#the forward

[hellochildrenoftheatom]

Queer Jews Project Day 8 - Berel-Beyle

We only know about Berel-Beyle through Yeshaye Katovski’s letter to the Forward in 1936 about “the girl who became a man.” To summarize: Berel-Beyle was AFAB, grew up in Krivozer, Ukraine, left home for Odessa, transitioned to a man, went back to his hometown, was accepted by his community, and married an old girlfriend, Black Rachel.

To quote the letter, “In our shtetl, Berel-Beyle always had a good name as a fine, upstanding Jew.”

I wish we knew more about this trans ancestor, but I’m glad we know about him.

Learn more about Berel-Beyle here.

Queer Jews Project

[justinssportscorner]

Donald Padgett at The Advocate:

Disgraced competitive cyclist Lance Armstrong posted a teaser for an upcoming podcast where he speaks with fellow former Olympian Caitlyn Jenner about the issues of transgender athletes competing in the sport aligned with their gender. “All right, so here we are on the PCH headed out to Caitlyn Jenner’s house to have a conversation in and around trans in sport,” Armstrong teased in a short video posted to Twitter. Armstong was plugging the upcoming edition of his podcast, The Forward, which drops today. With “sensitive conversations and topics” like the issue of transgender athletes competing in the sport aligning with their true gender “it really comes down to people are afraid to be fired, shamed, or canceled” if they voice their true opinions on the topic, Armstrong said. “Turns out I’m not that afraid of that. I think it’s an important conversation and, you know, especially I think if it can be handled in this way,” Armstrong continued. “But, and I also think the best way to have these conversations and get to a more, to get to a smarter conclusion, or even have a smarter conversation is just to go in fearless. And I’m sort of fearless on this one.” [...] He went on to ask if “there is not a world in which one can be supportive of the transgender community and curious about the fairness of Trans athletes in sport yet not be labeled a transphobe or a bigot as we ask questions? Do we yet know the answers? And do we even want to know the answers?? Twitter readers added context, noting that Armstrong was not canceled but was instead stripped of his titles and awards for doping and cheating.

Earth to serial cheater Lance Armstrong: You are the last person on earth who should be mouthing off about "fairness in sports", and especially when it comes to trans people in sports.

Armstrong teamed up with Caitlyn Jenner, a trans conservative commentator who opposes trans rights on an upcoming podcast about trans people in sports.

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

On January 24, I attended in Manhattan a book launch and dinner for a former U.S. secretary of state. The organizers invited me because of my status as a "Jewish influencer." I wasn't scheduled as a speaker, nor was I prepared to say anything at all. So you can imagine my surprise when, with a mouthful of steak, I heard over the speakers, "And now remarks from Emily Austin."

"Ugh, this is the business I'm in," I thought. "I've winged it before. What could go wrong this time?"

Well, just about everything, I soon learned. The next day, while I was at work, everyone I know began calling and texting me at once. Jacob Kornbluh, a reporter at The Forward, they said, had pulled a 42-second excerpt of my remarks from the dinner and posted it on Twitter.

What he shared was purposely intended to make me look like a horrible person, and to take what I said completely out of context. I only found out later that Jacob has quite the reputation of throwing his own people under the bus. What a shame.

"Everyone says the Jews were sheeps to the slaughter" during the Holocaust, Kornbluh tweeted. "'And the reason being was everyone was afraid to be vocal and proud of their identity.' 👀," he wrote.

To clarify for all, what I said—or a part of it, at least—was not exactly what I had intended to say. The Holocaust obviously did not happen BECAUSE we Jews were afraid of our identity; that was a poor way of communicating my point. My point, rather, was to encourage the audience I was speaking to—an audience of influential people—to be VOCAL and PROUD of their Jewish identity so that we never again become overpowered by hate. I noticed that some people took particular offense to my phrasing of "sheeps to the slaughter." I went to Jewish private school for many years, and every year on Yom HaShoah, this is the terminology that I've been hearing since the 8th grade and on. I feel bad that the phrase hurt some people, but that is the tragic reality of what happened in Europe less than a century ago. We were herded like animals, and slaughtered in the camps.

[hezigler]

At the core of ‘Oppenheimer,’ a debate about how to be Jewish – The Forward

Contrary to popular myth, Jews are far from being a very unified group. There are antipodes in think among Jews, especially in religion and politics. (This is even true within some individual Jews, hence the old Jewish saying, "ten Jews, twelve opinions.")

