If you want to be an ally to the Jewish people, you’d better be ready to fight the antisemitism faced by all Jews.

Zionist Jews. Anti- and non-Zionist Jews. Observant Jews. Secular Jews. Israeli Jews. Ashkenazi Jews. Sephardic Jews. Mizrahi Jews. Beta Israeli Jews. Desi Jews. Convert Jews. White-passing Jews. Jews of color. Visibly-Jewish Jews. Queer Jews. Left-wing Jews. Right-wing Jews. Patrilineal Jews.

We are one people, and if you only fight antisemitism when it targets the Jews you like, you’re not actually an ally of the Jewish people.

Antisemites shouldn’t get to be in the fabric of spacetime, actually, it being a concept discovered by the Jews Herman Minkowski and Albert Einstein. If their actions truly aligned with their beliefs they would stop participating in such a Jewish concept and cease to exist.

Resisting the urge to start asking people to *culturally divest* themselves from space-time in compliance with BDS guidelines.

if jews controlled the world then the egg prices would not be like this before pesach

I got an idea: Passover hotel

Forget cleaning the house. Just go to this place! They serve Passover meals! There are old guys arguing about Talmud on the porch!

the thing about being nonbinary is that you really do start to forget that other people have such strict walls around what is and isn’t allowed for genders. i thought we all agreed that we made that up. could you climb out of the cave real quick and feel the sunshine for a minute.

my Jewish experience is not believing all the orthodox readers insisting that there’s no way David and Yonatan could possibly be gay and ALSO not believing all the heterodox readers insisting that there’s no way David and Yonatan could possibly be not gay

Something I'm working on lately is trying to find healthy approach when it comes to engaging with opposing viewpoints re: discourse and politics. Because yes, there are trolls and bad actors, and it's seldom worth wasting your energy on them; but particularly online, you can't always immediately distinguish these people from, say, a teenager grappling inexpertly with difficult topics, or a boomer working with outdated language and assumptions, or someone who's been given bad information - and these are all people that it can be worthwhile attempting to reach, even if you don't always succeed. I don't want to burn myself out, but I don't want disconnect, either, and so I've been thinking: what approach best allows me to remain optimistic while still drawing boundaries?

Here's my current solution: to treat potentially difficult conversations with strangers like a rewilding project. A sort of social conservationism, where the idea is to untangle what you can in passing, leave behind a few potential seeds, and then move on: a project of impact over intent. Nobody expects conservation efforts to succeed in a day, and it would be foolish to fixate so heavily on trying to plant a single tree in arid soil that you've got no energy left for more achievable goals. Inevitably, you'll encounter areas that can't be recovered - or at least, not by you - in which case, any time you spend making sure of their unviability is just due diligence, and only becomes a waste if you commit yourself to trying to salvage the unsalvageable. But by the same token, you don't want to over-engage with a healthy area, either. You want to see what's needed, give it a push in that direction if it's within your capabilities, and then keep going.

And maybe this is a strange way to think of things, but I'm finding it helpful. The fantasy of completely flipping someone's perspective if you can only find the exact right thing to say is a powerful one, but it's not a realistic expectation to carry around for 99.9% of interactions, and as such, there's a need - for me, at least - to detach the success of the exchange from the visibility of the outcome. I can't see into someone else's head, and in all probability, I'll never speak to that particular stranger again: therefore, my concept of catharsis needs to change. So instead of thinking, Did I change their mind? and considering anything less than a yes a failure, it's better to ask, Did I do my best to give them something to think about?, because realistically, this is all I can actually do. I can't control how a stranger receives what I say, but I can make an effort to be clear, calm and comprehensible, and that ought to be worth something.

As it is Passover again, it is time for the annual debate as to whether the frog plague, which thanks to a quirk in the Hebrew, is written as a plague of frog, singular, rather than the plural, plague of frogs, was in fact, as generally imagined, a plague of many frogs, or instead a singular giant Kaiju frog. This is an ancient and venerable argument that actually goes back to the Talmud because this is what the Jewish people are. If we can't argue for fun about this sort of thing, what are we even doing.

