As a leftist Jew who believes strongly in the cause of dignity and freedom for the Palestinian people, and that Israel has abused them, I am begging fellow leftists to understand that real life is not a comic book. A government being âthe bad guyâ in a situation does not automatically make anyone who opposes it âthe good guyâ.
Hamas denies the Holocaust. Hamas disseminates the Protocols of the Elders of Zionâthe conspiracy theory it paints is what they mean by âZionistâ. Hamas forbids foreign aid educators from teaching human rights to Palestinians, and claims that even teaching that the Holocaust happened is a war crime. Hamas has written the aim of annihilating Israel (the country and its people) into its charterâthe mass slaughter and violent expulsion of 7 million Jews from the land is written into its laws.
There is no crime any state could ever do that would justify any of that; there is no act of state repression that could ever make it acceptable to side with the organization spreading Nazi pamphlets and Holocaust denial.
Oppose Bibi Netanyahu. Oppose Israelâs far-right, authoritarian government. Oppose Likudâs policies. Oppose its violence against Palestinian civilians. That isnât antisemitic. But Hamas isâverifiably, beyond a shadow of a doubt, to its coreâantisemitic. Its portrayal of Israeli Jews as blood-thirsty, child-killing master manipulators that control international media and finance is antisemitic. Its insistence that Palestinian freedom necessitates the death & expulsion of Jews from the land is antisemitic. Its redefinition of âZionismâ as a pejorative to mean genocidal Jewish/Israeli Supremacy is antisemitic.
Supporting the Palestinian people in their plight is a noble and loving goal; please never stop that. But do not let Hamas co-opt that into excusing or denying their rampant antisemitism and war crimes.
With dagger held unsheathed, blade pointing in its side'
Upon learning of Lae'zel, the terrible local Gorgon that occupied crumbled ancient ruins somewhere out in the country, Shadowheart had been set on killing her and turning in her head for the reward. She was blind, after all, and likely would be unaffected by the monster's terrible curse.
But when Shadowheart becomes prey herself, hunted by a band of brigands crueler and greedier than her and after the same prize, she is fated to a brutal mauling. Unknowingly she flees straight into the Gorgon's den, and when Lae'zel locks eyes with the criminals they seize, turning to stone within seconds, allowing Shadowheart the chance to slip away and hide. With Lae'zel distracted, she has the perfect opportunity to ambush the monster; what she does not expect is the sound of the tall, rippling form of Lae'zel slithering around the corner of a ruined column to confront her.
Shadowheart can hear its raspy breathing, can feel the coolness from the way its shadow blocks the sun as it towers above, only feet from her; she grips the pitiful knife in her sweaty palm and prepares to strike as close to the neck as she can get. All she needs to do is cut off its head, and then she was rich.
Her grip on the dagger tightens and her blood runs icy when the creature cornering her utters a single phrase in its gritty, underused voice.
"Are you injured?" it croaks coldly.
Shadowheart hesitates. Turns out her theory was correct; though she can feel the Gorgon's molten gold eyes bearing into her own, her body remains soft, alive. She tests her lungs, and fresh air flows in through her nose. She is alive.
'I'd been set upon by a predator
It was just looking for a meal, I saw ribs and fearful eyes'
Lae'zel is not stupid; she's been hunted day and night for years now, but nobody has ever gotten close enough to harm her.
Until Shadowheart.
She cannot immediately deduce Shadowheart's original intentions, for all she appeared to be was a helpless blind girl pursued by rapists and murderers. However, her disability proved itself a threat to Lae'zel; she can get close, too close. Close enough to land a deadly blow if Lae'zel is caught unawares.
So she decides to kill her. Eliminate such a threat once and for all, and Lae'zel can go back to her cold, isolated life in the ruins.
It had not been long since Lae'zel sent her away, letting her leave freely if she promised not to try anything stupid. That was her first mistake: showing her mercy. Shadowheart took this opportunity and fled, battered and exhausted. She'd be slow, easy prey.
