#jewish system
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[Text: This system is Jewish!]
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I'm so tired and sad. Everywhere I look I see Jewish people feeling lonely and isolated because they lost so many friends and they feel like they can't find anyone who actually cares and understands them. I wish I could just be everyone's friend.
If you're Jewish, or converting, and you need a friend, don't hesitate to DM me or get in contact in some way. I know it's not much, and I know most people won't even see this, but idk it's a start. Don't be shy, I won't judge you. Please reach out if you want to or need to
#jumblr#judaism#am yisrael chai#jewish#jewish convert#i just want to give yall a group hug#we really need better support systems
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More positive news from Israel
Aka the supreme court has done it again
After over a year of protesting by civilians (including me), Israel’s Supreme Court struck down Netanyahu’s judicial reform! Let’s go!!!
Not really the actions of a “terrorist state”, huh?
#israel#israeli#jewish#jewblr#טאמבלר ישראלי#gaza strip#israel palestine conflict#hamas is isis#ישראל#human rights#Gaza#pro israel#judicial system#politics#רפורמה משפטית#law
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I remember seeing some people talk about what were the last two afghan jews back when there were still two in the country and how almost... silly and comical it was that they still couldn't get along with each other but like... Imagine being the only two people of a minority group in your entire country because everyone else ran away, were intimidated into fleeing, or were killed. Maybe I'm a killjoy, but I really never found it funny to think of them having petty disputes because, like, obviously people in high-stress situations are going to be more prone to argument and disliking each other. Obviously when your sacred texts are stolen, when your community is snatched away, when you aren't sure if you'll be taken prisoner for the last time and never return... Obviously you're not going to be primed to interact with others pleasantly.
When you look up afghan jews, you'll find this.
#jumblr#jewish politics#antisemitism tw#personal thoughts tag#how can you not realize that there are (officially) NO afghan jews in afghanistan and not feel primal fear#'isn't it funny that the last two jews in the entire country still found ways to fight with each other?!'#i'm going to spontaneously combust just to send the shrapnel of my body everywhere. what is funny about that.#yes wikipedia is Not the ideal source. this was just an accessible visual of the figures#and maybe i'm readong too into it. maybe it is just human pettiness#but i've seen this attitude among non-jews where they find jewish suffering of ANY kind to be popcorn-worthy entertainment#the fact that there are countries that are (at least officially) jew-free should send shockwaves down your nervous system#no country has the right to be jew-free#i would rather be too sensitive to antisemitism and indifference toward jewish suffering than to be callous and apathetic and cruel#so if i'm looking too deeply into this... that is why
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Well Drawfee is officially no longer safe media for me :(
Karina liked multiple tweets conflating a PSA for antisemitism with Israeli propaganda and claiming that Israel planned its assault to coincide with the superbowl…
Julia liked posts claiming that the war isn’t a war. Nobody has liked anything about antisemitism or even acknowledging Jews are in danger right now.
TBH I’m devastated.
I have Drawfee art all over my home. I was actually gonna become a patron this year. I’d literally been saving to make it feasible. This is crushing. I feel sick.
#leftist antisemitism#antisemitism#drawfee#heartbroken#debated putting this in the Drawfee tag or not#but ultimately I think it’s important#I don’t wanna start fandom drama or Discourse TM#I just want there to be a record of how their silence on antisemitism#and liking of conspiratorial tweets#is affecting a very fragile community#and Nathan being Jewish doesn’t change this for me#his Jewishness does not shield me from his coworkers antisemitism#even though I wanna believe that antisemitism is unintentional#and I’m so happy for Nathan if he feels supported by his friends and coworkers#he obviously knows them better than I ever will#and I’m not calling in Jews to take sides over this or anything#I’m happy that Nathan doesn’t seem to be affected by this#it must mean he has a wonderful support system and that his friends and coworkers are better#at showing their support irl than they are online#and that is important and valid#but it doesn’t change how it affects Jews like me who only experience them through a screen#and do not have a support system#they don’t owe me anything#I don’t expect anything from any of them#but I also cannot deny that I am harmed#by the fact that they didn’t acknowledge the conflict until it affected people who aren’t Jewish#and have still not acknowledged that it affects people who are Jewish#and I especially cannot handle Karina’s clear support for the idea that a Super Bowl PSA for antisemitism prevention#is somehow a sinister Israeli plot and not evidence of the terrible time that Jews like me are having rn#I feel like I lost a friend tbh
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So there is this post, claiming that a Japanese hotel is being review bombed, because they refused a man service for being an IDF soldier.
