#Weekly Torah Reading

[jewishandmore]

Good Faith Judaism

“Good faith partners don’t quote scripture at each other.”

Working with people from multiple faith backgrounds, I often say this and find general agreement among accomplices in justice work.

Jewish teachers regularly cite sacred sources, from the Five Books of Moses all the way through current writings. Many Jews quote texts all the time and do much more than say: “Look, I have a source to back up my argument.” We have thousands of years of established procedures for “d’rash-ing” or interpreting texts.

As a rabbinic colleague pointed out, we try not to do this “at” each other, so much as with one another. We aim to be guided by some agreed upon principles in the process. We don’t always get it right. We can be argumentative and hurtful and divisive as much as anyone else, but we do try to unite around some basic ideas, like these, which are only a sample:

- Respect and Dignity — as one family of humanity, hailing from the same universal source, we try to treat one another as mutual bearers of an infinite spark, a shard of divinity. When we teach, generally, and particularly when we use our sacred texts, we aim to uphold these principles, and our teachings ought not defy them.

- Compassion and Inclusion — kindness, soulfulness, a high regard for each other’s humanity and human needs. While there are many sources in our traditions that can be used to divide and exclude, we should aim higher.

- Learning and Tradition — while wisdom often starts in a source text, Jews have embraced an evolution and movement with the times that progresses our texts with us. We are people of many books, some of which have only been written yesterday.

Rabbi Amy Scheinerman teaches about these principles and and many others, calling them “meta-commandments”[1] — underlying guidelines for applying Jewish teachings in practice.

We try not to use our texts as a bludgeon against one another. Sharing wisdom from ancient sources fulfills another important Jewish principle — bringing us together in community. When we use our sacred texts to sow division and enmity, we fall into historical challenges that Jewish wisdom has cautioned us against for millennia. Jewish teachings often attribute the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, in 70 CE, to “baseless hatred” between Jews, taking responsibility, perhaps unreasonably, for something that was clearly done to our ancestors by the Roman Empire.

Nearly seventy rabbis and rabbinical students from different affiliations recently joined together in an organization called Beit Kaplan, which is “a forum for the cultivation of a flourishing, dynamic Jewish civilization…With deep ties to Reconstructionist Judaism”[2].

Beit Kaplan rallied in support of students who left the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College last year because of the hostility directed at them as supporters of the State of Israel, self-proclaimed “liberal Zionists”. Beit Kaplan sponsored a gathering to hear the testimony of these former students on Monday, September 9, 2024.

On Friday, September 6, 2024, a rabbi and faculty member at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College (RRC) wrote a regular email to rabbinical students and advised them to not attend the Beit Kaplan gathering “both for the sake of your own well-being, and to not give the event undue attention”. The rabbi continued to provide “Torah framing” for help in dealing with “the problems that pain us” seemingly raised by the Beit Kaplan event.

The rabbi invoked that week’s Torah reading, called Shoftim, (Deuteronomy 16:18–21:9), declared that the students who left RRC were “those who provide false testimony” who spoke “unethically” and cited the verses that call for such people to be swept from your midst (Deut. 19:19) and killed for their crimes without pity (Deut. 19:21). While tempering this harsh decree from scripture with the Talmud’s qualifications that punishments should be the monetary payment for damages, the rabbi summed up with this interpretation: “There is still a consequence, and the consequence does not need to be identical to the initial action. There is mercy mixed in with justice.” The rabbi concluded with a nod to loving-kindness as a sign of power and rigor in pursuing communal justice.

This brazen use of sacred texts to condemn former community-members, disparage them as unethical liars, and then call for their punishment in vague terms shocked me. This was the kind of scriptural argument that justified American white supremacy, imposed patriarchy and misogyny onto generations of women, and argued for the subjugation of the Jewish people for nearly 2,000 years. That a rabbi made these claims, offered no evidence nor any judicial process by which those they accused could be condemned, and then alluded to punishments from Biblical and Talmudic times without any real qualifications, horrified and saddened me.

This rabbi used our shared sacred texts as a bludgeon against former students and potential colleagues as part of a message to prevent people from engaging with one another. In contrast, I propose an embrace of shared values as a necessary precursor to an argument from sacred sources. What we are arguing for is as important as which sources we use to support that argument. Quoting from the same passages in last week’s Torah reading (Deuteronomy 16:20), “Equity, equity you are to pursue”, or “Justice, justice shall you pursue”[3], we do so understanding that equity, and justice may be repeated in this verse to remind us to take others’ perspectives into account. Justice requires community and overcoming distances between one another — it is a collaborative project. In this way, I offer a Biblical interpretation that I believe asks us to participate in a system of community values that elevate all of us to behave better with one another.

As a graduate of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and a proud student of the teachings of Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan that inspired the founding of RRC, I implore the faculty and leadership of RRC to reconsider the words of one of your own. Please join us in this season of return and reconciliation in shared work of repair. Please engage with us and those who have shared their difficulties with RRC in good faith.

Let us teach and learn our texts with one another, and not use them as weapons against each other.

