#jewishness

[fromgoy2joy]

My soul is calling out for Hashem and noodles. I truly understand the angst of the Israelites as they left Egypt.

#fromgoy2joy thoughts #jumblr #jewish #jewblr #jewish convert #jewish tumblr #jewish conversion #jewish humor #pesac #pesach #pesach things #chag pesach sameach #passover #passover things #jewishness #jewish holidays #chag sameach

[hachama]

Once a Jew, always a Jew. If you stood with me at Sinai, I will never, ever question your right to do so.

Whether you've been through a beit din or not

Whether you've visited a mikveh or not

Whether you read Hebrew or not

Whether you're observant or not

Your Jewishness is not up for debate.

#jumblr #jewish culture #jewishness

[tikkunolamresistance]

Crying “Antisemitism” at the criticism of Israeli Colonial occupation is a pathetic scapegoat that our people have come to.

Antisemitism has prevailed throughout history because nobody has cared to tackle it— the very nations that breed Antisemitism, push us to another land and only protect us… if we do not live on their soil. That is not protection.

We must educate, we must unlearn, we must stop running in fear. We must call out the root of Antisemitism— and that is Capitalism.

Zionism makes us exactly who our oppressors are.

#judaism #anti zionism #jewishness #jumblr #jewish thought #anti capitalist #anti capitalism #black jews #jews of colour #jews of choice #jewish liberation #free palestine

[kvetchermedia]

Palestinian Postage Stamps with Hebrew & Arabic.

#jewish #jewishness #judaism #hebrew #palestine #palestinian #postage #vintage

[yentl-anshel]

we are in 2024 and the genocide of Palestinians continues. while the first and most pressing step is a ceasefire, the end to immediate violence, we also must consider what comes next- how do we go about ending the occupation?

in general, I have been seeing a lot of calls for Israelis to "go back where they came from," and while I'm certain that many will choose to go to the US, Canada, Europe, etc., I feel that that position is failing to account for the positioning of antisemitism and Jewishness in western society. I highly recommend reading "Decolonizing Jewishness." a failure on the left to recognize and grapple with Jewishness as a complicating factor in the dichotomy of colonizer-colonized will lead to a failure to dismantle Zionism.

#zionism #antizionism #antisemitism #Jewishness #end the occupation #end the genocide #end the apartheid #Israel

[stupidjewishwhiteboy]

A thought literally just occurred to me (so I apologize if it's not totally formed): I think a mental gap between Diaspora Jewish liberals/leftists and their culturally Christian counterparts of approximately the same political thought process re: Israel is that Jews in the West (America, the UK, etc.) view Israel as a Jewish refuge from the culturally Christian countries of the West. Now, as any Jew on Tumblr has seen, we already lose a fair amount who refuse to acknowledge the idea of Cultural Christianity entirely, but a fair amount of them would accept that conservative forces in their countries want to make said countries more obviously Christian and understand why Jews wouldn't want that, but view Israel as being equally problematic (if not more so) and don't get why Diaspora Jews of the left don't sign on to the multiracial, multicultural, atheistic society that they have a goal. The gap comes from the fact that to said Jews, the multicultural, multiracial society is just as (or maybe marginally less) culturally Christian as the society that exists now, and is hardly less hostile to Jews wanting to be Jewish

#jews #judaism #jewishness #Israel #cultural christianity #antisemitism

[irrealis-mood]

Very long and complicated post about Japan and Judaism/Israel ahead. Please read if you can.

A video of a pro-Israel Japanese demonstration kept popping up and it was making me think and gave me a hefty feeling of worry and skepticism.

I shouldn’t have to preface this also by saying I don’t support the decisions of the Israeli government, but people with no nuance on this site love to think Jews are a monolith, and I don’t want to go into the whole “good Jew bad Jew” “dual loyalty” thing because that’s a WHOLE other thing.

I also preface this by saying that I’m not a Japanese citizen. However, I did live and work in Japan and have been traveling there since 2016 for internships. I do not claim to be an expert on Japan or Jewishness. All that follows is what I experienced as a Jewish person that lived in Japan.

Japan is a country with a very little Jewish population (estimated less than 2000, most of which are not legally considered citizens) with a significant lack of knowledge of actual Jewish people or culture, with very few safe spaces for people who are Jewish to have community. More on this later.

