#same seder

[hannahwatcheshorror]

THE BOB'S BURGERS MOVIE (2022) REWATCH

What would a horror blog post on April Fools Day but an animated family comedy musical? Exactly, The Bob’s Burgers Movie is a horror movie (for kids)! That is right ladies and gentleman and everything in between, this movie has it all: murder, thrills, chills, and spills! Seriously though there are parts in there that made me uncomfortable, I’m talking As Above, So Below uncomfortable. I’m talking The Descent uncomfortable. This movie has its scary-ish/thrilling parts that remind me of the end of Child’s Play 3 but better and is way worth the watch.

⭐⭐⭐⭐.5

Bob and his family of five (5) are trying their best to keep their burger joint up and running but the movie starts out with the bank rejecting their loan proposal and giving them only a few days until they owe all this money. This is very overwhelming for parents Bob and Linda who are trying to see the bright side of things when a giant sinkhole opens right in front of their restaurant. The kids, Tina, Gene, and Louise, are each having their own problems which will be addressed throughout the movie but Louise is having problems with a classmate calling her a baby due to her always wearing a pink, bunny-eared hat. To prove she is brave Louise decides to go down into the sinkhole because, “babies come out of holes, they don’t go into them.” But what she finds is the skeletal remains of a body! Yikes! Even some of the teeth fall into her mouth! Yuck! This is how she is able to pocket a weird looking tooth from our victim who we later learn was a carny named Cotton Candy Dan. 

We find out in this movie that Louise was given her ears in preschool to help her be brave and she has been wearing them since. Tina is afraid of asking her love interest Jimmy Jr. to be her summer boyfriend and Gene is nervous about his music never taking off. All this is going on while the body is being examined and Bob and Linda ask their landlord, Mr. Fishoeder, for an extension on the rent. Mr. Fishoeder is there with his brother, Felix, and cousin, Grover, and Mr. Fishoeder says maybe to the rent extension but later that night it turns out Mr. Calvin Fishoeder is the prime suspect for this murder! Dun dun dun! Linda tries to give Bob a pep talk but she just punches him in the nuts twice. Louise comes up with a plan to skip school and figure out how Mr. Fishoeder is innocent so their folks can get the rent extension and therefore save the restaurant.

First they go to Carny-oppolis which is where the carnies live, it is kind of scary for three (3) kids to go all alone! But they meet up with their adult friend Mickey who sings them a song and then a scary carny gives them some tips about the night of the murder. They kids have to go to the police who they know personally to try and get the heat taken off of Mr. Fishoeder which only works to give them more reason to go try and figure out the case for themselves so next they go to Felix’s treehouse home to try and find a cufflink that is linked to the murder. While there, Felix comes home and the kids are almost caught! Ah! But they find out that Felix and his old girlfriend, Fanny, are back together and are going to flee the country. Scandalous! The kids follow Felix to Wonder Wharf to try and figure out where all of this is going to go down.

They follow Felix to a secret clubhouse underneath one of the rides at Wonder Wharf and Mr. Fishoeder meets him there, they want to tell him (Mr. Fishoeder) that his brother is a killer! Grover also shows up so Louise tries to talk to him since he is the lawyer but the boys are adamant on fleeing the country in a converted ride submarine (ha). Louise sees a picture of Grover wearing the cufflink that is linked to the murder and also sees a bite on his arm with the tooth mark of the guy whose tooth Louise still has. Grover realizes that Louise knows he killed Cotton Candy Dan, grabs a spear gun and points it at them all which is very scary! He takes away Felix and Mr. Fishoeders phones (the kids don’t have phones) then holds them all hostage!

Bob and Linda were doing a side plot where they were trying to sell burgers on the Wharf and weren’t having a very successful time at doing it, they even had Teddy helping but it wasn’t working! This somehow leads them to the kids, they find them but cannot actually help them, they become hostages too. With a clever move, Tina is able to get the family out of immediate danger but only for a moment, they are able to get to the under pier where Grover crawls to chase them (after he sinks his cousins) and this is one of the most terrifying things I think I’ve seen animated in a comedy, Grover crawling. He spiders his way into the under pier with the Belcher family and they get into separate carts respectively and begin racing throughout the maze of stored things in the under pier.

