Sometimes Jewish trauma is weaponized against Jews. Other times it's raised as a prop for "social justice." Where is the empathy for actual Jewish persons?
Love this. I am a non-Jewish ally with not that many friends who are on our side. It's lonely. I'm glad we have each other in an online community. I feel closer to my Substack subscribers than to my in person friends a lot of the time, especially when we are mourning our dead and afraid for our hostages and they are busy having freakish meltdowns about what didn't even look to me to be Nazi salutes. Glad to count you in my new friends column. Love, an ally from Philly
Thank you for your support! It is greatly appreciated. I agree, the salutes are not worth melting down over, but I do believe members of the alt right will raise their arms before too long, encouraged by Musk. It's all meant to be "innocent" but I think they know what they do.
Just before I started reading this, I was asking myself (again) how those with differing opinions, even on major issues, can make friends and allies across the typical divisions - in other words, just what you're trying to do. I'm a formerly lifelong left-leaner myself, was a young punk, consider myself gay++, Jewish dad and gentile (Aryan, no less - grew up gentile under Hitler) mother, used to be typically (not rabidly) leftist on Israel, learned I was wrong, became aware (maybe ... 10 years ago?) how insane and powerful today's anti-Jewish obsession is. Now, like you, I don't fit (not that I was ever a joiner anyway, but ... y'know). My old artsy lefty friends have now basically joined the Islamo-Nazi-Commie Party, and they're partying hard. Our true connections can only be as you described, I guess: one to one, despite whatever other distances.
I once visited the German Resistance Memorial Center in Berlin. There are rooms honouring resistance by all kinds of groups, some vehemently opposed in every other respect: communists and business leaders, pacifists and army officers, artists, intellectuals, Jews, Catholics, Protestants, Roma, Jehovah’s Witnesses, conservatives, liberals, and the White Rose group, of course. Despite their differences, they recognized the common enemy. That's harder today, because often, the enemy is us – and "us" meaning: any collective identity. The clearest indicator now is simply: support of Jews and Israel. They want "intersectional"? Well, *that's* intersectionality in action.
I liked this post . . . a lot. What a strange course of events we have witnessed. I hope to live long enough to see what novelists make of the woke/cancel culture after it passes from us. Thanks for calling the uber Woke folks what they are: bullies. Who knew that virtue-signalling could become so noxious.
I am no Trump supporter but I can't help cheering when I hear about the guy who was arrested for "stating his opinion." The one who's been harassing Jews on Columbia's campus and fomenting pro-Hamas attitudes. 1) He is no longer a student and should not be allowed on campus in this capacity. 2) He should be charged with a crime - Hamas is a declared terrorist group and it should be illegal to promote their ideologies. 3) I love that Columbia is getting cut off from $400 Mn of government money. Of course they probably have tons of money from Qatar. 4) Btw, that should be illegal. A new law should require every school that has received funds from Qatar to relinquish those funds and they should be used for research and to pay off student loans. (If I were Queen).
My husband and I are non-Jewish allies, and the world's completely inadequate response to the slaughter of the Bibas family is something—another thing—that we cannot comprehend. I can only think that it is primarily a result of the ignorance of most of the American/Western population, but ignorance is no excuse. October 7 and the events since then have broken my heart and crushed my soul. I wonder if there is any hope for civilization.
Important essay! A few comments: 1) Funny how in one arena a strict binary code is upheld (oppressor / oppressed), while in the arena of gender it's all about non-binary identities. I suggest we initiate a non-binary view of colonialism / slavery / genocide. For example let's advertise the little known fact that some indigenous peoples had slaves from other tribes. 2) Funny how cultural appropriation is verboten, UNLESS you're white and wear a keffiyeh. The hypocrisy is laughable. (Should the Arab who sold me mine in Old Jerusalem, 1981, be cancelled?) 3) And finally, regarding ". . . the slavery and genocide that much of the West was founded upon," let's note that the West was ALSO founded on the rule of law, equality before that law, personal liberty, freedom of speech, and a non-authoritarian perspective, to name a few ideals.
