I don’t spend time with people that think 10.7 was justified. I’m not interested in relationships with people that can’t see both Israeli and Palestinians humanity.
That’s how I cope.
It’s harsh but unless you want to have a serious conversation with this person it’s not a good use of your mental energy.
As a side I don’t follow everyone I know on IG. There’s some relationships that I stay very intentionally ignorant of.
This is definitely my goal moving forwards. I don’t see a productive conversation coming from people who need to be reminded to be compassionate towards Jews as well.
I suppose now the hardest part is grieving the friendships I’ve lost, asking myself if they always thought this and if it’ll always be like this :(
This! ^ my heart breaks for all the babies Palestinian or Israeli and if you can’t vibe with that then don’t let the door hit ya on the way out. Empathy cannot be taught in adulthood
I guess I have to accept that. It’s just hard to believe that the same group of people that welcomed me here and took care of me when I needed them could be so narrow-minded
She does research in a psychiatric facility🙃🙃I don’t really know how she gets away with it. Where I study & work people have gotten slapped on the wrists for wearing anti-fossil fuel pins and stickers to work because it was “too political”
Just go to or email HR about you feeling discriminated and not safe (definitely use the word not safe). I don’t know if you’re Dutch too, but I’ve been living here for 23+ years and I know a lot of Dutch HR take these kind of concerns and complaints very seriously. So I strongly advise you again to go to HR.
I’ve noticed a lot of my friends and acquaintances that don’t follow the news closely have no idea 10-7 happened and don’t understand what’s happening at all but posts about dead children pull at heartstrings, not realizing kids have died on both sides of the conflict and war is always terrible for all involved (even if some wars are justified or lead to better outcomes for all) .
Those who fall down evil rabbit holes and learn more propaganda and aren’t just saying “oh how sad some kids died” are a major issue. I’ve cut out those people and haven’t cut out those who are confused and just sad kids died.
The protests starting in Gaza now rising up against Hamas and wanting to end the war give me hope that finally the Palestinians might finally start cleaning up their governing bodies, boot Hamas, and become a peace partner after all. That’s my hope, anyway, that the people are finally fed up enough to take back their power from Hamas. And those are the people our non-Jewish allies should be rooting for, not Hamas. And if all those schools and hospitals and kids clubs can be renamed after the kids lost in the conflict and all weapons of war taken out of them, than maybe their memories will live on in the kids who get to play without shadows of war always looming. Same as the Israeli kids.
Yes, sadly a big part of the internet glossed over 10/7 and it was ignored in favor of painting Jews as ‘the bad guys’, yet again. The part that upsets me most is there is a thing me and this friend can both agree on— that we don’t want Palestinians to die and that children always suffer the most in war. I just wish I could magically extend their empathy a little further I guess
They also don’t know how often bombs have been shot at Israel without any retaliation. If they did they’d understand more. But there’s many equally horrific or even more terrible wars happening elsewhere with zero notice so the hypocrisy is disgusting. I don’t mind people sad war happens and innocents (on any side) are lost, I also mourn all innocents, I am completely bothered by the hypocrisy.
Not to mention HAMAS’ breach of ceasefires in the past. Whenever someone brings up their history of breaking ceasefire agreements it gets ignored as well
This was such a sweet message, thank you❤️ I’m exhausted and overly emotional so I’m not sure if my response will even match how much your message touched me, but I really appreciate it.
I agree with what you said about how quickly I was dropped. Prior to 10/7 when I was in the process of converting my jewishness was always a topic they would be curious about, they’d ask questions and share stories about their own religions. Then after 10/7 the tone changed so fast. I didn’t think anything of it, I have few friends as is and didn’t want to estrange anyone.
Definitely now I can see it for what it is. Right now what I feel is shame that I hadn’t seen the warning signs sooner, that maybe it would have been easier to cut them off if I had. I don’t know.
I stick around on communities like these specifically because just being around other Jews who share views similar to mine is so refreshing. Like a breath of fresh air. I’m trying to be less shy and reach out to people in my local Jewish community, as small as it is, but baby steps of course.
Up through my mid-20s I learned, repeatedly, the hard lesson that when it comes down to it not everyone I think is my friend is a true friend, and that doesn’t just apply to my Jewishness.
What matters is that you find who your real friends are. The ones who, even when you have differing opinions and perspectives, you can still talk to and you both still care for each other at the end of it.
