“as many as 90 percent of the civil rights lawyers in Mississippi were Jewish.”
I don't think people today can fully appreciate the level of bravery it takes to be a Jewish person living in Mississippi or Alabama, seeing the worst klan violence go unpunished, and choosing to very publicly ally yourself with Black folk, because it is the right thing to do.
(🤔Actually, the way things are going, people *are* starting to get a crystal clear picture again of what that bravery was like...)
jews have always understood that if anyone is persecuted, they'll be in line at some point; that if anyone is persecuted, everyone is in danger. that doesn't diminish the bravery. many folks see things they know are wrong and unjust, yet do nothing.
@paul_ipv6 Which is why it’s so frustrating that so few stand with us now. @mekkaokereke @donray
@AlliFlowers @paul_ipv6 @donray
The good news is that I don't think that it is so few?
I think that there is an intentional effort by right-wing anti-semites to portray any criticism of current Israeli government policy as broad anti-semitism against Jews everywhere.
There is vile, dangerous, rising anti-semitism everywhere right now. A lot of masks are coming off. But I think the vast majority of liberal and leftist people are against anti-semitism, and stand with Jewish people on this.
@mekkaokereke @AlliFlowers @paul_ipv6 @donray
You’ll also hear this coming from right-wing Orthodox Jews, btw. I know more than one. (Because of family history, I don’t often say this, but I am Jewish.)
@deirdresm My father’s side is Lubovitch. My mother’s side is Israeli. We’re slap in the middle, and pretty much atheist, culinary Jews. 😂 @mekkaokereke @paul_ipv6 @donray
@deirdresm Wow! That is quite the story! @mekkaokereke @paul_ipv6 @donray
@AlliFlowers @mekkaokereke @paul_ipv6 @donray
Many Jewish people *were* adopted into Christian families, so there was no reason to disbelieve the story at the time.
Anyhow, not ethnically Jewish, but that knowledge is only within the last 10% of my life. My bio great-grandmother turns out to have been from a poor area of rural Norway and not, as we'd been led to believe, Germany.
@deirdresm I can only imagine how that’s played with your head. @mekkaokereke @paul_ipv6 @donray
@AlliFlowers @mekkaokereke @paul_ipv6 @donray
My mother's mother was adopted into a Christian family (great-grandfather was both a Methodist minister and a physician), and the story was that she had been adopted from a Jewish woman who had to give up her child.
Except, we find out from 23andme, that was an anti-semitic lie.
Meanwhile, I had a Bat Mitzvah to reclaim the family heritage when I was young, but not as a convert (as we believed I wasn't).
So. Complicated.