#Jewish Publication Society

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

Material wealth is worthless

Riches profit not in the day of wrath; But righteousness delivereth from death. — Proverbs 11:4 | JPS Tanakh 1917 (JPST) The Holy Scriptures according to the Masoretic text; Jewish Publication Society 1917. Cross References: Genesis 7:1; Proverbs 6:34; Proverbs 10:2; Ezekiel 7:19; Zephaniah 1:18

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Notes: Simply put, financial security means nothing to God when the calendar reads, “the day of wrath.” If a person is not forgiven in Christ Jesus, it won't matter what his net worth is. If a person dies in his sin the wrath of Almighty God abides upon him and no amount of money can pay God off.

[unlovablereject]

New Torah! Had to get a smaller one to take with me. I thought having it on my phone would work, but, nah. It's not the same.

I love this Torah so far, JPS' newest version, I believe.

My favorite is still the Torah's from my Shul. I guess it's just comfort, maybe?

[glossahistorica]

"Morning Calls." - Hats, gloves, accessories and their wearing or leaving, for men.

 A gentleman, when calling, as a matter of course, takes his hat in his hand with him into the drawing-room, and holds it until he has seen the mistress of the house, and shaken hands with her. He would either then place his hat on a chair or table near at hand or hold it until he took his leave, according as to whether he felt at ease or the reverse.  He would not put his hat on until in the hall; as, in the house, a gentleman never puts on his hat in the presence of its mistress.  To leave his hat in the hall would be considered a liberty, and in very bad taste; only the members of a family residing in the same house would leave their hats in the hall, or enter the drawing-room without their hats in their hands. The fact of hanging up the hat in the hall proves that the owner of the hat is at home there.  At "at homes," small five o'clock teas, luncheons, dinners, &c., the rule is reversed, and hats are left in the hall by invited guests; the invitation constituting the difference. A gentleman would take his stick with him into the drawing room, or a small umbrella, if it answered the purpose of a stick.  When gentlemen wear gloves, which in the country they seldom or never do, except when driving, and in town almost as seldom, they would draw off the right hand glove at least before entering the drawing-room; but if they preferred to remain gloved—although it is not so courteous to do so—they need offer no apology when shaking hands with the lady, or allude to their gloves in any way.

Manners and Tone of Good Society; or Solecisms to be Avoided, A Member of the Aristocracy, c.1886 (13th edition) [x] (Paragraphing added.)

Please note that this advice accords with the late part of the century, and social mores with regards to the frequency of glove wearing among men changed significantly over the period; ie. men of earlier decades wore gloves more often, and likewise following.

Also worth bearing in mind, the etiquette may have been modified for Jewish men. Yarmulke/kippah-wearing customs varied widely in the 19th century (see this great page for more) and many Jews, particularly in the emerging reform movement, seem to have not worn kippot at all, or only for religious services, but for those who did wear them, the kippot of the time were often larger than the skull-caps of today, and were not easily kept underneath a hat. According to illustrations and accounts of the time, Jewish men in Britain typically wore their top hats indoors to synagogue services.

A flow-chart for your hat quandaries follows.

[shoezuki]

writing my final essay on the Beat Generation rn and that whole literary movement in america. and my essay topic is basically me arguing that bob kaufman Fucks and was the best beat. because tbh he was

but this also like. contains a lot of my distaste for the beat movement and that this course has really made me more.... like. i dont really like the beat movement much? i mean the biggest aspect of it, of the idea of freedom and no responsibility or consequences is somethin i dont like. most the other shit, bout sexual freedom and movement and anticapitalist n antimaterialist notions are all good. but the beats are just so inherently American. the underlying idea of freedom is SO inherently american in terms of like... the idea of it. its so very 'i can do whatever i want, whenever i want, and i dont care if it hurts other people because i value my freedom over the consequences or responsibilities i would be expected to assume.' its this idea of freedom in terms of absolute individuality and its far too self absorbed for me.

but another Issue i take w it was like. the movement was heavily inspired by black culture, and all about defying social norms and rejecting conformity. but there was still a major issue with norms in the movement itself or at least in terms of how media perceived it. like yes it was about liberty and freedom but also all the most well known beat writers are white dudes. many of them like kerouac held views of women as inherently lesser still.

and like. in that regard most of the most known beats who are like. THE beat writers. were kinda hypocrites. like kerouac didnt think women could write and when he met one woman who was a good writers he saw her as an exception. and with burroughs he was like, from an extremely wealthy family and was given an 'allowance' his whole life and never had to work and so his rejection of capitalism and the job market feels flat in that he can say all that from a place of privilege.