After a nice chase sequence they make it to the beach which messes up the Belcher family’s cart and makes it so it won’t open back up for them. Grover shoves them into the sinkhole in front of their restaurant! This is when things get really scary because Grover starts to push the pile of loose dirt onto the Belchers cart and soon they are completely covered. This is pretty horrifying to behold! They are beginning to pant as they speak, they are running out of air in there. There is a chance that our beloved Belchers could actually die! They are talking to each other like it might be their last time to speak to each other. We learn that Louise was actually gifted her pink hat in preschool for being so brave and it reminds Bob of his Mother because she used to wear a pink hat. This makes Louise feel better other than the part where they are going to die maybe. Luckily Grover shot out one of the tires so the metal was exposed and they were able to break into the waterline because it was made out of plastic so it burst and lifted them out of the hole!

Once they are out of the hole, Teddy helps get them out of their cart with a piece of the burger cart from the side plot. But oh, no! They have to hurry to save the Fishoeders and stop Grover from burning down the Mole Hill ride!  They run to the ride and when they get there Grover has filled it with highly flammable stuffed animals and there is a long fuse that is burning. Louise and Bob both take different paths to try and get to the lit fuse the quickest. Time is running out but just in time Louise gets to the fuse! They are able to save the Fishoeders and have the cops arrest Grover. All's well that ends well. Gene has his concert and is feeling good about his music, Louise feels confident with or without her ears, and Tina kisses Jimmy Jr. The family has a grand re-re-re-re-opening of the shop because the Fishoeder’s gave them enough cash to cover their bills and the street is finally put back together.

-----------------------HANNAH WATCHES HORROR--------------------

[loveprofusionmadonna2003]

im sorry i think you have to be literally an idiot to say this

[son-of-avraham]

Me: I am interested in judaism ONLY. Show me content about jewish life, intellectualism, history, and daily life

The Algorithm, apparently: does this mean you're interested in mormonism... how about jehova's witness............... this is all you'll get recommended by the way

[beforeviolets]

time to observe pesach by watching prince of egypt

[daz4i]

i should get into the holiday spirit and write a fic abt the landaus celebrating the seder fr

[torahtot]

that 'i love you jewish foods' post going around that includes charoset.. babygirl are u off ur rocker

[snakeofcookie]

I just had the weirdest experience:

I am on the way to a seder, and I'm scrolling through Tumblr and see a post from someone I've followed for years about going to a seder that sounds... familiar.

I obviously think that it'd be kind of cool if we were at the same seder, but there's just no way.

I arrive at the seder. I meet a few people, one of whom is the most Tumblr-ass looking person I've ever seen. I resolve to tell them I like their shoelaces when there's a chance for more private conversation.

During the meal, the table begins to discuss social media. Through this conversation I confirm that this person is wearing stolen shoelaces. But like.. that'd be a huge coincidence.

During a lull, I quickly pull up the blog I follow on my phone to see if there are any details I can use to corroborate this person's identity. I don't get past a post about a clown seder before I need to put my phone away. Mission failed, nothing useful.

The person at the seder mentions they will be hosting a clown seder.

I don't know how to process this.

[fromchaostocosmos]

I screenshot this rather then reblogged this from the original post it was connected to because I wish to respect the person who this ask was sent to boundaries.

I have to ask @asexualautistic how do expect to enter our community wanting to join our family and not understand the deep and meaningful ties that we as a 4,000 year old people have with our Homeland.

Not understand just how many of our Holidays are intertwined with the land itself. That when we pray we pray in the direction of Jerusalem.

That there is a famous poetic line that we often say, "my body is in the west and my heart is in the east." This was written by the Sephardic 12th Century poet Yehuda Halevi יהודה הלוי, who is consider one of greatest Jewish poets.

To have such a fundamental lack understanding about us as people and our connection to where we come from and our long held desire to return there. A desire we have always held even when we in chains weeping on shores by the river of Babylon.

Every Pesach we end the Seder by saying Next Year in Jerusalem L'Shana Haba'ah B'Yerushalayim לְשָׁנָה הַבָּאָה בִּירוּשָלָיִם and we say the same to end every Yom Kippur.