[chaotic-neutral-knitter]

I think one of the kindest things you can do for people with various mental health struggles is just... let people back into your life after they've been absent for a while.

Making friends as an adult is so fucking hard already and isolating yourself from other people is a very common symptom of depression, anxiety, burnout, ocd, trauma, grief, etc. Which means that someone will do the hard work of recovery/healing and resurface back into a world where their previous friends have written them off because they stopped showing up.

So if you know someone where you're like "yeah we could have been better friends but they fell off the map a bit" and that person suddenly reaches out, or starts showing up to events even though you kind of forgot they were still in the group chat... well they may have been Going Through It and you don't actually have to punish them for their absence you can just be glad that they're back.

[ionomycin]

temple at the end of the road

[jessaerys]

look at my cat :-)

[saracastically]

now she’s all ready for spooky season—are you? 🌕🐺

[thequeendomhq]

NAME. Kallias Mosè AGE & BIRTH DATE. 40 & December 11th, 2984 AC GENDER & PRONOUNS. Cismale & He/Him NATIONALITY. Lysaran SPECIES. Werewolf FACTION. Raiders of the Veiled Sea OCCUPATION. First Mate of The Leviathan (Former Navigator) FACE CLAIM. Michiel Huisman

biography

( tw: death, blood, violence )

Child of the Wildlands, son of no one significant until she began disagreeing. In the beginning, Augusta Mosè was loyal to her Alpha Ulric and Lysara. She was a proud wolf, a descendant of generations of Lysaran werewolves who gave everything to their pack. A witch of The Tower and hopeful emissary caught her eye, and love changed both of their plans. Raphael gave up The Tower to settle down in the Wildlands and start a life with his werewolf lover, and Augusta never thought she would be a mother. But the two fell quickly in love with their new life and with the son they welcomed into the world, Kallias. Augusta was meant to help her pack protect their borders and their people, not just their Alpha. This is what she told herself when she came home and decided to inform her husband that they could not sit idly by while Ulric had future ambitions to declare war and cause them all unnecessary bloodshed. Augusta had made the mistake of confiding her worries in a packmember, a werewolf who betrayed her to friends of Ulric who were far crueler than the Alpha himself and all eager for a future war. She knew they weren’t above hiring mercenaries. Fearful for the life of her family, Augusta took Raphael and their son and ran towards the nearest port with the hope that a ship would take them in and take them far away. She attempted to lead the wolves on the wrong trail as Raphael took Kallias and made for the docks. He placed his son in the arms of a sailor and promised to return.

Left with nothing but a broken promise and the clothes on his back, orphaned at an age that he would never remember again, Kallias was taken as far as the ship’s next stop: Caribella. The sailor had no place caring for a child and left him in an orphanage, giving the matron the child’s name and what little they knew. As a boy, Kallias was strange and unique. Whether it was the head traumas from horsing around with the other little boys or a desire to escape the pain of his past, the only thing that Kallias didn’t keep in his head were the faces of the people who left him. He remembered everything else, nearly everything that he saw and learned. Instead of using his great memory for studies, he used it to find out exactly how to survive and thrive on the streets. Patterns of behaviors, the places people hid their valuables, or where the rich liked to walk and the tiniest changes in his environment. His troublesome behavior and his growing ego would eventually land him on the streets of Caribella, where he learned what it was to steal food and scrub the decks of ships for petty cash. He grew up strong, but he did not grow up outwardly resentful. Other children on the streets gave him a home, and older criminals cared for him during the day. Even members of The Leviathan armada had taken to the little boy, giving him food and teaching him cuss words when they’d dock. Gentle dreams of howls and running paws kept him company in the nights. Life was full of adventure, and those who chose to wallow in their self-pity were only choosing to harm themselves and no one else. So, instead, Kallias decided to live life to the fullest. He drank, pickpocketed, gambled with raiders, and fought with sailors. Taverns knew him by name, and, soon enough, the Thieves Guild did as well. He was only a teenager when they recruited him after he’d successfully stolen from one of their own. For Kallias, it was an unexplainable desire to belong somewhere that pushed him to join a group of people who were tied together. Here, he’d learn the art of breaking laws to a finer degree. 

