The Problem with Me being Jewish

oh and for dinner my mom got you chicken what why because you're Jewish okay but what does that have to do with ham and Easter I don't know it's not Kosher is it but how am I supposed to know because you're Jewish oh well yeah but I'm not that Jewish oh oops oops and we say this in your name or who's ever name you pray to amen amen hi my name is Alyssa and I am Jewish uh no you're not you're pasty white with red hair listen Buster I may look like a hot and kissable version of Pennywise but that doesn't mean I'm not Jewish but you don't look Jewish your hair isn't curly your eyes aren't dark no go on say it uh your nose isn't big and hooked over correct I don't look like your typical animated villain character and I would argue no Jewish person looks like that only propaganda looks like that wait so does that mean I'll let you Google that one Jewish people can be any skin color speak any language and live all over the world just like Christians Muslims Hindus or any religious group but I understand where your confusion is coming from Jewish people are considered an ethno-religious group of people when someone says they're Jewish they could mean they go to a temple for religious Services they were taught to speak Hebrew or Yiddish and they observe Jewish holidays cultures and traditions or they could simply identify with and participate in their Jewish Heritage and community in their own secular way so without their religious stuff and there's also a huge gray area in between because everyone's different but no matter how they may Express themselves your Jewish friend probably knows the best place in town to get a bagel and no matter what you think of them and their lifestyle they are still Jewish which is so confusing I know take it from me I grew up Jewish emphasis on the ish though Once Upon a Time my parents both wore yellow to find each other on their first date a blind date my mom was Christian and my dad was Jewish well Dad didn't have like a bar mitzvah you know that religious coming-of-age celebration for Jewish kids the chair thing oh yeah the chair thing yeah my dad didn't do that oh man I know right that looks so fun anyway if I had to guess why it would probably be as a result of cultural assimilation assimilation is where an immigrant or their family lineage is pressured to disregard their Heritage and instead adopt the culture language even political ideology of the country they've moved to usually to blend in and avoid getting targeted of course this only goes so far for example if you're an Ethiopian Jew and you have dark skin you'll be racialized or assumed to just be black when arriving to the United States versus if you're a Scandinavian Jew and your skin is pale you'll be racialized or assumed to just be white and although my home country of the United States is known as a Melting Pot of cultures it's undeniable that how you look will Gravely affect how others treat you by this I mean my grandfather so my dad's dad was able to have a typical Jewish upbringing he learned Hebrew he lit the menorah he was bar mitzvahed he got to do the chair thing yeah but he was also drafted by the US military to serve in World War II oh the one with yeah the one with Germany fun fact when my grandfather served there was only a priest and a church for Christian religious Services no temples or rabbis for Jews like him but it was highly encouraged that everyone in the Army attend church so he a Jewish man attended Christian Church to blend in to assimilate why didn't he just not go no one was making him well sure no one forced him to go to church they didn't need to the social pressure for simply being the only Jewish person in a sea of Christian people during a particularly tumultuous time was all it took and the vocab word for this is called Christian hegemony hold on Christian [Music] hegemony hegemony all right and I don't know about you but if I survive something like that I'd be hesitant to raise my family outwardly expressing their Jewish Heritage World War II may have ended a long time ago but those ideologies are still very much alive and active today but I'll get into that later because it's not like this Jewish Heritage was hidden from my dad he always knew he was Jewish his friends did too that's how he ends up getting elected as president of his friend's benebrath chapter wait what I can't yes you can you're Jewish well yeah but I don't go to church temple temple sorry but still why me well Ethan's funking math Mitch is still on the teacher's bad side for flirting with Erica every day in second period and I'm still grounded for sneaking out but your record is clean what about Morty he's he's a good kid he can't he's Catholic what then why is he here he's the only one who can drive duh my dad accepted this position at first after all he ran on a post but he resigned soon after because as he told me he felt like a fraud he didn't grow up doing the typical Jewish things like his dad or his friends did he couldn't even speak Hebrew and my dad told me this feeling has followed him his whole life when he and my mom were about to get married he was scared that marrying a Christian would mean quote turning his back on his Heritage so to honor my dad's Heritage his father said a Jewish prayer in Hebrew to bless their marriage in addition to the regular American and Christian wedding traditions it was definitely not Orthodox it was probably not Kosher but if you ask me I don't think that makes my dad any less Jewish than his dad and although he had never really been in any kind of religious setting until he met my mom my dad was open to trying it out like I said my mom was Christian Lutheran to be exact which is basically