can i ask about your experience as a quaker (or growing up as one? i just saw you mention bein one in some tags)

i jus don't know much about them

so i was not raised quaker, i was raised baptist. which was. 0/10, do not recommend. all the guilt of catholicism with none of the stained glass lmaooo

like, i did resinate with the idea of there being some sort of higher power and i liked the idea of getting together with other believers to discuss spiritual matters but as i got older and started thinking for myself i realized i really didn't like a lot of things about the church. i hated the bigoted beliefs of its members. i hated the emphasis on blind obedience to authority. i didn't believe that the whole literal truth could be found within one book, specifically one group's interpretation of said book. and the idea that people were born inherently bad and sinful and that a supposedly kind and just god would condemn people to eternal suffering just for not believing the "right" things just did not sit well with me at all

when i went off to college i decided to try out a few different churches around town. i ended up settling on a progressive presbyterian church. the community was great and very accepting of queer people. i had some minor qualms with the theology but it wasn't like with my parents' church where every sermon made me feel increasingly nauseous, and i generally felt *good* during and after the services

and then covid hit and while they did stream their sermons, i lost that sense of community and just kinda... fell away

throughout all this i was researching different faiths online, both christian and non-christian. and one faith that kept popping up a lot that i liked the sound of was quakerism. like at one point i remember taking some online quiz of like "what religion do your values most align with" and quakerism was very in the lead. (before this, i'd only really been exposed to quakerism in history textbooks and assumed the religion died out alongside puritanism)

in the end what got me really interested was actually a video by a youtuber i liked, a queer/disability advocate and historical fashion enjoyer who also happened to be quaker

and after looking more into it, i decided to try attending a quaker meeting. which was easier due to covid cuz i could find a church online (located physically hundreds of miles from me) that did their sunday services over zoom

and so i attended and the people there were great and were doing actual good in their communities. and the way services were run, and their beliefs about what god *was* and all of that just hit me with an intense feeling of like. holy shit this is what i've always wanted from religion.

the video explains the sort of core beliefs and practices of quakerism better than i can but the main belief is that like. every person is godly. as such, it's our job to treat all living people as equally and kindly as possible. additionally, since we all have god inside of us, we need to look inwards and come to our own conclusions about our own religious beliefs and practices (and generally respect other people's religious beliefs even if they differ from our own, so long as they're not causing real tangible harm)

i haven't attended any meetings in a while, due to that group going back to semi in person (they still stream it out but it feels more like being a spectator than a member) and there being no quaker meetinghouses in the tiny town i currently live in, coinciding with me being too depressed to regularly attend anything. but i'm planning to start attending quaker meetings again once i move to a real city

i thought you said once you were jewish but you talk only about being indigenous and white?

sorry for the delay in answering this i had to mull over how strange it was at first to have someone like analyzing my ethnicity or remembering aspects LOL but im going to assume possibly you're someone struggling with your own identity or smth??? and answer

but tbh if you're looking for help with rediscovering being jewish, i am not the one to ask and the reason for that will be clear below. if you need help reconnecting to indigeneity however, that's a different story.

long story, bc i weirdly am giving u way too much background info for an anon LMAO but a tldr is included

to begin, my ethnicity is as follows: norwegian, german, chatiks si chatiks, niitsitapi, and well, ashkenazi jewish

so, yes, i'm ethnically ashkenazi jewish on my maternal grandma's side (indigenous on my maternal grandmother's side as well, my great grandma was jewish, my great grandpa indigenous). however, i was not raised with the knowledge of it. i did some digging, talking to my my grandpa, my mom and my aunt's (who knew all along but are gen x'ers and a boomer, and just... didn't really care at all except my mom and one aunt who also felt kind of sad about it), and they all said the same thing: my great-grandma chose to whitewash us (and therefore didn't even tell her kids, including my grandma, until later in life) because her mother and father did as well, for mostly safety reasons, but also fitting in reasons, because where i live was where most germans settled. (like for example, my paternal ancestry is literally just norwegian and german. my dad is half norwegian and german lmao, my paternal grandma immigrated from norway, and my paternal grandfather's was like a 2nd-gen immigrant or smth, they came over quite awhile after my cousins side of the family came over a loooong time ago idfk it's stupid i dont really care about all that.) and it might be silly to some but it was important to my grandparents i guess, especially because one of my grandpa's was a general(??? something???) in ww2.

TLDR anyway, long story short, my grandparents hid who we are, didn't raise their kids as jewish neither in religion nor even by telling them their ethnicity til they were older. SO i don't feel comfortable claiming my jewish ethnicity? like... idk it is weird because since finding out i am jewish, i feel this weird sense of heartbreak that 1. i partially don't know who i am, 2. that my grandparents were so desperate to fit in they literally hid a major part of themselves, 3. i lost out on a lot of culture because they simply chose to omit this part of our lives, idk i could go on???

so while part of me wants to try and reconnect what it means to be jewish, there's another part of me that feels uncomfortable doing so, as if ... idk... like i'm not allowed? it's a much different feeling than being indigenous and reconnecting, especially because i grew up knowing i'm indigenous and already having bits and pieces of that culture.

unnecessary information of me rambling on below

and as for my indigeneity, there wasn't really any hiding the color of my great-grandpa's skin. even as our genes have been passed down through my family, while some of us (me, a few cousins) ended up white as hell (for me it's thanks to my snow-white scandinavian/germanic father) others, such as my sister, have my grandpa's complexion, his eyes, his hair. it's beautiful. it sounds privileged as hell to say this, because i understand i have white privilege to the max, but i am a lil jealous of my sister. she's just so beautiful in my eyes, and really represents the ancestry in my family. it's lovely to me.

anyway, congrats, u have way more info than u needed