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A Davekat Art Blog

@ohdangdavekat

Now I post Star Trek at cardassianbussy and original stuff somewhere!

actually i’m not done rambling about this.

people have been harassing jews out of liberal, leftist, and queer spaces for decades, blaming us for what’s going on in israel/palestine, falling for christian supersessionism and labeling us as antiquated, mocking our laws and culture, telling us we can’t possibly be progressive if we’re religious and that we’re not actually jewish if we’re not religious, refusing to acknowledge the unique discrimination and oppression we face all over the world, including the united states. i have dozens of stories about how horrible leftists in particular have treated me as a jew. so to see people flouncing around on social media saying “just convert to judaism and then you can get abortions!!!!!!” is not only mindnumbingly stupid but a slap in the fucking face. y’all have never shown up for jews. i have been consistently and deeply let down by non jewish leftists, specifically white non jewish leftists, to the point where i really only feel comfortable interacting with other left leaning jews or in spaces that are at least partially under the jurisdiction of jewish voices.

the fucking audacity y’all have after the barrage of harassment jews received all over the internet and in real life - primarily from white leftists and liberals - after what happened in gaza in 2021, straight up invoking dual loyalty, blood libel, and every other fucking antisemitic trope in the book to the point where i and other jews had to stop wearing things that made us identifiable as jewish in public, for you to now turn around and use us as a tool in your plan to liberate yourselves that won’t even fucking work because this country doesn’t recognize freedom of religion for anyone but conservative christians, that is just fucking laughable. 

As someone who DID convert to Judaism several years ago, I need people to understand that:

  1. It takes a minimum of a year for anyone coming in as a true outsider. I think the shortest time frame I’ve ever personally heard of was a few months, but that was because this person was a patrilineal Jew who was raised Jewish already, and had an orthodox marriage as a deadline. If you grew up Lutheran? You need at LEAST a year to unpack all that, ideally much more.
  2. Personally, this process took me about a year of soul-searching before I ever even approached a rabbi, and then over two years afterwards of study, experiencing the Jewish calendar, and living Jewishly before I was ready for the mikvah. I’d fasted three times for Yom Kippur by the time I dunked.
  3. Living a religiously-observant Jewish life is no small overhaul. Unless you’re really lucky location-wise, most likely you will need to move, replace all your kitchen equipment, possibly change jobs (or at a bare minimum drastically rearrange your PTO), and reorganize your whole diet, among other things.
  4. If you’re already in a serious relationship, especially if you’re married to a non-Jew? You’re going to have to see if that person is willing to come along on this ride with you, or at a minimum, support these major life overhauls. If not? Good luck.
  5. Once you’re in, you’re in. That’s it. The whole credibility of conversion lies in the fact that it’s part naturalization into a tribe, part adoption, and that’s no small undertaking. You don’t simply accept the Jewish religion of Judaism as a one and done, you must become a member of the Jewish people, and that grants you the right and the obligation to practice Judaism.
  6. Because you’re joining a tribe, you also have to acculturate into Jewish culture and leave conflicting cultural beliefs and practices behind. Obviously there are some ways in which you can blend them (for example, I once saw a beautiful incorporation of their morning gratitude practice into their Shacharit prayers) but they have to be compatible if you’re serious about keeping halacha. Which you should be, if you’re going to use it as a legal basis.
  7. Judaism is a lot more about your obligations than any individual rights. The whole agreement that is the Covenant between Am Yisrael and Hashem is your obligations to your people, your G-d, your family, to your fellow humans, to the earth, to your body, and especially to anyone in your care. It’s very much a collectivist mentality: we are obligated collectively and we are judged collectively. And once you join? Yeah, that includes you, too. Antisemites don’t usually bother to pause and ask if you converted in before yelling at you about Israel, drawing swastikas on your property, asking you about your horns, fantasizing about ‘what if the Nazis had won’ stories, etc.

Oh and a bonus point: part of why conversion is not encouraged and is traditionally actually discouraged is because we don’t think you have to accept all this extra spiritual homework to be a good and righteous person! You have to feel like you are Jewish and this is your people and your eternal home before it’s worth having you take on all this extra work.

Tl;dr: Conversion to Judaism is a huge deal and it’s frustrating to see people trivialize it. But it just shows how little they know about us, because this is all really, really basic information.

Mean bisexual and party worm fall in love more at 10

Hi everyone please check out my Star Trek blog @cardassianbussy ! Mostly DS9 and mostly memes. And good GOD please start conversations with me about it if you enjoy DS9 no one in my life watches it

All my little davekats in one place. Suggestions for the next batch would be much appreciated :-)

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Susy is so fucking talented I’m dead 😭 knowing that this painstakingly perfected rendering of a thing I made is gonna be in someone’s literal HOUSE somewhere is mind blowing to me. I’m losing my shit at how cool this is.