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Easy Eye @easyeye.bsky.social

Frankly, that moment seems closer and closer. I had a fear reaction when Target emailed me to see Judaica because I bought a $5 menorah on impulse for my nephew. I'm not a member there, they got attached it to me through my credit card. I can "pass" for a European gentile but my DNA will put me.

jul 27, 2025, 12:15 am • 0 0

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Easy Eye @easyeye.bsky.social

A lot of the anti-Israel rhetoric that preceded 10/7 and right after was in defiance or denial of the real dangers and fears of the Jewish Diaspora. If you're an advocate for Jewish concerns, should you overlook Jewish concerns about anything from violence to casual antisemitic talk?

jul 27, 2025, 12:18 am • 0 0 • view
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Easy Eye @easyeye.bsky.social

American synagogues and institutions had to hire extra security because of threats, warnings and attacks on Jewish spaces. This is not an abstraction. So should Jewish institutions say, "that doesn't matter right now, we have to look past it to prioritize this." Probably? But I don't know.

jul 27, 2025, 12:24 am • 0 0 • view
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Easy Eye @easyeye.bsky.social

Also, there was kind of a slow burn to this. People jumped out of the gate after 10/7 saying absolutely dehumanizing things about Jewish people, denying blatant antisemitism. It was bad and if you said anything, you were called a mass murderer. American Jews weren't allowed to name their injuries.

jul 27, 2025, 12:27 am • 0 0 • view
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Easy Eye @easyeye.bsky.social

But another thing to consider. When Eastern European Jews started immigrating to the US in numbers, the mostly German/Prussian/Austrian Jews who were here looked down on this shtetl trash. They used the K word to describe them, refused to let them into their Standard Clubs, and avoided interaction.

jul 27, 2025, 12:32 am • 1 0 • view
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Easy Eye @easyeye.bsky.social

Eventually, they realized that Gentiles didn't care from which side of the Elba you were from, or that you came from a family of department store magnates instead of poor tailors. They decided that if they wanted Jews to be respected, they would have to make these tenament dwellers respectable.

jul 27, 2025, 12:36 am • 0 0 • view
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Easy Eye @easyeye.bsky.social

So they opened schools and social organizations and created scholarships to clean up the riff raff. I'm not sure how that ties back in to this question, but I do think there is a tie.

jul 27, 2025, 12:39 am • 0 0 • view