Beeperboppers Beeping

it's always a good day to complain about English speakers

Important addition: Maria Skłodowska-Curie was born during partitions, which means Poland didn’t exist, which means her insistence that she was Polish was a significant act of defiance against the occupation, which means that you should respect that instead of arguing that ‘well she had French citizenship’. She couldn’t have Polish citizenship despite being Polish, that’s kinda the point she was making by keeping her maiden name and naming a chemical element she discovered ‘Polonium’ .

HOW TO PRONOUNCE: Skłodowska

L with a dash through it (ł) makes a “W” sound. and W makes a “V” sound.

skwo-DOV-ska

Thank you for the pronounciation guide instead of the condescending guilt trip

If you want people to change their behavior, a condescending guilt trip isn't the way.

Showing up on the internet to be a dick to people for not saying a name they've never heard before in a language they don't speak that uses letters they have no idea how to pronounce isn't going to help anyone get her name right. Saying, hey, here's her full name actually, and how to pronounce it and why it's important that you do!

And yes. I know the information is available out there. At any point in my life, I could have looked up Marie Curie and discovered that her full name was Maria Skłodowska-Curie and why it mattered.

But no one has time to thoroughly research every concept they come across. It's impossible. I can't read a biography about every historical figure to make sure I'm respecting them. Even if I tried, how many biographies are written by assholes who want to sensationalize and don't actually care about respect?

We can't help that our teachers didn't teach us her full name. Their teachers probably didn't teach them, either. Most English speakers I know would actually much rather use someone's correct name and pronounce it right. But Maria Skłodowska-Curie was shortened for us long before any of us were born.

Tiffany couldn't quite work out how Miss Level got paid. Certainly the basket she carried filled up more than it emptied. They'd walk past a cottage and a woman would come scurrying out with a fresh-baked loaf or a jar of pickles, even though Miss Level hadn't stopped there. But they'd spend an hour somewhere else, stitching up the leg of a farmer who'd been careless with an axe, and get a cup of tea and a stale biscuit. 

It didn't seem fair.

“Oh, it evens out,” said Miss Level, as they walked on through the woods. 

“You do what you can. People give what they can, when they can. Old Slapwick there, with the leg, he's as mean as a cat, but there'll be a big cut of beef on my doorstep before the week's end, you can bet on it. His wife will see to it. And pretty soon people will be killing their pigs for the winter, and I'll get more brawn, ham, bacon and sausages turning up than a family could eat in a year.”

“You do? What do you do with all that food?”

“Store it,” said Miss Level. 

“But you-”

“I store it in other people. It's amazing what you can store in other people.” Miss Level laughed at Tiffany's expression. “I mean, I take what I don't need round to those who don't have a pig, or who're going through a bad patch, or who don't have anyone to remember them.”

“But that means they'll owe you a favour!”

“Right! And so it just keeps on going round. It all works out.”

“I bet some people are too mean to pay-”

“Not pay,” said Miss Level, severely. “A witch never expects payment and never asks for it and just hopes she never needs to. But, sadly, you are right.”

“And then what happens?"

“What do you mean?”

“You stop helping them, do you?”

“Oh, no,” said Miss Level, genuinely shocked. “You can't not help people just because they're stupid or forgetful or unpleasant. Everyone's poor round here. If I don't help them, who will?”

So I've been hearing that there shouldn't be a country for the jews, that it should be like "other countries" and "be for everyone".

Ok, so your country that has separation of church and state, which days are the work week?

Mon-Fri? Huh? Why is that? Maybe to make it so people won't work on Sundays, and then, go to church?

In Israel, the work week is Sun-Thu. I don't know if Americans even know that.

Friday night to Saturday night is the Sabbath, so having these days off make it easier to observe.

Muslim countries, usually, have the workweek be Sat-Wed for similar reasons.

People are so stuck on their American Defaultism that they forget that so many things are structured on purpose to benefit different people.

So when people say that Israel should be abolished and there should be a "neutral secular state", what they mean is that it should be more like what they consider the "normal" and "default".

They act like there is a "one size fits all" culture, that anything else is some perversion for the ideal of what a country should be.

That's just one of many many things, cultural and religious, that makes Israel the only place in the world where jews can live without being an afterthought.

I have a lot of problems with Israel.

So many, many problems, especially with the government, and with what's to come with Trump's victory.

I genuinely hope for a change, for the end of suffering, for lasting peace and justice.

But I'm so done with people that have their country built to suit them telling me mine shouldn't exist.

Hey so I’m not sure if anyone knows this but uhh. Pogroms are bad. Chasing Jews down in the street to beat the shit out of them is bad. Shouting “cancer Jews” and setting shit on fire is bad. Claiming that all of this widespread violence is about a fucking football match that happened days ago and not rampant antisemitism is bad. Going on “Jew hunts” is bad. Denying the existence of antisemitism while you’re cheering on a pogrom is bad.

