If y’all wanna know the true power of hate, just remember that Alan Turing, the breaker of the enigma code in WWII, was driven to suicide by being forced to undergo chemical castration as a punishment for his homosexuality.

Historians say he saved 14 to 21 million lives.

I’d also like to say in the time we studied WWII in school, the history textbooks never mentioned him. I had never heard of the guy until I watched “The Imitation Game” which I 110% recommend you watch if you haven’t.Alan Turing was a blessing to humanity who saved (once again) 14 to 21 million lives, and he is left out of history because he was gay.

And this is just one example?? So many brilliant and heroic people are left out of history because of their race, their gender, their sexuality, their religion, and it’s just because some bigots in positions of influence get to decide what parts of history are remembered.

This man has had a profound effect on the world, it’s estimated he shortened the war by 2 years, saved countless lives and was the father of modern computing. Without him the world would be a very different, and very dark place.

He wasn’t just chemically castrated. The injections they have him were intended to decrease his libido as part his sentence for “gross indecency”. About 2 years after his trial he was found dead in his apartment next to a half eaten apple that was filled with cyanide (which became the inspiration for the Apple logo).

Turing is one of the most amazing people in all of history. He developed our modern method of computing (see: the Turing Machine) and advanced computer science by immeasurable amounts. And he dies when he was 41. Just imagine if he lived in a world where he was accepted. Imagine the technology we would have today and how many more lives would have been saved. No person deserves what Turing got, especially not someone as brilliant as him.

TEACH. CHILDREN. ABOUT. ALAN. TURING! WHEN THEY LEARN ABOUT WWII, THEY DESERVE TO KNOW ABOUT THE MAN WHO ENDED IT!!!

A PSA on Jewishness, because apparently non-Jews just have to know this stuff and can't figure it out on their own

Jews are an ethnic group. Global Jewry is made up of several different ethnic groups, the largest of which are: Sefardi Jews, whose ancestors historically lived in the Iberian peninsula (Spain and Portugal) and western Europe; Ashkenazi Jews, whose ancestors historically lived in central and eastern Europe; and Mizrahi Jews, whose ancestors historically lived in MENA (Middle East/North Africa). There are other groups of ethnic Jews living in other places in the world as well. Jews from all of these groups have moved across the world, largely due to persecution in their host countries, and formed new communities in new places, so that there may be longstanding communities of Ashkenazi Jews in France, and Sefardi Jews in Morocco.

All ethnic Jews have ancestral, genetic heritage stemming from the Levant (specifically, the area now known as Israel and/or Palestine). All Jews also have cultural heritage stemming from the Levant. This is no less important or relevant than genetic heritage.

Some Jews have mixed heritage (one Jewish parent only). They are also Jews. The matrilineal descent question is a question of Jewish religious law, and is interpreted differently by different Jewish denominations and individuals. (My personal stance is to affirm patrilineal descent.) 

The religion historically practiced by Jews is Judaism. Ethnic Jews may practice any religion they please; this does not mean they are less Jewish in terms of their heritage. Non-ethnic Jews may convert to Judaism; this does not make them any less Jewish in terms of their religious practice. Judaism does not proselytize.

Judaism as a whole takes no global stance of Zionism as a political ideology. Different Jews have different opinions on Zionisms (plural intentional, because Zionism takes a lot of forms), and while they may be good or bad people, and you may agree or disagree with their politics, their Zionism or anti-Zionism does not inherently make them any more or less Jewish. 

The question of Jewish identity is ultimately not the purview of non-Jews. It is nothing more or less than gross arrogance for non-Jews to assume that their opinions on this question are remotely relevant or of interest to Jews, and the persistent insertion of some non-Jews into these private conversation is extremely offensive.

If you are not Jewish, and have written, or are considering writing, a post on  Jewish identity/ethnicity, I have some advice for you: don’t. You almost certainly don’t know what you’re talking about, and you definitely can’t have a better understanding of these complex issues than someone who is actually Jewish themselves. If you really feel, for some inexplicable reason, that you simply must weigh in on this issue, consult an actual Jew before doing so. 

Goyische Friend: Do you want to hang out next weekend?

Me: Sorry, I can’t, it’s a holiday.

Goyische Friend: Again???