There isn’t a lot of knowledge, among young people especially, about the Holocaust, for instance, that hasn’t been watered down at least a bit, in my experience. This isn’t just a problem with Japan’s comfort with Jewish people and Judaism, but with its own lack of accepting and owning up to its own bloody histories especially during World War II. Whitewashing history isn’t just a Japanese problem obviously, but it’s a pretty egregious one Japan has in respect to mistreating indigenous cultures, ethnic Koreans and what is disgustingly called “comfort women”.

While I was working in Japan I assisted in the set up of a peace exhibit which in part, due to my efforts, discussed the atrocities of the Holocaust and the artwork from the children kept in the Terezin concentration camp. I was in touch with one scholar who was essentially the voice on Japanese knowledge of Terezin. I brought up my Jewishness multiple times, but it always had a feeling it was being brushed over.

A lot of the panels lent to us by her mentioned Judaism only from the idea that we were victims, without discussion of anything about our culture or context. Even when the scholar spoke of the atrocities, Judaism was barely mentioned outside of being a descriptor of something banned from schools, or put into ghettos.

So many people who visited the exhibit knew nothing about Terezin, had never heard of it, never knew the extent of the horrible conditions in the camps. Some reacted openly by sobbing and crying out during her speech, proving the lack of knowledge. I was raised alongside the children of Terezin’s pictures as a young Jewish child; I grew up with stories of the Holocaust and pogroms from such an early age I never had a chance not to know it.

The majority of what I experienced as a Jewish person who has lived in Japan for some time exposed me to the fact that the majority of what touts itself to be pro-Jewish resources is Messianic Judaism, which is not Judaism. Many of the Jewish resources other than that are from Chabads, of which there are maybe a handful scattered around Japan. Even less of these are Jewish community centers or synagogues. A multitude of fringe, new and Christianity based religions that lay claim to Israel do have presences here. Many of those religions, including Messianic Judaism are known to appropriate Hebrew as a “sacred language”.

Antisemitism is rampant in Japan, even if it’s not always outright. Nazi symbolism appears in cosplay and decorations and fashion as an image of “counterculture” or “punk.” When it’s not outright, it’s ignorance and the discussions of new world orders. It’s a common thought that there really aren’t any Jews in Japan.

When I saw that pro-Israel demonstration, I looked for any outward display of Judaism. In Japan there’s a strong possibility that by participating in protests or demos you can get your visa revoked and get deported.

In that demo there was no one wearing kippahs, or tallit. They sang in Hebrew but it didn’t make me feel better. It just made me wonder, where is this coming from? Because if your support of Israel really and truly meant your support of Jewish people, it doesn’t seem like it.

#jumblr #Jewishness #I/p #Jewish #antisemitism

[marxonculture]

A Quick Note on 'Jewface', Maestro and Oppenheimer

Given that my presence on this platform is filtered specifically through the lens of Jewishness in film, and that I wrote my undergraduate dissertation on the Jewish identity of Leonard Bernstein – the subject of Bradley Cooper’s controversial upcoming film, Maestro – I thought I’d weigh in on the current discourse.

For those who are unaware, one of the biggest films due to premier as part of this year’s autumn film festival season is Bradley Cooper’s Maestro. The film is said to be a non-traditional biopic of 20th century American composer Leonard Bernstein, focusing largely on his complex relationship with his wife, Felicia Montealegre. Controversy has arisen around the Netflix production due to images from the trailer featuring Bradley Cooper as Bernstein wearing an enlarged prosthetic nose. Voices within and outside Jewish communities have loudly criticised Cooper for caricaturing Jewishness, using the term ‘Jewface’ which describes the act of a goyische (non-Jewish) actor using prosthetics to make themselves look more like a cartoonish, imagined Jew.

