#rusian

LISTEN i know that even for people like me who arent victims of any of these situations everything can be so overwhelming right now, and that we may feel hopless and we just dont wanna do anything anymore because everything seems pointless.

BUT FOR THE LOVE OF WHATEVER YOU BELIVE DO NOT BACK THE FUCK DOWN!

Like me, so many other people of the world (even if we belong to a "minority" and for that suffer daily discrimination) we are lucky enought to be ALLOWED to exist because for fucking coincidence we live in places where our goverments or/and the international powers allow us to just fucking be alive.

But there are so many people who the only thing tthey did was being born and for that the goverments decide that they should not exist.

If you were born in palestina to Israel and most of the world you arent fucking allowed to be alive.

If you are queer and were born in russia your fucking goverment says that you are not allowed to be alive.

If you are black in congo you are not allowed to be alive.

If you are native, for most of the goverments in the america continent you are not allowed to be alive.

And if you are a person with vulva/ you are a woman you are not allowed to be alive in most of the fucking world.

And so, so, so many more examples could be add because in this fucking sick world just being ALLOWED to be alive is a privilege.

So PLEASE I BEG YOU, IF YOU ARE IN A POSITION WERE YOUR MERE EXISTENCE IS ALLOWED (even for the dislike of some people) PLEASE, EVEN IF IT HURTS JUST RAGE, SPEAK THE FUCK UP! DONT BE QUIET!

If there are ambassadors of Israel in your country or/and from any other country that prohibits the existence of people, go and RAGE! GO AND DEMAND A CHANGE!.

If YOUR COUNTRY is in ANY way supporting the fact that some groups have the power to decide whether or not some people should be allowed to exist GO AND SCREAM AND SHOUT AND FUKING RAGE.

Why don’t Jews Celebrate Halloween?

In our very neighbourly NDG, Halloween is one of the most difficult days for our children. Our urban district comes alive with bustle of families going trick-or-treating. Since we moved here over 17 years ago, I’ve said if there is one holiday that NDGers celebrate its Halloween.

Our children watch as their friends all dressed up, fill the decked out block with every colour imaginable. Over the years we have allowed our children to give out candy on our porch. We’ve explained that our value is to give and not take.

This year some of our neighbours went out of their way to lovingly deliver Kosher candies to our children. Living in a multi-ethnic community, I find it more and more important to explain why we don’t celebrate this seemingly innocent pastime.

Historically speaking, the Halloween’s origins trace themselves back to the pagan idolatrous rites of the ancient Celtic and Druid civilizations. The Celtic year ended on October 31, and they would then celebrate a joint festival dedicated to the “sun god” and the “lord-of-the-dead.” Some historians even believe that Halloween was once also associated with savage human sacrifices.

Subsequently the Church appropriated this Holiday. In fact, the name “Halloween” means “Hallow evening”, or “holy night”, and is connected to All-Saints-Day also known as Hallowmas or All-Hallows-Day. It is the eve of one of the most important feasts in the Church calendar, solemnly observed by the Roman Catholics, Anglicans And Lutherans.

Halloween glorifies concepts relating to demonic forces, haunted places, witches, ghosts, goblins and general occult practices. The Jewish faith celebrates life, not death. We believe in serving G‑d with joy, not dread or horror. Most importantly, as a people we have always revered wholesomeness and uprightness not mischief.

While we respect all faiths and religions, and appreciate our neighbours celebrating their religious festivals with pomp and ceremony, joining them is another matter altogether. This holds especially true when the observances and ideals promote beliefs, which are entirely antithetical to Judaism.

Much of Halloween paraphernalia expresses themes of violence, destruction and spitefulness. It’s hard to not notice this even in an attempt to treat it as a joke.

This violent theme caused this day to be one that was used to attack Jews. This is an unfortunate historical reality. For example, you can look up the pogrom of October 31, 1905 that swept through Russia killing hundreds of jews in its path (I have written extensively about this). Growing up, many of my friends feared this day for these reasons. Even though, they had moved to a new country, their parents would lock the doors, turn off the lights and hide. I have always been empathetic to my friends in the Jewish community who still carry these traumas.

Back to my kids, tonight I had an opportunity to talk to them about what it means to be Jewish in multi-cultural community. We spoke about Abraham and Sarah felt living alone in the world, where everyone was celebrating every pagan holiday and custom. There were parades, parties, celebrations, and pageantry everywhere.

Still, Abraham and Sarah managed to inspire tens of thousands. Today, they are the parents of the three major religions. They nurtured Isaac all alone against the world and Isaac was pure in all his ways.

What was their secret? Abraham and Sarah always spoke positively and lived with excitement about their Judaism. Children today need positive reasons why they should live as a Jew, instead of hearing why you can’t do this or refrain from that.

So, should Jews celebrate Halloween? I can’t think of one reason why they should.

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Sources: parts of this article were taken from the notes of Rabbi Mendel Kaplan and Rabbi Chaim Mentz totally plagiarized without permission of the authors.

