#antisemitism tag

[sufficient-tenacity]

So... we're just doing shit out in the open now... cool cool cool coolcoolcool

[metatextuality]

I Don't Know How To Explain To You That You Should Care About Other People (Even When They're Jewish)

[jacensolodjo]

Total disclosure: Because of the book Babi Yar being republished in English on 4/18/2023, while also seeing certain posts on my dash, I was inspired to make this post.

If the USSR was a free and open utopia why were books like "Babi Yar" sent through so much censorship it would have probably been better it was never published at all?

Babi Yar aka Babyn Yar, you know, the massacre of (predominantly) Jews that was the largest singular event massacre of the Holocaust?

If the USSR cared about Jews why did they cover up and refuse to even so much as put a plaque of remembrance up for DECADES after? Oh sure 25 years after Babyn Yar they put up a placeholder plaque promising a new one. BUT they would clear away all the flowers and such from the PLACEHOLDER PLAQUE whenever foreign dignitaries finished their tour of the area. How, exactly, is that okay? How could they put effort into all of that and not even give a proper plaque of remembrance? (The answer, by the way, is this was the Soviet Union's standard MO. Western writer is visiting? Quick, hire a bunch of actors to live in this totally fake Ukrainian village to PROVE there is NO FAMINE.)

At some point you have to admit someone is in the wrong and it will always be the USSR.

(Note the book Babi Yar isn't just about the massacre but also tells the story of a young man up through the 1960s, including the Kreshchatik and 1961 disaster.)

The author himself regretted he published it with so much redacted from it due entirely to USSR censorship.

I suggest everyone take a look at the new publication of the book from this year. (Translated into English new publication I should say.) ((And yes I DO think it is well timed given the attack on the Babyn Yar memorial site last year.)) I should note, that the complete unredacted version is unvarnished truth, and thus some parts are hard to read. It is told from notes written by a boy barely into his teens and this should be kept in mind if you do read the book.

Note from the author of Babi Yar:

"Those who are interested will be able to have some idea of the conditions in which books are published in the Soviet Union, because—as I must stress again—my case was not an exception; on the contrary, it was quite ordinary and typical. Again, the version of Babi Yar distorted and deformed by the censorship was printed in millions of copies and appeared in translation in many languages. People who have read it already but who would like to know the full text need only read in this book the new sections, published here for the first time; especially since they contain the main sense of the book and are the reason why it was written."

(Please note that even though the author, Kuznetsov, was Ukrainian geographically and half Ukrainian from his mother, that he was a Russian speaker and thus used the Russian spelling of Babi Yar in addition to other words. He was well within his rights to use whichever toponym he desired. There is a HUGE difference in him using the Babi Yar form and a Western English speaker using it after knowing the preferred by actual marginalized Ukrainians form. Out of respect for Mr. Kuznetsov I use the form he used in his writing when talking about the book itself. As well as any other words from the book using the Russian spelling.)

Anatoly himself was not Jewish but he grew up right by Babyn Yar. Before and after the massacre there. The massacre also, it should be noted, did not just include Jews but ethnic Ukrainians, Russians, Rromani, the disabled (mentally or otherwise), etc., and Anatoly took great pains to make sure of this fact to anyone who read the book in its full form.

One more note from Anatoly about the book's current form: "In the summer of 1969 I escaped from the USSR with photographic films, including films containing the unabridged text of Babi Yar. I am publishing it as my first book free of all political censorship, and I am asking you to consider this edition of Babi Yar as the only authentic text. It contains the text published originally, everything that was expurgated by the censors, and what I wrote after the publication, including the final stylistic polish. Finally, this is what I wrote." (and I want to note he says PHOTOGRAPHIC FILM of the book which turned out to be a 478 page paperback so this meant he RETYPED ALL ~478 PAGES and had the presence of mind to actually PHOTOGRAPH IT knowing damn well what could happen to his manuscript otherwise. He sewed all of it into his jacket as he fled for asylum.)

(I want to say, foolishly giving people the benefit of the doubt, that when a writer is called a 'Soviet writer' that they think it is somehow all of them actually being allowed to write. When in fact 'Soviet' in front of writer only refers to the time frame they were writing. Many 'Soviet' authors often only had their work published either during the 80s -- the time of glasnost-- or after the Fall but they still get the moniker of Soviet. Or, commonly, like with Anatoly their work is so butchered by censorship as to be practically a different work altogether. It takes a certain amount of courage to publish anyway though, so Anatoly's efforts along with any other author that mirrors his experience should be held in high regard.)

