(((I Will Outlive)))

Shôgun - 101. Anjin

Your trauma from Christianity isn’t an excuse to be antisemitic, you just suck. Judaism and Christianity are nothing alike. Just because you’re pagan now doesn’t mean you get to be a bigot.

I grew up largely being told that we read the Bible and Christians also read the Bible, but that Christians have another book they call the “New Testament” and that they misunderstand our Bible.

Then I kept hearing “the Bible says this,” “the Bible says that” from Christians, and they were either talking about the “NT” or misinterpreting the “Jewish Bible” - OK, checks out. And I kept hearing from atheists “the Bible says this” in a disparaging fashion, or “the Bible says that.” And I’d say “no, actually, you’re talking about the Christian Bible,” and they would say “oh the Jewish Bible is even worse, Old Testament God etc.,” and I’d explain to them they were talking about the Christian misunderstanding of the Jewish Bible, and this would end up being completely unproductive. The assumption among all of these atheists remained that Christianity was right about Judaism.

Then I learned that in Yiddish, bibl refers to the Christian Bible, and we only use the term tanakh. I knew the word tanakh, but I always thought it was just something people said for no reason when they could just as easily say Bible or Jewish Bible. But suddenly I understood completely the importance of the distinction.

Jewish people who type the word “god” as “g-d”: Do you think you can fool the big man upstairs with a technical work around? When he goes through your emails/texts/facebook posts after you die, you don’t think he’s gonna see that dash and think “this sneaky fuck here, enjoy h-ll.”

this thought comes from someone who has no idea how Judaism works, but okay. People avoid writing out God’s name, because you aren’t ever allowed to destroy or desecrate something with God’s name on it - you have to bury it instead. That’s what a genizah is. The most well known is probably the Cairo Genizah. It’s a box where Jews can put anything with God’s name on it to ensure that it gets buried. So obviously Jews do write out God’s name. In fact, it used to be traditional to mark the top of pages with God’s name as a kind of blessing or mark of honesty. That’s why there are so many miscellaneous texts in genizahs. Judaism reads “do not use my name in vain” pretty literally as a command to revere and respect the Y-H-V-H name of God. Most rabbis agree that this commandment only holds for the hebrew, so not typing out God is more something people do out of respect or as a nod to this tradition. Some people use G-d because they want to parallel the fact that the tradition was put in place for people who would be speaking and writing in hebrew or a very near identical language like Aramaic.

It’s a matter of respect, not a matter of “don’t do this or you will be punished.” Besides, Judaism deals almost exclusively with punishment in life and Judaism very explicitly doesn’t have a clear and codified notion of עולם הבא (the world to come). And there is certainly no notion of hell. Also, Judaism is not nearly that harsh in response to small mistakes. We have a holiday every year explicitly devoted to the idea that we all fuck up and that we need to ask forgiveness from each other and God (and during which God does all the judging - God doesn’t wait until after we die. It’s an active thing that can be constantly adjusted). Maybe world religions is not the best topic of contemplation during your shower.

The next person who tries to correct me when I say “Happy Holidays” is going to be told Happy Hanukkah instead. Very tired of hearing, “No, it’s MERRY CHRISTMAS.” I’m pretty sure Judaism was around a lot longer than your Buckstar’s boycotting butt, Karen.

My boss once shared a great story about that. This happened when he was in a layover in North Carolina back when the “War on Christmas” bullshit was first becoming prominent. He had gone to get a pack of cigarettes, and after he paid for it:

“Merry Christmas.” “Happy holidays.” “No. I said Merry Christmas.” “Do you know what Hanukkah is about?” “No, what?” “Some people tried to make us worship their ways, so we rose up and killed them. Happy Hanukkah.”

I celebrate Christmas, but generally avoid holiday themed greetings when working as a cashier unless the customer mentions their holiday specifically. 

The other day, two older ladies were buying briskets and told me they were for their Hanukkah celebration that night, so I responded something like “Well Happy Hanukkah! It’s the third night, right?” 

I shit you not these two old ladies were so tickled that someone at a store wished them a happy Hanukkah. One of them literally told me I was “the first one to do that”. 

To those who think there’s a war on Christmas, please get the fuck over yourself and remember that not everyone experiences the world the way you do.

Can’t find the post now, but someone definitely reblogged something of mine with a comment in the tags that “this is tumblr, not tiktok; you can say ‘Christian’ here” and let me just say: that is emphatically NOT why I use Xtian.

