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matan4il · 2 days

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Passover is the Jewish festival of freedom.

Israel has 133 hostages, alive and dead, still held in captivity. I'm grateful for each one released, but as long as some of our people, Jews and non-Jews alike, are hostages, we all are. Also, yesterday alone, Israel saw no less than 6 terrorist attacks (attempted or thwarted) with zero casualties, and I'm grateful no one got hurt, but what kind of freedom do we have, when this is our daily reality, and it's not even recognized?

At the end of every Passover Seder, for 2,000 years now, Jews have concluded the holiday feast with, "Le'shana ha'baa bi'Yerushalayim (לשנה הבאה בירושלים)," next year in Jerusalem.

(here's a Passover Hagaddah from Casablanca, in Morroco, with this phrase and a drawing of the Hebrew Temple in Jerusalem -)

Passover is the festival of freedom, the story of a nation breaking its bonds of enslavement, it's a story of emancipation, and as such, it is a beacon of hope and a reminder that freedom is possible for all those who yearn for it. That's why slaves in the US south adopted this language, and expressed their hopes for freedom through the story of the Jewish exodus from Egypt.

But the story doesn't end as soon as the Israelites have left Egypt, it doesn't end in the desert. Achieving freedom is a process. That ancient story demonstrates that, but we have other, more recent examples. Jews liberated from the Nazi camps were still re-living the horrors of the Holocaust every night, if not more often than that. The hostages who have been released from their captivity at the hands of murderous, rapist Hamas terrorists are still working to recover. Freedom is a process. And in the story of the exodus from Egypt, which Jews have been re-telling annually for thousands of years, guiding our thoughts and understanding of what our freedom is, the story doesn't end when our ancestors left Egypt. The final note of the story defines our freedom as only being fully achieved after going through the journey in the desert, the process, when we are once more living freely in our ancestral, promised land, when we return to our holy city. And no matter where we live, we express this idea in Hebrew, our native, ancestral language.

(here's another Passover Hagaddah, this one from 1940's Cairo, in Egypt of all places, with this same phrase -)

Poet Amnon Ribak (whose career was originally in hi-tech before he started delving into what his Judaism means to him) once wrote, "Every man needs some sort of an Egypt, to deliver himself from its house of slaves, to leave in the middle of the night into a desert of fears, to walk straight into the waters and see it parting in front of him." He takes the Jewish exodus and turns it into a metaphor for personal challenge and growth. And how does he finish this poem? (my emphasis) "Everyone needs an Egypt, and a Jerusalem, and one long journey to remember forever through the feet."

Here's the poem composed as a song (composing poems is an Israeli tradition. And while we're at it, this is a reminder that the biggest center of original Jewish culture and art in the world today is Israel):

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This Passover, we will be remembering and re-telling the story of our ancestors' exit from Egypt, we will collectively yearn for Jerusalem again, we will do our best to learn from this ancient story as if each of us has been personally delivered from Egypt, we will cherish the freedoms that we have, and keep in mind the ones we still have to fight for, first and foremost the literal freedom of our hostages. Please, if you celebrate Passover, consider leaving an empty chair at your Seder table for all the people who are not yet free.

And may we all have a happy and meaningful Pesach! <3

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

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mapsontheweb · 2 days

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The Christian world, circa 600 A.D.

#maps #christians #600 #jews

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zionultra · 3 days

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I am so fucking outraged. Look at these pro-hamas terrorist supporters at Columbia university harassing our Jewish brother. They didn’t ask his beliefs or if he was a Zionist. They simply took one look at him and assessed that he was a Jew so they surrounded and harassed him. Don’t any of you EVER tell me it’s “anti-Zionism not antisemitism”. We are now approaching 1940’s Germany level of antisemitism. I am sick to my fucking stomach. Daven for his well being and mental health.

#jumblr #jewish #judaism #israel #jews #hamas is isis #tw: antisemitism #antisemitism #pro hamas terrorist pigs #am yisrael chai #we will outlive them

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secular-jew · 2 days

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lightningbee12 · 2 days

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Happy Passover!!

חג שמח וכשר!

May the hostages be released soon!

#jewblr #jumblr #israel #jews #jewish #passover #pesach #seder

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david-goldrock · 2 days

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והיא שעמדה לאבותינו ולנו

שלא אחד בלבד עמד עלינו לכלותינו

אלא שבכל דור דור עומדים עלינו לכלותינו

והקב"ה מצילנו מידם

פסח שמח לכולם

And she (the torah) that stood for our forefathers And for us

That not a single one, stood upon us to destroy us

But rather, that in each generation, they stand upon us to destroy us

And God saves us from them

Happy Passover everybody

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beautiful-basque-country · 9 hours

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Hi!

