The Chrestomanci

[magnetothemagnificent]

so as to avoid doing so, what are some ways that christians appropriate judaism?

-Wearing Tzizit/Tallit or kippot. Just no.

-Celebrating Jewish holidays, especially Passover.

-Whatever weird shit Evangelicals do with Torah scrolls. You don't wrap a Torah scroll around a person. That's extremely disrespectful.

-Messianic "Judaism". Just the whole package. Throw that shit away.

[thechrestomanci]

To clarify, because people on the internet are very literal:

If you are not Jewish, you should never wear tzitzit or tallitot. But, if you are in a Jewish space and have been asked to wear a kippah, then you absolutely should.

[gliklofhameln]

Jewish wedding ring decorated with filigree knops

Italy, 17th century

gold, engraved, filigree, and granulation

Inscribed in Hebrew on applied rectangular plaque: “mazal tov” [good luck]

[thechrestomanci]

What suggests this is a wedding ring? Kosher wedding rings are supposed to be smooth with no engraving.

[ladymaplecourt]

I believe this is supposed to be an engagement ring, not a wedding ring for under the chuppah. There was a trend during this period for Jewish men to give their fiancees gold rings with houses on them (the “knops” in this picture) to represent the home they will build together, often inscribed with “mazal tov”

[thechrestomanci]

@ladymaplecourt Thank you for explaining! An engagement ring makes much more sense to me. That tradition sounds like a really sweet idea (though I can’t imagine actually wearing that for even a brief amount of time!)

[thekosheraisle]

“Prohibiting them by law infringes on Jewish religious freedom.”

Uh I think the fact that’s it’s against women’s human rights that we should be focusing on here. This is a war against women, not religious freedom

It's just bad. It can be bad for three or four different reasons. Any number of reasons and it's still bad. I'm here trying to point out that we don't roll with the Christians.

[thechrestomanci]

Yes, but conservatives don’t care about women; they’ve established that very clearly. They’ve also worked hard to instantiate laws about *religious freedom* in the name of being able to be sexist, homophobic, transphobic, etc. However, in strengthening so-called “religious freedom,” they now gave us another argument for why abortion needs to be legal. 

[pansoph]

for chinese new year they get all these famous actors and comedians together and they do a lil show and one of the comedians was like “i was in a hotel in america once and there was a mouse in my room so i called reception except i forgot the english word for mouse so instead i said ‘you know tom and jerry? jerry is here’

[beefmilkthings]

jerry is here

[eruriholic]

my chinese teacher once shared this story in class about someone who went to the grocery to buy chicken, but they forgot the english word for it, so they grabbed an egg, went to the nearest sales lady and said “where’s the mother”

[cuddlyaxe-deactivated20190218]

When I was a teenager, we went to Italy for the summer holidays. We are German, neither of us speaks more than a few words of Italian. That didn’t keep my family from always referring to me when they wanted something translated because “You’re so good with languages and you took Latin”. (I told them a hundred times I couldn’t order ice cream in Latin, they ignored that.) Anyway, my dad really loved a certain cheese there, made from sheep’s milk. He knew the Italian word for ‘cheese’ – formaggio – and he knew how to say ‘please’. And he had already spotted a little shop that sold the cheese. He asked me what ‘sheep’ was in Italian, and of course, I had no idea. So he just shrugged and said “I’ll manage” and went into the shop. 5 mins later, he comes out with a little bag, obviously very pleased with himself. How did he manage it? He had gone in and said “'Baaaah’ formaggio, prego.”

I was done for the day.

[ravenpuffheadcanons]

This makes me feel better about every conversation I had in both Rome and Ghent.

[elodieunderglass]

I once lost my husband in the ruins of a French castle on a mountain, and trotted around looking for him in increasing desperation. “Have you seen my husband?” I asked some French people, having forgotten all descriptive words. “He is small, and English. His hair is the color of bread.”

I did not find my husband in this way.

In rural France it is apparently Known that one brings one’s own shopping bags to the grocery store. I was a visitor and had not been briefed and had no shopping bag. I saw that other people were able to conduct negotiations to purchase shopping bags, but I could not remember the word for “bag.”

“Can I have a box that is not a box,” I said.