 [1] I have heard Rabbi Scheinerman teach this under the phrase “meta-mitzvah”, here is one place in print:  Scheinerman, A. (2018, October). Hospice, Interfaith, and Halakha. https://collegecommons.huc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/BullyPulpit_Rabbi_Amy_Scheinerman_Transcript_FINAL.pdf, Pages 4–5

[2] Beit Kaplan. (n.d.). The Rabbinic Partnership for Jewish Peoplehood. Retrieved September 10, 2024, from https://www.beitkaplan.org/

[3] The first translation is from: Fox, E. (1997). The Five Books of Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. Schocken.

And the second is from: Jewish Publication Society Inc. (2009). JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh. Jewish Publication Society of America.

[infiniteglitterfall]

I do realize this is a real niche post but I cannot tell you how many damn times over the past 10 months I've seen gentiles tell Jews some version of, "Your own holy book SAYS God doesn't want you to have a country yet!"

And it's such an incredibly blatant and weirdly specific tell that they're not part of something that grew from progressive grassroots, but something based on right-wing astroturfing.

1. Staying in your own lane is a pretty huge progressive principle.

Telling people in another group that their deity said they couldn't do X is, I think, as far as you can get from your own lane.

2. It's also very clearly Not In Your Own Lane because I've never seen anyone actually be able to EITHER quote the passage they're thinking of, OR cite where it is.

It's purely, "I saw somebody else say this, and it seemed like it would make me win the debate I wasn't invited to."

3. It betrays a complete ignorance of Jewish culture and history.

Seriously? You don't know what you're referencing, its context, or even what it specifically says, but you're... coming to a community that reads and often discusses the entire Torah together each year, at weekly services... who have massive books holding generations of debate about it that it takes 7 years to read, at one page per day....

And saying, "YOUR book told you not to!"

I've been to services where we discussed just one word from the reading the whole time. The etymology. The connotations. The use of it in this passage versus in other passages.

And then there is the famous saying, "Ask two Jews, get three opinions." There is a culture of questioning and discussion and debate throughout Judaism.

You think maybe, in the decades and decades of public discussion about whether to buy land in Eretz Yisrael and move back there; whether it should keep being an individual thing, or keep shifting to intentional community projects; what the risks were; whether it should really be in Argentina or Canada or someplace instead; how this would be received by the Jews and gentiles already there, how to respect their boundaries, how to work with them before and during; and whether ending up with a fuckton of Jews in one place might not be exactly as dangerous for them as it had always been everywhere else....

You think NOBODY brought up anything scriptural? Nobody looked through the Torah, the Nevi'im, the Ketuvim, or the Talmud for any thoughts about any of this?? It took 200 years and some rando in the comments to blow everyone's minds???

4. It relies on an unspoken assumption that people can and should take very literal readings of religious texts and use them to control others.

And a sense of ownership and power over those texts, even without any accompanying knowledge about what they say.

It's kind of a supercessionist know-it-all vibe. It reads like, "I know what you should be doing. Because even if I'm not personally part of a fundamentalist branch of a related religion, the culture I'm rooted in is."

Bonus version I found when I was looking for an example. NOBODY should do this:

There are a lot of people who pull weird historical claims like "It SAYS Abraham came from Chaldea! That's Iraq!"

Like, first of all, a group is indigenous to a land if it arose as a people and culture there, before (not because of) colonization.

People aren't spontaneously spawning in groups, like "Boom! A new indigenous people just spawned!!"

People come from places. They go places. Sometimes, they gel as a new community and culture. Sometimes, they bop around for a while and eventually assimilate into another group.

Second: THE TORAH IS NOT A HISTORY TEXTBOOK OMFG.

It's an oral history, largely written centuries after the fact.

There is a TON of historical and archaeological research on when and where the Jewish culture originated, how it developed over time, etc. It's extremely well-established.

Nobody has to try to pull what they remember from Sunday school for this argument.

[copperbadge]

Mum, texting out of the blue: What's a Half Torah? Is it a special version of the Torah?

Me: A what?

Mum: We're watching this Netflix show about a Rabbi and one of the people mentions reading a Half Torah. Is it an abridged version?

Me: *lightbulb* ohhhh...a Haftarah.

I'm gonna be laughing about that for a while. Reading a Half Torah. It's when you're really halfassing the weekly portion. Like the opposite of daf yomi, half Torah.

(For non-Jewish readers: the Haftarah is a special reading from religious texts within Jewish canon but outside of the weekly Torah portion -- you have a relatively long bit of Torah that gets read each week and then a shorter reading from elsewhere in the Tanakh that relates to it.)

[makingqueerhistory]

Hi! Do you have any recommendations of books that explore the relationship between queerness and Judaism? Thanks so much!

Yes, absolutely; this subject also interests me so I am excited to share some books!

First, the book I always recommend:

Beyond the Pale Elana Dykewomon

Another favourite of mine:

The New Queer Conscience Adam Eli

I also recently got a fantastic list from a patron in our discord!

A Rainbow Thread: An Anthology of Queer Jewish Texts from the First Century to 1969 Noam Sienna

Balancing on the Mechitza: Transgender in Jewish Community Noach Dzmura, Tucker Lieberman

Uncommon Charm Emily Bergslien, Kat Weaver

Torah Queeries: Weekly Commentaries on the Hebrew Bible Gregg Drinkwater, Joshua Lesser, David Shneer, Judith Plaskow

The Soul of the Stranger: Reading God and Torah from a Transgender Perspective Joy Ladin

I hope this list helps!

[challahbeloved]

“The entire Torah is names of God.

In Hebrew the word kore means both "read" and "call."

