finding religion in humanity

A queer NDN with plans to convert through a Conservative synagogue when I'm able to while maintaining my own tribe's cultural traditions. For now, I'm mostly doing a lot of reading and talking.

[religion-in-humanity]

Reading Rec List (to add to):

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Gathering Moss: A Natural & Cultural History of Mosses by Robin Wall Kimmerer

All That Remains: A Renowned Forensic Scientist on Death, Mortality, and Solving Crimes by Sue Black

Lessons From Plants by Beronda L. Montgomery

How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell

Lighting the Seventh Fire: The Spiritual Ways, Healing, and Science of the Native American by F. David Peat

"All The Real Indians Died Off" And 20 Other Myths About Native Americans by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Dina Gilio-Whitaker

Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Y. Davis

Essential Judaism: A Complete Guide to Beliefs, Customs, and Rituals by George Robinson, updated edition

People Love Dead Jews by Dara Horn

The Red Tent by Anita Diamant

Judaism's 10 Best Ideas: A Brief Guide for Seekers by Arthur Green

My Jewish Year by Abigail Pogrebin

Here All Along: Finding Meaning, Spirituality, and a Deeper Connection to Life — in Judaism by Sarah Hurwitz

Reproduction on the Reservation: Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Colonialism in the Long Twentieth Century by Brianna Theobold

Jewish Literacy: The Most Important Things to Know About the Jewish Religion, Its People, and Its History by Rabbi Joseph Telushkin

Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall

When Bad Things Happen to Good People by Harold S. Kushner

The Indian Card: Who Gets to be Native in America by Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz

The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace by Adi Schwartz and Einat Wilf

Disclaimer: I don't agree with or condone everything said in these books. I just think that they offer important and interesting insights into a lot of topics and that they deserve consideration.

[religion-in-humanity]

I have absolutely zero interest in anyone's opinions on me being Native and wanting to convert to Judaism unless those opinions are coming from someone who has tackled the difficulties of joining one ethnoreligion that has been devastated by genocide while still maintaining your cultural attachment to another ethnoreligion that has been devastated by genocide. Reclaiming my Native identity has been a vital part of my life; I have had family members beaten in Indian boarding schools, I have family members whose names I will never know because they were taken by the foster system and never seen again, I am struggling to learn my tribe's language and traditions because they were beaten out of us two generations ago. These things are not negotiable to me. Christian colonizations tried to cut out my family's Native identity and culture and I am not finishing that job to convert to another religion.

Native Jewish people exist. These are not contradictory identities, and plenty of Jewish converts maintain their cultural traditions with no problem. I just need to find a rabbi in the rural midwest who is willing to talk to me about this and understand where I'm coming from, instead of immediately brushing me as wanting to merge my tribe's religious beliefs with Judaism or practice idolatry at the same time as being Jewish, which is absolutely NOT what I want to do.

[religion-in-humanity]

I wish it was easier to find comprehensive books about converting to Judaism like Choosing a Jewish Life that AREN'T centered around the idea that you're converting because of a Jewish partner or that you have a Jewish partner at all.

I understand it, I respect it, I know that that's been the assumed reason behind conversions (especially for women) for a very very VERY long time for good reason. But I'm aro and perpetually single and I just wish there were more books for people who are converting entirely alone, without a Jewish partner by our side and without Jewish in-laws to welcome us into their traditions.

It'd also be nice if there were more resources for aro people looking to convert in general, but I'm not surprised there aren't. I have a few different identities that are going to intersect in difficult ways with Judaism and Jewish communities and no real resources for figuring out how to navigate all that aside from just. . . doing it and hoping I don't fuck up.

[abirbable]

Other than the fact that nobody should be converting to Judaism because they want to marry someone who is Jewish (even if that’s only partially the reason), I’m curious what different identities you have that might “intersect in difficult ways”, as you put it.

[religion-in-humanity]

That's what's said in theory but in practice, many of the resources for conversion prospects and students that tackle the social aspects of converting (changing your lifestyle, changes to your home life, telling your family members, etc) are based around the assumption that the person converting is in a relationship with a Jewish person. Even when that isn't implied to be the reason, those resources are still built around a person's conversion to Judaism involving a Jewish partner and Jewish in-laws. It can be sad and frustrating when you don't have Jewish family in your life but the books and advice readily available assume that you do.

