Treat Jews like you’d treat any other marginalized minority.
That’s it, that’s the whole thing.
Oh God, please don’t. I don’t know if it’s the fact that Jews don’t fit the pattern, or the way Tumblr social justice people treat every marginalized minority is a little screwy, but a lot of the posts I see on here talking about Judaism from the SJ perspective make me super uncomfortable. Examples:
– Underestimating the amount of intra-community disagreement in Judaism, which is: all the disagreement. Not only is Judaism very diverse with a lot of extremely different sub-communities, but debate and dissent are part of our traditional culture. If you say “listen to Jews, do what they want,” wow are you in for a surprise if you ask more than one Jew exactly what that is.
– I’ve complained about this one before, but: “Jew” is not a slur unless you use it as one, and “Jewish person” always strikes me as this weirdly apologetic way of saying it, like it’s not already obvious that Jews are people. This isn’t a reclamation thing either, where only Jews can say it. I’m a Jew and that’s fine.
– Getting a little too enthusiastic about “it’s a religion, not a race! Jews can look like anything!” That’s not wrong, but it’s making things a little too simple. There are longstanding Jewish ethnic groups and there’s a Jewish traditional culture that isn’t 100% synonymous with the religion. It’s not like being a Presbyterian.
– Arguing about whether or not white-looking Jews are white makes me super uncomfortable regardless of whether your stance is “yes” or “no.” Playing fun games over exactly who’s included in the White Club is not an anti-racist thing to do.
– “Don’t trivialize the Holocaust by comparing people to Nazis!” This one always strikes me oddly because my grandmother actually lived through the Holocaust, and she compared everything she didn’t like to the Nazis. Absolutely zero “oh no, Nazi comparisons are a special sacred taboo zone” feeling; her view was that Nazis are shit, so if you’re shit you’re like a Nazi.
Maybe that’s her prerogative as a survivor, but my view is that forbidding Nazi comparisons is too much like saying “all we know for sure is that fascism is wrong in 1940s Europe; other fascists deserve to be judged on their own merits.”
– If a Hebrew word ends in “im” or “ot”, it’s plural. Don’t say “I’m a goyim;” you’re a goy. Minor nitpick.
– Don’t pity us. Sometimes this really comes across in the way SJ-ish people talk about marginalized minorities. It’s not painful or tragic to be Jewish. Please don’t say “I acknowledge my goyish privilege” in a way that sounds like “I will never know the misery of being Jewish.”
– Some Jews are assholes. Not an inordinate number, but, you know, the normal proportion. And some Jewish communities do some real asshole things. I feel weird about this fact when I read “JEWISH BABIES YOU ARE ALL VALID AND LOVELY.” (Plus there’s the pity thing again. I wasn’t sad about being Jewish, you didn’t have to cheer me up.)
– Treating marginalized groups as interchangeable is always a bad idea. Just treat Jews with respect, okay? Treat us like we’re individual people. I guess if that’s all you do for marginalized minorities, sure, do that for us too. But not all the other stuff.
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