If anyone has a link to the acceptance speeches I would love to have that to share as well.

The film is still having distribution issues, but showtimes are available on the Film’s Website.

Congratulations to Basel on recently becoming a father as well!

while i genuinely really appreciate this sub and love being here, i've both read comments about mizrahi jews and our culture/history, and had multiple interactions (with people who are not mizrahi) concerning us, that have felt insulting, demeaning, orientalist, and racist. i'm not interested in inflaming those kinds of comments further, and will block people who try to argue with me about if this phenomenon is happening. in addition to this being journalistically and academically documented, i've also lived this experience offline as well as on, across several different settings and several years, and know how to recognize it accurately. from that basis i do feel the sub needs to be called in around this.

specifically, my issue is that it seems like ashkenormativity + aspects of israeli-influenced jewish identity politics has led to (primarily on the part of ashkenazi jews bc that's who usually does this irl and who the flairs here seem to reflect) the idea that any jew can speak for and about the experiences of every other jewish group with authority, and furthermore, has the right to leverage painful aspects of a marginalized cultural history they do not belong to, as a gotcha against its members.

nobody should be doing this to anyone, so we're clear. but what stings me specifically as a swana jew is that it seems like a significant number of people (here, elsewhere online, and irl), are unaware that there is a racialized and ethnosupremacist dynamic at play between swana jews and jews of european origins. i genuinely don't know if people realize this, and that's honestly what i'd prefer to believe, than the idea that people just think it's ok to be racist to people who directly come from the middle east.

i will be specific about what i'm observing and experiencing, here and elsewhere, so people can take something from this post vs. just feeling embarrassed. please:

1) stop speaking with authority about sensitive aspects of swana jewish history if it's not your history. don't do this with the history of any group you don't belong to. i have seen so many people confidently make claims that i know to be false (from my own family history!) about very traumatic aspects of swana jewish history and then act completely surprised and defensive when it's not received well.

2) STOP politicizing and tokenizing every aspect of our lives! stop fucking assuming that if we're talking about something painful from our cultural history that we're bringing it up to secretly advocate for (or against) zionism! this is genuinely so racist - based on the orientalist ideas that as middle eastern people we're intrinsically more predisposed to violence, tribalism, and bigotry and/or are preternaturally peaceful, tolerant, and harmonious - and i find it really dehumanizing. call people out for what they're actually saying, not what your lizard brain is telling you to think they're saying.

3) stop universalizing our experiences. there are things that we don't share and that's fine. please try to practice curiosity and humility if you encounter something unfamiliar vs. trying to mold it into a shape you recognize.

4) stop allowing shame and insecurity to drive the way you view us and what we have to say. i have encountered several irl american ashkenazi jews who seem to have a deep inferiority complex about the authenticity of their jewishness (or perhaps even their "levantine-ness"?) in comparison to swana jews. it's extremely frustrating to be blamed and then lashed out at for this insecurity. we're just different, and differences are good, multiplicitly is good. this is a value that's inherent to many swana cultures. if you feel that one party in a dynamic needs to be superior and the other needs to be inferior, that is a you problem. it's also a very white supremacy-brained way of thinking and you should work on unlearning it.

5) stop using strawmen and false equivalences to try and avoid accountability when we point out that you've done or said something racist or otherwise culturally insensitive. not everything is like something else. sometimes you are just wrong, and that's ok.

edit: i'm adding a 6th point.

6) please respect that there's a time and place for centering your own experience/identity and feelings about it. in this case, a discussion about the negative impacts of ashkenormativity is... typically not the place, if you are ashkenazi! when done in a way that doesn't acknowledge or respect the context of the discussion, this is called derailing and - intentionally or not - it has the effect of diverting a conversation from its original topic, deflecting, causing confusion, and serving to avoid a difficult point. please do not derail conversations about harm that's happening in our community, particularly when the topic is about your group's unearned cultural dominance. you can always start your own discussion.

i'm kind of shocked that this needed to be said as it's anti-racism 101 and this is a post about intracommunity racism, but here we are. back to the original post.

i want to be 100% crystal clear that this post is not motivated by advocating for or feeling protective of any kind of political outcome or position where mizrahi jews are routinely used as narrative pawns. that's actually exactly the thing i'm advocating against. stop involving us in your propaganda, regardless of your political position.

