#doikayt

“What does it mean to originate from a place, from a world, from a culture that no longer exists, and from a language that may die in this generation? What phrases would I need to know in order to speak to those millions of unborn phantoms to whom I belong?”

Over the Town by Marc Chagall, 1918

“I did not live with you, but I didn’t have one single painting that didn’t breathe with your spirit and reflection.”

מיין הארץ בענק פאר דרויה. מיין מוטער לשון אנטלויפט מיר, דאָס ערשטע וואָרט וואס איך געוויס געווען לוויה.

No, I don't. Jewish people are extremely ethnically diverse, and the dispersal of Jewish people from the Levant started around 2000 years ago. Even if the Diaspora had historical ties to the Levant, it's so far back that it has no baring on the current multiple racial or ethnic identities of our people.

Saying this as an Ashkenazi Jew, the ashkenazicentrism that's pushed with the idea that "Jews are Indigenous to the Levant" is very concerning and also antisemitic to me. Jewish people are very ethnically diverse and come from many backgrounds and cultures.

Also this ideology is used to promote the colonial state of "Israel" which I am avidly against. I stand with Palestinians and will never support an oppressive ethnostate that destroys the ecosystem of the land that it claims to call home with bombs. One of the key features of landback is preserving our Indigenous ecosystems. Zionism isn't a landback movement. It is violence, and it is a genocide. Netanyahu is a colonizer. People who support him are colonizers and the state of Israel is a colonial project.

It was the UN who came up with the 'Partition Plan for Palestine.' It was white goyim who initially made the push for Jews to move to an ethnostate and divide Palestine into an Arab and Jewish state. One could argue that it was a mass-relocation effort to 'solve' "The Jewish Problem." In my opinion? Zionism is an antisemitic relocation effort.

That's without getting into how Israel is unwelcoming towards Black and Ethiopian Jews. Additionally, speaking Yiddish in Israel is considered taboo, so not exactly welcoming to Ashkenazim who wish to preserve our culture either. Israel isn't even a safe place for Jews. It's an authoritative dictatorship that oppresses its own people who speak against their crimes. It's a state that imprisons those who are barely adults for refusing to be drafted. Israel isn't a safe haven for Jews. It's a prison.

I do, however, view Jewish people as an Indigenous group, but we are not Indigenous to the Levant. I'd say that we're Indigenous in a similar way that Traveler groups are Indigenous. I believe in Jewish hereness. I state in my bio that I am a Doikaytist. We deserve the right to self-determination and safety in our own homes, in our own communities in the lands that we were born in.