דאיקייט

My main is @saidthesparrowtothedove

[othelo]

“When I was a student in yeshiva, I asked one of the rabbis why Jews talk so much. We were studying Talmud, and I was trying to understand the comprehensive, obsessive inquiry into questions from the minuscule and seemingly pedestrian–are the water cisterns adjacent to a house included in the price of its sale?–to the transcendent, like what is the nature of God. “Jewish time is circular, so we work to make things perfect for the next time around,” he replied, before adding world-wearily: “Also, we don’t believe in perfection.””

— Alana Newhouse, NYT Book Review of Stranger in a Strange Land by George Prochnik (via spikenards)

[gliklofhameln]

Interior of the Holleschau Synagogue — Isidor Kaufmann (1853-1921), Hungarian.

[hillbillybubbeleh]

by Bill Aron from his Soviet Jewish Life series; featured in From the Corners of the Earth

[gliklofhameln]

Tallit from Tafilalet, Morocco. Early 20th century, cotton and silk.

[bobemajses]

Wacław Koniuszko (1854-1900) - "Old Jew repairing a carpet", ca. 1890

[ignorethisatyourperil]

[astra-the-dragon]

the old 'what if the world was made of pudding'

[notaplaceofhonour]

what I love about that last rebuttal is it almost certainly took more time and effort to go and get two different goat cheeses than any simple verbal answer would have lol.

“hold on, this question is so ridiculous I need props to deal with it”

[lawbreaker13]

Asking rabbis questions still goes like this by the way

[mariacallous]

From “The Holocaust and Memory Theft” in Café Europa Revisited by Slavenka Drakulić

[landsccape]

[treasuresfromthearchives]

From Hagadah shel Pesaḥ : Hagadat ha-tefutsot

1988

[gliklofhameln]

Various kitchen implements for the preparation of matzah, 19th/20th century

[penrosesun]

It's wild how many non-Jews legitimately think that Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and Mizrahi are like, racial designations, and not cultural and liturgical traditions primarily defined by things like "do you eat beans during Passover" and "how many verses does Adon Olam have" and "is it very lucky or very unlucky to name a child after a living grandparent."

Like I want you to seriously imagine a world where people who think of themselves as both progressive and educated were regularly posting takes that said things like, eg. "uh... you can't be Episcopalian if you're Black lol. Episcopalians are from England??" Ok? Are you imagining that? Yeah, pretty batshit, huh? I need you to know and understand that treating the Ashkenazi/Sephardi distinction as though it is a racial one is about a million times more ridiculous than that. It's like imagining a clean racial division between "Episcopalian churches that have an organ" and "Episcopalian churches that don't have an organ". It's like if you tried to invent a new sort of congregational phrenology based entirely around the percentage of teetotaler church attendees, or how often people liked to sing "Come Thou Font."

[bobemajses]

Passover Seder in the home of the Jajati family, Damascus, Syria, 1995

[ofskfe]

Jewish students at the State Gymnasium in Chelm, Poland, 1934. (Portrait of four Jewish girls posing with a Polish friend, on the far left. Left to right:  Ewa Baliat, Henia Pojazd, Marysia Wilenka, and Kasia Harczuk), 

[bobemajses]

Jewish ceremonial textile, Iranian Kurdistan, 19th century

[ofskfe]

Iranian Jewish woman praying during Hanukkah, the festival of lights, at Abrishami synagogue in downtown Tehran.  

[gnomemeister]

broke: not my circus, not my monkeys

woke:

[beforeviolets]

לא בחיל ולא בכח כּי אם-בּרוחי "Not by might, nor by power, but by spirit."

the world has been growing darker and heavier and scarier over the past few years, and each year, hanukkah has become a time for me to consider what it means to relight the flames of my spirit. i hope all of you find a way to burn brighter this season—for your loved ones, for your community, for a cause you care about—and to find some light in the areas of your life that have been growing dim.

chag sameach 🕯🪬✨

[image description: an illustration of a woman facing left and holding a hanukkiah. she wears a veil and a collar and traditional style clothing and is in a gold arched frame and surrounded by blackness with stars. flames flow out of the hanukkiah behind her and in the flames reads לא בחיל ולא בכח כּי אם-בּרוחי meaning “not by might, nor by power, but by spirit.”]