On the first day of Hannukah, 15 people including a child and a Holocaust survivor were killed for being Jewish. A Muslim man intervened to save lives which is good but the situation is still horrible, horrible, horrible.
On the second day of Hannukah Jewish-American film director Rob Reiner and his wife Michele were murdered by their own son. More horror. “President” Trump reacted to this with a post so obnoxious, crude, nasty and egocentric it boggles the mind. Nothing will happen, and he will face no consequences.
I had a busy weekend. I gave most of my old Barbie dolls to a child of my acquaintance (kept Mermaid Barbie), saw The Muppet Christmas Carol in a historic building, put the Christmas Tree up. When I was a kid my family used to celebrate Christmas over several consecutive days, which I think was a leftover from the Hannukahs my mum used to have. But who knows?
And never forget that one of the reasons so many Jewish-Americans contributed to comics is because of the antisemitism in much of the creative sector in 20th century America. Many of these highly skilled and creative people ended up in comics because they couldn’t find work in more prestigious and lucrative fields.
also the same reason so many of them worked in the motion picture industry when it first began; working in film wasnt a respected line of work, so it kinda became a jewish culture, and when film unexpectedly caught on, upper-middle class white christians were quick to erase the jewish influence that the film industry had. also similar to the reason why so many jews in the past millennium worked in finance- in the 1100s it was considered sinful in the christian church to handle large amounts of money, so banking in western Europe was kind of the only profession in which Jews were guaranteed a secure income. because banking was a Jewish thing because it was sinful, when it became a respected profession, the upper-middle class and elites were quick to smear the Jewish involvement in banking as an evil conspiracy to control the world
nice addition thank u^👌🏼👌🏼👌🏼✡️
gonna add real quick that two Jewish men actually created Batman. Bill Finger was uncredited for years, but he is responsible for Batman’s look, backstory, personality,, setting etc. Bob Kane is responsible for the name and that’s pretty much it.
“In fact, nearly all the great superheroes were created by Jews: Jerry Siegel and Joe (Joseph) Shuster created Superman, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby (Jacob Kurtzberg) created Captain America, Bob Kane (Robert Kahn) and Bill Finger invented Batman, while Kirby, together with Stan Lee (Stanley Martin Lieber) produced a particularly impressive line of heroes such as Spider-Man, The Hulk, the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, the X-Men, Thor and the Avengers.
T’Challa, the Black Panther? Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.
It’s surprising how many superheroes have Jewish roots.
I’m surprised nobody has mentioned this already but a jewish man also invented what we now call graphic novels. His name is Will Eisner and the most prestigious comic book awards were named after him. He drew the Spirit comics as well as many graphic novels like A Contract with God, New York: The Big City and many many more.
He also wrote and illustrated two books about making comics and sequential art. He was a fucking genius of visual narrative, character design and ripping your heart out with his stories.
I’m only half Jewish (it’s… complicated) but when I heard Alan Moore describe superhero comics as “white supremacist dreams of the master race” I felt an absolute rage that even now, years later, has never entirely gone away.
Despite white supremacist’s best efforts, you survive and thrive. Hell yeah, take that number from them.
This is such a good comment. :)
I always feel… almost wrong saying I’m part Jewish because I don’t feel like I’ve done anything to deserve it I guess. But it would feel wronger saying I’m not? It’s just so complicated and all mixed up in family history that seems to be very messy. I remember when I was a kid at some rubbish summer camp telling the other kids “I’m one-third Jewish” because that was exciting new information then. And other bits of information came out over the years about my Jewish grandfather (he died when I was 6) and my mum’s upbringing and our ancestors in Russia, and once my dad (not Jewish) told me how his grandfather, my great-grandfather, would have hated him marrying a Jewish person because he hated Jews. (Sucks to be him, then, ha.)
…It’s SO COMPLICATED. Gah. I’m not religious in the least and my dad used to be pretty hardcore Christian when I was growing up (so I ended up going to Christian daycare clubs and stuff) but I’m very very proud to be semi-Jewish. Fuck nazis!
Maus was first published in December 1980, making it 36 years old now give or take. Happy birthday Maus.
Here are the two pages that stuck with me the most.
It’s January now. The other day my grandmother told me she cried when she first saw pictures of the Holocaust, because she had married a Jewish man. I believe her. With him she gave birth to a daughter, who later gave birth to me.
After she told me that, she cheerfully repeated her favorite antisemitic conspiracy theories to me, the Rothschild conspiracy and so on. She said she wanted to give Donald Trump a chance. He’s really not our President, on account of us all being British. “He’s hired neo-Nazis to share his throne,” I told her. “Literal neo-Nazis.” I tried to get her to at least look into it. I don’t think she will. “You’re very much like me, you know,” she said before she left. “Like me when I was younger.” She volunteers her time for UKIP sometimes. They’re a far-right British political party in which racism, homophobia and antisemitism runs rampant.
Art Spiegelman’s Maus is one of the most famous, most heartbreaking and most horrifying deceptions of the Holocaust that I can think of. The page on the left is the opening scene, in which Spiegelman recollects an old conversation he had with his father Vladek, a concentration camp survivor. “I fell, and my friends skated away without me.” “Friends? Your friends?” Vladek answers. “If you lock them together with no food for a week, then you could see what it is, friends!”