And here i thought the tree of life was a reference to yggdrassil. The more i learn (and glad i havent appropriated that)

Yeah honestly if its just the tree of life imagery you’re after, there’s plenty of that in Germanic paganism, Celtic and Norse. The Tree of Life/Etz Hayim in Kabbalah isnt even particularly tree-like

Antisemites are quick to spread the idea that Jews are incredibly wealthy people who have a great deal of social capital and wield a lot of control, and it’s darkly humorous to me at this point.

Being Jewish, for quite a lot of Jewish history, meant that you would live in poverty and oppression. You might get lucky and take a job that paid well but the gentiles wouldn’t take, circumstance might just be on your side, but for the most part, your opportunities would be severely limited.

Even today, Jewish poverty is a very real problem. In New York City alone, over 500,000 Jews live near or below the poverty line. Many of these Jews are Shoah/Holocaust survivors, and quite a few are fairly recent immigrants, frequently from Russia or the former Soviet Union. Poverty is also common within the Hasidic community. [x]

“Jewish” and “living in poverty” are not and have never been oxymorons. The truth is that Jews are not endowed with some sort of psychic force that draws material wealth to them, and in many cases, Jews are more likely to be poor than the general populace.

The whole Jews and the bank connection is from a time when people religiously followed the Bible (pun intended), almost to the letter. A successful bank is, in point of fact, a business, and practising Christians, a huge majority of the population, would not have been able to successfully run a bank because the Bible forbids charging usury. Usury is now defined as “the illegal action or practice of lending money at unreasonably high rates of interest” (Google definitions). Some early (14th century) influential European banking families were the Bardi and Peruzzi families, and a little later the Medici family. During that time, circa 1300, the word usury meant “the practice of lending money at interest” (etymonline.com, an online etymology dictionary) and only later came to mean excessive interest. Banks can’t really run without charging interest, because, in general, banks pay you a little for letting them hold your money for you so that you want to let them hold your money, and there’s a little more to it, but banks aren’t mints, and don’t fabricate money, so they get that money by charging interest on the money that people borrow from them (that’s usury). And that is illegal according to the Bible, henceforth, if you run a bank and charge usury, you are a sinner, not a real Christian blah blah blah oh look, Jews don’t have a rule against that! It must be them!

@adhdspacewizard made this and PMed it to me and I am SO excited to keep this one locked and loaded for the next instance of someone doing exactly this to me

— Bnei Avraham Ahuvecha: Gerim in Chassidic Thought by Dov ben Avraham, page 37

Can we talk about how funny it is that the popular social media trope of “Biblically Accurate Angels” are almost never Biblically accurate?

I absolutely love them. This isn’t a diss at any artist, I really do love almost all of the illustrations people have done across many platforms. But there’s definitely a distinct aesthetic style that’s employed in the “Biblically Accurate Angels” trope, and it isn’t…. wholly accurate.

The trend seems to be about rejecting popular images of angels in western art (winged women, chubby babies, white men with swords, etc), and instead basing images of angels on descriptions found in the prophetic books like Ezekiel and Isaiah.

What I want to say though, is that… often, those descriptions are VERY detailed, but people’s artistic expressions rarely “accurately” convey the specific details and features described in these passages.

Which is interesting. And not necessarily “inaccurate,” since many Biblical accounts of angels and composite heavenly creatures conflict in details. So you could argue that variation is expected within the genre.

However, I would love to see more illustrations where instead of just reading the Biblical account and gleaning a few details, people really dug in and committed to depicting those scenes and entities in a way that’s faithful to the WHOLE of the description. Not just a few features like “has lots of eyes” or “has many wings over the body.”

I also want to point out that the Biblical account doesn’t exist in a vacuum. You can get a much more “accurate” picture of Biblical angels by.

The emergence of the “inaccurate” angel tropes we have in our cultural milieu today come from centuries of… interpreting only a few details about angels from translations of Hebrew texts.

If your reaction to that is that you want a MORE accurate picture of angels, you should dig deeper than just the surface levels of detail in the texts, because those details have a context and that context will help your concept/imagery get closer and closer to accuracy.

Because the Bible itself was also written over hundreds of years in a variety of cultural contexts and even languages (the Tanakh is written in various stages of Hebrew and some Aramaic) As a brief example:

If you only look at Isaiah, a Saraf is a heavenly being with 6 wings and a body that burns like amber/fire/lighting. But if you study the etymology, commentary, body of literature, and artistic depictions of serafim in the archeological record… You’d know they are snakes. Winged snakes. And if you studied Enoch, you would know that even later conceptions of them as humanoid often retain snake-like attributes, and that probably forms part of the implicit context for Isaiah.