With the Guild on his side, he still spent his life scrubbing decks and out-cussing sailors, but he had his own rickety, rat-infested flat by the oceanside that he decorated with seashells and stolen treasures. After a day of watching a man drown, a day which was otherwise unremarkable, the man who didn’t know he was a wolf began to dream of these wild beasts far more than before. He dreamt of howls, forests, and a family calling to him. But Kallias had only known a good-for-nothing father who had apparently abandoned him to a sailor. He only knew a life that he had built with his own bare, calloused hands. Kallias promised himself that he would find the adventure and belonging that he craved, but he would find it on his terms with people that he chose and who had chosen him. Older now, he was brave enough to accept that some resentment had indeed festered deep inside his heart all along. As a child, he hadn’t known better that he should despise the ones that cast him aside when all he wanted was to belong. But there had been far more hidden deep inside him, far more than just resentment and dreams. Kallias learned on the day that a monstrous wolf terrorized the small town in Caribella where he grew up. He woke up that morning naked among the wreckage, screams in his head and crusted blood on his skin that did not belong to him. There, flashes of horror in his mind. Kallias looked at the wreckage and the traces of bodies and learned how much of a curse a good memory could be.

It was through connections within the Thieves Guild that Kallias was able to learn of an opening within the armada whose ships he scrubbed the decks of for years. These Raiders of the Veiled Sea, criminals on the water. Desperate to leave the small town in Caribella before he was found out to be the killer, he fought for the position and eventually advanced to Navigator of the main ship within The Leviathn. The werewolf nose and the ears that had always come in handy when it came to finding and stealing were now used to sense changes in the wind and find nearby land. His eyes recognized tides and stars and memorized every map put in his hand. Besides, the moon commands the seas, and the moon commands the wolf; this is his place of belonging. A wolf on the waters could sense an incoming storm hours before it came and chart the stars even on a cloudy and foggy day. 

The sea and the night sky also helped him find peace, something that was otherwise hard to find when you were a wolf and a criminal. On the swaying wood of the ship, the pirate learned how to concentrate to calm himself, easing his heavy heart and busy head. By focusing on his body’s strength and centering himself through silent meditation, he was able to better control his emotions, his thoughts, and his powerful wolf senses. As the full moon approached every month, he no longer feared it. Once he understood how to chain the beast that he became every month, Kallias started to feel unstoppable. In time, even the painful memories of the screaming, burning town were put to the back of his mind and replaced with the wind in his hair, the salt on his skin, the wolf in his veins. The men and women that sailed the seas with him had become his family, his pack. Some of the carefree joy of childhood returned on the waters, and then it didn’t leave him, even as he docked on land. Each country he saw was another adventure, and every person he met was another story. In the taverns, Kallias heard tales of wars and suffering but all that he was meant for was the sea, and so that’s where he always returned. 

personality

+ passionate, mediative, keen – impudent, uneducated, messy

played by dany. est. she/her.

[auckie]

https://x.com/MorePerfectUS/status/1765391777580912958?s=20

PLEASE GD IF YOU LOVE AND WANT TRAINS

[malenjoyer]

WE'RE SO BACK

[bluebeesknees]

𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘢𝘸 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘵𝘰𝘰 ✨

[arcticdementor]

Soon after former President Donald Trump was shot at a campaign rally in Butler, Pa., on Saturday, the term ‘Reichstag fire’ began trending on social media. Here’s what the Nazi-era term means and why people are talking about it.

…

Bruce Bartlett, a former government official in the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, issued a warning about Trump on X this past week, prior to the shooting, saying, “I bet he’s planning the American equivalent of the Reichstag fire to justify violence against the left.” After the shooting, Bartlett said, “Looks like we just had our Reichstag fire.”  Australian politician Rex Patrick tweeted just after the shooting, “We might have just witnessed America’s Reichstag Fire moment.” Journalist Joe Leyden shared, “Not sure whether I should be thinking about the #ReichstagFire right now. Not sure I shouldn’t.” Many others invoked the Nazi-era moment as well.

…

The FBI has identified the shooter, who was killed at the scene, as Thomas Matthew Crooks, a 20-year-old from Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, about an hour away from where the rally took place in Butler, Pa. The FBI has not released a motive for the shooting. The Justice Department has said it will investigate. And Republican leaders of the U.S. House of Representatives plan to hold a hearing with the U.S. Secret Service about the assassination attempt, which killed one rallygoer — Corey Comperatore, a firefighter and the father of two daughters — and critically injured two others.

[vvenuspng]

💥📣 BLITZO SUX