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Are You an #AppallingYoungJew?

A version of this article originally appeared in New Voices.

This week, social media users witnessed a beautiful onslaught of snark and defiance from the Jewish millennial corner of the Twitterverse.

Young Jews took to Twitter appalled by a swiftly deleted tweet – with a quote loosely attributed to Israeli MK Michael Oren suggesting their views are appalling.

Image by twitter

“The opinions of young #american #jews are appalling. They need the diversity here in #Israel,” the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations tweeted, tagging Michael Oren.

The tweet wasn’t a direct quote from Oren.

It was “a paraphrased conflation of ideas related to polling data on the opinions of a younger cohort of American Jews,” said Conference of Presidents Director of Strategic Initiatives Sam Schear. The tweet was inspired by a panel with Michael Oren, writer Yossi Klein Halevi, and Professor Shlomo Avineri on how the 2017 anniversaries of the Balfour Declaration, the UN Partition Plan, and the Six Day War are understood by modern Israelis and diaspora Jews.

“In these circumstances, we decided to remove the tweet,” Schear said, but not before it resulted in an epically sassy Jewish millennial hashtag: #appallingyoungjew.

Twitter users tacked this label to their 140-character articulations of young Jewish American angst over their image in the Jewish community. These tweets say, “Yes, we’re young. Yes, we’re diverse and critical of Israel. And, yes, we’re still proud, strongly identified Jews.”

Here are 7 deliciously chutzpadik tweets from #appallingyoungjews:

There are the I’m-hella-Jewish-so-fight-me tweets:

The haters-gonna-hate tweets:

And, last but not least, the stop-ragging-on-millennials-already tweets:

Are you an #AppallingYoungJew? Apply today to join the Forward’s Scribe community.

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