#mostly German and/or Jewish

[usergreenpixel]

(Disclaimer: While I am alluding to a historical setting and using historical characters, this story is a work of fiction EXCLUSIVELY. The baby mentioned here is an original character who did not exist in real life. Also, I dedicate this story to @amypihcs !)

Tw: suicide mention, Orientalism, death

The Grim Game

May, 1910

Harlem, New York City

It was a windy and rainy night, quite atypical for the month of May. Street lamps were illuminating the West 113th Street and its many fancy buildings, their lights bright as ever.

Some of the inhabitants of the many brownstones lining the street were preparing for dinner. Some were merely drinking hot tea or chocolate while discussing the business of that day and the plans for the next one. Others yet were already putting out the lights and preparing to retire to bed after a long day of work or school.

However, one particular household was doing none of the above, for an unexpected occurrence had disrupted their usual lives mere hours earlier. An occurrence after which the lives of that particular family would change forever.

“We should boil the milk first. That’s how it was done back in our country.” an old woman whispered in German while hovering around the stove. “The last thing we need is the baby being sick, my dear Bess.” she added, turning to her daughter-in-law.

Bess, a short woman in her early thirties, responded with a simple nod, her wide full lips curled at the corners into a smile as she was holding the baby.

Wrapped up in a bundle of white cloth with a polka dot pattern, the baby girl was so pink, so quiet and so tiny that she somewhat resembled a life sized doll, but the softness of her pink skin, her heartbeat and her soft gurgles were positive proof that the baby was in fact very much human.

“Sleep, my little princess.” Bess whispered in German, tears of joy streaming down her cheeks as she listened to her new daughter’s soft gurgles. “My little Mattie. Let’s go upstairs and make sure that Papa doesn’t catch his death of cold, alright?”

With that, Bess left the kitchen and headed straight for the master bedroom, where her husband was lying in bed, wrapped up in warm blankets and sipping hot chocolate.

Bess’s husband was a man who, while not very tall, had enough muscle mass to pass for a circus strongman and the unique brand of charisma that only the best of performers possess. And indeed he, Harry Houdini, was a household name in the United States, known for his daring escapes and for exposing fraudulent “psychics”.

As soon as the door opened and his beloved wife tiptoed inside with Mattie in her arms, Houdini smiled, put his cup of hot chocolate onto a nightstand and gently took the baby into his arms, carefully rocking the bundle and cooing in German, the mother tongue of both his and Bess’s families.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to the new parents nor to Mattie’s new grandmother, two ghosts gathered near the window of the master bedroom, looking closely at the happy family. These ghosts were none other than the recently deceased Mr. and Mrs. Dorn, the newest additions to the list of frauds exposed by Harry Houdini.

“You know, Otto,” said Mrs. Anna Dorn, a petite woman who was still donning her Turkish inspired dress and her white turban. “I still can’t believe that our foe is the same man who is taking care of Martha now.”

Otto Dorn, a short and stocky man whose head was also adorned by a turban, sighed, placing his transparent hand onto his wife’s shoulder.

“I can’t believe it either, my love, yet I do feel grateful that Houdini dove into the river to attempt to save us. At least he succeeded in saving Martha. It would not do anyone good to take her with us.”

“I know.” Mrs. Dorn sighed as well, guilt consuming her even in death. “I wished to protect our daughter from bearing the scarlet letter of having frauds for parents… However, I now feel that Martha might have a second chance at life and grow up to become an honest young woman.”

Mr. Dorn smiled, pulling his wife into a warm embrace.

“Let us hope that you are correct, my love.”

Mrs. Dorn smiled as well, and the two ghosts vanished into the night while the Houdinis were holding the baby girl and quietly discussing what design they wanted to use for Mattie’s nursery.

The ghosts crowded near the window to see the baby the new caretakers brought into the manor. 

[panvani]

Surely there have to be robust Japanese anti imperalist texts

[rubysevens]

i will be honest sometimes ill be talking w europeans abt gaza and its like okay you’re talking about a concept and i am talking about my uncle

[kralmajales]

So annoying that I cannot read the book I’m reading in public because of the cover……..

[hyperpotamianarch]

Could i dm you on the subjecting of becoming friends over a mutual hobby in hebrew/judean/linguistics?