Harming and/or killing Jewish people because they’re Jewish is bad.

I'm certain this is on Tumblr somewhere, but I haven't seen it around, so I'm sharing it myself

One thing I've been struggling with on a personal ethical level is dealing with the knowledge that the "Antizionist" movement on the Left is not an organic, grassroots ideology. We literally have recordings of the meetings by Hamas members from the 1990s where they laid out this exact setup: They would attempt to propagandize to the American and Western Left their specific narrative that was designed to ensnare Leftists by appealing to their ideologies and shortcircuit critical thinking. And it's not a coincidence that Al Jazeera, the Qatari propaganda outfit, was founded three years after that meeting, as Qatar is deeply involved in helping push this narrative on US universities. Add to the Iranian regime's previous experience at exactly this--using Leftists as useful idiots during the Iranian Revolution--and you can see the state-funded media and educational apparatus designed to achieve this exact result.

So I'm struggling with how much blame, how much personal culpability, there can be for people like, for example, Greta Thunberg, or other Gen-Z "antizionists", who have been deliberately and intentionally mousetrapped into cheering for a literal mass murderer and rapist in Sinwar. Because an enormous amount of money and effort went into trapping them with this belief system.

But on the other hand, they're actively abandoning their previously-claimed principles en masse--as feminists, as minority group supporters, as progressives--in order to embrace the "Antizionist" belief system.

So it's a struggle for me in debating how much blame they deserve individually, when they've been ensnared systematically, but their individual choices are still reprehensible.

if you'll allow me to flaunt my psych minor for a second, I'd like to talk about epigenetics. there's studies that show that if you shock a rat when you let them taste a certain flavor, they will immediately become averse to that flavor. not surprising. what is surprising is that the rat's grandchildren, who have never been shocked when given that flavor, will also be averse to it and afraid of it and avoid it. there's also correlational evidence to suggest that the descendants of people who suffered through famine are more likely to put on weight and keep it on easier, even if they have never been through a famine themself.

trauma gets passed down. the kinds of trauma your parents, grandparents, and so-on lived through is still living in you. even if your parents were the most well-off, loving, best parents in the world, their trauma is still in you.

now if you'll allow me to take a slight turn here: there's a wild rabbit inside every jew.

my dad grew up being called "jew-boy." my mother had a coworker throw pennies at her at her job in the 2010s. and that's just two examples. they both grew up being harassed for being jewish. I wasn't. I'm incredibly lucky. the amount of antisemitism I've experienced in real life has been incredibly minimal. I didn't even hear anyone make an antisemitic joke in front of me until college.

and none of us were seriously persecuted. none of my grandparents were seriously persecuted. but even though nobody's broken my windows, nobody's beaten me in the streets, and I haven't been at any of those horrible protests in person, the fear is there. this deep seated, blood-pumping fear of the ancient jewish rabbit in me telling me to run. to run for dear life, to run as far as my legs can get me, as long as my heart keeps pumping and my lungs keep breathing.

we all feel this.

everyone feels this.

I called my mother yesterday. when I brought up this feeling she paused, and the silence said everything. she told me I wasn't alone. she feels it. my dad feels it. my brother feels it. my nana and grampa feel it. every jew you know, online, in real life, hell, even the famous ones, they feel it. the rabbit is inside us all, and the rabbit knows, because its brothers who didn't flee in the past were slaughtered.

the rabbit is leaping around my chest, all of our chests, chanting run run run run run run run.

I don't know if I can explain it to gentiles. I don't know if this makes sense to you. I don't know how to get across how crystal clear and deep and primal this fear is, and how much all of us are feeling the exact same fear, despite our different lives and different histories and the fact we're different people.

part of me wishes it didn't matter. that I didn't feel like I needed to get goyim to understand my specific cultural and ethnic experiences. because I don't feel like I need to deeply understand everyone else's. I am a white passing ashkenazi american jew, and I will never fully understand what it is like to be anything else. that doesn't dissolve my responsibility to educate myself and practice empathy, but it's ok. idk, maybe other people do desperately wish they could get people not in their specific group to deeply understand what it's like to be them. I imagine that feeling is universal. I guess, it's just like, the left is unified that everyone is a person, everyone is equal, everyone is human, except the jews. nobody is left out but the jews. everyone's word is believed, but the jews. and it makes me feel like I have to beg and plead with people to understand what being jewish means, because we're not included with everyone else. we're the enemy. and I want people to see we're not the enemy.

epigenetics.