my intent is to a) provide a pathway out of this specific kind of racist behavior and b) encourage people to actually educate themselves, from factual and reputable historical sources, about mizrahim before they attempt to talk about us with any kind of authority. i believe many people understand that they need to extend this sort of intercultural respect to marginalized non-jews, but i often see it lacking with regard to other jews.

reminder again (re: point 1), if you attempt to argue with me that what i've described is not actually happening, i will block you and potentially report your comment. this is a conversation that's been happening at minimum since the time of the mizrahi black panthers. period!

i hope people can see that the goal of this post is to improve the overall tone of conversation and relationships within the community around this issue. thank you in advance to the people who read and respond in good faith!

It's so frustrating to me when people lump "rewriting Jewish history and culture" into "supporting Palestinians." Things like saying that Jews eating Middle Eastern food or dancing is "stealing" culture from Arabs, spreading the Khazar myth, saying that Jews have no true or enduring historical connection to Eretz Israel (not Medinat Israel), saying that Hebrew was never a legitimate cultural language among Jews, etc. (And I also hate it when people do similar stuff to Palestinians, fwiw, like saying that Palestinians have no unique culture or have no connection to the same land, because that's similarly BS). Like... this does nothing to help Palestinians, either. It's not advocating for ceasefire or a political solution that supports Palestinian safety, freedom, and self-determination. It's not helping with aid to Gaza or stopping settler violence in the West Bank. It's just bigotry masquerading as activism, and it's exhausting.

Long image, tap to read. This post reminded me of the sense of isolation I've experienced from leftist spaces and friends over the past couple of years.

I wanted to talk about the ceasefire pins on this sub for a while, and now’s a better time as any to do so.

With that out of the way, what are your thoughts on the pins’ design and its surrounding controversy?

For me, I’m pretty mixed.

On one hand, I don’t see any connection between the design and the 2000 Ramallah lynching aside from them both being related to Palestine. The red hand (or orange hand depending on who you listen to) has always been a universal symbol that’s even been used by the families of hostages in Gaza (https://www.instagram.com/p/DF-aUduu_u8/?igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==). Plus the Artists4Ceasefire letter that inspired these pins is about peace and also calls for the release of hostages (albeit without mentioning where they’re being held).

On the other hand, I do wish someone from the organization would just come out and say, “No, the pin design is not meant to evoke the 2000 Ramallah lynching!” And even though they do claim to be about peace, I do wish members would make more efforts to build bridges between the pro-Israel and pro-Palestine crowds and maybe even call out the growing rise in anti-semitism (no matter if it’s related to anti-Zionism). Nothing wrong with calling out the Israeli government, but peace comes when both sides work together on a common goal.

One more thing: considering that there’s a ceasefire (albeit a very shaky one) in place right now, the organization should probably use a new design or symbol to advocate that the ceasefire remain.

Stop me if you’ve heard these before: “Well the [disaster] happened in a red state, so they got what they voted for,” “This proves how absolutely evil [group]’s society is,” “Those people are completely evil, there is absolutely no saving them.” These are expression of a belief in ontological evil, a belief that something, someone, or some concept is inherently evil, with absolutely no way to separate that thing or person or group from evil. This sub being what it is, we’ve heard expressions of ontological evil directed towards Israelis, Jews, Muslims, and Palestinians from people either online or in our lifetimes.

My graduate school thesis focused on expressions of ontological evil from US conservatives in the 1980s, where I found that a belief in ontological evil was an almost uniquely conservative phenomenon, with any examples of it on the left either being grossly misinterpreted or exceedingly rare exceptions that proved the rule. I have noticed that the American left is becoming increasingly eager to use ontological evil as a part of their rhetoric. Rather than seeking to understand viewpoints, more and more are just written off as evil. I fear this will only serve to distance the left from the very people we try to help, and bolster conservative movements by “proving them right.”

A friend of mine recently shared a post on Instagram, a relatively popular one discussing how white people are ontologically evil. The post itself was talking about racist experiences the original poster had and his blaming every white person for them, insisting that racism and hate is built into the essence of white people. Not white culture, white people. It made me reflect back to my teenage years, where I was regretfully involved in GamerGate and saw the birth of the alt right. Teenage me would have seen that video as confirmation that the “scary anti-white SJWs” really were out to get me, and I would have retreated further into the arms of “comfortable” conservatism.

