#jewish appropriation

[hindahoney]

Let's talk about appropriation of Judaism, and hijacking Jewish history

"According to Halacha, Jews who abandon their Jewishness by choice become 'meshumadim' (An example being messianic "jews" of Jewish ancestry). Though Jewish by lineage, they cannot claim any privilege pertaining to Jewish status. To make it simple: if we don't claim you, you don't get to claim us."

Credit: insta user @rootsmetals

#jumblr #judaism #jewish #frumblr #antisemitism #jewish history #judaica #jewblr #jewish tag #jewish appropriation #messianic jews #christian supersessionism #bhi #christian replacement theology #mormon

[queencaramilflinda]

I don’t know if any non-Jews noticed this in the last d20 ep but Brennan has changed how he refers to Gulsum, the Mordred Manor real estate guy, from golem to construct! When Gulsum was first referenced in sophomore year he was called a flesh golem, but in junior year he has been called a flesh construct. In episode 12 of FHJY Brennan even made sure to correct himself when he misspoke and said golem instead of construct, which proved to me this was an active effort on his part.

The term golem comes from Jewish mysticism and has religious connotations so some Jewish people find it offensive when the term gets co-opted into fantasy settings without regard for the original source. It’s cool to see Brennan moving away from that and trying to find less loaded terms to use instead, like construct.

#personally I find phylactery to be a better example of Jewish terminology being appropriated but this is a start! #i don’t honestly care that much abt golem being used but I know it means a lot to Czech and mystic Jews so it’s nice to see the effort #fantasy high #cienna talks #fhjy #edited for clarity I know some people already reblogged but it’s fine

[friend-crow]

So this looks like a good read. Text: after half a year of work, my academic zine on the history of antisemitism & appropriation in western occult movements is done 🖤 a 22-page PDF full of citations, illustrated with historic & public domain images, pay-what-you-want (or FREE!): https://ezrarose.itch.io/fyma-a-lesser-key

twitter thread

Update (not that anybody is looking at the original post anymore): I have now read this and it is, indeed, very good.

Also, the author/artist is here on tumblr! Check out @sheydgarden

#cultural appropriation #zine #Ezra Rose #a lesser key to the appropriation of Jewish magic and mysticism

[is-the-thing-actually-jewish]

is Jewish Voice for Peace actually Jewish? I've heard a couple different things about that but no sources

@gryphistheantlerqueen also asked:

Whooo boy. So this has been sitting in the inbox for a few months, I wrote up a draft, and then it just sat... until this past week, when some new JVP BS hit the fan and gave me the kick to finish it.

Sooooo...

Verdict: Not Actually Jewish

(updated verdict after finding out about the “self-managed conversion” and “teacup mikvah”) Jewish, technically, and that "technically" is doing a lot of heavy lifting, and is actively debatable without access to a detailed breakdown of JVP’s actual membership rolls. 

In general summation, JVP is a far-left radical antizionist group that is headed by a few visibly antizionist Jews and whose membership rolls are either a strong minority or outright majority of non-Jews, based on variable statistics that they've released. Although they claim that the “majority of their members and staff are Jewish”, this seems to be both statistically unlikely and actively suspicious due to their noted tendency to instruct even non-Jewish members to speak #AsAJew on social media, and their instructions to do “self-managed conversions”.  However, due to their title, they are very popular with people who want a Jewish Stamp Of Approval for demonizing Israelis and Zionist Jews as a result. In effect, they are Jewish in the same way that people like Candace Owens and Hershel Walker are Black—as self-tokenizing minorities who throw the rest of their ethnic group under the bus in exchange for power and political access.

And despite the claims that they are “inspired by Jewish values and traditions” (as put on their website) and “oppose anti-Jewish hatred,” JVP routinely engages in antisemitic rhetoric, up to and including blood libel and antisemitic conspiracy theories, and acts as a shield against non-Jews who also engage in antisemitic rhetoric so long as the non-Jews in question remember to shout "For Palestine!" first. This is not an exaggeration. 

The primary example of their in-house antisemitic rhetoric is their "Deadly Exchange" program, where they explicitly and conspiratorially blame Israel as being responsible for American police brutality and militarization. However, for all of their fearmongering and blame-casting on the subject—as if American cops needed outside help in brutalizing minorities or gaining military-grade handmedowns from the Pentagon, both of which are explicit claims of the "Deadly Exchange" program—they have a hard time actually identifying specific deaths associated with the international training seminars they're holding up as responsible.

