Listen to the Rain

Today was another session of Laila's Hebrew school (called משפחתון Mishpachton, after the small-scale daycares that exist in Israel) today. I've been dreading going, because Laila is pretty wild and usually goes crazy in class. This time, I had the bright idea to make her walk all the way to the bus and then walk all the way from the bus to the Mishkan headquarters, and it worked! She asked a couple times for me to carry her, I always told her no, and by the time we actually got there she was willing to sit in my lap or have me hold her while the teacher sang the opening and closing songs and when it came time for activities (it was a Pesaḥ lesson), she went over to the tambourine-making station and picked out all the tambourine bells herself, ran to the "color a burning bush" station and did a bit of coloring, and then spent the entire rest of the lesson drawing on the whiteboard and asking me to draw in shapes so she could fill them in. I did draw this extremely sophisticated burning bush image of my own:


These are three and four years old. Not a lot of religious instruction at that age. We did sing dayenu briefly at the end, and there were some other songs in between, butwith young kids the important thing is to keep them engaged. They apparently did a lesson on keeping kids engaged at the Seder, because of course all the discussion and debate and talking about the lessons of Egypt and the wilderness aren't important to hungry children. It's only a benefit if you get to do any of the parts of the four children, and Laila's still a bit young for that. We'll see how she handles the Seder this year.

I do have one bit of sad news, though. We walked part-way back to the bus--I relented and carried her another part of the way--and got on the bus to go meet sashagee for lunch. I got off a little early to go to the Middle Eastern Grocery Store to pick up some hummus for Laila, but on the way I noticed something on a nearby lightpole. And when I went closer to look, well:

( antisemitism )

This is the same neighborhood where I've seen people tear down innocuous "Bring them home now" posters about the hostages, though, so I'm not that surprised. I'm just glad that Laila is young enough she didn't notice it or care about it. I only wish that I could have faith that antisemitism would be getting better, instead of on an obvious trajectory to get worse and worse for the rest of our lives.

Penn President Liz Magill to resign amid backlash over antisemitism controversies.

The first Penn president to resign for reasons not involving government appointment, apparently.

I watched the testimony she gave in front of Congress and sure, Elise Stefanik was grandstanding to a conservative audience because she wants to be the next Marjorie Taylor Greene, but the reason the question got such a visceral reaction is that everyone knew Magill's answer was weasel words. As opposed as I am to the idea of advocating for my death, you could come at it from a free speech maximalist position and say, "While I personally find the idea of advocating for Jewish genocide abhorrent, academic freedom requires that individuals be allowed to express unpopular ideas so that those ideas can be refuted in reasoned debate" or something like it.

She didn't say that, of course. She said "It depends on context," the probably most universally-hated answer in the world, and then made herself look a lot worse when she said, "if the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment," which, well, we're talking about genocide here. It's nice to know that if someone turns calls for genocide into action, Penn will at last step in.

(You can argue whether "intifada revolution" is a call for genocide or not, but under the Impact vs Intention model, many Jews absolutely experience it as that)

One of the major points of a president is to provide university leadership and to encourage donations, even for universities that have as gigantic an endowment as Penn, so when I saw that a $100 million donation was being withdrawn, I knew her days were numbered. And there's also a reasonable debate to be had about the influence of capitalism on university administration even for universities with enormous operating endowments--Penn's endowment is currently $21 billion.

Personally, especially after listening to some Jewish Penn students talk about things they went through, I'm glad she's gone. We'll see if it changes anything.

If I never see the "cruel Old Testament G-d vs Kind New Testament G-d" nonsense again it'll be too soon.

I could type out a whole comment that it's rooted in European antisemitism, in the idea of Jews as remnants of the past, slaves to "the law" from which Jesus came to free us but we were too stubborn and didn't listen, and so all our practices were backward nonsense. I could mention that the single most emphasized commandment in the Torah is to not oppress the stranger, the widow, and the orphan. I could mention that there's a lot of divine vengeance in the New Testament, too. But it never sticks so it's pointless.

Reminds me of when I saw friends' posting those "Do you not eat shrimp? Do you not wear mixed fabrics?" anti-evangelical memes and I was like, "Uh, I don't eat shrimp. I don't wear linen and wool. What exactly are you saying?"

So many people with no Christian religious beliefs who still have fundamentally Christian viewpoints.

So it turns out that Muhammad Abd-al-Rahman Barker, professor of Urdu and South Asian Studies; creator of the Tékumel setting, one of the first major TTRPG settings not based on a pastiche of European history; and author of Empire of the Petal Throne, the RPG based on that setting, was a neo-Nazi who sat on the board of the Holocaust-denial journal Journal of Historical Review and wrote a book called Serpent's Walk:

Serpent's Walk is a novel where Hitler's warrior elite--the SS--didn't give up their struggle for a White world when they lost the Second World War.

The book was published by National Vanguard Books, the same group that published The Turner Diaries. I found a pdf online and paged through it and it's basically Richard Spencer's version of modern neo-Nazism where multiculturalism leads to whites dying out so every race has to form their own nation-states back where they "belong," along with claims that it'll somehow be done without violence. The main character is a mercenary who starts up thinking this is a bunch of Nazi bullshit and, over the course of the book, slowly gets convinced that that fascists are right. It explicitly includes a lot of justifications for Barker's own situations--there's discussions of how high-caste South Asians are "Aryan" (Barker's wife was Pakistani), a meeting with some American Black Muslims who also talk about segregation (in that Muslims should live apart so as to make sure they rule their own states and govern them by Islamic Law)--the book talks a lot about Islam, which puts Barker's conversion to Islam in a more sinister light--some random Holocaust denial, claims that we secretly control America through the media, the works. There's also apparently some past war where Israel conquers most of the Middle East in the backstory and deports the Beta Yisrael, amidst all the standard antisemitism. And it ends with the main character as the neo-Fuhrer, all non-Nazis dead (after they just can't peacefully let AmeriKKKa live and launch a surprise attack or something, apparently), talking about the Thousand-Year Reich and asking "Would you like to read other books in which the good guys win?"

