@bwjewishhistory@babka.social
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bwjewishhistory

@bwjewishhistory@babka.social

Small Jewish book publisher and blog. Our focus is on Jewish life and culture, 1850s–1920s, in the words of people who lived then. I'm the project's editor and translator, Steven Capsuto.

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bwjewishhistory, to Israel
@bwjewishhistory@babka.social avatar

The Greek Jewish Festival in NYC is today, which means making my annual guess at how many delicious borekas I can eat there without my wheat intolerance kicking the daylights out of me. Woohoo! 😀 Check out the festival if you're in the area!

#Sephardic #Romaniote #GreekJewishFestival #Mazeldon #Jews #Jewish

bwjewishhistory, to random
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Microsoft is a goddamn public menace. It turns out the new versions of Windows, by default, copy all your data to a Microsoft server without asking your permission, as a "favor" to you.

I can probably figure out how to disable it, but this kind of shit really pisses me off. I'm so glad I switched my business to Linux a while back.

bwjewishhistory, to Jewish
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A video about the ways that many Sephardim celebrate Purim. Sara Malka's videos are always interesting. 🙂​ (And yes, I know, there are some minor factual errors in this, but it doesn't detract from the beauty of the video.)

https://youtu.be/u0BCTuOETKA?si=FMbR6Nqg-0H7yA-y

bwjewishhistory, to Israel
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This short cartoon is the best explanation I've seen of a major difference between Jewish culture and Christian culture.

How often I've been in a room with a bunch of Jews and one or two Gentiles, and the Gentiles start tone-policing everyone, convinced that what's going on is "an argument," and start calmly but firmly ordering everyone else to "bring the tone down." And the Jews look at the Gentiles as if to say "Why are you rudely interrupting a good conversation?"

https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/pb-daily/how-to-have-a-disagreement-without-having-a-fight

#Jews #Jewish #Mazeldon

bwjewishhistory, to Jewish
@bwjewishhistory@babka.social avatar

Falsifying the content of old literature is a rotten idea.

If we erase all evidence of past prejudices from the culture, then we are doing something dangerous to ourselves and others: aiding the bigots who want to teach younger generations that systemic prejudice never existed, and that the movements to end those prejudices were lying and were frivolous and dishonest.

Leave the past intact. We need it.

https://www.jta.org/2023/11/10/culture/publisher-removes-jewish-stereotypes-from-classic-georgette-heyer-romance-novel

bwjewishhistory,
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@CitizenWald Or maybe a boilerplate introduction that reads: "This book was written in the past. The past will always look like the past and sound like the past. The past will not look, sound, or behave like the present no matter how much you yell at it."

bwjewishhistory, to random
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If you want to protest against Israel's policies, go demonstrate outside an Israeli embassy or consulate. But if you're "demonstrating against Israel" by randomly committing crimes against Jews and Jewish institutions, you're not a crusader for justice; you're just a pathetic worm venting your preexisting bigotry, and hopefully will end up in jail where you belong. 😡​

cstross, to random
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REMINDER: ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion, and other large trained neural models are NOT "artificial intelligence", they're just stochastic parrots, remixing and regurgitating what they've been fed. There's no theory-of-mind involved, so no understanding: there's no "there" there. (A real live parrot exhibits more intelligence than this.)

Don't call it AI; call it parrot-tech. That way you'll have a better perspective on what it can (and can't) do.

bwjewishhistory,
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@cstross REMINDER: Figurative language exists. 🙂​

bwjewishhistory, to Israel
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I look forward to seeing this exhibit at the Yiddish Book Center!

https://forward.com/forverts-in-english/566867/permanent-exhibit-amherst-yiddish-book-center/

serge, to Israel
@serge@babka.social avatar

I'm going to make it really easy for everyone:

  1. Calling the Jews "Settler Colonialists" denies that they are native to the region. It's a way to deny Jews their homeland by de-legitimizing Israel.

  2. Calling it a genocide is a deliberate misstatements of facts, since the word "genocide" has specific and direct meaning. It's a means of demonizing Israel.

  3. Calling for the destruction (or "forced reformation" of Israel to any other country formation through non-democratic means is directly calling for the death of 7 million (or half the world's) Jews.

