#just jewish thoughts

[the-lesser-light]

As someone new to Judaism, it's ridiculous how quickly I've had to learn to spot the red flags in 'helpful' learning tools.

The number of times I've clicked on a video claiming to offer a nice short explanation or something or how to do something and found someone yelling about "The True path to Christianity" is ridiculous.

What is worse is sometimes I'll start something and feel something is 'off' but can't quite place it then halfway into a 15 minute video they start talking about Redemption and Gates of Heaven and THE LORD. Ah yes, the hidden Christian. It's like a jump scare every time.

Me looking at a Sunset: Boy, I'd love to learn how to sing the prayer for seeing something beautiful. Google: How to thank Jesus Me: Jewish prayer for seeing something beautiful Google: Here it is in Hebrew. Me, who cannot read Hebrew: Jewish Prayer for seeing something beautiful in English Google: Here it is transliterated. Me: Great. But I'm butchering it. How do I SAY it. Google: Here's a Messianic man adding in a twenty minute explanation on why THE LORD is our Savior and we have to repent.

Me: .....Well the sunset is gone now. I'll go spend an hour looking into this for the next time I see a really pretty sunset.

I'd love to compile some helpful links for people like me, who are looking for answers that aren't always in the form of a long essay. Sometimes the essay is good and by all means I love a deep explanation, but when I'm in a hurry and don't understand how to say a prayer, all I want is something to click on and sing along with so that I feel like I'm doing it right and learning.

MyJewishLearning.com is the bee's knees, and Sefaria is amazing once you learn how to navigate it, but the real winner is the people who post the 1 minute videos that simply say "This is how you count the Omer. Sing it with me." And you suddenly feel like you can do it.

[systematicamnesiac]

really love the linguistic function of tags on tumblr dot com

[slyandthefamilybook]

it's so annoying seeing posts about Jewish culture—cutesy posts about fighting with g-d that appeal to Christian atheists' religious trauma, posts with Jewish music, posts with pictures of beautiful Jews—getting tens or even hundreds of thousands of notes, but the moment someone makes a post about antisemitism—about how it's built in to Western society, about how it's insidious and creeping, about how you've probably internalized it, about the difficulties we face and the grief we feel—they fail to break jumblr containment. Don't get me wrong, I love that goyim are celebrating Jewish culture as something beautiful and wonderful, but that can't be all we are to you. We're real people with real problems that you can't just ignore in favor of reblogging posts about bagels or whatever

[noa-nightingale]

Okay I... am maybe not the best person to talk about this but I have serious problems with Jessie Gender's new video, When Your Favorite Creator Turns Out to Be Zionist.

Let me first say - I like Jessie Gender. I watched many of her videos and I think she has a lot of very interesting, moving, important things to say about topics like queerness, humanity and such.

But this video just... irked me.

I do not like how she talks about Zionists and Zionism. I have seen how the word Zionist is used against Jewish people. I am not the best person to put it into words but I do not like it when it is used as an insult or implied to be inherently a bad thing.

She seems to use it to mean "person who supports Israel's actions" (implied to support what she calls a genocide throughout the video) and that... is not right.

There are other issues I have as well with the video, like comparing the I/P situation to the Holocaust. There are more things but I am honestly not qualified to speak on them.

Before someone accused me of "supporting a genocide" - I do not. I wish for peace and safety for Palestinians AND Israelis. (And since I have been called a Zionist in the past - I do not consider myself to be one.)

I am just generally disappointed by a creator I like tbh.

I don't think I got my thoughts across very well. I'll be on the lookout for posts made by Jewish people about this video.

[anonymousdandelion]

Occurs to me that Christian cultural hegemony can be pretty well encapsulated by the fact that it is normal for people to say "Happy Chanukah to those who celebrate," and it is normal for many of those same people to say, "Merry Christmas, everyone!"

[frownyalfred]

Jewish Family dynamics and the Batfamily:

“Why the hell would you do that?” grabs your ass off the ground and takes you home

“What the fuck are you doing bleeding everywhere? I just washed that carpet!” bandages your wounds while complaining the entire time

“I told you not to try that jump!” gives you ibuprofen every four hours without asking

“You look stupid with all that shit on your face.” tenderly reassures you that your face will look exactly the same when you wake up at three in the morning terrified about the reconstructive plastic surgery

“Don’t do that again.” holds you when you cry

[torchflies]

Okay Top Gun Fandom, hear me out —

I adore Tom Selleck as much as the next pal, but we are sleeping on the ANGST FUEL of Mav being the spitting image of a Duke who died young.

