hermione-walked-out-of-a-yeshiva - Tumblr blog

[hermione-walked-out-of-a-yeshiva]

A while ago I was looking around for a middle name, and found a word that I thought was in the Bible, but recently found out is actually a Hebrew word that occurred once in the Torah (the name specifically is Heylel) I have gotten attached to the name, but decided to ask if it would be a better idea to look for a new one.

Anon, is it this word in Isaiah 14:12?

הֵילֵל (n-m) heb

Lucifer = "light-bearer"shining one,  morning star,  Lucifer(TWOT) 'Helel' describing the king of Babylonof the king of Babylon and Satan (fig.)

Source: מקור: Open Scriptures on GitHub

Creator: יוצר: Based on the work of Larry Pierce at the Online Bible

Accessed via Sefaria

Respondents who aren’t already familiar with Jewish interpretations of this word and passage may want to take a look in Sefaria or otherwise do some learning before forming opinions on this word’s appropriateness as a name for a non-Jew.

- Mod Alef/א

[hermione-walked-out-of-a-yeshiva]

[hermione-walked-out-of-a-yeshiva]

What is kashrut?

(This is being put out as a precursor question to another ask.)

Respondents, please include an FoR for any explanations.

[hermione-walked-out-of-a-yeshiva]

What's the general consensus on vampires? Obviously, much/most of vampire lore is rooted in antisemitism, but is it an archetype we (we = gentiles, as I am one, and understand that Jewish people can of course reclaim as they see fit) should completely abandon, similar to goblins? Is it something that can still be consumed from a modern lense, as long as it's consumed critically? Should gentiles avoid producing new vampire content? Thanks in advance!!

Mods here. Thanks for the interesting question, anon! While everyone is more than welcome to discuss here, writingwithcolor.tumblr.com may also be a good resource. Here are two relevant past asks:

https://ask-jumblr.tumblr.com/post/628013892672602112/im-a-big-fan-of-vampires-and-i-wanted-to-make-a

https://ask-jumblr.tumblr.com/post/626652932605198337/hi-i-just-wanted-to-ask-if-its-offensive-to-write

[hermione-walked-out-of-a-yeshiva]

However you spell it, I hope the Festival of Lights was a fun and delicious holiday for you and yours.

[hermione-walked-out-of-a-yeshiva]

[hermione-walked-out-of-a-yeshiva]

okay but like

what if the citizens of Arendelle all assume that Anna took the throne because Elsa died and all this talk of “Elsa lives in the woods now” is like the equivalent of oh yes we sent the dog to live on the farm upstate 

and that’s why Elsa didn’t go to the coronation/statue unveiling, because she knows and thinks it’s h i l a r i o u s and wants to see how long it takes Anna to realize literally everyone in the kingdom thinks Elsa is dead and is humoring her

[hermione-walked-out-of-a-yeshiva]

Looking for new mod(s)

Mod here.  Please consider signal boosting this post!

It is highly likely I will be looking for one or more people to take over this blog. I would also love to pass @jewish-education​ on to one or more people. If you’d be interested in taking over either blog, please reach out.

I would want both blogs to be maintained as pluralistic spaces. However, with a team of moderators, either blog could still benefit from some moderators who only want to work within a specific FOR, as long as the team is committed to and collectively able to curate/moderate a pluralistic space.

Ideally, in addition to willingness to maintain and (collectively) engage with a pluralistic Jewish community, I’d be looking for mod(s) who:

Can put in the time on tumblr. Internet access and time have both been issues for me on and off as I’ve run this blog. Of course, with a team, this would be more flexible.

Consider themselves both reasonably organized and reasonably flexible (again, with a team, it’s a little less tricky). Running these blogs takes both steadiness and the ability to take what gets thrown at you (at least with @ask-jumblr). Taking what’s thrown at you is not necessarily outright trolls, but all y’all have seen the drama of jumblr–it hasn’t always been easy keeping jumblr’s drama off this blog.

Have a variety of different Jewish experiences, either as a collective or through personal exposure to many communities. Pluralism in practice is tricky, and the more experience you have coming in, the more you’ll know what you’re getting into and have built up frameworks for both proactive decision-making and inevitable conflict-resolution.