Feel free, I guess. My DMs are open.

[mist-the-wannabe-linguist]

Did these people actually forget the fucking Holocaust

[mariacallous]

For half a millennium until the Holocaust, the cosmopolitan city of Thessaloniki, Greece, had a unique claim to fame: it was Europe’s only major city with a Jewish majority. 

But the golden age of Thessaloniki’s mostly Sephardic Ladino-speaking Jewish community came to a sudden end with the Nazi occupation of Greece in 1941 and turned cataclysmic with the deportation two years later to Auschwitz of nearly all the city’s Jews. By the end of World War II, some 65,000 Greek Jews — 87% of the total and 96% of those from Thessaloniki — had been killed, leaving barely 2,000 survivors in Thessaloniki (also known as Salonika).

Among them were the parents of Dr. Albert Bourla, a veterinarian who would go on to become the chairman and CEO of Pfizer, one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies.

In 2022, Bourla won the Genesis Prize — often described as the Jewish Nobel — for having led the development of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine. Stan Polovets, co-founder and chairman of the Genesis Prize Foundation, said in announcing the reward, “Millions of people are alive and healthy because of what Dr. Bourla and his team at Pfizer have accomplished.”

Now, with global antisemitism at its worst levels since World War II, Bourla is about to realize another milestone: the long-awaited opening of a Holocaust Museum of Greece. 

Bourla donated the $1 million Genesis Prize money toward construction of the museum. The museum is also being funded by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, and the governments of Greece and Germany. The management of the museum is currently trying to raise an additional $10 million.

“Those who know me know that in addition to being very proud of my Jewish heritage, I am equally proud of being Greek,” Bourla said in an emotional June 2022 speech in Jerusalem accepting the Genesis Prize. “My mother’s courage and optimism came from her experience of narrowly escaping death at the hands of the Nazis. In fact, both of my parents turned their experience surviving the Holocaust into something positive and life-affirming. This clearly shaped my worldview.”

The 9,000-square-foot museum occupying eight floors in an octagon-shaped structure will be located at the site of Thessaloniki’s Old Railway Station, where the first Nazi train carrying Jews to Auschwitz departed on March 15, 1943. 

But the museum, slated to open in 2026, won’t be just about the tragedy of the Holocaust. Exhibits and artifacts will tell the story of more than 2,300 years of Greek Jewish history in Thessaloniki and 38 other communities, beginning with the ancient Romaniote Jews who settled in Greece during the reign of Alexander the Great.

At an Oct. 29 groundbreaking ceremony in Thessaloniki, Polovets was joined by German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Greek President Katerina Sakellaropoulou, and local dignitaries and Holocaust survivors.

“I was honored to participate and was moved by the ceremony, during which President Steinmeier said he ‘felt shame’ and that the memory of what was done to the Jewish people on this site ‘cannot be erased.’ That is why this museum is so important,” Polovets said. “The memory of this once-vibrant Greek Jewish community and its near destruction by the Nazis —  especially during the current wave of rising global antisemitism — must never be erased.”

Only about 5,000 Jews remain in Greece: About 4,000 live in Athens, and the remainder live in Thessaloniki, Ioannina, Rhodes, Corfu and other communities. Meanwhile, Greece has not been immune to the wave of antisemitism sweeping Europe. Vandalism of Jewish cemeteries and Holocaust memorials is fairly commonplace.

A 2014 global survey of antisemitism by the Anti-Defamation League found that 69% of Greeks harbor antisemitic views — the highest percentage of any country in the world outside the Middle East. While those findings are sometimes disputed, Greece continues to struggle with antisemitism. 

However, physical violence against Greek Jews is extremely rare, and the current Greek government, as well as the one that preceded it, are considered among the most pro-Israel in Europe. Greece observes International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and in 2014 the parliament outlawed Holocaust denial.

A big push for the Holocaust museum came from Thessaloniki’s former mayor, 82-year-old Yiannis Boutaris, who died on Nov. 4, less than a week after the Holocaust museum’s groundbreaking ceremony. Boutaris announced that his city would build the museum at a 2017 event attended by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other dignitaries.