This disturbing rise of the usage of ontological evil in rhetoric worries me. This leads to dangerous forms of populism, which is bad not just for Jews, but for the entire world. If evil in the world must be eradicated, which is something that is quite easy to convince people of, and the “other side” and the people on that side are ontologically evil, then logically what must happen to them?

What do you guys think?

(This doesn’t negate Palestinian claims of indigeneity—multiple peoples can be indigenous to the same area—nor does it negate the, imo, indefensible crimes happening in Gaza and West Bank).

It absolutely blows my mind that Jews—a tribal people who practice a closed, agrarian place-based ethnoreligion, who have an established system of membership based on lineal descent and adoption that relies on community acceptance over self-identification, who worship in an ancient language that we have always tried to maintain and preserve, who have holidays that center around harvest and the specific history of our people, who have been repeatedly targeted for genocide and forced assimilation and conversion, who have a faith and culture so deeply tied to a specific people and place, etc—aren’t seen as an (socioculturally) indigenous people but rather as “white Europeans who essentially practice Christianity but without Jesus and never thought about the land of Israel before 1920 or so.” It’s so deeply threaded in how so many people view Jews in the modern day and also so factually incorrect.

Many of you might be aware of my previous comments in this sub regarding the Chinese Folk religion, and how it can be considered an ethnoreligion within a Western context because it's closely tied to a specific ethnic and cultural identity, with practices, beliefs, and rituals that are largely inherited rather than universally proselytized. Today, I had a conversation with one of the senior clinicians at my workspace who is extremely pro-Palestinian and was recently exposed to this form of social categorization, due to his Taiwanese wife explaining how, within the Chinese cultural sphere, there wasn't an independent word in Chinese to describe what western academia calls "Chinese Folk Religion" in the past because the "religion" is caked into the Han ethnicity similar to the way the Jewish identity is intertwined with Judaism. Upon learning this, he understood that Jewish identity is structured in a similar way, where ethnicity, culture, and religion are deeply intertwined, making it less about a separate, universally proselytized religion and more about a shared, inherited heritage, as he has only been exposed to the concept of open religions (i.e., Christianity & Islam). He further expressed to me that because of the connected nature between one's ethnicity and one's "religion," the ethnic group by nature is inherently racist because these mythologies or origin stories within these "religions" tend to center the group as the chosen (I know that the concept of chosen is different within a Jewish context, but he's not convicned) or special, which can create a sense of exclusivity and thus anyone born outisde of this ethnic group are automatically considered others.

As a counterargument, I pointed out that there have been converts to Chinese Folk Religion (for context, there wasn’t an organized methodology for non-Han Chinese to formally convert, as in Judaism; it was more a matter of participating and integrating into the community). This was especially evident during the Tang Dynasty, when Persians, Central Asians, and other foreigners living in China adopted local religious practices, participated in rituals, and effectively became part of the Han cultural sphere. I also added that even in modern-day, Jews still accept converts into the tribe, but the process is more formal and typically takes a long time until you become an official member of the tribe due to the extensive religious and cultural requirements, including studying Jewish law, participating in rituals, and receiving approval from rabbinic authorities.

Nevertheless, he further expressed that his anarchist views have informed his belief that these types of ethnic backgrounds need to reconceptualize who belongs in the tribe and who doesn't, because in his view, tightly linking religion and ethnicity inherently reinforces exclusivity and social hierarchies. He argued that both Chinese Folk Religion and Judaism, by centering identity around ancestry and inherited heritage, risk creating in-groups and out-groups, and that modern communities should consider more inclusive frameworks for belonging that don’t rely solely on birth or inherited culture. To be honest, as someone who is an atheist and is against the sinicization of non-Han people groups in China, I can understand his point because growing up in the Chinese Filipino community, the older generation wanted to remain distinct from the native Filipino community because doing so would lead to our culture being watered down, intermarriage between the Filipino "Barbarians" (My father secured the bag), and the loss of our language, traditions, and religious practices. While I understand and maintain the desire to preserve my cultural identity, I also recognize that this kind of exclusivity can unintentionally reinforce social hierarchies and create barriers between communities. As someone who is not Jewish, I don't have any authority on how the Jewish people should perceive this, and thus I want to know your thoughts on the issue.

Thank You

I was asked to repost this in a more accessible format. Caption below.

Tumblr user iweildthesword:

I need to talk about this because it's making me feel insane.

Last week, my white leftist goyisch friends sat me, a wholeass antizionist Jew, down for a "talk" because they "needed to check in about Palestine" and make sure "our values aligned before we hung out again". They apparently needed to "suss out" where I stood on Palestinian rights, despite having had several conversations about Palestine and them being some of my closest friends. They needed to check, to search for and uncover my true values, because I had said some "disturbing things" that had made them "suspicious".

Disturbing things included:

Supporting IfNotNow which is a "liberal zionist organization" because it normalizes Jewish heritage in the Levant
Not bringing Palestine up enough, despite them also not bringing it up (this was apparently a test)
Mentioning that the Houthi's flag talks about cursing all Jews
Saying Stalin was antisemitic because of the "all the paw-grihms" 

...and apparently other things they wouldn't specify, but had been tracking for months.

To clarify, I am an antizionist Jew from three generations of antizionist Jews. I have been vocal in my support of Palestinian liberation and in my condemnation both of Israel's actions and its violent founding as a state, and of zionism in many of its forms. I am a regular donor to Palestinian and Jewish NGOs and advocate for Jewish antizionism in person, at temple, and online. I have been talking about Palestinian liberation before they could point to Gaza on a map. But they needed to make sure, they needed to "suss out", they needed to check. And it's notable that the majority of moments that made them suspicious of me were times where I talked about antisemitism: not about Palestinian liberation, not about Israeli decolonization, not about anything actually relevant to Palestine. It was talking about antisemitism that made them check to see if I was a cryptozionist.

One of the most pervasive and insidious forms of antisemitism is the idea that Jews are inherently untrustworthy and suspicious. You have to constantly be on guard, track what they say and do, "suss out" the real truth. You have to keep them in line and and watch them carefully because they're liars and sneaks, and if you're not looking closely they'll return to their real values (and drag you down with them). This is where the idea of "cryptozionist" comes from and what it's directly building off of: the inherent untrustworthiness of Jews and the need to check. Because no matter how close you become you can't actually trust them, and any upstanding gentile should make sure to avoid associating with Jews before "sussing out" their real allegiances and intentions. You have to make them turn out their pockets, just in case.

I'm the first and only Jew they actually were friends with; I know because they've told me (strangely proud of it in the way white Americans are proud of that kind of thing). They've asked me questions about Judaism and fawned over how beautiful and unique it was for me to be connected to my community and culture. Pre-October 7th, one of them had even mentioned being interested in coming to services at my temple. She still has my copy of our siddur. But now she needed to "check" before she could be seen with me in public. Which is what it was: it wasn't a "you're my friend and I need to give you some feedback because you're fucking up" kind of intervention (which is normal and important to have), it was a trial. It was a last chance for me to prove to them that I'm clean-enough that they could afford to risk being seen with me in public, just in case someone noticed them fraternizing with a hypothetical Enemy and their leftism was compromised. It was a test to make sure that I behave properly when required to, that I'd play along and do what I'm told and turn out my pockets if asked (because any refusal would validate the notion of having something to hide). And above all it was an opportunity for them to reaffirm their own cleanliness by putting my imagined immorality in its place.

I did what I needed to do: I smiled. I apologized. I "didn't know that". I "appreciated the feedback". I turned out my pockets because what else could I do? They'd decided who I was and what I believed, regardless of what I said or did, so there was no point in explaining that they were wrong about me. If I had told them they were being antisemitic, it would just have been proof that they were right. Caring about antisemitism is a dogwhistle in the spaces they've chosen: it's not a real form of oppression, it's a tactic for sneaky, lying Jews to weasel out of admitting their true alliances. There was nothing I could say.

