As long as Hanukkah is studied and remembered, Jews will not surrender to the night. The proper response, as Hanukkah teaches, is not to curse the darkness but to light a candle
You know, that whole thing about Anakin being a false Messiah made me think. Anakin never did do what the Prophecy of the Chosen One said he would, did he? Even if we take the narrow Jedi interpretation of it.
Like he was supposed to a) destroy the Sith and b) bring balance to the Force. But he only managed part one, dying before he could do anything about part two.
Which makes him the Star Wars equivalent of a false Messiah. He never did fulfill the requirements.
Of course we end up once again with the question, what is “bringing balance to the Force” supposed to mean anyway? To destroy the dark side? Or the ability to use the dark side?
In that case not only did Anakin fall woefully short of accomplishing that, the Jedi were truly blind if they thought just destroying the Sith would do that. While the Sith were the strongest dark side group, they were not alone. Not by a long short. We have the Witches of Dathomir just for a start.
And then there’s Yoda’s words about fear, anger and hate leading to the dark side. Which essentially means that the dark side lives in all of us and cannot be erased.
A balance between light and dark? Except the dark is shown as being pretty constantly evil. Like tyranny and genocide kinda evil. Plus that would never have gone down with the Jedi would it?
So how do we bring balance to the Force? And how do we prevent the galaxy from repeating the same story over and over again? That Finn, Rey, Poe, Rose and all the rest 20, 30 or 40 years down the line will be facing the same struggle all over again, the way Leia, Han and Luke did?
“The only fight, against the dark side. Trough the ages evil has taken many forms. The Sith, The Empire. And now the First Order. We must face them. Fight them. All of us.”
These are Maz’s words to Rey when she asks what fight it is Maz is talking about.
The difference between Judaism and Christianity in the view of bringing about the Messianic age is that Christians – white Christians at the least – sits around passively for it to come when God decides it. For Jewish people it is an active process we’re all a part of, and it won’t arrive until we have done the work and are ready for it. It’s a state we work to achieve, not something arbitrarily bestowed upon us from on high.
In the original Star Wars the universe’s equivalence of the “Messianic age” is bestowed upon the galaxy when Anakin kills Palpatine and dies himself, erasing his own sins and bring “balance”.
In Jewish eyes it’s just not that easy.
As I already pointed out Anakin failed in doing anything to address the “imbalance” of the Force. And the rest of the galaxy seemed content to go on its own fucked up way and continue as it had always been. Perhaps because the fight against evil and “the dark side” was something that resided solely in the hands of the Jedi to their way of thinking.
Maz tells us no. It is on everyone if the fight against evil is to be won, if the dark side is to be defeated and the “Messianic age” arrive.
So where does that leave our heroes?
Well, with a whole lot of work cut out for them that’s for sure. And the ST’s conclusion will not be the Christian fairy tale ending that George gave the OT trio. The fight against the dark side and the balancing of the Force is almost certainly going to reach far beyond the ending of IX.
That doesn’t mean that it won’t be hopeful or optimistic. In our current political climate what better message to send that the idea that we can all make a difference. That a better tomorrow is in our own hands. That we can win this fight, though it will be a long one, but we have to stand together. We have to each do our part. We can’t wait for other to come save us, nor should we passively expect rescue. Doing that leaves only room for evil and oppression to win.
But if we do? Then we can win. We can bring evil, the dark side, to its knees.
So rather than passively waiting for an anointed family or an order of clerics to come save them, or the government for that matter (the clerics were government enforcers in the old Republic era, with all the problems that implies), the peoples of the galaxy must rise up themselves to fight oppression? Works for me, and I think in its bumbling and confusing way TLJ set up that endgame by showing the downfall of the “holy family” and “priestly class.” Rey’s faith in both was cruelly dashed by the very men she pinned her hopes on, and she had to realize that she, not they, were the hope the galaxy was looking for.
The same theme can be seen in a roundabout way through Finn’s story. He was trained to see himself as either helpless to stop the overwhelming force of the FO or, to the extent he had any effect, as an expendable cog in the machine. Therefore he swung from the extreme of wanting to run because he couldn’t hope to do anything except get killed, to the other extreme of accepting his own death as a cost in the fight. Rose’s and then Luke’s intervention flipped the script by showing that no, he was not expendable, in fact it’s one of the “chosen” ones who would sacrifice himself for the ordinary Resistance fighters.
