I work with caring for animals at a scientific institution and I care for many snakes. My father insists they're cursed by Hashem and completely evil inherently.
I am very much aware of the serpent in Judaism, as I am an Orthodox Jew. However I follow the belief that all animals are cared for by Hashem and even the snake's curse was still not a complete condemnation as the legless body allowed snakes to hunt a different type of prey.
I have been looking for more positive or nuanced rabbinical opinions or insights on snakes, the literal animal not the symbolism of the serpent. Does anyone have any recommendations for this? Not looking to cancel out the negative image snakes have, but rather for deeper interpretations on this complex issue. I just don't believe that just because the Serpant was cursed in Gan Eden it means that every snake ever forever is evil.
I have a ball python as a pet and she is the loveliest and sweetest girl so I'm also interested in where this goes. I absolutely refuse to believe they're evil, also snakes eat rodents so in that way they can serve the same purpose as cats!
I feel like this is the kind of thing Rabbi Slifkin would have brought up at the Biblical Museum of Natural History if it were a widely held opinion, but I remember nothing of the sort. I got to hold Cuddles the python, though.
I am so sick of people saying if someone is a person of color or queer in some way they can’t be antisemitic, despite the fact history books will tell you the opposite, multiple times.
Non Jews want Jewish allyship while praising people like Kayne West as geniuses, if he was a white man you would call him a white supremacist and a nazi.
Having a nazi and racist phase a teenager is not normal. Also just saying if I had friends who hate-crimed me, I wouldn’t still be friends with them. You cannot say nazi symbols are racist while saying Jewish people are white.
normalize not giving people the benefit of the doubt. how long do i have to give people the excuse of not understanding the antisemitism they are spreading? those are grown ass people, they should know what they are doing
(I already sent this to another blog but I feel this is an important message)
I'm a survivor of October 7th. I live in the south of Israel and I've been to the US a few times since the event
Here's a list of things not to do/say to a survivor of the Simchat Torah massacre, these should be well understood but they're unfortunately really not:
1. Don't expect/demand the person to share their story. It is a painful and traumatic thing to talk about for many (as is with traumatic events) and they don't owe you their trauma
2. Just don't ask about it unless the person brings it up
3. Don't share your spiritual "reasonings" as to why the whole thing happened (e.g. "Were the people in your community shomer shabbat?" .. yeah people have said this to me on multiple occasions)
4. Don't get political. The fact that we have community members who are no longer alive because of a terrorist organization is not up for debate
Just be sensitive and aware and don't be an asshole :)
When a jew opens up about an experience of antisemitism, we are often met with people claiming we are lying, exaggerating, or falsely calling something antisemitic.
And all of that is literally just the same tropes we have faced for centuries.
We are seen as inherently shady and untrustful. That we are trying to lie about our lived experiences to manipulate the masses.
People will find a jew who is incorrectly calling something antisemitic and use that to dismiss the experiences of jews who is not that person. Often times they don't even need to do that. I have had posts of mine where I talk about antisemitism in general, and people will claim I'm upset because I saw a free Palestine poster. No Samantha, I was talking about being called a kike whilst being dicked down (consensually up until that point) by a woman I thought I could trust.
We should start calling palestinian terrorism "irgc and EU proxy terrorism", considering the EU funds what it acknowledges to be unrwa indoctrination of children into terrorism, the PA's pay-to-slay program, and hamas itself. Europe couldn't stand the Jews surviving the shoah, so it's paying arab neonazis to try to finish the job.
When a jew opens up about an experience of antisemitism, we are often met with people claiming we are lying, exaggerating, or falsely calling something antisemitic.
And all of that is literally just the same tropes we have faced for centuries.
We are seen as inherently shady and untrustful. That we are trying to lie about our lived experiences to manipulate the masses.
People will find a jew who is incorrectly calling something antisemitic and use that to dismiss the experiences of jews who is not that person. Often times they don't even need to do that. I have had posts of mine where I talk about antisemitism in general, and people will claim I'm upset because I saw a free Palestine poster. No Samantha, I was talking about being called a kike whilst being dicked down (consensually up until that point) by a woman I thought I could trust.
I have an oddly specific question, bare with me please.