Was it perfect? No. Are we perfect today? No, but improving all the time. Do they prefer sharia law?
I'm with you. I have no patience for the new rules and in fact, I refuse to feel guilty about being white or Jewish. I am proud of being Jewish and I am proud of being a westerner who believes in actual social justice and Enlightenment values. Am Yisroel chai!
Wow. Well said, especially "The money and power and blood libel tropes, as well as whatever weird shadow archetype projections they believe, are exactly the reason why absolutely no amount of Jewish suffering deserves empathy. No amount of educating the populace will make them hate us less. When you show Jews starved, beaten, tortured, mutilated, that just sets a norm. This is how Jews should be, unless they're actually dead, but if they're going to be dead, it's nice to starve, rape, torture, and mutilate them first." Just got done reading Dara Horn's "Everyone Loves Dead Jews." In the very first chapter she talks about Ann Frank and how people especially love dead Jews if they're inspiring . . . and why wouldn't they? Many of them worship a dead Jew. I thought that was brilliant.
"Non-binary" is the most purely binary trope ever devised, because it can be used to completely divide the population into those who are willing to believe there's such a thing and those who aren't, those who consider themselves quite literally a whole new type of human being and those who think nothing has changed about our biological species-being. It's not just a self-description, like "androgynous", or a kind of neutrality, it's a statement of superiority: "Oh, I've *transcended* the binary!" And since it takes absolutely NOTHING to become "non-binary", and society contorts itself into self-harm to accommodate "Them" (how more obviously invasion-of-the-mind-snatchers could They be?), it costs nothing while giving you the chance to lord it over other people. It's political sabotage by civil warmongers. "Queer" functions more or less the same way, because straight people can now be "queer" - since it became a term of social power and not a derogatory slur threatening personal violence. Then they project their own addiction to black-and-white thinking onto their challengers, who are the "oppressors" in what my friend Ryan Bellerose calls their "causeplay". Today's trans extremism, "anti-racist" extremism, and anti-Jewish extremism are all tactics in an overall strategy.
Women are oppressed under far-left authoritarianism, and worse, totalitarianism. It is the far left who is endangering women by allowing men into private women's spaces and sports. The complaints and fears of real women are dismissed as "transphobic". They are just supposed to shut up and accept it. The physical danger to real women ignored. Women in prisons are being raped by men pretending to be women placed in women's prisons. Where are the left-wing feminists regarding these dangers to women? Worse than silence, they are actively complicit in placing women in danger and in erasing womanhood while claiming to championing women's rights. They can't even see the hypocrisy and irony of it all.
I would advise you not to engage with or have anything to do with these crazy leftists. They are not your friends and allies. They hate Jews and hate women. They are ideological marxists. Liberal Jews need to stop wasting their time and effort trying to reason with radical, ideologically driven crackpots.
"I refuse to participate in this nonsense; in fact, this type of fracturing of marginalized persons — and all women are subject to oppression under Far-Right authoritarianism — only adds strength to our collective oppression".
Agreed. I think that if I wake up one day and feel very committed to working out and eating healthy, everyone should call me Jackson and remember my pronoun is thor; and if I wake up another day and feel very committed to study and research, everyone should call me Rosalie and only use my pronoun ox; and if I wake up yet another day and feel absolutely committed to expressing myself by playing the piano, tap dancing and writing poetry, everyone must call me Gerri and only only use my pronoun quat. And remember, that sometimes ox (Rosalie) will turn into quat (Gerri) in the middle of the day -- or else thor (Jackson) gets so tired that thor just falls into a deep dreamy sleep. And then, I'm Jehosephat.
I have actually had two people who didn't know each other ask me how it is that Jews have all the money and all the power in the world. One was black and uneducated and one was white with a college degree.