People ate this up of course. At the time of the writing, it has over 12,000 reblogs. Lots of people praising the hotel staff for ~taking a brave stand~ and such.
But, you know, I thought it was a little weird, that the only source the post includes is... Nothing! OP just claims it was from "an israeli group".
So, of course, I decided to do some checking.
Turns out the hotel manager had no fucking idea whether the tourist had ties to the Israeli army or not.
[...] since the hotel did not inquire about the guest's military background at the time of booking, it appeared the reservation was canceled solely based on the guest's Jewish or Israeli name. [...]
So the OP of the above post is already intentionally misrepresenting the situation by claiming the hotel was only refusing to serve Israeli soldiers. (and we don't even know if the guy was a soldier...) But twelve thousand people thought that this was legit.
Great to know twelve thousand people on this website feel that xenophobia and racial profiling are justifiable and even praiseworthy!
Ok cool cool cool cool. Yep. Just another normal day.
YnetNews is rated High Credibility by Media Bias/Fact Check.
#antisemitism#antisemitism on tumblr#xenophobia#racial profiling#I'd though we'd be able to agree that even the worst person you know doesn't deserve racial or religious discrimination#not that the random guy‚ who might not even be a soldier‚ is a bad person#i realize I'm yelling at a wall but I need to get this out of my system#obligatory I'm Not Jewish‚ I Just Want to be a Decent Person disclaimer#you call yourself leftists and you're sharing this crap uncritically#but apparently even that is to far for some of y'all#i wish i was surprised but I'm not. tumblr leftists' dedication to justifying their antisemitism is impressive.#i hate it here i want to throw up
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bad post, worse notes
#atlas entry#both-sidesism is bad but anti-both-sidesism is more often than not a smokescreen to excuse human rights abuses#also this post is obviously about i/p and it's fucking insane to say Jews aren't at risk from systemic violence#or probably more specifically Neil Druckman. who is Jewish. like did y'all forget that the entire 20th century was marred by state-sponsored#violence against Jews. have you ever heard of this thing called the Holocaust or any of the circumstances surrounding it#this is literally just “Jews are white people and therefore. antisemitism is justified because it's a movement of the oppressed”#socialism of fools and all that
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I believed this happened a couple of years ago? But I'd thought it was a very peculiar experience for me to share.
So, I used to be in this traumagenic server with what seems like a lot of blacklists and claims to be POC friendly. It was one of our few DID/OSDD focused discord servers that we joined when we first suspected we have DID. (We got diagnosed a year later.)
I remembered being in a ticket with one of the mods because they looked at the names of our alters through pk. They then LITERALLY did some google research on the name origins and made it something like this.
" Hi! We noticed your names may be considered cultural appropriating blablabla
Casey = Irish
Ari = Jewish
Please consider changing your names!"
And then had the nerve to even ask me what my race is, but I felt so uncomfortable?? I said Asian. They want me to specify further. I said Southeast Asian. And if my memory serves me right, they wanted me to specify more than that.
When I looked at that message where I had to change my own and my alter's names, I felt like they were JOKING?? HOW IS CASEY A CLOSED NAME??? It's.. a generic name used by pretty much everyone in the world.
They mentioned how Irish is a closed culture, and I think they mentioned Irish discrimination during the US immigration and all. I understand, but at the same time, Irish itself isn't a closed culture at all?? Not to mention, I've been using Casey as my name for quite some time now.
Ari being linked to Jewish makes no sense to me either. People sometimes use it to shorten the name 'Ariana' for short, but I also see many non-Jewish people also using that name too.
Ari is an alternative spelling of our body's name, so we don't feel weird using our irl body's name (which is Arabic) to the people online. It's not a sense of shame of the body's name but more privacy concerns, easier pronounciation, and having our own individuality.
It's worth mentioning that a lot of Muslim and Christian names are derived from Judaism, too. The Muslim and Christian names just have a different spelling to it, so I don't know what the hell they were thinking.