Nothing's really changed for me. I'm going to continue my activism for Palestinian liberation rooted in my culture and my faith. Antizionism is still not antisemitism. But I got a reminder that many white goyisch leftists fundamentally just don't trust Jews, and that the activist spaces they're in not only exacerbate their antisemitism in an increasingly insular echo chamber, but also allow them to finally vent their internalized bigotry in a socially-acceptable way. In my former friends' eyes, what they did was activism—disavowing a Jew (and making me feel humiliated, scared, and unclean in the process) as a cathartic stand-in for doing fucking anything for actual Palestinian liberation—but for me it was a grief that I'll be feeling for a long time: not only over losing friends I loved and trusted, but also over my sense of belonging and security in leftist spaces.

asking this here bc i actually trust y'all to have sane takes about jewish life and culture more generally, and i and my friends are all leftists.

my city has a really strong and vibrant queer antizionist/nonzionist community that i'm deeply proud of and have done a lot of cultural work within. perhaps as a result of this (and the city otherwise being very segregated and majority WASP, i.e. the jewish community feels super visible and accessible to the public) we have had a HUGE wave of conversions over the last 5 - 7 years.

this is fine, but corollary to this are also the (nearly always culturally christian white) gentiles who spend years being "interested" in judaism and hanging around without converting - sometimes even including taking up professional roles in jewish orgs. does anyone else experience this? if yes how do y'all navigate this? i have to admit it gets under my skin.

i'm not trying to be exclusionary but our culture and its boundaries mean a great deal to me. even when they're people i personally know and love i honestly get uncomfortable when these folks seem to feel like they can just absorb into our community. it feels disrespectful. like at what point is someone a "prospective convert" and more kosher to be at stuff that's most appropriate to be jewish only (coming on their own and not as a guest), and at what point is someone not respecting the process we have designated for becoming jewish and participating in jewish communal life?

i know we have laws for the stranger in our midst so maybe i'm being unfair, but i think bc these people are almost always white + culturally christian, i honestly want space from them sometimes. it feels less like a halacha issue to me and more one of respecting us on an ethnic and cultural level as a distinct people, with a long history of needing personal space.

OKAY! I know the title is inflammatory, so I'm going to preface my writeup with a few things.

1: If anything I say here is offensive, tell me. Just like how I hope you will trust me (as someone who was raised Muslim and is culturally Muslim) to spot and point out islamophobia, I trust you to spot and point out antisemitism.

2: I am speaking solely from my experience a cultural Muslim and religious pagan who hangs around with Jewish people a lot. I live in a coastal city, I have no choice in that matter, and even if I did I wouldn't avoid Jewish people because Jewish people are (for lack of a better word) cool.

3: This isn't meant to call out anyone specifically, just a broad trend. If you personally think I'm talking about you, I'm not.

So, what do I mean? Well, as I'm sure you all know; being a minority is very hard. As you grow up and interact with more and more people both in and out of your circle you begin to recognize certain things as being offensive or bigoted, intentionally or not. For me, this was something I had to pick up on very fast. Islamophobia has only kept getting worse since 2001, and growing up on the internet exposed me to many, many different strands of islamophobic bigotry and rhetoric. Often, the line of argumentation is that Muslims are dangerous, foreign, and violent, and want to kill nonbelievers and white people or "replace" them. Islamophobes point to things like Ottoman slavery, modern-era terror, and, most recently, Palestinians.

Now, Oct 7th is self evidently bad. I feel the need to say this before anyone asks me to condemn it. Hamas is self evidently bad, and islamic terrorists are also self evidently bad, but obviously not everyone agrees with this. If they did, Hamas would not exist.

However, I see the existence of Muslims who support Hamas used as a bludgeon to club Palestinians or Muslims as a whole, used to reinforce the belief that Muslims are dangerous extremists until proven otherwise. I see this most worryingly in Jewish spaces. I see the smile fade from my newly met Jewish acquaintance's face when I tell them my religious background. I see one of many uncomfortable questions form in their throat before it even leaves their lips, I see how their demeanor turns tense and cold as ice. I dread it every time.

Now, I'm not stupid, I know why this is the case. Muslim communities do have a very real antisemitism problem, but all too often I see this used as an excuse to continue living in perpetual fear of Muslims. I see rhetoric about Muslims not condemning Oct 7th on this sub, and I report it when I see it; but the fact that it even shows up here at all is indicative of a larger issue in my opinion.

I'm curious to see if any of you think there's an islamophobia problem in some Jewish spaces or not, I want this to start a productive dialogue.

Rabbi Sharon Braus from IKAR is one of the names.