a spin-off of Catholicism because a guy named Mart had 99 problems but the pope was not gonna be one baby he's starting his own church my dad told me he converted to Lutheranism so my brother and I would be raised under one faith that way he could fill in the blanks on our Jewish Heritage if we were ever confused and he tried his best I'll give him that but honestly there were so many holidays and I couldn't keep track so I just smiled and nodded and ate the little chocolate coins he gave me and the rest is history wow so despite your parents differences in their upbringing love really does conquer all yeah um that's what I thought too but it's so nice to meet you what happened to Aubry I liked her so yeah Grandma cell did not like my mom from the moment they met and it didn't help that my mom accidentally spilled apple juice on her floor that night and the stain never came out no matter how hard she scrubbed it and from then on Grandma cell took every opportunity to say horrible things to my mother until the day she died Grandma I mean and may she rest in peace but also that's kind of petty like really Petty it just didn't make sense that is until I started doing my own research on Judaism and my family's Heritage but sorry I'm getting ahead of myself because how did I go from confirming my faith in the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit at the rightful age of 11 to lighting my first Menorah in 2020 well it all started when I was doxxed doxing is when people find personal and sensitive information about you and publish it with the intent to intimidate harass and harm you and or the people in your life this happens to a lot of YouTubers unfortunately I'm not the only one and this happened to me while I was outside of the U.S visiting Japan in late 2018 and to say that this was the worst possible time this could happen would be an understatement let it be known I did call the police but they had never heard of doxing they didn't know what I was talking about and they insinuated I was prank calling them so nothing was done about it I couldn't file any charges or submit a report it also took 48 hours for YouTube to not suspend the account but give them one strike and here are my emails um I never heard back from them and it's been years so what does this have to do with me being Jewish well a certain subsection of people who don't like me or my videos not all elimination dislikers just a subsection of them that I hope is small identify as how do I put this they don't like how World War II ended and so if a Jewish person exists today and is happy or successful these people think it's because being Jewish is actually a front for being a member of a secret society that controls the banks the news the entertainment industry and anything that could slap a stereotype on really because they believe Jews are trying to take over the world and they must be stopped therefore when my YouTube channel took off and all these people found out I had a drop of Jewish blood in me they felt I was part of a grand conspiracy and thus I needed to be erased and they still do yeah this is news to me too surprise but after about two years of therapy I realized how is it that a group of strangers who want me and my family dead care more about my Jewish Heritage than I do that's not fair it's my Heritage and you can't have it so after reading Animal Crossing New Horizons of all the serotonin I could amidst the 2020 lockdown I began researching Judaism to learn more about myself and one of the first things I learned was according to Orthodox Jewish standards a child is only Jewish if their mother is Jewish so either the mother has a Jewish mother or the mother must convert to Judaism otherwise her kid's not Jewish even if the father is which made the juice of 87 incident make a lot more sense perhaps my grandma resented her daughter-in-law not because of an apple juice stain on the linoleum but due to the absence of this Orthodox standard in the family tree a family tree that from her perspective would now end with my dad when I learned this part of me started to worry that this meant I wasn't actually Jewish or I was horribly appropriating my dad's culture or worst of all I got doxxed for nothing but the next thing I learned couldn't have come at a better time one day while sitting in on a Shabbat service over Zoom one of the members played guitar and sang a song called ladour Fedor which means from generation to generation in Hebrew it's a Jewish phrase that refers to passing on our Traditions culture and history from one generation to the next like lighting one candle and sharing its flame eternally and I immediately thought back to when my dad would show me how to play Dreidel and all the times we made mossable soup together even back to when he tried explaining another Jewish holiday while I stared at him blank faced eating guilt I didn't know it until I heard that song but all that he did that was the door of a door and sure I didn't know a look of Hebrew and neither did he but he still taught me about our family and what it meant to be Jewish no matter what anyone including his own mother would say he didn't let the light go out and it was in that moment hearing that song that I truly felt connected to my Heritage for the first time since then I've been slowly learning more and more about myself and of course making more and more Jewish friends who also struggle with this I thought it was just a me thing thankfully those who would argue that I'm not actually Jewish are a super small group of people that I have yet to meet and though I can empathize with where they're coming from I feel like the world has changed and gotten a lot bigger more complex more