Do you know if there's any Jewish history in EH? There are a lot of old (pre-Inquisition) Jewish buildings/art in Spain, Catalonia, and Portugal, but I'm not sure if there are EH. I'm just curious, since I've learned a lot about Jewish life in Spain before the Inquisition, but never about Jewish life in EH, if there even was any.

Thank you!

Kaixo and thanks for your message!

Of course there's Jewish history in EH! In Gipuzkoa there never was a big community, as well as in Araba, with the exception of Guardia. In Bizkaia, Balmaseda was the biggest center for Jews, but sadly they were forcibly expelled around 40 years prior to the expulsion from Castile. Jewish people flourished mainly in the southern side of Nafarroa in Muslim times: there were thriving Jewish communities in Lizarra, Tutera, Tafalla, even Iruña.

Luckily this didn't change after the Reconquista! Jewish people were mainly merchants and moneylenders - profession banned for Christians - and they would work with peasants and nobility alike. They were also wine makers, and this wine was very much appreciated not only in the kingdom of Navarre, but also in Aragón and Castile. Navarrese kings supported Jewish communities and welcomed any Jew from other region.

There's a tragic but moving story about this time. The Jewish community of Gasteiz was forced to leave, but they agreed to hand over their cemetery to the city on the condition of respect the ground and don't build on it. The promise was respected for 460 years until 1952, when Jewish representatives agreed with the town hall that the ground was available for any use. Nowadays, it's a park with this monument to Jewish people. The neighborhood is called Judimendi, "the mountain of Jewish people".

In fact, when the kingdom of Castile ordered the expulsion of Jews from Castile, most of them moved to the kingdom of Navarre. But after the conquest by Castile in 1512, Jews and Muslims were effectively expelled from their home. Most of them didn't go too far, just across the border, to Baiona.

Baiona welcomed Basque, Spanish and Portuguese Jews, gathering a very important community that led to call the town the little Jerusalem at one time. There's a much modern legacy there than south the border, for example, there's still a functioning synagogue.

After the French revolution, Jews were reocgnised the same rights and duties than any other French, so they kept their businesses and in Baiona, many of them devoted themselves to chocolate - still one of the best in Europe, I must add.

But during WW2 and nazi occupation, maaaany of these Jewish people were captured and led to extermination camps. The community didn't die, though, and they welcomed a new wave of Jewish refugees in the 60s due to the French-Algerian war.

René Cassin, one of the fathers of the Declaration of Human Rights, was a Jew from Baiona, btw.

Nowadays in Euskadi there are just around 300 Jews, while in Iparralde this figure is bigger but not super high (just around ~3,000 in the whole Aquitaine).

#euskal herria #basque country #pays basque #pais vasco #euskadi #jewish history #jews #history #sefarad

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cavalierzee · 3 days

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Israel's Real Iron Dome

Arab Leaders were installed to safeguard Israel and Western interests, not to liberate their occupied lands nor liberate Occupied Palestine.

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angrybell · 20 hours

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We’ve got the useful idiots in the US blocking Jews from universities. And in France, the pro-“Palestine” people seem to think they’re allowed to act like their heroes in Hamas.

#antisemitism #antizionism is antisemitism #Jews #hamas war 2023

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midnights-dragon · 1 day

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This. Everyone needs to be fucking talking about what’s happening not just to Jewish college students, but to Jews across the world. Antisemitism is RACING upwards right now because people feel SAFE TO BE ANTISEMITIC. There is zero backlash because if you stand up for the nation’s Jews, you’re called ‘pro-genocide’, ‘Zionist’, ‘Islamophobic.’

Antisemitism can not be permitted or tolerated at this level. STAND UP FOR JEWS. DO NOT ALLOW THIS.

#rare political post from me #antisemitism #jewish people #Jews #not jewish #columbia university #pro palestine #movement #antisemitic #cw Jewish hate

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palestinegenocide · 1 day

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At Passover, the Jewish community must break up over genocide

Blind Israel support in AIPAC funding appeal sent to Phil Weiss’s mother’s house. April 2024.

It’s a beautiful day in my town and I am going to go out for a walk with full awareness of my blessings. I don’t live in Gaza where the innocent are murdered day in and day out with U.S. weaponry and Joe Biden’s imprimatur (and that of many running dogs such as Jonathan Capehart and David Brooks on PBS News Hour). I don’t live in Israel, where I would have been indoctrinated in a supremacist ideology from a young age, and made to hate and fear Palestinians and to cheer genocide— and where I would have struggled to ever understand myself as a Jew. No, I live in the most privileged country in the world where there are wonderful freedoms for someone of my class.

Tomorrow is Passover so this is a message to my Jewish community. We must break up over Zionism. We must break up over genocide. Too many innocent people (on all sides) have died for this false and bigoted ideology to go on.

