being jewish means knowing from a young age that there’s no guarantee of safety, the even (and sometimes especially) when participating in your jewish community. it means having knowledge and understanding of atrocities for which there are no words that many other children your age couldn’t fathom.
it means coming home from hebrew school at 7 years old in tears, because you learned about the holocaust that day and can’t understand how anyone could do that, or why.
it means learning to recognize from a young age where and when it’s safe to be jewish – and where and when it isn’t.
it means growing up with a legacy of survival at all costs, which most of the time provides you with strength, but sometimes just leaves you wondering when it will be safe for us to stop worrying about simply surviving, and start living.
it means never forgetting, even when days pass, or weeks pass, or decades pass, because we know in our bones that another tragedy could happen at any second.
it means needing to have a sense of humor about thousands of years of constant, unending persecution, because it’s the only way we can continue on.
it means mourning together and strengthening one another, even when we’re the only ones who are paying attention and speaking out.
but most importantly, it means fighting to make things better, even when things are frightening, and even when things feel hopeless. it means trust that the world can be better than it is, and that we can help it become so.
I am told that you raised your hand against yourself Anticipating the butcher. After eight years of exile, observing the rise of the enemy Then at last, brought up against an impassable frontier You passed, they say, a passable one.
Empires collapse. Gang leaders are strutting about like statesmen. The peoples Can no longer be seen under all those armaments.
So the future lies in darkness and the forces of right Are weak. All this was plain to you When you destroyed a torturable body.
Bertolt Brecht, “On the Suicide of the Refugee W.B.”
Silverflint drabble of the week, 29/10/18: Love, tease, haunted.
The bonfire light flickered over Silver’s face, painting him in deep purple shadows and warm orange light as he listened to the men’s stories with easy smiles and knowing looks. A breeze teased his hair, long and loose and tucked behind his ears. Flint was entranced. Silver looked to him like Puck guising as a man on Samhain, when the walls between worlds grew thin and spirits and forgotten gods haunted the Earth.
Silver caught his eye, and the blooming heat across Flint’s skin felt preternatural too. It was dangerous to love one of the fair folk. Yet he did.
I am back on this island. Where you saved our lives, with a little encouragement from me. Where we – you, me, and a bottle of rum – buried the treasure. Where I learned to fight and not die.
I also think of Nassau. That night at the Wrecks. And the teasing looks we exchanged while we were roasting that pig.
I thought that memories would haunt me. They don’t. Because you’re alive. And so is Madi.
My life will go on without you. In the certainty that what there was between us – unacknowledged, unspoken, uneasy as it was – was love.
I’m glad this is making its rounds thought. People typically think that the Royal Family is the epitome of #goals but like, we’re all here gassing up one of the most racist, colonialist establishments, and folks have gotten so lost in the aesthetic that we’ve forgotten this.
Brief aside to my Australian friends: remember this when (if??) when we next have a referendum on monarchy vs republic
Since Black Sails was so rudely overlooked by most major awards shows, I’ve created a new awards body, where guess what? Black Sails wins EVERYTHING. As it should be.
(Also I’m gonna pretend that I’m presenting these awards in a glamorous ball gown, instead of the pyjamas that I shrunk in the wash)
So here’s where it all begins. Am I ready? No. But let’s do this.
* * * * *
EPISODE RATING: 💣💣💣💣💣💣💣 (7/10 cannonballs, in honour of the one flint smashed singleton’s head with)
BEST SCENE: Flint brutally killing Singleton and revealing the fake lost page
WORST SCENE: Eleanor’s ‘I will go fuck myself’ speech. Honestly the cringiest scene of the entire show. Make it stop.
BEST LINE: ‘Who’s Billy?’. Ha. Classic.
BEST ACTING: Flint’s shaking, angry, blood-soaked face after he kills Singleton
BEST CHARACTER: Max. She spent an orgy planning to manipulate silver regarding the stolen page. What a multi-tasker. Plus she’s just super sweet around Eleanor.
BEST GAY MOMENT: Max comforting Eleanor. So freaking tender.
WORST GAY MOMENT: Anne wanting to have sex with Jack. Sweetie, no…
THE ‘YOU TRIED’ AWARD: Levi. Mosiah’s man who attempted to fight anne bonny on the beach. Brave or stupid?