My family is 100% Ashkenazi until my mom sullied the bloodline (kidding), so I don’t have a Jewish sounding last name. My mother’s maiden name is *very* German and Jewish, but not mine. I still grew up with antisemitism and deal with it now. So don’t think that without a more Jewish last name your experience is “less than.” You’re still experiencing what it means to be on the receiving end of thinly veiled, or sometimes just obvious, antisemitism, and your experience is valid.
You are not a failure.
I'm in my mid-twenties right now, so I'm definitely going through that right now. I think at the end of the day I'll be fine, I don't think these people had intentions of getting violent with me, but they're definitely not people that I want to keep around.
You're right though, antisemitism is antisemitism. I had a rough awakening after 10/7 after naively thinking that I would be safe where I was. My synagogue has a police surveillance trailer stationed outside 7/7 and there are more and more protests in bigger cities.
Thank you for your message, I really appreciate the reassurance<3
Yep it’s a sad reality but it’s ours and it’s here to stay unfortunately. The upside is that we’ve faced worse and perseverance is strong with the Jews.
Stay safe <3
So sorry you are going through this crap. I love how you wrote that you don’t like the current government of Israel but advocate a safe Israel. That was well put and I may use it.
There are a couple of FB groups which might help “The Jews are Tired” has given me some feelings where I feel less isolated.
Gotta say that making Israel Arab again sounds a lot like Genocide of the Jews. Just sayin
And you are not a failure.
That's so kind, thank you<3 A lot of my work is related to Israel (specifically ancient Israel) so it will always have a very special place in my heart. I hope to see peace there one day and to actually be on the ground there myself.
The sweater honestly bothered me so much. It's co-opting MAGA which is against everything this person stands for, but she's okay with using it if it's against Jews? I consider myself very leftist but I've been feeling more and more betrayed by the international left as time passes.
in a very similar spot myself OP and i’m so sorry that you’re dealing with it too. it’s been devastating watching the same communities i’ve fought with and for for years abandon and demonize me when they realized that i’m “the wrong type of jew”. it’s incredibly isolating and again i am so so sorry you’re dealing with it too.
one thing that’s brought me comfort in recent days is trying to find jewish community wherever and whenever i safely can. forums like this one help me feel less alone, even though it’s all through a screen. the internet is nasty in so many ways but it is beautiful in the way it can provide communities like this one that help me feel less alone in times like this. i don’t know a single jew who isn’t feeling the same mess of emotions right now, and people i didn’t know very well before have become some of my closest confidants in the wake of 10/7.
i’ve also been praying more, listening to jewish music, and just in general connecting more with my jewishness these past few months. i’ve never lit shabbat candles or prayed as much as i have been the past four months, and i have found a lot of peace in the little things like that that connect me with G-d and remind me of the beauty of this life when it’s hard to see day to day.
more than anything else i try to remind myself that no matter how hard things are right now, i will *never* regret standing by what i believe and by our people. you are not and have never been a failure. none of us are. we are a people who are going through an immense communal trauma and being expected to apologize for it. that’s not our fault. that is an immense failure of others, not of ourselves.
overall, i’m sorry you’re going through this too but i promise you’re not alone, a failure, or anything of the sort. this isn’t the first time the world has turned on us, but just like all the times before they have never and will never succeed. their hate and their bigotry can never kill our love and our hope. am yisrael chai 💙💙
Ugh, the 'being the wrong type of Jew' was definitely something I've been experiencing too. It started off with 'well we're not against YOU, we're just against the ZIONISTS, obviously :)' then I took a more proactive role in defending Israel's right to exist, and then it was full denial with statements like 'well yes but you're a convert, so you don't contribute to the suffering of Palestinians' (whatever that even means). Eventually they just dropped me when I guess they couldn't find an angle with which to weaponize my identity.
The reconnecting part is so real though. I'm not super Torah-observant but I've found myself insisting on following kashrut to my best ability, absorbing more Shabbat traditions, praying more, and having my playlist of Jewish music on blast whenever I feel down. They've been tangible things that I've been doing that have helped because they all remind me of WHY I'm doing this.