“It will symbolize our shame,” Boutaris said at the time, “for what happened, for what we did, and mostly for what we could not or did not wish to do… during and after the war.”

In addition to Bourla, other famous Jews with roots in Thessaloniki include actor Hank Azaria, Israeli businessman and philanthropist Leon Recanati, his sister the philanthropist Jude Recanati, actress Lea Michele, former Nevada congresswoman Shelley Berkley and Belgian-born American fashion designer Diane von Fürstenberg. 

Polovets said Bourla’s donation aligns with the Genesis Prize Foundation’s values and mission of inspiring Jewish pride.

“With the rise of global antisemitism, education will be at the center of the museum’s activities, hosting permanent and temporary exhibitions and archives that will highlight the value of preserving the remembrance of the Holocaust, acceptance and respect for diversity, human rights, and freedom,” he said.

Polovets said he hopes the museum will inspire visitors to fight hatred from spreading today.

“Hatred in any form leads to denial, disrespect and destruction,” he said. “Democracy and respect for others are values that can never be taken for granted, and each of us has a responsibility to stand up to all forms of hatred.”

[iamthetruenhaz]

Russia's prep work

I originally wrote this as a reply to a reddit comment about the prep work Putin's Russia has done to reconquer Eastern Europe (and Central Asia) and soften up the West in order to "reclaim" the "lost" global power status the USSR had.

Putin* has been prepping his "reconquering" of Eastern Europe and Central Asia since he stepped into office. He took on an openly anti-western course since the Munich speech in 2007. He probably saw American global dominance weakening following Afghanistan and Iraq and because Russia had stabilised after the 90s, he thought it was time to act.

First he paved the way with the Chechen war where he "won" and got to jump on the War on terror bandwagon and use Islamic terrorism as a boogeyman for his own imperialistic purpose to rile up Russians against external threats.

Then he invaded Georgia to probe the soil and see how the west would react. They mostly ignored him so he went on to meddle in Eastern European politics, coerce Ukraine for gas and fund right-wing parties all across Europe (at the time mostly to drive a wedge between Eastern and Western Europe and suck EE countries back into Russian orbit) while pumping anti-western sentiment and Soviet nostalgia at home.

He saw that the west was disunited because of the US-UK-EU split following the wars in Iraq, Libya and Syria. He capitalized on that in several ways using both the wars and the refugee crisis that followed. One, to increase racist and nationalist propaganda and stir up hatred against "the liberal gay western cabal" and the resulting Euroscepticism. Two, to prop up the "proper" traditionalist Russia as an alternative. Three, to paint Eastern European countries as a puppet of the US liberals who were "ackschually" nazis in disguise, which was easy when the West was divided between trying to coax them into the EU and leaving them as a buffer-zone backwater. The brightest example of the latter was in late 2021 when Lukashenko started dumping Middle Eastern migrants on the Polish border so the Poles could be painted as a racist, white supremacist state. Unlike, you know, Belarus (really Russia) which weaponized the migrants.

Then he failed in Ukraine when his puppet's sharp turn away from a planned EU accession path caused the Euromaidan revolts. Pro-Russian protesters soon spawned, staging provications (my own country had a wave of protests and pro-russian counter-protests back then and I remember neonazis and other paid protesters being at the forefronts). Russian media started hurling accusations of nazism against pro-western protesters.

All of a sudden, it's like a switch was flipped in Russian society. Decommunization was out the window. In 2015, Stalin was chosen as the most influential figure in *world* history by Russians. All the anti-Western, Russian irredentist, traditionalist, racist and homophobic sentiments coalesced into one, directed against the "evil nazi gay jewish West". Putin started openly provoking the West with displays of military force, close flybys in territorial waters, playing Cuban missile crisis in Kaliningrad. All to rack up the atmosphere of an imminent Cold War II and maybe even WWIII where a "wronged", "humiliated" Russia would finally make the West pay. The WWII victory celebrations also took on the appearance of a war cult, with jingoistic slogans like "we can do it again", "to Berlin" and "we're coming for the German women" displayed on every 9th May parade. Eastern European countries, especially the Baltics and Poland, noticed and tried to raise alarm, but were mostly told to keep their paranoia down and ignored.