The page on the right is about Anja Spiegelman, Art’s mother, and what happened to her. She was imprisoned in Birkenau, but was sometimes able to intercept packages from Vladek tossed over the wall for her. One day, a Nazi guard caught her receiving a package, didn’t see her face, but chased her into one of the buildings. Anja’s friends hid her, the guard searched, but didn’t find anything. That evening, the guard lined up the women and said to them “The prisoner I chased this afternoon will now step forward… if you know who she is, push her forward or you’ll all suffer!” No-one pushed Anja forward. The guard tortured all the prisoners, made them “to run, to bend, to jump until they couldn’t anymore,” but still no-one pushed her forward. Then you could see what it is, friends! The torture continued for days, but still, still, no-one pushed her forward.
I think about those women a lot, come close to crying sometimes even. They don’t have names or human faces, not in the novel and not in history, and I imagine all of them are dead now. Their story and their heroism is over and done with in two pages. They probably never thought it’d be written down at all. They didn’t push her forward.
I’m really legit worried about the rise in anti-Semitism that’s been happening lately. Like…I’m not properly Jewish, not really. My mother was, and my grandfather was, but that makes me ¼ Jewish at best and I’m not even religious. My dad was (once) a fairly devout Christian and I think my mum converted for him, or something. But I was always so proud of being maybe-¼ Jewish, I remember announcing it to some other kids when I was at weekend camp, and now I’m just sort of…what AM I, what do I do? Do I have the right to be pissed off on my own/my family’s behalf? Or am I appropriating a struggle that’s not mine? I don’t even believe in God, not really.
Every time I see someone say something like “id like to connect with my jewish heritage but I don’t think I can make myself believe” I want to be like
“The magical thing about judaism is… You don’t have to Believe anything…..”
Which is an overstatement of the facts. I would be a bad community ambassador. However, here is the sum total of my religious beliefs:
– it’s good to treat people like people
– learning things is fun especially if you then talk about them with other people
– the universe is amazing
– the jewish people have an ancient and enduring history and that’s also amazing
Literally during multiple services at my (middle of the road, Conservative) synagogue the rabbis have said things like, “God, if you believe in God” or “however you relate to the concept of God”
like, they know there are atheists/agnostics/whatevs at shul. we’re supposed to be there! feature, not a bug
the “raised in a jewish family” collection (incomplete, because i would have been here all day)
thank you for collecting some of these. it seems that the only thing that scares gentiles more than gefilte fish and jews in hollywood and finance, is unambiguously stating that someone is jewish on wikipedia.
Do they think if they flat out state someone is Jewish 3 times a Jew will magically appear alah beetlejuice /sarcasm/
little do they know that the actual summoning technique is just a juicy debate
I don’t know…I suspect that if I ever got a Wikipedia page it would end up taking the ‘family/parent/grandparent was Jewish’ route purely because my mother’s father (but not her mother) was Jewish AND she went to a Jewish school and was I think more or less raised Jewish BUT some stuff happened and when I was born I was raised pretty firmly Christian for a while THEN some more stuff happened and my family isn’t religious anymore and I never really was I think BUT my mum sometimes still describes herself as Jewish BUT whilst I am super proud of the snippets of my Jewish ancestors’ history that I do know I’m not sure if I could ever describe myself as Jewish out of fear of appropriating an identity I’m not entitled to.
So I usually go with ‘my mum/mum’s side of the family is Jewish’.
Possibly the worst, most infuriating, most revolting-to-me-personally that I’ve ever seen on this site is a response to a post that went round about famous Jewish creators and their work.
It was, “I can’t believe the Jews caused superwholock”.
#I’m writing about antisemitism for something else right now #and that ancient post from ages ago just popped into my head and I was FURIOUS #Because people don’t care about antisemitism #I learned that over the years and it’s hard and difficult but it’s true #People will throw issues they claim to care about #under the bus #in an INSTANT when a chance arises to make a crack at something they don’t like #It’s a game to them #It’s true of everyone #This should be more of a post #More of a rant #But I don’t have it in me #(Ok to reblog)
Hearing the “oh you’re half Jewish? but you haven’t got a big nose!” bit does make you feel rather…annoyed? upset? even though your family are not actually practicing Jews and you’re mostly cut off from that part of your heritage and blah blah blah
There’s an article on the Guardian website right now about antisemitism, and it included a link to this site, which is a collection of horrible antisemitic tweets, and jokes about concentration camps, and the like.
But the awful thing is…well, my mother is Jewish. In a sense at least? I know almost nothing about
my Jewish heritage, only that my mum’s side of the family are, or…were?
My grandparent’s grandparents escaped a pogrom in Russia, my mum went
to a Jewish school, but literally no-one I know practises any sort of religion anymore…
…aaaaaand I’ve heard my mum
make concentration camp jokes. In a bitter sort of way. I swear, I
remember sort of what it was, a throwaway comment in the kitchen –
“We’re Jews, so we know how ovens work.” Something like that.
I have a feeling that should be a bigger deal. I have a feeling I really need to know exactly why
she said that. But who do I ask? My family has all these cracks in it I
don’t want to open, and I’m sure Judaism came into it at some point.
Oh, I don’t know
