Anti-semitism thread: onwards from 2023

Sarah Lawrence College

That's Jeff Tweedy's son, btw.

I thought this was a good, useful quote:

“Antisemitism isn’t primarily about hurting or killing Jews, and it’s not based on some theory of racial inferiority (or superiority),” he wrote. “Instead, antisemitism is a fear, and hatred, of Jewish power — expressed primarily as a readiness to believe that Jews, when organized and acting together on large scales, are dangerous, the very essence of evil.”

Jeff Tweedy is Jewish?

He converted. It's actually a pretty sweet story:

“Sammy, our younger son, was struggling quite a bit with the (bar mitzvah) process, and kind of begging to not to be forced to go to Hebrew school,” Tweedy told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “But it was important to us, and important to his mother.”

So Tweedy presented a heartwarming idea to the head rabbi of the family’s synagogue, the Reform Congregation Emanuel on Chicago’s North Side, to “alleviate some of (Sammy’s) kvetching”: Tweedy would go to temple each week with Sammy, and study to convert to Judaism while Sammy was working on his Torah portion.

“(I)t seemed to work. He ended up getting bar mitzvahed and I ended up converting,” Tweedy said.

Rabbi Michael Zedek performed the conversion, but during the process, Tweedy got to know Rabbi Herman Schaalman, who was his synagogue’s rabbi emeritus and continued to assist with ceremonies into his 90s.

“He spoke at Spencer’s Bar Mitzvah, and we had had lots of contact with him at our temple, before he retired and even after he retired he spent a lot of time there,” Tweedy said. “So he played a role in the kids’ interest in Judaism and I’m a deep admirer of his theology.”

Schaalman, who passed away at the age of 100 in 2017, was a legendary figure in the Reform movement. A native of Munich, Germany, he was one of five rabbis Leo Baeck brought to the U.S. in 1935 to study at Hebrew Union College. A leader in the movement for much of the 20th century, Schaalman went public towards the end of his life about having changed the ways he felt about his faith, which included questioning his belief in God.

“I was really moved by that. A lot of people’s views … on religion and things like that tend to calcify as people get older,” Tweedy said of Schaalman. “And his thinking was so nimble right up until the end that it allowed him to basically come up with a theology where it wasn’t pessimistic, it was more like ‘we don’t need a lot of (God) to be good,’ and I thought that was kind of an inspiring message for a world that’s trying to integrate religious beliefs and secular beliefs.”

The conversion process also required Tweedy to partake in a certain painful traditional ritual. He didn’t go over his circumcision story again in detail, but as he told NPR’s “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me” show last year, it involved a storage closet at his temple, a black operating bag and a mohel who afterwards told him that his sons were big fans.

Tweedy described the synagogue as a place where he’s simply known as “the father of Spencer and Sammy,” not a celebrity.

“You eventually blend in as a parent, and a citizen,” Tweedy said of the synagogue. “My experience with the temple, I think, has been pretty typical of most people’s. It’s just another wonderful group of supportive people.”

Tweedy sang at both of his sons’ bar mitzvahs, and he even brought along Mavis Staples, with whom he had been collaborating at the time, to sing at his younger son’s ceremony. He said the “pretty liberal” Reform environment leaves plenty of room for music (especially folk music) to be integrated into prayer. The synagogue also boasts a “semi-professional” klezmer group called the Ham-It-Up Band.

I think Tweedy has also said, essentially, that if his family was forced onto the trains again, he'd want to be with them, so he might as well be Jewish.

Btw, starting to see more clips of explicitly anti-Semitic hate speech at rallies, especially the stuff in Montreal.

Can you elaborate on that? There's a lot of misinformation being spread about what happened at Concordia yesterday

Never mind, I think I know what you're referring to

I saw a clip of somebody calling somebody a kike, and I saw a clip of a professor telling somebody to go back to Poland, you whore.

I don't know anything about the latter clip, do you have a link or can you direct me in some way?

I've seen the former, and I think it's impossible to know whether they're saying that word or "cunt," which is what the student has claimed.

got to admit, my benefit of the doubt reserves are pretty low right now.

Can't paste the link right now, but I saw it on one of those anti-Semitism aggregate accounts.

personally I believe anti-semitism is primarily about killing or hurting Jews

Heck of a fact check: https://t.co/9SKS6lOSIs pic.twitter.com/JV3PG8ZFQ1

— Talia Jane ❤️‍🔥 (@taliaotg) November 9, 2023

lol comments full of lip readers

nice of the anti-semitism aggregators to introduce the k-word into the general discourse, definitely what we as a people needed right now

it doesn't sound like either of those words to me

maybe we can get Peter Jackson to use his MAL tech to demix this and solve the problems of Israel and Palestine forever

The octopus was Ringo

Next Tuesday in Jerusalem

OK lol

You know who often uses octopus imagery? Antisemites.

Anyway, I'm glad we've got this anti-Semitism stuff sorted out. Carry on, Canada.

There is no way she's saying the K word in that video unless she retroactively was born in Georgia midsentence.

Granted, I don't blame that misinfo from spreading, I blame the person who posted the vid and made the initial claim

Honestly, I really couldn't tell one way or another from the initial vid, and the statement to the contrary comes allegedly/anonymously from the person being accused, by way of an ally of the accused, so it's not exactly some neutral defense. But I saw a second video with (to my ears) slightly better sound, and it starts off seemingly less angry and doesn't sound like what she was being accused of saying. Again, I admit my benefit of the doubt reserves are running low, so I apologize for further spreading misinformation.