In the last decade, he used his military and propaganda machine (what we call "hybrid warfare") to create the impression of the following: (1) The West is imperialist (and is being hypocritical about it), waging pointless bloody wars in the Middle East; (2) The West is weak in those wars, causing Russia to step in like in Syria and deal with the issue "properly"; (3) Western democracies are weak in dealing with "barbaric" refugees because they're too greedy not to let them in but too soft to throw the bad apples out (this was used to boost nationalism and Euroscepticism).

By those means, Russian propaganda managed to manipulate both anti-imperialist and nationalist groups within the West as well as in Russia and Eastern Europe and pave the way for its "just war" of "reconquering" Eastern Europe. In the West, the image of Eastern Europe was molded as either "poor backwards savages we're better off without" (for nationalists), "paranoid silly yokels crying wolf about Russia who is now playing nice" (for moderates), "ingrates not worth defending so we'll pull out" (for Trump-like US conservatives) or "backwards homophobic barbarians we don't want here because they'll ruin our utopia" (for progressivists). In Russia, they were portrayed as "lost property", accused them of being "taken over by nazis" anytime they tried to acknowledge any of the repressions suffered from USSR, and "unconscious puppets of the West" and routinely threatened with "annexation in 3 days" whenever they "misbehaved" by taking a stance against Russia's politics, whether past or current. Finally, in Eastern European countries themselves, Russia tried to ruin the image of the liberal West by portraying them as "the real fascists", "liberalism gone so far it circled back to fascism" and to prop up its own image as the "savior from debauchery upholding the good ols ways".

Also worth noting that Putin was all too eager to intervene in any country that tried to reject Russian dominance or even its own pro-Russian dictatorship. He was ready to support Belarus in 2020 and intervened in Kazakhstan in 2022 just a month before the invasion of Ukraine.

So yeah, it was quite the prep work. All to ensure that when he went on his imperialistic crusade in EE, people at home and in the West and even in Eastern Europe itself would applaud him, failing that be indifferent, failing THAT remain unheard.

* by "Putin" I don't necessarily mean just him, but the lobby behind him as well.

[aqlstar]

PSA for Americans mostly-

Americans use Caucasian to mean white because of fake race-science done by a weird German dude.

In the real world, Caucasians come from the Caucasus.

That means you can in fact have Caucasian Jews- Jewish people who follow the rites of the Jewish diaspora in the Caucasus.

The aren’t ethnically Caucasian, in the same way European Jews aren’t ethnically European, but the Caucasian Jews are very real (unlike the mythical white Jews of tumblr).

You may have also heard them called “Mountain Jews,” or even “Red Jews.” They make frequent appearances in Ashkenazi urban legend/popular culture as larger-than-life heroic figures.

[idon-twannabeperceived]

And also... it's not(?

YOU'RE WORKING TODAY??

yeah my country doesn't have a genocide holiday sorry

[girlactionfigure]

THURSDAY HERO: Tadeusz Pankiewicz

Tadeusz Pankiewicz was a Polish pharmacist who helped the starving, suffering Jewish residents of the Krakow ghetto by providing them with medicine, food, and other lifesaving supplies.

Born in Sambor, Poland in 1908, Tadeusz studied at the prestigious Jagiellonian University in Krakow. In 1933 he took over the family business: a small pharmacy called Under the Eagle. Germany invaded Poland in 1939, but Tadeusz’s quiet life and successful small business were mostly unaffected, until 1941, when the Nazis forced the city’s 15,000 Jews into a ghetto.

Tadeusz’s pharmacy happened to be within the ghetto’s borders. The Nazis shut down other businesses and essential services in the ghetto to make it impossible for Jews to get food and other necessities, but Tadeusz refused to close his store. He bribed the Gestapo, using his own savings, to keep Under the Eagle open. Tadeusz was inspired by his Catholic faith to stay and help people however he could.

Conditions in the ghetto were horrific. There was never enough food, and every day residents died of starvation or illness; others were shot in the street by Nazi soldiers. Medicine of any kind was almost impossible to obtain, except from Tadeusz, who provided health care and pharmaceuticals for free to residents of the ghetto. He also provided them with lifesaving products such as hair dye to disguise their identity and tranquilizers to keep children quiet during Gestapo raids.