I felt so mad and felt this was all too ridiculous. I had to keep my cool and leave because what kinda server is this??? That claims to be POC safe?? I'm sorry if I don't sound the most open-minded, but it's just a weird experience to me, really. When I think of cultural appropriating, I would think of taking a name from, let's say, a Romani name or a Tamil name, and then use it without realizing the significance of that culture just because it looks pretty for some aesthetic. Not whatever tf this server was pulling.
As an Irish system, what the fuck?? Casey is definitely not a "closed culture Irish name," LMAO?? You're not overreacting DW anon, that's just wild.
#tales from syscord#tales from anon#tales from the queue#discord#closed culture#irish#ireland#jewish#did#osdd#osddid#anti endo#endos dni#dni endos#plural#actually plural#plural system
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President Biden issued an executive order on Tuesday that prevents migrants from seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border when crossings surge, a dramatic election-year move to ease pressure on the immigration system and address a major concern among voters.
The measure is the most restrictive border policy instituted by Mr. Biden, or any other modern Democrat, and echoes an effort in 2018 by President Donald J. Trump to cut off migration that was blocked in federal court.
In remarks at the White House, Mr. Biden said he was forced to take executive action because Republicans had blocked bipartisan legislation that had some of the most significant border security restrictions Congress had considered in years.
“We must face a simple truth,” said the president, who was joined by a group of lawmakers and mayors from border communities. “To protect America as a land that welcomes immigrants, we must first secure the border and secure it now.”
Aware that the policy raised uncomfortable comparisons, Mr. Biden took pains to distinguish his actions from those of Mr. Trump. “We continue to work closely with our Mexican neighbors instead of attacking them,” Mr. Biden said. He said he would never refer to immigrants as “poisoning the blood” of the country, as Mr. Trump has done.
Still, the move shows how drastically the politics of immigration have shifted to the right in the United States. Polls suggest there is support in both parties for border measures once denounced by Democrats and championed by Mr. Trump as the number of people crossing into the country has reached record levels in recent years.
The restrictions kick in once the seven-day average for illegal crossings hits 2,500 per day. Daily totals already exceed that number, which means that Mr. Biden’s executive order could go into effect right away — allowing border officers to return migrants across the border into Mexico or to their home countries within hours or days.
Typically, migrants who cross illegally and claim asylum are released into the United States to wait for court appearances, where they can plead their cases. But a huge backlog means those cases can take years to come up.
The new system is designed to deter those illegal crossings.
The border would reopen to asylum seekers only when the number of crossings falls significantly. The figure would have to stay below a daily average of 1,500 for seven days in a row. The border would reopen to migrants two weeks after that.
The American Civil Liberties Union said it planned to challenge the executive action in court.
“The administration has left us little choice but to sue,” said Lee Gelernt, a lawyer at the A.C.L.U, which led the charge against the Trump administration’s attempt to block asylum in 2018 and resulted in the policy being stopped by federal courts. “It was unlawful under Trump and is no less illegal now.”
There would be limited exceptions to the restrictions announced Tuesday, including for minors who cross the border alone, victims of human trafficking and those who use a Customs and Border Protection app to schedule an appointment with a border officer to request asylum.
But for the most part, the order suspends longtime guarantees that give anyone who steps onto U.S. soil the right to seek a safe haven.
The executive action mirrors the legislation that Republicans blocked in February, saying it was not strong enough. Many of them, egged on by Mr. Trump, were loath to give Mr. Biden a legislative victory in an election year.
“Donald Trump begged them to vote ‘no’ because he was worried that more border enforcement would hurt him politically,” Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman, said in a statement on Tuesday. He added: “The American people want bipartisan solutions to border security — not cynical politics.”
Immigration advocates and some progressive Democrats have expressed concern that Mr. Biden was abandoning his promise to rebuild the asylum system.
“By reviving Trump’s asylum ban, President Biden has undermined American values and abandoned our nation’s obligations to provide people fleeing persecution, violence, and authoritarianism with an opportunity to seek refuge in the U.S.,” said Senator Alex Padilla, Democrat of California.
Tuesday’s decision is a stark turnaround for Mr. Biden, who came into office attacking Mr. Trump for his efforts to restrict asylum. During a 2019 debate, Mr. Biden, then a candidate running against Mr. Trump for the first time, excoriated his rival’s policies.
“This is the first president in the history of the United States of America that anybody seeking asylum has to do it in another country,” Mr. Biden said at the time.
