#JEWISH HERITAGE

[koenji]

via via_maris (on ig):

In 1945 in Berlin, legendary LIFE Magazine photographer Robert Capa documented the first Rosh Hashanah service held in the city since 1938 at Fraenkelufer, a synagogue that the U.S. Army had helped restore after the Nazis torched it. The text reads:

'This year, for the first time since 1938 when the Nazis destroyed Jewish synagogues, Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, was celebrated in a Berlin synagogue. Among the 500 worshipers who gathered for the services at sundown on Sept 7. were American and Russian soldiers who prayed together with the relatively few remaining Jews of Berlin. The synagogue, once burned by Nazis, had been repaired, re-painted and refitted with the aid of the U.S. Army.

The honor of holding the Torah or Sacred Scroll (above) during the ceremony was bestowed upon Pfc Werner Nathan, of Newark, N.J. The scroll had been hidden from the Nazis in an underground safe. Their freedom to worship restored once again, the German Jews prayed for a new world. "We are still in the dark," intoned the rabbi. "We are between two doors. We have opened and passed through only one. I ask God where we shall go from here."'

[jewelleria]

“goy” is not a slur.

goy is the hebrew word for “nation.” it’s a neutral term that can have both positive and negative connotations. it simply means non-jewish; as in all the other nations (goyim) that are not the jews. (in general, non-jews who are offended by being called a goy are usually also offended by jews who, for lack of a better word, live jewishly.)

yes, there are some ultra-religious jewish communities who feel negatively about “non-jewish ways of thinking”—and that mentality is the real issue, not the word. the word is in no way a slur, as it doesn’t meet the technical requirements for it. the venn diagram of people who are offended by goy and those who think “jew” (as opposed to “jewish person”) is a negative term is basically a circle.

[fallensapphires]

Holidays: Chanukah (Hanukkah)

The darkness of the whole world cannot swallow the glowing of a candle.

[proudzionist]

[ace-hell]

Ok so my grandma(dad side) went to a special institution that do research on you family name and give your this weird certificate that explains sruff about the family name, origin, meaning etc. So she did on 4 family names:

Her husband's

Hers-dad side

Her mother's - dad side

Her mother's (again)- mother side

And APPARENTLY i have a linage of THREE important rabbis(which one was literally a sofer stam) but that's not all- one of the family names can be traced to RASHI(רש"י) himself???

AND NOT ONLY THAT, which is HUGE, but there's a big fat chance RASHI is a descendant of THE KING DAVID?????

"european" MY ASS NOT ONLY IM NATIVE JEWISH I ALSO MIGHT HAVE A ROYAL HERITAGE????

I know there are another like thousands who should have it too but literally wtfff

I am so psyched out of my mind WHAT THE HELL

[askjumblr]

I was told growing up that my mother's mother was raised Jewish and my mother's grandmother and great grandmother were born Jewish, though I was raised atheist. I believed this wholeheartedly and considered myself a ba'al teshuvah - studied Torah, kept kosher, observed yomim tovim, (occasionally) attended services, etc for the past decade. Unfortunately, I recently discovered - very conclusively - this is not the case. There are absolutely no Jews in my ancestry at all as far back as the 1700s. I didn't intentionally lie to my synagogue, my friends, or my coworkers, but I lied nonetheless. I want to talk to the rabbi and ask about conversion, but I'm honestly pretty shaken by the whole discovery and have no idea how to start or what to say. Does anyone have any ideas?

.

[jewishpopculture]

George Michael photographed by Herb Ritts for Interview magazine’s October 1988 issue.

In 2008, Michael revealed to the Los Angeles Times that his maternal grandmother was Jewish, but she married a non-Jewish man and raised her children with no knowledge of their heritage due to her fear during World War II.

Photographer Herb Ritts was also of Jewish descent.

[arcadialedger]

Jewish SF/F books for Jewish Heritage Month

I highly recommend you check out these novels! This is just the tip of the iceberg.

[ethanfreemanappreciation]

Ethan and Anne Görner in The Phantom of the Opera

Ethan was the first Jewish actor in history to perform the role of The Phantom. A favourite of Hal Prince, Ethan performed the role on West End as well as in Toronto, Vienna and Germany.

Together with Hal he worked to include as many aspects of Erik, the Phantom, from the original Leroux novel as possible in the musical, earning him the nickname "The Leroux Phantom" amongst Phans.

[elder-millennial-of-zion]

I really appreciate your blog.

