judaism
www.thetorah.com
>“Yom Kippur,” the day of ritual and moral cleanness and self‐denial, has become the climax of the Jewish High Holy Days. This day is the hope for freshness and new beginning for individuals and for the collective. Once a year, on the tenth of the seventh month (*Tishre*), the high priest atones (כפר) for impurities of the Temple and the altar, and at the same time also for sins of all the people: himself, his close family, his priestly clan, and all Israel (Lev 16:10–11, 16–19, 21–22, 24, 29–33; 23:27; Num 29:7; Exod 30:10). In fact, atonement of the people is the core of the Yom Kippur ritual (Lev 16:6–11, 15, 17, 21–24, 30–32), while the atonement of the Temple and the altar is mentioned only secondarily (Lev 16:16, 18–20, 33). > >The biblical text states: “For on that day [shall the priest] make an atonement for you, to cleanse you, that you may be clean from *all your sins* before the Lord” (Lev 16:30).[1] Despite the evident meaning of the term “all your sins,” the rabbis learn from the phrase “before the Lord” that Yom Kippur atones for sins “between man and God” (בין אדם למקום) only, and this too, only under certain conditions.[2] For the sins “between man and his fellow” (בין אדם לחברו), one must appease his fellow and request forgiveness. In case he or she harmed another, he or she must pay compensation or return the stolen goods.[3] I wish that others would forgive me for my sins and transgressions.
>Gaza is a concentration camp and rapidly becoming a death camp. Gas chambers and firing lines have been replaced with bombs, tanks, and white phosphorous. We say [never again for anyone](https://www.ijan.org/projects-campaigns/nafa). Talli Gotliv, an Israeli lawmaker, demanded that Israel “Shoot powerful missiles without limit. Not flattening a neighborhood. Crushing and flattening Gaza," she continued… "Otherwise, we would have done nothing. Not with passwords, with penetrating bombs. Without mercy! Without mercy!" A wish Netanyahu is fulfilling. > >Israel is bombing neighborhoods, hospitals, schools, places of worship, tunnels through which people are trying to escape, without regard for civilian life. Half of Gaza is children. The intention is clear. The intention is genocide. Depriving people of food, water, electricity and basic needs, is not just collective punishment, it is an act of genocide. > >As we offer solidarity with Palestinian resistance, we are reminded of the Warsaw and Vilna Ghetto and concentration camp uprisings against the Nazis. Both are acts of resistance against fascist régimes. In both cases, there is a struggle for freedom from genocide and ethnic cleansing and the right to exist as a free people. > >Since 1948, Palestinians have had to flee while resisting so that they could stay as much as possible in their own homes on their own land, and for their own self-determination. Dr. Meyer called for a return of Palestine to Palestinians and a return of Judaism to the ethics of “do unto others.” We stand on the history of Jewish participation in struggles for our collective liberation. We stand with the right of Palestinians to their collective self-defense. > >We stand against genocide, whether the genocide that killed many of our families, or the genocide we are witnessing. The majority of the world is against this genocide. Internationally, many are showing up and protesting, calling out the US, UK, and EU, who are backing Israel’s genocidal plan with their arms, propaganda, and censorship. We stand with the majority. No genocide in our name. We say never again for anyone.We invite other Jews of Conscience to join us in demanding an immediate end to the escalating genocide in Palestine. > >To show your support for this statement, please sign [here](https://forms.gle/JLj9N7RJ72P2vmVh9).
inv.nadeko.net
With the exceptions of alcohol (and the occasional locust), nearly everything that is kosher is also halal. It is normal for Muslims to seek kosher cuisine whenever Islamic grocers or restaurants are difficult to access. Quoting Ethan B. Katz’s *The Burdens of Brotherhood: Jews and Muslims from North Africa to France*, page 52: >Illustrating the potential for interaction, Muslims looking for halal meat regularly entered kosher butchers’ shops. Given that many Muslims have long considered kosher meat permissible under Islamic law, since the nineteenth century, a number of North African Muslim travelers had sought out kosher butchers when visiting Europe. In war time France, many observant Muslims naturally turned to Jewish slaughter houses for their meat.¹¹⁶ Page 66: >During the 1930 celebrations of the centenary of the Algerian conquest, one Jewish observer spotted groups of visiting Muslim notables in traditional attire entering the kosher restaurants of the 9th arrondissement, drawn by both the compatibility of Jewish ritual slaughter practices with Muslim rules of halal and the familiar menu.²⁰ > >Indeed, the daily experience of the city was changing: Parisians out walking in certain quarters might regularly pass by a restaurant with North African or Balkan cuisine and smell the wafting scent of couscous, merguez, baklava, or other traditional “Oriental” or “Arabic” foods; see Jews or Muslims dressed in “North African” garb going about their daily lives in the city; or hear previously unfamiliar Arabic musical modes and instruments emanating from cafés, restaurants, and concert halls. Page 227: >Until halal shops became widespread in Marseille in the mid to late 1960s, many newly arrived Muslims went to kosher butcheries here and elsewhere in the city to buy their meat.¹¹³ Page 234: >Not far from Cronenbourg, the Bagouchas, an Algerian Jewish family, opened the city’s first “Oriental” grocery store, with products from North Africa. “All the Muslims,” remembers Dahan, “went to this épicerie, because they found there someone who spoke Arabic, who dressed like them, who served the great sacks of spices to which they were accustomed in North Africa.” For many years before Strasbourg had halal shops, religious Muslims purchased their meat at kosher butcheries.¹³⁸ Page 240: >Jews’ and Muslims’ mutual familiarity, common customs and language, and physical proximity gave way to social, economic, cultural, and even religious relations. In many North African cafés, Jews and Muslims played cards and listened to Arabic music together.¹⁶⁰ Mediterranean grocery stores regularly featured mixed Jewish and Muslim clienteles. Many Jews and Muslims lived in the same apartment building.¹⁶¹ A number of Tunisian Muslims who found their way to Belleville took jobs in the quarter working for Jewish‐owned food establishments.¹⁶² > >North African Jews in Belleville often had greater resources than their Muslim counter parts and reached out to them. As an organizer for Logique, a Jewish voluntary association helping underprivileged children in Belleville, Patricia Jaïs remembers working with both Jewish and Muslim families in need. She recalls as well a Jewish friend whose father kept his neighborhood North African café open after hours each night to allow Muslims who came with no money to eat for free.¹⁶³ > >Community boundaries were at once porous and fixed. With fifteen kosher and twelve halal butcheries in the short stretch between the Ménilmontant and Belleville Metro stops, Jews and Muslims generally purchased ritually slaughtered meat that accorded precisely with their own, rather than each other’s comparable, traditions.¹⁶⁴ > >Reviving customs popular in North Africa, Jews and Muslims also exchanged foods around the Muslim holiday of Ramadan. During the fast month itself, Jewish grocers often offered fruits, vegetables, and fresh herbs that Muslims used to prepare their evening meals. On Aïd el‐Fitr, the feast that concludes the holiday, Muslims would bring pastries and grilled mutton to their Jewish neighbors. As in North Africa, these exchanges highlighted a sense of community. > >By their festive, occasional nature, though, they underscored the way that many Jewish and Muslim neighbors, while speaking in the street and remaining amicable, stayed at arm’s length.¹⁶⁵ The mixing of Jews and Muslims was accepted here, but it occurred in a precise, controlled context and thus relied on understood boundaries. Quoting Aviva A. Orenstein’s [*Once We Were Slaves, Now We are Free: Legal, Administrative, and Social Issues Raised by Passover Celebrations in Prison*](https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2670&context=facpub#page=31): >Interestingly, one cause of the increased cost of kosher meals in some prisons is the request by devout Muslims for kosher foods, which satisfy the Muslim requirements of halal.¹⁵⁷ :::spoiler [Trivia] In medieval Europe, some Christian authorities referred to Islamic dietary laws as another justification for classifying Muslims as legally ‘Jewish’. Quoting David M. Freidenreich’s *Jewish Muslims: How Christians Imagined Islam as the Enemy*, pages 135–6: >Bernard transformed the structure of canon law, but he did not seek to change the ways in which canonists perceived Muslims. Huguccio, Bernard’s contemporary and an equally influential canonist, did just that: perhaps in an effort to account for the Third Lateran Council’s unprecedented association of Jews and Saracens, he collapsed the legal distinction between these groups. > >“Today,” he asserted in the late 1180s, “there does not seem to be any reason for saying that servitude to pagans is different from servitude to Jews, for nearly all contemporary pagans judaize: they are circumcised, they distinguish among foods, and they imitate other Jewish rituals. There ought not be any legal difference between them.”¹¹ > >Huguccio acknowledges that the New Testament itself instructs Christian slaves to accept the authority of their pagan masters (1 Peter 2:18). He emphasizes, however, that twelfth‐century “pagans”—that is, Muslims—are different from their predecessors because they adhere to “Jewish rituals” such as male circumcision and abstention from pork. > >Just as Christians may not serve Jews, Huguccio contends, so, too, they may not serve “judaizing pagans”—that is, Muslims. Canonists, after all, regarded literal observance of Old Testament law as a defining feature of Judaism, and they would readily brand Christians who practice circumcision or distinguish among foods as judaizers; from this perspective, it follows naturally that Muslims judaize in their adherence to these practices. By extension, Huguccio seems to suggest, Muslims are as likely as Jews to corrupt the beliefs and behaviors of their Christian slaves. > >[…] > >Huguccio, unlike Bernard, also forbids shared meals with Muslims on the grounds that “nearly all Saracens at the present judaize because they are circumcised and distinguish among foods in accordance with Jewish norms […] The reason for the prohibition [against Jewish food] expressed in *Omnes* applies equally to both groups.” According to Huguccio’s interpretation of *Omnes*, the sixth‐century canon forbidding shared meals with Jews discussed above, exposure to Judaism is dangerous because Christians might be tempted to adopt Old Testament practices. > >By this logic, interaction with Muslims is equally fraught since they, too, observe Old Testament norms literally. Huguccio’s argument for avoiding shared meals with Jews and Saracens alike appears in the influential Ordinary Gloss to the *Decretum*, the mid‐thirteenth‐century commentary that regularly accompanied subsequent copies of that collection.¹² :::
I’m kind of embarrassed that we’re going to end up celebrating the New Year **thirteen weeks late** again! Oh well. We’ll beat you to the punch one of these days, as soon as we catch you off guard! Anyway, here is some history that someone may find interesting: [*Rosh Hashanah with the Early Israelites*](https://www.thetorah.com/article/rosh-hashanah-with-the-early-israelites). Quote: >Part of the new year celebration ritual in ancient Near Eastern cultures was the solemn procession of the god, whose image would be removed from the temple precinct, paraded, and then returned to it. This ritual served a practical function, since the god’s quarters needed to be purified—a practice referred to in the Bible with the verbs *kappēr* and *ṭahēr*, and associated with Yom Kippur, also part of the New Year season.[28] > >In addition, it gave the god’s many non-priestly and non-royal worshipers direct access to the deity, unavailable to them during the year. In the Babylonian New Year festival, the king is reported to have taken the god Marduk “by the hand,” leading the image back into the temple. > >In Israel and Judah, a similar ritual appears to have taken place with the portable shrine in which YHWH was mysteriously present.[29] The Ark proceeded amid acclamation (*tĕrûᴄâ*) and blasts of the horn (*qôl šōpār*, 2 Samuel 6:15). In the premonarchic period, this would have been led by the priests, while in the monarchic period, the king would have taken a leading rôle in these proceedings. > >A fine illustration of the king’s rôle is preserved in the narrative about David’s transfer of the Ark to Jerusalem (2 Samuel 6). Donned like a priest in a linen ephod, David led the Ark to its resting-place. Although the story narrates a one-time event, it is modeled after the annual procession of the Ark.[30] In a similar manner, the Judean kings would have taken the lead in the procession of the Ark. > >The participation of the king was a powerful means to consolidate the position of the human king, with rather obvious political implications: G‐d was king on high, and the monarch was his deputy on earth. The few psalms that celebrate the human ruler as G‐d’s son on earth (such as Psalms 2 and 110) likely originated in the context of the New Year celebration. Certainly, the presentation of the king as a priestly figure (Psalm 110:4) is entirely in keeping with his rôle in the procession.
