bug

This may be controversial, I don't know - but please hear me out. I think it's time we started phasing out and objecting to the terms "Jew" and "Jewish" for ourselves; and for that matter, "antisemitism" as the word for racism/xenophobia against us. This may be rather radical to some, but it really isn't if you look at the approach other indigenous peoples have had to this same problem. It is more respectful to call Diné people Diné than "Navajo", for instance; I myself am half Amazigh, and while the term "Berber" still sees use, it is widely being rejected as disrespectful. I am convinced it's time for Judeans - Yehudim - to follow this approach. The words "Jew" and "Jewish" (or, for that matter, their equivalents in most languages of peoples who oppressed us) were not our creations, and while we have put substantial time into getting comfortable using them (whether it be through the insistence on "Jewish people" or even reclaiming old slurs like "Jewess"), I think it's time we accepted that they've done more harm to us than good.

Calling us "Jews", "Juden", "Juifs", etc., has so often been used as a slur, and more than just that: it actively distances us from our roots in a way that's made our sociopolitical alienation easier. "Jewish" also has myriad problems; how many times have we heard ignorant Judeophobes insist that we aren't "real" Jews/Israelites/Hebrews - merely "Jew-ish". It's distortions like these that have made the job of those hostile to us easy, and our job in combating them all the more frustrating. A "Jew" has no country, can be called "just a religion", can be called "the Jew" as if a mere abstraction, an object. "Jewish" people - even if recognized as people - need not truly be what we claim to be. Our own indigenous name for ourselves - Yehudi, Yisrael - generally does not share these problems. It can't be said that a Yehudi is "-ish". A Judean is very unambiguously of Judea, just as a Russian is of Russia or a Japanese person is of Japan; or a Diné of Dinétah; or an Amazigh is of Tamazgha.

Antisemitism is another term that was invented by our oppressors, and has been twisted more recently to use as another form of identity-denial. Antisemitism as an imagined form of racism against "Semites" may have made sense in the 19th Century when A.) the only real "Semites" familiar to Europeans were Judeans, and B.) "Semite" was conceived of as a "race", but in the 21st Century there is absolutely no reason to keep using a term that is routinely misunderstood to be applicable to any and all "Semites". Judeophobia is a far better term for prejudice against Judeans; and it makes it seem less exotic/exclusive. Judeophobia is of a kind with Sinophobia, homophobia, etc. "Antisemitism" is an antiquated, ambiguous word whose utility to fight Judeophobia has been outweighed by its utility to the Judeophobes themselves.

i say this not to be pessimistic or not as a casual observation but rather as a fact that i was told from a long-time agunah activist: if the system cannot be reformed as it has been in the past to meet our needs and realities, jewish women will, in time, refuse to participate in the jewish system as a whole, and will stop believing in its importance.

and why should we? why should we accept a system that chains women to marriages at the will of any man? how is that acceptable? how is it that divorce proceedings were more lenient towards women in the medieval era than they are now?

but it comes with THIS side effect

based on this post

what Persians, Jews, Kurds, Druze, etc. agree is racism: not being allowed to speak native language, culture erased, land stolen, children murdered, thousands jailed, hijabs mandatory, murdered for resisting or practicing culture or religion, historical artifacts and temples built over or destroyed or disappeared, religion stolen, people claiming to be the "true" inheritors of your culture while killing your people, etc.