#intra jewish racism

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

By ZACH KESSEL

One recent college graduate, alongside her former professor, has created a documentary series aimed at educating people past the flashy signs and catchy slogans one might see and hear at an anti-Israel rally, toward a full understanding of what Zionism and anti-Zionism really mean. That series, “Zionism and Anti-Zionism: The History of Two Opposing Ideas” by Zoé Tara Zeigherman, had its Washington, D.C., premiere Thursday night. 

The series, a five-episode look at the varieties of both its titular subjects, covers Jewish history and the development of Zionism, the intra-Jewish debates that occurred before Israel’s founding in 1948, and various strains of anti-Zionism from post-1948 Arab opposition to Israel to Soviet propaganda.

Zeigherman, alongside her former Georgetown University professor (and former member of Israel’s Knesset) Einat Wilf, began formulating the idea for the series in 2022, well before anti-Zionism and antisemitism shot to the fore of public debate following the October 7 Hamas attack. Zeigherman thinks the problem was always there, but now that college campuses are under a microscope, the documentary series is even more relevant.

“I think that what a lot of Jews have experienced since October 7 is kind of waking up to this feeling that something is seriously wrong; seeing protests on October 8, they’ve been feeling that something is mobilizing against Jews, and they don’t really understand what’s happening.” Zeigherman told National Review. “I had that feeling in the Black Lives Matter protest era when antisemitism was erupting online and I couldn’t understand where it was coming from.”

“If it can just help one young Jew the way Einat’s course helped me, that’s enough,” she told NR. “But I would really like to see it be part of something bigger, where Jews aren’t afraid to be Jews anymore — where we stand taller and prouder and go on offense as opposed to constantly defending ourselves and apologizing.”

Zeigherman initially came up with the idea for the series during her time as a Beren Summer Fellow with the Tikvah Fund, a nonprofit organization that promotes Jewish leaders and ideas, in 2022. While a fellow, she worked with individuals both inside and outside the Tikvah Fund to determine how to bring her vision to life.

[unbidden-yidden-deactivated20240]

I have a bunch of thoughts related to your recent post on lefty antisemitism, but I don't want to dump a big long thing in your inbox - let me know if you want me to send it, other than that just know you're not alone trying to wade through the messiness of it all.

I know leftist antisemitism is alive and well, I know Jewish perspectives/experiences/identities are not valued, and I know there’s a load of misinformation out there when it comes to the conflict (though honestly, I don’t trust info from any side because everything is propaganda at this point). But I listened to a podcast episode (Joyous Justice - a Jewish racial justice podcast hosted by a Black & Cherokee Jew) that was a bit of a gentle kick in the pants.

To summarize some of the key thoughts: There is antisemitism in lefty spaces because there is antisemitism EVERYWHERE - and racism, sexism, transphobia, classism, ableism, and the like. Leftists are not immune to these things. And so when someone like me says “well I’m not going to engage with some progressive cause because I’m bothered by the antisemitism” it’s like, anyone else of another marginalized identity could have the same excuse for not participating because they will inevitably run into someone who is being shitty about their identity. It’s good that we have ways to process these harmful experiences, and we should try to hold people accountable, but it’s not a good idea for our self-defensiveness to stop us completely from engaging.

I’m not solidly feeling any of this right now, but I am trying to sit with it in the discomfort.

Hi there,

Look, I definitely see where you're coming from and where this podcaster was coming from at least in theory, but I don't agree.

Leftists absolutely have all the same problems any other group has, and obviously we all have to work on our biases and movements all the time to try and root these things out.

This is different and goes beyond that though, because the brand of anti-Zionism that is mainstream amongst American goyische leftist movements and individuals is deeply antisemitic as a part of the cause. Anti-Zionism as an intra-Jewish discussion need not be [internalized] antisemitism, and there are plenty of ways that one can critique specific actions of the Israeli government that are proportionate, fair, and necessary (yes, even as an outsider.)

However, calls for the literal dissolution of the entire country without a thought or care for the safety and well-being of the affected Jews or the Jewish people as a whole, combined with a deep suspicion (and frequently outright hostility) towards Jews who bring up antisemitism (especially as it pertains to rhetoric around Israel) and then adding your regular run-of-the-mill antisemitism on top, are common and accepted in leftist spaces. In short: antisemitism isn't just one unfortunate pimple amongst many other expected blemishes on the face of modern leftism - it's actually frequently taken up as one of the causes of leftism. This form of antisemitism is seen as social justice, and so arguing against it is seen not for what it is (begging for people to add even a little nuance and critically examine a belief system that leads them to call for the genocide of half the Jewish population worldwide) but rather as arguing for whatever terrible thing they want to paint Israel as this week, whether or not it's true and whether or not such a label could just as easily be applied to groups and nations that they will give a pass to.

Meanwhile, most of the goyim arguing in support* of Israel are frequently right-wing conservatives whose other views on human rights and moral progress I find rather repugnant and who frequently utilize standard conservative talking points about Israel's more strident critics to attack them on other levels. For example, I cringe basically any time I see any right-wing critique of, say, the very real antisemitism of Cori Bush or Rashida Tlaib, because I just know it's gonna be racist as hell.

(The * is because I don't honestly classify a lot of this as support for the Jews, so much as a handy vehicle for their anti-Arab racism, Islamophobia, and unfair painting of all Palestinians and/or Palestinian rights movements as terrorism. I would also be remiss if I didn't say that the same is frequently true of certain batches of leftists whose anti-Zionism is more of a handy vehicle for antisemitism than genuine, thoughtful, and helpful advocacy for Palestinians.)

But there are some conservative voices that do have genuine support for Jews and are pro-Israel in a way that is more nuanced and doesn't just use it as a tactic. And when I see that, and especially when I hold it up next to leftist comrades who would never in a million years advocate for policies that would wipe out half the world population of another minority group but will happily repeat those talking points against Jews as if it were a social justice cause, it makes me question the validity of everything else they're saying.

And so I re-run that calculus on every social issue I'm passionate about, to see if maybe I'm on the wrong side of it, and every time I conclude I'm still very much not. So then I go back to the drawing board and reconsider Jewish history, identity, and peoplehood, and the conclusions I've come to about Zionism from those things, only to return to the same position I was in before. I've heard the arguments. I've actively sought out and considered the other side on this issue, hoping to understand something new, and each new source I read solidifies my opinion.

So then I'm stuck with concluding that my best option is to seek out like-minded Jews and when outside allies or work is needed, just kinda go into it accepting that a significant portion of the people I'm necessarily aligning myself with for other important causes would likely leave me and mine for dead under the right circumstances, and view that as good and right and just.

And while I don't let that change my voting behavior or advocacy at a practical level, it also doesn't change the fact that it fucking hurts and that I'm morally right to be angry about it.

[professorspork]

the big 'Faunus worldbuilding in Newsbees' post

as requested by EVER SO MANY OF YOU (!!), I now embark upon a post to talk much more about the Shallow Sea Verses and about the Faunus culture and worldbuilding I did for Newsbees. I've talked about them a little bit before, and I'll try not to repeat myself too much there but there's gonna be some overlap.