#this admin has sucked so badly and so consistently on immigration. just trying to out-trump trump at every turn#‘oh the previous admin absolutely hollowed out the asylum system? you know the one that (with all its many failures) was built post wwii?#with jewish refugees who were deported to the holocaust in mind? cool let’s build on that.’#not precisely surprising but still utterly fucking spineless#immigration#lines on a map#my posts
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hazbin hotel is tricky with religious stuff because it's a universe that plays fast and loose with a heavily modified version of christianity that is Real and True, so it doesn't really attempt to tackle or address other religions—which i think is totally fair, because it would be too difficult to reconcile that sort of thing with the worldbuilding while ensuring the premise stays coherent. still, i would be curious about how different religious folks try to reconcile going to hell in the hazbin universe because it's an interesting thought experiment. what would you do if you went to another religion's hell, but it isn't even exactly how they believed it was going to be? i actually think there's a lot of flexibility in hazbin's strategic avoidance of mentioning g-d (and the heavy editing of the eden story) because it leaves some wiggle room for the possibility of accommodating the reality of this particular iteration of hell into different theological systems without betraying one's core beliefs
#still thinking abt observant jewish rosie in this context#the religious studies major in me is soooo interested in the way hazbin approaches religion#it's all very christian-normative of course but it subverts enough of christianity to actually leave a LOT of room for other religious#systems to synthesize various theological frameworks#hazbin hotel#hazbin hotel meta
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Happy New Year, Jake
Happy Rosh Hashanah to the Moon Knight system
Pairing: Jake Lockley x gn!reader
Word Count: 820
Content: Fluff, slight feelings of unworthiness, mentions of food, alters mentioned, brief reference to past trauma, mentions of religion and religious practices, not beta'd
☾ ⋆*・゚:⋆*・゚☾ ⋆*・゚:⋆*・゚☾ ⋆*・゚:⋆*・゚
You asked Marc and Steven if you could do this.
Celebrate something with Jake.
Marc had some happy memories of holidays - Passover meals - finding the afikomen and getting a few dollars for it. The food, the wine, the prayers, the traditions.
Hanukkah wasn't quite as big of a holiday, but there were presents and dreidel to play and latkes to eat.
There were candles to light and services to attend.
Then, one day, there was no more happiness.
Steven's memories were spotty at best, but they were happy. His heart was rooted in the traditions of those before him.
But Jake had none of this. He was a shadow - a creature of the night. He had only been in your life for less than a year.
Jake was a difficult man to get to know. He preferred to keep to himself, but he was soft for you - that, he could not fight.
You didn't want to ambush him, or even surprise him. You asked his permission.
"Could...do you think we could have a little dinner for New Year's?" You asked him one night, moonlight spilling across the bed as you drew circles on his bare chest with your fingertips.
"New Year's?" He gruffed out, confused. "In September?"
"Rosh Hashanah," you supplied. "You know...the new year. If you want. I wanted to make you dinner - just something nice."
Jake's calloused hands scratched lightly down the curve of your back. "Not sure, mi vida. Better ask - "
"I did," you interrupted. "Marc's not ready yet and Steven is okay skipping this year - at least the dinner so you and I can share it. Only if that's okay with you. It doesn't have to be anything you're uncomfortable with."
The stubble of his chin tickled the skin of your cheek as he whispered back and forth with you.
"Okay. Yeah. I...I don't know exactly what I'm supposed to do, but...sure."
You were excited, having hoped Jake wouldn't turn you down.
You prepared a savory meal - doing most of the work the night before. You set an elegant yet simple table, with your best dishes, a tablecloth and your grandmother's silver.
A round challah loaf sat on her silver serving platter. You prepared apples and honey to symbolize the hope for a sweet year. You also served pomegranates and some vegetables. You made some brisket for Marc to eat later. Wine glasses and water glasses were set appropriately. You were ready.
You put the finishing touches on the table just as Jake emerged from your bedroom, straightening his tie. Jake was no stranger to wearing a tie or looking absolutely dashing at any given moment.
But this was something else. Instead of his typical leather jacket, he wore a dark suit jacket. Noticing your blatant stare, he ran a hand over the stubble of his jaw.
"I think this is like a...proper dinner," he attempted, sounding a little like Steven. "This too much?"
"Jake," you breathed, floating toward him. "You look incredible." Placing your hands on his muscled chest, you leaned in and brushed your lips tenderly over his.
