this lamentable asexual

My dude, my brethren, my fellow comrade

This is just literally what being Jewish feels like

My grandparents were holocaust survivors that could barely talk about their birth country when they were alive. My great grandmother lost her entire family when nazis gunned down Jewish Latvian villages and left no survivors. My great great great grandfather lived in a desert with barely any water resources because that was safer than staying in Poland next to his christian neighbors. And then there’s also my ancestral grandmother that lost everything when her family barely escaped the spanish inquisition.

My family has more lost history than the library of Alexandria

And you know what’s the worst part is?

You learn it in bits and pieces, scattered across your lifetime.

The first time you hear about places we can no longer visit or ceremonies we can no longer perform, you’re too young to remember. It is always part of you. It feels more like a fantasy world then a piece of history you’ve lost.

One day, you are researching family history. So many of the branches of your family tree get suddenly cut off. You start to understand what that means.

One day, you are reading your great-great-grandmother’s story’s. You read about her sister who moved east when your great-great-grandmother moved west, and the day that the letters stopped coming. You know what it means, even before you look up the name of the city she moved to, and what happened to it.

(You are one of the lucky ones. The trauma is far enough back that you weren’t raised in its immediate shadow.)

One day, you learn about the Yizkor book, the collected memories about the inhabitants of a village that no longer exists, which talks about your family.

(You are one of the lucky ones. So many villages don’t have Yizkor books, because there was no one left alive who remembered them.)

One day, you visit what used to be one of the cultural centers of your people. Now, it’s a museum to what was destroyed.

(It’s one of the lucky places. So many of the memories have been paved over and erased.)

One day, “the last Jew alive in [country where hundreds of thousands of Jews once lived]” stops being a shocking statement, and becomes a genre.

(You are one of the lucky ones. You’ve never been the last.)

There is no one time your culture was violently destroyed. It happened over and over again, across continents and millenia. The survivors flee, and hope they will have a few generations before the place they flee to is also destroyed.

(You are one of the lucky ones. You’ve never had to flee.)

Your culture is still here, because you are still here. What you have is the fragments of a thousand burned texts and demolished buildings and extinct dialects, but it is real. It is alive. Multiple militaries and paramilitary organizations are actively trying to kill it.

(You are one of the lucky ones. You don’t live in their direct line of fire.)

You grow up being told it’s better now. People don’t hate you for being different; not like they used to. One day, you realize their acceptance is dependent on them not having to think about how different you are.

(You are one of the lucky ones. It is possible for you to pretend.)

You speak your language, and you are speaking for everyone who was murdered for speaking it. You study your texts, and your are studying for everyone who was murdered for studying them. You celebrate your holidays, and you are celebrating for everyone who was murdered for celebrating them. You live your life, and you are living for everyone who was murdered.

(You are one of the lucky ones. You are able to speak, and study, and celebrate, and live.)

Nothing you do will ever be fully for yourself. You are a memorial to everything that was lost. You are everything that has been salvaged. You are the hope that something can be rebuilt.

Also, what prompted the Second Intifada (on paper), was that a Jewish politician went to visit the Temple Mount after the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf illegally excavated and dumped over 10 dump-trucks' worth of priceless artifacts within the Temple Mount.

And they slaughtered thousands of our civilians for it.

Fuck this article, but the headline spot on.

A Jewish man merely visiting the holiest place in the entire Jewish religion, that Jews aren't allowed to go near to "respect" the religion that built over it, and that alone prompted slaughtering thousands of our civilians.

And people try to, "Well... both sides" it.

"Wellllll, a Jewish politician visiting the Al-Aqsa Mosque made Muslims scared that they'd make changes to it, so you can understand why--"

a) Like when they "made changes" to our holiest site in the world by destroying and dumping tens of tonnes of our holiest artifacts??

b) A Jew visiting a Mosque shouldn't prompt slaughtering thousands of Jews.

I shouldn't have to say that.

And don't, "Well, apartheid--" me:

This was just after the Camp David Summit.

Just after the Israeli government agreed to all of Yassir Araf's demands for Palestinian statehood and then some: All of Gaza, 96% of the West Bank, East Jerusalem as the capitol, plus full monetary reparations for those displaced in 1948 War that they started.

And Arafat responded by not just rejecting statehood, but his Waqf by vandalizing and destroying ten dump-trucks worth of the holiest Jewish artifacts from the holiest Jewish place in the world.

And Jews were (and are) expected to be completely fine with it.

"They destroyed literally tonnes of our holiest artifacts, but we visited their mosque, so it's really all the same."

"They stabbed, shot, and blew up thousands of our civilians across a bloody summer, but one of our guys visited their mosque, so tit-for-tat."

Fuck that.

-

If you disagree with me about any of this, that's fine.

I don't care.

See, the Waqf's illegal excavation of the Temple Mount has a part two: The Temple Mount Sifting Project. We know where all the rubble was dumped, and this organization, with the help of hundreds of thousands of volunteers, has spent decades sifting through it for all the priceless archeological treasures.

But one of the most important elements of an archeological find, perhaps the most important element, is the context. Not only where it was found, but how deep. What was above it? What was it above?

And all of that context was permanently, irrevocably destroyed. If a 3000 year old shard is found, we have to ask: has it been there for three thousand years? Or could it have spent two thousand years elsewhere before being moved?

If the Temple Mount hadn't been desecrated, we'd find that shard in a layer of debris that would prove how long it had been there. But as is, we can't be totally certain. We can't prove it.

I've volunteered with the sifting project twice. The first time, I found a piece of Herodian tile--that is, the specific type of tile that he used in all his major building projects, which we also see at Masada.

I held in my hands corroboration of the contemporary account of Herod renovating the Temple and adding the retaining walls and plaza that are still standing today, the structure the Dome of the Rock was built on.

But that evidence, and every other piece of evidence the project finds, has, and always will have, an asterisk.

A bit of room for doubt that will always be there, because the religious authority descended from the conquerors of the land deliberately destroyed the evidence of the cultural history that predated their presence.

And yet, somehow, we are the real imperialist colonizers, and our presence is the real desecration.

When you factor in the fact that Jews are so so few, the amount of material culture within the archaeological is infinitesimally more finite, especially when compared to say the Roman Empire or the Arab Conquest. The scale and depth of just this incident of Temple Mount looting (note the Jordanian government also did significant damage during their occupation of the West Bank, this is not an isolated incident) is unimaginable.

-ancient roman posca: water, red or white wine vinegar, honey, salt, herbs (coriander, mint, thyme)

-switchel: water, ginger, vinegar, sweetener, lemon, salt

-ayran: yogurt, water, salt, mint

-sees the reports of the heatwave in Europe-