using israeli hebrew pronunciation is not neutral, and is a form of zionist cultural hegemony, and when ashkenazi leaders at mostly ashkie shuls it actually centers whiteness significantly more than using traditional ashkenazi pronunciation https://twitter.com/butsh_feygele/status/1309937512698306561

don't say """ashkenormative""" when you just mean WHITE

zionist twitter found this and now the swords are actually being pointed lol

im now getting "Israeli Hebrew pronunciation is the Safardi pronunciation" which also is objectively untrue. just because the ת is pronounced like it is in sefardi hebrew doesn't mean it's sefardi pronounciation—many traditional sefardi vowels aren't represented in israeli hebrew

also, to be clear, cuz i'm realizing the context isn't obvious in the first tweet:

i am talking about american congregations specifically, aka when ashkenazi prayer leaders in mostly ashkenazi shuls in america are using israeli hebrew for some reason

in the replies to this you get some great examples of zionist disdain for the diaspora and the absolutely disgusting ways that they talk about my jewish ancestors who lived, sang, celebrated, suffered, fought, and died in eastern europe

"fetishize your Eastern European shtetl language far away from us" "Purposely using European pronunciation is ghetto, depressing, and symbolic of our oppression"

ah yeah sure i'm definitely the bigot here. love how the responses reveal some of the point

yeah, referring to another jew as "Poison", that definitely demonstrates that this person is my mentions is against antisemitism in all its forms /s

i think this one image exposes a lot of what's disingenious about gay liberalism & about "am yisrael chai" / we're all one people nonsense

also to be clear: centering jews of color (whether they be ashkenazi, sephardi, or mizrahi) and centering non-ashkenazi traditions is *desperately* needed, and involves explicitly inviting jews of color and non-ashkenazi jews into prayer leadership (and elsewhere)

but white ashkenazi american prayer leaders using israeli hebrew pronounciation to a crowd of a bunch of ashkenazim actually centers whiteness *more*, not less, because zionism has been an important part of whitening white ashkenazi jews and because one of the functions of

whiteness is to sever whitened groups from their cultural heritage and create cultura attachments to universaling projects that serve the interests of imperial nation-states