In the coming…while…I will put out some more specific information, either searching for moderators or about the transition, depending on whether this initial post goes anywhere…

[hermione-walked-out-of-a-yeshiva]

If you are observant/Orthodox Jewish, talk to a rabbi. There should be options. Most likely your best bet will be:

- temporarily transfer ownership of the cats to someone who will get them neutered and vaccinated for you, and then transfer them back to your name. That way you are not breaking your religion to do what is needed for these cats.

So. I have a colony of cats. Strictly outdoors. They are never allowed in my home. I have ~20 cats and I refuse to get them fixed due to religious reasons. Anyway, they keep having kittens, and I want that to stop - but my religion prevents fixing them. I only vaccinate for rabies because the government makes me. What can I do to continue to ensure my cats continue to have long and happy lives in my colony as well as decrease the number of kittens?

I say this in the kindest way possible: your religion must not stand in the way of compassionate and proper care for an animal. If your religion prevents you from taking appropriate care of your colony, you must find them homes with someone who will.

Your options are as follows:

- separate the cats by gender. The males will be best since they can breed multiple females in a short period, whereas the females can only produce one litter every few months. They will need to be kept indoors or otherwise away from the females permanently.

- get all the cats neutered. I'm not sure if you are Buddhist, but I got some advice from a Buddhist veterinarian practicing in a majority Buddhist country: "Neutering is an accepted procedure with a ton of evidence that it improves animal health and life expectancy. It prevents a lot of issues like feline viral infection rate, pyometra, and certain cancers. So as I’m a vet who practices this procedure, but also practice Buddhism, I’m not committing a sin. I'm helping them."

- temporarily transfer ownership of the cats to someone who will get them neutered and vaccinated for you, and then transfer them back to your name. That way you are not breaking your religion to do what is needed for these cats.

- transfer all the cats permanently to new owner(s) or a rescue that will perform appropriate care.

Of course, you do have the option of euthanizing them all. While I don't know how a religion that actively prevents proper animal care would feel regarding euthanizing an animal that cannot or will not be cared for properly, I can tell you that you'd be hard-pressed to find a vet that would perform convenience euthanasias on 20+ cats and kittens.

A final word from the Buddhist vet: "There are two options that they can do if they want to stop cats from breeding. Isolation, or neutering. If they won’t do one, then it’s impossible. And no one can help them, not even their religions deity."

[hermione-walked-out-of-a-yeshiva]

Proposed blog changes: move to Reddit

While I enjoy personally blogging on tumblr, it has many disadvantages for this blog’s format… For some time, I’d been thinking about moving this blog to another platform and I keep coming back to Reddit.

What does this mean?

I’m going to wait 7-10 days for people to comment on the idea of a Reddit move before doing absolutely anything.

If you have used Reddit as a regular user and/or as a community moderator: Do you think it would be a good fit? Do you have any tips?

If you don’t have a Reddit account or would want to make a separate one: Would you be willing to make a new account to engage with this community?

If we proceed, think on: What are some ground rules we might want to set for users? for moderators? What might be a good name? Would you be interested in being a moderator?

The ask box is staying open, and I will still be queueing asks. However, it may take me a while to catch up, I will not be reblogging asks, and I won’t be trying to keep a super consistent queue. The ask box will remain open unless and until there is a clear transition plan.

I intend to keep my personal tumblr. I like it here–I just don’t think here is the right home for this blog.

Why Move to Reddit?

1. Better community tools around banning

It’s hard for me to stop someone from using this blog to spam and harass others. (1) On Tumblr, my only tool is blocking. In Reddit, there are some more nuanced tools. (2) On Tumblr, it can be tricky to message people to discuss their behavior, and any resulting warnings or consequences. On Reddit, there are some built-in tools for making sure admins and moderators can reach out in these cases.