I imagine when some of you asked me to say more about this, what you were hoping for was like a "here's all this great stuff I came up with for other traditions that I never got to use in the fic!" and that is--not what this post is, sorry. by virtue of the fact that this was, ultimately, a literary device very much devised to move this story forward, I didn't spend a lot of time thinking about in in ways that weren't plot-relevant. if you have prompts for, like, "how would they do/think about X" I'm delighted to give it a think, but it's not something I have just lying around.

instead I'm gonna talk about how it came about, why I did it, and what my priorities were

okay so I'm gonna take this in... I guess chronological order is the best way to make sense of it

from the outset of the fic's conception, I knew that I wanted it to be a reflection of my values. like. it's about unionizing a workforce, it's about socially-conscious community-building and class struggle and FUCK COPS. to disregard the minority oppression of the Faunus (which you'll note is something I always capitalize, for what I should think are now-obvious parallel reasons) in a world and a story like that just felt... not just insulting, but downright stupid. a missed opportunity. and I've always felt like this subject deserved much greater forethought and much better execution than canon provided, which I think can be described most charitably as "mostly serviceable" but is mealy-mouthed, inconsistent, and both-sidesy-whattaboutist at way too many points for me to feel like it merits any credit. like. if you're gonna do catgirl racism and intra-community disagreements over praxis, you gotta actually do catgirl racism and intra-community disagreements over praxis, you know?

(gee, I'm sure you're shocked Sienna is very much alive in Newsbees, wonder why that is)

ANYHOO

so that was thing one.

thing two is that this is perhaps the GREATEST ARGUMENT I HAVE for why I prefer writing everything in advance and then posting on a schedule, because I knew it was something I could then find my way into and then retcon back in, if needed, and that I therefore had the entire canvas available to paint on. and it's a good thing, too, because it saved my ass multiple times plot-wise and not just in this worldbuilding way.

to combine those two thoughts, the first time ANY of this actually came up in the drafting process was when I hit the Ilia scene in chapter 6. I knew what I wanted Blake to say to Ilia in that moment, which she absolutely couldn't say, which was: "I said the Mourner's Kaddish."

which: that's already a lot to unpack, so let's do that a bit! the first thing that drew me towards formulating my conception of Faunus culture around parallels to the diasporic Jewish experience is, of course, "write what you know." I'm not a racial or ethnic minority but I am Jewish, and so it was something I could use the 'draw from wellspring of personal knowledge and emotion' part of my brain for, rather than the 'radically and empathetically imagine the other' part of my brain. I've seen all sorts of fanon Faunus ideas where people drew on different and likely personal interpretations-- including things like the Faunus having their own language, Faunus interpolations of the Maiden myths and other Remnant lore having different values or being scaled more towards the God of Animals, Faunus having their own foods... if someone not-me had written this fic, this could have manifested in any number of ways. because the Faunus don't fit neatly into my (very American) notions of race, religion, or even X-men style "maybe we should regulate the people who have nukes for hands" minority/majority frameworks, I had the freedom to use the one that had the most personal meaning to me... and to deviate from that when it suited and felt appropriate. Neon's rightfully combative stance about Faunus mistreatment and how she reacts to it, for example, is far more aligned with the experiences of my friends and loved ones who are POC than it is anything I've personally gone through as a Jew.

so!

knowing, then, what my destination was (a Faunus cultural framework that would have specific death rites and rituals), I worked backwards from there. what makes a culture FEEL lived in is that people LIVE in it, that it relates to their everyday lives as well as its most significant moments-- what do we eat? how do we treat guests in our home? how do we handle life cycle events (birth/marriage/death)? without a country of origin, as the Faunus have none-- they made Menagerie, not the other way around-- and not wanting to go TOO explicitly religious by having there actually be some sort of dogmatic (har har DOG-matic) text about the God of Animals, I instead lit upon the idea of old poems whose metaphors have been transformed into material gifts. this felt intuitive to me probably largely because I'm Jewish (we're called the People of the Book for a reason lmao, we're all about interpretation and re-interpretation of text) but also, honestly, because the written word is WILDLY IMPORTANT in newsbees. they work at a newspaper! there's a reason the very last words of the story are Blake saying "for the record," which is a reporting pun. in hindsight, however, this is also sort of Sappho-y, which is also neat and, again, shows that ALL the ways I've experienced my own Otherness show up here.

having a text then gave me a scale of orthodoxy to work from, as in "very traditional people still recite these texts in a ceremonial way," but also a background radiation-level casual level of interaction, which is "yeah I leave shells at graves because that's what my parents taught me and I don't even really know why." this also means that all Faunus have the same sort of playbook to work from, regardless of where they're from geographically or what kind of Faunus they are.

once I had that in place, I immediately realized that whatever traditional Mourner's Verse there would be probably would feel kind of insulting re: what happened to the Amitolas, which is why I came up with the Traveler's Verse workaround. and the second I came up with that, I knew I could use it to connect Ghira and Kali back into the text at the end-- I'd been wanting to find a way to do that and hadn't come up with a method.

the first draft of that scene then promptly infodumped every thought I could possibly have about the Verses, immediately. @theseerasures teased me that it read like a Codex entry from Mass Effect, and she was 100% right-- and it totally interrupted the flow of the VERY EMOTIONAL scene with Ilia, which wouldn't do at all.

and that's where the 'writing it all before posting it' thing comes in. that infodumping then became the scene at Doc's in chapter 3. this also solved another problem I had, which was that in the VERY first draft chapters 3 and 4 were one very long chapter. I'd subsequently split them, which left chapter 3 quite short-- but at that point, the moment where Blake is upstairs getting her snack was only a brief explanatory paragraph. moving the Verses stuff back made the chapter a chapter, so it did a lot of heavy lifting for me. wanting the Verses to feel integrated, I also at that point went back and added the engraving on Tukson's door to the prologue, so that it would be seeded in from the start.

which is kind of to say that ALL WRITING IS CHEATING. we get to manipulate circumstances to best suit our needs! callbacks feel elegant and cerebral, but they're actually a very blunt and easy tool to use-- you get tons of mileage out of just establishing something and then bringing it up all the time. I'd already written the thing about Tukson being picky about book damage, and so I let that become a part of the Verses lore by saying it was a Faunus thing, and then doubled down on it with the "throwing the book at Ghira" anecdote.

as for what things mean what, the basic rule I gave for myself is that everything had to be common and easily-obtainable for a community often left impoverished and on the margins. that's why so many of them are food-based, because that's a very "even if we have nothing else, we have THIS" sort of thing. when coming up with the thing that would represent love, I lit upon honey BEFORE i realized "oh duh, lmao, bees" because... I'm an idiot, but luckily I figured it out after a bit. I was very enamored of the idea of it representing not just sweetness, but industry (as in "busy bees"), that love takes steady and determined work. the second I did think it up, the Velvet gag gift ("they're making fun of me") sprang to mind, though ironically it wasn't necessarily tied to the Mantle Bee yet, though that was also already a concept on the page.

probably the hardest thing to come up with was the NOT-honey gift for the epilogue (which ended up being nuts for growth), because I was like... is it a pen and paper for a first job? Is that too bougie? maybe a cute little desk succulent? but what would it represent?

and yeah, that's pretty much how I got there. it was a question of making something specific enough that it would feel authentic, but open-ended enough that I could make up whatever I wanted to suit the moment and have it all feel of a piece. from there, it was just about USING it-- keeping it in the back of my mind in Faunus-related scenes to see if there were ways I could weave it in somehow.

phew! okay I think that's pretty much everything. if anyone is so very enamored of the Verses that they'd like to use them for their own fics, you certainly have my permission to do so (with a link back to Newsbees for credit, please). I'm intrigued to see what you'd do with them! but also, like-- I love how multi-faceted and varied different interpretations of Faunus lore can be, and I'd love to see what y'all come up with for your own systems!