web.archive.org
 to jewish comrades
spectrejournal.com
critique of leiffer (dissent magazine editor btw) book. Rather interesting idiosyncrasies of zionist liberal (shooting and crying variety)
www.parapraxismagazine.com
>Psychic identification with the Nazis or European colonialists is socially unacceptable, and so such identification takes place via a negative formation: we are not the “Jew with trembling knees” exterminated in the Shoah, we are not the “backwards” Jew of the shtetl or the naively idealistic Jew of the Bund, we are not the “backwards” colonized Palestinian or Arab living under foreign rule. >With each new murder, each new expulsion, Zionists further cast their ballot on the side of the antisemites: they reaffirm particularity against the universal, they transform the world into, per Adorno and Horkheimer again, “the hell they have always taken it to be.” This negation voids Judaism’s historical content—the construction of the law against power, homeland without nation, messianism which reconciles past wrongs. >In a similar vein, that Hasbara has become more untethered from rational argumentation since this intensification of the genocide of the Palestinians reveals Hasbara’s libidinal core: blind domination, even on the field of reason. As the physical domination of the Palestinians reverts once again to the murderous blindness of its origin, so too does the propaganda which justifies it. The façade of lies and innuendos which the Zionist has constructed—Israel as a liberal-democratic nation, as a bastion of tolerance in a sea of hatred, as the most “moral army” in the world, Palestine as backwards, fundamentalist, incapable of peace—collapses under the weight of its actually existing actions. The performance of a false unity and its derivative power must be emphasized all the more. ::: spoiler sa >Since the invasion of Gaza, Israeli soldiers have documented themselves—with bizarre frequency—looting lingerie and underwear and bras from Palestinian stores and homes. They wear them, they strap them to their Humvees, they hold them up for the camera—in every case they are displayed as trophies. It is a means of feminizing the enemy in toto—of using the visual language of misogyny to say “these fighters are merely women, and look, we have won,” of asserting dominance through a symbolic rape, as the garments without wearers are standing in for the act of forcible removal (which is elsewhere literally carried out in the prisons). It is also a means, ironically, to “westernize” Palestinians, who, like most Muslims in the Zionist imagination, are considered to be sexually repressive and culturally “backwards.” “Look,” the soldiers seem to say, “deep down we know you want to be like us, deep down you like it.” The private erotic lives of Palestinians are imagined to be driven by distinctly Western feelings, as opposed to human ones. The animal-enemy merely breeds; in the lingerie, the Zionist sees the humor of a pig in lipstick, which explains their laughter. The invasion of privacy into the intimate carries the message that nowhere is safe. :::
\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \
cross‐posted (heh) from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/4960299 > It was only one century ago that many would have been shocked to hear the phrase ‘Jesus was a Jew’, as it simply wasn’t something that ordinary churches enjoyed teaching. While a few premodern Christians ([including the infamous Protestant pioneer Martin Luther](https://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1012&context=constructing#page=4), who responded with a massive wall of text after Jews kept telling him ‘nah, I’m good’) were [aware](https://books.google.com/books?id=K03PEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA76) of this knowledge, evidently nobody was really in the habit of emphasizing it either — quite the opposite of the current situation, where the phrase ‘Jesus was a Jew’ has become a cliché. > > Since many churches considered anti‐Judaism part of their job, it made sense that they would have wanted to keep quiet about J.C.’s Jewish background, as it would have inevitably raised all sorts of awkward questions, e.g. ‘If Jesus was Jewish, why don’t we all convert to Judaism?’ However, since some Christians feel guilty about nearly two millennia of violent Christian anti‐Judaism, including the Shoah, and many other Christians want to show their support for Zionism, the teaching that J.C. was Jewish has switched from being an arcane detail to basic knowledge. > > Now, certainly not all who repeat this trivia are directing it to Jews. In fact, a decade ago I usually saw it directed at blatantly antisemitic Christians, though I doubt that it was always persuasive ([as one ‘political pastor’ painfully learned in 1939](https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/springer.htm)). This counterargument is also a little irksome in its own way, as J.C.’s Jewish background should not be the only, or even the main, reason why somebody should respect contemporary Jewish people. The paradox of Jews inspiring two overwhelmingly gentile faiths **does** fascinate me, but Jewish people have worth aside from that. > > In any case, if you have been lurking Jewish communities for a while then you have likely noticed that when Jews mention this phrase, they tend to mention it unhappily. It isn’t just that the phrase has become cliché and pedantic, but mainly because [the intentions behind it are almost always misguided.](https://web.archive.org/web/20210919023446/https://sorekbekarmi.tumblr.com/post/612425147826290689/this-is-probably-a-really-naive-question-but-wtf) At best, telling Jews that J.C. was Jewish is only a quite minor, woefully inadequate way of expressing solidarity. At worst, it is an evasive rhetorical trick, basically the Christian equivalent to saying ‘I’m not racist, I have a black friend!’ or ‘I’m part Cherokee!’, hence why [somebody deemed the phrase antisemitic](https://jewitches.com/pages/antisemitism-education). I find both of those authors harsh, personally, so this is my attempt at putting it more gently if anybody finds their tones too off‐putting. > > While it delights me to see Christians who are sincerely interested in demonstrating solidarity with Jewish people, I suspect that all Jews would agree (for once) if I said that reminding others of J.C.’s Jewish background isn’t enough. Maybe better than nothing, but it still isn’t enough. How, then, should one go about it? [Click **here** for my suggestions](https://hexbear.net/post/2339225), zero of which involve supporting an antidemocratic régime! Evangelicals, take note! And if you want to discuss Christianity’s Jewish roots in a way that actually sounds sophisticated and interesting, [*Torah Praxis after 70 C.E.: Reading Matthew and Luke–Acts as Jewish Texts*](https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/93865/ioliver_1.pdf) is arguably **the** way to get serious about understanding them. See? Christianity’s Jewish origins don’t have to sound like boring trivia! > > If you tell a Jewish person that J.C. was a Jew, the politest response that you’ll get is simply ‘good for him’. Few people want to bluntly tell you ‘I don’t care’, let alone patiently and respectfully explain to a stranger why they find this knowledge irrelevant, so this my contribution for anybody who needed help. Hopefully I articulated this well!
