mikejwitz
@mikejwitz

Cohost really helped me rethink the relationship between my religion and personal politics, and realize that the former isn’t just an appendage to the latter, but can be the source that fuels and contains those same politics.

(This post is a little from the hip and rambly, but since the clock is ticking, hey let’s go)

I’m usually cautious when joining new social media sites. I spend a good amount of time observing, not posting. It helps me understand the vibes until I feel comfortable enough to post for myself.

I joined on October 29th 2022. My first post was nearly a month later. But all the while I sat by on the sidelines just to see what I could use cohost for.

But what really caught my eye and spurred my interest was the November 2022 financial update that had a very subtle b”h (short for “baruch hashem” or g-d bless) in there. I thought, “whoa, one of the cohost devs is jewish. that’s cool,” but it really stuck with me. To see someone leading a site and be open about their jewishness in such a casual way was shocking, to be honest. Especially as I read more posts from other Jewish posters.

I grew up within a private Jewish elementary and high school education system. They taught a very rigid perspective on Jewish history that centered Jews and Israel. I went on a trip to Israel in grade 9 (Dorot, not Birthright) because that was just A Thing You Did within my community, not questioning it. Slowly over time, I started to do just that. Question things. Wonder who or what was intentionally left out. Those absences were felt the more we walked around them. After high school, I broke out of my cultural bubble, met more people outside of the Montréal Jewish community and actively sought out new perspectives.

When people asked me about my Jewishness, I used to say, “I was raised Jewish, so naturally I’m a skeptic.” Because it was easy to distance myself from it and say, “yes I’m Jewish but I don’t really make that a central part of my identity, nor do I wholly believe it.” I wasn’t like those other Jews.

And then on cohost I started to read longer posts from other Jews whose religion fed their worldviews. That tikkun olam (healing of the world, the imperative for all Jews to make the world a better place for all) was central to their radical politics. That you can be explicitly anti-zionist and still come from a long lineage of Jews who opposed the establishment of the state of Israel. That you can be part of a collective of Jews that believe in better living conditions, collective action, respect, and love for all, without exception, and have it stem from the radicalness WITHIN Judaism.

Here was a site where posters were radically left-leaning, open about their Jewishness, and having their beliefs and practices not only aligned with their politics but also actively engaging with their politics. To go deep into prayers or rituals or traditions that fuse beautifully with their Marxist-Leninist or Anarchist positions. I just… hadn’t seen or been around many others like it. And Twitter’s format and pace made it impossible to delve deep enough into that (as well as all the undue harassment that may follow posting about that so openly).

It’s just… amazing what an impact this has had on me and I just wanted to take a moment to thank everyone on here who posts openly and proudly about it. Folks like @jkap, @shel, @nex3, @stevejmar, @nonstandardrepertoire, @numberonebug, @ChaiaEran, and many others I’m thankful for even if I didn’t like or comment on those posts. Within the #jewhost tag I’ve learned a lot and am forever grateful for that.

Like before cohost my Jewishness felt like a separate identity within me. Not necessarily something that defined me. But after a lot of reading (here and in other books) and introspection, I have a better sense of what my Jewishness means to me and how my Jewishness can better inform my relationship to the world around me.

My Jewishness is skeptical of others claiming to be figures of authority, and respects the people on the ground actually doing the work, much like how on Yom Kippur we can only ask forgiveness from each other. It’s what happens now, here, that’s important, and the only way forward is to DO THE DAMN WORK to seek forgiveness for the harm we’ve caused.

Ny Jewishness is tied to organizing work and collective action, much like the first waves of Jews in Québec who helped unionize their workplaces AND reached out to French Québec to help them organize (like Léa Roback). To them, they were carrying traditions and ideologies that they learned in Europe before immigrating to Canada.

My Jewishness recognizes Yiddish as a language that deserves to be studied and preserved (much to the annoyance of Zionists, fuck ‘em) because it’s the language of the diaspora and it reminds us that our home can be a culture, wherever we may be, and that we can survive and endure by constantly adapting to our surroundings.

My Jewishness is Anti-Zionist, because our claim to an ancestral homeland isn’t what defines all of Judaism, nor should its methods be modelled after British imperialism or South African apartheid to do so. A long lineage of brilliant thinkers and community members have spoken against it, have worked to build better relations and to heal, really heal, instead of furthering cycles of violence. FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA!

And… I’m just forever grateful for my time on this site because it’s helped me better appreciate my Jewishness in a way that I can be proud of. To teach my daughter that Jewishness can be full of beauty and hope and love for all people and all things, and that it contains the blueprint for a better future for all. Something that I thought could only be one of a few things now feels so open and diverse… like YES there are so many ways to be Jewish. I can figure out what my Jewishness is, how it defines me, and how I can continue engaging with it from here on out. Judaism gives me the power to set a path for myself and define my relationship to it, on my own terms. And that’s a gift.

So yeah. Cohost is closing up shop, and we’ll be scattered to the wind, but hey, that’s nothing new for us Jews. We can always carry what made this site great in us, learn from our mistakes, and b”h, we’ll all meet up again one day and be able to break bread together (or at least drekpost).

As my kid says, “see you later, alligator seder!”


mikejwitz
@mikejwitz

Sharing this again and adding a recommendation to read Sue Fishkoff’s Kosher Nation: How More and More of America’s Food Answers to a Higher Authority which is the most fascinating, eye-opening, and thought-provoking book I’ve read in a while. What does it mean for food to be kosher? Who decides? How do they decide? How do we decide? Just… incredible.


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in reply to @mikejwitz's post:

this meant a lot to me to read. i’m glad we could create the sort of place where things like #jewhost could happen, and i’m glad you (and likely others) benefitted from it having been here.

we’ll survive this diaspora as we have all diasporas. thanks for having been here

don’t forget that these brilliant folks aren’t going away. i know shel and jae already have blogs and i have no reason to believe they’ll stop talking about this stuff, shel especially. the work remains, the writing remains, it’ll just be a little bit harder to find. #jewhost is over but the anti-zionist jewish diaspora remains online.

in reply to @mikejwitz's post: