Standing Storms

The following information is paraphrased from the book “Between Scylla and Charybdis: The Jews in Sicily” by Shlomo Simonsohn.  I thought it would be interesting to share this as for the most part, no traditions of Sicilian Jewish culture survive into the present day, but some remain in the historical record.  The disappearance of these local traditions is likely in part due to rapid assimilation following exile due to the significantly more numerous Sephardic Jews, who generally never wanted to conform, even partially, to local customs.  Most of these were heavily contested by local religious authorities, many of which were Sephardic and did not get along with the local community.  These are mostly attested in notarial records where Jews would file complaints against the religious authorities for refusing to continue or perform certain local customs.

During mourning, women would scratch their faces until bleeding.

In Ketubot, there was a tradition where new couples would receive a bed as a gift, and in the case of wealthy families, as much as three separate beds.

Christian mimes were regularly employed to perform at  Jewish weddings and other community celebrations.

In Palermo, before their wedding ceremony, brides participated in a ceremony called bunbur where the bride is seated on a podium or chair inside the synagogue. At one point religious authorities denied pregnant brides this custom, which caused the community to lodge a formal complaint.

In Palermo, a funerary custom was to bring the newly dead brought in a coffin to the front of the synagogue, where lamentations and eulogies for the deceased would be recited.  Sometimes, for those held in high regard, this would be carried out inside the synagogue itself.  Then, the coffin would be carried to the cemetery as the cantors would sing the Psalms.

In Palermo, the sandaq (godfather) used to recite three psalms inside the synagogue.

On Yom Kippur and Hoshana Rabba, the hechal were opened and families would come and remain all night, including women, who would kiss the scrolls.

The Shema prayer was loudly recited in the same tradition as in Egypt and Palestine.

On Yom Kippur, the selihot were recited after the main events, and after every prayer Jews prostrated themselves.

In Messina, during weddings after the huppah, the bride would be driven around the Jewish quarter on horseback.

The Jews in Sciacca obtained permission to allow mixed gender dancing.

Your ancestors became Christian at all by missionary saints who very much believed Orthodox doctrine and worked miracles.

Then a mere 5 centuries ago their later descendants got duped by greedy novels who wanted the first tastes of capitalism by clearing out holy traditions which impeded their Lust for power and profit.

When I say that, while I would love to see more diversity in representations of Jewishness that reflect the richness of our people, I am NOT here for Goyim constantly insisting that every Jewish character needs to also be “something else” (JoC, LGBTQ+, disabled, etc.) in order for them to be counted under the banner of real representation because in their minds, Jewishness alone does not qualify as an aspect of diversity, THIS IS WHAT I MEAN.

When I say that I’m tired of non-Jews assuming I must be “white” based on the fact that I’m Jewish and then say “oh, well then I wasn’t talking about you,” when I tell them I’m mixed and still find their words antisemitic, THIS IS WHAT I MEAN.

My mother, whose father worked selling scrap metal from the junkyard, has a distinctly Jewish maiden name. There were a few other Jewish families on her street, but she also had neighbors who spewed slurs and threats at her and prohibited their children from so much as speaking to her. At school a classmate stated that “the Jews killed Jesus” and the teacher essentially allowed that statement to stand as fact for the rest of the classroom, making my mother and her friend, the only Jewish students in the room, feel unsafe. My mother also grew up very close with her second cousins (the daughters of her own mother’s first cousin). The eldest of those second cousins had been born in a Soviet Refugee camp after her parents had been liberated from Auschwitz and met in that Soviet camp. While the family members from whom I am directly descended came to the US to flee Soviet pogroms, that doesn’t mean I am untouched my the Shoah (the Holocaust).

My father’s experience was different. His surname (and mine) is unique, but also very French, due to his paternal grandfather being a goy. My grandfather was stilled raised Jewish and he and my grandmother raised my aunt and father in a Jewish home as well, but that surname, as well as some steps taken to fit in, kept my father’s family from being recognized as Jewish. This was important because in the 1960s, when my father was a small child, San Leandro was the kind of town where a black man driving in a car would be tailed by police until he crossed the city limit into Oakland (where he ostensibly “belonged”). It would not have been a good town to be openly Jewish in. That isn’t to say my grandparents didn’t use their passing privilege, however. My grandfather single-handedly assisted a fellow Navy veteran and his family become the first Black family to live on their street. He also struck a police officer who was choking a Black father at a school board meeting (my grandfather was a teacher and a school board member). My grandmother worked in and eventually managed the voter registration office for the county of Alameda and worked with Huey P. Newton and the Black Panthers to organize voter registration drives in Black communities. They brought my father and aunt to march with Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta during the farmworker strikes. My grandmother still doesn’t buy table grapes.

