This ended up a really long post. You didn’t want me to complain for ages? I’m literally Jewish, what did you expect! If it helps, every section has a TLDR.

Content warnings should be fairly self explanatory; antisemitism, Holocaust. Also some all-caps and cursing.

I’m just one Jew, so my perspective isn’t everything, but this has been my experience and I also asked some Jewish friends.

So, here we go!

Anti-theism

Anti-theism is different from atheism, for starters. Atheism is simply not believing in any sort of deity or higher power, and that’s all well and good. Anti-theism is what happens when atheists are dicks and choose to mock or attack the concept of religion. That’s less well and good.

(Anti-theism affects all minority religions, however I am Jewish so this section will focus on how it affects Jews specifically.)

This is something I see so, so much, especially in queer/progressive spaces. People who were raised Christian, or grew up only surrounded by Christians- we call them culturally christian- often have religious trauma from Christianity. Which I completely understand. Christianity can be very toxic.

So, so many people then use their trauma from Christianity to attack religion as a whole. Which is fucked up but they never get called out on it.

Equating all religion to Christianity is perpetuating colonialism, fun fact. Colonization wants everyone to be Christian, and anti-theists want to pretend everyone else is Basically Christian. This encourages assimilation and erases our culture.

Another idea I’ve seen, particularly from the more intellectual side of anti-theism, is that religion is only for unintelligent people and encourages blind faith or discourages critical thinking. Which is a subcategory of assuming all religions are just like Christianity- though of course, not all churches will be like this. Arguing with people about the Torah is a Jewish value. We all interpret the Torah differently and that’s really, really cool! My Hebrew School encouraged us to question various stories as early as seven or eight years old, maybe even earlier but I don’t remember.

Something else queer people tend to do is make fun of Torah or Old Testament laws as a gotcha to anti-homosexuality. Stuff like “saying homosexuality is a sin is just as stupid as saying eating bacon is a sin.” Which is… pretty invalidating to me! I keep kosher! I like keeping kosher, and I don’t want that practice to be called stupid. If you must, say “it would be hypocritical to condemn homosexuality and not bacon,” or better yet, “your religious beliefs should not affect the laws of our country.”

This idea culminates in literally advocating for Jewish genocide, except somehow the antisemitism there is considered subtle. I have seen with my own eyes so-called progressives say the world would be a better place without religion. A better place without Jews. No one else is hearing how fucked this sounds?

And yeah, I’ve seen the counterpoint “I’m not saying Jews should all die, they should just give up their religion and culture.” Forcing us to give up religion and culture is STILL FUCKING GENOCIDE.

There’s an Elie Wiesel quote I like a lot- “It is obvious that the war which Hitler and his accomplices waged was a war not only against Jewish men, women, and children, but also against Jewish religion, Jewish culture, Jewish tradition, therefore Jewish memory.” Advocating for no religion is advocating for genocide, full stop.

You can talk about how religions (mostly Christianity) have harmed people without going right to genocide.

TLDR: Anti-theists, who think religion as a whole is a bad thing, disproportionately affect minority religions such as Jews. This perpetuates colonialism and assimilation, and occasionally goes so far as to promote genocide.

Ethnic Features (Noses)

I don’t know how closely you follow my blog, but a few weeks ago I started aggressively posting about how much I loved big noses. This is because I am Jewish, I have a big nose, and I’m insecure about my nose.

If you weren’t aware, big noses are strongly associated with Judaism. This is partially rooted in truth- my nose is bigger than my white goy peers, and the whole Jewish side of my family has large noses. This gets exaggerated a lot for antisemetic purposes, though. Here is an example of antisemetic propoganda.

ALT

Negativity around big noses obviously affects non-Jews as well, particularly people of color. It’s bad for a variety of reasons, this is why it’s antisemetic in addition to being racist and also just plain rude.

Making fun of big noses or making rude comments is incredibly prevalent. There’s a really strong idea that anyone with a big nose should “fix” it with plastic surgery. I did a google search to look at pictures of people with big noses, and the first result was a plastic surgery ad. There’s also a trend in art and animation to give heroes that “disney princess” button nose, and give the villains a prominent, hooked nose.

