To be jewish is to be angry and tired and defiant

To be jewish is to be proud and loyal and so so full of warmth and love

*i whisper to my classmate "I don't know any of these songs" to share in her confusion*

*the kindest woman in the world leans over to mutter to us both that "Don't worry, [we'll] pick it up"*

This is the people you're siding with, these are the Israeli settlers.

you motherfuckers have no concept of what "land back" or "decolonize" even mean. you're too busy demonizing entire groups of people, terrified, shitting yourselves, that they'll do even half of the horrors to you that you've done to them for decades or centuries. this shit comes off as hella racist for real. you hate arabs so much. you hate first nations people so much. you hate black people so much. even if you sympathize with them, you can't fucking bear the idea of them gaining freedom, independence, autonomy, safety, because you're so, so scared they'll hurt you back and cause chaos in the streets. these same people who just want to rebuild. who just want to go home. who just want to see their families again. who just want food. who just want medical care. who just want dry, warm shelter. you're so focused on the ideas of colonization, of "us vs. them", of one people displacing the other for a state to exist, that you cannot comprehend coexistence, and your only idea of peace is if an entire group of people were just gone and dead.

grow the fuck up. for the love of GOD, grow the fuck up.

happy pride month to religious queer people, who feel like they’re contradictions, or told that they’re contradictions, but stay true to these important parts of themselves anyway. happy pride to the queer religious people who have to explain their identities, and who have to defend their faith or their queerness in either circle.

i love you, i am one of you, thank you for being in this community with me.

Antisemitism Required Reading

I get a lot of ignorant comments & tags on my posts about antisemitism, and I’ve already spent way too much time & energy engaging with them. So to preserve my sanity, I’ve made the decision not to engage too deeply with any commenters who haven’t at least read all of these in their entirety:

“Jewish Space Lasers” by Mike Rothschild

“People Love Dead Jews” by Dara Horn

“Jews Don’t Count” by David Baddiel

"More Than a Century of Antisemitism", GEC Special Report

If you’re not Jewish, please read all of this literature before adding anything to my posts about antisemitism.

Jews, please add any books you think should be on the list!

there’s such an attitude among ex-christian atheists that religions just spring up out of the void with no cultural context behind them. like ive heard people say shit like “those (((zionists))) think they own a piece of land bc their book of fairy tales told them so!!!” and they refuse to understand that no, we don’t belong there because of the torah, it’s in the torah because we belong there. because we’re from there. the torah (from a reform perspective) was written by ancient jews in and about the land that they were actively living on at the time. the torah contains instructions for agriculture because the people who lived in the land needed a way to teach their children how to care for it. it contains laws of jurisprudence because those are pretty important to have when you’re trying to run a society. same for the parts that talk about city planning. it contains our national origin story for the same reason that american schools teach kids about the boston tea party. it’s an extremely complex and fascinating text that is the furthest thing from just a “book of fairy tales”

“But there are nuances to sadistic barbarity against Jews, we are told, and sometimes gang-raping Jewish women is actually a movement for human rights. It hardly seems fair to call people anti-Semitic if they want only half of the world’s Jews to die. The phrase “Globalize the Intifada,” currently chanted at universities across America, perhaps widens the net a tiny bit—but really, who can say? Even the phrase “Gas the Jews,” chanted at a rally organized by NYU students and faculty, is so very ambiguous. How dare those whiny Jews presume to know what’s in other people’s hearts? It remains unclear why anti-Semitism should matter only when it is lethal, or if so, how many unambiguously anti-Semitic murders would be necessary for anti-Semitism to be happening outside whiny Jews’ heads. A realistic estimate might be 6 million. Even then, Jews have had to spend the past 80 years collecting documentation to prove it.”

— Dara Horn, Why the Most Educated People in America Fall For Anti-Semitic Lies

theres this specific brand of judaism thats """all-accepting""" (of women, lgbt ppl, mentaly ill/disabled ppl, etc) and 'fight with gd behind a dennys' and uwu cute and scrunkly and non-threatening that was bred in captivity by secular americans thats somehow treated as the "real", widespread version of judaism by people on social media and its so so funny and annoying at the same time. and often coexists in gentiles alongside antisemitic beliefs, talking points and ideas. anyways. it drives me insane.

JEWISH CONVERTS (YES THOSE IN PROGRESS ALSO) AREN'T "racefaking jewish" YOU STUPID FUCKING ASSHOLES

I don't think I can say this with enough emphasis--if you are not Jewish, you don't get to decide what is and is not antisemitic.

There's no ambiguity here. Zero. I am sick and tired of being lectured at by goyim about how, 'oh, ackhtually, your explanation of how my words are antisemitic is off! You're trying to stop the discussion by being inflammatory!'

Or to be told that I am cheapening the term antisemitism, and that people used to react to it before October 7th, but now they're numb to it, which is just what happens you start using serious accusations for political means!

It's... genuinely astonishing to me. I'm consistently amazed by the arrogance, audacity, and disrespect it takes for you guys to lecture Jews on what antisemitism is.

Have any of you goyim experienced antisemitism firsthand? Is it your people who's experienced antisemitism for 3000 years? Is it you who has family members rescued by Schindler? Was it your ancestors who fled from constant, unending pogroms in with nothing but the clothes on their backs? Have you ever had someone tell lies to your friend about you sexually harassing people because you're a Jew? Have you ever had to sit and think whether you should mark down that you're Jewish on a job application? Have you ever felt unsafe and compelled to take off your Star of David because you've been afraid you'd be attacked? Have you ever had to worry about a professor who constantly brings up the war in class marking your assignment down because it talks about Israel being a democracy? Have you ever had the feeling of acid being splashed on your soul when you see antisemitic comments? The ice water rushing down your spine when someone is antisemitic to your face, and you feel the weight of 3 millennia of oppression bearing down on you?

No? Not you?

Then sit your ass down, and frankly, shut the fuck up.

Do you know this Jewish character?

i love you gentiles who post about antisemitism. i love you gentiles who don't make me feel alone. i love you gentiles willing to learn. i love you gentiles who care about the jewish people. i love you gentiles who understand. i love you. i love you gentiles who give me, a jew living in a very scary time, hope.

A high-quality edit of Keshet's Jewish Progress Pride Flag

as a Jew I find the antisemitic trope of the Wandering Jew endlessly fascinating and there’s a version of it that lives rent free in my head that I can’t get out

because yes, we have been cursed—not by G-d, but by man; not for anything we’ve done, but for libel against us—and the curse antisemites have forced on us is that we must wander forever. we don’t get a home, here or there. we aren’t allowed to put down roots in diaspora, but we aren’t allowed to return either; regardless of which we do, the nations try to drive us out and impose their sentence on us: you must wander some more

there is a deconstructed version of the Wandering Jew that I want to reclaim, not as a testament to our sin but as a witness to the nations’, how they’ve treated the wanderer in their midst. on some level, a witness to how the nations treat all wanderers: Jew, Roma, bedouin. but ultimately, a testament to the libel & persecution we as Jews have endured & persevere through

this Wandering Jew is a weary old immortal forced to wander by hatred that goes before him through the nations, who has seen those nations come and go, empires rise and fall, and bears witness to our plight through every one, waiting for injustice to be righted so he can finally rest

If y’all (you know who you are) are uncomfortable with Jews wearing the Magen David (star of David) necklace and are openly harassing Jews for wearing it…then you have a problem and it’s called being antisemitic.