The land was named with the same name as us before we ever entered Diaspora.

So come into our homes and our places of worship and then accuse us of Genocide is just not just high handed, but it is cruel and lacking decency.

We are a people who survived multiple Genocides and to accuse of supporting Genocide is just I really find myself at a loss for words.

We are people who hold life to be so precious, to be so important, to be so valued that we are obligated to forsake 610 of the 613 mitzvot.

So to take us as a whole, as a group, as a people and to just make such a judgement call, to have such a lack of understanding about us, and to not understand the reality of what is even going on in the region, what makes something a Genocide, have understanding, compassion, or empathy for the great pain and trauma that Jews are under going right now, and just so much more.

And you want in to our family.

Forgive me if I find myself with hair on the back of neck standing up, forgive me for I find myself saying not like this, we can not open the door not like this.

[specialagentartemis]

#hey does anyone know what the deal was with the claims that Friday the 13th and Easter are actually pagan feminist fertility holidays #that were appropriated by the patriarchy/Catholic church? #because I feel like I'm going crazy seeing cnn quote that tumblr post from years ago #like which one came first (bc I can't find that post) and how true are those claims

@assclarinet Wh... what do you mean CNN is quoting tumblr posts. What.

Anyway. These claims go around constantly and they are just as sourceless as anything else in that post.

And as it is Easter Season, let's address them:

Was Easter actually a pagan feminist fertility holiday appropriated by the Catholic Church?

Short answer: No.

Long answer:

Easter is the theological core of Christianity. There is no Christianity without Easter. Easter is the holiest day of the Christian calendar, because it is the theological crux of the entire religion: that Jesus died, and then three days later he rose from the dead, his sacrifice having redeemed the world of sin and his resurrection ushering in a new age. Easter is a very Christian thing.

That's not typically what people who say this mean, though. They don't mean the Christian holy day of Jesus's resurrection Easter Sunday, they mean the hegemonic spring holiday in the culturally-Christian world that is pseudo-secularized Easter.

Was placing the central element of Christianity in the spring a way of co-opting pagan spring fertility festivals? No. It's fairly central to the Last Supper-crucifixion-resurrection narrative that it happened at Passover. The Gospels pretty well agree on this part, though there's conflict in the scholarship of whether the Last Supper was a Passover meal proper or happened a day before. (The seder as it is understood today wasn’t performed the same way back then, so it wasn’t properly a seder, either.) In early Christianity, the association of Easter with Passover was theologically significant--Jesus was (and is) called the Paschal lamb, equating Jesus's sacrifice with the sacrifice/slaughter of a lamb for the deliverance of the people from death. The timing of Easter is one of the few Christian holy days calculated based on the logic of the Jewish luni-solar calendar. It's not the same exact calendar, and they don't always directly coincide, but it's the same basis.

Early Christianity grew out of Judaism, and its relationship to Judaism, its self-view as the culmination of Judaism, remained significant to figures like Paul who have defined Christian thought and Church organization ever since. (Here’s a standard view on this presented from a Jewish perspective.) (This is a super interesting perspective from a Congregationalist Christian theologian with a keen interest on the Jewish roots of early Christianity.) (Here’s also a really interesting interview with provocative Jewish philosopher Daniel Boyarin about it.) Christianity and Judaism probably started really developing in different directions sometime after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, with the next few centuries seeing the rise of Rabbinic Judaism as well as the influx of pagan gentiles adopting Christianity and bringing their theological and philosophical backgrounds into it.

The upshot is: Easter is in the spring because Passover is in the spring.

Does the name "Easter" come from Ostara or Ishtar? No. These are the etymologies I see proposed to say, see! "Easter" steals the name of a pagan fertility goddess! And that's a super English-centric way of looking at the world. In most European languages (and let's be real, when people talk about Christianity stealing pagan holidays, they usually are thinking about, like, Celts), the name of Easter comes from the Latin "Pascha" which was adopted from the Greek "Pascha" which, wow, sounds an awful lot like Pesach, the Hebrew name of Passover. Because Easter was associated with Passover. Even in English, the formal, liturgical word for "pertaining to Easter" is "Paschal". So only in Germanic languages like German and English does the name of Easter come from non-Paschal origins.

