#WHO WOULD BE ON ZOOM SEDER WHO

[rotzaprachim]

a minyan of favourite characters who i know, deeply and truly, are jews 

[ncstalgicz]

⋇⊶⊰ 𝗕𝗨𝗥𝗜𝗘𝗗 𝗠𝗘𝗠𝗢𝗥𝗜𝗘𝗦 ⊱⊷⋇

miles morales x reader

During ITSV - ATSV | !SPOILERS AHEAD!

sypnosis: where you lose your memories helping Gwen in a battle and only remember one certain event, also that some of the scenes mentioned are from atsv and itsv plot: angst, fluff warnings: minor blood, trauma, slow-burn, atsv or itsv does not belong to me words: 3.3k music: i bet on losing dogs - Mitski

~ part one ~

Before Miles was able to catch the monitor, Doc Ock took it with her tentacles on her back. Miles was falling off the branch but before he and Peter B. Parker could fall, webs tangled on their body. You and Gwen zoomed past both of them using your webs. You shoot your webs towards the two tentacles on her right while Gwen took the two down on the left.

You land next to Gwen as you take off your mask. “Hey, guys.” Gwen greets them both. “Wanda?” The boy with the Spider-Man merchandise asks looking at you mostly. “It’s Gwen actually.” “You know her? Very cool.” Peter comments sarcastically. “I’m Y/n!” You tell them cheerfully. “We’re from another dimension. I mean another another dimension.” Gwen specifies. (I’ll skip Gwen’s intro and move onto yours)

Alright let’s do this one last time, for real this time. My name is Y/n L/n, I was bitten by a radioactive spider. And for the last 1 and a half year, I’ve been the one and only spider women. I saved my Uncle, I couldn’t save my brother. “Peter…” You hold his body hugging him close to you as you weep softly. After that I distanced myself from everyone, my boyfriend broke up with me. It hurt more because my brother was always there for me, but not anymore. I was trying to figure out who killed him when suddenly this weird thing appeared in my room. I got sucked into the weird looking portal and ended up in New York, except it wasn’t my New York. My spider senses told me to head to Visions Academy where I met Gwen. We told each other that we were both Spider Women. I wasn’t the only one was my first thought, we both belonged in the same dimension and we became close and that’s when I met him.

Miles Morales saved New York from being sucked into a black hole. He became my new friend along with Peter. He’s the reason why I didn’t grieve about my brother anymore. I finally socialized and became friends with other people. I became a new role model to children, The PDNY soon started connecting the dots and found Spider Women to be a suspect of the murder of my brother. My dad was a police officer as well. He would always tell me how close he was to catching Spider Women. He never knew it was right in front of him this whole time.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

1 MONTH LATER

You were currently fighting the Vulture along with Gwen. You were thrown against a wall and so was Gwen, vulture soon grabbed you both and pinned you against the wall. Vulture lifted his talons up getting ready to scratch Gwen when suddenly a red neon web got attached to the talon. Suddenly a familiar looking portal appeared and a weird-looking Spider-Man came in throwing himself towards Vulture as you look at him making eye contact. You and Gwen get out of vulture’s grasp as you and Gwen swing yourself towards the unknown man. You look at his hands and notice claws and a watch.

“I’m sorry who exactly are you supposed to be?” Gwen asks first. “That’s classified.” The man turns his head around glancing both of you a look. “You’re…The Blue Panther?” “No.” “The Caped Blue Seder?” “No.” “Dark Garfield?” “Stop.” “Macho Libre!” You exclaim this time. “I’m from another dimension.” The man tells you two. “You are?!” Gwen puts her hands over her mouth in shock. “Wow, actually I am not confused.” You snicker at her comment. “My name is Miguel O’Hara.” The man was about to tell Gwen about his backstory when she stops him. He was telling you both about the watch, how he can go through different dimensions without glitching with the watch, and convincing you both to let him fight Vulture by himself. “Alright, knock yourself out.” You told him noticing Vulture appearing behind him. “What is that supposed to mean—” Before he can finish his sentence he was attacked from behind by vulture. (I’m going to skip the whole battle scene lol)

Miguel was about to bite the vulture until he noticed a helicopter telling him to put the body down. “I’m a good guy.” Miguel reassured them. “You don’t look like a good guy.” They answered back. The vulture threw his knives towards the helicopter as the aircraft started going down. Your spider senses warned you as you looked up and see the helicopter going through the damaged building. You and Gwen looked at each other as if you had the same idea. You used your webs to make a spider web, you shoot your webs into different directions until the helicopter starts getting close to the ground damaging most of the building. You were to busy to notice the pieces of the building started to fall off. Gwen swifts through them but notices you were to busy saving the helicopter. “Y/N LOOK OUT!” She shouts for you. You get out of your daze before a piece of the building hits you on the head.

