i-was-over-on-the-bench

Latest Posts by i-was-over-on-the-bench

I’m also going to point out here that when it mentions here that Jews question almost everything, the Jews were for a while called the Israelites and you know what the word Israel means? It means to wrestle with God. It is literally built into the Jewish religion that we’re supposed to question things and that everything isn’t as straightforward as what is written. So please think about your judgements and look a little further into it before you voice them.

so i might be stepping out of line making this post but i feel it needs to be made so yolo i guess.

i know a lot of millenials have a sort of knee-jerk negative reaction towards abrahamic religions (really mostly christianity and judaism) and i understand. really, i get it. my dad is a pastor, and he used his religon to abuse, demean, and control me at every opportunity. he regularly tells my sisters that he’s “so sad im going to hell” and other sundry passive aggressive nonsense, so trust me i get it. i understand how a certain religion can be triggering to someone.

but there is a very important point here, and i really hope you understand this.

you cannot let it make you prejudiced, and, let me be clear here, im talking specifically about antisemitism.

i know exactly whats going on in your head, because for a long time it was what was going on in my head. you hear the word “judaism” and you have flashbacks to sunday school and the old testament and all the times you sat in a church and felt personally attacked, and you associate that with judaism and jewish people because most of the things that upset you were in the old testament. 

you can have your triggers, but you can’t let those triggers become an excuse to further marginalize a minority thats already attacked from literally every position of power there is. every major religion has leaders who are antisemitic, every country has a history of marginalizing jewish people, every person on the planet grows up in an inherently antisemitic world and has to unlearn that sort of toxic mindset.

and maybe this post should have been made by a jewish person, or somebody with more education on the subject than me but i think its really important that people don’t let their personal experiences with organized religion turn them into the kind of prejudiced person that hurt them in the first place. 

as a romni i have a shared tragedy with jewish people, so i feel like it was easier for me to step back and be like “woah, your thought process here is super toxic and you need to stop” but i feel like a lot of white christian-raised people don’t really have that touchstone and need somebody to be like “wake up, what you are doing is wrong”

why be straight when you can love isabelle mccalla

“how many deck the halls do we need” to the tune of andrew barth feldman’s “how many batmen do we need”

because jesus fucking christ, we do not need to sing an arrangement of deck the halls for the third year in a row. it’s on my top three least favorite christmas songs, along with jingle bells and i saw mommy kissing santa claus and santa claus is coming to town following close behind.

it’s like that scene in glee where the kids are like “hey mr. shue, can we do this?” and he just goes “no, bUT I FOUND A JOURNEY SONG WE HAVEN’T DONE” but replace mr. shue with my choir teacher and a journey song with an arrangement of deck the halls

the other thing i’m going to add to this is something for schools. i’m in the school choir, and every year, we sing mostly just christmas stuff. we’ll have a general winter song or two, some song from somewhere in africa, and a “hannukah” song (which sometimes isn’t even about hannukah! sometimes it just talks about candles and so it’s like ah yes, candles automatically equals hannukah). and then the entire rest of the concert is christmas music, closing out with hark the herald angels sing. now, i LOVE christmas music, but when it comes to some of it, it gets really fucking hypocritical. 

my family has been wanting us to sing light one candle for a while now (if you don’t know it, it’s a lovely hannukah song), and i suggested it last year. idk if my teacher just like couldn’t find a choral arrangement of it or something, but what i think is more likely is that it sounded too religious and so we ended up doing some really cheesy song called light a candle. similar title, somewhat similar message, it works right? my teacher shied away from a song that sounds “too religious” (but really actually isn’t! and has a fairly universal message!) and is jewish, but won’t give up the tradition of singing hark the herald angels sing, a far more religious song, but it’s christian. that’s like the dictionary definition of a double standard if that is why we didn’t sing the song.

like i said, i love so much of the stuff that goes into christmas. i love the lights, the decorations, the music. please just take into account that not everyone celebrates it and that there are other holidays that people do celebrate. don’t make everything about only christmas and exclude those who don’t celebrate.

also don’t get mad at me for saying happy holidays! i’m trying not to automatically assume you celebrate christmas and it’s not doing any harm to say that!

