"In each #movie, some bid for #universality trumps the representation of #Jewish experience, leaving behind a peculiar #Jew-shaped hole: The #stories are about us, but we’re not in them.

I would hate to think that this is because we have, in recent years, been deemed too problematic, too difficult to relate to or hard to like, for mainstream consumption. You could, of course, make a case that what we’re seeing is precisely the opposite — that this erasure actually represents some triumph of #assimilation and acceptance. What followed that midcentury efflorescence of Jewish visibility, after all, was a period during which parts of the Jewish experience were absorbed into the mainstream, until millions of #Americans could watch #TV shows steeped in Jewish #humor and sensibilities..."

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/31/magazine/jewish-people-movies-neil-diamond.html

This this this.

"#Hanukkah commonly evokes light, family gatherings, and childhood memory. But these associations sit atop a much deeper and more challenging history.

Hanukkah marks the only successful #Jewish revolt in recorded antiquity against cultural erasure.

Not against slavery. Not against imperial taxation. Not against foreign rule as such.

Against forced #assimilation.

The Seleucid decrees were not primarily economic or political. They were civilizational. They targeted the infrastructure of Jewish continuity itself: #Torah law and study, #Hebrew language, #Shabbat, #circumcision, and the #Jewishcalendar. #Torahscrolls were destroyed, and those who taught or possessed them were executed. In effect, the decrees aimed to dismantle Jewish memory.

Most ancient peoples who faced comparable pressures disappeared."

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/hanukkah-and-the-jewish-refusal-to-disappear/

New video: Watch Ayse Guveli from the University of #Warwick in our #CPCCGWebinar from last week. She discussed the 2000 #Families and The Third Generation projects which aim to reveal the consequences and the long-term impact of #migration on #migrants from Turkey and on their three #generation #descendants by comparing them to their non-migrant counterparts in #Turkey:

https://youtu.be/Ngobm5I-mh0?si=TQ608VQkCa0wXayB&t=1

#demography #sociology #inequality #education #labourmarkets #genderroles #religiosity #assimilation

"One hundred and twenty years ago this month, a celebration was held at #NewYork’s #CarnegieHall on #Thanksgiving Day, celebrating 250 years of #Jewish presence in the #UnitedStates. It was the capstone of a week of festivities commemorating the founding of Shearith Israel in 1655, the first Jewish congregation in what was then called #NewAmsterdam.

The #Shabbat before a packed house was to arrive at the world-famous venue, both a warning and a call to renewal were offered by Shearith Israel’s then-#rabbi, Reverend Dr. H. Pereira Mendes. He was concerned about the rate of #assimilation of the comfortable #American Jewish community."

https://jewishjournal.com/judaism/385034/the-covenantal-letter-at-carnegie-hall/

“I think this is really the first-hand experience of what it was actually like to go to a school that was underfunded, understaffed, really just seen as a way to assimilate children into what #Canada was going to become.”

#Indigenous #FirstNations #books #assimilation #education

https://www.windspeaker.com/news/windspeaker-news/new-book-provides-answers-day-school-survivors

Monsters and Humanity in Fiction with Surekha Davies

Monsters and Humanity in Fiction with Surekha Davies – How To Write the Future podcast, episode 177 *** “It all started with too…
https://writersfunzone.com/blog/2025/11/03/monsters-and-humanity-in-fiction-with-surekha-davies

#HOWTOWRITETHEFUTUREPODCAST #16thcenturyexploration #Americas #ancientknowledge #assimilation