r/JewsOfConscience • u/ContentChecker Jewish Anti-Zionist • Oct 27 '24

Discussion Cultural exchange with /r/Arabs!

Hi everyone,

Today we will be having a cultural exchange with r/Arabs - beginning at 8AM EST, but extending for about 2 days so feel free to post your questions/comments over the course of that time-frame.

The exchange will work similarly to an AMA, except users from their sub will be asking us questions in this thread for anyone to answer, and users from our sub can go to a thread there to ask questions and get answers from their users!

To participate in the exchange, see the following thread in /r/Arabs:

https://old.reddit.com/r/arabs/comments/1gd9eb3/cultural_exchange_rjewsofconscience/

Big thanks to the mods over at /r/Arabs for reaching out to us with this awesome idea! Thanks to MoC for posting the original post.

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u/Strange_Philospher Oct 27 '24

How do Jewish people who are both religious and leftists recioncile between religion and leftism? The common narrative in the Arab world established some sort of dichotomy between religion and leftism ( mostly due to political fights between Islamists and leftists ), so I was quite interested to gain more insights from people here. For example, how do u reconcile between the spiritual nature of religious practice and fighting against the material oppressive systems ? Doesn't the focus on one lead to ignoring the other ?

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u/Last_Tarrasque Non religious Jewish communist Oct 27 '24

I'm a Marxist, as such I am an atheist. I still engage in my Jewish cultural heritage, in the same way an atheist brit might still have a tree, get together with family, etc on Christmas, or how a non-religious Iraqi would feal no need to give up her culture's traditional fashion just because it has been influenced by Islamic ideas about modesty or start adding pork to traditional Iraqi dishes because Islam forbids pork.

At the same time I do break with a lot of Jewish customs, I eat cheese and meat together, I don't bother with Shabbat, etc. I don't eat pork or shellfish not for religious reasons, but because I'm not use to them and my autism makes me suck at learning to like new foods, etc.

I like to engage with my culture a lot though food, I have a lot of recipes passed down by my Nana (grandmother) and Grany (great grandmother) as well as some from my Bubby (other grandmother) which I feel connected to my culture when cooking.

I now re-read your question and realized that this don't really answer your question