Your normal about gerim, right? I've seen people use us as a reason to deny Jewish indigeneity, completely ignoring that many if not most Indigenous peoples had practices of "adopting" people into their culture/religion/community before colonialism- the only difference is that instead of getting rid of the practice we just formalized it.

Ilysm <3

This is the second ask I’ve gotten about gerim, which is funny because my dad is one.

Whoever uses gerim as an excuse to delegitimize Jews in any way doesn’t know anything about Judaism. Or indigeneity. Or much about religious and cultural developments throughout history at all really.

If conversion somehow made the Jewish people and Jewish heritage and history less legitimate, Halacha wouldn’t allow it. If hundreds of years of rabbis can be “normal” about gerim, random uneducated goyim on the internet can be too.

[koenji]

Antique Jewish Hamsa amulets and other Jewish talismans from Morocco, Kurdistan and Israel. 🪬 (png)

[u-mspcoll]

Shanah tovah pop-up cards from the Jewish Heritage Collections are now digitized and available at the Jewish Heritage Collection Digital Archive!

Shanah Tovah pop-up card. JHC-E0001. Gift of Constance Harris.

Shanah Tovah pop-up card. JHC-E0011. Gift of Constance Harris. 

Shanah Tovah pop-up card. JHC-E0017. Gift of Constance Harris.

View pictures of the other shanah tovah pop-up cards from the U-M Library Jewish Heritage Collection

[mizrahimayhem]

Applications are officially open! 🧿🍉🪬

We are Mizrahi Mayhem, a zine celebrating Jews from Asia, Africa, and the Mediterranean. All proceeds from the sale of this zine will be donated to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund. We accept submissions in the form of artwork, photography, poetry, recipes, short fiction, and testimonials (creative nonfiction) — so if you’re a Jew of Asian and/or African heritage and you have something to say, we highly encourage you to submit your work!

🍉SUBMISSION GUIDELINES🍉

🪬FAQ🪬

🧿TIMELINE🧿

[zahut]

“More than most, Jews have known insecurity, whether in the land of Israel or elsewhere. Too often home turned out to be no more than a temporary dwelling, a Sukka. Yet with its genius for the unexpected, Judaism declared Sukkot to be not a time of sadness but the ‘season of our rejoicing’. For the tabernacle in all its vulnerabilities symbolises faith: the faith of the people who set out long ago on a risk-laden journey across a desert of space and time with no more protection than the sheltering of the divine presence. Sitting in the Sukka underneath its canopy of leaves I often think of my ancestors and their wanderings across Europe in search of safety, and I begin to understand how faith was their only home.”

— Rabbi Pinchas Hackenbroch, Rabbi Sacks And The Community We Built Together

[burningchandelier]

My mom got a DNA test done and it didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know.

Ukrainian Ashkenazi. The Wiseman Family.

We know where we come from.

We went as far North as we could when there was nowhere safe for us in Eastern Europe. We made a home for ourselves in Lerwick, Scotland. Scotland, the only country in Europe that has never expelled Jews, kept us safe for a while, but a poor family could only live at the end of the world in the Arctic Circle for so long. There were too many fishermen and not enough people to buy fish.

Between wars, we went South again, to Germany. We didn’t stay.

I am grateful every day that my great-great grandfather could see that there was trouble coming for his family. He sent his four children and wife to Canada and followed the next year. So many of us did not.

We found a place in Toronto where we watched what happened to our loved ones in Europe. We forgot Hebrew. It was easier that way.

My great-grandmother kept secrets:

Her first daughter, born out of wedlock, was raised by her parents as one of their own.

Her second daughter was told that her father was dead, rather than divorced away (it was a different time— divorce was shameful, death was inevitable).

Her job was mysterious. Officially, she worked for the state department as a pay roll clerk. I don’t know why any pay roll clerks would have traveled to Russia during the Cold War, but she did many times.

The secret she kept the longest was her heritage. As far as anyone knew, she was a severe Scottish immigrant and fiercely proud of it. Only my mother, her favorite, had suspicions.

When Granny Annie Wiseman died, she left everything to her favorite granddaughter. The money, the house, and everything inside it. Every memory of who we are.

Years later, my mother fell in love with a Jewish man. They raised me together. I had the privileges and the pains of knowing who I was. I carry our family burdens and I honor them.

Someday, I will name my daughter after the woman I never met who passed our heritage to me through the simple and brave act of survival. Her assimilation kept us alive. Her secrets got me here. She left the breadcrumbs that let us find our way home.

We know where we come from.