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sch-uwu-lchen

g’mar chatimah tovah

muppetyaoi

who else up roshing their hashanah

jewishpangolin

She rosh on my hashanah till I tekiah

stimman4000

Shanah tovah! please look at my rosh hashanah apple tart it took. so long

plaidadder

Shanah tovah and everyone look at this apple tart.

shanah tovah, y'all

i get so much more annoyed by events on RH or YK when they’re scheduled by people i know and are therefore at least conceptually aware that Jews have different holidays. But here i am, every single year

jessicamiriamdrew

also my unpopular take is that events SHOULD be moved actually , when possible

jessicamiriamdrew

I can’t move Rosh Hashanah but YOU can move your public event

magnetothemagnificent

My internal thought process yesterday when I saw a 20 dollar bill on the ground:

"Just keep walking, if you pick it up you're fulfilling an antisemitic stereotype"

"But people will be antisemitic no matter what, at least it's not a coin"

"What if it's laced with anthrax precisely to poison you because you're Jewish and *they* know you'll pick it up?"

......anyway I'm 20 bucks richer now.

rainbow-femme

I work at a Jewish non profit and one of my coworkers has this issue every time Fiddler on the Roof comes on tv

She feels like a stereotype if she sits and watches Fiddler on the Roof, especially when so much of her job is presenting to the community how Jewish people exist beyond depictions like Fiddler on the Roof

But she also really likes the music and feels like not watching is letting the antisemites win. So she basically goes through Tevye’s “on the other hand” argument with herself every time it’s on and then tells us about it cause her kids make fun of her for agonizing over the optics of watching a movie alone in her house

#honor Topol and watch Fiddler #Do it #do it or you're goyische

hollowtones

PEOPLE on this website don't Talk about this shit enough:

you can have potato for breakfast

If you want

niipah

#secular latkes

daily-deliciousness

Honey apple challah tarts

clowneyelashes-deactivated20210

nailsby_sheila

fiktion-des-faktischen

You can leave your hat on

definitelywicked-deactivated201

When ur punk rock but still gotta go to shul

hymnsofheresy

when christian artists change the line in hallelujah from “maybe there’s a God above” to “I know that there’s a God above” >:c

covington-shenanigans

#idk why i’m so unreasonably angry#maybe cuz it’s my fav line

it’s also because Leonard COHEN (!) was Jewish and this is a quintessentially Jewish line, and changing it to that level of Annoying Certainty is stripping it of its Jewish meaning and imbuing it with that particularly American smug evangelical Christian attitude that makes me tired, so very tired

hymnsofheresy

THAT IS EXACTLY WHY

hachama

I don’t think I’ve heard any cover artist sing my favorite verses You say I took the name in vain I don’t even know the name But if I did, well really, what’s it to you? There’s a blaze of light In every word It doesn’t matter which you heard The holy or the broken Hallelujah I did my best, it wasn’t much I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you And even though It all went wrong I’ll stand before the Lord of Song With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

hymnsofheresy

um woah

cutecreative

I will always hit the reblog button so hard for Hallelujah but ESPECIALLY mentions of the elusive final verses which are just about my favorite lyrics ever. Why do people always omit the best part of the song??

fromchaostocosmos

In Yiddish

In Hebrew

fromchaostocosmos

In Ladino

stoneandbloodandwater

Yeah, I wonder why the verses that reference specific Jewish mystical and chassidic concepts that aren’t readily understood by American “I love Jews, you know, Jesus was Jewish!” Christians never get any airtime. Funny that.

You say I took the name in vain I don’t even know the name But if I did, well really, what’s it to you? There’s a blaze of light In every word It doesn’t matter which you heard The holy or the broken Hallelujah

These are specifically about Chassidic Jewish theories of the holy language, how each letter and combination of letters in Hebrew contains the essence of the divine spark and if used correctly, can unlock or uncover the divine spark in the mundane material word. And of course, there are secret names of God which, when spoken by any ordinary human would kill them, but if you are worthy and holy and righteous can be used to perform miracles or even to behold the glory of God face-to-face. The words themselves have power. Orthodox Jews often won’t even pronounce the word “hallelujah” in it’s entirety in conversation, because the “yah” sound at the end is a True Name of God (there are hundreds, supposedly) and thus too holy to say outside of prayer.