The good news is that some in the Jewish community are at last awaking from sleep over this. We will see more and more allies come forward in the Peter Beinart tradition—Jews who once drank the Koolaid – Beinart used to do events for AIPAC, and supported the Iraq war for Marty Peretz — and who have walked a path of independence.

Many of those Jews will come to have solidarity with the victims and the martyrs and the persecuted: the indigenous Palestinian population, driven from their homes to make way for the alleged liberation of the Jewish people.

“In my view, the Zionist narrative, even in its more liberal forms, cultivates an exclusivity and proprietary ethos that too easily slides into ethnonational chauvinism,” Shaul Magid of Indiana University writes in his new book. “

A simple, truer message to Jews was never spoken– by a former liberal Zionist. I urge my community to open its eyes to the grotesque armored thing that is modern Israel, and denounce its actions if only in order to save ourselves. (Because as the great rabbi said, If you are not for yourself who will be.) And yes it’s true: Palestinians who denounce Israel are pleasing their grandparents and parents; and we are not; but as Scott Roth used to say, that is the lamest fucking excuse for a thoughtful person in America.

Yesterday many progressives voted against more bombs for Israel (among others Bowman, Balint, Bush, Carson, Frost, Jayapal, Khanna, Summer Lee, McGovern, Omar, Pingree, Pocan and Pressley); and in a notable break Jamie Raskin voted against. So let us celebrate the memory of his son Tommy a great Jewish idealist and anti-Zionist who left us three years ago.

Zionism is today a danger to Jews. It is destroying free speech in our country (in the name of the Jews). It is destabilizing the Middle East (in the name of the Jews). Israel is wantonly attacking a foreign consulate in a neighboring country (in the name of the Jews). And so this Jewish identity, promulgated by Zionists, will only hurt Jews.

In the Forward last week, Jodi Rudoren, who has carried the water for Israel for years, wrote that Israel must stop killing Palestinians for the sake of “world Jewry.” And in a further heresy, she said, “antisemitism… is not an explanation for everything.”

She means that people are protesting Israel’s actions, not Jews. I believe she sees what I see, People will turn on our community for its blind support for genocide. Because what keeps Israel going in its violations of international law? The blind backing of the Israel lobby, the organized American Jewish community, never called out by the media for such, but everyone knows. As Obama said in 2015, there is only one country against the Iran deal; and today there is one country that wants the genocide to continue (and compels progressive politicians in the U.S. to violate their creed to ship more weapons).

There is another Jewish story. The brave Jewish students who are demonstrating at Columbia. The IfNotNow protesters at Biden rallies. The Jewish presence in the broad antiwar movement in the United States. They are moved by human rights and opposing the endless slaughter of children and women. They are “not hate-filled and bigoted… fringes,” as David Brooks, a longtime Zionist said of the protests on the PBS News Hour.

The Jewish protesters are today the leaders of our religious community. They are bringing an uncomfortable truth to a huddled, fearful, self-involved congregation. They are the heroes of Jewish history. They will save the world, and maybe too the lost Jewish tabernacle in the deserts of militarism.

Happy holidays,

#israel #free gaza #gazaunderattack #israel is a terrorist state #gaza strip #genocide #gaza #free palestine #jerusalem #palestine #jews #jumblr #passover

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matan4il · 5 hours

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I am at a loss for words.

A Jewish woman in Paris was kidnapped, held for several days, and raped for being a Jew, and her mother was psychologically taunted and tormented, as "revenge for Palestine."

And while the perpetrator is the main person responsible for this horrific crime, every single person denying or justifying the Oct 7 sexual violence is guilty of contributing to this normalization, making this antisemitic terrorist think his excuse is in any way an acceptable justification for this atrocity. Every single person who didn't believe Jewish victims, every single person who demanded proof, but turned a blind eye to the visual evidence Hamas terrorists themselves provided, every single person who called the films and pictures and testimonies from countless Israelis "propaganda," every single person who justified it and claimed that "rape is resistance." They're all complicit. They all have to know they've helped make Jews everywhere in the world less safe.

Speaking of complicity, even though a UN report found credible evidence for the sexual crimes committed by Hamas on Oct 7 and against Israeli hostages since, the UN secretary general, Antonio Guterres, has personally decided to leave Hamas out of the annual report on sexual violence in conflicts around the world. Israeli commentators expressed their belief that this was done, because had it been included, then the UN would have no choice but to finally recognize that Hamas is a terrorist organization. The UN is complicit. Guterres is complicit. Hold them accountable.

Speaking of the UN's known anti-Israel bias, what a surprise, their report on UNRWA, their own agency, claimed not to support the charges against it, though they did find that UNRWA has "some issues" maintaining its neutrality...

