not only does Jewish oppression elude conventional categories, Jewish stereotypes prove that anti-Semitism does not exist. Jews are rich, powerful, privileged, control the media, the schools, the business world, international banking: the Zionist conspiracy rides again. How could such powerhouses ever be in trouble? These stereotypes, I've realized, prevent recognition of how we are threatened or demeaned as Jews.
American activist (1945–2018)
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (September 9, 1945 – July 10, 2018) was a Jewish American essayist, poet, academic, and political activist against racism and for economic and social justice who lived in the USA.
From: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)
1980. I recognized in Reagan's election that the liberalism I had for years seen as the real danger was being superseded, that the right was gaining power, with all its Jew-hating, racist, sexist, homophobic capitalist thrust. At the same time the anti-Semitism I was encountering in the women's movement and on the left hurt me more, not because it was more threatening but because the feminist left was where I needed to be: this added to my sense of isolation as a Jew.
Soon we would get our first TV, so my mother (and I) could watch the McCarthy hearings. I knew the whole fate of humanity hinged on these hearings, as surely as I knew the Rosenbergs had been good people, like my parents, with children the same age as my sister and me. I knew government people, like McCarthy, had killed the Rosenbergs, and I was terrified, but it literally did not occur to me that real people, people I might meet, people who had children and went to work, hated the Rosenbergs, thought they should die. Nor did it occur to me that there were people who thought unions were bad, people who did not know you never cross a picket line, did not know prejudice was wrong and stupid.
Most stories of the holocaust, like most other stories, have been told by and about men. I don't reject them for this, they are Jewish and mine. But as a woman, I need to know about the women, and that many Jews fought back, as they could, Jewish women among them. To fortify myself, I collect names and as much information as I can find. About women who fought inside the camps. Say their names...I read about Krysia Frimer, whose brother was a resistance fighter but he forbade her to join because it was too dangerous yet she was killed first. I mourn all the women deprived of the night to fight back, who were not thereby saved; and all the women whose names have not survived, who took messages food weapons in and out of the ghetto, who whored to the soldiers leaders cops for somebody's life freedom food information, who kept themselves and their children alive. Those were Jewish women. I come from women who fought like that.
As Jewish women and Jewish lesbians, we need to reclaim words like pushy/loud/politico/power trippy/cheap/dominating/garish/sexy/emotional/always screaming/bossy/scary temper/difficult style/(and, of course) Jewish mother/(and) Jewish princess...I want a button that says Pushy Jew. Loud Pushy Jew, Loud Pushy Jew Dyke.
Liberals and pacifists often challenge the notion of "one's own people." Liberals "don't like labels"; pacifists say, "face your enemy with love." Both say, "people are people." I think Jews are haunted-intelligently so-by spectres of cattle cars packed to the top with our people. Some of who I am roots in the knowledge, as early as I can remember: there are people who did not want us to exist-millions of them. For these people, there is no love. It's easy for me to think in terms of "my people" and "our enemies."
That I am lesbian is my usual awareness. My close people are almost all lesbians, mostly not Jewish. I live in Santa Fe, among gentiles; and though I am lonely for Jews, I don't go to shul, and never did; and don't pray, or even know the prayers. I think Israel a boiling contradiction; and besides, they don't give queers citizenship. But the rise of Klan activity, Reagan and his white-on-white cabinet, synagogues bombed in France, have me in a sweat. Dreams of the camps. I need to know the network I may be forced to count on. I want to know the tradition, what binds us besides danger.