Coming back for a moment with this. TikTok found this did not violate their terms of service.
Okay I have not stopped thinking about this and I need to explain why.
So firstly it’s at least partially inaccurate. Yes, Jews in Slavic lands continued to speak their language, Yiddish. However, for a variety of reasons, Jews in these areas also spoke the language of the gentiles who lived around them.
I know this because my grandparents still speak Polish, a Slavic language, to this day. Also, the letters from my family in the Warsaw Ghetto are written in Polish.
Also Jewish migration to Slavic areas started earlier than the 1700s.
So that’s the first thing.
The second thing is that we are currently facing a massive wave of gentiles who would like to tell us who we are and where we come from for political reasons. The fact that ethnic Jews exist, and that we originate in the levant, is contrary to the popular narrative that fuels the Free Palestine movement in the west. And it doesn’t have to. I support a Free Palestine and I KNOW where we come from. But if people stopped seeing Israel and Palestine strictly through the lens of European Colonialism, people might stop supporting Hamas and calling for the destruction of Israel. And this is not the goal of all people who advocate for Palestine, but the idea that Jews are all simply foreign white European invaders is what keeps the average westerner so strongly involved.
And I know this because I’ve seen the reactions that people have when Jews start to talk about their ethnicity and ethnic origins. People go absolutely ballistic.
We have so many people telling us that Jews should simply go back to Europe. I’ve even seen people say that there should be a Jewish state in Europe because Zionism is “their fault.” As one of my friends put it, “naughty countries have to deal with the Jews”
And then you start to get the sense that people really don’t want us anywhere, which is why this tiktok is antisemitic. The person who posted it is antisemitic.
But as a Jew who knows where I come from, I also think it is FUCKING HILARIOUS. Because idiots everywhere are saying that Ashkenazi Jews popped out of the ground in Europe. And they either provide khazar theory, which is known to be antisemitic or they provide no explanation at all.
It’s so bitterly hilarious to me.
People are saying: Jews should go back to Europe! That’s where they come from
And Europeans are going: here?
I think my favourite part is “I don’t know where tf they came from” as if we arrived from Mars or something.
WE KNOW WHERE WE CAME FROM.
But they don’t want to hear it from us. They don’t trust us. When we say something they don’t like, it becomes “Zionist propaganda.”
I don’t know. Maybe they’ll hear it from another antisemite.
I just know that if Israel had lost the 1948 war and the Arab nations had followed through with their intended genocide “from the river to the sea” and killed all of the Jews in the region, Westerners would still be telling Jews in their countries to “go back to Palestine”.
Wait. So where do Jews come from? Their existence was never really covered in the history I was taught until the 1900s.