i mentioned it to my professor when we'd talk bout it but honestly the most authentic beats who didnt seem hypocritical or make the movement feel hypocritical to me were those who were marginalized and didnt have a choice in rejecting society. like allen ginsberg was one the Big Beats as well and to me he is the most Beat out of the main three of him and burroughs and kerouac. cuz ginsberg was an openly gay man in a long term relationship, he was jewish and lived on the fringes of 'acceptable' american society as an outlier.

it especially goes for bob kaufman. he was always left out of the beat movement and ignored and even in modern times doesnt really get the credit and recognition that he deserves. but holy fuck if anyone was ACTUALLY beat it was him! he was a black man with a jewish father. he created poetry without ever really writing it down besides on napkins and would 'perform' his poetry on streets and yelling out poems or sticking his head in peoples cars. he did not ever seek out publishing his work and he purposefully would confuse any publishers and would lie about himself and his life so even now some of the aspects of his biography is confusing. he wanted to be forgotten! he was never concerned with actually carrying on his work or creating it and there was something beautiful in that. he was constnatly accosted by police to the point that specific officers would harass and abuse him whenever they felt like it. he actually experienced a lot of the bullshit and hardships the beats rejected and criticised. many white beat writers chose to reject social norms, but he had no choice! theres something so much more authentic about the rejection of society when you by virtue of existing cant even exist within societal norms itself.

he was just. such an interesting dude. and the beat movement abandoned him because he was too far on the fringes of society that the public couldnt accept him. motherfucker wanted that, in a way, though. like he took back his silencing by silencing himself. he wasnt being forgotten or silenced or ostracized anymore, because he wanted to be forgotten.

[kafkaesquetwink]

the thing about antisemitism that offends me the most (outside of, you know, horrific violence) is the sense of *ownership* over judaism from non-jewish, especially (in my experience) christian, society. it’s the evangelicals holding seders and the atheists casually joking about “YHWH”. it’s the sense that to them, jews are nothing but a prequel. we are irrelevant, and therefore in the public domain. in more overt examples, it’s holocaust inversion and jokes about “the goyim”. they look at us and say, “all that was yours now belongs to me.” it’s the assumption that our life and culture is open to all, and that we are somehow greedy by not letting them have it.

when we do exist to christian society, it’s as a means to an end: “good thing the jews are still around, otherwise how would they all be gathered in zion?”, or its being treated as a relic, as living replicas of the Old Times: “those silly jews, they’re stuck living in the past!”

it’s dehumanizing, and frustrating, and i hate it.

we had avraham first. we had yaakov and sarai and it is. still. ours. you shouldn’t get to pretend like we don’t exist anymore. we aren’t extinct, no matter how hard some people wished we were, and that isn’t going to change.

[wiisagi-maiingan]

The thing about this whole Musk thing is that everyone is acting so shocked, like this came out of nowhere, and that level of surprise is only possible if you've been plugging your ears and ignoring the violent and rapid rise of antisemitism and pretending like conservatives and Far Right give a single fuck about Jews.

If you've been paying any attention to what Jewish people have been saying, instead of accusing them of "crying antisemitism" and comparing them to Nazis and justifying their increased exclusion from public life and society and spreading horrific blood libel, then you should not be surprised in the slightest. This was seen coming from a mile away and Jews have been begging for people to pay attention, to care, only to be accused of making things up or wanting to be oppressed or trying to distract from Palestine.

The complete refusal from liberals and leftists to acknowledge antisemitism in any meaningful way, to actually give a single fuck about Jews and Jewish lives and Jewish safety, is one of many reasons why Trump is in office. One of many reasons why Musk has actual power now. One of many reasons why these absolute fucking jokes, these billionaire children who have only gotten to this point by throwing around money they didn't even earn themselves, are now chomping at the bit to drag the US into being a fascist dictatorship and throw us all into WWIII.

And even as I'm writing this, I know the people this is about will not notice or care because they've convinced themselves that this could never ever apply to them, that they're one of the Good Ones™ and so they could never be bigoted or do bigoted things, so they'll reblog this post and never consider that it could be about them. It's miserable and exhausting and it feels like nothing is ever going to change and that antisemitism will always be something the world is united on.

[ramlionbam]

thinks about how jews are hypervisible and yet hyper invisible. how we are always being spoken of and in the public mind and grouped with "abrahamic religions" yet how people know so little about our actual culture, religion, history. how people know about the holocaust but don't know why it happened. how people know the word "antisemitism" and say they don't support it but don't believe it's still a real problem. how people know jews exist but don't think about how antithetical to jewish life their christian societies are, how few jews there are. how people assume jews are just diet christians, just special white people, both to be made hypervisible as the supposed symbol of the wrongs of white christian hegemony and to be made hyper invisible victims of it.