You felt the harsh pain in your head as you started falling down. Jess soon comes to the rescue with her motorcycle as she catches you in time. “We’ve got an injured spider.” She tells Miguel through the Watch. Gwen hurriedly shoots her webs to catch the helicopter, with all her strength she grabs the webs as they start to rip from the hold of the helicopter. Once successful she lets go and pants heavily, she quickly goes down towards the floor where she tries to walk but falls on the floor. (I’m also going to skip the father and daughter scene)

Before Gwen’s father could shoot her. Miguel throws a device which locks her father into this red looking cage. “No, Dad!” Gwen tries to reach for him but Jess stops her. “It’s alright we got you, right Miguel?” On Miguel’s shoulder is Vulture and your unconscious body as he lays you down on the floor checking your pulse. “Y/n…” Gwen walks towards your unconscious figure, she looks at your bloody head as tears start forming. “Shes alive but she needs medical attention.” Miguel reassured her. “Lyla, scan this mess.” Lyla scans, “No further anomalies. Canon remains intact.” She tells him.

With the watch, Miguel opens a portal as Gwen’s father looks at his daughter who was holding you in her arms caressing your head. “We can’t just leave them here. She’s doing this on her own.” Jess tells Miguel who looks at both of your figures. “I don’t know how to fix this.” Gwen cries softly looking at her dad. Jess looks at Miguel as he sighs and pulls out two watches. “Yeah, well, join the club.” He tells Gwen throwing both watches towards her. She looks at the watch in her hand as she puts it on her and your wrist. Miguel grabs your body and hauls you over his shoulder. Both Miguel and Jess go through the portal with him carrying you as Gwen stares at her father one last time before she goes through the portal. Once you got into Miguel’s Dimension, he immediately transports you to the medical wing and gives the doctors a brief summary of what happened. Gwen was waiting outside sitting on the floor with her head buried in her hands crying softly for her friend and for what had happened with her father earlier.

Two weeks later you finally wake up from your long coma. Gwen was alerted immediately and gave up on her mission to head towards you not caring about the consequences. Once she arrived she sneaked past the lady who was answering a call and found your room. “Excuse me miss.” A nurse behind Gwen noticed her tapping Gwen’s shoulder. Gwen quickly grabbed the wrist of the nurse as she exclaims in shock unwrapping her hand from the nurse. “If you’re here for her..I’m sorry…she has post-traumatic amnesia.” The nurse told her as Gwen took off her mask sobbing silently. She looked at your figure who was staring emotionless at the ceiling. “Is there anything I can do to help?” Gwen asks the nurse. “Time is all we can hope for. Let’s hope in a couple of weeks she’ll be able to remember certain things.” The Nurse walked away from the grieving girl.

During the week, Nurses would always check up on you asking what you remember. “I remember feeling pain…someone shouting…” you muttered as you hold your head in pain. Gwen would always be there for you during the check-ups hoping it would help your memory if she was there. Once the nurses left Gwen tried talking to you. “Hey, Y/n. Do you know who I am?” Gwen asks. You look at her and shake your head, she sighs as she lifts up her mask. “What’s the outfit for?” You ask her. “You had one too. It’s for us Spider people. You know?” Gwen tells you as you shake your head.

Gwen starts telling you about spider man and the radioactive spider, how you became spider women along with her and had these amazing adventures saving people. She didn’t wanna tell you about your family hoping that it would help your social anxiety. “My brother…is he worried?” You ask, worry laced in your voice. Gwen never knew you still remembered your brother. She looks at you not answering your question, she decided to ignore it. “Have I told you about the time you saw me perform?” Gwen asked you changing the subject. You shake your head.

