i don’t know how to explain to my non-jewish audience what it means that two torah scrolls were destroyed in an arson attack but what i can tell you is that during the los angeles wildfires, three staff at the synagogue in pasadena made 4+ trips each back into the building to rescue torah scrolls while the fire was close enough that ashes were falling in the parking lot.

what i can tell you is that we have a holiday once a year where we hold the scrolls and hug them and dance around them. what i can tell you is that they are written with love by hand by trained scribes who take exquisite care to make sure each word, each letter, is perfect. when we read from them we do not touch the parchment directly so that it won’t be harmed by the oils from our fingers.

we make beautiful clothing for our torah scrolls, embroidered cloth coverings and shining worked metal crowns to sit atop them or carved wood cases plated with gold and silver. the torah is to us the words of the living God, the tree of life, the record of who are and where we’re going, and the torah scroll is our most holy ritual object.

the torah scroll never touches the floor. if it is dropped accidentally, everyone in the room must fast for forty days in mourning. the desecration of a torah scroll is the utmost level of desecration that can be done to a jewish community, short of killing its members. nazis burnt and destroyed torah scrolls as part of their campaign of terror against the us even before widescale mass deportations began. in ancient times, the romans wrapped the rabbis who led our community in torah scrolls when they burnt them at the stake.

this past shabbat, in the middle of the night, a synagogue in jackson, mississippi was intentionally set on fire. the library was burnt to ashes and five torah scrolls were damaged, with two of completely destroyed.

i don’t know how many books were burnt, how many jewish holy texts and how many stories of jewish life and philosophy and love and resilience flew up with the smoke. i do know that the library was where the congregation had shabbat services and torah study. it was a sacred space. this is not the first time that people who hate us have destroyed our sacred spaces and our holy texts and our torah scrolls in order to terrorize us. i dearly wish it was the last.

Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

I think you can start to understand suicidal empathy by looking at the Iranian Revolution.

During the late 1970s, a wide coalition of groups including Marxists, liberals, Islamists, and students opposed the Shah of Iran, who was supported by the US and seen by this coalition as a Western puppet. Many Western leftists viewed the Shah's regime as imperialist and authoritarian, and therefore cheered the Iranian revolution as a people's uprising.

Ayatollah Khomeini, a Shi'a cleric, became the symbolic leader of this revolution.

Western leftists, in solidarity with the anti-Shah cause, downplayed or misunderstood Khomeini's theocratic intentions, viewing him instead as a symbol of anti-imperialism.

But Khomeini was an aspiring theocrat. Once the Shah was overthrown, Khomeini's Islamists turned on their secular and leftist allies.

Marxists, feminists, liberal democrats, and secular nationalists were imprisoned, executed, or exiled. Women were forced to wear the hijab, and Islamic law replaced secular codes. Political dissent was brutally crushed, often much more harshly than under the Shah.

The naïveté of Iranian leftists who had supported the revolution without recognizing the reactionary, theocratic nature of the movement they were backing? That's where the Western far left is going. That's suicidal empathy.

Suicidal Empathy is a form of excessive or uncritical empathy which leads individuals or groups to support causes, ideologies, or people whose core values may be fundamentally opposed to their own...and ultimately to their own detriment or destruction.

This kind of empathy becomes suicidal when it results in self-destructive alliances or compromises, often in the name of tolerance, anti-imperialism, or social justice.

Suicidal empathy helps explain the paradoxical support of Western leftists for radical Islamist movements which despise them as articles of faith.

So...why do such leftists support Islamists who would cheerfully murder them?

1. Shared Anti-Imperialist and/or Anti-Western Sentiment

Many Western leftists are deeply critical of Western foreign policy, especially U.S. and European military interventions in the Middle East. Islamist movements, particularly militant ones, also oppose Western influence. This shared opposition to "imperialism" can create a strange bedfellow dynamic.

These Leftists see Islamist resistance as part of a broader struggle against Western hegemony.

But this overlooks the reactionary social values of many Islamist groups, which often include patriarchy, homophobia, anti-Semitism, and authoritarianism - values that sharply contradict progressive ideals.

2. Victimhood Framing

Some leftists adopt a framework where oppression and victimhood define moral authority. Since Muslims, in the context of global leftist politics, are often seen as victims of Western aggression, there's a tendency to uncritically sympathize with Islamist movements under the assumption that they are inherently oppressed, regardless of evidence to the contrary.

