#my opinions are informed by my experiences and conversations with my jewish community

[transmascpetewentz]

"Converting to Judaism" lol you're not even a real Jew you just want an excuse to be a Zionist pig

...ok???

[h-sleepingirl]

Milton Erickson and a Rabbi Walk into a Bar... (Essay)

Finally, I've finished this essay about connections I'm finding between hypnosis, Judaism, magic, and intimacy. It's ~4.5k words, extremely "me," and I'm really thrilled to share it. Enjoy!

--

My weakness is getting deeply invested in very niche topics.

Hypnosis was my first and most lifelong obsession. It was my confusing, shameful sexual fetish that I eventually took by the horns and -- through my desire to learn as much about it as humanly possible -- turned into a job. But not a normal sex work job where I do hypnosis for money -- a weird job where I just teach about it. The kink community, and the further-specific niche where people want to hypnotize each other during intimate experiences, became my home.

But the value of study doesn't really come from the quantity of people I'm able to engage with. It comes from the way it enriches my life. It creates and benefits from the capability to see overlaps between all of my various interests.

On the surface, it may appear that two skills have no relationship. But the deeper you get into each one, a synthesis appears.

At a certain point when you are learning hypnosis, all seemingly-unrelated information seems to fit effortlessly into your hypnotic knowledge. You can listen to a song and suddenly you learn something new about how to hypnotize someone. Maybe it was a lyric that gave you an evocative emotional response; maybe it was a pattern in the music that you thought about replicating with the rhythm of your hypnotic language.

Over a decade into my own hypnosis learning, I got very lucky and found a second passionate home in communities of Jewish text study about a year ago. I started from almost zero there and found myself again to be a greedy novice, obsessed with digging into it.

Of course, as I got further, it became that I read a page of Talmud (a text of rabbinical law and conversation) and suddenly I learned something new about how to hypnotize someone. And as I progress, it is starting to go the other way: I learn about Torah study by reading about hypnosis and intimacy.

There are two directions this essay can be read. “How can intimacy and hypnosis teach us about Jewish text?” And, “How can Jewish text teach us about intimacy and hypnosis?” One half is of each part written by me as an authority, and the other half is by me as an avid novice. The synthesis of these two parts of me -- just like any synthesis between concepts -- may perhaps create something new.

Models

I’m sure most communities have a version of the idiom, “Ask three people a question and get five answers.” For a long time, this was a source of frustration for me in the hypnosis community. Is hypnosis a state of relaxation and suggestibility? Kind of, but also no. Is it more accurate to say it is based on unconscious behaviors and thoughts? Well -- kind of, but also no. 

So what is it? Well, it’s probably somewhere in the overlap of about 20-30 semi-accurate definitions and frameworks for techniques -- what we’d call “models.” Good luck!

Why is hypnosis so impossible to define and teach? How have we not found a model that we can all agree upon yet? I think many people share this confusion, and it's complicated by the fact that most sources for hypnosis education teach their model as the model. It makes sense -- it would be difficult to teach a complete beginner a handful of complex frameworks with which to understand hypnosis when that person is just trying to muddle through learning “how to hypnotize someone” on a practical, basic level.

…Or would it be? By the time I got involved with Jewish study, I had long given up on chasing the white whale of some unified theory of hypnosis. I was firmly happy with the concept that all ways to describe hypnosis are simply models -- and all models are flawed, while some models are useful. I was delighted, when entering Jewish community spaces, to hear the idiom, “Three Jews, five opinions.”

This concept is baked into Jewish text study, in my experience. You can look at any single line in Torah and find innumerable pieces of commentary on it, ancient and modern, with conflicting interpretations. Torah and other texts are studied over and over -- often on a schedule -- with the idea that there is always something new to learn. And this happens partially by the synthesis of multiple people's perspectives adding to and challenging each other, developing new models. My Torah study group teacher always starts us with a famous line from Pirkei Avot, a text of ethical teachings from early rabbis: “If two sit together and share words of Torah, the Shekhinah [feminine presence of God] abides among them.”

The capacity to develop and hold multiple interpretations at once enriches your relationship with the text. So too do I believe that being able to hold multiple interpretations of what hypnosis is and how it works enhances your skill with it. It is not a failure of the system -- it is the best thing about it.

Intimacy

It is intentional to make the distinction of “relationship with the text” -- not “relationship to the text.”

My job on the surface is to teach hypnosis, but the meta goal is to simply teach something that helps people develop profound intimacy with others. I think that hypnosis is a kind of beautiful magic that is well-suited to this, but it’s not the only path to take.

One of my favorite educators, Georg Barkas, describes themselves as an intimacy educator who teaches rope bondage. Their classes and writings are highly philosophical and align closely with my own ideas about intimacy -- as well as my partner’s, MrDream, from whom I’ve learned so much. I frequently cite Barkas when I talk about hypnosis because I feel the underlying ideas they have about rope bondage are extremely applicable to all kink and intimacy -- and I will continue that trend here.

Barkas recently published an excellent essay looking in detail at the concept of intimacy itself. They posit that our first thought of intimacy is usually about a kind of comfort-seeking and familiarity. That’s contained within the etymology of the word, and socially it’s what many of us think of when we define our relationships as “intimate”: settling in to engage with a partner who we love, know, and understand.

But, Barkas asks, what if we place this word into a different context? They talk of how in scientific endeavors, the goal of “becoming familiar with” is unpredictability and discovering things that are surprising and unexpected. This perhaps offers a different view of intimacy: intimacy where you do not engage with your partner as though you know everything about them; intimacy where being surprised by them and learning something new is the goal.

My partner MrDream teaches about this often in hypnosis education: approaching a partner with genuine curiosity and interest -- “curiosity” implying that you don’t know what to expect, with a positive connotation. There is a kind of delicate balance between being able to anticipate some aspects of what is going to happen hypnotically -- to have a general grasp on psychology and hypnosis theory -- versus holding tight to a philosophy that neither you nor the hypnotic subject really knows how they are going to respond. The unexpected is not to be feared, but celebrated and held as core to our practice. Hypnotic “subjects” (those being hypnotized) who can relax their expectations will often have more intense experiences.

Thus we come to the first time in this essay where I mention Milton Erickson, my favorite forefather of modern hypnosis. Erickson was a hypnotherapist active through the 1900s and is famous (among many things) for presenting a model of hypnosis that wasn’t necessarily an authoritative action done to a person, but a collaborative and guiding action done with a person.

In his book “Hypnotic Realities,” he talks about how his view of clinical hypnosis is defined by how the therapist is able to observe each individual client and directly use those observations to continually develop a unique hypnotic approach with them. The client’s history, interests, and modes of thinking are utilized for the trance, as well as any observable responses they have in the moment. For example, a client with chronic pain may have the frustration they express over that pain incorporated into the trance. This is in deep contrast to hypnosis where the therapist comes in with any kind of “script” or formula to recite ahead of time.

It’s important to Erickson’s model that the therapist doesn’t know exactly what to anticipate, and it’s also important hypnotically that the same is true for the client. A common “Ericksonian” suggestion is, “You don’t have to know what is going to happen, and I don’t know either.” In order to develop the most effective approach with each patient, Erickson would enter into a session with some presumed knowledge, but ultimately learning -- not assuming -- how to best hypnotize each individual person.

We circle back to the phrase, “a relationship with Jewish text.” In my opinion, engaging with Torah is exactly this kind of intimacy. Torah is something we come into in order to poke and prod at it, to interact with it and to see how it interacts back at us. The teacher of my study group always cites a model where Torah itself is a participant in our partnered learning and group discussions. We ask it questions, we push its boundaries, we strive to glean something new and yet unseen. A line that may seem simple on the surface can reveal much more when we explore its context or put it into a different context entirely. 

This is easier for me to say as someone who is coming into learning Torah for the first time, but I am able to look ahead to when I will be fully familiar with the text and still be able to take this expanded definition of intimacy with it. Not coming to it without a sense of comfort, but still engaging with curiosity. MrDream teaches a model for hypnosis that is based on the idea of exploration -- exploring your partner no matter how long you have been with them. You are always coming to them as a different person, shaped by your ever-growing experiences and identity, and your partner changes as a human as well. I believe Torah is also dynamic in this way, as the context within which it exists -- and the way we interpret it -- is constantly shifting.

Ritual

I have been engaging with spiritual ritual on and off for as long as I’ve been learning hypnosis. The concept of magic has always been alluring to me -- not from a motivation to meet specific goals, but for something more difficult to pin down. I like that ritual, in an esoteric framework, is about looking at various metaphors between ingredients and actions; a candle representing an element of fire which may in turn represent intensity, or purity, or something else. Drawing meaningful connections between concepts like this is a skill I’ve developed in parallel with hypnosis, as well.

I was recently talking with a friend of mine who is also interested in esotericism -- we were sharing our frustrations with various books on magic and ritual. We wondered why so many sources would go on to teach prescriptivist formulas and associations, and not much else. Do this, and that will happen. This symbol represents that. My friend and I agreed that the ritual value of ingredients comes from how you personally assign meaning to them -- but why was everything always trying to teach us their meaning, as opposed to teaching us how to cultivate our own associations?

A week or so later, I happened to go to an excellent class that explored whether or not there was a place for smudging and smoke use in modern Jewish ritual. The teacher first took a careful, measured approach towards looking at indigenous smudging practices and the concept of appropriation. What followed was 30 minutes of history and text exploring examples of smoke in early Judaism, and then 30 minutes of a handful of interpretations of what “smoke” could mean and represent with relation to Jewish ideas -- directly practical to modern ritual. It was utterly excellent and immediately profound for me, as someone who has been yearning to blend my experience with esoteric ritual with my relationship with Judaism.

Observant readers will note that through this essay I speak passively about Judaism -- I am a patrilineal Jew, which for better or worse means that it is not a simple matter to say, “I am ‘fully’ (or ‘not’) Jewish.” (I am in the beginnings of working with a Conservative rabbi -- who affirms that I’m Jewish -- to make my status halachic [lawful], which is deeply exciting.) Opinions on that aside, a relevant piece of information is that the Jewish holiday we celebrated most consistently when I was growing up was Chanukah. While a lot of Jewish practice has been something I’ve been striving towards as an adult, Chanukah has always been “mine.” It was fast approaching after this class, and I felt motivated to use my newfound knowledge to make more ritual out of lighting the candles.

