Spaces in a cluttered mind

38, she/her, Jewish (Conservative). I live in a small town Michigan that nobody has ever heard of. This space contains lots of smatterings of my thoughts on life, religion, and miscellaneous nerd nonsense.

[shadowweaver06]

The least original insult I've gotten online so far: someone calling me a conservative five-head.

I have alopecia - I'm painfully aware of my giant ass forehead, thanks. The terminally online would be really surprised to learn just how liberal I actually am. But you know, nuance is dead for dipshits on the internet who only seem to be capable of black and white thinking.

At least they weren't antisemitic- just a moron with zero insult game. lol. I'm a millennial, I've lived through far more creative insults.

[shadowweaver06]

I wish that the 'GLP-1's are medically approved eating disorders' dipshits would get off the internet and touch some grass.

As a 4'10" woman with diabetes and high cholesterol who developed both while only 20 lbs overweight, 20 lbs is not always just vanity weight and I'm honestly tired of the HAES weirdos claiming that we all have eating disorders.

If you don't wanna use or take a GLP-1, good for you. You don't get a gold star for not wanting to take a medication. That's your prerogative. If you are good at your current weight- great. Weight has no intrinsic moral value. But stop shaming people for using these medications to lose weight or treat other conditions.

[jewish-hot-takes]

Didn't realize this was a hot take: Islamophobia is real and also bad

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[jewish-hot-takes]

reform is like christianity in the way the members see themselves as being freed from the law, reform just replaces jesus with the enlightenment.

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[shadowweaver06]

There are valid criticisms of the Reform movement, but, this is not really one of them.

Reform doesn't see halacha as binding, but halacha still informs it's teshuvot - and it's members still view Jewish law as important to informing practice. Reform is just focused on individualized practice, as far as doing what is meaningful - rather than enforcement of collective communal observance.

A valid criticism would be that the Reform movement completely fails in it's duty to teach observance of halacha, so that people can make informed choices about what they choose not to observe and why.

Enlightenment era inspirations aside, the Reform movement has seen a shift back toward interest by some folks there in taking on more traditional observance practices - however, folks who do are often stymied by the lack of support they find in the Reform community so they do what they can on their own or find a more observant community to join that accepts them.

Reform doesn't see itself as freed from the law, though - which is why I disagree with the take here. Reform Jews do absolutely have a responsibility to engage with mitzvot - the emphasis is just placed on personal practice and meaningfulness, not communally enforced orthopraxis.

Edit: If you dislike what I have to say but don't feel inclined to actually have an adult disagreement with an actual justification for what you disagree with, just keep scrolling. You do not need to leave such pithy contributions as "cool story bro" or "ok 🙄" in the comments. This is not an airport and I don't need you to announce your departure from agreement with me. I have no problem using the block button on people who don't want to engage in actual discourse- if you just want to shit on people strictly for not being as observant as you, or for having a different view on how to engage with Jewishness than you, you can do that somewhere else.

[shadowweaver06]

Currently embracing my boho, hippie-in-a- headscarf era.

I honestly have really taken to liking wearing them. It's nice to have something private, even if it is just my hair, in a world that is so constantly overshared and overexposed.

(For the curious - the shaper, headband, and scarves are all from Wrapunzel, the patterned overalls are from TikTok shop and the pink t-shirt is from Meijer).

[tiktoks-i-enjoyed]

[shamebats]

[gaymingbinosaur]

My grandma told me she was happy I got the option to be single and unmarried once.

[weirdtranssexual]

“it is antisemitic to automatically assume a jew is a zionist”

it is antisemitic to automatically assume that being a zionist — defined as the belief that jews have a right to self determination in their ancestral homeland — makes someone a bad nasty evil genocidal bloodthirsty killer actually

hope this helps

[thecrushheb]

I really hate the "Jerusalem is very important to three religions why would Judaism get full control of it" because its only important because thats where the JEWISH TEMPLE was and where the JUDEAN KINGS lived. just because people made religions out of fanficing Judaism means we have to give them equal slices of our own cultural history?

[illegitimatetenenbaum]

@edithsweetithh as if that can just stay in the tags.

