#Jewish custom

[edenfenixblogs]

re: your comment about the misinterpretation and misuse of "tikkun olam" by non-Jews, could you please explain what it *does* mean? I've heard that it roughly translates to repairing the world (like with Rabbi Tarfon's "it is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you at liberty to neglect it"), but idk if that's what it actually is or not (sorry if any phrasing is weird, i've been awake for way too long today)

Your understanding is correct.

It does mean repairing the world. This means doing charity and choosing kindness whenever possible and generally doing small and large things without recognition in order to leave the world better than you found it. Plant a tree. Read at a nursing home. Save all your loose change for ten years then donate that amount to a cause you care about. Make kindness that helps others heal a part of your daily practice. This is tikkun olam.

I have seen bigots who consider themselves progressive try to goysplain tikkun olam as Jews attempting to impose their idea of perfection on the world around them and that we use it to justify violence. I have seen people say that Jews consider the bombing of Gaza and Rafah to be the ideal practice of tikkun olam. And it is a blatantly and horrifically false and disingenuous to say this. Tikkun olam is my absolute favorite aspect of my faith. I wake up and choose kindness and peace every single day and have since I learned about this concept. It is not always easy, but it is always worth it.

And to see others pervert it into something violent and to associate that violence as synonymous with Jewish religious ideology is truly one of the most painful things I’ve experienced in this conflict and one of the most bigoted things I’ve experienced in my life.

[askjumblr]

Hello! I have a question about acceptable challah covers (I want to make one for my family). I know it needs to be big enough to cover two loaves and cannot be translucent, but how completely does it have to cover the loaves?

Like am I allowed to have small decorative holes? If so, how many? And how big? I’ve seen fillet crochet challah covers (see below) before, but I’m not sure they’re technically allowed.

.

[historicalfictionsims]

Zipporah's Vest & Audition Dresses - BGC

In honor of May being Jewish American Heritage Month, I wanted to make a couple of outfits inspired by Zipporah Feldman from the Dear America diary Dreams in the Golden Country. Zippy is a Russian Jewish immigrant who settles in New York City and discovers a passion for Yiddish theatre. 

If you remember several months ago, I made a poll with various decades. The 1900s won, but I just couldn’t settle on a project idea. Six months later, I present my 3k followers gift!

These outfits come from the made-for-TV adaptation that I used to watch all the time as a kid on VHS (yes, I am that old). The dress on the left is styled various ways, but I liked it best with the collar down and vest. There is a little wonkiness on the sleeve meshes, but it's hard to tell from the front. The dress on the right is what she wears during a theatre audition, hence the name. The canon swatch doesn't show the details as well as most of the others. I made T-E and child versions of each dress.

Swatches are in my Combined Diary palette, plus Mothz patterns and @trillyke's plaids and patterns.

Download for free on Patreon | SFS

Download vest dress for free on CurseForge: Adult | Child

Download audition dress for free on CurseForge: Adult | Child

Support me on Patreon or buy me a coffee?

Feel free to tag me if you use them, I’d love to see! My TOU are here.

[queer-jewish-spoonie]

Today at work I rang up an older Jewish lady. I noticed her magen david, and complimented it. She froze for a second and then relaxed, and asked me where mine was. I showed her my necklace and we had a short conversation. She said that she could tell all the way from the queue line that I was Jewish. At one point she said, "these days we just want to-" and she closed her shirt a bit to hide her magen. I wish I weren't so socially awkward because instead of nodding along, I would have told her, "no, we can't hide, not anymore, not again." I wish I could have hugged her and told her how much she- a total stranger- means to me. Every time I run into another Jew when I'm not expecting it, it takes my breath away. I'm reminded of why I converted- because I fell in love with Judaism, the Jewish people, Jewish culture, Jewish everything. Jews, I love you so much. We are amazing. We have each other. עם ישראל חי

[onlytiktoks]

[jewreallythinkthat]

I love that Judaism focusses so much on the here and now of our actions rather than what happens after death. I think it's so important that so many beliefs and rules are about how we live and not how we die because at the end of the day, how we live impacts other while how we die, in theory, does not (obviously grief etc but physically the way I die shouldn't really have a material affect on others, unlike living my life to help and raise other up).