invidious.materialio.us
:::spoiler [My favorite segment.] >Reb Yechiel Michel, a humble and holy rebbe, a Talmud of the Baal Shem Tov was approached by a man for a blessing. ‘Rebbe, I can’t even afford to give charity.’ The rebbe blessed him, and his fortune changed. Each year, he became wealthier and wealthier. At first, he did give charity, but the richer he became, the more his heart hardened until it closed altogether. > >‘This is too much. I didn't build this house to be continually bothered. Out, out!’ So the man put a guard at the gate and turned the beggars and the poor away. When Reb Yechiel heard this, he immediately made plans to visit the man. > >‘But rebbe, he has turned away from the Torah. He will never let you in.’ ‘He has a guard at the gate.’ > >‘Order me the suit of a rich man, and hire the finest coach and horses money can buy.’ And so they did. Arriving at the gate, he was stopped by the guard. Handing the man a gold coin, the rebbe spoke to him with authority. ‘Open up, I'm here to do business with your master.’ Taking the gold coin, the guard opened the gates. > >Instantly, as the rebbe was ushered in, the wealthy man recognized him. ‘How dare you enter my house under false pretenses‽’ > >‘I am pleased [that] you recognize me. It is a pity [that] you have forgotten yourself.’ > >‘What do you want from me?’ > >‘What a fine mirror you have. Wrought in gold and silver.’ Turning to the wealthy man, he raised the mirror in front of him. ‘What do you see?’ > >‘Myself.’ > >The rebbe stepped to the window. Outside, knowing the rebbe was visiting the wealthy man, people had begun to gather. ‘Now what do you see?’ > >‘People.’ > >[*Turning the mirror to him again.*] ‘And now?’ > >‘Myself.’ > >Then turning the mirror over, the rebbe peeled away the silver backing. Lifting the silver in the palm of his hand, the rebbe asked, ‘What is the Hebrew name for this?’ > >‘Keseph.’ > >‘Silver, what is the other meaning of keseph?’ > >‘Money.’ > >‘Money misused can be like a mirror. You see only yourself.’ Stepping again to the window, the rebbe held the mirror up in front of it. ‘Now what do you see?’ > >‘People.’ > >‘Wealth well used is a blessing. The problem is, we forget it. You asked me what I want from you. The real question is, what do you truly want of yourself? You're a good man, that's why G‐d blessed you. Don't let silver make you forget it.’ With that, the rebbe left. Repentant for the rest of his life, the wealthy man became a beloved man of charity, even changing his family name to Rehe El, which means ‘the mirror that belongs to G‐d.’ :::
nymag.com
it seems ordinary israelis really do be living in the alternative realm
harpers.org
kinda meandering family- and self-exploration piece, but i think its nice
Quoting Katherine Aron‐Beller’s *Christian Images and Their Jewish Desecrators: The History of an Allegation, 400–1700*, chapter 4: >A longer polemical folktale seems even more relevant for our purposes. Referring again to the thorn/burning bush, which here “radiated God’s presence,” Joseph describes his father, Rabbi Nathan, actually committing image desecration. He openly urinates on a cross in front of a Christian bishop, denying its sanctity and arguing that it should be considered putrid because it was the instrument that had caused the torture and death of Jesus: >>Once my lord and father, Rabbi Nathan, may he rest in Paradise, was riding alongside the bishop of Sens.¹²⁰ The bishop got off his horse opposite a bush in order to urinate. My lord and father saw this, and he got off his horse opposite an abomination [a cross] and urinated on it. The bishop saw this and was angry. He said to him, it is not proper to do that, to make the cross smell bad. My father replied, “On the contrary, it was a foolish thing for you to do [Gen. 31:28]. You urinated on a bush, on which the Holy One, blessed be He, radiated His presence in order to bring salvation [that is, at the burning bush, Exod. 3:1–3]. **But this [cross], on which you [Christians] say that [the god] you fear was defeated, stank, and rotted, it is right that you should expose yourself and urinate all over it!”¹²¹** > >The Jew holds the trump cards. It would, Rabbi Nathan argues, make more sense for the Christian to desecrate the cross himself rather than venerate it. He first criticizes the bishop for urinating on a bush when, according to the Christian argument, Christ revealed himself in one. Second, he contends that **it makes no sense for the bishop to venerate an object that caused the death of his savior. If the bishop saw the bush as a place of Christian divinity, the Jew argues, then he (the Jew) has shown more respect for Christ by not urinating on the bush than the bishop who did!** It might well be argued then, that Joseph the Official was responding to the spreading allegations of Jews violating Christian images and offered in this polemic an allegorical retort.¹²² (Emphasis added.)
cross‐posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/4654542 > >In July 1939, a group of Palestine‐born Jews, including key public figures and communal leaders, gathered in Jerusalem for the first meeting of the Natives of the Yishuv Federation (NYF; in Hebrew, Hitahadut Bney ha‐Yishuv). NYF was a political movement that sought to represent Jews of the “Old Yishuv” as an increasingly marginalized population in Palestine.^1^ > > > >In contrast to other movements and civil associations with similar aims, the NYF was not ethnically defined (e.g., Sephardi or Yemenite). Rather, it brought together a number of Palestine’s established Jewish communities under the category of “natives” (*bney ha‐arets or ha‐Yishuv*), clearly positioning themselves against European Zionist élites while relying on Ottoman practices of communal political organization that were viewed by the Zionist leadership as a direct threat to its authority.^2^ > > > >The NYF’s core members belonged to the pre‐Zionist Ashkenazi communities of Jerusalem. Joined by leading Sephardi figures, they also sought to draw closer the Yemenite, Georgian, and other communities. The federation claimed the independent status of a recognized political actor with its own social, economic, and cultural institutions, tied to a specific constituency. > > > >This rather radical position combined the struggle for native Jews’ political power with views of a shared Arab Jewish existence in Palestine, which were often expressed by the NYF founder and leader, Dr. Israel Ben‐Zeʾev, in meetings and in correspondence with high Zionist officials. > > > >[…] > > > >In addition to this large variety of private papers, I follow the official paper trail documenting the looting of Palestinian books during the 1948 war, focusing on Ben‐Zeʾev’s struggle against the Hebrew University and the Ministry of Education over the fate of these books that he had partly collected and assembled in Jaffa. > > > >This conflict formed part of an older, fierce debate concerning the politics of (specifically Orientalist) knowledge, that is, who gets to hold, manage, produce, and disseminate knowledge, and which types of Orientalist knowledge should be promoted. > > > >Ben‐Zeʾev opposed the treatment of the looted Palestinian books as dead cultural artifacts in the published work of a closed professional milieu at the university, struggling to keep them for use in his public educational projects and as part of a local, living Arab culture—albeit that by this point the books’ original owners were being displaced from their land and homes and this very culture was undergoing massive destruction. > > > >[…] > > > >Ben‐Zeʾev had a special relationship with A. S. Yahuda, an Orientalist trained in Germany (under the famous philologist Theodor Noeldeke) who spent most of his life as an academic in Europe and the U.S. and yet maintained a deep and ongoing interest in political and academic matters in Palestine. > > > >A lengthy correspondence between them from the 1940s (when Yahuda lived in New York and Ben‐Zeʾev in Jerusalem) reveals the fierce criticism they shared of the Zionist leadership and the Hebrew University’s Institute of Oriental Studies (IOS) for marginalizing native Jews, and particularly the milieu of native scholars and their political and cultural views that stood in opposition to the Zionist colonial‐separatist agenda.^29^ > > > >Ben‐Zeʾev admired Yahuda and hoped to gain his support in his political and cultural projects, including the opening of a New York branch of his political movement of native Jews as well as a research institute on Arabic Jewish literature in pre‐Islamic times and in Muslim Spain, on which I elaborate in the next sections. > > > >[…] > > > >The collection of books in Jaffa by Ben‐Zeʾev was met with growing resentment by the university’s Orientalists and librarians, who were determined to bring the Palestinian books to the only place they deemed proper for them, the university library. Within a few years they managed to bring about the demise of Ben‐Zeʾev’s library, obtaining some seven thousand books from its collections. > > > >They were assisted in this process by several government ministries and officials (in addition to Palmon), especially Ben‐Zion Dinur (Dinaburg) and Eliezer Rieger, who had served as senior professors at the university until their appointments as heads of the education ministry in 1951.^80^ With the latter’s authorization, university professors and librarians made frequent visits to Ben‐Zeʾev’s library, screening it for “important” books they wished to have at their disposal. > > > >One year later, in late 1952, the Arab Library in Jaffa was finally closed down, despite Ben‐Zeʾev’s protests, without ever being opened to the public. > > I am practically in shock right now. I know that there isn’t anything especially disturbing about this report, but the fact that Zionists can successfully hide Jewish history like this from the general public almost enrages me. > >  > > *Alav hashalom.*
forward.com
Rabbinical students clutch pearls over the existence of anti Zionists in their class; complain about “communist literature.”
Quoting Katherine Aron‐Beller’s *Christian Images and Their Jewish Desecrators: The History of an Allegation, 400–1700*, [page 143](https://books.google.com/books?id=K03PEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA143): > This fight against idolatry, which was a central issue in biblical religion, lost importance as a national concern during the period of the Second Temple.⁹ Only a few cases are described by Titus Flavius Josephus (37–100 CE), born Yoseph Ben Matitiyahu, in his works. In 5 BCE Judas, son of Saripheus, and Matthias, son of Margalothus, attempted to remove King Herod’s golden eagle, which had graced the great gate of the Temple for some time.¹⁰ > > Both Philo and Josephus described how, when serving as prefect or governor of Judea (26–36 CE), Pontius Pilate sent images of Caesar, known as “standards,” into the city of Jerusalem at night.¹¹ > > Josephus reports: “This excited a great disturbance among the Jews when it was day; for those that were near them were astonished at the sight of them, as indications that their laws were trodden under foot, for those laws do not permit any sort of image to be brought into the city.”¹² > > Josephus reported how **Jews gathered from all over the countryside outside Pilate’s headquarters in Caesarea, staging a passive demonstration by lying down on the ground for five days and nights.** > > When Pilate finally agreed to hear their complaint in the marketplace, he took precautions and surrounded the protesters with armed soldiers: “Pilate also said to them that they would be cut into pieces, unless they would admit of Caesar’s image, and gave instruction to the soldiers to draw their naked swords. Hereupon the **Jews, as it were at one signal, fell down in vast numbers together, and exposed their necks bare, and cried out that they were sooner ready to be slain than that their law should be transgressed. Hereupon Pilate was greatly surprised at their prodigious superstition, and gave order that the ensigns should be presently carried out of Jerusalem.**”¹³ (Emphasis added.)