I use Xtian because, like some more traditional Jews, saying “Christ” even as a prefix is a tacit acknowledgment that Jesus was, in fact, the messiah - something that I do not believe and which I find even more important to separate myself from since I was raised Xtian. It is not offensive to do so; “X” is frequently used to denote the Greek letter “Chi,” which is where the word ‘Christ’ originally comes from. “Xian” would probably be slightly more accurate, and I did use it for a while until it confused enough people who thought I was referring to Xi'an. Which, fair enough, so I switched.

Honestly, I’d much rather use “Notzrim,” [נוצרים] which is a Hebrew word for Xtians and means (effectively) “followers of the one from Nazareth.” But like, nobody knows what that means in English, so Xtian it is until someone suggests something better.

But just to be 100% clear: I am not on TikTok, I will never be on TikTok, and this spelling has ~☆~nothing~☆~ to do with the quagmire that is TikTok.

Question, to my very limited knowledge, “jesus christ” was just the name of a person. Why does “christ” imply or acklowledge him as the messiah?(I do not know much about any side of this, and am agnostic, this is a question I am asking out of curiosity. I’m sorry if it is a stupid question to ask, I just don’t know what I don’t know.)

His name, as far as we know, was 'Yeshua ben Yusuf,’ not 'Jesus Christ.’

Christ comes from the Greek word christos, or 'anointed.’ So when you say 'Jesus Christ,’ you are saying 'Jesus the anointed one,’ you are not saying his name. This is why it is also acceptable for Christians to refer to him as 'Christ Jesus,’ because that’s not his name; you’re just saying 'anointed Jesus.’

'Christos,’ from which Christ is derived, was used in the Septuagint to translate the Hebrew word מָשִׁיחַ, literally 'moshiach’, 'Messiah,’ into Greek. Christos is to the Hebrew word מָשִׁיחַ as 'bread’ is to 'naan,’ it’s literally just another word which means the same thing in context.

So, as @unbidden-yidden said, calling him 'Christ’ or his followers 'Christians’ is a tacit acknowledgement and/or agreement that Jesus was, in fact, the messiah, which Jews very much do not believe.

This is like saying 'Spider the really cool one,’ and if you use this term, or like 'The followers of Spider the really cool one,’ you are acknowledging that I am, in fact, really cool. And if you don’t believe I am really cool, you might wish to use another term, as is explained above.

All of the information on the origin and usage of the term Christ, btw, is available by googling 'Christ word origin’ or going to the Wikipedia page for ’Christ (title).’ You could have easily found this yourself rather than asking a couple of Jews to re-explain this for you.

Missionaries are inherently xenophobic.

Missionaries to Jews are inherently antisemitic.

There is no debate here - the above statements are inescapable true. Intentions do not matter. It LITERALLY DOES NOT MATTER that Christian missionaries BELIEVE they are doing something good by saving other people from hell. IT. DOES. NOT. MATTER.

Because the people you’re missionizing ALSO have beliefs, that are part of their own religions and cultures and histories and ethnicities. And your assumption that only YOUR beliefs are correct and must be spread is the LITERAL definition of xenophobia.

Missionaries and bigotry are not seperable.

If you proselytize in your personal life (congratulations, you are also a model of xenophobia and bigotry), or if you support missionaries or missionary activity (ideologically or financially), you are now being instructed to unfollow me, because I don’t like you as a person, and I can’t respect you while you willfully disrespect others. In either case, you are also now being instructed to cut that shit the fuck out. No one wants to hear about the love of Jesus from you, and if they do, they will ask you DIRECTLY and EXPLICITLY. Literally no one else gives a fuck.

I will be accepting apologies in writing and reparations via venmo.

I can never get over the fact that Catholicism has defined its most fundamental tenets with such excruciating specificity that even most Catholic priests can’t explain the basic thing that their religion is about without unwittingly committing some obscure heresy or other. It sounds like a fake religion that you’d make up for a satirical cautionary tale about the perils of pedantry, and yet.

