#nesyapost

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Some of my favorite Hassidic Purim pictures

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The State Department just published a 51 page report detailing over a century's worth of Russia's exploitation of antisemitism as a tactic to spread disinformation and propaganda

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Baghdadi Jews celebrate Purim in Shanghai 1908

Source: Rachel Wahba

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“Yentl—you have the soul of a man.”

“So why was I born a woman?”

“Even Heaven makes mistakes.”

Yentl, the Yeshiva Boy by Isaac Bashevis Singer

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On November 23, 1909, more than twenty thousand Jewish Yiddish-speaking immigrants, mostly young women in their teens and early twenties, launched an eleven-week general strike in New York’s shirtwaist industry. Dubbed the Uprising of the 20,000, it was the largest strike by women to date in American history. The young strikers’ courage, tenacity, and solidarity forced the predominantly male leadership in the “needle trades” and the American Federation of Labor to revise their entrenched prejudices against organizing women. The strikers won only a portion of their demands, but the uprising sparked five years of revolt that transformed the garment industry into one of the best-organized trades in the United States.

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"Jewish law teaches that the person harmed is certainly not obligated to forgive a perpetrator who has not done the work of repentance. And even if repentance is wholehearted and demonstrable, if apologies have been offered and amends made, how and when forgiveness factors in is not always straightforward. Is forgiveness something the victim can choose to do at any point? Definitely. Can it sometimes be a useful part of the healing process? For sure. Is a victim obligated to forgive? Well, as we rabbis are fond of saying, that’s a whole other conversation. It’s worth mentioning that forgiveness isn’t the same as reconciliation—returning to some sort of relationship that will continue into the future. Regardless, I want to spell out that, in Judaism, a person can do real, profound, comprehensive repentance work and even get right with God—experience atonement—even if their victim never forgives them. Repentance and forgiveness are separate processes." On Repentance and Repair by Danya Ruttenberg

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Scene from the most famous Yiddish play The Dybbuk by the Vilner Trupe. 1910s.

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10 times Amy Winehouse was iconic showing off her magen david.

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Wedding of Iraqi Jewish Couple, 1960. Photo courtesy of Maurice Shohet

Source: exhibit.ijarchive.org (Iraqi Jewish Archive)

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Thinking about how in 1983 Ofra Haza, a Yemenite-Jew refugee, sang the song Chai at Eurovision in Munich, Germany 11 years after the Munich Massacre and only four decades after the Holocaust, with a song where the chorus says Am Yisrael Chai - The Nation of Israel Lives and it's all about joyous survival. (She placed second)

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A young man studying for conversion turned to his teacher and said, "But, Rabbi Kushner, Fitzpatrick isn't a Jewish name." To which Kushner replied, "It will be."

-Choosing a Jewish Life by Anita Diamant

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Picture of an amateur Yiddish Troupe from a Polish shtetl in mid-1920s. The poster in the back describes a circus that was previously in town. The woman's headband is in Hebrew and reads "a wicked woman."

Source: Yiddish Research on Facebook

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Early morning light in the synagogue.

Photo: Edinburgh Hebrew Congregation stained glass windows by me

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The Edinburgh Hebrew Congregation Orthodox Synagogue houses six stained windows by the distinguished Scottish stained glass artist William Wilson, RSA. These richly coloured works combine Jewish religious symbols with abstract and floral motifs with one depicting the act of Creation.

Photos by me

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The first night of Hanukkah

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On Repentance and Repair -Danya Ruttenberg