Two other people, dear old friends, have told me either that Jews are responsible for all the evil on the face of the earth or that Israel is. I simply wish they had told me sooner so I didn't have to waste my time with them. Nothing worse than polite antisemitism, snakes in the grass.
You can understand how, when the educated and the uneducated believe conspiratorial tropes that go back not just to the Middle Ages but actually to the era of Caligula and the ancient Egyptians, that hatred of Jews is foundational to western culture. Anything going wrong, anything scary like a plague, anything shameful in their country, in their culture, they can blame it on us, and they do, just look at Jewish history, it has happened pretty much every 50 years for 2500 years. They should be grateful that they can offload their sins onto us but it doesn't work out that way.
The money and power and blood libel tropes, as well as whatever weird shadow archetype projections they believe, are exactly the reason why absolutely no amount of Jewish suffering deserves empathy. No amount of educating the populace will make them hate us less. When you show Jews starved, beaten, tortured, mutilated, that just sets a norm. This is how Jews should be, unless they're actually dead, but if they're going to be dead, it's nice to starve, rape, torture, and mutilate them first.
There are in this world some righteous gentiles, bless them. A few. So few you can assume you won't meet any in your lifetime, and if you do, treasure them as something holy.
Wow. Well said, especially "The money and power and blood libel tropes, as well as whatever weird shadow archetype projections they believe, are exactly the reason why absolutely no amount of Jewish suffering deserves empathy. No amount of educating the populace will make them hate us less. When you show Jews starved, beaten, tortured, mutilated, that just sets a norm. This is how Jews should be, unless they're actually dead, but if they're going to be dead, it's nice to starve, rape, torture, and mutilate them first." Just got done reading Dara Horn's "Everyone Loves Dead Jews." In the very first chapter she talks about Ann Frank and how people especially love dead Jews if they're inspiring . . . and it makes sense, since many of them worship a dead Jew. I thought that was brilliant.
Love this. I am a non-Jewish ally with not that many friends who are on our side. It's lonely. I'm glad we have each other in an online community. I feel closer to my Substack subscribers than to my in person friends a lot of the time, especially when we are mourning our dead and afraid for our hostages and they are busy having freakish meltdowns about what didn't even look to me to be Nazi salutes. Glad to count you in my new friends column. Love, an ally from Philly
Thank you for your support! It is greatly appreciated. I agree, the salutes are not worth melting down over, but I do believe members of the alt right will raise their arms before too long, encouraged by Musk. It's all meant to be "innocent" but I think they know what they do.
Just before I started reading this, I was asking myself (again) how those with differing opinions, even on major issues, can make friends and allies across the typical divisions - in other words, just what you're trying to do. I'm a formerly lifelong left-leaner myself, was a young punk, consider myself gay++, Jewish dad and gentile (Aryan, no less - grew up gentile under Hitler) mother, used to be typically (not rabidly) leftist on Israel, learned I was wrong, became aware (maybe ... 10 years ago?) how insane and powerful today's anti-Jewish obsession is. Now, like you, I don't fit (not that I was ever a joiner anyway, but ... y'know). My old artsy lefty friends have now basically joined the Islamo-Nazi-Commie Party, and they're partying hard. Our true connections can only be as you described, I guess: one to one, despite whatever other distances.
I once visited the German Resistance Memorial Center in Berlin. There are rooms honouring resistance by all kinds of groups, some vehemently opposed in every other respect: communists and business leaders, pacifists and army officers, artists, intellectuals, Jews, Catholics, Protestants, Roma, Jehovah’s Witnesses, conservatives, liberals, and the White Rose group, of course. Despite their differences, they recognized the common enemy. That's harder today, because often, the enemy is us – and "us" meaning: any collective identity. The clearest indicator now is simply: support of Jews and Israel. They want "intersectional"? Well, *that's* intersectionality in action.
Thank you for your work.
"... the Islamo-Nazi-Commie Party, and they're partying hard". Hilarious; I love it !!!!
