#judaism discourse

[ripley-ryan]

eyyyy you’ve noticed how many people are weird about converting too!! I got massacred for it when I mentioned it in another blog but like. if you want to convert then actually do something about it and work with a rabbi? there’s way too many people on here who are “interested in Judaism” or “planning on converting” and like that doesn’t make you special. you’re still a goy and you can still be massively antisemitic, you just think you have a “special connection” when you don’t. as a convert those people make me so upset, I never claimed Judaism before it was mine and I actually understood things, why can’t they just be quiet until they do the same

THANK YOU anon. literally i have no issue with converts it’s just that, as previously stated, some of you on here have GOT to be lying.

like saying you’re converting and learning yiddish and turning around and being anti-zionist isn’t necessarily antisemitic, but sometimes it’s pretty clear when you’re doing all this to go “as a jew…” and don’t really have an interest in judaism other than as a political tool.

this isn’t directed at you anon obviously because this is like a general you type of situation here. but like once again some of you guys have got to be lying about who’s converting around here because there cannot be that many of you coming in here with very little respect to a mostly closed religion

[mylight-png]

I cannot even begin to express how horrifying the lack of outrage about this is.

May anyone who ever claimed "the hostages were treated well" be cursed. Such lies are absolutely disgusting and despicable.

This is not what being treated well looks like. This is psychological torture, abuse, and warfare. This is pure evil.

[edenfenixblogs]

Look what Google just recommended to me!!!!

I already own (and love) Shabbat and Portico.

But I am OBSESSED with the rest and must acquire them immediately.

Top of my list is Love Japan because LOOK AT THIS BEAUITFUL BOWL OF MATZO BALL RAMEN!!!!!

We hear a lot about Jewish people in Europe and MENA, but we do not hear a lot about Jewish culture as it blends with East Asian cultures, and that’s a shame. Not just because it erases the centuries of Jewish populations there, but also because there are plenty of people of mixed decent. People who may not have come directly from Jewish communities in East Asia, but people who have a Japanese Father and a Jewish Mother, for example. Or people in intercultural marriages. These are all real and valuable members of the Jewish community, and we should be celebrating them more. This cookbook focuses on Jewish Japanese American cuisine and I am delighted to learn more as soon as possible. The people who wrote this book run the restaurant Shalom Japan, which is the most adorable name I’ve ever heard. Everything about this book excites and delights me.

And of course, after that, I’m most interested in “Kugels and Collards” (as if you had any doubts about that after the #kugel discourse, if you were following me then).

This is actually written in conjunction with an organization of the same name devoted to preserving the food and culture of Jews in South Carolina!

I’m especially excited to read this one, because I have recently acquired the book Kosher Soul by the fantastic, inimitable Michael J. Twitty, which famously explores faith and food in African American Jewish culture. I’m excited to see how Jewish soul food and traditions in South Carolina specifically compare and contrast with Twitty’s writings.

I’m also excited for all the other books on this list!

A while ago, someone inboxed me privately to ask what I recommended for people to read in order to learn more about Jewish culture. I wrote out a long list of historical resources attempting to cover all the intricate details and historic pressure points that molded Jewish culture into what it is today. After a while I wrote back a second message that was much shorter. I said:

Actually, no. Scratch everything I just said. Read that other stuff if you want to know Jewish history.

But if you want to know Jewish culture? Cookbooks.

Read every Jewish cookbook you can find.

Even if you don’t cook, Jewish cookbooks contain our culture in a tangible form. They often explain not only the physical processes by which we make our meals, but also the culture and conditions that give rise to them. The food is often linked to specific times and places and events in diaspora. Or they explain the biblical root or the meaning behind the holidays associated with a given food.

I cannot speak for all Jews. No one can. But in my personal observation and experience—outside of actual religious tradition—food has often been the primary means of passing Jewish culture and history from generation to generation.

It is a way to commune with our ancestors. I made a recipe for chicken soup or stuffed cabbage and I know that my great grandmother and her own mother in their little Hungarian shtetl. I’ll never know the relatives of theirs who died in the Holocaust and I’ll never meet the cousins I should have had if they were allowed to live. But I can make the same food and know that their mother also made it for them. I have dishes I make that connect me to my lost ancestors in France and Mongolia and Russia and Latvia and Lithuania and, yes, Israel—where my relatives have lived continuously since the Roman occupation even after the expulsions. (They were Levites and Cohens and caretakers of synagogues and tradition and we have a pretty detailed family tree of their presence going back quite a long time. No idea how they managed to stay/hide for so long. That info is lost to history.)

I think there’s a strong tendency—aided by modern recipe bloggers—to view anything besides the actual recipe and procedures as fluff. There is an urge for many people to press “jump to recipe” and just start cooking. And I get that. We are all busy and when we want to make dinner we just want to make dinner.

But if your goal isn’t just to make dinner. If your goal is to actually develop an understanding of and empathy for Jewish people and our culture, then that’s my advice:

Read cookbooks.

