tzedek, tzedek tirdof

🌻 28 | reform jew | nb trans man | anti-zionist not anti-Jew Converted: June 7, 2019/4th of Sivan, 5779 🌻

[troybarnesbucky]

the time between pesach and shavuot (aka the omer) is the best because it’s springtime and you start to feel alive again and by the time summer starts to roll around you get to celebrate the torah (because that’s what it’s all about babyyyyy) AND eat cheesecake. and also jewish men have nice beards…. jews stay winning, springtime is Thee Jewish Season.

[iftheshulfits]

It makes me so sad to see people resort to outright bullying and childish behavior because someone is struggling with Jewish tradition or liturgy. It's just mean spirited and shallow in a self serving way. There's so many genuine problems in this world and who is doing Judaism the "right" way (excluding Christian appropriation) is so small.

[ilookattextile]

Matzo bag from my partner’s great great grandmother, probably circa 1900, probably Austria

[wralthsmlth]

I'm a bit late, but anyways.

[dreamingscience]

Happy soon to be pesach everyone

[nonbinaryjudean]

passover seders in art

Lynne Feldman / Yelena Bryksenkova

Siona Benjamin / Oxana Zaika

Malcah Zeldis / Flora Rosefsky

[magnetothemagnificent]

I do think there's something poignant about Artemis II being launched Seder night, in the month that was the first month ever observed by Jews as a people, in the month where Hashem first pointed to the moon and said "הַחֹ֧דֶשׁ הַזֶּ֛ה לָכֶ֖ם רֹ֣אשׁ חֳדָשִׁ֑ים רִאשׁ֥וֹן הוּא֙ לָכֶ֔ם לְחׇדְשֵׁ֖י הַשָּׁנָֽה׃" - "This new moon shall be for you the head of the months, it shall be the first for you of the months of the year." I really hope it'll be successful and that the launch and return goes smoothly for the crewmembers.

[beyonce-knowles-carter]

22 YEARS AGO ON DECEMBER 18, 1998 - DREAMWORKS ANIMATION RELEASED “THE PRINCE OF EGYPT”

Because DreamWorks was concerned about theological accuracy, they decided to call in Biblical scholars, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim theologians, and Arab American leaders to help the film be more accurate and faithful to the original story. After previewing the developing film, all these leaders noted that the studio executives listened and responded to their ideas, and praised the studio for reaching out for comment from outside sources.

The animation team for The Prince of Egypt included 350 artists from 34 different nations. Careful consideration was given to depicting the ethnicities of the ancient Egyptians, Hebrews, and Nubians properly.

Both character design and art direction worked to set a definite distinction between the symmetrical, more angular look of the Egyptians versus the more organic, natural look of the Hebrews and their related environments. The backgrounds department, headed by supervisors Paul Lasaine and Ron Lukas, oversaw a team of artists who were responsible for painting the sets/backdrops from the layouts. Within the film, approximately 934 hand-painted backgrounds were created.

THE PRINCE OF EGYPT (1998)

[reverse-engineering-life]

it’s written in the Torah that we must revisit this masterpiece once a year. For the culture.

Happy Seder.

[dreamingscience]

Happy soon to be pesach everyone

[bobemajses]

Ceiling of the synagogue in Szeged, Hungary.

The emancipation of Hungarian Jews in the 1860s manifested itself in many synagogues built at the end of the century, which constituted sacred centres of the empire. Such were the great synagogues of Budapest, Pozsony/Bratislava (Slovakia), Nagyvárad/Oradea (Romania) or Szeged, whose Moorish/ Oriental style refer to the thousands of years of Jewish history. Or the impressive synagogues of the great Hungarian plains, Hódmezővásárhely, and, above all, Szabadka/Subotica (Serbia), which used the motifs of the “Hungarian Art Nouveau”, devised by the architects of Budapest, for the expression of their identification with the Hungarian nation.

[challahbeloved]

[jantesika]

I am... I am legitimately lightheaded from laughing.

[aguineapigcouldntdothis]

for the last time a b'nei mitzvah does not mean that a 12-13 year old jewish person is an adult in the sense that they should be able to move out, marrying, have kids, and be fully independent. a b'nei mitzvah means that they are now responsible for carrying the spiritual weight of their actions and that they can participate in certain jewish rituals they could not join in on before, but they are still children living under the care and guidance of their parents and they will remain that until theyre legal adults at least.

[vaspider]

pleaaaaaase y'all the process of having a manufacturing facility declared kosher has nothing to do with a rabbi blessing the food

pleaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaase stop

you can literally google what is required

[jessicalprice]

This touches on something I feel like most Christians (cultural and/or practicing) reaaaaallllly don’t get which is that rabbis traditionally aren’t clergy/priests in the Christian sense.