[shulkatze]

I bought this book on thriftbooks and I think it was a gift to its previous owners by the co-author of the book 😳

[unsolicited-opinions]

Leftist antisemitism is a symptom - American Jews and the Illiberal Left

TLDR: I think we would be wise to stop regarding leftist antisemitism only in its own context and habitually recognize it is a part of a larger issue, the rise of the illiberal left.

Why are Jews are the most reliable supporters of Liberal policies and politicians in modern American history?

Haviv Rettig Gur seems to suggest that Jews in the US, recognizing that Liberal values resulted in their (imperfect but historic) emancipation in the US, became perhaps the most Liberal people ever. They understood that US Liberal values were what made Jews relatively safe in the US, and offered them opportunities which had been denied to them everywhere else.

When previously did a head of state speak to Jews the way George Washington did?

Gur suggests that this is why American Jews have historically been so invested in the struggle of black folks in the US. When I say invested, I'm talking about facts like these:

- Henry Moscowitz was one of the founders of the NAACP.

- Kivie Kaplan, a vice-chairman of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (now called the Union for Reform Judaism), served as the national president of the NAACP from 1966 to 1975.

- From 1910 to 1940, more than 2,000 primary and secondary schools and 20 Black colleges (including Howard, Dillard and Fisk universities) were established in whole or in part by contributions from Jewish philanthropist Julius Rosenwald. At the height of the so-called "Rosenwald schools," nearly 40 percent of Black people in the south were educated at one of these institutions.

- Jews made up half of the young people who participated in the Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964.

- Leaders of the Reform Movement were arrested with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in St. Augustine, Florida in 1964 after a challenge to racial segregation in public accommodations.

- Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marched arm-in-arm with Dr. King in his 1965 March on Selma.

- The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were drafted in the conference room of Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, under the aegis of the Leadership Conference, which for decades was located in the RAC's building.

When I was a child and asked my mother why Jews seemed overwhelmingly to be Democrats, I was told "because of FDR and the Civil Rights movement." That's not wrong, in Gur's framing, but perhaps a more shallow response than the question deserves.

In Gur's framing, US Jews realized that the promises of Liberalism, over and over, no matter how much they delivered for other peoples, did not deliver for black Americans.

Gur suggests that US Jews worked to see that change for their black co-citizens because if American Liberalism didn't deliver for black Americans what it appeared to promise to all Americans, the sense of safety, security, and belonging which Jews felt in the US was an illusion.

US Jews believed that we had common cause with non-Jewish American Liberals. We thought non-Jewish liberals believed what we believed about universal civil rights, pluralism, enlightenment values and enlightenment reason. When Jews saw the "In this House We Believe" signs on our neighbors' lawns, We felt comforted because those beliefs are also our beliefs.

We thought, for instance, that our non-Jewish friends agreed that Liberal democracies were better for human rights than any form of government in the history of human societies. We thought they agreed that religious, racial, and ethnic intolerance were social ills which needed to be fought with information. We thought they valued data, reason, and reliable sources.

Since 10/7/23, we've been learning that we were mistaken. We've seen gentiles who we thought shared our values seem to discard those values.

We saw college educated friends share antisemitic (and alarmingly familiar) conspiracy theories about Israeli puppetry of US politics and the return of Nazi and Soviet antisemitic slogans/images.

We've seen highly educated "Liberals" preach ahistoric nonsense denying that the Jewish people are from the Levant and willfully ignoring the huge swaths of historical fact which don't support their favored narrative.

We've seen friends rage against "globalists" and "Zionists," when what they mean is 'Jews'.

We've seen people who we thought were allies against all forms of racism justify their racism towards Jews as righteous through specious reasoning like 'I don't hate Jews, just the 97% of Jews who believe that Jews should have self-determination in their homeland.'

We've been told that we cannot ask them to temper their use of antisemitic tropes, because doing so "weaponizes" concerns about antisemitism to obstruct them from their righteous crusade against the most evil nation on earth...which happens to be the only Jewish nation.

Despite this, about 80% of Jewish voters voted for Harris over Trump.

I think US Jews will continue to be Liberals, because Liberal values are dear to us and aligned with our values as Jews, as a historically oppressed minority, and as Americans who see more clearly than some others the gap between the promise of American liberalism and its long-delayed universal delivery.

The problem, I think, is in how many of our former friends simply aren't Liberals any longer.

I think Jews in the US need to spend a good deal more time scrutinizing the illiberal left.