In that spirit, I would like to submit a third possibility, which is that in fact it was one perfectly normal sized frog, who was absolutely acing Untitled Frog Game: Ancient Egypt Edition. One particularly obnoxious frog, who through sheer hard work, managed to plague all of Egypt.

This is the most Jewish thing that has ever happened.

An unrelated note, every single Jewish post that I’ve seen with more than a couple thousand notes is from before 7/10… that says something about this hellsite

I've noticed that too. The only stuff that breaks out of jumblr is the occasional meme, otherwise we've been completely discarded.

This right here. This is why I studied history, and still participate in STUFF with the local museums. It's all about the people, and the interpersonal connections. Those growth ticks on the doorpost happened in ancient societies. As did the child's footprint, or a pet's footprint, and shared meals, and baking bread, and the joys and sorrows of LIFE IN GENERAL. People tend to forget that.

here is a child’s footprint stamped into clay in Mesopotamia more than 2000 years ago. many of these have been found, and some are inscribed with the children’s names. 

SOBBING. We did this in my preschool. My mother has the clay handprints we made. Over 2000 years and we do the same thing with clay and a child's prints.

did I not love them best? I who birthed, who nursed, who killed them?

“The old magic persists thanks to it’s unfathomable power.”

No, the old magic persists because the new magic can’t run the legacy spells I need to do my job, and keeps trying to install spirits I don’t want or need onto my orb.

Look, if the new magic didn't have a personality construct that kept trying to tell me which spells to use, maybe I wouldn't still be using the old magic.

Yes it had a deep blood cost, but at least it was a one time sacrifice and not this monthly bloodletting nonsense new age magic has

The old magic is robust enough to survive a decade of use and it's compatible with every wand, staff, scroll, and charm in our collection.

The new magic stops working after three days and every spell uses proprietary runes.

Our preferences, as an archiving institution, should be pretty clear.

You try to get guidance for the new magic and the king's sorcerers maybe will answer you in a few days with an unhelpful suggestion to buy the newest orb.

You need guidance for the old magic and a dozen retired middle-aged wizards will pop up to explain it to you rune by rune if necessary.

antitheists will say "in my ideal world, every minority group will have abandoned their traditions and beliefs and instead follow a form of culturally christian secularism" and act surprised when people call them bigots

reading about jewish history is depressing bc it’s like this endless cycle of, “we were doing okay for a bit and even managed to partially integrate, but the political climate changed and we’re once again heavily persecuted if not outright murdered. ce la vie!” 

i want gentiles to understand that Diaspora jews are getting squirrely rn bc we’ve been through this before and we can Tell the current period of relative acceptance is ending and we’re in for some shit. 

this is from 2019

reading about jewish history is depressing bc it’s like this endless cycle of, “we were doing okay for a bit and even managed to partially integrate, but the political climate changed and we’re once again heavily persecuted if not outright murdered. ce la vie!” 

i want gentiles to understand that Diaspora jews are getting squirrely rn bc we’ve been through this before and we can Tell the current period of relative acceptance is ending and we’re in for some shit. 

I was actually just talking to my GF the other day about the difference in how we both examine our Jewish identity (obvs all Jews conceptualize that differently) but we were sharing shit and I was telling her about where I grew up and the shit I dealt with (I learned the word kike the hard way at 7 and was thrown out of a park with my mother at 4 for being “dirty Jews”) and she was like “you know, I never experienced any of that… I think I always thought that Jews were safer than we really are.”

