shehecheyanubitch

[shehecheyanubitch]

“The famous quip “2 jews, 3 opinions” us often used to illustrate how we can hardly ever agree on a topic… But it has a deeper, truly positive meaning: When 2 jews come together and debate in good faith, they will always reach together a new understanding far beyond what each of them could have reached alone. That is the third opinion. That’s our special power as jews - as long as we are united, BECAUSE we may differ radically in opinion and personality, we achieve greatness.”

— (via arothejew)

[shehecheyanubitch]

Okay, so:

Latin has this word, sic. Or, if we want to be more diacritically accurate, sīc. That shows that the i is long, so it’s pronounced like “seek” and not like “sick.”

You might recognize this word from Latin sayings like “sic semper tyrannis” or “sic transit gloria mundi.” You might recognize it as what you put in parentheses when you want to be pass-agg about someone’s mistakes when you’re quoting them: “Then he texted me, ‘I want to touch you’re (sic) butt.’”

It means, “thus,” which sounds pretty hoity-toity in this modren era, so maybe think of it as meaning “in this way,” or “just like that.” As in, “just like that, to all tyrants, forever,” an allegedly cool thing to say after shooting a President and leaping off a balcony and shattering your leg. “Everyone should do it this way.”

Anyway, Classical Latin somewhat lacked an affirmative particle, though you might see the word ita, a synonym of sic, used in that way. By Medieval Times, however, sic was holding down this role. Which is to say, it came to mean yes.

Ego: Num edisti totam pitam?

Tu, pudendus: Sic.

Me: Did you eat all the pizza?

You, shameful: That’s the way it is./Yes.

This was pretty well established by the time Latin evolved into its various bastard children, the Romance languages, and you can see this by the words for yes in these languages.

In Spanish, Italian, Asturian, Catalan, Corsican, Galician, Friulian, and others, you say si for yes. In Portugese, you say sim. In French, you say si to mean yes when you’re contradicting a negative assertion (”You don’t like donkey sausage like all of us, the inhabitants of France, eat all the time?” “Yes, I do!”). In Romanian, you say da, but that’s because they’re on some Slavic shit. P.S. there are possibly more Romance languages than you’re aware of.

But:

There was still influence in some areas by the conquered Gaulish tribes on the language of their conquerors. We don’t really have anything of Gaulish language left, but we can reverse engineer some things from their descendants. You see, the Celts that we think of now as the people of the British Isles were Gaulish, originally (in the sense that anyone’s originally from anywhere, I guess) from central and western Europe. So we can look at, for example, Old Irish, where they said tó to mean yes, or Welsh, where they say do to mean yes or indeed, and we can see that they derive from the Proto-Indo-European (the big mother language at whose teat very many languages both modern and ancient did suckle) word *tod, meaning “this” or “that.” (The asterisk indicates that this is a reconstructed word and we don’t know exactly what it would have been but we have a pretty damn good idea.)

So if you were fucking Ambiorix or whoever and Quintus Titurius Sabinus was like, “Yo, did you eat all the pizza?” you would do that Drake smile and point thing under your big beefy Gaulish mustache and say, “This.” Then you would have him surrounded and killed.

Apparently Latin(ish) speakers in the area thought this was a very dope way of expressing themselves. “Why should I say ‘in that way’ like those idiots in Italy and Spain when I could say ‘this’ like all these cool mustache boys in Gaul?” So they started copying the expression, but in their own language. (That’s called a calque, by the way. When you borrow an expression from another language but translate it into your own. If you care about that kind of shit.)

The Latin word for “this” is “hoc,” so a bunch of people started saying “hoc” to mean yes. In the southern parts of what was once Gaul, “hoc” makes the relatively minor adjustment to òc, while in the more northerly areas they think, “Hmm, just saying ‘this’ isn’t cool enough. What if we said ‘this that’ to mean ‘yes.’” (This is not exactly what happened but it is basically what happened, please just fucking roll with it, this shit is long enough already.)

So they combined hoc with ille, which means “that” (but also comes to just mean “he”: compare Spanish el, Italian il, French le, and so on) to make o-il, which becomes oïl. This difference between the north and south (i.e. saying oc or oil) comes to be so emblematic of the differences between the two languages/dialects that the languages from the north are called langues d’oil and the ones from the south are called langues d’oc. In fact, the latter language is now officially called “Occitan,” which is a made-up word (to a slightly greater degree than that to which all words are made-up words) that basically means “Oc-ish.” They speak Occitan in southern France and Catalonia and Monaco and some other places.

The oil languages include a pretty beefy number of languages and dialects with some pretty amazing names like Walloon, and also one with a much more basic name: French. Perhaps you’ve heard of it, n'est-ce pas?

Yeah, eventually Francophones drop the -l from oil and start saying it as oui. If you’ve ever wondered why French yes is different from other Romance yeses, well, now you know.

I guess what I’m getting at is that when you reblog a post you like and tag it with “this,” or affirm a thing a friend said by nodding and saying “Yeah, that”: you’re not new

[shehecheyanubitch]

Shoutout to non binary Jews!!