A regime or system of government (since people have tried to 'well actually' about the word regime) that does not allow their people to poke fun or satirize or even tell an unflattering truth with no veiling is not really a regime/system of government one should be defending and yet. When you defend the Soviet Union, you defend their total disregard for Jews, Ukrainians, etc., while at the same time pretending to care about them (The Soviet Union was a Jewish utopia, honest! So long as you ignore all the pogroms and things like the Doctors' Plot that happened post-Holocaust because gosh darnit there were still too many damn Jews in the Soviet Union! Mother Russia, FIX! While also preventing them from going to Israel where they can actually, you know, live. Instead you just whisper about thinking of going to Israel and you got fired and became a 'leech' and yada yada some people waited a decade or more to be allowed to emigrate but hey whatever. Jewish Utopia.)

I leave with one more note from the author of Babi Yar:

"Time and again I set about the task of writing an ordinary documentary novel on the basis of my notes, but without the slightest hope that it would ever be published. Apart from that, something rather strange happened to me. I had been trying to write a straightforward novel in accordance with the rules of ‘socialist realism’—the only guide to writing which I knew and which I had been taught ever since my schooldays. But the truth of real life, which cried out from every line written in my child’s notebook, immediately lost all its vividness and became trite, flat, false and finally dishonest when it was turned into ‘artistic truth’."

And an example of something that was excised by Soviet censors, denoted by brackets paired with what made it into the first editions of the book:

"[I, Anatoli Vasilevich Kuznetsov, author of this book, was born on August 18th, 1929, in the city of Kiev. My mother was Ukrainian, my father Russian. On my identity card my nationality was given as Russian.] I grew up on the outskirts of Kiev, in the Kurenyovka district, not far from a large ravine the name of which—Babi Yar—was known then only to the local people. Like the other parts of the Kurenyovka it was our playground, the place where I spent my childhood."

(I wonder, what was so repugnant about stating he was half Ukr to cause it to be removed from the book entirely?)

[a-queer-seminarian]

So I have a somewhat technical theological question for you based on a post I saw recently (I think it was one of yours or you'd commented, but not 100% sure) and am hoping for your insight on it. On the post I'm thinking of, it was mentioned that in some denominations of Christianity, Judaism is seen as a sister religion that is still valid by God, as he has kept his promise to the Jewish people. I've also encountered the idea that Jews will get a "second chance" to convert during the end times. Would this still apply to a Jew by choice who was baptized and raised Christian? Or would that person be considered an apostate/be seen as having turned their back on Jesus and salvation?

Hey there, anon! Thank you for the question. Sorry my response is long lol, but this is a complex and extremely important topic!

Also, for future reference for you and others, I prefer to receive any asks that aren't specifically about me or seminary stuff over on my broader blog, @blessedarethebinarybreakers.

____

I do indeed have a post over on my other blog about how Jewish people already have a completely fulfilling relationship with God.

This viewpoint is one I have learned from Christians who seek interfaith relationship with Jewish persons.

For instance, Barabara Brown Taylor expounds upon it in her book Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others, which I highly recommend for Christians who are seeking to understand how to respect persons of other faiths while being committed to their own. I've got a tag with passages from Holy Envy that you can start out with to see if you're interested in the whole book :)

I've also been deeply enriched by the perspectives of Jewish persons like New Testament scholar Amy Jill Levine — I have tons of passages from her here — and Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, whom you should totally follow if you have a Twitter. (See also the couple of great threads from her I've shared here on tumblr)

That viewpoint is completely contrary to the other one that you bring up — that at the End Times, Jews will have a "second chance" to convert. That viewpoint is all too common in Christianity, and it causes real harm to Jewish people here and now.

In this viewpoint, back in Gospel times, the Jewish people rejected Jesus as their messiah. In this viewpoint, Jewish scriptures — what Christians unfortunately dub the "Old Testament" — foretell Jesus as the messiah, so in "rejecting him," basically they've completely misread their own scriptures.

...To tell a people group they have their own scripture wrong is...condescending, to say the least.

Another problem with this viewpoint is that in order for the Jewish people to "reject" Jesus as messiah, they'd have to have considered him a contender in the first place...and they didn't! Jesus just isn't relevant to Judaism.

This is a bad comparison (because Hindus in my cultural context at least don't go around doing this kind of thing the way Christians do lol), but to try to help make the point, if say, a Hindu told me I've rejected Shiva, I'd be like...I haven't? Shiva's just not relevant to my life. How can I have rejected a deity that I've barely contemplated??