So when Islamist ideologies are anti-liberal or even fascistic...they may still be viewed through a lens of victimhood rather than agency.

3. Cultural Relativism Taken to an Extreme

Many leftist thinkers promote cultural relativism not as an academic principle, but as a living practical policy doctrine. The fear being labeled as Islamophobic if they, for instance, acknowledge the atteocities of female genital mutilation, honor killings, child brides, slavery, and theocracy. So they avoid criticizing reactionary, regressive, barbaric aspects of Islamist ideology, even when these violate their own principles (e.g., women's rights, LGBTQ rights, free speech).

In defending "cultural practices" under the banner of tolerance, they tacitly support values that would call for their own deaths. "Suicidal empathy," indeed.

4. Post-Colonial Guilt

The legacy of colonialism leads many in the Western left to feel deep guilt over historical injustices. This can fuel an overcorrection which leads them to defend or romanticize "resistance" movements, even when these movements uphold values that are themselves oppressive and regressive. (Bizarrely, their guilt over colonialism never finds expression in US leftists organizing en masse for Native American Indian nations. Canadian leftists haven't given nearly the energy to the needs of First Nations people's that they've given to Palestinians. No leftist movment in support of Australian aboriginal peoples has ever gotten the energy from Australian leftists that Palestinians enjoy. Why? Because by condemning and sacrificing Israel for their sins, they get to feel righteous without having to know or sacrifice bupkis.)

And this works against actual human rights efforts.

This alliance enables authoritarianism and suppresses genuinely progressive voices in many Muslim-majority societies. Secular Arab liberals and feminists often express frustration that Western leftists support the very Islamist movements they struggle against at home.

Suicidal empathy comes from well-intentioned, dangerously naive solidarity that prioritizes identity, victimhood, or anti-imperialism over consistent moral principles. The alliance between Western leftists and Islamist movements becomes "suicidal" when it undermines the very values the left claims to champion-like human rights, secularism, and gender equality.

The Millennial and Gen Z protestors calling for Israel to be destroyed? That's where they're headed.

I think one of the reasons we're having massive political realignments all of the world right now is because many are starting to realize that shared enemies ≠ shared values.

I hope the campus leftists figure it out soon.

Everybody fucking read Persepolis.

Seconded. Read Persepolis. Link below, free.

The movie is also good. Link below, free.

The Aesthetic of Resistance: Why Some Western Leftists Support a Regime Which is Everything They Claim to Hate

(Dedicated with appreciation and admiration to literally every single Iranian person I've ever met for educating me.)

A vocal current within the Western Left has become inept at recognizing abuse of power…when it speaks in the language of 'resistance.'

Objectively, Iran isn't a scrappy underdog challenging imperialism. It's a repressive regime that embodies everything the Left claims to despise.

A Theocracy Run by Religious Extremists

If you believe in the separation of Church and State, the regime isn't an ally.

Iran is ruled by unelected clerics who claim divine authority and answer to nobody.

The Supreme Leader, currently Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is not an elected politician. He's a religious messianic figure with ultimate say over everything from military policy to women's clothing.

The Guardian Council is all male, conservative religious fanatics who regularly disqualify moderates, reformists, or women from participation in any public matters.

This is textbook authoritarian theocracy, a system where dissent is heresy and religious doctrine is law. There is no religious freedom in the Regime's Iran.

They Stone Women. Yes, Still.

The regime's laws on women would make the Taliban proud.

When 22-year-old Mahsa Amini was arrested in 2022 by Iran's morality police for allegedly wearing her hijab improperly, she was beaten to death in custody. Her murder sparked mass protests, which the regime crushed with bullets and mass arrests.

There is no question what the response would be if a US state like Alabama enforced such laws. The outrage would be deafening and justified. So why does that same righteous fire for justice seem to extinguish itself somewhere over the Atlantic? What principle justifies this selective vision?

If you chant "ACAB" as a denunciation of state violence and the enforcement of oppressive norms as a moral principle, consistency demands you cast that same critical gaze towards the Regime and it's morality police.

These enforcers serve as agents of the state's ideological control. They target women for unveiled hair, arrest dissidents for defying religious codes, and violently suppress basic civil liberties.

