+Jews Are Tweeting With The Hashtag #FirstAntiSemiticExperience, And It’s Horrifying

jewish-privilege:

(source, source, source)

A penny to the head, a fist to the face, scanning for horns… when did it first happen to you?

A call from a British Rabbi for Jewish Twitter users to share their #FirstAntisemiticExperience has yielded a surge of painful memories on the social media site.

Rabbi Zvi Solomons serves the Jewish Community of Berkshire, an Orthodox community in the English town of Reading, barely half an hour train ride west of London. Responding to an historic high of anti-Semitic incidents in the UK — as well as to the very public accusations of anti-Semitism in the British Labour party, particularly from leader Jeremy Corbyn — Solomons asked Jews to share their earliest memories of enduring slurs and violence.

The hashtag has succeeded in demonstrating that the problem of anti-Semitism is “universal,” says Rabbi Solomons, noting that examples range from outright violence to subtle prejudice.

The answers are both painfully varied and painfully overlapping: many report experiencing violence, discrimination from teachers, slurs from childhood friends, Holocaust denial, approval of the Holocaust and taunts by Evangelical Christians. Of the growing hundreds of responses, the preponderance are from British Jews (helped by the fact that Solomon is British, working at a British congregation) with American, Canadian, and other European Jews chiming in. A surprising number mention violence. Many come from younger Jews…

My first antisemitic experience was during kindergarten (age four or five) and being asked on the playground why I or “my family” killed Jesus. I didn’t even know who Jesus was.

(via dramarocker)

bibleforboys:

grumpy-soul:

This is the cutest thing I have ever seen

this is a lot

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kittyb4e:

(via lgbtlaughs)

L'Homme et la mer (Man and the Sea)

dwnsy:

L'Homme et la mer

Homme libre, toujours tu chériras la mer!
La mer est ton miroir; tu contemples ton âme
Dans le déroulement infini de sa lame,
Et ton esprit n'est pas un gouffre moins amer.

Tu te plais à plonger au sein de ton image;
Tu l'embrasses des yeux et des bras, et ton coeur
Se distrait quelquefois de sa propre rumeur
Au bruit de cette plainte indomptable et sauvage.

Vous êtes tous les deux ténébreux et discrets:
Homme, nul n'a sondé le fond de tes abîmes;
Ô mer, nul ne connaît tes richesses intimes,
Tant vous êtes jaloux de garder vos secrets!

Et cependant voilà des siècles innombrables
Que vous vous combattez sans pitié ni remords,
Tellement vous aimez le carnage et la mort,
Ô lutteurs éternels, ô frères implacables!

— Charles Baudelaire

Man and the Sea

Free man, you will always cherish the sea! 
The sea is your mirror; you contemplate your soul 
In the infinite unrolling of its billows; 
Your mind is an abyss that is no less bitter.

You like to plunge into the bosom of your image; 
You embrace it with eyes and arms, and your heart 
Is distracted at times from its own clamoring 
By the sound of this plaint, wild and untamable.

Both of you are gloomy and reticent:
Man, no one has sounded the depths of your being;
O Sea, no person knows your most hidden riches,
So zealously do you keep your secrets!

Yet for countless ages you have fought each other
Without pity, without remorse,
So fiercely do you love carnage and death,
O eternal fighters, implacable brothers!

— William Aggeler, The Flowers of Evil (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954)

(via mistsbetweenworlds)