#intra jewish issues

[germiyahu]

If someone derails your conversation about Israel to be about Israel's treatment of this or that group, Mizrachim, Beta Israel, etc. you may just want to consider their motivations, and do a little digging into the kinds of subjects they normally talk about on their own blogs.

If someone who has staunchly antizionist views, like I'm talking thinly veiled genocidal fantasies about destroying Israel and reveling in the chaos that would bring, and having no concern for the future of 7 millions Jews, their concerns about Medinat Yisrael's treatment of minority groups are not valid.

This is Concern Trolling.

If someone is derailing you to accuse Israel, through accusing you, of sterilizing Ethiopian women, stealing Mizrachi babies and having them raised by "white" parents, trying to destroy Yiddish, all these alleged violent assimilationist policies that Israel employs against fellow Jews?

A non Jew barging into your space and bringing up intra-community issues and grievances is a red flag. Do not fall for the sealioning trap. Do not turn out your pockets. Do not fall for the concern trolling.

Because what is their solution to these problems? To eliminate Israel as a state? And what about these minority groups within Israeli society then? Their answer is the same as their answer for the Ashkenazim: who cares? They largely imagine all Israeli Jews can simply move to the United States or France or something. The fact that over 95% of Israelis cannot just go to the countries of their parents or grandparents is of no concern to them.

That's why it's concern trolling. They're trolling you by pretending to be concerned, and baiting you into discussing an intra-community issue because they think that'll be the argument that finally gets you to disavow Israel. Because now you'll have no choice but to agree Israel is irredeemably problematic, because now it affects other Jews. So they are exhibiting a kind of bitterly envious brand of antisemitism. They think that all Jews believe in Jewish supremacy. They're quite mad about it. This is an aspect of the Chosen People canard.

But the main reason concern trolling is bad is because they don't care about these groups they bring up. They're not defending them, they're not championing their rights. They're trying to distract you and make you look like a hypocrite. When they cheer for Hamas raping and pillaging and spraying bullets into Israelis, they don't care if it happens to Beta Israel women who've supposedly been mass sterilized against their will. They cheer all the same. So much for their legitimate concerns that Israel is antisemitic in of itself I guess?

If the solution to a problem faced by a minority group within a country is "destroy their country which they also believe has saved them from ethnic cleansing and mass death, and figure out the rest later," you're not an ally to that group; stop pretending you are!

This is tied into pinkwashing, but from a sort of opposite approach. If any societal progress that Israel makes for minority groups is a psyop and a marketing ploy to cover up Palestinian Genocide, the concern trolling is antizionists holding Israel hostage to any societal progress it has not made. But they never intend on letting Israel improve these relationships. Israel is too nice to gay Jews, and not nice enough to African Jews. The only course of action therefore, is to let Hamas butcher them alongside straight Jews and "European" Jews.

So if you see someone trying to engage in this game, ignore them! Your time is worth so much more, and the vulnerable minority groups of Jews (both in Israel and the Diaspora) are much safer with Jews who discriminate against them than goyim who tout social justice rhetoric but want to see them dead. Plus, so many Jews are already doing the work, learning and listening, and trying to improve. This enrages the concern trolls like nothing else.

Call out Israel's bigotries, but you know, maybe don't trust the people who aren't affected by those bigotries invading your space and demanding your allyship to groups of people they'd be content seeing die en masse. Like "Israel is actually antisemitic against this vulnerable group of Jews!" and "All Israelis are settlers, none are truly civilians, and any form of violence against settlers is justified" are two stances that do not mesh very well...

Because at the very least, they're separating good Jews from bad Jews again, just based on what they perceive intra-Jewish oppression to be like. And they expect these good Jews to cheer and happily live as dhimmis in the absolute chaos that is a 100% inevitable Hamas-Fatah civil war and total societal collapse... and spit on the graves of their kinsmen.

And at worst, the concern trolls won't bother distinguishing these vulnerable Jews from their alleged oppressors anyway, and happily watch as they all flee with the clothes on their backs or get gunned down or enslaved by Hamas "Resistance" Fighters.

#like an oppressed person will always prefer a familiar master to a foreign liberator #I'm always so surprised how non intuitive this is for so many people #antisemitism #leftist antisemitism #intra community issues #intra Jewish issues #ironic that I'm commenting on them at my early stage lol #israel #concern trolling #pinkwashing

[phoukanamedpookie]

Defending the use of "schvartze" to describe Black people? 😬 Not a good look.

