in my heart is the seed of the tree which will be me

There are Jews who have European backgrounds and *some* of them have benefited from eurocentrism or being white passing, but in moments of crisis or need the social tides that create white privilege have never seen Jewish people as part of that group. Whiteness is a social category which has changed with time and attitudes and, at least for now, it has never and still doesn't include Jewish people.

Continuing to use the term "white Jews" is ignorant at best and harmful at worst. Even converts once converted are othered and can no longer rely on any previous white background to save them if they are identified as Jewish.

She is currently in the process of being forced out of her job by open, unrepentant antisemitism (literally had HR tell her, "your feelings aren't based on reality" and chide her for reporting her immediate supervisor's antisemitic actions, because she didn't consider how it might upset the supervisor or harm the supervisor's career in a conversation that started, "we can't have this conversation if you're recording it.) She has concluded that they covered their tracks well enough that trying to hold her place of work accountable would be more difficult and stressful than she can handle.

Fortunately, she's going to be okay--the antisemitism in her field is open and blatant enough that all the Jews are banding together to protect one another, so she already has another job lined up.

But if there is anyone who could be considered a "white Jew," it's this woman.

judaism predates the concept of race. when you convert to judaism you become wholly jewish in every way that matters, both to jews and to antisemites, because we are a people. we arent a race, we arent an ethnicity, hell we arent a concept that the western world seems to be able to comprehend. there is no real translation in english for עם.

Above: three different species of lerp psyllid

These tiny, aphid-like creatures are commonly known as lerp psyllids or jumping plant lice. Their nymphs have specialized mouthparts that can extract the sap from certain plants, and the sugar is then excreted as a liquid that quickly crystalizes when it hits the air, allowing the nymphs to build intricate structures known as lerps.

Above: psyllid nymphs hiding beneath their lerps, likely Creiis corniculatus and Creiis costatus

As this article explains:

Lerps are basically pure starch with some proteins and fats. They are created by psyllids, which are tiny, sap-sucking insects. When psyllid nymphs imbibe tree sap, their gut absorbs the amino acids and nutrients, but they quickly excrete the water as honeydew and the sugar as lerps.

Above: the lerps of two different psyllids from genus Cardiaspina

Each species produces its own distinctive type of lerp. Some of these structures resemble clamshells, while others have a fuzzy, glassy, or basket-like appearance; most lerps measure roughly 1-5mm in diameter, but some have a wavy or tube-like shape that can extend to a length of more than 10mm.

Above: a pair of exposed psyllid nymphs

These structures provide the nymphs with some measure of protection from parasites, predators, and dehydration, but they can also attract some unwanted attention:

Unfortunately for psyllids, their homes taste sweet (containing more starch than cane sugar) and are a prized food of birds, mammals and opportunistic humans. The level of sweetness fluctuates depending on the season, the weather, and the species of psyllid.

Above: animals feeding on some sweet, delicious lerps

The nymphs themselves are tiny, and their bodies often have a flat, oblong shape that allows them to slide beneath their lerps more effectively. They spend all five stages of their nymphal development tucked beneath their lerps; if the structure is damaged, removed, or destroyed, the nymph immediately begins to construct a new one.

Above: genus Hyalinaspis and genus Cardiaspina

When the nymph finally reaches maturity, it sheds its exuvia (molted exoskeleton) and emerges from the lerp as an adult psyllid. The adults are winged insects that look like miniature cicadas, with their bodies typically measuring less than 5mm long (that's about 1/5th of an inch).

Most lerp-forming psyllids are native to Australia, but they also occur as an invasive species in many other parts of the world.

Above: nymphs of genus Glycaspis and Cardiaspina

Lerps have traditionally been incorporated into the beliefs and practices of Aboriginal cultures in Australia, which is home to more than 300 different species of lerp-producing psyllid:

Lerps feature in Aboriginal calendars, ceremonies, mythology, and cosmology, all of which have embedded biocultural knowledge about the time and place for optimal collection. These insects are central to Indigenous cultures, yet Western science knows surprisingly little about their taxonomy, biology, and ecology.

The term "lerp" actually comes from the indigenous word lerep, which means "sweet" in the Wemba-Wemba language of southeastern Australia.