I was deeply surprised when all I did was light a stick of incense before saying the blessings over lighting the menorah, and my experience transformed into something intense. I smelled the incense and couldn’t help but think about what I’d learned about the Rambam’s commentary that incense in the time of the Temple was about making the Temple smell sweet to pray in after the burning of sacrifices. I thought about what I’d learned about the presence of God being smoke and clouds to the ancient Israelites. I thought about things I’d learned from other places -- hiddur mitzvah (the value of beautifying a practice), and a midrash (parable) about God loving the light and rituals we do in a very personal way simply because they are from us.

Esoteric ritual has often felt to me like exerting effort in making the associations of ingredients work for me. But this was effortless. I was doing something that was entirely my own, solidly founded by the broad and deep study I’d done, by my personal relationship with the concepts, by my identity.

In other words, the power behind this ritual came from knowledge, and the knowledge came from my intimacy with it. And that intimacy was not just with the study I had done -- it was also the process of being surprised in real time by what I was learning through the ritual itself.

Hypnosis gains “power,” in so much as we let ourselves use the term, through these same acts of intimacy towards knowledge. It operates directly based on various ingredients: how much we know about hypnosis theory itself, general psychology, the person we are working with, and ourselves. Hypnosis is a ritual -- it is setting aside special time to do something with a collection of ingredients that you have personal associated meanings with. If you can’t connect to those deeply enough, it won’t reach its full potency.

Knowledge, Perception, and Unconsciousness

One of my favorite concepts to teach in hypnosis is, “A change in perception equates to a change in reality.” This is derived from Erickson by MrDream, and it’s something he and I have had a lot of conversations about to refine. The implication of this is not something as trite as hypnosis having the power to change a person’s perceived reality. It is the concept that if you look at something from a different perspective, you gain various different capabilities.

For example, when you are feeling stuck in a situation and you think about what a close friend of yours would do if they were in your shoes, you gain the capability to see more options, to change your actual view of the reality of the problem and therefore change your actions towards it. In hypnosis, this could be the difference between simply telling someone to relax their legs versus another perspective of telling them to imagine what it would be like if their legs just started relaxing. It could be the idea that when a person does feel relaxation from a simple suggestion, their perception changes on what is happening -- they build more belief in hypnosis, and that belief in turn makes the next suggestions easier to buy into.

Erickson’s model of hypnosis is predicated on the idea that hypnosis itself matters, that hypnosis is a time within which someone’s reality changes. In his ideal hypnotic context, the subject feels like they no longer can expect things to behave as they usually do in their “waking” reality. They are thus opened to many different kinds of new experiences and capabilities. To Erickson, perception matters -- by itself, it’s a primary driving force behind literal change and response.

This ties back to our idea of intimacy -- just as I aim to approach my partners with this profound curiosity, just as I aim to approach Torah, I want to have this intimacy of the unexpected with trance itself. I want to allow myself to be surprised by hypnosis, by the things I don’t yet know about it even after more than a decade and thousands of hours of trance. But more than this, in an Ericksonian sense, simply changing my perspective to this motivation is one of the things that lets me get there.

I went through a guided study class about Shabbat (Judaism’s weekly sabbath of rest) with a partner, and so much of the class was in the abstract that it at times felt difficult for me to latch onto. We were learning all of this background context about a view of Shabbat where instead of spiritually striving and reaching on that day, you come in acting as though your spiritual work -- like your other work -- is “finished.”

In one session, we spent a chunk of time parsing through how we could interpret that as actionable. It felt like it just wasn’t clicking for me -- the midrashic texts weren’t offering enough for me to feel like I could make judgments on questions like, “Does this imply I shouldn’t meditate on Shabbat in this context?”

It wasn’t until I slept on it that I found a very simple piece of the puzzle: putting aside the questions of concrete actions, in an Ericksonian sense, the internal act of shifting my perspective would absolutely change the way I behaved and interacted with the day. It would become more indirect and unconscious -- instead of carefully analyzing my actions as I might with other Shabbat prohibitions on work, I could simply let myself act in ways that fit that perspective of “spiritually resting.”

The abstraction of the class made more sense -- perhaps it wasn’t trying to give us direct answers, but rather create a psychological environment for us that was well-suited to this more unconscious processing. Or rather, in addition to the sort of typical conscious halachic interpretation. If I allow myself an opinion here, I’d say that I care about halacha as actionable, but as always, I tend to care more about feelings and what’s internal.

This also lent credence to ways this class and the class on smoke and ritual changed my experiences. I was not given a set of actions to take, but rather a variety of perspectives that unconsciously made me think and behave differently. The concept of “knowledge is power” is both true and alluring in many different contexts, and yet had often fallen through for me in most ritualistic frameworks. The way that it succeeds, I believe, is when you develop a relationship with knowledge that actually changes your internal perspective and perceptions.

Limitation

With this we return to the concept of models and interpretations. It is serendipitous to be going through these experiences at a time where I am avidly working on my next book -- the thesis of which is that in order for us to progress as hypnotists, we must get comfortable moving fluidly between many differing definitions and frameworks (models) of what hypnosis is and how it works.

It is as the Ericksonian principle would say: If you take a perspective on hypnosis that boils down to “hypnosis is about relaxing the conscious mind,” you will do hypnosis according to that perspective. You will use relaxation-based techniques and make an effort to get someone to think “less consciously.” If you instead take a perspective that is “hypnosis operates based on activation of the conscious mind,” you may do hypnosis that causes someone to think and process in a more stimulating way.

Both and neither are true, and they can coexist. I believe that most models can be useful -- some more useful than others. But the best thing you can do is to not assume that one model is the most correct one -- instead, it is to develop the capacity to work within many at once even while being aware of their boundaries.

Jewish text, in my experience, provides models -- perspectives that themselves give guidance on how to understand things and act. I think especially about midrash and stories that are explicitly intended to fill in the gaps or give an alternate view on something. The question of, “Is there one correct way to do/see things” is more complicated here, but there are areas -- especially in those subtle shifts of mindset for ritual or interpreting text -- where the answer is still “no.”

My time so far in Jewish study supports this in a different way. There is a human element of collaboration and challenge. Learning as we do with a chevruta (study partner) adds another person to the relationship -- it is no longer just between you and the text. There is another human who you are building something with, and it is “intimate” according to our exploratory definition in an even clearer way.

The purpose of a “scene” inside of kink (a “session” of kink play) is to operate in a semi-limited framework -- limitations exist on who is involved, where it begins and ends, how partners communicate, and what themes/topics/activities are involved. These limitations -- though they may be quite broad -- are partially what allow for intense experiences. A scene needs to exist in a different “space” than our daily lives, and it needs to operate by different rules and involve different ingredients. Here, we also see overlaps with the definition of a “ritual.”

This doesn’t just facilitate intensity (and safety) -- it facilitates learning something new about your partner. By taking your relationship and putting it into a limited context, it allows you to observe it in a more careful way, where novel changes can be more obvious.

Studying with a chevruta is much like this. I have had study sessions where my chevruta and I are meeting for the first time and the only thing we are aware of sharing is our desire to dive into a piece of text. I’ve also had chevrutas where we know each other outside of study, and some of our time is schmoozing and catching up. But in all cases, we are limited in scope, and that limitation creates ease of access towards the common goal of expanding our knowledge and relationship with the text. We are focused; we are motivated. We are creating something that we can only create through who we are as individuals and what we are doing as avid learners.

This has surprised me at times with its tenderness and intensity. Building well-founded interpretations with someone is in and of itself very intimate -- not sensually, but humanly. It has given me something I have always wanted -- an intimacy that is pervasive not just in application of knowledge, but in the development of it. A feeling of sacredness and joy from being able to see so many different perspectives.

I long for this connection, this alchemy. Yes, all models are limited. But within those tight, restricting limits is the potential energy of creation.

“And I Must Learn”

There is an infamous story in the Talmud, in Berakhot 62a, where Rav Kahana hides under the bed of his friend Rav Abba. Rav Kahana hears Abba and his wife giggling and starting to have sex, and remarks out loud that Rav Abba is acting like someone who is famished. Rav Abba, mid-sex, understandably says, “Kahana, why the fuck are you under my bed listening to me fuck my wife?” Rav Kahana replies, “It is Torah, and I must learn.”

There was a version of this essay that began with this tale. I am enamored with the vast overlaps I can derive from its briefness: that intimacy can be studied sacredly both as a general concept and specifically with your partner; that we are obligated to learn ourselves, our partners, and general human desire; that there can be a thread of wholeness in every action of your life if you give every action sacred attention.

Even this, though, is a limited-context interpretation. The rabbis of the Talmud were certainly not sex-positive, especially not as we currently use the term. The surrounding triptych of conversations is similarly humorous but seems to comparatively describe sex as dirty or gross, and this bit of text cannot really exist separately from all of the places where there is halacha derived about sex that is about controlling women’s bodies or preventing queer and trans people from being able to live authentically.

But -- we are allowed to interpret like this. We are allowed to play with context and see what we discover.

For me, this is about finding the connections between my actions and my interests; parts of me that synthesize the whole. It is about developing intimacy with Torah, with my learning partners, with my romantic partners; with the people within the writings, with the authors, and with the readers.

Reading Torah is the same as hypnotizing someone is the same being intimate with someone is the same as doing a ritual. All things on a broad enough scale overlap this closely. There is value in this “zooming out” to a wide enough context to see the connections that exist -- just as there is value in celebrating the limitations that arise, models nestled alongside each other, when you “zoom in.”

We need both to be able to treat our learning -- all forms of it -- as something special.

[a-very-tired-jew]

Hey there! I'm curious about Judaism. I've been doing some research but as you can probably imagine especially these days i've been getting a LOT of mixed messages. Much like anyone I know general background information but I wanted to dig deeper and see exactly what the process of conversion is? As well as other offhand questions which are best asked to someone who lives that life. Like how does the Jewish community largely interact with LGBT+ folk? Thank you and i'm sorry if i'm asking a lot from you!

