#specifically the history of the American Jewish woman

[john-laurens]

The South Carolina Historical Society puts on an annual winter lecture series, and the theme this year is "Untold Stories of the American Revolution." The first lecture of the series will be "Vicious and Immoral: Homosexuality, the American Revolution, and the Trials of Robert Newburgh" presented by John G. McCurdy on February 11, 2025. This lecture speaks right to my special interests, and I'm sure many of you would be interested in attending the lecture too. You can register for this lecture and other lectures in the series here (both in-person and livestream options available). Other lectures in the series include "The Tory's Wife: A Woman and Her Family in Revolutionary Carolina," "A Promised Land: Jewish Patriots, the American Revolution, and the Birth of Religious Freedom," and "Revolutionary Blacks: Discovering the Frank Brothers, Freeborn Men of Color, Soldiers of Independence." It's certainly a great lineup of topics and speakers this year!

Surprisingly, I had never heard of John McCurdy or his works prior to this lecture announcement. It appears that his lecture will be based on his recent book of the same name. I've just started reading the book myself and have been enjoying it so far. It is interesting and refreshing to see a discussion of queer history so specifically framed in the context of the American Revolution. John McCurdy previously talked about this book at the Museum of the American Revolution, and you can watch that presentation here. He has a few other publications, including a book titled Citizen Bachelors: Manhood and the Creation of the United States. I've picked this one up as well but haven't had the chance to read it yet. I'm certainly excited to have found some new books that discuss sexuality and gender in late 18th century America.

[historicity-was-already-taken]

Allow me to enter a commentary on visual language into the conversation. This is the movie poster for the notorious 1940 Nazi propaganda film, Jud Susse (or Suss, the Jew):

i want more nuance to be entered into the discussion of the green girl sorority and how differently cynthia plays elphaba in comparison to those who came before her because while a lot of people are rightfully like "why was elphaba not black from the beginning" and celebrating that she is now being played by a black woman, i think we need to be careful in just writing off all the elphabas of the past as Random White Girls when the role was championed (and often followed/succeeded) by a jewish woman

the pop culture archetype of the Wicked Witch has deep roots in antisemitism stretching faaaar far back. there is a level of reclamation happening in casting idina menzel, a jewish woman, to play the Misunderstood and Maligned young girl who is branded as exactly that. and stage!Elphaba is also written and acted with jewish stereotypes in mind--she is loud, aggressive, no-nonsense, blunt. she is quick to advocate for herself and shut down the discrimination she faces. all of this is very intentional! her personality is abrasive from years of abuse, and that makes propagandizing her easy. this is literally the thesis statement of the musical--it's not about aptitude, it's the way you're viewed.

cynthia's performance of elphaba is fucking INSPIRED despite going in a completely different direction. she's much more reserved, analytical, one of her key character traits is how well she can read people (see her calling out Galinda as insecure/putting on airs in their first scene together, clocking that Fiyero is using his party guy persona as a shield for his own depression) elphaba's attempts to blend in and make herself smaller all fail simply because of her existence, if not that then because she feels empathy so strongly she often struggles to hold back from acting, protecting.

personality wise, though, cynthia's elphaba is very quiet and closed-off, not at all the bullet-to-the-face that she is in the stage show, and... she still gets propagandized and maligned. though this seems to contradict the other interpretation, it tells of the other end of the spectrum of propaganda, one that black women watching (and many, MANY other marginalized folks) are sure to identify with--it does not matter how "nice," how reserved, how small a black woman makes herself. a racist society will still scrutinize her every action for a way to parse ill intent from it, brand her as an angry black woman who is dangerous and wicked, and write off any humanity she has in the process.

these two very different interpretations tell of the lie of assimilation. the fact of the matter is, when you are marginalized, there is no way to sand down your edges enough to make the people oppressing you "accept" you. that is why wicked is a tragedy at its core. whether loud and aggressive or quiet and unimposing, there is nothing elphaba could have done to make the people of Oz see her as anything other than a scapegoat to blame all their problems on.

so while i definitely appreciate that people are excited for black girl era elphaba, i would encourage us all to still show appreciation for what came before--that was not white girl era elphaba. that was jewish girl era elphaba. two houses, both alike in dignity, two stories both worth being told.

[hero-israel]

More receipts of Pro Palestine being racist:

https://x.com/afrosabi/status/1824067188510130301 (Pro Pal accusing Black and Jewish people of making up the anti-Black history of the watermelon in America to discredit Palestine)

https://x.com/Sarahmango23/status/1823472916169707549 (Pro Pals accusing Black people of being racist for saying 'watermelon people', despite the fact that Black people told them from the beginning the symbol was racist against Black people and Pro Pals had told them to fuck off)

https://x.com/mistergeezy/status/1823828863220375622 (Another Arab being racist)

https://x.com/PettyLupone/status/1823777446594011530 (Targeting Black women specifically about "supporting genocide")

https://x.com/Datelinefam/status/1824046702493311347 (Black woman clapping back on an Arab thinking it's on Black women to fix I/P)

https://x.com/zackoryk/status/1823561655613067712 (Another Black woman clapping back on Pro Pal racism)

https://x.com/SashaBeauIoux/status/1823700014746546201 (Gay Black man calling out Pro Pals for demanding Black people give up their vote "for Palestine")

Bonus receipt:

https://x.com/rockera_bella/status/1823847606738673738 (Receipts on Arab Americans being reliable Republican voters despite them pretending to be Democrats)

Any member of Pro Palestine that's pretending this is a "psyop" (because of course they're already saying it's "the Jews" trying to sow discord), I can do this all day. 10 months worth of receipts if they want to go hard.

Pro Palestine is racist.

In 2000, 72% of Arab-Americans in Michigan voted Republican. Trump scrambled things (apparently not enough since clearly many are fine undermining Harris) but the concept of "shared struggle" is a complete lie from the start.

While I'm here, for over a century the U.S. legally categorized Arab-Americans as white. A few months ago Joe Biden invented the new census category of "Middle Eastern" - to include them and also to include Israelis. Couple that with Trump adding coverage of Jews as an ethnic group under the Civil Rights Act, and we can fairly state that there has never been a time in modern American history where by legal stricture Jewish Americans were "white" and at the same time Arab Americans were "people of color" or something like that. We have always been grouped the same as them; the strident colorist categorization is based purely on hate.

[enlitment]

Top 5 underappreciated historical figures!

Thanks for the ask! This one was super fun, but also super difficult to answer. I've purposefully avoided mentioning the ladies of the French Revolution, since I have another question specifically about them lined up.

