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livHello DW, it's been a while. This term has had way, way less drama than last, but on the other hand I still don't have stable accommodation in London. My cousin, who is extremely lovely, is very politely intimating that I've already been staying in her spare room quite a lot longer than originally agreed, so I am in the midst of arranging to be a lodger for part of the week with a stranger, in exchange for money rather than relying on goodwill.
Anyway, I want to tell you about this weekend. On Thursday it was mine andjack's third actual wedding anniversary, but on Friday I had to go to Paris for college reasons. My last class of the week was cancelled so I had time for a nice afternoon with my lovely husband. This didn't go quite as well as I'd hoped; the weather was really unpleasant, and somehow it took two hours between leaving college and getting our act together to eat very late lunch, during which time we got soaked by the rain, and I was really quite hangry. Anyway one of the very trad Indian places by Kings Cross was willing to serve us a thali to share at 4 pm, and then we had an hour or so in the British Library, and then on to our actual dinner date at Itadaki-Zen, a vegan Japanese place which has very weird ideas about the wellbeing benefits of foods, but extremely delicious tapas. Then we had a night in a non-terrible hotel in Bloomsbury, allowing me to show up at St Pancras early doors on Friday.
So that I could catch a Eurostar to Paris, along with about half the current rab students and our Dean. The first time I've left the country since the pandemic and therefore also since Brexit took effect. (They stamped my passport entering and exiting France! It's been a really long time since travel meant getting stamps.) But it was really fairly easy, especially since it was with a group and I didn't really have to make any travel decisions. I have always loved the rest of France more than Paris, but Paris is still Paris. The weekend was really packed, and I'm not sure how much I should say about it in advance of the college's official press release, but basically we spent Friday night and all of Saturday with the French community, two services, one of which we co-led, three meals, a study session with our French counterparts (they have a newly founded and tiny rabbinic school). We met their two rabbis, the senior who spent most of 30 years as the only female rabbi in France, and the junior, a recent graduate of the college and former rock-star.
We learned lots about the history of French Jews, including that appropriated Jewish money was used to build the château we stumbled across close to where we were staying in Vincennes. Also the extremely unusual demographics, because unlike almost every other country, there are several times more Jews in France post-war than there were before WW2. This is because hundreds of thousands of north African Jews immigrated when former French colonies became independent in the late 20th century. This meant not only a massive increase in numbers, but a switch to an overwhelmingly Sephardi community after at least a millennium of primarily Ashkenazi culture. I also had not previously known that there is good evidence of Jewish presence in what is now France from the second century, and possibly Jews arrived there even in the first century ie very soon after 70 AD.
On Sunday we went on a guided tour of the Marais, the historic Jewish area of Paris. I'd been there before but it was good to walk around seeing the effects of all the historical info. Then back on the Eurostar to arrive in London in good time for my normal teaching Sunday evening.
The thing I wanted to pull out from this experience was that the guide was pretty convinced that the fantasy image of a witch is based on antisemitic stereotypes. The last time I came across this theory was a weird controversy on Tumblr some years ago, where some people were very vocally insistent that you shouldn't write witches in your fantasy settings because that's antisemitic, and others were pointing to this an example of just how ridiculous Tumblr's social justice culture is. At the time I kind of rolled my eyes at the idea that fairytale witches are antisemitic, I mean, sure, they have big noses, but loads of cultures claim that their despised minority or othered group has big noses, that's too generic to be meaningful. But on the other hand, I was strangely comforted because Tumblr in the height of the SJW era was just about the only online community I've been part of where it's actually considered bad to be antisemitic. Anywhere that neglects moderation will be full of far right griefers who are still recycling the same stereotypes from Crusader-era Jew-hate filtered through the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, when not spreading outright neo-Nazi propaganda. Anywhere with a progressive or lefty bent will assume that antisemitism isn't a real issue because Jews are white and middle-class and anyway Israel is evil. (Mastodon, which I like in principle, is particularly annoying for doing both of those at once.)
But the guide made a somewhat convincing case: Jews were forced by Christian anti-Jewish edicts to wear pointed hats. Jews usually had several precious old books in their homes written in foreign script when most of the population weren't literate even in French, and furthermore often kept cats to protect said grimoires from mice. Plus the big noses and the stealing children thing, and arguably allowing more freedom and economic power to women than most of the surrounding culture in some parts of Europe. So I suppose there could be a connection.
I also feel weird about the witches thing because of the Burning Times meme, and the debunking of same. Because historically Jews, and Christians with Jewish ancestry or who protected Jews, were in fact burned as an act of religious persecution, and there were mass burnings of Jewish books. So were other people, particularly Christians from minority sects, and some probably mentally ill people as Janega points out. And I definitely don't want to play oppression Olympics here; there absolutely are contexts where Jews have at least conditional legal protection and social acceptance in ways that Pagans do not. But TERFs claiming to be witches and decent people pointing out that mass burning of witches never actually happened, both leave me in a slightly awkward spot.
(PS I am not interested in arguing about whether antisemitism is really just legitimate criticism of Israel, or whether anti-Zionism is antisemitic. Both angles on that just promote misery and not useful conversation at all.)