Poe’s story can also be seen as him going from reliance on Leia to being a leader in his own right, again in a terribly executed plot but that seems to be the intention. The comics show this angle more clearly by portraying him respectfully disagreeing with Leia on a matter that concerned the very heart and soul of the Resistance and reaching a compromise, then turning out to be right and saving the day. Because Leia trusts him, for a good reason! Because Poe has, in fact, never been a selfish gloryhound who sacrifices people right and left for the sake of victory! And the Rebellion/Resistance has never been the kind of military where the superior expects to be obeyed because she says so without question or input, which is a terrible way to make decisions anyway!
Salt aside, though, I can see TLJ following up from TFA to set up IX for a giant “fuck you” to the supposed Skywalker legacy and for the fight against evil to be a broad-based one, not just a slugout between superpowered beings.
The idea that I often see espoused that religion causes only strife and if we just got rid of religion, the world would be more peaceful is weird and wrong in a lot of ways, relies on a lot of magical thinking, and fuels the evangelical tendencies of a lot of especially culturally Christian atheists.
Keep in mind, I am a Jewish atheist. I don’t typically identify as an atheist, because my Jewishness is so important to me and because I am fairly observant, and because not believing in G-d does not preclude being a religious Jew as it would say being a religious Christian, but I do not believe in G-d. So I can say this as someone who explicitly rejects a supernatural origin for religion. If you reject that supernatural origin, you have to accept that religion is a human creation and arises out of human needs and desires. And even if you posit that it was made up by sinister figures to control and exploit potential followers, a position I think is laughably naive and completely unrelated to how humans work, then you have to conclude that both those evil puppeteers have non-religious motives, and their followers are getting some kind of psychological need filled. So religion is something people adopt for human reasons.
Violent religious ideologies are also adopted for human reasons that have nothing to do with religion making people crazy or violent. For example, Islamic extremism arises primarily as a response to the effects of colonialism, poverty, and a pervading sense of hopelessness, both in the Middle East and Asia, and in ghettoized immigrant communities in Europe and North America. Although this response is religious in nature, this religiosity is only a veneer over an attempt to fight back and to give their lives a sense of meaning in the face of seemingly insurmountable opposition, and these desires would not disappear or grow less destructive if tomorrow every Islamic extremist were hit with the atheism stick.
Atheistic and secular ideologies have been plenty violent in the past and still are in the present, so we know that any ideology, whether it includes an appeal to divine authority or not, can be used to promote violence or to encourage adherants to respond to percieved threats with violence. Yet to hear some atheists describe it, religion in their minds seems to be a supernatural force that can take over people and make them violent, and if we just conquer this scourge, the world will be at peace. This fairy tale helps explain why many atheists, mostly Western culturally Christian atheists, replicate the Christian need to evangelize. If Christians believe they are keeping the people they are trying to convert from going to hell, these atheists believe that other people’s religiosity brings war and violence to the world and they must convert people to bring peace. Either way, it comes down to the same obnoxious inability to deal with the fact that other people believe differently from you, which strangely enough is the very thing that’s supposed to make religious people so violent and warlike.
White evangelical atheists are just Christians who found a new devil in religion.
Also the difference comes in to place with the Bible as well. Jewish ppl tend to follow the god of the Old Testament, all powerful, all knowing, vengeful, jealous, and law abiding. Many of the rules Jewish people ahere to come from the Old Testament, observing the Sabbath, not eating of unclean things like pork. God was something to be feared and have limited to no access to. They also follow the Torah.
Whereas Christians tend to weigh heavily on the New Testament. Christians believe in Jesus, and once he died for our sins the veil from the Old Testament ripped in two clearing the way of god and mankind to become one hence the Holy Spirit. God in you. Though most Christians believe in Jesus and what he did and talked about his two rules, many like to dip into the Old Testament to pick up rules that no longer apply because of what Jesus did. Christians use these rules to okay racism, control over women, slavery, kill homosexuality, killing people who aren’t Christians etc. Christians come from the word Christ as in Jesus Christ.
But a few Christians called Red Letter Christians (which I am) only adhered to Jesus spoken word via the red lettering in the New Testament of the Bible. Jesus gave only two rules 1. Love thy neighbor as thyself. 2. Believe in Him. Never during his time on earth did Jesus condemn homosexuality, control over women, slavery, killing because a person isn’t like you, nor racism.