With that being said, in no particular order:

Fulvia

Anyone in the classics circle likely knows much more about her than I do, but I'm so glad I've discovered her through Tumblr! All of the things I've learned about her so far have been so interesting. It's incredible to see how much political (and military) power a Roman woman was able to yield despite living in a deeply patriarchal society.

(also, the part of me that loves drama really appreciates the story about her stabbing Cicero's tongue with hairpins after the proscriptions and Octavian's atrocious poem about her)

2. Émilie du Châtelet

Also hardly a surprise for anyone who's been following me for a while. Again, the fact that I've only relatively recently found out that there was a female mathematician and physicist in the fist half of the 18th century with such significant contributions to the field makes me almost feel as if I've been lied to.

She is special to me both because she was incredibly smart (she was able to understand Newton like few other people in her time and she spoke so many languages!) but there's also something about her writing that makes her feel deeply human and relatable. I've read some of her texts, and not only are they written in a beautiful prose but they're also incredibly moving. Her view on how to achieve happiness in life is one of the best I've ever came across, and her arguments for the education of women always make me feel so emotional...

...when she says that it was only after she realised that the circle of (male) French intellectuals accepted her among themselves and treated her as equal that she realised she too "might be a thinking creature"... I don't know, there's something about it that always gets to me.

Okay, time to introduce some male historical figures as well! This one is a residue from the time when I was really into the American Revolution.

3. Peter Stephen Du Ponceau

He was probably the only one in Baron von Steuben's original group that was able to speak decent English when they first arrived in the US to join the revolutionary war, which a) makes him quite important b) is kind of funny to think about.

But what I especially like about him is that he was a talented linguist who seemed to have genuine respect for other cultures, which let's face it, was quite rare in his times. While taking part in the American Revolutionary War, he recorded and studied the languages of Native American People. How cool is that?

(He was also potentially queer and I do have a soft spot for queer history)

Okay, guess should bring up someone interesting from Czech history as well. I fully confess that my own country's history is not necessarily my favourite area of study, but for her, I'll always make an exception:

4. Milena Jesenská

Probably most well known as Kafka's (kind of?) girlfriend/pen pal, but there is so much more to her story!

She was a writer and a journalist during the first half of the 20th century. She was really talented and soon made a reputation for herself, which let's face it, wasn't an easy thing to do for women in her time.

After Czechia became occupied by Nazi Germany, she joined the resistance movement and helped Jewish families to escape. She was later transported to a concentration camp, where she worked as a nurse and was said to have been "a moral support for other prisoners". She unfortunately died there when she was only 47. Still, what a life!

5. John Polidori

He's not necessarily my number one favourite person but I'd argue he is one of the most unappreciated figures. Vampires in fiction are massively popular but he rarely gets credited as one of its first authors. (Also the theory that Lord Ruthven, the charismatic, immoral aristocrat featured in The Vampyre is heavily based off on Lord Byron is not only entirely plausible but also quite funny).

Whenever I read something about the Geneva Squad, I always end up feeling kind of bad for him. As a foreigner, someone who was of a lower social status and - since he technically came along as Byron's personal physician - a paid employee, it just seems to me like he was never actually fully part of the group. Maybe I'm wrong, but to me, he felt kind of like a perpetual outsider. Lord Byron also got the credit for writing The Vampyre that should have gone to Polidori.

He was of course far from a perfect saint, with his drug and gambling addiction, but I still can't help but feel that he deserved better.

[historicity-was-already-taken]

Welcome New Followers Post xiv

gonna make this bullet points of Things to Know because deadlines, but hi! welcome!

-this is not a jewish identity or a jumblr blog. i am a jewish person and a holocaust historian, so my content often overlaps with those realms of tumblr

-this is first and foremost a public history blog. public history and public historians do history for the public. we're passionate about transmitting complex historical topics from the academe to the people, and we're in constant (one-sided lmao) conversation with entities such as: film writers and producers, textbook writers, government bodies, journalists, etc regarding the construction of public memory, and the responsibilities that entails

-you don't have to ask if something is ok to reblog. I appreciate the thought, but unless I turn off reblogs or specifically ask people not to engage in certain ways, you're fine, that said:

-I do see and read all tags, replies, and rbs. I consider them public, and I often respond to them as new posts. If you want to engage with me and don't want others to see, then send me an ask which includes the words "please respond privately"

-You can should disagree with me and tell me when you think I'm wrong! Now, I won't lie, years of existing as a young-appearing hyper feminine (i like skirts and bows and sparkly shoes it is what it is) female, Jewish historian have made me defensive and bitey af, and I often misread neutral tones as "coming for me" tones and respond in kind. I apologize for when/if that happens to you, and I assure that, once I realize you're not coming at me in bad faith, I will feel horribly guilty.

-There is a learning curve here. I don't have any desire to gatekeep my blog (it's the opposite tbh), but I do use high level terms which can have multiple meanings in different contexts. I actively try to avoid using impenetrable academic jargon in this space, but sometimes that jargon is the only appropriate phrasing available. In those cases, I urge you to do some research and poke around and then, if you still don't understand what I mean, DM me.

-I am a white, American woman. I am actively anti-racist, and anti-bigotry in general, but there will be times when I do or say something clueless or privileged. If you see that and you have the energy, please tell me! I want this blog to be a welcome place for all,* and I appreciate call-outs as an opportunity for (un)learning.

-Building on that, this is an anti-bigotry space which I'd like people of all demographics and identities to feel comfortable engaging with.* That said, I don't play nice when some random corner of tumblr rolls up in here and barfs their shit all over my posts.

-I am a cringe millennial. I started this blog in 2011, when I was 21, had just finished college, before I'd heard back from any graduate schools, and before I had much resembling a career. I am currently 34. It's fine. But a lot of you are in your teens and 20s and are just starting on your careers, so like, please don't negatively compare yourselves to me or get self-deprecating when/if you want to contact me. We all learn and achieve at different paces and that's ok.

-My book, The Girl Bandits of the Warsaw Ghetto, will be released in Fall 2025. Trust me I will be screaming from the rooftops and you will not miss the announcements lmao.

-If I don't reply to an ask or a DM, it's not because I hate you. There are 800 reasons why I may not reply, and none of them are personal.

and finally

-I am not your Good Leftist Anti-Zionist Jew. I am not here as a rhetorical cudgel for left-wing anti-Semites who seek out Jews with politics similar to mine to then use as a weapon against other Jewish folks. Don't fucking do it.

*That does not mean that everything I post here will make you feel comfortable. History isn't supposed to make you feel comfortable. Sometimes, it can and should make you feel actively uncomfortable, because that discomfort/cognitive dissonance means you're learning (keep your cognitive dissonance temper tantrums tf away from me, tho). It does mean that I, as an individual, want you all to feel that this is a space where you are welcome to learn and ask questions.

i tried to use bullet points to keep this short, and i failed miserably. on brand.