I honestly think it's something a lot of people struggle to understand as the dominant global religions of Christianity and Islam put so much importance on heaven and hell and like... Should those exist, then that's a problem for me once I get there. I cannot believe a good and loving G-d would send someone to hell when they have led a life to better the world however that same person didn't believe in the right deity? I cannot understand the idea that faith will protect you from all sins and negative actions - that you could harm and hurt but because you believe in G-d then all of that is forgiven and completely fine.

It's why I find the notion of atonement and forgiveness in Judaism so healing and important. If you have harmed your fellow man, they are the one who must grant forgiveness if you are truly apologetic, not G-d and not a priest. It is only after you have shown true contrition for what you have done, and tried to make amends, that you can go to G-d for forgiveness. The only person who can grant forgiveness is the one harmed and you have to face up to that. The idea that a priest can just relieve you of the harm you've caused someone else is so insulting to me. That they could still be hurting and confused and dinstead of trying to find out why and growing as a person, you leave them in that state to satiate your own need for release from the guilt.

I feel lucky to be from a people who value our time on earth as important and not just a temporary sojourn before heaven and a people that understands that to apologise and atone, you must face up to what you have done in the realest possible way.

As a note, I am not trying to bash religions. I'm sure there are some with similar views, it's more that I can probably count on one hand the number of times he'll and heaven have been discussed in shul because they are just not the most important thing?

[kai-420gator]

I went insane over this ship and I needed to write a wip for a fanfic that I'll possibly post on ao3, mostly depends if people actually like my writing or are interested in my take on this ship since this is a au I made up

TW:

Suicide

Josh Levy was dead.

Josh Levy was dead and Bill Dickey was at his funeral.

Bill didn't want to believe it at first, wanted to believe that Josh had just quit posting fanfics because of him. That Josh had seen how stupid it was to post anything like fanfics in fandom spaces but when his mother screamed down at the basement that he had gotten mail, a rare thing for him, it worried him since he thought it might be one of his old clients that he had stolen from their collection while 'cleaning' them. But as he was looking at the sender address he didn't recognize other than the last name, 'Levy' he was a bit surprised since he could've sworn that Josh wouldn't have known Greedo318 was him. Bill opened the letter, expecting the letter to be full of anger and whines but his blood ran cold as he read that it was from Josh's father.

The letter detailed that Josh had killed himself a few days ago and that since Bill was Josh's childhood friend, Josh's father hoped that Bill could come to the funeral since even though they had parted on bad terms they were still friends at one point.Bill sat in the back corner of the funeral house as Josh's family are in prayer, Bill felt so out of place as he stared down at the ground. He was wearing a black shirt with black pants and an old dark blue jacket since it was all he can afford and his mother wouldn't give him anymore money. He saw that Josh's family was in the appropriate attire, black suits, and black dresses. Bill felt like he wanted to throw up every time he looked up to see the closed wooden casket that held Josh's body. He wanted to try and make a joke to himself about how his family probably struggled to find a casket big enough for him but for once in his life he felt shame for trying to take a jab a Josh.Bill mostly spaced out until the family started their speeches about Josh's life and how they remembered him, most of the stories were of when Josh was younger, 'more happier' as his family put it but some of the family tired to share stories of how they tried to understand Josh's interests and it almost made Bill laugh about how little they actually knew about him.

After they were done everyone then walked out of the funeral home to wait for the casket to be moved. Bill stood far from everyone else, not knowing what to do as he waited. Bill had his hands in his jacket pockets since he didn't know what to do with his hands, one hand was curled up in a fist while the other held an old Boba Fett head, Bill didn't know why he even kept it after all this time, seven years, seven years of having this head in his pocket, sometimes Bill wonders why he even cared so much. Josh had the body, almost the entire figure except for the head, Bill could've easily just given it to him but a strange part of himself was so reluctant to even think about letting Josh have this one thing.

[is-the-thing-actually-jewish]

When I was a kid my grandma was my only close Jewish relative so I just assumed everything she did was universally Jewish (including the French language) and I'm still trying to figure out which are real- I know it could be a minhag and you wouldn't know, but have y'all ever heard that you have to eat something parve between eating meat and dairy? or was my grandma just trying to make me eat my vegetables before desert?

Rating: Who are we to argue with the wisdom of your mothers? 