Anyway, I want to tell you about this weekend. On Thursday it was mine and
jack's third actual wedding anniversary, but on Friday I had to go to Paris for college reasons. My last class of the week was cancelled so I had time for a nice afternoon with my lovely husband. This didn't go quite as well as I'd hoped; the weather was really unpleasant, and somehow it took two hours between leaving college and getting our act together to eat very late lunch, during which time we got soaked by the rain, and I was really quite hangry. Anyway one of the very trad Indian places by Kings Cross was willing to serve us a thali to share at 4 pm, and then we had an hour or so in the British Library, and then on to our actual dinner date at Itadaki-Zen, a vegan Japanese place which has very weird ideas about the wellbeing benefits of foods, but extremely delicious tapas. Then we had a night in a non-terrible hotel in Bloomsbury, allowing me to show up at St Pancras early doors on Friday.So that I could catch a Eurostar to Paris, along with about half the current rab students and our Dean. The first time I've left the country since the pandemic and therefore also since Brexit took effect. (They stamped my passport entering and exiting France! It's been a really long time since travel meant getting stamps.) But it was really fairly easy, especially since it was with a group and I didn't really have to make any travel decisions. I have always loved the rest of France more than Paris, but Paris is still Paris. The weekend was really packed, and I'm not sure how much I should say about it in advance of the college's official press release, but basically we spent Friday night and all of Saturday with the French community, two services, one of which we co-led, three meals, a study session with our French counterparts (they have a newly founded and tiny rabbinic school). We met their two rabbis, the senior who spent most of 30 years as the only female rabbi in France, and the junior, a recent graduate of the college and former rock-star.
We learned lots about the history of French Jews, including that appropriated Jewish money was used to build the château we stumbled across close to where we were staying in Vincennes. Also the extremely unusual demographics, because unlike almost every other country, there are several times more Jews in France post-war than there were before WW2. This is because hundreds of thousands of north African Jews immigrated when former French colonies became independent in the late 20th century. This meant not only a massive increase in numbers, but a switch to an overwhelmingly Sephardi community after at least a millennium of primarily Ashkenazi culture. I also had not previously known that there is good evidence of Jewish presence in what is now France from the second century, and possibly Jews arrived there even in the first century ie very soon after 70 AD.
On Sunday we went on a guided tour of the Marais, the historic Jewish area of Paris. I'd been there before but it was good to walk around seeing the effects of all the historical info. Then back on the Eurostar to arrive in London in good time for my normal teaching Sunday evening.
The thing I wanted to pull out from this experience was that the guide was pretty convinced that the fantasy image of a witch is based on antisemitic stereotypes. The last time I came across this theory was a weird controversy on Tumblr some years ago, where some people were very vocally insistent that you shouldn't write witches in your fantasy settings because that's antisemitic, and others were pointing to this an example of just how ridiculous Tumblr's social justice culture is. At the time I kind of rolled my eyes at the idea that fairytale witches are antisemitic, I mean, sure, they have big noses, but loads of cultures claim that their despised minority or othered group has big noses, that's too generic to be meaningful. But on the other hand, I was strangely comforted because Tumblr in the height of the SJW era was just about the only online community I've been part of where it's actually considered bad to be antisemitic. Anywhere that neglects moderation will be full of far right griefers who are still recycling the same stereotypes from Crusader-era Jew-hate filtered through the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, when not spreading outright neo-Nazi propaganda. Anywhere with a progressive or lefty bent will assume that antisemitism isn't a real issue because Jews are white and middle-class and anyway Israel is evil. (Mastodon, which I like in principle, is particularly annoying for doing both of those at once.)
But the guide made a somewhat convincing case: Jews were forced by Christian anti-Jewish edicts to wear pointed hats. Jews usually had several precious old books in their homes written in foreign script when most of the population weren't literate even in French, and furthermore often kept cats to protect said grimoires from mice. Plus the big noses and the stealing children thing, and arguably allowing more freedom and economic power to women than most of the surrounding culture in some parts of Europe. So I suppose there could be a connection.
I also feel weird about the witches thing because of the Burning Times meme, and the debunking of same. Because historically Jews, and Christians with Jewish ancestry or who protected Jews, were in fact burned as an act of religious persecution, and there were mass burnings of Jewish books. So were other people, particularly Christians from minority sects, and some probably mentally ill people as Janega points out. And I definitely don't want to play oppression Olympics here; there absolutely are contexts where Jews have at least conditional legal protection and social acceptance in ways that Pagans do not. But TERFs claiming to be witches and decent people pointing out that mass burning of witches never actually happened, both leave me in a slightly awkward spot.
(PS I am not interested in arguing about whether antisemitism is really just legitimate criticism of Israel, or whether anti-Zionism is antisemitic. Both angles on that just promote misery and not useful conversation at all.)
(no subject)
Date: 2024-03-07 08:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-03-08 12:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-03-08 02:16 am (UTC)I watched an excellent YouTube video on witch stereotypes and antisemitism; I wish I remembered where I found it.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-03-08 11:23 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-03-08 07:45 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-03-08 11:30 am (UTC)And I am always grateful for your encyclopaedic knowledge of Josephus. I was a little surprised about the antiquity because I don't really think of Jews in northern Europe in the first millennium, but of course the ones who came to England with William the Conqueror must have come from somewhere. And probably there were in fact a few Jews in Britain when the Romans were here, since they brought people from all over the Empire.
