happyhoneysuckle - Tumblr blog

[happyhoneysuckle]

I’m really excited to share this little historical art/information I’ve been working on these last few days! A lot of research and love went into it ❤️

special thanks to my grandma and great grandma, as well as to my friend maya for stories about Tunis and Djerba 🇹🇳

[happyhoneysuckle]

Do YOU have a complicated relationship with the holidays?

Do YOU love music of all genres and traditions?

Are YOU okay with the fact that I put a LOT of Leonard Cohen in this?

Then have I got a playlist for you!

[happyhoneysuckle]

In the universe of selfies and status updates where we show our best self to the world, #Elul demands honest self-examination:

How have I failed others?

How have I failed myself?

How did I waste time?

Was I careless with relationships?

Where am I cracked?

What message do I want to leave behind?

How can I do better?

Elul is the month of self-evaluation and honest internal discourse. Before Freud and Jung, even before the couch, Judaism encouraged the internal journey. Let’s go.

Afshine Emrani

[happyhoneysuckle]

🧿 Elul, Rosh Hashanah and a little update 🧿

Hello, just coming back on here to check in I guess... The last time you heard from me I was preparing for my final High school exam.

Now summer is drawing it's last breaths as the heat dies down in the evenings and some leaves are already turning brown.

I am yet again preparing for another test, this time it's an entrance exam 🧿

Once that is done I will hopefully be looking for a new place to call home.

The future is very much unknown at the moment, and sometimes it terrifies me, other times it excites me.

I'm very excited for the upcoming holidays, this new year is extra exciting for me! I'll hopefully be able to join the local jewish community in the city I'll be studying in, I haven't been to Shul in far too long. In the mean time my family and I are looking for a kosher restaurant to spend the first night of Rosh Hashanah together and we're going to be calling the Shul in one of the cities we're going to be going to during our holiday.

I was really excited to cook and bake some special food for Rosh Hashanah but I haven't been to a kosher restaurant in ages either and if we can spend this new year with other Jewish families that would be pretty cool too!

SO onto Elul and my feelings at the moment.

I always feel extra connected to my Jewish identity and faith this time of the year, and I used to chuckle to myself and find it funny... like a little recurring coincidence, but it isn't. Because of Elul's nature it is easier to feel connected to Hashem, see here ->

I am deeply feeling the need for introspection at the moment, and although this post is in a sense the beginning I feel like it's the blurb behind a book... it only touches the surface, besides we always - even unintentionally filter our words when they're meant for other people.

I also need to tie up my loose ends, I have unfinished business (the exam to get into uni, finding a place to stay, calling the Shul in the city I'll be studying in).

Also this year I'll be fasting for Yom Kippur for the first time, I'm excited although I'm probably going to do a liquid fast (I won't eat just drink) so not a total fast but still a big step.

I feel like I'm "taking stock" of my life as the My Jewish Learning website suggest we should do during the month of Elul, what I find amazing is how I've always naturally been in tune with these things (some more than others obviously)

I think that's all for now... Share your updates and we can make this a little shared diary of sorts 🥰🧿🦋

[happyhoneysuckle]

x

[happyhoneysuckle]

You don't need to believe in God to believe in Judaism - Jewish World - Haaretz.com

i really love this article. while the author's background is quite different from mine, the article describes some of the same feelings i have about why i do judaism even if i'm not sure g!d exists.

[happyhoneysuckle]

So uh....some dude apparently recreated Adobe Photoshop feature-for-feature, for FREE, and it runs in your browser.

Anyway, fuck Adobe, and enjoy!

[happyhoneysuckle]

How do you watch the richest man on Earth go to space for 10 minutes of his own amusement while using more CO2 than a billion people in a year instead of idk helping fight climate change or poverty and not immediately radicalize yourself

[happyhoneysuckle]

there’s no rule as to how big or how small you’re allowed to dream. if you just want a small home and an orange kitchen and four cats that’s just as reasonable of a goal to work for as a big new york penthouse. and if all you really want is a simplistic career that isn’t the center of your life then that’s just as valid as dreaming of becoming a famous fashion designer or ceo. i know everyone keeps urging you to dream big, but dreams can be as simple and small as you want. they’ll always be valid. you decide how you want to live and what kind of life you want, no one else.

[happyhoneysuckle]

Some racist asshole run a muslim family down with his pick-up truck this afternoon in London (Ontario), killing four and leaving only one family member alive. The terrorist was a 20-year old islamophobic dude who targeted muslims and wanted to kill as many of them as possible; when the police arrested him, he was wearing body armor, he had intended to commit more than just murders. There's a 9-year old who lost his family and is in the hospital right now. It's heartbreaking.

More info:

Killing of Canadian Muslim family with truck was hate crime -police

[happyhoneysuckle]

Yes!!!! I feel so safe here lmao

tumblr is literally social media for introverts. i love it here.

