#former mod's posts

[jewish-privilege]

So apparently I’m being called a “murder advocate” and “someone no one should associate with” for advocating self-defense against the people who tortured and murdered 9/10ths of my family tree and have threatened to finish the job. 

I quit.

I get routine death threats from Neo-Nazis, I’m regularly told, in explicit detail, how they want to kill me and mutilate my body.  But I’m getting blamed for stating that I want to defend myself and others. 

So I’m joining @janothar in taking a break from Tumblr for the next few weeks.  Because I’ve had enough of this shit.  I have better things to do with my time than deal with Jumblr discourse that protects Nazis and demonizes Jews. 

-Joseph

[jewish-privilege]

I understand your distaste for the tradition, it's not above criticism at all. I can't change its history unfortunately. All I can really do is respect your truth, keep it in mind, and work towards a future different from the past.

And that’s all I can ask for. We can’t change the past, but we can change the future.  My opening suggestion?  I know that there are some Jewish occultists among my followers; I’d suggest with start opening some dialogues with them for a perspective on how to treat the Jewish cultural elements in your tradition with respect.  

And I thank you for having an open mind.  It makes for such a pleasant change from the usual :)

(The last time I had one of these conversations, I got a curse put on me by someone that I considered to be a friendly acquaintance, which, being an atheist, I viewed with a combination of humor and irritation–even if I don’t believe in it, the intent was most certainly hostile)

[jewish-privilege]

I've added an edit to the original this morning to point out that it wasn't my intention to represent Hebrew as a dead language. The intent was rather to give an extreme example relating to both living and dead languages.

I get that.  I even understand that.  And, to some extent, I even sympathize with that.  But, as the (incredibly appropriate in this context) saying goes, “Intent is not magic!” 

Now, I hate it when I make a simple mistake and people jump all over me, so I’m going to say this much: your correction?  A very good first step, and I applaud you for doing so.  The fact that you owned up to the mistake is good, instead of getting defensive, and I’m specifically going to take this point to ask my followers to not jump down your throat and make you defensive. 

But still, at the end of the day, you are still part of a cultural tradition that has been built by directly stealing bits of Jewish cultural heritage and shoehorning it in nearly at random.  This is not a thing for which I blame you, but instead a thing that I blame the system that taught you. 

I’ll put it this way; I’m an atheist, but, due to my RPG hobbies, I get alot of exposure to Occult topics, either via practitioners who are also in the hobby, or just from background reading for my hobby.  In the course of a decade of that exposure, I have just about never seen a non-Jewish occultist, of any tradition, treat Jewish cultural topics with any degree of institutional sensitivity, or, really, as anything other than a source of Generic Mystic/Arcane Symbolism.  Individual occultists being sensitive and understanding?  Yes, they do exist, and you’ve shown that you’re one of the decent sort and not one of the smug ones, for which I thank you.  But as for the tradition as a whole?  Well, my opinion starts with “vastly irksome” and quickly veers into the sort of language I’m not comfortable using when I know I have 14-yo followers.  And that’s my general position on Western Magick Occult traditions.  Some of the people in it are decent, but the tradition itself is vile to me because of centuries of abuse and theft. 

[jewish-privilege]

Side-note: Witchcraft and Western Magick are not necessarily synonymous. The latter stems heavily from qabalistic and ceremonial influences. The study of the Sephiroth and Hebrew as a divine language and alphabet are heavily ingrained in the occult

“Heavily ingrained in the occult”.  Yeah, and the reason for that is due to centuries of cultural appropriation by Christian occultists, frequently using Jewish holy symbols in ways that are actively sacrilegious, such as using the Tetragrammaton.  The only good thing from your post’s advice means that your followers wouldn’t be pronouncing the Name correctly. 

We are very much aware of how Western Magick occult practices views Jewish traditions and motifs as a buffet bar, and have for centuries.  “Oh, I’ll take some Arcane Mispronounced Hebrew Chanting from this tray, and mix it with some Names For God from this tray, and sprinkle it with a helping of Alchemical Symbols from the spice rack, and use some Christian interpretations of King Solomon to bulk things out.”  And all we see is a bunch of outsiders that come in, take things completely out of context, and then smugly say that they know how to “properly” use our cultural heritage that they’ve stolen.

I’m not blaming you in particular, but you come from a tradition that has, for centuries, been involved in the parallel processes of both oppressing us and stealing our culture and heritage when bits of it attract interest, magpie-like.  Add to implicit equivalence between Hebrew and Latin as dead languages that can just be used without care or consideration or effort, and the reasons we’re… irked with the tone of your post I hope are fairly clear.  Does that make sense?

[jewish-privilege]

If your sole criteria/threshold for what is considered to be antisemitism is 'wanting to push little Jewish babies into ovens' and you consider any behavior short of that to be acceptable and non-antisemitic behavior, then, congrats, you are antisemitic.

[jewish-privilege]

To my fellow Jews of Tumblr,

A good and close friend of mine and my family, Barak BenTor,  Barak Mordechai Ben Ediit HaKohen, is in the Cleveland hospital tonight (2/21/16), dying of cancer.  He is 43 years old.  He and his wife, Elana, have two children, Dovid and Devorah. 

He is expected to pass at any time.  I just got the call. 

If people could say Tehillim for him, it would be very much appreciated.

-Joseph

Links to Tehillim for the dying: 130, 121, 91

[jewish-privilege]

I have rarely felt more bemusedly Ashkenazi than at this moment. 

Short version: I have access to a restaurant supply store, and I got a case of chicken on Wednesday.  Yesterday involved processing that case.  As a direct result, I now have in the neighborhood of more than a quart of fresh chicken schmaltz in my fridge.

I will admit that I am at a loss at what to do with so much schmaltz; in the past, most of my experiences with cooking with schmaltz involved using the small volumes skimmed off of the top of chicken soup.  This is... much, much more than that.  

Help?  Suggestions?

[jewish-privilege]

Guys!  :D

I’m reading @jimhines‘s Revisionary, and there’s a shul called Am HaTorah whose rabbi is running an underground railroad stop for magical people being hunted by the government!  :D  And he all but says that he’s doing it for צֶדֶק צֶדֶק תִּרְדּף (Justice, Justice, You Shall Pursue), that, even if it’s possibly futile, you do the right thing because it is right.

Okay, done squeeing.  Back to reading :D