little-desi-historian

[little-desi-historian]

Here are some cool gals looking mighty dapper! You can click on each photo for names and here’s some info on each fabulous woman:

Lily Elsie: English actress during Edwardian era, famous for being in many musicals and operettas

Josephine Baker: French bisexual actress, singer, and dancer who rose to prominence in the 1920s, refused to perform for segregated audiences, active with the French Resistance during WWII and the Civil Rights movement in the 50s

Dorothy Arzner: American lesbian film director who was the only female director in Hollywood during the 1930s, created the first boom mike for the Clara Bow film “The Wild Party” (1929)

Dorothy Mackaill: British-American actress who was involved in the Ziegfeld Follies, also notable for her silent-film roles

Daphne du Maurier: English bisexual author and playwright, famous for her works like Rebecca and “The Birds”

Frida Kahlo: Mexican bisexual painter, known for the feminist and nationalist themes in her paintings, created 55 self-portraits and once stated “I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best.”

Hannah Gluckstein, known as “Gluck”: British lesbian artist known for her evocative Modernist paintings, adopted the name “Gluck” because she thought the sex of a painter is irrelevant

Olive Thomas: American silent-film actress, involved in the Ziegfeld Follies, possibly the first “Vargas Girl” after posing for pinup artist Alberto Vargas

Jessie Matthews: English actress, singer, and dancer who rose to prominence in the 1920s and 30s

Katharine Hepburn: American actress who helped to create the “modern woman” image in Classic Hollywood during the 1930s and 40s, wore trousers before it was fashionable for women to do so, won four Academy Awards for Best Actress

[little-desi-historian]

[little-desi-historian]

I will always be disgusted by my fellow goyim for siding with Hamas of all things. You don’t have to talk about the war, hell, you can be completely indifferent and neutral- it is a conflict happening on the other side of the world and politics may not be your thing. But if you are actively celebrating Hamas, justifying October 7, calling for the destruction of Israel, distorting Zionism because of your own internalized antisemitism, boycotting places because it has a ‘Zionist agenda’ (which is exactly what happened in Nazi fucking Germany), saying that the hostages deserved it or were treated well, condone pogroms, you are disgusting to me. You are a disgrace. Horrific, absolutely horrific.

[little-desi-historian]

TAMING THE WILD OX

In this week's Torah portion, Mishpatim, we learn the laws of the muad, an animal that performed an act of destruction on three consecutive occasions (Ex. 21:28-36). If someone’s animal is designated a muad and it gores an animal belonging to someone else, the muad’s owner must pay the full price of the damage. Conversely, if a tam (animal without a violent past) gores another animal, the tam’s owner is only responsible for half of the loss. Once an animal is considered a muad, can it ever be tamed? Is redemption possible for a habitually violent ox? The rabbis of the Talmud say yes, and offer a number of ways for the ox to regain the status of a tam. One of these ways is new ownership. Perhaps the ox was out of control because of poor management, and a new owner will be able to tame it. The Lubavitcher Rebbe brings down a universal lesson from the teaching of the rehabilitated ox. We all have a wild ox inside of us that can lead us to behave in ugly ways. But like the fearsome muad, we have a path to redemption: new ownership. When we place ourselves under God’s control and submit to His will, we can overcome our “animal nature.” Rabbi Betzalel Bassman compares this to an addict who finds recovery in a 12-step program that requires him to submit his will to a Higher Power. May we all be strengthened to subdue our animal nature so we can be a blessing to those around us!

Image: “Jewish Cattle Dealer” by Julius Holzmuller, 1909

Source: accidentaltalmudist.org

[little-desi-historian]

[little-desi-historian]

Bialys

photo credit Lauren Habermehl

[little-desi-historian]

are you ok is the hook are you ok is code for we are not ok but please remind me you are breathing

Sarah Kay, The Places We Are Not

[little-desi-historian]

Two silver noise graggers

the first in Polish style, pierced and engraved with Hanam leading Mordecai on his donkey surrounded by floral scrolls, hardstone finials to handle, the scene repeated on each side

the second Star of David flag form, applied with granulation and set with turquoises, applied with inscription on one side, and Mordecai on a donkey on the other, possibly Bukhara

[little-desi-historian]

Miniatures from a Judeo-Persian manuscript, Mashdad, Iran, 1853

According to the scribal inscription, the book was calligraphed by Eliyahu ben Nissan, known as "Gurgi" (the Georgian). The text is a transcription of the tale of Yusuf (Joseph) and Zulaikha (Potiphar’s wife), as told by the 15th-century Sufi poet and philosopher Nur ad-Din ‘Abd ar-Rahman al-Jami. The story of Joseph is the story of a Jew forced to live among non-Jewish Egyptians, who despite hardships and temptations never loses his faith or forgets his true heritage; and when the time came, he revealed himself to his brothers and rejoined his family. This story must have had deep resonance, and even comfort, to the Jadidis in Mashdad (Persian Jews who were forcibly converted to Islam in the 19th century but continued to practice Judaism in secret); perhaps they commissioned this story as a reminder that like Joseph in prison, if they could keep their faith they would one day be rewarded.

[little-desi-historian]

The Or Torah Synagogue in Akko, Israel is Tunisian, and decorated floor to wall to ceiling with beautiful tiles from Italy. Gorgeous.

[little-desi-historian]

When Abraham Lincoln was elected President, he was gifted two kittens from Secretary of State William Seward in August of 1861. The President doted on the cats, which he named Tabby and Dixie, so much so that he once fed Tabby from the table during a formal dinner at the White House. Embarrassed by Abe's action, Mary Todd Lincoln told him it was "shameful in front of their guests." The President replied, "If the gold fork was good enough for former President James Buchanan, I think it is good enough for Tabby." Lincoln's friend Caleb Carman recalled how the President would pick up one of the cats and "talk to it for half an hour at a time." The cats apparently won the President over with their quiet adoration. At one point during his first term, Lincoln said in frustration, "Dixie is smarter than my whole cabinet! And... furthermore... she doesn't talk back!"

Information Source: Digital Research Library of Illinois History

[little-desi-historian]

1991 stamp of the USSR:

Declaration about state sovereignty of Ukraine.

[little-desi-historian]

23rd November 2013: Holodomor genocide Remembrance Day in Lviv, Ukraine.

[little-desi-historian]

ask tankies what a stateless society looks like and they will describe a social democracy

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Food shortages in Ukraine in the Soviet era.

[little-desi-historian]

The ruins of the medieval Saint Michael's Golden-Domed Monastery in Kyiv, Ukraine after it was blown up with dynamite by the Soviets on the 14th of August, 1937.

Before the demolition Ukrainian scholars were imprisoned so they wouldn't protest, and the 12th-century Byzantine mosaics were stolen for museums in russia.

[little-desi-historian]

On the night of 1st May 1966, on the eve of Workers' Solidarity Day, the Soviet flag was torn down from the building of the Kyiv Institute of National Economy (now Kyiv National University of Economics) by G. Moskalenko and V. Kuksa.

They replaced it with this flag of Ukraine.