2. Better community tools for informing new users

On Tumblr, there isn’t a great way for me to introduce new users to how this blog works. On Tumblr, I can’t pin a post, I am limited to a fairly tiny description on the homepage, and people on mobile can’t always find the pages for rules, guidelines, explanations, archives. etc. On Reddit, there are better ways to inform new users of how the community works, including community descriptions and pinned posts.

3. Better mobile interface

I am yet to hear any concerns about Reddit mobile limiting features. If I’m wrong about this, please let me know.

4. Easier collaboration for moderators

Reddit is built for multiple moderators and approving posts/comments in ways that Tumblr just isn’t. There are whole systems for approving outside posts, for moderators to chat as a group, and for reminding people of rules.

I am not expanding the moderating team on Tumblr, but with a move to Reddit I would try to bring in some new moderators. This would have some added bonuses:

Content can come out faster!

More perspectives and fewer insulting goofs when handling Jewish people who aren’t me! I so often don’t know about different Jewish groups, perspectives, and overlapping identities. With a bigger team, more perspectives and identities could be represented.

No weird conflict from me of Should I answer a question on a post I’m also moderating?

5. Less Repeating Ourselves

We get a lot of repeat and semi-repeat questions, but archiving and search are pretty awful on here. I never know whether people have seen those similar asks and still want answers to their own question, or whether those asks were enough.

Often, on mobile, people can’t view the archive I’ve been building. I’m under the impression that a subreddit’s pages are still viewable on Reddit mobile.

Tumblr’s search is also terrible–I regularly can’t find a post on here that I know exists. I’ve played around some with Reddit’s search and have found that it actually works.

6. Better Conversations on questions

When reading this blog, people rely a lot on the notes. In Reddit, the platform is the notes. While up/downvoting have some downsides, I believe that we can find ways to work those out.

7. Retain anonymity from ‘outside’ identity

I know that many users appreciate their account being separate from their life ‘outside’ this corner of the internet. For some users, this is an important safety concern. For better or worse, Reddit is known for being separate from ‘real life’ and its connected internet activity like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Linked-In. While brings me to my next point…

8. More functional balance of anonymity and privacy

I very, very often, wished I could just message an anon to clarify. For understandable reasons, that just isn’t possible. However, taking the anon feature away would make it much, much harder for people with sensitive questions to send them in:

On Tumblr, people can’t send in an ask from a ‘sideblog’ created just for that purpose. If I turned off the anon feature, people would have two choices for relative anonymity from their main blog (A) message me with a sideblog using the tiny chat and hope I post it or (B) make a whole separate account with another email address.

In Reddit, option A (message a mod) is a little easier. The chat function simply works better.

And Reddit provides a much improved parallel to option B (new, separate account). Reddit allows one person to make multiple, independent accounts under the same email. In other words, you don’t need another email address to make an independent account to send in a question.

9. Not any worse?

While Reddit is notorious for being unchecked, Tumblr is also a cesspool of Nazis…

Some Final Notes:

There are already some corners of Reddit with features similar to this blog, but they aren’t an entirely question-based environment like this blog. This blog was in part made (spoiler alert?) to be a non-terrible version of “God Save Us From Your Opinion” on Facebook. Reddit would be a much better platform than Facebook or Tumblr for that purpose.

This blog was also created* to provide an outlet for the many asks that I and other Jewish blogs get on tumblr. Moving platforms would…not be ideal for diverting those asks…thoughts?

* mild clarification edit

[hermione-walked-out-of-a-yeshiva]

undefined

For some reason a bird speaking Japanese is mildly off putting.

> Literal translation

Bird:“ ‘Uhm Hello, this is the Ono family.”

Bird: “What’s wrong?”

Owner: “Abe-chan, you’re a little too early. Once the phone’s picked up, then properly say hello.”

Bird: “Okay, understood.”

Owner: “Do you really understand? I’m counting on you. Hello, this is the Ono family residence in Gifu.”]

Bird: “Okay, I understand!”

Owner: “Got it.”

> That’s clearly some sort of Pokemon.

> Off-putting? It’s like birds were meant to speak Japanese!

> For some reason it’s never occurred to me that birds can mimic languages other than English. It’s so cool, though!