Imagine the PAIN of Viper going in to teach TG ‘86 and finding the carbon copy of the wingman he (loved?) lost sitting in front of him. Because if Duke Mitchell canonically dies in his 30s — 30-something Tom Cruise as Duke would DESTROY ME. Just saying… the possibilities… don't make me write this.

[6footeel]

haven’t made any decisions about his colors yet so i kind of just had fun with it lol

[the-lesser-light]

1933

I watched a video of the past today

They were celebrating something joyful

Together they danced and laughed

Now and then some would look into the camera with grand smiles as if to say "Join us. Celebrate with us."

I wish I could ask them what they were celebrating

I wish I could reach through the video and warn them

I check the date of the video and know not one of them will survive the next ten years.

I play the video again

Let them smile just a little longer. Let them dance just a little longer.

Let them celebrate the very act of being alive just a little longer.

[tsyvia48]

I’m a Torah-loving Jew who is also a radical leftist. I study midrash and I study theories of change. I use Mussar to strengthen my anti-racist muscle. I seek out Jewish metaphors for anti-oppression work.

Zionists believe they deserve my loyalty because I love Torah. Anti-Zionists believe they deserve my loyalty because I’m a radical leftist. They’re both right. I’m loyal to both, because they’re my people. Jews are my people and justice-pursuers are my people. But I’m realizing for many, I’m not theirs.

The Zionist/anti-Zionist binary is fucked up and insufficient (like all binaries), and it is hurting people (like all binaries). Both sides are allowing disinformation and partial truths to corrupt their values and their humanity, and the end result is perversion and suffering and danger. I’m sick and heartbroken and deeply lonely.

[twakiju2]

people I thought were my friends stop being antisemitic challenge

[fdelopera]

I’m Christian but want to challenge what I’ve been taught after seeing your posts about the Old Testament having cut up the Torah to fit a different narrative. Today I was taught that the Hebrew word Elohim is the noun for God as plural and therefore evidence of the holy Trinity and Jesus & Holy Spirit been there at creation. Is that what the word Elohim actually means? Because I don’t want to be party to the Jewish faith, language and culture being butchered by blindly trusting what I was told

Hi Anon.

NOPE! The reason G-d is sometimes called Elohim in the Tanakh is because during the First Temple period (circa 1000 – 587 BCE), many of the ancestors of the Jewish people in the Northern and Southern Kingdoms practiced polytheism.

(A reminder that the Tanakh is the Hebrew bible, and is NOT the same as the “Old Testament” in Christian bibles. Tanakh is an acronym, and stands for Torah [Instruction], Nevi’im [Prophets], Ketuvim [Writings].)

Elohim is the plural form of Eloah (G-d), and these are some of the names of G-d in Judaism. Elohim literally means “Gods” (plural).

El was the head G-d of the Northern Kingdom’s pantheon, and the Southern Kingdom of Judah incorporated El into their worship as one of the many names of G-d.

The name Elohim is a vestige of that polytheistic past.

Judaism transitioned from monolatry (worshiping one G-d without denying the existence of others) to true monotheism in the years during and directly after the Babylonian exile (597 – 538 BCE). That is largely when the Torah was edited into the form that we have today. In order to fight back against assimilation into polytheistic Babylonian society, the Jews who were held captive in Babylon consolidated all gods into one G-d. Shema Yisrael Adonai eloheinu Adonai ehad. “Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.”

So Elohim being a plural word for “Gods” has absolutely nothing to do with the idea of the Holy Trinity in Christianity.

Especially because Christians are monotheists. My understanding of the Holy Trinity (please forgive me if this is incorrect) is that Christians believe that the Holy Trinity is three persons in one Godhead. Certainly, the Holy Trinity is not “three Gods” — that would be blasphemy.

(My sincere apologies to the Catholics who just read this last sentence and involuntarily cringed about the Protestants who’ve said this. I’m so sorry! I’m just trying to show that it’s a fallacy to say that the Holy Trinity somehow comes from “Elohim.”)

But there's something else here, too. Something that as a Jew, makes me uneasy about the people who are telling you these things about Elohim and the Holy Trinity.

Suggesting that Christian beliefs like the Holy Trinity can somehow be "found" in the Tanakh is antisemitic.

This is part of “supersession theory.” This antisemitic theory suggests that Christianity is somehow the "true successor" to Second Temple Judaism, which is false.

Modern Rabbinic Judaism is the true successor to Second Temple Judaism. Period.

Christianity began as an apocalyptic Jewish mystery cult in the 1st century CE, in reaction to Roman rule. One of the tactics that the Romans used to subdue the people they ruled over was a “divide and conquer” strategy, which sowed division and factionalization in the population. The Romans knew that it was easier to control a country from the outside if the people inside were at each other’s throats.