A rabbi isn’t a divinely-ordained speaker-for-God whose primary role is leading worship. Traditionally, rabbis are experts in Jewish law, practice, culture, history, etc.

A rabbi doesn’t have any sacred/spiritual/magical powers to bless things that any other Jew doesn’t have. (And that’s not how blessing things works in Judaism anyway. It’s an expression of gratitude, not a transmutation or instillation of magic divine power.)

The reason a rabbi is involved is to *make sure everything’s being done correctly.* Because they’re an *expert*.

Not to “bless” anything to fill it with godpowers or whatever.

[vaspider]

Yes yes this.

You call in a rabbi to supervise and make sure that a kosher food production facility is set up properly the same way that you call in a master electrician to check and make sure all the lines are set up correctly. The electrician isn't blessing your production line any more than the rabbi is - they're both there to make sure shit is being done right.

[scarletsaphire]

So what you’re saying. Is the rabbi is like kOSHA?

[vaspider]

This made me laugh so hard I wheezed.

[athingofvikings]

#cool stuff#so they're scholars then#is there discourse tho?#or do they all agree on everything? like the ways to do stuff#i guess that depends on how the holy book is written and detailed right?#wait is the book holy?#i will read about this at some point#or find a video or something

@the-chickenshit-oddity, I am DYING from the question of "Is there discourse tho?"

Two thousand years of it, layered on layers.

Each page of those books in that image looks like this:

Here's a breakdown of the page's general structure:

And it continues today. There is an active tradition called "Daf Yomi" (literally "Page of the Day") where a given page of the above books is studied, debated, and analyzed each day; it takes seven years to finish one cycle. (I've seen it called "the world's largest Book Club", and not without reason!)

And is there discourse? You bet. To give one mildly humorous example, there is still not consensus among Jews if the turkey is a kosher bird. One camp argues that it is, because it fulfills the criteria. Another camp says that it isn't, because it is not on the list of kosher birds (which were native to the Levant and surrounding region, and the turkey is native to the Americas). It's been, oh... 400 years? Still ongoing.

[jessfromonline]

Passover Gothic

The grocery store in the goyish neighborhood is overflowing with matzah. Every shelf is full of matzah. There is matzah spilling out of the front door. You ask to buy the matzah. The cashier does not know what matzah is. You gesture towards the shelves, but they stare on, unseeing, and ask you to please finish your transaction.

Your child takes the candle, the feather, and the spoon from your hand. You have not yet lit the candle, but it is glowing anyway. They locate the crumbs with uncanny speed, but they are not where you placed them. Nothing is where you placed it. You just finished cleaning, but the entire house has rearranged itself.

The youngest child begins to sing the Four Questions. As she opens her mouth, the voice of your oldest child rings out. Your oldest child is an adult and hosting her own seder in Queens. No one else notices.

You begin to pour out wine for the plagues. “Dam”, you say. The smell of iron is in the air. All of your guests are staring straight ahead, unblinking, chanting “Dam” repeatedly under their breath. There are no other plagues. There is only blood.

You’re on the third verse of Dayenu. The fifth. The twelfth. The nineteenth? Does Dayenu have this many verses? Have you restarted? It keeps getting faster. You can’t understand the words anymore, but the children continue, their mouths moving at inhuman speed. You speak to tell them that this is enough, but the only word that comes out is “dayenu”. You cannot stop them.

You open the door to let in Elijah. You return to the cup, and it is empty. A smile spreads across your face. The time of the Messiah is upon us. You open your mouth to sing Siman Tov. The words come out backwards, and the cup begins to fill with wine.

The search for the afikomen begins. Quickly, your oldest child returns with half the middle matzah. Then your middle child. Then your youngest child. Each piece is identical, and all the boxes of matzah were empty. Each child demands the sum total of the reward. You look on helplessly.

The Hebrew on the back of the box of macaroons says they are pareve. The English states they are not kosher for Passover. You read them again. The Hebrew on the back of the box of macaroons says they are not kosher for Pesach. The English states they are pareve. You place the macaroons back on the shelf.

Day five of Passover. It feels as if you have not eaten chametz in years. You long for the taste of bread. You go to sleep, praying the days to pass quickly. You wake up. It is day five of Passover.