Tadeusz’s pharmacy became the go-to place for Jews to meet, plan underground activities and acts of defiance, and get lifesaving care and equipment. Tadeusz and his pharmacy employees Irena Drozdzikowska, Helena Krywaniuk, and Aurelia Danek put their lives at significant risk to help the Jews of the Krakow ghetto. Besides medicine, supplies and a safe place to meet, the brave pharmacist and his staff shared their meager wartime food rations, and hid Jews on the property during deportations. They were able to smuggle some Jews out of the ghetto and take them to hiding places where they would be safe.

Tadeusz actually befriended German soldiers to get information from them! He got them drunk and cleverly manipulated them into telling him about planned actions against Jews so he could warn them. Another service Tadeusz to the Jews trapped in the ghetto was acting as intermediary between them and the Poles with whom they left their valuables.

Among the people who met in secret in the pharmacy were prominent figures such as writer Mordechai Gebirtig and artist Abraham Neumann, who were tragically shot by the Germans in the ghetto in the infamous Bloody Thursday of June 4, 1942. Julian Aleksandrowicz survived the war to become a doctor and medical professor who specialized in the treatment of leukemia. Dr Abraham Mirowski, another Jew saved by Tadeuszm later said that the kind pharmacist was “living among us, was continuously exposed to dangers, but it did not make him scared. He was full of sympathy for our tragedy and wanted to help us with all his heart. Each death of a man or a woman was a traumatic experience for him.”

After the war, Tadeusz stayed in Krakow and, in 1947, he published his memoirs of life under German occupation. He continued working as a pharmacist. In 1957, some of the Jews he’d saved brought him for a visit to Israel as their guest. Tadeusz was honored as Righteous Among the Nations by Israeli Holocaust Memorial Yad Vashem in 1983.

Tadeusz Pankiewicz died in Krakow in 1993. His pharmacy is now a museum about the history of the Jews of Krakow, with special focus on the ghetto years. Tadeusz and his brave staff are also a featured museum exhibit.

For helping Jews in the Krakow ghetto, we honor Tadeusz Pankiewicz as this week’s Thursday Hero.

[matan4il]

Daily update post:

Today, people in Israel are really loving Germany. If you're wondering why, it's related to SA's lawsuit against Israel at the ICJ. While the US, the UK and Canada all said that SA's accusation against Israel is baseless, Germany is actually putting its money where its mouth is. Instead of just saying the accusation is not rooted in reality, Germany has asked to join the lawsuit as a third party on Israel's side, protesting the misuse of the convention for the prevention and punishment of genocide. For the record, in the wake of the Holocaust, Israel was one of the countries pushing for the adoption of this convention, and one of the first to sign it. It's unbelievable poetic justice, that it's the Germans now coming to the defence of the Jewish state.

Yesterday, an independent Palestinian terrorist attack was carried out, one Israeli was injured, 3 terrorists were eliminated as they were breaking into a Jewish community. The man who was injured had identifies the cuts in the barbed wire fence, was hit by bullets, but was able to alert Israeli security forces, who stopped the attack. Two of the terrorists were 16 years old, the third was 19 years old. Firearms, knives and an axe were found on them. Here's CCTV footage of them while they were breaking into the community:

As the international coalition's forces have moved from defensive to offensive measures against the Houthis (the Iranian funded terrorists from Yemen), Israel is preparing for possible retribution carried out against our people, especially the southern city of Eilat.

The Israeli hostages in Gaza have not had their medications for 99 days. The Red Cross has refused to take these meds from the families, saying that while Hamas doesn't allow it, they can't pass anything to the hostages anyway. Now there's talk about Qatar possibly forcing Hamas to allow it, maybe as a part of some deal. We'll see. There's a lot of cases where reports from Qatar say Hamas have agreed to this or that (mostly in terms of agreeing to a new hostage deal), and then it turns out it was just the Qataris' suggestions to Hamas, being reported as if Hamas had accepted them. Against this backdrop, the Palestinian Red Crescent has reported it continues to provide ambulatory, mobile medical services to Palestinians who can't make it to hospitals, including giving them their meds.

