#mizvot

[spot-the-antisemitism]

Ok I lost the post so I can’t confirm that these all haven’t been said already but I’m trying to say new ones! These are some things that I know about Judaism and Jewish culture as a gentile who has always lived on the US west coast (I didn’t know a single Jewish person growing up bc I went to catholic school. My partner is Jewish now. He isn’t practicing but the culture means a lot to him)

Bagels, challah, matzo, and latkes are all delicious Jewish foods

Prayers are said before meals (I have been invited to pray with my partner’s family!)

There is a list of 613 rules (mizvots?) but the exact interpretation varies based on translation

Many dietary restrictions are based on hygiene and health, such as not eating scavenger animals

Other dietary restrictions are a bit more curious to me, such as not eating dairy with meat. Many involve not consuming an animal with its offspring (like not taking the bird when you take its eggs, not consuming an animal cooked with its mother’s milk)

A glass is stepped on during weddings

Although there is a heavy emphasis on what is physically clean or unclean and the state of the body, Judaism, in contrast with many branches of Christianity, is less concerned with the “purity” of thoughts and more with actions. Whereas Christians are made to feel guilty for things like questioning faith, these types of thoughts may even be encouraged in Judaism

Similarly, certain concepts regarding the spiritual may differ a lot amongst Jewish people, such as beliefs about the afterlife

Passover is generally considered the most important holiday, but I hear Jewish new year is the most fun! If invited by a Jewish loved one, Gentiles are typically welcome to participate

I could try to pull out a lot more regarding faith, history, and culture, but I feel a lot less confident about it and don’t want to get it wrong. Correct me if any of these are wrong! I’m eager to learn and always enjoy spending time with partner’s family so I can learn more. They’re all always so happy to talk to me about being Jewish and what it means for them (:

Matzo is gross imho but everything else is correct

That again depends on the household

Correct and we are allowed to violate all but three to save a life

Of don't eat shellfish which was hard to cook back then

Yes what it symbolizes depends on sect (the wedding I saw in gritty 1920s silent film the rabbi said it was to acknowledge the broken world before the coming of the messiah)

I explain it as either sins are grave enough punished by exile (or smiting) or that's between that Jew and G-d. There is no original sin or christian guilt in Judaism

We JUST had a conversation between Jews, Christians and Atheists about our beliefs (or lack thereof) on the afterlife

Passover is very important but so is Rosh Hashanah- Yom Kippur. Just as there are Christians who only go to church on Easter and Christmas so are there Jews that only go to Synagogue on Passover and Rosh Hashanan

[beardedmrbean]

Sorry but I can't help myself anytime someone mentions alcohol in the Bible and gets the wrong impression that God is against drinking at all...

So, for context, what's really fun is that people who believe God is a teetotaler like to cite the difference between"wine" and "strong drink" in the Bible while trying to imply that wine is nothing but grape juice (this is just circumvent the whole "Jesus turning water into wine" thing).

The kicker?

Even old testament laws allowed drinking ,and there's no way around it with verses like Deuteronomy 14:26! Lol

I've had more than one person try to challenge me on that, they can never come up with anything other than the grape juice thing which if you look at the bits where "wineskins" are talked about, the difference between new and old was the old had been used for making wine in them so they were stretched out as a result, so they were pretty much just good for water.

Foolish to think they spent all the effort on vineyards that they did for grapes, raisins, and grape juice too.

When Prohibition hit in the US, Jewish population overnight kind of quadrupled

Find someone in the family history, claim heritage, get booze which was a act protected by 1A which superseded the 18th.

Roman Catholics could get some too, but it was way way less.

Also the Rabbi's could lie.

lol, good for them stupid law go make some money.

But ya, if the almighty has a issue with people consuming hooch one would think of all the groups of people in the world that the Haredi would not touch a drop.

Haredi = Orthodox/Ultra Orthodox but I saw this yesterday

"Its members are usually referred to as ultra-Orthodox in English; however, the term "ultra-Orthodox" is considered pejorative by many of its adherents, who prefer terms like strictly Orthodox or Haredi."

while looking up something totally different and decided I will try and shift my language some if I remember.

But back to the topic at hand, people that say things like that have never been to a Jewish party. More specifically a wedding or a Purim bash.