She finds the girl in the evening, struggling through a waist-high grassy field. She must have lost the path at some point and failed to find it again. The tall foliage made the perfect cover for a creature like Lae'zel, who could easily weave her way through the blades and take her prey by surprise. As she draws nearer, the scent of copper fills the air. Peeking over the grass she can see that Shadowheart is struggling for a multitude of reasons; the thick grasses slow her down, yes, but she is more slowed by the deep gash in her side, blood bubbling out between her fingers as she attempts and fails to staunch the flow.
Lae'zel may be a monster, but she is more honorable than kicking a creature while it's down. She watched the ailing girl for a few moments longer, gauging how far she might make it. She only gets a few dozen more steps in before she crashes to the ground, uttering a pained groan before going still and quiet. Lae'zel quickly scans the area for any other life. Satisfied by the silence, Lae'zel darts forward and peers down at Shadowheart tangled in the grass, covered in smears of dirt and dried blood. She seems much less threatening in this state, and the Gorgon cannot help but give in to her piqued curiosity; she scoops the white-haired woman up and roughly tosses her over her shoulder, sliding effortlessly through the field once she finds a useable path that leads toward her temple.
Shadowheart is all but dumped on the dusty floor to wait there until she regains consciousness. Then, she will be Lae'zel's to do with whatever she pleases.
'What is it that stays my hand now?
With so much misery that I could mercifully put ends to
For that animal I let slink off into the undergrowth, unscathed
Do I not fear death, but just pretend to?'
Shadowheart is not a prisoner, Lae'zel insists. She is a merely a guest who is not allowed to leave until she recovers. This leaves her with plenty of time to plot and scheme, to plan the slaughter of this demon and be done with it. But night after night, she lies awake sleepless, unable to bring herself to action. She cannot bring herself to kill the creature who likely saved her life, who continues to let her stay in its home and asks nothing in return.
Maybe she plans to wait until Shadowheart is healthy again to kill and eat her. She doesn't know. Instead of worrying over it, she talks.
She mostly talks to herself for the first few days. When Lae'zel is aroundâusually only to check that Shadowheart had not tried escaping for the third timeâshe says little to nothing; her vocabulary seems to consist primarily of grunts and sighs and hissing. A lot of hissing, especially when Shadowheart accidentally shifts too close.
She comments on the Gorgon's collection of swords one night as she is slithering away into the darkness. It's a desperate grab at any kind of communication, and Shadowheart knows she's struck gold when she hears Lae'zel halt, then turn a fraction in the dirt.
"You wish to know of my swords?" she whispers, her tone suspicious with the barest hint of surprise.
Shadowheart nods all too eagerly, and she spends the rest of the night listening to Lae'zel tell the stories of nearly each and every one. Some she left out; whether they were too painful a memory or an insignificant one, Shadowheart did not know. But she listened.
And then the person behind the monster began to show through. Shadowheart would garner little bits and pieces of her history throughout the stories. She pointed to the jagged scar running down her right shoulder blade and told the tale of a clever thief who used mirrors to try and outsmart her. He'd managed to sneak up behind her and land a brutal slash down her back, but it wasn't enough to kill her. She puffed with pride as she regaled how she twisted and snapped him up by the throat with her injured arm, and grinned wickedly as his face froze in terror, the expression forever carved into stone.
She also tells stories of recent onslaughts of attacks, some by targeted monster hunters and others who happened to wander into her domain and wanted what she had for themselves, and what she had admittedly wasn't much. Shadowheart learns, through glimpses into Lae'zel's past, what a tortured life she's lived. She almost wonders if killing her would be a mercy, but shakes the thought away as Lae'zel dives into another tale centered around a bejeweled dagger. Then another, this time a hunter's bow.
By the time she is telling the story of the ogre and his crystalline club, Shadowheart is drifting into sleep.
'For it was starving, it was hungry
But had eyes too close to let me'
For a very long time, Lae'zel killed anyone that walked into her temple, whether she meant to or not. Innocent, curious children and poor lost elders were not even spared, and over time her heart grew cold and hardened from it. She learned to accept that she would be alone until her final day, and made surprisingly easy peace with that fact.