Many Christians who believe that all Jews (and/or all non-Christians) will have a last chance to convert to Christianity / accept Jesus as Lord etc. genuinely believe that this is a kind and respectful viewpoint. I used to think so, too! It's only been through listening to Jewish persons and other non-Christians that I've come to understand how it perpetuates Christian supremacy (after all, it implies that Christianity is supreme, that all good people should and will one day become Christian).

An extreme version of this viewpoint that's common in white evangelicalism is that a widespread conversion of Jews is one of the signs (or catalysts?) of the End Times. These Christians make converting Jewish people a priority. Historically, this has brought horrific violence upon Jewish communities, and that continues to this day.

So yeah, TL;DR: the Jewish people can't have a "second chance" to become Christian because, 1) there was no "first chance,” no time the whole Jewish people “rejected” Jesus and/or Christianity; and 2) they don’t need a “second chance,” since they already have a valid and fulfilling relationship with the Divine.

_____

Finally, to answer the last bit of your question about the End Time fate of someone baptized & raised Christian and converted to Judaism:

I totally understand if you are worried about that either for yourself or someone else in your life. The Christian supremacist ideas about who "needs" that kind of "second chance" are deeply ingrained in a lot of us, and take a long time to fully unpack! So whatever your beliefs are, current or future, about the End Times and heaven and all of that, I hope you can find comfort in this:

God's compassion is infinite, beyond any human compassion. If you or I as human beings could imagine having mercy on such a person, so much more for God!

A lot of Christians, especially white evangelical Christians, put a lot of their focus on the End Times and the world to come — but if you take some time to revisit Jesus's own ministry, you'll notice how little he brings up the world to come. He's much more focused on bringing liberation here and now. Same goes for the prophets before him, from Moses to Amos to Isaiah. God's will is for our flourishing here and now — on earth as it is in heaven.

So as far as possible, I believe it's often most fruitful to put aside end time talk and thoughts about some abstract afterlife — to pay more attention to what's going on right now, in your little corner of this beautiful planet. What injustices would Esther, Jeremiah, Jesus be calling out? Who are the mighty who need to be cast down from their thrones, who are the oppressed in need of empowerment, and how can I, you, we participate in that? That's where our focus needs to be. When it comes to what comes next, we can rely on the compassion of the God who created us not for suffering, but for flourishing, not for punishment, but restoration.

____

Further Reading:

Reminder about the Holy Envy book quotes on respecting non-Christians

And again with the Amy Jill Levine quotes link

My antisemitism tag on my other blog is full of stuff to help Christians recognize where we are failing to love our Jewish neighbors as ourselves. This post in particular is a good starting place.

And this post is also a good place to start, with ideas for avoiding or uprooting supersessionism (the idea that Judaism was made irrelevant by Christianity) in your Christian beliefs

A really old post where I talk about the idea of the "end times" a bit more

I forever love this quote about letting go of both our fear of punishment and desire for reward

On that topic, here's my post on why I think the idea of hell is a human idea, not a divine one — and how that ties to the movement for prison abolition here and now

And here's my tag for stuff about, like, the afterlife, heaven, hell, etc. in general

If you're accustomed to reading the Bible through a lens of "if it's in the Bible, it's God's will," you might be interested in seeing another framework option.

[wagahai-da]

yeah this is definitely who I want to reblog about Palestine (also have a post that starts "nobody asks Jews to get over the Holocaust" which. lol)

[brehaaorgana]

"Jewish people in the west are considered to be white" I'm,,, do y'all fucking hear yourselves??? There are lots of ethnic Jewish people who have assimilated (and therefore may "pass" amongst WASPs) but their ability to do so has only really happened in the last few decades. Or did people forget how many social organizations were closed to Jewish people up through the 80's? Or that McGill university maintained a Jewish quota until 1960? (Did you ever stop to realize that the impact of Nazi eugenics and racism against Jewish people SPECIFICALLY didn't like magically end the moment Hitler died?) Y'all will get as far as *maybe* admitting ethnic Jewish people are "non-white" but then turn around and say Jewish people can't be POC -- a term which has ALWAYS been about american political solidarity and NOT "biological destiny" for ethnic minorities - which Jewish people unequivocally *are.* So the problem y'all are having is that non-Jewish people are trying to dictate that Jewish people cannot promote minority solidarity despite being ethnic minorities. You're claiming Jewish people are white despite all evidence to the contrary - and at the *very least* they are non-white, and then you're saying "I know the term POC is about political solidarity not biological destiny but uh, Jewish people are white, for biological reasons I decided." What you WANT to say is Gal Godot doesn't do much for issues of COLORISM in the media, that she's still light skinned although hey, Jewish-Israeli representation is a landmark thing. Because that would be accurate to the situation, unless now ethnic minorities targeted by racists/white supremacists have to seek public approval to count or not count as POC. I wasn't aware the new policy was that to be a POC everyone else had to agree your flavor of persecuted ethnic minority "counted." Also I literally saw someone claim that A.) the only people who DON'T see Jews as white are "actual Nazis" and B.) Gal Godot is white BECAUSE her grandparents were Holocaust survivors. Just wondering if that person feels like the human compost dump that they are for literally articulating the fact that Gal Godot's family was very targeted by Nazis for not being white and then immediately turning around and saying "she's white though." Like oh??? Is that so?? Her grandparents almost DIED because they weren't white so that's FASCINATING you'd say so. How do we apply this rule, exactly? She's second gen from holocaust survivors who were persecuted for not being white, but now Gal is "white"? Just wondering how the fuck does that work. 🤔

