After Texas mosque burned, Jews gave Muslims keys to synagogue

And on the flip side Bannon keeps amping up the nazi quotient.

8 Likes

The actual Nazis used Islamists on their side so methinks you got that backwards

Aside from Trump’s immediate family, I was actually thinking of a few specific Jewish posters over on tumblr, who, shall we say, actively and enthusiastically engage in “Nat Soc shitposting”, the enabling of Nazi posters, and the active hate speech harassment of their own people. I can give links to the worst offenders if you like.

But there’s a difference between “political disagreement” and, well, that.

3 Likes

Thanks for the offer but I’m sure you will understand why I’ll pass on that. Aside from all the weirdness of online life these days I’ve got some IRL difficulties to sort out and need to stay positive.

2 Likes

NP. And, yeah, it’s been over a year since I enthusiastically saw people who said that they were Jews, knew all of the shibboleths, and yet were enthusiastically reposting racist “Schlomo Schekelburg” memes… for starters, and I’m still revolted and shocked.

Hope that things work out for you.

8 Likes

I’d like to add one thing to this:

Let’s stop calling events like these “calamities” etc… Yes, they are, but this was likely not some mysterious natural disaster, or a random accidental fire that just happened to coincide with the orange con man’s recent anti-muslim activities. This was likely some human shitstain, feeling emboldened by a sympatico with the a-hole in chief, felt willing and able to commit a terrorist act and commit arson.

“Calamity” removes the intentional terror aspect of it. I’m for calling it what it is: Domestic Terrorist Activity.

13 Likes

While there is likely some chance of repercussions or backlash for this, I feel characterizing it as “brave” diminishes it. It is an act of compassion. Bravery is for sure worthwhile, but compassion is what we need most right now.

3 Likes

according to many comments I’ve read in the last few months (not on BB!), all crimes being reported against Muslims & Jews:

-were already happening under Obama
-are false flag attacks
-and are fake.

How do people who say such things sleep at night?

9 Likes

I in no way intend to disparage the kindness, generosity, and decency of the congregation’s(what is the right term for the group of Jews whose religious observance is connected to a given synagogue? I’m not sure that congregation is right) willingness to help out the mosque-less Muslims; but it probably does help that, in Texas, Jews and Muslims are both comparatively low-status minority religions; rather than being locked in an incumbent/minority interaction as in most of the middle eastern hot spots.

Regardless of theological details(or even in direct defiance of them) it doesn’t take much for the majority faith in a given area to start throwing its weight around(even the notoriously chill Buddhists have shown a capacity for serious jerkassery in Myanmar); and Jewish/Muslim relations in nations where one is the dominant party and the other is a minority frequently reflect that; but if neither is the dominant incumbent, there is no particularly solid theological ground for enmity. If Jews were ever deeply displeased with Abrahamic monotheisms that claimed one or more additional prophets, that was a lost cause at least a millenium ago; and as for Muslims, Jews are about as ‘people of the book’ as they come.

You didn’t recognize it as the complex, nuanced view of a professional historian?

14 Likes

Congregation is the correct English term. (Funny note: when I was a kid, I was confused as to who “Cong.” was in the notations in the siddur (prayerbook) for the various call-and-response parts of the blessings)

3 Likes

Not until they run out of Muslims.

3 Likes

When it comes to the driver for ‘enmity’ as you’ve described, I think there’s room for some doubt and more discussion (that is, equal “dominance’ does not guarantee peaceful coexistence.)

Further, if we’re talking about Jewish/Muslim relations in the Middle East (we should probably instead, for practical and overriding reasons, say Israeli/Arab –not all Arabs are Muslim, and not all Jews identify with Israel [look up Brooklyn Hasidic Jew protests against Israeli policies]), then I’d say that land – and not theology (theology being chiefly the cudgel for action and the wedge to polarize and provide rationalization for land grabs) is what has led to much of the enmity between Israelis and Arabs. As far as I know, there exist no land issues between the Muslims and Jews in Texas, no “West Bank” there.

(That all said, a more cynical person, agreeing with what I’ve posited above, might say, yep! no West Bank explains it all. I believe it doesn’t; there’s something called common (and uncommon) human decency, and as embodied now in the Israeli and Arab peace projects.)

I’d think that seeing themselves as racial superior to Koreans, Chinese, and Filipinos and running their empire on that notion qualifies as racism, but I’ll not derail further.

18 Likes

Apparently not.

13 Likes

Of course not.

No one here is knowledgeable or enlightened, except for a very select few… and they will be sure to let us all know it, constantly.

13 Likes

Well, if you only read Breitbart and Fox…

But yeah, the cognitive dissonance is pretty strong. Their echo chamber is clearly the Truthiest!

There isnt a particular word so congregation wail do just fine.

Except for dhimmitude circumstances, basically sorta yes.

It is possible I misread you here as this is a sentence fragment. Would you be kind enough to clarify this statement?

I’m referring to the treatment of Koreans, Filipinos, and Chinese under Japanese occupation. I don’t think it’s particular controversial to say that they were treated pretty badly during that period. Yes, the Japanese were engaged in the global discussion over white supremacy. They posited themselves as speaking for other East Asians (under the idea that they were the proper spokesman for everyone else in the region, as they saw themselves as inherently superior) in that global conversation in the late 19th into the 20th century. They used this same belief to justify their imperial activities. They did use the language of race as codified by the Germans (and a couple of decades of Eugenics and social darwinist language in both the US and Europe) to not only discriminate, but to brutalize other East Asians.

And they managed to save thousands of Jews during the war (including within their occupied territories and from occupied Europe). Considering the fact that the US turned away many people fleeing the nazis, based on quota numbers created by the immigration act of the 1920s, in this case Japan certainly was on the moral high ground - compare it to the voyage of the damned. But I don’t think we should allow our admiration for the actions of some in the Japanese government to cloud our judgement on their other activities. But nor should we forget the bravery of those who DID save lives.

Hope that clarifies my meaning.

20 Likes