Nine days after the attacks of 10/7/23, Jonathan Chait wrote:

Writers like Michelle Goldberg, Julia Ioffe, and my colleague Eric Levitz, all of whom rank among the writers I most admire, have written anguished columns about the alienation of Jewish progressives from the far left. I think all their points are totally correct. But I find the frame of their response too narrow. They are treating apologias for Hamas as a factually or logically flawed application of left-wing ideals. I believe, to the contrary, that Hamas defenders are applying their own principles correctly. The problem is the principles themselves.

...

Liberals believe political rights are universal. Basic principles like democracy, free speech, and human rights apply equally to all people, without regard to the content of their political values. (This of course very much includes Palestinians, who deserve the same rights as Jews or any other people, and whose humanity is habitually ignored by Israeli conservatives and their American allies.) A liberal would abhor the use of political violence or repression, however evil the targets.

...

The illiberal left believes treating everybody equally, when the power is so unequal, merely serves to maintain existing structures of power. It follows from their critique that the legitimacy of a tactic can only be assessed with reference to whether it is being used by the oppressor or the oppressed. Is it okay for, say, a mob of protesters to shout down a lecture? Liberals would say no. Illiberal leftists would need to know who was the speaker and who was the mob before they could answer.

...

One observation I’ve shared with many analysts well to my left is that the debate over this illiberalism and the social norms it has spawned — demands for deference in the name of allyship, describing opposing ideas as a form of harm, and so on — has tracked an older debate within the left over communism. Communism provided real-world evidence of how an ideology that denies political rights to anybody deemed to be the oppressor laid the theoretical groundwork for repression and murder.

There have been conscious echoes of this old divide in the current dispute over Hamas. The left-wing historian Gabriel Winant has a column in Dissent urging progressives not to mourn dead Israeli civilians because that sentiment will be used to advance the Zionist project. Winant sounds eerily like an old communist fellow traveler explaining that the murders of the kulaks or the Hungarian nationalists are the necessary price of defending the revolution. “The impulse, repeatedly called ‘humane’ over the past week, to find peace by acknowledging equally the losses on all sides rests on a fantasy that mourning can be depoliticized,” he argues, calling such soft-minded sentiment “a new Red Scare.” Making the perfect omelette always requires some broken eggs in the form of innocent people who made the historical error of belonging to, or perhaps being born into, an enemy class.

But more than three decades have passed since the Soviet Union existed or China’s government was recognizably Marxist. And so the liberal warning about the threat of left-wing illiberalism seemed abstract and bloodless. On October 7, it suddenly became bloody and concrete. It didn’t happen here, of course. The shock of it was that many leftists revealed just how far they would be willing to follow their principles. “People have repeated over and over again over the last few days that you ‘cannot tell Palestinians how to resist,’” notes (without contradicting the sentiment) Arielle Angel, editor-in-chief of the left-wing Jewish Currents. Concepts like this, treating the self-appointed representative of any oppressed group as beyond criticism, are banal on the left. Yet for some progressive Jews, it is shocking to see it extended to the slaughter of babies, even though that is its logical endpoint. The radical rhetoric of decolonization, with its glaring absence of any limiting principles, was not just a rhetorical cover to bully some hapless school administrator into changing the curriculum. Phrases like “by any means necessary” were not just figures of speech. Any means included any means, very much including murder.

Both Julia Ioffe and Eric Levitz have pointed out that decolonization logic ignores the fact that half of Israel’s Jewish population does not have European origins and came to Israel after suffering the same ethnic cleansing as the Palestinians. This is correct. But what if it weren’t? If every Israeli Jew descended from Ashkenazi stock, would it be okay to shoot their babies?

The problem is much greater than leftist antisemitism. The illiberal left has become nearly as great a threat to Liberalism as the far right.

It is often the case that a movement’s treatment of Jews serves as a broader indicator of its health. It’s not an accident that the Republican Party has become more attractive to antisemites as it has grown more paranoid and authoritarian. What the far left revealed about its disposition toward Jews is not just a warning for the Jews but a warning for all progressives who care about democracy and humanity. The pro-Hamas left is not merely indicating an indifference toward Jews. It is revealing the illiberal left’s inherent cruelty, repression, and inhumanity.

I'm annoyed that it is has taken me so long to catch on and alarmed by the implications.

I am, however, very proud of my 14yo, who sums up her experience trying to respectfully disagree with leftists this way:

"They're allergic to nuance."

[boreal-sea]

This is why I do not call for the destruction or dismantling of countries. This is why I am wary and judgmental of those of you who do.

You sound like my right-wing father. You sound like the worst of American society.

I grew up in the 90’s. I grew up during a military operation called “Desert Storm”. To most people, they know it as the Gulf War. I grew up with a military father. I grew up with right-wing rhetoric. I grew up with someone who called for the destruction of countries.