[blastlight]

the anti-loophole christians are gonna be so mad when they hear about selling chametz

[arco-pluris]

[hindahoney]

To the Reform Jewish community:

I think I have some misconceptions about the reform community. I think I'm wrong about how I perceive reform Jews and their level of observance, and I want to be educated.

The things I'm going to say are going to be pretty harsh, but I promise I say them so you can understand where I'm coming from, my experience with the Reform movement, and that I want to learn because I see some problems with my thinking. My background and experiences are primarily with the conservative movement, modern orthodox, and Chabad. It's no secret that within these communities, reform Jews get a pretty bad reputation (I want to stress: Not everyone in these movements says/believes these things, but it's common to hear) To the more right-wing side of Judaism, reform Jews are seen as assimilated Jews, "Jewish only in the name" I've heard. I'm told about how reform Jews widely don't keep kosher, often don't have mezuzot, don't pray, don't lay tefillin, don't keep shabbat except making a dinner every now and then. I'm told, and given the impression, that reform Jews have a loose relationship with their Judaism and misunderstand our core texts which leads to misunderstandings and demonization of Jews who do (ie "Orthodox Women are oppressed").

I don't have very much experience with Reform Judaism (which is likely where my ignorance comes from), and I understand that there are Reform Jews who may keep kosher, or may keep Shabbat, but I think my misunderstanding of what makes someone reform is their level of observance. To me, if I encountered a Jew who grew up Orthodox but now no longer kept kosher, kept shabbat, threw out the tzitzit and doesn't lay teffilin, I'd say he's no longer orthodox and he's reform.

Is this where my misunderstanding is coming from? Is it the shul you go to? I just can't imagine seeing a man with tzitzit in a Reform shul. Are you taught that there are observances you no longer need to keep?

I have a pretty decent-sized Reform following, so I've heard from you about how it's offensive and painful when people assume a lack of observance, and that that's not what it means to be reform. I want to be educated, and I want to listen. At the same time, I can't ignore the instances I was in a reform-dominated space and they told me themselves "Oh yeah reform Jews don't keep kosher, it's not important," or about how they work on Shabbat, and then I notice they don't know Hamotzi or the Birkat.

I see the divide between movements and it feels like we can't reach across the aisle to understand each other. Ring-wing Jews are mad at left-wing Jews for not maintaining important traditions, but mainly they are mad at reform rabbis because they see the loss of tradition as the fault of the community leader, that the community would choose to uphold more traditions if they were educated on it, which is the responsibility of the rabbi. Reform jews are mad at right-wing Jews because, let's be honest, right-wing Jews are constantly talking trash and have a belief that they are "better" Jews for being more observant. But I think reform Jews don't really understand some practices, or they aren't taught about them right, because a large portion of dialogue I've had with reform Jews has been me having to field accusations and speak for the movement about how right-wing Jews aren't all sexist, homophobic, transphobic, etc. and neither are the practices. So I think this also plays a large part in why Reform Jews have a problem with Jews from other movements, because they believe we're closed-minded.

I think these hard conversations need to be had so that we can come away understanding each other. I want Judaism to move past the need for movements, which I think we are, because part of me believes they do more harm than good and people never feel like they quite "fit" certain movements. I just hope that these conversations can be had in good faith.

[nerdylilpeebee]

https://www.tumblr.com/whenmagicfilledtheair/740906474389356544/do-you-think-romani-brought-persecution-on?source=share

This is so egregiously antisemetic I can't even.

Tbh, I find it very suspicious they wanna claim there's a "reason" for hatred of Jews to exist (citing that the Jewish were these predatory money lenders who put cities in un-payable debts), but then blame hatred of Black people on, essentially, "capitalism."

Who they view as true victims and who they view as people who "brought it on themselves" is VERY clear, regardless of their statements of "oh, this doesn't justify hating the Jewish, I just want people to know this information cuz we can't just claim that the world is antisemitic." Their posturing ignores that even if some of the Jewish were once predatory money lenders, that was so long ago it can't possibly have any fucking bearing on the rest of human history. The Nazis did not kill the Jewish because some of them were money lenders hundreds of years ago. The "root" they state as the root of antisemitism is very evidently not the case for literally every case of antisemitism since then. It is irrelevant to all but that initial hatred of Jews, which I honestly doubt is historically accurate.

[gay-jewish-bucky]

conservative and orthodox jews stop treating refom judaism as synonymous with being areligious challenge

[goy-bullshit-translator]

I'm so glad channukah is eight days long because it gives my mother time to have bad ideas like "let's make baked sufganiyot" on night one and still have time to fry sufganiyot before the holiday is over. Can you imagine if someone showed up to a one-night holiday like Christmas with a crucial dish prepared wrong? Chaos. Disaster.