[thevioletscout]

Did you know!

Betty Boop was based on an African American jazz singer named Esther Jones, pictured below!

Despite this, Betty Boop has been consistently portrayed as white, and Esther Jones' likeness was used without her permission. 

And if you've actually read this far and not just nodded and scrolled on, congratulations! I was lying to you, that entire thing was bunk.

Esther Jones, better known as Baby Esther or Lil Esther, was only a child when Betty Boop made her debut, her exact age is a mystery due to a lack of records. That image I showed you before? That's of a model named Olya P. for the magazine Retro Atelier in 2008. Also Olya’s not even black, she’s white and either Russian or Ukrainian.

Betty Boop was indeed visually based off a jazz singer and actress, but it was Helen Kane, a white woman. Clara Bow, another white singer, is also sometimes cited as an inspiration, but with less evidence. 

It was Helen Kane who found out her likeness was used without permission and filed a lawsuit against Max Fleischer and Fleischer Studios for it. While he would later wholeheartedly admit it, he denied the likeness as part of his testimonies. In the process, he argued that Kane had taken most of her songs and style from Baby Esther. However, according to Wikipedia it’s possible a lot of the evidence for that was fabricated in an attempt to discredit Kane.

So to be more precise, Betty Boop was based off a white woman who might have based her image off a little black girl.

Also, the topic of Betty Boop's intended race gets a little silly regardless given that she was first conceptualized as an anthropomorphic poodle. While it's not exactly unheard of for the 1930s, I don't think they were really focusing on coding her as a specific race at that moment.

The cartoon Minnie the Moocher (remember this) would even depict Betty Boop as coming from a German immigrant family. Many speculated she was even Jewish due to this as well as the Fleischer brothers and her voice actress Mae Questel both being Jewish, but Benjamin Ivry of Forward pointed out that her family's meals were not Kosher so this was unlikely. 

Now you might be thinking; okay but what's the harm in portraying Betty Boop as black? Can’t black people reclaim this one character for themselves? And honestly, I kinda agree. Personally I think Betty Boop is one of those characters that can be ANY race, not just white or black, given her ambiguous and stylized features. I love seeing black women cosplaying Betty Boop or her being portrayed as black in art.

However, the reason I bring this up is because I personally think false or misleading information does not make for good representation. Especially when it leads to situations where artists have to explain themselves for giving Betty Boop light skin when the reason cited otherwise is blatant misinformation. Though thankfully the one interaction I have had about it before posting this was very polite.

Not to mention, this kind of thing maybe not necessarily buries but distracts from the very real contributions and accomplishments of black people in Betty Boop's history.

Let's talk Cab Calloway, for example.

Cab Calloway was a singer and bandleader acclaimed for mixing jazz with vaudeville. He was the first African American to sell one million copies of a single record, and collaborated with Fleicher Studios for three animations, Minnie the Moocher, Snow White, and The Old Man of the Mountain. In these, he would perform a song, the first and last even being directly named after his music, and he was even directly rotoscoped while dancing. 

I can't find any sources for who approached who for these collaborations, but I feel its needless to say there's an inherent respect for Calloway and his work in these cartoons. For a black man in the 1930s. And they didn’t even hide it, Minnie the Moocher and The Old Man of the Mountain features live footage of Cab Calloway and his very visibly black band.

These cartoons bleed passion from both the singer and the animators. And if you’ll excuse the sidenote, I watched those cartoons as part of my research and even today his music is still absolutely enchanting. 

And Calloway was not immune to racism just because of his success either. He and a friend, Felix H. Payne Jr. were even victims of police brutality by officer William E. Todd in 1945 when they were attempting to visit Lionel Hamptom at the whites-only Pla-Mor Ballroom.

His work matters. Betty Boop was only one small part of his career, the man did a lot in his time, but he brought something truly amazing to the table.

There are real people whose accomplishments deserve to be recognized, but I feel they often get pushed aside in the efforts to make up representation that was never actually there under the false belief that there was none in the first place.

Hell, this entire thing is a discredit to the real life of Esther Jones herself!

She was a literal child who’s date of birth and especially death are unknown. She gained fame in her hometown Chicago which led to her becoming an international celebrity, touring Europe as an honored representation of African Americans alongside Josephine Hall. Then she basically retired as a teenager and disappeared from the public eye.

And what is her memory nowadays? As a sexy flapper that supposedly inspired Betty Boop’s creation.

Even knowing this was false, I had to fight back so much misinformation while making this. This photo right here? I was led to believe this was a photo of an adult Esther Jones, but it’s not! We don’t have photos of her as an adult! This is a completely different, unidentified, woman photographed by James Van Der Zee!

And quite frankly, as a white woman I feel like a jerk having to be the one to tell black people that actually no Betty Boop was based on Helen Kane, not Esther Jones.

So in conclusion, STOP MAKING SHIT UP.

[Sources:

Betty Boop - Wikipedia

Cab Calloway - Wikipedia

Baby Esther - Wikipedia

Модель Оля | BETTY BOOP Wiki | Fandom

Dizzy Dishes (1930)

Minnie the Moocher (1932)

Snow White (1933)

The Old Man of the Mountain (1933)]

[kick-a-long]

If you expect a vast ethnic cleansing in western countries that will make the racial ideology of the 1940s look kind, and you're a zionist, why don't you live in Israel already?

well first, I think that the group that will probably be targeted in whatever kind of expulsion or deportation are muslims. It's insane to me that the left doesn't see that. it's insane to me how short sighted they are when there are FAR more islamists posting videos in their own words about what they believe, ex-muslims speaking about shitty practices, muslim countries with fully horrific laws when viewed from western values, and a growing population of right wing voters who are already upset with politics generally and leftists specifically. normal, chill, awesome, muslim populations in Europe are going to pay the bill for the check that leftists are writing by aligning themselves (and thus moderate muslims) with islamist groups and countries. leftists are tethering the image of terrorists to muslims better than post 9/11 govs were able to. it's stretching a rubber band that will snap back.

second, I'm something like 7 generations American jew. I am a left leaning, history knowing, unapologetic, pragmatist interested in fixing what's broken not throwing the most long running democracy in history away over infighting, patriotic American. I love this hot mess of a place and while I don't think America is EXCEPTIONAL by it's nature, I think America has things running here as well or better than any other country on the map in terms of both stability and inalienable rights at the moment and historically. To me it's the only game in town even if it's a shitty game in the last 20 years.

literally the only thing that would make me leave is if the government stopped being democratic. Just because America is imperfect and fuck-y and racist sometimes doesn't mean it's not one of the best, most stable, places to live in the world for any type of minority. you can see it in the court system where antisemitism in colleges and work places has been prosecuted civilly and will continue to be. It is never going to be legal to fuck with jews for being jews or muslims for being muslims. that said, jews are very ingrained into America both culturally and ideologically while muslims are very separated from it. jews aren't the "other" muslims are. most jews aren't recent or even second gen citizens, while many many muslims, including rich well educated (which is primarily where our muslim community comes from) aren't. it's a grand tradition in america to fuck with recent immigrants, look how many hispanics support deporting immigrants.