It's totally okay to ask all this. Unfortunately I am not the best one to ask about the conversion process. I am a secular Jew who was born and raised in it. I was molded by it. I didn't see a Christmas tree till I was in the second graaaaade. *more incoherent Bane noises*

There are a number of converts and people current converting on here who can speak to their own experiences and what they did/currently are doing. When I speak on Jewish issues I tend to speak from the secular, cultural, and historical side of things that I have experienced and researched. Regarding the LGBT+ question, the area where I grew up in the USA is one of the largest interstate Jewish communities. As such, the politics within are reflective of the politics outside of it. Meaning, we've got people who are absolutely homophobic and transphobic, and we've got people who are supportive and make sure we're accepted. I personally grew up in the Reconstructionist movement which was/is extremely left and very accepting. The greater Reform community that we existed in was accepting as well. From my understanding acceptance was really relegated to your local community and the views contained within. I know plenty of Conservative Jews who are LGTB+ and accepted by their community, but I also know ones that left the synagogue they were part of when they came out and switched to a more accepting one. Again, it's all about finding what feels right to you and provides in the manner you need. I know less about the Orthodox cultural acceptance, but that is simply due to me not interacting with members as much. Maybe someone else can weigh in. However, you must remember that when you put two Jews in a room, you will get three opinions. Meaning someone else could completely disagree with all of this, then we discuss, and come to a completely different conclusion. It's just how it works.

[jewish-vents]

I recently had to move two hours away from all the nearest big cities around me, and now I'm in a place with a way smaller Jewish community. Recently now more than ever I've been needing community support, especially given that I'm a convert and I never truly got a chance to finish the process. The only place I can turn to is the Chabad community, but I'm not as knowledgeable about them as I was with my reform community. I'm always nervous about reaching out, and about how older people will take to me being trans (male). I've also heard a lot of controversy/judgement coming from other Jewish communities directed at Chabad? I'm a bit confused about the whole thing. I genuinely have no idea if I should reach out or wait until I can move somewhere else. It sucks feeling so isolated

Ok so, I don't have a lot of knowledge or experience with Chabad communities, but I asked some friends who do know a bit more, and this is what they said:

- if you're looking to finish your conversion with them, it's not very likely it will be possible. Maybe if you're looking to be orthodox, but I'm guessing from your ask that that's not exactly what you want.

- you might want to see if your previous rabbi might let you finish the process online. I know some people who did that after they moved because they had already started with a rabbi and wanted to keep that one for the rest of it. You might have to travel for Beit Din and mikveh, but I mean it's better than nothing. Alternatively, if your previous rabbi will not want to do that, try to find a rabbi who might be ok with a lot of the process being online. I know there are some who do that, even if I don't know who exactly.

- about attending Chabad services independently of conversion. That will depend a lot on the branch and on the community itself. It might be worth a try, there is really no way to know what the answer will be until you ask, but the worst that can happen is they say no. Which I know doesn't feel great, but just remember that doesn't mean something is wrong with you specifically

- another thing to consider is the fact you're trans. People have different opinions over disclosing one's transness vs staying stealth, especially when we're talking about communities where gender (and sex) have a wide difference. It's likely, even after you convert, you might not be allowed to lead a service or do things they would consider "for men". Also, how well you pass might dictate which side of the mechitza you'll be put on (aka, if they'll let you sit with the rest of the men). I know this is really uncomfortable to even think about, but I just want to be realistic with you so you can make an informed choice and are ready if you do attend at some point. Independently of one's opinions on that type of gender roles, it is their community and they do make the rules there

All this being said, some people have very positive experiences with Chabad, some less. Depends on the community, what you're looking for, etc

Wishing you the best of luck! And if someone else has opinions of advice for Anon, leave it in the replies or reblogs please

-🐺

[kosherkept]

I hope nothing in my ask sounded condescending or anything! (or implied you don't know what you're talking about or something, sorry I'm autistic and struggling a lot of with communication rn) But yeah it's definitely not normal for a rabbi to recommend not doing any learning yourself, ive talked to four rabbis about converting cause I was looking for one that would be best suited to me as a queer trans person in the rural south, and every one of them recommended studying independently and learning/immersing myself in the open aspects of Jewish culture to see if converting would make sense in my life and to go ahead and start the process and I did for basically the whole year I was waiting for the intro to judaism class, I was even attending synagogue for about 4-5 months before the class and most reform synagogues will let you start attending services if you want and are able to so that you can get involved with your local Jewish community and get a feel for the services, anyways I wanted to say sorry for giving a bunch of unsolicited advice I realized when you answered my ask that was more so a vent looking for people whove have similar experiences and not like, a call for advice, sorry for completely misunderstanding it! I just am very passionate about Judaism and my conversion process and love to talk to other people who are trying/thinking about converting and it tends to get a little rambly, the only other thing I really wanna say but you can definitely ignore if you don't feel like it would help is to not put all learning and everything aside completely, the conversion process as a whole is much easier if you go into it with a pretty good base knowledge and my Rabbi told me that it showed I was serious about wanting to convert and truly dedicating myself to a Jewish life even when other people aren't looking (and in my case more meaningful because me and my Rabbi have time to focus on more specific things like queer Jewish history, disabled Jewish history and other like more niche specific things)

also sorry this is really the last thing but I'm pretty sure I have a lot of the same feelings about choosing a Jewish life (correct me if I'm wrong), I felt personally like it was really heavily aimed at people converting just for marriage and kinda implied that most people wouldn't convert just for the love of it on their own which, kinda felt a little bad to me personally, and I really didn't like the assumption that everyone converting is already involved in the Jewish community in some way or connected to it through family or their partners family, it definitely presents some things in a way that I didn't enjoy reading very much, living a Jewish life by Anita Diamont is completely different in vibe and it's more about the customs, history, prayers, holidays, mitzvot, and minhag of the Jewish community and in my opinion it was much kinder and friendlier than choosing a Jewish life, it was basically all informative and not anecdotal

anyways sorry again! I hope nothing in this ask was rude/condescending either but if it was please feel free to correct me cause I certainly didn't mean for it to be I just really enjoy talking about these things and have a bad gauge of tone

hi!!! i'm sorry if i replied in a way that made it out to seem i thought your ask was unwelcome or condescending, it wasn't at all!! im also autistic so we're just 🤝 . i wasn't looking for advice but it's natural to want to offer it to other people and i'm not upset about it so it's totally fine

and yes i heavily agree about the book!! i've ended up skipping some chapters entirely since i'm not wanting to convert 1. for a fiancé, nor 2. as a christian or soon to be ex-christian. the entire segments about giving up christmas were so weird to me since she didn't clarify in the introduction that the book was primarily for christians, although i don't remember if she said anything about the book being for partners of jews. but i do like her writing style so maybe i'll have to check out her other book as well

[clumsyclifford]

Do you think you’ll write jalex again? I know things are weird rn within atl-world, but you write that pairing so well. Definitely don’t want you to do something you’re uncomfortable doing, but just curious! Your writing is amazing :))

hello anon!! this is a good and legitimate question so i wanted to wait until i could sit down and give you a proper answer for it.

so the short answer is yes, i think i probably will. at least for the time being, when we're still in a big black hole of ~uncertainty~, i don't think that writing fanfiction about characters who, while technically based on real people, are not in any way meant to actually depict those real people - i don't think that's necessarily a show of support. i realize everyone will have a different threshold for what they consider "supporting" the band, and not everyone is comfortable still doing so, and i respect everyone's various opinions and thoughts and feelings. paige @danswank started a really good conversation about it over on her blog, but it really boils down to: everyone is going to respond differently and the most important thing right now is to respect that. we don't have a lot of concrete facts, so it comes down to interpretation and personal experience and a lot of other subjective, ineffable stuff.

anyway that's kind of tangential. the point is, as i see it, there are different, yknow, tiers of supporting an artist. giving them money - supporting them financially - is probably the biggest one, and at the moment i'm not in a place to be doing that. there's also vocal support, as in literally just being vocal about liking the band and tweeting at them or whatever to say you still back them, and again, that's not something i'll be doing. but to be completely honest, i don't think writing fanfiction is any level of support at all. i mean, think about it: it's not as if atl are going to see me writing fanfiction about them. they're not scouring ao3 going "ah, bellawritess posted a jalex fic, this must mean she still supports us!" they don't know i'm here, doing this. they don't know i exist. they can't hear me.

fanfiction, rpf, whatever, for me it has very little to do with the actual people i'm writing about. writing is a hobby for me. it's something i'm good at, and it's something i like doing. i like telling stories with characters people already appreciate. i can't be bothered to create my own. i like to exist in fan spaces and mutually appreciate things we all communally enjoy. the fic i write has nothing to do with all time low (or 5sos, or one direction). the actions of the real people who inspire my characters have almost zero effect on my characters. i made 5sos jewish, for fuck's sake. i'm obviously not trying to recreate reality here. none of us are. that's the whole thesis of (decent) rpf. "this is a work of fiction." fiction! fan fiction! none of us are under the impression that the alex gaskarth in my silly little fanfiction is the alex gaskarth who's out there right now doing whatever he's doing in real life. and barring any truly unforgivable actions by them - which so far i haven't seen, and without any certainty on the allegations front i continue to be neutral about it - i don't see why i can't keep using their names on my characters.

i don't know if this makes me an immoral person. i know fiction doesn't exist in a vacuum. but at the end of the day, i don't think all time low should have the power to stop me from engaging in a hobby that i do literally for fun, that will never reach their eyes or ears. unless it turns out they're disgusting people (and we only know what we know, so things could change in the future, i can only speak to this with the information i have now), i'm not gonna give up one of my favorite fucking pastimes in the world for them. notwithstanding how i feel about them as real people.

anyway! i appreciate you asking, i'm glad i got a chance to organize my thoughts like this and i hope they make sense to you. <3

[empmoniitor]

INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION: WHAT ARE THE BARRIERS AND 09 WAYS TO IMPROVE IT

The Quarantaniversary is here- it’s almost a year since the COVID-19 pandemic dawned upon us all. And we all witnessed a TREMENDOUS change in our workplaces.

Nevertheless, remote work surprisingly assisted globalization, and companies are hiring more people from abroad than ever. With people ready to telecommute, workplaces are getting more diverse. Sure, this scenario isn’t going to last same forever- but we can already witness a lot of challenges that follow remote work- intercultural communication being one of them.

It is no secret why communication tops the list of priorities that a company needs to inculcate among its employees. Intercultural communication makes it trickier to accomplish, especially with people literally working miles apart.

Many organizations are opening their gates soon, and the cultural differences may intensify if you don’t start working on it now. Do you wonder if your employees are happily interacting despite these differences?

In this blog, we will discuss how to-

1. Assess your staff’s intercultural communication skills;

2. Identify the hindrances;

3. And rectify them for good.

BONUS- READ, HOW TO CREATE AND DEFINE A WORK FROM HOME POLICY FOR YOUR COMPANY

WHY IS INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION IMPORTANT?