But then Shadowheart came into the picture; an equally as lonely annoying little farm girl with an overambitious sense of adventure, given her particular limitations. She intrigued and infuriated Lae'zel to no end. Why did she keep her up into the late hours of the night, when her time could be better spent curled into some cold corner, fighting for any scrap of rest? Why did she return day after day, sometimes staying away for as long as a week at a time, yet always comes back? It distressed Lae'zel greatly how empty and chilled the temple felt without Shadowheart's presence when only a month ago it would not have bothered her. She may have even preferred it. But now the wind whistles too loudly as it tears through the columns, the echoes of crumbling structures startle her when she is too deep in her head. It is driving her mad.
She watches the sun during the day and the moon during her sleepless nights, both in an endless rotation but never touching. How she longs for them to touch. The thought disgusts her, but she dimly wonders when Shadowheart will come back anyway.
'If you were easy to kill, I would have done it already'
Some days, when thoughts of Shadowheart torment Lae'zel to no end, she once more considers killing the girl. Out of sight, out of mind. But the image of Shadowheart bleeding, choking, dying by her hand tortures her far worse than even the tenderest of desires.
'Plagued by phantom noises
That that skeletal beast was haunting all my steps'
During the first few nights of Shadowheart's recovery, when she was delirious with pain and sweating with fever, she thought she could hear the heavy drag of a serpentine body around every wall and column. Her heart would race with panic while her body remained sluggish and weak, trapping her in place. If she were to be Lae'zel's prey, there was nothing she could have done to stop it.
Even after some flimsy semblance of trust had been established, both women slept with daggers under their bedding for some time.
'Questioning all my choices
With that dagger held unsheathed, I felt sick at my contempt'
Even after her body recovered, Shadowheart suffered. She struggled with the guilt of her choices; she could have killed Lae'zel as she intended to and save hundreds of travelers from a stony demise. But as she comes to learn, it is not Lae'zel who is the monster. It is humans.
For as long as Lae'zel has existed in her current form, she's been hunted. A target was planted firmly on her back the moment this terrible curse was inflicted upon her. She refuses to share her origin story, how she came to be this way, and Shadowheart does not press. Instead, a thick, sickening lump of empathy, remorse and fury lodges itself in her throat and sticks fast.
Every time she sees Lae'zel, with every new bit of information she learns, the lump grows and it chokes her further.
'For you were lonely, you were like me
Like some outside force had sent me
If I was easy to kill, you would have done it already'
Lae'zel's loneliness is not as apparent as Shadowheart's. She hides hers well, whereas Shadowheart's desperation for connection shows more plainly, and that scared Lae'zel. She kept her distance, only checking on the girl once a day at first, but over time Shadowheart's tendency to chatter away in that clipped, sarcastic tone of hers wore down Lae'zel's walls. The way she asked questions drew her in. Unbeknownst to Shadowheart, the monster's heart ached in very much the same way as her human one did.
Shadowheart gave up on killing Lae'zel a long while ago. She kept their visits a tightly bound secret; it wasn't as if anyone would notice she was missing anyway. Even without her eyesight, by now her feet carried her to the temple through memory alone.
'You are at my feet, we're by the fire
You're a gentle beast and I'm alive
You are at my feet, we're by the fire
You're a gentle, purring beast and I'm alive
You are at my feet, we're by the fire
You're a healthy, gentle, purring beast and I'm alive'
As Shadowheart slowly peels back Lae'zel's layers, she finds something she doesn't expect: a highly intelligent, fiercely loyal and passionate companion. She became somewhat protective over Shadowheart in the weeks they grew closer, threatening to hunt down and slay anyone who even mildly inconvenienced her. Underneath Lae'zel's pointed scales, sharp teeth and head full of writhing snakes is a women starved of loved yet too prideful to admit it.