And that like, struck a chord with me? I think that the reason why a lot of people dismiss antisemitism (and I mean people who are generally well-meaning, not the assholes who dismiss it because they hate our guts) is because people think that Jews are safe now. People think that we talk about it too much because well, who deals with that anymore? Antisemitism was just Jews not being allowed into country clubs, right? And now, Jews CAN go into country clubs, so it’s fine! I mean sure, there was the Holocaust, but that happened waaaay over in Europe, and the United States won that war, right? Hell, Jews are successful now! No one hates them anymore!

And it’s this awful, insidious, and I believe purposefully constructed narrative around antisemitism that keeps people who would normally jump onto defending marginalized people from defending Jews in the same way- our oppression isn’t as important because in their eyes, it isn’t life threatening. Which is SUPER frustrating because as a Jew, I know it is threatening, and I know that, as said above, we are really in for some shit. 

I don’t think that this is the only reason antisemitism is dismissed and denied- that’s a whole clusterfuck of antisemitism in itself, but I do think that there is a narrative that Jews are “safe”, so much so that people don’t see us as a marginalized minority anymore, despite the fact that we are very much still a minority and we are VERY much still marginalized. 

I’m a Jew in the USA and I grew up in North on East Coast in Solidly Blue State.

And I grew up in large Jewish community and grew up frum.

Which meant that I was often in the mostly Jewish world, but a lot of the day to day antisemitism I dealt with was that brand liberal antisemitism.

If you have dealt with liberal antisemitism and/or racism then you know exactly what I’m talking about.

This however didn’t mean that I didn’t deal with all the various flavors of antisemitism because I did.

But I most exposed to that liberal wasp style.

One would think that this being a Solidly Blue State, state in the North, a state on the east coast, and a state that is a combo of all of those that is would safe and great.

But no it was not. Growing up we still had to have police cars every year outside all the synagogues, shuls, and temples for Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur for our safety and that was just when I was growing up let alone now.

The thing I need people to understand is that is about degrees of safety rather safe.

So when I talk about the USA in regards to Jewish history what I say and make clear is that it has never been safe and still not safe.

There have been certain places at certain points in time that were safer then other places and other points in time. There was certainly a point a like 20-30 year period that I would consider when the USA at it most safe-ish point.

If we were looking at a graph the peak of the most safe-ish has been hit and we are falling that comes after that.

In my opinion whatever Jewish “Golden Age” that existed in America is over.

I think that in like 30 years from (even less, but I give that time to see the full effects) we see a total different America in regards to Jewish life in that it will so vastly different. In terms of the population decrease due to Jews leaving the country and much of what is left hiding their identity for safety reasons.

This is why I have always said it is not that the USA is safe for Jews it was safe-ish for Jews and it is a matter of degrees of safety.

And when it gets to a certain below a certain threshold people are not going to wait around and see what happens because we have just to much history under our belt to know what happens to play those kind of games.

And I’m not just talking about the Holocaust here. Because we have a lot of post Holocaust history that we can look to, to see what has happened to other Jewish communities. We are not a stupid people and we learn from each other. So we know what happens to one community can happen to another community.

It is also why we have seen Israel go from being like I think 3rd or 4th of the list in terms of largest Jewish population in the world to 1st.

And that is not just due new people being born.

Because for the longest time USA was the largest population of Jews in the world, not just Diaspora, but the world.

But in the past couple of decades more and more people have been making Aliyah to Israel due to fear of antisemitism and safety concerns.

If I recall correctly France was pretty big source of Jews making Aliyah for quite some time.

But I know some other countries that have smaller populations of Jews have also been having the same thing over the past couple of decades like South Africa, if I recall correctly.

(French Jews and South African Jews please correct me if I’m wrong)

And from the areas I’m in I know that in past decade a fair amount of Jews have slowly been making Aliyah as well.

Now that isn’t to say everyone is going to go to Israel, I just think odds are if you are going to move to whole new country as a Jew many Jews are going to choose the one country that you know for sure the government won’t kill you for being a Jew.

And to be clear it is not that all the people who make Aliyah agree with every government policy or like who is charge when they move or stuff like that it is just this is where they feel their best bet is in terms of safety as Jews.