When we read the Torah, we are not only reading, but also calling God by name,

And God calls back.

During the Torah reading we are passive,

We don't say anything

We don't respond at all

Only listen.

From within the congregation one rises,

The Torah reader,

And calls God in the name of us all,

And the Holy Blessed One calls back in response.

Torah reading is the time in our prayer when we stop for a moment,

We cease saying our part in the prayer,

And listen to what the Holy Blessed One has to tell us this week.

This is not the time for ideas about the weekly reading,

Or for studying the Torah's commentaries,

Rather for the Torah reading, for the calling:

A time for listening to Divine speech

Bursting from the Torah.

We direct our hearts to listen to the reading,

To awaken, to evoke the ancient words,

To transform the reading to a calling,

To hear the Torah calling to us.”

— Dov Singer, Prepare My Prayer, Page 183.

[queer-jewish-spoonie]

Hi I recently came across your blog and had a question. How do you as a chronically ill person participate in Jewish life(to whatever extent you do, either cultural or religious)? I ask because I've become chronically ill/disabled within the past few years and while somedays I do okay to manage, I also struggle really badly to stay involved because of my chronic fatigue and other symptoms.

Shalom friend!

Obligatory "I am not a Rabbi, just an individual Jew, and these are my thoughts"

So to start, I am diagnosed with hEDS and POTS, and likely have MCAS. With these conditions comes a whole host of symptoms. The ones that impact me the most are the fatigue, pain, nausea, and dislocations/subluxations. I have countless other symptoms I experience daily that impact my daily life. Because Judaism is so central to my daily routines, I've had to adapt my Jewish life to be more accessible.

To be honest, the biggest (and hardest) thing about it is simply accepting that you might not be able to practice/observe how you want to. Coming to terms with that and accepting that have gotten rid of a lot of the stress and hesitance I felt when attempting to engage with Jewish ritual after becoming disabled.

I think it is imperative to get a solid Jewish support system in place too. Reach out to a local shul and see if anyone can give you rides to services/events. Schedule a meeting with the Rabbi to discuss ways to make the shul itself more accessible to you, whether with ramps or special seating or simply with help getting established in the community. I have someone my age at synagogue who has the same conditions as me, and we help keep each other accountable for attending services and Hillel events.

Find Jewish rituals that make you feel extra good and lean into those, and don't stress yourself out by over-worrying about rituals or mitzvot you struggle with. It's important to wrestle with the Divine, but it is also important to lean into the joy that is being a Jew and engaging with Jewish ritual.

Fill your home with Jewish art, ritual items, and texts. Put up mezuzot and display your Judaica. If you aren't sure where to start with obtaining Judaica, you can ask your local shul or check out online Judaica shops. I like JudaicaWebStore and Modern Tribe. And thrift stores will occasionally sell Judaica, you just have to dig! One of my Shabbat candle sets comes from a thrift store, as well as the bowl I keep my hand-washing cup in.

Read the weekly Torah portion. Sefaria is a great resource for this, as well as just about every other Jewish text. You don't even have to read the whole thing if you aren't able to, just skim it or read a few bits at a time through the week. It's a small way to connect with the text that has sustained us for centuries, as well as connect you with countless other Jews reading the same text along with you.

Listen to Jewish music. I'll link my Jewish music playlist in a reblog that has pretty much every Jewish song I've liked in it. There's Jewish music for pretty much every genre, you've just gotta find what you like!

Daven (pray)! Sefaria has loads of siddurim (prayerbooks) available. There is also the OpenSiddurProject that has an amazing amount of siddurim and other texts available for free. Shuls can also lend you a copy of their siddur!

If structured prayer isn't your thing, try hitbodedut. Hitbodedut is a Jewish meditative practice that involves isolating yourself (often in nature, but isn't necessary) and speaking to HaShem privately. Sometimes hitbodedut looks like crying, sometimes it looks like laughter between words, sometimes it is just a bland conversation. Whatever you feel you have to tell HaShem, tell Him, after all it is just the two of you when you're doing hitbodedut!

There's also Jewish meditation! There's loads on Spotify and YouTube, and I don't doubt other platforms have them!

[bijoumikhawal]

Books I am planning to read- tagged by @amarocit

1. Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson. I was recommended this by my good friend @2percentsugar after he read the two essays I've put out so far on natiophagy. I suspect that the "global" analysis is probably gonna disappoint me somewhat but it seems interesting

2. Nations and states: an enquiry into the origins of nations by Hugh Seton-Watson, picked up a pdf for similar reasons to the above through a commie pan-Africanist library that had the former

3. Folktales of Egypt by Hasan M. El-Shamy. I got this book last year and still have only partially read it. Finding any book discussing Egyptian folktales is really difficult, due to a lot of academic focus being biased away from doing so. I like folklore and fairytales a lot (I grew up with the Grimms and Stories for Children by Singer, as well as a few other anthologies). The trouble is I want to post some of these online and I have to type them out manually when I do! It ends up distracting me.

4. Egyptian & Sudanese Folk-Tales (Oxford Myths and Legends), retold by Helen Mitchnik. Not ae excited about this one the way I am about El-Shamy's. He includes ethnographic and contextual info about the storytellers he interviewed and pretty directly transcribes what he was told. This is a "retelling" by an outsider thar doesn't include that information. Still might be fun.