[askjumblr]

(FOR: Reform) I'm not Reform myself but the other day I looked through a Reform siddur (Mishkan Tefillah, 2007) and was surprised by a few things:

The siddur contains both weekday and shabbat liturgy, which was surprising because in my (admittedly limited) experience with Reform I never encountered a weekday minyan or anything of that sort, so I'm kind of curious if anyone actually uses the weekday liturgy part of it to daven.

There were a bunch of verses omitted from various prayers and tehillim and I'm not sure why. Does anyone know why?

.

[shadowweaver06]

Reform liturgy typically removes references to moshiach (they see things in terms of there being a messianic age rather than a specific person coming as a messiah), and removes other references, such as to korbanot and they remove the musaf prayers from their siddurim. There are also changes to liturgy like gender neutrality in language for G-d and adding egalitarian references to the matriarchs in some prayers.

Ultimately it comes down to differences in a.) how the reform movement prioritizes a lack of repetitiveness in daily prayer (we said it once, why say it again?), and b.) some differences in what they choose to prioritize from a theological perspective. Lots of things about Reform practice are left up to the individual practitioner, and I know a bunch of people who are Reform but use orthodox or conservative siddurim at home for daily prayer.

(Keep in mind this is what I know of U.S. Reform not the UK/Canadian/Australian branches of the movement).

Ultimately as someone who converted in the Reform movement I do have an appreciation for the brevity of services but honestly wish they had left the original liturgy intact with the option to skip stuff that doesn't align with your personal practice or beliefs, or to substitute an optional alternative blessing. I get the desire for egalitarianism but at the same time like... it's ok to wrestle with the parts of liturgy and belief that you don't like or agree with.

Some shuls in large cities do have daily or semi-daily minyanim. However lots of shuls are in places without them because their congregations are too small to support that.

Reform to be fair is not Judaism-lite. It's just really a different way of interacting with being Jewish and with Jewish liturgy. As someone who doesn't particularly identify with the Reform movement (despite converting there) anymore, there's nothing wrong with it. It's just different.

[kindredspirit195]

Happy pride to my fellow Jewish lgbtq+ folk! You deserve to exist and be accepted, loved and supported 🌈❤️✨

[asneakyfox]

one big thing i think people outside fandom (like, all fandoms, fandom in general, not any particular one) tend to misunderstand is they know it's a subculture of people who are weirdly deeply invested in fictional media, and they hear about drama caused by people in those subcultures being unhinged in not-fun ways, and they think the unhingedness comes from the fact of being overinvested in works of fiction.

which is a natural assumption, but in my experience that's not really the case? like in my experience the drama llamas in fandom are usually not the ones who are just genuinely very deeply into the fiction. i've known people who are basically thinking about star trek or x-men comics or supernatural pretty much 100% of their free time and ime that type of person is usually very nice and surprisingly functional in their regular life. when someone's a constant nexus of fandom drama it's usually not that they are obsessed with the actual work of fiction the fandom is about, it's at least one of the following:

what they're obsessed with is not the source material but their unhealthy parasocial relationships with one or more of the people who created it

what they're obsessed with is not the source material but some elaborate shared-universe subset of fanfic about it that's only barely related to the original at this point, and/or an esoteric reading-against-the-text reinterpretation of the source material (often if the canon is active and ongoing this leads to becoming actively hostile toward it for its inevitably increasing failure to conform to their preferred fanon)

what they're obsessed with is not the source material but the fandom itself and gathering clout within it, so that the source material basically only exists to them as a tool for scoring points in increasingly arcane fandom disputes

and very often you get the same person doing 2 and sometimes even all 3 of these, and that's where the trouble really starts

[madlori]

holy shit I've never seen this articulated but OP is EXACTLY RIGHT.

[yehuditexcalibur]

I wish all the “religion is inherently bad” people who go on to describe issues exclusive to Christianity would understand that their idea of Christianity being analogous to all religion is a very glaring sign that they are still steeped in the Christian hegemony they seem to reject so vehemently

[shadowweaver06]

Most of these folks haven't deconstructed their religious conditioning and still operate on a scaffolding that assumes evangelism as the norm - they just substitute their newfound atheism for the proseltyzing religion they're newly distanced from.

