Yeah I did a thread a while back on Israeli Sesame Street's surprisingly dark joke about Moishe Oofnik and Yom Kippur -- the resident Grouch goes around *refusing* to ask or offer forgiveness to everyone he knows

But it's kind of deeper than it seems

https://twitter.com/arthur_affect/status/1357725076150362114?s=20 https://twitter.com/erinbiba/status/1362218638615453699

Like

Forgiveness is not some kind of magical automatic default reaction you have to being wronged

The idea of Yom Kippur is seeking and offering forgiveness is an *effortful act* that you do *in order to stay in community with each other*

"Because we care about keeping the community together, we will make the effort to get past this issue between us and move forward, whatever it actually takes to do so"

Because -- when Jewish people were an oppressed outnumbered minority -- they had to, to survive

Moishe Oofnik, being a Grouch, does not want to be in community with anyone

The world can fuck off

Which means he doesn't want your forgiveness and he doesn't seek it from you

You are free to come after him as hard as you want for his actual crimes and he against you

That's not, like, a *good* thing

But it's not, in and of itself, sin

A good Jew wouldn't choose to live that way -- if everyone did that Judaism would vanish -- but as not a Jew, but a man (well, a Grouch) fine

It's his right to make that choice

You can respect that

I like that better than Christianity, honestly

Jesus said some nice-sounding shit about how "the community" means EVERYONE in the ENTIRE WORLD, that you should treat any random stranger as your brother or sister

Christians took that lofty sentiment and tried to systematize it

"You HAVE TO forgive people AS SOON AS they harm you, BEFORE they even ask it of you, REGARDLESS of whether they do anything to earn it, and EVEN IF they do not reciprocally forgive you"

Well that's super hardcore

It sounds very admirable indeed

It's fucking stupid though

Nobody actually fucking does that

Christians most of all

It makes every Christian in the world an obnoxious hypocrite as soon as they say it

If they actually did that they wouldn't fucking be alive

And in practice, culturally dominant Christians in positions of power are vindictive and petty as fuck, unapologetically so, as much as anyone else in any position of power if not moreso

The hypocrisy flows from their lips effortlessly even as they tirelessly pursue their debts

(Best thing ever was Jena Malone in Saved! screaming "I am FILLED with Christ's love!" while violently shoving another girl down into the sidewalk

Extremely accurate observation of Christian high school life)

And, as tiresomely repeatedly observed, Christians only seem to really bring up the idea of unconditional forgiveness and *push* it so that you have actually *do* it when it's them needing forgiveness

Or someone else who reminds them of themselves

David Brooks, who as far as I know does not generally support universal debt jubilee, prison abolition, squatters' rights, etc. and whom I'm pretty sure does keep track of various petty journo grudges, going off on how Christianity teaches that morality is an "inverse process"

That Christianity "keeps no record of wrongs" and that in fact someone who's done a bad thing and overcome it is a *better person* in a Christian framework than someone who didn't initially sin

All because some douchebag lost his Harvard admission for making racist posts on FB