The Jewish people would have something specifically about banning alcohol in their Mitzvas, but the 613 Mizvot to my knowledge don't have anything forbidding alcohol, just drunkenness which I would need to consult a Rabbi to see what would be considered drunkeness, smashed one night is ok just not every night or never smashed?

[moronichero]

it's really weird when there's a mikveh in your city, but because of the beef between shuls (and your being a queer progressive jew), you're not allowed to use the mikveh and so the only time you get to fulfil that mitzvah is when you go wild swimming

like I love the natural aspect of mikveh in lakes, rivers, and seas, it feels authentic and beautiful, a true moment between me and Hashem. I feel held by Hashem in nature, especially with practices as intimate as mikveh. Hashem is not contained in a building, and the gathering of holy sparks that we do when we engage with jewish ritual is not contained to a building

it just sucks that there is this level of exclusion rather than the desire to facilitate other Jews being able to fulfil more mizvot. I genuinely cannot wrap my head around it

[ask-jumblr]

I know it’s probably a long shot, but in case anyone has any old or unused tallises, The Chevra Kadisha of Queens and Long Island and The Hebrew Free Burial are in dire need of them because of the number of deceased from COVID-19. 

If you’re able to either;

1) Drop off at 136-06 71st Road in Kew Garden Hills by placing in the labeled plastic bin on the front porch (this way there is no need for any physical proximity) 2) Mail it to: Mount Richmond Cemetery 420 Clarke Avenue Staten Island, NY 10306

This is a big mitzvah as not everyone has tallises at home to be buried in. If you are abroad or in other parts of the U.S., I would also recommend reaching out to your local chevra kadisha to see if they need them as well.

Mod here. If anyone knows of another chevra kadisha in need of tallitot, feel free to reblog or comment with information.

[dwellordream]

“The understanding of birth as a time of great danger stemmed first and foremost from reality; death during labor and birth was not uncommon. Traditionally, pain and death during childbirth were attributed to the sin of Eve. The Bible already states that the pain of childbirth is a punishment for that sin: “In pain you shall bear children” (Gen. 3:16). Later, the Mishna explains that death at childbirth is the result of laxity in performing three specific commandments—the separation of the challah, the lighting of the Sabbath candles, and the observance of menstrual purity. These were known, in short, as Mizvot HaNaH (CHallah, Niddah, and Hadlakat haNer). A connection between these two explanations was implied. 

…Although the Mishna attributes a woman’s death at childbirth to her failure to perform the three commandments that were her domain, and this understanding was accepted throughout the centuries, few medieval sources emphasize this specific cause of guilt. Rather, the consensus seems to be that at the hour of birth, all a woman’s deeds are judged and not just her performance of these three female commandments. The author of Sefer Hasidim warns people not to gossip or discuss any bad deeds the woman may have done, since any reminder of her sins might tip the scales against her. Instead, the parturient was to be prayed for. In fact, the first known mention of blessings for the sick connected to the reading of the Torah are blessings for the parturient.

These understandings again highlight the complex web of connections between religious understandings and biological and social realities. Many women died in childbirth, and, as in the case of many other deaths in the Middle Ages, the justification offered was religious. The belief that women died during childbirth because of their sins is, of course, not uniquely Jewish. It might even have been of greater importance in Christian sources. In Christianity, the origin of pain and death during childbirth was also assigned to Eve. Christians, like Jews, believed that women who gave birth without pain were not in Eve’s lot. In Christian tradition, the Virgin Mary was regularly characterized as not having suffered at birth, while in Jewish tradition, only the midwives in Egypt were ascribed this quality.

In fact, as Ulrike Rublack has recently shown, women who did not suffer during childbirth were viewed with tremendous suspicion. Pain during childbirth was the lot of women and they were expected to bear this pain with perseverance. Birth was also a symbol of the mundane world and its trials and tribulations. A central source in this connection was Midrash Yezirat haValad (The Midrash of the Creation of the Newborn), which was well known in medieval Ashkenaz. …The Midrash has two versions; one describes the fetus’s encounter with the world before leaving the womb and after being born, whereas the other explains the creation of a fetus in great detail. 