5. Ghost Riders of Upper Egypt by Hans Winkler. I got this as part of my research into and theorization about adorcism in Northeast Africa, but put it off because it's not about zar (my specific interest area) and because I found out the author was a German in the 1940s (and while no one wants to detail what he did, yes, he was)! I have read some of it and know its got useful information but I'm not especially happy about it.

6. Chromophobia by David Batchelor. I was recommended this as part of a discussion about white supremacy, art, and fashion. It's quite concept I'm familiar with, but I'm curious to see what insight an academic analysis has.

7. Seth, God of Confusion by H. Te Velde. I've gotten interested in dissecting Set like a bug and the Chaos (sometimes feminine and full of raw power) vs Order (masculine and needs to control power) dichotomy since finding out pagan Egyptians occasionally conflated Set with HaShem, especially in Late Antiquity. This usually wasn't positive, as by this point Set wasn't viewed as a nuanced figure, but i love taking my shame and turning into something to strut around in. Also because I dislike dualism and wanna break it with a hammer.

8. On My Right Michael, On My Left Gabriel: Angels in Ancient Jewish Culture by Mika Ahuvia. A lot of people claim "angels aren't important in Judaism" to differentiate from Christianity, but that blatantly isn't true. I know a bit about Apocalyptic literature and modern folklore, and hope this will be another addition to all that.

9. Ban of the Bori. Part of my zar research, as zar was very directly influenced by Bori during the 19th and early 20th century (to the point where "zar-bori" is used to refer to a broader adorcist system stretching across Sahelo-Saharan Africa). I started this, but the writing style is insufferable to read so it's one of those academic books that takes me forever to finish.

10. The Arabic Hermes: From Pagan Sage to Prophet of Science by Kevin van Bladel. I like reading about syncretism!

11. The Devil and the Jews by Joshua Trachtenberg. I've been recommended this but haven't read it yet, and it is relevant to some Thoughts I've been Thinking

12. Torah Queeries: Weekly Commentaries on the Hebrew Bible. I agreed to help with a midrash for every parsha project, so I've been reading multiple versions of the parshas I think I'll have Ideas on and the different takes people have to respond to or just to help me get the juices going

13. Qemant: A Pagan-Hebraic Peasantry of Ethiopia by Frederick C. Gamst. An Ethiopian friend of mine has mentioned the Qemant a few times and I want to know more. TL;DR is that they're an ethnoreligion that seems to have split off from Judaism before monotheism really took hold (?).

And I'll cut it off here because we don't need to be here forever.

Tagging @2percentsugar @wanderingwriter87 @knivesandteeth @tokidokifish @idonotbitemythumbatyou @subatoism @lorenzobane @fatalism-and-villainy and anyone else who wants in!

[eretzyisrael]

THIS WEEK'S TORAH PORTION

Biblical Readings for Passover

During Passover, the regular cycle of weekly Torah portions is set aside in favour of special readings that reflect the themes of the holiday.

[iantimony]

big ol' tuesdaypost

listening: background noise for the week has been relistening to TANIS. not gonna lie, y'all, this podcast has not aged well! it is simply not very good! it was always kinda mid with regard to dialogue etc but now after listening to other narrative podcasts (TMA, Silt Verses, Wolf359, etc) it's even worse. all it ever really had going for it was Vibes and it's hanging on that by a thread. however, it is serving the purpose of essentially white noise. audio drama equivalent of eating packing peanuts.

I also got surprised in one of the early episodes because Elisa Lam's name wasn't censored - I could have SWORN that at the time there was a pretty large backlash to using a real person's tragedy and name in a narrative fiction podcast so they went and censored her name out? like, that's why all the following episodes have that disclaimer about "for legal and safety reasons we've elected to change some names and leave others out entirely"? okay yes live mid-writing of this I went and checked and the transcript of that episode literally says "Also, we have decided to entirely redact the name of one person who has passed away whose name was used in this episode. It appears in this transcript as [REDACTED]." did I somehow get an unedited version in my podcast app??? very odd.

when I got bored of TANIS or needed something more engaging/stimulating I got back on The Silt Verses season 2! on s2e3 now for reference. especially in contrast with TANIS it is so phenomenal lol.

you will notice that last week I linked "Pale Green Things" from the album The Sunset Tree by The Mountain Goats. this made me realize that a song I listen to a lot around this time of year ("This Year", obviously, lol) is on the same album. I have embarrassing news which is that I have listened to exactly one Mountain Goats album all the way through (Jenny from Thebes) so I resolved to listen to The Sunset Tree all the way through.

gang, this is not a surprise, or news, but man, this album fucking whips. it's so good. why didn't I do this years ago. oh my god.

Broom People

Dilaudid

Magpie

reading: "Bad Influence" by Mia Sato - duuuuuuuuuude lol. I am no legal expert but I think I know how this case is gonna go because let's be totally real. the beige home shade is really funny to me, not quite a maximalist but someone who loves her home with objects that are colorful, lively, full of sentiment, and secondhand where I can make it (i.e. not mass market sludge).

On the Origin of the Hebrew Deity-Name El Shaddai by F. M. Behymer - a discussion of the name 'El Shaddai' in contexts of fertility came up in weekly torah study this week and the rabbi was wondering if there were any real scholarly sources related to that beyond just noting it a few times in scripture. naturally I immediately went to jstor. interesting article, not sure if it's exactly what my rabbi was thinking about but I will be emailing it to him.