Similarly. If you only read Ezekiel, a Cherub is a four headed being (man, ox, lion, eagle/vulture) with four wings, four arms, and one single leg with a large hoof, associated with being God’s chariot bearers, their spirits linked to Ophanim, the turning many eyed wheels. However, again, if you study the etymology, the commentary, the contemporary literature, and the archeological record… cherubim are sphinxes, and don’t always appear in the same configuration. Sometimes they have male heads, sometimes female. Sometimes they have animal heads - ram, eagle, lion, bull, even snake. They almost always have wings. But instead of humanoid bodies, they are usually quadropedal. And they’re not ONLY associated with being divine chariot bearers, but also with thrones, gates/doors, tombs, and generally as guardians of civil, royal, and sacred spaces. Ezekiel himself even later describes cherubim as winged lions with both a lion and human head, so we KNOW that his concept of cherubim was centered in a time and culture when cherub meant sphinx.

So. What I’m saying is.

If you want to accurately depict the literal beings described in prophetic visions, you have a LOT more at your disposal than just “these are a few of the details in the text translation I read.”

This is no one’s fault - not everyone has time to research angels in bronze age art, not everyone reads Hebrew and Aramaic or even realizes we have millenia of commentary. Ultimately, we are all working from our current cultural context. But, I’m saying, the more you immerse yourself in the context of the TEXT, the more “accurate” your angel depictions will become TO the text.

Repeat - I LOVE the biblically accurate angels trope! I love to see them. They are factually more accurate than the fat winged babies. What I’m saying is, I would love to see MORE of this trend, I would love to see it deepen and instead of being about using Biblical details of angels as inspiration for new images of angels, using the whole context to get a clearer idea of what angels were to the original authors.

If Jews actually controlled the media and government lets be real we’d be so much better off, we’d have so many more days off and so many more Hanukkah movies and songs.

Moshe Glickson (via yidquotes)

Our community is strengthened when we fully support and integrate patrilineal Jews.

If people could stop saying that Ashkenazi Jews = ethnically European that’d be great. :)

If you can accept that “American” is a nationality, rather than an ethnicity, you can understand that “X European Country” serves the same function for Jews with history in Europe.

I really don’t like being called identical to the same people that killed/kicked out my family for NOT being like them, destroying much of our distinct culture in the process.

And please don’t use the fact that Europeans forced goyische last names on us as part of your argument. :)))

If you’re interested in genetics, you can even look at this cool study on Levantine populations. Jews, including Ashkenazim, have significant overlap with the populations studied. If one study isn’t enough for you, have a link to a bunch more that say basically the same thing! 

Almost all Jewish groups are more closely related to each other than our neighbors, indicating common ancestry regardless of how far apart we’ve lived in the past, and we’ve never forgotten where we come from. We’re still a diasporic people with origins in the Middle East. Not Europe. History and science agree. Please stop trying to argue otherwise.

I’m happy you made this post because I saw the post that presumably inspired it and I wanted to say something about it but didn’t have the koyach. 

That said, genetic studies have shown that ethnic Ashkenazim (of which I am one) are half Southern European.  However, we have very little Eastern European admixture.  Also, if I recall correctly, Jews and Palestinians are more closely genetically related to each other than either are to any other population.

@loon-whisperer, you’re absolutely right! I had longer drafts that explained the details more, before deciding to be as concise as I could. And also the interesting thing about that is that the S European admixture has to be from when we first came into Europe (and possibly before), but once Ashkenazi society formed in Central Europe, the mixing was minuscule.

If your “answer” to antisemitism is to tell Jews to stop being Jewish, you are entirely missing the point.

Jews should have the right to live Jewish lives, without fear of being oppressed or murdered by gentiles. You are asking Jews to give up their heritage, religion, ethnicity, and very identity to escape persecution they shouldn’t have to experience in the first place.

And it’s not like separating ourselves from our Jewish identities ever stopped gentiles from persecuting us anyways.

Jewish people have the right to live Jewish lives free from oppression and persecution.

Casting off our culture or religion will not save us from antisemites. It will not solve antisemitism. It will not solve anything. It will only remove from us our cultural and religious heritage and force us to take on aspects of those who have persecuted us, but as even the most assimilated Jews have been subject to antisemitism, even then we would be subject to antisemitism.

Our culture is ours. Our lives are ours. We should not have to debase ourselves or remove each last vestige of Jewishness and Judaism from our lives to receive humane treatment and human dignity.