If your anti-authoritarianism stops at Tehran's border because it feels geopolitically inconvenient to criticize a state opposed to Western influence, you're not anti-authoritarian and are not promoting moral principles. You're just performing selective, aesthetic outrage.

Solidarity, if it means anything, must extend to all those resisting state oppression, not just those who fit your aesthetic of revolution.

They Kill Gay People. By Law.

Iran's government executes gay people.

In public.

For being gay.

As state policy.

Consensual same-sex acts between men are punishable by death. Between women? Up to 100 lashes. The regime often forces gay and trans Iranians into exile, prison, or coerced surgery.

This isn’t some rogue judge. This is the actual legal code of the Islamic Republic.

Iran's LGBTQ+ rights record makes Putin look like RuPaul.

Yet somehow, the same activist movements that cover their feeds in rainbows during Pride Month can't seem to work up a single post about Iran's state-sanctioned homophobia.

If your pride doesn't cross al borders, it's not pride. It's an aesthetic, just branding and performance. You can't claim to support LGBTQ+ liberation while ignoring the regime's brutal state-led persecution...unless your solidarity is only for show.

Real allyship doesn't flinch when it's inconvenient or challenges your preferred villains. Pride isn't pride if it's selective and intersectionality is meaningless if you use it to excuse abuses in one nation...which you'd condemn in another.

They Crush Labor Movements and Workers' Rights

Iran doesn't just jail journalists and students. It jails bus drivers.

Labor unions are illegal. Strikes are illegal. Demanding back pay is treated as "national security sabotage."

Teachers, steelworkers, truck drivers — anyone who organizes is beaten, arrested, or disappeared. In 2023 alone, dozens of labor activists were sentenced to multi-year prison terms for trying to negotiate wages or demand safety protections.

You can't champion the "worker’s struggle" while turning a blind eye to a regime that jails, tortures, and executes labor organizers.

If your solidarity skips over Iranian workers because it complicates your anti-imperialist narrative, that’s not internationalism, it's performative ideological convenience. You don't get to wave the red flag for workers' rights while ghosting the ones bleeding for it under a theocratic police state. Labor solidarity isn't real if it ends where the slogans get uncomfortable.

They Colonize and Militarize Their Neighbors

The Islamic Regime of Iran is not just a local bully. It's a regional empire.

It bankrolls and controls violent militias in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen not to support anyone's liberation, but to spread its own political and religious dominance.

If any other country did this, the Left would call it neo-imperialism. When Iran does it? It's "resistance."

You can't claim to stand against imperialism and ignore Tehran's regional warlords. If empire is wrong when it’s Western, it's still wrong when it wears clerical robes and claims to operate under the banner of "resistance."

They Practice Ethnic and Cultural Domination

Iran itself is not a culturally unified state. It's a multi-ethnic empire where Persian Shi'a identity is imposed from the top down.

And yet the Western Left doesn't call this apartheid or colonialism.

If your anti-colonialism skips over this because it clashes with your chosen narrative, then it's not principle. It's just performance.

The Iranian Regime Censors Everything and Jails Everyone

Where is the Western Leftist solidarity for them?

You rally for free speech and civil liberties at home, so why the silence when Iran shoots students and jails teachers for demanding the same?

A regime that censors art, criminalizes dissent, and tortures activists is authoritarian.

If your solidarity evaporates the moment it's inconvenient for your narrative, it was never about justice. It was about fashion.

You can't be both pro-liberation and mute about the Regime's prisons overflowing with feminists, filmmakers, and kids. Either stand with the oppressed everywhere or stop pretending you have any moral principles.

If the Regime Wasn't Anti-American, You’d Hate It

The reason some progressives give Iran a pass is because it opposes the US and Israel.

That's it.

If it were a Christian theocracy executing gay people, torturing minorities, and colonizing its neighbors,they'd see it for what it is: a violent, fascist, patriarchal, ethno-nationalist police state.

But because it wears the right aesthetic, they (either through dishonesty or pure ignorance) mistake the Regime as seeking justice.

It’s not.

The Regime Is What the Left Says It's Fighting

It's everything they claim to stand against:

So the next time someone chants slogans lifted from Tehran, ask yourself: do they know what they’re endorsing? Or are they just cheering for the empire they want to believe is innocent...because that narrative appeals to them.