As I stated in my op, I am aromantic and while I am open to potentially falling in love one day, it hasn't happened yet. Like many ethnic communities that have faced violence and genocide, I know that a lot of Jewish communities have a strong emphasis on marriage, having children, and passing on the culture and religion through your family, especially when you're perceived as a woman and/or able to give birth. It's something that I am very familiar with as Native person and while I know that there are plenty of aro Jews and plenty of Jews who don't have kids for whatever reason, it's still something that I dread tackling during the conversion process, especially when I live in an area that isn't especially queer friendly.

I am also Native and while I don't follow any specific religious traditions, I'm reconnecting to that part of my heritage and my tribe's beliefs traditionally include things like animism, doodeman (clans and totems), ancestor veneration, spirit veneration (not worship, but respect), sweat lodge and pipe ceremonies, "vision quests" (not a term I generally like but it's the one people are familiar with), gifts of tobacco and the other sacred medicines to spirits, and guidance from the Midewiwin ("medicine men"). I know many of those are contradictory to Judaism and I wouldn't practice them after converting, like making prayers or offerings to spirits, but others are foundational parts of my tribe's culture and I know that I'm going to need to have a lot of discussions with my future rabbi about how to handle these different aspects of who I am and who I'll become. I know people from other ethnoreligious cultures have converted to Judaism and I know there are Native Jews out there, but there are absolutely no resources for Native people looking to convert and there are still a lot of misunderstandings and stereotypes about my people that I will need to talk to any rabbi I work with about before real discussions can happen.

[religion-in-humanity]

I wish it was easier to find comprehensive books about converting to Judaism like Choosing a Jewish Life that AREN'T centered around the idea that you're converting because of a Jewish partner or that you have a Jewish partner at all.

I understand it, I respect it, I know that that's been the assumed reason behind conversions (especially for women) for a very very VERY long time for good reason. But I'm aro and perpetually single and I just wish there were more books for people who are converting entirely alone, without a Jewish partner by our side and without Jewish in-laws to welcome us into their traditions.

It'd also be nice if there were more resources for aro people looking to convert in general, but I'm not surprised there aren't. I have a few different identities that are going to intersect in difficult ways with Judaism and Jewish communities and no real resources for figuring out how to navigate all that aside from just. . . doing it and hoping I don't fuck up.

[zionismandunashamedofitforever]

Judaism actively permits people to discourage others from converting.

in this spirit, I'd like to strongly suggest that you first seek therapy for "different identities" before you carry all that baggage into whichever hapless Jewish community you want to "bless" with your presence.

[religion-in-humanity]

Everyone has identities and baggage, dipshit, it comes with living in a society and being a person.

I never said anything about "blessing" anyone with my presence, you're just a bigoted ass who saw someone who exists in a different way from you and decided that that means there's something wrong with me. Maybe instead of telling people online to go to therapy for *checks notes* being queer and Native, you should try going yourself to figure out why you feel the need to treat strangers this way.

[religion-in-humanity]

I wish it was easier to find comprehensive books about converting to Judaism like Choosing a Jewish Life that AREN'T centered around the idea that you're converting because of a Jewish partner or that you have a Jewish partner at all.

I understand it, I respect it, I know that that's been the assumed reason behind conversions (especially for women) for a very very VERY long time for good reason. But I'm aro and perpetually single and I just wish there were more books for people who are converting entirely alone, without a Jewish partner by our side and without Jewish in-laws to welcome us into their traditions.

It'd also be nice if there were more resources for aro people looking to convert in general, but I'm not surprised there aren't. I have a few different identities that are going to intersect in difficult ways with Judaism and Jewish communities and no real resources for figuring out how to navigate all that aside from just. . . doing it and hoping I don't fuck up.

[petrichara]

Love, grief, and magic in the mundane

1- @Bluewmist on Twitter / 2- Roly Poly is Taken on Twitter / 3- About Time (2012) by Richard Curtis, image from Mita Park on Unsplash / 4- Sherri Turner on Twitter / 5- Cold Solace by Anna Belle Kaufman / 6- The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green

[my-jewish-life]

"Judaism is not a religion of blind obedience

[lostxanadu]

the doctrine of "original sin" frustrates me not just because that's a cruel thing to believe about literal babies but also because the "sin" it's talking about is... chava eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? which i don't personally view as a "sin" in the way christians view the concept, e.g. a moral stain, but more like a child's act of disobedience -- an act that teaches a lesson, establishes a boundary, and by doing so makes the actor (the child, or chava) more mature or rounds out their worldview through experience. children don't intrinsically know the difference between right and wrong or good and evil, and they need to explore in a safe environment (like an idyllic and enclosed garden) to develop that understanding.

as a result of their disobedience, adam and chava realize they're naked (toddlers don't care if they're wearing pants or not), are cast out of the garden (children grow up and leave their parents' houses), and learn a.) the toil it will take to feed themselves and b.) the pain that is unavoidable in creating a new life. every child learns these things in the process of becoming an adult.

christians took a coming-of-age story and decided that it actually meant that every woman and every child was tainted (notice how men aren't given nearly that level of demonization based on adam's disobedience). that's heinous.