CONSIDER THE GAUNTLET THROWN. HAVE FUN OUT THERE.

<3

[survivingcapitalism]

Vision & Mission

Vision: A just peace in Israel-Palestine based on principles of equality and human rights.

Mission: To amplify the voices of Canadian Jews in support of justice in Israel-Palestine and at home.

Thematic areas

Palestine Solidarity: IJV was the first national Jewish organization to endorse the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. We continue to support and defend BDS as well as to hold Canadian organizations accountable when complicit in Israeli oppression of Palestinians.

Anti-racism and Indigenous solidarity: IJV stands in solidarity with Indigenous peoples and with all marginalized peoples in Canada against racism, settler colonialism and white supremacy. IJV also works to combat antisemitism and distinguish it clearly from critiques of Zionism and Israeli policies.

Justice-Oriented Jewish Communities: IJV believes that no one should have to choose between embracing Judaism or Jewishness and supporting Palestinian rights. IJV chapters and campus clubs organize meaningful ritual gatherings that centre justice and critical reflection.

IJV Basis of Unity

We are a group of Jews in Canada from diverse backgrounds, occupations and affiliations who share a strong commitment to social justice and universal human rights. We come together in the belief that the broad spectrum of opinion among the Jewish population of this country is not reflected by those institutions that claim to represent Jewish communities as a whole. We further believe that individuals and groups within all communities should feel free to express their views on any issue of public concern without incurring accusations of disloyalty. We have therefore resolved to promote the expression of alternative Jewish voices, particularly in respect of the grave situation in the Middle East, which threatens the future of Palestinians and Israelis as well as the stability of the whole region.

IJV Principles

We are guided by the following principles:

We affirm that human rights are universal and indivisible and should be upheld without exception.

We believe that all people living within Israel-Palestine have the right to freedom, equality, and to peaceful and secure lives.

We believe that the fight against antisemitism is undermined when principled opposition to unjust Israeli government policies and practices–including those that contravene international law–are branded as antisemitic.

We oppose all forms of racism, including antisemitism, anti-Arab racism, anti-Black racism, Islamophobia, and intra-Jewish racism, which marginalizes Jews of colour, Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews.

We stand in solidarity with the Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island (North America) in their efforts to overcome the impacts of European colonization both past and present.

We seek direction from the communities with whom we stand in solidarity and follow their leadership at every opportunity.

We strive to be inclusive, justice-seeking, democratic, and open to diverse ideas and practices.

We believe that true security requires justice and solidarity.

We hereby reclaim the tradition of Jewish support for universal freedoms, human rights and social justice. The lessons we have learned from our own history compel us to speak out.

These principles are violated when we allow an occupying power to trample the human rights of an occupied people. Palestinian inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza, living under Israeli occupation and military blockade, face appalling living conditions, with desperately little hope for the future. At the same time, Palestinian Israelis are subjected to a range of discriminatory laws and regulations and are consequently unable to enjoy the same rights and freedoms that are enjoyed by Israeli Jews. This institutionalized discrimination has led increasing numbers of people around the world to identify Israel an apartheid state. We therefore declare our support for a properly negotiated peace between the Israeli and Palestinian people and oppose any attempt by the Israeli government to impose its own solutions on the Palestinians. Furthermore, we support full equality for Palestinian Israelis. To these ends, IJV supports the 2005 call issued by the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) National Committee for an international campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions to compel the State of Israel to comply with international law and support Palestinian Israelis’ human rights by

Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall;

Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and

Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.

[emily84]

Reposting this because I didn't want to derail OP but, and here's just a thought, I don't think this is a conversation we as outsiders can have, or have lightly.

This feels like an intra-community conversation between Jewish people (and, yes, Israeli Jews) that we can only be admitted to by explicit concession.

Just like it's not my place as a white person to police matters relating to colorism in the Black community, or to word police discussions within the trans community. I can acknowledge those issues, and talk about them, but not use them as pieces in my arguments just because I want to have the upper hand. Or convince myself my two cents about racism on X of all places can silence or "counter" words by people who are actually Black, or trans.

This is not just about weakness and ableism and if you say you disagree you're being disingenuous. This is a delicate conversation about (inter)generational trauma and survivor's guilt and a thousand other corollary issues that Jewish people have been grappling with, at length, for decades (centuries), academically, privately, publicly, in literature, in art, and within their diasporic communities and with gentiles as well. It's not new or surprising, actually. Just because it wasn't on your "bingo card" when you suddenly learned about this yesterday, it doesn't make it new or surprising.

And just because you don't like Israel or its politics, you don't take this very painful thing that concerns Jewish people everywhere, not just in Israel, and make light of it, and label it "white supremacist". I see it done all the time here in Italy. This is exactly the kind of language that makes Jewish people distrust us goyim.

[transsexual-divine]

NO MINORS! UNDER 18 AND/OR NO BIO AGE GETS BLOCKED!

Hello! Welcome to my Pagan sideblog! I use this space primarily to keep records of my Craft and things I’m studying and/or interested in. I also use this space for devotional work and sharing my own twist on magick!

My mainblog is at @lyriuum - it is mostly for gaming! If you find a gaming blog following and liking you, but a Pagan blog reblogging you … that’s probably me!

Here is a bit about me! -

Leo ☀️ - Taurus 🌕- Aquarius 🌅

Queer (Trans Male, Bisexual, Biromantic)

Eclectic Pagan (Wiccan, Celtic, Eastern European, British, Norse - Lokean, and Indigenous practices are my influences/main areas of study and/or worship)

Adult

He/Him pronouns only

American

BYF … -

I don’t share donation posts that aren’t benefitting trans people (either as a personal fund or as an organization) and/or is helping trans people flee and seek refuge.

I don’t approve of gatekeeping areas of practice, nor do I gatekeep anyone from a practice and/or from an area of study. I don’t support this, and actively rally against this behavior in the witchcraft community.

I am proudly and openly trans, and I put that into my magick and into my Craft. I am also proud of my ancestry, and actively look for ways to add it into my life.

I am newish to Paganism! I’m still learning, but I appreciate all good-faith and good-matured advice.

DNI -

MINORS!

Bigoted individuals of all stripes. This includes transphobia, homophobia, anti-Pagan beliefs/ideas, anti-Wiccan individuals, classism, and racism.

If you don’t believe that trans genocide is real and happening, if you aren’t fully in support of transgender individuals and their campaigns for equal rights intra-and-extra the Queer community, and if you are hateful of any type of trans identity. I don’t support truscum/transmeds or the rats that call themselves “feminist.” Leave my page.

Christian, Jewish, or Islamic witchcraft and/or witches. Also, no non-Pagan/Wiccan religious blogs in general.

