Being Jewish

[lagilman]

Pretty much everyone here knows (or will figure out sooner rather than later) that I'm Jewish. What most people don't understand is that this isn't like being Christian-only-not.

I don't agree 100% with everything in this essay, but I endorse the hell out of it. And you should read it.

Originally posted by vschanoes at Being Jewish

I was reading a great piece about queer YA lit the other day about intersectionality, and the multiple ways that characters and people can embody differences from the normative “white, cisgender, heterosexual, abled, Christian (or similar morality structure) and more often than not, male.” While I really like this piece, I was brought up short by “or similar morality structure”—I couldn’t help read it as a reference to Jewishness: we’re different, but not quite different enough to count. I blame the right-wing use of “Judeo-Christian,” to be honest, but more on that later. I want to emphasize that I have no idea if Tristina Wright meant it that way—she may have meant something entirely different, and the anger in this essay is not meant to be directed at her. It is directed at what feels to me like an attempt in the US to erase the historical differences between Christians and Jews, an erasure being committed in order to exonerate Christians of their history of violent anti-semitism while demonizing Islam.

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Comments

[mt-yvr.livejournal.com]

Genuine question... is it insulting to say that a lot of this strongly resonates with a lot of feelings I'm having about "gay is just straight with the same sex"? I recognize a loooot of the feelings, or what I think are the feelings in this essay.

What's interesting to me is that I was raised to be afraid of insulting Jewish people. I was raised that it was actually potentially insulting if not offensive to say "Jewish" to someone. All my life I was raised to believe that Jews were inscrutable, opaque from the outside. Harbourers of mysteries that I could never understand as someone raised second generation lapsed Catholic. That I would NEVER be able to understand as I wasn't born Jewish.

That mainly came from Michael, my father. Irish American born and raised in the Bronx. There are echoes from the Irish side of the family, as well, in some of the things in that essay. And in some of the things you, yourself have written about.

Not so much as "oh, I get that because this is the same" but more of a .. I recognize those flinches.

Genuinely I don't know if it would be presumptuous to say that or insulting to the specific lived experiences, which is why I ask. It's not meant to lessen the story but more to stand in solidarity with it. Next door, so to speak. I just never know if that works or not.

[lagilman]

IMO, it's not insulting at all - there's a commonality to being a part of a minority group that's both historically persecuted AND overwritten/overtalked. I'd be more surprised if there wasn't resonance.

And the "inscrutability' is a weird kind of fetishizing the Other. If someone is SO different, it removes the obligation to try and understand/see them as equals, because of course it's impossible. Much the way some men treat women. It will not surprise you to learn that I have strong opinions on how many layers of bullshit that is.

[mt-yvr.livejournal.com]

Nope. It's why I tend to follow a set of people fervently. You among them. I learn more and more about Jews and Judaism every day because I rejected that view once I realized it was there. Edit : To be clear I mean I follow people because they are amazing people. Among many things they teach me about things like how to ask questions, or a religion, or how to sit quietly and listen. You kinda hit all of them, but that's a whole other thing.

Mike had a LOT of racism in his family, and bigotry and misogyny and and and and. It took me a long time to realize exactly how entrenched it was. Subtle things as well as big things.

The hard part for me is that I tend to question if people "get it" when they say they do. So I like "tell me something about yourself that is similar". It's where the "this reminds me of X" thing in me comes from. But. I had to learn to not make it about appropriating the conversation. The hard part that I alluded to is that it's difficult to know if that works for other people or not.

This essay has given me a lot to look up and a lot to read about and an incredible insight into things I knew but didn't really pay attention to. Aka never needed to understand. Correcting that now.

[deborahjross.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much for this link. I found the post deeply resonant, and also gives me insight why the Orlando shooting continues to distress me deeply.

[martianmooncrab.livejournal.com]

thanks for cross posting it, hate is a peculiar thing, my mother, of Prussian extrration, hated Jews (and she said it funny like Joos) and next to that, she hated Catholics. She pretty much hated everyone and everything that wasnt her. It taught me that blaming everyone else for your own failures wasnt healthy.

[badgermirlacca.livejournal.com]

Thank you.