[jacensolodjo]

A lot of people point to Birobidzhan as proof of the Soviet Union not being antisemitic after all. But the fact of the matter is, while Birobidzhan was partially the brain child of a hopeful Jewish population, it was in fact a place they were allowed simply because it meant fewer Jews in the more populated areas of the Soviet Union.

Also don't get me wrong, Birobidzhan is not a ghost town. A bunch of Jews still live there (though honestly only 1% of the population now is actually Jewish). But it is a dying town. As Israel became a much more viable option for 'Soviet' Jews, the more Jews left for it. Or to the United States or Canada or wherever else. Birobidzhan's highest population numbers hit 80k in 1989, just before the Wall fell. It now hosts approximately 75k people, 1% of them Jewish. But there are also Gentile Koreans, Chinese, Ukrainians, Cossacks, Mongolians, etc.,

Birobidzhan was considered to some a compromise over going to Israel. The problem of course is that Birobidzhan was still in the USSR. However, you would not get blacklisted just by whispering its name like you would when talking of Israel. Because if Jews weren't dying in pogroms or giving up their 'Jewishness', having them leave the Soviet Union to instead be citizens of Israel was unacceptable. How DARE these Jews claim to not be Soviets? How DARE they leave behind the glorious Soviet Union? Even if we treat them like crap how DARE they leave!!

The area they were given for this new 'Jewish Autonomous Zone' was pretty much a desert. Jews were essentially being sent to wander the fucking desert again. Nothing really grew in Birobidzhan that could sustain such a population increase in the 1930s and anything that started to manage it often died off. Through a lot of hard work, they have greenery going on but not necessarily food. To say nothing of the infrastructure already there and just how isolated it really was. At least half of the Jews who arrived at Birobidzhan returned to whence they came because of just how difficult it was to live there.

By the way, did I mention that Birobidzhan was a place already occupied and the original population were told to pack up and get out if they didn't want to be around *gasp horror* jews?

While many Jews left for Birobidzhan of their own free will, many more fled there after being the target of pogroms and other antisemitic attacks in the rest of the USSR. It became a place that the powers that be (in a system that was supposed to give power to the people but didn't) knew they could find Jews to either exploit or kill anytime they fucking felt like it. Think Kristallnacht but many nights and many whims. You know, pogroms against people who had just fucking fled pogroms.

In this once upon a time in so called Jew Utopia, it was illegal to not only study the Torah (and the Talmud and everything else) it was also illegal to learn Hebrew or Yiddish (frequent visitors to my blog or just ppl who know will be aware this was true of basically every language that wasn't Russian which says a lot but i digress. But that does not mean everyone ONLY knew Russian because of course people will take the risk to learn a new language if they feel they must). Birobidzhan became a place eventually where they had a newspaper written in Yiddish (Birobidzhaner Shtern, meaning Birobidzhan Star in Yiddish appropriately enough) for a population that probably didn't even have it as a third language much less 2nd or 1st. It did however get the distinction of being the largest Yiddish language newspaper in the entire Soviet Union but as mentioned earlier that doesn't say much when the people of Biro barely got away with having Birobidzhaner Shtern in the first place.

It continues to publish to the present day so it can be considered one of the longest running Yiddish newspapers in the Eastern world (though not uninterrupted. There were many interruptions). It was also written in Russian, for all those Jews who never learned Yiddish (Not just because it was illegal. It sometimes wasn't viewed as necessary to know. Hebrew was used for worship and Yiddish for a long time was considered a lesser language when you already had German, Polish, Russian, etc., but many did still use it for everyday discussion. I have seen some people even now make fun of Yiddish which is... not cool. There is a difference between making jokes and making fun.)