“Christianity Bashing”

That, right there in the title?  That’s the number one complaint I get in one form or another for A Thing Of Vikings, even more than I’ve gotten complaints about the LGBT characters.  I get complaints that I am “bashing” Christianity in my fic, ranging from public comments where the reviewer clarified that they view the mere inclusion of LGBT characters as “an ultra-liberal agenda”, to guest reviewers on FFnet, and private messages that say that they have no problems with me being a Jew… but that I should shut up about the Jewish experience with Christianity.  I had one ask when the “True Christians” will be showing up, the ones who missionize with zeal and love for Jesus, and cited as examples Billy Graham and Richard Wurmbrand of the sort of people he’d like to see–both of them vile antisemites, Wurmbrand even worse than Graham’s “Synagogue of Satan” comments, because Wurmbrand was born a Jew and converted, and joined a group that wanted to destroy the Jewish people.  I can say, without hyperbole, that this is literally the single most common complaint I get.

But the thing of it is, I’m not “bashing” Christianity, despite temptation.  I’m just not handling it with silk gloves.  And these people are so used to being coddled that, as usual with any privileged person, it’s easier to tell the minority to shut up and be quiet than it is to engage in retrospection. 

But let me give an example here; I don’t know how many people follow my main tumblr, but the other week, there was this incredibly tone-deaf post by @catholic-living, and then, in their attempts to apologize, they managed to victim-blame the Jews for the suffering we’ve endured at the hands of Catholics, saying that it was the fault of both sides.  It then got worse when other Christians chimed in.  But the thing is, this is normal.  This is how relations between Jews and Christians are.  Some are polite, sure, but #NotAllChristians falls flat as a protest for the same reason #NotAllMen does–because we don’t know which of these privileged people are safe, or will remain safe.  As I commented in that last post I linked, it’s actually almost a relief to see the hatred out front-and-center, as a reminder not to fall into a false sense of security.  

But still, after that, I made my own venting post on how, to these people, my sole value is “Jesus was a Jew!” and not as a person in my own right.  

That attracted more angry Christians who proceeded to prove me right.  I’ll spare you all the link spam and just give you all this highlight. 

So when I hear accusations of “Christianity bashing”, I just think of stuff like this.  Because this is my normal; that stuff I linked above?  That’s not exceptional.  This behavior–of calling me “Satanic” and insisting that it’s love, of saying that I need to convert or else–that’s my normal experience in interacting with self-professed Christians.  I was stalked in college by three Baptists who believed that converting a Jew was guaranteed admission into Heaven and wouldn’t take no for an answer.  I don’t go out wearing my headcovering or anything else that could identify me as Jewish, because I don’t feel safe, because I’ve been harassed.  I’ve been asked where my horns and tail are.  I’ve been told, to my face, that my sole use in Christian theology is as part of a mass blood sacrifice to bring back Jesus.  

And the thing is?  The thing that really brings home “#NotAllChristians” to me?

I can count on one hand, with fingers left over, the number of times I’ve had another Christian intercede when I’m being harassed, either online or in public.  My first personal interaction with Christian antisemitism was when I was nine and a kid came running up to me and screamed at me that “You killed Jesus!” and I’ve had routine encounters with hate-filled Christians since then.  I’m now 34.  So in a quarter century of dealing with hate, I’ve had less than five times of someone else who is also “Christian” attempt to put a stop to it. 

Instead, when I cite incidents like this, I’m told that the malefactors are “Not True Christians”.  Every single time.  Which is laughable.  (My favorites, speaking as hyperbole, are the Protestants who try to pull that “Any Christian who hates Jews is ‘No True Christian’.”  Oh, buddy, I ‘hate’ to burst your bubble, but you might want to see who you’re defining as “Not A True Christian”!)

The thing with the No True Christian arguments is that it lets them wash their hands of misbehaving Christians, instead of accepting that such behavior is rampant among their own community.  And, hey, I get it.  Nobody wants to have monsters in their community.  Imagine how I feel about Jared, Ivanka, Miller and Shapiro!  They’re all Jews, and they’re monsters who should be treated as such.  

But I don’t have the luxury of disowning them, as antisemites of all stripes won’t let me.  So we have to police my own community, and that’s something we Jews do (to greater or lesser effectiveness).  We actually have multiple terms for such people: Shonde fir de goyim (literally “A Shame before the Nations”), Chilhul Hashem (”A Stain on the Name of G-d”), Judenrat and Kapo  (from the terms for the Jews who collaborated with the Nazis during the Holocaust), and more.  Because, thanks to that history that @catholic-living was so ignorant of and that others tried to say was irrelevant, we’re deeply aware of how we’re judged by our worst members, and don’t have the luxury of being able to say “they’re not ‘True Jews’”.  