None of this is to mention how David’s sin in sleeping with Batshevah (the subject of much of the song, with a brief deviation to Shimshon and Delilah) is considered the turning point in the Tanach that ultimately dooms the Davidic line at the cosmological level and thus dooms Jewish sovereignty and independence altogether. From a Christian perspective this led to Jesus, the King of Kings, and that’s all very well and good for them, but for the Jews, the Davidic line never returned and is the central tragedy of the total arc of the Torah. Like, our Bible doesn’t have a happy ending? And that’s what this song is about? There’s no Grace - you just have to sit with the sin and its consequence.

Of course, Cohen is referencing all of this ironically, and personalizing these very high-level religious concepts. Like the point of this song is that Cohen, the songwriter, is identifying with David, the psalmist, and identifying his own sins with David’s. The ache that you hear in this song is that the two thousand year exile that resulted from one wrong night of passion and Cohen feels that the pain he has caused to his lover is of equally monumental infamy. Basically, in a certain light, the whole of Psalms is a vain effort for David to atone for his sin and I think Cohen was writing this song in wonderment that David could eternally praise the God who would not forgive him and would force him and his people into exile. But he ultimately gets how you have to surrender to the inexorable force of God in the face of your own inadequacies and how to surrender is to worship and to worship is to praise - hence, Hallelujah. You can either do the right thing and worship God from the start, or you can fuck up, be punished, and thus be forced to beg for His forgiveness. It’s the terrible inevitability of praise that’s driving him mad.

Like honestly, I identify with this song so strongly as an off-the-derech Jew, I sometimes wonder what Christians can possibly hear in this song, as it speaks so specifically to the sadomasochistic relationship that a lapsed Jew has with their God. It’s such a different song from a Christian theological perspective it’s almost unrecognizable, man. This song continues to be a wonder of postmodern Jewish theology and sexuality from start to finish. Don’t let anyone give you any “Judeo-Christian” narishkeit. This is a Jewish song.

(Sorry about the wild tangent it’s just 2AM and I love this song so dang much, you guys.)

hymnsofheresy

holy shit. woah.

dduane

This.

dispatchrabbi

That last bit from @stoneandbloodandwater, that’s a great articulation of the well of feeling, memory, storytelling, and culture packed into one of the most Jewish songs ever to get real famous. The song is both surrender and defiance, and that those are actually a single path together, not two opposite choices.

hanukkitty

do you like judaism?

do you like video games?

well, my rabbi streams himself playing mario kart and talking about jewish things on twitch every friday morning at 9am pacific time. other mornings, less gaming, but just as much jewish learning

he also has a youtube

it’s a fun time, check it out when you have a chance

cuddlyplaguedoctor

@sonochinosodomy

cognitioncorsair

I made some special chanukka icons!! Feel free to use (credit is appreciated but not necessary) Also if anyone wants another flag feel free to comment/reply/send me a message :)

femmeharlequin-deactivated20240

Vibe check

historicity-was-already-taken

This weekend I was schmoozing at an event when some guy asked me what kind of history I study. I said “I’m currently researching the role of gender in Jewish emigration out of the Third Reich,” and he replied “oh you just threw gender in there for fun, huh?” and shot me what he clearly thought to be a charming smile.

The reality is that most of our understandings of history revolve around what men were doing. But by paying attention to the other half of humanity our understanding of history can be radically altered.

For example, with Jewish emigration out of the Third Reich it is just kind of assumed that it was a decision made by a man, and the rest of his family just followed him out of danger. But that is completely inaccurate. Women, constrained to the private social sphere to varying extents, were the first to notice the rise in social anti-Semitism in the beginning of Hitler’s rule. They were the ones to notice their friends pulling away and their social networks coming apart. They were the first to sense the danger.

German Jewish men tended to work in industries which were historically heavily Jewish, thus keeping them from directly experiencing this “social death.” These women would warn their husbands and urge them to begin the emigration process, and often their husbands would overlook or undervalue their concerns (“you’re just being hysterical” etc). After the Nuremberg Laws were passed, and after even more so after Kristallnacht, it fell to women to free their husbands from concentration camps, to run businesses, and to wade through the emigration process.