Whether you wear tefillin, a kippah, a tallit, anything else or none of it, you are valid. Your observance of Judaism does not invalidate your gender.

Shoutout to non binary Jews who are part of a super accepting synagogue!

Shoutout to non binary Jews who are part of a queerphobic synagogue!

Shoutout to non binary Jews who aren’t part of a synagogue!

Shoutout to non binary Jews who wear gendered religious items!

Shoutout to non binary Jews who want to wear gendered religious items but can’t!

Shoutout to non binary Jews who wear gendered religious items but don’t really want to!

Shoutout to non binary Jews who don’t wear gendered religious items!

Shoutout to non binary Jews who are only out in jewish spaces!

Shoutout to non binary Jews who are nervous about coming out in jewish spaces!

Shoutout to non binary Jews whose coming out didn’t go well in a jewish space!

Shoutout to non binary Jews whose coming out went really well in jewish spaces!

Shoutout to non binary Jews who aren’t sure where their identity fits into their Judaism!

Shoutout to non binary Jews whose identity is tied to their Judaism!

Shoutout to non binary Jews who feel more distant from Judaism because of their identity.

Shoutout to non binary Jews who feel closer to Judaism because of their identity.

Shoutout to all non binary Jews, whether you fit into any of these or not. Navigating Judaism and being non binary is complicated, and I’m so happy that you are part of my community!

[shehecheyanubitch]

pls appreciate my meme guys

[shehecheyanubitch]

Ketubot (Jewish marriage contracts) from Herat, Balkh, and Kabul, Afghanistan.

[shehecheyanubitch]

Wauw another Icelandic-Dane enduring the Jewish journey! I'm glad to see more of us 😁

Wow! Indeed it is very strange and awesome! Are you me? 😅 Feel free to send me a message! I’m always up for meeting new people!

[shehecheyanubitch]

When the Bible says "be holy," it means exactly the same as if it said, "do My commandments." - Maimonides

[shehecheyanubitch]

A handful of Jewish quotes that we should all keep in mind

“Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.” - Talmud

“Tzedek Tzedek Tirdof” (Justice, Justice you shall pursue) - Torah

“If you were there and the Romans or Babylonians were about to destroy Jerusalem, and you had the power to something about it, would you sit and mourn and cry? Or would you turn world upside down to change history? So, what is stopping you? Overturn the world today!” - R"Menachem Mendel Scheerson

“there may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest” - Elie Wiesel

“the status of those who observe oppression and remain silent is equal to the status of those who commit the oppression themselves”- Ibn Ezra

[shehecheyanubitch]

I made a short game about having a fistfight with hashem in the dark of the night. Check it out!

[shehecheyanubitch]

דער קאַפּיטליזם איז די מצרים פֿין אונדזער צײַט.

[shehecheyanubitch]

“The enlarged ע ayin at the end of שמע Sh'ma (Hear) and the enlarged ד dalet at the end of אחד echad (one) combine to spell עד eid (witness). We recite the Sh'ma to bear witness to the Oneness of God.”

— Mishkahn Tefilla, pa. 65

[shehecheyanubitch]

Today is Yom HaShoah. I want to take this moment to remind everyone that we will outlive them.

[shehecheyanubitch]

“לֹא־תְקַלֵּ֣ל חֵרֵ֔שׁ וְלִפְנֵ֣י עִוֵּ֔ר לֹ֥א תִתֵּ֖ן מִכְשֹׁ֑ל וְיָרֵ֥אתָ מֵּאֱלֹהֶ֖יךָ אֲנִ֥י יְהוָֽה׃ You shall not insult the deaf, or place a stumbling block before the blind. You shall fear your God: I am the LORD.”

—

Leviticus 19:14

[shehecheyanubitch]

A person came before Rabbah and said to him: "The head of my town said to me: 'Go and kill so and so, and if not, I will kill you.'" Rabbah said to him: "Let him kill you, and do not kill. Who can say that your blood is redder than the other man's? Perhaps his blood is redder than yours."

Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 74a

[shehecheyanubitch]

[shehecheyanubitch]

A Prayer of Healing for Mental Illness

May the One who blessed our ancestors bless all who live with mental illness, our care-givers, families, and friends. May we walk in the footsteps of Jacob, King Saul, Miriam, Hannah, and Naomi who struggled with dark moods, hopelessness, isolation, and terrors, but survived and led our people. Just as our father, Jacob, spent the night wrestling with an angel and prevailed, may all who live with mental illness be granted the endurance to wrestle with pain and prevail night upon night. Grace us with the faith to know that though, like Jacob, we may be wounded, shaped and renamed by this struggle, still we will live on to continue an ever unfolding, unpredictable path toward healing. May we not be alone on this path but accompanied by our families, friends, care-givers, ancestors, and the Divine presence. Surround us with loving-kindness, grace and companionship and spread over us a sukkat shalom, a shelter of peace and wholeness. And let us say: Amen.

By Rabbi Elliot Kukla

[shehecheyanubitch]

“We’re all Zooming out of Egypt” –Rabbi E on facebook live