importantly I feel like there are issues we should be coming together on because I can assure you an Orthodox Jewish person's lack of validation of my Heritage isn't gonna stop people like me patrilineal Jewish people from getting hate crimed hate like this has always been a problem it didn't go away when World War II ended I and all of your Jewish friends can assure you of that and lately it's become bigger louder I don't think non-jewish people realize it let alone know what to do to help so allow me remember in history class when the teacher would show us propaganda posters from decades even centuries ago and we would say wow those are so obviously horrible it's so obviously conveying a dangerous message how could anyone let this happen and our teachers had to insist though it seems obvious to us now people did in fact shrug it off and we know what that led to fast forward to today I believe our modern day version of propaganda posters are dog whistles that circulate on social media a dog whistle is basically propaganda that not only hides but also thrives in plain sight a lot of them will take the formula of a popular meme but inject it with a slide dash of dog whistle that way when it's called out by the person or group being targeted by it the user can just say what nah don't read into it like that or they'll pass it off as it's just a meme don't be so sensitive but I'll bet you 10 guilds I've already eaten that you have come across a dog whistle before I mean who hasn't procrastinated doing their homework by reading ridiculous conspiracy theories on Wikipedia until two in the morning you know the stupid ones like how Mark Zuckerberg Beyonce and other powerful people or celebrities are secretly lizard people and they have exclusive meetings where they wear cloaks do Secret handshakes and drink fruit punch they stole from children but lo and behold that is a dog whistle that was like an orchestra of dog whistles on the surface those sentiments sound like the perfect LOL XD random meme content because they're so ridiculous right who would believe that the thing is though these all originate from a very harmful piece of anti-jewish propaganda written in 1903 called the protocols of the Elders of Zion Jewish people unfortunately know this document very well so hearing anyone make light of these conspiracy theories is a major red flag if you want to learn more about it you can check out the United States State's Holocaust Memorial Museum's encyclopedia which is linked in the description below now of course you could use one of these unknowingly and that doesn't make you a horrible irredeemable person I mean I've used dog whistles before without even realizing it and I'm Jewish but that's the problem if you aren't aware what dog whistles are in current circulation you could unknowingly use them pass them on to others and alienate your Jewish friends or Worse put them in danger as speaking up in an environment rampant with dog whistle users would force them to out themselves to very dangerous people there's an awesome Tick Tock Creator named Zara zahava who's really good at breaking down the origins of old and new dog whistles in bite-sized videos I highly suggest you head to her page whenever you have a second I'm sure you'll learn something new because I can assure you every time you brush off a dog whistle as just a joke you lose a Jewish friend and gain a Yahtzee oh sorry to interrupt with my game of Yahtzee a dice game made in 1956 by Milton Bradley that's another thing if you use tick tock you know it's kind of hard to talk about this stuff online since words like that are understandably considered naughty words and you'll get in trouble for using them and although that censoring system means well helpful educational content like this sometimes gets wrongfully flagged and punished because they use that naughty word so although I can't say this word on this platform as it would risk my video getting removed and I will be placing a sponsor on this video to ensure my awesome team gets paid should this video be demonetized words like this need to be said out loud in real life and if you think my situation is bad that's nothing compared to what Jewish people who are more open about their identity have to deal with I've had friends tell me how they've been harassed stalked literally hunted down and attacked by strangers in broad daylight because they're Jewish yes World War II is over but anti-jewish ideals are are thriving they've just evolved with the times and we need to catch up that's why I'm making this video being Jewish should be a happy experience and a peaceful existence everyone I've gotten to know so far in this journey has been nothing but welcoming when a friend's mom found out I was Jewish she sent me home with enough kugel to feed a horse and a bunch of my Jewish friends and fellow Jewish creators helped me construct this video one of them being Raven from Tick Tock Raven reveals and I'll have links to everyone's social media below thank you for watching my videos especially this one and as always stay safe lastly it's time I give a huge thank you to surfsharkvpn for sponsoring this video there's a lot of stuff I talked about in this video that I encourage you to research but it might look a little suspicious in your browsing history and the last thing you want is an ad popping up thinking you'd be interested in some sketchy World War II memorabilia that's where surfshark comes in a VPN from surf 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Channel: illymation

Views: 2,385,062

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Id: z5IimXRrCCo

Length: 19min 27sec (1167 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 29 2023