The fact that the Nazis initially focused their efforts on Jewish men meant that it fell to Jewish women to take charge of the family and plan their escape. In one case, a woman had her husband freed from a camp (to do so, she had to present emigration papers which were not easy to procure), and casually informed him that she had arranged their transport to Shanghai. Her husband—so traumatized from the camp—made no argument. Just by looking at what women were doing, our understanding of this era of Jewish history is changed.

I have read an article arguing that the Renaissance only existed for men, and that women did not undergo this cultural change. The writings of female loyalists in the American Revolutionary period add much needed nuance to our understanding of this period. The character of Jewish liberalism in the first half of the twentieth century is a direct result of the education and socialization of Jewish women. I can give you more examples, but I think you get the point.

So, you wanna understand history? Then you gotta remember the ladies (and not just the privileged ones).

ask historicity-was-already-taken a question

roachpatrol

Holy fuck. I was raised Jewish— with female Rabbis, even!— and I did not hear about any of this. Gender studies are important.

kogiopsis

Why Gender History is Important (Asshole)

treewizarded

“so you just threw gender in there for fun” ffs i hope you poured his drink down his pants

notyourdamsel-in-distress

I actually studied this in one of my classes last semester. It was beyond fascinating.

There was one woman who begged her husband for months to leave Germany. When he refused to listen to her, she refused to get into bed with him at night, instead kneeling down in front of him and begging him to listen to her, or if he wouldn’t listen to her, to at least tell her who he would listen to. He gave her the name of a close, trusted male friend. She went and found that friend, convinced him of the need to get the hell out of Europe, and then brought him home. Thankfully, her husband finally saw sense and moved their family to Palestine.

Another woman had a bit more control over her own situation (she was a lawyer). She had read Mein Kampf when it was first published and saw the writing on the wall. She asked her husband to leave Europe, but he didn’t want to leave his (very good) job and told her that he had faith in his countrymen not to allow an evil man to have his way. She sent their children to a boarding school in England, but stayed in Germany by her husband’s side. Once it was clear that if they stayed in Germany they were going to die, he fled to France but was quickly captured and killed. His wife, however, joined the French Resistance and was active for over a year before being captured and sent to Auschwitz.

(This is probably my favorite of these stories) The third story is about a young woman who saved her fiance and his father after Kristallnacht. She was at home when the soldiers came, but her fiance was working late in his shop. Worried for him, she snuck out (in the middle of all the chaos) to make sure he was alright. She found him cowering (quite understandably) in the back of his shop and then dragged him out, hoping to escape the violence. Unfortunately, they were stopped and he, along with hundreds of other men, was taken to a concentration camp. She was eventually told that she would have to go to the camp in person to free him, and so she did. Unfortunately, the only way she could get there was on a bus that was filled with SS men; she spent the entire trip smiling and flirting with them so that they would never suspect that she wasn’t supposed to be there. When she got to the camp, she convinced whoever was in charge to release her fiance. She then took him to another camp and managed to get her father-in-law to be released. Her father-in-law was a rabbi, so she grabbed a couple or witnesses and made him perform their marriage ceremony right then and there so that it would be easier for her to get her now-husband out of the country, which she did withing a few months. This woman was so bad ass that not only was her story passed around resistance circles, even the SS men told it to each other and honoured her courage.

The moral of these stories is that men tend to trust their governments to take care of them because they always have; women know that our governments will screw us over because they always have.

Another interesting tidbit is that there is sufficient evidence to suggest that Kristallnacht is a term that historians came up with after the fact, and was not what the event was actually called at the time. It’s likely that the event was actually called was (I’m sorry that I can’t remember the German word for it but it translates to) night of the feathers, because that, instead of broken glass, is the image that stuck in people’s minds because the soldiers also went into people’s homes and destroyed their bedding, throwing the feathers from pillows and blankets into the air. What does it say that in our history we have taken away the focus of the event from the more domestic, traditionally feminine, realms, and placed it in the business, traditionally masculine, realms?

historicity-reblogs

Badass women and interesting commentary. Though I would argue that “Night of Broken Glass" includes both the personal and the private spheres. It was called Kristallnacht by the Nazis, which led to Jewish survivors referring to it as the November Pogrom until the term “Kristallnacht" was reclaimed, as such.