And with no Christians calling out their fellows for their bad behavior, or at least interceding against harassment, I feel justified in judging the community of Christians by their worst members, at least on a personal level.

But, like I said, while I feel that I could justify engaging in “Christianity bashing” in my writing, I’m not.  I’m doing my best to show the difference between what the religion says and what the practitioners actually do.  I’m not coddling them.  I’m holding up a mirror to show how they treat others from an outsider’s perspective–the hate, the atrocities, the monstrousness committed in the name of Jesus.

And to those reviewers, that’s “bashing”. 

To them, I say, “Matthew 7:5″.

I’ve had a few Christians get defensive over this–and in the two months since I’ve written this, I’ve gotten six more accusations of “Christianity bashing”.

So let me clarify something here.

If I was going to bash Christianity, I could.  I could draw from my upbringing where I was literally warned as a child to behave in public or “The Christians will come and kill us all!”  Christians are literally used as boogeymen for Jewish children–with examples from real history, like the Strasbourg massacre in 1349, where the Jewish community (save for the pretty ones and the children who were forcibly baptized) were herded into a building, barred inside, and the building was set on fire.  

I could easily paint Christians as bloodthirsty monsters who need to regularly consume Jewish lives in order to stay placated.  

I could write about the mass burnings, the Inquisition, the expulsions where my ancestors were thrown out with only what they could carry (if that!) by Christians interested in looting their possessions (on that note?  My family’s bakery in Lodz, Poland, is still standing after it was taken from us during WWII.  It is now city “property”, but we have the papers that show it was ours.  We inquired once about 20 years ago about possibly getting it back, and the city government basically threatened our lives if we were to try).  I could write about the pogroms, the atmosphere of fear.  Of ritual public humiliation enforced by law.  Of our people being murdered and their bones being used for playthings by Christian children, rather than being allowed to be buried with respect.

I could use all of that, and it would only be scratching the surface of the treatment my people have suffered at the hands of Christians over the last two thousand years.  

But I’m not.  

I’m just presenting Christianity fairly from an outsider perspective.  As good, bad, or indifferent.  

And I’m getting lectured and having lengthy essays written at me–but when I get attacked by Christian missionaries (like I was last week), Christians don’t speak up to police their own.

And, look, I get it.  Reacting defensively when your people get criticized–especially when you’ve never experienced serious criticism–is the natural reflex.  But it’s hypocrisy of the highest order to demand that an outsider, one whose personal and cultural experiences with Christianity is overwhelmingly negative, instead paint Christianity positively while doing absolutely nothing to present to that outsider any evidence that they themselves are different.  

The question is not “Why is the author presenting Christianity as negatively as they are?”

The question is, “Why is the author presenting Christianity positively at all?”  

Because it’s not like I have reason to–aside from my own integrity, knowledge of history, and personal experience that at least some of you aren’t bloodthirsty monsters who hunger for Jewish lives and treasure.  Some of you actually live up to the moral lessons in your “New Testament”.  Just a few.

But not many.

Not in my experience.

And rather than challenge my accumulated experience, I’m just getting it reinforced with every accusation of “bashing”.

Rabbi Gershon Winkler

I grew up largely being told that we read the Bible and Christians also read the Bible, but that Christians have another book they call the “New Testament” and that they misunderstand our Bible.

Then I kept hearing “the Bible says this,” “the Bible says that” from Christians, and they were either talking about the “NT” or misinterpreting the “Jewish Bible” - OK, checks out. And I kept hearing from atheists “the Bible says this” in a disparaging fashion, or “the Bible says that.” And I’d say “no, actually, you’re talking about the Christian Bible,” and they would say “oh the Jewish Bible is even worse, Old Testament God etc.,” and I’d explain to them they were talking about the Christian misunderstanding of the Jewish Bible, and this would end up being completely unproductive. The assumption among all of these atheists remained that Christianity was right about Judaism.

Then I learned that in Yiddish, bibl refers to the Christian Bible, and we only use the term tanakh. I knew the word tanakh, but I always thought it was just something people said for no reason when they could just as easily say Bible or Jewish Bible. But suddenly I understood completely the importance of the distinction.

Definitely love how every time I criticize something Christian, a ton of Christians show up to say that they’re pretty sure their denomination doesn’t believe that*, so I’m just falsely maligning Christianity for the heck of it.