The regime isn't the voice of the oppressed.

It's just another boot on 90 Million Iranian necks...and millions more in the region.

Sources and Further Information:

Also, fun fact about Iran (to simplify) is they ended up this way because Iranian leftists made common cause with religious fanatics and nationalists, swallowed their own agendas in the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and fucked over the country's feminists.

Sound familiar?

True. Details.

really sucks that as a Jew i cannot even grieve with my community about MY PERSONAL SHUL being fucking FIREBOMBED, FOR THE SECOND TIME(!!!!) without being scrutinized, victim blamed, sent antisemitic hate messages (you'll notice my anonymous asks are off now!), and told we should've done more.

I have people in the comment of news articles speculating about "oh I bet it was [whichever side of Zionism you want to bitch about the most]" or being blatantly racist or Islamophobic. as if this wasn't done by a white 19 year old NAZI.

can you people shut the fuck up about things you don't understand? can I stop being asked "why the security guard wasn't there" (IT WAS 3AM) (our security guard would genuinely fucking die for us and got an award for his 33 years of service on the same night as the fire) or why we dont "fireproof where we keep our Torahs" (the building is made of fucking brick with steel doors and bulletproof windows. because of shit like this.)

I've been told we "deserve it" for whatever blood libel strawman people want to prop up this time, told they feel no sympathy because I'm not making it about anyone else that is going through hardship.

I'm not going to offer up a burnt sacrifice of my personal grief as some sort of ritual to appease every bad-faith actor in the world. I am not going to make this about anyone else. I am not going to allow ourselves to be put down for not being perfect victims.

why is everyone so gddamn quick to yell at Jews for not being compassionate to OTHER groups when WE get FIREBOMBED. if one more person says something fucking stupid I am going to scream.

We need to talk about the false narrative around the Iranian people’s revolution.

Some Western leftist media/ figures refuse to support the ongoing revolution in Iran because they believe regime change would benefit the US and Israel. But what if I told you it benefits Iranian people?

We are against the Islamic regime. We want secularism. That is the one thing uniting everyone in the streets. We come from different backgrounds and groups, and we may have different visions for Iran’s future, but we are united against this regime.

This is not new. We have risen up before — in 2009, 2019, 2022, and many times before that.

The Islamic regime has killed more people in three days than Israel has killed in twelve days in Iran. You must understand: the Islamic regime is the enemy of Iranian people too. This regime is killing people to survive, accusing protestors of being connected to Israel or the US, while they are all Iranians demanding freedom.

It has been almost two days the internet was cut off in Iran. The last time this happened, during the bloody November of 2019, the regime killed 1,500 people within 3 days in silence.

Please do not fall for the regime’s narrative. This is a people’s revolution.

Just gonna say that Gene edited pig organs potentially being on track to being superior to human donor organs, is really fucking cool.

Being able to CRISPR up a compatible kidney, heart, or liver when modern pig breeds take less than a year to mature.

They aren't perfect yet, but it's a process that can/is being iterated on to be better all the time.

What would Halacha/kashrut say about this just out of interest

(All denominations please reply)

You're not eating it so dietary laws don't apply and being medically necessary Pikuach Nefesh supersedes all other Mitzvot, so there shouldn't be any issues in any branch of Judaism.

Edit: many apologies to the Karaite community, I fully sank into my rabbinic normative assumptions, I don't know enough to know the Karaite position on this, so I can't say.

Big fan of whatever this genre of conversation is

Regularly, people accidentally reinvent Abott and Costello:

Synagogue set on fire in Mississippi

A fire heavily damaged Mississippi’s largest synagogue before dawn Saturday – the same house of worship in northeast Jackson that the Ku Klux Klan bombed in 1967 because the rabbi supported civil rights.

The fire was reported shortly after 3 a.m. at Beth Israel Congregation on Old Canton Road. No congregants were injured.

The library and administrative offices of Jackson’s only synagogue were reduced to charred ruins. Two Torahs were destroyed and five were damaged in the flames that erupted during Shabbat, the weekly Jewish day of rest, according to temple leaders. One Torah that survived the Holocaust was in a glass case and was undamaged in the fire.

Beth Israel has suspended services indefinitely. 

