaism.

So, assuming I’m not out of place in my assessment that the Meshichists are the odd man out, my question is if I should simply remove them from the game, leaving in-game Judaism to Orthodox and Reform. Or if I should replace them with a different third faction, and if so whom? I understand that Conservative Judaism is another major faction, but I know absolutely nothing about them, including how I would distinguish them from Orthodox.

Help, please.

Part 2: Zealous/Cynical

So CK2, as mentioned, has a lot of structural Cultural Christianity.

Individual characters in the games, that is to say Rulers or associated courtiers, have a list of traits, each one modifying their aptitudes and how the AI will direct them. Things like “Gluttonous,” “Charitable,” “Craven,” “Shrewd,” and so on. There’re hundreds of them.

Some of these traits are set as opposites of one another, which means that if a character has one the game won’t allow them to have the other. You cannot be both “Just” and “Arbitrary,” that sort of thing.

Further, one trait can have more than one opposite. “Slow,” “Quick,” and “Genius,” are all inter-incompatible, for example.

Which brings me to the Zealous and Cynical traits.

Their descriptions are thus:

Zealous: This character burns with religious fervor and cannot tolerate heretics, infidels, or heathens.

Cynical: This character is a cynical unbeliever, disliked by the clergy but good at intrigue.

I’ll shy away from describing their exact in-game modifiers and just leave it that Zealous is considered an overall very desirable trait, while Cynical is undesirable unless you’re playing a spymaster. Zeal makes you more popular with priests of your religion, while cynicism makes you commensurately less popular with the same.

Furthermore, unlike Cynical, being Zealous also precludes you from having any of the “Sympathy for [Insert Other Religion Group]” traits.

Now as I understand it, Judaism rather encourages questioning everything, which feels like a third pole on that little alignment graph. I’m essentially asking if I should try and create a “Pious Skepticism” trait to represent Jewish characters who don’t mindlessly-accept-writ-dogma-and-hate-unbelievers but also aren’t unbelievers themselves, while at the same time arguing with and about established scripture.

This hypothetical “Pious Skepticism” trait, name subject to change, would also allow for characters to be both on good terms with religious authorities and still have access to the Sympathy traits.

I feel like the current system of Zealous/Default/Cynical probably doesn’t represent the Jewish experience, but as a gentile I obviously need advisement to be sure.

TLDR: I feel like CK2 lacks a way to represent the whole arguing-about-everything thing that, at least from what I’ve read following Jewish blogs, is considered so important to your community. Then as an addendum on that point, is my proposed solution of making a new trait to represent it, and slotting it into the zealous/cynical dynamic.

Part 3: Depicting Antisemitism in the Game

CK2 has a limited system for dynamically depicting sexism. For what I feel pretty safe to assume are reasons regarding processing power, the degree of sexism within your in-game territory is boiled down to the “Status of Women” modifier in your nation’s lawcode, with five options.

“Traditional: Women are prohibited from holding all [government] positions. Some government types will be restricted to Agnatic inheritance law.”

“Marginal: Women are allowed to hold some power, occupying background positions behind the people in charge.”

“Significant: Women have been granted official power and are allowed to hold public offices.”

“Notable: Restrictions on female power have been officially repealed. All career paths are open for prominent women.”

“Full: Powerful legislation removing old restrictions has finally had the effect of affecting the general opinion on women in positions of power across society.”

These laws are pegged to different benchmarks in the game’s technological progression system, which has the effect of spacing out the reforms over the coarse of your game.

As you try and move women’s rights forward, powerful men in your nation will fight you tooth and nail to prevent that from happening.

As things stand in the game, antisemitism is represented as identical to every other form of xenophobia. Which obviously downplays the the shear length and breadth of impact antisemitism has on society.

Essentially, my notion to represent the special form of bigotry that is antisemitism is to apply a similar system to the one already applied to sexism.

In the sexism system, your nation is quantifiably better off for every step further you advance down the road to equality. The only real reason not to pursue equality is the hope of placating powerful special interests within your state who want a larger slice of the pie for themselves or have other ideological motivations, at the expense of weakening your nation as a whole.

Which I think would be a pretty good angle for representing antisemitism. I’m not advocating for a 1=1 switchover from the sexism system, of course, indeed one of the things I’d want help with is determine what the five stages would be in a similar antisemitism system.