I'm reading Levy's *The Dawn of Agriculture and the Earliest States in Genesis 1-11* and thought I'd share this screenshot. Really well written and researched book. Levy cites the midrash (fn77) from: *Pirqe Rebbe Eliezer*, 24. [Heb], *editio princeps*, Constantinople, 1514. folio 16b. Digitized Copy, Hebrew Union College, Klau Library, in the Pirqe Rabbi Eliezer Manuscript Database.
web.archive.org
cross‐posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/4339383 > >[Passover](https://www.hebcal.com/holidays/pesach) (Hebrew: פֶּסַח Pesach) commemorates the story of the Exodus, in which the ancient Israelites were freed from slavery in Egypt. Passover begins on the 15th day of the month of Nisan in the Jewish calendar, which is in spring in the Northern Hemisphere, and is celebrated for seven or eight days. It is one of the most widely observed Jewish holidays. > > As a gentile with an interest in the history of labor, the story behind Passover interests me. [Some Jewish historians have come to the conclusion that Exodus was a **dramatization** of real events](https://archive.is/VDrDl): there are certainly truths at the story’s core, but the story itself is probably best interpreted as largely symbolic: > > >“It’s not a historical event, but it’s also not totally invented by someone sitting behind a desk,” explains Thomas Romer, a renowned expert in the Hebrew Bible and professor at the College de France and the University of Lausanne. “These are different traditions that are brought together to construct a foundation myth, which can be, in a way, related to some historical events,” he says. > > > >[…] > > > >[I]f the Israelites were just a native offshoot of the local Canaanite population, how did they come up with the idea of being slaves in Egypt? [One theory](https://brill.com/view/journals/jane/11/1/article-p39_3.xml), proposed by Tel Aviv University historian Nadav Naʻaman, posits that the original Exodus tradition was set in Canaan, inspired by the hardships of Egypt’s occupation of the region and its subsequent liberation from the pharaoh’s yoke at the end of the Bronze Age. > > > >A similar theory, supported by Romer, is that the early Israelites came in contact with a group that had been directly subjected to Egyptian domination and absorbed from them the early tale of their enslavement and liberation. The best candidate for this rôle would be the nomadic tribes that inhabited the deserts of the southern Levant and were collectively known to the Egyptians as the Shasu. > > > >One of these tribes is listed in Egyptian documents from the Late Bronze Age as the “Shasu of [YHWH](https://archive.is/rUHSy)” — possibly the first reference to the deity who that would [later become the God of the Jews](https://archive.is/0JR3P). > > > >These Shasu nomads were often in conflict with the Egyptians and if captured, were pressed into service at locations like the copper mines in Timna — near today’s port town of Eilat, Romer says. The idea that a group of Shasu may have merged with the early Israelites is also considered one of the more plausible explanations for how the Hebrews adopted YHWH as their tutelary deity. > > > >As its very name suggests, Israel initially worshipped El, the chief god of the Canaanite pantheon, and only later switched allegiance to the deity known only by the four letters YHWH. > > > >“There may have been groups of Shasu who escaped somehow from Egyptian control and went north into the highlands to this group called Israel, bringing with them this god whom they considered had delivered them from the Egyptians,” Romer says. > > > >This may be why, in the Bible, YHWH is constantly described as the god who brought his people out of Egypt — because the worship of this deity and the story of liberation from slavery came to the Israelites already fused into a theological package deal. > > I hope that I don’t offend anybody by proposing a reinterpretation of Exodus as mostly symbolic. My intention is not iconoclasm — quite the contrary! Looking behind the scenes make me appreciate it all the more, and in any case it is absolutely true that some of your ancient ancestors endured slavery… repeatedly. > > That leads me to my next point: the Bronze Age was not the last time that you endured slavery. You endured it again… and again… and again. Whether it was [Rome](https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13260-5_5): > > >when Titus sacked Jerusalem in 70 CE, he carried off 97,000 Jews into slavery > > Per Catherine Hezser’s [*Jewish Slavery in Antiquity*](https://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=17ECD98E2407C40898D86604CFF8573B), pages 240, 253: > > >It is likely that the supply of Jewish slaves was much larger than that of gentile slaves in Roman Palestine of the late first and second century CE. […] After the Bar Kokhba revolt in the second century CE Jewish slaves are said to have been sold by the Romans at markets in Gaza and Hebron.^35^ > > [Malta](https://jewishcurrents.org/may-15-jewish-slaves-of-malta): > > >A community of up to 1,000 Jewish slaves on the archipelago of Malta, east of Tunisia and north of Libya, established over the course of two centuries by the Knights of St. John, a Catholic order of pirates left over from the Crusades, was officially abolished on this date in 1800. > > [Poland](https://hexbear.net/post/855469): > > >In September 1941, 24,000 employees were engaged in the ghetto’s own operations, working for the Wehrmacht, police, and SS, and later for the private companies with workshops there. Nine thousand were employed by Jewish institutions. > > We can find cases of Jewish serfdom in, for byspel, [Georgia](https://www.mdpi.com/2313-5778/7/3/68), but this topic is not meant to be exhaustive. Nonetheless, I do want to touch on [neoslavery today](https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2670&context=facpub): > > >Passover can be a difficult time of year for Jewish inmates. First of all, the prisoners may particularly miss their families during the time of this family holiday celebration.^225^ Furthermore, the irony of the prisoners’ situation—celebrating a ritual of liberation inside prison—is not lost on them.^226^ Sid Kleiner, longtime director of Beth Tikvah Jewish Prisoner Outreach,^227^ explains: > >>Along with separation from family, there is a painful theme to the holiday—redemption, freedom from bondage and captivity. Jewish inmates gather around the Seder table and declare that, “this year we are free.” It isn’t easy to make this declaration with barbed wire, high walls, and correctional officers in view.^228^ > > And finally, [your Palestinian kin](https://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=BA95E6BF58BA26C284BB015C77C4F1DD): > > >Workers consistently and overwhelmingly claim that having no other choice is the reason behind them working in the [Zionist] settlements and putting up with the exploitative work conditions that are part and parcel of the settlement employment sector for West Bank Palestinian workers. The work, they say, is not a free choice but a necessity where no other options exist; a way to put food on the table, and scrape a living in the fragile, poverty‐stricken, and often dangerous environment of the occupied West Bank. > > > >It’s not hyperbole. There is no free or genuine choice regarding employment for many workers who have been systematically streamlined into settlement work. Who are, due to circumstances forced on to them, unable to turn down the exploitative and politically damaging settlement work or find any alternative. This idea of no choice has come about due to a combination of several [Zionist] policies that have purposefully stifled Palestinian development and growth throughout the occupied West Bank, in particular in the rural (read: Area C) communities that have suffered substantially from land annexation. > > Yet while the situation looks severe, [the Palestinians have inherited much from you](https://hexbear.net/post/1328308), and because of that I have no doubt that they’ll overcome their oppression, as you repeatedly have. > > Have a wonderful Passover!
www.sajr.co.za
cross‐posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/4280603 > The capitalist media ([example](https://web.archive.org/web/20240415191626/https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/irans-regime-strong-armed-jewish-community-to-praise-attack-on-israel-797217)) have been playing down Iranian Jews’ approval of the counterattack, claiming that Tehran is figuratively holding a gun to all of their heads to appreciate it. > > Iranian Jews don’t have to lie! Even here in the North, where the capitalist media dominate, there are thousands (maybe scores of thousands) of anticolonial Jews who loathe Zionism’s neocolony, and I suspect that they would be at least understanding if not approving of the Iranian counterattack. So claiming that the Islamic Republic of Iran **must** be forcing its Jewish population to appreciate these well aimed blows on an antisemitic régime is utterly laughworthy.
cross‐posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/4269754 > ([Mirror.](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/371828317)) > >After 1953, **Jews and Armenians continued to be disproportionately overrepresented in various underground political parties and anti‐Shah circles**.^39^ On par with their political activism during the Pahlavi period, **Jews were part of 1970s revolutionary movement groups in addition to the Tudeh, such as student organizations and the Association of Jewish Iranian Intellectuals. They, too, took to the streets and participated in political demonstrations supporting a wide variety of revolutionary movements.** > > > >It is difficult to quantify the extent of Jewish participation in the revolutionary movement, but **sources suggest that it was not inconsequential. In March 1978, nine months before the shah left Iran, Jewish radicals, some of whom were socialists and republicans, won the elections for the leadership of the central organization of the Jewish communities, defeating the old guard establishment that was identified closely with the shah and his alliance with [Zionism]**.^40^ > > > >These activists formed the aforementioned AJII. Later in 1978, particularly in September and December when the demonstrations grew larger and more frequent, **there are multiple reports of thousands of Jewish protestors marching in Tehran, and the Jewish hospital in the city operated rescue teams together with the leadership of the revolutionary movement**.^41^ > > > >It should be noted that from that moment on **there were no official voices in the community in support of Zionism. There were myriad motivations and reasons for Jews (and non‐Jews) to support the revolution, some more prosaic than others.** > > > >[…] > > > >One of the highest profile trials and executions was that of the industrialist […] and Jewish community leader, Habib Elghanian, on 9 May 1979. Given the […] fabricated charges of being a “friend of God’s enemies, spying for [Zionism’s régime], and spreading corruption on earth,” Iranian Jews feared that if the new government executed Elghanian no Jews would be immune from such treatment.^43^ > > > >Shortly afterward, the Iranian Jewish leader Hakham Shofet led a small delegation to Qom to meet with Ayatollah Khomeini to seek clarification. **The meeting helped to allay the Jewish community’s concerns.** > > > >In his proclamation, **Khomeini acknowledged the deep roots of the Jewish communities in Iran, underscored the elements of monotheism present in both Judaism and Islam, and distinguished between Zionism and Judaism: “We know that the Iranian Jews are not Zionist. We [and the Jews] together are against Zionism. […] They [the Zionists] are not Jews! They are politicians that claim to work in the name of Judaism, but they hate Jews. […] The Jews, as the other communities, are part of Iran, and Islam treats them all fairly.”**^44^ > > > >At the same time, this societal chaos produced euphoric dreams for the postrevolutionary republic. In less than two years, from February 1979 to summer 1980, Iran witnessed its broadest political participation and freedom of the press that resulted in hundreds of new publications, which in turn helped to inform and shape public opinion. Such participation and euphoria were enjoyed by all the religious minorities, including the Jews. > > > >The Jewish community’s leadership now had direct relations with the revolutionary leaders, and they were given a place to represent the Jews and other religious minorities in shaping the character of the new republic. **One of its community’s leaders, ʻAziz Daneshrad, an ex‐Tudeh activist, was elected to represent the Jews in the Constitutional Experts Council (Majlis Khobrigan‐i Qanun‐i Asasi). The council’s main rôle was to write the republic’s new constitution and bring it forth for referendum**.^45^ > > > >At the same time that news reports [under Zionism] and around the world claimed that Iran was building extermination camps for Iranian Jews, Daneshrad as a sitting member of the council raised the idea of revoking the reserved seat for the religious minorities, allowing minority candidates to compete in the general party lists. To his disappointment, the measure was not approved. > > > >[…] > > > >**Iranian Jews are not hiding in taqiya mode. In present‐day Iran, those who remain speak up against injustices. They express a desire to be part of the Iranian nation and maintain independent positions relative to the Islamic Republic**, as well as to [Zionism] and Jewish issues worldwide. The Iranian Jewish response to an ongoing discourse of “rescue” has been far less enthusiastic than expected.^79^ In general, Iranian Jews living in Iran want to remain Jewish and Iranian without compromising any component of their identity. > > > >After Ahmadinejad’s two presidential terms, Iranians elected a pragmatist, Hassan Rouhani. Under his leadership (r. 2013–21), **Jews experienced a number of political and cultural achievements. In December 2014, the government unveiled a monument with Persian and Hebrew text that commemorated the Jewish soldiers who sacrificed their lives during the Iran–Iraq war.^80^ In addition, the Majlis passed new laws that corrected prevailing inheritance laws, which prioritized Muslim heirs over their Jewish relatives, and another law that excused Jewish students in public schools from attending classes on Shabbat**.^81^ > > > >Under Rouhani’s tenure, the president and his foreign minister made it a tradition to bless the Iranian Jewish community on their official Twitter accounts on Rosh HaShana.^82^ In one of his many Twitter threads, Foreign Minister Javad Zarif referred to the former president’s Holocaust denial and countered: “Iran never denied the Holocaust. The man who denied the Holocaust is now gone. Happy New Year.”^83^ > > > >Although Zarif meant to draw a line between Ahmadinejad as the most prominent Holocaust denier and the Rouhani administration that he (Zarif) was part of, it is important to note that Holocaust denial remains prevalent in the ranks of the Iranian government. Iran’s Supreme Leader, ʻAli Khamenei, has himself engaged in Holocaust denial and such references remain on his social media and official website.^84^ > > > >Zarif’s point, however, has some merit in that Holocaust denial is not as dominant as in other Middle Eastern societies.^85^ Even during Ahmadinejad’s presidency, **state‐run TV aired the drama *Zero Degree Turn*, based on the story of Abdol Hossein Sardari, the Iranian diplomat in [Fascist]‐occupied Paris who forged passports for French Jews**.^86^ […] **Iranian Jews speak and write, and their views, opinions, struggles, and actions can represent their complex experiences of living in Iran. Scholars can understand Iran and Iranian Jews better when they listen to Iranian Jews when they speak and write about their experiences of being Kalimian in Iran.** > > (Emphasis added.)
