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Today’s aesthetic: keeping the same tab open in your browser for three solid weeks because you’re definitely going to get around to reading and/or acting on whatever’s in it any minute now.

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“we need to spread love”

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safety 

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Would anyone be able to help me get $50 to cover my rent. I've been out of work for 3 weeks

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Libyan Jewish women drinking tea in traditional clothes. Photo by Orr Shalom.

Tea drinking is a much-loved, often elaborate tradition in Libya. Family members sit cross-legged on a carpet to laugh, chat, and discuss life events over small glasses of tea. The tea is typically thick, and is served in three rounds; at the end of the third round, roasted peanuts and almonds are infused into the tea. The distinctly Libyan-Jewish striped fabric worn by the women in this photograph is usually adorned with heavy jewelry and fastened with a crescent-shaped brooch.

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Being kind to ghosts is a Jewish value

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Ways to feel connected to nature in times of quarantine

🌿 spend as much in direct and indirect sunlight as you can

🌿 stay near your window and keep it open as much as possible, breath in the air from outside

🌿 watch nature documentaries and movies that show a lot of nature. If you have Netflix I strongly recommend Arietty (and all other studio ghibli movies)

🌿 drink a lot, always. Try some loose tea if you can - not only will the warmth be good for your mental health, the leaves will give your monkey brain a stronger sense of accomplishment

🌿 look at your houseplants, as weird as that sounds, and eat fresh

🌿 paint or stitch animals, flowers, beaches, whatever you need!

🌿 look around online for natural sounds! Birds singing, waves, leaves rustling

🌿 read physical books, believe me

🌿 change your scenery. Hang pictures of nature, paint or print them out, or hang some leaves 

🌿 meditate on nature and visualze the heck out of it. Try imagining moss growing on your walls and a stream running from your door to the window 

🌿 take a shower imagingin rain or a bath  imagining being in the ocean 

🌿 light some candles and look at the moving flames, esp in the evening

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rent’s comin’ up soon, still waiting on my stimulus check. not sure when it will be coming, but it should be relatively soon! thank you so much to everyone who has helped us so far, after my check comes in, i’ll be golden. :) if you’re interested in helping a disabled trans guy make do until his stimulus check comes in:

paypal.me/slapnutbongo | slapnutbongo@gmail.com

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Goyim do not have a right to dictate to Jews or other goyim what Judaism is, means or who counts as Jewish. They don’t have a right to say who “real Jews” are. They don’t have a right to say what “Real Jews” believe and they don’t have a right to gaslight us into doubting our own experiences of antisemitism. These are internal Jewish issues. You do not have a say.

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got my government check. do not need it. dm me your venmo or paypal if you need help, no questions asked

(please rb)

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Underwood Archives/The New York Times

From 1920 to 1934, New York’s large Jewish community experienced a sharp uptick in the number of observant Jews and rabbis.

Wine was permitted “for sacramental purposes” during Prohibition. That meant that Catholics and Jews were able to buy it. Catholics, however, used wine only during church ceremonies, whereas Jews consumed it at home every week to mark Shabbat (the Sabbath). It’s no surprise that many of the most famous bootleggers were Catholic or Jewish.

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I recently decided to start writing full-time, a decision that’s been both enormously liberating and incredibly isolating. But there are some real perks to not having to be in an office all day, and one of them is getting to sit on the couch and read a good book smack dab in the middle of the afternoon.

As a black Jewish writer, I obviously want to read books written by and highlighting the stories of Jews of color. That’s easier said than done, though. It’s not that these stories don’t exist — Jewish literature is an amazing, rich genre of diasporic Jewish stories. However, the narratives of Jews of color are often left out of the Jewish literary canon, and we suffer for it.

With that in mind, I decided to make a list of books you should be reading — all written by Jews of color or featuring Jews of color. Some of the stories here aren’t explicitly Jewish, but there may be a good reason for that. When asked if he would ever write a Jewish character, mystery novelist Walter Mosley replied, “Not if he wasn’t black … Hardly anybody in America has written about black male heroes. There are black male protagonists and black male supporting characters, but nobody else writes about black male heroes.”

Jewish writers of color may shy away from writing explicitly Jewish stories for a number of reasons, like fearing that the demand for these narratives simply isn’t there. Or maybe, like Mosley, they feel more compelled to highlight the stories of groups who have been historically erased from popular narratives. Whatever the reason, though, and whatever the content of their work, these writers remain unequivocally and deeply Jewish.

[Read Nylah Burton’s full piece at Alma.]

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From the series “Remenants: the last Jews of Poland.” Photographed by Tomasz Tomaszewski.

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ahh yes, the only thing this apocalypse was missing..

The hellcracker