One night, as Shadowheart reclined by the fire with Lae'zel curled next to her, she studied the beastly woman she harbored a thinly-veiled affection for. The serpents sprouting from the Gorgon's scalp formed a languid pile of warm bodies in Shadowheart's lap while her head rested atop a pillowy thigh. She found it interesting and endearing how the snakes mirrored Lae'zel's condition. When she slept, they slept. When she was ill or injured, so were they. They showed excitement and thrill in their own way when Lae'zel discussed a topic she was passionate about. They even seemed to like Shadowheart.
Past her broad shoulders, the wiry expanse of her body was cradled comfortably by her serpent half, and Shadowheart wondered with some shame whether she could fit in there next to her. She stroked a finger along the length of a dozing snake's head and smiled to herself when its strange reptile eyelids fluttered. Lae'zel twitched and muttered in her sleep, and Shadowheart's heart clenched painfully at the implications of this kind of trust. She couldn't hope for something more than this.
She brushed her fingers along Lae'zel's long bony ones where they rested palm down against her thigh, and froze when she shifted. Groaning softly, Lae'zel's clawed fingers unconsciously wrapped themselves around Shadowheart's smaller, chubbier ones, gentle with her even in sleep.
Shadowheart's breath staggered and caught in her chest, and considered letting herself hope after all.
i think it's fine to show up a little buzzed for work, but only if it's the kind of work that doesn't require the full use of your faculties. like if all you do all day is routine coronary angioplasties, or you're just performing the same route motions on a ballistics assembly line, fine! show up with a flask on your hip and take sips in your down time. but if you're running the griddle at waffle house you need to sober the fuck up and lock the fuck in.
the conservative conspiracy theorist addiction to ai is very funny. "I'm not like you sheeple, I get all my info from a trusted source- a robot that is ran by the richest people on planet earth"
one of the most fucked up aspects of being an adult is really how life-goes-on everything is. like you can be dealing with the most fucked up trauma-drama-grief and still have to sleep and eat food to survive and like. poop. pooping while you're really sad shouldn't be a thing but it is. we don't have a say in the matter. life goes on
Some antizionist Jews argue constantly that Israel doesnât have to be part of Judaism, yet they make their entire Judaism about Israel. Every holiday has to be an apology for Israel. Their presence in Jewish spaces has to be so they can bring up Israel. Every conversation where they mention their Jewishness is so they can talk about Israel.
In Judaism joy is the supreme religious emotion. Here we are, in a world filled with beauty. Every breath we breathe is the spirit of God within us. Around us is the love that moves the sun and all the stars. We are here because someone wanted us to be. The soul that celebrates, sings.
Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, Studies in Spirituality, p. 258
Itâs so weird to me that so many Christians act like Judaism is depressing and something that people need to escape from.
Like, I know thatâs what yâall want to MAKE it to pressure us out of it, but weâve always known that joy is a form of resistance.
Judaism, as a practice, exists to sensitize us to both the goodness of reality, so we feel joy and gratitude and awed tenderness, and to the brokenness of reality, so we can heal it and finish the work of creation. And the guiding star even there is joy and awe and wonder.
I think at least for most Christians it's not a conscious wanting to make Judaism something people have to escape from, I think it's a combination of projection (because Christianity *is* something lots of people want to escape from, at least white, European Christianity) and the fact that the only things the US school system, and I suspect lots of European school systems, teaches us about Judaism is about the Holocaust and other persecution. (I understand that said persecution is Christians trying to make Judaism something bad to be escaped from by making it miserable/deadly to exist as a Jewish person, but I don't think antisemites are aware of anything other than hating people because they're different in this specific way)
I was raised Christian and have been putting myself into spaces designed to help broaden my understanding of Jewish culture, and I was honestly surprised by your statement that it's about joy. I think perhaps this is one of those things that doesn't get talked about to outsiders, possibly because to those in the Jewish community it is so obvious/well known?
Speaking personally? Itâs not that itâs not talked about to outsiders, itâs that itâs not always talked about explicitly.