[d-archive1948-deactivated202303]

It’s easy to forget that everything that’s happening in Palestine is a result of European colonialism, centuries of European antisemitism, and Europe’s inability to answer its ‘Jewish question’

The ‘Jewish question’ was never a Palestinian or an Arab one, but a European one. Instead of Europe ‘answering’ it, by giving their Jewish populations their fair and equal rights and ending their centuries of antisemitism, they just simply tossed it onto the Middle East through lending it a very European tool; which is settler colonialism.

Europe found its ‘answer’ (or it didn’t) by simply letting someone else try to figure out the ‘answer’ and in the process sending a whole region into decades of chaos, and destabilization.

Every person who advocates themselves for the Palestinian cause must be fully aware that Zionism is fueled by antisemitism, and antisemitism empowers it. So let’s not act surprised when we see white supremacist and right-wing groups declare their love and support for Israel, because simply to them it’s the answer to their antisemitism and hatred for the Jewish people.

[queerkeitcoven]

jewish plant magic: rooting in (+ resources)

In honor of Tu B’Shvat, the New Year of Trees, and because so many people have been asking, I am compiling a list of some of my favorite resources for Jewish Plant Magic. At times, trying to find w…

some lovely writing & resources on Jewish plant magic, by local (to me) queer Jewish witch Dori Midnight! hoping we get to meet sometime.

[queerkeitcoven]

Queer Identity in Jewish History: An Interview with Noam Sienna

An interview about an anthology exploring marginalized voices in Jewish history

Orig­i­nat­ing from a broad range of geo­graph­ic and chrono­log­i­cal con­texts, these texts, many of them appear­ing for the first time in Eng­lish, offer the read­er a broad vision of what it has meant to be a queer Jew through­out histo­ry — even in con­texts where queer­ness has tra­di­tion­al­ly been assumed absent. Aca­d­e­m­ic and lay read­ers alike will dis­cov­er an aston­ish­ing vari­ety of per­son­al sto­ries, poems, and midrashim in the anthology… I have been fol­low­ing the project since Noam first decid­ed to pub­lish it as a book — and was delight­ed to dis­cuss it with him in more depth…

SL: What are your hopes for the book now that it’s been published?

NS: There’s almost no area of the Jew­ish world or aspect of Jew­ish life that is not touched upon in some way in the book — rab­binic lit­er­a­ture, Hebrew poet­ry, Jew­ish immi­gra­tion, sec­u­lar­iza­tion, mod­ern­iza­tion, and the development of the field of sex­ol­o­gy. I real­ly want oth­er schol­ars to run with all of those dif­fer­ent direc­tions. The hope I have mov­ing for­ward is that more people will be able to open up these his­tor­i­cal fields.

There’s def­i­nite­ly more aca­d­e­m­ic work to be pro­duced from the book. About a third of the mate­r­i­al in the book has nev­er been pub­lished in Eng­lish transla­tion. Some mate­r­i­al, sourced from archives, appears in this book for the very first time.

One rea­son why I chose to pub­lish it with a trade press rather than an acade­m­ic press is because I also want­ed it to have a wider audi­ence than just aca­d­e­mics. I want­ed a high school, even mid­dle school, stu­dent to be able to read it, and I very con­scious­ly tried to write in a way that was accessi­ble to laypeo­ple. I’m excit­ed to see the book serve as a resource for nonacademics: artists, film­mak­ers, play­wrights, graph­ic nov­el­ists and people who are doing oth­er kinds of Jew­ish pro­gram­ming. The sto­ries includ­ed in this book could make won­der­ful plays, art instal­la­tions, documen­tary films, com­ic books and graph­ic nov­els, children’s books, et cetera. I’m not the per­son to do that, but I’m real­ly excit­ed to put out the raw mate­r­i­al for oth­er peo­ple to work with.

SL: There’s a lot of talk right now among Jew­ish authors about what is out there for young readers that rep­re­sents the full spec­trum of Jew­ish experiences.

NS: It’s so rich and so much of it is unknown, and so real­ly this book is an excuse to get peo­ple to read pri­ma­ry sources from Jew­ish his­to­ry. If the fact that it’s about les­bians or about cross-dress­ing stow­aways or about Yeshi­va stu­dents sleep­ing with each oth­er gets peo­ple excit­ed to read that, great — but what’s equal­ly excit­ing to me is that this might be a con­duit for some­one to learn­ing about Jew­ish life in the Ottoman Empire, or life in colo­nial Brazil, or in medieval Iraq.

The intent of this book is to broad­en the hori­zon of Jew­ish his­to­ry — in terms of sex­u­al­i­ty, gen­der, tem­po­ral­i­ty, and loca­tion. I think peo­ple might be surprised to dis­cov­er just how many areas of Jew­ish life can be enriched through the incor­po­ra­tion of these mar­gin­al­ized voices.