The Diaspora Doesn't Love Us, Either

Wanted to come here to talk about the fact that diasporic Jewish experiences are disparate things.

Not all of us resonate with coming from relative generational wealth, for example if you had turn-of-the century immigrant relatives to the US who were able to build up some wealth.

Not all of us resonate with Yiddish language or culture. If that was at all spoken in my family it would've been extensively spoken by great-grandparent and older generations. 

Not all of us resonate with diaspora-ism as a positive experience. So many of ours knew persecution and deportation. I don't feel comfortable with people idealizing shtetls and harsh conditions.

Not all of us resonate with thriving Yiddish culture in general, because a lot of our relatives' mandate was to assimilate into their home country, and assimilation and religious erasure under political causes was always the goal. Love that we have workers' rights now, but remember what Jewish people sacrificed for universality and socialism.

I refuse to idealize something that came of discriminatory conditions. Not when I've been told stories of violently antisemitic letters written between politicians, and political assassinations of progressive, pro-Jewish cultural figures.

The diaspora has had its joys, but came of oppression. Sure, it's important not to hyperfixate on the Shoah as Jewish people's only moment. But it's also important not to sugarcoat reality. We will not repair the ills of Zionism by failing to truth-tell about our relatives' struggles or idealizing their contexts for pain.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Gender rant: I'm not here to give you a boner and neither is anyone else.

I'm going to work this kind of like a list of extended bullet points. Hey, kids. So let's talk about a little something called gender expression. Gender expression comes in many different varieties, and has taken on different sub-labels in popular or regional culture. Some of these labels that you might know are concepts like "dyke" "femme" "twink" "tranny" and other terms. Though there doesn't seem to be an overarching consensus on whether or not certain terms are considered offensive, partially due to the culture of term reappropriation in recent years (for instance, affectionately or cattily using the term "fag" within the gay male community), mainstream culture has adopted some terms and concepts as shorthand for certain gendered lifestyles. I argue this- No one should be unfairly reduced to their gender expression by anyone else. I believe that it is unfair to assume that someone considered to adopt a more convent...
Read more

Pop Culture Nation-A Recovered Memory of Cherished Treasures

Sometime between 2004 and Spring of 2006, I forcefully slammed a very large shoebox full of cassette tapes into the garbage can at my mother's house. You don't understand. Not just original cassette tapes. Mix tapes. During the peak hipster era of High Fidelity and Say Anything (much older, because yes we were already rehashing nostalgia), I committed a high crime against art and Xennial self-determination. I remember neither the context of the conflict, nor why I desired so strongly to sabotage myself. Was it later than then? Had I moved out again? Was it closer to 2008? I couldn't tell you. But I knew I was on one of my decluttering kicks. Inasmuch as I am messy and allow things to pile up (hopefully not to a hoarderly level) I have also gotten on occasionally forceful kicks of throwing my possessions away. Mostly because they reminded me of a part of myself that was over. Around this same time I think I dumped all the handwritten letters between me and beloved friends be...
Read more

Dream Brother

Twin seeds, planted in one long planter. Soon, a large landmass would stand between us. I wish I hadn't absorbed, from somewhere, that only the coasts mattered. And here we are. So much between us, including life & water under the bridge. I miss New York but I'm not built to root there. Just to visit. I think there was a time in my life when going there could've propelled me. They would've "gotten" what I was doing. But that was a small window of time. Now it's over. So much similar between us but so many parts of us different. And yet so much in common too. It feels like long ago but hey, obvious why we were pretty much "The Crayons" together. The queers in the 'burbs claw in the dark to find each other. Our absurd reads, endless summers and maybe the mystery trousers left in my trunk. Beach days, then you moved out right after we graduated. Things got tangible quickly. We did grownup things at 18 in a state where you didn't have to...
Read more