[Is] BookTok for Dummies[?] by Chels - I am not a tiktok girly (I have deleted social media apps from my phone because I find accessing them through web browser is less addictive, and tiktok simply does not function in a web browser so I don't use it) so I am very removed from these dynamics. call me crazy but I do not care if people on tiktok are reading porn because [looks at my ao3 history] glass houses, etc. the weird reactionary bent against romance novels is very strange to me.

Static by purplewhales on ao3 :3

watching: the death of personal style by Mina Le - I've definitely never been as extravagant as she is known to be but I do love a little Outfit(tm), especially since I have officially acquired my Good Leather Jacket this fall. cooking this one in my brain still though because it takes me SO long to get ready for the day and having a 'uniform' would probably. help that. lol.

The Winter Reset Guide by Morgan Evelyn Cook - she's kinda basic (in a positive way) but I've been enjoying her vids along with Caroline Winkler as background noise. ngl I love her high five thing it's very cute. I did stop everything to hold my hand up like I was high-fiving her. her dog is adorable too.

LED Christmas lights which don't hurt the eyes by Technology Connections. "this is not what christmas looks like. it looks like a vape shop. or, worse, a gaming PC." extremely funny thank you autism etc

I bought the world's most expensive yarn by Cinema Knits - the background noise while my soup was simmering and I was crocheting another mouse cat toy. cozy bliss.

The Online Gambling Epidemic by Drew Gooden - I'm becoming more of a hockey person (especially with the women's league coming up let's goooo) and while I'm not that tapped into it I'm sure gambling there exists, though it doesn't seem as plastered across everything as it is with football?

relatedly: watched a hockey game in the background on Saturday while I ran dnd! my mom and brother were there in person so I tuned in remotely to keep up :) also watched the Sirens/Frost game on Sunday yippee

playing: as above: ran dnd on Saturday! once again I spent time before it agonizing how I did not want to even a little bit but after actually doing it I had a lot of fun.

making: like a fool, I left the container with my winter wear open and my cat RIPPED THE POMPOM OFF the top of a hat I made a few years ago. it's no great loss - the pompom really wasn't big enough, I didn't have enough of the beige yarn I'd really wanted to use - and she didn't eat any of the yarn, just relished in tearing it all apart, so I made a new one with some leftover of the white. this one is bigger and fluffier and definitely matches the vibe of the hat better so I'm not mad. it's been deadly cold here, like windchills bringing it to single digits, so I've actually gotten some good wear out of it the past few days.

made what will hopefully be a lemon coaster but I think I gave it one too many rows of the interior yellow so stay tuned, plus a mousie for my cat :)

further work on the holiday card for this year! sketches followed by some inspo images:

sources: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

eating: yayy thanksgiving. many leftovers, etc. made a big ass kugel that was demolished over two different get-togethers, gonna make another one for a potluck at temple this coming Friday! might make that one with crushed pineapple because every time I mention it my grandma sighs wistfully and says how her mom used to make it that way.

I also made this sunchoke soup from some sunchokes that I blanched and froze about a month ago. I halved the recipe because I only had about a pound of sunchokes and this is soooo good. no picture because I'm ngl it looks like sludge lol. made waffles again too.

finally: little emotional support cheese board from the other day, lol.

feat. paesanella ciresa (soft vaguely mushroomy?), somerdale red dragon (very dijon mustard-y), cotswold (super chives and onion flavor), and appenzeller white label (swiss adjacent) picked up as little samples from the cheese counter castoff bin. and olives and mozz balls of course.

misc: really enjoyed these few days off. it is cold as fuck here which is not encouraging me to get back in the swing of things but it has put me in cozy mode. I did reformat my resume in LaTeX so now it's sexy for my conference next week because I am … printing out a few copies I guess ?? to bring to hand to people if needed. do people still do that. who fucking knows.

[shelvesofsiddurim]

Have you done any reading with the JPS Tanakh - Gender sensitive edition? I am a genderqueer Jew and have been interested in potentially investing in a copy, however I haven't found many reviews of it online to know if it is worthwhile. Do you have any scholarly reading recommendations for queer observant Jews or recommendations for siddurim?

I have. It's entirely in English and the translation is...pretty decent. I appreciate what it's trying to do and I think its worth having as a reference copy. If I was doing Torah study with people who aren't familiar with Hebrew or don't have a strong background in Biblical Hebrew, then it would be the one that I would teach from because I think the translation is more accessible and engaging.

For scholarly recommendations:

A Rainbow Thread: An Anthology of Queer Jewish Texts from the First Century to 1969 by Noam Sienna

The Soul of the Stranger: Reading God and Torah from a Transgender Perspective by Joy Ladin

Torah Queeries: Weekly Commentaries on the Hebrew Bible (various authors)

Siddurim recommendations are going to be a little harder. For Ashkenazim, the classic queer siddurim are Siddur Sha'ar Zahav (Congregation Sha'ar Zahav) and Shavat va-Yinafash (Beit Mishpacha), but those lean heavily Reform in their liturgy. The Rabbinical Assembly's Siddur Sim Shalom is good for someone who wants traditional liturgy combined with poetry and an egalitarian framework (Modeh Ani in Sim Shalom is still gendered in that siddur though); it has Hebrew-English, with a few things transliterated here and there. Depending on your feelings towards Orthodoxy and davening with an Orthodox siddur, Koren is my go-to, although it's very binary in how it deals with gender both in its prayers (only Avot) and the halachic guides** that are in the back of their Hebrew-English and Hebrew-with-English-Instruction siddurim.