Meanwhile, SA is proving once more that anti-Zionism is the new antisemitism, because it is being used to hurt Jews worldwide, by removing the Jewish captain, David Teeger, from the national cricket team under the excuse that there are anti-Israel protests against him.

Blinken says that Saudi Arabia is still interested in normalization (meaning, a peace agreement) with Israel. I'm going to be honest, I don't think it's a coincidence that it took the Saudis this long to say it. If Israel had folded, and stopped its war against Hamas, I suspect the Saudis would have taken this to mean that Israel is not strong enough to be an ally against Iran. The fact that the war continues, despite international pressure to stop (and effectively surrender to Iranian-funded Hamas), gives moderate Arab states hope that an alliance with Israel against Iran won't fail them and crumble at the first sign of trouble. I believe that's something that hasn't been talked about enough, how moderate Arab countries have been watching this war with Hamas, and how destructive it would be, if Hamas would have won. And any scenario where Hamas still exists and rules Gaza, even in a limited capacity, would be understood as their victory.

Jewish students at Harvard are suing the university for its longstanding failure to fight antisemitism, including in allowing antisemitic material to be taught in class. This is a reminder that the issue was never Claudine Gay specifically, there's a much bigger problem at hand in Harvard and other western universities, and her resignation is just the first step. I'm glad Jewish students are taking this initiative, to force Harvard to take more steps.

The Israeli Air Force has drawn this imitation of the yellow ribbon, worn as a part of the call to release the Israeli hostages, in the skies of Gaza (pic taken from inside southern Israel):

This is 71 years old Uri ben Tzvi.

I got to watch an interview with him. Uri survived the Hamas massacre on Oct 7 at kibbutz Be'eri, he and his wife hid together for hours, including 3.5 hours during which terrorists were rampaging through their home. Two hours later, they were saved thanks to their son, an IDF officer in an elite unit, who managed to make it out of his own home, and join security forces. But Uri recounted how almost any noise makes him jump now, and how almost all of his age group was wiped out. When he goes to the dining hall (kibbutzim are communal, everyone eats meals together), his friends that he used to sit with are no longer there. He insisted that Oct 7 was a kind of Holocaust, as Jewish kids were once again hiding in closets, terrified for their lives.

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[yuri-for-businesswomen]

Regarding radical feminists (specifically transphobic ones) becoming fascists: it's a thing. You let yourself fall into one form of bigoted thinking, it gets easier and easier to adopt others. And that's how we get JK Rowling denying Nazi crimes in the year 2024.

oh my fucking god. someone accused her of „upholding nazi ideology around gender“ which she called a fever dream because gender was not a thing in nazi germany since the distinction between sex and gender was made mid 20th century. all the claims about trans people being targeted by the nazis come from the fact they burned books by magnus hirschfeld and made him close his institut where he did research on transsexuals - his wikipedia states he was targeted for being JEWISH and GAY. not because of his research.

this article also makes clear that being trans only meant people crossdressing, which mostly - almost exclusively - affected gay men who were indeed targeted by the nazis as emphasised by homosexuals getting their own symbol in the concentration camps. crossdressers were indeed persecuted because they were regarded as homosexuals.

and just my personal opinion? doing experimental research on what we today understand as homosexuals with internalised homophobia and gender dysphoria is not trans friendly. they usually died soon after the surgeries. if hirschfeld had not been jewish and gay but a non-jewish heterosexual german in the nsdap selling it as the medicalisation and castration of homosexuals it was to the nazis, they certainly would have let him do it or even supported it as part of their eugenics politics. seeing as he was racist and sexist too. and one of his doctors went on to work for the nazis, for example (source: the scientist magazine below).

oh and by the way it is really difficult to find sources that are not tainted by modern gender ideology applied to what went down at that clinic.

this article for instance talks about „transgender“ people getting „gender affirming care“ when - again - gender was introduced as a concept after the fact.

i wish some more of you would realise this. trans, whether that be transvestite, transsexual or transgender, is not a universal concept like biological sex and homosexuality. it is entirely cultural.

