Tag: judaism tag

wyrdmorrish:

keshetchai:

keshetchai:

best part of the seder i had was this moment:

R: Well, I really value Jewish tradition and ritual, but I’m an atheist.
Me: Good thing you don’t need to believe in G-d to have dinner. 

actually this isn’t the real best part of my seder. 

the BEST part of the seder was that the apartment next door was ALSO an airbnb who asked to borrow my cooking pot, since neither place had a stocked kitchen. I loaned it to them after we made matzah ball soup so that they could make fried chicken (after all, passover ended that night). They were holding a birthday party and needed to fry chicken for 24 people. I understood this was dire and also offered to feed people doing set up. They passed on that, and instead I just loaned them the pot. 

So, when the seder was almost fully finished we decided that someone ought to drink the elijah cup. We also decided it would be brilliant to talk to our neighbors again, three cups of wine and many martinis later (I mean I didn’t drink that much, but uh, my guests did). So we knocked on the neighbor’s door and asked the girl who answered if she would drink it for us. 

She was not the girl who had asked us earlier to borrow the pot, or the birthday girl, but she was game to listen to the request when she realized we had been the ones to loan the stock pot. 

Anyways, I tried to explain awkwardly that we symbolically pour a cup of wine for a jewish prophet to drink, but like…obviously he doesn’t actually show up to drink it, and normally a parent drinks it while no one is looking, but we’re all adults and everyone is looking, so could you maybe drink it? (all prefaced with “This is like…a Jewish thing and explaining it is complicated BUT–)

she was like “ohhh, okay.  …Wait, but you can’t watch while i drink then!” and i was like oh yeah, good point, and then she was like “will this fuck me up?” and I said “No, no, it’s barely wine.” (because it was manischewitz)

so like… maybe 5 of us were in the hallway and she was like “alright, cool. turn around.” and so we all turned around and that’s when she met elijah and handed him the cup and he drank it. then she announced it had been emptied and we all turned back around.  after our neighbor said it tasted good and we all thanked her, we went back inside and finished the seder. 

When I woke up this morning, the cooking pot had been returned to our apartment, along with a large glass bottle tucked inside.

And that’s the story of how elijah 100% definitely drank the wine at my seder and then gifted me tequila in return. 

“…and so we all turned around and that’s when she met elijah and handed him the cup and he drank it…”

Cal Poly Students Target Zionist Groups

eshusplayground:

eshusplayground:

tikkunolamorgtfo:

So! Allow me tell you why I’m seething over this in two parts! 

Part I

First of all, let’s get specific about what this means: They explicitly want to exclude Hillel. To vaguely phrase it as “all Zionist-related groups” is just a dogwhistle for Hillel. And look, there are legitimate reasons to be opposed to Hillel as a national organisation, especially when it comes to their stance on Israel. I personally do not believe Hillel should have any stance on Israel at all, because it’s meant to be a home for all Jewish students, and that includes Jews of varying political and religious opinions. I would love to see Hillel abandon its present stance, and I know there are Jewish students all over the place working on making that more of reality as I sit here typing this. 

But here’s the thing: Regardless of Hillel’s bad policy on this issue, it’s still overwhelmingly the centre for Jewish life at nearly every college and university in the United States. It just is. So the message quickly becomes an ultimatum—from gentiles—that any Jew who wants to be considered progressive must completely divest themselves from the existing Jewish community and only engage with other approved Jewish individuals in order to be considered ideologically pure. It doesn’t matter if Hillel is your only option for getting Kosher food, attending services, being with other Jewish people, etc. It’s #bad and if you engage with it, then so are you. 

Now, would be bad enough just on the principal that gentiles shouldn’t dictate how Jews access Jewish life and Judaism, but in light of all the drama with the Women’s March Organisers, this whole thing becomes even more offensive and absurd. Because when Tamika Mallory (along with Linda Sarsour and Carmen Perez) refused to denounce Louis Farrakhan’s comments about Jews and LGBTQ+ people, the following was said: “I don’t agree with everything that Minister Farrakhan said about Jews or women or gay people…[but I hope that Jewish and LGBTQ+ people] will also take the time to understand why I have partnered with the Nation of Islam and been in that space for almost 30 years.” Basically: “He has some bad ideas, but I think his group does enough good for my communities at large that I am willing to overlook it.” So then why aren’t Jewish groups afforded the same nuance? Why is it only Jews who are being held to a standard of unattainable perfection, while everyone else gets to be messy and flawed? 