If your Sephardi, then your only real option is Siddur Or uMasoret, which - although not advertised as an explicitly queer siddur - is a queer-friendly*, traditional egalitarian Sephardi siddur that comes in weekday, Shabbat and Festivals, and Friday night variants.

*queer friendly in that it has non-binary Hebrew, which I know that some queer Jews prefer to see used

**the halachic guides assume that the reader is male

Hope this helps!

[gaelic-symphony]

hi!! :)

i hope this isn't weird, but i love reading your posts about judaism to learn more from it. i don't follow any religion but i love getting to know them from people who do

and if you don't mind me asking, what are your favourite things about it? <3

i hope i have expressed myself well and you don't mind this 🫶🏼

I actually love this ask, and I'm so glad you sent it! There are so many things I love about Judaism, it would take me forever to come up with a list of them, but here are a few of my favorites:

I love our everyday rituals. I love keeping kosher and going to the kosher supermarket. I love that every time I eat or go grocery shopping, I'm affirming my connection to my people and my ancestors. I love that we have blessings for the most mundane human activities like washing our hands. I love ending every week with Shabbat. I love how it gives us a day to rest and reflect and be thankful before we start a new week, and I love having the weekly marker of Shabbat to track the passage of time. I love that you don't have to subscribe to any particular version of Jewish theology or believe that we do these things because Hashem commanded us in order to participate fully in these rituals. You can do them just because you find meaning in them. You can do them just because you're proud to be Jewish and follow the traditions of your ancestors.

I love our holidays. So many of them commemorate our survival against those who tried to wipe us out: Purim, Chanukah, Passover. Every year, we tell the story of our peoples' perseverance. We reflect on the strength and courage of generations of Jews before us that allowed our continued survival into the present day. Other holidays are seasonal markers of time. Tu B'Shvat is a little over a week away, and it's our "new year for trees," the time of year when the earliest trees start to bloom in the Land of Israel. Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur mark the end of the old year and beginning of a new one, and give us the chance to leave our mistakes of the past year behind and learn from them moving forward as we start fresh with a brand new year. Sukkot is a traditional celebration of the annual harvest. And other holidays, we're just so happy to be Jewish that we need to throw a party about it! Shavuot celebrates the Israelites receiving the Torah from Hashem at Mount Sinai, and then we celebrate the Torah again on Simchat Torah, when we read the very last verses of the book of Dvarim and start all over again with Bereshit.

I love our music. Our daily prayers are set to music, with special nusach (melodies) for Shabbat and holidays. When we read from the Torah or the books of the prophets, we chant the words to the same melodies our ancestors have done for centuries. We sing as a way to connect with each other and with Hashem. We sing the psalms of King David, and we sing wordless melodies we call niggunim. We've developed our own styles of secular, non-liturgical music and dance: klezmer and canciones, the horah and the Yemenite step, and many, many more!

I love our scholarship. Our scholarly tradition is one of questioning and arguing, neither of which are viewed negatively in Jewish tradition! We love to ask ourselves "what if" and "why," and the point isn't so much finding a singular answer as it is the process of engaging with the text. Does it really matter as a real-world issue whether there are any Pokemon that would be kosher to eat? Of course not! But that's exactly the type of thing we love to argue over, and if the ancient rabbinic sages like Hillel and Akiva and Rashi and Maimonides were alive today, I guarantee you they would have opinions on the matter.

I love our joy. There is so much joy that comes with being Jewish, a joy we feel just for being alive against all odds. Most of our prayers are not asking Hashem for the things we want, but thanking Hashem for the things we have. We have a brachah we say specifically to thank Hashem for the opportunity to fix what is broken in this world. Our history has rarely been a happy one, but we have always found reasons to rejoice. We danced and sang and celebrated our holidays and life events even in the Warsaw Ghetto. This past December, during one of the saddest, heaviest, and scariest times for our people since the Shoah, Jews all over the world celebrated Chanukah like we always do. In the midst of our mourning, we found joy. Literally and figuratively, we came together as a tribe to create light in the darkness.

[shirbird]

I recently made a connection between the story of Moses’s birth (which was recently in the weekly Torah portion) (I would like to note that I do not take these stories as fact, however it is in the Torah which is what religious Jews supposedly live by) and Israel’s terrorist and genocidal acts in Gaza.

The story goes that the pharaoh’s astrologers saw that a baby boy would soon be born that would be the savior of the Jewish people. Now pharaoh didn’t want the Jews (his slaves) to be taken from him, so he ordered that all male babies born to Jewish mothers should be killed upon delivery.

When Moses’s parents heard about this, they separated, so as not to bring a child into the world that would be immediately killed. Moses’s father, Amram, was a community leader so everyone in the community separated from their spouses as well. Moses’s sister, Miriam, went to her parents and told them this:

“pharaoh decreed that all boys die, however you are killing the boys and the girls.”

Upon hearing this, Moses’s parents got back together, and six months later Moses was born (yes Moses was a preemie).

