ashkenazi x sephardi sapphics <33
watercolor, colored pencil, ink, marker, gel pen
(hebrew text says the words for love in ladino, hebrew, and yiddish! - amor, ahava, libe)

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祝日 / Permanent Vacation

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Today's Document

JBB: An Artblog!
YOU ARE THE REASON

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Claire Keane
Not today Justin

if i look back, i am lost
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@gators-and-graph-paper
ashkenazi x sephardi sapphics <33
watercolor, colored pencil, ink, marker, gel pen
(hebrew text says the words for love in ladino, hebrew, and yiddish! - amor, ahava, libe)
yidgirl, listen to me. your coarse hair belongs to your mother and her mother and her mother.
your monobrow that boys made you feel alien for in school is an heirloom from the first of your foremothers forced into exile.
your slow metabolism and the weight you carry in your hips and belly are traits inherited from those who nearly starved.
your nose in profile is like the rock of gibraltar.
your crooked smile is the reef that nazi u-boats run aground on.
don’t augment your bodies so you might assimilate more easily. be ugly to them if you must. but your being is undeniable and beautiful.
i love you and i will always defend you.
my yidden transmascs, listen to me. the unrest in your body is a prayer of protection from your grandfather’s grandfather’s father.
the furrow in your brow as you linger in the hall, uncertain of which side of the mechitza is yours, is a mirror of your forefather’s, his fingers worrying his patchy beard and fretting at his too-long sleeves.
your voice cracking in musaf is evidence of things not yet to be, destinies not yet written. yet, there is time still, for you are written here.
the way your nose is tugged down by your lips when you laugh is how we tenderly remove the sheets from our mirrors after shiva concludes. the dead are not gone, never gone, but they will not scorn you as you seek to look upon yourself.
the animal of your body paces in anticipation, for fear of the next blow. may you trust it better than anyone before you, may it receive you kindly as it grows taut and wild, and as familiar as if it were your first meeting.
what kind of man will you be, all told? a knightly lion? a giant killer like david, an angel tussler like yaakov? will you be like yosef, will you be envied for your gentleness and scorned for your clear-sight? you will wear the armor of a general, or a coat of fine colors, or the pure garb of a kohen.
when a zadie chases you down and asks you to make a minyan, go. when a bubbe chases you out of the kitchen to go sit with the fathers and cousins and uncles, you may go. or, you may stay, to help her make stock and knead challah.
do not deform your proud back so they may not have to look at you, and be unnerved. don’t forget your kippah before you go, and and do kiss the mezuzah as you pass through the door.
i love you and i will always defend you.
my yidden transfems, listen to me. the cry in your heart that leaps to your throat and compels you to say “i would rather become a new woman than be stranded to live as the same man” is the the cry of ruth to naomi, begging that she walk with her forever, to be one people and to know one Gd.
when you are among women and you do not stay your tongue, when you speak what is true you are adding your own thread to the tapestry of tales girls tell to one another when night falls, and we feel bold. don’t be afraid.
when the undeniable hunger to be known draws your gaze across the mechitza, where you know you should not look, shut your eyes and dare to imagine what it is like to be there instead of here.
the strong line of your shoulders is the polished wood of a harp your foremother played as a song of Hashem, her nimble fingers leaping from string to string like a hind in a dappled wood.
rummaging through boxes of tarnished judaica, seek a pair of fine earrings, find a mirror and hold them up. do they suit you? do you dare to wonder if you might wear them as well as your mother, and her mother, and her mother before?
a chasid approaches you and asks you if you want to wrap tefillin today. do you? is it a sense of affection for Gd’s law, or ritual, or a sense of obligation that gnaws at you? ask yourself this kindly, without moral judgement.
know that the way you may shrink from fact of the dark bristle at your cheeks, the heaviness of your hair, the thickness of your fingers is a shame known to all the women come before, their chafing laughter brandished as a burning iron to frighten and deny them the right they had to be women so brash and unyielding. affirm yourself that right they could not for themselves.
when shabbos approaches, when the bride and her procession are just down the street, ask that you may greet her. draw the match, light the wicks, dousing the wood with a flick of your hand. cup your hands over the flame like you are drawing water into your palms, bring this gentle water to your eyes, may it kiss your skin with its cool touch.
if you find a timbrel, give it a shake. the song of your foremothers is there, of miriam and all the women leading us from from bondage— can you hear it? if you find yourself thirsty, lost in the barren wilderness— and trust that, someday, you will— do not despair. listen. listen for the sound of running water that only you know how to summon.
be meek before Gd, but never a man. be shrill or shrewish or kind or mean, but do not be ashamed.
i love you and i will always defend you.