The checkout lady looked extremely tired and said, “Un sac?” (A sack?)

Of course. A fucking sack. And so I did get a sack.

[kat2107]

I once was at a German-American Church youth camp for two weeks and predictably, we spoke a whole lot of English. 

When I phoned my mom during week two I tried to tell her that it was a bit cold in the sleeping bag at night. I stumbled around the word in German because for the love of god, I could remember the Germwn word for sleeping bag.

“Yeah so, it’s like a bag you sleep in at night?”

“And my mother must probably have thought I lost my mind. She just sighed and was like ‘So, a Schlafsack, yes?”

Which is LITERALLY Sleeping sac … The German word is a basically a one on one translation of the English word and I just… I failed it. At my mother tongue. BIG

[eridaniepsilon]

My former boss is Italian and she ended up working in a lab where the common language was English. She once saw an insect running through the lab and she went to tell her colleagues. She remembered it was the name of a famous English band so she barged in the office yelling there was a rolling stone in the lab…

[backonrepeat]

I’m Spanish and have been living in the UK for a while now. I recently changed jobs and moved to a new office which is lost somewhere in the Midlands’ countryside. It’s a pretty quaint location, surrounded by forest on pretty much all sides, and with nice grounds… full of pheasants. I was pretty shocked when I drove in and saw a fucking pheasant strolling across the road. Calm as you please.

That afternoon I met up with some friends and was talking about the new job, and the new office, and for the life of me I couldn’t remember the English word for pheasants. So I basically ended up bragging to my friends about “the very fancy chickens” we had outside the office.

Best thing is, everyone understood what I meant.

[eridaniepsilon]

I love those stories so much…

[acleverforgery]

Picture a Jewish American girl whose grasp of the Hebrew language comes from 10+ years of immersion in Biblical and liturgical Hebrew, not the modern language. Some words are identical, while others have significantly evolved.

She gets to Israel and is riding a bus for the very first time.

American: כמה ממון זה? (”How much money?” but in rather archaic language)

Bus Driver: שתי זוזים. (”Two zuzim” – a currency that’s been out of circulation for millenia)

[learningftw]

that’s hilarious

[shiraglassman]

I am officially screamlaughing at my desk from that last one OH MY 

[speakertoyesterday]

Does everyone know the prime minister who promised to fuck the country?

So in Biblical Hebrew the word for penis and weapon are the same. There is a verb meaning to arm, which modern Hebrew semanticly drifted into “fuck”: i.e. give someone your dick.

The minister was making a speech while a candidate, bemoning the state of the world. “The Soviet Union is fucking Egypt. Germany is fucking Syria. The Americans are fucking everyone. But who is fucking us? When I am prime minister, I will ensure we are fucked!”

[andhishorse]

What the hell Biblical Hebrew.

[moral-autism]

Just guessing: The path from something like “give someone a blade” to “give someone a blade, if you know what I mean ;)” is probably not that difficult or unlikely.

[liminalreader]

^Given that the Latin word for sheath (like, for a sword) is literally “vagina”, I can verify that this metaphor is a time-honored one. 

[liminalreader]

Oh yeah and one time my Latin professor was at this conference in Greece and his flight was canceled, so he needed to extend his hotel stay by one more night.

Except he doesn’t speak a lick of modern Greek, and the receptionist couldn’t speak English.  Or French.  Or German.  Or Italian.  (He tried all of them.)

Finally, in a fit of inspiration, he went upstairs and got his copy of Medea in the original Greek (you know, the stuff separated from modern Greek by two and a half thousand years).  He found the passage where Medea begs Jason to let her stay for one more day, went downstairs, and read it to the receptionist.

She laughed her head off, but she gave him the extra night.  

[fatterdragon]

All of these *chef’s kiss* but the Medea one is hands down the best

[whatshouldwecallhomer]

s/o to my classics professor who managed to get a tire changed on his rental car while doing research in Greece by telling them his chariot had broken down

[minitafan-deactivated20251020]

OMG the Greek ones are amazing 😂

[thechrestomanci]

Inflation sure has happened over millenia. Two zuzim used to buy you a whole goat.