Essentially, having any kind of proud Jewish soul was next to impossible in the Soviet Union. Worship was illegal, the language of our ancestors was illegal, our books were illegal. Yes, many still did all that stuff anyway but that doesn't erase it being illegal. If you were caught you could be executed for it same as many were executed for speaking or learning Ukrainian in the same time frame. Again, doing all this in Birobidzhan was basically living on borrowed time. At any moment the powers that be could decide they also could not stand having Jews in the ass end of nowhere being Jews.

Those living in Birobidzhan from the 1930s onward (remember, it was already settled when the Jews got there after a very trying journey) were all too aware that they weren't hidden. The powers that be knew exactly where Birobidzhan was, many Jews had actually been sent there from places like Ukraine and Belarus for being annoying about Russian settlement in their lands but not enough to send them to gulag. So they still lived in fear of the pogroms following them. They were also on the border with China and thus served as a low key deterrent for Chinese expansion. The Soviet Union even called the mass settlement operation the Birobidzhan Experiment.

In 1948, Stalin enacted a 'campaign against rootless cosmopolitans'. Cosmopolitan was almost always an antisemitic dogwhistle. 1948 is also when Birobidzhan was nearly bulldozed entirely. It had outlived its usefulness but managed to survive just barely.

Following this, 4 years later, in August 1952 came the Night (isn't it always for tragedies affecting Jews?) of the Murdered Poets. ALL 13 victims were poets who were Jewish and wrote predominantly in Yiddish. Some had a connection to Birobidzhan. Including a man who had the strongest connection to Birobidzhan, David Bergelson who came from a Ukrainian stetl before settling in Birobidzhan. Mere months later that same year, in November, St*lin erased all doubt about whether Jews were welcome anymore (and had never really been anyway): they weren't. He used the term Jewish Nationalist (basically any Jew that didn't consider themselves only Soviet) as well as a recorded use of the phrase "eat the rich" (again an antisemitic dogwhistle in that time frame; not saying it is now. it was also used against Ukrainian 'kulaks/kurkuls' to justify the Holodomor) in a speech to the Politburo.

It also continued his campaign for the Doctors' Plot, as that same speech had him railing about his belief that many doctors were 'Jewish nationalists'. From 1951 to 1953, any doctor was suspect even if they weren't at all Jewish (this was a belief shared by many nazis as well). With all of this going on, everything Jewish culture was closed down in Birobidzhan, just as in the rest of the Soviet Union. The mask had finally fully fallen approximately 30 years before the Iron Curtain fell and only 20 years after Birobidzhan was founded as a Jewish Autonomous Zone. Birobidzhan was never a true safe haven, nor had been the Soviet Union as a whole. The Soviet Union had always had the power to shut it down, it barely tolerated such a concentration of Jews simply because it was in fact so far away from 'civilization'.

Things only got marginally better for Jews in the Soviet Union when the Purim Miracle of 1953 happened: the death of St*lin. He had been ready to give the green light on a far reaching campaign that could have seen more than 75% of the remaining 'Soviet' Jewish population eradicated but, as the mention of Perum implies, this was stopped in its tracks with the death of St*lin. Even without St*lin, however, any Jew that so much as whispered about going to Israel was, again, blacklisted (which meant losing their jobs and homes) and given the title of the very thing Soviets hated: leeches aka people who relied on welfare (because remember they didn't practice what they preached about everyone deserving to have a life worth living no matter their ability or who they were).

Birobidzhan, while still populated, stands as a cautionary tale and proof positive that the Soviet Union lied for its entire existence about Jewish treatment and that russia has inherited this tendency. If it sounds too good to be true (especially for Jews), then it probably is.

TL; DR: there has never been a fucking Jewish utopia in the Soviet Union and anyone saying as such is a liar who has gaslit themselves into believing otherwise. With often the 'but there were SO MANY Soviet Jews' line being proof while forgetting (conveniently) that the USSR was a HUGE place to begin with that swallowed many countries that already had a well established Jewish population (Ukraine, for instance). And no points are given for pointing out 'marx was a Jew'. He was self-hating (and his entire family had converted away anyway) and led the charge in insisting Jews give up their Jewishness for the sake of communism. And Marxist Jews are deluding themselves.

[jacensolodjo]

Pictured: The spine of a book titled The Unredeemed: Anti-semitism in the Soviet Union

Succinct and to the point. Who could ask for more in a book title?

Published in 1968. A roughly 300 page book that really only details antisemitism of 1960s Soviet Union but it does link back to events all the way back to the beginning of the 1910s, 20, and 30s to show it was never anything new in the Soviet Union in the 1960s.

Pages upon pages of evidence that the Soviet Union was never a friend to Jews.