Heck, the only reason I use Black myself is because "person of sub-Saharan African heritage" is too many syllables, using Negro or colored gets a big nope because of Jim Crow, and a better word hasn't been found or created. Trust and believe that if I find the term that identifies those we call Black as coming from a place that has a history and a culture comes along, I'm gonna use it and ask others to do so as well.

#jumblr #intra community issues #if you're not black or jewish this ain't for you

[forthegothicheroine]

To any Jewish leftists who personally feel uncomfortable with Hanukkah, that’s your right. But I would really like to get through one Hanukkah season without seeing smug twitter posts about how it’s a holiday celebrating religious extremism and terrorism against people trying to be multicultural. Sorry I’m going to celebrate not being forcibly assimilated, I hope ancient Greek kings appreciate your posthumous support.

#disagreement with this is fine just please don't clown on it #intra-jewish issues #Hanukkah

[doberbutts]

really appreciate your posting about Jewish concerns amidst all this. My brother and i -- both staunch anti-zionists and both jewish -- talk about israel and palestine fairly often in private but feel very uncomfortable talking about it in public for fear that we might get labeled "soft zionists" if we dont demand the most extreme solutions possible. its pretty nerve wracking

Black people 🤝 Jews: being afraid to talk frankly about intra-community issues outside of their communities because opportunistic bigots will jump on the chance to be as shitty as possible every time even if you say things like "I think people should be equals" or "I would like us all to live happily in peace"

I have a friend on here who adamantly refuses to talk about being Jewish on her blog in part because of what antisemitism she's witnessed being enacted on people whose crimes literally boil down to "is open about being Jewish online". I don't blame her- I'm not even Jewish and I get flak for refusing to denounce my openly Jewish friends despite us all being in agreement that what's happening in Palestine is terrible and a permanent peaceful solution as well as a complete rebuild and restructure of the whole governing and legal system needs to happen ASAP or else an entire demographic of people is going to be obliterated out of existence.

[unbidden-yidden]

of course I've been following you for a while, and I think i asked something along these lines before, but maybe not to this extent? unsure, as I can't find the previous ask I sent.

I was raised within the Xtian culture (I'm agnostic, but still practice the Xtian cultures and traditions; namely Xmas and the January New Year) and follow a few Jewish tumblrs, but I never know - when you or they post in reference to or in celebration of Judaism - if I can reblog things as a form of "goyim support"? Because I always want to share posts from the people I follow, but I never want to inadvertently claim an identity, religion and/or culture as my own to people who don't know me (i.e. random people who follow me.)

Does this make any sense? No clue, sorry if it's mostly nonsense. Like, I know that tagging posts with something along the lines of "I'm not Jewish but [...]" can detract from the actual topic of the post and then I'm making my act of reblogging something about myself as opposed to actually being supportive? But then! I'm hesitant because during my internal debate I think "if I don't clarify that I am not Jewish, I will be inadvertently appropriating the identity of Jewish people."

I don't want to pretend to "be Jewish" without actually being Jewish, is I guess what I'm trying to communicate. (Am I? I don't very well know.) And to expect or request "Okay for goyim to reblog!" on anything/everything would be absolutely ridiculous, so I won't.

How I got from "I want to share this cool post about Judaism from a blog I follow" to fear of appropriation on my part is beyond me, but alas. ("It's not that serious" they call from the peanut gallery.)

Any advice on how one such as myself might tread these waters? If you don't want to or can't answer for any reason, I understand. This isn't the be-all and end-all of situations, just a question from one stranger on the internet to another. I just hope I've been able to convey this rambling comes from a place of respect and well-meaning curiousity.

Hi there!

I appreciate your sensitivity to this and desire to balance things - that tells me you are kind and want to be respectful. So, thank you for asking; it's a good question! Tumblr is kind of a weird format with the reblogs structured as they are.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I always lock reblogs on things I don't want reblogged and tag things as "goyim DNI" or similar if it is too much of a sensitive intra-Jewish issue or whatever. For positivity, I typically don't assume that everyone reblogging it is Jewish, and honestly appreciate when people who aren't Jewish want to spread positivity about us. That said, if you want to make a clear distinction, I think tagging it something like "reblog of support" would do the job without derailing.

Obviously two Jews, three opinions, but that's what I'd say for me at least. 😊

[abwwia]

Hannah Wilke: Intra-Venus Series #6, February 19, 1992, 1992-93, chromagenic print with overlaminate, 47 1/2 by 71 1/2 inches; at Ronald Feldman.

Born Arlene Hannah Butter; (March 7, 1940 – January 28, 1993) was an American painter, sculptor, photographer, video artist and performance artist. Wilke's work is known for exploring issues of feminism, sexuality and femininity.