Is that concept of Judaism something told to you by someone who is Jewish? Because Jewish people I know seem to believe god is a punk-ass bitch and they need to fistfight him, more or less. Jewish people have literally put him on trial multiple times, so mainstream modern Judaism seems very different from the characterization of following an all-powerful, jealous and law-abiding god. And for that matter, most Jewish people’s relationship to the commandments doesn’t bear much resemblance to the legalistic adherence to archaic rules that many Christians characterize them as, aided by the Christian Bible itself.
I had a few Jewish friends growing up. They were from a stricter denomination, Orthodox Judaism to be precise. Your friends sound like Reconstructive Judaism. Orthodox don’t believe Christ was the son of god and that he was just a Prophet.
There are different sects of Judaism: Orthodox (adhere to the Bible/Torah strictly, obey the Sabbath and have a gazzion rules to follow), Conservative (adhere to both the Torah but also *live in the real world* like won’t eat pork but work on the Sabbath), and Reconstructive (which as you described your friends are, they believe in Jesus as God’s son, and condemn God’s teachings of the old rules)
Orthodox Jewish people make up just 10% of Jewish people in the U.S., so they are hardly representative (link). That number is 31% in Israel, adding up adherents of Haredi Judaism and religious Zionism, but they are still outnumbered by the 67% of Jewish Israelis who are non-religious and atheist (link). What we would call Orthodoxy does seem to outnumber Reform (3.9%) and Conservative (3.2%) Judaism among religious Jewish Israelis, however. Jewish people have expressed frustration at the idea that Orthodoxy is more “real” or representative Judaism than other denominations (link). The largest Jewish denomination in the U.S. is Reform (which I think my friends are, if memory serves) followed by Conservative, though these terms are not universal across communities. Reconstructionism as far as I can tell does not teach that Jesus is the son of God, in fact according to my research “classic” Reconstructionists reject traditional theism altogether. While Reconstructionism is theologically diverse, I can’t find a mention of any strain of Reconstructionism believing in Jesus that way.
@yinx1 What you are writing here is a severe misinterpretation of Judaism, and Orthodox Judaism in particular. For reference, I am a practicing Orthodox Jewish woman.
Re the original question, in Judaism there is less of a focus about who G-d is and more of a focus on what G-d does. So when Jewish people talk about G-d, it is as the one who created the world, and delivered the Jewish people from Egypt and gave the Torah. Most Orthodox Jews assume G-d is all-powerful and all-knowing, but don’t really focus on that, since it’s less important.
I am so not qualified to talk about the Jewish concept of g-d or even whether there’s just one concept of it, so if anyone Jewish wants to talk about it feel free. I can talk briefly about the Christian God, but keep in mind I used to belong to a fairly conservative Protestant sect heavily influenced by U.S. Evangelical Christianity so this likely doesn’t represent all Christians. I mean my old sect, the Korean Presbyterian Church, recently declared Catholicism a heresy I can’t with these fuckers 😂
Much antisemitism below
So in the version of Christianity I’m familiar with God is a unity and Trinity at the same time, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. He is heavily gendered, translated with exclusively masculine titles such as King. Not so much gendered pronouns though, since Korean doesn’t truck much with them. Jesus, the Holy Son, is considered to be the Messiah and the fulfillment of prophecies by the Jewish prophets and holy books. (I’m still embarrassed about ever believing this, ouch.) Jesus is considered human and divine at the same time, a concept so tricky–much like all this Trinity stuff–that historically they literally had to kill people who didn’t believe it.
The Virgin Mary is NOT a part of the divine and we were taught nothing about there being anything feminine in God. It’s a big beef my particular sect, and probably many Protestant sects, have with Catholicism that Catholics over-exalt Mary. Some even accuse Catholics of worshipping her as a goddess, which I have seen no evidence of but may not be that far from the history of Mary taking over local goddesses as Christianity spread. But at least we let her have sex after she had Jesus, I think most Protestants believe she had Jesus’s brothers and sisters the good old-fashioned way with Joseph. Evidently Catholics believe she and Joseph never had sex and the siblings of Jesus mentioned in the Bible were cousins or step-siblings, something that had me completely agog when I first heard it.
God as I was taught is all-good, all-powerful, and all-knowing, a trilemma I struggled with until I couldn’t keep up my faith anymore. I’ve since come to think God could be at best two out of three, but from talking to Jewish friends they hardly grant one out of three which is, like, a pretty harsh grade to give the creator of the entire universe lmao. I’ve also been taught Scripture is flawless and perfect and to be read literally, so the pronouncements of God are not to be questioned ever. Like, not the genocides, not the slavery, not anything.
