Since it's Jewish American Heritage Month I'm sharing some of my favorite pieces connected to my culture π«£ I love being on here n I love sharing my world with you and I'm lucky y'all enjoy my world too β€οΈ
in which murderbot is a very normal terracotta soldier and ART the dragon spirit of a chinese junk who dwells in the ship's keel. they meet in the ming dynasty perhaps, when ppl are sailing places extra willy-nilly.
*NΓΌwa is the mother goddess in chinese mythology, known for creating humanity from yellow clay and repairing the sky.
thank you @mutualrapport for hosting the event! original prompt below.
[drawn for the prompt: an AU of ART and MB's first meeting and conversation - e.g. another look at their first meeting from a fantasy, historical, or (non-canon) sci-fi lens! Any perspective is fine. The only constraint is that it cannot be set in the canon universe. Any visibly non-canon AU- fantasy, human, historical, etc. - anything goes!]
David Bolchover's brutal new book recounts how the Nazis destroyed the lives and legacies of 11 Jewish soccer superstars
The World Cup is in full swing. Cristiano Ronaldo, CR7 himself, is improbably, arrogantly playing his sixth tournament at the age of 41. The media loves it: the Lionel Messi vs Ronaldo rivalry continues. Ronaldo plays on with tears and tantrums, breaking records and refusing to simply grow old and go home.
But David Bolchover, author of Digging Deep: Unearthing the Stories of Eleven Murdered Jewish Footballing Greats, finds himself thinking about a different 41-year-old: Jozsef Braun. Arguably the greatest Jewish footballer who ever lived, he was killed by the very Hungarians who had once cheered his name.
βWhen he was murdered, he was 41,β Bolchover told me when we spoke recently. It was less than 15 years after he had last scored an international goal for Hungary β then one of the top few international teams in the world.
Millions of Jews across Europe were part of the burgeoning soccer culture that was sweeping the continent, with disproportionate representation among elite players, coaches and referees, The way Bolchover tells it, the Jewish soccer culture lost in the European Holocaust was as substantial as the foundational Jewish contributions to culture that helped bring western civilization into the 20th century.
These were some of the elite players, coaches and visionaries of the sport β the Messis, Ronaldos, Pep Guardiolas, Zinedine Zidanes, and Carlo Ancelottis of their time. Indeed, Bolchover says that one significant reason that Hungary and Austriaβs all-conquering soccer teams became second rate was that they murdered the Jewish populations who were instrumental in achieving and perpetuating that excellence. Dave Rich, who wrote about the UK release of the book, made a point that Bolchover says he wishes he had thought of himself: βJewish footballers were as prevalent in the football leagues of central and Eastern Europe in the 1920s and 1930s as Black players are in the Premier League today.β
The team that Bolchover unveils in his book would strike fear into the hearts of any pre-War expert on European soccer. Wunderkind Steuermann scored Polandβs first ever international hat trick. Max Scheuer played his whole career for the Jewish, Zionist team Hakoah Wien and led them to the Austrian national title. Weisz went from international star player to record-winning coach, winning the Italian championship for Bologna and Inter Milan. He remains the youngest coach to win Serie A.
Across eight chapters, Bolchover tells the stories of his 11 selected players of his selection and, in so doing, tells a particular history of the Shoah. He can even ignore GyΓΆrgy MolnΓ‘r and JΓ³zsef Eisenhoffer who alongside JΓ³zsef Braun, in 1924, were the Jewish players who scored Hungaryβs first six goals as they humiliated Italy 7-1 in Budapest. But, along with the glory, it seems like on every page there are footnotes chronicling the tragic fate of the Jews in the towns and villages from which players, their wives, and their families hail.
βIβm not going to just mention a place where Jews lived and not tell you what happened,β Bolchover said. βTo me, thatβs an abandonment of responsibility. You often get non-Jewish English writers just letting it lie: βHe was from this area and he died in Auschwitz.β Itβs not good enough.β
Bolchover deliberately avoids saying that these men βdiedβ or that they βperishedβ; he says they were murdered. βVocabulary is very important,β he told me. βYou have to use βmurder.β You canβt use βdied.β Even βperished,β I donβt likeβ¦ I talk about the Holocaust as the Holocaust was. A Jew whoβs not angry about the Holocaust is a strange Jew.β
Bolchover is also scathing about the nations for whom his protagonists played. He resists describing many of his players simply as Hungarian, Austrian or German. History, he argues, has already rendered its verdict. βThe ones that thought they were Hungarian, the ones that thought they were German, the ones that thought they were Austrian were proven to be wrong,β he said. βThey were rejected by the host societiesβ¦ In the end, they were Jews.β
βI felt I needed to write this book,β he said. βI felt more and more drawn to the stories of those who didnβt make it. You feel a responsibility to tell their stories because nobody else can tell them. I felt if I donβt write this book about these 11 players, nobody would. And certainly not in the right way.β
The book was sparked, in part, by fury. In 2019, the release of the biopic about Bert Trautmann β the German goalkeeper who played for Manchester City and who had served in the Wehrmacht β generated a wave of admiring press coverage that Bolchover found intolerable. Trautmann had, it was widely noted, apologized for being a Nazi; the coverage seemed to imply that he was a great guy who had simply made some unfortunate early choices.