While it is true that Bernstein did own a decent sized schnoz, the prosthetic utilised by Cooper is significantly bigger, and more defined than the nose was in reality. From a personal standpoint, I do find the use of this prosthetic to be pretty discomforting, but I think it speaks more to Cooper’s insecurity about the size of his own nose, which is a lot bigger than perhaps he would like to admit (and not too dissimilar to Bernstein’s actual nose!), than it does about his perception of Jews. That being said whether it was his intention to cartoonify Jewishness or not, Cooper has ruffled feathers in a way that is crass rather than substantive. Bernstein’s living relatives have come out in support of Cooper and his decision to use the prosthetic, saying that Bernstein would not have minded, but I think their statement rather misses the point. The nose is not about Bernstein himself, but about highly visible representations of a tiny minority that are stereotypical and incredibly reductive.

Funnily enough, however, Cooper’s use of ‘Jewface’ is the element of Maestro that bothers me the least. I have been fairly vocal since the film’s announcement about how I believe the production as a whole to be a pretty catastrophically bad idea. Leonard Bernstein is my number one creative hero – as a composer, public intellectual and educator, I don’t think there has been a single Jewish figure in American history who has had more of a positive impact on culture.

As I mentioned, I have written extensively about Bernstein in an academic context, and in researching him, it became clear to me just how vitally important his Jewish identity was to him throughout his life. It informed his music (even West Side Story, which was initially conceived as a story about Jews and Catholics on the Lower East Side of Manhattan), and his role as an educator (he often described his pedagogy as rabbinic in nature), and he was deeply, foundationally affected upon learning about the realities of the Holocaust which caused what he described as ‘aporia’, a state of being where he was too overwhelmed to write a single word for years. Bernstein’s complicated relationship to sexuality was also hugely significant in his life. There is still debate to this day about whether, given an open, accepting environment, he would have identified as a gay man or as bisexual. He had significant, passionate relationships with both men and women, and was an early major advocate for HIV/AIDS research.

My problem with Maestro is that I don’t have faith in Bradley Cooper as a writer/director, to sensitively depict these two massive aspects of Bernstein’s identity. Focusing on his most significant straight-passing relationship as the centre of a film called Maestro does not inspire confidence that the film won’t totally whitewash Bernstein’s Jewishness, or reduce his sexuality to the pain it caused his wife (in a similar way to other reductive music biopics like Bohemian Rhapsody or Rocketman). Cooper’s own identity is significant in that he is starting from a place of remove from the identity of his subject, which isn’t necessarily a dealbreaker, but when there are other filmmakers out there who are far better suited to a project like this, both from an identity perspective and a thematic one, it’s hard to justify why this project exists at all in its current form.

Some have pointed to the involvement of Steven Spielberg as a producer on the project as hope for better representation, but given that Cooper and Martin Scorsese – a filmmaker who I have criticised in the past for the didactic, Christian morality of his movies – are also credited producers, I don’t think it’ll make much difference. I’m more comforted by the involvement of Josh Singer (Spotlight, The Post) and his contribution to the screenplay, given his Jewishness and his work on thematically sensitive historical films.

I’m not writing off the film entirely just yet. I had similar worries about Oppenheimer, given the significance of the scientist’s Jewishness in his decision to start work on the bomb in the first place. Nolan and Cillian Murphy, thankfully, proved me wrong in the director’s decision to focus on the differing Jewish identities of Oppenheimer, Lewis Strauss, and I.I. Rabi, and the nuanced ways in which their characters were informed by Jewishness, as well as Murphy’s attention to detail in his performance. It’s certainly possible for non-Jewish filmmakers to consider Jewishness in a valuable way (see Todd Field’s Tar or Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza for a couple of recent examples), but the set-up of this project makes it hard for me to believe that Cooper is one such filmmaker.

To end with a little self-gratifying what-if, I thought I’d lay out what would be my ideal Bernstein biopic: a film centred around the relationship between Bernstein and his fellow queer, Jewish composer and mentor, Aaron Copland, the letters they wrote to one another, and the fallout of their brushes with McCarthyism which had vastly different outcomes. I would keep Cooper as Bernstein (without the prosthetics!) because he can convincingly play the man’s charm, I’d cast Michael Stuhlbarg as Copland, and get Todd Haynes to write and direct. Haynes is Jewish, gay, and has a great deal of experience directing sweeping, romantic, dark, and political films. He knows how to portray music on screen and has several masterful period-pieces under his belt, with Carol in particular as a shining example of complex, historical queer romance in America. Honestly, this would be my dream film project.