"Shana Tovah," you wished him, motioning for him to have a seat at the table. But he pulled you back to his side, pressing a sweet kiss to your temple.
As you sat down to enjoy your holiday meal, your heart burned within your chest each time Jake seemed uncertain about what exactly to do. The last thing you wanted was make him uncomfortable, or make him somehow feel less...Jewish? Than Steven or Marc.
You only desired for him to be who he was. But you wanted him to feel a part of his history too, if he was comfortable.
"You okay?" You quietly asked, watching as he dipped his apple slice into the honey.
He paused, his warm brown eyes going wide. "Did I do something wrong? Is there like a prayer?"
"Jake, you can't do anything wrong. This is for you. Just...be with me." You reached across the table and squeezed his hand, watching as his shoulders relaxed.
"This is nice, baby," he spoke up after a few minutes. Leaning in, he made sure to catch your eye. "It's really nice. Thank you...for thinking of me."
You smiled warmly. "Of course, I'm always thinking of you."
You shared your special meal and some traditions together, feeling so warm inside and so grateful for this man of yours. When you got up from the table, he pulled you close and told you how amazing you looked.
"Gotta dress up like this again so I can take you out," he roughly whispered against your ear while holding you against him.
Easing back, you brushed your fingers along his jaw. "You mean 'take me out' a date, right? And not...your nighttime job?" You teased.
"Very funny," he mocked, scooping you up into a hug, where you stayed for a while, content in his arms.
"Happy new year, baby," he whispered, feeling like he belonged.
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Moon Knight Masterlist
Main Masterlist
#moon knight#jake lockley#jake lockley x reader#holiday fic#rosh hashanah#new year#happy new year#steven grant#marc spector#moon knight system#moon knight fic#jewish holidays#oscar isaac characters
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[Text: This user hopes anyone spending time with abusive family for Chanukah gets through it okay.]
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#userbox#did#system#did system#osdd1#osdd1 system#jewish system#anti endo#endos dni#hanukkah#chanukah#mod morpho 🦋#holiday userboxes
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Big reminder that your country is not immune to bigotry. I've seen so many people, for example, pretend like antisemitism doesn't exist in the USA because we were part of the allied forces in WWII (of course, they conveniently don't remember that we rejected jewish refugees when WWII broke out and we only really joined because Pearl Harbor was bombed, but I digress).
If you think your country is immune from antisemitism, racism (including anti-Indigenous racism), class issues, ableism, whatever else it may be, look deeper because you will find it.
#politics#antisemitism#antisemitism tw#i think if pearl harbor wasn't bombed we would have potentially never declared war#like yes it was better for us to have joined but realistically it wasn't to 'save the jews' like many USamericans think#we did NOT in fact 'save the jews' and we still have huge antisemitism problems ALONG WITH so /so/ much other shit#i can't understate that america isn't so far removed from the world that we just magically don't have problems#ANYway. tangent aside. it just.... annoys me whenever i see usamericans doing this#not because i think they're always malicious but it's a reminder that people aren't truly taught accurate us history#look if american history was taught to you in such a way you only felt warm fuzzy feelings you were FAILED...#...you were *failed* by an education system that was more interested in american exceptionalism than actual factual history#and i don't think america is the only culprit in national exceptionalism but i have the most experience as a usamerican#quick amendment that many jewish refugees were fleeing in the very beginning before war broke out *officially*#but we still rejected them sanctuary from nazi germany as a country (AND ofc america wasn't the only country to have done this!)
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Antisemitic idiots are being stupid in the Jewish/Israeli group that had the link to your discord group. Just a heads up in case you need to do damage control.
oh trust me, I’ve noticed 😂 We have solid security in the server, and staff are pretty prepared to deal with any bullshit.
But, this is a good time to say, come join my server! We are a jewish, antifacist community that is Nuanced About Israel and is supportive of POC, disabled people, systems, and queer people. We have members spanning across the denominations and around the world. We’re here to learn, engage, and be proudly Jewish!
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They’re making a honey cake (none of them know how to bake)
A very special Jewish Jay Ferin Friday: Rosh Hashanah edition! Shanah tovah everyone!!!
