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objectively, this is the greatest piece of decor my roommate could have added to our apartment

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jewish converts: would any of you feel comfortable telling me what your beit din experience was like? questions you were asked, the structure, etc. i'm not very nervous, eager more than anything, but i'm also not quite sure what to expect and i like to have an idea of these things before i go in! :]

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my beit din is scheduled for tuesday of next week and i am incandescent with excitement

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"If the command to remember is absolute, there is, nonetheless, an almost desperate pathos about the biblical concern with memory... Not history, as is commonly supposed, but only mythic time repeats itself. If history is real, then the Red Sea can be crossed only once, and Israel cannot stand twice at Sinai, a Hebrew counterpart, if you wish, to the wisdom of Heraclitus. Yet the covenant is to endure forever... If there can be no return to Sinai, then what took place at Sinai must be borne along the conduits of memory to those who were not there that day. The biblical appeal to remember thus has little to do with curiosity about the past."

— Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory, by Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi

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On my desk is a stone with "Amen" engraved on it, one shard saved from the thousands of broken gravestones in Jewish cemeteries. And I know that all these shards now fill up the great Jewish time bomb with the rest of the shards and pieces: broken tablets and broken altars and broken crosses and rusty crucifixion nails with broken household vessels and sacred vessels and broken bones, and shoes and glasses and artificial limbs and false teeth and empty tin cans of deadly poison. All of these fill the Jewish time bomb until the end of days and though I know of all this and of the end of days this stone on my desk gives me peace. It is the stone of truth that cannot be disputed, the stone of the wisdom of all the stones of wisdom, stone from a broken tomb and whole beyond all wholeness. It is a witness stone of all that has transpired in the world and all that shall transpire in the world, a stone of amen and of love. Amen, amen, and may it be His will.

— The Jewish Time Bomb, by Yehuda Amichai (translated from Hebrew by Karen Alkalay-Gut)

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Faith is not a form of ‘knowing’ in the sense in which that word is used in science and philosophy. It is, in the Bible, a mode, of listening. The supreme expression of Jewish faith, usually translated as ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one’ (Deuteronomy 6:4), really means ‘Listen, O Israel’. Listening is an existential act of encounter, a way of hearing the person beneath the words, the music beneath the noise.

    — Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks zt”l, in The Great Partnership: God, Science and the Search for Meaning

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there are always jewish tune floating around my brain

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im not orthodox but what i would give to have a little son with wearing a kippah with cute little peyos. i could still do it but everyone in my community would be confused.

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i had a dream that my religion class visited my synagogue for some kind of educational trip (we were visiting churches too) but instead of showing us literally anything about judaism my rabbi just sang a terrible cover of bad romance on the bimah before leaving

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me drowning in a lake while my friend, 11th century french rabbi and prolific scriptural commentator Schlomo "Rashi" Yitzchaki (zy"a) stands nearby: help im drowing help me rashi

Schlomo "Rashi" Yitzchaki (zy"a): "drowing" is likely a scribal error for "drowning." "im drow[n]ing" is to say: my lungs have become filled with water, and i am struggling to breathe. "help" once followed by "help me" a second time: the first [help] is directed to the Holy One, blessed be He, and means: "may He help us by swiftly delivering the World to Come;" the second (i.e., "help me") is to invoke direct assistance in this world, spoken as if to a personal friend. the meaning of "rashi" here is unclear.

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would it be unreasonable for me to tell my piano instructor that i don't feel super comfortable playing and singing christmas music for the fun additional pieces she tacks onto the class' regular lessons

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shout out to ron from my synagogue who attends high holiday services in football-patterned ties and who has trained the under-b'nei mitzvah kids to ferry him extra pieces of challah from motzi

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Jewish culture is how everything goes into slow motion as someone drops the Torah. On Yom Kippur. He was so distressed.

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my religion professor: i heard myself say "this is like brokeback torah" last class about this story about rabbinic homoeroticism, so if i have to clean out my desk and vacate by 5pm today, you know why

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shook the lulav and etrog in my temple's outdoor sukkah for the first time today, and not only was it delightful and joyous, but my rabbi was so impressed with my hebrew pronunciation that he was like "we have got to get you trained for bimah responsibilities" and i'm :] <3

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chag sameach