I liked this post . . . a lot. What a strange course of events we have witnessed. I hope to live long enough to see what novelists make of the woke/cancel culture after it passes from us. Thanks for calling the uber Woke folks what they are: bullies. Who knew that virtue-signalling could become so noxious.
I am no Trump supporter but I can't help cheering when I hear about the guy who was arrested for "stating his opinion." The one who's been harassing Jews on Columbia's campus and fomenting pro-Hamas attitudes. 1) He is no longer a student and should not be allowed on campus in this capacity. 2) He should be charged with a crime - Hamas is a declared terrorist group and it should be illegal to promote their ideologies. 3) I love that Columbia is getting cut off from $400 Mn of government money. Of course they probably have tons of money from Qatar. 4) Btw, that should be illegal. A new law should require every school that has received funds from Qatar to relinquish those funds and they should be used for research and to pay off student loans. (If I were Queen).
My husband and I are non-Jewish allies, and the world's completely inadequate response to the slaughter of the Bibas family is something—another thing—that we cannot comprehend. I can only think that it is primarily a result of the ignorance of most of the American/Western population, but ignorance is no excuse. October 7 and the events since then have broken my heart and crushed my soul. I wonder if there is any hope for civilization.
I recommend staying away from Facebook.
Important essay! A few comments: 1) Funny how in one arena a strict binary code is upheld (oppressor / oppressed), while in the arena of gender it's all about non-binary identities. I suggest we initiate a non-binary view of colonialism / slavery / genocide. For example let's advertise the little known fact that some indigenous peoples had slaves from other tribes. 2) Funny how cultural appropriation is verboten, UNLESS you're white and wear a keffiyeh. The hypocrisy is laughable. (Should the Arab who sold me mine in Old Jerusalem, 1981, be cancelled?) 3) And finally, regarding ". . . the slavery and genocide that much of the West was founded upon," let's note that the West was ALSO founded on the rule of law, equality before that law, personal liberty, freedom of speech, and a non-authoritarian perspective, to name a few ideals.
Was it perfect? No. Are we perfect today? No, but improving all the time. Do they prefer sharia law?
I'm with you. I have no patience for the new rules and in fact, I refuse to feel guilty about being white or Jewish. I am proud of being Jewish and I am proud of being a westerner who believes in actual social justice and Enlightenment values. Am Yisroel chai!
Wow. Well said, especially "The money and power and blood libel tropes, as well as whatever weird shadow archetype projections they believe, are exactly the reason why absolutely no amount of Jewish suffering deserves empathy. No amount of educating the populace will make them hate us less. When you show Jews starved, beaten, tortured, mutilated, that just sets a norm. This is how Jews should be, unless they're actually dead, but if they're going to be dead, it's nice to starve, rape, torture, and mutilate them first." Just got done reading Dara Horn's "Everyone Loves Dead Jews." In the very first chapter she talks about Ann Frank and how people especially love dead Jews if they're inspiring . . . and why wouldn't they? Many of them worship a dead Jew. I thought that was brilliant.
"Non-binary" is the most purely binary trope ever devised, because it can be used to completely divide the population into those who are willing to believe there's such a thing and those who aren't, those who consider themselves quite literally a whole new type of human being and those who think nothing has changed about our biological species-being. It's not just a self-description, like "androgynous", or a kind of neutrality, it's a statement of superiority: "Oh, I've *transcended* the binary!" And since it takes absolutely NOTHING to become "non-binary", and society contorts itself into self-harm to accommodate "Them" (how more obviously invasion-of-the-mind-snatchers could They be?), it costs nothing while giving you the chance to lord it over other people. It's political sabotage by civil warmongers. "Queer" functions more or less the same way, because straight people can now be "queer" - since it became a term of social power and not a derogatory slur threatening personal violence. Then they project their own addiction to black-and-white thinking onto their challengers, who are the "oppressors" in what my friend Ryan Bellerose calls their "causeplay". Today's trans extremism, "anti-racist" extremism, and anti-Jewish extremism are all tactics in an overall strategy.