Differences in culture are inevitable, and it takes a lot for people to bridge the gap. Lack of management in intercultural communication paves the way for misunderstandings and a feeling of being left out.

I’ll explain my point by citing an example. The west urges its people to leave their parents’ home and start a family at a very young age, while the east encourages a culture of living with parents and grandparents. It is one of the very few differences that you will find even when working with employees belonging to different cities in your own country.

A workplace that understands the diversity in traditions, customs, and cultures make its staff feel welcomed. It leads to better team communication, which ultimately develops a healthier and dynamic work environment. To be successful in any sector, organizations must understand and meet the communication patterns of their clients, employees, investors, and other associated people.

HINDRANCES IN INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION

KNOW WHAT YOUR TEAM LACKS

Now that you understand the why, let’s get into the what part.

There are four broad cultural differences that you’ll spot among people around you. Your employees are no exception. Improve your intercultural communication by identifying their weak points. Look for the ones that they lack so that you can rectify them ASAP. After all, acceptance is the first step to betterment!

Here are the key cultural aspects that your staff may lack:

1. EDUCATIONAL

School is the second home of a child, and it plays a vital role in shaping our thoughts, mannerisms, and problem-solving skills. Our background depends on our school, teachers, locations, and the associated national and district laws.

Companies hire people for different positions based on their qualifications. When they work together on a project, they implement varied methods based on their backgrounds to tackle the same set of problems. The results can either be pretty cool or a disastrous mess.

2. RELIGIOUS

An employee’s religious and spiritual affirmations have a significant impact on their priorities and behavior. Religious and spiritual beliefs have the power to impact a person’s perception, analytical abilities, and decision-making skills. As a result, they may even have a difference in ethical behavior.

Everyone has a right to express their religion. There could be a possibility of differences in opinions at the workplace and cold wars. Beware!

3. ETHNIC

Ethnicity is different from race. It is not biological and depends on a person’s learned behaviors due to their culture, nationality, religion, ancestry, heritage, and linguistic backgrounds. Jewish, Tamil, Pashtun, Cambodian, Sindhi, etc., are a few examples of ethnicity.

Naturally, separate ethnicities have a different train of thought and exposure. For instance, people who grow up in a spiritual and sacrificing environment avoid conflicts at all costs. Others may be direct in communication.

4. RACIAL

The race is a biologically defined term. Black, White, Asian are a few examples, for instance. Races have NOTHING to do with the person’s ethics and working skills. But they do have an impact on their accent, day-to-day behavior, and stuff like that.

While racial diversity is no big deal in the modern workplace, racist slurs, biased behavior, and mixed perceptions are still prevalent. Strong intercultural communication intertwines people and prevents this from happening.

BTW, HERE ARE 07 MOST IMPORTANT MANAGEMENT SKILLS & HOW TO DEVELOP THEM

5. GEOGRAPHICAL

The location you grow up in defines the environment you are exposed to- leading to developing varied dressing, speaking, eating, and living habits. Working with people from different geographical upbringing may sound cool and all, but it is actually the primary cause of stereotypes.

People who dwell from the same place tend to bond faster. And while that’s no big of a deal, it may lead to groupism and people feeling alienated.

6. LINGUISTIC

Some countries have an official language for their state, while some don’t. It is plausible due to the languages spoken by the natives. While English is the most acceptable among them all, people also come with different accents.

Long story short, language remains a barrier in any workplace that doesn’t stick to hiring only the locals. Paving the way for a friendly yet strong intercultural communication promotes bonding among all and keeps conflicts at bay.

7. GENERATIONAL

The generation you are born in has a darn tootin’ impact on your ideas on professionalism, ethical behavior, collaboration, creativity, and overall communication. Gen Z, for instance, prioritizes career and stability, while Boomers have a softer spot for their home and family.

Different generations are going to look at stuff with different glasses. A GenXer’s creativity and Baby Boomer’s experience may yield the best results. But it requires constant understanding, respect, and fair inclusion of all.

8. SOCIO-ECONOMIC

A person’s income and socio-economic status (SES) speak a lot about the privileges, opportunities, and resources that they usually get. Contrary to popular belief, SES has a major impact on our behavior and analytical skills.

SES contributes to an employee’s functioning, mental & physical health, stress level, and morals. If left to perish, it leads to judgments, biases, and information silos.

IMPROVING INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION AT WORKPLACE

There are cultures within cultures, and communication is the only path to collaboration. There’s nothing worse than a lack of understanding among people due to their misaligned assumptions and cognitive biases.

The strategies listed below are vital to creating cross-cultural harmony. However, I have witnessed points 4, 5, 7, and 9 making the maximum impact on intercultural communication:

1. AVOID USING SLANG

The non-natives of your place may understand what you say but may not understand the exact idea and context behind it. Slang, phrases, and idioms are cool, but why not keep it simple? Even the natives may get confused if your language gets too complicated.

Everyone has an interpretation of their own. And it is natural to read between the lines when things are not clear. An inaccurate interpretation, in such cases, will end up confusing or may even offend your staff. Play safe ALWAYS.

2. HANDLE HUMOUR WITH CARE

Cracking jokes is no big deal, and you don’t always have to be a grumpy boss. But remember, not everyone understands humour. So if you decide to go for it, make sure everyone understands it clearly. Cultural appropriation is a prerequisite, and you cannot compromise it for a few fake laughs. Go for neutral jokes that seem appreciated and accepted in all cultures. (for instance, a knock-knock joke)

HRs and management need to understand how culturally leaned behavior affects communication. Fixing it reduces intercultural communication conflicts to a humongous extent.

3. ORGANIZE GAMES & ACTIVITIES

Collaboration is the key to better communication. And what’s a better way to collaborate than to organize non-work-related activities. When people talk about stuff other than work, they feel more connected and start opening up despite their differences.

As a matter of fact, people with a different culture are more interested in a place’s native culture. Games and activities are a perfect way to cheer things up when trying to improve intercultural communication.

4. HOLD DISCUSSIONS & DEBATES

Debates might be the last thing you’d want in your organization, but hear me out- when you encourage people to present their conflicting thoughts professionally, they learn how to be opinionated and yet hold back the offense. Debates are healthy, and they bring sportsmanship among the peers.

Group discussions are also an excellent way of teaching the employees how and why it is crucial to keep things clear and simple in a conversation. Intercultural communication can only strengthen when people polish their verbal as well as listening skills.

5. SPEAK SLOWLY

An intercultural workplace would definitely have employees with varied accents and familiarity with the language. When you speak at your usual pace, you become vulnerable to miscommunication, misinterpretation, and misunderstandings.

Modulating the speed will ensure that your words are loud and clear. But make sure you’re not too slow, or else people would drift off while listening, let alone improve the overall communication. And that’s a bummer!

ALSO READ, HOW TO TURN THE VIRTUAL WORKFORCE INTO REALITY?

6. KEEP NON-VERBAL MISINTERPRETATIONS IN MIND

Your body language is always a part of communication. And it doesn’t matter what your words say- your tone and posture add meaning to it. Focus on keeping your facial expressions and body language very neutral. You don’t always have to smile, but maybe stop crossing your arms and looking at your phone.

Sometimes the non-verbal misinterpretations are not very obvious, and you have to dig a bit deeper. For instance, the Japanese find it rude when someone points a chopstick at them while eating.

7. WORK ON COGNITIVE BIASES

Everyone is biased- that’s natural. But it’s very unethical to let the biases interfere with our decision-making processes at work. It doesn’t matter how you feel about stuff- you have to take a rational and practical approach to get an unbiased and appropriate solution.

Your cognitive bias stems from a lot of reasons and has a direct impact on your conversations. If not taken care of, it may make things bitter between people with a difference in opinion.

8. NEVER FRAME CLOSED QUESTIONS

Avoid direct questions that need an answer in yes or no. Some people find it rude to answer such questions without an explanation. They might as well go with a yes instead of saying no to someone’s face. It might sound a little absurd, but such behavior is also an influence of their background.

Open-ended questions that require a plausible explanation are better in such cases. As a bonus, you always get to understand the thinking process of your team. And you can always assign the right tasks to the right person in the future.

9. ENCOURAGE ACTIVE LISTENING

Out of the two fundamental parts of communication, people tend to only work on their speaking skills. Well, we all know that won’t work. After all, who likes sharing their thoughts with someone who won’t let them finish their sentences? To ensure a healthy and happening relationship among all, you have to make sure that people like each other’s company.

Intercultural communication is a responsibility. Encourage people to come up with doubts, suggestions, and queries. It helps break the information silos, and nothing gets missed or misunderstood.

READ MORE FROM OUR BLOGS,

WRAPPING IT UP!!

Cultural differences are bound to occur in any workplace. The key is to accept and understand them. Intercultural communication can yield creative results when utilized the right way. Try to make the best out of your intercultural work environment and never let your productivity go down.

Is there anything that I missed? Would you like to drop a suggestion/query? Let me know in the comments below. I would love to hear from you.

ANNYEONG!!

Originally Published On: EmpMonitor

[kny111]

by Alexandra Stein

As I ‘developed’ over the years (as our groupspeak put it) it was revealed to me that ‘struggling with the practice’ would help us transform ourselves so as to be ready to contribute to some brave new world where we would finally fight for liberation of the oppressed. Meanwhile, we foot soldiers were so exhausted by the double shifts we worked year in and year out, the endless criticisms and self-criticisms, the leadership’s frowning upon any joy and spontaneity, that we no longer had the energy nor wit to keep asking questions.

However, despite – or perhaps because of – this dull and exhausting routine, in 1991 I did eventually make my exit along with two other disaffected comrades. Together we formed what I now call an ‘island of resistance’. We were able to gradually break the code of secrecy that silenced doubts about the group and its leader. With each other as validation, we began to articulate the real, dismal and frightening story of life in The O, which had as its unlikely recruiting grounds the 1970s food co-ops of the US Midwest.

After a dramatic exit, I wrote the memoir Inside Out (2002). The book was an effort to understand how I, an independent, curious and intelligent 26-year-old, could have been captured and held by such a group for so long. It was a cautionary tale for those not yet tempted by such a fate to beware of isolating groups with persuasive ideologies and threatening bass notes.