So, like... if you follow a bunch of jumblr bloggers and notice us going absolutely feral passing around some pictures of pomegranates? Thatâs Jewish joy. When you see our pictures of sukkot and chanukiyot and shabbat tables? Thatâs Jewish joy. Delightedly âyes-and-ingâ each other about speculative halacha? Thatâs Jewish joy.
More privately, part of our morning daily liturgy -something that, in many communities, is part of the âat home and waking upâ daily prayer routine as opposed to the âin synagogue and functionalâ daily prayer routine (although itâs usually still said in shul, at least in the spaces Iâm familiar with) is called âNissim BâChol Yomâ - (literally âMiracles in Every Dayâ), in which we express gratitude and wonder at the mundanities that theoretically shape our existence. Also in that âat home and waking upâ section are a prayer called âElohai Nâshamaâ in which we express gratitude for our souls, and âElohai Nâtzorâ (also said after using the restroom) in which we express awe at how wonderful it is that the human body works.
And to take that further, we have prayers of joy and wonder for surviving dangerous situations, but also for seeing mountains for the first time [ever/in a while] or the ocean or particularly beautiful people. There is so much joy and awe and wonder for the amazing world we live in, and that we are part of it, and it spills into so much of what we do.
When weâre jumping around going âYES AND THAT PERSON/TRADITION IS JEWISHâ -thatâs not âhey, notice usâ (okay, itâs sometimes âhey, notice usâ or âhey! please remember we existâ); itâs something we do in our own spaces too, and itâs an expression of joy -communal responsibility means that we arenât just shamed by each otherâs failings, but that we reflect the glow of each otherâs successes.
Ever been in a shul during a celebration, when we reach a lull and pelt the celebrants with candy while singing congratulations to them at the top of our lungs? Or watched the dancing spill out into the street as a community welcomes a new Torah? Heard the mood shift during the High Holy Days as we begin Ki Anu Amecha? Seen the look on a childâs face on their first day of school when you give them a honeystick and then start the lesson?
I had a rabbi growing up who dressed as Elmo for Purim every year so small children wouldnât be frightened by all the noise going on when we boo Haman, and every year, especially as it got late, he wound up with a whole bunch of children arrayed around him while he/the chazzan/various other congregants read the megillah; often holding a small child and pointing things out. In the synagogue I currently belong to, the Hokey Pokey is part of the Simchat Torah dance lineup so that even the smallest, least Jewishly-knowledgeable children will have something they are confident that they know and can participate in wholeheartedly. My bânai mitzvah class (I teach Sunday school) will launch into the Torah service at the top of their lungs with the slightest provocation because they think itâs fun to sing.
I wouldnât say that itâs about joy -not everything in Judaism is joyful, and something does not become less Jewish for not being joyous. And there is an unfortunate reality that often, when there is joy, itâs shaded together with sorrow or defiance. The broken glass at weddings, the spilled drops at the seder, the counting of the Omer, because we have so many things to never forget.
And beyond that there is so much longing written into Judaism. So many what-ifs. So many places where too many died. So many places where people still do. So many somedays and maybes. Musaf. Leshanah HaBaah. The way many people will fall silent near the end of Birkat HaMazon. And so much of that is hopeful, but at the same time, so much of it still commemorates tragedy.
But... well. Itâs not that we donât talk about our joy. We do. A lot. But I suspect itâs harder to immediately comprehend and recognize for people who want to learn but donât have the cultural context to do so. And I feel like portraying us as joyless and miserable and archaic and so caught up by the burden of historical suffering (not of our own making, for the more charitably minded) that we can and never will be free of it even if we want to (but we donât want to because thatâs how we manipulate people, for the particularly hostilely minded) is... a very efficient way to dehumanize us? Because people, writ large, experience joy. Experience a broad range of human emotions. So if âthose peopleâ donât? Well... thereâs probably something wrong with âthem.â Or at the very least weird about âthem.â To acknowledge our joy means to acknowledge that weâre people. That weâre still here, that weâre surviving, that weâre continuing to grow and change.