According to the Midrash, the creation of the embryo is the product of cooperation between God, man, and woman, and is assisted by an angel called Layil (Night) “When a man comes to have intercourse [leshamesh mitato] with his wife, God calls the angel responsible for pregnancy and says: “Know that tonight this man is sowing the creation of a man.” The Midrash also explains how the fetus is created: R. Eliezer says the man sows white and the woman sows red and they mix with each other and from them the fetus is created according to the will of God.... The white that the man sows, from it the bones and tendons and brain and nails are formed, as well as the white in the eyes. The red that the woman sows, from it the skin and flesh and blood are created, as well as the black in the eyes. Spirit and soul and image and wisdom . . . and courage—they are given by God. 

The Midrash describes the time spent by the fetus inside his mother’s womb and divides this period into three parts. It also explains that the sex of the baby is determined within the first forty days. These understandings are medical explanations that can be traced back to Aristotle’s medical treatises on obstetrics. For example, it was believed that the male’s soul is formed forty days after conception, and the female soul eighty days after conception. These numbers also explain the duration of ritual impurity after birth, as mentioned in the Bible: forty days for males and eighty for females.

Consequently, medieval Jewish sources instruct expectant fathers to pray for the birth of a son during the first forty days of a pregnancy. After these first forty days, they believed that the gender of the child had been determined; thus, they prohibited praying for a specific gender. Although medieval writings discuss the centrality of the father in the formation of the fetus and the development of the different parts of his body, the determination of the gender of the fetus was attributed to his or her mother. The extent of the mother’s enjoyment of the act of procreation determined the gender of the child. This belief was shared by Jews and Christians alike. 

Medieval Jewish texts provide many other details on pregnancy and birth. Although it was commonly accepted that pregnancy lasted nine months, medieval medical sources understood that the term of pregnancy was somewhere between seven and nine months. Children born after an eight-month term were doomed to death, but those born after a seven- or nine-month term were healthy children. Some halakhic discussions, as well as exegetic texts, distinguish between these two possibilities. For example, most medieval biblical commentators understood the births of the ten tribes as following short pregnancies, whereas Jacob and Esau underwent a full-term birth, as it is written, “when her time to give birth was at hand” (Gen. 25:24). 

These ideas on pregnancy had practical implications as well. For example, Hasidei Ashkenaz were very concerned about women giving birth on the Sabbath. Although helping a woman in travail was permitted and overrode the laws of the Sabbath, Hasidei Ashkenaz preferred to avoid such an instance. They determined that the duration of pregnancy as between 271 and 273 days. Consequently, they believed they could calculate the day of the baby’s birth. Thus, the readers of Sefer Hasidim were instructed to refrain from sexual intercourse on Sundays, Mondays, and Tuesdays, days that might lead to a Sabbath birth. These many references to birth and its processes in halakhic writings testify to men’s intimate knowledge of this world of women. 

Although men were excluded from the birth chamber, they were well aware of the many activities within. We may even situate the physical location of the father during birth. One commentator derives the names given to Judah’s sons from his involvement in their respective births. Judah’s first son was called Er (literally, awake); the commentator explains that Judah was awake all night and listened to his wife’s screams during labor. The second son was called Onan (lament), for Judah cried and lamented his wife’s pain during birth. His third son was called Shelah, (literally, hers), since “the sorrow was hers alone, as he was at Kziv at the time of her birth.” (Gen. 38:5) 

In the account of the birth of twins related later in that chapter, commentators remark on the birth of twins in medieval culture and the methods of examining and determining multiple births. The male authors display familiarity with the female anatomy of birth as well. For example, Rashi explains what the placenta is and says: “It is a kind of clothing that the baby lies in and is called ‘vashtidor’ in French.” It is interesting to note that, in many of these discussions, including most cases of Rashi, commentators almost always provides a parallel vernacular term when discussing issues related to childbirth. Clearly, the women who provided accounts of birth used these terms, whereas the Hebrew names were not well known.”

-  Elisheva Baumgarten, “Birth.” in Mothers and Children: Jewish Family Life in Medieval Europe

[pyjamac]

i think it’s rlly awesome that my 15 yo brother’s interest is speculative technicalities of jewish law. like talking to me abt if a vampire could follow the mizvot. he’s so funny.

