#Jewish rabbi

[minnesotafollower]

“We Are the Church: Render to no person evil for evil. Strengthen anyone fainthearted. Support anyone weak. Heal anyone afflicted” at Westminster Presbyterian Church  

On October 15, 2023, Rev. Dr. Tim Hart-Andersen, Senior Pastor at Minneapolis’ Westminster Presbyterian Church, delivered the sermon, “We Are the Church: Render to no person evil for evil. Strengthen anyone fainthearted. Support Anyone Weak. Heal Anyone Afflicted,” which was the fifth of his final seven sermons before his retirement at the end of October. Scripture Leviticus 19:9-18 “‘When you…

[mental-mona]

“The Jewish response to trauma is counter-intuitive and extraordinary. You defeat fear by joy. You conquer terror by collective celebration. You prepare a festive meal, invite guests, give gifts to friends. While the story is being told, you make an unruly noise as if not only to blot out the memory of Amalek, but to make a joke out of the whole episode. You wear masks. You drink a little too much. You make a Purim spiel.” Precisely because the threat was so serious, you refuse to be serious – and in that refusal you are doing something very serious indeed. You are denying your enemies a victory. You are declaring that you will not be intimidated. As the date of the scheduled destruction approaches, you surround yourself with the single most effective antidote to fear: joy in life itself. As the three-sentence summary of Jewish history puts it: “They tried to destroy us. We survived. Let’s eat.” Humour is the Jewish way of defeating hate. What you can laugh at, you cannot be held captive by.

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks zt"l, "The Therapeutic Joy of Purim," article published 1 March 2015

[freedom-in-truth]

[gender-fluid-weirdo]

This is Bagel,

Bagel is a Rabbi

Rav Bagel is very wise

Rav Bagel is sad

Rav Bagel is waiting for his dindins

[dragoneyes618]

During Hitler's first five years in power, the Nazis did a great deal to make the lives of Jews miserable. They revoked their citizenship, ejected Jewish students from German schools, boycotted Jewish stores, and banned Jews from a large number of professions. On occasion, individual Jews were sent to concentration camps; the Nazis, however, had not yet created death camps and, remarkably enough, people were sometimes released from concentration camps and allowed to go home.

On the night of November 9-10, 1938, the Nazis' discriminatory policy toward the Jews changed to wholesale violence as they carried out the largest pogrom in the history of the world. The official pretext for this action was the killing in Paris of a low-level Nazi diplomat by a seventeen-year-old Jewish boy, Herschel Grynspan. The boy's Polish-born parents had been deported several weeks earlier from Germany back to Poland. The Poles, however, refused to accept Grynspan's parents, along with seventeen thousand other Polish-born Jews deported by the Nazis. These unfortunate Jewish refugees were left to rot, penniless, in the no-man's land separating Germany and Poland. Cut off from contact with his parents, Gwynspan shot the German official in retaliation. When the man died, the Nazis decided to punish all of German Jewry for Grynspan's deed.

The pogrom that ensured became known as Kristallnacht, the night of the broken glass. On that night, the glass windows in almost every German synagogue, and in most Jewish-owned businesses, were shattered. Shattered, too, were the lives of almost all German Jews. Ninety-one Jews were murdered during Kristallnacht; thirty thousand more were arrested and sent to concentration camps, where hundreds of them died.

World leaders denounced the Nazi pogrom, and American Jewry reacted by forming the United Jewish Appeal, which soon became the greatest fundraising organization in Jewish history. The Nazis scoffed at the protests. They announced that Kristallnacht had been carried out in honor of the birthday of Martin Luther, the sixteenth century antisemitic religious reformer whom Hitler greatly admired. The Nazis also announced the imposition of a one-billion-mark fine against the Jews; they would be forced to pay for the damage the Germans had inflicted on their synagogues and property.

German Jewry now knew that their situation was hopeless. While large numbers of them had left Germany during the first five years of Nazi rule, half of the community of 600,000 had remained, hoping that Nazi antisemitism would moderate. After Kristallnacht, they recognized that such thinking was illusory; between that event and the outbreak of World War II, less than ten months later, virtually every Jew in Germany tried to emigrate. Few countries, however, were willing to accept them. The British imposed a White Paper in Palestine to ensure that it not become a haven for Jews fleeing Hitler. Some of the Jews who tried to emigrate to the United States succeeded; most did not. In Canada a high government official was asked how many Jewish immigrants the country could accommodate. "None is too many," he answered.