Anyway, for all that this system is really incapable of handling the magnitudes of sexism or antisemitism, its something I can implement without crashing the game and, I think, a significant improvement over the current situation.

But before I started into the in-depth process of trying to code this, I wanted to seek out some Jewish voices to run my thoughts by first.

Part 4: Ethnoreligion

CK2 has a very christian perspective on the relationship between culture and religion, to the extent that I as a pagan am repeatedly jarred by it. And I’ve learned that Judaism’s view of the subject is even less like that of the christians. Making it, I presume, a bigger problem with the game.

So in the game culture and religion are considered completely distinct from each other, the conversion of one not having any effect on the state of the other. The only direct connection of any kind that I know of honestly just makes the problem worse: if you find yourself in control of a county which is both a different religion and culture from your own, you must actively convert the religion before it will be possible for culture to passively convert.

Which can result in situations which, given my knowledge that Judaism is specifically an ethnoreligion, are very strange. Like Anabaptist Yiddish counties.

Or the way any prospective Jewish rulers, if they want to ensure a firmer political position in a majority-gentile kingdom (if they manage to establish such a thing), demographic shift is fastest achieved not by, say, some mechanism to attract Jewish immigrants from neighboring countries, but by relentlessly proselytizing until the goyim convert, and only then the process of cultural shift may start.

Can you tell that this system was designed for the catholics.

I’m not really sure what exactly I could do to fix this, but I believe I can:

Disable the proselytizing mechanic for Jewish characters. I’d need to replace it with a “dispatch debate team,” or something, mechanic so that Jewish players won’t be left helpless in the face of grassroots Heretic movements.

Code a new system for gentile-counties-with-Jewish-rulers to passively convert culture and religion at the same time, but at a slower pace. And maybe, if I’m feeling ambitious overconfident, some mechanic by which you can try to inspire immigration by Jewish populations, potentially causing a brain-drain in nearby Kingdoms if you invest enough into it.

Create an opposite system, so that if a county of both Jewish religion and culture is converted to a different religion group, the county’s culture will autoswitch to an off-brand version of itself. If I’m feeling cheeky, I’ll call the off-brand culture “Goyim” or something.

I think that these three things in conjunction with each other would adequately solve the problem.

But, you know, I don’t know, because I’m not Jewish.

Part 5: Education

The game’s current system has it that as a monarch you can offer your vassals to have their children educated in your court, which usually results in them adopting your culture and religion if they haven’t already.

I feel like Jewish rulers would be less blaze about that than everyone else. Because, you know, experience. I want to set things so that Jewish rulers will either auto-decline those offers or maybe set it so Jewish characters are ineligible for the events that cause culture/religious conversion during childhood. I don’t really need a perfect solution, I just want to stop the phenomena of the idiot AI selling out to the big homogenizing power every single time.

Unless I shouldn’t do that, and I should leave things as is for whatever reason, or do some completely third thing.

Part 6: Logo

So in CK2, religions have their own individual logos so you can tell at a glance what religion a character is affiliated with. Heresies of the same main religion share a logo between each other, which will be a red version of the main religion’s logo.

Should a Heresy grow powerful enough to usurp the main religion’s position, the former-Heresy will get the full color version and the former-main-religion will get the red version.

Long story short, Judaism is represented by a Menorah. Because I learned that gentiles massively over inflate how important Hanuka actually is, I was wondering if that was a good pick, or if it should be replaced with the Star of David, or some other third thing.

Part 7: Terminology

This one is essentially Part 6: Part 2. The game has a shorthand way of copy-pasting in default terms from the different religions, so that a generic piece of in-game text can vaguely refer back to the character’s religion without needing to be rewritten for each religion.

For reference, here’s what that looks like for the christians:

Scripture Name = The Bible Priest Title = Priest High God Name = God God Names = God, The Lord, Jesus, The Blessed Virgin Evil God Names = Satan, Lucifer, The Devil

So in-game text in various places will be coded to say something like “We found a secret chest of gold, praise [Insert=god_name]!” and the game will insert something from the appropriate category at random.

You’ve probably guessed where I’m going with this: as a gentile, I want to double check that the terminology assigned to Judaism is actually appropriate.