The replay center in Secaucus says NOT antisemitism

https://res.cloudinary.com/ybmedia/image/upload/c_crop,h_430,w_771,x_0,y_0/c_scale,f_auto,q_auto,w_700/v1/m/e/f/efba0fa9faf9860f4c403ea65b9ebaa658fbc34e/buck-laughlin-trevor-beckwith-best-show.png
"Hmm, it looks like the ref is rescinding his accusation of anti-Semitism."

i don't blame anybody for sharing it, it's how it was framed and info spreads on Twitter quickly

Carry on, Canada

personally I believe anti-semitism is primarily about killing or hurting Jews

― symsymsym, Thursday, November 9, 2023 8:22 AM bookmarkflaglink

I interpreted what Tweedy said as meaning what starts as words or symbols or fears can turn into actions.

Kind of the frog being boiled alive thing

“Antisemitism isn’t primarily about hurting or killing Jews, and it’s not based on some theory of racial inferiority (or superiority),” he wrote. “Instead, antisemitism is a fear, and hatred, of Jewish power — expressed primarily as a readiness to believe that Jews, when organized and acting together on large scales, are dangerous, the very essence of evil.”

The quote's by a Rabbi Rubenstein at Yale, not Tweedy Jr.

I think it's true that anti-semitism almost universally does have this conspiratorial thinking about secret cabals of powerful Jews behind it at one level or another. I just find the framing a bit weird - surely anti-semitism is primarily about the actual consequences to Jews, and is about racial discrimination. And this framing doesn't leave any space for valid criticism of Jews wielding power - it's not anti-semitic for me to attack AIPAC's actions or the ADL's positions.

Jews are no less capable of using power for evil than any other group of people. It's fair for people whose families are bombed or whose lives are consigned to an indefinite military occupation to feel fear or hatred of Israel. Nobody should conflate Israel with Jewish people, but I think these kinds of definitions of anti-semitism themselves muddy the water.

I haven't read the pdf where the quote comes from, so maybe it provides more context, and I'm reading it unfairly.

Someone on my daughter's instagram account just told her the blood of thousands of children is on her hands. It's cool, though, she's distracting herself by helping her roommates hang Christmas decorations. She's decided against hanging Hanukkah decorations for the time being, though. Because something something chilling effect.

sorry jic

That's awful - I'm sorry Josh.

Terrible. People have lost their minds.

Really sorry Josh.

I feel like something has really broken out there. Some kids were running around our neighborhood yelling "White Power" last night. On Tuesday a friend who was working at a polling place had an old man call her over to help him with his ballot. He wanted to know which people running were Jews so he could avoid voting for them.

Damn. People are fucking terrible.

Xpost to Josh and Keyes

That's really messed up. I'm very sorry to hear that Josh.

Similar things have been reported about protests at Northwestern University and a friend of mine who's still there (attended as a student, then got a nice job as university staff) sadly confirmed the details. It's really insane and infuriating how too many people opposed to what's happening in Gaza have been taking it out on all people of Jewish faith - I really expected at least students in a university to know better. I was already bracing for both anti-semitism and Islamophobia to get worse - per the analyst quoted in another thread, to 9/11-era levels - but this is far worse than what I've seen in my lifetime.

Conversely, over here, people who are susceptible to yelling "White Power" are more likely to be supporting Israel's actions.

Thanks everyone, I appreciate it. Fortunately she's a strong kid, and sensible and discipled enough not to reply. She just reported it to the school and moved on.

Shit's pretty fucked up right now. So much rage and frustration, made worse by ignorance and a general erosion of whatever empathy was ever there. Sometimes you just gotta put on Tom Lehrer's "National Brotherhood Week" and laugh.

"I was already bracing for both anti-semitism and Islamophobia to get worse - per the analyst quoted in another thread, to 9/11-era levels"

Yeah I posted that thread and was thinking about it earlier today...

I honestly thought this NYT article was good, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/09/us/antisemitic-speech-palestine-israel-protests.html and was dismayed to see Dan Nguyen and others downplaying the importance of this on bluesky and elsewhere.

The most heartbreaking thing is, my daughter is a kind, generous, caring person who spends a lot of her time helping and supporting other people (and animals!). She also has anxiety issues (who doesn't?) and, for lots of reasons, finds the Jewish community to be her safe space. When she called me today (not in tears or anything, just to check in and say hi) she told me how a lot of the more liberal voices she gravitates to no longer sound like allies, and a lot of the voices on the right, which she can't stand, are gleefully stepping in to fill that void, which disgusts her. She told me it increasingly feels like there is no place for someone like her, and nowhere is a terrible place to be. The last thing I want her to think is that it's better to just be silent.

The last thing I want her to think is that it's better to just be silent.

I feel that. Every day that passes, the more I feel I just can't speak out about the subject, both due to my own emotions as well as the potential reaction.

I can see why.

That sucks, Josh. I've noticed for a long time that people will start posting that kind of stuff on all kinds of Jewish content on Instagram regardless of if it has any connection to Israel. I'm sure it's worse now.

I saw this post reblogged by a baseball tumblr I follow and thought it was good. Linking because it’s reasonably long and if you guys think it’s full of shit at least it won’t take up too much space itt. On the dangers of false friends (and, as they would say on there: tw: antisemitism): https://postimg.cc/gallery/q7ZMf9S

I can’t read it for some reason, it comes through blurry

If you click the individual images it should be ok

XP, I relate a lot to the instinct to remain silent. In the morass of modern “discourse” it can feel like saying what you think is right also gives ammunition to the people who want to harm you. On the other hand, the loudest among us are often the worst.

I see it now gyac, thanks. Actually dovetails with what I just commented.