AMALENA

Blood quantum is racist

Except when applied to me

Or my family

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Ashkenazim are fake I’ve been told again and again and again

By white knight warriors and colonial forces invested in destruction

Who fight for indigenous rights but deny my indigenous nation

Jews are white lies and Europeans, don’t you know?

As if my namesake wasn’t murdered in Europe for not being so

As if my family had anything other than their lives when they fled

Or anywhere else in the world they could go

Yes. I’m pale. I’m sun freckles and lobster-red burns.

My great-uncle’s nickname was Gingi for his red hair

We look how we look

Because of exodus and exile, twenty generations of cold weather 

Because of pogroms and rape 

Ashkenazi are easy to hate

We’re uncanny valley to the Racist

Pale skin stretched on the wrong shaped frame

Slavic complexions over Middle Eastern faces

We’re whatever you want to say is evil:

White, brown, too close, too far

And you Europeans killed all the ones who looked too swarthy, too MENA.

You killed Edmund and Emma and Amalia 

But left Vera who could hide in a nun’s convent among the Catholics

But left Yaakov called Gingi with red hair like King David and Esav.

Who do you expect to be left after all that death?

Blood quantum reduces, erases, and reuses

It’s purpose is to destroy culture inconvenient to power

If it’s wrong for other indigenous fights

Why is it right to make me your white?

Watering down of culture in the name of civility and society

Impressing dominance of majority on a minority 

Stealing our story out of jealousy, hate, and spite

Why is it your idea of what makes me white right? 

Why did I believe your lies for too many a night?

I used to think I was just white 

Because I thought pale meant white

No room for passing or nuance or mixed

Judaism is just a religion, right?

Jews are inbred white, right?

Right?

Right?

Eh, not quite.

Only white and black, only neat boxes

Check White, Black, Hispanic, or Asian

My tribe is older than the box your mind is stuck in

We don’t fit because what even is a tribe?

We don’t count by tribe on SAT bubble-your-race tests

We look at skin 

And throw everything else in the bin

You so-called champions of diversity

Keep shouting to gatekeep me

Test, test, test, to prove what percentage of my blood is a lie

You’re so sure someone like me can’t be

You believe your own imperial colonial hypocrisy

Well I tested myself with your blood quantum test

And blood quantum is still racist

But since you asked:

I’m that Levantine, Canaanite, Mediterranean,

somehow Persian and northwest Asian,

Ancient Judean authentic Israelite OG MENA

Ashkenazi Jew

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I come from the tribe of Levi

Through my grandmother a Cohen

And thanks to modern technology

And the dug up and tested bones of archeology

My DNA tells a story

I came from the firstborn, 

A descendant from the tribe Reuven

And blood quantum is still racist

But it sure feels good to throw it in your faces

But I don’t care about my percents

Because blood is a drop of liquid 

It is not fifty percent anything

It keeps me alive

It is one hundred percent blood

I am 100% my tribe, B’nei Israel

Still, the internet loves to protest me

Because blood quantum is racist

Except for Jews

And on my convert dad’s side, yeah, I’m white

But Ireland won’t claim my polluted Jew veins

So whatever white that side retains 

My dad was adopted in and is by choice 100% Jew

Because the idea of my tribe isn’t something new 

It’s older than religion, race, or any golden dome

I didn’t grow up white in a home

With Shabbat, havdalah, chalva, babka, hummus, techina

And a thousand other words with /ch/et like Chanukah 

That makes your clumsy colonial white wagging tongue choke

Religion and race and ethnicity and culture is a knot

And I tried for so long to untangle

Every unique strand that makes up me

Examining spiritual philosophy 

New age hopes and dreams and assorted forms of deity

But I realized something these past two years

A knot is 100% string.

And there is no such thing as half a Jew

I can be Irish, Scot, Norse, Anglo, and OG MENA Ashkenazi too

Because we’re a tribe

Modern life has no bubble or box for such a thing

“White” is conditional, it’s assimilation

Something I refuse to do

My first language is of hills and desert

It has bright Mediterranean vowels and guttural Middle East consonants

An indigenous sound for an indigenous people

Of kineret ve kinor

Of dunes and fields and golan

Of the Mediterranean sea, ha’yam

It’s tribal and spiritual and primal and home

It’s community and knowing you’re not alone

Celebrating seasons biting seven species

Wheat, barley, figs, dates, pomegranates, grapes, olive oil, 

Milk and honey dripping down your chin

And before you open your mouth to squawk,

I’m not saying I am and others are not

I’m saying I am. 

And you can’t take that away from me.

We’re not victims, we’re survivors

I’m a Fuck You Jew

And blood quantum is still racist.

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