And there are a lot of people who are very threatened by that idea. Not just our joy, of course -this is a conversation Iâve had before with friends of other minority backgrounds. And on top of that... trauma can sell, and if you can convince the intended audience that it wasnât really that bad or give them a hero fantasy where they wouldâve helped, it can sell really well. Let them say âit couldâve happened to meâ and clutch their pearls, because they didnât quite empathize before. Let them walk away able to sleep soundly, secure that it wouldnâtâve been them as the victim, and if it had, someone wouldâve come to the rescue, because someone always does, because these are stories, not people. Let them sleep soundly, having not even considered that they wouldâve been the bad guys because those are characters and they know better.
And when all you know of a people is their pain, and you learn to define them by it, it becomes very difficult to see that thatâs not necessarily how they see or define themselves.
I do think there is something to the idea that we don't talk about our joy to non-Jews--or at least, we don't go out of our way to do so, and it's tied directly into the ways Judaism is different from what people from Western, and especially American, culture think of when they hear "religion."
Christianity is a universalist religion. Like other universalist religions, a central tenant of Christianity is that it's for everyone; the good things about it aren't just good for Christians, they're good for everyone. Anyone who becomes Christian, or becomes more Christian, will be better off for it. And if you have access to something that could make everybody's lives better, and you keep it to yourself, that's pretty selfish, isn't it?
So a Christianity that is about joy (or whose followers believe it's about joy, if you want to be cynical about it) will look, to a large extent, like Christians telling non-Christians how joyful their lives are.
Judaism is an ethnoreligion. It's specifically for us. Not because we think other people aren't good enough for Judaism, or any nonsense like that, but because the things that make Judaism wonderful and beautiful and joyful are tied to our culture and our community and our history, and simply wouldn't have the same effect for people who don't have that culture and history.
(That, incidentally, is why the Jewish conversion process is so long and involved. Because it's not just about accepting our religious worldview, it's about becoming so completely a part of the Jewish community that the convert takes our culture and our history as their own.)
So there is no push to tell non-Jews about Jewish joy. And if it goes into proselytizing--to communicating to non-Jews that their lives aren't complete unless they become Jewish--then it's actively against Jewish values.
Which does not in any way mean that we won't tell you about the joyful parts of Judaism if you ask; Jews love explaining things.
But if you're primarily interacting with Jews passively--say, by following a bunch of Jumblr blogs--then, even aside from all the joy you'll miss because it happens in synagogues or more private chats, there's a lot you probably won't understand because we aren't explaining it unless someone asks, and joy looks different in different cultures.
Jewish pain, meanwhile, we very much want to tell non-Jews about.
Because quite a lot of Jewish pain is caused by non-Jews, and the only way it will ever stop is if the non-Jews realize that they are hurting us, care that they are hurting us, and stop hurting us.
In the aftermath of the final battle at Baldur's Gate, Zevlor is consumed by grief for his fallen friends and comrades. The Hellrider must take his vengeance.
Armed with the Everburn Blade Tav gifted him, the paladin has vowed to punish every single soul responsible for the demise of Elturelian tieflings.
And the tiefling trio x class screen is done! Click to see Rolan and Dammon.
I hate you "Abrahamic", I hate you "Judeo-Christian", I hate you Protestant interpretations being the academic standard, I hate you "BC/AD", I hate you "X amount of years before Chr*st", I hate you academic supercessionism, I hate you ignoring Jewish translations and interpretations, I hate you "The Bible", I hate you making sweeping statements about Judaism even though you have no authority to, I hate you "expert in religion", I hate you casual academic antisemitism.
The reason why God was so involved in human affairs a long time ago but then noped out after Jesus is because God is going through the same motions for every animal species: making a covenant, giving commandments, and sending down his own child to die in the form of that species. I know this because I felt an odd urge to swallow a mouse yesterday and, when I questioned it, I received a vision from God saying that He was on mice right now, and the mouse I was about to swallow was the mouse-equivalent of Jonah. Tomorrow I'm supposed to spit him out in a den of sinful mice so that he can squeak to word of God at them. I wish that little guy the best.