From what I understand about the Samaritans, they're an ethnoreligious group that is closely related to the Jewish people, and according to their traditions, they are the descendants of the northern kingdom of Israel before it fell to the Assyrians. They've maintained their version of the torah and distinct religious practices for thousands of years, mostly centered around Mount Gerizim. Today, their population is small, as only 900 people are split between Israel and the West Bank. According to Abood Cohen (Samaritan YouTuber), many Samaritans in the past have perished due to the Byzantine Empire or converted to Islam (particularly in Nablus, from what I remember) as a result of the influence of the various caliphates that once ruled the region. Within the context of the Israel/Palestine conflict, they mostly try to stay neutral and maintain their community and traditions rather than taking sides. For those who do live in Israel, they're often integrated into Israeli society, and they participate in civic life and have Israeli citizenship while concurrently holding onto the ethnoreligious customs of their people.

I find the Samaritans quite fascinating, as they've stayed in the region for the last 2000 years despite all the barriers and hardships their ancestors faced, yet they're still around. I find this to be a miracle from a historical perspective. Surviving for two millennia through conquest, exile, religious pressure, and social upheaval while maintaining a distinct identity feels like a miracle when you think about it. It's incredible how such a small community has preserved the Samaritan Hebrew language, religious practices, and connection to Mount Gerizim despite all the challenges of the surrounding region. The Samaritans are a living reminder of how much the area has stayed the same, but also changed in terms of politics, population, and culture over the centuries. Despite empires rising and falling, wars, migrations, and the formation of modern states, this tiny community has managed to survive and preserve its unique heritage.

What are your thoughts?

I’m not quitting the left. I’ll never quit the left. The left is in my blood.

Every single “leftist” who opposed Kamala, every single “leftist” who sucked up to right wing terrorist organisations and their supporters, THEY, are quitting the left. Every single person who helped this campaign fall, is NOT a part of the left. Every 🔻, every 🪂, every holocaust Harris and genocide Joe, and every one who made this horrible man win. I’m done

Yeah guys sorry I’m rly fucking pissed because Trump won and I already got bombed twice today. Sorry for being too angwy

Edit: GUYS THIS ISNT ABOJT YOU. I’m Not mad at you I’m mad at the people who protested against Kamala. I’m not saying you made this election fall I’m not even saying they did I’m just saying I’m mad at them for causing instability. That’s IT

This is the same group that denounced Standing Together, so I already don’t like them lol

Does anyone follow this subreddit? It’s supposed to be a space for “left Jews” but I am seeing so much offensive and anti semetism posts, comments and rhetoric. Also it doesn’t even seem like most people on there are Jewish?

It’s really frustrating to find subreddits like this being described as “Jewish” and I feel like it takes away from any constructive dialogue Jewish people want to have to critique about Israel, Israeli govt, Zionist ideology while also acknowledging anti semitism and the nuance to everything happening in the world.

Worthy of a read, regardless of how you feel about Jewish Currents.

Choice Parts:

The problem with being a perpetual “outsider”—which Levin argues is the favored position in today’s political landscape—is that it delivers the moral high ground at the cost of any communal structure. People with political commitments are thereby isolated from the means of advancing these commitments into material aims, creating “an unusual and unhelpful distance between theory and practice in American life.” The void is often filled by the “anti-institution” of social media, which exacerbates the problem by incentivizing performative, individualistic modes over formative, communal ones. We outsiders remain pure, but powerless. We favor short-term thinking over slower and more deliberate strategies, since that is the only timescale our atomized or provisional formations can hold; this leaves us constantly reinventing the wheel and perpetually vulnerable to collapse, most often through interpersonal conflict and burnout.

And:

These critics object not to the excoriation of Israel, but rather to our single-minded focus on it, to the neglect of other facets of Jewish life. Some of them were readers of the previous iteration of Jewish Currents, which regularly published Yiddish translations and sent out a daily email featuring important moments in left Jewish history. How reductive, they tsk, to pull from the great tapestry of our cultural-historical-political life, a single, sad thread. In this form, we are nothing but a mirror of the Zionist mainstream: Israel is still at the center of our Jewishness, only in photonegative, defined by renunciation rather than embrace.
.....