cross‐posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3220137 > >I have said many times that **only Jews can really come close to understanding the impact the *Porrajmos* has had on the Romani population, and I venture to think that only Romanies can come close, on an emotional level, to understanding the Jewish tragedy.** The Holocaust, sadly, just doesn’t seem to mean as much for anyone else. But neither Jew nor Rom can *fully* understand the other’s experience, then or now, nor should either begin to presume to interpret for the other. > > — [Ian Hancock](https://books.google.com/books?id=yqmYJiVui9UC&pg=PA257) > > As the old saying goes, misery enjoys company, and there is perhaps no better example of this than the plight of [Jews and Roma in Europe](https://www.travellerstimes.org.uk/features/roma-and-jews-solidarity-ujpest-roma-centre). Although Jewish and Romani cultures have little in common (at least at first glance), in many cases it was easy for Jews and Roma to put aside whatever differences that they had when their lives were at stake. Quoting Kateřina Čapková and Eliyana R. Adler in [*Jewish and Romani Families in the Holocaust and Its Aftermath*](https://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=22FBA171EF232DE89DEBBD8EDF0CAABE), page 5: > > >Because the discrimination against Jews started earlier than that against the Roma, **there were cases of Romani families hiding Jewish families in Romani settlements**.^16^ > > Volha Bartash, page 41: > > >The memories of Jewish–Romani wartime encounters were not limited to recollections of mass killings, ghettos, and concentration camps. The stories of survival, to an even greater extent, demonstrate the awareness of each other’s destiny and readiness to help. For instance, **Wanda Stankiewicz, a Romani woman from Ejszyszki, rescued a Jewish girl who had lost her parents in one of the early massacres in 1941**.^75^ > > > >**While hiding in the woods, Jews and Roma often stuck together, sharing food and warning each other of danger.** The poetry of Papusza (Bronisława Wajs), considered to be one of the earliest accounts of the Holocaust of Roma also sheds light on the **connections between Roma and Jews in the Volhynian forests (current Ukraine).** > > > >Papusza and the members of her community later recalled the **Jews who were hiding together with their group; many verses of her poetry are dedicated to the plight of Romani and Jewish women and children, who were particularly vulnerable to the harsh conditions of the natural environment.^76^ Survivor accounts indeed show that a Jewish and a Romani family in hiding faced similar challenges.** > > > >[…] > > > >**As a result of their common destiny, the Romani and Jewish communities of Belarus and Lithuania currently share a number of memory sites** (some along with other victim groups). […] How the Romani and Jewish communities of both countries coordinate their commemoration projects represents another potential line of inquiry for further research. > > > >It is interesting that the Belarusian Jewish community has supported a number of Romani commemoration efforts. For instance, **Romani and Jewish victims of the Kaldychava (Kołdyczewo) concentration camp have been commemorated together in one memorial complex**.^77^ > > Ari Joskowicz’s [*Rain of Ash: Roma, Jews, and the Holocaust*](https://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=F5BE979E5708C7A2ACD29D5E3BFA4B7D) may be to date the most complete account (in English) on Jewish–Romani relations during the twentieth century and specifically during WWII. For example, page 42: > > >While the majority of Papusza’s poetry uses natural imagery to express her sense of loss in the face of destruction, “Tears of Blood” describes her wartime experiences in concrete terms, describing the solidarity she felt for persecuted Jews and the Jewish children who found their way into the forests.^115^ > >>**I saw a beautiful young Jewish girl, > >>shivering from cold, > >>asking for food. > >>You poor thing, my little one. > >>I gave her bread, whatever I had, a shirt.** > >>We both forgot that not far away > >>were the police. > >>But they didn’t come that night.^116^ > > > >Elsewhere in the poem, she implores a bright star to blind the Germans “so the Jewish and Gypsy child can live” and **also seeks to protect two Jews who were the sole survivors of their families**.^117^ Together with the work of Sutzkever, Papusza’s poetry memorializes **moments of shared Romani–Jewish battles for survival and resistance in [Axis]‐occupied Europe**.^118^ > > > >These acts of joint resistance extended beyond partisan activity: in the ghettos in Radom and Tarnów, **Roma participated in the smuggling networks and illicit supply chains that fed starving Jewish ghetto inmates**.^119^ > > You may be pleasantly surprised to learn that it is actually fairly normal for Romani adults to mention Jews in their narratives pertaining to the Fascist era. Quoting Zsuzsanna Vidra in *Multi‐Disciplinary Approaches to Romany Studies*, [page 206](https://books.google.com/books?id=Vp0E1ErYpXQC&pg=PA206): > > > The Romany interviewees tell stories of their experiences with their Jewish neighbours from the post‐war period.^8^ **As a matter of fact, the “Jewish theme” comes up spontaneously in the narratives.** […] In contrast to the narratives of the post‐war majority society, my **Romany interviewees born after 1945 openly and spontaneously shared stories about their Jewish neighbours without using any narrative techniques to hide or avoid mentioning the ethnic origin of the people in question.** > > (Emphasis added in all cases.) > > Just for the sake of balance, I should admit that Jewish–Romani relations haven’t always been so romantic. In particular, *Rain of Ash* discusses instances not only of solidarity but also of conflict, especially between Jews or Roma who were relatively privileged such as police or Kapos, but it is possibly worth mentioning that in‐group conflicts were far from unknown either; after all, the Fascists loved to pit their enemies against each other. > > In any case, > > >The fact that the issue of persecution of the Roma is almost always linked to persecution of Jews, prevents it from being treated as an autonomous subject of scientific research, and consequently as a historical phenomenon that should be contemplated independently of other events. > > ([Source.](https://www.cpi.rs/media/publications/The-Suffering-of-the-Roma-in-Serbia-during-the-Holocaust-e-book.pdf#page=16))
cross‐posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3442569 > The Soviets could be merciless when [tackling antisemitism](https://hexbear.net/post/2074067). Quoting Morris Kominsky’s *The Hoaxers*, pages [206](https://archive.org/stream/TheHoaxers/page/n200/mode/1up)–[7](https://archive.org/stream/TheHoaxers/page/n201/mode/1up): > > >In 1897, the dreaded Czarist secret police, the Ochrana, claimed that it had obtained a copy of the report of a secret meeting of Jewish leaders allegedly held in Basel, Switzerland. This alleged secret report, the “Protocols,” was published as an appendix to a book published in Moscow by Professor Sergei Nilus in 1905. > > > >[…] > > > >The 1912 edition of Nilus’ book triggered a series of pogroms in 1913 and served as a springboard for the Mendel Beiliss frame‐up, about which we have already taken notice. During World War I, Czarist secret police agents brought the “Protocols” to the secret service agencies of the Allied Powers, who refused to treat the document seriously. In 1917 the “Protocols” were *openly circulated by the Czarist police* in what came to be known as the *Pogrom Edition*. The results can be summarized in one sentence: Oceans of Jewish blood flowed. > > > >Meanwhile, like a vulture feasting on carrion, Nilus derived a huge income from the distribution of his book. **In 1917, shortly after the Pogrom Edition had done its damage, the Communists (Bolsheviks) came into power in Russia and a decree was issued, making mere possession of the “Protocols” punishable with a sentence of death.** > > Albert Szymański’s *Human Rights in the Soviet Union*, [chapter 3](https://archive.org/stream/HumanRightsInTheSovietUnion/page/n52/mode/1up): > > >**Immediately after the Bolshevik Revolution expressions of anti‐Semitism became a crime. In July 1918, the Council of People’s Commissars called for the destruction of ‘the anti‐Semitic movement at its roots’ by forbidding ‘pogromists and persons inciting to pogroms’.