I’ve been thinking a lot about compassion in Judaism, and being kind. In that light, I would like everyone to know that my current favorite Jewish supernatural headcanon is that, instead of driving vampires away with crosses or stakes through the heart, we say the Mourner’s Kaddish for them. I mean, that’s just so adorable. You see this threatening undead creature, and instead of yelling murder, you feel bad for them, and you mourn for them. Imagine being a vampire at the receiving end of that, having been chased away for years and years and told you’re a monster when you come across someone who sees you and your existence and accepts that you’re in a pretty bad place and offers help in the best way they can. I’m actually tearing up about this a little. If someone adds to this post I’ll love them forever.
It doesn’t work for zombies.
This is one of the hardest things she learns, in the business. Saying the Mourner’s Kaddish will slow a vampire, to stare at you with wide shocked eyes (and once, memorably, to weep blood-tinged tears), unable or unwilling to lift a hand against you. It will calm a dybbuk, enough to make it stop whatever destruction it’s begun, and almost always enough to start a conversation about why it clings so desperately to the world of the living, what it’s left undone, how it can be freed to move on. You have died, the Kaddish says, and we mourn you as we would mourn our own dead, because someone must.
But there is no soul and no mind left in a zombie, no vestige of the self it once was, nothing left for the Kaddish to speak to.
She says it anyway, with every head-shot, with every flung grenade.
Not because she still hopes one might hear her, but because they are dead, and the dead should be mourned.
wasnt jkr the guy who got assassinated by the president? why is he bad?
i. ive been thinking about how to reply to this for like ten minutes. i can’t even add anything. it’s already perfect .
tobytobytoby.csp
Why would I marry a man for money when I can literally marry a man to only have to wait an hour between meat and milk?
Fun fact, I have a not-exactly-relative (she’s related to my cousin on the side not related to me) who always said she was going to marry a Dutch guy in order to only wait 1 hour.
She did indeed marry a Dutch guy.
Before they met, he had randomly taken it upon himself to wait 6 hours for some insane reason.
Every male Conservative rabbi: Shabbat shalom, everyone! My name is David, Aaron, Jacob, or Jonathan. I have a neatly-trimmed beard and wear glasses, and you can tell I’m fun because I’m wearing colorful socks and a knitted kippah! Please join us for Musical Havdalah this week, where I’ll be playing guitar/hand drums/tambourine along with my Jewish dad band!
@ everyone tagging this with some variation of “you’re right but you shouldn’t say it,” you all are COWARDS and Every Male Liberal Rabbi is going to play Kol Ha Olam Kulo to remind you that הָעִיקָר לֹא לְפַחֵד כְּלַל
first he’s going to lead us in a niggun, so once you’ve become accustomed to the melody, feel free to join him in song
i don’t know how to explain to my non-jewish audience what it means that two torah scrolls were destroyed in an arson attack but what i can tell you is that during the los angeles wildfires, three staff at the synagogue in pasadena made 4+ trips each back into the building to rescue torah scrolls while the fire was close enough that ashes were falling in the parking lot.
what i can tell you is that we have a holiday once a year where we hold the scrolls and hug them and dance around them. what i can tell you is that they are written with love by hand by trained scribes who take exquisite care to make sure each word, each letter, is perfect. when we read from them we do not touch the parchment directly so that it won’t be harmed by the oils from our fingers.
we make beautiful clothing for our torah scrolls, embroidered cloth coverings and shining worked metal crowns to sit atop them or carved wooden cases plated with gold and silver. the torah is to us the words of the living God, the tree of life, the record of who are and where we’re going, and the torah scroll is our most holy ritual object.
the torah scroll never touches the floor. if it is dropped accidentally, everyone in the room must fast for forty days in mourning. the desecration of a torah scroll is the utmost level of desecration that can be done to a jewish community, short of killing its members. nazis burnt and destroyed torah scrolls as part of their campaign of terror against the jewish people even before widescale mass deportations began. in ancient times, the romans wrapped the rabbis who led our community in torah scrolls when they burnt them at the stake.
this past shabbat, in the middle of the night, a synagogue in jackson, mississippi was intentionally set on fire. the library was burnt to ashes and seven torah scrolls were damaged, with two of them completely destroyed.
i don’t know how many books were burnt, how many jewish holy texts and how many stories of jewish life and philosophy and love and resilience flew up with the smoke. i do know that the library was where the congregation had shabbat services and torah and talmud study. it was a sacred space. this is not the first time that people who hate us have destroyed our sacred spaces and our holy texts and our torah scrolls in order to terrorize us. i dearly wish it was the last.
Steve Galloway (American, 1952), Aerogator, 2020. Charcoal and pastel on paper, 19 x 25 in.
American Alligator (Alligator missippiensis), family Alligatoridae, Sheldon Lake State Park, TX, USA
photograph via: Texas Parks & Wildlife Dept.
Eshkachech being sung with cave acoustics??!
i fucking love tumblr on new years i scroll past a glittertext gif wishing me a happy 2002 i scroll past my mutual wishing me a happy 2018 i scroll past a gifset wishing me a happy 2013 i scroll p
happy 1915 everyone!
i for one plan to be more insane about platonic relationships in 2025
happy new year’s eve. let’s be even more insane than that about platonic relationships in 2026.
