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Spock’s bar mitzvah. He did not have fun

There's this really frustrating goyish idea that Jews are always finding "loopholes" or "tricks" to violate the "spirit of the law" when it comes to observing Jewish law. No, they're following Jewish law. All ways in which one can follow the law are equally "in the spirit of the law" because the law's purpose is to be followed. The idea that finding easier ways to observe religious rules means "tricking" god or doing something otherwise shameful is reflective of Christian philosophy. Suffering is not virtuous in Judaism. Penance is not the purpose of Jewish law. Judaism is meant to enrich the current lives of its community, not ritualize hardship for some unknowable divine purpose.

bitchbrisket

The idea is so ingrained that even my colleague who subscribes to no religion, took that view with me, expecting us to read by candlelight on Shabbat, complaining that religion is archaic and outdated. I told her that lights on a timer is perfectly acceptable for Shabbat standards nowadays but apparently that wasn’t good enough as all religions have been set in the stone ages and therefore none of them make sense to be modernised, therefore making religion incompatible to modern life…

nerdyqueerandjewish

Maybe it’s just that my experiences are not universal and people really are isolated from immigrant and refugee populations, but part of what feels so crazy about leftist antisemitism is that my ‘social Justice 101’ included a lot of “don’t project a governments actions onto people” “don’t judge people by the most radical far right members of their ethnicity / religion” “it’s normal for people to miss and feel affection for a country they have ties to, they are talking about people/place/culture, not the government”

Because people seem so unaware of these really basic ideas, at least when it comes to Jews and Israelis

cantotallyeven

I think they're aware, it's just that to them Jews don't count as people

iswearbyalltheflowers

I think it's more that they're ideologically committed to anti-zionism - their problem with Israel is not anything it does but that it exists - so unlike with other groups they can't really acknowledge that there is such a thing as Israelis or an Israeli culture beyond the state because that would make their position that it needs to be violently abolished indefensible. Hence the treating every aspect of Israeli culture and being Israeli as like an ideological choice to commit evil (ex. a lot of the "-washing" language obsessively theorizing how everything else Israelis might get up to is really just cover for or otherwise in service to the bad things they do).

iswearbyalltheflowers

@dude1818 You know you're right

iswearbyalltheflowers

Because antisemitism has been how non jews critique power structures for thousands of years now. An eye can't see itself.

tributary

sometimes you see a story take shape in real time. not the event itself but the narrative that forms around it.

first, the facts: on december 14, 2025, a father-and-son duo attacked a menorah lighting celebration to mark the start of hanukkah in bondi beach. they explicitly targeted a jewish celebration and murdered 15 people and wounded many more. people tried to intervene by fighting off the shooters, and several were shot or lost their lives in the attempt.

you’ve probably heard of ahmed al ahmed, the shopkeeper who seized a gunman’s weapon and forced his retreat, sustaining gunshot wounds in the process. you should also hear about alex kleytman, a holocaust survivor who died saving his wife; reuven morrison, who warned of dangerously rising antisemitism in australia a year before and hurled bricks at the attackers before being shot dead; sofia and boris gurman, a couple who died trying to fend off the attackers; and chaya dadon, a 14-year-old girl who was shot multiple times while shielding younger children with her body. she is in the hospital.

then, the spin:

when the details of the attack became clear, i saw condemnations of the violence. some of them highlighted the explicitly antisemitic nature of the attack. others decided this was really an issue of gun control, or a false flag, or actually a really great thing that they wanted to see more of because the victims belonged to a group that they despised.

i saw a few themes emerge. one was apologetics, a desperate desire to downplay the significance of the attack.

and this weird forced positivity approach of “look at this person who helped other people, even though he is — gasp — muslim and they are jews.” as though muslims and jews are fundamentally at odds, that it’s surprising that human beings would come to the aid of human beings outside their group.

take none of this as a criticism of ahmed, who is objectively a hero and righteous man. he did not ask to be made the symbol of a feel-good story, to be the only thing that many people mention about the attack at all.

and i understand that it is an effort to preempt islamophobic responses to the attack, i do. it’s just that the message, over and over again, makes jews an afterthought in our own story.

it’s not his fault that his gofundme has received more donations than all of the other victims and survivors’ combined. he did risk his life to save others at considerable cost to himself.