I have been saying this probably since 2017-8

One of the really tragic things I have found in my experiences is the breakdown of overall communications between the Frum Communities and the overall larger Jewish Communities.

Because it causes fractions in Am Yisrael, it causes misunderstandings, it causes lack of shared resources, and most importantly sharing information.

As we know one of the things Jews thrive on is information. The more the better. We understand the importance of information. I mean look at how we study the Tanach and how much information and sources we use to study it. Look at the Talmud and much information comes up at seemingly random to make a Rabbi’s point.

We don’t hoard gold as like the stereotypes make out, but rather information and it is not so much hoarding and more like gathering, collecting, and then sharing with others in great enthusiasm.

We each are vast libraries of info.

I don’t want to come across as if I’m painting all Frum communities this way or as if I’m bashing Frum communities. That is not my intention nor is my goal.

Rather it comes from a place of love. I grew up Frum and while I struggled deeply in my community because of how things that were set up that I firmly believe are fundamentally out of line with everything that Judaism is. There was still much that was wonderful and beautiful and in line with Judaism.

And while I don’t live in that community now there is much I deeply miss about. So this is not an attack on Frum communities or Frum people and I hope that is clear. (and if you are Frum yourself or grew up Frum and ever want to have discussion and what needs to change in the communities with me I’d love to have that convo)

A big thing about these communities is there is a very isolationists viewpoint. The is an idolization of the Shtetl and Shtetl life while totally ignoring what the actual reality of it looked like i.e the extreme poverty, the danger, and that women had a lot of say and power as well the reality that men and women were not all that isolated from each because they needed to interact with each other to get work done.

The reality is the Shtetl was murdered in the Holocaust. Now it probably would have died of natural causes as we entered a world that is more interconnected by technology. But we will never know because we never got a chance to find out. Because it and that type of life was murdered in the Holocaust.

And you can not just try and build it somewhere else because it was born out of a very specific history and antisemitic laws that forced it to come into place.

And even more so in the middle of places the well populated you can not just try and make a modern Shtetl. It will not work or happen.

And as the world becomes inter-connected the smaller it becomes and the less isolated you can be. That is the reality.

Now the reason I’m talking about all of this and there is one, is because at least in my community growing the messaging that I was given was that any Jew who is not Frum is assimilated.

Which I didn’t buy then and my instinct of not believing that was proven to be true as I lived in other places and interacted in other communities. To me an assimilated Jew is one who has shed all pretense of being a Jew. We has no connection to the community and identity and has no interest in maintaining any connection to the community and their identity.

There are plenty of assimilated Jews lets not play games. But most of us are not, most of us of still connected to our identities and our community is one way or another.

Someone who is proud of their Jewish identity is not assimilated regardless of what Halacha they do or do not keep. Someone who deeply connected to the culture is not assimilated again regardless of what Halacha they do or do not keep. Someone who is deeply involved with Jewish organizations (not JVP and its ilk, but actual Jewish orgs) or their local Jewish community is not assimilated regardless of what Halacha they do or do not keep. Someone who eats cheeseburgers, but is on their temple board is not assimilated.

This lack of sharing of information often means that Frum communities are unaware of the kinds of antisemitism and dangers that Jews in the communities outside of the Frum ones face and deal with in the and the Jews in none Frum communities often are unaware of the kind antisemitism Frum Jews face and deal with.

Which means that antisemites win every time.

So I try to educate everyone about it all. I do this here and I do this for my family who live in the Frum community.

Because when you live in a Frum community often you can work either within the community or network in the community which means that you can get a job for a business owned by a Frum Jew so certain workplace hurdles are ones you don’t experience because they don’t exist.

The idea of needing time off for Yom Tovim is not a thing because that is built in the work schedule already. No one is going get harassed for Kippah when the owner wears one. Stuff like that.

So there is not always an awareness about how other Jews who do experience antisemitism in the workplace or in school.