However, as the game’s name lists for the three “god” categories drops several names I don’t recognize, and I know that Judaism is against copying certain things in this regard down, to be safe I’m not going to post the specific list unless asked. Instead, I’m just going to ask how those three categories should be filled out.

What I assume to be safer to directly repeat is that the priest title for Judaism is entered as “Rabbi,” and the scripture name is listed as “The Torah.” At least as a gentile, the only question that leaps out to me between the two of those is if “The Torah” might be better switched to “The Tanakh.”

End:

Thank you all in advance for your patience and assistance! I will of course answer any questions.

My thanks to @queerdo-mcjewface, @terulakimban, @miriams-well-of-jewish-thoughts, and @hermione-walked-out-of-a-yeshiva for helping me already when I couldn’t figure out how to submit this Ask.

[perfectlyvalid49]

After reading this, the question I have is why did you make it as a response to my post?

It isn’t really in conversation with what I said, it would stand on its own just fine. If you wanted to make sure the same audience saw it, you could have tagged it #Jumblr. If you wanted to make sure I saw it, you could have just @ed me.

So the only thing I can think of is that you read a 20 paragraph essay on the pain felt by a Jew in the diaspora that spends exactly one paragraph talking about Israel, and mentions twice that I am not very personally connected to the country, and thought, “the response this needs is a complete derailment so I can talk about how much Israel sucks.”

And to be explicitly clear – when a Jew says, “hey, my synagogue in Minnesota received a bomb threat, and I’m worried that I’ll have to move due to antisemitic violence,” and your response is, “yeah, but Israel sucks,” that is antisemitic. To say that Israel is an elephant in the room in a response to a discussion about the pain caused by antisemitism is to imply that Israel’s existence/actions somehow justify the antisemitism. If you want to know why people conflate antizionism with antisemitism, it’s because of actions exactly like this one.

And you can have these opinions! I don’t agree with all of them, but you’re allowed to have them. Having them isn’t necessarily antisemitic (though some of them do head into the territory of antisemitic talking points). But putting them on a reblog of a post about the pain that antisemitism is causing is antisemitic. And it’s just incredibly tone deaf in a way that’s hurtful.

I guess, to try to understand, let’s flip the situation. If and American Muslim made a post about the pain caused in their own life by Islamophobia, would you reblog it with, “those are valid issues, but what we really need to talk about is Hamas’s attack on October 7th.” Is it a fair thing to want to talk about? Yes. Is it correct to bring it up as a response in this way? Absolutely the fuck not.

If you want to talk about Israel’s shift into far right politics over the last 20 or so years, we can. If you want to talk about the reasons that may have happened, we can. If you want to talk about what we can do as non-Israelis to support a shift to more liberal politics and policies in Israel, we can. If you want to have a philosophical debate about Zionism (though, if as you say you do not have a connection to Judaism, you may need to do some homework first), we can.

But not here. Not as a response to this post. You say you stand against antisemitism. You can’t do that effectively until you learn to separate conversations about Judaism from conversations about Israel. Until then, you’re only going to hurt more people than you help.

On being Jewish, and traumatized (It’s been 5 months and I want to talk):

Judaism is a joyous religion. So much of our daily practice is to focus us on the things that are good. I know that there’s a joke that all our holidays can be summed up as “they tried to kill us. We survived – let’s eat!”, and you might think that holidays focused on attempts at killing us might be somber, but they’re really not. Most are celebrated in the sense of, “we’re still here, let’s have a party!” When I think about practicing Judaism, the things I think about make me happy.

But I think a lot of non-Jews don’t necessarily see Judaism the same way. I think in part it’s because we do like to kvetch, but I think a lot of it is because from the outside it’s harder to see the joy, and very easy to see the long history of suffering that has been enacted on the Jewish people. From the inside, it’s very much, “we’re still here, let’s party” and from the outside it’s, “how many times have they tried to kill you? Why are you celebrating? They tried to KILL YOU!”

And I want to start with that because a lot of the rest of this is going to be negative. And I don’t want people to read it and wonder why I still want to be Jewish. I want to be Jewish because it makes me happy. My problem isn’t with being Jewish, it’s with how Jews are treated.

What I really wanted to write about is being Jewish and the trauma that’s involved with that right now.