Anti-Wiccan people or people who are overly critical of Wicca while ignoring the same issues in their Pagan faith.

Those who gatekeep areas of practice or study … this is anti-Pagan in nature! Knowledge is key!

Sideblogs! -

@lyriuum — main blog & gaming blog!

Blessed be!

[jewish-privilege]

...As an Ethiopian Jew living in America, it can be frustrating having to constantly feel like your identity is under suspicion by not only other Jews but also people who have absolutely no knowledge of Jews or Judaism. I’ve complained alongside my Moroccan, Yemeni, and Persian friends countless times about the different microaggressions and plain ignorance of our fellow Jews and non-Jews alike; this can range from a friend’s grandparent making an inappropriate remark to being held up at the airport as the TSA agent looks over your last name once again. I remember in eighth grade history class, hearing my teacher profess how “the Holocaust was stupid because Jews are essentially white.” As a young person who still had no clue how to react when an authority figure behaved ignorantly, all I could do was sit there in silence.

I will not be silent any longer.

For a lot of people, the idea of “Jew” equals “white,” and that leads to a range of annoying to downright insulting encounters while navigating the spaces where we should feel we belong.

In America, many of us are faced with the threat of anti-Semitism that scars the whole of our community, but we’re also faced with the ingrained and monstrous beast that is racism. It happens like this: You overhear terms like “shvartze,” the Yiddish word for black that is considered a slur against Black people, whispered while meeting a friend’s extended family. Your mother is harassed by a random security guard as she picks you up from working Sunday school at the J.C.C. The police harass you following a cousin’s bar mitzvah. These are just some of the forms of harassment that I and my loved ones have experienced in spaces where all Jews are supposed to be able to safely congregate. More often than not, members of our communities are put in precarious positions in regards to dealing with bigotry that presents itself in spaces meant to for all Jews.

...Ashkenormativity is a unique form of eurocentrism that has found its way into Jewish culture. In a twisted way, the “whiteness” that became a hallmark of power due to European colonialism has been able to become a boon for white-passing Jews, in particular Ashkenazim. While in much of actual Europe, anti-Semitism is so deeply rooted that even having white skin doesn’t necessarily enable you with privilege, in the unique case of America, it allows for a situational point of privilege that changes based on the whim of the majority. The same way that in so much of society, we have defined white people as the “default” person, a similar sentiment has translated into defining the Ashkenazi as the “normative” Jew.

For Jews of Color — some of whom are Ashkenazi themselves though still face racism based on the color of their skin — we are not only asking for our fellow Jews to use the privilege they do have in non-Jewish society to better the lives of others; we are demanding to be equal members of our own Jewish communities.

This is not only an American issue. In Israel, even though our Jewishness is no longer seen as a threat, we still face the brutal realities of racism. The slayings of Solomon Teka and Yehuda Biadga last year have caused widespread communal outrage and have brought to the forefront the issues of racism and police brutality in Israeli society. Out of the six Ethiopian Israeli men murdered over the last five years, only the death of one was prosecuted and the sentence only carried the weight of three years. It took until this past January for Haymanot Judaism, the religious practices unique to Beta Israel (Ethiopian Jews), to be fully acknowledged by the Chief Rabbinate as an authentic form of Judaism, despite the ruling of late Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef in the early 1970s and decisions made in 2014 to recognize Haymanot Judaism. This means that for the last few decades, many Ethiopian Jews living in Israel either had to convert to Rabbinic Judaism or jump through hoops to be able to engage in major life events like marriage.

Systemic racism from both religious and policing structures in Israel have only worked to attempt to assimilate Ethiopian Jewry in a way that is grossly inappropriate. This includes incidents like the distribution of birth control to Ethiopian women without giving them full disclosure on the effects, throwing out blood donations given by Ethiopians, and sending Ethiopian teens off to boarding schools after settling into Israel. These were all on top of police practices like racial profiling as well as racism from fellow Israelis. Now we are seeing the younger generation taking an active and aggressive stance in protecting themselves and their rights as fellow Israeli citizens against the structures that their own parents couldn’t fight against.

The list of injustices goes on: Out of the many issues of disgusting racism that have occurred against the Mizrahi Jews, one of the most chilling is the disappearances of the over 1000 Yemeni children in the 1950s that until the last two decades went widely under-investigated. Systemic segregation was used as a weapon against many Mizrahi Jews who came to live in Israel. Segregation, religious intolerance, economic inequality, and harassment led to the formation of HaPanterim HaShhorim, the Israeli Black Panthers, in the ’70s to fight against the discrimination faced by Mizrahi and Sephardi Jews. Even today as society improves, there is an education and wealth disparity between Mizrahi and Ashkenazi Jews.

Historically, there has also been a bad habit of the Ashkenazim attempting to triumph their own traditions as greater or more authentic, leading to times when Ethiopian and Indian Jews have been pressured to “convert” as if they weren’t already Jewish.

Even the very way we define Zionism needs to change. Theodor Herzl, the Austrian Jew largely credited as “the father of political Zionism,” was an assimilationist. His viewpoint on what the Jewish state of the future would become was fashioned in a way that only took in the perspective of the non-religious Ashkenazim who frequented his circles. Herzl also supported the Ottoman government against the Armenian rebellion for independence, which resulted in the Armenian genocide.

The issue at the heart of the Zionism that dominates our culture is that the person who we are so quick to give credit to left out a huge portion of our people and didn’t intend on ever including us. Crediting a single person for the dream of Jewish liberation and sovereignty overlooks the fact that our culture, people, and faith thrives because of the fluidity and strength of our many traditions. We should instead credit our families, communities, leaders, and more importantly, ourselves, with the continued survival of our people.

We come from a tradition that calls for us to actively reinterpret what we were left to inherit. For our community to effectively come together, we need to have more hard discussions and push for change. At this point we should not have to ask; we demand our fellow Jews to give us an actual spot at the table.

[returnofthejudai]

I unequivocally condemn Rabbi Yosef’s anti-blackness and demand his immediate resignation. We in the Jewish community, must work to stamp out racism and bigotry in our own ranks and it’s unacceptable for us to stay silent on this issue even if talking about it risks giving us negative attention. I apologize for not bringing it up sooner. 

[dataanxiety]

Trifecta

Yes, she's black, Jewish, and female. And she feels VERY oppressed! In actuality, she is the winner of the grievance lottery, a trifecta, as one can infer from this excerpt that I LEGALLY reproduced here from the increasingly left-leaning (Jewish) Forward. They don't like to call themselves the Jewish Forward anymore. Kind of like the Jewish Anti-Defamation League is now the ADL and defames Jews regularly unless they are woke enough.

Note that emphasis is mine in what follows. I could have included exasperated comments, but you'll get the idea.

"Can Jews Be White?"

by Nylah Burton, July 02, 2018

A couple of nights ago, I was walking to my apartment in my aggressively white neighborhood. This particular night, my noticeable blackness could have been deadly. There were helicopters flying above my apartment and police stationed at a couple of streets right by my front door. Police can punish anyone who fits the suspect’s description, which is usually black. My friend and I felt both terrified and relieved: terrified of me being questioned or shot from above, and relieved that she could use her whiteness to shield me.