Also there is no connection to Ishtar.

The etymology of "Easter" is super obscure, though.

Well, there was an Eostre, right? And the Easter bunny tradition was stolen from the pre-Christian Germanic pagan festivals for Eostre or Ostara? Ehhhhh. Dubious. This Library of Congress folklore blog post by a folklorist who has studied Middle English has a lot of well-cited information suggesting that most "received wisdom" about the pagan festivals or Eostre/Ostara that featured a hare derive from the Brothers Grimm in the 1800s. Jakob Grimm cites a single source for the evidence of a goddess Eostre, an 8th century Christian monk's writing.

Eosturmonath has a name which is now translated "Paschal month", and which was once called after a goddess of theirs named Eostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month. Now they designate that Paschal season by her/its name, calling the joys of the new rite by the time-honoured name of the old observance.

Definitely possible, even likely, there was some syncretism in the celebration activities there, but it's hard to prove what, and to what extent.

Grimm is the one who postulates the existence of Ostara based on this, using the methods of historical linguistics to derive a cognate with the old German oster-month. Note that the Grimms were 1) linguists as well as folklorists, and the idea of Ostara appears to come from linguistic hypothesis moreso than actual gathered folklore, and 2) very invested in nation-building through their folklore project. No other sources for Eostre or Ostara exist, though modern linguists have hypothesized a connection to the Vedic Ushas and Greek Eos as Indo-European dawn-goddesses. (Also hence the word "east.") So Eostre and Ostara may certainly have existed as Germanic goddesses/personifications of the dawn, but probably not fertility. And the month around April, as the return of spring, was associated with the dawn goddess. If so, Eostre gave her name to Eosturmonath ("Eostre-month"), which is when Easter fell (see above re: the timing of Passover), and so Eoastremonath became Easter-month became Easter. "Easter" then likely derives from the name of the month, not the goddess directly.

The story of Ostara and a hare was, as best I can tell, invented in the 1800s during a time of renewed interest in European paganism as, again, nation-building projects.

Hares, eggs/chicks, and flowers are all perennial symbols of spring and new life in Europe, so it wouldn't be surprising if older celebrations in springtime used them, and those got transferred onto Easter celebrations because, hey, spring, dawn, sunrise out of the night, new birth, resurrection, new life, it all kinda goes together. But it wasn't a holiday that was "appropriated by the patriarchy/Catholic Church,"; at most it was traditional spring festivities transferred onto the new spring festivity. This happened a lot.

As for the second question...

Was Friday the 13th a pagan fertility holiday and that's why it's been made unlucky now?

Short answer: No.

Long answer:

No one really agrees on why Friday the 13th is unlucky, but it probably also comes from Christianity. Friday is the unlucky day because it's the day that Jesus was crucified. 13 is the unlucky number because that's the number of people at the Last Supper. I've also seen several people online reference that Loki was the 13th guest at the feast where he caused the death of Baldr, but I can't find an actual source for that, and it feels very Christianity-influenced. The most influential records of old Norse/Icelandic mythology were written down in the 1200s, well after Christianity was the primary religion of the region, and Christian influences on Norse mythology as we know it now cannot be wholly discounted. So I'm somewhat skeptical Loki is the origin, either.

But also, and this is where I get more into personal hypothesizing, 12 is a very strong and auspicious number in a lot of cultures. There are (typically, approximately) 12 full moons in a year, so lots and lots of calendars split the year into 12 months. 12 is a good number for timekeeping and subdividing: Ancient Egyptians were the ones to develop 12-hour days/nights, and Mesopotamians the ones to split time into units of 60. There were twelve tribes of Israel, twelve disciples, twelve Olympians, twelve labors of Hercules, twelve constellations in the Greek zodiac and twelve years in the Chinese zodiac cycle. English has unique number-names up to twelve before we start going three-ten, four-ten, etc. We like twelves! Particularly in cultures influenced by the Mediterranean sphere. So I can imagine prime thirteen is ungainly, awkward... unlucky.

(Also, the idea of splitting the week into a cycle of 7 days originates from Judaism in the Biblical book of Genesis, continuing into Christianity and Islam from the same origin. The whole concept of "Friday" is inextricable from Abrahamic religions.)

