#Children of Israel

[todaysjewishholiday]

15 Sivan 5784 (20-21 June 2024)

The fifteenth of Sivan is the traditional birthday and yahrzeit of Yehudah bar Yisroel. The original one. The one Judaism is named after.

Why him? In the Torah, Yehudah is one of the twelve sons (and thirteen children, let’s not forget Dinah) of Yaakov who becomes Yisroel. Yaakov, remember, had fallen in love with Rachel but her father Laban had swapped brides on the wedding day because he thought Leah should be married first, and then the two sisters committed to an infant arms race to try and win their husband’s affection (a bad time for all). Yehudah was the fourth of Leah’s seven children, so he had neither the legal rights of the firstborn or the narrative significance of the youngest son, who the family narratives in Bereshit persistently preference. But despite his middle-of-the-pack position, Yehudah appears in the Torah’s story of the family as a clever and decisive character, unlike the eldest brother Reuven, and is persistently placed as the foil of Yosef, the second-to-last child (and firstborn of favored Rachel) who gets all the advantages the Torah offers to younger brothers.

This prominence may be a matter of historical accuracy (or at least communal memory) or Yehudah’s role in events may have been burnished retroactively to account for the success of his most famous descendants, the house of David, who became kings. Of course, according to Tanakh, the northern ten tribes went and established their own monarchy after two generations of almost-unity.

It’s that split, into the northern kingdom of Samaria and southern kingdom of Judah, that produced the Jewish people (or at least our name). Many of the nobles of the northern kingdom were taken into captivity by the Assyrians, who turned back before conquering Judah. Then a little over a hundred years later, the nobility of Judah was taken into exile by the Babylonians. It was the returnees from that captivity, and their conflict with the remaining population of Samaria, who they felt had mixed too much with other people’s and adopted too many foreign practices, that made the people of Judah a distinct religious community.

The fifteenth of the month is aligned with the full moon in the Hebrew calendar and is frequently a festival day, as with the start of Pesach on 15 Nisan and Pesach Sheni on 15 Iyyar, Sukkot on 15 Tishrei, or the minor holidays of Tu B’Av and Tu B’Shvat. Ancient sources may have felt that Sivan, whose major holiday falls at the start of the month, needed something more when designating the 15th as Yehudah’s birthday and yahrzeit.

Today is also Erev Shabbos, the last of the six days of labor this week. We will welcome Shabbat HaMalka with the Kabbalat Shabbat service and the lighting of Shabbat candles at least 18 minutes before sunset.

[8bitmanna]

Verse of the Day

🤍Exodus 3:14🤍

[motherofplatypus]

This is how many bullets they shot on a fucking kid.

[taviamoth]

art by the.gauntlets

Dr. Huda Abu Khater's Instagram

gofundme to help them

[i-am-aprl]

says “I’m not getting my diploma at graduation Myself and 3 other seniors were notified that UChicago won’t confer our degrees at graduation this weekend. Despite finishing 4 rigorous and excruciating years of undergrad This comes off the heels of the university already having me and other students arrested & criminalized. The 4 of us have been targeted for “possibly” participating in campus-wide protests which a large majority of our student body has. We assumed we’d have criminal records before degrees. And now we might not even have that We’ve done the work. We deserve our degrees. Standing on the side of justice shouldn’t negate that. Sign, call, write to tell UChicago this is not okay. We need more support.” Go to his profile and click in the link in his bio for a quick way to contact the University.

[anymouslydone]

[intersectionalpraxis]

"Gaza now has the largest population of child amputees in the world." [@/abrahammatar on X. June 5th, 2024.]

[sugas6thtooth]

It's unfathomable, even more so when you realize this isn't the first time Israel has done this. She was a baby. The men were so obviously red crescent medics, and still, Israeli soldiers shot and killed them.

It wasn't a misfired bomb. It was guns. They knew what they were targeting.

Anyone who defends this, for whatever religion you believe in, even if you believe in nothing at all, I can only hope the afterlife brings you your deserved suffering on a platter. You're disgusting, vile creatures, who must've snuck onto the Earth because there is no way in nature that you are human. Die.

نَّا ِلِلَّٰهِ وَإِنَّا إِلَيْهِ رَاجِعُونَ

Save the children of Palestine. Protect the medics. Free Palestine. 🇵🇸

[good-old-gossip]

The first Palestinian athlete to participate in the Olympic games died on Wednesday at the Nuseirat refugee camp in Gaza as a result of kidney failure due to power outages and medical shortages as a result of the ongoing Israeli war and siege of the enclave.

Majed Abu Maraheel, who passed away at the age of 61, became the first athlete to be the flag bearer and represent Palestinians at the Olympic Games in Atlanta in 1996. Being a distance runner, he competed in the 10km race.

Since his breakthrough on the world stage, more than 20 Palestinian men and women have been able to compete at Olympic competitions.

"He was a Palestinian icon, and he will remain as such," his brother told Paltoday TV after the funeral.

"We tried to evacuate him to Egypt but then the Rafah crossing was closed (by Israel), and his condition kept deteriorating."

In his preparation for the Olympics, Abu Maraheel would often be seen on his daily runs from his home in Gaza to the Erez Crossing with Israel, which Israel closed in October after imposing a full blockade on the Strip.

Last month, it was reopened for the first time since then.

He would often have to pass through that crossing for his job as a day labourer in Israel. After participating in the Olympics, Abu Maraheel went on to become a coach for other Palestinian runners hoping to replicate his presence at the international competition.

Abu Maraheel's death highlights the grim fate of many Palestinians who are facing kidney failure in Gaza.

A report from the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor in March found that there were between 1,000 to 1,500 patients in Gaza with kidney failure, and that they are facing a "slow death" because of "a lack of medical and therapeutic services, medications and other necessities".

Israel denies blocking humanitarian aid into Gaza, though aid agencies say they are not able to get aid in because of Israeli restrictions.

[starrswara]

netizens are desensitising gruesome things that are taking place in Palestine.

even the internet’s reaction to graphic things such as - pictures of injured children, civilians stuck under rubble, dead bodies of families in their destroyed homes etc. is beyond underwhelming.

DO NOT NORMALISE GENOCIDE.

BREAK THE STIGMA.

#save palestine

[beardeddetectivepaper]

[tomi4i]

[gastonjerry]

YOUTH STS LESSON 120 DEFEAT OF THE MIDIANITES AND DEATH OF BALAAM

MEMORY VERSE: “And they slew the kings of Midian, beside the rest of them that were slain; namely, Evi, and Rekem, and Zur, and Hur, and Reba, five kings of Midian: Balaam also the son of Beor they slew with the sword” (Numbers 31:8).   TEXT: Numbers 31:1-54   Today’s text opens with word “avenge”, which means to retaliate. Immediately after the act of immorality and idolatry of Israel with…

[taviamoth]

This is not a natural disaster. This was not inevitable. They didn't grow up like this. It was inflicted on them by the vilest sadists on earth.