I don’t even think Christmas shouldn’t be all over the public space like it is. Clearly it does make a lot of people happy and I lowkey I actually kind of like it too! (Sort of. But I also don’t.) So, continue covering your town square or wherever with trees and lights, I’m not saying not to. What I *am* asking for is:

- Acknowledge that Christmas is not a universal holiday and that some people either feel negatively about it or just don’t celebrate it. Stop being offended by this.

- Stop forcing people to participate. Don’t make your Jewish employees wear Christmas outfits, don’t make schoolkids be part of Christmas plays, etc.

- Stop pushing back when Jews are honest with you about how they feel about it.

- Stop deflecting to talk about how Christmas traditions are actually pagan in origin. We know, and also it’s fully irrelevant to our issues with Christmas.

- Recognize things from other cultures. Or at very least don’t *prevent* members of other cultures from expressing them. If your employee wants to put up a menorah, let them. If your coworker wants to add a Chanukah decoration to your office don’t take it down when they’re not looking because it “messes up the Christmas spirit” or whatever.

- Recognize things from different cultures at other times of the year too. Let your Jewish students and employees take days off for the fall holidays. Maybe even consider merchandise or decorations for those holidays too!

- Stop with the double standards. You don’t get to say that a menorah is religious and a Christmas tree isn’t. Either both of them are or neither of them are. A menorah actually is a ritual object but a) plenty of secular Jews use them and b) I don’t think most Christians know that, they just think of Judaism (and therefore Jewish culture) as “a religion” and Christian culture as normal. When people claim to object to Chanukah (the holiday most widely — and often exclusively — celebrated by secular Jews) because it’s “religious,” they’re actually objecting because it’s non-normative.

- Listen when someone is telling you about their experiences with and thoughts about hegemonic culture. Don’t argue that actually it’s fine becaude Christmas is secular or pagan or whatever. Trust people about the experiences they’ve had and how things impact them.

(Yes, non-Jews can reblog this.)

ay so i post virtually nothing on here, i think i have a total of like eight posts but i have been getting more followers recently thought i should say this real quick: if you support trump, unfollow me right now. by supporting trump, you are supporting having my rights taken away. most of y’all already understand why trump is bad, i’m not gonna explain that, and by supporting him, you’re also saying yeah all of this shit is okay and in fact, i want four more years of this! if that’s the case with you, unfollow me because i’m not putting up with all of this

aaron tveit being the only nominee for best leading actor in a musical is simultaneously a huge middle finger to chris mccarrell and the lightning thief (i thought they would at least give the dude a nomination so that aaron isn’t the only one in the category) and the funniest fucking thing.

it also sucks though because he’s been snubbed for years and deserves the nomination and the award, but it’s a bit hollow because yeah he gets it but it’s not like he had any competition

one last thing, yes chris should have been nominated, no we do not need to put down aaron tveit because of it.

i am mourning the loss of the dear evan hansen movie. no, it hasn’t happened yet, but they’ve already made so many poor choices that will throw it down the drain.

first they made a few less than ideal casting choices, then they made larry stepdad, which throws a lot of things off. and now, ben platt is saying that they’ve kept the integrity of the show, including “most of the songs,” which implies that some songs are getting cut, and that’s something that this show can’t afford to do. there are only 14 songs in the show, and every single one of them is integral to the story and/or the characters. you can’t just cut some of them. also the way the staging is done, it’s so easy to mess that up for the movie. i was so excited for this, and don’t get me wrong, i’ll still see it, but i have a feeling it’s going to be fairly disappointing.

can i just appreciate whoever runs the politician netflix social media? like, some shows/movies/broadway social media accounts aren’t that funny, but the person running it for the politician is a meme and a mood

