So You’re A Gentile Who’s Realized We Have A Problem: Now What?
Tumblr likes to spin its wheels and spend time yelling at each other, so here’s a nice comprehensive guide. Five Things You Can Do Now That You Know We Were Serious About The Antisemitism:
1) Accept that if you’re in this to be an ally, you’re going to have a tough road ahead of you. We’re traditionally very wary of outsiders in our spaces because when we welcome them, well … this happens. In fact, if you want to convert to Judaism, you traditionally get rejected three times, just to make sure you’re serious and not shitting with us. Expect wariness. Expect to get your feelings hurt, because a lot of us are very raw right now. Stick with us anyway–once we know you’re not just bandwagoning us, you’re going to end up with a lot of friends who are relying on you. Nobody said allyship was easy.
2) Learn about Judaism. Note that I DO NOT MEAN LEARNING WITH INTENTION TO CONVERT. We don’t proselytize and it would be against Torah for me to even suggest it. What I mean here is, you can’t call bullshit if you don’t know what we’re about. Some good basic resources are The Jewish Book of Why by Alfred Kolatch; My Jewish Learning; and for a strict Orthodox standpoint, Chabad. You’ll find that some things in these sources contradict each other. That’s pretty par for the course in Judaism; we don’t have a single dogma or point of view.
3) Consider calling a local synagogue and asking if they have volunteer work for a gentile ally. Introduce yourself, explain (briefly) what got your attention, and offer your services–to stand outside during services, to walk folks to and from shul (this is particularly important in Orthodox communities, where driving on Shabbat is forbidden), hell, to help stuff envelopes for whatever vigil or service they may be holding in memoriam. Anything will help.
4) You may wish to make a donation to a local synagogue or Jewish charity. I strongly recommend the ADL (Anti-Defamation League), which is a Jewish charity focused on combating antisemitism. Jews traditionally give monetary gifts in sums of $18, which corresponds to the numeric value of the word “chai,” or “life.” The last time this happened I made a post about this tradition and got accused of being a Nazi because of the whole 1-8 A-H thing, so let’s just nip that right in the bud: yes, we know. It’s a horrible coincidence. We’re not giving up a few-thousand-year-old tradition because of some dipshit with a bad moustache. If you can’t afford $18, consider moving the decimal over and donating in multiples of 18, like $3.60. Your meaning will still be perfectly clear, and anything helps. If you wish to make a donation in memory/in honor (which many synagogues appreciate), I suggest either choosing the name of one of the shooting victims–giving tzedakah, or charity, in their names is considered a great mitzvah and a blessing to their families–or using the phrase “am Yisrael chai.” It means “Israel lives.” Although the country in the MENA region is called Israel, this is not what the phrase refers to–the traditional patriarch of Judaism was named Jacob, and renamed as Israel following a wrestling match with a messenger of G-d. To say “am Yisrael chai” is to say his people, that is, the Jewish people, live.
And on that note …
5) In the coming days and weeks, you’re going to see a lot of people making this about Israel or Zionism. Please tell them to shut the fuck up. Israel, Zionism, and Jews are three completely different, albeit related, things. To wit: Israel is a geopolitical country situated on the site of our ancestral homeland and currently headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; Zionism is the belief that Jews deserve a safe homeland; and Jews are a group of people spread across six continents and most countries who are united by a common group of ancestors from the Levant (the part of the world now occupied by the geopolitical entity known as Israel). Saying the victims of this shooting had anything to do with the political situation in Israel would be like saying I, personally, am responsible for Vladimir Putin because I have a Russian ancestor. I speak exactly two words of Russian, have never been to Russia, have no family left living there (and haven’t for four generations), but I’m totally responsible for Russia. You see how ridiculous that sounds? The same applies to Jews and Israel. Please, please, PLEASE do not conflate this event with Israeli politics. I’m not saying Israeli politics aren’t a topic worth discussing–I’m saying this is not a discussion they belong in. Don’t let the powers that be (or the alt-right sleaze that sucks the dicks of the powers that be) distract from the topic at hand, which is “out of control guns meet out of control xenophobia and antisemitism,” by throwing OMG ISRAEL AND ZIONISM AND GLOBALISM into the mix.
And finally: yes, gentiles, this is okay for you to reblog. In fact I encourage it. And I will answer any questions you have to the best of my ability, if they’re asked in good faith. Please just follow the most basic tenet of Judaism, which is: don’t be a dick.
If you’re ready to stand and help, now is the time.