Thanks for this very informative and elucidating explanation! It's all so ludicrous. I refuse to play.
Women are oppressed under far-left authoritarianism, and worse, totalitarianism. It is the far left who is endangering women by allowing men into private women's spaces and sports. The complaints and fears of real women are dismissed as "transphobic". They are just supposed to shut up and accept it. The physical danger to real women ignored. Women in prisons are being raped by men pretending to be women placed in women's prisons. Where are the left-wing feminists regarding these dangers to women? Worse than silence, they are actively complicit in placing women in danger and in erasing womanhood while claiming to championing women's rights. They can't even see the hypocrisy and irony of it all.
I would advise you not to engage with or have anything to do with these crazy leftists. They are not your friends and allies. They hate Jews and hate women. They are ideological marxists. Liberal Jews need to stop wasting their time and effort trying to reason with radical, ideologically driven crackpots.
...................................................................................................................................................................................................
"I refuse to participate in this nonsense; in fact, this type of fracturing of marginalized persons — and all women are subject to oppression under Far-Right authoritarianism — only adds strength to our collective oppression".
Agreed. I think that if I wake up one day and feel very committed to working out and eating healthy, everyone should call me Jackson and remember my pronoun is thor; and if I wake up another day and feel very committed to study and research, everyone should call me Rosalie and only use my pronoun ox; and if I wake up yet another day and feel absolutely committed to expressing myself by playing the piano, tap dancing and writing poetry, everyone must call me Gerri and only only use my pronoun quat. And remember, that sometimes ox (Rosalie) will turn into quat (Gerri) in the middle of the day -- or else thor (Jackson) gets so tired that thor just falls into a deep dreamy sleep. And then, I'm Jehosephat.
I have actually had two people who didn't know each other ask me how it is that Jews have all the money and all the power in the world. One was black and uneducated and one was white with a college degree.
Two other people, dear old friends, have told me either that Jews are responsible for all the evil on the face of the earth or that Israel is. I simply wish they had told me sooner so I didn't have to waste my time with them. Nothing worse than polite antisemitism, snakes in the grass.
You can understand how, when the educated and the uneducated believe conspiratorial tropes that go back not just to the Middle Ages but actually to the era of Caligula and the ancient Egyptians, that hatred of Jews is foundational to western culture. Anything going wrong, anything scary like a plague, anything shameful in their country, in their culture, they can blame it on us, and they do, just look at Jewish history, it has happened pretty much every 50 years for 2500 years. They should be grateful that they can offload their sins onto us but it doesn't work out that way.
The money and power and blood libel tropes, as well as whatever weird shadow archetype projections they believe, are exactly the reason why absolutely no amount of Jewish suffering deserves empathy. No amount of educating the populace will make them hate us less. When you show Jews starved, beaten, tortured, mutilated, that just sets a norm. This is how Jews should be, unless they're actually dead, but if they're going to be dead, it's nice to starve, rape, torture, and mutilate them first.
There are in this world some righteous gentiles, bless them. A few. So few you can assume you won't meet any in your lifetime, and if you do, treasure them as something holy.
But don't expect empathy from the rest.
Wow. Well said, especially "The money and power and blood libel tropes, as well as whatever weird shadow archetype projections they believe, are exactly the reason why absolutely no amount of Jewish suffering deserves empathy. No amount of educating the populace will make them hate us less. When you show Jews starved, beaten, tortured, mutilated, that just sets a norm. This is how Jews should be, unless they're actually dead, but if they're going to be dead, it's nice to starve, rape, torture, and mutilate them first." Just got done reading Dara Horn's "Everyone Loves Dead Jews." In the very first chapter she talks about Ann Frank and how people especially love dead Jews if they're inspiring . . . and it makes sense, since many of them worship a dead Jew. I thought that was brilliant.
Thank God I live in Israel
Thank you, Jen. What a wonderful essay ♡