[gliklofhameln]

Jewish wedding ring decorated with filigree knops

Italy, 17th century

gold, engraved, filigree, and granulation

Inscribed in Hebrew on applied rectangular plaque: “mazal tov” [good luck]

[thechrestomanci]

What suggests this is a wedding ring? Kosher wedding rings are supposed to be smooth with no engraving.

[rhythm-of-the-wardrums]

It’s that day of the year again

So anyway as always I will be giving away three (chest) binders to three people who need one

Rules are simple:

-reblog or like this post to enter. If you want to spread the news but not enter, write “not entering” in the tags

-reblog as much as you like, but try not to annoy your own followers

-technically must be 18 or have parent’s permission to do this, by tumblr rules of service or whatever

-must be okay with giving me some sort of address to ship to

-do not have to be following to enter. I repeat, do not have to follow to enter

-$50 limit for the binder, and I’m in the US so not super sure how international this can be. We’ve done Canada in past years tho

-please don’t enter for cosplay only reasons

I think that’s it for rules uhhhhhh giveaway ends Sunday the 19th since this never gets a lot of notes for some reason. I pick winners using a random number generator on the notes. Good luck

[sophiamcdougall]

Please don’t pirate books at least while the author is alive. I’ll make an exception for actual billionaires and wildly expensive textbooks you cannot afford yet need to complete your studies. I can’t make an exception for assholes, because we’re all considered assholes by someone.  I don’t know how many people realise how many writers who created successful, beloved stories and characters still die poor while other people get rich off the same work. I don’t think people realise that in the UK the current average yearly earnings for an author has nosedived over the last fifteen years to £10,500. That obviously is forcing people to quit writing. It increasingly means writing is a job for people who’ve inherited money or have wealthy spouses who can support them. I don’t know if people realise that in general, writers are poor and getting poorer. I’m sorry, but if you think widespread sense of entitlement to free books has nothing to do with that … you’re just wrong. 

I say I don’t think people realise - the truth is I hope they don’t, because the alternative is that they don’t care. That’s certainly the impression I’ve got from Twitter, where a truly horrifying number of people are arguing that copyright on  all books should expire after thirty years, and you should be able to acquire books for  free after that. This … would not just mean that everyone gets free books. It would mean if you write a book at 30, not only do you lose any royalties from it at 60, but Disney can take it, make a franchise out of it, Scrooge McDuck it up in a pool of money while you starve because writers don’t get workplace pensions.

Some threads on the unintended (?) consequences of this. I can’t go over it all again. John Brownlow NK Jemisin Michael Marshall Smith Me Marina Lostetter Kari Dru and others William Gibson and others

There are plenty of others. It’s not that this actual idea will actually happen, but I do think it reinforces the idea that it’s not only okay, but sometimes actually virtuous to search for ways to enjoy writers’ work without paying for it. Like it’s somehow a step towards a better world. Not just at the reader end, to be fair, at the employer end too. And I do see a lot of people here too who are all about supporting workers unless the workers are writers in which case fuck’em. 

Like. If you want to radically change society in such a way that mass-media conglomerates don’t exist and so can’t exploit us and we’re supported to make art in some other way than fine. But can you start the revolution with actual rich people please, not ask us to live right now, in the society we’ve got, without the money we need to survive it. Finally, a plea: I really, really, do not want to debate this. This whole thing genuinely makes me feel tense and shaky and sick. If you’ve got to disagree - unfollow me, block me, vagueblog somewhere I can’t see it. The Twitter version of this already has me feeling like I’ve been kicked in the gut. I didn’t want to write this post. I just felt I wasn’t going to have any peace until I did.

[sophiamcdougall]

More from Courtney Milan, including on how no, it’s not like patents.

[feuervogel]

So much good here. 

[mikkeneko]

not even about the topic at hand but

I can’t make an exception for assholes, because we’re all considered assholes by someone

[sophiamcdougall]

No there freaking isn’t. A millionaire is not a billionaire-lite. A millionaire is not someone who has absolutely no risk of suffering personal want, and the power to fix multiple social issues and chooses not to.

I chose my words deliberately. If I’d meant “and millionaires” I would have fucking said that. I didn’t forget. 