First, I want to talk about Israeli Jews. I can’t say much here because I’m not Israeli, nor do I have any close friends or family that are Israeli. But if I’m going to be talking about the trauma Jews are experiencing right now, I can’t not mention the fact that Israeli Jews (and Israelis that aren’t Jewish as well, but that’s not my focus here) are dealing with massive amounts of it right now. It’s a tiny country – virtually everyone has a friend or family member that was killed or kidnapped, or knows someone who does. Thousands of rockets have been fired at Israel in the last few months – think about the fact that the Iron Dome exists and why it needs to. Terror attacks are ongoing; I feel like there’s been at least one every week since October. Thousands of people are displaced from their homes, either because of the rocket fire, or because their homes and communities were physically destroyed in the largest pogrom in recent history – the deadliest single day for Jews since the Holocaust ended. If that’s not trauma inducing, I don’t know what is.

And there is, of course, the generational trauma. And I think Jewish generational trauma is interesting because it’s so layered. Because it’s not just the result of one trauma passed down through the generations. Every 50-100 years, antisemitism intensifies, and so very frequently the people experiencing a traumatic event were already suffering from the generational trauma that their grandparents or great grandparents lived through. And those elders were holding the generational trauma from the time before that. And so on.

And because it happens so regularly, there’s always someone in the community that remembers the last time. We are never allowed the luxury of imagining that we are safe. We know what happened before, and we know that it happened again and again and again. And so we know that it only makes sense to assume it will happen in the future. The trauma response is valid. I live in America because my great grandparents lived in Russia and they knew when it was time to get the hell out in the 1900s. And the reason they knew that is because their grandparents remembered the results of the blood libels in the 1850s. How can we heal when the scar tissue keeps us safe?

I look around now and wonder if we’ll need to run. We have a plan. I repeat, my family has a plan for what to do if we need to flee the country due to religious persecution. How can that possibly be normal? And yet, all the Jewish families I know have similar plans. It is normal if you’re Jewish. Every once in a while I see someone who isn’t Jewish talk about making plans to leave because they’re LGBTQ or some other minority and the question always seems to be, “should I make a plan?” It astounds me every time. The Jewish answer is that you need to have a plan and the only question is, “when should I act?” Sometimes our Jewish friends discuss it at play dates. Where will you go? What are the triggers to leave? No one wants to go any earlier then they have to. Everyone knows what the price of holding off too long might be.

I want to keep my children safe. When do I induct them into the club? When do I let my sweet, innocent kids know that some people will hate them for being Jewish? When do I teach them the skills my parents and grandparents taught me? How to pass as white, how to pass as Christian, knowing when to keep your mouth shut about what you believe. When do I tell them about the Holocaust and teach them the game “would this person hide me?” How hard do I have to work to remind them that while you want to believe that a person would hide you, statistically, most people you know would not have? Who is this more traumatic for? Them, to learn that there is hatred in the world and it is directed at them, or me, to have to drive some of the innocence out of my own children’s eyes in order to make sure they are prepared to meet the reality of the world?

And the reality of the world is that it is FULL of antisemitism. There’s a lot of…I guess I’d call it mild antisemitism that’s always present that you just kinda learn to ignore. It’s the sort of stuff that non-Jews might not even recognize as antisemitic until you explain it to them, just little micro-aggressions that you do your best to ignore because you know that the people doing it don’t necessarily mean it, it’s just the culture we live in. It can still hurt though. I like to compare it to a bruise: you can mostly ignore it, but every once in a while something (more blatant antisemitism) will put a bit to much pressure on it and you remember that you were already hurting this whole time.

On top of the background antisemitism, there’s more intense stuff. And usually the most intense, mask off antisemitism comes from the right. This makes sense, in that a lot of right politics are essentially about hating the “other” and what are Jews if not Western civilizations oldest type of “other”? On the one hand, I’ve always been fortunate enough to live in relatively liberal areas so this sort of antisemitism has felt far away and impersonal – they hate everybody, and I’m just part of everybody. On the other hand, until recently I’ve always considered this the most dangerous source of antisemitism. This is the antisemitism that leads to hate crimes, that leads to synagogue shootings. This is the reason why my synagogue is built so that there is a long driveway before you can even see the building, and that driveway is filled with police on the high holidays. This is the reason why my husband and I were scared to hang a mezuzah in our first apartment (and second, and third). For a long time, this was the antisemitism that made me afraid.