My dad has picked some bad movies for us to watch, giving me the opportunity to get bored and make more of these!

some musical quotes backgrounds (and then one ben platt one) and there are two for requiem because i couldn’t decide

Make theater more accessible

Hello to all Broadway fans! I can guarantee that you have absolutely no clue who I am because I have only posted two things on here, and they were both about the Riverdale Heathers episode. However, what you should know is that I am a MAJOR fan of the theatre, modern Broadway in particular, and there are many shows I would absolutely love to see, but there is just one problem. Tickets are really expensive, and also New York is hours away. I want to write a letter or sort of essay to the American Theatre Wing or someone who could do something about the accessibility of Broadway to try and sell them on trying to make Broadway shows more accessible, whether it’s making tickets cheaper or doing what they did with Newsies with all of the most popular shows or both or something else. Currently, the only way the vast majority of theater fans get to experience these Broadway shows is through the cast recordings and the occasional bootleg. Even if the tour comes to town, tickets are still expensive, and if your parents are anything like mine, they’re not a huge fan of a lot of this stuff, they don’t understand it that much, and overall, they don’t see much of a reason to spend that kind of money on a “stupid show.” So we watch the bootlegs. We live and breathe the cast recordings. And then when any clips of the show are released, we FREAK OUT. Many people do not have the money, or the support from parents, or they can’t make the trip to New York, but for whatever reason there is, many theater fans have never actually seen a Broadway show. Another thing in the theater is that it is definitely not accessible to the deaf. I know that there was a production of Spring Awakening that was, but for the most part, theater is not accessible to those who are deaf, and sometimes people with other disabilities. Anyways, the point is that I want to write a letter or essay to try and sell the idea of making theater more accessible to everyone, and I want anyone who wants to help to help. I will leave my email and a link to the document, and I am sure that if everyone collaborates, we could probably write something pretty good and send it to the American Theatre Wing. There has been talk for a while about how Broadway needs to be more accessible, and I’ve even seen a post many times about the irony that many shows are about the poor and destitute and yet those are the exact people who can never see these shows because they are so expensive. If you can, try to help write, and also SOURCES. PLEASE. The reason I am reaching out to so many people is because it’s hard to find sources on this sort of thing. Hard as in I genuinely do not know what to search, and then what I did search, I found literally nothing. 

Anyways, my email is deadgirlwalking.1717@gmail.com and the link to the document is down below. You will have to request edit access.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KRi5Roe_JWuO6EHGfgIHlETbRHFp_rnykf1EptXeFek/edit

Disclaimer: I don’t know if this will help any, but we can try.

Edit: anyone reading this now, feel free to read the letter, but it has been finished and sent off.

Riverdale Heathers Music Lyric Changes PSA

PEOPLE PLEASE STOP COMPLAINING ABOUT THE LYRIC CHANGES. I do not like it, no one does, but they had to do it. TV censorship makes them censor a lot of words, (why they had to censor dick when they said it on Glee multiple times, idk, might just be a network thing) so they used the versions form the high school show, but then also modified those a little for some of them to make an in between version. They don’t really have to censor the actions though, which is why the whole thing with Toni happened. (Y’all know what I’m talking about, I just don’t want to acknowledge it because it’s even more uncomfortable than in the original show and we didn’t even have the superb vocals to back it up) Clearly about half of the people with Riverdale have never heard of TV censorship. It’s the same reason that they had to change some of it last year. The episode had two okay to good moments, the rest sucked, but stop complaining about lyric changes. They had to be made to be able to air the episode. Also extra PSA to add to the end: for all you Riverdale folks who LOVED the episode, please get yourself some standards and listen to the original soundtrack. Barrett Wilbert Weed and the rest of the cast are so incredibly talented, and it’s AMAZING.

So I’m gonna go cleanse my ears after Riverdale Heathers because there were only two songs that were pretty good. Seventeen was good and then Fight For Me was decent. The rest is trash.