“Glass the Middle East and turn it into a parking lot” was a very common sentiment at the time, and not just from my father. By “glass”, people mean to bomb these countries (many of which are deserts) so brutally that the sand itself melts into glass.

It is a call for genocide. It is the call for the dismantling of entire countries because their governments were “too evil”.

(Of course, that’s just the line the public was fed. Behind the scenes, it was also largely about access to oil, and we all know that)

The Gulf War was specifically about Iraq, but let’s be clear: Americans did not give a fuck which country it was, “The Middle East” was talked about as a single entity that was evil because it was Muslim. The civilians of these countries were simultaneously evil guerrilla combatants (because they were Muslim) and victims needing “liberation” by Americans. American soldiers were described as bringing “freedom” to the poor oppressed ignorant people of the Middle East. My father still hates all Muslims to this day.

10 years later, 9/11 happened.

Time will never erase the stomach-clenching fear I felt. Not fear of Saudi Arabia. I was 17 by then and I knew better. No, I was afraid FOR them, because I knew what America would do, and I hated it. I saw the people all around me once again calling for the destruction of a country, a government, and deciding America had the right to do it. I watched people froth at the mouth and pound their chests the chance to attack another middle eastern country. Islamophobic propaganda was absolutely everywhere, and life in America for anyone even suspected of being Muslim was a living hell.

So do excuse me when I side-eye you as you call for Israel’s destruction. Excuse me if I roll my eyes when you claim Hamas are “freedom fighters”. Excuse me when I hear you spreading blatant antisemitic propaganda like it’s truth. Excuse me as I see you blocking Jewish students on campuses, attacking synagogues, and screaming antisemitic slurs at Jewish school children.

Because at the end of the day, all of you calling for Israel’s destruction sound like my father.. It doesn’t matter what your justification is. I just see the same hatred that has consumed Americans since the 90’s aimed at MENA countries. You’ve just moved on to the next target. I grew up with this hateful rhetoric and I REJECTED it.

Why have you embraced it?

“But this time the country we’ve chosen to hate and that we’re saying deserves to be glassed actually deserves it! This time the civilians really are evil!”

Yeah. Sure.

[jewish-sideblog]

I think people forget that the Nazis never said they were the bad guys. If someone says, hey, I’m evil! You don’t let them take over your country. They presented themselves as scientific, not hateful. By their own account, they were progressives, and the superiority of White Europe over the other races was a proven and immutable fact. They had scientists and archaeologists and historians to prove it. They didn’t tell people they wanted to kill the Jews because they were hateful. They manufactured evidence to frame us for very real tragedies, and they had methodological research to prove that we were genetically predisposed to misconduct. Wouldn’t you believe that?

Hollywood has spent the last 80 years portraying the Nazis as an obvious and intimidating evil. That’s a good thing in some ways, because we want general audiences to recognize that they were evil. But we also want them to be able to recognize how and why they came to power. Not by self-describing themselves as an evil empire, but by convincing people that they were the good guys and the saviors. They hosted the Olympics. Several European countries capitulated and volunteered themselves to the Empire. There were American and British Fascist Parties. They had broad public support. Hollywood never shows that part, so general audiences never learn to recognize the actual signs of antisemitism.

People today think they can’t possibly be antisemitic, because they’re leftist! They abhor bigotry! They could never comprehend Nazi ideology coming from the mouth of a bisexual college student wearing a graphic tee and jeans. How could they? The only depiction of antisemites they’ve ever seen have been gaunt, pale, middle-aged men in black leather trench coats with skulls on their caps.

If the Nazis time-travelled from the 1930s and wanted to take power now, they’d change their original tactics, but not by much. They would target countries suffering from an identity crisis and an economic collapse. They would portray themselves as the pinnacle of what that society considers progressive. Back then, it was race science. These days it’s performative wokeness. Once they’d garnered enough respect and reputation, they’d begin manufacturing propaganda and lies to manipulate people’s anger and fears at a single target— Jews.

If the Nazis made an actual return, they wouldn’t look like neo-Nazis. They wouldn’t be nearly as obvious about their hatred. Their evil wouldn’t give them yellow eyes, and no suspenseful music would play when they walked in the room. They’d be friendly. They’d look like you. They would learn what things your community fears and what things you already hate. They would lie and fabricate evidence to connect the rich elites and the imperialists you revile to a single source of unequivocal Jewish evil. It wouldn’t be hard— they already have two-thousand years of institutional antisemitism they can rely on to paint their picture.

If you’re curious why antisemitism today is coming from grassroots organizations, young, liberal college campuses, suburban neighborhoods with pride flags and All Are Welcome Here signs? That’s why. It’s because, as a global society, we’ve forgotten that the world didn’t used to see the Nazis as bad guys. And what is forgotten about history is doomed to be repeated.