#blu ray #blu ray collector #blusforjews #cinema #cinephile #film #film tumblr #jewishness #jewishness in film #maestro #leonard bernstein #bradley cooper #jewface #antisemitism #oppenheimer #christopher nolan #todd haynes #michael stuhlbarg #aaron copland #biopic #music biopic #queerness #queer history #gay #bisexuality #lgbt representation

[wonderlandleighleigh]

So its early but I'm on Tumblr, and like.

You know. Saw a post. Like you do.

And it's about appropriating Jewish mythology and symbols and terms. And there is so much "DON'T DO THAT" in the post.

But I think the post gets it a lil wrong. What we're really looking for is respect. Respect our things. Our culture. Or symbols. They're not Happy Meal toys. Make some effort.

I saw a lot of comments on the post saying that people had never met a Jewish person, and that we are "professional victims."

Well hello. I'm a Jewish person, and we've been run out of more countries than you've had hot dinners, so we're more like professionals at getting the fuck out of places where people want us dead.

Let's do an edit!

Golems: if you're going to use them in your fantasy, please treat them with respect. They're a mythological creature borne out of the desperation of a people constantly on the run from assholes trying to burn down their lives, and thought of as protective. Don't use them as a weird monster. It's easy to find the lore. Read up.

Kabbalah: is so much stranger than you know, and worth doing research on. Please be respectful if you intend to use it in a story, or even try to practice it.

If it's Hebrew and it doesn't have anything to do with Judaism...man that is a weird one. Cuz it's our religious language but also people who aren't Jewish live in Israel and speak Hebrew but this one feels funny.

The Star of David: it's not a pentagram. It's not a generic symbol. It's pretty specifically Jewish. Sometimes it gets worn by people who want us dead? Uncomfortable.

Goy: isn't considered polite but is more polite than "fuckin goy" which I sometimes use when some goy is being a terrible asshole.

Lenny Bruce had a whole bit on this one:

Gentile: less rude. You non jews are just gentiles.

Antisemitism: that funny feeling in your bones when you know someone either doesn't like you because you are Jewish (those fuckers who wear the "6 million was not enough" shirts. IE; Hitler shoulda kilt more Jews), or when someone says shit like "you guys control the banks so I bet you'll get all 7 days of Passover off soon enough." We don't control the banks. I fucking promise. We don't control shit. Whatever power white Jewish people might have is allowed by the white gentile power structure and can be easily taken away.

When the big orange goy was president, and employed Steven Miller (Jewish. A piece of shit) I used to tell people that "we'll all wind up in the same train car anyway. He's no safer from the hate than the rest of us." I'm still right.

The word Jew: context matters. "The Jews" is an easy shorthand. The Jewish People takes longer to say. One time in a bar, in Mississippi, the director of another department from work pointed at me and yelled "JEW!!!" and that felt.

Bad.

It felt bad you guys.

1. Being singled out for what you are feels bad.

2. Mississippi feels like a place you don't want to be singled out for being Jewish.

3. "Jew" often gets bent into "jewy" which is derogatory. Women were sometimes called "jewesses" which was a little like being called a witch they wanted to burn at the stake.

Probably safe bet to just say Jewish People.

We've been around a long time, but there aren't a whole of us left. But we also come in all different types. A bunch of us are white, but some of us are Black or Latinx or Asian or Middle Eastern. We don't agree on any one way of doing things and we have a lot of opinions and sometimes some dude wanders around The Rockaways in New York with a machete looking for the closest synagogue because Kanye told him we're all evil.

We are constantly on the lookout for people who don't like us because WE KEEP FINDING THEM. Like sometimes you think somebody's cool, but it turns out they think we have horns and eat white Christian baby blood.

For the record, white Christians don't season their food, so that shit is too bland. Not enough dill. We'll pass.

But yeah. Just some thoughts on my culture. Thanks for reading.

#my judaism is funky fresh #jewishness #judaism #Youtube

[cimness]

The line most often quoted from Frank’s diary—“In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart”—is often called “inspiring,” by which we mean that it flatters us. It makes us feel forgiven for those lapses of our civilization that allow for piles of murdered girls—and if those words came from a murdered girl, well, then, we must be absolved, because they must be true. That gift of grace and absolution from a murdered Jew (exactly the gift, it is worth noting, at the heart of Christianity) is what millions of people are so eager to find in Frank’s hiding place, in her writings, in her “legacy.”

