kvetchings - Tumblr blog

[kvetchings]

I love watching school ties again and then going into the tag on tumblr and seeing all the screenshots of matt damon’s character looking hot, like in the scene where he calls brendan fraser a kike. or the scene where he tells him he’ll always be a dirty jew. you people have brain worms if you come away from that movie primarily thinking “matt damon hot.” and this is the only context in which I would somehow like... imply that the moral content of school ties could POSSIBLY go over anyone’s head? this the least subtle movie ever made. it’s absurd.

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Never Again Will I Visit Auschwitz

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I can't deal with any hot take about the picture of shel silverstein on the back of the giving tree. YES he looks like an evil pirate in that image YES saying he always looks like an evil pirate is secret antisemitism. but if one more person says its antisemitic to point out his evil pirate photograph I will go beast mode. 

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this is going to be a year of me growing so much as a Jew, I can already tell. I love celebrating shabbat every week with my weird community of Jewish young adults. I love doing readings for my religion class and disagreeing with them because I care so deeply about the text. I love going to a reconstructionist shul and missing how deliberate humanists are about when and how they talk about g-d and use hebrew. I am a religious person and I’m figuring out what that means to me! shanah tovah!

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dude straight up I don’t trust christians with the tanakh. its like we leave you guys for TWO seconds and you’re fucking... proselytizing people using our prophets and saying that the “””original sin””” was sex. fuck off!

[kvetchings]

HOW TO LIGHT SHABBOS CANDLES

Shabbos candles are lit 18 minutes before sunset. After sunset has already passed, Shabbos automatically begins, and one can no longer light the Shabbos candles.

STEP 1:

Light 2 candles that are large enough to burn for 2-3 hours, or until the Friday night meal has concluded. (Some have the custom to light 1 candle or many candles. Ask your Rabbi which custom to follow.)

STEP 2:

Extend your hands over the candles, then draw them inwards in a circular motion, as if to bring the light toward you. This symbolizes that you’re drawing the spirituality and holiness of Shabbos into your home and into your life. Do this motion 3 times. Then cover your eyes.

STEP 3:

Say the blessing while your eyes are closed:

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה’ אֱלֹקֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם

אֲשֶׁר קִדְּשָׁנוּ בְּמִצְוֹתָיו וְצִוָּנוּ

לְהַדְלִיק נֵר שֶׁל שַׁבָּת

Ba-RUCH / ah-TAH / ado-NOY / eh-lo-HEY-nu / MEH-lech / ha-o-LAM

a-SHER / kee-d’-SHA-nu / bi-mitz-vo-SAV / vi-tzee-VA-nu

l’-had-LEEK / neir / shel / Shabbos.

Blessed are You, Hashem, our God, King of the universe,

Who has sanctified us with His commandments,

and commanded us to kindle the light of Shabbos.

By saying this blessing, you are accepting Shabbos upon yourself. As soon the blessing is finished, prohibited activities (such as using electronics) cannot be done. The candlesticks should not be moved because they are “muktzeh.”

STEP 4:

Talk to God when you’re done saying the blessing. Take a moment to thank God for everything He has given you, and ask for all that you desire for the future. God loves to hear your prayers! Jewish women traditionally use this special time to pray for their families and ask to raise upright and God-fearing children and descendants who will follow in the ways of Torah and Judaism. You can also use this time to pray for others who need good health, relief from pain, or any other need. Open your heart and speak to God.

(Source)

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my friend gave me this BIG ol magen david for my birthday which was really sweet of him but like do i have to self assurance to wear it? no. i’d feel like a fake jew.

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The only Jew in Star Wars was Han Solo. He was a flawed hero like in the Jewish Bible. Luke Skywalker was a perfect hero. That’s goyish.