By then, I had learned about the brainwashing of prisoners of war and others in Mao’s China and North Korea in the 1950s; I had read the psychohistorian Robert Jay Lifton’s Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism (1961) and the psychologist Margaret Singer’s Cults in Our Midst (1996). Singer described six conditions of cultic control among which were control of the environment; a system of rewards and punishments; creating a sense of powerlessness, fear and dependency; and reforming the follower’s behaviour and attitudes, all within a closed system of logic. Lifton emphasised that thought reform took place when human communication was controlled. Added to this, I found John Lofland’s Doomsday Cult (1966), his unrivalled undercover study of an early cell of the Unification Church – the Moonies – which outlined seven steps to total conversion centred around the isolation of the follower from everyone except other cult members. All these scholars agreed that the essence of the process was to isolate victims from their prior connections and destabilise their identity, then consolidate a new, submissive identity within a rigidly bound new network. This was achieved by alternating a regime of threats with conditional approval.

As I continued to recover from the trauma of my cult involvement, I came across the British psychologist John Bowlby’s attachment theory. This states that both children and adults will usually seek closeness to perceived safe others when stressed (even if only symbolically in the case of adults) in order to gain protection from threat. I saw this as potentially useful in helping to understand how people become trapped in cultic relationships.

Eventually, my friends twisted my arm and packed me off to the University of Minnesota. I tentatively tried a course one of them had found for me: George Kliger’s class on cults and totalitarianism. On his reading list, I found the work of the political theorist Hannah Arendt, a German Jewish refugee who examined large themes of human freedom and oppression with detailed evidence. In her seminal work, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), she found that the regimes of Hitler and Stalin destroyed public and private life; both regimes based themselves on ‘loneliness, on the experience of not belonging to the world at all, which is among the most radical and desperate experiences of man’.

Although The O had been a small group numbering no more than 200 at its peak, it was Arendt’s work that illuminated most clearly what I came to see as a diminutive totalitarian movement. Like the movements Arendt profiled, The O operated at the whim of a charismatic, authoritarian leader wielding an exclusive belief system to isolate each individual in order to dominate us.

In that first class, I also learned something about teaching. At his last session, the somewhat unassuming, almost doddery Kliger, in the context of discussing why people become passive in the face of totalitarianism, revealed to us that he knew personally the power of induced powerlessness. He stood up and quietly unbuttoned his sleeve. As he rolled up the fabric, the not-very-faded inked number appeared on his arm, and he explained that as a teenager he had survived Buchenwald concentration camp.

Inspired by Kliger, I entered the Masters of Liberal Studies programme at the age of 45. There, I learned about Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiments of the 1960s, which showed that two-thirds of ordinary people were willing to administer severe electric shocks to complete strangers when ordered to do so by the experimenter. I also learned about the conformity experiments of the 1950s by the social psychologist Solomon Asch, who demonstrated that, when faced with obviously incorrect information, 75 per cent of participants publicly denied clear evidence before their own eyes rather than buck the majority opinion. However, when just one other person disagreed with the majority and broke the unanimous bloc, the conformity effect almost entirely disappeared.

All of this became key to my own study of the social psychology of extremist political organisations. These scholars understood the power of extreme social influence to corral and corrupt even the most ordinary of individuals. Totalism works because ordinary people – at least those without prior knowledge of the controlling methods of totalism – are subject to the coercive manipulations that leaders employ. If the situation is strong and isolating enough, without any clear escape route, then the average person can cave in to the traumatising pressures of brainwashing.

Continue to Full Article

[ins0mnia-an0nym0us-au]

re: getting told i have borderline nazi-ideology

I very recently had an interesting experience that I wanted to share.

I use Discord, a communication program that’s main purpose is an instant messaging feature, you can create a server, which can have multiple “rooms” in it for different topics of conversation. It also has various other features, like voice chatting, video-calling, screen-sharing, etc. 

There are lots of uses for it but mainly I use it just to hang out with people. Recently, I started branching out and joining different ‘fandom’ discord servers. I first joined an Arrowverse server, then just a server for people who ship a certain couple on one of the tv shows. 

But then I binged all of Agents of Shield and I wanted to find somewhere to talk about it, make some friends. So I joined a server and it started off pretty great. Everyone was very kind. We all love Marvel and Agents of Shield. 

Here’s where it turns into an experience (SPOILERS FOR AGENTS OF SHIELD) -

In Agents of Shield and the Marvel Universe in general, there is an organization called Hydra, which was founded by Nazis. Agents of Shield deals with Hydra a lot and one of the main cast members turns out to be a member of Hydra hidden within Shield. The actor Brett Dalton seems like an absolute sweetheart, I’ve actually seen him in person at Dragon-Con a few times and he’s one of those actors that refuses to sit behind his table, he stands in front of it to talk to his fans, give hugs, handshakes, etc.

People were talking about how apparently because of him being a Hydra member in the show and saying things like ‘Hail Hydra’ with fans or maybe even randomly (I’m not sure the context of that - if someone asked him to say it with them or whatever), that people cancelled him and that’s why he only does Hallmark movies now. Which is something I find ridiculous for a few reasons. 

Brett Dalton is an actor. He is given a role and he plays it. If that is a good guy or bad guy, it doesn’t matter, he reads the lines and acts the part. The fact that people ask him to repeat lines or certain lines get more famous than others is not his fault. 

This brought into question why certain people would even have ‘Hail Hydra’ as a favorite line. Which was incredibly stupid of a question in my opinion. 

Hydra is an iconic enemy organization within the Marvel Universe

‘Hail Hydra’ is a quick and easy line to say vs longer quotes

It comes from many iconic scenes in the franchise itself - both within comics & the cinematic universe

Then they questioned why anyone would be a fan of Hydra at all when it’s a Nazi run organization - a fictional, Nazi run organization. I pointed that out and they scoffed at that and said it doesn’t matter. So instead I tried the following reasons -

Some people just love to root for the bad guy - no matter how bad

Favorite actors/actresses play the villains

It’s ‘edgey’ to root for the bad guys

In the end they didn’t buy any of that as good enough reasoning and said that deep down every person who was a fan of Hydra must secretly be a Nazi or Nazi sympathizer and that even if Brett Dalton was a nice guy, he shouldn’t go around saying ‘Hail Hydra’ because some Jewish people have stated it makes them uncomfortable. 

Listen, if something makes you uncomfortable, you have the right to say that it does and if it is a good enough reason then maybe that person will change what they are doing, hell, maybe everyone else will agree with you. But I find this entire thing incredibly stupid. If you watch anything from Marvel and expect not to run into something referencing Hydra then you are either naive or incredibly foolish. If Hydra triggers you, if Nazism triggers you, just stay away from Marvel.

“But we should make Marvel available for everyone!”

No, we can’t make everything available for everyone. That is literally impossible. Should some Marvel content have less Nazi references in it for those triggered by it? Sure, I’m sure there is something out there for them. 

But this isn’t even the end of this experience I had on this server. I thought we ended this conversation on good terms. But I’ll never know if they were secretly reporting me to the server owner or not. The next bit is when I was given a ‘warning’ not to open my mouth again on my beliefs or I would be kicked from the server. 

It started when I saw people just saying things like “America is such shit” and “Yeah, America is such garbage” - even the Americans were saying this. Now I’m a proud American but I understand that the media is very influential, so I tried to be diplomatic in my approach. I entered by saying something like - “America definitely has its problems, that’s for sure, but so does every country - still, look how far we’ve come!”

Responses were not kind to that. They were insistent on just pointing out all the flaws in America. From apparently rampant racism, a fascist regime, terrible public education.

I once again tried to approach diplomatically. I simply said that there is racism everywhere, I don’t think I touched the fascist regime comment, and I agreed on the terrible public education comment. Which spiraled into a talk about our public education system. We all pretty much agreed that our public education system is shit… which I still don’t understand how someone can want more government when the government fucks everything they already run up. 

I’m not sure how it went from that to talking about being able to choose who to serve at your business. It’s hard to remember exactly. I just remember the whole Christian Baker thing being brought up but it turns out we were talking about two separate cases. 

They were talking about a case where a baker was contacted by a lesbian couple and that baker released their information to a hate website, later they sued the baker and won. Which - yeah, that baker deserved to be milked for every last dime. 

But I was talking about a baker that was contacted by a gay couple to make a ‘gay cake’ - this baker said no because it was against his religion, and even told them that he doesn’t make Halloween or Anti-American cakes but he’d happily make them other desserts. But they still sued him and originally the gay couple won but it was taken to the Supreme Court and the baker won the suit. I think it’s a good thing the baker won that case. 

No one should be able to tell you who you should or should not serve. If a gay baker is contacted by a homophobic person and is asked to make an anti-LGBTQ+ cake, they should have every right to say “no, I will not.” in the same way a Christian baker should have every right not to make a ‘gay cake’ or a cake covered in penises or an anti-Christ cake. 

Do I think it’s dumb not to make a cake for someone just because it’s gay? Yes. Take the business. In the same way I think if a gay person turns down someone just for being straight it’s dumb. But that is their right. 

But apparently because this is how I believe, I have borderline Nazi ideology and was told that if I didn’t keep my mouth shut when they spout off about politics, I would be kicked from the server. The message I received was laughable at best. All about making a ‘safe-space’ for members of the fandom from all ages, genders and orientations. 

How impressionable young people are around (a few sentences ago it was children - which, there are no children in this server, teenagers, they are teenagers) and that it may influence their minds and opinions in the future - as if their spouting off about how much they hate America and all of their political opinions won’t? The hypocrites. 

Then came the point in the message where I was basically called a Nazi. Which… really? I’m autistic, non-binary, lesbian, with several disabilities. The Nazis would have put me in the front of the line to be executed. The gall these people have to think that I could ever agree with Nazis or Nazism. I’ve been to the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. I’ve watched unfiltered footage from WWII of the Concentration Camps and what they did to people like me. It’s disturbing to me how ignorant these people are of what Nazism actually is but mostly it’s sad because of how intolerant they are of anything but their own point of view.

The final bit of the message was about how I had treated people flippantly despite how they expressed their discomfort. Again - the gall of these fucking people. Not one person ever fucking said they were uncomfortable when we were talking. I would have stopped talking about politics immediately if one person spoke up. They just kept talking, kept responding to my messages, but instead they went and tattled on me to the server owner. 

So, instead of staying in a server where I was told to just sit down and shut up, I messaged the owner back and told them exactly what I just told all of you. I also told them that they are exactly what is wrong with everyone today, why everyone is so divided and why no one talks to each other anymore. That going through life being unable to hear opposing opinions when they don’t do you any harm is a sad way to live. That it did make me sad that they had just assumed the worst in me because I did enjoy my time there, I even spent a solid month editing a photo as a Christmas gift to the server.