*the current rate of people being wrong about that is about 50%, that I can observe

(And then every so often a different Christian shows up to say that the thing I’m pointing out is correct and obvious, but why am I upset about such a fundamental unquestionable part of the religion?)

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Sorry not sorry, you can point these things out and say Christianity’s history contains some colossally Bad Takes without being wrong or even rejecting Christianity itself. Sorry I actually studied theology and Church history and the beliefs of different denominations and you were just reflexively trained to reject anything you didn’t vibe with as “not real Christianity”.

As an ex-vangelical who has memorized almost all of the Bible and was on track to be a Southern Baptist pastor before I got out, I can confidently say to all the Christians that might read this: your denomination absolutely does believe all of the hurtful, racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, misogynist, and ableist things you think it doesn’t. You might not believe them, your priest/pastor/individual congregation might not believe them, but your denominational leadership? Absolutely does believe every bigotry the church has ever been accused of.

The one church I can stand to go to, I can only stand to go to sometimes, because there is so much deep work being done on every level to reconcile with the criticisms of abuse survivors, women, people of colour, Indigenous people, Jewish people, LGBTQ+ people, and disabled people, to admit the church’s past wrongdoings and correct them, that it isn’t really restful to go to services. Like we sit down, sing some hymns, and then talk about how this week’s Scripture reading formed the basis for Christian antisemitism that exists up to the present day and Jesus is probably not okay with that.

But damn, it’s good to know that work is being done, because it needs doing.

A thing to keep in mind both with the abortion debate, and the US border crisis: Rich white Christian lawmakers desperately want to increase the supply of adoptable children that don’t have connections to their birth families.

Since the 1960s, the number of babies available for adoption has steadily declined. The model many people prize as “ideal” is to adopt an infant as early as possible, so that it remembers no other parents, has no connections to any other culture or religious heritage, and can be raised, as much as possible, as though the child were a couple’s own biological child. Families will wait years and pay tens of thousands for this kind of child. They want them desperately.

This has been an unspoken factor in a lot of conservative political decisions that don’t make sense on the surface, like restricting birth control and abortion while making raising a child as difficult and expensive as possible, or separating parents from children without even keeping track of which child belongs to which family.

You can see this agenda working in a lot of responses to “crises”, like the Sixties Scoop of Indigenous, Aboriginal, and Native American children, Operation Babylift in Vietnam in 1975, or people swarming Haiti in 2010 looking for orphans.

In all these cases, the “solution” to the “crisis” is to “save” children from unhappy lives in terrible conditions by giving them to, primarily, rich white Christian families, to be raised as conservative middle-class Christians. 

It looks altruistic, but don’t assume it actually is; so long as a child has living family members, it’s often better for them to be with their families in a refugee camp in a warzone than to be separated, no matter how nice their new homes and new families are. (And the adoption industry has scrupulously avoided, whenever possible, gathering evidence on what it’s like to give up a child for adoption, much less having your children taken from you.)

That’s one of the things I’m actually really surprised and amazed hasn’t been pushed as a solution more often; it used to be such a huge narrative in the past, but the more we know about childhood trauma, the more resistance there is to  babyscoop tactics. 

But if this is a fight you’re in on? Watch for this. 

This post is several years old and sadly more relevant than ever.

I’m skeptical specifically of saying restricting reproduce rights and knowledge and “making raising a child harder” are intended to go together. The first is about forcing people with uteruses to give birth, making sex “have consequences,” and not “promoting” “premarital” non-reproductive sex. The second is about keeping money in the hands of the wealthy, demonizing the poor, and blocking social welfare.

That’s definitely not the only reason for keeping poor people poor. But when poor people go to a crisis pregnancy centre looking for prenatal care and resources to help them parent, or even an abortion, they’re given very little concrete help, but a good deal of pressure to give their child up for adoption.

It’s a continuation of the practice of unwed mothers’ homes like my own mother was born into in the fifties. Because of the stigma of unmarried pregnancy, women would go to these homes as their pregnancy advanced, and once they were isolated, they were often heavily pressured into surrendering their babies for adoption, not given any kind of guidance or support if they wanted to keep their babies and live as single mothers.

“god will curse you for this” implying that I have somehow reached this point of my existence without yet being cursed by the gods? buddy you are so late to the fucking program the end credits have started rolling