Rabbi Yitzhak Greenberg

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yeah apparently when my dad was a kid every year around christmas my grandma would send my grandpa out to get a tree and would tell him “go get the hanukah bush” and he’d be like no its fine I’ll get a christmas tree and at the high holidays she’d make him go get gefilte fish and eat it, since he was insisting on being a jew, so honestly I think this was just a microaggression. thanks goyische bubbe. 

also while I’m posting my grandma is visiting and she saw the permission slip for a jewish summer camp I’m going to on our kitchen table and was like “are you getting bat mitzvahed?” no thats… a permission slip with the word yiddish on it. she’s lived in New York City for most of her life and has been married to my jewish grandfather for 50+ years. idg how she remains so in the dark about judaism. 

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the #firstantisemiticexperience hashtag is horrifying. so many people were targeted so early in their lives. i’ve been thinking about how my grandma’s elementary school class was especially small because it had more jewish girls than average, and a lot of mothers held their daughters back. i’ve been thinking about how kids in my mom’s school told her she was going to hell. i’ve been thinking about how my goyische grandma made comments deriding her husband’s judaism, and how my grandad did the same to my jewish grandmother, and what it must have meant for both my parents to hear that from the people raising them. i’ve been thinking about my first antisemitic experience, when a boy in my ninth grade history class turned to the kid sitting next to me and told him a holocaust joke, the day we began studying the holocaust. earlier that morning my dad told me in the car on the way to school that his grandfather left poland to escape violent antisemitism. i’ve been thinking about my jewish friends who have had pennies thrown at them, and whose synagogues have been vandalized, and who attend jewish day schools with bulletproof glass in the windows. i’ve been thinking of the gentiles who believe that antisemitism doesn’t matter anymore, or just exists in europe, or ended in world war II. just because we can join country clubs doesn’t mean we aren’t still othered and oppressed. antisemitism will always be more complicated than that. 

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I had a really interesting conversation with my mom and our closest family friends over the weekend about black/jewish relations. they’re black, and the mom works in an organization of primarily black and/or jewish people because they do education relating to the holocaust and the slave trade. she said she hasn’t experienced any division in her workplace as of yet, but I was remembering a conversation we had over the summer about how they’ve so far avoided publicly naming a stance on israel and I wonder the affect that could have. her son is in his late 20s and lives in brooklyn, and he said that he’d already witnessed a lot of hostility and had a lot to say about racial politics in israel, which was interesting because it’s really not something I know a lot about, and I’d never heard a gentile talking about the treatment of sephardic jews before. he also said that jews control 25% of the wealth in either the world or the united states (I missed which). that’s untrue. he’s really smart and I really like and respect him, he’s basically a brother to me, but that left a bad taste in my mouth. obviously I’m not going to dismiss anything else he was saying.

[kvetchings]

“Jewishness is not a belief, a feeling, a conviction or a lifestyle. It is a state of being. We can either celebrate it or fight against it. But it will always be there. So why not celebrate it?”

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SEINFELD TWICE?? SEINFELD TWICE? two different people compared my writing to seinfeld!

good writing comparisons I got: Seinfeld twice, David sedaris, Joni Mitchell, Etgar Keret, whoever wrote the god of small things

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i feel like there’s something i lost through not having a female relative to teach me how to cook traditional foods. my mom doesn’t cook, her mom doesn’t cook, and my other grandma isn’t jewish. she doesn’t cook either but that’s beside the point. i can cook latkes or matzah balls or challah but im figuring it out for myself. i know better than my mom does what im doing. and i know im gendering all of these things but they are gendered. it feels wrong that im the one to show my mother how to braid challah or sing the chanukah prayers. where was her mother to teach her that? where was she to teach me?

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my friend didn’t know that my family is half christian and I told him and he was like “yeah but your name is still [REDACTED ASHKENAZI NAME], you can’t get away from that.” and like... oof yeah. of course this particular friend is goyische and has been making jokes about how jewish my name is since we’ve known each other. I know I can’t get away from it. 

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i’ve made almost this exact post before but lets have 5779 be the year of not casting italian gentiles in jewish roles. cast jews! need someone who “looks jewish” for a jewish role? super easy! any jew looks jewish automatically! you don’t need need jason biggs.