#rabbis are teachers mot priests after all

[creekfiend]

I'm not Jewish, but my first easily-accessible exposure to Judaism and Jewish culture as like, a living community of people was through things like tumblr posts made by Jews. And yes, they were often queer/disabled/leftist Jews because a lot of the people I follow are queer, disabled, leftist etc.

It wasn't my first attempt at learning about Judaism but like... a lot of resources that aren't about pogroms and the Holocaust tend to assume that the reader is already familiar with Judaism. My knowledge about Judaism (that wasn't about antisemitism) from school was like "they only believe in the Old Testament, they don't eat pork, and they celebrate Passover and Hanukkah (and the stories behind those)" which I understand is technically correct but incredibly lacking. It's kinda like jumping from the most basic arithmetic to calculus, I guess (I don't really get calculus tbh).

I have been able to do more research and use less 'accessible' sources now, but it's because of those tumblr posts that I was able to understand those sources and know what lines of inquiry to pursue.

(Also it gave me the knowledge that by asking questions about Judaism I wasn't going to get aggressive conversion attempts, which was incredibly reassuring. My experiences with Christianity have been like, they lure you in with free cheese toasties and then try to get you to sign up for a baptism. I'm not exaggerating, this literally happened to me.)

Omg. The amount of gentiles who have told me that they wanna learn more about Judaism directly from jews but are afraid to talk to a rabbi bc they're worried it will lock them onto some kind of mandatory conversion pathway is extremely sad to me bc 1. WOW EVANGELISM IS SCARY and 2. talking to rabbis can be very fun depending on the rabbi and in my experience many are very delighted to get to explain stuff to people who are legitimately interested I mean lots of times being a rabbi is just being a nerd whose special interest is Jewish Stuff

ANYWAY

I'm glad you've been able to expand your knowledge in a way that makes you comfortable!