Re God’s shady past, it was a pretty common line in my church that the God of the New Testament was a kinder and gentler one than the God of the Old Testament, and that Jewish people worshipped the, I guess, cruel and barbaric pre-makeover god who ordered slaughters and kept His people to an unbearably harsh set of laws while our God was kindly and full of love (but still homophobic as hell because the Old Testament suddenly becomes super important then and only then). The event that perpetuated this huge character growth in God was evidently the coming of Jesus/a.k.a. Messiah, because now our sins were all forgiven as long as we accepted Jesus as our lord and savior so we didn’t need animal sacrifices or all those technical laws anymore. Yeah, again, I’m embarrassed I ever believed any of this.
So those are the headcanons of God from my old corner of the Bible fandom. It’s far from universal but fairly widespread, and I believe very damaging between its cultural appropriation, antisemitism, and regressive attitudes toward women and queer people.
Jewish ppl tend to follow the god of the Old Testament, all powerful, all knowing, vengeful, jealous, and law abiding. Many of the rules Jewish people ahere to come from the Old Testament, observing the Sabbath, not eating of unclean things like pork. God was something to be feared and have limited to no access to. They also follow the Torah.
This is a mixture on inaccuracies and nonsense. A fundamental belief in Judaism is that G-d created humans in order to have a relationship with them, and that G-d is aware people make mistakes, and is forgiving, provided that the person does repentance for their actions.
(as an example from Ezekiel: “
Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? saith the Lord GOD; and not rather that he should return from his ways, and live?
“ or Isaiah: “
Let the wicked forsake his way, and the man of iniquity his thoughts; and let him return unto the LORD, and He will have compassion upon him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon
“)
Now you can probably say, well what about the times in the Tanakh (what some call the Old Testament) where G-d seemed to act in cruel ways? There are two points that should be made clear regarding that. Firstly, that Jews (not only Orthodox Jews) do not consider the written Tanakh to be the entire Torah, and learn it alongside the Oral Torah – the Talmud, midrash etc. So, for example, when the Torah talks about punishing a person an eye for an eye, the Jewish position has always been that the phrase is talking about monetary compensation. Jews do not read the Torah just literally. The second point is, yes, there are cases where we ask, while we learn, why did G-d do this or that. That’s one of the reasons why Jewish people argue.
An example that I think will illustrate the point I’m trying to make is the destruction of Sodom. Why did G-d destroy Sodom and Gomorrah? (No, it wasn’t homosexuality). The text simply says that there was ‘a great cry’ and that their sins were ‘grievous’.Then G-d tells Abraham what he is about to do. That, in essence, is an invitation for Abraham to challenge G-d, which Abraham does. He tells G-d, to his face, “
shall not the Judge of all the earth do justly?
“ and tells G-d that he can’t destroy a place even if most of the people there are acting wickedly, if there are a few righteous ones as well. G-d agrees with Abraham.
So what was the sin of Sodom? Here the midrash says that the people there hated any visitors or immigrants, who they perceived as coming to steal their wealth, and would torture any visitors or immigrants in horrific ways. In the text itself we see the people of Sodom threatening to gang rape the angels. (Again, the issue here isn’t homosexuality, it’s gang rape)
to sum it up, to say that in Judaism G-d is “
something to be feared and have limited to no access to
“ is erroneous, to put it mildly. Like I wrote above, G-d created humans in order to have a relationship with them. (This is not exclusive to Jewish people.)
I am so not qualified to talk about the Jewish concept of g-d or even whether there’s just one concept of it, so if anyone Jewish wants to talk about it feel free. I can talk briefly about the Christian God, but keep in mind I used to belong to a fairly conservative Protestant sect heavily influenced by U.S. Evangelical Christianity so this likely doesn’t represent all Christians. I mean my old sect, the Korean Presbyterian Church, recently declared Catholicism a heresy I can’t with these fuckers 😂
Much antisemitism below
So in the version of Christianity I’m familiar with God is a unity and Trinity at the same time, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. He is heavily gendered, translated with exclusively masculine titles such as King. Not so much gendered pronouns though, since Korean doesn’t truck much with them. Jesus, the Holy Son, is considered to be the Messiah and the fulfillment of prophecies by the Jewish prophets and holy books. (I’m still embarrassed about ever believing this, ouch.) Jesus is considered human and divine at the same time, a concept so tricky–much like all this Trinity stuff–that historically they literally had to kill people who didn’t believe it.
