#crack me

[lepertamar]

the most repeated metaphor for israel's exile in the nevi'im (prophets) in the tanakh is that of an adulterous woman punished by her husband. basic logic: g-d promised us in exodus that we would live well in the land of israel and be protected by It (g-d), but we were not. our enemies said this showed g-d the god of israel was unable to protect us, but we could not abide this, and counter-claimed that g-d was punishing us for our unfaithfulness and that It had sent the nations to destroy us, and It had the power reestablish us when we had repented. the adultery metaphor is obviously tuned to the psychology of its times and audience, but more foundational and less criticized is the assumption g-d can make such promises, that it's preferable that It determines the actions of third parties in the world, that if It can't, It's worse than worthless, a used tissue, because the only people here who should have free will and the power to exercise it are the jews and g-d.

this question continued through the repeated exiles and genocides of the jews in the next 2,500+ years, but began to become increasingly complicated and ambivalent over time, including with the interpretation in kabbalah that g-d was shattered and exiled alongside us.

look closer.

much post-holocaust theology rests on the existential question of g-d's impotence, for the hebrew bible does not present evidence that g-d is omnipotent.(1)(2)

so look closer at this metaphor, back in its times. play with reversing it:

g-d is not your husband (patriarchal definition) but g-d is also not your spouse, husband, or wife (modern egalitarian definition). g-d is your wife (patriarchal definition).

g-d cannot take you in or cast you out g-d cannot save or feed or clothe you g-d cannot give you land or defend you in battle g-d cannot divorce you even though It/She/They rages It will in Its besotted-mortified-crazed grief and abjection after you are unfaithful.

perhaps g-d can make your life hell from jealous sabotage g-d can drive you mad with lust and longing for It's beauty, as you have done to It. g-d can make your people survive forever through being the catalyst for all your children(writings/cultural handing-down/mitochondria). g-d can commit adultery against you and betray you. but if you die by your enemy's hand, g-d has permission to die in your house, for you will need it and It no longer.

(and many jews think this option is the worst one tho lmao.

'i can excuse being malicious and cruel and unjust or nonexistent, but i draw the line at being not-omnipotent!')

let me rewrite some of the prophets:

I G-d, take a millstone and grind meal now, in exile, Remove My veil, strip off (My) skirt; Show My thigh, cross streams, let My labia(3) be publicly shown, My private parts be seen So shall Israel shall have vengeance on Me for My lies of kingship [masculine], For My overthrow by your enemies, And shall encounter no opposition...(4)

For when showers I could not bring, And the late rains did not come, I had the brazenness of a street woman, I refused to be ashamed.(5)

/

Over You, G-d, we bent(6), saying 'For the number of Her sins, dishevel Her hair,' (7) Let Your thighs be uncovered, Your 'heels' violated....(8) Your shame will be exposed to Your face, Showing nations Your nakedness, kingdoms Your labia....(9)

/ or,

My beauty won Me fame among the nations, for it was perfected through the splendor which I set upon you— But haughty with My beauty and fame, I played the harlot: I lavished My favors on your enemies O Israel.... I sullied My beauty and spread My legs to every passerby(10)—I multiplied My harlotries to anger you. For I was jealous of your envy of other nations(11), which you loved more than Me When you bid Me make kings of your children, and cronies of Egypt(12), rather than wrestle Me til dawn And I despised you, when you wished to be a tyrant, As they were once tyrants over you.(13)

....the nations put you to the sword, and took away your finery, and Mine, In exile, because of misery and harsh oppression; When we settled among the nations you found no rest; All your pursuers overtake Me now In the narrow places.(14)

/ or,

Israel, you uncovered your lover's beauty in Egypt; There Her breasts were squeezed, and there Her nipples were handled. Her name was G-d, She became yours, The fierce-wonders and land and laws you desired for-to-live, She placed wide-with-boasting(15) on Her lips and brought you as dowry. But She did not give up the whoring She had begun with the corners of the Earth; For we had lain with Her in Her youth, and we had handled Her virgin nipples and had poured out our lust upon Her.(16) [....] the Babylonians came, and all the Chaldeans, and all the Assyrians with them, all of them handsome young fellows, governors and prefects, officers and warriors, all of them riding on horseback.