Just to make it clear, "staff publicly taking sides" refers to UNRWA employees being openly anti-Israel, antisemitic and pro anti-Jewish violence, and the "problematic content" in UNRWA textbooks is incitement to terrorism and educating Palestinian kids to be antisemitic. This alone constitutes more than "some issues with neutrality." But there's more. Out of the 12 Gaza UNRWA employees first identified by Israel as having participated in the Hamas massacre, at least three were killed inside Israel on Oct 7 itself, and at least one more was captured on film while helping to kidnap an Israeli young man's body from an Israeli kibbutz into Gaza using a vehicle with UN license plates. I'd say that's a bit more than "difficulties with neutrality". In fact, the UN itself implicitly recognized the evidence was damning, or it would not have fired nine of the twelve right away, and admit a tenth UN worker was dead following the invasion and attack on Israeli communities, while claiming they're still "clarifying" the identities of the other two killed employees who participated in the Hamas massacre. BTW, it's been about 3 months of the UN "clarifying" the identities of those other two dead employees (screenshot below is from the article published 2 days ago, link with same claim on "clarification" is from Jan 27).

UNRWA is complicit. There are other humanitarian aid NGOs, which can do better. Dismantle UNRWA. But we know the UN will not be dismantling the cash cow that this agency is, even though no other refugee group gets an equal treatment to that. At what point do we say out loud, that if more and more UNRWA employees are found to be complicit in a massacre or being embedded with Hamas, if Hamas terrorists have continuously used UNRWA infrastructure to store weapons and shoot at Israelis, if UNRWA was found to be providing a terrorist organization with internet and electricity, and if the UN can't hold its own agency accountable, then the UN is also complicit in UNRWA's collaboration with Hamas?

In Israel itself, as the biggest Jewish community in the world is celebrating Passover, attacks on Israeli Jews continue.

Two days ago, on the Eve of Passover, a combined terrorist attack took place in Jerusalem, in an ultraorthodox neighborhood, with two Palestinian terrorists driving their car into a group of visibly Jewish young people, then the attackers left their car and tried shooting at their victims, but the weapon thankfully malfunctioned. Three people were lightly wounded. (the vid below shows most of the attack, but not the graphic parts of the car hitting the young Jewish men)

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Yestrday, the Lebanon-based terrorist organization Hezbollah launched three suicide drones at Israel's northern communities, along its Mediterranean shore. This attack comes on the heels of the news that out of 18 Israelis wounded in a previous Hezbollah drone attack on an Israeli Arab Bedouin town, one has died from his injuries, after fighting for his life for 5 days. It's 27 years old Dor Zimel, an officer who was stationed in that town to protect it. Dor was set to get married next month, and he had proposed to his fiancee with a ring donated by a bereaved father (his son, 23 years old Addir Messika, was a jewelry designer, and the ring was one he designed before he was murdered by Hamas terrorists at the Nova music festival on Oct 7). Dor's organs were donated and saved the lives of 7 people, including an injured soldier, who's also the father of a girl. May Dor and Addir's memory be a blessing.

And today, on the second day of Passover, an attempted stabbing attack was stopped before the Palestinian female terrorist managed to harm anyone. She was neutralized at the scene.

I'm sure all those who decried Israel having to continue its war against Hamas during Ramadan are being extra loud about this wave of anti-Jewish violence during Passover, which is actually just a partial list of the on going attacks on Israeli Jews during this holiday.

In other news, the preparations for the IDF's ground operation in Rafah have actually already started. Reports suggest 250,000 Palestinians who have come to the southern city as they left other war zones in Gaza, have already left Rafah, and that Israel has already started building encampments to house those it will evacuate from the city before the ground operation begins.

Trying to remember when have I ever seen an army building an entire camp city for the enemy's civilian population. I'm coming up blank.

This is Miri Gad Mesikka.

She lives in kibbutz Be'eri, together with her husband Eli and their 3 kids. On Oct 7, they locked themselves in the bomb shelter from the invading Hamas terrorists. They were in there for 12 hours, fighting for control of the bomb shelter's door, until the terrorists set their house on fire, and the Gad Messika family had to make an impossible choice: stay and maybe suffocate to death from the smoke (or worse if the fire got in), or jump from their second floor window, probably be injured and maybe be shot to death by the terrorists. Eventually, they chose to jump out. They all got injured, and one of her sons got his leg broken, but the terrorists didn't spot them, and this decision saved their lives. During the time they were locked inside the bomb shelter, Miri recounts how she would see some of her friends and neighbors not responding anymore, and she couldn't know why. She kept hoping it was because their phone batteries ran out. "Today I know some of them were being kidnapped, while others were being murdered. It was a massacre, happening in countless different spots at the same time." One of her friends told Miri, that her daughter, a baby who was less than one years old, was shot in the head right in front of her. Then the friend's husband was murdered as well, and despite being shot with a bullet in her lungs herself, the friend somehow managed to get herself and her two other kids away.

Never forget.

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)