I apologized for making anyone uncomfortable but also told them that no one ever said anything. Then told them I won’t apologize for anything else and that I wouldn’t bother sticking around. Why would I? Everyone had been secretly talking about me it seems. No one had the same opinions as me and no one wanted to hear them. What was the point? So I just left the server. 

Being autistic makes it so hard to understand social queues in real life, doing so online is pretty much impossible unless you use emojis that have certain connotations linked to them. I generally have to take people at face value of what they are saying. If no one says that they are uncomfortable - I assume they aren’t. If no one tells me that I’m breaking a rule or doing something wrong, why would I assume differently? Mostly though it hurt me that they all just sat there and decided that I was pretty much a Nazi when I’d been nothing but nice to them. I thought we were becoming friends, some of us anyway. 

It just proves that once more, the crowd of ‘tolerance’ is the least tolerable. Now I have no Agents of Shield server and I miss my almost friends. 

[simonalkenmayer]

There is only ONE way to peacefully coexist with people wearing a swastika, and that is if you're in a time and place that has never known Nazis, and so it's just a geometric symbol to them. Unfortunately, this will probably require either time travel or an incredibly long lifespan.

I have one of those.

And I still don’t coexist with Nazis.

I eat them whenever possible, as a matter of fact. Have been since the Silver Shirts. Look it up, if you’re keen. Knew it was all going downhill as soon as the eugenics movement began. Eradicating or sterilizing one group of the population is how the Jewish exiles and the witch trials began. And funnily enough, both of those movements also coincided with religious movements within the dominant cultures.

In the case of the late Victorian/turn of the century eugenics movement, it was Spiritualism. You had this renewed interest in science and applying science to every aspect of life without regard for experience, quality of life, human rights and so on, hand in hand with the idea that people don’t really die. Prior to that the religious movement often directly informed the bigotry, for example, with the Jewish exiles, we had renewed fervor for Catholicism, caused by plague and famine, and it was the particular breed of Catholicism that was fire and brimstone. But in the case of Spiritualism, it was a far more toxic arrangement that in my opinion led to far more devastating and far reaching difficulties we still see today.

When one major group, composed of leaders, the wealthy, major writers and social figures, suggests that there are levels of value to humans, applies these levels and suggests doing dire things to the people in them AT THE SAME TIME as another group, overlapping the first, claims that no one really does, and in fact they can be communicated with and reasoned with even after their demises...you have a built in cultural justification. I’m not saying the “scientists” who took Darwinism to such an extreme believed in Spiritualism. What I’m saying is that there was a large scale cultural conversation taking place publicly, and that exposure to it allowed many people to feel better about their reprehensible behavior. Hitler was famously obsessed with the occult and Spiritualism. Many people say he was Christian and used Christianity as his justification for persecuting the Jews, but it wasn’t Catholicism, or Christianity in the classic sense. It was a pseudo-faith, dipped in ridiculous mysticism, pretended sciences, folklore, and of course, the overarching idea that people aren’t really dead when they die, so of course it’s all fine. The deities sort it out.

Look at today. We have a resurgence of ethical bankruptcy. What has gone hand in hand with it? A cultural emphasis on greed, a sudden expansion of evangelical ultra-conservative ideals catering to the white and poor, all spearheaded by a party and a president willing to use the name of god and invoke the mythology of class to justify their actions. Voila! The reappearance of Nazis who are unabashed.

Every time, in the course of human history, that marginalized groups are mistreated or expelled from the main culture, you will find three things: an economic impetus, often caused by the very people in power; a religious or philosophical (or in the case of eugenics, a pseudoscientific) justification in the form of a movement; and people willing to wear a label and be vocal about their ridiculous beliefs, who shout loud enough to make the idea seem common, normal, attractive.

Every time. Without fail. Civil War? A massive shift in the economy from farms to resource mining and westward expansion, the beginnings of Spiritualism, religious conservatives unique to one regional area...and the Klan. The Heigotnauts. The Forst Nations. The Irish. It does not fail. It’s always happening. Overlapping each successive wave.

If you have a long life and/or a time machine, such patterns are obvious and avoidable. They may even be preventable, if you’re willing to eat the offenders.

[egal-aboosta]

The Promised Post

Generally, on tumblr I lean towards giving people answers about each movement’s standards because these are functional. I’m not a rabbi, and I think that jumblr gives a little too much benefit of the doubt to random people like me being able to decide what their Judaism should look like. However, I said I’d write something about my opinions on how patrilineality is handled in the Jewish community since I’m modding @ask-jumblr where issues around patrilineality are coming up.

Just a reminder that I’m not a rabbi, I’m also not on a synagogue’s ritual committee, etc. so outside this modding (where I try to limit its influence anyways), my opinion has no real world effects except perhaps (?) my ability to support people I care about who are struggling with their identity. And if you aren’t looking for friendship and support, now you’ve got something to hold me to if I start my own minyan where I alone get to make the rules?? Never seen a Jewish organization work that way, but there are always firsts??

For some reference:

I tend to hang with Reform and Conservative communities but try not to limit myself (when there are options)

All sides of my family have been Jewish since as long as anyone can remember

My family’s Ashkenazi, and I grew up in predominantly Ashkenazi communities

---

For me, there are two ways you can be Jewish: being part of the Jewish ‘tribe’ and being ‘part of the Jewish covenant.’ I could have just as easily used ‘family’ or ‘people’ in place of tribe, but for this post I’m going to use the word ‘tribe*.’ 

*I’m switching from ‘family’ to ‘tribe’ because last time I made this post (which I can’t find) someone gave a good reason (that I can’t remember) about why ‘family’ wasn’t the best term. Now I’m trying again.

To me, someone’s a part of the Jewish ‘tribe’ if:

They consider themselves Jewish, they don’t consider themselves part of another religion, and any of their “parents” are Jewish. This can be birth parents, adopted parents, foster parents, aunt who you informally lived with a bunch because you’re birth parents weren’t great, etc. It gets a little weird for me if the Jewish parent wasn’t a birth parent nor did they raise you for at least a good chunk of your life, but I don’t know you. Rock on. I shouldn’t be judging and welcome to the fam!

They don’t consider themselves Jewish, but their birth parents are Jewish. If you ain’t happy about this, then I’m probably not either...sorry.

They married someone Jewish, are doing something Jewy beyond supporting their partner (supporting their kid’s Judaism counts at least a little), and don’t consider themselves part of another religion. If you accidentally realized you’re doing this and are a little freaked out, we might be able to negotiate on this one.

You converted through pretty much any movement.** A (likely) belated Mazel tov & welcome to the fam! If you were adopted and committing was a decision you made and 13 and regretted, then I’m really sorry. I too regret decisions I made at 13. I won’t be offended if you disown me, but unfortunately you’re still on the family tree.

**Your friend counting you as an honorary Jew doesn’t count. Neither does Jews for Jesus. I get nervous about Humanistic Judaism’s adoption because I don’t know how much they educate on Jewish peoplehood before making things official. But if you’ve made some kind of commitment within it or have been there a while, and you know what you’re getting into, ofc. If there’s a good reason why I need to clarify further, let me know, but I try not to run around Jewish identity-policing anyone

To me, someone’s part of the Jewish covenant if:

They meet the birth-parent qualifications of their traditional group. Usually this is your mom, but if it’s your dad that’s cool with me too. Welcome to the party even if you don’t want to be here.

You converted through a movement or community with the concept of a covenant. Same deal if you were 13 and now wish you could opt-out, sorry.

You’re part of the tribe, understand the concept of the covenant, and consider/ed yourself permanently bound by it. So, yeah, this counts a heck of a lot of patrilineal Jews on tumblr. And before anyone feels like I’m making a special exception for them, I actually came to this conclusion in the context of an “intermarried” couple I know that isn’t really intermarried in my mind; they've never had a mikvah and I think it’s been a long time since [spouse] needed one.

Neither being part of the ‘tribe’ nor being part of the ‘covenant’ means I automatically think you’re right, nor does it mean I automatically think you get to define my Judaism. Judaism doesn’t really work that way, and I’d be dizzy if I tried to let it.

---

If you’re wondering why I don’t have one definition of Jewishness, here’s one of many articles worth reading about the complexity of Jewish identity: http://jewishvaluescenter.org/jvoblog/identity?fbclid=IwAR1h58S3FsOlSQVIBvfzYsWAldKsV_J9PAKPdep0H0jHnNhARxm0rJgFJ2Q

And if my opinion upsets you, then I’d like to remind you that (1) I’m still out here listening [send me a message!], and that (2) I don’t have that much power. Over the course of my time on jumblr, I’ve had to make sure my voice isn’t taken too seriously, and I keep trying to limit what authority it’s given. Hence the rarity of mod comments on @ask-jumblr, and quieting down of @jewish-education (which I started to be experience/resource/idea sharing for pre-Bar Mitzvah Sunday/synagogue-school teachers and parents, but not being experienced with jumblring quickly spun away). I hope that in knowing my opinion, all y’all will better be able to help me mod without excessively controlling the conversation. 

[anarchistsuggestion]

hey, vaccinate your kids you jerks!!!

thanks for coming to my essay! now that i have your attention, i think we should stop talking about anti-vaxxers like theyre all backwards hyper-religious dumbasses. like, im frustrated too, and i agree that "personal/religious reasons" should not allow someone to keep their kids unvaccinated. furthermore, as an autistic person, i despise the myth that vaccines cause autism. i especially hate that it scares people into avoiding vaccines, because theres nothing wrong with me.

but ridiculing these people will only make the problem worse, and here's why: i think that a lot of anti-vaxxers and their communities are used to feeling like the most important aspects of their cultural identities are universally mocked or demonised (im not qualified to say whether these feelings reflect reality in every case, but either way im just talking about feelings, ie, what people think we believe about their culture). for instance, my only knowledge of amish people comes from jokes ive seen others make about them. yes, none of these jokes were very serious, and its easy for me to laugh at them because im not amish, but despite my low empathy i can understand that it just feels bad to hear a whole bunch of jokes about something important to you. i'll get back to this point in a moment.

anyway, i bring up the amish because in 2014, there were measles outbreaks in some amish communities in Ohio. and i think that a lot of the people who dont vaccinate their kids are used to being ridiculed for their "weird" or "new age" or "hyper-religious" or "unchristian" lifestyles, so they just see our concern as more of that mockery. we all sound the same to them, and cant you see why?

