Happy Purim. A holiday when we Jews celebrate managing to not be killed by some antisemitic schmuck, which is basically all of our holidays.
— OhNoSheTwitnt (@OhNoSheTwitnt) March 12, 2017
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Mmm, hamantaschen. My family wasn’t Jewish, but every sensible New Yorker takes advantage of ethnic bakeries during their various holidays. Purim, this year, actually ran from Saturday sundown to Sunday evening…
The story of Purim involves a non-Jewish king and his antisemitic advisor. The king has a hot Jewish wife who convinces him Jews are ok. pic.twitter.com/fVBKWhWl6G
— OhNoSheTwitnt (@OhNoSheTwitnt) March 12, 2017
When Bannon badmouths Jews to Trump that's called Hamansplaining. #Purim
— Twitnter is Coming (@OhNoSheTwitnt) March 12, 2017
"They tried to kill us. We won. Let's eat." https://t.co/HEIkDN0dsb
— Joy Fleisig (@datadivajf) March 12, 2017
Nevertheless, we digested. https://t.co/eL9uU1z27P
— OhNoSheTwitnt (@OhNoSheTwitnt) March 12, 2017
Another Scott
Mentioned in an earlier thread today. ICYMI:
Ivanka: Complicit (1:43) – (May autoplay)
Cheers,
Scott.
Yarrow
UGH. Pictures of three terrible people, right there on the front page. Horror shows, all of them.
rikyrah
Um, are those tweets snark or real?
I am asking in all seriousness.
I have said it before:
I see Kushner as a slave catcher-plain and simple.
mai naem mobile
Easily the ugliest family ever to occupy the WH. Inside and out.
@rikyrah: That’s so perfect for Kushner – slave catcher.
Yarrow
@rikyrah: I don’t really understand the tweets. Maybe someone can explain?
Kushner is a bad person.
Mnemosyne
@rikyrah:
I like to use the term of his own people: kapo. The name for the Jews who collaborated with the Nazis to try and save their own hides.
rikyrah
@Mnemosyne:
That is exactly how I see him, and it sort of confuses me that the Jewish community doesn’t see it.
efgoldman
@Yarrow:
You have to be Jewish. And it’s like trying to explain any joke.
Purim celebrates the biblical story of Esther, roughly comparable to the story of Scheherezade. By telling stories to the king, she saved her people.
Hamentaschen are three-cornered pastries; Hamen is the villain of the story, and he legendarily wore a tricorn hat.
rikyrah
When they All Lives Mattered the Holocaust.. wasn’t that a neon sign for the world to see?
Mike in NC
We should feel lucky that Bannon only spends four sober hours in his office every day.
Chet Murthy
@rikyrah: Uh, they don’t? The head of the ADL said he’d put his name on any list of Muslims, straight away. Many Jewish organizations have come out against Dampnut. OTOH, maybe you meant “Right-wing Israeli parties” ? In which case, yeah, you’re right. Then again, etho-nationalist parties amongst the Hindu-American community were for Trump, too. The thread thru it is RW/ethno-nationalist, eh?
Just my 2c.
efgoldman
@Mike in NC:
That many? Can you verify that?
Mnemosyne
@rikyrah:
A lot of them do. It’s only the ones who are already right wing who don’t.
My friend at work keeps threatening to pull her right-wing family members’ Jewish card. ?
Yarrow
@efgoldman: I’m familiar with the story of Esther. I detest it – I think it’s the general treatment of women that I couldn’t get past. I could get into eating pastries though. As I recall, Sarah Palin fancied herself a modern day Esther who was going to save “her people.”
Yarrow
@Mnemosyne: Did you make it to the gate yet?
efgoldman
@Yarrow:
Well, considering that it’s thousands of years old, I wouldn’t expect it to be an exemplar of feminism.
jl
Haman was Irish? Man, that explains a lot. Vengeful lot, the Irish.
jl
And, Esther in the Bible was described as a virgin maid, ‘fair and beautiful’.
AL seems to have embellished that into cold stone fox smoking hot babe.
I suppose as clickbait for the BJ vulgariate, but still, fake news!
Edit: OK, it was the twitter, not AL. But she picked it.