But the left has a problem with antisemitism too. And it has always been there. Where the right hates the “other”, the left hates the “privileged/elite/oppressors.” It’s the exact same thing, just dressed up with different words. They all mean “other” and “other” means “Jew.” It hurts more coming from the left though. A lot of Jewish philosophy leans left. A lot of Jews lean left. So when the left decides to hate us, it isn’t a random stranger, it’s a friend, and it feels like a betrayal.

One of the people I follow works for Yad Vashem, and a few weeks ago she mentioned a video they have with testimonies from people who came to Israel after Kristallnacht, with an unofficial title of “The blow came from within.” The idea is that to non-German Jews, the Holocaust was something done by strangers. It was still terrible, but it is easier to bear the hate of a stranger – it’s not personal. But to German Jews, the Holocaust was a betrayal. It wasn’t done by strangers, it was done by coworkers, and neighbors and people they thought were friends. It was done by people who knew them, and still looked at them and said, “less than human.” And because of this sense of betrayal, German survivors, or Germans who managed to get out before they got rounded up, had a very different experience than other Holocaust victims.

And I feel like a lot of left leaning Jews are having a similar experience now. People that we’ve marched with or organized with, or even just mutuals that we’ve thought of as friends are now going on about how Jews are evil. They repeat antisemitic talking points from the Nazis and from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and when we point out that those ideas have only led to Jewish death in the past they don’t care. And if someone you thought of as a friend thinks of you this way, what do you think a stranger might think? Might do?

The Jews are fucking terrified. I’ve seen a post going around that basically wonders if this was what it was like for our ancestors – when things got bad enough to see what was coming but before it was too late to run? And we can see what’s coming. History tells us that they way people are talking and acting only leads to one place. I’m a millennial – when I was a kid the grandparents at my synagogue made sure the kids knew – this is what it looked like before, this is what you need to watch out for, this is when you need to run. I wonder where to run to. It feels like nowhere is safe.

I feel like I’ve been lucky in all this. I don’t live in Israel. I have family and acquaintances who do, but no one I’m particularly close to. Everyone I know in real life has either been sane or at least silent about all of this (the internet has been significantly worse, but when it comes to hate, the internet is always worse). I live in a relatively liberal area – there’s always been antisemitism around anyway, but it’s mostly just been swastikas on flyers, or people advocating for BDS, not anything that’s made me actually worry for my safety. But in the last 5 months there have been bomb threats at my synagogue, and just last week a kid got beat up for being Jewish at our local high school. He doesn’t want to report it. He’s worried it will make it worse.

I bought a Magen David to wear in November. At the time it seemed like the best way to fight antisemitism was to be visibly Jewish, to show that we’re just normal people like everyone else. Plus, I figured that if me being Jewish was going to be a problem for someone, then I would make it a problem right away and not waste time. I’ve worn it almost constantly since, but the one time I took it off was when I burnt my finger in December and had to go to urgent care. I didn’t think about it too much when I did it, but I thought about it for a long time after – I didn’t feel good about having made that choice.

The conclusion I came to is that the training that my elders had been so careful to instill in me kicked in. I was hurt, and scared, and the voice inside my head that sounds like my grandmother said, “don’t give them a reason to be bad to you. Fight when you’re well, but for now – survive.” It still felt cowardly, but it was also a connection to my ancestors who heeded the same voice well enough to survive. And it enrages me that that voice has been necessary in the past. And it enrages me that things are bad enough now that my instinct is that I need to hide who I am to receive appropriate medical care.

I wish I had some sort of final thought to tie this all together other than, “this sucks and I hate it,” but I really don’t. I could call for people to examine their antisemitic biases, but I’m not foolish enough to think that this will reach the people who need to do so. I could wish for a future where everything I’ve talked about here exists only in history books, and the Jewish experience is no longer tied to feeling this pain, but that’s basically wishing for the moshiach, and I’m not going to hold my breath.

I guess I’ll end it with the thought that through all of this hate and pain and fear, we’re still here. And we’re still joyful as well. As much as so many people have tried over literally THOUSANDS of years to eradicate us, I’m still here, I’m still Jewish, and being Jewish still makes me happy.

Am Yisrael Chai.