While I worry for what happens to Jews after Muslims get targeted, I'm only leaving if the gov collapses and religion stops being protected.

Europe on the other hand is pretty fucking close to believing that muslims are taking over and will replace their courts with sharia law and like... idk, legalizing honor killings and outlawing free speech or some shit. most muslims in europe are refugee status, or "low value" immigrants, and they are a pretty huge minority there, compared to America where there are very few. Europe doesn't have a kind history to ethnic groups generally. they can't even handle jews, people who they share far more religious and physical similarities with and who stay out of controlling other people's shit as a rule. jews in fight about controlling our own shit.

third, I support Israel because it's doing the right thing and is the most equal state in the arab world to live, as a woman, arab, muslim, jew, druze, you name it.

It's not my backup plan.

I want Israel to be ok because Israel, by it's people, ideology, location and even in its flawed gov, IS EXCEPTIONAL. By pretty much any measure, Israel shouldn't exist on paper. Israelis have done what should be impossible by their own bridge building, smarts and hard work. I'm lucky to be jewish so I was in a good position to actually listen and learn about the history and current state of the region rather than join the pro terrorists marching through college campuses and times square.

sorry for the rant.

I believe shit globally (america +europe +everyone else vs. russia +china +iran +north korea) is about to pop off, especially with trump in office, and I don't see Europe or America allying with iran, despite their anti-israel posturing. great if it doesn't, but in the meantime it's important to spread the word that islamists are dog shit and muslims are not.

[darkmaga-returns]

https://stateofthenation.info/?p=5544

Talk about a ten-thousand ton TRUMP-launched neutron bomb…..

Posted on November 26, 2024 by State of the Nation

…to quickly disappear the millions of illegal aliens being criminally transported across all American borders by the treasonous Biden- Harris international human trafficking crime syndicate—WOW!

SOTN Editor’s Note: Folks, this is as good as it gets!  That is, if Trump really follows through on this crucial rule-of-law restoring presidential initiative.

For the uninitiated, both Justin Trudeau and Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) were deliberately installed as Canadian prime minister and Mexican president, respectively, by notorious international criminal George Soros to specifically carry out the most devastating international crime conspiracy in U.S. history—the facilitation of the long planned and highly organized invasions of illegal aliens, which then saw countless trained bolsheviks unlawfully transported to all 50 states to await future orders.

But why, really?

This is how the communist-run Democrat Party will staff their AMERICAN BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION.

In point of fact, The New World Order globalist cabal has used those two arch-enemies of the American Republic — Trudeau & AMLO to commit a whole host of crime waves against the USA.

For another example, the US-Mexican border has been completely run by the drug cartels.  Of course, there are several other dangerous international crime syndicates who are also running their operations under cover of the pervasive drug trafficking, but the fentanyl trafficking alone is now destroying communities across America.

Then there are the human trafficking rings, which include sex traffickers, slave traffickers and child traffickers among others.  There are the extremely efficient organ trafficking operations which need to get freshly harvested organs to the recipients all over this country.  Of course, the US Intel Community-directed arms traffickers are running their black ops 24/7 to arm the illegals for the American Bolshevik Revolution.  Then there are the nuclear material smuggling operations secreting illegal weapons-grade ingredients to covert nuke labs in various states such as New Mexico.

Closet communist and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum was likewise recently installed by the same NWO cabal to continue this Republic-destroying enterprise—UNTIL NOW!  Really, how does a white Jewish woman with no Mexican blood, and whose Ashkenazi grandparents were from Lithuania and Bulgaria, get to be selected the Mex prez unless the election was totally rigged for that transparent election theft?  Now closely watch her reaction to Trump’s tariff directive to understand who is pulling her strings.

[hyperpotamianarch]

Weird question, but I'm a little lost right now lol. My mom always told me her mom was raised Jewish and my mom's grandma was born Jewish. She's not at all religious and raised me atheist. I've done my best to keep kosher, study Torah, learn Hebrew, attend services or go to shul, perform mitzvot, etc in the past decade or so, and definitely thought of myself as a ba'al teshuvah.

Lately, I decided to get on a genealogy website and look into my actual ancestors. I found US census records, military draft cards, hospital death certificates, marriage licenses - extremely trustworthy, verifiable sources - going back to at least 1880 in a very clear trail. My grandma's extremely Polish maiden name came from her Polish Catholic father. Grandma's grandmother and grandfather came over from Bulgaria in the 1880s and were married in a church.

While it's cool to see my great great great grandparents' actual handwriting and know where they lived, I was completely wrong about everything I thought I knew about my family history and I feel like a complete berk. I genuinely thought I was Jewish. I wasn't trying to lie to people or misrepresent Judaism to curious gentiles or worm my way into Jewish spaces in order to proselytize. I still definitely want to continue my study and officially convert, and I'm trying to work up the courage to lay it all out in front of the local rabbi and ask what he thinks I should do. I've only gone to two Yom Kippur services and a few study sessions over Zoom, so I don't really know him or the congregation well.

I don't want to come off sounding like I intentionally lied to him or that I'm trying to get special treatment or skip steps during the conversion process. This is a genuinely jarring realization that's changed the way I think about myself and my faith. Do you have any advice for me going forward, or do you know someone who might?

To be honest, I'm... Probably not the best person to turn to on this topic. However, I can try and help.

You didn't lie to anyone, and this kind of things can happen. You can probably said you were told by your family you were Jewish but upon investigation you found out your great grandparents married in a church. Now, technically that doesn't directly point to the idea that your grandmother wasn't Jewish - she could've been a Jewish woman attempting to assimilate with general society, or have converted to Christianity (which according to Orthodox Judaism at least doesn't change her descendants' claim to Judaism.

Honestly, at this point... I think it's more a matter of having courage to talk to the Rabbi about it than it is about things of the religion. And yeah, gathering courage to talk to an authority figure you barely know is going to be hard.