[spoondrifts]

"Holiness is the great nothing that appears in all the religious traditions of the world in various poetic guises. It is an ineffable intensity, an oceanic sense, a warm flash of light, a marriage of the soul, a mighty wind of resolution, a starry grace, a burning bush, a wide-stretching love, an abyss of pure simplicity... it is the word the angels cry, the word that rings throughout heaven."

— This Is Real and You are Completely Unprepared, Rabbi Alan Lew

[homunculus-argument]

Grave offerings and burying the dead with tools and goods is actually such a deeply human thing to do. It's not really even necessarily about how much you believe in a literal afterlife or them taking the tools with them. It's also just going Wait, I'm Not Done Taking Care Of You, let me make you one more pair of socks so your feet won't be cold when you go wherever it is where I can't follow.

[tigerlilypurr]

“The Last Unicorn” as a Reflection on Jews and Judaism after the Holocaust

April 16 2019

Peter S. Beagle, who turns eighty on Saturday, has behind him a six-decade career as a novelist, and is still writing. A native of the Bronx with literary aspirations, who was born into a family of Jewish artists and rubbed elbows with Ken Kesey, Beagle, as Michael Weingrad puts it, “could have ended up an American Jewish novelist trailing belatedly after Saul Bellow and Philip Roth or an occasional surrealist like Bernard Malamud or Cynthia Ozick, an observer of and sometime participant in the counterculture.” But while he experimented in a number of genres, Beagle stands out from this group by writing several works of fantasy, most importantly the 1968 The Last Unicorn, for which he is best known. Weingrad comments on this book’s subtle, but inescapable, Jewish themes, which go far beyond the fact that one of its main characters is a wizard named Schmendrick:

[In this novel] Beagle does not ironize evil; he treats it mythically. He introduces villains, above all the Red Bull, an implacable, destructive force that has been unleashed against the unicorns. Beagle’s depiction of the [titular] unicorn’s melancholy quest for the rest of her kind borders on secular post-ḥasidic parables of God discovering what has become of His Jews in the wake of the Shoah. “Wherever she went,” Beagle writes, “she searched for her people, but she found no trace of them.” Though the novel cannot be reduced to allegory, its language is infused with suggestive parallels to God and the Six Million. The unicorn repeatedly refers to the other unicorns as her “people.” “How terrible it would be,” she says ominously, “if all my people had been turned human by well-meaning wizards—exiled, trapped in burning houses. I would sooner find that the Red Bull had killed them all.” Beagle’s unicorn resembles a god who has been living apart from the world. When the unicorn leaves her timeless forest, she enters into history and is shocked and saddened by what she discovers, not least that human beings are no longer able to recognize her. “There has never been a world in which I was not known,” she muses, surprised when a farmer takes her for an ordinary mare.

Read more at Jewish Review of Books

More about: American Jewish literature, Fantasy, Holocaust, Judaism

[magnetothemagnificent]

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.

[religion-in-humanity]

I was planning on converting through a Conservative synagogue but I live with gentile family and can't move out, so maybe Reform would be a better choice because I can't exactly keep a kosher or even relatively Jewish household outside of my bedroom.

I still plan on emailing the rabbi of the synagogue I was looking at but if anyone has input, I'd really appreciate it.

[hailruth-deactivated20260123]

a hanukkiah bouquet . ݁₊᪥⋆. ݁

[religion-in-humanity]

Op: This is a very Jewish thing I learned about in my Jewish classes about Judaism.

Tags on reblogs: #christian #catholic #quaker #jesus #jesus loves you #christianity #catholicism #protestant #mormon

[jinxpologist]

i just pointed out in my judaism class that it’s interesting to me that when asked God’s name, God did respond with the ineffable name (the tetragrammaton) but put a much greater emphasis on who they are the God OF (I’m the God of Abraham, the God of Moses, etc.).

and my teacher said she feels a kinship with that because she remembers the joy that came with the first time she was called “(son’s name)’s mom”, and how beautiful it feels be named for who you love. and i almost burst into tears

[thedruidsforest]

How could you NOT fall in love with the glow of the moon and stars, the warmth of the sun, the ancient life within the trees, and the sweet melodies of the winds?