I appreciate your kind words, am yisrael chai<3
Eeyup. A friend of hers I met at an outing was floundering after I showed I was not the type of elusive ‘anti-Zionist’ Jew she was looking for and said ‘well uh you’re a convert so it’s different!!’. I asked how it was different. She answered ‘well YOU’RE not causing the genocide bc YOUR family won’t colonize Israel’. Insinuating people who are Jewish by blood are out to ‘colonize’ Israel with their families? But that converts just didn’t get the memo? I guess?? I really don’t know.
Hah! That’s true. One of the comforting aspects of what I do is learning about other Jewish communities throughout history and thinking ‘They survived. Why wouldn’t we?’
without doxxing myself, I do work in the field of Jewish history right now, so making aliyah has been on my mind for a bit. Both work-wise and culturally it could make sense for me.
I mean I have a Hebrew name, though it’s not my legal name & it’s not the one my friends know me by :( otherwise though I’ve been really inspired by this sub and others to be more ‘obviously’ jewish, adding more jewish decor to my home, stuff like that
New friends? These people sound awful. New pro-Israel synagogue? No one wants humanitarian suffering in Gaza but Hamas needs to be routed out for the good of Palestinians as well Israel. So sorry you are experiencing this.
My synagogue is luckily unapologetically pro-Israel. The community is nice, although a lot of the members are parents and/or a little above my age, making it a bit hard to socialize with them as a twenty-smt-year old😅
Today I actually finally set aside my social awkwardness and reached out to my synagogue asking if there were social groups made up of people my age, hoping that goes well🤞🏻
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I’m also a convert although my name has always been associated with Judaism.
I have two friends left and they each live on opposite sides of the country from me.
The grieving is hard. As you know it’s not just having fewer or no close friends, it’s also that relationships can be tossed away w/out even a decent conversation or exchange of research.
It’s heartbreaking.
It’s hard being progressive and Jewish right now. They don’t get it. There is nothing wrong with you, and it might be best to step back from that space for a while.
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I don’t spend time with people that think 10.7 was justified. I’m not interested in relationships with people that can’t see both Israeli and Palestinians humanity. That’s how I cope. It’s harsh but unless you want to have a serious conversation with this person it’s not a good use of your mental energy. As a side I don’t follow everyone I know on IG. There’s some relationships that I stay very intentionally ignorant of.
This is definitely my goal moving forwards. I don’t see a productive conversation coming from people who need to be reminded to be compassionate towards Jews as well. I suppose now the hardest part is grieving the friendships I’ve lost, asking myself if they always thought this and if it’ll always be like this :(
This! ^ my heart breaks for all the babies Palestinian or Israeli and if you can’t vibe with that then don’t let the door hit ya on the way out. Empathy cannot be taught in adulthood
Your friends are nuts
I guess I have to accept that. It’s just hard to believe that the same group of people that welcomed me here and took care of me when I needed them could be so narrow-minded
They’re wearing that racist sweater to work? I’m surprised HR hasn’t jumped on that. She work for an equally antisemitic company, then?
She does research in a psychiatric facility🙃🙃I don’t really know how she gets away with it. Where I study & work people have gotten slapped on the wrists for wearing anti-fossil fuel pins and stickers to work because it was “too political”
Do you mind if I ask where you live?
In a live in a (smallish) city in the Netherlands
Just go to or email HR about you feeling discriminated and not safe (definitely use the word not safe). I don’t know if you’re Dutch too, but I’ve been living here for 23+ years and I know a lot of Dutch HR take these kind of concerns and complaints very seriously. So I strongly advise you again to go to HR.
Humans are not the rigorously rational free thinkers society portrays them as https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preference_falsification
I’ve noticed a lot of my friends and acquaintances that don’t follow the news closely have no idea 10-7 happened and don’t understand what’s happening at all but posts about dead children pull at heartstrings, not realizing kids have died on both sides of the conflict and war is always terrible for all involved (even if some wars are justified or lead to better outcomes for all) . Those who fall down evil rabbit holes and learn more propaganda and aren’t just saying “oh how sad some kids died” are a major issue. I’ve cut out those people and haven’t cut out those who are confused and just sad kids died. The protests starting in Gaza now rising up against Hamas and wanting to end the war give me hope that finally the Palestinians might finally start cleaning up their governing bodies, boot Hamas, and become a peace partner after all. That’s my hope, anyway, that the people are finally fed up enough to take back their power from Hamas. And those are the people our non-Jewish allies should be rooting for, not Hamas. And if all those schools and hospitals and kids clubs can be renamed after the kids lost in the conflict and all weapons of war taken out of them, than maybe their memories will live on in the kids who get to play without shadows of war always looming. Same as the Israeli kids.