The Virgin Mary is NOT a part of the divine and we were taught nothing about there being anything feminine in God. It’s a big beef my particular sect, and probably many Protestant sects, have with Catholicism that Catholics over-exalt Mary. Some even accuse Catholics of worshipping her as a goddess, which I have seen no evidence of but may not be that far from the history of Mary taking over local goddesses as Christianity spread. But at least we let her have sex after she had Jesus, I think most Protestants believe she had Jesus’s brothers and sisters the good old-fashioned way with Joseph. Evidently Catholics believe she and Joseph never had sex and the siblings of Jesus mentioned in the Bible were cousins or step-siblings, something that had me completely agog when I first heard it.
God as I was taught is all-good, all-powerful, and all-knowing, a trilemma I struggled with until I couldn’t keep up my faith anymore. I’ve since come to think God could be at best two out of three, but from talking to Jewish friends they hardly grant one out of three which is, like, a pretty harsh grade to give the creator of the entire universe lmao. I’ve also been taught Scripture is flawless and perfect and to be read literally, so the pronouncements of God are not to be questioned ever. Like, not the genocides, not the slavery, not anything.
Re God’s shady past, it was a pretty common line in my church that the God of the New Testament was a kinder and gentler one than the God of the Old Testament, and that Jewish people worshipped the, I guess, cruel and barbaric pre-makeover god who ordered slaughters and kept His people to an unbearably harsh set of laws while our God was kindly and full of love (but still homophobic as hell because the Old Testament suddenly becomes super important then and only then). The event that perpetuated this huge character growth in God was evidently the coming of Jesus/a.k.a. Messiah, because now our sins were all forgiven as long as we accepted Jesus as our lord and savior so we didn’t need animal sacrifices or all those technical laws anymore. Yeah, again, I’m embarrassed I ever believed any of this.
So those are the headcanons of God from my old corner of the Bible fandom. It’s far from universal but fairly widespread, and I believe very damaging between its cultural appropriation, antisemitism, and regressive attitudes toward women and queer people.
Also the difference comes in to place with the Bible as well. Jewish ppl tend to follow the god of the Old Testament, all powerful, all knowing, vengeful, jealous, and law abiding. Many of the rules Jewish people ahere to come from the Old Testament, observing the Sabbath, not eating of unclean things like pork. God was something to be feared and have limited to no access to. They also follow the Torah.
Whereas Christians tend to weigh heavily on the New Testament. Christians believe in Jesus, and once he died for our sins the veil from the Old Testament ripped in two clearing the way of god and mankind to become one hence the Holy Spirit. God in you. Though most Christians believe in Jesus and what he did and talked about his two rules, many like to dip into the Old Testament to pick up rules that no longer apply because of what Jesus did. Christians use these rules to okay racism, control over women, slavery, kill homosexuality, killing people who aren’t Christians etc. Christians come from the word Christ as in Jesus Christ.
But a few Christians called Red Letter Christians (which I am) only adhered to Jesus spoken word via the red lettering in the New Testament of the Bible. Jesus gave only two rules 1. Love thy neighbor as thyself. 2. Believe in Him. Never during his time on earth did Jesus condemn homosexuality, control over women, slavery, killing because a person isn’t like you, nor racism.
Is that concept of Judaism something told to you by someone who is Jewish? Because Jewish people I know seem to believe god is a punk-ass bitch and they need to fistfight him, more or less. Jewish people have literally put him on trial multiple times, so mainstream modern Judaism seems very different from the characterization of following an all-powerful, jealous and law-abiding god. And for that matter, most Jewish people’s relationship to the commandments doesn’t bear much resemblance to the legalistic adherence to archaic rules that many Christians characterize them as, aided by the Christian Bible itself.
I had a few Jewish friends growing up. They were from a stricter denomination, Orthodox Judaism to be precise. Your friends sound like Reconstructive Judaism. Orthodox don’t believe Christ was the son of god and that he was just a Prophet.