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

The Great Flood

1 And the LORD said unto Noah: ‘Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before Me in this generation. 2 Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee seven and seven, each with his mate; and of the beasts that are not clean two [and two], each with his mate; 3 of the fowl also of the air, seven and seven, male and female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth. 4 For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I blot out from off the face of the earth.’ 5 And Noah did according unto all that the LORD commanded him.

6 And Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was upon the earth. 7 And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons’ wives with him, into the ark, because of the waters of the flood. 8 Of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls, and of every thing that creepeth upon the ground, 9 there went in two and two unto Noah into the ark, male and female, as God commanded Noah. 10 And it came to pass after the seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth. 11 In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. 12 And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.

13 In the selfsame day entered Noah, and Shem, and Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and Noah’s wife, and the three wives of his sons with them, into the ark; 14 they, and every beast after its kind, and all the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth after its kind, and every fowl after its kind, every bird of every sort. 15 And they went in unto Noah into the ark, two and two of all flesh wherein is the breath of life. 16 And they that went in, went in male and female of all flesh, as God commanded him; and the LORD shut him in. 17 And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bore up the ark, and it was lifted up above the earth. 18 And the waters prevailed, and increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark went upon the face of the waters. 19 And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high mountains that were under the whole heaven were covered. 20 Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered. 21 And all flesh perished that moved upon the earth, both fowl, and cattle, and beast, and every swarming thing that swarmeth upon the earth, and every man; 22 all in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life, whatsoever was in the dry land, died. 23 And He blotted out every living substance which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and creeping thing, and fowl of the heaven; and they were blotted out from the earth; and Noah only was left, and they that were with him in the ark. 24 And the waters prevailed upon the earth a hundred and fifty days. — Genesis 7 | JPS Tanakh 1917 (JPST) The Holy Scriptures according to the Masoretic text; Jewish Publication Society 1917. Cross References: Genesis 1:21; Genesis 1:25; Genesis 2:7; Genesis 5:32; Genesis 6:7; Genesis 6:19-20; Genesis 6:22; Genesis 8:1-2; Genesis 8:3-4; Matthew 24:37,38 and 39; Luke 1:6; 2 Peter 3:6

Genesis 7:1-24 "The Great Worldwide Flood"

[dostoyevsky-official]

Despite its public portrayal of itself, the ADL isn’t a civil rights group in any meaningful sense, but rather, a veiled pro-Israel lobbying organization that uses superficial language of inclusiveness and anti-racism to defend Israel from criticism from the left. The ADL has made it clear on a number of occasions that it considers the entire basis of the peaceful Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement — embraced by virtually all of Palestinian civil society — to be hate speech, specifically any claim that denies Israel’s ​“existence as a Jewish state” (e.g. its claim to ethnonational supremacy over non-Jews living in Palestine). The ADL’s website clearly states, ​“Anti-Israel activity crosses the line to anti-Semitism” with any statement that ​“Israel is denied the right to exist as a Jewish state,” and that ​“the founding goals of the BDS movement and many of the strategies used by BDS campaigns are anti-Semitic.” The ADL smearing Black activists who oppose Israel isn’t new. In the 1960s, the ADL harshly criticized the Black-led Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Black Panthers for their criticisms of Israel, equating these ​“negro extremists” with the KKK and American Nazi Party. The ADL also worked with the Israeli government in the 1960s, ​‘70s and ​‘80s to spy on Arab groups, as well as leftwing anti-South African apartheid activists. As Pulitzer Prize-winning author Glenn Frankel noted in Foreign Policy magazine in 2010, ​“The Anti-Defamation League participated in a blatant propaganda campaign against Nelson Mandela and the ANC in the mid 1980s and employed an alleged ​‘fact-finder’ named Roy Bullock to spy on the anti-apartheid campaign in the United States — a service he was simultaneously performing for the South African government. The ADL defended the white regime’s purported constitutional reforms while denouncing the ANC as ​‘totalitarian anti-humane, anti-democratic, anti-Israel, and anti-American.’”

[marchwardenofmordor]

Since people liked my post about the new Nosferatu film, I’m gonna go a little more in depth about some of the things that REALLY stood out to me

- The sound design of his voice and the blood drinking: a fucking genius choice. Each horrific rattling inhale before he speaks and the way he trails off at the end of his sentences because he’s manually breathing for the EXPRESS PURPOSE OF SPEAKING. That monotone is fucking perfect because he sound like the air is being squeezed out of him with each word. The monstrous gulping and slurping as he drinks blood is great because it sounds equal parts disgusting and sexual.