TLDR: Large noses are associated with Judaism and that stereotype is true for many people, so negativity towards large noses, which is prevalent in our society, targets Jews (among other ethnicities).

Talking About Israel

(Disclaimer: I do not agree with or support the actions of the Israeli government.)

Quite frankly, I’m hesitant to write this section in case I get hate for it, which is exactly why this section needs to be written.

The conversation around Israel and Palestine, while having a good overall idea- free Palestine- is absolutely rampant with antisemitism.

If you’re a goy and you’re talking about Israel, please take a moment to think critically about how Israel’s Judaism affects your opinion of the subject. A lot of goyim hold the perception that religion has nothing to do with this, and while that might be true on the surface, antisemitism is ingrained in y'all so deeply you don’t notice it. Or sometimes you do notice it, and you just don’t care.

There is a double standard for Christians and Jews. Jews are blamed for the actions of the Israeli government in a way that Christians are never, ever blamed for any action taken by a Christian government.

May 2021, I mentioned being Jewish once and got an anon saying “free palestine.” I never said I disagreed with that statement. They just thought I hated Palestine, since I was Jewish. This is an assumption all of my Jewish friends have dealt with- that every Jew is automatically a Zionist. The same happening to Christians, assuming they support every bad thing done in the name of Christianity solely because they are Christian, would be ridiculous. “I got this necklace for Christmas-” “OH, SO YOU HATE GAYS!?” That would never happen. The equivalent happens for us.

I have seen people advocate for Israel to be destroyed. Obviously, stolen land should be returned. But that’s such an aggressive way to phrase it. I’ve never seen the phrase “Destroy America,” even from those who support land back.

There is nuance to this that goes completely unacknowledged by goyim. There’s a misconception (if I’m being generous and not assuming it’s purposeful) that Israel was founded just for the hell of it, they thought stealing land would be fun. Israel was founded soon after more than half of Jews in Europe were murdered. No fucking wonder they didn’t feel safe staying in Europe, no fucking wonder they wanted to leave. So many other countries wouldn’t accept refugees. This isn’t an excuse, and that doesn’t make it right, but this adds a layer that’s necessary to consider to actually understand what happened.

Even in progressive spaces, it seems like anything is okay to say about Jews as long as you’re saying it in the context of Free Palestine. “Israel is greedy, which makes sense because Jews are greedy” is a statement I have heard more than once. Mocking the Hebrew language is fine since that’s what they speak in Israel, never mind religious significance. We can call Jewish babies “spawn” since it’s their fault for being born in Israel, never mind the fact that they are infants and have zero knowledge or control over government actions. All of this goes unquestioned by everyone except Jews.

The most insidious thing anti-zionists have done is compare Zionism to Nazism. Not only is tossing around Holocaust accusations also antisemetic (more on that in the next section), it is so sickening to call Jews the ideology that called six million of us. There are people who live in Israel who just barely escaped Nazis, whose family was murdered by them. Does no one hear how fucked up it is to call those people Nazis? Call any Jew a Nazi?

Anyway, before you say or if you hear anything about Israel, think critically about it. Avoid using the word Jewish. The religion is not at fault for the government. Don’t equate them.

TLDR: The conversation around Israel and Palestine contains a lot of antisemitsm. There is a double standard for Jews that doesn’t exist when Christian governments do bad things. Anti-Israel sentiments are often overly aggressive and contain unrelated antisemetic comments, sometimes even comparing Jews to Nazis.

Talking About The Holocaust

The way so many goyim talk about the Holocaust is absolutely vile. It’s a subject that needs to be handled respectfully and with care and so many goyim forget it’s a real, actual event with real, actual affects on real, actual people. There are two main ways I’ve seen goyim talk about the Holocaust.

A source of entertainment- have you seen how people will talk about Anne Frank like she’s the fictional blorbo of the week? When her sexuality came to light, the internet treated it like their favorite gay ship became canon. They forget she was a real person, a real child, who suffered and had meaning beyond their entertainment.

This one I see more- goyim use the Holocaust like it’s a tool to benefit whatever argument they’re trying to make. Both sides of any argument will do this. Animal rights activists, who I generally will agree with, will say shit like “hamburgers are like the Holocaust for cows.” Some Republican once made a tweet along the lines of “being conservative in modern America is like being Jewish in Nazi Germany.” If you compare the other side of an argument to Nazis, it’s a good way to shut down an argument- the other side doesn’t want to look like a Nazi! People know this and will bring up the Holocaust in an argument, any argument, that has nothing to do with the Holocaust.