Becoming Anne Frank: Why did we turn an isolated teenage girl into the world’s most famous Holocaust victim? by Dara Horn | The Unforgotten: New Voices of the Holocaust, A Smithsonian magazine special report

History | November 2018

#jewish #jewishness #anne frank #the diary of anne frank #ww2 #holocaust mention #christianity #inspiration #absolution

[dabs-into-oblivion]

saw the take "zionism just means wanting a home for the jewish people" and the thing about that is, that is not what the word has come to mean. the term zionism/zionist has become associated with the state of israel. unfortunately the colloquial and cultural meanings of words change based on common usage and we do need to update our thinking accordingly.

also, like, implying that a home = a religious ethnostate feels off to me in multiple ways. i don't love the idea that the ideal is for us as jews to isolate ourselves from the rest of the world to avoid antisemitic violence. why are we not simply working to stop and prevent antisemitic violence. the jewish people already have homes in the diaspora. displacing us to bring us "home" would arguably be far more disruptive both to us and to the ecosystems we're in now.

#zionism #israel #jewishness #antisemitism #posts into oblivion #az talks

[fromgoy2joy]

I sat next to the protest today.

I wrote fan-fiction about two gay jewish dads raising children to the play list of the chant- "No peace on stolen land!" on an American college campus. It isn't a name brand one either, nor does it have any legitimate ties to Israel. The anger is just there- it has rotten these future doctors, nurses, teachers, and members of society.

I don't even know what to call their demonstration- it was a tizzy of a Jew hatred affair. At points, there were empathetic statements about Gazans and their suffering. Then outright support of Hamas and violent resistance against all colonizers. Then this bizarre fixation on antisemitism while explaining the globalists are behind everything.

"Antisemitism doesn't exist. Not in the modern day," A professor gloated over a microphone in front of the library. "It's a weaponized concept, that's prevents us from getting actual places- ignore anyone who tells you otherwise."

"How can we be antisemitic?" A pasty white girl wearing a red Jordanian keffiyeh gloats five minutes later. "Palestinians are the actual semites."

"there is only one solution!" The crowd of over 50 students and faculty cried, over and over.

"Been there, done that," I thought, then added a reference to a mezuza in the fourth paragraph.

Two other Jewish students passed where I was parked out, hunching and trying to be as innocuous as possible. We laughed together at my predicament, where I am willingly hearing this bullshit and feeling so amused by this.

"Am I crazy? For sitting here?" I asked them. My friends shook their heads.

"We did the same last week- it's an amazing experience, isn't it?”

We all cackled hysterically again. They left to study for finals. Two minutes later, I learned from the current speaker that “Zionism” is behind everything bad in this world.

Forty-five minutes in, a boy I recognized joined me on my lonely bench. He came from a very secular Jewish family and had joined Hillel recently to learn more about his culture. His first Seder was two nights ago.

He sat next to me, heavy like the weight of the world was on his shoulders. There was just this despondent look on his face. I couldn’t describe it anyone else, but just sheer hopelessness personified.

“They hate us. I can’t believe how much they hate us.” He said in greeting.

And for the first time all day, I had no snarky response or glib. All I could do was stare out into the crowd, and sigh.

#fromgoy2joy thoughts #jumblr #jewish #jewish convert #jewish tumblr #jewish conversion #jewblr #tw antisemtism #antisemitism #am israel chai #am yisroel chai #am yisrael chai #Jewish on campus #jewishness #judaism #antisemitism mention #leftist antisemitism #goyim don't touch

[tikkunolamresistance]

THIS BLOG SUPPORTS PALESTINE

#judaism #jewish #jewishness #jumblr #palestine #propalestine #pro palestine #anti zionism #anti colonialism #anti imperialism #socialism #communism #jewish thought #jewish activism #jewish radical activism #jewish liberation #black jews #jews of colour #jew by choice #gay jews #lgbtq #trans jews

[fursasaida]

We Jews are a diverse people, and we draw strength from that diversity. Many of us have no connection to Israel and don’t desire one. By the same token, many Israelis are opposed to oppression and war. I am thinking of comrades like Hayim Katsman, a leftist scholar who envisioned different politics for the future and was killed on October 7. I am thinking of lifelong peace activists like Vivian Silver, whom we learned recently was also killed that day. May their memories be a blessing, and may the memories of all victims of injustice inspire us to greater works and higher aspirations than our elected officials and pundits—and may they move us to reject the false choices and petty prejudices they peddle.