She was born on March 7, 1940, in New York City to Jewish parents; her grandparents were Eastern European immigrants.

She taught art in several high schools for approximately 30 years and joined the faculty of the School of Visual Arts.

Hannah Wilke died in Houston, Texas, in 1993 from lymphoma. Her last work, Intra-Venus (1992–1993), is a posthumously published photographic record of her physical transformation and deterioration resulting from chemotherapy and bone marrow transplant. Via Wikipedia

#HannahWilke #Americanpainter, #sculptor #photographer #videoartist #feminism #sexuality #femininity #artherstory #womensart #palianshow #artbywomen #contemporaryart #contemporary #art #femaleartist

Hannah Wilke: Marxism and Art: Beware of Fascist Feminism,1977, poster on heavy stock paper, 11 1/2 by 9 inches; at Ronald Feldman.

#Hannah Wilke #art by women #art #palianshow #photographers #lymphoma

[survivingcapitalism]

Vision & Mission

Vision: A just peace in Israel-Palestine based on principles of equality and human rights.

Mission: To amplify the voices of Canadian Jews in support of justice in Israel-Palestine and at home.

Thematic areas

Palestine Solidarity: IJV was the first national Jewish organization to endorse the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. We continue to support and defend BDS as well as to hold Canadian organizations accountable when complicit in Israeli oppression of Palestinians.

Anti-racism and Indigenous solidarity: IJV stands in solidarity with Indigenous peoples and with all marginalized peoples in Canada against racism, settler colonialism and white supremacy. IJV also works to combat antisemitism and distinguish it clearly from critiques of Zionism and Israeli policies.

Justice-Oriented Jewish Communities: IJV believes that no one should have to choose between embracing Judaism or Jewishness and supporting Palestinian rights. IJV chapters and campus clubs organize meaningful ritual gatherings that centre justice and critical reflection.

IJV Basis of Unity

We are a group of Jews in Canada from diverse backgrounds, occupations and affiliations who share a strong commitment to social justice and universal human rights. We come together in the belief that the broad spectrum of opinion among the Jewish population of this country is not reflected by those institutions that claim to represent Jewish communities as a whole. We further believe that individuals and groups within all communities should feel free to express their views on any issue of public concern without incurring accusations of disloyalty. We have therefore resolved to promote the expression of alternative Jewish voices, particularly in respect of the grave situation in the Middle East, which threatens the future of Palestinians and Israelis as well as the stability of the whole region.

IJV Principles

We are guided by the following principles:

We affirm that human rights are universal and indivisible and should be upheld without exception.

We believe that all people living within Israel-Palestine have the right to freedom, equality, and to peaceful and secure lives.

We believe that the fight against antisemitism is undermined when principled opposition to unjust Israeli government policies and practices–including those that contravene international law–are branded as antisemitic.

We oppose all forms of racism, including antisemitism, anti-Arab racism, anti-Black racism, Islamophobia, and intra-Jewish racism, which marginalizes Jews of colour, Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews.

We stand in solidarity with the Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island (North America) in their efforts to overcome the impacts of European colonization both past and present.

We seek direction from the communities with whom we stand in solidarity and follow their leadership at every opportunity.

We strive to be inclusive, justice-seeking, democratic, and open to diverse ideas and practices.

We believe that true security requires justice and solidarity.

We hereby reclaim the tradition of Jewish support for universal freedoms, human rights and social justice. The lessons we have learned from our own history compel us to speak out.

These principles are violated when we allow an occupying power to trample the human rights of an occupied people. Palestinian inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza, living under Israeli occupation and military blockade, face appalling living conditions, with desperately little hope for the future. At the same time, Palestinian Israelis are subjected to a range of discriminatory laws and regulations and are consequently unable to enjoy the same rights and freedoms that are enjoyed by Israeli Jews. This institutionalized discrimination has led increasing numbers of people around the world to identify Israel an apartheid state. We therefore declare our support for a properly negotiated peace between the Israeli and Palestinian people and oppose any attempt by the Israeli government to impose its own solutions on the Palestinians. Furthermore, we support full equality for Palestinian Israelis. To these ends, IJV supports the 2005 call issued by the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) National Committee for an international campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions to compel the State of Israel to comply with international law and support Palestinian Israelis’ human rights by

Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall;

Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and

Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.

[emily84]

Reposting this because I didn't want to derail OP but, and here's just a thought, I don't think this is a conversation we as outsiders can have, or have lightly.

This feels like an intra-community conversation between Jewish people (and, yes, Israeli Jews) that we can only be admitted to by explicit concession.

