(From a JVP chapter in North Carolina, section 19, https://jvptriangle.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/21grieftechnologies.pdf)

I can’t. I literally can’t. I just—

I’m crying.

You want to take our fucking language too? You want to destroy thousands of years of history so that you can ameliorate your own guilt?

Ah, yes, it’s so reasonable to tell a culture that they’re not allowed to speak their own language, that they must adopt solely the language of a dominant culture. Totally not what we’re supposed to be fighting against. /s

Anyone who believes this should be ashamed of themselves. I would never tell people, even in the 1940s, to stop speaking German. I would never tell people to stop speaking Russian. I would never tell people to stop speaking Arabic. I don’t care about your opinions on Israel, you should be absolutely horrified at the idea of telling Jews that we can’t use our traditional language. That we should assimilate and say our prayers in English and Arabic.

This is antisemitism, pure and simple.

maybe post the full context?

this is not telling Jews to never pray in or speak Hebrew; it’s not saying “don’t speak Hebrew if there are Palestinians around!”

it’s explaining how to provide chaplaincy / spiritual support *to Palestinians* in interfaith contexts

Mmhmm. The context doesn’t make it better, it just makes their antisemitism easier to justify.

In summary, the context doesn’t make it less horrifying. The words stand alone and are part of a disturbing pattern.

Also, fuckhead, how many Muslims and Christians do you think you’re gonna find in a fucking synagogue?

I don’t go into churches and rip down their crucifixes because I find it traumatizing they’re worshipping an idol that consists of glorifying the torture and death of a Jew, do I?

The Palestinians can rip my Hebrew from my hands and replace it with their colonizer Arabic over my dead fucking body.

the most insane people on jumblr continually remind us that not only do they never actually interact with Palestinians irl, but they aren’t activists/organizers/spiritual leaders of any kind in real life either. it’s quite telling if someone can’t seriously imagine a scenario in which a rabbi is involved in chaplaincy or a similar role in an interfaith context

If you’re talking about what I said:

My statement stands. Most people coming into a synagogue during prayer who are not Jewish are:

1) taking a world religions class and it’s a requirement

2) taking part in some kind of interfaith thing that’s actually going to be structured in such a way as to explain this stuff to them

3) work there (less weird than you may think, one of the secretaries at my shul is a goy because she’s really good with accounting)

4) dating or married to a Jew

5) related to or friends with a Jew who’s invited them to an event like a b’nei mitzvah

6) converting or thinking of converting

You’ll notice there’s nobody on this list who should be surprised by Jews praying Jewish prayers and performing Jewish rituals. The level of incompetence and coincidence that would be required for a random Palestinian to just…stumble in during the Shema is absolutely INSANE, not least because anyone in a keffiyeh is going to get stopped by the security guard to find out what they’re doing there.

Suggesting we should allow Islamist colonization of our prayers JUST IN CASE a Palestinian should actually get all the way into a Jewish place of Jewish learning and Jewish worship during Jewish prayers on a Jewish holiday and somehow not have expected those prayers to be in the language of the Jewish people is absolutely inane. Once again JVP proving it is neither Jewish, nor our voice, nor for peace.

It’s the hypocrisy, innit?

This guidance is not given to Churches even though their entire liturgy is stolen from Jews, their religion came out of Rome who colonized our homeland and created the Diaspora, they genocided or expelled or pogromed us everywhere in Europe culminating with the Shoah so maybe they could not use Latin, or anything from the Old Testament because maybe “Enough has been taken.”

And it’s not given to mosques even though 10/7 is the largest terror attack in a single day on record and was explicitly genocidal against Jews. Maybe Jews don’t want to hear Arabic.

Ya dig? How that’s not fair?

It’s the way it’s not a crime unless Jews do it! And only Jews need to restrict themselves!

So anyway yall can get fucked because this the same behavior pattern abusers use on their partners and I’m not HAVING IT.

This the B in the BITE model. Behavior Control. Especially when it is only expected of one(1) party without parity. Asking for a person to give up an identity feature of religious practice for a moral purpose is also treading into BITE territory.

Stay vigilant.

Also, heyo, since there was a “gotcha” up there about the full context - YEAH. Let’s look at the full context of the full document! This is from a Tisha b’Av document (zine? idk what the right word is).

You know, the Jewish day of mourning where we collectively grieve the fall of the Jewish Temple, the Jewish diaspora, and all of the Jewish pain and loss that flowed from that? That Jewish day of mourning?

I can’t imagine the degree of self-centeredness required to tell Jews not to use our own language, to further erase our Jewish identity, on a day of Jewish mourning.

Also Seth is an example what the average JVP Jew is like btw

wanting Jews not be Jewish lest it offend the gentiles and doubling down and upon seeing other Jews promptly no true scotsmanning them

i know a lot of people are talking about the tisha b'av guide by jvp and specifically the part where they say hebrew is traumatizing for palestinians so we should pray in...arabic instead. however, even more disturbing is this one:

tisha b'av literally is about mourning the destruction of the temple. it is the saddest day in the jewish calender. it is a holiday about jews and jews specifically.

"we release any attachment to the temple...tisha b'av be approached as not a time to mourn all suffering and all injustice, but to narrow focus and look...in palestine"

this not only takes away the original jewishness of the holiday, but completely refocuses it on the palestinians. jvp does this with every single holiday. they first strip it of anything that could even slightly be construed as zionist in any way possible, add some new age rituals/meanings to make it more palatable to a goyische leftist audience, and then focus the entire thing on the liberation of palestine.