“We have already had outreach from other houses of worship in the Jackson area and greatly appreciate their support in this very difficult time,” the congregation president, Zach Shemper, said in a statement. 

Initially, congregants believed lightning from thunderstorms the night before had started the fire, so Edelstein said he flew a drone over the top of the synagogue and determined that had not happened. 

The hours moved by fast, he said. As Edelstein, wearing a protective breathing mask, helped measure one of the broken library windows, he looked inside and spotted a book lying face up. He stepped into the library to look closer. 

It was open to the Shema, one of the most important prayers in the Jewish faith that reads, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” 

“Everything’s charred and stuff but one of the books was on top, opened up right to that,” he said.

Similar to Saturday’s blaze, the 1967 bombing and fire heavily damaged the synagogue’s administrative offices and library but injured no congregants. The rabbi at the time, Perry Nussbaum, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that “bigots” were responsible for the fire, and he believed they might have been inspired by anti-Semitic campaign materials used extensively in that year’s Democratic primary for governor.

Mayor Horhn, 70, said he has some recollection of the 1967 attack, when he was 12.

“I do remember that the Jewish community and the African American community in those days formed alliances and partnerships to fight racism, to fight injustice, to fight mistreatment of citizens for whatever reason,” Horhn said.

Renee Nicole Good, 37, was murdered by ICE in broad daylight, in front of numerous witnesses that were recording it from multiple angles.

Trump and Homeland Security are now attempting to claim that she was a "deranged terrorist" that "ran over" ICE agents. The videos demonstrate that she was speaking to an agent through an open window, and was attempting to move her vehicle out of the way and leave when the agent standing BESIDE her vehicle shot her point-blank in the face.

ICE agents then refused to permit medical assistance for more than 10 minutes. One of the witnesses was a doctor, but was not permitted to render aid.

Maybe 2026 is the year I get good at rubix cubes. or perhaps yo-yos.

For the record I went with Rubik’s cube. I’ve already solved the mystery of how to spell it, I’m like 80 percent there

I went with the poetry, but then I’ve written all of them other than a villanelle before. I need to look that one up and do it.

You couldn’t publish this today.

You’d have to hide it under seven layers of metaphor.

that australian children's author writing an essay about how the victims of the Bondi massacre deserved to die because they were Chabad, which according to him is a "Zionist, Jewish Supremacist" organisation, (and not just like. a religious organisation of Jews practicing their religion and culture, and you'll be surprised to hear, that Eretz Yisrael is a part of that culture) is a foul man. Talking about how Jews "don't face oppression" in the diaspora, and then going on about how much anti-Asian racism he faces because of his surname (which to be clear, is bad. But the problem is that he goes "guys believe me people are so racist to me, but don't listen to Jews when they tell you people are racist to them because they are lying fascists") Its a fucking joke.

Every time someone excuses attacks like these for some reason or another it manufactures consent for killing Jews. Every time you say "oh, well they were the bad ones, so its fine" you're taking a step down a slippery slope and one day you're going to make a wrong step and lose your footing and never will be able to get back up.

If "bad" Jews are fair game, then any Jew is fair game, because I can guarantee you that Jew haters, whether they be left or right on the political spectrum, will be able to come up with a justification and you will all just eat it up like its "resistance" and not a continuation of one of the oldest bigotries on Earth. Genuinely, fuck you.

Actually you SHOULD make problematic content. You SHOULD explore dark or taboo topics. You SHOULD have a space where you can cope with your traumas or explore sensitive topics in a way that doesn't hurt anyone.

Also you should make problematic content for funsies. You don't need to have had trauma or need to be coping in order to explore dark creativity. You can just be a human who wants to explore dark and taboo topics because you want to. That's completely normal, btw.

Every single person on this planet thinks about dark and taboo things. It's literally the most normal thing in the world.

Go draw the horror porn and be free.

It strikes me as slightly odd when people say "oh but if there were antiblack racists or misogynists, the leftists would actually care!" Because, like, no they would not care. Ask any black person or woman who has spent time in actual real-life leftist spaces. They don't care about black people or women nearly as much as you'd think they do. I get the point you're trying to make, but real-life leftists don't actually care about bigotry as much as they care about seeming intelligent.

Exactly! Thank you!

Signed,

Actual Black gay Jewish woman