Just like it's not my place as a white person to police matters relating to colorism in the Black community, or to word police discussions within the trans community. I can acknowledge those issues, and talk about them, but not use them as pieces in my arguments just because I want to have the upper hand. Or convince myself my two cents about racism on X of all places can silence or "counter" words by people who are actually Black, or trans.

This is not just about weakness and ableism and if you say you disagree you're being disingenuous. This is a delicate conversation about (inter)generational trauma and survivor's guilt and a thousand other corollary issues that Jewish people have been grappling with, at length, for decades (centuries), academically, privately, publicly, in literature, in art, and within their diasporic communities and with gentiles as well. It's not new or surprising, actually. Just because it wasn't on your "bingo card" when you suddenly learned about this yesterday, it doesn't make it new or surprising.

And just because you don't like Israel or its politics, you don't take this very painful thing that concerns Jewish people everywhere, not just in Israel, and make light of it, and label it "white supremacist". I see it done all the time here in Italy. This is exactly the kind of language that makes Jewish people distrust us goyim.

#it's a huge fucking issue and one of the many reasons why israel is the way it is today #it's also a common response to generational trauma #but you don't get to be antisemitic about it #it's not ''''''new''''''' #there are extensive sources of Jewish scholars and writers talking about this #go read one of the many many many books about it

[bringmemyrocks]

Intra community ex-frum Jewish whining, not related to current events

There's a very real segment of religious Jews who are genuinely left-wing and anti Zionist, and a lot of them are queer/feminist to boot (groups that tend to be ostracized within religious Judaism).

But they still cannot stomach the idea of anyone (esp Jews/former Jews) having issues with Judaism as a religion separate from disliking Zionism. Like you can be anti Zionist, sure, but if you say "actually I don't keep kosher because I don't like religious stringencies" or "I don't pray in Hebrew bc I don't think God cares" or "I'd rather learn Arabic than Yiddish" they lose their goddamn minds

At this point I realize it's all down to insecurity, but it's funny to see them interact with me IRL or online for 0.5 seconds and then realize I have an actual issue with frumkeit and they just ... slowly back away.

#otd #posting on shabbat bc Ostensibly such types won't see. lol #i #me and religion

[magnetothemagnificent]

Don’t say religion when you just mean Christianity!! Lmao!! You think you can criticize only Christianity from a very Jewish point of view and call yourself religious critic? No, fool, you just don’t like Christianity, which hey, neither do I. But also I don’t like your religion either. Which I’m sure makes you want to murder me. Because religious zealots like you don’t value human life.

oh ho ho....a "religious zealot".....

LMAOOOOO

I also criticize intra-community issues within Judaism, I criticize the dangers of religious interference in governement all the fucking time.

Also Judaism isn't just a religion, most of my Jewish friends are atheists.

I mean I wouldn't say I want to murder you.....but your behaviour kinda makes me want to give you a good slap in the face.

#antisemitism #hate anon #I'm blocking this fucker if they send me yet another one don't worry lmao #I'm just having a little fun

[tuungaq]

would love to be able to have an intra-community conversation on jewish mothers and the unique strain of issues and intergenerational mishegas that comes with being raised as a jewish daughter except then i don’t want to feed into stereotypes in a way that goyim can take advantage of. but there is a common thread to some of our experiences and it feels lonely not talking about them esp. re: guilt and weight

#rachel says a thing

[oddmerit]

i try REALLY hard to like cohost dot org and there IS a lot to like about it, legitimately:

most of the staff are jewish gaytrans furries so they Get the need for firm moderation that accounts for “plausible deniability”-type bigotry, even if they slip up it’s pretty quickly rectified (see below)

good 18+ filtering, pro-posting queer hole

NO BULLSHITE ALGORITHMS. chrono timelines only

css/html/markdown crimes

that being said.

the general culture there is rough bc a lot of the prominent powerposters are friends or friends-of-friends of the devs by nature of how they conducted the closed alpha, but bc of the lack of public metrics it’s considered taboo to claim that there ARE powerposters in the first place. and because powerposters are just a few degrees removed from the devs, people who WERENT part of the alpha want to emulate that general vibe. part of which means getting extremely hostile and defensive if anybody says something that could be construed as putting the devs down and claiming they’re “twitterbrained” or whatever and that people who “expect too much” of the devs are going to be the downfall of the site