Yarrow
@efgoldman: Other stories in ancient religious texts don’t always show women treated in that same way.
efgoldman
@Yarrow:
No, but some do; some show slavery (approvingly); some show polygamy; some show mass murder; some show slaughter of innocents….
amk
aussie rw seems a lot saner than the murkan version in pandering to the fucking base.
jl
@Yarrow: Some stories are worse, some are better.
Judah was going to burn Tamar at the stake for infidelity after he was her John by the roadside. And this after Judah decided to punish Tamar for his own sons’ screw ups.
The old king in 1001 nights was so pissed his wife was unfaithful, he executed her, then he decided to marry, rape and murder a virgin every day for the rest of his life.
Mnemosyne
So it turned out that my over the counter knee brace has some metal in it. ? I had to take off my pants and let them run the brace through the metal detector, but the LAX ladies were nice about it. I am safely on the plane with a nice bag of ice on my knee.
efgoldman
@amk:
Antti-vaxxers just believe the woo. Some are RWNJs, some are leftier-than-thou, some are Jill Stein.
Do i remember reading that the only state which requires vaccination for school, no religious or other exception, is that liberal bastion of Mississippi?
Aleta
Yay. Have a good flight.
efgoldman
@Mnemosyne:
When mrs efg traveled with a big, prescription knee brace some years ago, they not only made her take it off, they wiped down the metal parts with some kind of explosives-detecting pads.
Yarrow
@Mnemosyne: Have a good flight! Hope you are able to get some sleep or at least rest.
Millard Filmore
@Mnemosyne:
I am not Jewish, or a historian, but every time this “kapo” thing as traitor comes around I cringe. From everything I have read, neither the Sonderkommando nor the kapos in charge were volunteers. They were picked in a semi-random manner to serve the death factories. After some weeks of work the entire team was liquidated and a new team was selected. If my understanding of this is wrong, please enlighten me.
http://www.hagalil.com/shoah/holocaust/greif-0.htm
Yarrow
@efgoldman: @jl: Agreed. I just took a particular dislike to the story of Esther. I’d be happy to eat the pastries, though.
Mnemosyne
@efgoldman:
They wiped my hands with those, but they do that at random at LAX sometimes anyway.
frosty
@Mnemosyne: OMG! But at least your fellow passengers can be assured you weren’t carrying a knife next to your knee.
Please post your Mousecapades to On the Road this week! You have two lucky nieces.
frosty
@Millard Filmore: Your understanding is correct. I’m currently reading Tim Snyder’s Black Earth and discovering some sympathy for the Ukrainian guards at Treblinka. If that’s your only choice other than starving and freezing with 3 millilon other Soviet POWs what do you do?
jl
@Yarrow: Some scholars think some of the latter Old Testament books are a little heavy on the pro-Persian propaganda, which is kind of jars with Israel’s supposed sole allegiance to YHWH.. The idea is that Israel during the second temple period was a vassal state of the Achaemenid Empire. The good king of Persia was God’s instrument in releasing the community from the punishment of the Babylonian captivity.
Reminds me of dreary orthodox political just-so-stories I read in US history class in the BSier textboosk during HS.
Edit: anyway, I kind of agree. Esther is a good yarn, but something about it bothers me. Same as the books that describe the establishment of Second Temple Judaism. But I’m a goy, so whatever, who cares? Christian interpretations are even worse.
efgoldman
@frosty:
Ukrainians were complicit at Babi Yar.
toschek
@Mnemosyne:
I was carrying my dog though the rape-eye-scan and afterwards they swabbed me down. I mean, I know my dog’s barking can be explosive but that’s taking it a little too far. How is one supposed to strap a bomb to a chihuahua anyway?
Peale
@jl: she was smoking hot. Made all the more appealing by a very lengthy spa session. Her husband, though, was quite an ass who didn’t know two shits about how to run a kingdom. Everything had to be so extreme. First he issues an edict to allow the free slaughter of Jews within the kingdom and confiscation their property. As if there weren’t consequences for that. Then he reverses course and Allows the Jews to defend themselves. The idea that no one should be trying to kill each other or take property doesn’t seem to cross his mind. He basically issues two edicts that plunge his own kingdom into a civil war. This is not a wise man from the East, for sure.
jl
@jl: Some of the theories of how Persia may have created a much more glorious and grand history for their vassal state in Israel that it had before the Babylonian captivity, and working with Second Temple priests, inserted that into the Bible, is interesting. If true, shows that nationalist myth building and propaganda techniques used by empires haven’t changed much through the millennia. I read a book that did a compare and contrast of documents from different Persian vassal states but don’t remember the details.