There's no evidence it was ever a sacred pagan day for sex or anything like that. It just wasn't.

[girlactionfigure]

There’s a Jewish holiday coming up in two days, It’s called Passover.

And for those who aren’t familiar, I want to share what this time of year really means to Jews — and especially to me — and to all religious and Orthodox Jews around the world who observe it.

See, from the outside, a lot of people think Jewish holidays are just about food, family, wine, gatherings — like a big dinner party.

But Passover is different.

Passover is hard work. Passover is a lot of preparation. Passover is soul-searching.

For weeks before it even begins, our entire lives shift. We (by we, I of course mean our wives…) clean our homes like absolute crazy people. And not for spring cleaning. Not for guests. Not because company is coming over — but for something called chametz.

Chametz is any food made from grain — wheat, barley, oats, spelt, or rye — that has come into contact with water and risen. Bread. Pasta. Cake. Cookies. Even tiny crumbs.

And on Passover, Chametz is completely forbidden.

We scrub down our kitchens. We check every pocket of every coat. We vacuum cars. We clean toys. We search by candlelight the night before Passover to make sure not a single crumb is left in our homes.

Why?

Because chametz represents more than just bread. It represents ego. Arrogance. Laziness. The things that puff us up and hold us back.

And when Passover comes in, we want a fresh start. A clean sheet. A home, and a heart, without chametz.

And then comes the heart of Passover: The Seder.

Seder means “order.”

It’s not a meal you rush through. It’s not about eating and moving on.

It’s a night where we sit, usually for hours, surrounded by family, by friends, and most importantly, by our children.

Because the entire purpose of the Seder is to tell our story to our little children.

The story of the Jewish people. The story of Egypt. Of slavery. Of exile. Of pain. Of miracles. Of redemption.

We read from a book called the Haggadah — which literally means “the telling.”

We dip vegetables in salt water to remember our tears.

We eat bitter herbs to remember the bitterness of slavery.

We eat matzah — flat, dry bread — to remember how quickly we had to run to freedom, with no time to wait for the dough to rise.

We drink four cups of wine to celebrate the four expressions of freedom promised to us by G-d.

And we sing.

We sing songs our ancestors sang. Songs they whispered in hiding. Songs they cried in exile. Songs of hope. Songs of faith. Songs that say — we are still here.

That’s what Passover is.

It’s not just a Jewish holiday.

It’s our origin story. It’s our identity. It’s everything we’ve survived — and everything we still hope for.

And at the center of it all is this powerful line we repeat every year at the Seder:

“In every generation, a person is obligated to see themselves as if they personally left Egypt.”

It’s not just history. It’s personal.

We all have our Egypt. We all have our struggles. We all have things we’re trying to break free from.

And Passover reminds us — freedom is possible. Miracles happen. And our story is still being written.

And every year — in every Jewish home where there is a Seder — no matter where that home is in the world…

It always ends the same way.

After hours of storytelling, of singing, of laughing, of crying, of remembering who we are and where we come from… comes this moment. 

Everyone rises. Everyone’s voice comes together — loud, raw, emotional, sometimes through tears — and we scream at the top of our lungs:

“L’shana Haba’a B’Yerushalayim!”

“Next year in Jerusalem!”

“Next year in Jerusalem!”

“Next year in Jerusalem, Amen!”

[gaelic-symphony]

An added bonus of Chanukah (and other Jewish holidays) lasting multiple days is that it makes it so easy to celebrate with multiple different sets of loved ones! My girlfriend and I are both Jewish and both from the same part of Maryland, and her parents are also divorced, so we potentially have THREE “candles and latkes with the parents” evenings this year, but that still leaves us five nights to celebrate with friends or at shul or at home by ourselves. We don’t have to choose to spend our holidays one way. And we get to do the same for first and second night Seders at Pesach, for High Holidays, and for Sukkah parties.

[jewish-sideblog]

Honestly we should stop calling them leftists. They’re rebranding conservative evangelical christianity as a neo-liberal evangelical atheism. They have created a cult of performative activism. The Revolution is their rapture, always to be anticipated but never to be truly worked towards. A public declaration of dedication to Jesus has been replaced with posting a tiktok with a filter for the newest cause.