the most recent incident of this stemmed from a moderating misstep where someone i followed reported a nazi channer who followed her and was part of an antisemitic harassment campaign, but hadn’t posted anything to the site yet. the staff who handled her report said “this is concerning so we’ll wait and see BUT we don’t take action based on offsite behaviour”, despite that being untrue based on previous moderation actions (notably TERFs getting nuked from orbit before they could even start posting). the person who reported them got upset and several of her followers (including me) were like “what the fuck, that’s unexpected and shitty”, some saying that made them feel unsafe in case that ever happened to them. once the decision got traction (and other people started reporting the account) the staff went back on its decision “based on internal review” and suspended the account in question, which is where this story should have ended

except, the day after it happened, i woke up to a post on my cohost dashboard that was someone screaming their head off about people who had said “this is disappointing and makes me concerned”, and kept quoting one specific person who they claimed had overreacted and was symptomatic of the above-mentioned “twitterbrain” and that it was all “bad faith”. like, if THAT is gonna be the community reaction to someone being alarmed about inconsistent moderation, why would you ever publicly bring up moderation concerns at all?

its one thing to ask site members to be considerate of staff (its a small team and half of them were at a con AND it was a weekend AND they eventually backtracked and apologized anyways so it was all good at that point) but its another thing to go off on a rant quoting mostly one specific person while claiming its really “just general you” and claim that they’re the reason the site will go under. if you’re going to claim that you need to bite your tongue over missteps “for the good of the community” that’s a HUGE fucking red flag! bc thats how resentment will grow and eventually explode into something MUCH worse! it wouldnt turn into “intra-community infighting” if everyone was like “cool, thank you, please make sure this doesnt happen again” after the issue is solved instead of dragging it out and turning it into an example of “oooo look how PRO-HARASSMENT twitter has made you, you’re HARASSING the devs by voicing concern”!

and dont get me STARTED on the shitfits people were throwing when staff said “we don’t allow loli on this site”. people understand “cohost isnt a free speech absolutist site like twitter” when it comes to hate speech but they absolutely do NOT understand it also applies to jerking it to fictional csa lmao. cohost isnt overrun by “puritans”. the devs will not ban queer hole*. the devs post queer hole. its fine

(*the only way i can see NSFW getting banned is if stripe drops them for processing cohost+ subs or the future tipping system and even then i trust staff will fight for Queer Hole as hard as they can)

#unidentified gay noise

[atthebell-moved]

Just saw the post about how you wrote about circumcision. I'm legitimately curious about what you talked about in it. I can guess that it may be about the health side. But again, I don't know.

i have two degrees in religious studies so it wasn't the health side lmao.

it's a very important theological concept and practice in judaism (and islam, and a concept in christianity as well although not a significant practice) so i've discussed it quite a bit over the years.

idk how much detail to go into so as not to bore anyone, but basically circumcision is itself a covenant with G-d within judaism and is particularly significant when it comes to the promises made to abraham, the first patriarch of judaism. G-d makes abraham several promises during his lifetime and circumcision acts as the sealing of part of their contract. abraham will become circumcised, all the men of his company will be, and all his male descendants will be forever after. this is important because part of the covenant between them is that G-d will give abraham as many descendants as there are stars in the sky, but they are to fulfill this covenant and, later with the mosaic commandments, further covenants. circumcision is meant to be a physical marker of this covenant and something that distinguishes jewish men from gentile men; distinguishment being a HUGE concept in jewish theology. circumcision is also a big cultural practice akin to christenings or baptisms in christianity as it's a near-universal practice amongst jews.

in terms of interfaith discussions of it, islam shares a lineage to abraham and the commandment & promise of circumcision, although muslim boys are typically circumcised at an older age than jewish boys. in christianity like many commandments circumcision is not required as their theology regards Torah commandments fulfilled through jesus, so they don't have to do many of the things jews do (although some sects do engage in torah-based practices, sometimes as messianism 👎🏻). im not super familiar with other traditions and which also involve circumcision as ethno-religious practice, my understanding is it's primarily a judeo-islamic practice.

i don't want to get into 'intactivism' as many of its proponents utilize antisemitic tropes and there has already been intra-community discussion about issues with circumcision for well over a century. gentiles are not adding anything new to the conversation and often attempts to draw public outrage over the practice only serve to fuel antisemitic violence in those places. same goes for attempts to ban circumcision because of islamic practice.

anyway here's my circumcision infodump hope you enjoy

#asks #anons #i didnt want to get too deep into the weeds on the theology but yeah it was one of my areas of interest alongside the Akedah #sorry this took ages to write i got distracted

[dataanxiety]

Trifecta

Yes, she's black, Jewish, and female. And she feels VERY oppressed! In actuality, she is the winner of the grievance lottery, a trifecta, as one can infer from this excerpt that I LEGALLY reproduced here from the increasingly left-leaning (Jewish) Forward. They don't like to call themselves the Jewish Forward anymore. Kind of like the Jewish Anti-Defamation League is now the ADL and defames Jews regularly unless they are woke enough.