It made me reflect on a topic: Can Jews Be White? After Alma published the Jews of Color roundtable discussion, I encountered a lot of indignation from “white-passing” Jews who took great issue with our use of the terms “white Jew” and “whiteness” in describing the intra-community racism we had experienced. I was pretty furious. Policing the terminology and feelings of Jews of Color was pretty much the antithesis of all we had discussed. And furthermore, many Jews actually are white.

For the record, I strongly feel that de-assimilation and the dismantling of whiteness is critical to both the eradication of racism and the survival of the Jewish people. But here’s the salient point: White Jews aren’t white passing. They are functionally white.

“White-passing” implies the need to hide. For example, a white-passing Latinx person may be deported if their immigration status is revealed. A white-passing black person may get some privilege due to their appearance, but will still be subject to systemic economic disparities. Most systemic benefits of whiteness will not be taken away from white Ashkenazi Jews who possess them if someone discovers their Jewishness. No doubt, prejudice and anti-Semitism may remain, but their loan rates will stay the same and the police won’t be more likely to pull the trigger.

This is not to say that being Jewish isn’t incredibly dangerous in this country. But at this point in time in America, anti-Semitism is not comparable to systemic racism. All Jews will be a target of white supremacists, but many Jews may not ever experience racism. White supremacy is an extreme ideology that asserts the superiority of Western European Christian whiteness with violence and murder. It can spread like wildfire, but it is rarely coded into every aspect of our lives. Racism is.

In this country, to access the benefits of whiteness, different European immigrant groups had to shed parts of their individual cultures and seek shelter under the big tent of “white” culture. But this is an empty existence, for white culture has no value beyond power and privilege. Being willing to acknowledge when whiteness applies to us isn’t assimilation; it’s an acknowledgement of a fucked up system.

The views and opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of the Forward.

[a-queer-seminarian]

Edited March 30, 2020

__________

currently thinking about how Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem was hailed and celebrated by the people -- how they shouted “hosanna,” an exclamation of adoration and praise; how they waved palms and spread their cloaks for his arrival........and then turned on him. let the Romans take him and torture him and brutally execute him.

and how because this happened to Jesus, he knows intimately what it feels like when similar things happen to us. when we are welcomed at first and then, when we fail to meet expectations, we are vilified and thrown out -- Jesus gets it. God really, truly, has been there.

a Black woman is employed by a church as part of a diversity initiative, and is welcomed by all -- until she starts pointing out things that need to change, pervasive issues of racism and misogyny and cissexism that should be addressed. excitement sours into resentment, openness into anger; she is ostracized, treated rudely, isolated until the environment becomes so toxic she leaves. she is blamed for the way things “didn’t work out.”

parents promise their son their love is unconditional; he grows up hearing the promise to “love him no matter what.” but these parents are also not quiet about making their anti-gay views known. he has to wonder -- will that unconditional love survive him going out?

a trans person comes out to their loved ones, who express support, a willingness to learn and a promise to work on the new name and pronouns. but months pass by and those loved ones are still misgendering them and growing more and more frustrated, not at themselves but at the trans person -- “Why are you making life so hard?” “Why can’t you just be normal?” “Why would you even want to change your body like that?”

a congregant comes out to her pastor and some of the elders of the church, who respond with compassion and a promise that she’ll always be welcome at the church. the congregant is relieved, and even emboldened to bring her girlfriend to church a few weeks later. but the pastor and some church members confront her, horrified -- “you can’t hold hands with another woman in a place of God!” “This is not okay! If you’re going to act on your desires, we will have to take severe action.” She realized that when the pastor promised her welcome, he’d assumed she would remain “celibate”...she goes home disillusioned brokenhearted. Church will never feel safe again, she tells her girlfriend.

i and people i love dearly have lived through some of these scenarios, and that kind of pain seeps into your psyche and nests in your bones.

but i do find comfort in knowing that my God has been there too -- that the God who throughout the scriptures professed to know, really know the pain and suffering of Their people (e.g. Exodus 3:7) did experience it firsthand. it breaks my heart that Jesus, whom i love, knows this pain too....but it also brings me comfort. because he gets it -- he really, really gets it.

and the God who knows, who sees, who feels with us, is a God whose power is compassion, suffering with and being moved to act -- God does not leave us alone when faith communities abandon us; God shares our pain when others afflict us; and God will act to make things right.

as we enter Holy Week, i plan to meditate more on Jesus’ pain -- the pain of rejection, of having loved ones turn on you, of being handed over to torture and death -- and offer my deepest gratitude for that ultimate act of solidarity with all whom the world rejects and tortures.

thank you, Jesus. you share our suffering always -- give me the courage to try to share your suffering with you, so that i may be moved to act for all who suffer today.

________________

So. I wrote this little reflection during Holy Week last year. We are now approaching Holy Week once again. I will be preaching (via the internet) at my home church this Palm Sunday, and so naturally I remembered, “Oh, I wrote a little something about Palm Sunday before, let’s dig that up and see if it was any good!”

I re-read what I wrote below, and was aghast. embarrassed. ashamed.

Because what I wrote has the same kind of antisemitic tinge to it that has enabled hate crimes against Jewish communities across the centuries.

“But I didn’t say ‘the Jews killed Jesus’ -- I made it clear that Romans are the ones who executed him!!” Sure, but I clearly imply that his Jewish community “let” the Romans kill him; I literally used the language “they turned on him” and rejected him.

When I wrote this piece just last year, I was so sure I was a Good Christian who Knew About The Dangers of Antisemitism In Christianity -- I patted myself on the back for knowing that the Romans are the ones who actually tortured and crucified Jesus. But I wrote this! Even while checking over everything I wrote and thought about Passion Week in particular, being aware of the horrific violent history of this week, this not-even-subtle antisemitic thinking completely flew past me.

What antisemitism continues to lurk in my theology, unchecked?

I think I’m ~so good~ at noticing antisemitism and other dangerous bigotry embedded in my beliefs and language. Clearly, I’m not.

This post spoke to a lot of people, you can see in the comments on it. Last year, I was happy to have moved them with my words. Now, I blush, knowing I let antisemitic thinking spread.

Now, I have no clue how to rethink the Passion narrative that is so central to my faith but so corrupted by antisemitism. How do we read the stories of Jesus being handed over to death without being antisemitic? We can remind the listeners that “The Jews” of Jesus’s days don’t = the Jewish communities that came after them and that continue today. We can remind the listeners that Jesus and his friends were also Jewish, and his was an intra-community struggle. But I don’t think that’s enough.

I have to preach in just six days about Palm Sunday -- a Triumphalist passage if there ever was one! How do I preach it without indicting “the Jews”? Especially now, in this time of pandemic, when people will be expecting my message to be about that very immediate crisis, rather than the timeless crisis of antisemitism in our scripture.

If anyone has articles for me, thoughts for me, I’m all ears. Here are a couple resources I’ve got so far:

I just downloaded an ebook called Jesus Wasn’t Killed by the Jews: Reflections for Christians in Lent

An article about the “Moneychangers in the Temple” that Matthew’s Gospel shows Jesus “driving out” directly after the Palm Sunday scene

A church’s reflection on Passion Week

“A Note on ‘The Jews’ in Palm Sunday’s Passion Reading”

I especially appreciate any Jewish person’s perspective, but don’t expect it -- I know y’all don’t owe me anything. I am deeply sorry for my role in perpetuating antisemitism, and I’m going to be working on doing better.