Their gospel is propaganda, and blind faith is mandatory— G-d help you if you check the source on a Twitter post. Anyone who does not post for the Righteous Cause must be working against it, because you can either be with them or against them. They refuse to read and engage with leftist theory, political science, or even the basics of sociology, though they treat the misinterpretation of those texts and tenants as something sacred. The destruction of designated enemies, heretics, and non-believers is the only result actually worth fighting for. Destruction is more valuable to them than peace, voting, or true solutions to problems.

What is leftist about any of that? What is leftist about hate criming Jews and desecrating Holocaust memorials? They could be volunteering at homeless shelters or needle exchanges or libraries. What is leftist about valuing child murderers and disinformation when you could easily value peace and shared self-determination for native peoples?

We should call them what they are. They are evangelicals, forcing the gospel of a new age down the throats of everyone they come across. They are making a poor attempt at cosplaying leftism, the same as “Messianic Jews” hosting “Christian Seders” make a poor attempt at cosplaying real Jewish people.

[fittingoutjane]

Watched Prince of Egypt with the kids after Seder. And I have to say, the music hits hard, but the animation, especially in the crowd scenes, hits so much harder.

Nowadays, everything is CG. Cartoon characters all have the same bland face. But when the Children of Israel gather to march out of Egypt, everyone has their own face. Most of them at least vaguely Mediterranean or Middle-Eastern, yes, but with variations in shape and coloring.

And they're my people's faces. That older woman there looks like my aunt. That girl looks like someone I went to Hebrew school with. That guy looks like someone I saw at shul the other week.

My father could be in that crowd. So could I. Which is fitting, because we were.

[sirfrogsworth]

Tim wants to be an intellectual the same way a child wants to be an astronaut.

Just say enough big words and people might just believe he can land on the moon.

As far as I know, moral philosophy is not really taught in high school outside of maybe an elective in a school with a budget. It certainly wasn't an option at my school. We were lucky to have two languages to choose from.

In any case, an academic understanding of moral philosophy is not actually required to talk about morality. We all have morals. We all have a conscience. We all have ethics we try to uphold. There are good people who have never heard of consequentialism and evil people who have.

Tim is most likely jealous of Sam Seder because he is an *actual* intellectual. He understands the big words he uses and doesn't feel the need to randomly show off his vocabulary.

Tim lies about imaginary high school philosophy classes to make it seem like Sam is lacking common knowledge—proving his supposed ignorance.

The only "ism" Tim actually understands is fascism.

Beanie man is sad.

Very sad.

Edit: Tim Pool dropped out of high school at 14. You can't make this shit up.

[mariacallous]

New Yorker Helena Weinstock Weinrauch, a Holocaust survivor known for taking up ballroom dancing in her late 80s, died at her home on the Upper West Side on Sunday. She was just one week shy of her 101st birthday.

The cause was likely congestive heart failure, her niece Judy Paskind said.

“She loved being made up and dressed up,” Paskind, a retired accountant, recalled. “And a lot of people [at the funeral] yesterday were saying how elegant she was, and she was! She always looked put together. Until she got sick in the last year, I don’t know that I’ve ever seen her without makeup.”

Weinrauch’s incredible story of survival — and how she discovered, at 88, the joy of ballroom dancing — was the subject of a 2015 documentary, “Fascination: Helena’s Story.”

Weinrauch was also known for wearing the same hand-knit blue sweater during the first Passover seder every year for more than 75 years. The sweater — with fluffy angora sleeves, a metallic blue bodice and a scalloped V-neck — had been made by Weinrauch’s friend Ann Rothman, who stayed alive during the Holocaust by knitting for the wives of Nazi officials while a prisoner in the Łódź Ghetto.

“She became known in the ghetto,” Weinrauch told the New York Jewish Week in 2022. “She was so good at knitting that she knitted coats for the wife of the German people and it became known that Ann can knit skirts, a blouse — anything you want, she can knit it.”

[fuzzytheduck]

Thread so far:

"why are you mourning something the Romans did, out of curiosity"

"I'm not sure how in-detail you want me to get, but the main thing is that they destroyed the Beis Hamikdash, the holy temple, which was (still is, really) the most sacred place in the world to the Jewish people."