I don't know if it'll be helpful, and I hope this won't hurt you, but I know a joke about people in a similar situation don't take it as me laughing at you for being where you are, but maybe it can help add levity to your eventual conversation with your congregation's rabbi. Anyway, here goes:

Three Jewish brothers found out that their mother wasn't Jewish. One was a Hareidi, Ultra Orthodox; another was more Neo-Orthodox, but tended to go with strict Halacha; and the third tended to go with more lenient Halacha. When they found out they are Goyim, the latter immediately went to eat pork before he converted - since, as he got some time to be Goy, he could at least enjoy it. The second, on the othr hand, went to eat meat from a cow that had a hole in her lungs, as up to today he went according to the Halacha that it is forbidden. The first said: "oh, now I can drink Coca Cola!"

(Hareidim tend to only trust very specific Kashrut brands. Maybe there could be a version with Orthodox, Conservative and Reform Jews, but I never heard one.)

If you still feel trepidation... you can, perhaps, turn to others on Tumblr that are better suited to that than I. I'm an Israeli Jew and I assume you are American, so there might be cultural differences. I suggest you try be open with your Rabbi, personally, but I might be missing something cultural that is different outside of Israel.

I wish you good luck in talking to your Rabbi and your conversion process!

[elumish]

There's an idea I see a lot that's basically like, it's important to humanize fascists when we write about them so people understand that regular people can be fascists and that it's not just an amorphous evil, etc.

And I always have this knee-jerk negative reaction to seeing that. And it's not because I don't want people to understand fascism or people who commit right-wing violence or whatever (literally part of my field of study), but that it always seems to sort of be prioritizing the wrong thing.

I've written about this some before on my substack, but it keeps eating at my brain and I am incapable of letting go of stuff, so here we are.

The thing about fascism and about right-wing (esp far-right) ideologies in general is that one of the core tenants of them is that there are inate hierarchies of people, and at the extremes, it's essentially that the people at the top (white cis/het Christian men, in American/European right-wing ideology) are the most human, and the people at the bottom (Black people, in a lot of American right-wing ideology) are the least human.

And we as a society have no trouble humanizing white cis/het Christian men, by whatever definition we're using of humanize. And you need to look no further than how mainstream news organizations cover politics to see that this is true--it's almost a trope at this point that they will cover the opinion of every individual Trump voter at a gas station in Ohio before they talk to anyone else. News organizations show family photos of white murderers and mugshots of Black murder victims. People care about what every sobbing white woman thinks about POC she finds scary but often don't care about getting the other side of the story.

We know that (cis/het not-disabled Christian male) white people are human, because that has basically never been in question in the history of the world (or at least the history of the U.S.), and you can write someone as human without humanizing them--because humanizing is not just about literally writing someone as human (as opposed to, say, a squid), but about showing their individuality in a way that makes them more sympathetic.

Spending your time and energy worrying about humanizing fascists is a little bit like the AP announcing recently that their style guide now says to avoid the term TERF and to focus instead on the specific objections. What you'll end up with is not objectively incorrect, but it gives the microphone to the people who least need or deserve it.

The whole goal of fascists is to dehumanize other people--so if you're so opposed to the fascist ideology, why don't you focus your attention on humanizing those people? Give us the viewpoints and intricacies and individual meaningful human lives of your Black characters, your indigenous characters, your Jewish characters, your Muslim characters, your characters of color, your queer characters, your disabled characters, your female characters.

And this isn't to say that fascists should be presented as amorphous blobs, because that's silly and meaningless. But in a story, you only have limited space and reader attention to spend on building characters out. Why do you want to spend that on the fascists?

[feministfocus]

The Inspiring Upbringing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

by Sofia Bocchino

Most Americans know the name Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court and feminist icon, but not many know how she became the influential judicial figure she will always be remembered as. Ginsburg served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1993 to 2020, and was the second woman to serve as a Supreme Court justice in U.S. history. Growing up in Brooklyn during the 1930s and 40s, she experienced severe adversity from a young age. Her older sister died from meningitis at the age of six, and her mother died from cancer just days before her high school graduation, which she was unable to attend. Ginsburg also endured WWII in her childhood, which was an especially stressful time for her family because they were Jewish. Despite this adversity, Ginsburg excelled in school, and went on to study at Cornell University on a full scholarship. During her time there, she would meet many figures who influenced her future career, including her future husband, Martin Ginsburg, a nationally prominent tax attorney, Vladimir Nabokov, professor of literature and renowned Russian author who influenced her writing, and Robert Cushman, a constitutional lawyer who inspired her to practice law. 

After graduating from Cornell, marrying Martin, having a daughter and spending two years in Oklahoma where her husband was stationed in the army, Ginsburg moved back to Massachusetts and began her legal studies at Harvard Law School. Ginsburg also became the first woman to ever serve on the editorial staff of the Harvard Law Review. However, in the midst of her studies, she had to move with her family to New York City after her husband took a job with a law firm, finishing her studies at Columbia Law School and graduating in 1959. After graduating, she struggled to find employment as a lawyer due to her gender and the fact that she was a mother. It was very rare for a woman to succeed in a law career during this time due to sexism and wage gaps. With the help of her professor from Columbia; however, Ginsburg was able to receive a clerkship under the Southern District of New York. There, she researched Swedish Civil Procedure, and her work was published in a book entitled Civil Procedure in Sweden (1965). Her experience as a clerk landed her the opportunity to work as an assistant professor at Rutgers School of Law; however, she was asked to accept a lower salary because of her husband’s well-paying job. In 1965, she gave birth to her second child. She was still working as an assistant professor and concealed her pregnancy for fear that her contract would not be renewed. 

In 1970, after receiving tenure the year prior, Ginsburg became professionally involved in gender equality after being asked to moderate a student panel in “women’s liberation.” After only a year, Ginsburg published two law review articles, led a seminar in gender discrimination, and partnered with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to draft briefs in two federal cases. Throughout the 1970s, Ginsburg was a pioneer in the field of gender equality, drafting dozens of law review articles, contributing to Supreme Court briefs on gender discrimination, and co-authoring a law-school casebook on the matter. Due to her revolutionary research and career at Rutgers, Ginsburg became founding counsel of the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project in 1972 and was hired by Columbia Law School, where she became the first tenured female faculty member. Throughout the 70s, Ginsburg argued before the Supreme Court six separate times and won five of the cases. 

In 1980, President Jimmy Carter appointed Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in Washington, D.C. Ginsburg was a very liberal judge, and became heavily involved in protecting women’s reproductive rights, specifically the right to have an abortion. In 1993 she delivered the Madison Lecture at New York University Law School, providing a critique of the reasoning behind Roe v. Wade. Ginsburg argued that the court should have issued a more limited decision, providing room for the court to provide better details, claiming it would “reduce controversy rather than fuel it.” 

