What does a Jew look like? Answer: like anyone you might see on the street.
Whatever ethnicity, whatever denomination, a Jew is someone who calls themselves a Jew. Saying that someone does or does not "look like a Jew" is inaccurate, stereotyping, and downright offensive, and in fact stems from anti-Semitic propaganda. This blog is intended to combat and correct the popular image of a Jew as looking one particular way.
So show everyone what the Jews of the world look like, and how varied and diverse we all are! Submit a photo of yourself and tell us what being Jewish means to you.
Mordechai Anielewicz - Leader of the Jewish Combat Organization in the Warsaw Ghetto. Led the Jewish resistance in the Ghetto. Murdered on the 8th of May, 1943. Hashomer Hatzair member.
A face of Jewish resistance, to serve as a reminder to those who would say Jews didn’t ‘resist enough’ in the Shoah, of the Jews who fought in the darkest hour of Jewish history and gave their blood so that our people could live.
(via antisemitismschool)
When I was in middle school, I was part of the school’s gifted and talented program. Two days a week for several months, those of us in the program would be pulled out of class to work on enrichment projects on a topic of our choosing, which we would then present to our parents and each other to educate them about our topic. (Because this program was run by a teacher with neither gifts nor talent, we had about zero guidance and the projects always stank, but that’s neither here nor there.)
In my particular grade, an astonishing number of G&T kids were Jewish, and in fifth grade, one of those kids chose to do his project on the Shoah. B was active in the local children’s theater, and thought it would be awesome to script and film a short scene about a group of Jews hiding from the Nazis to show as part of his presentation. This didn’t surprise me in the least—no matter what his topic was, B always did a video, usually starring himself—but what did surprise me was when he insisted he wanted me to play the Nazi.
“Uh, I’m Jewish,” I stammered. “Can’t I play a Jew instead?”
“No,” insisted B. “You look all wrong to be Jewish. It wouldn’t be believable.”
Another kid in G&T, A, was both Korean and Jewish, and was in the same Sunday School class B and I were. A was also, like B, active in the local children’s theater and a decent actor for his age. But B didn’t even offer him a part.
Thus I, a Jew, ended up playing a Nazi opposite a Gentile girl’s “Jew,” while a kid with far more acting experience than either of us, also a Jew, was relegated to holding the camera. Because a Jew thought A’s brown-skinned, Jewish self and my blond, blue-eyed, Jewish self couldn’t possibly be believable playing Jews, even in a shitty five-minute skit only our parents would ever see. That’s a hell of a lot of internalized anti-Semitism, right there.
So when I see shows like Glee, which cast blond, blue-eyed, Jewish actress Dianna Agron as a WASP cheerleader and WASP actor Mark Salling as her character’s Jewish love interest, I get angry. When the only Jews who can get cast as Jews are men with “Jewfros” like Josh Sussman and women with dark hair and prominent noses like Lea Michele (who is actually half-Sephardi and half-Italian, but plays an Ashkenazi stereotype), I get angry. Because that shit hurts people. It hurts those of us “non-Jewish looking” Jews who have to hear our Judaism constantly questioned, even by other Jews. It hurts those Jews of all types who internalize the idea that the media representation of Jews is somehow factual, despite their own experiences, observances, and friendships to the contrary. And it hurts all the more because the Jews who internalize that BS often grow up to spread it around even more—like Brad Falchuk, Glee’s Jewish writer and showrunner—and being effectively erased by your own people is about as damaging as it gets, because it leaves you with no safe space.
If you “can’t believe” a Jewish actor playing a Jew because of looks, there is something the fuck wrong with your beliefs.
If you “can’t believe” a Jewish person is in fact Jewish because of looks, there is something the fuck wrong with your beliefs.
If you “can’t believe” that Jews (like *gasp* PEOPLE) come in all body shapes, sizes, skin colors, and hair types, even when confronted with concrete examples, there is something the fuck wrong with your beliefs.
And in all of those cases, please fuck off.
Dagestan’s “Mountain Jews” flee chaos. I didn’t even know they existed. It reminds me to stop being so totally focussed on Europe and North America. And to be thankful to live in a region where B”H things like this don’t happen that often anymore. (via Forward.com)
It’s stuff like this that makes me wish people on the internet would educate themselves on Jews before ever talking about us.
For instance, the article points out that this group managed to maintain many Jewish traditions that were wiped and purged from the Ashkenazim in the USSR, by virtue of their relative isolation from the Kremlin and its chokehold on the FSRs. Because holy shit anti-Semitism doesn’t travel down neat racial lines outlined in your Oppression 101 handbook from the US. At the same time, now they’re arguably in much more danger than city-dwelling Ashkenazim in Eastern Europe because well lol, the Caucasus has always been a ~volatile~ region to say the least and now they’re being targeted specifically, as well.
(via kibitzing)
A Jewish Tunisian bride in her traditional wedding dress | © Magnes Museum
(Source: , via kibitzing)
Black Jews in Harlem way back when in 1940. :)
(New York Historical Society blog post here.)
(via ushistoryminuswhiteguys)
To paraphrase the words of several people involved in this group, the blog is place to collect knowledge and create a curriculum for the study of Mizrahi history, culture, politics, identity.
As much as it is a resource to us as a group, the blog will also be be a resource for anyone who wants to learn about our individual and collective stories. It is a tool in the effort to decolonize the study of radical Jewish history.
Signal-boosting their tumblr! (via Jewish Voice for Peace)
As it turns out, Raisman, who is Jewish, chose the traditional Jewish song “Hava Nagila” to accompany her Olympic floor routine and help her win the gold.
“I like how the crowd can clap to it,” Raisman told Haaretz.com, which reports on Jewish news.
According to the website, she also said she is proud to be using the Jewish song “because there aren’t too many Jewish elites out there.”
“It’s a huge honor to be the first Jewish gold medalist of the 2012 (London) Games,” Raisman told NationalReview.com.
Haaretz reports that the teenager from Needham, Mass., won the Pearl D. Mazor Outstanding Female Jewish High School Scholar-Athlete of the Year Award, which is given out by the Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in New York.
However, even more important to Raisman than the Jewish connotations the song has, says Haaretz, is how she says it inspires audience participation.
sharingpurellwithhowardhughes:
This is a piece written by a black, lesbian, Jewish woman.
I completely understand where she’s coming from. I always feel really awkward in Jewish spaces because usually I’m the only person of colour in the room. It also isn’t uncommon for me to be asked things like “Are you Ethiopian?” (because apparently I can’t be black and Jewish without being Ethiopian or adopted). It feels shitty when the community that you embrace still looks at you funny even though you try your best to prove yourself again and again.
Actually, one time in the Hillel at my college, we had an impromptu discussion at lunch about how many people’s parents/grandparents regularly use phrases like “kushim” (a derogatory phrase for black people)…Some people said that their parents made sure to tell them that words like that were unacceptable, some people said their families used words like that.
And let’s not even get started about the current situation in Israel when it comes to the Sudanese refugees…Or the the history of the divide between Askenazi and Mizrahi Jews.
But yeah, we need to sit down and have a lot of talks.
But…in my heart I’ve always been a New Yorker…a New York Jew.
Bess Myerson was the first Jewish woman to become Miss America in 1945. Though she was told to use a pseudonym that ‘sounded less Jewish’, she refused. A lot of sponsors and events refused to deal with her.
(via demarches)