So much has been said about the difference between a million and a billion that I would have hoped it was no longer necessary to explain it, but here we are. 

 A million is a thousandth of a billion.  A million seconds is 12 days. A billion seconds is 32 years. 

If you earned £1000 a day, and spent nothing, it would take you three years to become a millionaire. It would take you 2,470 years to become a billionaire. They’re not even close to the same kind of thing. Obviously it’s fortunate and unusual to be in possession of a million anything at once, (although it’s worth noting that different currencies mean significant differences in how much wealth we’re actually talking) but in a career where it often takes years to create and sell even one book, it should be understood as equivalent to several years of salary coming at once. The safest thing for any writer would be to assume it will never happen again. Your next book bombing - or simply not getting the lucrative film deal your last book did – these are very normal occurrences. Yeah, that wouldn’t in itself take you back to poverty, but it could very easily mean the status of “millionaire” is a one-off blip, not a static condition.    And factor in one fairly normal problem like having to pay for your own or a relative’s longterm care, or any kind of health crisis at all for writers in the US, and you could be back to average levels of wealth at best very quickly.  Also how the hell do you know who is a millionaire? You don’t. 

And people are very quick to assume writers are millionaires, because a book has sold fairly well or has been made into a film or even simply because they’ve heard of them. That’s a big part of the point of this post. People think writers are much, much richer than they are. They are very unaware of how often even books that make money don’t necessarily make money for the writer. (Just look at what happened to Peter Beagle, for a particularly heinous recent example.) They are very keen to find loopholes to  put writers in a special category of person it’s okay to exploit.

Don’t. 

[alexseanchai]

[image: tumblr tag reading “#also an exception for millionaires”.]

[jabberwockypie]

It’s worth noting that those net worth sites where you can google an author’s or a celebrity’s name and their net worth, are complete bullshit with no real basis in fact.

[nonbinary-support]

dude is not gender neutral

it can be used in a gender neutral way but it is a word that you need to ask permission to use with someone. do not call all people dude. regardless of how you mean it, stop doing that. the people who do this the most in the trans community are dfabs. we do this, all the time, because dude isn’t ever used to misgender us. when people call us dude, they call us that because we are either men or they mean it in a gender neutral way. people do not do this for our trans sisters and our transfeminine siblings.  and we need to stop making them feel unsafe because of how we view a word. their safety comes first. and like it’s not as if trans women and transfeminine people haven’t been asking us and telling us not to call them this and say this casually, they have been. all the time. seriously. and we don’t listen and it’s not fucking okay. their safety comes first -Mod Virgil

[thechrestomanci]

I’m wondering if there’s regionality to this - is this true in California? I’m (a cis queer woman with experiences getting misgendered) from California, and have always used dude and guys in gender neutral way and being called dude or guy hasn’t ever felt like being misgendered. They feel on the same level as “folks” to me. But I also recognize that my experience isn’t comparable to trans women’s experiences.

[mugges]

[rivendellrose]

Anthropology major answer: “There absolutely was such a time! Modern humans and our ancestors shared territory numerous times over prehistory with cousin species like homo neanderthalensis, homo floresiensis, and many, many others!” 

Folklore student answer: “Also, almost all cultures have something like djinn, faeries, hulder, fox spirits, and other similar creatures who can appear at least human and are very, very dangerous to humans!” 

Both of these things are true, and may be connected both to the above and to each other. :D

[aroloverboy]

This Pride, don’t forget about us

[trans-junk-rat]

[mcrtookmyvirginity]

Um……. Taylor Swift kept me a virgin??

[c4n0fwormz]

cleantough

[cynical-spucksy-deactivated2020]

rebornworstenemy

[mystic-terrors]

twentyfourwithout10in

[pipebomb-malewife-deactivated20]

Busy saint Joan?

[tulipscomeinallsortsofcolors]

corpse flowers only come in one color

[teacupfulofstarshine]

um … 

coffee mug pouring out darkness?

[poisonedapples]

Venemouscarrot

[romansleftshoulderpad]

Virgil’s right,,,,,,knee,,,tampon ????

[poisonedapples]

Blue I’m actually fucking choking what the fuck

[theonlyjelly-iwillput-inmybelly]

Allpeanutbutters-youwonttake-outyourbutt

[romansleftshoulderpad]

Cole wins

[moonreflectioninthefragglepond]

Pretty.Modest.