"ughh all these people ignoring science and being stubborn about vaccines because their church said--" you sound like one of those atheists. if you cant say anything productive, please stay out of the discussion. why do you act like ridiculing people will change their minds? we should be reaching out, instead.

we need to make the effort to approach anti-vaxxers in a way that distinguishes us from those who only converse with them to mock them.

i want more people to understand that the best way to change someone's mind when they're defensive is by listening. you need to be willing to accept whatever they might rant about, and respect that, even if their fears seem ridiculous, even if their fears are rooted in ableism, their fears still terrify them. thats why theyre called fears. you can validate someone's feelings of anxiety and confusion without validating their bigotry, and you must be willing to accept that this is work. this is difficult. it's much, much harder than yelling your opinions. it's exhausting, and sometimes it doesn't even pay off. sometimes you just can't convince somebody, and you have to be able to accept that.

if this seems too hard for you, i have good news: you do not have to do it. this kind of thing is not for everyone, and it's okay if you just don't want to. this doesn't have to be your responsibility.

i only ask that you stop making things worse by (performatively, in the case of yall who arent in danger of dying/losing a loved one to a preventable disease) mocking anti-vaxxers, because we are the ones who need something from them. we are asking them to face their fears (which were sometimes instilled in them very early in their childhood) for the good of humanity. i don't know about all of you, but i'd be hesitant at best to face even my third worst fear (spiders) for the sake of strangers who regularly mock my culture and heritage, and i know for a fact that most spiders cannot harm me!

this is natural. this is human. it is easy to dismiss things you dont understand, and it's even easier to dismiss them when all the scientific evidence agrees with you. however, your evidence does not make these people's experiences and fears less real for them. it does not lessen the effect their fear has on their choices. knowing that a tarantula won't hurt me if i follow certain guidelines will not stop me from shaking and having a breakdown if i think too hard about touching one. knowing that nothing bad would happen doesn't motivate me to go over to the science building at my college and ask to hold their fucking tarantula.

there are no shortcuts here. if we want anti-vaxxers to accept vaccines and stop putting so much effort towards keeping their children unvaccinated, we have to convince them that they don't need to be afraid of vaccines. we need to actually address their concerns. telling them their fears are ridiculous is just not convincing no matter how much scientific evidence you have. this discussion has become too performative. people just tell anti-vaxxers to vaccinate their kids, and they dont bother to address the fear that motivates their opponents. they don't care that they're asking people to trust a yelling internet stranger with their child's health.

it is inconsiderate to demand things from people without stopping to think about what you're asking for. please think about it from their point of view. if vaccines were dangerous, and they vaccinated their kids, then anything bad that happened to their kids due to the vaccines would be their responsibility. and remember, these people have not been given a convincing reason to believe vaccines are harmless. okay? they do not want to be at fault for their children getting hurt. yes, they are wrong. yes, they are frustrating. yes, they are endangering immunocompromised people like my dad, but there is a huge difference between being malicious and being misguided. please do not treat them like they set out to hurt you.

also? stop telling them to care about other people when you don't care enough about them to respect that they're doing their best with the resources they have. stop saying "i dont know how to explain to you that you should care about other people" when you really just want them to magically stop being scared. maybe you say it out of genuine frustration and bewilderment, but when everyone is saying it, it comes across like a smug 'gotcha!' phrase that excuses you from spending more energy on the debate. you can just say youre tired and stop.

i am trying to explain to you that you should care that these people have felt scammed/hurt by the medical industry enough times that they feel justified in risking the health of their whole family (assuming they even think vaccines work). you should care that theyve never been given a convincing reason to trust remedies promoted by rich strangers who make claims that sound too good to be true. the government has promoted harmful things to underprivileged people before, like milk (it took me a half hour to sift through unrelated stuff about soy milk to confirm this, so i'll go ahead and link my source). it is logical to mistrust an industry that operates for the profit of people youve never met. not everyone trusts the FDA to keep the pharmaceutical industry in check, and it's actually pretty smart to rely on direct accounts from people you know personally when you aren't sure how well something actually works, and you dont trust the ones selling it to you.

with that in mind, talking to people is probably the best way to tackle this issue, but many of you haven't bothered to compile introductory information about vaccines. you havent bothered to present these resources in a way that doesn't ridicule people who are scared. i am trying to explain to you that you shouldn't debate with people if you won't treat them like humans. i am trying to explain to you that "you dont actually care about others" is a hurtful and manipulative sentiment, and when you say it to people who are trying their best, you become part of the problem. you reinforce their mistrust. i am trying to explain to you that trusting doctors doesnt make you morally superior.

put yourself in their shoes for a moment. imagine that someone comes up to you and makes it clear that they think the choices you've made as a parent are ridiculous. they make claims about your child without offering proof, or the only proof they offer also mocks you and people like you (or they just tell you to "google it"). furthermore, they tell you that unless you give in, something bad will happen to their own children, and it will be your fault.

this is manipulative. even if you are correct, it is manipulative. demanding that someone treat their child in a way that they consider harmful is just ridiculous and i don't know why you expect people to listen to you. do you expect this to be easy? do you honestly believe that if someone isn't converted within minutes, they're just being stubborn? do you think these people know the truth, and only persist out of spite?

these questions are necessary, because many of you talk about anti-vaxxers as though the answer is 'yes.' there is a difference between being correct and treating people right. please be more aware of that line in the future, and do your best not to cross it.

oh, and by the way, if i see any of you using this year's measles outbreaks as an excuse to be hateful towards jewish people, i will block and report you. antivaxxers usually arent malicious, and if you perceive orthodox jewish antivaxxers as being worse than other antivaxxers, you need to rethink your beliefs. they arent rejecting vaccines just to hurt you. maybe theyre tired of being demonised and blamed for everything from climate change to unemployment to dead kids*, and theyre unwilling to trust random people with something as important as the health of their children when a lot of us have never bothered to listen to their struggles. (* ive seen a whole lot of people saying things that border on blood libel without quite involving blood during these discussions, so can we all agree to be careful not to do anything that resembles that shit now that ive provided a handy link about what it is? thanks)

lastly, all of this criticism of anti-anti-vaxxers is very easy for me to say because i have less of a personal stake in the issue. i know it must hurt in a way i can't currently understand to lose someone to a preventable disease. if i have made anyone feel dismissed or invalidated in this essay post, i'm sorry for doing so, and i want to make it clear that it is okay if you hate anti-vaxxers. i know their fear has hurt you, and i wouldn't ask you to pretend otherwise. i dont want to make any of you feel like you shouldn't talk about your experiences and fears. i'm just asking that, before you hit the post button, you read through your post and edit out anything manipulative or guilt-trippy. your contributions to this conversation are valuable, and i want the people youre trying to convince to be able to read them without feeling like they have to defend themselves instead of listening to you. the culture around this debate has become almost hostile, and while we dont all need to work directly with anti-vaxxers to make it better, we do all need to agree to stop making it worse.

[jewishconvertthings]

hey i’m sorry if this is a controversial question but i haven’t seen anybody talk about this. i have wanted to convert for years and i’m finally in a place where i can start taking steps to convert. but i was wondering if i would be turned down for being non zionist and criticizing the state of israel. i don’t want to have antagonization with the rabbi, but i’m afraid they might lash out at me or kick me out when the subject inevitably comes up.

Hi anon, 

Yep, I generally have a rule that I will just delete questions about Israel (regardless of the perspective of the person) because I don’t want I/P discourse on this blog. 

However, this is a valid question and it’s been asked respectfully, and so I will answer it as neutrally as possible, once. I’m going to preface this answer by saying that it is based my own experiences in Jewish community and intra-community discourse, despite my effort to keep my opinions out of it. Other people’s mileage may vary. 

———–

So it really depends on what you mean by “non-Zionist,” how you are criticizing Israel, and what community you seek to be a part of. 

First of all, what do you mean by non-Zionist? Here is a great summary post of what people actually mean when they describe themselves as Zionist/anti-Zionist. In general, however, I tend to agree with the folks who are uncomfortable with non-Jews using either term to describe themselves, since both have been weaponized against the whole Jewish community in various ways. So you may want to clarify and re-articulate how you approach the issue for that reason alone, and then revisit how you personally identify later, if you do end up converting. 

It also depends on how you go about criticizing Israel and what you mean by that. Here is a good post to check through and see if you are inadvertently using antisemitic tropes. 

As for which community you want to join - it really depends on the community and the rabbi. There are some Jewish communities that are a lot more ambivalent or straight-up opposed to Israel in its current iteration. On the liberal side, that could be for reasons related to human rights concerns and in particular, aligning themselves with the Palestinian cause. On the far right, you’re going to get some communities that do not think we should be living in Israel until Moshiach arrives (but ultimately are Zionist when that day comes.) 

Most moderate communities, however, are pretty staunchly in favor of Medinat Israel existing, but individual opinions vary greatly beyond that. Some individuals are horrified by the current government and some support it. Some are pro-settler and some are against the settler movement. Some are just concerned about the family that they have living there. It gets very nuanced and requires a high level of knowledge and sensitivity to engage with, and people often avoid it in conversation for this reason. 

Personally, if you are comfortable with them as a branch in general, I’d recommend going the Reconstructionist route if you do decide to pursue this. They are the ones who make the most room for anti-Israel opinions and I actually personally know two well-respected Reconstructionist rabbinic students who are proudly and vocally anti-Israel. 

As for other movements? Some will engage you on the topic and just make sure you’re not antisemitic or converting to prove a point or to give your advocacy (if you engage in it) more weight. Some will be very leery of you, but ultimately go ahead with the conversion after making sure of the same. Some won’t do it at all, seeing it as a lack of loyalty to the Jewish people and antisemitic unto itself. However, depending on what you actually mean and what your actual opinions are, you may find that your sponsoring rabbi actually agrees with you!

Questions you will want to be able to answer for yourself (don’t feel like you have to answer questions from anyone else who’s not your rabbi or beit din, honestly): 

Am I converting for the right (i.e. - non-political in this case) reasons? 

Have I thoroughly explored the antisemitism I’ve absorbed from society and made sure to purge it from my opinions on this topic? 

Where does my information come from? Am I using only sources that are biased in the direction of my existing opinion? Am I willing to fully explore the other sides’ rationales to make sure I have answers at least for myself as to why I disagree? 