In August of 1993, Ginsburg replaced Byron White on the Supreme Court after being nominated by president Bill Clinton and confirmed by the senate on a vote of 96-3. Ginsburg would continue to lead a fulfilling legacy for 27 years, some notable acts include requiring state funded schools to admit women (United States v. Virginia), creating strides towards equal pay in her dissent from the Supreme Court’s decision on the pay discrimination case (Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.), protection of pregnant women in the workplace, a key vote in queer people’s right to same-sex marriage (Obergefell v. Hodges), and a pioneer in the protection of Roe v. Wade. Even after her death, Ruth Bader Ginsburg continues to pave the way for gender equality from her past work both inside and outside of the Supreme Court. 

While women’s rights have been challenged in America, with the overturn of Roe v. Wade and the new President-elect’s decision to leave all aspects of reproductive rights up to each state, Ginsburg’s influence has been challenged. In spite of this injustice, feminists and pro-choice activists and politicians everywhere continue to advocate for reproductive rights. Now more than ever, it is crucial that politicians and activists across the country continue to advocate for reproductive rights and gender equality, as we are now entering a presidential term where those rights may be further threatened. This issue can be fought for through voting, educating yourself and others, and supporting political candidates and federal justices who will advocate for and work to re-establish reproductive rights and gender equality in law and government. Ruth Bader Ginsburg spent her whole life fighting for all encompassing women’s rights and gender equality, and as citizens who have been impacted by her work, it is expected that we carry on her legacy, especially in times of national adversity. Ruth Bader Ginsburg will be remembered in history as the first woman to make major breakthroughs in laws pertaining to women’s rights and gender equality as a tenured professor at Ivy League universities, all while raising two children. It was for those reasons and so much more that NYU law students and young people across the nation granted her the title of the “Notorious RBG.”

[xxxg0ryygurlll13xxx]

so i started watching real housewives of Potomac and i have noticed 2 very interesting things

so to preface all of the women on this show are black or mixed and i am not. im whiter than white, i am also jewish (thats important), im also from Baltimore. The Wire baltimore.

first if u dont know anything abt Potomac Maryland some context: it is an EXTREMELY wealthy area of md by washington DC, i mean million dollar mansions, old money kind of wealthy area.

so it was not too shocking to hear the shit talk abt my home city of Baltimore. One of the women on this show is from old money but used to work in Baltimore and its brought up by the other women esp one woman who is older and very very keen on appearances and etiquette. When they argue she often calls the other woman "ghetto" and said "she should go back to baltimore cause she aint cut for this" and other snide comments abt baltimore. its not surprising but interesting.

now the jewish thing. One of these women whos name is Katie is mixed her father is white and her mother is black, her and her mother converted to judaism and shes a practicing jew. and these other women for some reason cannot wrap there heads around that. specifically a woman named Gizzelle who goes about it in an interesting way.

so in ep 2 of season 1 Katie has a baby naming (traditional jewish ceremony for young girls, google it lol) ceremony for her young daughters and Gizelle shows up 30 mins late. She says in the like interview part "I didnt know jews showed up to thins on time. I thought like with black ppl i had a 45 min grace period. girl i thought u were black!" insinuating that katie can only be one or the other. she also says "when she goes to synagogue shes the only black person and i bet all the jewish ppl look at her like 'Girl we know u arent jewish!". all around gizelle makes other snide comments abt how katie can only be one thing or shes black first and a jew second instead of both at the same time.

while yes in the states most jews are white (for various historical and immigration reasons) and most black americans are christian (cause slavery and colonialism) anyone of any race or ethnicity can be jewish. and if u convert ur a jew. plain and simple. i also know that this is unfortunately a somewhat common argument on both sides. white jews saying ppl of other races cant be jewish and people of other races saying they cant be jewish.

also im sure no one or very few ppl in her congregation think that. in my experience with both relatives, friends and jews in general we are a very accepting people (as well we should be too). Katie does mention she feels a bit awkward being the only black person there but it doesnt bother her.

another woman mentions that she went to school w lots of jews and "they dont look like katie". they seem to be suspicious of katies jewishness. The whole thing is odd to me but i find it very interesting. I do know that their confusion while not really vaild is almost understood, its not malicious or hatred its pure confusion and ignorance. i do think it is important to mention that Gizells father was a leader in civil rights and worked closely w MLK Jr. so her confusion is interesting especially. Jewish people helped closely support the american civil rights movement. jewish people and black people have a long interesting close history in america. a lot because both know what it is like to be a "cultural other" so i would think she would know abt this at least a bit and understand Katie more.

again i just find this perspective they have interesting as a jewish person. i am white as well. i think of myself as both jewish and white however i am culturally jewish not religiously jewish.

[pokytoad]

Okay so I'm going to say something, because I'm done keeping it inside.

This is based on my own personal experience as a woman who was raised in a borderline cult. AKA: true Bible Belt, Evangelical, fundamentalist Christianity.

I keep seeing phrases like "Zionism only means the establishment of a basis for a Jewish homeland, nothing more" and while it SHOULD be that way, in the United States, Zionism gets a lot darker than the textbook definition. Evangelical Zionists (hello? Like 90% of conservative politicians) are literally obsessed with the idea of this "Holy War" going on in the Middle East. They think it's the first phase of Armageddon.

I am not exaggerating, this is extremely serious.

I come from a fundamentalist church that prayed for Israel every service, and on October 7 I was filled with dread because I knew some Evangelical leaders would rejoice in this moment in history.

They think this is a prophecy heralding the end times, and they are extremely serious about it.

And the greatest irony is that based on Evangelical Zionist principles, they're antisemitic. They pretend to care about Jewish people, but they think that Judaism is just as outdated and "false" as Islam and even Catholicism for fuck's sake. They don't support Jewish people OR Israel. They support the destruction of the entire world to justify the "rapture/tribulation", and this is Phase #1 in their twisted, Kool-Aid-soaked heads.

I'll let Sarah Posner with MSNBC say the words:

(Source is linked below)

I cannot stress enough how seriously I'm saying this because it looks like 4Chan bullshit when I read it back, but Evangelical Zionists in the USA are not supporting Israel. They want every non-Christian to be struck down with hellfire, and this is a reality to them. You can comment to say "well that's just your specific experience etc" but the fact that I HAVE this experience? Means that there is a very real and unprecedented amount of fundamentalist Christians CHEERING ON a genocide in 2023. I can see the rhetoric, the propaganda, and the cult programming happening right now, because I got out.

These people are actively participating in mass murder because they want non-Christians to be decimated. It's pretty Aryan if I can be bold. It's insane. And to them, It's real.

My heart goes out to all my Jewish and Muslim friends during this difficult time. I don't have any solutions, all I can do is spread awareness about this cult-like, insidious behavior happening in the open in Evangelist American churches everywhere.