[docholligay]

Ok so to preface this, I follow a rabbi on here and I was planning on posing this question to him, then saw your recent posts and thought to send it to you as well since you're one the more vocal of the Jews I follow on here: I've been thinking about Judaism a lot, and tossing around the idea of converting. I know there's a lot I need to unlearn, being culturally xtian, but what are some thing you'd recommend I focus on? I also know I need to examine my reasons for why I would want to commit to this; anything I might overlook in that dept? I'm trying make sure I want this for the right reasons, and not, as your tag said, for clout. I'm pretty sure I dont, but I want to make 100% sure I'm doing this right in all aspects.

DO NOT REBLOG

First things first, I would have you ask yourself, in a really reflective way, why you want to convert. 

What do you find beautiful about Judaism, that you can’t get in any other way? Have you been studying Torah? Have you read in depth about what different movements hold as their banners? Would you convert if you were never allowed to weigh in on what is or isn’t Anti-Semitic online? Would you convert if you were never allowed to put it in your about me? Is the visibility of being that minority part of the pull? What IS it about being Jewish that draws you? This is not an easy question, and really if you can snap answer it you haven’t thought deeply enough. 

Judaism done correctly DEMANDS a lot of you. Do you want those demands? How will you work to constantly be picking up more mitzvot? How will you work to climb the ladder of righteousness, or is it merely the lure of something that is quasi-exotic? If this sounds like I’m being rough on you, I am, I have an old-school rabbinical holding that conversion should never be taken lightly, and it should only be when you CANNOT talk yourself out of it for deeply personal reasons that you pursue it. You can learn about Judaism and engage with Jewish ideas without converting. As a convert, having chosen this covenant, you should hold yourself to an even higher standard. 

As far as unlearning cultural Christianity, things I have noticed converts do that they don’t always seem to realize they engage in, because they don’t THINK of them as having a Christian basis: 

Lashon hara (We take this one seriously!) 

Black and white thinking/ moral purity (There is only one answer to this complicated issue and it so happens to be the one I rested at, any other idea should be blackballed and not discussed. This comes from the idea of Sin being a very serious thing and also All Sins are Equal Intention is Meaningless, whereas Judaism has a much different shade to it on transgression and repentance  ) 

Subgroup to this: Assurance. Cultural Christians are SO SURE OF THEMSELVES. What they believe, what they would do in any situation, and if you try to talk to them about it, they’re almost always like, “No, no I know I would do X/I think Y” and this is true on nearly any given topic.

This Person Cannot Be Learned From Because They Did a Bad Thing (Please read the Torah, I’m begging you--this goes back to the Jesus “washing” one’s sins away, Jesus being a TOTALLY PURE person to save us all, etc. It’s not realistic. King David literally had a man killed to fuck his wife, he’s a great hero of Judaism.) 

Examining one’s motivations. This is one of the hardest ones, I think, but Judaism often asks us to ask ourselves WHY we’re doing something. Is it to elevate yourself, or hurt someone who has hurt you? I fuck this one up all the time, but when I do, I am quick NOT to excuse myself. 

But Why Follow Rules if You Don’t Believe in God? The more you get into this, the more culturally Christian atheists will annoy the SHIT out of you with this, because they can’t see a reason to follow Stringencies other than “I’ll fucking spank you” They don’t often see the value of cultural and social touchpoints, the value of boundaries, etc. I believe in God maybe half the time, at best. You’ll find fully Orthodox people who are VERY stringent, and don’t believe in God. Picking up mizvot is about community and dedication as much as it is anything else. 

I’m sure there’s more offhand, but the ones converts generally THINK of are: Thinking of the holidays as Christmastime, no matter what else is going on, what does prayer mean, etc. The OVERTLY religious things, they seem to get easily, it’s the cultural and social ways of thinking that attract so many people to Judaism under a religious lens, but turn them off when they realize there’s a social lens aspect to it as well, and then find themselves on the outs, sometimes, in communities full of Jews by Birth. 

paging @verbforverb with any other observations. 

[veganmarlo]

something I’ve been trying to find the answer to for a little while with no luck (don’t have a rabbi as of yet so can’t ask them, gotta country livin 🙄🙄) but could you reasonably wear Tallit without Tefillin and it not be weird? Or are they mizvot that are strictly to be practiced together?