Jesus led one of many breakaway Jewish sects at the time. The Jewish people of Qumran (possibly Essenes), whose Tanakh was the “Dead Sea Scrolls,” were another sect.

Please remember that the Tanakh was compiled in the form that we have today over 500 years before Jesus lived. Some of the texts in the Tanakh were passed down orally for maybe a thousand years before that, and texts like the Song of Deborah in the Book of Judges (in the Tanakh, that’s in the Nevi’im) were first written down in Archaic Biblical Hebrew during the First Temple Period.

There is absolutely nothing of Jesus or Christianity in the Tanakh, and there is nothing in the Tanakh that in any way predicts Christianity.

Also, Christians shouldn’t use Judaism in any way to try to “legitimize” Christianity. Christianity was an offshoot of 1st century Judaism, which then incorporated a lot of Roman Pagan influence. It is its own valid religion, in all its forms and denominations.

But trying to use the Hebrew bible to give extra credence to ideas like the Holy Trinity is antisemitic.

It is a tactic used by Christian sects that want to delegitimize Judaism as a religion by claiming that Christianity was somehow “planted” in the Tanakh over 2500 years ago.

This line of thinking has led Christians to mass murder Jews in wave after wave of antisemitic violence over the last nearly 2000 years, because our continued existence as Jews challenges the notion that Christians are the “true” successors of Temple Judaism.

Again, the only successor of Temple Judaism is Rabbinic Judaism, aka Modern Judaism.

This line of thinking has also gotten Christians to force Jews to convert en masse throughout the ages. If Christians can get Jews to all convert to Christianity, then they don’t have to deal with the existential challenge to this core misapprehension about the “true” successor to Temple Judaism.

And even today, many Christians still believe that they should try to force Jews to “bend the knee” to Jesus. When I was a young teenager, a preacher who was a parent at the school I went to got me and two other Jewish students to get in his car after a field trip. After he had trapped us in his car, he spent the next two hours trying to get us to convert to Christianity. It was later explained to me that some Christians believe they get extra “points” for converting Jews. And I’m sure he viewed this act of religious and spiritual violence as something he could brag about to his congregation on Sunday.

Trying to get Jews to convert is antisemitic and misguided, and it ignores all the rich and beautiful history of Jewish practice.

We Jews in diaspora in America and Europe have a forced immersion in Christian culture. It is everywhere around us, so we learn a lot about Christianity through osmosis. Many Jews also study early Christianity because Christianity exists as a separate religion within our Jewish history.

But I don’t see a lot of Christians studying Jewish history. Even though studying Jewish history would give you a wealth of understanding and context for your own religious traditions.

So, all of this is to say, I encourage you to study Jewish history and Jewish religious practice. Without an understanding of the thousands of years of Jewish history, it is easy to completely misinterpret the Christian bible, not to mention the Hebrew bible as well.

[hilacopter]

extremely specific poll but I'm really curious about this for reasons and I also wanna do a fun lil thing on jumblr for once:

all my polls flop so if y'all could rb for sample size that'd be nice

[fromgoy2joy]

Doodle- The Jewish Cat named Mitch

By Joy (Simcha , שמחה)

Done with shitty paints

[mieczyhale]

[kittyoverlord]

This scene really spoke to me as someone who converted to Judaism. To be fair, I wasn't raised religious at all, so I don't know what it's like to leave one faith and move to another, but I still have thoughts!

I connected with Judaism because of it's emphasis on questioning and doubt, and this exchange also illustrates another key aspect of Judaism that I really identify with - following mitzvot/commandments because it does good right now for yourself and others, not due to some fear of eternal damnation. (that kind of philosphy doesn't work as well in a world where Heaven and Hell are confirmed as real planes lol.)

I also recently took a class (shout out to The Unyeshiva) that focused on the history of Jewish converstion. One thing from that class that I've been thinking about specifically in relation to Kristen's journey is different methods of proseletyzing.

The rabbi said we tend to picture xtian missionary groups that are pushy and make people uncomfortable - "Convert or you'll burn in hell." But there are ways to share information and offer one's faith to others as an option without making it a requirement - such as holding an intro to Judaism class or inviting friends to Jewish celebrations - which could still be considered proseletyzing in a way. She said the idea is: there are some people who would be happier practicing Judaism than not, and if we do some outreach those people are more likely to find Judaism, but not everyone will want to be Jewish and that's ok.

I'm not sure how much Ally is intending to work Jewish philosophy into Kristen's character arc, but I love being able to chew on the subtext anyway. Considering Kristen literally needs to convert a bunch of people to her religion ASAP I'm interesting in seeing how she decides to go about that.

I hope Kristen's journey works out and she and Cassandra are able to make amends. I also get angry at G-d, but at least I'm not in danger of destroying my entire religion because of my frustrations...