#the maccabees

[secular-jew]

[midileduwang]

Fakeman is a robot in thigamajig skin.

You're all living a lie.

Illusions within delusions

Drugged by cultists for a fight the death

Love camouflaging under strife.

indeed they were all in disguises

concocted by black rainbows.

THEY WERE MY GAY DINOSAURS ALL ALONG FUCK YOU UBISOFT!

[magnetothemagnificent]

Something always bugged me about the MCU deciding to still have Jane's hair turn blonde when she became Thor, even though she's played by Natalie Portman, a Jewish woman, when there's a history of Eurocentric beauty ideals being forced upon Jewish people, especially Jewish women.......

So, I decided....what if in an alternate universe, Jane Foster was Jewish? Instead of becoming some Norse god, she would be a superhero inspired by the Maccabees. The hammer theme is still there! Her Hebrew name would be Yehudit, after the Yehudit who killed Holofernes, and whose story is culturally associated with the Chanukah story. And of course her hair doesn't turn blonde.

So yeah.

My piece is inspired by Patrick Brown's official Marvel artwork of Thor.

[id in alt text]

[germiyahu]

Actually that may be too harsh to Jesus. He was a Rabbi after all, and what I've learned is that the Rabbis haaaaated the Maccabees. And can you blame them? The Maccabees and their weird incestuous jumbled up quasi theocratic mess was directly responsible for the Roman usurpation of Judea.

So it's not a surprise that a Pharisee like Jesus would view armed revolt as futile and only leading to disarray, and that the Kingdom of God was the only true state to aspire to and to wait for. But, as it was just Purim... I don't know, sitting on your hands and waiting for God to save you isn't exactly the only way to do things in Judaism now is it?

[famousornotbuthot]

[ x ]

[yashayskahson]

The 7 Holy Maccabean Martyrs

[vath-and-such-vinluv-s-stuff]

Rojudean Rabbit the Maccabunny @p-pooky

[realitys-ex]

The Odd Etymology of macabre

I recently learned the etymology of ‘Macabre’, and it is too great not to share.

‘Macabre’ comes from ‘Maccabee’. As in the ones from Hanukah.  Y’see, back in the day people put on shows/plays about the events in the book of Maccabee. Part of that play was a dance sequence depicting the Greeks torturing the Maccabees (Not for anti-Semitic reasons, just because it occured in the story and for some odd reason they thought it should be a musical scene).

In France this scene was called  “dance Maccabee” or “danse macabre” (spelling not being crazy important in medieval france). Possibly the first use of the term was in Latin “Machabaeorum chorea”. 

In any case the sequence was relatively horrifying, and so the term ‘macabre’ came to mean anything horrifying or gruesome.  

This gives 3 takeaways:  1) Goth Chanukah makes perfect sense 2) The ‘R’ in ‘macabre’ should be silent (both pronunciations are officially acceptable). 3) Etymology is fun! (but that is a bit of a given.

Also: Source1 Source2 Source3

(There is another explanation, but it seems less accepted and less fun so I have decided to ignore it)

[teenagedirtstache]

[secular-jew]

Ágnes Keleti (née Klein), survived the Holocaust, lived through the overthrow of communism in her native Hungary, and won 10 Olympic medals over the course of her career. At 103, she is the oldest living Olympian medalist alive today.

Born in 1921, Agnes became a star gymnast in her youth, winning national championships and at 15, participated in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. With the outbreak of World War II, Keleti concealed her Jewish identity and survived by finding work as a maid in a small village. Her father and other family members were murdered at Auschwitz.

After the war, Ágnes resumed her career and made her true athletic breakthrough. She missed the 1948 London Olympics due to a torn ankle ligament.

At 31, which is quite an ancient age for a gymnast, she won 4 medals at the Helsinki Olympics in 1952, including the gold in the floor exercise.

In 1956, during the Melbourne Olympics, the USSR invaded Hungary, and Ágnes defected along with 4 other Hungarian athletes. The following year, she emigrated to Israel where she became the star of the 5th Maccabiah – מכביה.

Keleti collected more Olympic medals (10, including 5 gold medals) than Usain Bolt (9).

Photo: Agnes Keleti, the Maccabiah Archive

[dovymcjewpunk]

233 years after the Maccabees freed their homeland of oppressive colonisers, Israel was once again invaded and colonised - this time by Rome. Unfortunately this part of the story doesn’t have a happy ending. In the year 69 CE the Romans would burn the Beys HaMikdash and forcibly expel the Jews from Israel, beginning nearly 2,000 years of exile for the Jewish people. This Roman victory was immortalizes on the Arch of Titus - which depicts the plunder of the Temple. Most notably, it shows the Romans carrying off the golden menorah rebuilt by the Hasmoneans. The arch faces in towards Rome to show the victors carrying their spoils from Jerusalem to Rome, and the Jews of Rome had always had the custom that they would never walk under the arch depicting the greatest tragedy in Jewish history.

But, the story does ultimately have a happy ending - about two thousand years later the descendants of those Jews who instituted the custom to never walk under the Arch of Titus gathered to do just that. On 5 Iyar 5708 / 14 May 1948 the Jewish community of Rome gathered at the arch of Titus to walk through it for the first time - backwards - toward Jerusalem, away from Rome. After 2,000 years the exile was ending. And when the newly re-born country of Israel needed a symbol, the very image of the menorah from the Arch of Titus was what was chosen. An image meant to show our downfall is now a symbol of the greatest victory for the Jewish community since the Maccabees. This is Chanukah.

[hugowhitenews]

Tom and Miles with Hugo at the Studio.

[gerardwaygirlmoments]

New piece of false history I just invented to help me cope with being both a Jew and a genderqueer MCR/Smiths fan:

Joan of Arc was a Maccabee

[famousornotbuthot]

x

[catholic-saint-tournament]

Question: is the Book of the Maccabees included in the Deuteronomy or is it completely separate?

nah, Maccabees is its own thing, totally separate from Deuteronomy.