[schraubd]

Some Nuanced Thoughts on Protecting Jews via Police

NBC News, which as a mainstream media source Is Not Covering Violence Against Jews(tm), has an interesting article up discussing how the Jewish community in New York is assessing calls to increase police presence in Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods as a means of combating rising antisemitic violence:

Audrey Sasson, executive director of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, or JFREJ, a left-wing "movement to dismantle racism and economic exploitation" based in New York City, said deployment of more police would be an understandable reaction — and one that would worry her. "Of course, we all need to feel safe. That's fundamental, and there is no arguing with that," Sasson said. "But how do we get there?" Sasson said that her group is multiracial, as is the Jewish community at large, and that many Jewish people wouldn't feel safer with a greater police presence.  

"Right now, the tools we have for safety [are] more police and more guns," Sasson said, "but the question for me is how can we build other tools?" 

Those tools, according to Sasson and JFREJ, include making sure the Jewish community is in a coalition with other targeted communities, having a better system for reporting violence that doesn't rely so heavily on police, creating community-led transformative justice projects and implementing non-punitive and restorative-oriented approaches to violence. 

Sasson acknowledged that the vision is a long-term one, and she does not discount the desire for more police from people living in fear after "the whole holiday was marked by attacks." [emphasis added -- DS]

This is good, and I dare say snaps my long streak wherein everything I've ever read from JFREJ is neither bad nor good but "meh" (Mazel Tov!). The reason I like it is because:

(a) It does not disparage those Jews who desire police protection in the immediate term, or suggest that it reflects a failure of solidarity on their part to desire this solution;

 (b) It acknowledges that viable alternatives to police protection need to be built -- that is, they do not exist now -- and that this construction project is has a long-term time horizon attached to it.

Those twin acknowledgments are, I think necessary if the critique of "more police" is to have ethical traction. Without them, the objection to more policing sounds like a demand that Jews place our lives in the hand of vague feel-good bromides about "community building" or some such that have all the practical bite of a consciousness-raising bed-in project -- and if we don't accede to the demand we're basically giving into our inner-fascists. I think Sasson is read properly in tandem with Eric Ward:

"You can't tell a community that is being physically assaulted that they can't increase law enforcement response but then offer them nothing in response," Ward said. 

Still, Ward, who has studied anti-Semitism extensively, acknowledged that it's not that simple. 

"We know increased policing brings increased racial profiling," he said, adding that high police presence to protect Jews "is likely to be seen as feeding into black and Jewish tension."

Ward is, I think, making the same point as Sasson, just with the opposite emphasis. Telling Jews "how dare you ask for more police" when there isn't any practical, immediate-term alternative isn't going to be received well, and reasonably so. That's true even though, as Ward also points out, there are real costs to the "increased policing" proposal -- including costs along the very dimension its nominally supposed to help (tamping down on intra-group tensions and hostility). There's legitimate space to critique the "more police" response -- but it has to come with enough humility to acknowledge that there's ample reason to be skeptical of the existence of viable alternatives in the short-term. Ultimately, my view on this is basically that of Batya Ungar-Sargon: Whatever my intuitions are on the wisdom of this strategy, I should defer to the people on the ground. Of course, the people on the ground will themselves often have divergent takes. But one suspects the consensus that will emerge will lie somewhere in between "abolish the NYPD" and "send in the National Guard." via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/2ZzQCHP

[miairviin]

Icb liebe dich, Berlin

Happy Belated Valentine’s Day to all! Yesterday was the start of my second intra-European adventure: Berlin, Germany!

I arrived later last night and met up with a couple of my friends from Greece who had arrived earlier that day. After successfully navigating Berlin’s public transportation system, we headed to the hostel. From there, we went just a few doors down to a restaurant called Aufsturz for some authentic German food. My first meal was jägerschnitzel and Berlin truly came out swinging in regard to its culinary wonders. The jägerschnitzel was thin breaded pork with a mushroom cream sauce over a bed of German noodles. It was the perfect meal for someone who had just gotten off of an airplane.

The next day, the four other girls who came to Berlin with me woke up at 9 am for a free walking tour the hostel helped set up for us and some of its other guests. We began our tour in the city center of Mitte at the beautiful Brandenburg Gate, a place I had been looking forward to visiting since I first booked my flight. This gate has had a very long and very tumultuous past. It has come to represent a changing Berlin. The gate was one of many just like it, and they were all commissioned by the Prussian King Frederick William the II in an attempt to make Berlin “the Athens along the spree.” This explains why so there are so many elements of Greek architecture throughout the city. There have been two world wars, including Hitler’s dictatorship, bombings, battles, and political demonstrations galore. All of the other gates have since collapsed, but not the Brandenburg Gate. Though it has undergone a few alterations, the Brandenburg Gate stands tall, a symbol of pride and resilience which has come to define Berlin.

Our next stop was the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. I knew that Berlin was a city that was rich in history, but I was not prepared for the beautiful ambiguity of this particular site. The artist who designed the memorial refused to give an explanation as to what the meaning of the 2,711 cement blocks of varying heights set up in a grid could be. In fact, the memorial takes up an entire city block downtown. That is how much importance the German government has placed on educating the world on its history. Our tour guide encouraged us to walk through and draw our own conclusions, to decide what message it was trying to send to us. As I meandered through the blocks, I felt so many different things. The blocks began short, just below my waist. There was even a humble bouquet of flowers resting on one of the first few blocks a visitor must have left. But within a few seconds, the blocks were high above my head and I could not see to my left or to my right, only forward. You were always visible from the outside of the memorial to the passing foot traffic, but in the memorial I felt anxious. Within a few minutes, I lost my group and it was just me and the seemingly endless rows of cement blocks. Though terrifying and at times frustrating, this really gave me time to consider my tour guide’s challenge to decipher the meaning for ourselves. I decided that the memorial was trying to tell us about the Jewish people during the Holocaust. Even if the lesson only lasted a few minutes and came nowhere near the intensity of the real Jewish experience. Much like the memorial’s blocks did not begin tall, the Holocaust did not happen over night. It was a gradual process of dehumanization beginning with boycotting jewish shops and ending with genocide. Though at times it felt like the Jewish struggle was invisible, it wasn’t. Other Germans knew, other countries knew, and other people knew of the atrocities being committed against the Jewish people and yet no one ventured into the grid to help. When you’re in the memorial, it’s easy to get lost, to lose your friends, to lose your bearings, to feel anxious. I cannot pretend I am able to even imagine the anxiety and fear that was felt by sisters separated from brothers, children from parents, and wives from husbands during this incredibly dark and irrationally evil time period. Our tour guide added to my analysis by saying that there was a quote describing the Holocaust as a bureaucratic duty rather than a truly insidious endeavor carried out by insidious people. Perhaps it is harder to rationalize this idea of someone being so brainwashed by their government they are willing to sentence millions to death in the name of patriotism. Either way, I felt as though it was an interesting point to include, especially in today’s growing political unrest. The memorial is just one of the many ways Berlin has refused to let its dark past define the city. Rather, history is embraced alongside the present and the two combine to form the ever changing Berlin.

