as a jewish person interested in jewish history it is honestly such a sad experience trudging around a bookshop or a local library looking for books about jews and there's a massive shelf of holocaust horror stories next to an even bigger shelf of books wanking over hitler's genius or how britain was so amazing to triumph over the nazis... and then there's just another big shelf about israel and palestine, which is a mix of historical revisionism and pop politics and picking up a random title is gonna be a sort of bingo wheel of lowkey calling for the genocide of one group or other, whether it be Jews or Muslims or Arabs or Druz or the people of (insert nation / state here)
not for nothing but the jewish religion is thousands of years old, and all the prominent books on display are about the slaughter of jews, the desire to slaughter jews, the slaughter of other people in the name of jews, or the desire to slaughter other people in the name of jews
and it's like... okay. fine. i guess.
i know that there are rec lists and i do have some books about bundism on my to-read pile, and i think once i go through my current stack i am gonna maybe make a list of specific jewish history titles and ask if my local library will order them in, or just ask around the synagogue to see if anyone already has specific titles i want
but i wish i could fucking impress upon people sometimes that like. this is also antisemitism. part of the reason a lot of people are so excited about the pitt as a jewish show is bc it's so unapologetically jewish whilst being a "mainstream" show
the jewishness of the MC isn't either played for comedy or dismissed out of hand, his jewishness is key to his character beyond an offhand comment about hanukkah instead of christmas or "but i wasn't religious growing up", and his jewishness feels very holistic, both in robby's character and in the philosophy of the show as a whole
whereas i am. so used to jewish narratives being dismissed or jokes in the course of other things, or just being horribly tragic - and as a specific fan of historical narratives, we're often conspicuously absent, largely bc white christians are scared of presenting jews and muslims, arabs, romany and sinti people, etc, so even though all these people Would Be Present in these societies, esp pre-Shoah, we are all invisible
fuck me, kingdom come: deliverance had a little wiki entry about jews and judaism and then had NO JEWS. i know that KCD II has a cute gay jewish guy but KCD really set up a lot of interesting stuff w its historical notes and then did not follow through
i have been writing a lot of jewish characters recently and feeling almost nervous about it bc i worry about if i'm alienating non-jewish readers or painting a target on my back for harassment both from antisemites or like, centrist and right-wing jews who will be pissed about one aspect of my politics or other as a diasporist
but at the same time there is just... so little.
particularly as someone who typically writes a lot of period stuff and who sure, does write the 1920s through to the 1970s, but is largely far more interested in much older periods, it's always frustrating feeling like there's no reflection of that desire to create and seek out these narratives in what's possible to watch and read and engage with
theartofmadeline
annaxmalina
titsay
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dededos
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janainaart