For the past week Gwen has been visiting quite a while that she sneaked in two of her friends, Pavitr and Hobie. You got along with them just fine, they would bring you tasty food, fun games and even taught you the basics of your powers. You never asked the same question ever again. You were soon gonna be able to leave again anyway so you would find out yourself later. Once you were able to leave, your friends took you everywhere, to Pavitr’s Dimension, meeting his girlfriend, drinking some chai tea which you got scolded by him, experiencing traffic. You visited Hobie’s dimension watching one of his bands. When you asked Gwen to go to your dimension she declined. “But why not?” You asked her again. “We just can’t, or well I can’t at least.” She muttered the last part.

You never knew how to go to your dimension so you were never able to go, but one day you will find out.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

1 YEAR LATER

Miles was on his bed listening to music on his headphones. Next to him was his notebook full of drawings of you and Gwen, mostly you. He wasn’t paying attention until Gwen called his name. “Miles. Miles!” He got up startled when he noticed the weird portal. Gwen got down with an orange jumper around her shoulders. “Nice room.” Gwen started observing everything while Miles was looking at her confused of where she came from. He hissed when she took off the action figure from the box, which pained him. She noticed the notebook. Miles tried grabbing it but Gwen was quicker and turned the pages noticing the drawings of Y/n. Her face held pain since he didn’t know about your condition yet. Then she stops on a drawing of her.

“We missed you too.” Gwen told the boy. “Wanna get out of here?” She asked. “I’m grounded.” Miles told her. “Oh.” She went towards the window and took off her jumper. “Is Spider-Man grounded?” She asked with her mask on.

Both Gwen and Miles were swinging around the city until they decided to stop for a short break. “So, how’s Y/n?!” Miles broke the silence watching the sunset while hanging upside down. “She’s been good…” Gwen faded. She toyed around with her watch nervously. Miles noticed her fidgeting around. “Let’s go back, yeah?” Gwen asked Mile’s starting to get up.

They got back and used their webs to grab food. They were underneath a water silo where they were eating all the fresh food. “This is what keeps you from glitching when you go to a different universe?” Miles asks Gwen holding the watch in his hand. Gwen spaces out until she notices Miles clicking something from the watch. “Oh, no no no. Miles don’t touch that!” Gwen hurriedly grabs the watch keeping it away from the kid. “My bad.” Miles stands their guilty. “I’m sorry for thrashing out like that.” Gwen apologizes. “It’s fine.” It stays quiet for a while until Miles kept thinking about Y/n.

“Why didn’t Y/n visit me?” Miles breaks the silence. “We couldn’t.” Gwen tells him looking at the city view. ‘I have to tell him eventually.’ Gwen thinks to herself. “Listen Miles, something bad happened to her—” Before she was able to explain Miles parents appeared and started talking.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

A COUPLE MINS LATER

“I should probably go.” Gwen takes her leave, putting on her jumper that was given to her by Rio, Mile’s mom; “Wait, Gwen what about Y/-” Miles was cut off by Gwen leaving immediately. ‘What was it that she was trying to tell me?’ He thought to himself. “You should go after her.” Rio tells his son. “Just promise me you’ll be back. With a better cake.” She scolds him. Miles hugs his mom as he follows Gwen with his Spider-Man suit on. Gwen stops in front of an abounded building that seemed to have giant holes all over. She distracted the cops by reversing the car which successfully caught their attention.

She swiftly got inside the building and told Lyla to scan the area to figure out what has happened. Miles follows her inside as he uses his invisibility to not get caught. As she saw the scene unfold with The Spot creating more holes on his body to go to different dimensions. “Shoot! Shoot! Shoot! Shoot.” She kept muttering as The spot creates a tiny machine. Jess soon appears behind her. “Gwen. How’s the chase going?” Jess asks the teen noticing her stressed state. “Uh, it’s going great. Almost got him.” Gwen lies. “Jess we’ve got another anomaly who seems to be moving quickly.” Lyla tells her. “So you’ve almost got him right?!” Jess asks Gwen. “You made another visit to the kid again, didn’t you?”

Gwen stays quiet and nods softly. “Gwen you can’t keep doing that. Think about what would happen if the spot gets away, Y/n already tracked his location several times but he moves quickly.” Jess told the girl. Miles ears perk up at the mention of your name. “He’s here, no wait here, here, wow this guy moves a lot, okay he’s not moving anymore at Earth-50101. Y/n is heading there at the moment.” Lyla told the ladies. “Gwen you have one day to fix this mess, until then you can’t see the kid anymore.” Jess told her. “Alright.” Gwen looks down at the floor.