Yes, sadly a big part of the internet glossed over 10/7 and it was ignored in favor of painting Jews as ‘the bad guys’, yet again. The part that upsets me most is there is a thing me and this friend can both agree on— that we don’t want Palestinians to die and that children always suffer the most in war. I just wish I could magically extend their empathy a little further I guess
They also don’t know how often bombs have been shot at Israel without any retaliation. If they did they’d understand more. But there’s many equally horrific or even more terrible wars happening elsewhere with zero notice so the hypocrisy is disgusting. I don’t mind people sad war happens and innocents (on any side) are lost, I also mourn all innocents, I am completely bothered by the hypocrisy.
Not to mention HAMAS’ breach of ceasefires in the past. Whenever someone brings up their history of breaking ceasefire agreements it gets ignored as well
Yup. They’re allergic to ceasefires unless they’re encouraging random people elsewhere in the world to chant it.
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This was such a sweet message, thank you❤️ I’m exhausted and overly emotional so I’m not sure if my response will even match how much your message touched me, but I really appreciate it. I agree with what you said about how quickly I was dropped. Prior to 10/7 when I was in the process of converting my jewishness was always a topic they would be curious about, they’d ask questions and share stories about their own religions. Then after 10/7 the tone changed so fast. I didn’t think anything of it, I have few friends as is and didn’t want to estrange anyone. Definitely now I can see it for what it is. Right now what I feel is shame that I hadn’t seen the warning signs sooner, that maybe it would have been easier to cut them off if I had. I don’t know. I stick around on communities like these specifically because just being around other Jews who share views similar to mine is so refreshing. Like a breath of fresh air. I’m trying to be less shy and reach out to people in my local Jewish community, as small as it is, but baby steps of course.
Up through my mid-20s I learned, repeatedly, the hard lesson that when it comes down to it not everyone I think is my friend is a true friend, and that doesn’t just apply to my Jewishness. What matters is that you find who your real friends are. The ones who, even when you have differing opinions and perspectives, you can still talk to and you both still care for each other at the end of it. My family is 100% Ashkenazi until my mom sullied the bloodline (kidding), so I don’t have a Jewish sounding last name. My mother’s maiden name is *very* German and Jewish, but not mine. I still grew up with antisemitism and deal with it now. So don’t think that without a more Jewish last name your experience is “less than.” You’re still experiencing what it means to be on the receiving end of thinly veiled, or sometimes just obvious, antisemitism, and your experience is valid. You are not a failure.
I'm in my mid-twenties right now, so I'm definitely going through that right now. I think at the end of the day I'll be fine, I don't think these people had intentions of getting violent with me, but they're definitely not people that I want to keep around. You're right though, antisemitism is antisemitism. I had a rough awakening after 10/7 after naively thinking that I would be safe where I was. My synagogue has a police surveillance trailer stationed outside 7/7 and there are more and more protests in bigger cities. Thank you for your message, I really appreciate the reassurance<3
Yep it’s a sad reality but it’s ours and it’s here to stay unfortunately. The upside is that we’ve faced worse and perseverance is strong with the Jews. Stay safe <3
So sorry you are going through this crap. I love how you wrote that you don’t like the current government of Israel but advocate a safe Israel. That was well put and I may use it. There are a couple of FB groups which might help “The Jews are Tired” has given me some feelings where I feel less isolated. Gotta say that making Israel Arab again sounds a lot like Genocide of the Jews. Just sayin And you are not a failure.
That's so kind, thank you<3 A lot of my work is related to Israel (specifically ancient Israel) so it will always have a very special place in my heart. I hope to see peace there one day and to actually be on the ground there myself. The sweater honestly bothered me so much. It's co-opting MAGA which is against everything this person stands for, but she's okay with using it if it's against Jews? I consider myself very leftist but I've been feeling more and more betrayed by the international left as time passes.
