More Dad Less Sad

This was prompted by me and my boyfriend discussing handedness and being able to tell apart left and right. And me, being ambidextrous, was baffled by how do people with an obligate dominant hand mix up which side is the one with their Writing Hand and which one isn't?? And my boyfriend pointed out that I go "turn left - no I mean right" so much when giving directions that I have lost my navigator privileges.

I argued that mixing up the words isn't the same thing as mixing up the directions. Like if your mom accidentally called you the dog's name doesn't mean that she literally can't tell you apart from the dog. And he looked at me like this

It might take time. More than has already passed, but it will get better.

than has already passed, but

it will get better.

That's the specifically Jewish Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Why is it different than International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which is January 27?

The one in January is for everyone on earth to learn about and remember all the different victims of the Holocaust, and subsequent genocides.

This one is a day when Jews can grieve, light a candle for, and remember all of the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust, as well as to honor the survivors.

The one on January 27th is on the Gregorian calendar. It's the same date on your calendar every year.

This one is the same date on the Jewish lunar calendar every year: the 27th of Nisan. That's the penultimate day of Nisan, because it's the day before the new moon. Sometimes that's in April, sometimes May.

(Except when that interferes with Shabbat, in which case it's moved back or forward. This year it's on the 26th of Nisan, because the 27th ends with the beginning of Shabbat.

Listen, it's not easy to preserve the traditions of a culture that's over 4,000+ years old, and add new ones.)

You're not Jewish? Here are some things you can still do to support Yom Ha'Shoah!

Follow Jewish blogs!

Reblog posts that taught you something new!

Use the "new post" button when you feel inspired to talk about other genocides!

Ask good-faith questions! (That is: ask questions you really mean, about things that interest you. Don't put judgement, criticism, arguments, or snark in the form of a question.)

Remember (or learn now!) that as a result of the Holocaust, the Jewish community is really fucking tiny and extremely interconnected. Most Jews alive today have been directly affected by the Holocaust.

I'm a convert-in-progress living in California, and I have still personally met multiple people who turned out to be Holocaust survivors.

Every Jewish friend I had, growing up, was missing huge chunks of their extended family because of the Holocaust.

Remember (or learn now!) that the Holocaust did not happen in a vacuum. It was not a one-off event. It was preceded by centuries of pogroms and exiles. Then in 1903, the Russian Empire invented Jewish global conspiracies with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. In that same empire from 1917-1920, 150,000-200,000 Jews were murdered in incredibly brutal pogroms. And from 1940-1980, in the Damgana - one of the largest ethnic cleansings in history - countries across the Arab world systematically stripped Jews of their rights, expelled them, and killed them.

Remember (or learn now!) that Jews were 0.75% of the world population in 1939. If that were still true today, there would be four times as many Jews on earth right now. (60,465,000, instead of 15,700,000.)

There are a lot more trans people on earth than Jews.

There are, at least, a lot of trans Jews.

Remember (or learn now!) that the Holocaust wiped an entire world from the earth that can never be rebuilt. Jewish villages. Coffeeshops where everyone was speaking Yiddish. Jewish cultural hotspots with music, theatre, poetry, community.

Yad Vashem offers amazing free online courses like:

The Holocaust through the Perspective of Primary Sources (see what people were saying about it and experiencing at the time! Survivor testimonies, German bureaucracy, and letters and photos along the way.)

The Final Solution to the Jewish Question (how did Nazi ideology develop? What actions and policies did the Nazi Party start out with?)

Antisemitism: From Its Origins to the Present (what does antisemitism look like today? How has it changed over the centuries? Why is it so common? Where does it come from?)

And tons of amazing digital collections and online exhibitions, like:

Jews and Sport Before the Holocaust

The stories of Jewish communities before the war, in places from Macedonia to the Carpathian Mountains

What everyday life was like for Jews who had been rescued from the death camps

The names and biographical details of 4,800,000 people murdered in the Holocaust

And a podcast, with episodes like:

Emanuel Ringelbum and The Warsaw Ghetto Secret Archive

Jews Saving Jews

The Shtetl: Between Myth and Reality

The First Female Rabbi

Profits and Persecution: German Big Business and Holocaust Crimes

There's also a video from the United States Holocaust Museum that includes home movies from before the Holocaust, which is pretty fucking amazing:

-------------------------------------------------

Also prev tags:

I LIED !!!! GET PRANKED

POST BELOW ME GET FUCKING WET

sephardi 

sephardi (ladino) 

ashkenazi 

moroccan

juhuri/kavkazi

bukharian