[hanorganaas]

What’s the difference between a b’nai mitzvah and a bat mitzvah? Just curious

b’nai mizvot means two people usually twins are receiving Bar/Bat Mitzvah (or in recent days being used for Non-Binary Jews). It goes for any gender. For example my friends Lauren and Ally are twins and when they received their mitzvah we were invited to their B’nai Mitzvah. 

Bat Mitzvah refers to ONE girl receiving their Mitzvah. Example when I was 13 I had my Bat Mitzvah. 

Thus because Kate and Beth are twins they shared their Bat Mitzvah they should have said you got this at “B’nai” Mitzvah. I hope I explained this clearly

[yoramkelmer]

For one of the most important mizvot of Purim #purim #purim2022 #chabadanmark #kopenhagen #פורים #פורים2022 #vodka #lifeessence (hier: Chabadanmark) https://www.instagram.com/p/CbOPugvNq-c/?utm_medium=tumblr

[fromchaostocosmos]

I kind of don’t like the term Abrahamic Faiths/Religions.

Like I understand that the point of it is to say that these are religions/faiths that believe in a man named Abraham and that he is a prophet and that he and his children are important and hold specific moral standards.

See the thing is only 1 out of the 3 faiths are actually related to Abraham and are his descendants. The key with Abraham and his descendants is that is specifically through his grandson Jacob. 

The reality is the only reason the other two so called Abrahamic Faiths even exist is due them stealing from Judaism and subjugating the Jewish people. 

If you look at history who will see that both Christianity and Islam have followed similar trajectories in relation to their treatment of Jews and their stealing from Judaism.

I mean I know that I have talked about this before and why it bothers me and why I take issue with it. 

To be honest I’m not really sure why I am bringing this up again.

Maybe with Channukah soon coming to a close it is giving me all sorts of feelings, I don’t know.

What I can say is this for Muslims and xtians if their religion brings them comfort, joy, and meaning then that is good because I think out of anything that is what religion should do.

I know personally for me I find more comforting to have existence with a G-d just I like know for others it is more comforting to have existence with out one.

And I say as long as a person is a moral, compassionate, and good person to each their own.

What it comes down to for me is that I want I guess acknowledgment of the fact that those two religions are only able exist because they stole from us.

I am also, this might just be me who feels this as well as feeling petty, sick and tired of this push for sense of camaraderie of things that were rules specifically for Jews that got co-opted.

Like hair covering or certain food restrictions like I’ll see a thing about how some married Jewish women cover their hair and nuns do too and some Muslim women, but like I don’t feel that sense of camaraderie.

Rather, I see something that was for Jews that got stolen and used by others.

I fully recognize that maybe this is just me who feels this and maybe I am just really petty and holding a grudge or whatever, but the Mizvot were not meant for everyone.

Hashem gave the 7 Laws of Noach for all to follow and then 613 obligations to Jews.

So every time I see those kinds of things instead of seeing the camaraderie thing, I see the horrors that have been inflicted on us and theft unrolling in front of me like a roll of parchment that reaches back in time.

I guess basically this is the thing that I’m dealing with in my brain right now and for a while too.

{I do feel the need to say that if anyone uses this post as a way to launch into how Muslims are all evil or terrorists or any other Islamophobic bullshit 1. you will be blocked without impunity and 2. you have utterly missed the entire point of what I was saying}

[yocar601]

Mizvot... Meditad en ellas. https://www.instagram.com/p/B6YiUGjgilV/?igshid=19lt2vz5s2tvi

[remedy7411]

Thoughts- A series of rambling ideas written down instead of screaming

When something terrible happens look for the good. When the world feels like it is falling apart around you look for the good. When it feels like there is no hope left and there is nothing you can do to change anything look for something tiny that you can do to make it better. 

A single person was created so that no one could say their parents were greater then anyone else’s. A single person was created so that they could say the world was created for them. A single person was created to remind people that saving one person is like saving the entire world, while killing one person was like destroying the entire world. A single person was created. A single person was created so if the little things you do make things better for one person then they matter just as much as if what you do has a cosmetic effect. 