oh and lastly, did you know that the nazis persecuted prostitutes but opened brothels in concentration camps and other places? and did you know that many of the women prostituted by german nazis were jewish, roma and eastern european? and did you know that pro trans groups and parties are supporting the liberal prostitution law in germany that enables and fosters the mass sexual exploitation of eastern european women at the hands of german men in german brothels TODAY? where is the uproar for that huh? you people are deeply unserious when it comes to social justice issues and prefer engaging in manufactured rage online over actually analysing and dismantling systems of oppression. fuck off now

[etz-ashashiyot]

Okay so here's a weird (highly specific) gerische feel:

As far as I can prove (which is my mother's side of the family, but mostly her mother, because my biological grandfather was totally estranged by the time my mom married my father and I've never met him) I have no Jewish ancestry

However

I do have German ancestry and learned a bit of German in my younger years (but otherwise have no cultural connections to it)

My beit din was actually mixed minhag so I have the option of choosing Ashkenazi or Sephardi

I adore Sephardic food and music and liturgy, and if I were choosing a minhag in a vacuum I would honestly choose it, however,

When I learn Yiddish music and sing in Yiddish, it feels like home, like I was made to make these sounds and sing these melodies, and,

My body has a hard time processing food in general, but you know what it doesn't typically have issues with and which I actively enjoy eating? Gefilte fish, pickled herring, beets, shredded horseradish, garlic, pickles.... etc.

.......I may or may not have seasoned my bowl of matzah ball soup this past year at seder with shredded horseradish

Conclusion: I think my germanic heritage has ensured I remain painfully Ashkenazi and I should probably just embrace it lol ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(I still typically just follow the minhag hamakom, though, at least with davening)

[jewishsimming]

So I have been doing some thinking and research about my shtetl idea.

For those of you who don't know, a shtetl is a Yiddish word (Jewish-Germanic language) for a small town. Specifically the term refers to small towns in pre-Holocaust Eastern Europe, usually (but not always) in the Pale of Settlement - countries like Poland, Russia, Belarus, Lithuania, Ukraine etc - but I believe also included some parts of the Austrian Empire and Hungary?). These towns were not entirely Jewish but a lot of them were majority Jewish. So I'm thinking agricultural, artisan, small town mentality where everyone knows everyone else's business and there's class tension.

(If you want a pop culture frame of reference, Fiddler on the Roof's Anatevka is a fictional shtetl).

I'm just trying to think of where to put it. I want to say Henford-on-Bagley but I'm not sure.

It'd have to be a modified Decades Challenge. With respect to the original rules, they are very American-centric and Christian-centric and focus more on a middle or upper class situation, especially with regards to women not being able to work (lower and middle-class women do not have the option not to work, mostly).

IDK. I'm having a good think about it. I feel like modified rules could also lend itself to a generic Small Town Challenge without it having to be Jewish (but making it Jewish makes it more fun).

[cr4btank]

guy whose main special interests are geography, archaeology, sociology, and the magnus archives. anyways here’s my extensive (perhaps slightly unrealistic for london i don’t know) ethnicity headcanons for tma and tmagp. most of these have little to no canon backing my Autism just told me

i’m going to reblog this with more later

TMA

jonathan sims: indo-surinamese

martin blackwood: i get canada from him ? specifically martimes, maybe nova scotia. also ethnically jewish because im both of those and can do what i want

tim stoker: predominantly vietnamese, dominican also

sasha james: st. lucian?? doesn’t feel entirely right but it’s all i’m getting

elias bouchard: english . maybe a bit portuguese

peter lukas (& lukas family) norwegian & russian??

gerard keay: greek

michael shelley: russian & serbian

basira hussain: bihari

daisy tonner: my mind wants me to say german my heart says aṉangu. she can be both

melanie king: ukrainian

oliver banks: xhosa

rosie zampano: italian & malaysian

annabelle cane: nyakyusa

gertrude robinson: german & polish

TMAGP:

sam khalid: sindhi

alice dyer (& luke): taíno (specifically cuba)

gwen bouchard: mostly english partially swedish

celia ripley: korean

teddy vaughn: yoruba

lena kelley: mestiza (guarayo)

ink5oul: tibetan???? mongol?? leaning tibet i think

colin becher: so very scottish (accidentally said irish whoops so edited this)

please (metaphorically) throw rocks at me if anything here is canonically wrong or just like . wrong in general