^53^ In 1922, the Russian Criminal Code forbade ‘agitation and propaganda arousing national enmities and dissensions’ and specified a minimum sentence of one year’s solitary confinement (and ‘death in time of war’) as punishment.** > > > >In 1927, the Russian Republic passed legislation outlawing the dissemination, manufacture or possession of literature calculated to stir national and religious hostility. Article 74 of the Russian Criminal Code, which came into effect in 1961 [*sic*], reads, ‘Propaganda or agitation aimed at inciting racial or national enmity or discord […] is punishable by loss of personal freedom for a period of six months to three years, or exile from two to five years’.^54^ > > > >**During the Civil War and throughout the 1920s there was an active official government campaign against anti‐Semitism, incidents involving, and actions taken against, were frequently reported in the Soviet press. In this period the Party published over 100 books and brochures opposing anti‐Semitism**.^55^ > > > >Jewish intellectuals and workers were disproportionately active in the revolutionary movement in the Russian Empire. In 1922, Jews represented 5.2% of Communist Party membership (about five times their percentage of the population). From the late 1920s through to World War II the proportion of Jews in the Party was about 4.3%.^56^ > > > >During the Civil War **large numbers of non‐Marxist Jews rallied to the Bolsheviks, the only major non anti‐Semitic organized force.** The White Armies and their allies systematically promoted pogroms and other forms of anti‐Semitism as part of their campaign to defeat the revolution. Many of the top Party leaders were Jews, e.g. Kamenev, Trotsky and Zinoviev (members of Lenin’s leadership); Kaganovich and Litvinov (members of [Stalin](https://www.marxists.org/subject/jewish/harap-stalin-jews.pdf)’s leadership). > > :::spoiler (Emphasis added in all cases. Click here for more.) > >After the Soviet [government] had removed all the traditional Czarist restrictions on Jews, they eagerly took advantage of the new educational, economic and social activities opened to them. As a result both of the elimination of traditional barriers and the general leftist mobilization in which most Jews participated, large numbers gave up their traditional ways, and became part of the mainstream of the newly emerging Soviet society. > > > >The majority of the young generation of Jews became alienated from both the religion and the cultural practices of their parents. As a measure of the rapid integration of Jews into Soviet society, intermarriage, which was extremely rare before the Revolution, became quite common.^57^ In the 25 years after the revolution, traditional Jewish life was revolutionized as the Communist Party organized new organizations to impart a socialist content to Jewish culture. > > > >Special ‘Jewish national districts’ for Jewish settlement were set aside in the south of Russia, the Ukraine and Crimea.^58^ In 1928, an autonomous Jewish Republic was established within the Russian Republic of Birobidzhan, on the border of Manchuria. This was meant not only as a ‘Jewish homeland’, but as a means of encouraging development of an undeveloped area of the East. Birobidzhan was officially proclaimed an autonomous region in 1934, and although it has attracted relatively few Jewish settlers, it continues to exist as a Jewish Autonomous Republic.^59^ > ::: > \ > Kominsky’s summary that ‘Oceans of Jewish blood flowed’ is barely an exaggeration: with the possible exception of the [Polish–Cossack War of the mid‐17th century](https://books.google.com/books?id=kNzCDgAAQBAJ&pg=PA55), **the White Army committed the deadliest pre‐1940s massacre of Jews**, [killing 115,000 or possibly even 200,000 Jews.](https://books.google.com/books?id=kNzCDgAAQBAJ&pg=PA343) You can read examples of the Whites’ cruelty [here.](https://archive.org/stream/russianrepublic00malorich/page/n66/mode/1up) Unsurprisingly, the Whites later had an influence, [some would argue **the** most important influence](https://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=CF32564579EB2C5E6A0DBD4AA164F4D6), on Fascist antisemitism, too. > > Enacting the death penalty for possessing anti‐Jewish propaganda is pretty hardcore, and maybe even a little too harsh, but either way having this context in mind is necessary for understanding the enactment.
cross‐posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3313701 > As I was editing [my essay on why the Fascist bourgeoisie committed the Shoah](https://hexbear.net/post/1697229), I looked for a thread that I made correcting Bordiga’s exaggeration that ‘no one anywhere else wanted to allow [Jews] to enter […] no one could allow them to enter’. To my surprise, I had not yet made such a thread! > > Quoting Nathan Weinstock’s [*Le Sionisme contre Israël*](https://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=D371DE862AAB50521797F6EA66F21321), page 146: > > >La grande majorité des juifs européens qui ont réussi à échapper au massacre ont trouvé refuge en Union soviétique : 1.930.000 personnes, soit 75,3 % de l’ensemble des réfugiés juifs^18^. D’après les recherches de Schwartz^20^, l’évacuation *méthodique* des populations juives menacées d’extermination par les autorités soviétiques, dont on a souvent fait état, reposerait cependant sur une exagération manifeste de la portée réelle — fort restreinte en vérité — de l’intervention des autorités de l’U.R.S.S. dans ce domaine. Les estimations de l’*Institute for Jewish Affairs* de New York reproduites ci‐dessus incluent vraisemblablement les juifs de la Pologne orientale et des pays baltes occupés par l’Union soviétique. > > :::spoiler [Citations] > >19. Données fournies par l’*Institute for Jewish Affairs* de New York et citées d’après S. Adler‐Rudel, *The Agony of a People*, in *The Future of the Jews*. A Symposium edited by J.J. Lynx, London, 1945, p. 38, tableau 2. > >20. Schwartz, *o. c.*, pp. 222 et ss. > ::: > \ > This translates to: > > >**The vast majority of European Jews who managed to escape the massacre found refuge in the Soviet Union: 1,930,000 people, or 75.3% of all Jewish refugees.** According to Schwartz’s research, the Soviet authorities’ *methodic* [evacuation](https://www.jta.org/?p=576802) of Jews threatened by extermination, which one frequently [mentions](https://archive.org/stream/SovietButNotRussian/page/n15/mode/1up), could be based on an exaggeration of the real range — quite narrow in reality — of the Soviet authorities’ intervention in this domain. New York’s *Institute for Jewish Affairs*’s estimations reproduced above probably include Jews from eastern Poland and from the Soviet Baltics. > > A corroborating source for this is Professor Raul Hilberg’s [*The Destruction of the European Jews*](https://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=48B8C40D42E61ADB36DE25ADC98240A9), third edition, volume I, page 295: > > >When the Einsatzgruppen crossed the border into the USSR, five million Jews were living under the Soviet flag. The majority of the Soviet Jews were concentrated in the western parts of the country. Four million were living in territories later overrun by the [Wehrmacht]: > > > >Buffer Territories:^2^ > > > >**Baltic area 260,000 > >Polish territory 1,350,000 > >Bukovina and Bessarabia up to 300,000** > > > >--- > >up to 1,910,000 > > > >Old Territories:^3^ > > > >Ukraine (pre‐1939 borders) 1,533,000 > >White Russia (pre‐1939 borders) 375,000 > >RSFSR Crimea 50,000 > >Other areas seized by [Fascists] 200,000 > > > >--- > >ca. 2,160,000 > > > >**About one and a half million Jews living in the affected territories fled before the [Fascists] arrived.** > > (Emphasis added in all cases.) > > Just to supplement these data, here is an anecdote from Adam Broner’s *My War Against the Nazis: A Jewish Soldier with the Red Army*, [page 18](https://books.google.com/books?id=VBw63XL3O-cC&pg=PA18): > > >The commander of the cavalry unit who met us about three miles inside Soviet territory started negotiating with us. He asked why we were coming over to their side. People in front told him that we were fleeing the fascists and we wanted to lead a productive life in the Soviet Union. > >“Are you working‐class people?” the commander asked. > >“Sure we are. Look at our hands!” > >“If you promise not to push any further, I will ask at headquarters if we can let you in.” > >“Yes, we promise.” > >“Then,” said the commander, “wait here. It will take me two to three hours to return.” We promised to behave and waited anxiously for his return. Then afar we saw him riding back bringing the good news that we were allowed to enter the USSR. Hurray!