Note that emphasis is mine in what follows. I could have included exasperated comments, but you'll get the idea.

"Can Jews Be White?"

by Nylah Burton, July 02, 2018

A couple of nights ago, I was walking to my apartment in my aggressively white neighborhood. This particular night, my noticeable blackness could have been deadly. There were helicopters flying above my apartment and police stationed at a couple of streets right by my front door. Police can punish anyone who fits the suspect’s description, which is usually black. My friend and I felt both terrified and relieved: terrified of me being questioned or shot from above, and relieved that she could use her whiteness to shield me.

It made me reflect on a topic: Can Jews Be White? After Alma published the Jews of Color roundtable discussion, I encountered a lot of indignation from “white-passing” Jews who took great issue with our use of the terms “white Jew” and “whiteness” in describing the intra-community racism we had experienced. I was pretty furious. Policing the terminology and feelings of Jews of Color was pretty much the antithesis of all we had discussed. And furthermore, many Jews actually are white.

For the record, I strongly feel that de-assimilation and the dismantling of whiteness is critical to both the eradication of racism and the survival of the Jewish people. But here’s the salient point: White Jews aren’t white passing. They are functionally white.

“White-passing” implies the need to hide. For example, a white-passing Latinx person may be deported if their immigration status is revealed. A white-passing black person may get some privilege due to their appearance, but will still be subject to systemic economic disparities. Most systemic benefits of whiteness will not be taken away from white Ashkenazi Jews who possess them if someone discovers their Jewishness. No doubt, prejudice and anti-Semitism may remain, but their loan rates will stay the same and the police won’t be more likely to pull the trigger.

This is not to say that being Jewish isn’t incredibly dangerous in this country. But at this point in time in America, anti-Semitism is not comparable to systemic racism. All Jews will be a target of white supremacists, but many Jews may not ever experience racism. White supremacy is an extreme ideology that asserts the superiority of Western European Christian whiteness with violence and murder. It can spread like wildfire, but it is rarely coded into every aspect of our lives. Racism is.

In this country, to access the benefits of whiteness, different European immigrant groups had to shed parts of their individual cultures and seek shelter under the big tent of “white” culture. But this is an empty existence, for white culture has no value beyond power and privilege. Being willing to acknowledge when whiteness applies to us isn’t assimilation; it’s an acknowledgement of a fucked up system.

The views and opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of the Forward.

#black jewish privilege #white jews #jews of color

[coochiequeens]

Do not give up financial independence just to keep a man happy. If that’s what it takes to keep a man happy he’s not worth it. And what if he is the only one able to access money and he’s involved in an emergency?

In the controversial 2001 best seller, the American author Laura Doyle argues that the key to a happy marriage is a wife relinquishing control and allowing her husband to handle all decision making, including household finances, a lifestyle that is rooted in conservative biblical principles. “When you surrender to your husband, you accept that a supreme being is looking after you both,” reads one passage. “The more you admire your husband’s magnificence and how everything about him is just as it should be, the more you will feel God’s presence.” Though these tenets are rooted less in Jewish textual traditions than in the New Testament and in fundamentalist-Christian notions of wifely submission, they have seeped into the Orthodox community over the past two decades.

The Surrendered Wife’s popularity highlights how an insular religious group with carefully preserved boundaries can in fact be quite porous to outside influence—particularly to views popular on the American Christian right. A mini-industry of Orthodox “Laura Doyle coaches” and educators have emerged, most of them unlicensed yet fashioning themselves as quasi-therapists, 

offering marital-harmony courses and workshops. Drawing from Doyle’s text (albeit sometimes without Doyle’s direct involvement or instruction), they teach women how to accept their husbands, to never criticize, and above all, to be aidel, the Yiddish word for “refined” or “demure.” But recently, the book’s proliferation in the community has stirred controversy, as some Orthodox women began to publicly criticize this sort of marriage education.

Traditional Jewish texts are complex regarding marriage. Though ancient Jewish law sees marriage as a sort of financial transaction, giving husbands control over their wife’s vows and ability to divorce, the idea of female surrender as a virtue is a foreign import. As intra-community struggles over Orthodox women’s rights have grown more heated in the past decade, this sort of literature has found a home within the community. Social media has created grassroots platforms for religious women to speak up about issues such as female erasure in public spaces, the right to divorce, access to female-provided emergency medicine, and sexual abuse. And in response, “there’s a real communal concern about what would happen if women would start to assert themselves,” Rivka Press Schwartz, an Orthodox educator, told me. “There is something scary for individual women about the power of their own anger, and it’s easier to say, ‘I choose to be surrendered in order to make my husband happy, to make me happy.’”