They’re so quick to say “It’s not anti-Semitism because opposing Israel isn’t the same as being anti-Semitic!” and like…it’s not always the same as being anti-Semitic, but you have to fucking do it right, and my goyim, you ARE NOT. Gentiles holding Jews to different standards from everyone else, asking Jews to prove themselves from cutting ties with campus Jewish life, and generally just trying to define anti-Semitism as non-Jews? Like, it doesn’t even matter what your Israel stance actually is; your praxis is already inherently anti-Semitic all on its fucking own. 

Part II

The article notes that the statement calling for Hillel to be excluded said the following: 

“Black folks and other People of Color have a long-standing history of standing in solidarity with Palestinian folks,” the statement reads. “The quotidian experiences of Palestinians include a long history of dealing with violence, colonization (particularly through land dispossession), and oppression. We cannot in good conscience advocate for our own liberation without being mindful of the current and historical liberation struggles of others locally, nationally, and globally.”

Later on, the statement added that The Drylongso Collective was focused on “anti-Black and anti-Brown racism at Cal Poly.”

“To attempt to decenter Blackness from our discussion by focusing on an accusation of anti-Semitism based on a false equivalency of Zionism and Judaism is deeply disturbing and speaks of not only the lack for anti-Semitic acts committed by non-Black/Brown students but also of the coalition work that remains to be done,” the statement reads.

Okay, so let me stop y’all right fucking there with this reminder: 

JEWS OF COLOUR EXIST
JEWS OF COLOUR EXIST
JEWS OF COLOUR EXIST 

Like, not only does this statement completely overlook the fact that over half of all Israelis are either Black or Brown, which demonstrates a total lack of understanding about who Israelis are, thus utterly disqualifying these students from really having any opinion on the state as an entity all, but FUCKING HELL, does it really go out of its way to way absolutely erase Black and Brown Jews existing in their own corner of the diaspora. They mention the ‘struggles of others locally, nationally, and globally’ in the same breath that they imply that Black and Brown people are a wholly separate entity from Jews, and then go on to preemptively accuse Jewish people of derailing the conversation to be about themselves, shifting the focus away from Black and Brown people, when again JEWS OF COLOUR EXIST. 

How much chutzpah does one have to possess to be able to simultaneously erase all Black and Brown Jews whilst also demanding that they stop engaging with Judaism unless it’s entirely on your uninformed gentile terms?

I am so sick of discourse that paints Judaism as whiteness, not only because it misses the point of how anti-Semitism has operated as a racial hatred for centuries, but also because it always ends of with Jews of Colour being attacked and harassed by people who claim to fight for, well, People of Colour. Just like how the CDM organisers revelled in the “white tears” of the Iranian Jew they ejected from their march, and the trans Indian Jewish reporter they got fired from her job, these organisers would have you believe that Jewishness, in and of itself (and unless otherwise proven on an individual basis through a series of loyalty tests), is whiteness, perhaps even whiteness in its very worst form. And I don’t know how much of that outlook is due to ignorance and how much of it is due to blatant hatred, but it’s anti-Semitic no matter which way you spin it, and I’m so fucking tired of watching people who think they’re progressive swallowing conspiracy theories from the pages of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, as if it wasn’t already trite Jew-hating bullshit when it was first published in 1903. 

I am so sick of discourse that paints Judaism as whiteness, not only because it misses the point of how anti-Semitism has operated as a racial hatred for centuries

[…]

these organisers would have you believe that Jewishness, in and of itself (and unless otherwise proven on an individual basis through a series of loyalty tests), is whiteness, perhaps even whiteness in its very worst form.


Not going back to reblogging critical stuff, but there’s a paper about this phenomenon that you can read right here. It’s long, but a worthy read, even though I don’t agree with everything it says about Jews and whiteness.