"I see. From my perspective, the atrocities committed thousands of years ago have no bearing on my life. I mean presumably you mourn the roman-judea war because one side was Jews and you are Jewish. Not because life was lost but specifically Jewish life. Which is strange to me because surely they lived a very different life to the one you live today. Surely even their understanding of Judaism, the thing you share, was different from yours with your modern sensibilities. Sorry if this is offensive but it just seems like a tenuous connection. Also I am asian (like you! haha)."

Response:

"I see. From my perspective, the atrocities committed thousands of years ago have no bearing on my life."

The destruction of Jerusalem and the expulsion of Jews from Israel, are, to Jews, constantly present in our lives and rituals.

I'm sure you've seen depictions of Jewish weddings in media, where the groom steps on a glass. this is done in memory of the Destruction.

After meals, we say four blessings of thanks. the fourth one was composed in gratitude for being allowed to finally bury our dead after the massacre at Beitar.

Every year, on the anniversary of the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash, we fast in mourning.

At the end of a Passover Seder, we say "next year in rebuilt Jerusalem" in hopes that we can hold a real seder next year, with a korban pesach (Passover offering) brought in the temple.

There are countless songs, poems, and works of art that express grief over the Destruction

This is a poem written in medieval Spain expressing a profound yearning to return to Israel.

This is a video of Jewish boys around the arch of Titus in Rome (the structure built by the Romans* to commemorate the capture of Judea), singing about the memory of Jerusalem.

*in the same way kings hauled up lumps of rock to build Thebes of the seven gates iykyk

"I mean presumably you mourn the roman-judea war because one side was Jews and you are Jewish."

Yes and no. We dont just share some superficial trait that makes us want to root for that side or something. We ARE that side. we have retained our longing to return ever since.

"Not because life was lost but specifically Jewish life."

Its not just a matter of life lost, which IS devastating. its also a matter of cultural and religious destruction. Korbanos, or offerings, were once a major part of jewish service, but since we are forbidden from bringing them outside the temple, they have not been brought for nearly 2 millenia.

We nearly lost our oral tradition. the mishna was compiled about 1800 years ago to preserve it.

Hundreds of thousands of Jews were slaughtered, taken as slaves, exiled from their homeland. To this day we are considered to be in Galus Edom, Roman exile (the last of four exiles).

We were scattered to the winds, subject to near constant persecution, denied rights, forced to flee again and again, all while keeping our identity and faith alive.

"Which is strange to me because surely they lived a very different life to the one you live today. Surely even their understanding of Judaism, the thing you share, was different from yours with your modern sensibilities."

This is true! there are many differences between the way we live now and the way we used to back in those days, but there are also many similarities. we celebrate the same holidays, operate under the same legal system, follow the same dietary restrictions, rest on the same sabbath, read the same torah... there are plenty of examples i could use to emphasize this. Here are a couple.

A torah scroll can only be written by hand, on parchment, by a skilled scribe using either a reed pen or a feather quill.

On the sabbath, we aren't allowed to start, spread, or feed fires, which makes cooking difficult. For millennia Jews have managed this by cooking stews over Friday night to be eaten in the morning. Some basic info in this video:

"Sorry if this is offensive but it just seems like a tenuous connection. Also I am asian (like you! haha)."

I don't find it offensive at all! I'm always happy to converse in good faith. thank you so much for reaching out, too few people seem to seek new perspectives, and i genuinely commend you for that.

also while i suppose on a technical level i could be considered west asian, that label is largely inapplicable to me with regards to american race relations. i dont remember where i was going with this

anyway sorry it took so long to get back to you, if i forgot to translate any jargon, or if my writing is unclear, let me know and ill do my best to clarify

P.S.

i want to add that for me personally, it was a culture shock to see things from the other way around. as a child i thought all religions worked the same as mine, and it was wild to me to find out that some people have no strong cultural/religious identity.

i saw a video a while ago that documented the siege of Jerusalem, from a youtuber that primarily covered ancient roman history. I was shocked at the level of detachment the event was described with. Don't they know how important this is? How devastating this was for my people? How relevant it is to us?

here is the video for reference: