#Rabbi Yohanan

[dadyomi]

Tuesday 2/21, Nazir 29: Tradition? Tradition!

"A halakha learned by tradition cannot be questioned" stated boldly in the middle of a multivolume freeform debate between generations of religious philosophers about literally every aspect of Jewish life is the hottest take I've seen in a minute. Do you know where you are, Rabbi Yohanan? You're stating this in the Question Everything Book!

[travelbasscase]

Ritual impurity isn't impurity in the dirty or unhygienic sense. It's becoming separated from the rest of humanity by your experiences (namely getting close to blood and the cycle of life and death). You're rendered impure by touching a corpse or giving birth, also, and all genital discharges are considered sources of impurity, male and female. The experience of witnessing death, or producing a new life (which was more dangerous in biblical times!), or having the monthly reminder that you can produce a new life takes some time to come back from. That's why we have this. It's not about misogyny (I'm sure it's misused to abuse women, but so's everything. We've got much bigger problems than a tradition that plenty of women find deeply meaningful being used as a weapon by a minority of a minority). It's not like niddah requires you to isolate yourself from society or be shunned. You still have your friends and your family and your community. All it is is you don't intimately touch your husband for the duration of your period (also keep in mind that in the past with different sanitary products women might have been less excited about doing the deed with blood all over), you bathe in the mikveh, you come back home and get freaky (if the period of abstinence doesn't make you eager, Rabbi Yohanan's immense beauty standing outside the mikveh will certainly entice you to jump your husband when you get to your house).

this article by myjewishlearning is pretty good

hmm methinks my fellow jews are engaging in some bullshit takes. just bc we are an oppressed minority religion, doesn’t mean our practices can’t be misogynistic and such. judaism isn’t “woker” than other patriarchal religions. and don’t hit me with the “it’s her choice, so it’s empowering!!!” bc you can apply the same logic to mormon tradwives and it’s clear how ridiculous that is.

[spacelazarwolf]

here is the reality. whether you like it or not, a large chunk of the global jewish population identifies as zionist, as in they believe that israel should exist in some capacity (regardless of their feelings about the current government). a lot of numbers have been thrown around that i don’t necessarily think are accurate, but it is very safe to say that particularly those who are involved in jewish community organizations and/or are more observant tend to identify as zionist. there are a lot of reasons for this that would take an entire doctoral dissertation to cover. if i wanted to cut myself off from every single jewish zionist or every single jew or jewish organization that believes israel should exist or simply has even one jewish zionist friend or one jewish zionist in attendance, i would have to completely isolate myself from the jewish community, and i am simply not going to do that.

for shavuot, we stayed up until past 3am having difficult conversations about israel and zionism and other rifts in the jewish community and how to talk about them without the inevitable defensiveness that always comes up, how to disconnect the political aspects of zionism from jewish identity and how to have difficult conversations with people who disagree with us without leaving the table. we talked about it through the lens of a story in the talmud about rabbi yohanan and reish lakish, a story that ends in tragedy, a story that is representative of where the community is headed if we aren’t able to start having these conversations.

so when gentiles show up and demand i abandon my community because it’s sinful politically incorrect to associate with sinners people with slightly different political opinions, it pisses me the fuck off. because y’all are constantly going on and on abt jews needing to “unlearn zionism” but then when non zionist jews refuse to just walk away from our people and decide instead to do the difficult work of starting and maintaining important conversations within our community, we get called zionists or accused of “associating with zionists” and therefore zionist by default.

so what do you want? do you want there to be less jewish zionists? because the only way that’s going to happen is if difficult conversations are allowed to happen, and those difficult conversations won’t be able to happen if you insist that all jews who aren’t zionist refuse to associate with the vast majority of our people. or are you simply looking to isolate jews with different political opinions than you because you don’t want to take the time to understand why so many jews identify as zionist. i know because i have had hours upon hours of conversations with the people in my community, and my understanding of their reasoning and motivation has made it easier to have conversations about zionism.

so it’s fucked because. y’all want there to be less jewish zionists. the only way for that to happen is to talk to them and understand them. but associating with them or trying to understand why they identify that way makes you a zionist. and therefore you should also not be associated with. but there should be less jewish zionists. so it sounds to me like y’all are just expecting people to change their minds because. what? because you said so? that is not realistic in the slightest!

anyway this post is not meticulously crafted it’s literally just me venting abt this shit but i’m just sick and tired of goyim who are not part of these difficult conversations deciding that they know better how to deal with jewish zionists (who they will not associate with) than jewish non zionists who are actually trying to have the difficult conversations with their community.

[jewish-vents]

I can't get over Encyclopedia Britannica referring to Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai as a "Palestinian Jew." Be so fucking fr rn. Can goyim stop doing historical revisionism on sites that are supposed to be reliable/informational for five fucking minutes

.

[mohelconvention]

I love how the Talmud has such utter contempt for trivial, ridiculous matters such as “time” or “space.”

“Is Rabbi Yishmael here with us now? No? Well he totally would have said this.” Excellent. Tell me of the opinion he definitely had.

“Rabbi Shlomo and Rabbi Yohanan had very different opinions on this, but lived 2 centuries apart. Too bad we can’t see them duke it out. What’s that? We absolutely can and we absolutely will?” Fantastic. Make these titans fight for our benefit.

[maimonidesnutz]

Rav Yohanan: you know what might cheer you up? Rabbi: sighs is it the bone of your tenth son again? Rabbi Yohanan: …No!! Rabbi: Rav Yohanan: Rav Yohanan: it’s the bone of my tenth son

(Berakhot 5b)

[ximen]

Things that happened at today's aufruf for my upcoming marriage and subsequent schmoozing:

-Future father-in-law compared fiancee and I to Rabbi Yohanan and Reish Lakish

-Fiancee's grandfather gave a dvar saying that I am Alexander the Great

-Fiancee and friend attempted to give a live reenactment of the Mushroom Post to fiancee's grandparents

-Somehow, we ended up talking about Homestuck

[dzamie]

I'm trying to keep up with daf yomi, and:

Kiddushin 31: okay, new topic: how far does "honor your mother and father" go? several young rabbis: well, for my parents, I- other rabbis: not good enough, poser Rabbi Yohanan: man, this sounds tough. maybe it'd be easier to just never see your parents Gemara: for context, Yohanan is an orphan

[the-magic-mirror]

I’ve started drawing tarot based on Jewish culture, in no particular order. It was inspired by the Ace of Cups, referencing Rabbi Yohanon’s beauty.

“One who wishes to see a glimpse of Rabbi Yohanan should bring a new, shiny silver goblet from the smithy, fill it with pomegranate seeds, and place a diadem of red roses upon the lip, and position it between the sunlight and shade. That luster is a semblance of Rabbi Yohanon’s beauty.”

[gangstalkerbarbie]

They be out here deciding this shit in active contradiction to how these people are in canon! I firmly believe that this is because they've never been exposed to any other dynamic so in consonance with my own principles I am gifting this website a squirming mewling cardboard box containing Rabbi Yohanan (universally acknowledged femme who gets shit done), who looks exactly like his sister, and his student-peer Reish Lakish, who is initially some ginormous bandit failson along for this Victorian manners comedy ride because of this

https://www.sefaria.org/Bava_Metzia.84a.12?lang=bi&with=all

These are the yaoi source texts of the most ancient desert mothers, cherish them accordingly

It's really fucking annoying shipping an mlm ship and everyone in the goddamn universe is like "the bigger stronger one is a dominant cis man who tops and the smaller weaker one is a submissive trans man who bottoms :)"

[dadyomi]

Wednesday 3/15, Nazir 51: Two For One

The logic of the Talmud always has proofs, but sometimes it truly is just wild. One corpse imparts impurity, but two corpses mingled, because they are not one corpse, are just fine. 

Rabbi Natan, son of Rabbi Oshaya (not, I think, Rav Natan from the above) later flatly states that “Dust that comes from two corpses is impure” and while the Gemara doesn’t respond it does state that a related dilemma stands unresolved, so who knows, really. 

[spacelazarwolf]

no one:

rabbi yohanan:

[psychologeek]

Yup.

In the Jewish sources, our elders are called by their father's name (X ben Y), job (Yohanan Hasandlar - "the shoe maker"), an acronym (Rambam - Rabi Moshe Ben Maimon), their living place (Rabi Yosei HaGlili - from the Galil), and more.

For example, when my grandfather refers to something HIS grandfather (that was a Rabbi) said, in Hilchatic (religious) field, he won't say "my grandpa" or " Rabbi (first name)" or even "Rabbi (surname)".

He would say something like "let's see what our tutor, the Rabbi from (X), said about it."

Are you fucking for real with this? Y’all have really been whipped into such an antisemitic frenzy like.

“Members of a non-European ethnic group were displaced from their ancestral land and forced to take European names in Western nations hundreds of years ago. Now they’re changing their names back to names that have historical precedent in their native languages. (Black people)” is universally accepted as a good thing by liberals / leftists / anti-racists. But for some reason

“Members of a non-European ethnic group were displaced from their ancestral land and forced to take European names in Western nations hundreds of years ago. Now they’re changing their names back to names that have historical precedent in their native languages. (Jewish people)” is considered a horrifyingly evil colonial tactic?

Most Jews living in European diaspora didn’t have surnames at all until a handful of centuries ago. Sephardim were forced to take on Spanish surnames to avoid being killed by the Inquisition following the Alhambra Decree in 1492. Ashkenazim were forced to adopt Germanic and Eastern European names in different nations at different times between the 1780s and the 1850s. Both Ben Gurion and Netanyahu’s “white” names were forced upon them by local Prussian, Russian, or Austro-Hungarian officials less than three hundred years ago. Adopting Hebrew-or-Yiddish-derived last names were banned by most of these laws. When Jewish families left the nations that had forced them to adopt white Germanic last names, they adopted indigenous Jewish last names instead.

David Ben Gurion was born David Güre. He literally just added a Hebrew patronymic prefix to his father’s last name. Meanwhile Mohammed Ali was born Cassius Marcellus Clay. Amiri Baraka was born Everett Leroy Jones. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was born Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor. When you commend black people for shaking off names that were forced upon them by Europeans three hundred years ago, but vilify Jewish people for doing the exact same thing, you’re antisemitic. There’s no other way around it.

[your-best-american-babygirl]

no sorry, you misheard me. i keep rabbis in this hutch (motioning to yohanan ben zakkai sitting in a large rectangular enclosure) it's so the predators can't get them

[punchyfeeley]

TALMUD DICK MEASURING CONTEST?!?!

“The Gemara continues discussing the

bodies of these Sages: Rabbi Yohanan

said: The organ of Rabbi Yishmael,

son of Rabbi Yosei, was the size of a

jug of nine kav. Rav Pappa said: The

organ of Rabbi Yohanan was the size

of a jug of five kav, and some say it

was the size of a jug of three kav. Rav

Pappa himself had a belly like the

baskets (dikurei] made in Harpanya.”

- Bava Metzia 84:a 6

[big-gay-bird]

One of my favorite Jewish teaching ever is from Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai and it roughly translates to:

“If you have a sapling in your hand, and someone should say to you that the Messiah has come, stay and complete the planting, and then go to greet the Messiah.”

Basically, you cannot abandon the work to provide for your future and the future of your community because you believe that the changes coming will provide a perfect world. You have to continue tikkun olam, healing the world, it’s our sacred responsibility no matter what comes to be.

There is no "after the revolution." No "ideal world." I don't care how much progress we make, we will always fail someone, hurt someone, and the best thing we can do is accept that, and keep striving to make it better as we go.

And don't get me wrong, I don't say this to discourage anyone from trying to make that ideal world. Quite the opposite.

I feel like it's very naive to continue to approach these big changes we want to make in the world as if there's an "after it's all over" when we don't have to worry about it anymore.

We should always be striving to make life better, even when life seems pretty damn good.