#askerade

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what do you have against rabbits

MANY THINGS.

They’re invasive, they ruin wildlife, some absolute tit had the genius idea of releasing stoats and ferrets to kill rabbits so now we have THOSE running amok and eating native birds, they’re all mixie-resistant and fundamentally UNTRUSTWORTHY.

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Saw a post bouncing around that referred to snakes as "danger noodles." Thought this might amuse you.

am absolutely amused!!!

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Did you have to learn about English history in school?

Yep! I used to know the lengths of all the rivers in England and Scotland, can recite all the Kings and Queens from memory, and wrote about the Tudors *extensively* in my final year of school. Colonial legacy, what can you do?

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About a month ago you posted a picture that said "Went for a walk, and had the strangest feeling I was being followed…" under the tag #it's-a-scam. What does that mean, and do you know anything about the heads? They seem interesting. Thanks in advance.

Oh, those are some heads up north that are just... there. I assume it’s an artistic installation of some kind, but frankly they were near enough a graveyard that they could be cunningly-disguised zombies.

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אוי וויי is spelled with 2 yuddin

shhh i’m illiterate

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So, weird question: Would angels be allowed a b'nai mitzvah? Both actual!angels and modern media versions thereof -- supernatural, good omens, etc? If so, how would they go about it? Especially the latter? Cause if I recall correctly, classic!angels were entities assigned a single task, but modern depictions have a wide variety to them: some have free will, some don't, some do but don't think they do. I'm asking mostly for a possible story for the Day of Jewish Comics, to see if an idea works.

Short answer: Probably not.

Long answer that is probably going to end up a mini-shiur:

A bar or bat mitzva is a marker of the day someone becomes obligated to do mitzvot, and has achieved daat (awareness)- and angels are created, surely, knowing that they are responsible for their own actions. However, we have the problem that angels are created by prayer and belief- how one prays and acts affects affects the angel that is created by your prayers and actions:

The story is told of a man who spoke disparagingly of the Baal Shem Tov. The next day the Baal Shem Tov confronted him about his slander. Shocked, the man demanded, “Who informed you of my private discussions with my friends?” “An angel told me,” replied the Baal Shem Tov. “Angels wouldn’t have told you,” countered the man, “angels don’t gossip.” “This angel does,” replied the Baal Shem Tov. “This was the angel created by your slander. His very presence informed me of how he was created.”

And mitzvot are significant in that we do them not as we breathe or sleep, like any animal, but because we make a conscious choice to do the tasks the L-rd our G-d has set us. Angels, however, are created with a specific task in mind- to guide, to praise, even to tempt one to sin in the case of Satan. And if one can’t truly choose to do or not do mitzvot (if one has no yetzer hara, evil inclination), one cannot truly take on the responsibilities that a bar/bat mitzvah would imply.

This being said, we do have scriptural evidence that angels can disobey- that they are not automatons. You’ll probably be familiar with the Yom Kippur liturgy: ‘The angels are dismayed, they are seized by fear and trembling as they proclaim: Behold the Day of Judgment! For all the hosts of heaven are brought for judgment. They shall not be guiltless in Your eyes.’ So how can holy creatures sin? Through mistaking or distorting their mission, primarily- there’s a midrash that the angels responsible for the destruction of Sodom were left to wander the world for a hundred and thirty-eight years to repent for their arrogance, for instance.

But you asked about angels in pop culture, who are overwhelmingly quite Christian angels. The only episode of Supernatural I’ve ever actually seen was that one where the kids are living in the walls (aaaaaaa) so I can’t actually talk about that, but I can talk about the resurgence of angels in popular culture as a whole. 

Angels in media are often representations of humanity without our humanistic impulses, whatever the creator of said media supposes those to be- it’s not uncommon, for example, to see angels wonder why humans fall in love, or in preachier media wonder why we kill each other. (This is also applicable to aliens, which is both intriguing and the subject of an entire Media Studies dissertation, probably.) They’re powerful, remote, spiritual, and impossibly old, like your zaidy if he was also a Jedi Knight, which for all i know he is. Generally, they observe humanity, find us ‘intriguing’, and slowly learn to act and think like us. And really, isn’t that the key to a good yidishe kop? So I suppose your answer in this fictional context, like any bar or bat mitzvah, is: ‘Maybe… after intense study.’

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Who was your first Doctor?

Nine! The first episode I ever saw was ‘The Empty Child’, which terrified me, smol bespectacled fatling that I was, and I refused to watch another episode for YEARS.

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re the whole thing about God saying 'let us make man', like wasnt that one of the miracles of the 70 scribes who translated Tanach into Ancient Greek? They all changed the translation to it being the singular 'let Me make man' so people couldnt denounce Hashem?

Again from Rashi: [....] ‘there is an opportunity for the heretics to rebel (to misconstrue the plural as a basis for their heresies), Scripture did not hesitate to teach proper conduct and the trait of humility, that a great person should consult with and receive permission from a smaller one.’

But yeah someone who’s reading the Bible in Hebrew-Old Greek-Latin-English Babelfish looking for opportunities to denounce religion is not gonna care over historical background, are they?