I wish I could say this isn't the thought process of thousands of Americans but at the end of the day, their ideology is rooted in bigotry and hatred.

[thebrandywine]

Hey ! That may be weird, but would you want to say a little more about “The New woman in the city during the 20th century and her intersection with a rise in immigration ” ? I never heard of it before (I’m not from America), but it’s seems quite interesting from the few things I just read (Wikipedia).

NOT WEIRD I LOVE THIS SHIT

This is going to be fast and dirty because I don't have any of my sources with me BUT the turn of the 20th century in America saw a LOT of social and cultural change in part due to the growing prominence of metropolitan areas/cities. Industrialization had firmly settled in and that meant factories and THAT meant more jobs which led to an increase in immigration (mostly because factory owners/foremen could pay immigrants less which meant a better cut for them). So you have the 'melting pot' of the American city starting to get a lot more complex culturally at the same time as a growing movement of young women wanting more independence-- they might want to live on their own or they might want to support themselves on their own without a husband or any number of things. A good way to do that is to move to the city and get a job!

This IMMEDIATELY led to a cultural panic because for the first time a large number of America's young women were on their own and away from the protection of their family. Who would make sure that they conformed to societal values? Who would keep them safe? This was especially exacerbated BECAUSE of immigration-- pure, young, virginal white women (America's pride, blah blah, other weird sexual and racist stuff) coming into contact with stupid, brutish, predatory immigrant men (NOTE: I AM REPEATING THINGS HERE lol). A MASSIVE moral panic ensued.

One of the most interesting things to come out of this, I think, is the resurgence of captivity narratives. Media is an incredible way to measure the values/fears of the populace at the time of publishing which is why you can follow the rise and fall of captivity narratives in American history and really easily find points of conflict. Captivity narratives have a long history in general but in American history they're mostly present at three points: colonization/westward expansion, the Civil War/Reconstruction era, and the turn of the 20th century.

I keep saying 'captivity narratives' but what I mean are stories about women (again, The Pure, Virginal White Woman who represents white America) being captured and sexually defiled by The Other, who represents a larger threat to American society and culture. During colonization/westward expansion, that Other was Native Americans. During the Civil War and Reconstruction (which immediately followed the Civil War), it was slaves/recently freed black men. And then, at the turn of the 20th century, it was immigrants!

This is a whole other ramble, but the 'immigrant' in question really, really depended. There was an idea of an 'acceptable' immigrant-- white (though 'white' had yet to be more specifically defined and the concept of it varied from person to person), well-spoken, deferential, and fully converted to the cult of the flag. The unacceptable immigrants were largely from Eastern Europe-- Italians, Polish people, some Russians, and, of course, Jewish people (because this is America-- who else is the most common scapegoat of all fucking time?). If you read captivity narratives from the turn of the century, you can ALWAYS tell who The Bad Guy is: he'll have a heavy accent, he'll be described as 'swarthy,' and the author will A L W A Y S make a point to mention his race.

A different ramble I could go on is the idea of the 'white slave trade' which is wholly connected to the moral panic and captivity narratives, but I've rambled enough lmao. If you'd like to read some captivity narratives (don't worry, the authors are long dead) or do more research about any of the stuff I mentioned above, here are some sources:

White on Arrival by Thomas A. Guglielmo [looks at the idea/evolution of whiteness for Chicago Italians at the turn of the century. secondary source]

Behind the Mask of Innocence: Sex, Violence, Prejudice, Crime: Films of Social Conscience in the Silent Era by Kevin Brownlow [SUPER interesting read about a bunch of the stuff i talked about above! secondary source]

The White Slave Trade and the Immigrants by Cordasco and Pitkin [what it says on the tin. secondary source]

The House of Bondage by Reginald Wright Kauffman [the captivity narrative of the time- very racist and extremely critical of/incorrect about sex work. primary source]

The Social Menace of the Orient by Jean Turner Zimmerman [VERY RACIST and I do notnotnot like the word 'Orient,' which is no longer used by anyone in scholarship that's hip with the times. primary source]

Tiger by Witter Bynner [short play about a white slave- notice the language used for the antagonist!! primary source]

Traffic in Souls or While New York Sleeps, dir. George Loane Tucker. can be watched here!

i will be very strong and limit myself to those sources-- thank you for asking so i could infodump about history. if you've read this far... sorry lmao

[alarrylarrie]

Hi please can you explain the latest nightmare stuff from the US? I live in France.

Yeah, I definitely can.

However, in order to explain the current political landscape, I have to discuss recent events. So to be safe, I’m going to give a MASSIVE TRIGGER WARNING for the following: guns/gun violence, violence against children, school shootings, LGBTQ issues, specifically trans issues, discussion of violence against marginalized communities, antisemitism, environmental issues, and political unrest/ violence, loss of basic human rights.

And just to be extra cautious, I’ll add a cut. Protect your peace, people. Seems like we have so little left.

Okay. So. It’s really hard to know where to start.

Yesterday, we had yet another mass shooting. This one was at a school in Tennessee. An elementary school. Three children died, as did three adults. It’s awful. Additionally, the shooting was committed by a trans person.

I say that only because it’s relevant. Anti-trans rhetoric has been ratcheting up. Anti-every marginalizes group, actually. 385 anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced in the last year alone. And the red states, (conservative majority led states) emboldened by the extreme and corrupt conservative Supreme Court, are just saying the quiet parts out loud now. Bills that would sentence a woman to death for an abortion? Check. Bills that would punish a woman for taking birth control? Check. Bills that dictate who you can marry? Check. Bills that end free speech on the internet? Check. Bills that say who can play what sports, that end gender affirming care, that take trans kids away from their parents? Check check fucking check. Bills that dictate what curriculum can be taught in schools and end classes like gender studies, LGBTQ history, racial history of America, and Jewish studies? Yep, got those too.

You slap all of that on top of a country broken by corporate greed and end stage capitalism. Add Biden’s green lighting of the Willow Project, which will devastate natural resources and even further expedite climate change. Oh and don’t forget Trump fanning the flames of political violence with his grievance “take back our country” politics, and you have the cesspool that is the current American political landscape. A waking nightmare from which there seems to be no end in sight. And I haven’t even mentioned police brutality, still going strong, or the possible re-emergence of family separation, or the sure fire end to a mailed form of medical abortion, or the Wisconsin supreme court election that holds our “democracy” in its balance, or the supreme court’s rulings on some massive cases, including Moore V. Harper, which threatens the validity of our vote in this country, and so so much more.

TL;DR- we are not okay.