Rabbi Yisroel Bernath 

The Russian Pogrom of Halloween 1905.

For most people October 31 is a day of parties and dressing up in costumes. But just over a century ago, October 31, 1905 was a tragic day, ushering in hundreds of pogroms that killed thousands of Jews across Russia. Crowds surged through the streets, yelling threats, destroying property, and murdering Jewish men, women and children with impunity.

The immediate cause of this seismic wave of violence was the October Manifesto, a declaration from Czar Nicholas II guaranteeing basic freedoms and political rights. Promulgated on October 30, 1905 (sometimes referred to as October 17 on Russia’s “Old Calendar”), the declaration came amid rising political turmoil and the threat of revolution. Instead of calming tensions, the manifesto led to huge demonstrations and riots in many Russian cities. Tragically, it was Russia’s Jews who suffered the most.

In the city of Odessa, crowds rushed into the street to celebrate the manifesto. One student recorded that “a joyous crowd appeared in the streets; people greeted each other as if it were a holiday.” Among the throngs were many Jews who believed the new laws would help grant them long-sought legal rights. But violent scuffles soon broke out.

As the mood in Odessa darkened, many Russians began turning on the city’s Jews with almost unimaginable sadism. At first, angry rioters beat Jews in the streets and ransacked the homes and businesses belonging to local Jews. The extreme right-wing anti-Semitic group, the Black Hundreds, entered the fray, encouraging pro-Czar Russians to blame Jews for their country’s ills. When a city official was shot dead, the surging crowds became enraged and attacks accelerated, turning into a violent pogrom that lasted several days. The police either turned a blind eye or eagerly participated in the attacks.

Eyewitnesses described Jews being thrown out of high windows to their deaths. Jewish children were murdered in front of their parents. Rioters targeted Jewish pregnant women, assaulting them and killing some by cutting open their stomachs. Parents were tortured by watching their children die. By the time the pogrom was over, over 400 Jews were dead and about 300 injured in Odessa alone.

October 31 saw hundreds of other pogroms across Russia, mostly in the south. 690 pogroms cost 4,000 Jews their lives; the wave of hatred and murder saw another 10,000 Jews injured.

In the Belarusian town of Rechysta, local Jews, many of whom belonged to Communist and Communist-Zionist groups, organized to defend themselves from murderous mobs. The threat of violence was high: local Black Hundred members issued warnings calling Jews “enemies of the Czar” and demanding Jews’ “extermination”. Police officers distributed rifles to townspeople, and a parish priest announced “the Jews should be killed to a man, since they want to overthrow the Czar.” Violence erupted in the town when some locals beat up Jewish businesswomen and ripped up the dry goods they were selling.

About twenty Jewish men organized and fought back, but were soon hopelessly overwhelmed. One Jewish fighter, Noi Geizentsveig, later explained, “We did not see the enemy during the skirmish, therefore we did not throw the bombs (the Jewish self-defence group had acquired) and responded by aimless shooting." The Jewish fighters were overwhelmed; local thugs shot and stabbed them, yelling “Here is your freedom!” and “Here is your constitution!”, references to the October Manifesto they blamed the Jews for bringing about.

Within hours, eight Jewish fighters were murdered and twelve were wounded. They were dragged to the town’s police station and locked up with no food, water, or medical care, dead fighters together with those still living. Later on, the fighters who were still alive were consigned to house arrest, denied medical care even though some were severely injured.

The final pogrom of the hundreds that started October 31, 1905 was in the town of Bialystok (in present day Poland). Eighty-two Jews were murdered in those few convulsive days of violence, and about 700 people were injured. Czar Nicholas II dispatched officials throughout Russia’s territory to report back on the pogroms, which dissipated nearly as abruptly as they began.

For many Russian Jews, the October 31 pogroms was proof that they had no future in Russia and spurred many to leave. One Russian Jew who fled was the famous Yiddish writer Shalom Aleichem. He and his family watched three days of pogroms overwhelm the Jewish community of Kiev from their hiding spots in one of the town’s hotels. When the violence was over, they hastily made plans to flee Russia, eventually moving to America.

On November 25, 1905, three weeks after the terrifying pogrom and just before he left Russia for good, Shalom Aleichem wrote to a friend in New York, Dr. Maurice Fishberg, begging him to use his influence with American Jews to encourage the United States not to help Czar Nicholas II (who was embroiled in the Russo-Japanese War and was looking for a loan). After watching his fellow Jews murdered in cold blood, Shalom Aleichem, like many Russian Jews, despaired of Jews’ future there. “Six million Jews” in Russia could be “murdered” there, the author wrote, in a long, impassioned letter about Russian politics and the war.

Over a century after the horrible spasm of violence that consumed much of Russia, we owe it to the many thousands of Russian Jews massacred in the pogroms of October 31, 1905, to remember their deaths and honour their memories.

▶ Neblisa vive en mí, ella me sabe abrazarМои панталончики из школы, Ясуюки — мой анорак !

❥𝓡𝓸𝓴𝓾☙