During the Passover Seder we read a passage with a similar idea: “pharaoh wanted to kill only the boys, but Laban wanted to kill everyone”. Therefore Laban was a far worse villain.

So yes, there are Palestinians that want to kill innocent people, and are actively trying to. There are Palestinians who have killed innocent people. But the Israelis are not just killing them. They are killing everyone.

Therefore, in the words of the Prophet Miriam, they are worse than Pharaoh (who is considered one of the main villains in ancient Jewish history). They are definitely worse than the Palestinians.

It is not the Jewish way to kill indiscriminately.

It is not in Jewish values to kill indiscriminately. One of the ten commandments is “do not kill”. However, my history is full of my people committing genocide. And almost nobody owns up to it. It is sometimes even celebrated. And yet so many Jews believe that we are always in the right.

There are people who will call me a self-hating Jew. My own sister has. My brother, who lives in Israel, believes every single Palestinian wants to kill him.

But this is not about Judaism. It never has been. This is about power, and people doing anything to get it, and not caring about anything else. This is about people caring only about themselves and no one else. This is about greed, this is about uncontrolled rage, this is about a systemic problem that has never been addressed in a major way because anyone who tries is labelled an anti-Semite, and therefore loses their legitimacy. This is about cruelty.

And I don’t know what it will take for the world to see that.

[transition-with-the-torah]

Goals for Tevet 5785:

1) Continue filling in my 2025 planner.

2) J101 class includes:

weekly parshah reading (4);

assigned reading for four classes: 1) Torah She'b'al Peh [Oral Torah & Rabbinic Judaism], 2) Halakhah and Mitzvot [Jewish Law & Commandments], 3) Practice of Shabbat, 4) Choosing Judaism; and

attendance day for Musaf Service 101 [Shabbat].

3) Try to attend the Shaḥarit or Torah service on any available Shabbat. (Ideally, separate from Musaf Service day.)

[ajotavia]

24 Weekly Torah Reading Portion

[outreach-by-adellah]

New You: Better Jew - Steps to Becoming FULL SHOMER - 10 Adar

Shabbat is easily one of the most important mitzvot in the entire Torah, a mitzvah which is to be observed by every Jewish man, woman, and child, and even by the non-Jews and animals in our midst. Shabbat is a day of rest where we distance ourselves from the stressors of our week and both literally and metaphorically “unplug” ourselves from the hectic nature of our wider world. However, in our modern day, many Jews have trouble truly observing Shabbat. Even with a strong desire to become shomer shabbos, many well-meaning Jews find themselves bested by work, social media, and the other things life throws our way. If you find yourself relating to this sentiment, this guide is for you! 

A step by step guide to becoming FULL SHOMER™

Stage 1: Acknowledging Shabbat

To start becoming shomer shabbos, you don’t need to go from 0 to 100; you just need to go from 0 to 1. Instead of treating Shabbat just like any other weekday, take a few minutes before dinner on Friday to light some candles and make a blessing over some wine (or grape juice) and challah. Don’t even worry about making sure to light them 18 minutes before sunset. Simply marking Shabbat in some way is a great basis for future observance. Aside from the traditional rituals, you can also make Shabbat special in your own ways. Perhaps you can have a more elaborate dinner than you normally would, you can make sure not to answer any work emails, or you can make an effort to spend more time with your family than you would during the week. Any steps you can take to make Shabbat special will have the effect of making future increases in Shabbat observance come much more naturally to you!

Stage 2: Learning

Now that you are marking Shabbat as a special day, clearly with the intention of becoming more connected with your Jewish culture, the next step is to start to use this day to learn more about Judaism! You can take time to read the weekly Torah portion, brush up on your Hebrew, or say a few prayers. When I was first restarting my Jewish journey and was not yet a member of a synagogue, I found it extremely fulfilling to listen to musical Kabbalat Shabbat services online as a way to welcome Shabbat. Although ways of observing Shabbat which involve less technology are certainly preferable, you should take your journey at your own pace. Don’t worry if your current observance is not “ideal”, as long as it is helping you achieve your Jewish goals.

Stage 3: Tefillah

Once you start acknowledging and learning about Shabbat on your own, the next step is to do so with others! Jews are not a people which exist in solitude, and there is a reason why so many of our prayers use the pronoun “we” instead of “I”. Truly, the most Jewish way to observe Shabbat is in a congregation with other Jews. Take the time to reach out to a local temple/synagogue/shul (whatever floats your boat) and inform them that you would like to join their congregation for your first Shabbat service. I guarantee that you will have a positive experience every single time. Nobody will judge or shame you if you are not the most knowledgeable on Hebrew, praying, or when to stand up and sit down. Especially if you inform them of your visit, any synagogue you want to try out will be a welcoming environment with some of the kindest people you have ever met to guide you through the process. As I’ve reiterated earlier, don’t sweat it if the only way of getting to synagogue is driving. The important thing at this stage is just becoming more connected to Shabbat. The specifics can be worked out later.

Stage 4: Community

This next step is to get involved in your Jewish community, which will probably come to you pretty naturally once you’ve been going to synagogue for a while. You’ll become friends with other members there and become involved with the events and volunteer opportunities that are announced after services. The longer you spend in the Jewish community and the more active you are in it, the more you will feel connected to your Jewish culture. This is a perfect ingredient to becoming more observant of mitzvot like Shabbat. Not only will you want to become more observant, but as an integral part of your community, you will now have the resources to do so, such as a place to stay over Shabbat! 