The mishnah lists a series of mizvots. Is one of them greater than another? Do deeds of living kindness trump studying Torah or honoring your parents or helping the needy bride or tending to the dead or attending the house of study/’worship (I don’t remember the wording) morning and night and on time (i super don’t remember how that is worded)????? And would not eating animals be considered the greatest deed of loving-kindness or are deeds of loving-kindness to people above deeds of loving-kindness to animals? Do Kashrut laws matter to people that say that not eating animals is a deed of loving-kindness because Kashrut doesn’t say you cannot eat meat. It tells you how an animal is to be treated. It tells you how an animal is to be slaughtered. It tells you what a rabbi must do to make the food acceptable. But it doesn’t say that you CANNOT eat meat/animal by products. 

If you didn’t fast are you a bad Jew? If you didn’t spend the day in services are you a bad Jew? I don’t think so. We live by the commandments. We don’t die by them. We don’t pass out by them. If you CANNOT fast for whatever reason then it is a Mizvot to eat. 

Can I fix my grade? Or will I fail the class? I think that I can fix it. I think that I just need to make sure I am on top of everything else. And get as much of the extra credit as I possibly can... It is my fault but at the same time I AM SOOO MAD AT MYSELF because of it. Like I should have checked to make sure that I didn’t have anything that I needed to turn in instead of assuming that I could turn it in before the next class but I didn’t and it sucks. So now I am playing catch up... Then for a different class I don’t know if I got full credit for an assignment or half credit because I turned it in late but my grade (or at least the posted grade) doesn’t show that. I also need to decide if I want to bother going to talk to my accounting teacher about one of our homework assignments because I got a 90 on it when I thought I got a 100 so I need to know what I did wrong. I have a feeling it has to do with the way I did the general ledger... Because I kind of just guessed on how to do the t-accounts. Ugh I have mostly all a’s (well three a’s, a b, and an f) and yet I feel like I am failing everything and completely behind and I don’t know why. I hate this SOOOO MUCH. 

Do you ever feel like the world is crashing in on you and you aren’t really sure what to do or why you feel so lost/alone? It sucks. And the worst part is that I SHOULDN’T feel this way at all. I am not doing poorly in any of my classes (or at least not so poorly that it is irredeemable and impossible for me to improve/get the grades that I want to get. I think I need to get more to do and I am slowly collecting things but I really need to get a job. Though I finally finished my resume-- it only took me forever and a day. Thank g-d for friends that are still willing to help me with it even though it took ages for me to get it to them. 

[jyungar]

Prisoner Without Bars

LIKE A PRISONER WITHOUT BARS I stand fixed in my cell, They tell me there is a way out An exit strategy, If only, I would recover, Keep this Halacha or that Learn this Masechta or that Have more faith, Those old familiar voices (the kitik inside my head)

Here in the Holy City, It is quiet. The street observes the Sabbath too you know! The calm and sensory relief from the noise of bustling traffic Envelopes her stoned houses and communal buildings. This of course, only exacerbates my guilt! This brick of basic observance… the Shabbat! As a human construction, The brilliant mind of ancient prophets and scribes Foreseeing the need for this sacred day Brought to fruition, Today! Acts as a further indictment of my doubting faith.

I could just walk away Go other places Blunt this feeling Understand the social trajectory of human creative thought Realize the common historical cross-cultural patterns of religion and myth As I have done, But why does it still hold me then? Why do I love the silent streets? Knowing the system that produced this, needs People who believe Who practice Obsessively Who will throw stones if it is violated, A medieval trade.

In jail, Those I learn with I cannot talk to, Those I pray with I cannot learn with, And the others do not even understand the problem! Like the couple last night who are Baalei Teshuva from WACO Texas (!) Their certainty was stifling, Their belief, professed of course, in public without shame, was insufferable, And their deafness to my subtle view of the divine was frustrating.

I am a prisoner Of my own making A community of one The bars remain in my illusion Holding me in Restraining me from further growth Knowing there is an outside Yet mistrusting what they are selling Afraid of losing my partner in the process And those whose naive approval I still need.

How painful the double life is As if The Rabbi does not know As if He does not get “complaints”

But more painful is my mediocrity Not to have carved out a system of thought Knowing full well how I mistrust such systems Of having nothing but grief to offer…

Of my inability to get past the fact of God’s inaction In the face of a million and a half babies who went up in smoke filled crematoria, the stench of THAT does not escape me for a moment And infects every thought of a benevolent deity.