#art tag#starchive#jrwi#jrwi riptide#jay ferin#chip jrwi#gillion tidestrider#and a little pretzel cameo#ignore that they are in the void i had to get this out of my system#100% projecting but this made me happy so there :)#something something the kitchen is full of love and they are sharing in the act of cooking with each other idk#but yeah jay is jewish to me and so is chip and gillion is hanging out and sharing the traditions with them
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Breaking down the Comics: Writing a legend, building a history.
Today we aren't reviewing an issue of Moon Knight. Today we are going to talk about something important.
So who wrote Moon Knight?
"Easy!", you might say. "Doug Moench!"
Sure. But you'd be surprised to find that it's not as much as you'd think.
Doug Moench wrote issues 1-15, 17-26, 28-33.
He returns in 1998 for a 4 issue mini seires Vol 3 "Resurrection Wars" which revives Marc Spector, who had been killed off in the previous volume.
He continues in 1999 with Vol 4, another 4 issue mini series "High Strangers/Strangeness" which won an award for favorite limited series.
He also wrote werewolf by Night, which gave us the first iteration of Moon Knight. An instantly popular character that made appearances in other comics like "The Hulk" before he was given his own comic.
He had time to work on the designs with Bill Sienkiewicz. They built up the weapons, the costume, the cab, and the copter.
He also built up the side characters of Gena, Gena's two boys, Crawley, Frenchie, Detective Flint, and Marlene.
He set the ground rules:
Moon Knight system is Jewish.
Marc, Jake, and Steven are a part of a system and are not one man pretending to be someone else
Jake is the one that is friendly and loves being with the people.
Steven is posh, collected, and takes care of things.
Marc is the one with experience, has the skills needed to get things done, and holds all the pain.
They are former Mercenaries who did terrible things and have deep guilt.
Khonshu resurrected them to act as Moon Knight
They strive to protect any who would come to them for help that perhaps might not get it elsewhere
I would even argue that he was building up to the fact that Moon Knight himself was his own form of alter but it has since been glossed over and replaced with the idea that Marc is most often the one under the mask.
Pretty simple rules to follow to make it a Moon Knight comics, but you'd be surprised what some writers have done with it.
These comics were written long before DID was acknowledged and the different forms of PTSD and Dissociation were defined.
And yet, here we stand with a traumazied man from Chicago slowly working through a freshly cognizant system and trying to figure out how three (four) people can work together towards not just a life, but life as a superhero who wants to help people.
Further more, an odd thing happened in this.
We had a comic that often focused more on mental health than on super powers, heroics, or villains.
More often than not, we watched Marc, Jake, and Steven struggle with themselves and one another. We watched stories unfold from the villain's point of view, often just being ordinary people pushed too far by a system that failed them.
More so, we watched Moon Knight sympathise with these villains.
How often he let them walk away or he let them kill their abusers, wondering if he was doing wrong himself.
How can he help when sometimes the help he offers is not what is needed?
We even watched him fail. We saw him lose his temper and cause damage. We saw him curl into a ball and break. We saw him get lost in his own nightmares and dissociative fuges.
Moench stepped forward and often handled current events with raw emotion. We saw his characters cry over the loss of public iconic figures. We watched people struggling as they returned from war. We saw child abuse and poverty. We watched economic struggles with classism and we watched people struggle to deal with grief.
We even watched them deal with antisemitism over and over again. How many times were the victims of his stories Jewish and trying to survive in America? What about the story that took place with the mass shooting in the Synagoug? We heard stories of Generational trauma as elders struggled with survival after the Holocaust.
Moon Knight was a unique comic unlike any other I've ever come across. For it's time and for it's topics at the time. What's more, this comic continued.
It was no 'special of the week' comic and spanned multiple years as they grew.
What do we know about Moench? Who did he write this comic for?
The Moon Knight in the Were Wolf by Night certainly didn't have all this depth. He was just a man dressed in silver, fighting a monster and ultimately choosing the side of the monster.
Moench himself was from Chicago. He knew what it was like to live in the city and see the fall of factories and hard times on the streets. We know he witnessed the times of Vietnam veterans being forgotten and abused. He witnessed a lot of changes happening in the world and the places he was writing about.
He wrote about what spoke to him and what he saw around him.
And in his stories, there often were no clear heroes, winners, or villains.
But there was one issue that he chose to add into this comic that was already filled with so many things that other comics avoided.
Moon Knight wasn't written as Jewish in that one shot cameo. He wasn't written with DID either, but I'll get to that.
