A dragon who’s converting to Judaism

I'm surprised that 15.1% of people said 2%. That's like 160 million people. Does anyone really think there's that many Jews left? Maybe if +90% of them weren't murdered in pogroms & genocides we might have had that many Jews. We aren't just talking the Shoah. The Bar Kohkba Rebellion in the Roman Era & the Rhineland Massacres in Medieval times were both individually worse for Jewish population than the Shoah (which itself wiped out half of all Jewish people). Than there's all the other pogroms in between these three that mean the Jewish population never had chances to really recover.

2% represents a world where people didn't scapegoat the Jews for everything from losing wars, to disease outbreaks to the weather (I still can't figure out why medieval people blamed other humans for that). Where missionary faiths were actually tolerant of other faiths & traditions.

Perhaps a world with 160 million Jews would also be one where Aboriginal people are not a mere 3% of Australia's population. Where Native Americans were given time to recover from smallpox outbreaks rather than deal with colonisation & deliberate massacres. One where Berbers & Assyrians are more plentiful. Because it would be a world where rulers wouldn't use religion as a cover for massacres or genocide.

so, things to say about this:

1) good job turning Tree Day into a political discourse, taking our culture and making it about Palestinians. definitely not cultural appropriation at all.

2) Olives have been a major significance in Jewish culture. the story of Noah's arc with the dove carrying an olive branch, the Miracle of Hanukkah with the jug of olive oil that lasted for 8 days, and the countless references to them in the Torah. they're a symbol of peace, prosperity and life in Judaism.

3) there's an ongoing debate on wether the Jerusalem Pine is an invasive species or not, it is spreading over some areas of Israel and is an ongoing concern, but there's no practice of planting them deliberately. I have no idea where you got this from.

4) it's not "Jewish Arbor day", it's much more than that. it's a day of ecological awareness, agricultural celebration, and appreciation of local harvest. it's THE BIRTHDAY OF THE TREES. we celebrate the 7 species, listed in the Torah as the special products of Israel (as in, our local specialties).

אֶ֤רֶץ חִטָּה֙ וּשְׂעֹרָ֔ה וְגֶ֥פֶן וּתְאֵנָ֖ה וְרִמּ֑וֹן אֶרֶץ־זֵ֥ית שֶׁ֖מֶן וּדְבָֽשׁ

aka: land of are wheat and barley, and grape and fig, and pomegranates, olive oil, and [date] honey.

we're celebrating our local produce. We've had a local holiday for environmental awareness for thousands of years.

Yeah no of course Muslims are allowed to be scared in the US. Muslims tend to face equal rates of hate crimes in the US as Jews per capita. This blog has always stood against Islamophobic hate when it’s come up.

I don’t know how many times I’ve got to say this but. Just because this blog is focused on combatting antisemitism specifically doesn’t mean that I don’t care about plights and horrors that aren’t being covered.

It’s just really interesting to me that not once have I been accused of racism for not covering anti-Black crimes. Not once have I been accused of being pro-genocide for not covering the conflicts in Congo or Sudan. Not once have I been accused of supporting paedophila because I’m not doing a day-by-day breakdown of the Epstein case.

I only get comments like that from antisemitic anti-Zionists who think that a Jew on the internet detailing antisemitism and hypocrisy must somehow be fundamentally detrimental to Muslims. Of course Muslims in America should be scared. Of course Palestinians should be scared. Muslims living around the world have ample cause to be scared right now.

The situation in Gaza has been trending on tumblr and every other social media site consistently for three months. Most major news networks are at least covering the ICJ case and the Houthi strikes this week. Public awareness of situation in Gaza is so high that it’s clearly influencing polling for the US presidential election. Herit/ageposts has basically been talking about it 24/7, complete with an antisemitic rehash of The Crucible. Their posts tend to get tens or hundreds of thousands of notes.

Meanwhile, there are like. Ten blogs on this website that are actively contributing to combatting antisemitic misinformation. We might get 10k notes on a more successful post. Mostly we get slurs and death threats.

Right now there are major conflicts ongoing in Sudan, Syria, Myanmar, Ukraine, and Somalia. Do you care for the thousands of people that have died in those conflicts in the last sixteen days? Have you been consistently posting about them and bringing attention to them? There was a mass shooting at an American high school just last week. Did you make a post about it? Or do you not care about the three children who died? Will your reblog bring them back?

You can care about multiple things. Talking about one thing does not mean you don’t care about anything else.

You are born Jewish. Like how you are born Gay, Trans, white or black. You cannot convert to Jewish.

there are like two jewish communities in the entire world that don’t accept converts, and i highly doubt that’s your situation. so i can pretty much guarantee you don’t interact with your local jewish community, bc if you said this in front of a rabbi or other active members, you would likely get a 30 minute lecture.

But second generation and more atheists already exist, and as open atheists grow as a demographic, for more and more of them the answer to "Why are you an atheist?" is not going to be a long, involved story of self discovery or a bitter rejection, a principled decision or a sharp retort, but simply "Well, that's how my family was." Does your concept of atheism account for their existence?

How does the concept of children being raised by atheist parents make you feel? If it makes you feel uncomfortable, or like the children are missing out on something, you may need to unpack that. What responsibilities do you feel that atheist parents have to their children's religious education, and do you apply those same standards to religious parents? If you find yourself with a double standard, ask yourself if the higher one or the lower one is more reasonable to apply broadly.

Personally I recently started saying the modeh ani and I really like having that moment of gratitude to start the day with. Something so simple like waking up is something we tend to take for granted and I love how the modeh ani allows a moment of reflection about how wonderful it really is to be able to wake up.

A couple weeks ago, it was thundering while we were saying Mizmor L’David, which was an awesome experience. It’s definitely become special to me, particularly because my understanding of G-d is very linked to sound/vibrations.

I also attempted to add alt text, I hope it didn't come out too messy:

Based this one on a Midrash but I think it works if you don't know it:

And a somewhat less lighthearted one:

חוה יצחקה

chava yitzhaka is how i tend to transliterate it even though it's inconsistent and not quite accurate. there are just too many consonants next to each other if i write it "yitzchaka".

chava was picked first. chaya had been on my list from the beginning because i like the etymological connection to חי (chai | life). but then a friend gave a beautiful dvar about the biblical chava & how her eating of the forbidden fruit was actually a part of g!d's plan and allowed for the torah and this entire universe as we know it to exist. without chava's rebellion there would be no judaism. and going along with this, chava was only given her name after being banished from gan eden, as a blessing. and it is also etymologically connected to chai; chava is the mother of all life. that dvar spoke to me, and i knew in that moment that chava had to be part of my name.

yitzhaka was a late addition to the list after finding it in a name dictionary about a week before my mikveh date. the masculine name yitzchak had been on my list during the period of time i had been considering masculine names, and it had been at the top because i love the meaning (laughter) and the story of sarah laughing after being told she would become pregnant in her old age. i also felt a lot of connection with the old saying that goes something like "humans make plans & g!d laughs". because i could never have foreseen the journey my life has taken. the masculine names had all been scrapped from the list, but when i learned that there was a feminine variant of yitzchak, i had my name. it was a cohesively feminine, highly meaningful name, and i love it. i don't use it much, but it feels like me.

And collectively everyone was like: hey we love this tiny child, please do take him to a public candle lighting and show him the Rugrats special and here's our fave chanukah kids books and some songs and play a little dreidel and here's some kindergartner activities you can printout or color, also through the power of Jewish geography here's a potentially nearby Jewish bakery with sufganiyot stocked up for him, and also a recipe for if you want to sneak veggies into some latkes.

He's five and has permission. ADORABLE.