Above: Eucalyptolyma maideni, also known as a spotted gum lerp psyllid, hiding beneath its fern-like lerp

Sources & More Info:

Land for Wildlife: Lerps: One of Nature's Sweet Offerings

Business Queensland: Psyllids and Lerps

Journal of Ethnobiology: Indigenous Use of Lerps in Australia: So Much More than a Sweet Treat

Aboriginal Peoples and Terrestrial Invertebrates in Australia: Lerp and Honeydew

iNaturalist: Subfamily Spondyliaspidinae

It’s not about us. It’s not about us. It’s not about us.

Seeing queers get angry because the Jews “get” to have the Holocaust, as if the generational trauma of 6 million genocided human beings and the overwhelming loss of memory and culture is somehow a privilege.

Yes, queer people have historically, and continue to face extreme oppression and violence around the world. Yes, we should talk about and commemorate our dead and fight for our living.

I wish we had spent more time exploring the implied abuse or at least anger issues and favouritism that Edgar and Susan had on their family. Both of them are rude and abrasive to Alice. Edgar snaps at both Polly and Joe. They heap praises onto Will whilst cutting Joe aside. Polly is restrained in unfair positions.

A lot of Edgar's pre-deadite warning signs of increased aggression go unnoticed bc this behaviour (if not abuse, then aggression) is clearly normal. Alice points out that Susan knew that Will was abusive.

Susan enables her family's behaviour, right up until the end. She would kiss the corpse of her husband moments after he violently attacks their son because he promised that they were only hurting him because he needed something, and if Joe would just behave and give it to them then he would stop. And so she enables him, and she lets him in again, and she gets him killed.

Joe - presented as a least favourite child, and afraid of his brother and father's outbursts - is also an enabler. He didn't protect Alice from Will, and he left Thya when she needed him the most because that fear of his father enabled the cycle of abuse. Thya literally points out that he had an easier time fighting back against his wife than he did his father.

That is to say that Alice is paying the price for a cycle of aggression (from half the family) and enabling (from the other half).

He stole and ripped off from our folklore to make that thing and let me tell that is not Corpse Bride. She might be a corpse and she might be a bride, but she is not a Corpse Bride.

That is our story, our history, our pain, our trauma, and our way of dealing with lack of dignity given to our daughters and sisters in death, about the rape they didn't survive, and about the horrific and lonely murder done to them.

It how we cope with the loss of our family, our loves, our friends, our community members, and how we envision them returning home to us.

It is not some generic story about a dead woman or funny mistakes or wacky songs or worms in ears.

It is about tragedy. It about permanent loss. It is about the desperate hope to have your child's bones be returned. It is a warning for brides and it is reminder for brides of the strength inside of them.

It is a story that is found in every Jewish Diaspora community no matter the setting because it happened to every Jewish community in Diaspora.

Our daughters were taken before they could be married and as they were adorned in their bridal wear. And then they were raped, murdered, and left to rot in some unknown place. Never to be found. For not even in death could they return home.

So we made a story about our daughters coming home so that their bones could rest with family and community.

This is a Jewish story.

This is one translation/version of the actual story, which was from a collection of Jewish mythical tales compiled by Rabbi Isaac Luria in the 16th century. On the surface, many of the story details line up with the movie version you might recognize, but what makes adapting this story appropriation instead of appreciation (in my opinion) is that it completely ignores the cultural context of the myth, chopping it up into an easily digestible non-Jewish story for general audiences.

In order, here are all the specifically Jewish things about the original story that to my knowledge were NOT included in the film.

The folktale takes place in Tzfat (Safed), Israel.

The main character of the story is named Reuven (pronounced Reh-oo-ven), the same as one of the twelve tribes of Israel.

Reuven and two of his friends stumble on a nameless woman buried close to the surface in the woods. While not in the story itself, in Jewish communities it is evident why she was buried, shallowly, in a wedding dress--because she was murdered by non-Jews on her wedding day and was never returned to her people, therefore denied a proper Jewish burial.