but i’m reminded of righteous gentiles, the ones who saved jews in the holocaust. certainly they are worthy of admiration. but there were relatively few righteous gentiles all told, which you might not know considering the many, many movies about them. jews are so rarely seen as the heroes in our own stories.

i think dara horn was wrong: people don’t love dead jews. they’d really prefer not to think about them at all.

is this the story?

i think it’s easier for people to highlight gentile heroism when they don’t want to look at the deeper issues. but this was preventable. this didn’t have to happen at all.

iswearbyalltheflowers

England’s chief rabbi, Sir Ephraim Mirvis, has issued a plea to the Church of England that I hope it heeds. The plea is as follows. The Chur

iswearbyalltheflowers

— Why is the Church of England about to debate anti-Semitic propaganda?

iswearbyalltheflowers

General Synod in York overwhelmingly supports controversial Kairos II document

iswearbyalltheflowers

A Theological Critique

iswearbyalltheflowers

wrt today’s daf

actuallyjamesagarfield

I really truly do not understand what it is about Israel/Jewish people that makes everyone loose any semblance of compassion or critical thought. Like I know Jew hate makes you stupid and I know it has always been like this. Maybe I can never really understand it because I am not Jewish, but it just boggles my mind. It's like everyone has a chip in their heads that activates when ever they see something or someone Jewish. Like vandalizing Jewish restaurants and calling them "baby killers", are you that stupid and dense? You really cannot introspect and see why that's fucked up? Or how everyone hates Gal Gadot because she's Israeli. Like ok, I thought xenophobia was wrong? I thought that was like progressive 101. Remember Trump's Muslim ban? We can agree that that is fucked up right? It's the mind chip, it turns of higher brain function when interacting with something or someone Jewish. Y'all don't punch Nazis, y'all like to pretend that you do. It's all about how yall want to be perceived. It's always been popular to hate Jews. Yall are just the latest morons to jump on the bandwagon. History will remember you as that.

the-catboy-minyan

every generation of antisemitism claims they're punching up, we're the scapegoats of, like, every era of western history since the creation of christianity. logic goes out the window when you convince someone they're punching up, that they're punching the opressors and not the oppressed. it's mob mentality.

it's so ingrained in christian society since its inception, that it's easy to convince people to keep hating us over and over again. just change replace the aryan race with replace the native population of palestine and bam, you have millions of supporters.

iswearbyalltheflowers

iamgayjew

The Diary of a Young Girl is the most popular Holocaust education book because it ends right before Anne Frank was sent to Bergen-Belsen. If her diary had continued until her death, it would have contained harrowing tales of slave labour, scabies, lice, the cold, hair loss, starvation, depression, and finally death from typhus.

People don't want to read about that. They like Anne Frank's diary because it's optimistic. She's funny and smart and she thinks that all people are good. Real Holocaust education would teach about what happened to the Jews. What was done to them by the Nazis. If you want to educate yourself about the Holocaust, read Night or Maus.

ignorethisatyourperil

edithsweetithh

too many people are under the impression that the holocaust is well known because they think it was white on white violence and not because the nazis fucking invented murder factories

cartoonverisimilitude

I literally just saw somebody claim that part of the reason why slavery was worse than the Holocaust was because the Nazis believed that the gas chambers were a humane execution method.

Bitch what the fuck ?

judai-sm

look idk how to tell antisemitic leftists this but magneto is not for you.

iliothermia

The Morning After

yitzh0k-r3uven-hal3v1

Saying "you need to separate Israel from your Judaism" is like saying "you need to separate your Islam from Mecca" or "you need to separate your Christianity from Jesus". Its fucking impossible because that's what the religion revolves around.

If you are ignorant and stupid enough to think otherwise, then you're an antisemite.

bilgisticallykosher

You've heard of Oy Vey, I'm Gay, now get ready for

VEY ZMIR, I'M QUEER

bilgisticallykosher

Reblogging again for pride month 2025.

This is for all those who were promised community, only to be rejected and banned. To all those who can't wear or fly a Magen David ✡️ without being accused of blood libel. To those who had their community turn their backs on them. To those who have had self-proclaimed nazi punchers spew nazi rhetoric back to their face. To those who are lost. To those that lost friends, lost their sense of belonging, because people stole our word and re-defined it to mean something dirty.

To the queer Jews, and allies, who don't have the same place of belonging that they had before October 7th. To those that aren't here anymore, after. Happy Pride.

bilgisticallykosher

2026!