BEST OUTFIT: more of a make-up/accessories awards, but it goes to Joshua, for his outstanding commitment to the face paint and fake teeth
Tumblr likes to spin its wheels and spend time yelling at each other, so here’s a nice comprehensive guide. Five Things You Can Do Now That You Know We Were Serious About The Antisemitism:
1) Accept that if you’re in this to be an ally, you’re going to have a tough road ahead of you. We’re traditionally very wary of outsiders in our spaces because when we welcome them, well … this happens. In fact, if you want to convert to Judaism, you traditionally get rejected three times, just to make sure you’re serious and not shitting with us. Expect wariness. Expect to get your feelings hurt, because a lot of us are very raw right now. Stick with us anyway–once we know you’re not just bandwagoning us, you’re going to end up with a lot of friends who are relying on you. Nobody said allyship was easy.
2) Learn about Judaism. Note that I DO NOT MEAN LEARNING WITH INTENTION TO CONVERT. We don’t proselytize and it would be against Torah for me to even suggest it. What I mean here is, you can’t call bullshit if you don’t know what we’re about. Some good basic resources are The Jewish Book of Why by Alfred Kolatch; My Jewish Learning; and for a strict Orthodox standpoint, Chabad. You’ll find that some things in these sources contradict each other. That’s pretty par for the course in Judaism; we don’t have a single dogma or point of view.
3) Consider calling a local synagogue and asking if they have volunteer work for a gentile ally. Introduce yourself, explain (briefly) what got your attention, and offer your services–to stand outside during services, to walk folks to and from shul (this is particularly important in Orthodox communities, where driving on Shabbat is forbidden), hell, to help stuff envelopes for whatever vigil or service they may be holding in memoriam. Anything will help.
4) You may wish to make a donation to a local synagogue or Jewish charity. I strongly recommend the ADL (Anti-Defamation League), which is a Jewish charity focused on combating antisemitism. Jews traditionally give monetary gifts in sums of $18, which corresponds to the numeric value of the word “chai,” or “life.” The last time this happened I made a post about this tradition and got accused of being a Nazi because of the whole 1-8 A-H thing, so let’s just nip that right in the bud: yes, we know. It’s a horrible coincidence. We’re not giving up a few-thousand-year-old tradition because of some dipshit with a bad moustache. If you can’t afford $18, consider moving the decimal over and donating in multiples of 18, like $3.60. Your meaning will still be perfectly clear, and anything helps. If you wish to make a donation in memory/in honor (which many synagogues appreciate), I suggest either choosing the name of one of the shooting victims–giving tzedakah, or charity, in their names is considered a great mitzvah and a blessing to their families–or using the phrase “am Yisrael chai.” It means “Israel lives.” Although the country in the MENA region is called Israel, this is not what the phrase refers to–the traditional patriarch of Judaism was named Jacob, and renamed as Israel following a wrestling match with a messenger of G-d. To say “am Yisrael chai” is to say his people, that is, the Jewish people, live.
And on that note …
5) In the coming days and weeks, you’re going to see a lot of people making this about Israel or Zionism. Please tell them to shut the fuck up. Israel, Zionism, and Jews are three completely different, albeit related, things. To wit: Israel is a geopolitical country situated on the site of our ancestral homeland and currently headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; Zionism is the belief that Jews deserve a safe homeland; and Jews are a group of people spread across six continents and most countries who are united by a common group of ancestors from the Levant (the part of the world now occupied by the geopolitical entity known as Israel). Saying the victims of this shooting had anything to do with the political situation in Israel would be like saying I, personally, am responsible for Vladimir Putin because I have a Russian ancestor. I speak exactly two words of Russian, have never been to Russia, have no family left living there (and haven’t for four generations), but I’m totally responsible for Russia. You see how ridiculous that sounds? The same applies to Jews and Israel. Please, please, PLEASE do not conflate this event with Israeli politics. I’m not saying Israeli politics aren’t a topic worth discussing–I’m saying this is not a discussion they belong in. Don’t let the powers that be (or the alt-right sleaze that sucks the dicks of the powers that be) distract from the topic at hand, which is “out of control guns meet out of control xenophobia and antisemitism,” by throwing OMG ISRAEL AND ZIONISM AND GLOBALISM into the mix.
And finally: yes, gentiles, this is okay for you to reblog. In fact I encourage it. And I will answer any questions you have to the best of my ability, if they’re asked in good faith. Please just follow the most basic tenet of Judaism, which is: don’t be a dick.
If you’re ready to stand and help, now is the time.
mici's campfire 