My Jewish ancestors were treated like second-class citizens in their homelands, just as non-Jews are now throughout Israel and the occupied territories. My Jewish ancestors were killed in or made refugees by pogroms like the ones carried out by Hamas on October 7, and like the many carried out by Israeli settlers over the past year in the West Bank, which continue into the present at an accelerated pace with the active support of the Israeli military. My Jewish ancestors were targeted by ethnic cleansing projects that look increasingly similar to what is underway right now in Gaza. My Jewish ancestors, alongside those of many other communities, suffered at the hands of ethnonationalist, ostensibly genocidal projects like the one that has been perpetrated against the Palestinian people for the last hundred years.

As a Jewish American, I know that I honor their memory, my heritage, and our religion by speaking out for all those facing the same calamities. As a Jewish American, I know that my Jewishness is whole without nationalism, without a state—without hatred, racism, and violence. I know that preserving my safety does not require compromising anyone else’s, that my life is not secured by the deaths of others. I know that we all have the right to equal rights and peace alongside one another, as the Palestinian and Israeli people deserve equally. I know that nations do not keep us safe, and I know that we cannot achieve peace without justice.

I know that no Jews anywhere are safe from the scourge of antisemitism, just as our Muslim siblings are not safe from the scourge of Islamophobia. I know that no Jews anywhere are kept safe from the scourge of antisemitism by a nuclear superpower governed by extremists that carries out atrocities in our name daily. And I know that speech against war, on behalf of Palestinian lives, or critical of the actions or project of the Israeli government, is not antisemitic.

This is very personal to say in my workplace. I am compelled to speak here and now as a member of this faculty because there are many loud voices on and off campus claiming that Jews here are protected by the suppression of speech, expressions of Palestinian identity, criticism of Israel, and silencing of our anti-Zionist students, who have demonstrated tremendous courage and fortitude.

I must say to you all that I, a Jewish member of this faculty, am not asking the University to suppress anyone’s speech. I, a Jewish member of this faculty, am not threatened by appeals to Palestinian humanity and calls for peace. I, a Jewish member of this faculty, am not threatened by seeing keffiyehs and flags, or by the beautiful seas of students from all backgrounds calling for peace and justice that have swept through campus as of late. I, a Jewish member of this community, reject racism and prejudice in all forms—and I consequently reject the idea that calls for Palestinian liberation are by definition calls for the elimination of Israelis.

[...]

As I fear that University leadership recognizes only one account of modern Jewishness, I am—as a Jewish American whose home is here, in New York City, and not in Israel—left with no choice but to speak out. I do so on behalf of myself and my like-minded colleagues, for our students, with some of whom I share these experiences and outlooks. Anyone telling our leaders that they need to suppress our students’ free speech in order to keep Jews like me safe does not speak for me, and never will.

#palestine #israel #zionism #jewishness

[musingsofajewishconvert]

I have a question. My da's family is very Irish Catholic, and being Irish is a huge part of my cultural identity. But part of Irish culture is being Catholic (see image below). And there aren't really many Jews in Ireland, so it's not like I can just google it.

I guess what I'm trying to ask is how can I marry my culture to my (future?) Jewish-ness? How can I be both Irish and Jewish?

I really miss my now-rabbi friend. She was half Irish-Canadian too, so she really understood where I was coming from.

#musings of a jewish convert #jewish conversion #jewish convert #jewish #jewishness #irish culture #irish-canadian american problems #seriously though how do i be both?

[stupidjewishwhiteboy]

This seems culturally appropriative, especially because what they seem to be evoking is essentially the demon from the Exorcist, which is very much not a dybbuk.

#jews #Jewishness #Jewish culture #dybbuks #dungeons & dragons #D&D #cultural appropriation #I genuinely don’t understand why they did this