Some links from my recent web browsing:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Foluke Ifejola Adebisi\u00a0has an excellent blog post on “the concept of allyship against injustice.”<\/a> In other words, what does it mean to be a “white ally,” or any other kind of ally? Adebisi makes an intersting disctintion between allyship as being,<\/em> and allyship as doing<\/em>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I think what is important is that we move away from thinking of allyship as something we\u00a0are,<\/em> but instead think of it as something we\u00a0do,\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>each time we do something. Each time we want to contribute to a particular struggle for justice, we must decide what must be done in the moment, irrespective of what we have done before or what type of person we think we are.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n I came away from this blog post thinking that if I hear someone saying they are<\/em> an ally, this may not mean much. I’m going to watch what they do<\/em> instead of listen to what they say they are<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Marginalia hosts a scholarly debate on how to translate ioudaioi<\/em><\/a> in texts from the last centuries BCE and the first few centuries CE. Does it mean Jew or Judean? While this may seem like a big argument over a trivial detail, the scholars involved claim the stakes are higher than you’d think. <\/p>\n\n\n\n For example, if you translate ioudaioi<\/em>\u00a0in the Gospel of John as “Jew,” then that could reinforce one of the foundations of Christian anti-Semitism. The ioudaioi<\/em>, the Jews, killed Jesus. Whereas if you translate ioudaioi<\/em>\u00a0as “Judean,” someone from the land of Judea, maybe you can undermine that foundation of anti-Semitism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But other scholars argue that in some texts, ioudaioi<\/em>\u00a0is better translated into modern English as “Jew,” sometimes as “Judean.” It all depends on the context. And we don’t want to inject anachronisms into translations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another point comes up: Is it anachronistic to talk about Judaism as a religion in this era? Was Judaism more of an ethnic identity than a religion? (In a related story, Haaretz reports on archaelogist Yonatan Adler’s new book<\/a> that advances the claim that the archaelogical record does not show evidence for Jusdaism as a religion before the 2nd century BCE.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Editor Neal caren is creating an online collection of W. E. B. DuBois’s articles for The Crisis<\/em>. These articles were written between 1914 and 1934, and many have not been collected previously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n DuBois’s essays are fascinating to read. His articles for The Crisis<\/em> sounds radical even by today’s standards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Australian librarian Hugh Rundle writes about the exodus of people from Twitter to Mastodon<\/a>. He titles his blog post “Home invasion: Mastodon’s Eternal September begins.” As a Mastodon user of fairly long standing, he describes how he has experienced the influx of Twitterers:<\/p>\n\n\n\n “It’s not entirely<\/em> the Twitter people’s fault. They’ve been taught to behave in certain ways. To chase likes and retweets\/boosts. To promote themselves. To perform. All of that sort of thing is anathema to most of the people who were on Mastodon a week ago…. To the Mastodon locals it feels like a busload of Kontiki tourists just arrived, blundering around yelling at each other and complaining that they don’t know how to order room service.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although I’m most emphatically not a Twitter user (I left Twitter in 2014, not in 2022), I am a new Mastodon user. I hope the Mastodon users don’t see me<\/em> as behaving badly….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Some links from my recent web browsing: Are We Allies? Foluke Ifejola Adebisi\u00a0has an excellent blog post on “the concept of allyship against injustice.” In other words, what does it mean to be a “white ally,” or any other kind of ally? Adebisi makes an intersting disctintion between allyship as being, and allyship as doing: … Continue reading “Recent web browsing”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,36],"tags":[864,213,861,455],"class_list":["post-9685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-media","category-pop-culture","tag-anti-racism","tag-judaism","tag-mastodon","tag-w-e-b-dubois"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9685"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9685\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9686,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9685\/revisions\/9686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Jew or Judean?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Dare You Fight?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Invasion<\/h4>\n\n\n\n