[happyhoneysuckle]

Please speak out against antisemitism.

Please speak against it when you see it, please publicly condemn it, please pay attention to Jewish people when we point it out.

Please educate yourself on Jewish issues and please do not enable your activism to include violence against the Jewish community.

Please make sure your activism includes us too.

[happyhoneysuckle]

Recently come to the realisation that many of my non-jewish 'friends' might just be friends with me despite the fact that I'm Jewish.... I really find it hard to justify their silence with the 500-600% increase of antisemitism....

My grandmother survived a genocide, 3 civil wars, and an ethnic cleansing across 4 countries in Asia. Prior to college she pulled me aside to remind me to never trust anyone- not family, not friends, and especially not allies. I brushed it off as her hypervigillance from being a refugee multiple times. I am a queer asian jew and after this month I believe her.

I saw an over 400% increase in hate crimes against the Jewish community, over 17,000 tweets saying “H*tler was right”, calls for rape and murder of my community. All the while, the same social justice community who would speak up for me as an asian woman 2 months ago wouldn’t open their mouths for me now because they cant seem to see the difference between an IDF soldier and a diasporic jew. 

A professor told me that I am personally slaughtering Palestinian children because I am a living Jew, and Jews should all be wiped from the earth. Oh, and she assured me that this wasn’t antisemitic, just anti-zionist. Another professor agreed that Jews were dirty thieves. Another professor showed pictures of dead holocaust victims beside a picture of dying pigs as a way to remember a specific disease. A sociology professor said antisemitism doesn’t exist anymore. Another professor said that Black Jews dont exist and then shut down the Black Jews who tried arguing with her by saying their opinion doesn’t matter because of the forced birth control injections of Ethiopian Jews in Israel. 

Arizona is re-opening their gas chambers, closed over 20 years. They will be using Zyklon B aka hydrogen cyanide aka Nazi gas chamber gas. This is the  gas that killed millions of people - Jews, Roma, LGBT, disabled, and more. From US records of using this as a method of execution, we know that it takes 10-20 minutes for someone to die of it, with witness reports of people slamming their heads into walls to kill themselves before the gas, coughing/gagging, and dying in agony. No one is speaking out against this (please call your senators!)

It is the first of June and I have already seen anti-asexual rhetoric being spewed by people in the LGBT community. Those who believe that the “A” stands for Ally, and that aces deserve zero community support because we have AVEN. We have AVEN, an online chatroom and education database for asexuals. Those who believe we do not have oppression by the cishets, yet ignore data on corrective rape, medical abuse, conversion therapy, job and housing discrimination against our community. 

I am tired. I am sad. I am terrified. I am abandoned by the communities and spaces that were once a safe haven. I am abandoning my cultural name. I am abandoning my asian and jewish mother tongues. I am taking down my mezuzah like many in my community. This and last month were supposed to be celebrating the AAPI community, American Jewish community, LGBT community, and bring awareness to mental health. As a member of all of those communities, I have never felt more alone.

Please see this. Please start speaking out. My communities hear your quiet and it is suffocating. 

[happyhoneysuckle]

Love you poem but faith in Judaism is not blind, it's actually centred around asking questions!

All in the name of religion

Faith can only be blind, if it has questions, it's not faith. And this blindfaith is the reason for chaos all around the world.

Jews vs Muslims

Christians vs Jews

Hindus vs Muslims

Muslims vs Christians

Buddhists vs Muslims

And the list goes on..

Just that thought brought these words in my head and I ended up writing this piece...

There's blind faith, there's fraud

There's noise, there's crowd

There's hypocrisy, there's riots

Disagreements and fights

There's god men and myths

Money laundering and stupids

There's terrorism, there's violence

Controversies, anti-science

There's politics, there's corruption

There's pollution, destruction

There's business, there's fiction

All in the name of religion

As per me, if you choose your religion above humanity, you are the problem!

-frncs

7th Jun, 2021

[happyhoneysuckle]

Save these images to debunk the Pallywood lies. They love sharing fake photos to get sympathy. Using children from Syria or Yemen saying they are Palestinian. Spread the word. 

[happyhoneysuckle]

Hey did you know I keep a google drive folder with linguistics and language books  that I try to update regularly 

[happyhoneysuckle]

been on my mind for the past two plus weeks

Why does it feel like Jews are the only ones who care about antisemitism?

Why are we the only ones who talk about it? Why do all my non-jewish friends like my antisemitism posts on instagram but none of them post anything themselves? None of them try to spread the word?

People think being a Jew means you celebrate Hanukkah. People do not realize that we are Jews every day. We are Jews even when you are not thinking about us. This is who we are. And so much of our identity is rooted in trauma. And nobody fucking cares.

Nobody cares about Jewish people except Jewish people.

At least, that’s what it feels like. And it’ll keep feeling like that until I see evidence to the contrary.