Reuven drunkenly put a ring on the dead woman's finger and said "Harei at mikudeshat li b’taba’at zo k’da’at moshe v’yisrael" (roughly: "Behold, with this ring, you are consecrated to me according to the law of Moses and Israel") three times. As per Jewish law, the words, which contain a lot of power in our tradition, and the presence of two adult Jewish witnesses made them officially married.

Reuven goes to mikvah (the holy ritual bath) to prepare for his wedding.

The dead woman interrupts Reuven's wedding and testifies to the Rabbi that she had been betrothed to bridegroom the night prior. After this point, the story pivots to be mostly about the legal proceedings of the Beit Din (Rabbi council) who must decide to either recognize or annul the marriage. The reasons why the marriage is considered illegal are a significant portion of the actual text.

While representing herself in court, the corpse states that her goal is to consummate the marriage because she was never able to have "kosher" sex as a married woman in life. If she had won her case, Reuven would have been legally obligated to provide (lmao).

When the Beit Din decides that the marriage is illegal, the woman once again becomes inanimate, and she is given a proper Jewish burial.

At the conclusion, Reuven marries his true bride under a wedding canopy called a chupah (mostly assumed, but specified in illustrated versions).

You may or may not have noticed a specific detail in the summary I just gave you. That's right--the vicious, hateful murder of a young Jewish woman on her wedding night was so common at the time of this story's writing that it was an assumed element which was not given context. Any version of the Corpse Bride which does not include this detail is a false retelling, as it misses the significance of the bride being a corpse at all. This is a story about the Jewish people metaphorically putting our own suffering on trial and laying it to rest so that life can resume. Tim Burton made it about some guy in Victorian England having a bad night.

And in one of those posts I went into depth about the history of this story and the research I did.

I also talked about this version, The Finger.

What I found in my research was really heartbreaking. This phenomena of Jewish brides being stolen on their wedding nights, raped, and then murdered was so common that these Corpse Brides stories spanned all across the Diaspora.

And the differences between the variations were really very minute.

Such as the place, who did the killing, where the body was discarded, and the how the ring got on her finger.

But everything else over all is the same. A Jewish man puts a ring on what is a dead Jewish bride's finger, says the words that would make them married, he is going to be married, Corpse Bride shows up, she demands for the marriage to be upheld, there is a beit din over it, it is not upheld, she returns to a state of being dead, her bones are returned to the community, she is given a real proper Jewish burial and is mourned, and she is able to find peace.

An example for a difference is that I found in Ashkenazi versions the Chassan, groom, to be thinks her finger is a branch or stick. Also especially since this act was extremely common in Russia, these stories for Ashkenazi took place in forests and often ended with her leading the community to where her bones were. They then needed to go through the process of removing them and bringing her home.

While the Mizarhi variations did not have that element and rather when she returned to her state of being dead she was there with her bones and could be buried right away. Their variations did not have the forest element from what I could find.

And the Sephardi variations where a mix of where her body was located so it could be a forest, marshland, or else where. It really depended on where the community who was telling the story was located.

I also did find many road blocks in my research which is why I keep doing research on this story.

Many scholarly and academic and institutional sources tend to in my experience and research come from ones that are not Jewish. And they tended to focus solely Ashkenazi versions and only on a like just a couple variations of the stories.

The Finger if I recall correctly is a Mizrahi version.

Sephardi versions I have found to be one of the harder ones to find and I think that is because of just how much of an impact the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions had. I think it is too easy to not realize just how much was stolen and forcibly lost because of the Inquisitions. And just how much impact and ripple effects are still being felt to this very day.

Again all of this just why I have found in my research and experience.

I don't want to say that is this is the definitive only result or anything like that. Just what I have found and noticed when doing research. Research that has included was a spectrum of academia with no cultural perspective really all the way to solely from within the culture and no larger overall overview.

This story is one that I love and care deeply about so I don't know if I will ever stop doing research on it and/or looking into.

I try to collect different copies of the story where and when I can. I want one day have a mini physical library dedicated to this story alone where I have multiple variations and versions of it from different places and points in time as well different Diaspora languages even if I can't speak it, read it, or understand it.

Because I want to have this physical memorial to this history and a sort of museum to one of the ways we found to cope with the pain and trauma.

If they’re not alive, halacha doesn’t apply to them.

So