[ebony-wolf]

White-dog? White-cat?

[supreme-succ-overlord]

…. mediocre-flower-plebeian

[ironwoman359]

softman862

[nightcatssketchbook]

daydogsnotebook

[thevalkyriebookclub]

allosexuallycarefree

[icecoldparadise]

Piping hot hell. well then XD

[raise-me-up-take-me-up]

dullardinsunglasses

[arteestofcats]

writerofdogs

[golgak-the-goblin-deactivated20]

DaveHumancore?

[icarus-suraki]

BlindDogfish?

[marzipanandminutiae]

brussellssproutsandimportantfacts

[hazelrhoeas]

….artwizard …….somehow still fits 😂

[animatedamerican]

liveactioncanadian

[hachama]

Tiepsha?

טפשה

[thechrestomanci]

manymuggles

[ihatecispeople]

Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque burns at the same time as fire engulfs Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris

A fire broke out at the revered Al-Aqsa Mosque compound's Marwani Prayer Room in Jerusalem just as flames ravaged the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.

Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, built 1035 C.E (the first recorded holy building on the site built in 705 C.E) has also been a victim of fire today as the Notre Dame in Paris burns. 

[ihatecispeople]

It’s important to note that the Al-Aqsa Mosque is the third holiest site in Islam, so I beg you to keep Muslims, especially Palestinian Muslims in Jerusalem, in your prayers (and if you’re not religious, keep Muslims in your thoughts). 

[caribbeansapphos-deactivated201]

listen… i’m a lesbian and i know full well what oppression based on love is like… but i wish white gay folks wouldn’t act like sexuality is the only reason anyone’s ever felt that

[caribbeansapphos-deactivated201]

there are people in my family who’ve been disowned because they married someone of a different colour to them… i’m mixed race and the very concept of my existence would’ve been illegal in the us when my parents were born. the supreme court only ruled against discrimination of mixed-race marriages in 1967! that’s barely 50 years ago. homophobia is an awful thing to experience and i know that from first hand experience but i’m begging you to remember that gay people aren’t the only ones being killed for who they love. please remember the struggles faced by Black and brown people when you talk about oppression. please have some solidarity with your nonwhite friends (especially your nonwhite gay friends!) when you talk about dismantling the systems that keep us alone and isolated. please remember the horrible history that is anti-miscegenation laws when you talk about equal marriage rights, because they aren’t just for white gay people.

[caribbeansapphos-deactivated201]

this is okay for white people to reblog

[elfwreck]

Mixed-race marriages were still being denied in 2009. This is not ancient history. Just because it’s law, doesn’t mean bigots give up their preferences. In communities that shelter and protect bigotry, it takes a long, long time for oppressed people to get the same rights everyone else has.

[meangirlnurse]

hey, goyim? can we have a talk? i mean it. i just feel like there’s something we need to discuss and i’d really like to open a dialogue about it 

[meangirlnurse]

why the FUCK are you people putting chocolate chips in bagels

[egal-aboosta]

Do you also hate chocolate chip challah oh coward set in ye olde ways?!

[reflected-blue]

I have very strong feelings about challah being BREAD and chocolate chip challah is NOT BREAD it RUINS the symbolism and yes, this is a stupid pet peeve, especially when chocolate chip challah is SO GOOD but I just which it could become a desert food

luckily my husband has a lot of allergies and makes his own challah so whenever I’m presented with chocolate chip challah he knows to sneak me a bite of chickpea-and-oat  

[egal-aboosta]

Yeesh! That is weird! Whenever I’ve seen it it’s been desert, not pre-meal Hamotzi material? What desert-before-dinner universe do you live in? 

[thechrestomanci]

Really?? Maybe this is a West Coast/ East Coast thing? Chocolate chip challah is a STAPLE! Why would you even make your own challah if not to put things in it? I also make nutella challah (for hamotzi! it counts!). And we buy local chocolate chip challah as well.

[yayfeminism]

Very informative thread -source

[felinepurrrstory]

Diana Wynne Jones on cats

[jewish-tutter]