One of the the closest they've come to a specific allegation is claiming that "former St. Louis County police chief Timothy Fitch trained with the Israeli military three years before Michael Brown’s killing and the Ferguson uprising." (Note: this was in a video that appears to have since been made private.) But Darren Wilson worked for the Ferguson PD, not the St. Louis PD, and Fitch retired months before the killing. So he was in a completely different police department, and this is the closest JVP comes to pointing to specific deaths or acts of brutality that they blame on Israel. Everything else is literal fearmongering--up to and including the classic conspiratorial tropes of "secretive Jewish governmental influence".

JVP has also happily supported the words of white supremacists like Richard Spencer, taking his “You could say that I’m a white Zionist in the sense that I care about my people," statement at face value, using it as the basis for entire articles where they compared Zionism to White Supremacy as a deliberate misrepresentation of the ideology that is common on the extreme political Left (you can compare that treatment again with how Candace Owens treats the word "Woke" on the Right). Even when the Charlottesville "Unite the Right" march happened, JVP wasted no time in comparing Zionism with the very ideology fueling the people chanting "Jews Will Not Replace Us," saying that Zionism is "Jewish racial supremacy" and calling for a universal condemnation of the ideology as a form of White Supremacy... which was the exact sort of message that many of those same White Supremacists would have happily agreed with.  So JVP is essentially siding with literal White Supremacists,  even as they claim that "Jews are not the primary victims of White Supremacy."

JVP also engages in Holocaust revisionism, such as with this lovely quote from Cecilie Surasky, the deputy director of JVP, “I believe it is critical to situate the genocide of Jews in a broader context, and not as an exceptional, metaphysically unique event. Some 6 million Jews died, but another 5 million people were also targeted for annihilation.”

(another quote, from an article by Surasky, which compares Netanyahu to Hitler.)

This is just straight revisionism of the entire Holocaust and the unique fixation the Nazis had on the Jews. Literally, even when they were losing, they were diverting resources from the war just to kill more Jews. Quote Hitler himself, "Jews must be prevented from intruding themselves among all the other nations as elements of internal disruption, under the mask of honest world-citizens, and thus gaining power over these nations." The very basis of the Nazi ideology paints Jews as an existential threat to the human race's peace and security—a far cry from JVP's claim that the Jewish suffering in the Holocaust wasn't unique or exceptional.

Additionally, JVP ignores or re-envisions Mizrachi Jewish history. They call the very term Mizrachi “Zionist rhetoric,” and refer to Mizrachi “immigrants,” (“Deadly Exchange,” pg. 16-17), and claim “the Israeli government facilitated a mass immigration of Mizrahim” (“Our Approach to Zionism”) as though those weren’t the direct result of the mass expulsion of and violence against Jews in MENA countries. These weren’t immigrants, these were refugees. 

And as for the question of “Are they Jewish?”, well...

Statistically, they are not representative of the Jewish population as a whole, 90% of whom identify as some degree of Zionist in the sense of “Supporting Jewish self-determination.”  One does not need to be Jewish to join JVP, as they proudly state on their website. Their membership rolls are also extremely obfuscated, and the fact that they encourage their followers, whether Jewish or not, to post and speak “as Jews” on social media makes it even more difficult to figure out what percentage of their membership is actually Jewish.  Furthermore, they have instructions for their members to engage in “self-conversions” that are not acceptable to Jewish law or tradition, and misuse/appropriate other sacred Jewish traditions to the point that “blasphemy” is an accurate description, with their instructions on the mikvah (a sacred bath) being outright offensive.  

(note that one has to be completely nude and bare of any adornment or makeup to use the mikvah, which is a pure pool of collected rainwater to be immersed in, for context on the above... misuse.  Trying to claim this as being “in line with sacred Jewish tradition” is like trying to claim to be Catholic while also saying that the Pope is the Antichrist and that using beer and a doughnut for the Eucharist is acceptable. For more information on mikveh, see: The Jewish Virtual Library, Aish, myjewishlearning, or Chabad.

There's also no altar.

The irony of asking people not to appropriate while doing this is astonishing.)

It’s also telling that they straight up say they are “claiming” the practice as their own.

Furthermore, JVP has hosted panels on “antisemitism” in the past... headed by people who are not only not Jewish, but who have been credibly accused of antisemitism in the past.  

