#JEWISH HERITAGE

[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?

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[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

[jewish-culture-is]

jewish culture is not feeling super connected to your heritage and feeling like you don't know that much about judaism until you visit a jewish museum and you're like oh wow i recognize all of these things...from centuries ago...and have the same traditions...my ancestors would be proud of me :)

!!

[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.

[askjumblr]

I was raised as a "messianic jew" as ive gotten older i have realized the, uh issues to say the least, of that community, I would like to connenct with the jewish heritage I have in a better way, my question is if there are any tips or advice for this as i am quite aware of the difference but not the details of things like how jews pray or connect with G-d (? Should i do that??)

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[koenji]

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

[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.

[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

[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