There are different sects of Judaism: Orthodox (adhere to the Bible/Torah strictly, obey the Sabbath and have a gazzion rules to follow), Conservative (adhere to both the Torah but also *live in the real world* like won’t eat pork but work on the Sabbath), and Reconstructive (which as you described your friends are, they believe in Jesus as God’s son, and condemn God’s teachings of the old rules)
Orthodox Jewish people make up just 10% of Jewish people in the U.S., so they are hardly representative (link). That number is 31% in Israel, adding up adherents of Haredi Judaism and religious Zionism, but they are still outnumbered by the 67% of Jewish Israelis who are non-religious and atheist (link). What we would call Orthodoxy does seem to outnumber Reform (3.9%) and Conservative (3.2%) Judaism among religious Jewish Israelis, however. Jewish people have expressed frustration at the idea that Orthodoxy is more “real” or representative Judaism than other denominations (link). The largest Jewish denomination in the U.S. is Reform (which I think my friends are, if memory serves) followed by Conservative, though these terms are not universal across communities. Reconstructionism as far as I can tell does not teach that Jesus is the son of God, in fact according to my research “classic” Reconstructionists reject traditional theism altogether. While Reconstructionism is theologically diverse, I can’t find a mention of any strain of Reconstructionism believing in Jesus that way.
I don’t believe in any God at all lol. I approve of referring to God with female pronouns, though, for the reasons stated in response to your earlier ask (link). Who’s to say it’s even the Christian God Thandie was referring to, especially since she’s also an atheist? It’s not all about you lol. Also don’t lump Jewish people in with you, the concept of the divine in Judaism includes the feminine for some and there is a diversity of thought.
I’m not sure how calling God “her” would be legitimately offensive to anyone, unless they felt God should only be referred to in gender neutral terms..
You know someone is a jerk if they care more about “misgendering” God than misgendering real people.
God was portrayed as a black in Bedazzled.
And was a black woman AND a Native American man in The Shack and..depending on ones interpretation of the Trinity, an Asian woman. And I have yet to hear any Christians say they were offended by that movie.. quite the opposite.
And let’s be real we get offended over some dumb stuff.
In the type of Judaism I was raised in, we refer to G-d as the Eternal One, which is purposefully gender neutral. I think it’s perfectly fine to interpret G-d as a female.
That’s really cool. A lot of Christian churches are moving towards using gender neutral terms too. My wife, who’s a pastor, and a lot of her colleagues use They/Them with the occasional She/Her.
GOD IS GENDERFLUID AND NONBINARY AND DON’T YOU FORGET IT
I don’t believe in any God at all lol. I approve of referring to God with female pronouns, though, for the reasons stated in response to your earlier ask (link). Who’s to say it’s even the Christian God Thandie was referring to, especially since she’s also an atheist? It’s not all about you lol. Also don’t lump Jewish people in with you, the concept of the divine in Judaism includes the feminine for some and there is a diversity of thought.
I’m not sure how calling God “her” would be legitimately offensive to anyone, unless they felt God should only be referred to in gender neutral terms..
You know someone is a jerk if they care more about “misgendering” God than misgendering real people.
I don’t believe in any God at all lol. I approve of referring to God with female pronouns, though, for the reasons stated in response to your earlier ask (link). Who’s to say it’s even the Christian God Thandie was referring to, especially since she’s also an atheist? It’s not all about you lol. Also don’t lump Jewish people in with you, the concept of the divine in Judaism includes the feminine for some and there is a diversity of thought.
The dictionary definition is kinda clear – it means a mass genocide, so I
understand why people use it. And Carrie was of mixed heritage – I dont
know if she even identified herself with being Jewish, tbh.
But i wouldnt call the destruction of Alderaan a holocaust – it reminds
me more of the destruction of The Temple – and Alderaanians being
scattered across the galaxy in diasporas, longing for their former peace
and glory.
@die-sphinx No, used as a proper noun it means “the mass slaughter of European civilians and especially [Jewish people] by the Nazis during World War II“ (link). This was the sense in which the questioner used the word in the ask, capitalized as a proper noun.
Small-h “holocaust” does have an older meaning of sacrifice or destruction by fire (not generic genocide), but the word has become so strongly identified with that one historical genocide that it’s iffy even to use it uncapitalized in other contexts imo. As far as I’m concerned, if a word is stained with the blood from the torture, enslavement, mutilation, rape, and murder of millions of your ancestors then you as a group have earned that word many times over and it belongs to you.
^^^Just in case someone gets confused from the way this is formatted in the notes, the above is a quote I have argued against and does not represent my opinion.
