carnival

I’ll take this one since I’m the blog’s resident Jew.  Oy vey, where do I start…

SJ community loves to police Jewish identity and silence actual Jews when they talk about their own identities.  This usually happens in context of either “Are Jews White?” or “Jewishness is just a religion” conversations.  In reality, Jews are an ethnoreligious group that ethnically originated in the middle east, and while some ethnic Jews have light skin, it’s actually due to centuries of forced assimilation in European and Slavic countries through rape, which is a big reason why Jewishness is matrilineal.  Furthermore, there exist Jews who do not look white at all.  There are black, brown, and asian Jews who are all ethnically Jewish, and these conversations erase them.

“Jewish privilege”.  Fact: It’s not a thing.  It’s actually a very common anti-semitic trope that says that Jews run everything so they are not oppressed.  Jews are oppressed, and face anti-semitic violence.

“Anti-semitism is not just about Jews, there are other semitic people.” While yea, there are other semitic people, the term “anti-semitism” was created by Germans in the 19th century to refer specifically to the hatred of Jews because it sounded more scientific.

Blaming anti-semitic violence in Europe on the actions of Israel.  I see this literally every single day on this site, and it’s very upsetting.  Jews that live in the diaspora are not responsible for Israel’s actions, and especially should not be suffering at the hands of white people in Europe under the guise of anti-zionism.  

Finally, and this is a big pet peeve of mine.  The only people I ever see reblogging posts about anti-semitism are other Jews.  Even a lot of my non-Jewish followers will reblog posts about racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. but ignore posts about anti-semitism, and that as a Jew makes me feel unsafe. 

That’s enough for now.  If you’re interested in learning more about Jewish identity and anti-semitism, you are welcome to check out my personal blog: yochevedke.  I discuss that stuff a lot.  

Again, The only people I ever see reblogging posts about anti-Semitism are other Jews, while many blogs I follow reblog every post under the sun relating to racism, sexism, and homophobia. This issue has on occasion made me feel pretty isolated, because I have seen a lot of people reblogging posts related to recents events in Gaza that reflected extremely anti-Israel points of view. There’s nothing wrong with that, people have every right to hold those opinions, and I even share some of them. However, as the original poster said, a lot of recent anti-Semitic violence in Europe stems from the the willingness of anti-Israel Europeans to hold Jews in the Diaspora responsible for the actions of the state of Israel. This is not ok. This is anti-Semitism, and this is part of what American Jews are seeing as anti-Semitic in what tumblr users say and do.

The average American Jew on tumblr doesn’t think “I support what Israel is doing in Gaza, and the horrible things people say about Israel are anti-Semitic attacks”.