So leave the ways that are making you be what you really don't want to be

[sovay]

After shutting Twitter down for the day, spatch informed me that he had seen a Trump-defending, America First-ing user deciding to respond to his critics by identifying and tagging the Jewish ones. I am not on Twitter and therefore have not been able to see if this was a neo-Nazi triple-parentheses thing or just a lot of hashtags or does it matter, really.

I've been following the reponses to Pence's fucked-up Evangelical Zionist Holocaust tweet, of which this thread and this article seemed especially on point. I just disagree with the latter's classing of Defiance (2008) among dubiously inspirational Holocaust narratives because it's not a story about implicitly non-Jewish "people who saved Jews during the Holocaust," it's a story about Jewish resistance—Jews who saved themselves and other Jews—and while we can argue about whether the not-at-all-Jewish Daniel Craig should have played Tuvia Bielski, the fact remains that his character is not a righteous gentile, he's a very angry Polish Jew. I don't think that's "inspirational," I think that's necessary. (Even if I just now thought of Jason Isaacs as Tuvia and if I could have gotten him and Liev Schreiber in the same movie? Oh, man.)

Tonight begins Tu B'Shevat, a holiday which my family has never especially celebrated. It's a bit hard to plant trees in January around here, especially since it was snowing earlier today. On the other hand, I have always liked—even just to hear about—the part where the Tu B'Shevat seder is structured around the Tree of Life which is the Kabbalistic pattern of the Sefirot. On the yet other hand, while I like quite a lot of dried fruits, I can't really eat nuts.

I will not be listening to the State of the Union address. I will read about it afterward. I am sure it will be horrifying. I plan to do something constructive with my night instead, like write about a movie with Ida Lupino.

Comments

[rosefox]

You're welcome! I learned about it from a picture book called Sadie's Snowy Tu B'Shevat, in which a girl tries to plant a tree in the snow and her grandmother teaches her this custom instead. A small child in your life might enjoy such a book if you wanted to find it and read it to them. :)

[sovay]

A small child in your life might enjoy such a book if you wanted to find it and read it to them.

I have got a couple of candidates . . .

[rosefox]

Sort of apropos of this, the other night Kit watched me while I made havdalah, and it turns out I was totally incapable of describing it as "I'm doing this"—I could only say "we do this, this is how we do it, this is why we do it this way". We're not raising Kit in a faith (what this means is sort of evolving), so I kept trying to change my phrasing, and I could not transmit the knowledge any other way! I'm not sure whether this is because Kit is my child or it would have happened with any child. I found it disconcerting and fascinating.

[sovay]

it turns out I was totally incapable of describing it as "I'm doing this"—I could only say "we do this, this is how we do it, this is why we do it this way".

It makes sense to me. It's the way Jewish traditions were explained to me as a child: this is what we do, meaning family, meaning people who were like my family. It's all very communal. You need a minyan to say some of the most important things in the religion.

[coraline]

I'm curious -- in your head is that "this is what we [the Jewish community] do" or "this is what we [this part of this family, of which you are a part] do?"
I can totally see why it's not just "what I do" since you're doing it as part of a tradition and a community and a heritage. I think I would still describe it that way to someone I didn't consider part of the group?

[rosefox]

It was "this is what we, in this family, do". Which—it isn't! It's only my thing, and havdalah isn't even a thing I grew up with in my family! But that's the language I have in my head for the transmission of knowledge from parent to child.

I would actually have a very hard time saying "we" meaning community, to my child, without including that child in that community. That feels painfully distancing and uncomfortable.