I spent my entire childhood as the only Jewish or only religiously Jewish student in my grade and one of only a handful in the school. I was harassed for my dietary restrictions and for not celebrating Christmas and Easter. I was actually required by my public school teachers to participate in annual Christmas activities. I was the target of antisemitic bullying from classmates from preschool through high school. I’ve had academic consequences because of my choice to observe the High Holy Days. I’ve been tricked into eating treif by peers who would never think of doing such a thing to a Muslim person (nor should they).

The year I became a Bat Mitzvah a swastika was graffitied on my synagogue. I saw literally uncountable swastikas drawn on and even carved into desks, walls, and playground equipment throughout my time in school and I never reported it because I knew nothing would be done.

I am fortunate that I didn’t face the same level of harassment as my older sisters did, more likely due to my asocial nature than anything else. My eldest sister was the target of the “how many Jews can you fit in a Volkwagen” joke on multiple occasions. I was only taunted for picking up my own dropped change once.

no bro

You don’t if he’s Northern Irish. You don’t know if he’s Catholic. You don’t know if he grew up watching his people get murdered by Loyalist Protestants and British soldiers who carried heavy racial prejudice against Irish Catholics (hellooo, Bloody Sunday anyone?), who had for centuries been characterized as barbaric, racially inferior, lowly people who needed to be wiped out or converted. Attacks by the IRA, and therefore retaliation by the British, didn’t completely cease until 1998, I believe? This film came out in 2002.

You don’t know if he was an Irishman who grew up in England. Bomb attacks carried out by the IRA in England kindled misplaced aggression toward innocent Irish civilians living among the English population and Irish people were verbally and physically attacked and their businesses targeted. Perhaps similar to how ordinary Muslims bear the brunt of aggression after attacks by Muslim extremists…

You can still find yourself threatened and demeaned if you’re a Catholic in Northern Ireland or if you’re a Protestant in Ireland and some older dude in a pub in a smaller town straight up asks you if you’re Catholic or not and you’re afraid what’ll happen if you don’t lie about who you are.

You can still hear casual racism toward Irish people in everyday life and in publicly broadcast media in the UK.

You can still see and hear “Kill All Irish” and other pretty heavy anti-Irish sentiment among Loyalists in Northern Ireland who don’t consider themselves Irish at all.

Just because it now appears that the island of Ireland has been allowed to move on from war and their appearance and culture generally allows them to blend into and reap the benefits of the White European demographic doesn’t mean that this character does not have the background suitable to fully empathize with her. Maybe he does, maybe he doesn’t, we just don’t know his story.

First of all, pretty much yes to everything about Ireland up there. Growing up in Northern Ireland, I saw the violence from all sides - my father is a British Protestant and my mother is a Catholic, so I basically couldn’t win because according to one side I was a dirty taig and according to the other I was a filthy hun. Luckily I managed to make friends with a mix of both Catholics and Protestants who all thought this attitude was just as stupid as I did, but between all of us, we saw our fair share of sectarian violence, and the Catholics, without a doubt, got it worse.

Irish Catholics were robbed of their country by Protestant invaders centuries ago. They fought and fought and eventually got the Irish Free State (now the Republic of Ireland), however, thanks to the deliberate plantation of Protestants to eradicate the Catholic majority in the North, it was left under British rule. Since then, Catholics have been murdered, arrested, terrorised, tortured and driven out of their houses just for being Irish Catholics. 

I moved from Northern Ireland in 2010 and to the day I left, the violence was not over. I couldn’t wear certain colours in certain areas because I would be beaten. I had fake names depending on where I was stopped, as attackers can determine what religion you are from your name alone (and this is a trick I learned, too, for defence). I can recite my rights if I’m arrested because if I was stopped in certain areas I could be, on the assumption I could be Catholic. I know the subtle sectarian geography of the city of Belfast because if I cross the road in the wrong place I’m in enemy territory. I have been chased by a group of forty people, throwing fireworks at me, because they assumed I was a Catholic. Police were parked on nearby streets and didn’t acknowledge the commotion. My friends and I walk past graffiti screamed “Kill All Taigs”. A fifteen year old boy who lived half an hour from me was beaten to death by a group of adults for being Catholic. For fifty years, people have been detained without trial, tortured, beaten and wrongly imprisoned just for being Catholic, because apparently, being Catholic means you must be in the IRA. 

Even now, I can’t escape it. I have a noticeable Northern Irish accent, which is stronger when I’m around people from there and is noticeable as a strong accent whenever I’m not in the country. At airports, I’m always the one stopped and frisked if they hear my accent. At ferry ports, it’s alway my car (which has Northern Irish registration plates) that’s “randomly selected” for a search. All of this just happened to me, a person who got off lightly.

“I love our Bitter Coast Striders, but feel bad that they can’t fly very well. So I’m selectively breeding them into a strain that, one day, will dominate the Vvardenfell skies, pursuing its prey for great distances!”