What’s more, The Surrendered Wife has attracted many Orthodox Jewish women who see it as a solution to what they perceive to be a marriage crisis. “I just wanted to share that I can honestly say that Laura Doyle book saved my marriage,” one woman wrote in a letter published on an Orthodox Jewish women’s lifestyle blog. Others see female submission as harkening back to a more traditional past. “May I venture to say that the reason why [Doyle] is so ‘controversial’ is that she is going back to what marriage used to look like?” wrote another woman in that blog’s comment section. “Her concepts are very much in line with the Torah perspective … Many rabbonim [rabbis] approve of her method.” (Doyle did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)

One of the most popular proponents of reframing Doyle’s work for Orthodox Jewish audiences is the American-born, Jerusalem-based author Sara Yoheved Rigler, who in 2013 created the “Kesher Wife Workshop”—a virtual seminar series that she has described as offering “basic ideas from The Surrendered Wifeamplified by the Torah.” Rigler has said that she has given this workshop to 2,000 Jewish women internationally. On a popular Orthodox podcast last year, she spoke about reframing dissatisfaction with one’s husband as heaven-sent. “This is from Hashem,” she tells her students, using the Hebrew word for God. “It’s not from my husband. I’m going to stop blaming my husband, criticizing my husband, because everything that happens to me is from Hashem.” That perspective, she suggested, “takes the sting out of it.”

But some women are calling into question the merits of these parallels drawn to Jewish doctrine. Leslie Ginsparg Klein, a scholar of Jewish women’s history and an Orthodox educator, told me that seminars like these are “a retelling of a completely non-Jewish ideology in Jewish terms in order to push girls and women into adopting a new social norm.” Another woman I spoke with, Rachel Tuchman, was engaged to be married when she first heard of the ideology, in 2003. “I couldn’t believe that it had infiltrated our community,” she told me. In her work as a licensed mental-health counselor in Cedarhurst, New York, where many of her clients are from varying Orthodox backgrounds, Tuchman told me she observes firsthand the consequences of subscribing to The Surrendered Wife’s ethos. “A lot of kallah [premarital] teachers are recommending the book, and I think that’s why it’s getting [attention] … Then people end up in therapy and … [I’m] like, ‘Where did you learn that this is how you should have a relationship?’” Doyle’s book may have gained nearly doctrinal status among many women, but, Tuchman said, it’s not based in Orthodox principles—“it’s really a cultural-societal influence.”

To some religious women, though, the question of authenticity is not as urgent as seeking the key to a happy marriage in a terrifyingly modern world. “There’s kind of a sense of family life being under attack, that the world out there is not welcoming to families, that the world out there is trying to get everyone divorced,” said Keshet Starr, the director of the Organization for the Resolution of Agunot, which is devoted to resolving contentious Jewish divorce cases. Some women, she said, are “looking for this perfect formula: Just follow these rules, and you’ll have a perfect, amazing marriage.” Fear of the outside world is prevalent—and, ironically, the solution to dealing with that fear comes from the outside, too.

According to historians, the American embrace of wifely submission was popularized in the 19th century with the cult of domesticity, or the cult of “true womanhood.” As men went to work outside the home and middle- and upper-class white women stayed back to manage the household, American religious literature and women’s magazines began to preach four virtues for the ideal wife: domesticity, purity, piety, and submission. Female labor outside the home was needed during the world wars, but afterward, the notion of wifely submission reentered the popular discourse, in an attempt to return to some myth of an idyllic America. “Part of that is reimagining the home,” Beth Allison Barr, a history professor at Baylor University and the author of The Making of Biblical Womanhood, told me over Zoom. “Part of it was ‘What do we do with all these displaced men who have just gone through this horrible thing?’ Part of it is ‘Let’s get them back in jobs; let’s build back their self-esteem.’ And part of that was reordering the household.”

The pendulum swung back and forth: The 1960s brought the sexual revolution, and then, Barr said, the early ’70s brought a desire for religious education. Some 1,600 women were enrolled in Southern Baptist divinity programs, many of them likely seeking ordination. “If all of those women came through, there was going to be significant displacement [of men]. And it is at that time that we see that crackdown,” Barr noted. In 1979, the Southern Baptist Convention experienced a conservative resurgence—and within a few years came conservative Christians’ widespread adoption of the verses in Ephesians 5: “Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church.” Barr characterizes the rise of the wifely-submission ideology, and the use of language like “biblical womanhood,” largely as a reaction to ascendant female religious power. “And then it just explodes onto the scene.”