If a Jewish couple takes in and raises a non-Jewish alien and said alien is essentially brought up as a Jewish child, is the alien Jewish or would he have to convert? Would it work the same as a Jewish couple adopting a human child that isn't Jewish, or would extraterrestrials be different?
I work with caring for animals at a scientific institution and I care for many snakes. My father insists they're cursed by Hashem and completely evil inherently.
I am very much aware of the serpent in Judaism, as I am an Orthodox Jew. However I follow the belief that all animals are cared for by Hashem and even the snake's curse was still not a complete condemnation as the legless body allowed snakes to hunt a different type of prey.
I have been looking for more positive or nuanced rabbinical opinions or insights on snakes, the literal animal not the symbolism of the serpent. Does anyone have any recommendations for this? Not looking to cancel out the negative image snakes have, but rather for deeper interpretations on this complex issue. I just don't believe that just because the Serpant was cursed in Gan Eden it means that every snake ever forever is evil.
I have a ball python as a pet and she is the loveliest and sweetest girl so I'm also interested in where this goes. I absolutely refuse to believe they're evil, also snakes eat rodents so in that way they can serve the same purpose as cats!
There is a recording making its way around Arab intelligence services this month. In it, Mahmoud Abbas, the 89-year-old president of the Palestinian Authority, serving twenty years into a four-year term, expresses quiet satisfaction that Saudi Arabia was struck by Iranian regime missiles during the war. He says, in the coded language Palestinian politicians use when they think nobody is listening, that the Saudis had it coming.
He did not know he was being recorded.
He knows now.
...
When Israel and the United States opened the war on the regime in Iran this spring, the Palestinian factions discovered something they had spent decades insulating themselves from. They were irrelevant to their own war. The biggest Middle East war in a generation was unfolding, and nobody in any serious capital was asking Ramallah or Gaza what they thought.
The Palestinian commentator Ahmad al- Attawna put words to it on Arab television:
"The Palestinian people clearly have no leadership, and I'm not speaking metaphorically; even in reality, there is no true leadership capable of presenting the Palestinian people with a vision or a sense of where they are headed."
That is a Palestinian, in Arabic, to an Arab audience, saying the thing Palestinian intellectuals have been whispering in private from Amman to Ramallah for years.
...
On paper, Mahmoud Abbas should have welcomed this war. The regime in Iran is the patron of his worst enemies; the force that expelled his government from Gaza in the 2007 coup and has been agitating against his rule in the West Bank ever since. The humbling of Tehran should have been the best month
Abbas had in twenty years.
Instead, he spent it nursing a grievance.
Saudi Arabia has spent the last several years reducing its financial support to the Palestinian Authority, the slow drawdown Gulf royals use to send a message. Abbas has never forgiven them.
...
So when Iranian missiles started landing in Riyadh, Abbas, if the recording is authentic, which every official I have spoken to about it believes it is, expressed joy in what he thought were private conversations. Open pleasure that the Saudis were getting what he felt they had coming.
The Saudis found out, as the Saudis always do.
...
What this month exposed is a truth the Palestinian national movement has spent fifty years concealing from the world and from itself.
It does not have principles. It has patrons. Hamas's loyalty to Iran lasted exactly as long as Iran was the strongest player in the room. Abbas's commitment to Arab solidarity lasted exactly as long as the Saudis were signing the checks.
Call this what it is. A franchise operation. Loyalty runs in one direction only: downward from the top, and evaporates the moment the royalty payments stop.
I have spent years being told, in every Western capital where I am invited to speak, that the Palestinian cause is the conscience of the Arab world. This month, the Arab world watched Hamas refuse to lift a finger for the regime that armed it for twenty years, and watched the president of the Palestinian Authority laugh at the destruction of the country that has paid his civil servants’ salaries for most of his presidency.
Therein lies the conscience of the Arab world.
Iran will punish Hamas quietly, the way Tehran punishes proxies who disappoint it: a late transfer, a missed shipment, a Quds Force contact who stops returning calls. The Saudis will decide what to do with Abbas, and my guess is that Mohammed bin Salman is already running the arithmetic on whether it is easier to replace the old man than to reform him. Saudi-Israeli normalization is back on the table, and MBS is not the kind of ruler who lets a man with a recording problem sit across the table of the deal that reshapes the region.