Like clockwork, someone will eschew Christianity, and go through a long drawn out phase where they evangelize their newfound atheism and try to get others to join them. It is just as annoying as when Christians do it. They can't fathom that not everyone has the same experiences as them or that people don't possess the same religious traumas because they assume Christianity is the default for all religious belief.

These are just my observations as a formerly Jack-Catholic Jewish convert. Do with them what you will.

[shadowweaver06]

Life as an adult full time Jewish college student basically looks like the following:

Work Monday-Friday 8:30-5:30. Class week is Tuesday - Monday.

Get assigned nearly 200 pages of textbook and supplemental reading and videos on Tuesday.

Do the absolute bare minimum reading to get initial participation credit done by Thursday night (which you cram in at some point after dinner and stay up way too late to finish). Pull out challah on Thursday night to defrost and rise overnight (or just admit defeat and buy it already baked from Trader Joe's at 3pm on Friday afternoon) and make some shabbat dishes. Actively continue to avoid your homework until Sunday (because Shabbat) since there's no way you have the inclination to do anything until then because starting it at 10pm in the summer on a Saturday after havdalah is not happening - because you are conditioned to be in bed by 10:30. Agonize about the reading you're not getting done due to active procrastination, but don't actually do it yet.

At noon Sunday, skim the rest of the reading and watch maybe one of the 10 lectures you got assigned. Finish your participation posts. At some point between waking up and starting your last minute academic flailing, manage to get the chores you also procrastinated on doing all week finished. Because you need chonies and the laundry mountain is becoming a problem.

Half-ass your way through a written assignment which you start at 4 pm on Sunday and don't finish until after work at midnight on Monday, almost forget to add citations to it, look up at the clock and realize it is now 2am Tuesday and it's due in an hour, and submit your sub-par handiwork and hope for the best. Realize you forgot to take an exam on post-Freudian theory and pray it isn't a super long one. Finish the exam ten minutes before the cut off. Crumple into your office chair exhausted and crawl into bed to be awake by 7am for work.

Somehow manage to squeak out a reasonable grade on your assignment and half-assed participation posts. Somehow pass the weekly quiz with an OK but not spectacular grade.

Pass the course with an A. Learn nothing from the experience, and lather, rinse, and repeat weekly until winter break.

[shadowweaver06]

It is... miserably hot inside the house tonight. Ugh. I slept like crap last night (thanks to *ahem* uncomfortable post-colonoscopy after effects, pun mostly unintended), and now I'm trying to rush through an awful creative-writing-in-a-science-course style assignment due at 3 am, on like 2 hours of sleep and too much caffeine while slowly sweating to death upstairs.

Why am I rushing through this assignment? Well - my wife wound up with a burst baker's cyst in her knee so walking around and doing stuff is a challenge for her, and my 80 year old great aunt is in the hospital with sepsis caused by a kidney stone and an infection and mom's not getting anything done here so I've been running around like a chicken with it's head cut off trying to get all the things including housework, errands, school, and cooking done the last 3 days.

lol Only two more sections of this project to go and I can breathe - and maybe get some sleep.

[shadowweaver06]

Middle age is a trip.

I am currently camped out in the upstairs bathroom in my parent's house, irritated because I haven't had a single solid item to eat since lunch yesterday, and smelling mom making fried chicken for dinner downstairs, but I am also so bloated and nauseated from the gallon of laxatives I was told to drink for tomorrow's colonoscopy that the idea of food alternately doesn't sound remotely appetizing but I'm also hungry and the store bought ramen broth and passion fruit juice and peach tea I drank earlier is not cutting it.

At least I haven't puked this time. Yet. So. Gold star for me.

I’m currently contemplating death but also fantasizing about tomorrow's pot roast. Send help.

[shadowweaver06]

If you're going to send threatening antisemitic screeds to my personal messages inbox, you might want to make sure your blogs don't contain easily verifiable details about your identity first.

The authorities do really love an open and shut case for hate crime prosecutions these days. Just saying.

[mslovelyrita-deactivated2026070]

Happy Pride Month! 🏳️‍🌈 Be normal about queer Jews or else. 🫵