the lesson I'm taking away from this election is not that the Democrats need to become more left wing or more right wing but moreso that they need to find a way to cater their rhetoric towards people who genuinly have no idea what is going on. the target audience for every speech and political appearance should be someone who doesn't know what the three branches of government are because they were drawing a Cool S during high school civics

political scientists have failed to consider the possibility that the silent majority is silent because they didn't understand the question and are trying to play it cool

crazy how 2,000 years of being fed "jews are untrustworthy two faced liars" will make people instinctively think jews are liars and have their gut reaction to jews talking about judaism be "assume they're lying." or maybe these are two unrelated phenomena that have no impact on each other and the gentile instinct to distrust the jew has nothing to do with thousands of years of antisemitism they've internalized.

my heart bleeds everyday for the afghan girls and women. they are housebound and have to cover themselves up from top to bottom because they have to "avoid temptation or seduction". they are not allowed to speak in public or appear in public because it is deemed "too intimate." the women can’t look at men. suicide rates have skyrocketed because women and girls would rather be dead than to be a women in afghanistan. it’s not a sin to be a women.

women and girls are denied access to healthcare because they cannot be treated by male doctors, yet they are also barred from education and, therefore, cannot become doctors themselves. shops in afghanistan are even forced to cover up female mannequins. little girls live in fear of becoming child brides, but they dream of being poets, they would kill to get education.

a woman was disqualified from the olympics because she spread the message "free afghan women" at her breakdance performance. there must always be a relative male by their side like women were dogs being treated by their owner, except dogs have more rights than the women suffering.

we must raise awareness, do not look away. these women deserve the opportunities and the human rights that EVERY person does. they are talented, creative and intelligent but men are so scared. scared of women. the taliban tries to erase women. i’m sick. remember: it’s not islam or "just their culture", it is the radical government that feels threatened by women. do not look away.

Does the rest of this website live in some alternate reality where you never set foot in a kitchen until age 25?

Pogroms in Amsterdam where jews are thrown into rivers in 5⁰C weather and forced to yell slogans to be allowed out. Where jews are beaten bloody and forced to say they're not Jewish for the beating to stop. Where jews are run over by cars. Where jews are forced to hide in hotels as people who want to lynch them storm in. Where law enforcement does nothing and drives right past jews being hunted in the streets.

The protests didn't cause this, right? The violent rhetoric didn't cause this. The active celebration of a massacre didn't cause this. The constant dehumanization and belittlement of Jewish suffering didn't cause this. The lionization of murderers like Nasrallah and Sinwar didn't cause this. The encampments didn't cause this. The historical revisionism and the complete ignorance about the Holocaust didn't cause this. The apathy towards rising antisemitism didn't cause this. Constant deflections and gaslighting when jews tried to speak out about their fears didn't cause this. Accusations of genocide didn't cause this. Comparisons between jews and nazis didn't cause this. Normalized violence against jews under the guise of antizionism didn't cause this. The appropriation and the downplaying of the Holocaust didn't cause this. ALL OF THIS didn't cause this pogrom in Amsterdam on the eve of the anniversary of Kristallnacht, right?!?

Go fuck yourselves, all of you who participated in any of the above, or ignored us when we told you where it was all headed. WE KNEW YOU WERE GOING TO DO THIS. BECAUSE YOU'VE DONE IT IN EVERY GENERATION AND YOU NEVER LEARN

The word diaspora

I know it’s old news, but people *are* actually editing Wikipedia pages about Judaism & Israel???

I googled the word “diaspora” since I couldn’t recall the exact meaning in Greek, and the Wikipedia page is scrubbed of Jews. Only Palestinians are mentioned in relation to Israel.

Despite the first suggested questions & articles are about the Jewish diaspora. (Even if my location/ algorithm changes the results, it would still be high up there…).

No wonder people are so ignorant about this conflict. You can’t erase history

Check the Wikipedia vandalism tag, you'll see how this isn't just ignorance but intentional distortion.

The way this otherwise universally accepted in leftist circles concept of "don't speak over members of oppressed minority groups, don't tell them what counts or doesn't count as discrimination against them, don't tokenize those who validate your opinions only to dehumanize those who don't" just flies out of the window when it comes to Jews

Again, speaking as someone with scrupulosity OCD and anxiety, this whole entire mentality of "if I vote for a presidential candidate, then I, personally am responsible for each and every bad thing they do" is essentially a form of catastrophic, polarized thinking. It's a super unhealthy way of thinking that leaves you unable to meaningfully navigate through life a lot of the time. And while you might feel morally clean, it's actually an incredibly dysfunctional way to live because you just won't take action when it could really matter, or the actions you do take don't actually have a substantial chance of changing things.

Like refusing to vote, or voting third-party even though you know the odds of a third party candidate making it are pretty much nil (or because you've convinced yourself it could totally work if Everyone Just - even though we all know there is no point in history when Everyone Just), that's dysfunctional behavior. There's no getting around it. It's dysfunctional behavior.