In the 17th century, the simplicity and elegance with which Isaac Newton had succeeded in explaining the laws governing the motion of bodies and the stars, unifying terrestrial and celestial physics, dazzled his contemporaries to such an extent that mechanics came to be considered complete. By the end of the 19th century, however, the relevance of certain phenomena that classical physics could not explain was already unavoidable. It fell to Albert Einstein to overcome these shortcomings with the creation of a new paradigm: the theory of relativity, the starting point of modern physics. As an explanatory model completely removed from common sense, relativity is among those advances that, at the dawn of the 20th century, would lead to a divorce between ordinary people and an increasingly specialized and unintelligible science. Nevertheless, either during the physicist's lifetime or posthumously, even the most surprising and incomprehensible aspects of relativity would eventually be confirmed. It should come as no surprise, then, that Albert Einstein is one of the most celebrated and admired figures in the history of science: knowing that so many barely conceivable ideas are true (for example, that the mass of a body increases with velocity) leaves no choice but to surrender to his genius. Origins Albert Einstein was born in the German city of Ulm on March 14, 1879. He was the first-born son of Hermann Einstein and Pauline Koch, both Jews, whose families came from Swabia. The following year they moved to Munich, where his father established himself, together with his brother Jakob, as a dealer in the electro-technical novelties of the time. Little Albert was a quiet, self-absorbed child, and his intellectual development was slow. Einstein himself attributed to this slowness the fact that he was the only person to develop a theory such as relativity: "A normal adult does not worry about the problems posed by space and time, because he considers that he knows everything there is to know about them from early childhood. I, on the other hand, have had such a slow development that I did not begin to ask myself questions about space and time until I was older". In 1894, financial difficulties caused the family to move to Milan; Einstein remained in Munich to finish his secondary studies, joining his parents the following year. In the fall of 1896 he began his higher studies at the Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule in Zurich, where he was a student of the mathematician Hermann Minkowski, who later generalized the four-dimensional formalism introduced by the theories of his former student. On June 23, 1902, Albert Einstein joined the Confederal Office for Intellectual Property in Bern, where he worked until 1909. In 1903 he married Mileva Maric, a former fellow student in Zurich, with whom he had two sons, Hans Albert and Eduard, born in 1904 and 1910 respectively. In 1919 they divorced, and Einstein remarried his cousin Elsa. Relativity During 1905, he published five papers in the Annalen der Physik: the first of these earned him a doctoral degree from the University of Zurich, and the remaining four would eventually impose a radical change in science's picture of the universe. Of these four, the first provided a theoretical explanation in statistical terms of Brownian motion, and the second gave an interpretation of the photoelectric effect based on the hypothesis that light is composed of individual quanta, later called photons. The remaining two papers laid the foundations of the special theory of relativity, establishing the equivalence between the energy E of a certain amount of matter and its mass m in terms of the famous equation E = mc², where c is the speed of light, which is assumed to be constant. Einstein's efforts immediately placed him among the most eminent of European physicists, but public recognition of the true scope of his theories was slow in coming; the Nobel Prize in Physics, which he received in 1921, was awarded to him exclusively "for his work on Brownian motion and his interpretation of the photoelectric effect". In 1909 he began his university teaching career in Zurich, then moved to Prague and returned to Zurich in 1912 to become a professor at the Polytechnic, where he had studied. In 1914 he moved to Berlin as a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences. The outbreak of World War I forced him to separate from his family, who never joined him again. Against the general feeling of the Berlin academic community, Einstein was then openly anti-war, influenced in his attitudes by the pacifist doctrines of Romain Rolland. On the scientific level, between 1914 and 1916, his activity was focused on perfecting the general theory of relativity, based on the postulate that gravity is not a force but a field created by the presence of a mass in the space-time continuum. The confirmation of his predictions came in 1919, when the solar eclipse of May 29 was photographed; The Times presented him as the new Newton and his international fame grew, forcing him to multiply his lectures around the world and popularizing his image as a traveler of the third class railroad, with a violin case under his arm. Towards a unifying theory During the following decade, Einstein concentrated his efforts on finding a mathematical relationship between electromagnetism and gravitational attraction, determined to advance towards what, for him, should be the ultimate goal of physics: to discover the common laws that were supposed to govern the behavior of all objects in the universe, from subatomic particles to stellar bodies, and to group them into a single "unified field" theory. This research, which occupied the rest of his life, was unsuccessful and ended up by making him a stranger to the rest of the scientific community. After 1933, with Hitler's accession to power, his loneliness was aggravated by the need to renounce German citizenship and move to the United States; Einstein spent the last twenty-five years of his life at the Graduate Institute of Princeton (New Jersey), where he died on April 18, 1955. Einstein once said that politics had a fleeting value, while an equation had value for eternity. In the last years of his life, his bitterness at not finding the formula that would reveal the secret of the unity of the world was accentuated by the need he felt to intervene dramatically in the political sphere. In 1939, at the urging of the physicists Leo Szilard and Eugene Paul Wigner, and convinced of the possibility that the Germans were in a position to manufacture an atomic bomb, he addressed President Roosevelt urging him to undertake a research program on atomic energy. After the Hiroshima and Nagasaki explosions in World War II, Einstein joined scientists seeking ways to prevent future use of the bomb and proposed the formation of a world government from the embryonic United Nations. But his proposals for humanity to avert threats of individual and collective destruction, formulated in the name of a unique amalgam of science, religion and socialism, received from politicians a rejection comparable to the respectful criticism among scientists of his successive versions of the idea of a unified field. Albert Einstein continues to be a mythical figure of our time; even more so than he became during his lifetime, if we take into account that the photograph of him showing an unusual mocking gesture (sticking out his tongue in a comical and irreverent expression) has been elevated to the dignity of a domestic icon after being turned into a poster as common as those of song idols and Hollywood stars. However, it is not his scientific genius or his human stature that best explain him as a myth, but, perhaps, the accumulation of paradoxes contained in his own biography, accentuated by the historical perspective. Einstein, the champion of pacifism, is still remembered as the "father of the bomb"; and it is still common to attribute the demonstration of the principle that "everything is relative" precisely to him, who fought fiercely against the possibility that knowing reality meant playing blind man's buffalo with it. [Why Socialism? by Albert Einstein ](https://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism/)  **Megathreads and spaces to hang out:** - 📀 Come listen to music and Watch movies with your fellow [Hexbears nerd, in Cy.tube](https://live.hexbear.net/c/movies) - 💖 Come talk in the [New Weekly Queer thread](https://hexbear.net/post/1471192) - 🔥 Read and talk about a current topics in the [News Megathread](https://hexbear.net/post/2040065) - ⚔ Come talk in the [New Weekly PoC thread](https://hexbear.net/post/2021745) - ✨ Talk with fellow Trans comrades in the [New Weekly Trans thread](https://hexbear.net/post/2040316) **reminders:** - 💚 You nerds can join specific comms to see posts about all sorts of topics - 💙 Hexbear’s algorithm prioritizes comments over upbears - 💜 Sorting by new you nerd - 🌈 If you ever want to make your own megathread, you can reserve a spot [here nerd](https://hexbear.net/post/261657) - 🐶 Join the unofficial Hexbear-adjacent Mastodon [instance toots.matapacos.dog](https://toots.matapacos.dog/explore) **Links To Resources (Aid and Theory):** **Aid:** - 🌈 [LGBTQ+ Resource Post](https://hexbear.net/post/279079) - 🍉 [Resources for Palestine](https://buildpalestine.com/2021/05/15/trusted-organizations-to-donate-to-palestine/) - [🐌☕ Zapatista Coffee](https://schoolsforchiapas.org/store/coffee-corn-and-agricultural/zapatista-coffee/) **Theory:** - ❤️[Foundations of Leninism](https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1924/foundations-leninism/index.htm) - ❤️[Anarchism and Other Essays](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/emma-goldman-anarchism-and-other-essays)
www.huffpost.com
# Jewish UPenn Students Could Face Discipline For Screening Film Critical Of Israel by [Matt Shuham](https://www.huffpost.com/author/matt-shuham), HuffPost ## University of Pennsylvania administrators told a student group it could lose funding and organizers could face consequences for screening "Israelism." A Jewish student group at the University of Pennsylvania is facing potential disciplinary action for screening a documentary critical of the Israeli government. Multiple universities have now attempted to stop student screenings of “Israelism,” an award-winning film that features the stories of American Jews who have traveled to Israel and subsequently reexamined their relationship with the country and with their own pro-Israel religious educations in the United States after seeing how Israel treats Palestinians. Students from Penn Chavurah, a progressive Jewish group on campus, hosted a screening of the film Tuesday night, even though the university refused to permit access to a venue. Nearly 100 people packed into a classroom to watch the documentary, according to Jack Starobin, a board member and organizer at Chavurah. “It’s moments like these where we’re counting on strong leadership to stay true to this university’s values, and that’s where I think the failing has been on the part of Penn administrators,” Starobin, a senior at Penn, told HuffPost. A screening of the film, which was released in February, was scheduled for Oct. 24 but was postponed after Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel and Israel’s subsequent retaliatory attacks on the Palestinian territory of Gaza. Starobin said he’d been in talks with university administrators for weeks about holding a screening this month instead. A few days ago, the university denied organizers’ request for event space to hold the screening, suggesting it be delayed until February. Administrators never provided any specifics behind their reasoning, Starobin said. Erin Axelman, a co-director and producer of the film who participated in a question-and-answer session after Tuesday’s screening, said administrators referred “vaguely only to campus safety.” When administrators found out that organizers planned to hold the screening this week anyway, they told Starobin that doing so could jeopardize Chavurah’s status and funding from the school, and could lead to disciplinary action against organizers, he told HuffPost. Harun Küçük, the director of UPenn’s Middle East Center, which ultimately arranged a room for the screening, resigned from that post Tuesday over “inappropriate pressure from administrators” regarding the screening, according to a letter from the school’s chapter of the American Association for University Professors. Küçük, who did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment, confirmed his resignation to The Daily Pennsylvanian, telling the paper, “I would not have resigned if I had any comment left in me.” He is still an associate professor of history and sociology of science at UPenn. A university spokesperson who declined to give his full name acknowledged to HuffPost that administrators sought to postpone the screening until February ― citing “the safety and security of our campus community” without explaining further ― and said that student organizers had “disregarded” the university’s direction by hosting the screening this week. “Consistent with University policy, the student organizers will be referred to the Office of Community Standards and Accountability to determine whether a violation of the Code of Student Conduct occurred,” the spokesperson said. Axelman accused the university of a “profound lack of academic integrity” and of attempting to intimidate and censor student organizers. “We are honestly baffled and deeply disappointed by UPenn’s continued attempt to censor progressive Jewish voices, at the exact time when nuanced conversations about Jewish identity and the root causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are most needed,” Axelman said. Since Oct. 7, Penn has come under significant pressure from politicians and benefactors who have pushed administrators to fight antisemitism, broadly defined. Earlier this month, more than two dozen members of Congress wrote to Penn President Liz Magill condemning “your institution’s silence in condemning the terrorist attack that took place by Hamas on October 7, 2023.” (Magill had been far from silent, releasing numerous statements that condemned the attack and antisemitism.) Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), a signatory, sent similar messages to Yale, Columbia and Harvard, CNN reported. That letter, and various donors to Penn, also condemned the Palestine Writes Literature Festival, which was held on Penn’s campus in September. On the other hand, some professors, students and pro-Palestinian activists have criticized Magill for statements that, as the Arabic literature scholar and Penn professor Roger Allen told The Daily Pennsulvanian, “vastly under-represented opinions and status” of Arab and Palestinian community members. Starobin criticized what he viewed as a double standard at the university. Earlier this month, he noted, Rabbi Shmuel Lynn commented during an event hosted by Penn Hillel and Meor Penn, another Jewish group on campus, “It is not trite to say that there’s a war, there’s another frontline, there’s another camp of battle that we’re all fighting ... there’s a two-front war, in this sense, for the heart and soul of us, the people, [and] for the existential threat, the survival.” The Penn student said he regretted that Penn Chavurah’s decision to hold the “Israelism” screening had turned oppositional and noted that organizers had cooperated with police who were on hand the night of the screening. His organization’s goal, he said, was to provide an opportunity to discuss a controversial topic in an open environment. The university’s action to prevent the screening, he argued, boded poorly for academic freedom. “It suggests that the university feels it has the license to shut down any dialogue on campus if it conflicts with the preferences of its donors or the dominant current of national politics,” Starobin said. “And that kind of caving toward the dominant strain of thinking on a controversial issue is precisely the kind of intellectual tunnel vision that a university should seek to avoid, combat and provide space to escape.” > “That kind of caving toward the dominant strain of thinking on a controversial issue is precisely the kind of intellectual tunnel vision that a university should seek to avoid.” >- Jack Starobin, UPenn senior Fights over the film, which have played out on various college campuses, are part of a larger public debate over the limits of acceptable criticism of the Israeli government. On Oct. 7, Hamas militants based in Gaza killed about 1,200 Israelis and took more than 200 hostage in a surprise attack, according to Israeli authorities. Israel responded with devastating airstrikes and a ground invasion on the Gaza Strip that have now claimed at least 15,000 lives, according to Palestinian authorities, and led to the displacement of nearly 2 million people, according to the United Nations. Several Israelis held in Gaza have now been swapped for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel as part of a cease-fire agreement that continues to be negotiated. Hunter College canceled a scheduled screening of “Israelism” earlier this month. The New York City college’s interim president, Ann Kirschner, said that the decision was made in the interest of ensuring “the safety of our learning community” and that administrators wanted to avoid “targeting any students, faculty or staff based on their identity: the essence of bigotry.” “In the current climate, we seek to balance our commitment to free speech and academic freedom with the danger of antisemitic and divisive rhetoric,” Kirschner said, noting that police were investigating the drawing of swastikas on posters surrounding school buildings. The school’s senate, composed of students, faculty and staff, subsequently passed a resolution criticizing what it called “an egregious and illegitimate violation of the academic freedom necessary for departments to pursue their academic missions and institutions of higher education to operate with integrity.” The university rescheduled the screening for Dec. 5. Daniel J. Chalfen, one of the film’s producers, told The New York Times that Hunter’s initial decision to cancel the screening was the result of “a very organized campaign to shut it down.” The Times noted at least two email campaigns that produced hundreds of messages urging Hunter administrators to cancel the screening, including one originating from a Facebook post that described the film as “antisemitic.” The following day, The Forward, the nonprofit Jewish publication, reported on a pattern of similar email campaigns attempting to prevent screenings of the film at several colleges, including Oberlin and Yale. The publication also reported that Dov Waxman, the director of UCLA’s center for Israel studies, said he’d come “under intense pressure from numerous organizations and individuals,” including calls asking for major donors to the center to push for his firing, because he’d decided to host a screening of “Israelism.” “The opposition is not from students,” Sam Eilertsen, who co-directed the film with Axelman, told The Forward. “The opposition is coming from just people on the internet.”