It is no coincidence that Kristallnacht brought about the formation of the United Jewish Appeal, later to become a major financial supporter of Israel. More than any other event of the time, Kristallnacht converted large numbers of Jews into Zionists; the price of not having a Jewish state, they realized, was too, too high.

- Jewish Literacy, Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, pages 390-391

[shalom-iamcominghome]

Funny things about being in jewish culture™

You absolutely cannot expect jews to (1) stay on a topic topic or (2) be concise. The notion of "having a topic" to talk about is merely a suggestion (apparently, this includes me)

Jewish time means you're transported into a universe where time doesn't exist. Every shul has to have a portal to a different plane of oblivion - it's as important as having the scrolls in the ark

You might only know someone by their hebrew name and consider if they will look at you weird if you call them by it outside of shul

There is a latent jewish mother hiding in everyone and that mother will arise like a sleeper agent if someone has deduced that you aren't eating enough during any potential communal meals

Why so many puns

Why are all of you as sarcastic as me...

The one person who's actually fluent in hebrew flexing their superior language comprehension (diaspora)

Celebrating having a minyan

Singing prayers to popular children's songs

It's surprisingly normal to ask about someone's bris if it comes up

There are seven people in the building, yet I thought there were twenty

[nesyanast]

"Jewish law teaches that the person harmed is certainly not obligated to forgive a perpetrator who has not done the work of repentance. And even if repentance is wholehearted and demonstrable, if apologies have been offered and amends made, how and when forgiveness factors in is not always straightforward. Is forgiveness something the victim can choose to do at any point? Definitely. Can it sometimes be a useful part of the healing process? For sure. Is a victim obligated to forgive? Well, as we rabbis are fond of saying, that’s a whole other conversation. It’s worth mentioning that forgiveness isn’t the same as reconciliation—returning to some sort of relationship that will continue into the future. Regardless, I want to spell out that, in Judaism, a person can do real, profound, comprehensive repentance work and even get right with God—experience atonement—even if their victim never forgives them. Repentance and forgiveness are separate processes." On Repentance and Repair by Danya Ruttenberg

[frownyalfred]

Thinking about if Bruce was Jewish again.

In Judaism, burying someone is one of the greatest mitzvot of all. A lot of Jewish people bury their own loved ones, whether symbolically by helping shovel the first few bits of dirt, or the entire grave.

Burying someone is considered so great a mitzvah because it is one that cannot ever be repaid.

If Bruce was Jewish, he probably buried Jason himself, or with Alfred’s help. It had to happen within 48 hours of Jason’s death.

And then! Jason came back. Does that render the mitzvah null? How does that affect his yartzheit? I have so many questions.

[livelovecaliforniadreams]

 I really enjoy you as a human being, okay?

[mcknotanniegrey]

omg, got to episode 5 of nobody wants this and literally cried when Joanne said their argument made her miss her first Shabbat and Hot Rabbi had an impromptu Shabbat then and there.

[ashmedy]

The Jewish people did not cease to live and grow when the New Testament was written.

[mental-mona]

Judaism is the guardian of an ancient but still compelling dream. To heal where others harm, mend where others destroy, to redeem evil by turning its negative energies to good: these are the mark of the ethics of responsibility, born in the radical faith that God calls on us to exercise our freedom by becoming his partners in the work of creation. That seems to me a life-affirming vision: the courage to take the risk of responsibility, becoming co-authors with God of the world that ought to be.

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks zt"l, To Heal a Fractured World

[hiddurmitzvah]

This is from my latest project:

This deer appears on the grave of Rabbi Naftali Hirsch Spitz, who was the Av Beit Din, the head of the rabbinical court in Worms (Germany), and he was also mentioned as a gaon, a genius on his tombstone. He wrote important religious commentary books, such as the Maleh Ratzon, in order “to answer all the difficulties in the Talmud”. He died in 1712.

The deer on the tombstone is an example of a tradition in Jewish graves where the name of the deceased appears as a symbol, since Hirsch is German for deer.

You can purchase the Symbols of SchUM Zine, where there are multiple symbols from the Schum cities (Speyer, Worms and Mainz) are depicted with linocut, and you can read the explanations of them, just like above.

You can order a copy here:

hiddurmitzvahshop.etsy.com/listing/1792120058/symbols-of-schum-zine