- I think, as a personification of shame, that he is SUPPOSED to make you want to crawl out of your own skin. The moaning, the nudity, the squelchy sounds… if you went to the cinema to see it, I think the idea was to make you blush and perhaps have a bit of a bodily reaction that would have you glancing around at other people in embarrassment. Not everybody is going to want him, but he will tap into the shame of witnessing something sexual in public. If we take the particular time period the film is set in, too, I think he’s supposed to have us clutching our pearls, making us collectively hearken back to the victorian attitudes towards sex and shame.

- You know what else is great about putting us in that mindset as an audience? It makes us remember that talking about sex and death are still considered shameful and taboo - the Victorian period really wasn’t that long ago, and some aspects of that history still casts its shadow of shame over us. But as ashamed as we are, we’re also curious creatures.

- Sex and death are very closely linked. Again, a little death being a term for an orgasm, the fact that indole is a chemical that both repels and attracts us (the scent is commonly used in perfumery, and in small amounts, smells alluring and seductive, like white florals, or the literal smell of sex, but in large concentrations smells fucking rancid, like rotting bodies). When we die, our brains release a rush of endorphins, etc. Dead bodies have a ‘sweet’ smell before they begin rotting - again, that’s probably indole, and would explain some of the subconscious urges of a necrophiliac.

- He is also called ‘death’ multiple times, and we know that a little fraction of his power is bringing ‘la petit mort’ (a little death / orgasm) to his victims.

- Even rats are symbolic here of sex, death and disease: we know terms like ‘multiplying like rats’ obviously, and how rats are symbolic of the plague (even though it was the fleas that caused it). The presence of the rats and the cries of townsfolk about ‘disease’ and ‘plague’ are less like the actual literal plague, and - considering that Orlok is ‘shame’ - more like a metaphorical miasma sweeping through victorian society, reinforcing ideas of shame and purity and what is or is not proper.

- Bodily fluids!! There are tears, there’s cum, considering the rats (again) there’s excrement (also on the walls of the cell in the asylum??), and with the Renfield-type character there’s also saliva. This isn’t just for shock/horror - the main fluid shown is blood, and in the mindset of a victorian christian (historically, blood transfusions could only really be shared between a man and a woman who were married because blood was a life-giving bodily fluid likened to the life-sowing fluid of semen), the idea of a blood-drinking monster was fucking horrific and blasphemous, sinful beyond measure.

- Orlok’s appearance and the treatment of the G*psies in the town (once more - “bringing shame to this inn!” Likening them to the vampire) is indicative of the xenophobia and prejudice towards Romani Jewish people of the time period, where white victorian christians feared Romani people as being ‘child-stealing’, ‘blood-drinking’ (again, look up Blood Libel) barbarians prone to SA (stereotypes which sadly persist today), but also fetishised them as mystics. (I did my university dissertation on ‘boho’ tattoos, cultural appropriation and the origins of the ‘boho’ aesthetic and why it is just ✨not it✨ but I won’t go into that in depth because my analysis was literally over 5000 words)

- I love that the message at the end was basically ‘the only way to kill your shame is to lay with it, to accept it and love it’ - which is honestly true. If you learn to accept uncomfortable aspects of yourself and face them, they no longer have any sort of power over you.

- The female protagonist is dressed all in white, indicative of her purity and chastity, and it’s interesting to see how her wardrobe gradually darkens throughout the film, showing her becoming quite monstrous herself in one particular scene where she rips open the top of her dress and demands Thomas to ‘take her’, up until the final scene, where she is stark naked and covered in blood. Honestly wicked. I love a good corruption. Her character is so symbolic of the struggle of someone who is deeply repressed and chastised for her desires. Desires which started innocently and then - through suppression in an oppressive society and household (her father discovering her naked and screaming at her for being sinful)- were twisted and given form as something monstrous that literally eats away at her and those around her, because she brings her shame wherever she goes, and in the end, even though she faces it and sets an example, it ultimately kills her to do so.

- Also notice how NOBODY fucking listens to her. And every time nobody listens to her, Orlok grows stronger as she grows angrier and more frustrated. They’re feeding him by ignoring her. It’s sad that they look at her in the end, and deem her ‘sacrifice’ as noble, only really paying attention to her once she is dead, with her shame laying on top of her, crushing her. This is the torment of the Victorian Woman, told that she must deal with her problems alone by the male characters.

Edit: Also because the film is German in origin, I’d recommend looking up the ‘Nachzehrer’ creature - a ghoulish vampire-esque creature that would rise from the grave to drag its victims into death with it through various means, known to devour its own funeral shroud, rendering it naked. Fun fact: it was said that if a corpse was clutching its left thumb in its right hand with the left eye open (I think? It’s been a while since I researched it), it would rise as a Nachzehrer. They are also thought to be able to drain their victim’s life force remotely. The threat was said to be particularly great if the living gave the Nachzehrer a personal affectation - in the case of Orlok, it would be Thomas giving him the locket containing Ellen’s hair.

