Thread by @Liddlebigmouth1

Living ad a Jew in the Netherlands continues to prove to me that my ethnicity is not only Levantine, by that I am not a white European and never will be. 🧵

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I grew up in a Jewish suburb of Philly. If anything, I felt a touch different as my fam was secular, but my general experience was one where being Jewish common & relatively safe. My school was mainly 1/2 Jewish & 1/2 Black, some Asian Am & Latino students & white gentiles. /2

That is not to say I did not experience my Jewishness as othering nor that I did not go through some scary antisemitsm. Aside from being a minority in the US & what that entails, here are a few examples of what I experienced:
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Gentile children still taunted me now & then, a neighbour girl would throw things at me & shout “dirty Jew” on my way home, my darker Ashkenazi uncle faced shouts of “dirty Puerto Rican” or “n*gger”, a camp councillor told us she prayed for us every night that we’d find Jesus. /4

The worst was an experience out of a horror story when I slept over at a new school friend’s house at age 6. The parents & children kept me up all night in tears telling me my family & I were going to burn in hell unless we found Jesus. /5

But in general, as my community had a hood sized Jewish population, my general Jewish life was safe. Once I got to my very gentile University, I felt more othering than ever before and while that was something to get used to I never felt I needed to hide my Jewishness./6

At 23, I went to the Netherlands. My first day there I was sitting at a tram stop & noticed 3 swastikas graffitied on the bench w/the words “Joden naar het gas” (Jews to the gas chambers). I was in shock. /7

My gentile boyfriend said it was nothing to worry about, rival football supporters used this as Ajax Amsterdam had been founded by Jews, it was nothing to be concerned about. 😳 /8

Slowly I started to learn Dutch actually were nothing like Danish in WW2. 90% of Dutch Jews were sent to camps, 75% genocided. Dutch authorities had handed over their immaculate municipal records to SS, detailing where every Jew lived, worked, etc, making it easy to find them./9

I learned Jewish presence in A’dam had been significant enough that city’s dialect to this day still contains Jewish words: eg, A’dam is nicknamed “Mokum” from Hebrew makem; “mate” is “gabber” from “chaver”, to steal is “jatten” from “yad”; “de mazel” a form of goodbye./10

All through the city were remnants of a once thriving Jewish community: a former Jewish theater; “Joden”breestraat where Rembrandt lived, named after the Jewish community there; magnificent Sephardic Esnoge (synagogue); Anne Frankhuis; Jewish foods… /11

Regardless, my US experience meant I never considered hiding my Jewishness. Oncr around an Easter that fell around Pesach a colleague at work e-mailed everyone that she’d brought Easter bread & matzoh with butter and sugar for everyone. /12

I couldn’t believe it - matzoh? I replied “Wow, I am Jewish — thank you for considering me by brining matzoh!” A few minutes later a woman appeared at my desk. It turns out she was Jewish as well. /13

She took me aside & said to me in a hushed tone that Dutch commonly ate matzoh w/butter & sugar around Easter, it was something Jews introduced. And Dutch Jews are very quiet about being Jewish, be careful. I was shocked — why not be proud of being Jewish, especially here? /14

Her answer: the Dutch never fully faced their antisemitism, Shoah was in living memory & there are children/grandchildren of Dutch who supported Nazis. I quietly brushed it off as a painful & understandable trauma but it did not persuade me from being open about my Jewishness./15

I had other experiences: a colleague always calling me Anne Frank or Barbra Streisand; colleagues gossiping I was only out for money; a short-lived BF calling me his “horny little Jewish princess”; my ex’s boss “joking” all night at her party that I stealing food, silverware/16

As gross as these experiences were, I still never hid and proudly stated my Jewishness. I really believed that aside from these micro-aggressions I was generally safe. No way the Dutch would ever see Jews in the country under such threat again./17

Flash fwrd to today. I see Dutch everywhere — flooding streets/events, in gov/politics, on news programs & media, chanting in stations & airports, talking in cafes, approaching me w/litmus tests, using libels, tropes, genocidal calls - under guise of “Freeing Palestine”. /18

These same Dutch were not obsessing about burkas & Islam just two decades ago, and at the time I scolded them for their xenophobia. I argued that the way to tackle cultural clashes are with education on both sides./19

Yet now, as Euro & Dutch goyim are wont to do, they are compensating for their shameful typical xenophobic behaviour by using the Palestinian cause to deflect their guilt once again onto Jews. /20

They march, libel, spread propaganda, shout genocidal slogans not because they care about Palestinians. Because they don’t want any blame for failed integration and Islamophobia. They are performing. Deflecting. And feel safe to be antisemitic under guise of a social cause./21

Today I went to a house nearby pick up a 2nd hand hocker advertised on a local FB group. The woman was very friendly & chatty. And then she asked me where my last name was from./22

My Europeanised last name was forced onto my family c.1 1/2 centuries ago in a shtetl where they were forced to live in what is now Ukraine. They were once Ha’Cohanim high Rabbis. /23

The matriarch at the time probably sold spices on the market. They were lucky enough to be able to pay for a semi decent name, one that means Laurel Leaf. Unlike another side of the family, a high Sefardic rabbi who came to south Ukraine during a window of Ottoman rule. /24

His name was Elchanan ben Lemuel Ha’Levi, another high Rabbi. And he was forced to take the name Lemel — which means idiot. But I didn’t explain this to the Dutch woman.

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1st, why is it her business? 2nd, I no longer feel safe telling people I’m Jewish.

She asked me again.

As many of Jews in diaspora will know, I stood there wrestling with my a gut feeling telling me to be careful.

So I simply stated it was Ukranian, from a long time ago./26

“Ah,” she said. “I thought so! But I wasn’t sure as you don’t look Ukranian!”

😳

“Is your family ok?”

“My family left a 100 years ago.”

“Oh how fortunate. Just awful what is happening there.”

“Yes, terrible indeed.”

“And those poor Palestinians!”

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And there you have it. Jews know: trust our instincts. Ingnore anyone claiming we are paranoid & , an antisemitic, gaslighting trope. That includes ourselves, or our own people.
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Needless to say, I told the woman I was not interested in the item and left.

As I walked home, I shook off the incident and breathed.

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I was proud of myself. Proud of how I did my best to reject her prying for my own safety.

Proud of how I did not fund her feigned empathy for social causes, empathy clearly dirtied by Jew demonization.

Proud of being Jewish, no matter how quietly.
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