JVP has also endorsed The Mapping Project Boston, which was a Boycott, Divest, and Sanction (BDS) subsidiary, listing every “Zionist” organization in Boston, Mass. This included Jewish schools, elder homes, community centers, disability centers, and more; all of them painted with scary and misleading “links” to non-Jewish organizations to insinuate Jewish control of the state and city governments, invoking age-old antisemitic tropes of a conspiracy of Jews as they did so:

(first image is the Mapping Project, the second is a 1938 Nazi political cartoon)

The Mapping Project also, and this is my personal favorite, accused Harvard University of doing “racist science” for engaging in archeological and genetic studies of Jews and Jewish history.  Tellingly, BDS actually disavowed The Mapping Project (albeit for bad optics, not for the rank antisemitism they were promoting)... but JVP has not, even though the Mapping Project’s entry for the ADL reads as follows:

Masquerading as a “civil rights” group, the ADL is a counterinsurgency and espionage organization whose mission is to protect the mutual interests of the US and Israeli governments, and to eliminate solidarity among oppressed peoples, especially concerning Palestine. The ADL spies on and criminalizes activists (using its connections to governments, police, schools, and corporations) while undermining their work by pushing its own state-sanctioned, pro-“Israel” agenda. And while the ADL claims to represent Jews and to fight “antisemitism” on their behalf, the organization has supported anti-Jewish state violence and sanitized Nazis. The ADL cannot be reformed: it must be dismantled and whatever resources it has should go towards repairing the many harms it has done. (Emphasis added.)

Of course, JVP has also engaged in similar conspiracy-toned antisemitic dogwhistles, such as this fun bit from their first Deadly Exchange video:

So clearly (to me at least), they have no problems with The Mapping Project’s tone and presentation.  

And this isn’t even going into JVP’s routine promotion of blood libel, their egregious double standards, their approving of pogroms, their active support for Hamas terrorists and demonization of Hamas’ victims, their attempted revisionism of Jewish history, their abject rejection of Jewish culture, and their other actions that show not just bias, but outright hatred for 90% of the world’s Jews.  

As one commentator put it, JVP as an organization is very much like Autism Speaks is to Autistic people--a thinly disguised hate group that views the people they’re supposedly speaking for as the problem, and themselves as promoting the Solution.  To this moderator, they’re the equivalent of the Association of German National Jews, who were also known as the Jews for Hitler; they wanted to abandon Judaism and embrace Naziism... and they got sent to the gas chambers anyway.  

Mod Joseph

Sources:

www.adl.org/resources/backgrounder/jewish-voice-peace

www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Mikveh-Guide-for-Jewish-Voice-for-Peace-Outlined.pdf

(and also just... a general experience/exposure to them on social media, where even the most progressive actions taken by Israel, such as the recent ruling regarding queer Palestinians being able to claim sanctuary in Israel, being labeled as “pinkwashing”)

#jumblr #jvp #not actually Jewish #appropriation #avoid

[backgroundshipper]

And let’s not forget the hypocrisy of non Jews.

All year it’s “Stop mentioning the Holocaust,it happened along time ago”, “We should finish what Hitler started”, “Israel needs to go away”, and rewriting Jewish history to fit their political views,conveniently ignoring the fact that the Allies recruited Nazi scientists after World War Two, and there are now Rabbi Halloween costumes come out around Halloween.

But when Chanukah comes around,it’s “We love the Jewish people! We love Chanukah even though we don’t know the historical significance, and meaning behind the holiday.We just like it because it’s so pretty!”

Bunch of hypocrites.

#jewish #jewblr #judaism #culture appropriation

[smoov-criminal]

i wanna see more solidarity between black people and jewish people. there are a concerning amount of similarities in our history and oppression, and with the way things are going we need to learn from each other and protect each other more than ever (not to mention black jews who are rarely acknowledged)

#mj.txt #judaism #black power #poc solidarity #<- i know not all jewish ppl are poc but im not sure what other tag would be appropriate

[thejewitches]

wait til the cottagecore girlies find out that Judaism has a holiday celebrating love where we dress up in white dresses and go dance in the vineyards and fields under the full moon

#jumblr #jewish #jewitchery #jewitches #jewitch #tu b'av #jewish holidays #a joking post is not an invitation for appropriation! #judaism #tubav

[will-o-the-witch]

The more I study and reflect, the more I see Lilith as a demon of sexual violation than of sexual freedom.