We surveyed a range of family, friends, and acquaintances with different minhagim (customs related to religious observance, as distinct from halakha, the requirements of religious law). Some folks wait one, three, or six hours between meat and dairy. Some people say that it’s making the distinction between meals that matters, so if you sit at the Shabbes table all afternoon after a nice cholent lunch and you only clear away the dishes when it’s time for seuda shlisheet, you should not have a dairy meal, but if you have a pastrami with friends and then come home and want ice cream before bed, those are clearly separate things regardless of how many hours it has been. Some people say that you should just brush your teeth between meat and dairy so you don’t accidentally mix meat and milk in your mouth if you’ve got some meat residue between your teeth. However, none of the people we surveyed were familiar with the minhag you have described.

That said! It is still entirely possible that this minhag does exist somewhere— there is, as we said, a range of customs and traditions around this matter, and it’s hard to prove a negative. Furthermore, there is also a Jewish principle of following the practices of your elders when it comes to matters of minhag. It is for this reason that many Ashkenazi Jews today continue to avoid kitniyot on Passover, even though we no longer have the same concerns about mixing up our grains—we are simply following the traditions of our ancestors.

Additionally, there is a rule for eating something parve between dairy and meat, as in dairy first. Unless the dairy is a hard cheese, which takes longer to digest (at least according to the rabbis) you don’t have to wait at all, depending on your custom, but should eat something parve as a “palate cleanser.” See the second paragraph here.

If you assume that the foundational principle of all the various minhagim around eating dairy after meat are about maintaining the clear distinction between the two categories, eating something parve between them is a perfectly cogent position to hold.

And hey, it got you to eat your vegetables.

[shkatzchen]

Happy Hanukkah! Happy New Year! I've been sitting on this for half a year now and I'm glad to finally share it with you all. I actually started this before my Independence Day dress, and this was the reason that I discovered the 'heal' function of Gimp, to remove the flowers so I had a blank canvas to add these Stars of David. I wanted to make a dress my Jewish sims could wear to proudly show off their faith and/or ethnicity, for holidays or just because.

I'm sorry the gif is terrible (this is the best I could do) but, at least it gives some idea of the different colors available.

Requires Cottage Living. Comes in 16 swatches.

Download from SimFileShare here.

Made with S4S.

[petrichoremojis]

IDs in alt

Symbols for: Jewish, halakha, two variants for "born Jew", two variants for "Jewish convert"

The forearm crutches variant of the convert one was self-indulgent, the kippah on a baby variant was just for fun

[certified-pinkwasher]

i <3 my side profile

i love my nose and lips and hair and eyes and cheekbones im jsut so so so so pretty omgggg

[son-of-avraham]

When I was a kid, I used to pitch a tent in my bedroom to sleep in, so you can imagine why sukkot is one of my favorite holidays

[angryjewishcockroach]

I’m laughing so hard because like…what’s stopping anybody from buying a Pez dispenser…sticking the scroll where the candy’s supposed to go…supergluing some sort of a hook to it…and nailing that to your doorpost? 😂

(Available from Modern Tribe)

[eldritch-emojis]

Various religious symbols

Cross | Star of David | Grimoire or Spellbook

can be used for symbols "Christian" , "Jewish" and "Pagan" or simialr

[the-first-man-is-a-cat]

1. Instructions in Mourning Customs

2. Funeral Procession

3. Burial

Manuscript made ca. 1450 - 1500, currently in Princeton University Library.

[feygaleh]

I have a question about that Twitter thread you reblogged (I'm East Asian so I am coming from a point of 0 reference). One its the criticisms of Israel is that it is based on Hebrew and western laws. I'm assuming Hebrew law is a code of ethics based on context, is it specifically associated with Ashkenazi Jewish people? What does that criticism mean in the context of erasing other Jewish cultures?

i read it as based on hebrew (language) and western laws as two separate subjects so maybe im dumb. 😭😭😭 but hebrew being the standard language in israel while also recruiting many jews to move to israel means a dying out of ladino, yiddish, and other jewish languages.

jews in the comments are saying it’s about ~45% ashkies and ~50% sephardi and mizrahi combined. so the message i got from the thread is by combining these cultures for a pan-jewish culture we are inevitably going to be erasing the other parts in one way or another esp if we’re only following one traditional set of laws etc etc etc

idk if i answered the question 100% correctly pls let me know if i misread ur ask

EDIT: these things are not the complete fault of israel. gentiles and the shoah are the biggest oppressors of erasing jewish history and customs. im answering for how israel is complacent