[rotzaprachim]

I think a lot of people - both Jews and gentiles - need to reckon with the fact that not only are Zionism and antizionism terms that are pretty damn ambiguous in practice, they’re ALSO essentially, not only words, but collections of syllables that have been given the social power to destroy the entire public conception of a persons’ morality. Like people can just say words. They’ve been given so much social power that they can just be used to destroy a whole person, a whole Jewish person, no matter what that person actually thinks about the issue. You don’t like Joe with the ✡️ in his profile? Call him a Zionist. You hate (((Rachel))) Literally just say that, despite her avowed identification as an antizionist Jew, she’s actually a secret liberal Zionist. Jews may hold all sorts of complex opinions about the issue, but to an extent their own personal feelings and moral view on this issue don’t matter within the external Zionist/antizionist dichotomy because of the extent that society has tapped into the millennia long tradition of viewing all jews as sketchy liars to no longer allow us the grace to define ourselves and allow for more nuanced conversations. Like. There’s no irl moral purity exam or card for determining if a Jew is an antizionist or Zionist or not.

every “I hate Zionists not Jews” gentile on the internet, no matter their own ethic or religious background or their own feelings on the issue, NEEDS to account for the power they’ve given the word “zionist” to indicate a bad and untrustworthy, even murderable person, and the fact that literally any Jew can be Labelled one NO MATTER WHAT their actual opinions on the matter are and for basically any reason. What does it mean when the entire morality of a member of a group can be destroyed by a single word? and every Jew who has taken part in this needs to consider that they, too, can be ruined by a word

[fem-lit]

In the current epidemic of rich Western women who cannot “choose” to eat, we see the continuation of an older, poorer tradition of women’s relation to food. Modern Western female dieting descends from a long history. Women have always had to eat differently from men: less and worse. In Hellenistic Rome, reports classicist Sarah B. Pomeroy, boys were rationed sixteen measures of meal to twelve measures allotted to girls. In medieval France, according to historian John Boswell, women received two thirds of the grain allocated to men. Throughout history, when there is only so much to eat, women get little, or none: A common explanation among anthropologists for female infanticide is that food shortage provokes it. According to UN publications, where hunger goes, women meet it first: In Bangladesh and Botswana, female infants die more frequently than male, and girls are more often malnourished, because they are given smaller portions. In Turkey, India, Pakistan, North Africa, and the Middle East, men get the lion’s share of what food there is, regardless of women’s caloric needs. “It is not the caloric value of work which is represented in the patterns of food consumption” of men in relation to women in North Africa, “nor is it a question of physiological needs…. Rather these patterns tend to guarantee priority rights to the ‘important’ members of society, that is, adult men.” In Morocco, if women are guests, “they will swear they have eaten already” or that they are not hungry. “Small girls soon learn to offer their share to visitors, to refuse meat and deny hunger.” A North African woman described by anthropologist Vanessa Mahler assured her fellow diners that “she preferred bones to meat.” Men, however, Mahler reports, “are supposed to be exempt from facing scarcity which is shared out among women and children.”

“Third World countries provide examples of undernourished female and well-nourished male children, where what food there is goes to the boys of the family,” a UN report testifies. Two thirds of women in Asia, half of all women in Africa, and a sixth of Latin American women are anemic—through lack of food. Fifty percent more Nepali women than men go blind from lack of food. Cross-culturally, men receive hot meals, more protein, and the first helpings of a dish, while women eat the cooling leftovers, often having to use deceit and cunning to get enough to eat. “Moreover, what food they do receive is consistently less nutritious.”

This pattern is not restricted to the Third World: Most Western women alive today can recall versions of it at their mothers’ or grandmothers’ table: British miners’ wives eating the grease-soaked bread left over after their husbands had eaten the meat; Italian and Jewish wives taking the part of the bird no one else would want.

These patterns of behavior are standard in the affluent West today, perpetuated by the culture of female caloric self-deprivation. A generation ago, the justification for this traditional apportioning shifted: Women still went without, ate leftovers, hoarded food, used deceit to get it—but blamed themselves. Our mothers still exiled themselves from the family circle that was eating cake with silver cutlery off Wedgwood china, and we would come upon them in the kitchen, furtively devouring the remains. The traditional pattern was cloaked in modern shame, but otherwise changed little. Weight control became its rationale once natural inferiority went out of fashion.

— Naomi Wolf (1990) The Beauty Myth