7, 15, 20, 24 - Jumblr ask game
7. Are there any Judeo-languages you want to learn?
I actually am learning Hebrew. I’m taking this class cycle off because IDK when this job is going to end and I dont feel good entering into a new class rn? But I’m in Hebrew 2 at a JCC across the country from me. Isn’t zooming cool? Although to be honest, I feel like I’ve been learning Hebrew my whole life. The thing is, right, when you’re around something all the time, and I do, mean all the time, 2-3 days a week, plus music, plus stories, shit rubs off. Conversational Hebrew is a very different beast from archaic Hebrew but the things that cross over are enough the same that when it connects, it’s like lightning striking and your brain goes “click click click hey, DB, you’ve been using this in this context for about 30 fucking years, wake up” and it is, ngl, very cool. I’d also like to get more yiddish, as my family are all yiddiskite but like...I’ve got spanish banging around in there and more Japanese than I have any right to from just anime alone and I just don’t have the spoons. Too much Germanic/Russo bullshit and I can’t. But if I could learn Yiddish by snapping my fingers? I would.
15. If you celebrate the High Holidays, what do you like to do?
Survive? IDK does anyone LIKE to celebrate the High Holidays? I tend to get really introspective during the Days of Awe, tbh. I try to think about what I have done to grow, how I can do more. I spend a lot of time on forgiveness, and I find that the person most in need of forgiveness is myself as thats who I’m the cruelest to over the course of the year. I also tend to do a lot of work on trauma. I like to go to shul, like, in shul. There were good things about this whole quarantine high holidays but I couldn’t focus on actually praying with things being digital. Too easy to get distracted. I also miss theological discussion. I LOVE theological discussion. Give me that good midrashim yall.
20. Do you have a favorite midrash?
Not to be arrogant or anything, but my favorite midrash is my own. Maybe there’s text to back it up but if there is? I haven’t seen it. So check this right. It’s about Jacob and Esau. In Bereshit, Jacob fucks Esau over REALLY fucking hard when he steals his birthright, and he knows it. He spends decades screwing around but there comes a moment where he meets Esau again and it is the last time in the Torah we ever see Esau. And Jacob spend the whole Torah portion talking about how he’s ready to die for his sins etc but how he has to take responsibility for what he’s done but when he meets his brother at the river, his brother embraces him and it goes really well. And whenever I see midrash on this portion? It’s always about how owning up to your mistakes can end well for you, how you can get forgiveness for what you’ve done. But what I don’t see when I hear midrash about this portion? I don’t hear anyone talk about what FORGIVING did for ESAU. See, when they meet, it turns out that Esau has a large, successful clan and lots of property or whatever. And he’s happy. Not only that, Esau is happy to see his brother after all these years. He’s missed his twin and finally, after all this time, he gets him back. But? Esau only gets him back because he’s forgiven him. Esau had to do that shit for himself. He had to do it in the decades between them, without Jacob apologizing, or making amends, or showing remorse. Esau had to heal, for himself, on his own, independent of anything Jacob did or did not do. And yall, he DID. He did because otherwise he would not have been able to embrace his brother when they meet again. Because he was the wrong party here, deeply wronged, and at no point does that change. What changed was Esau and how he reacted, internally, to the situation and as important as atonement is - and boy fucking howdy is it important, Jacob, you really needed to atone you son of a bitch and I use that insult specifically because Rebecca you had a hand in this garbagefire and you know it - what’s just as if not even more important is how one deals with the injustices one is dealt in this life. It’s up to each of us to deal with these things that happen to us, because no matter how we deserve to be treated, we can’t control what other people do. We can only control how we respond and we can respond with bitterness and hatred or we can respond with warmth and love. Esau, in that moment, chose warmth and love, and yes, Jacob is better for it. But Esau is better for it too. He has been for years. He’s cared for himself so he can care for Jacob and his family too which is a level of emotional intelligence he didn’t have in the earlier part of his story when he’s described as almost animalistic, self-focused and self-serving but when they reunite, he’s selfless, forgiving, caring, concerned about his brother, sisters-in-law, and nephews.
The lesson of personal emotional growth and development independent of the person who wronged you is a desperately important lesson that I think gets overlooked in the wake of imparting the absolutely necessary lesson of taking responsibility for wronging someone and making direct amends. Please understand, getting people to understand you need to fucking do right by people you’ve wronged, hella important. Possibly the more important, when creating a codex for How To Do Society but when teaching How To People Independently, Esau’s lesson is also necessary. Things like this remind me of something a secular teacher said about the Torah in a Judaism class I took in college which is: in order for the Torah to be a perfect text, it must be a living document that is always evolving to fit whatever time it exists in. Esau’s side of this story is proof of that is it fits the evolution of our understanding of the function of the self and wellness in modern society and within the framework of an evidence-based practice therapeutic model. And I find that to be very cool.
16. Do you have any Jewish superstitions?
I already answered 24 so I picked one no one asked for :P
So! In my family we have a few. We have the red bindle, which is this red ribbon you tie around the bedpost for good luck and toward off misfortune. We also spit 3 times, with the backs of the middle and index fingers pressed to the lips, to ward off something bad, usually/almost always after saying “kunna harah” or “god forbid” such as “If I leave while I’m this tired I’ll get in a car wreck!” “kunna hara” *spits three times* If someone says something good that hasn’t happened yet but that we want to take place, we say “from your lips to god’s ears” or “baruch hashem” basically invoking G-d’s blessing on the thing so that it will happen - for example “Hey, maybe Biden will actually sign an executive order stopping these bullshit ant-trans laws?” “From your lips to gods ears.” There’s also a housewarming tradition that when someone moves into a new house, you bring them a broom, salt, sugar and bread for good luck.
