Freedom Is A Verb

The true story of Hanukah:

Back in the day the Israelites had the dankest bud in all of the Levant and they spent every Friday night just blazing the fattest doinks, until one day the Seleucid emperor Antiochus Epiphanes went straight-edge and declared that nobody from the walls of Antioch to the shores of the Indus was allowed to smoke out anymore. The Israelites thought that was some bogus cop shit so they went home and got all their like cool swords and baseball bats and stuff and had a war about it and they beat the fuck out of the Seleucids and it was awesome, except for the dispensary got trashed and there was only one nug left in all the land. Judah Maccabee decided to light up anyways, and somehow--somehow--that one nug burned for the whole fuckin party. The end.

also why is it that every single zionist on tumblr dot colm takes pains to stress how jewish they are in their screen names, but if i say that i'm an anti-zionist jew, and that's partly why i care about this stuff, it's "as a jew"ing? or doing the equivalent of being a 'pick me'? just because i think it's gauche and tacky to put my jewishness on everything doesn't mean i'm not proud. growing up around jews (speaking anecdotally here tho, maybe it's different where you're from), we didn't really go to great lengths to advertise. not because we were ashamed, but because where i was from, the people who did that were obnoxious evangelical christians. we didn't evangelize.

do whatever you want, display your faith n culture however you want (even better if it triggers the fash epic style), but i'm getting. mixed messages is all.

besides, i don't want to be like you, but that's not because you're one of the baaaaaad jews, or whatever you've told yourself in order to sleep at night, it's because i find you personally repellent and don't want to be associated with your genocidal project. being disliked isn't the same as being rebels. you can't crybully your way into acceptance. and while it's true that antisemites see us as all having a kind of ethnoreligious/racialized hivemind (the impetus behind the "oh you just don't want to be seen with us because you want to appease antisemites, but they'll never fuck you!" logic), that cuts both ways. we BOTH wear the get-along shirt of bigotry. you're stuck in here with me and you have to listen to me and take my points on their own merits instead of creating some baroque fake logic where i'm acting out of self-preservation to appease people who hate us. plus, AND MORE IMPORTANTLY, antisemites are not logical, or else they wouldn't be antisemites. by saying i have to choose between genocides ("either we genocide palestinians to make room for shopping malls, or the holocaust will happen again!") you are ceding ground that needn't be ceded, and you're being a weird little freak.

get some materialism in you and then come chat. i'll only be a little mean i prommy

necklace depicting three figures found in an amulet of protection against lilit from the sefer raziel.

Book of Esther in fish-like case, Eastern Europe,

19th century

Being an antizionist antifascist Jew is insanity producing because you constantly have to see Zionists shake hands and make deals with neo-Nazis but a college protester is somehow the face of antisemitism because what’s a little sieg heiling amongst friends?

Elon can push neo-nazi conspiracies forever and be considered a friend to Jews whereas you should never dare be opposed to all forms of ethnosupremacism, Zionism and white nationalism alike, without being accused of antisemitism.

Hanukkah lamp, India, end of the 19th-20th century, copper alloy

Lamps in the form of the Star of David are characteristic of the Bene Israel community, which was originally centred around Mumbai on the western coast of India.

A Jewish Wedding — Jacques Joseph Maquart (1803-1873), French.

Toward a Jewish Theology of Liberation was one of the most impactful books I read in my early 20s. Marc Ellis’s words made me realize that Zionism is not destiny within Judaism and Jewish culture, and that we could build a Liberation Judaism and a Liberation Jewish culture today.

He was a tireless advocate for justice in Palestine and wrote extensively about the pro-Palestinian position’s compatibility with the historic Jewish tradition. May his memory be a blessing.

this really sums up the current state of discourse

a friend of mine is working on this, reposting here if any of you have experiences you want to add

i keep seeing people talk about their bfs/husbands weaponizing incompetence to avoid grocery shopping or purposefully fucking it up. mine doesn't do that he'll shop on his own prerogative like an actually functional adult, his issue is he occasionally brings home a Cursed Item

it is. uh. not good tasting

i am also jewish he literally brought this home specifically to offend me

wake up babe the 11th plague just dropped

me drowning in a lake while my friend, 11th century french rabbi and prolific scriptural commentator Schlomo "Rashi" Yitzchaki (zy"a) stands nearby: help im drowing help me rashi

Schlomo "Rashi" Yitzchaki (zy"a): "drowing" is likely a scribal error for "drowning." "im drow[n]ing" is to say: my lungs have become filled with water, and i am struggling to breathe. "help" once followed by "help me" a second time: the first [help] is directed to the Holy One, blessed be He, and means: "may He help us by swiftly delivering the World to Come;" the second (i.e., "help me") is to invoke direct assistance in this world, spoken as if to a personal friend. the meaning of "rashi" here is unclear.

You don’t say.

For the record, she actually abandoned the movement BEFORE they all got whooping cough, but abandoned it too late. There’d been a breakout of measles in her area that caused her to reassess, and she and her doctor had already drafted and started a catch-up vaccination schedule, but her kids caught whooping cough just before it could be started. Then she wrote a blog post for The Scientific Parent explaining how she and her husband had come to wrong decisions in the first place, how they changed their mind, the consequences they suffered as a result, and asking other parents to please vaccinate their kids. And now she’s an activist for destroying the misinformation of anti-vaxxers, and reaching out to anti-vaxxers because she’s understands their fears but knows their kids deserve better. 

She was trying to the best for her kids and just didn’t know how to interpret the validity of information or its sources, an actual skill that can be actually difficult and that is under-taught and a necessary first step to being able to trust vaccination research, so chose no action over taking an action she wasn’t sure of. She kept looking into it with family and friends and even eventually came to the right conclusion before her kids became sick, but it was still too late.

Honestly it was pretty brave of her to publicly admit she was wrong. She could have just quietly vaccinated her kids and not become a national news story, but instead she spoke out, even saying “I’m writing this from quarantine, the irony of which isn’t lost on me.” and also “I am not looking forward to any gloating or shame as this ‘defection’ from the antivaxx camp goes public, but, this isn’t a popularity contest.  Right now my family is living the consequences of misinformation and fear.  I understand that families in our community may be mad at us for putting their kids at risk.”

She understood the consequences and still put herself and her story out there. 

You know what, it does take a big person to admit they were wrong so publicly and work to undo the harm. I believe I made fun of her in the past, but timemachineyeah changed my mind.

Teshuvah comes in three steps. The public admission of wrongdoing, taking steps to make right what was wrong, and a commitment not to repeat the offense. She’s all clear in my book.