βHe apologized for being a Nazi, but he was a Nazi,β Bolchover said. βHe apologized for being an antisemite, but he was an antisemite. And the regime he fought for and supported murdered all these great Jewish footballers that nobodyβs ever heard of.β
That nobody has heard of them is not an accident. It is, Bolchover argues, a failure of collective memory β one that begins with the mass extermination of the Jewish crowds who would remember their heroes and proceeds to the shame and repression of the national crowds who gleefully murdered their Jewish compatriots. Jews too have been too quick to embrace the βpeople of the bookβ stereotype and look to claim credit for founding football clubs (Bayern Munich, yes; Eintracht Frankfurt, yes; Ajax, yes) while remaining curiously silent or ignorant about the fact that Jews were also, for a golden pre-war generation, many of the very best players on the continent.
βJews, even Jews, are slightly uncomfortable with the fact of their own ignorance, that actually it wasnβt the founders that were important,β he said. βWhy all the focus on that? Why not all the focus on all the top international footballers and coaches? Do we focus really on club founders now, or on the chairmen who run the teams? No, we focus on Messi and Ronaldo.β
The answer, Bolchover suggests, is the Holocaust. Not just because it killed the players, but because it killed the memory of the players. The destruction of European Jewry was so total, so final, that it erased not only lives but legacies. When people laugh and say Jews arenβt really footballers β better suited to medicine, to finance β they are, Bolchover argues, βlaughing at our own destruction.β
The 11 players in the book are drawn from across Europe. Bolchoverβs structural rule β that they must all be full internationals β was deliberate. He is making a point: These were not obscure club players; they were the stars of their nations, the best their countries could produce. And then their countries killed them.
Only three of the 11 β Julius Hirsch, Otto Fischer, and Weisz β have had some biographical attention in German and Italian and a few English-language articles. With the exception of a few recent Polish language articles about JΓ³zef Klotzβs famous penalty, the others are, as Bolchover puts it, βcompletely forgotten, really.
And theyβre not now. Theyβre in print, their names are there, and people can read about them.β
Bolchover mentions the research he and others have done using Holocaust Yizkor Books β the Jewish memorial books, where decimated communities honored their obligation to remember the dead by listing the names and fates of former neighbors. Bolchover resists that simplistic framing. This is not a memorial volume in the old community sense. It is a piece of serious sports history and Holocaust scholarship, with deep archival research, extensive footnoting, and the kind of narrative drive that makes it readable to someone who has never opened a Jewish history book in their life.
He is withering, too, about the broader European refusal to reckon honestly with the nature of the Holocaust. As Simon Schama has argued β and Bolchover echoes β the Holocaust was not something that happened to the Jews while Europe stood helplessly by. It was something Europe did to the Jews, on a grand scale, with widespread participation. βThatβs something Europe doesnβt want to talk about,β Bolchover said. βAnd even European or British Jews and American Jews donβt want to talk about it.β
None of this is comfortable reading. None of the conversation I had with Bolchover was comfortable. But, in the way that Bolchover insists the Holocaust itself must be discussed, it is honest. As he writes in the book, βto say that the destructive assault on European Jewry was some sort of historical blip or carried out and supported only by an elite cadre of committed German Nazis, constitutes a highly underestimated and sophisticated form of Holocaust denial.β
Which brings us, inevitably, to the 2026 World Cup. To the question of what this history means for the Jews who are alive today, watching the tournament on their screens and phones, where only one Jewish player is on the roster of any of the 48 teams and not a single one is from Europe. This isnβt because Jews are good at business not sport, itβs because Europeans murdered all the Jews who were brilliant sportsmen and coaches and all the Jews who would remember them.
At his UK book launch, Bolchover made the link explicit. Ronaldo at his sixth World Cup. The greatest Jewish footballer who ever lived, murdered at 41. The crowds in their national colors, Norwegians rowing, Senegal drumming, the Scots with their bagpipes, the Dutch in orange. And then the question that nobody wants to ask: What would happen if Israel qualified for the World Cup?
βWhat would happen if they were there? Nobody would go, βOh, look at those fun-loving Israelis.β Even in America. And imagine if they were anywhere else in the world.β The same hatred, he said quietly, that accounted for the murder of his eleven players β it is still there. Still in football. FIFA, he noted, has never held a memorial for the great Jewish footballers and coaches who were murdered in the Holocaust.
dark/gothic judaica: an aesthetic that could be an artistic goldmine
Torah Ark Curtain from 20th century North Africa // Scene from a production of The Dybbuk by Vilner Trupe, 1910s // art by E.M. Lilien just in general // veil & style by Mirjam on wrapunzel // Jewish Henna by Bella RΓos // 1910s Jewish dress from Galicia // "Hebrew Dark Academia" pin posted by jewish_opinion on pinterest // Marissa Nadler - a gothic folk musician who is Jewish // Rosh Hashana card from CJH Museum Collections // Art from Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins by Eric Kimmel, Illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman. Scholastic, 1990 (this book was an essential part of my childhood) // "Schemajah Hillel," page 18 from the book "Der Golem", illustrations by Hugo Steiner-Prag // The Praying Jew (Rabbi of Vitebsk) by Marc Chagall, 1914 // Yemenite-Israeli dancer Rachel Nadav lighting the Shabbos candles // Tefillin Bag, c.1930, Eretz Yisrael. belonging to a Shmuel Yankovitz // Lili Liliana in "Der Dybbuk", 1937 // The Tzadikβs Son, 1912, by Lazar Krestin // Marrakesh Mezuzah // Pomegranate photo from unsplash
yousharknotpass
dailybridgerton
vaporwave
baratheonpilled
prguitarman