Wishing safety and belonging to everyone, especially my Jewish mishpacha and our allies. 💚🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️✡️

forevermorallylucky

Having a loved one in Israel is weird bcs I have every personal reason to want this war over as soon as possible, but I can't hang around and talk with other people against the war, bcs most of the people against the war in the west kinda want the person I love dead, and yeah.

stoptheantisemitism

Your loved one decided to go participate in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Your loved one decided to support an ongoing genocide. Your loved one doesn't get any sympathy from the rest of us.

Imagine contributing to a genocide and wanting people to feel sorry for you.

the-11th-doctor2

I'm assuming the loved one could, y'know, leave. Or stand up against the genocide. Or do something. And they're choosing not to. That's their choice, which you support and yes, you both deserve to be judged for it. If you both didn't want the judgement, you should've made a better choice.

If that isn't the case, and they have no choice, I'm sorry. They're in a bad position and they don't deserve it. But they're also not wanted dead. I don't want random people in Israel death. I don't think I want anyone dead. I want the war to stop by Israel ending the genocide and making amends. There's a difference.

hyperrbolic-orange

If you are advocating for the end of Israel, for all Jews to simply "leave," or simply accept whatever else happens, you are advocating for genocide.

I am tired of pretending that western leftists advocating "death to Israel" as people are in the notes, or politely skirting the issue by claiming they DONT want anyone dead, just for everyone to willingly leave the ONLY nation in the world where Jews have ever been safe from white supremacy and Arab supremacy. The only nation that guarantees Jewish safety.

I am tired of people who are so happily pro genocide that they dont even realize what they are yelling for accusing us of being the monsters.

I don't know how many people in the notes are Americans but as always it's rich coming from them. Talk about genocidal colonizers? After they voted in Trump twice absolutely no American has any leg to stand on. I suppose it isnt surprising that their stance is "get out of the country," since their tax dollars are the ones funding ICE.

Clearly "go back where you came from, even if you only left because they were trying to kill you" is a universal stance.

the-11th-doctor2

So somehow when Americans did it to the native Americans, that was bad, but when it happens in other places that's just fine and dandy? And here I hoped people would learn from history....Unless you're gonna say that the first colonisers there were absolutely right to wipe everyone out and that's why Israel should too? Shame on you. It's also not true that if Israel stops killing everyone they'll be killed in turn. That's bullshit and you know it. Israel started the genocide and them stopping it wouldn't mean they would die.

hyperrbolic-orange

"Shame on me" ? Are you kidding me? Are you SERIOUS

You have no idea what you're talking about, your lack of understanding about every aspect of the situation from the historical context to the extremely clear double standard Americans employ when they accuse Israel of genocide and insist the ONLY way to make amends is to abandon their own right to a state (which yes, would be genocide — the destruction of a nation is one of the definitions and anyone without somewhere would be slaughtered the same way we have always been slaughtered and or forced to flee to avoid said slaughter for centuries. Ask yourself, what happened to all the Jew that used to live in the MENA? Where did they go? Lebanon, Yemen, Libya, Syria?

https://jewswerehere.com/

I don't want anyone to die. But there are only 16 million Jews left in the whole world. Do you understand how small that is? Nearly half of them live in Israel.

America and Canada, where I live, are both colonized nations built on the blood of Indigenous peoples. That is a gruesome, undisputed fact. We have barely even begun to scratch the surface of acknowledging the depth of the crimes that were committed. Yet no one disputes that we all have a right to live here. That the refugees from other countries that flee here seeking safety and a better life dont deserve that same safety and protection, even if they are settling on colonized land. And that anyone forcing them out is a monster.

When the British colonized these lands and killed everyone who was already here, they did it purely in pursuit of power. To expand their empire, to make something theirs and rule the way they wanted. And they could have had a peaceful existence here, it's not like there isnt enough land. But they didnt do that.

Israel was not founded out of a desire for power or conquest. There were people making their way to the area they were told was the holy land for years, sure, but even those folks were by and large motivated by pogroms, not simply a desire for a nice chance of scenery.

Without the Holocaust, Israel never would have been founded. We were forced out of our homes AGAIN and not allowed to return. You sickos keep telling people "go back to Poland" as if people didnt TRY. You think they didn't just want to go home? There was no home.