These are antisemitic. Period.

bwjewishhistory,
@bwjewishhistory@babka.social avatar

@serge @raf Throwing around the word "genocide" to describe Israel's goals is irresponsible and dangerous. Given Israel's military capabilities, if the country's aim were genocide, the region's demographics would long ago have become very different than they are. By contrast, Hamas's goal has always been an ethnic cleansing of Jews from the region, through mass slaughter and expulsion.

That said, I recommend not getting into protracted arguments over the term "settler colonialists," given that the massive return of Jews to the region in the late 19th and early 20th century was led by an organization that was literally called the Jewish Colonization Association, which along with similar groups, created "colonies" and "settlements," populated by people who often described themselves as "settlers."

bwjewishhistory, to random
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My latest article posted to LinkedIn: My fellow translators are posting about AI and little else these days. The posts tend towards one of two conflicting ideas: "AI is your friend—there’s nothing to worry about" or "Our profession is doomed! Dooooooomed I tell you!" Both are exaggerations.

I believe we can survive as language professionals in the AI era, but we must make adjustments.

Here's how I'm approaching it...

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7120444388987527168/

bwjewishhistory,
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@shekinahcancook Yeah, the transcriptionists got hit even sooner than the translators.

flexghost, to random
@flexghost@mastodon.social avatar

Senator Bob Menendez has been indicted

He gave sensitive U.S. government information and pressured the Agriculture Department to help an Egyptian businessman and the government of Egypt

Oh.

And he cannot be removed as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee

He has to voluntarily step down

That’s our system for you. Wokka, wokka

bwjewishhistory,
@bwjewishhistory@babka.social avatar

@flexghost I know nothing about Menendez, but I do know that "indicted" doesn't mean "guilty."

bwjewishhistory, to Israel
@bwjewishhistory@babka.social avatar

"Women on the Yiddish Stage," a new book co-edited by Alyssa Quint and Amanda Miryem-Khaye Seigel. 🥰​

https://www.mhra.org.uk/publications/Women-on-Yiddish-Stage

#Jews #Jewish #Yiddish #theater #theatre #JewishBooks #Mazeldon

coreyrayburnyung, to random

Elon let thousands of actual Nazis back onto Xitter under his selective, BS "free speech" rationale. And now, he is taking a poll to see if the Anti-freakin'-Defamation League should be kicked off of Twitter?!?! Worse still, those thousands of Nazis will determine if the ADL stays or goes b/c they were the constituency most willing to pay for blue-check marks?!?

bwjewishhistory,
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@josephramoney @mastodonmigration @coreyrayburnyung @edgeoforever You can fight anti-Jewish prejudice without being on a social media platform that enriches Nazis. What would you have the ADL do next? Try to buy ads in white supremacist publications?

bwjewishhistory, to Jewish
@bwjewishhistory@babka.social avatar

Gentiles sure do love lecturing us Jews about what it means to be Jewish.

If you're not Jewish yourself, your role in conversations on this topic should involve more listening than yammering.

bwjewishhistory,
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@bp This was a situation where a Gentile was arrogantly yelling at a bunch of Jews, basically saying "Judaism is a religion! R-E-L-I-G-I-O-N! You can't be both a Jew and an atheist!"

In fact, the vast majority of rabbis, probably including most very Orthodox rabbis, would agree that a Jew who's an atheist still counts as a member of the Jewish people. But so many Christians think it's their place to try and dictate what it means to be Jewish. They desperately want being Jewish to work like being Christian, which it doesn't. It's its own thing. As I said, they need to listen more and yammer less about things they don't know about.

The issues you raise about conversions and Jews by choice are a separate conversation, I think.

bwjewishhistory, to random
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When Shylock spoke Yiddish:

In the late 19th and early 20th century, Yiddish star Jacob P. Adler (right) was known for playing Shylock in "The Merchant of Venice." His portrayal was no villainous cliche but a proud who, even in defeat, left the stage with his head high.

Invited to bring the show to Broadway in English (which Adler spoke with a heavy accent), he agreed to a compromise: everyone else spoke in English but Shylock spoke .

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