On the other hand, if Persia had not conquered Babylon, then maybe no Second Temple Judaism. The whole history would have been changed.
Millard Filmore
@efgoldman:
The war turned around before the Ukrainians would find out that the Jews were simply first in line to go under the bus. This page has a nice table that shows the Nazi plan for local populations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalplan_Ost
jl
@Peale: OK thanks. I gotta reread the part about the king’s decree regarding the tanning bed tax that so oppressed the population. The king was a sucker for going with the last person who got his ear, especially at the great banquets. What was his name? King Trumpasaurus? I forget.
Peale
@jl: yep. His wife didn’t come to dinner and so he has his cabinet officials devote an entire news cycle to a trivial debate about what is essentially a personal family matter.
Gretchen
@Mike in NC: From the look of Bannon’s nose I’d say that 4 sober hours a day is generous. But you’re absolutely right. The more hours a day that Bannon in non-functional, the better for us.
NotMax
Obligatory.
patrick II
@jl:
It’s only because you deserve it.
SiubhanDuinne
@efgoldman:
No you don’t.
drdavechemist
Interesting observation from the Purim spiel at the local temple, where the cantor is a friend of the spousal unit. They did a parody of “Hamilton” with Esther in the title role. I know that the great stories are timeless, but while lots of the “Hamilton” lyrics didn’t require much modification to be relevant, the cast and writers also wove in numerous current topical references (both Haman and the King made Trump-like pronouncements), as well as at least one pointed reference to the Holocaust. So a story written thousands of years ago echoes down through the ages to remind us all to stand up for what we believe in, since “History has its eyes on you.”
(edited because I messed up the emphasis tags and couldn’t fix them, so had to resort to quotation marks for the title)
prob50
@toschek: @toschek:
Dog collar? A collar for a chihuahua might be too small to carry much explosive power, but I don’t know all that much about that particular area.
prob50
@Peale:
sounds kinda like an early period version of Trump. Think what he might have done if they had Twitter back then.
Ohio Mom
The other day I finally realized that Israel is to many of my fellow Jews as Abortion is to many Christians.
They become one issue voters. That in turn leads them to voting for people who put in place many policies and laws which actually go against the bulk of these voters’ values and principles. But that single issue holds a bigger sway.
Now, in the end, they actually end up working against their single issue. Whatever peace Israel has enjoyed as a result of negotiations and treaties, has come from the efforts of Democratic administrations; Abortion rates rise under Republican administration s and fall under Democratic ones.
But as we already know, these facts don’t matter to these two sets of one-issue voters.
As a side-effect of both groups’ single-minded obsession with their one big issue, every other far right-wing effort is strengthened. Funny that.
Ohio Mom
On Purim: Purim, like Mardi Gras, is a big sigh of relief after the long winter. Spring is coming! Even though the larders are running low, we will soon be able to restock them! We are not going to starve, this year, anyway. Of course we are giddy!
After the big blow-out, there are holidays that make a virtue of the rationing you must do until those new lambs are born and the garden/farm starts producing again. You are either doing the giving-things-up-for-Lent thing, or the limited-diet Passover thing.
If it wasn’t Esther, it would be a different story because the season calls for a raucous holiday.
J R in WV
@Mnemosyne:
OMG – I have a total shoulder replacement in both shoulders!!
Will I have to take my shirt off and remove the joint assembly for their Fuckin X-Ray machine?
Not gonna happan!!!!
Seriously, glad you’re gone there and down again by now!
J R in WV
@efgoldman:
Don’t know about Mississippi, but no waivers here in West by dog Virginia either.
Ohio Mom
@efgoldman: The anti-vaxxers who are RWNJ’s are still mad at Hillary for the “Vaccinate by Two” campaign she led when she was FLOTUS.
I can’t tell which came first, they dislike vaccines so they dislike Hillary for championing them, or they dislike Hillary and therefore dislike anything she’s for. Not that I’ve put any effort into researching this.