“Ariel sold her voice for legs just because of a guy“
Meanwhile Ariel with legs;
Ariel already loved the human world long before meeting Eric (you don’t get a collection like hers overnight) and when she finally got a chance to explore it, she took it.
Ursula made it more about Eric than Ariel ever did.
and i mean hell this has been talked about before in more depth than i can, but when people complain about how the ending was changed (the original fairytale does not give ariel a happy ending, she dies trying to protect the prince), i think about the fact that this was written by a gay man in the 1980s
and i think it’s entirely valid (and gives her an extremely strong connection to the queer community) to change the story so she doesn’t die because of who she loves
Triton made escape a necessity. Once someone goes to the point of destroying your possessions in a violent rampage, there is no staying and sticking it out, there’s no safety. (And Ariel, even in Ursula’s lair, gave Triton more thought than he deserved at the time.) Nowhere in the ocean she could go and be safe. Everyone’s always ‘why don’t they just leave :|’ in abusive situations until the leaving is not something they find 100% worthy of approval.
Ursula made it about Eric. She didn’t have to. Ariel had to get out from under Triton’s thumb, it could have been literally anything. Ursula took advantage of a desperate victim for her own agenda. Realistic predatory behavior toward a vulnerable person.
And also
There’s always the ‘Eric didn’t want her until she was silent and meek’ criticism - FIRST OF ALL he started out looking for a woman who wasn’t silent, and second of all what part of the carriage driving bit (or any of her other actions on land) is meek, exactly?
People above have noted the queer subtext. Now, on the subject of Ariel being willing to leave her family, aside from the baseline ‘this is an abusive environment and she was not safe there’ angle I already mentioned, consider: Ariel’s father made it clear he would stop at nothing to crush and tear down who she was and replace it with what he wanted her to be. Now - what demographic might that resonate with? And given Ashman’s involvement, do you think that was a coincidence?
there has been scholarly discussion about the idea that the og little mermaid story, where she dies at the end, was written as a queer allegory.
so taking that into account… there is something very touching about taking this story from hans christian andersen from beyond the grave and being like “things are different now. they get to be happy. she gets to live.”
also in re: “Eric didn’t want her until she was silent and meek” the meek part’s been discussed but can we please talk about how when he first met her he thought she wasn’t the girl with the voice that he was trying to find and was disappointed, but that he slowly fell for her anyway? He’d explicitly wanted Ariel WITH her voice, but came to love her without it.
The bit about Howard Ashman being queer is finally giving me some glimmer of understanding of why the teenaged girl mermaid is named “Ariel.” Because, although the Disney movie single-handedly changed popular perception thereafter, Ariel is a boy’s name. Howard Ashman absolutely knew that.
(Ariel in Shakespeare’s The Tempest also has male pronouns, in case anyone was struggling to remember.)
and the hebrew name ariel/ari-el is male
Learn Ladino
Ladino, otherwise known as Judeo-Spanish or Judeo-Espanyol is a minority language spoken almost exclusively by Sephardic Jews. It’s main influence is Old Castillian Spansih, and anyone who speaks Spanish won’t have too much difficulty in understanding it, but it is also influenced by Hebrew, Turkish, and Arabic. Because it is only spoken by between 60,000 and 400,000 people, resources for learning Ladino are scarce, so I wanted to share the online (free!) resources I’ve found for those who would like to learn
Online Courses
Endangered Languages Online Course - a series of videos that take you through conversational Ladino
A Beginner’s Course to Ladino - I cannot recommend this course enough, the lady who does the videos is so sweet and helpful. There is homework and resources. If you want to learn Ladino, you should definitely check this out
Ladino Language and Song - this course is being run at the moment so if you’re quick you can be a part of the live sessions!
Social Media Accounts
@ladino_hoy on Instagram is a Spanish account aimed at teaching common Ladino phrases
@SephardicBrothe on Twitter often posts resources in Ladino and is definitely worth following to stay updated on new resources coming out
@SarahAroeste on Twitter makes music in Ladino and often posts resources as well
Basics
Getting started - an introduction to grammar and phrases in Ladino
Diksionario de Djudeo-Espanyol a Inglez - an essential resource, this is a PDF Ladino and English dictionary
Ladino Phrasebook - A very basic introduction into greetings in Ladino, helpful for beginners
Kan Ladino - A regular radio programme in Ladino, complete with music and conversation, very helpful
I aim to be posting more about Ladino because it is such a beautiful language, and definitely deserves more recognition, but I hope this can help people get started! Shalom!
This is important. Please reblog so as many Jews can have the option to see these resources!
self-awareness check, list five things you like that aren't media pieces in the tags now ‼️
My goyische friend grew up in Toronto and is of course a diehard Maple Leafs fan. If you’re not a hockey fan, you may be surprised to learn that it is common for hockey teams to play the Hava Nagilah at games, for some reason. When my was probably eight or so, he walked by a backyard party loudly playing Hava Nagilah and thought “oh, they must be Leafs fans.” We absolutely cackled when he recounted this story to me.
this is ADORABLE