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Ruz-e Bagh, Iranian Jewish celebration of Isru Chag, Iran, 1968

Isru Chag is the day after any of the three pilgrimage festivals (Shavuot, Pesach, and Sukkot). It is unclear which of the holidays is being celebrated in this photo, but I would guess it's Pesach given the name Ruz-e Bagh means "day of the garden" in Farsi and is commonly associated with Nowruz, which often falls around Pesach. This article further suggests that Ruz-e Bagh was specifically a post-Passover celebration similar to Mimouna in Morocco and Saharene in Kurdistan.

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Ornate Torah mantle and crown, Rome, Italy, late 17th century

The Jewish community in Rome is known to be one the oldest continuous Jewish settlements in the world and dates back to the first century BCE. The historic Roman Jews are part of the small but ancient Jewish group of Italqim, speaking an own dialect known as Giudaico-Romanesco. They were later joined by Sephardi, Ashkenazi, Persian and Libyan Jews. The rise of Christianity in the later Roman empire spelled the end of the community’s good fortunes. In 1555, a ghetto was constructed in seven marshy, flood-prone acres at the Tiber River. There, the Jews were obliged to live for 315 years until the creation of the Kingdom of Italy in 1870.

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“For how much longer will we fly? The drunkard hoopoe said: Our goal is the vastness. / We said: And what’s behind it? He said: Vastness after vastness after vastness. / We said: We’re tired. He said: You won’t find a pine tree to rest on. What you ask / of descent is in vain, so soar just to soar.”

— The Hoopoe, Mahmoud Darwish trans. Fady Joudah

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Passover silver Seder cups

Silversmith: Hieronymos Mittnacht (1708–1769) (?), 1761-63. Inscribed in Hebrew: “I will free you from the labours of the Egyptians” [Exod 6:6)]

Late 17th Century

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Iranian photographer Jalal Sepehr's (جلال سپهر) series Water and Persian Rugs (2004) explores cultural identity and tradition. Sepehr, born in Tehran in 1968, is a self-taught artist known for blending heritage with contemporary themes.

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Students in costume for Purim, Hamadan, Iran, 1927

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Kurdish woman. Iran, 1968. Vernochet, J.M.

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love when the rabbis of the talmud go "today İ will spread medical, botanical, and zoological misinformation"

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— Bent to the Earth, Blas Manuel de Luna

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Girl in a Jewish kindergarten, Isfahan, Iran, 1973

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Hi y’all, I don’t do this often but I am sharing a donation request from a young woman named Kareman. She is a kindergarten teacher trying to survive in Gaza alongside her husband and her son Hamoud, who is two years old. I’ve attached a photo below. If you are able, please donate here to her GFM.

Most of us cannot imagine what it is like to be displaced over and over. To be slowly starving. Many of us are alive today despite our ancestors going through something similar. That is certainly the case for me. I can only hope that were I in such a situation, like my ancestors or like Kareman, others would help me.

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Oh friend you absolutely can be a lawyer and be shomer Shabbat. I’m a law student and am able to take Friday afternoons and all day Saturday off. It can sometimes be annoying and you may not get every job you apply for (there are internships that essentially demand you work on weekends or not apply), but you can absolutely do it

Sending love from one Jew in law to another :)

So, I believe in Judiasm and will likely convert in the future. However, I am also thinking about studying law at a university in the future and becoming a lawyer.

I don't think that's a job I can just take days off for, so, like... what would I do about Shabbat?

.

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yes to clarify i meant SSDI for the income amount! i became disabled/chronically ill later in life (technically was born with it but didn't become disabled enough to affect my ability to work until I was an adult). so i'm eligible for SSDI bc I have been paying into social security for a while and would probably also apply for SSI. so for me i could do both and would get more in benefits but would still have to worry about SSI asset limits

as you pointed out, you get even less with SSI. and the asset limit is for SSI, not for SSDI, though SSDI does have the limit on income. there should be no difference in payments for people who were disabled at birth than for those who became disabled later. it's so fucked

i'll edit my original post for clarity!

how many times do we need to say it disability benefits aren't worth the effort of a scam

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literally me. i am significant disabled and getting disability benefits would be great. but on SSDI I couldn't make more than $1620 a month ($19,440 a year). And if I did get benefits, I could only get a maximum of $3822 a month ($45,864 a year), but probably I'd get much less since the average is $1537 a month (or $18,444 a year)

on SSI you only get up to $967 a month and can't have more than $2000 in savings (including property) or get married (without losing benefits due to having more than $3000 in combined savings as a couple)

It's literally enforced poverty. And many disabled people need the benefits primarily for the health insurance but then literally are forced to be extremely poor in order to not go into thousands or millions of dollars of medical debt

(this is all US specific btw)

how many times do we need to say it disability benefits aren't worth the effort of a scam

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Couple under the chuppah, Kermanshah, Rojhelat (Iranian Kurdistan), 1980

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I just realized that most of the photos on my blog don’t have alt text, and I am going to rectify that. It might take a couple weeks to a month, since I have A Lot of photos, but I will get it done. I’m so sorry to any of yall who are blind or low-vision who wanted to engage with my content but couldn’t due to the lack of accessibility. I’m going to make sure I do better, and please do reach out if there are any other accessibility issues I have not addressed

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— Immigrant Blues, Li-Young Lee