You're right, we used to go to Itadaki-Zen back in the day, because there were a lot fewer good veggie options in the early 2000s. It's not quite as it was back then, now they only have tapas and not main courses, but still lovely. Thank you for the fascinating linguistic information, too!
(no subject)
Date: 2024-03-08 02:27 pm (UTC)In general you should use the ID for the country you're entering, and some countries insist on that. When travelling between the UK and Belgium I present my UK passport when entering the UK, and both my UK passport and Belgian ID when entering the Schengen area; this is partly for form's sake and partly so my UK passport doesn't get cluttered with entry stamps (they don't stamp for residents)
(no subject)
Date: 2024-03-09 07:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-03-09 08:03 pm (UTC)I think "take ID card but make sure not to keep it in the same place as passport" would be the safe path there if you care about those things; eg "keep ID card in hotel safe; keep passport on person" or "hold onto your own passport and your partner's ID card".
(personally I don't worry about these things; I keep things in pockets that are moderately fiddly to pick but beyond that I accept that there's a chance that I will lose one or the other or both and I will have a very annoying day or two faffing at consulates/embassies — but it's a small enough chance compared to other stuff that can go wrong.)
(no subject)
Date: 2024-03-09 07:15 pm (UTC)What gives you that idea? I've never heard of that. Though last time the passport officer spotted me putting one passport away when handing over the other ones, and demanded to see it, which I have no idea if I was entitled to say no to. Fortunately he didn't spot the fact my money belt also contained a black passport and ask to see that; that one's a full-size mock-up of a passport for Rafi's teddy bear.
I was a little surprised about the antiquity because I don't really think of Jews in northern Europe in the first millennium
What counts as northern Europe? The Ashkenazi community is evidenced in France and the Rhineland from the ninth century IIRC.
You're right, we used to go to Itadaki-Zen back in the day, because there were a lot fewer good veggie options in the early 2000s. [...] Thank you for the fascinating linguistic information, too!
It's more than linguistic trivia as far as I'm concerned. If I'd known about the concept of itadakimas* when I first started wanting to express gratitude for the food I eat, around 2007, I might have taken to saying that rather than בְּרָכוֹת. The word remains in reserve in my brain for use should I ever stop fasting on Tisha BeAv, which I have come close to in the last few years.
* Can anyone explain why such Japanese words are normally always transliterated with the silent terminal U? There doesn't seem to me to be any point transliterating something which is not pronounced; it's misleading to people not familiar with the language.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-03-09 08:06 pm (UTC)I think there are countries that have exit checks that dislike you entering on one ID and leaving on another. It messes with their accounting of who's entered and is still in the country.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-04-18 07:08 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-03-08 08:56 am (UTC)I think in an English context witches seem like a rural thing, whereas Jewish communities were urban - I don't know if that's actually factually correct or just my impression, though. And I know in Spinning Silver Novik's Jewish protagonists live in a tiny village, so if that was something that happened in Eastern Europe (I know it's a fantasy setting, but that part all feels pretty grounded) maybe also elsewhere...?
(no subject)
Date: 2024-03-08 11:51 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-03-08 12:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-03-08 09:45 am (UTC)To my shame, I've only become aware of this relatively recently (in the last decade..?), and I am horrified. I remember my parents telling me about antisemitism and Oliver Twist and The Merchant of Venice and Nazis, and I just assumed that it was taken as read in progressive/lefty circles that antisemitism was bad. I've been getting a lot more educated recently. I am glad to find in the minutes of a meeting I missed, that my Quaker meeting is planning some sort of shared community activity with our local shul, as an anti-antisemitic thing.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-03-08 11:59 am (UTC)There are lots of Jewish communities who have great relationships with Quakers – I've lead quite a few services in Meeting Houses! And Quakers generally have a good reputation for being actually committed to peace rather than just jumping on the latest media bandwagon, but I know there have been some clashes between Quaker and Jewish communities over extremely fraught questions about Israel and antisemitism. I am heartened to hear that your Meeting is working with the local Jewish community (which is awesome, I need to find a way to get invited to Sheffield sometime...)
(no subject)
Date: 2024-03-08 05:17 pm (UTC)Yep, that makes sense.
And yes, I think my Meeting is doing this specifically as a balance to ensure that its/Quakers' work around Israel and Palestine doesn't manifest as antisemitism.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-03-08 07:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-03-10 09:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-03-08 08:06 pm (UTC)It is an interesting argument, that the "stereotypical" witch design has roots in specific kinds of antisemitism. Casting back through what I've read, it seems like previous writers and storytellers weren't shy about making Jews villains if they wanted them to be, and there are arguments for the social aspects of witchcraft (as in, witchcraft accusations often come as a way of protesting or highlighting social inequalities) that I find compelling. Still, it would not be surprising if some primary source were found that detailed this connection more explicitly.