There's more in this reddit post. The part that really stands out to me is the quoting of an archivist who was going through Barker's old papers:

My reaction, as it had been when Phil had done things like this in the past, was "Oh, Phil, WHY?"

as it had been when Phil had done things like this in the past

Phil had done things like this in the past

I'm sorry, what?

I don't really have a dog in this fight, since I've never played in or run Tékumel, just read about James Maliszewski's campaign over at Grognardia and read Raymond E. Feist's Kelewan books which are, let's say, heavily inspired by Tékumel. But I do feel bad for the people who loved Tékumel. It was niche but one of the famous weird settings, drawing on Barker's background in South Asian studies to create its future history, not full of knights and orcs and Caverns of Chaos.

It's true that Lovecraft and Howard's work both also reflect their bigotries, but the difference is that we've acknowledged the problems, had the conversation, and moved into the phase of reinterpretation. The question of whether Tékumel will survive this is a real one, since apparently the Tékumel Foundation has known about Barker's Nazism for a couple years and just kind of hoped no one else noticed, which reflects far worse on them than how the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society's FAQ literally begins with "How can you support or promote the works of a terrible racist like H. P. Lovecraft?" The Tékumel Foundation will need to have its own reckoning and after their past behavior, it's not clear that they're equipped to do it. I suspect it might be some time before mention of Tékumel is greeted with anything other than "Tékumel? Isn't that written by a Nazi?"

For my own part, I was slightly interested in Tékumel but honestly Skyrealms of Jorune is weirder anyway (even if less meticulously developed), and Mechanical Dream beats them both for oddities. Hell, even Exalted steps away from knights and orcs. There's plenty of other RPG material out there for me.

Not much else surrounding the food because I already posted about it! sashagee has left more and more of her things here, now bringing over her yoga mat because she figures that after sleeping on my shikibuton she'll need it more than after sleeping on her double-memory-foamed cloud-bed. I'm probably going to end up getting a memory foam pad myself to make her more comfortable, since while I'm used to it to the point that at ACEN last year I slept on the floor of RogueNire and zbrund's room with just a blanket and a pillow and I was okay, but for sashagee, basically the only thing worse than my shikibuton would be a bed of nails.

News came out today that Chicago is close to reversing progress and could return to Phase 3, which would honestly be fine with me. I've already ranted here about the beach-scolding when going to the beach is literally orders of magnitude safer than going to a bar or an indoor restaurant, and hoenstly we shouldn't have opened indoor activities at all if you can't wear masks during them. If bars and restaurants and groups greater than ten are banned, it'd change nothing about my life. Even a group of ten is too many, I think (the max I've gathered in was six and that was outside). And sashagee keeps telling me about people coming into her work in groups of ten or twenty, maybe half of them masked, and gathering around her and her co-workers. Shutting that down sounds great.

( Farmer's Market Dinner )

I really needed this meal today because the internet is a mess. Today "Jews," "Hebrews," and "Semites" were trending--always a bad sign--and on looking into it, apparently Nick Cannon was fired for antisemitism, meaning Twitter was filled to the brim with "See! He said Jews control the media and (((they))) fired him! He was right!" comments, including a depressing amount of them from Black people. Most of those followed the familiar pattern--Jews are rich, Jews control the media and the banks, Jews can't be oppressed because we actually run the world, you've heard it all before. "Punching up" as a model of interaction fails utterly when dealing with antisemitism, because a lot of antisemitism is about how we're secretly on top, so therefore those comments aren't antisemitic, they're bravely speaking truth to power.

As the meme goes, "The Jews are tired."

I did really appreciate this article by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, though: Where Is the Outrage Over Anti-Semitism in Sports and Hollywood? A good question I wish we had a better answer to.

Time for a new tag.

ChiTribe, which started last year and whose happy hour lisekatevans and I went to back during Chanukah, has been hosting game nights on Zoom as we're all stuck inside our homes. I was thinking about going but in the end, my discovery yesterday that my guest bathroom tub can fit me won out so I did that instead.

Well, maybe it was for the best for my mental health, because it turns out that Zoom isn't secure. I'd seen some people talk about their minyans or other events being disrupted, and yesterday, that's what happened to the Chitribe game night:

This Monday evening, ChiTribe hosted our weekly virtual game night via Zoom with an open room code for the third week in a row. Tonight, immediately after opening the room with our community members, an unknown participant joined the call. This participant invited others and took control of the screen virtually in an antisemitic attempt to disarm and offend the members of ChiTribe game night. Profane images were posted and the unknown participants shouted offensive and antisemitic profanities.

More at the link.

I really hope that the people at Mishkan know about this--to be honest, I should bring it to their attention. It's only a matter of time until something similar happens there if we don't take precautions.

I'm glad they kept the game night going, though, and I'm sure if something similar happens at Mishkan we'll keep things running too. עם ישראל חי