Stilljewish

Journal Community
Name:	Stilljewish
Date(s):	July 2008 - July 2010 on livejournal; August 2010 - August 2017
Moderator:	batdina, kass
Founder:	batdina, chopchica
Type:
Fandom:
URL:	stilljewish on livejournal stilljewish on dreamwidth
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Stilljewish is a livejournal community founded in July of 2008. It relaunched on dreamwidth in August of 2010.

Stilljewish 1.0 -- on livejournal

The original comm described itself in this way:

Stilljewish is a space for fannish Jews and Jewish allies to discuss and share our experiences, both online and in real life. This includes things such as discussion of Jewish characters in books, shows and movies; discussion of how Jews are portrayed in the media; discussion of our favorite holidays or foods; discussion about conversion, child raising, weddings, cooking and other life events; discussion about the antisemitism we see in fandom and in the world, etc. Because we are Jews, we’re sure there will be a lot of discussion.

The community arose out of conversations at Con.Txt in 2008:

One of the things that came up at Con.txt was the issue of creating safe space for fen of colour, Jews, and their allies. I offered to set up a space for Jews...So here is the place (the post) where we can start hammering out some basics for a safe space community for Jewish fen.

In a broader sense, the community can be said to have arisen out of discussions about identity politics in fandom and antisemitism in fandom (see: Judaism and Fandom) which were percolating at that time. The community's name is a reference to a quote from Buffy the Vampire Slayer character Willow Rosenberg, from the Season Three episode "Amends:"

Buffy: "What are you doing for Christmas?"

Willow: "Being Jewish. Remember, people? Not everybody worships Santa."

(Later in the episode:)

Xander: "That's the Christmas spirit."

Willow: "Hello? Still Jewish. Hanukkah spirit, I believe that was."

Membership was open to "anybody who is pro-Jewish." All subjects were considered open for discussion except for Israeli politics; attacks on anyone's form of Jewishness were strictly prohibited.

Conversation flew fast and furious immediately after the founding of the community. After a substantial kerfuffle over discussion of Israel, chopchica (one of the initial co-moderators) stepped down, and after that the community became relatively quiet. In August of 2010, batdina announced that the comm was going to relaunch on dreamwidth.

Stilljewish 2.0 - on dreamwidth

In August of 2010, the comm relaunched on dreamwidth, now moderated by batdina and Kass. The new comm describes itself this way:

This community is a space for fannish Jews and Jewish fans to discuss the intersection of Judaism and fandom in our lives. For now, we're limiting membership in the community to people who fit that description. (If you self-define as a fannish Jew or Jewish fan, you're welcome here. We're not interested in policing the boundaries of either Jewishness or fannishness.)

This should go without saying, but we'll say it anyway: no attacks on anyone else's form(s) of Jewishness or fannishness will be tolerated. There are as many ways to be Jewish and fannish as there are Jews and fans. We're hoping that this comm will attract Jews of every variety and fans of every stripe, and we want to make this a safe place for all of us.

"Safe" doesn't necessarily mean that your views or ideas won't be challenged. We hope that they will! We look forward to all sorts of discussion, and we assume that our conversations here will feature a variety of voices and perspectives. That's not a bug, it's a feature.

Our ground rules are pretty simple. Try to be a mensch. No ad hominem attacks. No antisemitism. Steer clear of racism, homophobia, sexism, ableism, and so on. And try not to leap immediately to defensiveness if other members of the comm perceive any of those things where you do not.

Membership is limited to Jews, and posts are currently locked to community members (at least to begin with; that may change in future, or it may not, depending on how things go.)

The introductory post (which is postdated to 2025 and is not locked) explains the new plan:

In the previous incarnation of this community over on livejournal, there was a flood of conversation when the comm was first founded but then posts and comments petered out. We've given some thought to how to keep the conversation flowing, and here's our plan: during the first year of the comm's existence on dreamwidth, we're going to launch twelve discussion topics, one each month. (A list of those topics follows.)

Y'all are also welcome to start discussion threads at any time; we want to keep discussion flowing, but we don't want to limit conversation to our own ideas of what's worth discussing! If there's something you want to talk about, post away. At the end of the first year we'll evaluate how this has worked and whether we want to maintain the same strategy the following year..

The discussion topics for the first year include "Favorite fictional Jewish characters: tell us who you love, in any fandom at all," "Jews in RPF fandoms: Adam Lambert and beyond," and "Identity politics: (how) do we, as Jewish fans, participate in fannish conversations about privilege and identity?" among others.

See Also

• Eid ka Chand