[hermione-walked-out-of-a-yeshiva]

A lot of people are genuinely terrified about what will happen if Donald Trump wins reelection and it's really weird how some of y'all are acting like everyone begging you to vote for Biden is some privileged, rich, out of touch, neo-liberal when a lot of them are just vulnerable people who don't want to like...die in a brutal civil war or watch all their remaining rights get stripped away by an increasingly authoritarian Republican Party.

I do not know how to express to you how much worse it can get.

[hermione-walked-out-of-a-yeshiva]

people: "if biden and harris lose, this could be the last fair and free election in our lifetimes!!!"

me: *thinks about how felons can't vote, thinks about how the working class often have to choose between getting work that day or voting, thinks about how black people and indigenous people couldnt vote until 55 years ago, thinks about how gerrymandering is rendering low income/mostly minority districts virtually silent, thinks about how the electoral college is still in effect and has more power than the actual popular vote, thinks about​ how each state can set up their own arbitrary laws for voting, even at the federal level, thinks-*

me: yea. fair and free. yup.

[hermione-walked-out-of-a-yeshiva]

Mod here with a reminder that

the High Holidays are coming soon!

if you have questions about what the High Holy Days are, how to make them special within your community’s COVID-19 restrictions, or anything else that’s constructive, the ask box is open and please send those questions in soon. If a question would be more appropriate for a rabbi or other leader in your community, please ask them ASAP; they are coming up on the most tumultuous version of their most hectic time of year.

If your blog includes lots of Jewish content, please consider signal boosting this reminder.

[hermione-walked-out-of-a-yeshiva]

If you are not Black do not make jokes about being Black, slavery, or anything that has to do with Black people! There are boundaries and this is one of them! Don't laugh, giggle, ahehe NOTHING! You should not feel comfortable making or even laughing at these jokes. If you are or do then it's very sus.

[hermione-walked-out-of-a-yeshiva]

So what's the deal with the USPS at the moment?

I’m so glad you asked, honey bunches of oats! 

The Post Office is literally under siege by a faction of the federal government that shall remain unnamed but rhymes with “shmepublicans.” On the surface, this can seem like simply part of that party’s platform to replace government-funded organizations with private corporations (see: private prisons) in an attempt to reduce government expenditure. Which, if that were their genuine goal, I’d at least have a maaaarginal amount of respect for the tactic (marginal because it’s an earnest tactic to improve the lives of Americans, not because I in any way agree with the tactic). 

Yet in reality, their motivations are much more insidious. Please look past my tinfoil hat and yarn-covered corkboard and listen with an open mind: the federal government is trying to defund the Post Office in an attempt to disenfranchise voters. 

For not only is the Post Office the ONLY and cheapest option for sending and receiving things through the mail, it is also often the only and cheapest option for low-income people to get things like money orders and other essential documents and services. And with an election coming up DURING A GLOBAL FUCKING PANDEMIC, mail-in ballots are expected to be used in higher numbers this year. Take away the Post Office, and you take away many voters’ ability to cast their ballot. And those voters will disproportionately be low-income people, students, people of color, and people with disabilities. You know: people who historically vote blue, are historically underrepresented in government, and contemporaneously have suffered under the current administration. 

Much ink has been spilled by smarter people than me, so I’ll round this out by directing you to those sources:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/31/us/politics/trump-usps-mail-delays.html

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/04/why-postal-service-worth-saving/610672/

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/15/politics/postal-service-new-director/index.html

Last but not least, a plea: please fucking vote. Vote for every fucking office on your ballot. Vote in the local election and vote in the federal election. This is not a fucking game, children. We HAVE to work within this shitty system to have any hope of changing it in the long term. And before we get to improving things, we have to fix this broken machine. And there are a lot of repairs to be done. So fucking ignore anyone trying to tell you that voting doesn’t matter or that Joe Biden is a terrible candidate. 

For if voting didn’t matter, they wouldn’t be trying so hard to stop us from doing it. 

Don't Boo, Vote: If You Don't Vote, No One Can Hear You Scream 

[hermione-walked-out-of-a-yeshiva]