Stage 5: Go All Day

Now that you have somewhere to spend Shabbat, make an effort to have your observance there lasting all day long. Spend all Shabbat at your shomer shabbos friend’s house if you can, or try to get a lunch invite after synagogue every week. Anything you can think of to extend your observance of Shabbat in your Jewish community past the hours of synagogue is great for improving your relationship with Shabbat! This will also make it much easier in the future for you to cut back on any remaining technology you’ve still been using over Shabbat, as you’ll have lots to do instead of just being on your phone.

Stage 6: Cut Back on the Tech

If you’re already active in your community and have somewhere to spend Shabbat this step should be pretty easy for you, but everyone always has a couple vices. For example, you might carry your phone with you “just in case” or use it as an alarm, or you might drive to synagogue. This stage is about cutting out those last couple of small things that are keeping you from being truly and fully shomer shabbos. As often as you can, try and spend the night at someone’s house so you don’t have to drive, invest in a kosher alarm clock, leave your phone at home, or do whatever you need to do to make the final small step to full observance. You don’t have to make a commitment to do this forever; just take it week by week, and try to have a fully observant Shabbat as often as you can. At this point, you’re almost there! There’s only one more step.

Stage 7: Complete Consistency

They say that doing something consistently for 3 weeks makes it a habit. I’m not sure if this would mean fully observing 3 or 21 Shabbats, but either way, consistency in your observance is important. If properly observing Shabbat is important enough to you that you start doing it every single week - no exceptions - there will be little that can get in your way from here on out! 

So, there you go! That’s how you become FULL SHOMER™. I myself have also been through all of these stages and can attest to this method of reaching full Shabbat observance. Good luck to everyone on their Jewish journeys!

Tell me in the tags:

Which stage of Shabbat observance do you think you’re at right now? Do you have the goal of becoming fully shomer shabbos? How do you plan to achieve that goal?

Jew Joke:

What do you call a Jewish man who can open any door with a salmon?

A loxsmith

[girlactionfigure]

SHABBAT ✡️ ALERT ✡️ INSTRUCTIONS for those in ISRAEL

(( Note Israel Realtime does not post updates on Shabbat (Israel time) unless life threatening / saving. ))

Chief Rabbinute instructions with details

🔹Erev Shabbat - Parshat Vayikra, where G‑d calls to Moses from the Tent of Meeting, and communicates to him the laws of the korbanot, the offerings to be brought in the Sanctuary.

🔹Before Purim - Parshat Zachor, on the Shabbat before Purim, the holiday on which we celebrate the foiling of Haman the Amalekite's plot to destroy the Jewish people, the weekly Torah reading is supplemented with Zachor ("Remember!") reading in which we are commanded to remember the evil of Amalek (who tried to destroy the Jewish people on the way) and to eradicate it from the face of the earth.

Shabbat Times here -> https://www.myzmanim.com/search.aspx

🔸NORTH - Risk MEDIUM-HIGH, particularly in Safed, Meron, Acre, Nahariya, Teveria, Afula, and Golan. Precautions required, know your shelter options at synagogue, school, work and home - even shopping.

🔸SOUTH - Risk LOW, occasion rockets from GAZA almost exclusively near-Gaza villages, Sderot and Ashkelon. Outside of those areas resume normal activities.

🔸EILAT and NEGEV - Risk LOW, but occasional attacks from Yemen. Keep an eye open on shelter options.

❗️This is a LIFE and DEATH WAR - due to Pikuach Nefesh you MUST have a way to receive alerts on Shabbat! Here’s how…

SILENT CHANNELS - Radio & TV stations go “silent broadcast” for Shabbat, ONLY alerts. No TV or Radio? STREAM IT on phone or computer.

➡️ SILENT TV - Channel 14 - stream https://www.now14.co.il/live/ (doesn’t work with adblocker) ➡️ SILENT RADIO - • Kol Chai radio - on radio 92.8, 93 and 102.5. - stream https://www.93fm.co.il/radio/players/%d7%a9%d7%99%d7%93%d7%95%d7%a8-%d7%97%d7%99/ • Kol Barama Radio - on radio 92.1, 104.3, 105.7 and 107.6. - stream https://kol-barama.co.il/live/ • Galei Israel - on radio 89.3, 94 and 106.5. - https://www.rlive.co.il/station/galey-israel

➡️ ON COMPUTER - leave a computer open to https://www.oref.org.il/en (only in Israel) - alerts will display and sound on the screen. Turn OFF screen saver, sleep and hibernate so the computer doesn’t turn off.

➡️ VIA APP - leave on phone with red alert app. Set app to YOUR area so it only alerts for your area. We suggest Tzofar Red Alert or Homefront Command - available in Play Store and App Store. IF an alert goes off for your area CLICK THE PHONE TO VERIFY ALERT TYPE - to see if infiltration! Yes, on Shabbat - this is Pikuach Nefesh!

⁉️ ENGLISH SILENT CHANNEL - is there a silent channel in English? NO. But you can use Pikud HaOref ON SCREEN in English, see “ON COMPUTER” option above.

It is a mitzvah to take actions to protect and save and preserve life on Shabbat, not a violation. But ONLY actions which do so.