[phantasm-masquerade]

daily reminder "Judeo-Christian" is a nonsense political shibboleth - Judaism and Christianity don't share anything they don't also share with Islam. In fact, Christianity and Islam share a lot more in common than either does with Judaism.

[luckys-last-brain-cell]

If you don’t want to go down the “slippery slope” of “genetic Judaism” (absolutely not a thing, Judaism isn’t defined by a blood test) then why is it so unimaginable that the Jewish community at large does not believe Lea Michele should play Fanny? Is it because, gasp, she looks like what you think a Jew looks like?

How are you suddenly so knowledgeable in what defines a Jewish person only when you disagree with what Jewish people are saying? It’s the same story: listen to Jews until they say something you don’t want to hear.

Is this a big deal? No. Is it bugging me anyway? Yes.

Anyway, there are a dozen reasons I won’t be seeing any variations of Funny Girl in the near future.

[mylight-png]

Do people understand that the reason Israel is seeing so many fewer casualties is because of all the defense infrastructure?

And do people realize that this defense infrastructure was made necessary by the frequency of attacks against Israel?

And do people realize that if Hamas actually cared about Gazans they'd build defense infrastructure too?

The iron dome, alarm system, bomb shelters, all of these are made out of necessity to protect Israeli civilians and it's working.

Meanwhile, Hamas builds tunnels for terrorism and uses water pipes to make more rockets. They initiate wars they know they can't win, and they hide their offense infrastructure within civilian infrastructure, thus making their civilian infrastructure military assets by law.

People want equivalency and use Disney ethics without applying any critical thinking as to why things are the way they are.

If Israel didn't have the defense infrastructure that it has, we'd be seeing huge amounts of casualties, because Hamas is continually firing rockets into Israel. People seem to forget that fact.

[tiktokantisemites]

This post is specifically intracommunity stuff. I don’t want to see goyim being clowns in the tags. But I’ve got some examples of attitudes in the Jewish community that I feel encourage antisemites to continue their behaviour because “this Jewish guy on TikTok said it’s okay”.

The original post is by funcomfortable, a Jewish creator. He’s encouraged these comments in his comment section. Because American Ashkenazim obviously don’t have anything to be worried about, right? American Ashkenazim don’t know what antisemitism is, right?

And this is OP’s response. Stop encouraging people to discount antisemitism simply because it is being spoken about by white Ashkenazim. Whatever your intention, you are allowing someone who believes in the Khazar theory an opening to point at you and say “this Jew agrees with me”.

This isn’t a post where I’m debating any claims of indigenous status, because that is fully out of the scope of this blog. But funcomfortable? Should you see this, do better.

[entanglingbriars]

the term “closed religion” clearly implies the existence of open religions, but that idea is clearly nonsense

[supercantaloupe]

if a jew writes or creates something about Current Events specifically through the lens of judaism (particularly religious judaism, not simply cultural judaism) i think that's within their right even if i disagree with what they've written/created. but it makes me really uncomfortable watching it get spread around by goyim

[hindahoney]

your last post about Erez Oved is still tagged with "homophobia," and I fear that this is another case of "oops we got outraged because we got our news on Tumblr."

Oved is an actor who identifies as bi/pansexual. He is VERY open about Yakov Levy being a character he created for the song "conversion therapy," which highlights the absolutely shameful practice of conversion therapy which is still very rampant in religious circles.

I can't imagine his intent is to defraud anyone, because he want to be recognized as himself so people hire him for their projects and buy his book. I mentioned this on the post, but the last "incriminating" screenshot is promoting the above mentioned short. To him, and anyone who is vaguely familiar with Israeli media, his Yakov Levy character is just an exploration of the Haredi world he encountered while researching a role.

(and he was born and raised in Jerusalem, so I'm not even sure he doesn't come from a modern orthodox or traditional family. He surely has at least secondhand experience with religion, it's unavoidable in Jerusalem)

Is it in good taste? Is it a valid way of giving a voice to religious queer folks in Bnei Brak, who you can be damn sure have no social media presence of their own to leverage? Should he have made it clearer to an international audience that this is a character he's exploring? Is it a little cynical and patronizing? All debatable, and I definitely see all sides of the argument. But calling other queer Jews homophobic is just... Nah.

I tagged it as homophobia because in case people didn't want to see something that could be seen as homophobia, which it could. He is taking the voice away of actual queer orthodox jews who live in communities they can't be open in, and telling the world that their experience is easy and supportive, which simply isn't true. It can be dangerous to be gay in a lot of orthodox communities. I didn't call him homophobic and I don't think I ever questioned if he was Israeli? AFAIK that's irrelevant.

He was not open at all about it being a character. That's what the problem was. He didn't tell people that he was just an actor and he wasn't even chassidic. His "apology" was essentially patting himself on the back for solving homophobia in the charedi community. He is still trying to sweep his actions under the rug and post like normal as this character. His comments are full of people still calling him out or people who don't know it's a character and calling him brave for being gay and orthodox.