Not to be offensive, but I really wish people would stop bringing up Carrie Fisher‘s religion. Carrie and Leia still are two different people and their heritage didn’t have anything to do with the movies.
And the destruction of Alderaan was a horrible genocide and war crime, and the Empire attacked them because the planet had indeed been conspiring against them Empire.
The death Star had been a secret weapon, no one that was supposed to know about it.
That’s why in Rogue One so many planets were against helping the R1 squad retrieve the plans to the Death Star, because it would expose them as a threat to the empire and paint a target on their back for the planet destroying weapon
Bail and Leia Organa took the risks anyway to help the R1 squad.
But unfortunately they hadn’t been aware that Tarkin and Vader would also be trying to prevent the plans from being stolen and had witnessed them stealing the plans.
What happened to Alderaan wasn’t a holocaust. Genocide yes, The movies and books made it pretty clear that Alderaan’s destruction was the Empire’s Monstrous punishment for the planet conspiring against them, something both Vader and Tarkin suspected even before the events of ANH.
The Empire and First Order might be metaphorically inspired or based off Nazis, and essentially they can be called space Nazis just like the Jedi can be called space monks, but they still are not the same nor can the fictional events of a science-fiction movie be compared to the real life horror’s people had to go through. They are indeed fascists though who’ve committed war crimes.
But I myself am not Jewish, just Africa and Brazilian, so I might not be the best person to talk about this and I apologize if I got anything incorrect.
I think you hit on another reason the Holocaust and the destruction of Alderaan are in no way comparable, and in fact should not be compared. Wasn’t it a major talking point of the Nazis that Jewish people as a whole were conspiring against the state and were actively dangerous to the German people? That was not true at all of Jewish people toward Germans (other than there being Jewish Communists or some shit, but given sheer numbers there had to be vastly more goyim Communists), but was actually kind of true of Alderaan, or at least their leadership, when it came to the Empire. So there’s an argument to be made that equating the two genocides indirectly validates a major piece of antisemitic rhetoric, which is obviously not cool. European Gentiles hated Jewish people for racial/ethnic reasons, and made up an imaginary threat to validate that hatred. The Alderaanian genocide on the other hand was a vastly disproportionate and murderous–monstrous, as you put it–reaction to an actual threat.
Yeah, there were and are unfortunately a lot of genocides throughout history and they come in a lot of different forms. The Holocaust was a very specific event and is not a stand-in for all genocides omg. There’s no ground for comparing Alderaan to the Holocaust, and as far as I can tell it seems to be based solely on the meaning of the word being stretched beyond all recognition, coupled with the galactic-level reach of Leia being played by a Jewish actress.
Wasn’t it a major talking point of the Nazis that Jewish people as a whole were conspiring against the state and were actively dangerous to the German people?
This is Antisemitism. It isn’t special to the Nazis or anyone else, it is the foundation of Antisemitism and is rooted in Xtianity and their desire to wipe out Jewish people as our continued existence completely undermine their religion.
Like you will see the “Jews are conspiring against X and is dangerous to the people/government/whatever” in various iteration ever since Xtianity decided to piggyback its success off various forms of imperialism, though it was put into canonicity and Xtian mindset by the early church fathers evven before then. The piggybacking just made sure it spread to every single corner of the world and all civilizations thanks to western imperialism.
And speaking of religion. Judaism and being Jewish is not a religion. It is also a religion.
It may seem a fine point but it is a significant point.
While Carrie did attend Shabbat dinners I don’t know if she considered herself religiously Jewish. She was ethnically Jewish and she was reclaiming her Jewish heritage through the later part of her life.
So please do not dismiss this as just being “her religion”. It is extremely invalidating, not to mention woefully incorrect.
That said, it still does not make Leia Jewish. As I’ve stated elsewhere yes there are reading of her and her character that can be made to support this, but they will inevitably be fans (usually Jewish fans) looking for representation and trying to make sense of the mess that is the GFFA universe. Canonically George never intended Leia, or Han, or Luke, or Padmé, to be Jewish.
Yes canon has some really freaking skeevy connotations here – such as making a character played by a Jewish woman witness the genocide or her people and then dismiss that as nothing in canon – but that is what it is. George was an asshat on this topic as he was on so many others and he is no different on this than most other goyische creators when it comes to pulling crap like this. I don’t blame other Jewish fans for trying to make some sense of it, but that doesn’t make their fan interpretations canon.
L.J.'s Obsessions 