Many religious Americans, both Christians and Jews, point to God’s punishment of Eve (“And he shall rule over you”) as proof of female submission being divinely commanded. That reading sees the text as prescriptive. In fact, the central description of the ideal wife, according to Genesis, is as a “helpmate opposite him.” It is this phrase in Hebrew, ezer k’negdo, that is most cited in the Orthodox Jewish community: in girls’ schools, at wedding ceremonies, in eulogies. The phrase suggests that a spouse ought to be a foil, a point of contrast, neither a mirror nor a servant. The righteous wife is also often referred to as akeret habayit, the bedrock of the home, in a complementarian sort of way; families sing an ode to the “woman of valor” at the Sabbath table weekly, praising the Jewish wife as both a domestic queen and a shrewd businesswoman.

But as today’s Orthodox women attain educations, pursue careers, become breadwinners, access the wider world through the internet, and even build independent platforms for themselves, that complementarianism has been challenged. Some community influencers have turned to conservative American Christian thought for its language on submission within a religious framework, in order to maintain a certain status quo around gender. This sort of anxiety isn’t new—the history of modern-day Orthodoxy is one long chain of reactions to outside influences, whether dominant religious cultures or secularism. Orthodox Judaism as a whole has grown more stringent, in what sociologists call a “slide to the right,” as a response to the pervasiveness of secular culture. And yet, as Doyle’s influence shows, this community’s boundaries are, as ever, permeable. “There’s no way to exist in American culture and not be in some way influenced by it,” Ginsparg Klein, the Jewish women’s-history scholar, said. “Throughout history, the Jewish community has been influenced by its surrounding culture and has likewise influenced its surrounding culture.”

Indeed, the Orthodox Jewish adoption of The Surrendered Wife is part of a bigger trend: As large swaths of the community have aligned themselves with the Christian right, they’ve built political alliances based on the idea of a shared Judeo-Christian worldview, on concerns about social issues regarding abortion and gender, and on a general sense of an existential threat posed by secular progressivism. Concurrently, a younger generation of religious women that is plugged in to online discourse is being exposed to alternative critical voices. The tension will only continue to grow. As this community struggles with assimilation and with its boundaries around authenticity, the outcome of that struggle will likely set the tone not just for the design of a home, but also for female visibility and leadership in the Orthodox sphere.

#The surrendered wife #Conservative religious communities and women’s rights

[radio-rebel-477]

Through the mouthpiece of Nabil Hayek, a 19-year-old Palestinian who is a recent victim of gun violence in one of Israel's Arab communities, this article seeks to highlight the growing intra-Arab violence within the country. This year has been one of the deadliest for Palestians, with about 180 deaths resulting from "clashes" with the Israeli military; however, in 2023 within Israel, at least 155 Arabs have been killed by members of their own community. The vast civil bloodshed has led people to call out the Israeli government for its lack of initiative in policing and protecting Arab peoples within its realm while placing its best efforts in aiding Jewish communities.

During my reading, I was most struck by a quote from a former mayor of Yafa, who states, "Jews pay taxes and get security. We (referring to Arabs) pay protection money to gangsters just for our own safety, and we don't feel very safe here at all. The governor's statement stems from observations about the challenges Arabs in Israel face when seeking out bank loans. When they are unable to receive them from legitimate institutions, they borrow from gangs and loan sharks, only to become victims of the gang’s weapons and threats when they come for collection. Then, out of fear of what has become of their neighbors, many pay gangs for local protection—a responsibility that the police should be carrying out—and the money given to the gangs then entrenches the community in the same problem of violence once more.

When examining this issue, I find myself agreeing that the burden of ensuring the relative safety of Arabs within Israel’s political boundaries does fall to the Israeli government. However, I wonder, with the bank loan and gang issues aside, to what extent Israel is responsible for the behavior within Arab communities. Would giving Arabs better access to loans solve the gang violence problem, or would the problem of violence transfer to another cause? Upon reflecting, and I in no way mean to otherize, I cannot imagine how dire the situation must be for the Arab community, which is already under pressure and in poor conditions from the Israeli government, to have to turn against each other in such a brutal way for survival. One would hope that people would find a way to stay together in the face of danger, but what does one do if the danger is from their own people?

#POLS477