The Shul as a jail Where the other prisoners shockle with wide brimmed black hats Tallis over their heads Tsitzis dangling out and longer than the black jackets Like a white stream of faith pouring from their certainty. Proudly demonstrating their commitment to Halachic minutiae. Shouting the credo aloud! “lesakein olam bemalchut shaddai” (as if God is hard of hearing) or… “yehei shmei rabba” fulfilling the rabbinic dictum, that he who screams this, will be rewarded… All this profession of outer faith All this God talk.. All this inner emptiness.. Now nauseates me. I feel literally claustrophobic And must run away But my shthender protests! How can you leave me! What will people think? You know your wife will ask Morty where you are! And there will be consequences!

Even worse the jail of the past! I am forced to drive my mother in law and wife to listen to Tova Lichtenstein last week, along with 200 adoring women. Her erudition and delivery is flawless Her derision of Hassidim fervent, Her love of learning as the Rav’s daughter, expected Her devotion to her husband’s use of secular poetry, refreshing, But her defense of him, curious, as she carved out his truth: Between the Haredi world of scholarship and her put down of pop culture “He only meant hi-brow… Nothing after the 17th century interested him” As if this gave him some kind of hechsher validation.

The next day I am feeling nostalgia for those years spent in Boston with the Rav, I owe him so much, what a transference! What an authority figure for me! As he validated the schizofrumkeit of Torah and Madaa Of secular knowledge alongside Torah Of the divided soul of Adam Of the Lonely Man of Faith. How many years I was spellbound until I realized the untenable Quicksand this really was, for my soul.

Hassidut was my therapy.. It spoke to the soul not the mind And was a real barrier to the Brahman Boston intellectual elite. It also provided an real intellectual path even though it professed the mystical.

The nostalgia quickly turned to guilt, and a sense of betrayal For after all, This Sunday evening room filled with sane, normal people in Skokie Was such a light relief to the black Rogers Park Haredi orthodoxy!

Yet even here I was a prisoner of the post… Postmodern and Post rational, post centrist orthodoxy Post all these doctrinal differences. The sense of middle ground as she admitted and well-articulated, The path of her father and husband was the “Brisker”, proudly announced,

Yet she failed to acknowledge the rejection of the real Brisker dynasty, The other side of the family who had expelled them of course, For their straying from the extreme Brisker path and their approaches to secular learning, and their avowed Zionism.

This centrism could not hold even in Artscroll/Lakewood America, And so, the elegiac tone was not merely for her mourning the recent loss of her husband, it also encompassed her father’s legacy.

In this deep frame of depression I faced the week But the universe was kind! There was a key to the door of the jail the next morning in an E mail.

Brill writes:

The students and colleagues of Rav Shagar each developed different aspects of his thought. Rav Yair Dreyful, his co-founder of Yeshivat Siach Yitzhak emphasizes the emotive and personal existential value of Torah and mizvot. Some of his students, emphasize the need to re-integrate mysticism and meditation, of Rebbe Nachman, Chabad, Zohar, Rav Zadok, and Rebbe  Kalonymus Kalman Shapira. Others prefer intellectual discussions of post-modernity, language games, paradox, and Israeli society. Some of his students learned from him a need to be open and found paths in psychotherapy, poetry writing, film-making, and scholarship. Yishai Mevorach, one of the editors of the Rav Shagar’s writings, looked where he was pointing and went forward into the chaos.

The universe is kind!

As if I was being given a message Despite your jail! There are no bars! This trajectory of yours is shared with others, Who struggle with the same writers and Rebbes, Who see chaos and a post-Holocaust nightmarish world without God Yet do not wish to give up on our tradition! But remain in the space between tradition and modernity.

Soloveitchik and Lichtenstein lived in a pre-postmodern era Where history meant fact And philosophy meant certainty Where science meant optimism in the future of mankind, But now?

After Auschwitz After all went up in flames. Including certainty and faith. How could you continue as if It had never happened?

In this new Jail, I now reside The bars may not be there But emotionally I feel them Constraining my flight from this overwhelming task Not to leave this world without making sense of the desolation. I run from it every day I fill the day with everything BUT this duty. Except for moments like these In the Holy City Which beckons even me To respond With a new hallucination.