America and Canada didnt want the Holocaust refugees. No one did. You can look this all up, this is historical fact. Please dont you feel you need to take my word for any of it.

Regardless, the British dumped the refugees on Palestine. They also did not want them there and attacked the settlement camps.

Now, I have heard the justification that they werent attacking the camps because they were Jewish camps, it's because they were British. And if you think I give a flying fuck about why someone attacked camps full of Holocaust survivors, you can go fuck yourself. If you would like to justify that as reasonable, well, I guess I'm not surprised. It wouldn't be the first-time. I just cant understand it.

It didnt have to happen like that. None of this had to happen. The Holocaust, fucking America and Canada these fucking so called great nations...

Im not sorry that the Holocaust survivors in those camps refused to be killed. And im not sorry that they fought back, and formed a resistance. I wish more than anything it wasn't necessary, that the land could have been shared from the start and all of this avoided.

But no, Israel didnt start this. And you—that is all of you, every single non Jew and all your ancestors who continue to justify your hatred of us century after fucking century yes there is always some new perfectly good reason—have made it perfectly clear why we need at least one single nation in the entire world that cares about Jewish safety.

Because no one else gives a flying fuck.

Stop advocating for our genocide.

laughingsour

"Israel was not built of a desire for power" BULL. SHIT.

Don't you dare say this is because of the holocaust because this was planned since decades before the holocaust:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandatory_Palestine

If people were really not able to go anywhere else after the holocaust then that means the europeans decided it was easier (read profitable) to just colonize another place instead of building a world where stolen land being the only safe place for a group of people would be unthinkable. Meaning zionists settlers were willing particpants of the powers that abused them.

As for the US and Canada, I agree it being stolen land, which is why many groups have been fighting to get it back since before long before Isnotreal even existed.

So I'm sorry if people are sick of your shit, I'm sorry if manifest destiny is treated with the contempt it should've had from the start and I'm sorry if you being victims of a genocide doesn't justify another.

But I'm Not. Fucking. Sorry.

thisgingerisareallybadwriter

The fact that you admit Europeans forcibly removed Jews from their countries and stuck them in the Levant, yet still somehow believe these Jews were fellow European colonizers and not victims and refugees of European colonization would be funny if it weren't so heinously bigoted.

Anyway. Am Yisrael Chai. The days of people killing Jews without consequences is over. Suck it.

zonatcannibalism

The misconception that zionist ideas only existed and have been a part of judaism since the zionist political movement has formed is so fucking harmful actually

moran-with-a-g

"Next year in Jerusalem"

ofekma

By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion. There on the poplars we hung our harps, for there our captors asked us for songs, our tormentors demanded songs of joy; they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” How can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land? If I forget you, Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill. May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy.

- about 582 BCE

The last part about Jerusalem has been recited in Jewish weddings, the earliest document example of that is from around the third century and has lasted till this day.

My heart is in the east, and I in the uttermost west-- How can I find savour in food? How shall it be sweet to me? How shall I render my vows and my bonds, while yet Zion lieth beneath the fetter of Edom, and I in Arab chains? A light thing would it seem to me to leave all the good things of Spain -- Seeing how precious in mine eyes to behold the dust of the desolate sanctuary.

Was written during the middle ages

There are a lot more examples, as well as examples of Jewish people trying to re-settle in Israel throughout history, as well as ancient prayers that have lasted till today but I don't have time to find all those translated to English now

adventuresofanotsoteenagewitch

Couldn't leave these tags in the notes. They're brilliant and true. Credit to @ofekma.

theblxefox

Ben Gvir is a convicted terrorist and needs to be in fucking jail, for the sake of literally everyone

maimonideznuts

The fact that a convicted terrorist can lead a political party and a paramilitary militia is a travesty.

The fact that on their first date he took his wife to visit the grave of Terrorist Baruch Goldstein is also a travesty, the fact that the match still went ahead after a date pilgrimage to the grave of a Terrorist is also baffling. Everyone involved made bad decisions.

Ben G'vir also bragged about stealing hood ornaments from Prime Minister Rabin to "make sure he knows we can reach him", immature and threatening. He's a far right whacko, and always has been.

ido100

He can't be booted out quickly enough.

weemietime

He that mf that got caught on Ayalon highway with 700 LITERS OF GAS lol

theblxefox

Nah thats Smotrich, another terrorist that needs to be in jail and as far away as possible from the government

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