Our next stop was a perfect example of how Berlin has handpicked what history it has decided to preserve and what to ignore. In a humble car park, about eight meters below our feet was the bunker where Hitler killed himself after realizing the war was lost. Just outside the bunker, children and old men fought to protect a dying Germany but not because they still believed in it; because they were literally fighting for their lives. Conversely, Hitler, who was on a wild cocktail of drugs, was busy committing suicide because he knew, like everyone else, the Germany he was fighting for was long gone. It was interesting to see the Berlin reaction to dealing with this bunker was to turn it into a functional space: a car park. Again, this is one way Berlin has selected the history they want to breathe life into and remember forever versus the history that deserves nothing from us. If not nothing, than a car park.

We continued on to places like Checkpoint Charlie, where West Berliners were eventually granted access to the East. There was a part of the Berlin Wall standing outside a cafe we stopped at. Berlin has a subtle tribute to the old wall in the form of a narrow strip of cobblestones running across the city along the same line where the Berlin Wall once stood. Another example of a memorial in plain sight are the golden stumbling stones that make appearances all over Germany. These stumbling stones became a part of Berlin when a citizen independently began installing golden plaques in between cobble stones on the sidewalk. The stones are meant to signify the last known residence of Jewish families that were taken away during the Holocaust. Each stone is engraved with a name, a year of birth, and if known and applicable, the location and year of their death. The head rabbi of Munich refused the installment of these stumbling stones. Her rationale is that people will step on them and that would be incredibly disrespectful. Our tour guide offered the interpretation that they force you to stop, and bow your head to not only to read the information on the stone, but also in reverence. It’s chilling and disorienting to think that today I was walking the same street as someone who decades ago, was being torn from a life they knew intimately and thrust into a world of terror and uncertainty. It’s impossible. Absolutely impossible.

We ended our tour, and stopped in for some more authentic German food. I dined on a sausage in curry ketchup and for dessert, apple strudel, a Berlin experience just as high on my list as the Brandenburg Gate. It was DELIGHTFUL. The cream was sweet, the apples were crisp, and the dough was soft. I know I will think of that dessert often. I can only hope I can find something like it back home when I return to the states.

We ended our night with a stroll along the East Side Gallery which displays murals commenting on social and political themes on what was once the east side of the wall. If it wasn’t for the cold, I could have spent hours walking along this open-air art gallery. Each mural had so much to say, and I felt so lucky to listen to whatever message the artist was trying to deliver. I also felt grateful they were able to share it with me. For so long, east Berlin had been subjected to communist rule where any misstep outside the party norms could mean death. Here, artists were able to express so many things from love to the disdain of racism to history to female empowerment to intersectionality to the need for environmental consciousness. The East Side Gallery had no shortage of conversation pieces or thought provoking images.

I close this entry with icb liebe dich, Berlin because there are no other words. I love you, Berlin is the only thing on my mind as I write this. The energy of the city is so youthful, so vibrant, so bold. Just like it’s food, people, architecture, and history. The energy is tangible here, racing through the streets like a pulse and heartbeat. Everyone seems to be moving, but moving towards something great importance. There’s a purpose. They’re here for a reason. I cannot wait to see what tomorrow brings in this truly mythical place.

[lueminous]

Hey Lue, what intra-fandom drama has happened now? What discourse is causing people to say that creating safe spaces is the same thing as racism? Hope you don't mind me asking.

After getting piled on by racists one too many times on twitter someone created a discord server for people of colour, jewish people and muslims so we can talk to people who understand without a dumbass going all reverse racism on us. And this has got some clowns in this fandom mad basically reinforcing why this chatroom was needed lmfao but apparently we are the racists here 🙄

[xtruss]

Jewish Americans are at a Turning Point With an “Illegal Regime of Zionist Cunts: Isra-Hell”

I felt alone as a Jew attending a Palestine solidarity rally in 2014. I don’t feel alone any more

— Arielle Angel | Guardian USA | May 22, 2021

On Nakba Day, 15 May, amid the outbreak of war in Israel/Palestine, I attended a rally in Bay Ridge in Brooklyn, to commemorate the expulsion of more than 700,000 Palestinians from the new Israeli state in 1948, and to protest against the oppression of the Palestinian people in the land between the river and the sea. From the signs I saw as part of that crowd – “This Jew will not stand by” or “Another Jew for a Free Palestine” – and from monitoring my social media feeds, it was clear that there were thousands of Jews taking part in these protests in cities all over the country.

For me, the conspicuous presence of larger numbers of Jews – many, but not all of them young – at every major Nakba Day protest was significant. During the 2014 assault on Gaza, I ventured out to a Palestine solidarity rally in Columbus Circle in Manhattan by myself. An ardent Zionist until that point, my worldview had been profoundly shaken by the images in the papers – Palestinian children bombed to pieces on a beach; Israelis in the rattled buffer town of Sderot gathered on hilltops overlooking the Strip, cheering as the bombs fell.

I didn’t know a single person that might accompany me to such a protest. To go at all felt like a betrayal of everything I’d ever known and loved. And yet even stronger was my anguish at doing nothing. I felt alienated by the march itself, unprepared to face the righteous anger at the Israeli state from the perspective of its victims. My heart raced when chants broke out of “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” – a popular protest slogan calling for equality in a single democratic state, which Jews have long been told amounts to their expulsion. I stayed another 30 minutes, then ducked into Central Park, collapsing on a bench in sobs. I’d never felt more alone.

I don’t feel alone any more. Though the years since 2014 have seen the growth of a small but committed Jewish anti-occupation movement, the last week and a half have brought an even larger circle of the community to a place of reckoning. We’ve seen Jewish politicians, celebrities, rabbinical students and others speak up loudly for Palestine. We’ve seen a powerful display of solidarity from Jewish Google employees, asking their company to sever ties with the IDF. At Jewish Currents, the leftwing magazine where I am now editor-in-chief, we asked for questions from readers struggling to understand the recent violence. We’ve been deluged.

These questions taken in aggregate paint a striking portrait of a community at a turning point. Though many queries aim to understand specific aspects of the recent round of violence – the circumstances surrounding the expulsions of Palestinians from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah, for instance, or the affiliations of the Jewish revelers dancing ecstatically opposite a fire on the Temple Mount – many more are simply expressions of confusion, and a newfound willingness to confront it head on.

“These questions taken in aggregate paint a striking portrait of a community at a turning point”

“I know what’s happening is wrong, but does supporting Palestinian liberation mean supporting Hamas?” asks one reader. “How do I talk to my family about this?” asks another. There are people struggling with new terminology (“Is apartheid an accurate word for what is happening in Israel/Palestine? What about ethnic cleansing?”) and with the foundational events that shaped the current situation on the ground (“Was there really an expulsion of Palestinians in 1948?”). Though many of our Jewish readers are anxious about antisemitism and about Jewish safety in Israel, there are strong indications that they are beginning to separate these feelings from the moral reality on the ground. On the whole, their questions represent a genuine outpouring of curiosity and compassion about the plight of Palestinians.