Am I willing to sever ties with friends and people in my activist communities who are antisemitic? If not, how am I going to navigate being Jewish in these spaces? 

How do I relate to loyalty to the Jewish people and Jewish identity, apart from Israel? 

How do I relate to the many traditions that are rooted in the land of Israel and/or the diasporic Jewish dream of returning to it? 

Definitely feel free to approach a rabbi prior to having any answers to all but the first two, and even if those answers are shaky or need further examination. Do your homework on the congregation and the rabbi to make sure you have an idea of what you’re getting into before you go, and regardless of how much you’ve been able to discover ahead of time, definitely bring up the topic in a non-antagonistic way. 

Do not expect an outright rejection, particularly from more liberal rabbis, but do expect to be asked to really think through your opinion and make sure that you are speaking from a place of genuineness, love for klal yisroel, and basing your opinion on facts. If you’re doing all that and find the right rabbi, you should be fine. 

And one final point/recommendation? Go into this with an open mind. I came into this expecting to fully and solidly come down on one side and ultimately came to an opinion that was much more nuanced, tentative, and basically the opposite of what I’d expected. You may find that your opinion changes, doesn’t change, or that it only grows stronger. I wish you the very best in your exploration!

[imsorry12345-blog]

My Apology

I am writing this as a former SJP member who is now coming forward about their experience with the organization and hoping for a chance at redemption.

My story begins at a college in the United States. I was beginning school in a new city and longed for a sense of belonging and purpose. During my first year at university, I coincidentally fell into a group of friends who were active in SJP. I was uninformed at the time and decided to attend events with them, but unfortunately, was quickly misled down the wrong path. As a young, impressionable college student I didn’t think about the implications of my actions or to even consider any other stance but my own. This was primarily because the SJP had villainized not only the pro-Israeli organizations on campus, but any individual who considered the country as a sanctuary. The Jewish population were constantly being dehumanized by this organization and anyone who supported Israel was automatically irrelevant and not worth speaking to. Because of this, I never truly had a conversation with anyone had differing opinions than the SJP organization I was apart of. After a year of membership with the organization I found myself more close minded than I had ever been and filled with hatred and anger, which I now understand is misdirected and unwarranted. For this, I would like to apologize.

After graduating, I had the chance to visit Israel and actually speak to Israeli citizens about their experiences. We stayed in Jerusalem, but we had an Israeli tour guide who spoke english and helped us get around to different areas and was very knowledgable about all the historical sites. While we were there, the Jerusalem festival of light was happening and I was privileged enough to get to experience this and gain an understanding of Israeli history and culture. We visited the Wailing Wall and although we were not allowed in, our tour guide was very informative. I truly gained empathy for the people of Israel during this trip.

 The kindness I experienced from the Israeli people was juxtaposed to what I had been misled to believe from members of the SJP organization. I came to realize that Israel was not built on hate and theft as I was led to believe, but from fear and a yearning for community which was robbed from the Jewish population for many years. After returning, I had the opportunity to learn from American-born individuals of the Jewish faith about what Israel meant to them.  I was dissociated from the BDS community at this point and was able to have an open minded discussion. They opened up about her birthright trip and humanized many of the issues I had nonchalantly brushed to the side before. I also participate in interfaith activities with our local synagogue and had the opportunity to speak with some elderly members of the community, but I consider them more acquaintances than friends. For them, it had similar implications of community and family that Israeli-born citizens explained to me, but it was also a symbol of culture from them. One of my now close friends explained how culture was stripped from many Jewish communities, and Israel gives them something to tie them back to their roots. As someone who has roots outside the US, this resonated with me and I realized the selfish nature of my opinions. Why should I be able to have a cultural tie while many Israeli don’t deserve the right? It is now unfathomable to me that I identified with an organization who supported these hateful ideologies, and tried to strip people of something that I and many members of the SJP have, a sense of home.

I used to be involved with the BDS movement and would boycott certain companies and support movements at my university. I no longer support this movement because it is aggressive and preventative to creating efficient dialogue. It is also incredibly ostracizing to the people of Israel and primarily hurts the civilians living within Israel, who have done nothing wrong and are only trying to create a space for themselves when no one else would give them one. It is a form of bullying. I never truly understood the impact of what I was doing and I no longer support any movement that targets a specific group of people. Many people back this movement because of their antisemitism and I refuse to participate in a movement that furthers the oppression of a group of people. 

I now realize the error in my ways. I have made strides to undo the damage I caused during my years in college, and have distanced myself from the “friends” who caused me to get involved with the organization in the first place. I have tried to purge my social media from any anti -Israeli or anti-semitic content, and donated to an Israeli-based organization (Pitchon-Lev) in an attempt to right my previous wrongs. I regret my previous actions, and now understand that Jewish people have the right to live freely in a country where they feel safe. No one should be stripped from that right, and I’m only sorry it took me this long to realize this. I am still learning and working to create dialogue with a group I was isolated from for so long, but I hope to continue spreading peace and the true message of Israel and what it stands from throughout my social groups. I now know that Israel stands for peace and hopefully, with enough people realizing the importance of dialogue in promoting peace and understanding a resolution to this conflict can be found and these two communities can begin to repair relations and form a sense of community within each other.

[leescoresbies]

Hi! I wanted to ask you a question about Judaism. I have a distant relative who was Jewish and I've been thinking about her, and I've seen a lot of your posts on Judaism. I've been interested to learn more. As a queer woman I'm hesitant to explore religion at all but everything I've read about Judaism I've liked. my question is, where should i start if i want to see if maybe this is for me? My family didn't discuss religion much so I feel a little lost. Any advice is much appreciated. Thank you.

hi anon! thank you so much for directing this q at me it tbh makes me feel very special & great & i hope i can provide some helpful advice! i am definitely not the best person to speak to anything relating to formal conversation as i’m ethnically/culturally jewish & ergo also an idiot about a lot of it bc i picked up a lot of information & never formally did the work to learn it, but i have been trying over the last few years to change that - & i can speak to that at least! 

the most obvious answer is frankly to reach out to & visit a synagogue & experience what that feeling & community is like for yourself. there isn’t another substitute for that experience. this might mean attending a social holiday celebration at a synagogue, just dropping in & attending a service or reaching out to a rabbi & asking questions depending on your comfort level. 

however - the leap from “this is interesting” to “i’m going to listen to a bunch of people in a strange place i haven’t visited before sing in hebrew on a friday evening” is definitely a big one. it seems you may be at the point where you want to do the research to see if & what is appealing about judaism’s values. nothing is more jewish than reading other people’s philosophical perspectives & then arguing with them so - congrats - that’s step one! step two is wine drinking. you can probably combine the two. maybe eat a cookie shaped like someone’s silly hat to feel very festive. 

judaism is not a monolith. it is a cultural, ethical & spiritual set of beliefs & arguments guided by rabbanic interpretation & community connection. & it varies not only with three or four main categories of practice (orthodox, conservative, reform – again very loose here) but within these categories themselves. so there are things that will probably appeal to you about certain perspectives, and not about others. i also think its valuable to consider what about judaism you think appeals to you - the community, the spirituality/theology, the history - which may shape how you then connect with it. 

hopefully looking into some of these things will also help assuage some of your fears & maybe misconceptions about judaism & sexuality in general because - again - not a monolith. a big complicated very old living breathing system of thought & belief. if there’s something you have concerns about in relation to judaism, chances are some rabbi has written extensively on the topic, & then some other rabbi argued with them why they’re wrong, & so on forever & ever & ever & ever. because that’s how it goes. 

i know i just spilled out a whole bunch of ideas & i don’t write them out to intimidate you at all! jewishness is a lifelong journey regardless of how you find & connect with it, & these are all things i wrestle with & work on all the time - finding the right congregation has been some work for me in the last few years & i’m lucky enough now to live in a big city with some variation in how judaism is practiced, which wasn’t always the case for me. but that work has not only shored up my own ethical beliefs & ideas, but it’s connected me to a long chain of history & existence that spans space & time which can’t in my opinion be substituted for anything else. 

if anyone has any recommendations for books & reading related to being introduced to judaism, or wants to weigh in with yr own advice for this anon, that would be lovely & i’ll share the responses xo 

[jewish-education]

The raised-Christian-anon here, I live in Finland. The synagogue is a few hours drive away, which isn't too bad tbh! Thank you for the very informative and helpful answer! 😊 I'll definitely start learning more before contacting the rabbi.

That’s so cool! (Sorry, I’m a crazy American southerner who thinks she likes winter. Though we don’t get much of one.) Aaaand looking into Jewish resources in Finland, maybe I shouldn’t relocate based on my own naive interest in snow and coziness.

It looks like y’all do have a Chabad house though. I’m not sure that a relatively isolated Chabad house would take on a conversion student (nor am I sure that’s what you want) but Chabad is also very welcoming to curious non-Jews. I’d totally recommend reaching out to them as you learn about Judaism. 

I’m guessing the synagogue you mentioned is a separate community from Chabad. Especially since I found a website. Is this the one you meant? 

The website seems to reference a second synagogue. I don’t know which is closer. 

The linked synagogue references accepting some converts which is a good sign if you choose that path. Whether the rabbi does conversions is a slightly different question.

The synagogues identify as Orthodox, but there’s a huge range within Orthodoxy. Probably they’re somewhere in the spectrum of what’s called “Modern Orthodox” in the U.S. but I could be wrong in that assumption.

The communities identify as Ashkenazi, so cultures/traditions you’ll most commonly see in English-language resources should hold true (to the extent anything in Judaism is ever uniform).

If you were more interested in Reform/Progressive/Liberal Judaism, @progressivejudaism might know someone who could help you, but it’s quite possible this movement doesn’t have a presence in Finland (or anywhere in Scandinavia). 

Whenever you reach out to a particular rabbi, it’s important to remember that their way of approaching Judaism isn’t the only way. Every Jewish person thinks their 2-3 opinions are correct (if you got that bad joke, you’re well on your way to being ready to study with a rabbi in my opinion). We have no way of knowing which of us are right. And if you end up pursuing conversion you’ll get to be a part of that gorgeous mess. While liberal American Jews sometimes discount the variety of perspective and practice within Orthodoxy, I encourage you to look for diversity in these communities as you explore them. I hope to hear more about your journey and perhaps learn some more about Jewish life in Finland.

Anyone on jumblr have any experience with or contacts in the Finnish Jewish community?