#Jewish holidays

[morganas-simp]

IT WAS ONE GIANT FROG

🐸

[modestly-trying]

Little bit from My Jewish Year hy Abigail Pogrebin

[mintytrifecta]

[image description: the bugs bunny in a tuxedo "I wish all a very pleasant evening" meme edited to say "I wish all of my Jewish followers a very pleasant passover". Next to bugs is a photo of a small stack of matzo and the cup of Elijah. ]

[nesyanast]

Some of my favorite Hassidic Purim pictures

[mental-mona]

“The Jewish response to trauma is counter-intuitive and extraordinary. You defeat fear by joy. You conquer terror by collective celebration. You prepare a festive meal, invite guests, give gifts to friends. While the story is being told, you make an unruly noise as if not only to blot out the memory of Amalek, but to make a joke out of the whole episode. You wear masks. You drink a little too much. You make a Purim spiel.” Precisely because the threat was so serious, you refuse to be serious – and in that refusal you are doing something very serious indeed. You are denying your enemies a victory. You are declaring that you will not be intimidated. As the date of the scheduled destruction approaches, you surround yourself with the single most effective antidote to fear: joy in life itself. As the three-sentence summary of Jewish history puts it: “They tried to destroy us. We survived. Let’s eat.” Humour is the Jewish way of defeating hate. What you can laugh at, you cannot be held captive by.

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks zt"l, "The Therapeutic Joy of Purim," article published 1 March 2015

[amaditalks]

I have found my new quest.

Someone in a Facebook group I’m in posted this picture of a hanukkiah they saw in a thrift shop and did not purchase. Everyone in the group was telling them to go back and get it. They didn’t recognize what they were seeing.

It’s Yehudit brandishing her sword and the head of Holofernes.

She is being anointed with oil to honor her for her triumph.

On a hannukiah.

I need this so badly I can taste it. 

[mostpeculiarmademoiselleetmsieur]

Hey all. Just wanted to give my non-Jewish followers who might be curious about our calendar a little note.

I had a friend ask about Passover this morning, because they thought it always overlapped with Good Friday and Easter.

So, here’s the thing: The Jewish/Hebrew calendar is a lunar calendar. It doesn’t follow the Gregorian/English calendar, which follows the sun. Each of our months is 29 or 30 days long, following the lunar cycle, and the holidays fall on different says of the English calendar every year because of that. Also because of that difference, a leap year adds an entire month for us, rather than just a day, so that the seasons in which our holidays occur don’t change, since our holidays are mainly based around the seasons and not just the calendar dates.

So, because it’s a leap year—and, yes, it’s pretty much the same schedule with leap years in the Hebrew calendar as the English calendar—we’re currently towards the end of Adar 1, and Purim, the holiday we celebrate during Adar, will be celebrated during Adar 2. This also moves Passover out to late April this year.

This isn’t a very comprehensive explanation, but I thought it might be helpful or interesting to those of you who might be curious about the difference between our calendars.

[avi-on-jumblr]

TU BISHVAT IS IN 5 DAYS EVERYONE LET'S GET HYPED. TREES TREES TREES

[incognitopolls]

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

[420paki]

In honor of Tu BiShvat (the Jewish New Year of Trees), have some of my favorite Jewish art depicting trees.

[fdelopera]

i'm saying this now, and i will say it again: any goy who decides to wish me a "Happy Hanukkah" this December is required to tell me something that you know and appreciate about any other Jewish holiday.

bonus points if the other holiday you choose isn't Pesach (which you probably know about because of the Last Supper, or maybe a Jew has invited you to a Passover Seder before).

i swear, the only reason many of you know anything about Hanukkah at all is because it happens during the "Christmas season".

it's not enough to wish a Jew "Happy Hanukkah" once a year. it's not enough to tell your Jewish friends that you "punch Nazis lol".

now is the time to show us that you celebrate the Jews in your life.

now is the time to demonstrate that you respect us and our traditions.

this is my challenge to you:

do better.

[koshercosplay]

it's time for yet another year of chanukah ratings! that's right folks here are my Very Important Ratings of chanukah memorabilia (or, as I wrote last year with the pun of the century, menorabilia) for this year. Buckle up everyone for a wild ride!

none of these have anything to do with chanukah, but as we all know, chanukah IS the jewish holiday of all time which means it's time to bring out every single piece of even vaguely jewish-related merchandise! 5/10 the transliterations are incorrect

this is most likely a translation error but the thing is I still don't know what was supposed to be there. I want this pillow. I'm gonna start peppering this into my conversations. 7/10 many menorah!

oh no. no no no. why is there always at least one of these. I'm so tired. we have never wanted jewish santa. actually this looks like regular santa just stole those items from a jewish household. maybe santa IS christian after all! 1/10 santa has descended into a life of crime and thievery

it's very funny to me that to goyim chanukah is the live laugh love peace light and joy holiday because of the ~pretty lights~ when in reality it's about a rebellious uprising against our oppressors. AND latkes. 4/10 why is the t in latkes lowercase

no no you see the big floating magen dovid behind thomas jefferson isn't antisemitic, it's just a friendly reminder that jews control the banks! -102938473732/10 hey walmart what the fuck

I for one am ready to accept the hanukkah armadillo as part of the tribe. unfortunately the designers of this were cowards and didn't even give him a kippah or menorah. 6/10 free the menoradillo from bland christmas capitalism and give him a latke

this feels like an advertisement for "I Spy". the menorah isn't kosher. aladdin's lamp is there for some reason. is he jewish? good for him. mizrachi jewish icon. 5/10 scroll back up and read the hebrew

I saved the best for last purely because Tis The Season of the Boob Donuts. once you notice the Boob Donut you can't escape. that's not even how jelly donuts are filled and yet, here we are. 9/10 for boobs and no christmas imagery

[mintytrifecta]

[nesyanast]

Baghdadi Jews celebrate Purim in Shanghai 1908

Source: Rachel Wahba

[mental-mona]

You may know, if you’ve ever seen a Jewish house before Passover, it’s hard work. It really is. I try and be away from home when it’s happening. You have to clear the house of all products that contain leaven, you’ve got to clean everything, you’ve got to take out a new set of utensils and cutlery and crockery, and it is really hard work. I got somebody in England to design a special apron for Passover cleaning that read, “For this, we left Egypt?”

I used to wonder, why make Passover such hard work? And now I know: because freedom is hard work. And it has to be fought for in every generation. We have to tell and re-tell the story. We have to remind ourselves what it feels like each year to eat the bread of affliction and taste the bitter herbs of slavery.

...

Freedom is hard to attain, but it is very easy to lose. And that’s why it has to be fought for in every generation.

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"tl, "In Defence of Religious Liberty," the acceptance speech at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty award ceremony

[bytesizedshorts]

Happy Hanukkah! Hope all those celebrating Hanukkah have a happy one this year!