There are interviews of Doug admitting that "I didn't say, 'I'm going to sit down and create a Jewish character.'"
In fact, he picked a name and later found out it was a Jewish name. This made him do research. Not just into Judaism, but into the areas that Marc Spector fought in and where his family came from.
Do you have any idea how many writers of that time and our current time simply slap the label of "Jewish" on a character and refuse to actually look into what makes them Jewish?
I can't say how much he researched and how much he got wrong or right, but I do know that when he did choose to dive into topics that touched on certain issues, he handled them with a grace that is often overlooked.
The writer that came after Moench? Alan Zelenetz, a former Jewish day school principal from Brooklyn.
Zelenetz had been acting as an editor for a bit before he took a look at Moench's early start.
And it was in Issue 37 and 38 where we get the real backstory of Marc Spector. A man running from his Rabbi father.
Marc now became the son of an Orthodox Rabbi who had been forced to flee Czechoslovakia after the Nazi invasion.
Here, we get the story of Marc running to the Marines. Running to the mercenaries, and running from home. Perhaps even, running from G-d.
Zelenetz wanted to lean into the Jewish past and Jewish story. He explored themes of using a holy book to create a villain while playing with Jewish myths. He also explored Antisemitism without toning it down or hiding it under comic bookish villainy. He portrayed Moon Knight facing white supremacist vandalizing a Jewish Cemetery. He showed Moon Knight saving the Torah from a Synagogue fire. He also showed a strained relationship and the question of Moon Knight finding his own relationship in what he does with his father's views.
Alan Zelenetz edited/wrote shorts for issues 18, 21–22, 27, 32, Then wrote the whole story for issues 36–38.
Zelenetz voiced that he was looking to add some Jewish representation into his workforce and perhaps into the comic industry at the time. Considering his background, perhaps he was the only one at the time that had the proper knowledge to play with things the way that he did in the story of Elias Spector's death and Marc Spector's pain.
He did not stick around with Moon Knight for long after. Though, he admits that he wanted to play with the fact that Khonshu was an Egyptian god and Marc was from such a Jewish background. I am sad we didn't get to see that story.
After that, Moon Knight's original 1980s run was finished. The question of what to do with Moon Knight, where to take him, and who would take up the mantle of writing him now lay in the hands of Marvel.
Many failed after this. They failed to keep the heart of what Moon Knight stood for and who Moon Knight was. His Jewishness was forgotten and his mental health became a joke.
Not to say all of them failed. There are a few shining stars that gleamed in the darkness and I like to think that it was these moments that kept Moon Knight going all these years.
Moench didn't set out to write a story about mental health, and yet his approach is the most real I've seen. Hardly a shining picture of perfect representation, there is still something there in watching the character almost seem to push back against the unintended desire to push him into a corner.
No matter how often Jake and Steven and Moon Knight were seen as Marc pretending to be someone else, there was always ALWAYS that correction. Always that push back.
Call it the writer's curse of characters misbehaving and taking on a life of their own, but perhaps there was something more there. Perhaps he felt the weight of time and cry of the suppressed and overlooked.
So many of his stories danced the line of "I can't say it because it will get edited out by the big wigs at Marvel, but if you would just look... Just look over here for just a moment..."
And years upon years later, a writer did see the whispers there and said "I see the story of pain. I see the cry of mental health." Lemire told the story that Moench couldn't and from that, we are still pushing forward with McKay.
And more, perhaps we will see the Jewish story that hides in all that also get a spotlight again.
In the era of big battles, cross-over events, explosions, and super villains cackling about domination... I still look back at Stained Glass Scarlet, The Druid, the Music Box, And Colloquy.
As I finish the original 1980s run, I brace myself to dive into what comes next.
I think I'm trying to find where and how the original run ventured so far into the dark and insulting territory it did and the journey back into a revival that now means so much to so many.
In a way, perhaps it mirrors a journey into our own mental health. How easy it is to become lost in what everyone around you tells you that you are and how you are supposed to be until your own doubt sets in to drown you. Perhaps it is the journey of Moon Knight's character emerging from this to find a path to healing that is what kept us here so long.
#Moon Knight#Moon Knight comics#Analyzing the comics#Marc Spector#Jake Lockley#Steven Grant#Doug Moench#Moon Knight is Jewish#Moon Knight has DID#A system of hope#I'm rambling again#But this is important to me
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