Edited to link to the paper, which is here: https://www.academia.edu/33816464/White_Jews_An_Intersectional_Approach

Cal Poly Students Target Zionist Groups

pipistrellus:

i know there was a post going around near pesach recently like “how do people think that jews control everything when we can’t even manage to organize a yearly seder. do you know how much work that would involve???” but i’m not so sure that that is really the best evidence against The Jewish Conspiracy. I think we can be plenty organized a lot of the time if we really try. 

no, what REALLY proves that jews do not control the world is this: if jews controlled the world, jews would complain a lot more about having to control the world. you wouldnt be able to escape it. youd sit down next to an elderly person on a bus and theyd start monologuing about the drudgery that was Bringing The White Race Down From Within. peppered every few minutes with “can’t complain, though. can’t complain.”

hazel2468:

@ xtian atheists who come onto posts about the Holocaust all “hurr durr well why do you j00z still believe in G-d if so many of you fucking died? G-d let you die, G-d is evil and doesn’t exist, why you still worship old man with beard in the sky?”

Two things. One, you have NO understanding of how Jewish culture and Judaism works. And yes, I am calling you xtian atheists, because you are approaching the concept of religion from the model of Christianity, and are therefore poorly equipped to understand anything about Jewish text, culture, and religion. Two- you are an asshole and I hope a rat shits in your mouth while you sleep. 

As my aunt says- “Ale tseyn zoln dir aroysfaln, nor eyner zol dir blaybn af tsonveytik”. May all your teeth fall out, except one to give you a toothache. 

The Rabbi Who Seceded From the South

jewish-pride:

Jewish communal leaders, worried about provoking an anti-Semitic
reaction against their exposed congregations, tried to keep a low
political profile in an America increasingly prone to explode in
political violence. They were religious refugees in a place that offered
them shelter and they did not want to relive the strife of Europe.

An exception to this rule was Rabbi David Einhorn of Baltimore.
Einhorn had moved to the United States when the Austrian authorities
closed his synagogue. Einhorn was a Reformed rabbi, and the government
saw his preaching as endorsing the democratic ideas of the Revolution of
1848. So Einhorn had to go.

…

Against this background of violence from pro-slavery mobs and
disapproval from some in his own congregation, Rabbi Einhorn took the
wolf by the ears when he learned that a New York rabbi had published
remarks endorsing slavery as authorized by God in the Torah.

In an act of bravery that exposed him to great personal risk, Einhorn
wrote in response to the use of the Holy Bible to endorse slavery:

Is it anything else but a deed of …rebellion against God to enslave
human beings created in his own image and to degrade them…? Is it
anything else but an act of ruthless and wicked violence to reduce
defenseless human beings to a condition of merchandise and relentlessly
to tear them away from the hearts of husbands, wives, parents, and
children?

It has ever been a strategy of the advocate of a bad cause to take
refuge from the spirit of the Bible [in] its letter. Can that book
hallow the enslavement of any race… Can that book justify the violent
separation of a child from its human mother?2

Einhorn dismissed the New York rabbi’s argument that slavery was
justified by its long history stretching back to Abraham. “Does a
disease,” he asked, “cease to be an evil on account of its long
duration?”3

Einhorn would be one of the first rabbis to connect the fight for
racial equality to the protection of all minorities. He saw
abolitionism, the protection of the Irish against anti-immigrant Know
Nothings, and the struggle of the Jews for civil equality as being all
of the same cloth. No minority could be safe as long as it was safe to
attack another minority. His words were published widely and he
attracted the notice of Southern partisans.

In April 1861, following the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter in
Charleston Harbor, riots enveloped Einhorn’s city and the rabbi became a
target of the mob. Rioters destroyed the printing press that had
published his anti-slavery essay and the rabbi’s life was threatened. He
was forced to flee north.

When order was restored, Einhorn’s synagogue told him that he would
only be welcomed back if he agreed to stay as silent as the other rabbis
on the slave question. He refused, and instead embarked on a rabbinic
career in Philadelphia and New York that made him a leading light of the
Reform movement in American Judaism.

The Rabbi Who Seceded From the South