Hello friends. If this post is inappropriate, please tell me how to fix it or feel free to remove it. I am here because sometimes The Algorithm presents me new information, but especially when it's about Judaism in the current global climate, I want to make sure I'm not being told something inaccurate or harmful. * When I was a kid, I thought Judaism was a religion * As I got older, I learnt people also treated it as an ethnicity, it was both * Now I am seeing some people (I am unsure of their intentions) say Judaism is not an ethnicity, it is a religion For example, this guy: https://www.tiktok.com/@yuvalmann.s/video/7317661422694026529 Who is a Jew, from Israel, who is now an anti-Zionist. He says "a Jewish person from Morocco, a Jewish person from Ethiopia and a Jewish person from Germany or Hungary have absolutely nothing to do with each other but one thing, religion". And later explains that the idea of Judaism as an ethnicity itself was an idea of Zionists. I'd be curious to hear what people here think about that take, whether it's accurate, if it's harmful/inaccurate, etc. Thanks very much!
Has anybody had any luck? Most of the spiritual Jewish musicians I have found have been committed Zionists which is gross.
My friends and I are working on an arrangement of Eli Eli by the martryed poet-soldier Hannah Senesh. The song is a simple, reverent prayer of gratitude for nature. The author, a Hungarian Jewish refugee in then-Palestine was a zionist. The song is an 'unofficial anthem of Israel' and plays a prominent role in non-Haredi Shoah Rememberence. Senesh wrote it when she was overcome while walking to the beach in Palestine before she became a paratrooper in an attempt to liberate more Jewish people from Hungary. The last line of the song is 'Tefilat ha'adam' or 'The Prayer of Man(kind)'. The hebrew can change nicely to 'Tefilat sh'falasteen' which means the 'Prayer of Palestine'. The song transforms into a prayer for the endurance of Palestine. Lyrics below in English. We could also change 'water' for river as a reference to 'From the River to the Sea' but the words for 'sky/heavens' and 'water' rhyme in Hebrew. My God, My God May these things never end: The sand and the sea The rustle of the water The lightning in the sky The prayer of Palestine.
www.jphilll.com
One of my jewish friends sent me this on discord and i thought it might interest yall
I promised last night to post a photo. My goodness, this was hectic. I got 3 hours of sleep the night before and was really running on empty. Yet I *also* promised to throw together a dinner for 2-3 of my friends (and partner). Well, all three showed up! With the power of friendship we managed to juggle cooking scuffed teriyaki tofu (they still liked it), roasted butternut squash, matzah ball soup from a box, and latkes from a box all at the same time in a small apartment kitchen. We didn't even have enough chairs for the five of us lmao. How the hell do people put together actual big dinners? The Manischewitz matzo ball soup is unironically extremely good. Also my friends brought donuts but not sufganiyot. Then after dinner some of us saw the new Ghibli film and honestly? I didn't love it. Well, now I need to get ready for overmorrow's Christian-side-of-the-family Christmas-get-together-slash-funeral-for-my-grandpa-that-died-recently crossover event. Wish me luck!  
Norman Finkelstein was born on December 8, Brooklyn, New York City in 1953 to Holocaust survivors Mary and Zacharias Finkelstein. Finkelstein's parents were Jewish Holocaust survivors. His mother grew up in Warsaw and survived the Warsaw Ghetto and the Majdanek concentration camp. His father was a survivor of both the Warsaw Ghetto and Auschwitz. After the war they met in a displaced persons camp in Linz, Austria, and then emigrated to the United States, where his father became a factory worker and his mother a homemaker and later a bookkeeper. Finkelstein's mother was an ardent pacifist. Finkelstein has said of his parents that "they saw the world through the prism of the Nazi Holocaust. They were eternally indebted to the Soviet Union (to whom they attributed the defeat of the Nazis), and so anyone who was anti-Soviet they were extremely harsh on". Finkelstein grew up in Borough Park, then Mill Basin, both in Brooklyn, New York, where he attended James Madison High School. In his memoir he recalls strongly identifying with the outrage that his mother, who witnessed the genocidal atrocities of World War II, felt at the carnage the United States wrought in the Vietnam War. He attended James Madison High School followed by Binghamton College, where he graduated in 1974 with a degree in History. Finkelstein enrolled at Princeton University where he earned a Master's degree in political science and a PhD in political studies in 1988. He also studied at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris. As a young man, Finkelstein identified as a Maoist and worked for The Guardian, a Maoist newsweekly. After the 1981 trial of the Gang of Four, Finkelstein had a falling out with Maoist politics. Following this experience, Finkelstein decided to develop his worldview with meticulous scholarship. Finkelstein recounts spending an entire summer in the New York Public Library comparing historical population records of Palestine to the claims made in the Joan Peters Zionist text "From Time Immemorial". Finkelstein's work largely debunked the text, which was well-regarded at the time, winning the National Jewish Book Award in 1985. Finkelstein's skepticism of scholarship regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict would continue to characterize his academic career. In 2003, Alan Dershowitz published "The Case for Israel", which Finkelstein called "a collection of fraud, falsification, plagiarism, and nonsense". Dershowitz began campaigning to block Finkelstein's tenure bid at DePaul University. In 2007, Finkelstein was denied tenure at DePaul University. In response, Finkelstein resigned, and students staged a sit-in and hunger strike in protest. In 2008, Finkelstein was denied entry to Israel. In 2009, a documentary film about Finkelstein's life and career was published, titled "American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein". > "My parents often wondered why I would grow so indignant at the falsification and exploitation of the Nazi genocide. The most obvious answer is that it has been used to justify criminal policies of the Israeli state and US support for these policies." - Norman Finkelstein [Norman Finkelstein - Israel and Palestine ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MON2HL02mec)   [An Unpopular Man - Norman Finkelstein, TNR](https://newrepublic.com/article/122257/unpopular-man-norman-finkelstein-comes-out-against-bds-movement)  [FINKELSTEIN: Misadventures in the Class Struggle -  ](http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/finkelstein-misadventures-in-the-class-struggle/) **Megathreads and spaces to hang out:** - ❤️ Come listen to music and Watch movies with your fellow [Hexbears nerd, in Cy.tube](https://live.hexbear.net/c/movies) - 💖 Come talk in the [New Weekly Queer thread](https://hexbear.net/post/1149995) - 💛 Read and talk about a current topics in the [News Megathread](https://hexbear.net/post/1189161) - 💚 Come and talk in the [Daily Bloomer Thread](https://hexbear.net/post/1109740) - ⭐️ [September Movie Nominations](https://hexbear.net/post/451216) ⭐️ **reminders:** - 💚 You nerds can join specific comms to see posts about all sorts of topics - 💙 Hexbear’s algorithm prioritizes comments over upbears - 💜 Sorting by new you nerd - 🌈 If you ever want to make your own megathread, you can reserve a spot [here nerd](https://hexbear.net/post/261657) - 🐶 Join the unofficial Hexbear-adjacent Mastodon [instance toots.matapacos.dog](https://toots.matapacos.dog/explore) **Links To Resources (Aid and Theory):** **Aid:** - 🌈 [LGBTQ+ Resource Post](https://hexbear.net/post/279079) - 💚 [Resources for Palestine](https://buildpalestine.com/2021/05/15/trusted-organizations-to-donate-to-palestine/) - [🐌☕ Zapatista Coffee](https://schoolsforchiapas.org/store/coffee-corn-and-agricultural/zapatista-coffee/) **Theory:** - ❤️[Foundations of Leninism](https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1924/foundations-leninism/index.htm) - ❤️[Anarchism and Other Essays](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/emma-goldman-anarchism-and-other-essays)