The Palestinian people, the actual people, the ones nobody in Ramallah or Doha or Tehran has consulted in decades, will be handed whatever arrangement the leaders decide to hand them.
That is the consequence of a leadership that spent a war performing for three audiences at once, and forgot the oldest rule of politics in the Arab world:
Someone in the room is always recording.
If this gave you a sharper picture of what just happened in the Arab world, forward it to one person who is still operating on 2023 assumptions.
He thought nobody was listening. The Saudis heard everything. And the Palestinian Authority will never recover.
"the name Epstein is now synonymous with disgust and how we know there's a cabal of dark forces in the world" okay I hate Epstein too, he was a repulsive monster, and so is everyone associated with him. there needs to be justice. there needs to be truth and consequences.
can people please ask for that and acknowledge his evil while dialing back their extreme antisemitism attached to it? ffs
looking for a therapist. not sure if I just never mention that I'm Jewish, or if I say that a some of my issues stem from antisemitism and if they can't deal with that then we would not be a good match. I understand if they don't like Netanyahu but if they believe Israel is committing genocide we can't work together. and then having said that - assuming they haven't said no we can't work together which would also be devastating because it's hard enough to even do an intake interview having to risk talking about this - I have to trust that they are being honest with me, but in the back of my mind never really being fully able to trust that either 1) they don't secretly hate Israel and Jews but think they're a professional and won't let it affect them but it will regardless, or 2) they are actually malicious ( maybe to the point that they have put Jewish therapists on the "zionists do not refer" lists that are so popular with mental health professionals these days) and is overjoyed to have a Jewish patient so as to hurt me further for Great Justice (I'm a genocider remember, not really a human the same way other people are, and any cruelty and harm done to me frees palestine. what better thing could you do then get an Evil Zio to trust you with all their most intimate secrets and issues and then use it against them?)
I'm not sure I will ever really be able to trust a therapist again after seeing what goes on in the mental health field regarding Jews. so it's either never bring it up at all or never fully feel safe in therapy (in which case what is the point of going to therapy at all)
Well, there's also option 3: look for a Jewish therapist. This non-profit has a free referral system. They have connections to Jewish therapists in several locations as well as therapists who will meat remotely.-🐞
No actually as an indigenous Mexican who had the beautiful ancient cities and temples of my people callously buried under catholic churches, who is also Jewish, I’m not going to be chill about the dome on the Temple Mount either.
I’m not going to stop feeling strongly about it in the same way I still feel strongly seeing centuries of my people’s history buried under Catholic churches. I understand the dome is there now, and I don’t think it should be destroyed because I understand the significance it holds now.
But I’m not going to stop being angry about it. Especially since my people are not even allowed to go there. I can’t imagine the rage we Mexicans would justifiably have if Spaniards suddenly decided we aren’t allowed to visit our own ancient cities and temples becuase the land is “their’s now” since they built their churches there. The patience and understanding of the Jewish people is so fucking undermined. We have time and time again been expected to and have bent over backwards for others becuase we fundamentally believe in uplifting everyone, even at the cost of ourselves. Even in our own fucking country. Even in the country everyone accuses of being “Jewish supremacist” do we still face blatant discrimination, and allow ourselves to face it for the sake of our muslim neighbors and muslim Israeli citizens.
My people’s history has been repeatedly stomped over and time and time again attempted to be eradicated from history. I won’t stop being mad about that.
antisemites are obsessed with the concept of jews taking revenge for what has been done to us. firstly:
there have never been enough jews in the history of the world, there are not enough resources, there is not enough time for it to be even remotely possible that we do unto you what you have done to us
secondly:
and what if we did? would it not by your own estimation be justified?
thirdly:
this only comes to your mind because if this happened to YOU, then YOU would want to take exact revenge. we aren’t like you. we want to live. all we have ever wanted is to live and be free to determine our own futures. we want independence, self-determination, and peace.
we are not like you. and even if we took revenge in some impossibly small and limited capacity, it would never be enough. i don’t know that enough suffering has ever existed for you to be punished for what you’ve done to us.