It's easy to see her as some pro-choice feminist liberator if we only pay attention to that one midrash of an (not "the") origin story, but nearly everything else written about her in other midrashim speaks to the opposite. It isn't pro-choice when she kills a baby someone wanted to have and it isn't sexual liberation when the other person did not consent.

To me, Lilith is more about perversion, malice, and violating things a person wants to keep sacred. It's very strange to me when people laud her for unashamedly expressing her sexuality when the way she's doing that is rape.

I'm all for people still finding ways to reclaim and reinterpret her from a feminist perspective in the modern day because the seeds for it are there, but it's crucial we remain aware of this aspect and discuss it, rather than pretending like it wasn't ever there.

#lilith #cultural appropriation #jewish #jewitch

[gay-jewish-bucky]

Golems are Jewish, you don't get to take Jewish folklore figures out of the context of Jewish oppression, prosecution and trauma and remove all traces of Jewish history and the pain they came out of because you think they're "cool" or "aesthetic".

#jumblr #jewish #judaism #golem #golems #the golem of prague #cultural appropriation

[anonymousdandelion]

do you ever learn something about appropriative xtian interpretations of jewish texts that leaves you feeling more theologically nauseated than you have ever felt in your entire life

#dandelion says #jumblr #appropriation #jewish dandelion #I thought I was hardened to such things #I was wrong #believe whatever you want but keep your hands off the shema

[judaicsheyd]

Hello, I'm not trying to ask this in bad faith but how is working with Lilith antisemitic?

I'm just curious and in no way trying to offend. (Also I don't work with her.)

Hey there! I got very very close to answering this privately because the more Lilith content I post the more antisemitism I seem to face, and I just don't have the energy to deal with that ATM, but I'll post it publicly in the name of education. I'm also on mobile so apologies for formatting/grammatical errors.

First and foremost, Judaism is 100% closed. This means that everything within Judaism, whether or not it's "good" or even worshipped, is still closed. If countless people from a closed culture tell you not to touch something because it is ours, one should just listen to that already. That is the most important part of this entire argument.

Lilith was first reclaimed and seen as a positive feminist figure by Jewish feminists, and was a symbol against the intersection between antisemitism and misogyny, as well as the misogyny Jewish women may face within their own communities. Even this symbolic version of her has been stolen and stripped of her Jewishness, which is antisemitism in action.

Adding on to points #1 and #2, taking Lilith and stripping her completely of her Jewishness is antisemitism. It has happened countless times to Jewish figures, ideas, and beliefs, it is antisemitism. By interacting with her as a non-Jew, you are taking her out of her Jewish context, and stripping her of her identity.

The narrative of Lilith being the first wife of Adam, rebelling against Gd, and becoming a hot sexy demon goddess is not her true story. This story originates within a satirical work (the Alphabet of Ben Sirach) which also talks quite literally about pissing and farting and a bunch of other crude stuff because it was a work made to be stupid. In actual Jewish lore, Lilith was never a human, period. The idea that this story is the true Jewish idea just continues to erase actual Jewish narratives and the reality of her story.

I have seen countless Lilith appropriators say that, yes, the Kabbalah is closed and so is every other part of Judaism, but just not Lilith. This statement already doesn't make sense, but also one cannot interact with Lilith in a vacuum. One cannot interact with Lilith outside of Judaism. A heart cannot beat outside of the body it belongs to. You cannot interact with Lilith without inherently interacting with all these other aspects of Judaism.

I'm a bit busy at the moment, so this was slightly rushed, but I believe I have covered every point. If I think of others later, check the replies and I will tag you in them. I hope this helps, and thank you for the respectful inquiry!

Ignore the tags, B"H.

#judaism #jewish #jumblr #antisemitism #demonolatry #demonology #demons #torah #jewish mysticism #appropriation #yeshivawithcarver #demonologywithcarver #carverop #askcarver #לילית

[cemeterything]

Okay so. Not mad, just trying to politely inform. "Old testament g-d" is an anti-semitic dogwhistle. Saying the "old testament g-d" is angry and unforgiving is a further dogwhistle. Thank you for your time

ah, i had no idea, but i did some googling after seeing this ask and i'm now aware that it can be used as an antisemitic dogwhistle, so i'll make sure to be more careful with my words the next time i talk or joke about religion. i hope that the original context of my post being about christian saints (the veneration of which judaism doesn't practice) makes it clear that i wasn't trying to criticize the jewish faith or jewish people even jokingly, as i'm aware of how harmful that can be and that since i'm not jewish it's not appropriate for me to do so, but i also realize that antisemites won't bother to make that distinction, so i understand and apologize if anyone was hurt or concerned nonetheless. thank you for informing me.