Or what it is like trying to find Kosher food or being one of a few Jews in a given area.

(Unless of course it is a very small frum community then there is that awareness)

But that ignorance and lack of awareness goes the other way too. In terms of how Frum Jews when traveling have to be cautious and aware because it is more obvious that they are Jewish. Amongst other things.

And with all that said there is still so much we have in common I want to clear. Like how we learn about antisemitism at a young age and then respond to it as children.

Like a common thread I have found in all the Jews I’ve interacted with no matter the background is that a young age we all have played some kind of “game” that comes down to us figuring out where in our homes we would hide, who we know could hide us, and how well could pass as a goy.

Like we all have “played” some variation of that “game”.

Or how so many of us keep important documents not in the bank but at home in place we can easily grab it or have many of us know what the one thing we are taking with us is.

The various tips and tricks so speak we pass from generation to generation for survival and to each other in whispers.

And that is just in one area where we are all so alike.

There is so much more in how we are all so like. We all need at least one pomegranate decorative thing in the house in another. Somewhere in pretty much every Jewish house you will find something that decorated with a pomegranate or decor that is a pomegranate without fail.

The reason I wrote this all here is on this post is because Trump won his 1st election in 2016 and in 2017 was Charlottesville and the Unite the Right Rally. And there was slew of articles that came out from both goyim and several people purporting to be Jewish who expressed shock and dismay. The reason I write purporting to be Jewish is because they either were totally assimilated Jews or people who had some Jewish heritage somewhere at some point, but where not actually Jewish at all because otherwise how could they so shocked and dismayed.

I was more shocked and dismayed and the various articles expressing shock and dismay that something like this could happen in the USA and in this year of 2017 of all things.

I kept thinking to myself like have these people never interacted with a spoken to any Jew ever in regards to antisemitism? Have they never interacted with any Jewish community ever?

Because there was absolutely nothing shocking about what happened. What was shocking was the responses to the what was happening. That a president took to two days to condemn it was shocking and that the condemnation was really one that was shocking and at the same time not really because the president was Trump.

What was both shocking and not shocking was easily the antisemitism got covered up and wiped away by the Left and the “Jews will not replace us” was turned into “You will not replace us” chants only by leftists.

What was shocking and not shocking was the lefty youtubers covering this not bothering to bring any Jewish youtubers or Jewish experts to give insight, expertise or anything like they normally do on topics or in regards to groups they don’t belong to.

It was for me a moment that I was knew I really need to start speaking more and more about antisemitism and educating more and more.

I don’t remember when my blog shifted from whatever random stuff it was before to mostly focusing on antisemitism, Jewish history, educational stuff, and life as a Jew type of stuff, but that moment really solidified it for me that was what my main focus would be.

Now I still have things on here because this is my blog and I reblog and blog about things in my personal life and stuff that interest me and that I like or find cute (animals) and fandom stuff, but like at the very least 50% (if not more) of what I do is trying to educate of Jewish history, history of antisemitism, antisemitism in general, and like reality of life being Jewish.

I can only hope that I’m doing an okay job at it and helping in any way.

So if there is anything I can say I hope is a take away from this is that is has always been about degrees of safety and a matter of safe-ish because no where is Diaspora is actually safe because that is the reality of Diaspora.

It is one of the reason I hate how Diaspora has become such a water downed word and gets applied incorrectly to many groups specifically immigrant groups.

Diaspora is not a generic term to mean living outside of one’s Homeland. It is a specific term with a specific meaning and it should and can loose it’s meaning.

When you think of people forcibly taken from Africa who where then put into Chattel slavery and their descendants that is Diaspora.

When you think of Trail of Tears and their descendants that is Diaspora.

{There are of course more examples within USA history and in other places, but I’m giving two very famous examples in USA history for Americans to try and given them a better understanding from one American to another}

I have never so wholly agreed with a post on tumblr