What has changed? The Black Lives Matter movement can claim credit for helping masses of people understand the mechanisms of structural racism and oppression, and for consistently linking the Black struggle to the Palestinian one. White people, including white Jews, who spent last summer confronting their own complicity in anti-Blackness or their discomfort with the force of abolitionist demands like “defund the police”, are perhaps finding themselves prepared to face similar complicities and discomforts in relation to Palestinian liberation. Jewish groups in solidarity with Palestine like Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow in the United States and Na’amod in the UK, some of which were formed following the 2014 assault on Gaza, have steadily moved the intra-communal conversation around Israel/Palestine, creating more space for Jews to speak their conscience without having to abandon their identities. These groups all enjoyed periods of growth during the Trump-era, when Donald Trump’s close relationship with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, heightened the contradictions for a largely liberal Jewish populace. Young Jews becoming politically conscious for the first time saw a powerful, rightwing Israel intent on entrenching a decades-long occupation – a story that contrasted sharply with the one many of their elders had told them.

It remains to be seen whether this new visibility of Jewish dissenters on Israel/Palestine will have a meaningful effect on conditions on the ground. Many Jewish communal institutions rely on mega-donors to keep the lights on, and many of those mega-donors are conservative – meaning that our institutions are not particularly responsive to constituent pressure. For another, much of the American support for Israel comes from evangelical Christian Zionists, who, despite stirrings of dissent in their own communities, remain wedded to an apocalyptic Second Coming predicated on a warlike Jewish state. In Israel/Palestine itself, the single most important factor in Palestinian liberation is unified Palestinian resistance, which has taken inspiring new forms this week.

But there’s no question that Jewish support for the status quo in Israel/Palestine provides a powerful justification for Israeli government support globally. More Jews speaking up against Israeli apartheid weakens that justification, leaving politicians, lobbyists and others to account for what their support is really about.

On Thursday, a ceasefire took hold between the Israeli government and Hamas, ending an 11-day engagement that has left 12 Israelis and 232 Palestinians dead. The announcement was a genuine relief, but it does not change the reality in Israel/Palestine, where Palestinians across the land live under various forms of Israeli subjugation – the crushing blockade in Gaza; the military occupation in the West Bank; and second-class status in East Jerusalem and within the Green Line. Just as 2014 produced new infrastructure in the Jewish community to encourage dissent, I am certain that this moment will prove pivotal in a changing Jewish American conversation about Israel/Palestine.

— Arielle Angel is the editor-in-chief of Jewish Currents

[baehraini]

real talk though when you keep claiming "jews are white" because black, asian etc. jews exist: have you ever heard of colorism in your life? never encountered the idea that intra-group prejudice can exist and still not have any member of that group be "white"? I know you're not talking about white converts to judaism, sis

jewish people experience anti-semitism regardless of race but not all jewish people experience racism because a lot of jewish people are white (european). but they’re white in a different way from other whites because whiteness is considered conditional by anti-semitc white ppl

[jewish-privilege]

[June 2018] - Barkan Wineries is facing a furious backlash after an undercover investigation revealed that the company banned Ethiopian employees from coming in contact with its wine due to an ostensible doubt about their Jewishness. Israel’s chief rabbi condemned the ban as “pure racism,” the president castigated the winery, the Knesset speaker called it shameful, while an MK backed a growing public boycott of one of Israel’s leading winemakers.

Last year, Barkan’s management decided to pursue an additional, more rigorous kosher certification from the Eda Haredit, a private hardline ultra-Orthodox group, according to a Monday investigative report by public broadcaster Kan (Hebrew link).

...In order to obtain Eda Haredit certification, Barkan was required by the group to ban all its Ethiopian workers from coming in contact with the wine, citing a halachic ban on gentiles handling wine, even though the Chief Rabbinate of Israel recognizes the Ethiopian community as Jewish.

Some ultra-Orthodox communities do not recognize Ethiopians who immigrated to Israel in the last 30 years as Jewish according to religious law.

Barkan agreed to comply with the Eda Haredit demand, and in recent months began transferring its Ethiopian workers from the production to other positions in the factory.

In a recording of a phone call between an Ethiopian worker and a senior manager, Barkan said that the employees were being moved due to religious considerations.

“Because of the kashrut, I need to transfer Yair (another Ethiopian worker) to a different work station… so that he won’t be next to the doors touching the filling [containers],” he said.

“Everyone has their values, and I have mine, and you are a Jew, he’s a Jew and I’m a Jew. But, at the end of the day it’s business, and business is business,” Assouline told the worker.

...A number of the workers who spoke to Kan said they were angered and humiliated by the new policies.

“Once I touched the wine, and the [kashrut] supervisor ran over to me and smashed the bottles right in front of me,” one Ethiopian Barkan employee told Kan.

“Every other Jew who comes to work there comes in contact with wine, but we are not allowed to. Why, because I’m different?” another said. “I feel humiliated. This is racism.”

...The Kan report on Monday immediately generated an outcry from both secular and religious Israelis, with calls for a boycott and an investigation into the company’s policies.

Sephardi Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef vowed to investigate the employment practices at Barkan, which he described as racist.

“I view the directive issued by the so-called ‘Kashrut Corps’ to ban religiously observant Ethiopian Jews from making wine with the utmost severity,” he said in a statement Tuesday. “There is no excuse for issuing such instructions other than pure racism.”

Yosef vowed to “act on the matter under the full extent of the law.”

President Reuven Rivlin also weighed in on the report, praising Yosef for his “clear and resolute statement against this terrible injustice at Barkan wineries.” The president called on the company to rectify its “serious error.”

Knesset speaker Yuli Edelstein tweeted: “I have a hard time imagining a Jew who would refuse to drink wine produced by Jews of Ethiopian descent. Racism is shameful.”

Meanwhile, a growing number of Israelis took to social media to express outrage at Barkan, demanding Assouline resign and calling for boycott of the company, with many quoting the CEO’s “business is business” remark.

MK Yael German (Yesh Atid) joined boycott calls, slamming Barkan’s “shocking and disgusting behavior.” In a statement, she urged “anyone who cares about racism to boycott this wine until they apologize.”

...In the 1980s and 90s, Israel clandestinely airlifted thousands of Ethiopian Jews from Ethiopia, spending hundreds of millions of dollars to bring the ancient community to the Jewish state and help its members integrate. About 140,000 Ethiopian Jews live in Israel today, a small minority in a country of nearly 9 million. But their assimilation hasn’t been smooth, with many arriving without a modern education and then falling into unemployment and poverty.

While Ethiopian Jewish immigrants from the Beta Israel community are recognized as fully Jewish and did not need to undergo conversion upon arriving in Israel, immigrants from Ethiopia belonging to the smaller Falash Mura community, which converted from Judaism to Christianity in the 19th century, are required to undergo Orthodox conversion after immigrating.

...Though Ethiopian immigrants have made strides in certain fields and have reached the halls of Israel’s parliament, many complain of systemic racism, lack of opportunity, discrimination by religious authorities, endemic poverty and routine police harassment.

Those frustrations boiled over into violent protests three years ago after footage emerged of a uniformed Ethiopian Israeli soldier being beaten by police. Thousands of Ethiopian Jews and their supporters blocked main highways and clashed with police in a bid to draw attention to their plight, including what they say is unchecked police brutality against their community members.

Read Tamar Pileggi’s full piece at The Times of Israel.