Remember that the Holocaust is an important thing that happened, and it’s important to learn about, but it is not something to be brought up any time or mentioned as a “gotcha” in a debate.

TLDR: Goyim tend to treat the Holocaust far too lightly, either as a source of entertainment or a tool for debate.

Holiday Erasure

Jewish holidays! They’re so erased. For the goy reading this- can you name five Jewish holidays off the top of your head, not including Hanukkah? If you can, kudos to you. If you can’t, I’m not surprised.

Hanukkah’s treatment is very, very invalidating, and I get grumpy about this every December. You’re lucky you caught me far away from Christmas season, or I would never shut up about how much I hated it.

The public perception of Hanukkah seems to be the Jewish equivalent of Christmas. This ties in to what I mentioned in the first section, the way equating all religion to Christianity perpetuates colonization.

The idea in December is that everyone- Every Single Person- is going to celebrate Christmas. In recent years, after non-Christians said “hey, maybe be more inclusive?” the idea has somewhat shifted to Every Single Person is going to celebrate Christmas or Basically Christmas.

Not everyone has a Christmas tree? Okay, well, surely everyone has a “winter holiday” tree then! No, we don’t. The tree is still a Christmas thing. Giving it a different name doesn’t change the fact that it’s a Christian tradition. This is a Santa’s Workshop game, but if we slap “happy holidays” on there, that’ll change the fact that Santa is a Christian thing. Decorating the school in Christmas ornaments, but a Star of David ornament will come off as wokely including Jews rather than forcing them into our tradition!

Not everyone celebrates Christmas. Not everyone celebrates Christmas Lite. Hanukkah is its own thing that isn’t fucking Christmas.

That’s enough on Hanukkah, the hypervisible but still erased Jewish holiday! Hanukkah’s really not our most important holiday, not even close, it just gets attention because it’s close to Christmas and therefore can be commercialized. Our big holidays happen in the fall, usually September or sometimes early October.

Those are Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. They’re lovely holidays that very few people know much about. Every year I basically have to give a powerpoint to all of my friends.

I always have to miss school for Rosh Hashanah. For Yom Kippur, school is off for students, but teacher meetings are also scheduled for that day. What do the Jewish teachers do? Who cares, they’re not important. I’ve also had more than one teacher assign me homework over the High Holy Days and then get mad or take off points when I don’t complete the homework. On a student level, my classmates think Yom Kippur is a fun day off, just a neat little vacation, not something that has significance to anyone. Of course the day off for a Jewish holiday is about them, not about Jews!

Passover, being in proximity to Easter, has some of the same problems as Hanukkah + Christmas, but very toned down, which I appreciate.

TLDR: Jewish holidays face erasure. Hanukkah is equated to Christmas, tying into the larger problem of equating Judaism to Christianity.

Downplaying Antisemitism

Goyim don’t think antisemitism is that bad, or around today. They think it starts and ends with the Holocaust. If a Jew calls someone out for being antisemetic, more often than not, they’ll be called overreacting. This has affected me to the point where I always check with a Jewish friend to make sure I’m not overreacting before I react appropriately.

I told my old friend about the greedy Jew stereotype, and she said she’d never heard that one, so it probably wasn’t real. She’s not Jewish.

Holocaust denial is the most major example of this. Both insisting the Holocaust didn’t exist, or it wasn’t that bad. Maybe someone says it gets talked about too much.

As a general rule, if a member of a marginalized group says something is hurtful to them, believe them. They notice it more than you do.

TLDR: Many goyim think Jews overreact to antisemitism, or that it doesn’t exist at all. This is invalidating.

Conclusion

Obviously there are aspects of antisemitism I haven’t touched on, but these are the ones that might not be noticeable to non-Jews. Shit like lizard people, the rise of Nazism, greed stereotypes, space lasers, etc should be obvious enough. I hope.

Anyway, I hope I explained this well and that goyim reading learned something. Don’t be an asshole, and maybe buy your local Jew a bagel in these trying times. We need it.