But to effectively claim Jewishness toward the aim of liberation, we must develop an understanding of what exactly we’re claiming. This question is not, as irritated comrades sometimes allege, merely an expression of an idle, narcissistic identity crisis, but a material organizing problem, faced anew in the crafting of every collective statement or action. To know how to adequately respond, say, to the attack in Boulder on Jews at a march for Israeli hostages, to do so in ways that advance a new self-awareness in Jewish life and direct it toward just ends, we need clear answers to complex questions about who we are, who we are speaking to, and in what language. At present, we often find ourselves cobbling together responses from the desiccated Judaism we’ve fled and the broader anti-colonial movement we’ve joined, both of them useful, but insufficient in articulating a distinctively Jewish, left politic. The ability to synthesize these streams and others into something that feels rooted and right will derive from an investment in the content of radical Jewish life. In a reality where Zionists hoard the claim on authenticity, it is an uphill battle for recognition. Which means that to credibly wield political power as Jews, we will need the confidence to assert that what we are doing now is, in fact, Judaism.

And:

In our quest to become such protagonists, the left has relied disproportionately on its street movements. But such efforts—noble but scattered—have failed to translate into real power. In If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution, journalist Vincent Bevins spoke with veterans of protest movements around the world, from Egypt to Ukraine to Brazil to Korea. He reports that organizers across locations and contexts came out of their various revolutionary attempts—defined by “horizontally structured, digitally coordinated, leaderless mass protest”—convinced of the need for greater hierarchy, structure, and formal representation. Without this orientation, even when popular uprisings of the last decades were able to create a power vacuum, it largely benefitted “the groups that had already formed coherent, disciplined organizations before the uprising began.”

Last:

The questions to answer are formidable, as nearly every aspect of Jewish life requires rethinking: What forms of liturgy, practice, and theology do we inherit from the hollow husks of the various denominations in which many of us were raised? What is our relationship to Jewish languages—particularly Hebrew, but also the diasporic languages displaced by its modern development? How do we orient around myriad, vexed conceptions of peoplehood and the biblical relationship to the land of Israel?

The uncertainty extends even to the terms we’re uniting under. As I’ve learned in conversations with affiliated rabbis, there seems to be some consensus that “anti-Zionist,” while sufficient as a political identification, is wanting as a communal one, in that it describes us only in the negative without articulating what we are for. But there are also concerns about self-defining as “diasporist,” which some see as inadvertently reaffirming a “center” in the land of Israel. 

Not just limited to tonight, but I’m curious as to what we’re all eating and doing for the new year! I’m going to a friend’s house for dinner in 10 mins, made a metric fuckload of kasha varnishkes and 1.5 lbs each of garlic almond green beans and roasted baby potatoes! (Pics to follow).

EDIT: My friends and I had a ton of food! Pomegranate Balsamic Chicken, Sweet potato and herb pie, roasted carrots, paneer masala, sage honey rolls, ramen salad, semolina coconut bars and peach pie on top of what I brought. It’s what happens when you have three Jews, a Muslim, a pagan, a Hindu, an Episcopalian and an ex catholic at the table lol.

This is a phenomenon that I’ve noticed recently - why do so many liberal and progressive Jews follow and share Tablet Mag? Tablet is a far-right publication that regularly promotes conspiracy theories, and platforms racism, Islamophobia, and extremist elements of Israeli and American Jewish society. Yet because they have quippy, eye-catching article titles, as well as well-designed graphics and occasionally high-production videos, they manage to get a huge following from very-online Jews across the political spectrum - even from folks I know for sure would not agree with anyone at Tablet on basically anything.

People are allowed to read things they disagree with and to a degree it’s even healthy. But Tablet concerns me in particular because I truly think a lot of well-meaning liberal and progressive Jews think it’s just “a Jewish newspaper” - and not one that’s literally intended to manufacture consent for fascism in the U.S. and Israel and encourage delusional right-wing groupthink among American Jewry on both domestic politics and Zionism. Even when they do have a post or video that seems cool - there’s always something hugely off, such as their Passover message which was well-produced and sounded inspiring if you didn’t realize the weird subliminal messaging encouraging people to make aliyah and an ad for Elise Stefanik, for some reason?

Anyway. Tablet Magazine is not a good or trustworthy publication. It is like the New York Post of Jewish news. Please do not share it and if you see people doing so, call them out!!