Here there is clarity. Our task? To see the vertical only in the horizontal We can no longer afford the luxuries of religious fervor Our hands upward in prayer to the Silent One above

No We need a moratorium on the god word A cessation of hyper religious expression in public As long as those horrors out there, The genocide and mass murder, The child slavery and global exploitation of the poor continues, The collusion of global corporations with international banks and politicians in an unholy alliance that make the rich even richer, And of course, the destruction of climate and mother earth,

Stop all the piety! Stop the self-indulgence The feel-good sanctity The frumkeit Please!

Because in fact we are all in this jail without bars, together.

[println-archive]

straight othrodox jew voice i realized i was orthodox when i realized i was able to change my point of view on the dirty queers based on the mizvot that are always right and those reformists just arent really jewish! but im totally accepting uwu

[docholligay]

Question! What made you decide to avoid eating pork, but not some of the other food that's supposedly proscribed? (I'm actually unclear on what exactly is a no-no, even after trying to look it up online)

I’m Reform, which doesn’t mean “You don’t have to follow any of the rules ever” like some Reform Jews who I might argue haven’t given their faith a lot of thought would say, but it encourages us to be our own “sage” and to really try to discern what has meaning, and what God might have meant, rather than saying, “WELP IF SHAMMAI SAYS SO.” I think, done correctly, it’s a really challenging form of the faith because it asks us to be in touch with what we feel the ideals of God might be, to constantly be climbing the ladder. 

I mean, my BIGGIES, and if I could make the world take anything from Judaism, it would be this, are the ethical obligations. The prohibition against lashon hara, asking us not to spread something, even if true, simply to discredit or harm someone, asking, ‘why can’t this be handled privately?’, asking us to search our motivations for “warning” which holy shit do I wish fandom would get that one. The obligation to the poor, the obligation to tzedakah, our obligation to stand for others, to attempt to think good of people, to guard against joy in the misfortunes of others. That’s my big deal Jewish following! This is where I put the majority of my energy! 

But also, I keep a version of some of the kosher law. I don’t eat pork, and I don’t eat “matched” meat and dairy. So I don’t eat beef and cow milk together, for example. I do this because the ACTUAL LAW IN TORAH is “Don’t stew a kid in its mother’s milk” and I have a lot of very personal feelings about how that’s gotten SEVERELY overstretched as a linchpin of Jewish behavior and if we’re going to “put a fence around the Torah” why aren’t we doing that by donating 20% of our income?? Just to make sure??? and things like that, but this is an argument better kept in my Torah study class. 

Anyway, the pork thing. I had been thinking about it for a few years, not only out of personal thoughts, but as a mark of Jewish identity, perhaps one of the most commonly known ones. But two things changed it for me: knowing a pig, and a random rabbi I was reading. 

But Doc, you might fairly say, you’ve known plenty of farm animals. Yes, and so I don’t feel bad about eating them. Chickens barely know they’re alive. Cows are assholes. Sheep are ridiculous. None of them has a keen sense of intelligence that BOTHERS me. Pigs are very intelligent, akin to dogs and maybe even smarter, and working at a place that had a few (Keeping pigs is not common here) made it feel...not okay to me. Then I was reading a rabbi, also Reform, whose name escapes me, and he pointed out that there is no use for a pig on a farm but to die. It cannot give milk, or wool, or eggs. And I was like, “HO HO HO IS THAT AWKWARD AS HELL.” so I gave it up. 

I don’t really care if other people eat it or not! People always want to argue with me, and I’m like, “Bro I could not possibly care less about your life.” But I won’t cook it. So. I told Jill she can cook it whenever she wants but as it turns out she wants pork less than she wants to cook. 

There are a lot of kashrut (kosher) laws and honestly all Jews keep them to different degrees from Very Very Serious to Not At All. IN my congregation, I’m one of the more serious, but not the most serious, as far as food goes. 

People get hung up on the food thing, but there’s plenty of other things I do and keep too. I say Modeh Ani when I wake up in the morning, I light Shabbat candles every week, I don’t use internet on Shabbat, I say the Shema before I got to bed. Whether I’m “religious” or not depends on one’s perspective, i suppose, and I’m really not interested in whether anyone considers me religious or not. The older I get, the more mizvot I find I pick up.