They exposed your god and saw how she could be defiled We were roused against you, and came upon you, from all around— /

Further rambling discussion notes and citations:

Marilyn Monroe said, “If they love you that much without knowing you, they can also hate you the same way.” All idealisation is punishing and sadistic.” - jacqueline rose

thoughts on this reversal as something that Reveals -- for the audience i'm writing to it's one that shocks the connotations to something more viscerally s 0 meth1ng/relatable (the way the og was supposed to be for its audience), but more importantly, i'm trying to come up with something more infinitely chewable as a negotiation of fault and interiority-vs-effects, instead of terminating.

but also while my point in rewriting these is about the non-existence of omnipotence, non-existence of omniscience is probably more interesting. because it....reveals.....i guess a parallel to the way ppl talk about Widely Despised Female CharactersTM (both in madonna and whore perfect idealized and evil all-blameful interpretations). as simultaneously incoherently both culpable and agencyless, both agenda-driven and lacking in interiority, threefold responsible: evil for creating the evil of the world, and evil for trying to fix or destroy that evil when she regrets(17) that world, and timelessly still-blamed as evil when she regrets destroying it and admits that she doesn't have the capacity to fix it but promises to never destroy it again(18). (the souring when its clear she's not secretly timelessly omnisciently correct for allowing this evil).

all this entity's choices and preferences are made into a morally-charged one that is a referendum on the moral valence and bestows moral judgment to anyone or anything she likes/doesn’t like or does/doesn’t do. and also those interior feelings, if shown, are open to making her limitlessly blamed for the spurned person’s resulting action. or mysteriously impersonally Morally Right (after those preferences, like liking meat more than grain, are forcibly interpreted as being solely a moral pronouncement that invites and justifies limitless violence and blame)(19). both timelessly nonlinearly unchangingly culpable at each point in a linear sequence of events regardless of what order one shuffles it in, and incapable of having curiosity or ignorances or confusions that make up linear accumulations of knowledge or opinions or back-and-forths that change her mind over time, or that are incomplete without the preexisting elements of the narrative or which have to take place in the context of a dynamic dialogue/tug of war to make sense.

so i think in a similar way to that, but in a way that doesn't...pattern-match....without the pronounflip/husband-wife adultery and shaming flip......people will not think of the full picture of what else entails if one accepts a premise......no allowing for g-d being dumb or irrational or impulsive, or ignorant at earlier periods of time of what consequences will occur later. no allowing It to have the capacity to change Its mind, and therefore no allowing It to make it up to us once the error in thinking or acting has been understood and regretted. no dynamic interiority allowed in It being capricious and poorly-moral or passion-ruled or not having considered what is evil or what isn't, or what is a big deal to humans and what isn't, not omniscient enough to already know this prior to the chance to learn it by observing humans. no considering such a being to be acquiring contradictory ideas over time and It trying to figure out which one should rule in any given moment, struggling with warring impulses and giving into one at one time and another at another time, being stubborn bc It is a person with ideas that contradict too, reaching out in a curiosity or a confusion, putting on an act to try to court and impress and arouse desire in It's mate Israel. eg, people ignoring the implication that a specific method (flood, languages) implies either a limited ability or a specific desire or a specific curiosity, or both (18) (why multiple languages specifically??? why not something way less surmountable if insurmountability was desired? or if timeless omnipotence was available??).

let alone, in some cases the idea of g-d simply being helpless, overcome, raped and despoiled, not omnipotent enough to achieve -- even if It does know what It wishes It could do -- a method that would fix things, stop things.

but apparently a fearsome but vulnerable and morally-heterogenous and linearly evolving/accumulating/learning god with enough raw bursting power do act immorally sometimes, but without omnipotence, is unpalatable. so……idk, the time-collapse of god treatments that mirrors that of misogyny that mirrors that of antisemitism -- no matter what you do or don't, or can or can't, or know or don't know, or think or can't think, it's your fault -- haunts to an un-unseeable extent.

this is all torah/tanakh and jewish thought specific(20), but the bigger issue for me that i have a hard time unseeing after seeing it was like….the classic conception of omnipotence and omniscience is a thought-termination (either as timeless will-always-have-been-morally-right termination, or as infinitely-blamable, uniquely worthy of punishment, betraying anthy-style scapegoat termination, which are just two different sides of the coin).

there is no cognitively nondissonant way to say 'if g-d exists, i am deciding It is shaped in such a way so as to be to blame for everything/should Be Killed/is actively working against our Liberation/must be a concept that is inherently keeping life from snapping back into a happy and suffering-free equilibrium', because if you (like me) are open to the idea of g-d being nonexistent, there is only One excuse for not also being open to the idea of g-d being a non-omnipotent, non-omniscient, dynamic, learning, growing entity, a person who is then subject to whatever limitations a person would have, and also is an-other person whose inner heart, like any other person's you cannot narrow down to the dichotomy of either being the guy you made up in your head, or a deliberate traitor to that guy. It's the same excuse for why a person or group such as the Jews are The Enemy Of All Humanity Who Must Be Killed Or At Least Blamed: laying down one's own interiority as a sentient being, to invent a person who exists to be limitlessly blameable in situations where no one else would be. if you (like me) don't completely believe g-d exists, i suppose we can't hurt It, but i know what it sounds like and who it impacts. i am much more stung about g-d lying to us -- by claiming we could only be destroyed by Them/our own transgressions. ie., lying by claiming other groups of humans totally didn't have the power to exile and genocide us irrespective of our own behavior -- than by the crime of 'not being omnipotent.' lol. but ofc even this too assumes They did actually lie to us at all, and that a more fitting interpretation of the text (let alone reality) isn't just a folie a deux of wishful thinking on one or both of our parts in this lovers affair.(21)

1: Milazzo, G. Tom. “TO AN IMPOTENT GOD: IMAGES OF DIVINE IMPOTENCE IN HEBREW SCRIPTURE.” Shofar 11, no. 2 (1993): 30–49. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42941804.