#antisemitism #<- for the discussion of it #in my research i did see people debating the appropriateness of it but since im 1. not jewish and 2. not posting on a forum #where this kind of thing can be discussed and misconceptions identified and explained #im gonna go ahead and say oops my bad sorry

[is-the-thing-actually-jewish]

Maybe it’s a softball question, but I’d sure love to read an answer to “are dybbuk boxes actually Jewish?”. I know those things are still being sold on places like Etsy and eBay to this day.

Rating: Not Jewish

No, Dybbuk boxes are not real, they are misappropriations of Jewish spirituality and superstition. Dybbukim are a real concept in Judaism, they're a type of demon that clings to things, particularly people. "Dybbuk" comes from the Hebrew word of "Debek", which means "cling to".

However, Dybbuk boxes specifically are not a Jewish thing. They all originate from a hoax concocted in 2003 by Kevin Mannis, who exploited the Holocaust to sell his lie. His success has led to more people trying to cash in on his success on eBay and the like.

Here is an in-depth explanation of the situation by Jewitches:

-Mod Eitan

#not actually jewish #appropriation #goyishe inventions #jumblr #general category topic #dybbuk boxes

[magnetothemagnificent]

The internal struggle between not really like Al Ewing or most of the new X Men comics but also really liking most of the newest issue of Resurrection of Magneto...........I guess a broken clock is right twice a day lol

I will say I am so tired of recent comics just......not naming the Holocaust or Jews by name and just having Magneto say "my people".......it's way too vague. Magneto is a Jew, what happened to him is because he is Jewish. He was perscuted in the Holocaust because he is Jewish. His family was killed because they were Jews. And Resurrection of Magneto is very guilty of this erasure.

#listen I guess if you appropriate judaism for long enough you end up with actual jewish symbolism lmfao #magneto posting #resurrection of magneto #marvel comics #marvel #magneto #max eisenhardt #erik lehnsherr

[insane-control-room]

actually, no. antizionism is antisemitism. zionism, by definition, is believing in the jewish people's right to live in their home land.

you do not have to be an antizionist to be against israel's government, just like any citizen of any country can be against something their government is doing and not hate the country they live in. shocker, isnt it?

you do have to be an antisemite to claim that we have no ties to the land or our historic holy sites (as the UN does. look it up. unfortunately bbc was the only non-jewish news site i could find that even spoke about the erasure of our history).

tell me, in what way is antizionism not antisemitism? because i havent seen anything that separates the two - in fact, the more i see that thrown around, the more i see the inherent antisemitism.

i hope that all of you well meaning individuals (cough, goyim) will reblog this and truly reflect on what you are marching for. ask questions. study our history. maybe learn about how israel is the only democratic state in the region (ever since tunisia's downgrade to a hybrid regime), and ask yourself and others why. ask, in what way is your antizionism not antisemetic?

what are you marching for?

#antisemitism #jewish history #jewish erasure #appropriation #israel #i hope people reblog this #erasure #jews don't count #what are you marching for

[spacelazarwolf]

non-usamerican roman catholic here 😶‍🌫️ we know the prince of egypt is a jewish story and we do respect that! not in a cringey fetish way, like, we do acknowledge and respect you're the chosen peeps, but it is part of our scriptures and our liturgy as well. We do celebrate and recount the exodus during the catholic liturgy again and again (especially on the night of good saturday), like we sing the song of the sea in its entirety and on the same night we pray for the safety of all the jews of the world, cos we acknowledge that you of all people were the chosen ones. The catholic bible is a whole afaik, and the book of exodus holds just as much value as any other book.

All this to say, at least from my perspective, i don't feel like i'm 'appropriating' the prince of egypt when i celebrate it, we know it's about the jewish people, but at the same time it is an important part of our religion as well! 💙

do u ppl know how to read i never said u can’t enjoy the movie i said u shouldn’t erase the fact it’s a specifically jewish story.

#ask avishai #also maybe it’s time to talk abt how christian scriptures are an appropriation of jewish texts but maybe y’all aren’t ready for that