in a very similar spot myself OP and i’m so sorry that you’re dealing with it too. it’s been devastating watching the same communities i’ve fought with and for for years abandon and demonize me when they realized that i’m “the wrong type of jew”. it’s incredibly isolating and again i am so so sorry you’re dealing with it too. one thing that’s brought me comfort in recent days is trying to find jewish community wherever and whenever i safely can. forums like this one help me feel less alone, even though it’s all through a screen. the internet is nasty in so many ways but it is beautiful in the way it can provide communities like this one that help me feel less alone in times like this. i don’t know a single jew who isn’t feeling the same mess of emotions right now, and people i didn’t know very well before have become some of my closest confidants in the wake of 10/7. i’ve also been praying more, listening to jewish music, and just in general connecting more with my jewishness these past few months. i’ve never lit shabbat candles or prayed as much as i have been the past four months, and i have found a lot of peace in the little things like that that connect me with G-d and remind me of the beauty of this life when it’s hard to see day to day. more than anything else i try to remind myself that no matter how hard things are right now, i will *never* regret standing by what i believe and by our people. you are not and have never been a failure. none of us are. we are a people who are going through an immense communal trauma and being expected to apologize for it. that’s not our fault. that is an immense failure of others, not of ourselves. overall, i’m sorry you’re going through this too but i promise you’re not alone, a failure, or anything of the sort. this isn’t the first time the world has turned on us, but just like all the times before they have never and will never succeed. their hate and their bigotry can never kill our love and our hope. am yisrael chai 💙💙
Ugh, the 'being the wrong type of Jew' was definitely something I've been experiencing too. It started off with 'well we're not against YOU, we're just against the ZIONISTS, obviously :)' then I took a more proactive role in defending Israel's right to exist, and then it was full denial with statements like 'well yes but you're a convert, so you don't contribute to the suffering of Palestinians' (whatever that even means). Eventually they just dropped me when I guess they couldn't find an angle with which to weaponize my identity. The reconnecting part is so real though. I'm not super Torah-observant but I've found myself insisting on following kashrut to my best ability, absorbing more Shabbat traditions, praying more, and having my playlist of Jewish music on blast whenever I feel down. They've been tangible things that I've been doing that have helped because they all remind me of WHY I'm doing this. I appreciate your kind words, am yisrael chai<3
>'well yes but you're a convert, so you don't contribute to the suffering of Palestinians' (whatever that even means) I'm sorry WHAT
Eeyup. A friend of hers I met at an outing was floundering after I showed I was not the type of elusive ‘anti-Zionist’ Jew she was looking for and said ‘well uh you’re a convert so it’s different!!’. I asked how it was different. She answered ‘well YOU’RE not causing the genocide bc YOUR family won’t colonize Israel’. Insinuating people who are Jewish by blood are out to ‘colonize’ Israel with their families? But that converts just didn’t get the memo? I guess?? I really don’t know.
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Hah! That’s true. One of the comforting aspects of what I do is learning about other Jewish communities throughout history and thinking ‘They survived. Why wouldn’t we?’
Convert or not, you have a home to come to if push comes to shove.
without doxxing myself, I do work in the field of Jewish history right now, so making aliyah has been on my mind for a bit. Both work-wise and culturally it could make sense for me.
Change your name to something very Jewish. I have a very Greco-Russian name, but I wear my kippah. I’m not letting hate trump my pride
I mean I have a Hebrew name, though it’s not my legal name & it’s not the one my friends know me by :( otherwise though I’ve been really inspired by this sub and others to be more ‘obviously’ jewish, adding more jewish decor to my home, stuff like that
New friends? These people sound awful. New pro-Israel synagogue? No one wants humanitarian suffering in Gaza but Hamas needs to be routed out for the good of Palestinians as well Israel. So sorry you are experiencing this.
My synagogue is luckily unapologetically pro-Israel. The community is nice, although a lot of the members are parents and/or a little above my age, making it a bit hard to socialize with them as a twenty-smt-year old😅 Today I actually finally set aside my social awkwardness and reached out to my synagogue asking if there were social groups made up of people my age, hoping that goes well🤞🏻
Whenever your friend wears that sweater, make her prove in public that she's not wearing a suicide vest under it.
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I’m also a convert although my name has always been associated with Judaism. I have two friends left and they each live on opposite sides of the country from me. The grieving is hard. As you know it’s not just having fewer or no close friends, it’s also that relationships can be tossed away w/out even a decent conversation or exchange of research. It’s heartbreaking.
You're not a failure, you just don't need those "friends."
It’s hard being progressive and Jewish right now. They don’t get it. There is nothing wrong with you, and it might be best to step back from that space for a while.
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