2: eg, Elie Wiesel, Night:

"I heard [a man] asking: Where is God now? And I heard a voice within me answer him:  ...Here He is—He is hanging here on this gallows."

3: Eslinger, Lyle. “The Infinite in a Finite Organical Perception (Isaiah VI 1-5).” Vetus Testamentum 45, no. 2 (1995): 145–73. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1535129. 4: Isaiah 47:2-3, Ibid

5: Jeremiah 3:3

6: Job 31:10

7: Sotah ritual, see Numbers 5:18

8: Jeremiah 13:22

9: Jeremiah 13:26

10: Ezekiel 16:14-15, 16:25-26

11: 1 Samuel 8:5-20

12: 1 Kings 9:16

13: 2 Samuel 22 throughout, 1 Kings 1-10 throughout

14: Lamentations 1:3

15: Everett Fox translation choice for 1 Samuel 2:1

16: Ezekiel 23 throughout

17: Genesis 6:8, 8:21

18: Genesis 11:6-7

19: Genesis 4:4-6

20: Karasick, Adeena. “Shekhinah: The Speculum That Signs, or ‘The Flaming S/Word That Turn[s] Every Way’ (Genesis 3:24).” Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies & Gender Issues, no. 2 (1999): 114–36. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40326491.

21: Milazzo p. 49:

This is the god which cannot raise the dead. This is not a god which transcends the world in which the drama of life and death is lived. This is a god which, having placed its hands around their heart, stands there with this people [.....] This impotent god walked the road to Babylon and stood among the crematoria at Auschwitz.

[faeriekit]

"This fic was ai generated—" Cool, so lemme block you real quick

[jackalspine]

@schnuffel-danny hehehe

regarding this post: from schnuffle

[fanaticalthings]

Bruce Wayne except he texts like an ominous boomer

wdym you can't tell if he's threatening them?

Based on this post by @mysterycitrus :)

<- Prev Masterlist Next ->

Bonus:

Happy birthday, Tim 🥰

[hinamie]

mentor

[sandushengshou]

Interview with the Vampire | 2x08 “And That's The End of It. There's Nothing Else”

[hinata-boke]

why is his smile so radiant

[payasita]

being a manager sucks balls half the time but the cashier kids im in charge of trust me enough to dick around in front of me so ive been keeping a running list of the shit they say that makes me laugh randomly: -"guys, is it cheating if you play fortnite with your ex" [4 seperate others, immediately]: "YES" -"there must be like… infinite sentences" -"bro what bro what the fuck bro what's that mean bro why'd you say that bro what" <distraught response to a girl randomly greeting him with 'hey there big boy' in an old timey transatlantic news reporter accent

[tiedsuccubus]

What position was nanami’s mom getting clapped in to create such a beautiful man

[andysanimation]

Movie with a trash little little bb girl who is a man in his 30-40s who needs a job, and has a difficult relationship with his child/sibling. Then gets a job as a night guard and everything seems fine, until the night, when the inanimate objects come to live and get quirky. But eventually understand each other and team up to stop the bigger evil.

[lepertamar]

was talking about frameworks and lenses and focal points with which people engage with or parse the world last night, and i really feel like a big part of how i engage with the world is bdsm. almost everything about me is about bdsm. how i enact my own being & life is bdsm, how i operate in tension/tandem/intertwining/reaction with the world that is not me is bdsm. how i conceive of my agency and lack of it and the hacks and habits and obligations i put on myself in order to become more myself than myself is bdsm. how i manage my schizo mind in its beautiful unique glories and stupid boring illnesses is bdsm. how i see many dilemmas and struggles and paradoxes in the world is bdsm. etc etc etc.

[illusioncanthurtme--art]

Physically? I am sitting in my bedroom. Mentally? Spiritually? I AM DEAD ON THE FLOOR!!!!! THESE TWO HAVE KILLED ME!!!!

(Another drawing! This was originally attempt #1 at drawing stan, and then fiddleford just showed up. Kinda feels like them five minutes after the above acting like nothing happened though, so it works sdjkgkjfshj)

[strawlessandbraless]

When I see someone new to the Supernatural fandom spelling ‘Cas’ with the extra ‘S’

[fanaticalthings]

next thing you're gonna tell me is that the butts match 🙄

<- Prev Masterlist Next ->

[feymaid]

I could get the clink for life, or the electric chair. But I don’t want to die a virgin.

[sandushengshou]