[ruminativerabbi]

Queen Berenice

March is Women’s History Month, an annual observance since 1987 and one of several such months each year proclaimed as such to encourage the study and appreciation of some specific group within the fabric of American society. Known to most will be Black History Month in February and LGBTQ+ Pride Month in June, but there are also Jewish Heritage Month (May), Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15–October 15), Arab-American Heritage Month (April), German American Heritage Month (October), Italian-American Heritage Month (October), Native American Heritage Month (November), and a few others. (For a full list, click here.) These months mostly come and go, leaving in their wake a few op-ed pieces, some longer essays, perhaps a television special or two. And, of course, they are focused on mostly, although surely not exclusively, by the groups whose heritage they exist to celebrate.

To take note of Women’s History Month this year, I thought I would write about a woman no one, I’m guessing, will ever have heard of…and yet who was present at a truly pivotal moment in Jewish history and who rose remarkably to the occasion.

In general, the role of women in history has been understudied and underappreciated—which observation applies across the board to all sorts of academic disciplines. But the degree to which the prominent Jewish women of antiquity have been mostly forgotten, their names themselves mostly unknown, is slightly astonishing. And a little depressing too. Some will have heard of Beruriah, one of the few female Torah scholars from antiquity to be cited and praised in our literature, but fewer will have heard of Yalta, an important figure from the mid-3rd century CE, a communal leader respected and taken fully seriously, and the second-most mentioned woman in talmudic literature. And fewer still, I think, will have heard of Imma Shalom, the sister of Rabban Gamliel II of Yavneh and the wife of Rabbi Eliezer (one of the most prominent sages of his day), who is also quoted prominently in the Talmud in a way that suggests the respect she commanded in her day and in her place.

Those three—Beruriah, Yalta, and Imma Shalom—were part of the rabbinic world. But women also occupied positions of political importance, some of whom were actually the queens of their countries. Almost all have been completely forgotten, their very names unfamiliar despite their prominence in their own day. Queen Helena of Adiabene is a good example. Adiabene was a small kingdom located in the Kurdish part of today’s Iraq when Helena  and her husband King Monobaz converted to Judaism early on in the first century CE. Eventually, Monobaz died and Helena moved to Jerusalem, where she played an important role as a philanthropist, famously giving gifts of gold to the Temple and personally dealing with a crippling famine by importing gigantic amounts of food at her own expense from all over the world to distribute among the hungry. She was famous for the huge sukkah she constructed in Lod, where she lived before coming to Jerusalem, and for her even larger tomb which exists to this day a few miles north of the city. But who has ever heard of her? No one!

But the personality I thought I’d write about this week in honor of Women’s History Month is Queen Berenice, another personality long since forgotten by all. And yet, in her day, she was the voice of reason that tried—unsuccessfully but nobly—to prevent the destruction of the Holy City by the Romans…and in the same way Queen Esther saved the Jews of Persia from annihilation: by getting the Roman most likely to spearhead the campaign to the destroy the city to fall in love with her and then, at least possibly, to spare the city simply because she wished him to.

It's a long, complicated story. When Berenice was still a child, her father was named King of Judea by the Roman Emperor Caligula. And so, at the age of ten, Berenice became a princess. She was married at age fourteen to a much older man who died shortly after the wedding and left her a widow at age sixteen. Her father died shortly after that, but not before he succeeded in marrying her off a second time, this time to his own brother, King Herod of Chalcis. (Chalcis was a tiny kingdom in what today is Lebanon.) And so Berenice became a queen. And that same year she became a mother too, giving birth to the future king of Chalcis, whom she named Berenicianus after herself.

When Berenice was twenty, she was widowed for the second time. For a while, she lived with her brother—who, in the meantime, had become king of Chalcis and who ruled as Agrippa II—and served as the female presence in his many palaces across Chalcis and Judea, something along the lines of how Grover Cleveland’s sister Rose served as First Lady until he eventually married. And now she really does become a Zelig-like character, showing up everywhere—including, semi-amazingly, at the trial of Paul of Tarsus, the founder of the Christianity as we know it and the author of most of the New Testament.

And then she married for a third time, choosing yet another king as her husband, a man named Polomon, king of Cilicia (a small kingdom in today’s Turkey), whom she insisted agree to be circumcised and fully to convert to Judaism if he wished to have her as his wife. He did it too! But their union still didn’t last. Why, who knows? Maybe he resented the whole circumcision thing. Or perhaps they just weren’t meant to be. But before long she was back in Jerusalem, powerful, famous, and in exactly the right place to do great good.

The 60s of the first century CE were a dangerous, difficult time. The Roman governors of Judea, called procurators, were greedy bullies, or at least most of them were. The procurator in Jerusalem was a man named Florus, who was eager to steal at least part of the vast treasury of riches stored in the Temple. When the Jews protested, he sent in his soldiers to terrify the inhabitants into submission. Berenice, present in Jerusalem, first sent some of her servants to beg Florus to call off his goons. And then, when they were rebuffed, she went herself, bare-headed and barefoot, to beg him to withdraw. In the end, Florus withdrew his men. But Judea was on the brink of open rebellion against Rome nonetheless. Seeing disaster on the horizon, Berenice gave a long, passionate speech in which she begged the locals not to begin a war they could not possibly hope to win. But no one was in the mood to listen. And so the rebellion began.

Berenice, however, had a plan. She moved into her brother’s palace at Banias, a lovely and verdant section even today in Israel, where she was able to hobnob with Roman aristocracy. She met Vespasian himself, the future emperor who was at the time in charge of Roman forces in Judea. But it was when she met Vespasian’s son, a young man of twenty named Titus, that she suddenly saw an “Esther” path forward for herself and her people. She was in her forties. Titus was just twenty. But he was no match for her and he fell quickly into her trap. She did her best to keep him from moving violently against the Jewish rebels, perhaps trying to convince him that the rebellion would just die out if the Romans didn’t rise to the bait.

Our source for this story is the work of the Jewish historian Josephus, himself a client of the Romans, who writes that, in the end, Titus—head over heels in love—only moved against the rebels when he had no choice. And he remained in Berenice’s thrall for all of his years. Eventually, once his father became emperor, Titus returned to Rome and Berenice followed, living with him until Titus was finally forced to send her home and instead to marry a Roman woman who could give him a Roman heir.  

And that is the story of Queen Berenice. Unknown to most today, and yet a woman who invented and re-invented herself time and time again, eventually positioning herself to attempt to defuse a full-scale rebellion against Rome by appealing first to the rebels and then, when that failed, to their future opponent. Queen Esther was successful where Queen Berenice failed. Is that why we remember Esther, but have totally forgotten Berenice? Perhaps we should remember her too: a brave, wily, and daring Jewish woman who did her best to head off catastrophe for the Jewish people and who, even if she failed, deserves to be remembered as someone who, at the very least, tried to do good.