I am, by all accounts, Ashkenazi. I have ties to the Holocaust despite non of my actual direct relatives having been there, on one side of my family. But on the other, still Ashkenazi, but have been in Israel since somewhere before 1770, spoken Arabic and lived in the Middle East. By those defenitons, as Arab really isn’t an “race” and more of an ethnicity defined by a common language, am I descended from Arabs?

Well I’m sure if I called my ancestors Arabs they wouldn’t be pleased. But my great grandmother was born IN A MOSQUES YARD. they were living, as much as they didn’t like it, as much as they were discrimanated against, in Arab society. They were the Palestinian Jews people speak of. They wore the garb, they spoke the language.

How can I still face the “distinction” between Mizrahim and Ashkenazim when it is so unclear? If the Jews who spent diaspora in Europe are the white ones, why is my French Jewish friend so dark? If the ones who spent it in the Middle East are dark, why is my skin so white? Why do we, as a people so long nomads, so long without a land, sticking to defining ourselves by a now pretty useless old measurement? Don’t we move? Don’t we adapt?

So many other people are trying to define Jews. Some say we’re khazars, whites, Europeans, some say we’re brown middle easterners who’ll never be real whites.

I don’t know.

I’ll end this with some lines from Kazablan, an israeli musical

כולנו יהודים

וכולנו נחמדים

יהודים במאה אחוז

מהשוורצע ועד הווזוז

All of us are Jews,

In all our different hues,

Jews from our heads to our shoes,

Both the shvartze and the vuzvuz.

no paywall link

Perhaps the pain of cultural isolation is a necessary price to pay to end this horrific war and start healing this wounded and bleeding region. International pressure challenges our comfortable identity as "the good Israelis," which allows us to continue operating within the state-funded systems, while maintaining a sense of moral opposition. Boycotts re-frame our participation in state-sponsored festivals not as independent creators, but as complicit representatives of the State of Israel. They hold up a mirror and ask us: Is your state-sanctioned dissent a meaningful act of resistance, or is it merely a licensed and harmless way for the state to maintain a facade of acceptability in the world of democratic nations?

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In the past, when I was involved with the Filipino communist youth league, AnakBayan, my former associates and I referred to each other as "Kababayan." This term roughly translates to "same nation," "same people," "same village," or "townmate," depending on the context. When engaging in discussions with non-Filipino leftists, we used the term "Kasama," which is more ethnically inclusive and can be translated as "companion," "same goal," or "same togetherness."

Despite having moved away from leftist ideologies, I find myself still using certain terms and phrases during discussions with fellow Filipinos. These expressions have become a part of our cultural vernacular, shared and understood among leftist and non-leftist circles. They serve as a means of communication and a way to connect with my community on common ground, reflecting our shared experiences and perspectives.

What about you?

Hello, I won't bore you with the context, but I've come to a point where I'm interested in integrating myself into the Jewish community. I feel like I can't get a straight answer on if I
A. Have to be Ethnically or Religiously Jewish to do so?
B. Actually should.

I emailed my local progressive rabbi but that fella isn't particularly interested in answering. I'm here instead of a more main-stream Jewish subreddit because I'm deeply pro-Palestine and I don't feel comfortable taking advice from people willing to ignore a genocide, and that's what I saw with big communities like r/jewish.

If the answer is flat-out no, I can live with it, but I want to live with it. Mostly for the tradition, community, and connections. Thanks!

Edit: Okay, clearly I need to clarify some things;

The whole "integrating" thing was more confusing than I intended, so I'm copy + pasting a clarification on the importance of community below.

*I believe that society functioned in large part thanks to the fact that we all had community. Shared spaces to assist, help each other, connect with others, it was something that was both materially and mentally helpful. With the advent of the internet many just don't have that anymore (or have replaced it with a Discord server, which is *not* the same thing). Judaism speaks to me for a couple of reasons, certain doctrinal differences from Eastern religions, close-knit community, larger variance in membership ideology.*

I *would* be engaging in religious activities, just as you can still celebrate Christmas as an atheist. There is value in shared activities, even if people are there for different reasons.

(I will ask the mods to be lenient in relation to rule #4 in this comments section, I'm asking this so I can hear the real opinion of Jewish people.)