None of this runs directly counter to your fascinating commentary, though.

wtfhistory

READ THIS.

the-waters-and-the-wild

If anyone has books or articles related to these accounts or ones like them, please let me know. These stories need to be told.

historicity-was-already-taken

@the-waters-and-the-wild hi! I’m (OP) actually writing a book on these themes. If you’re interested in learning more or helping me out with access, please check out this page: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/women-in-the-warsaw-jewish-underground-project#/

Help me pay for the translators, books, reproductions of archival materials, and editors I need. | Check out 'Women in the Warsaw Jewish Und

idunnobutwhocares

Does anyone know of any books that focus on the lost roles of women throughout history? don’t get me wrong this is important and interesting but I wanna know as much as possible you know?

historicity-was-already-taken

@idunnobutwhocares idk maybe the OP.

Now to be clear, these roles were never lost—the sources exist and historians know how to analyze them and have written libraries of books on the subject. The problem is that those histories and their meanings haven’t penetrated much into public conceptions of the past.

So, for now check out the reading lists I link to on my home page. If you’d rather wait for a curated list, send a DM to my ask box.

neil-gaiman

I’d add something else. A lot of Holocaust survivors didn’t talk about what they did to survive.

My cousin Helen will be 102 in February and she is still one of the smartest people I know . A couple of years ago she told me that after she escaped the Warsaw ghetto (she wouldn’t tell me how, although I suspect that it may have been under the dead bodies on a cart dragging out the dead, as she got in to the Warsaw Ghetto in an empty body cart) she went to the apartment of a woman she had been friends with who only knew her as the person on her forged papers, but who would not ask questions about Helen showing up without luggage or explanation.

On the third day that she was there the woman called to her excitedly, shouting “Come and see!” Helen went out onto the balcony. Smoke was rising from the ghetto a few blocks away. The Warsaw Ghetto had fallen. “Isn’t it wonderful?” asked the woman. “The Jews are burning!”

Helen said the smile on her face was the hardest thing she had ever had to do.

And Helen’s daughter mentioned that she had never heard Helen talk about that incident before. Her mother kept so much of what had happened back then to herself.

Helen’s older sister, Wanda, had false papers, worked with the Resistance and, without any training, worked as a nurse for Nazi Doctors who didn’t suspect her. (As a spy? Because her false ID was that of a nurse? I don’t know.) All the information I have about the living and the dead is fragmentary, like peering at a huge room through a tiny keyhole.

They survived, and they moved on…

fluxphage

quick correction: they would have moved to israel, not palestine, as palestine did not exist

jewish-privilege

Palestine sure did exist at that time. It was the British Mandate of Palestine. Israel didn’t gain independence until 1948 which was three years after the end of the Holocaust. During the Holocaust, Nazis yelled at Jews to go back to Palestine and those who could tried to flee and find refugee in Palestine. Of course, the British didn’t allow them entry, but that’s a different story for a different day.

historicity-was-already-taken

@joachimjoestar @jewish-privilege please keep discourse related to Israel/Palestine out of my reblogs. I don’t want that discourse in the intellectual space I have carved out for myself on tumblr and I appreciate your respect for my boundaries.

I recommend that you both take a look at my Israel/Palestine reading list, linked to on my home page (ETA here: https://historicity-was-already-taken.tumblr.com/Israeli-Palestinian%20Conflict%20Historical%20Bibliography), and take any further discussion you wish to have on the topic into a separate set of posts.

Introduction Ancient Period Rise of Islam and Caliphate Rule Byzantine Empire and Medieval Europe Ottoman Empire Sephardic, Middle Eastern,

Thanks.

jewish-privilege

I one hundred percent apologize and did not mean for this to come across as I/P discourse, but rather just historical/time-line fact. But that was only my intention and not the impact; I apologize and will try my best to respect your boundaries. Thank you for the resources!

buttart

Happy Hanukk-cat and Happy Mew Year, from me and Sluggo

#SLUGGO IN A KITPAH!#i love you sluggo #Happy chanukat!

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