Miles eyes widen in betrayal. Gwen opens up a portal as she looks at the city outside. “Goodbye, Miles.” She goes through the portal. Miles turns visible now as he looks at the portal. He remembered the mention of you going to, Earth-50101? ‘What am I Doing? What am I doing?’ Miles hesitated before he went inside the portal where he was sucked into this tube and was transferred to Earth-50101. He kept falling where he passed roads as he shot out his webs but before he could grab on he started glitching, hurting himself in the process as he continues falling. Going through hanged clothes, pedestrians, and finally falling all over again.

He soon hears The Spots Voice and Looks over to see Gwen and..you. “Stay still.” Gwen looks at The Spot as he keeps going through different holes, trying to keep up with him you shoot a web at him while he was talking to people on a balcony. You were about to punch him until Miles shouts your name. “That’s the best you can do?” The Spot kicks your face by making a hole as you start falling. “Oh no, Y/n!” Miles catches you swinging away. “Did you follow me?” Gwen appears looking at the Miles who was carrying you. “I’m sorry, I just wanted to see Y/n real quick.” Miles told her looking at you. “Um, who are you?” You ask the unknown boy.

“What? It’s me, Miles..Miles Morales?” You look at him confused until you look away and see Pavitr heading towards you three. “Hey, Y/n, Gwen, who’s the new guy?” He asks. “This is Miles. He came in unattended.” Gwen told him. “Wow, you came in here without permission, new guy must be in love with you.” Pavitr teased as you laughed getting off of Miles as you shoot a web, swinging away until you found a place to land, the three following you. “Hey, Pavitr. Nice to see you again!” You throw an arm over his shoulder. Miles seems to notice as he looks at you hurt. He looks at Gwen as well. “We’ll talk about it later, okay?” Gwen reassured him.

The four of you enter Alchemax trying to stop The Spot. You were currently trapped when he put a wall mechanism to not let you four stop his idea. Miles puts his fingers on the wall trying to use his power until another Spider-Man came in using his guitar to remove the force field. “Hobie!” You exclaim in happiness greeting the boy with a handshake. Miles looks over at you as he notices that the handshake was the one he taught you when you first became friends. He looks away and notices Gwen looking at him sadly. “Don’t just use your fingers mate, use your palm as well.” Hobie advised him.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Nueva York - Earth 2099

“That’s not fair!” You chase after Hobie who decided to play a game of tag with you to let time pass by. Miles and Gwen were seated at a bench staying quiet while looking at the two. “How come she doesn’t remember me?” Miles asked the teen next to him. “I tried telling you- I swear I tried. But I couldn’t knowing how much it would hurt you and me both.” Gwen told him. “She got injured during a fight, she got a serious concussion and I wasn’t able to do anything but wait. Miguel took us in, and immediately took her to the hospital where we learned that she was in a coma. Once she woke up, the nurse told us that she had post-traumatic amnesia. All we could do was wait until she remembered certain things.” Gwen finished off fidgeting with her hands.

“Was she able to remember?” Miles asked the girl. Gwen looked up to see you tackling Hobie finally being able to catch him. “Her brother, she thinks he’s still alive.” Gwen told the boy. Miles eyes widen as he looks at you who looked back at him until Hobie tackled you back. “Isn’t he..dead?” Gwen nods. “She doesn’t know, and I don’t intend to tell her. You know how she acted before when she still remembered things, I don’t want her to be like that again. I love the way she is now.” Tears fill her eyes as she holds them back, not letting them fall. “You have to tell her one day, just like me.” Miles told her as she looks up and shook her head. “No, you can’t. I know it’s bad but if she finds out about his death she’ll probably want to change the canon. We can’t let that happen. She already wants to figure out how to visit him but we don’t let her.” Gwen warns the boy who just looked at you in worry.

‘Just what happened when I wasn’t here.’ Miles thought missing the girl he used to know.

[stars-inthe-sky]

So, hey. How did you and your family celebrate Passover when you were a kid? How about now?

My Rhode Island aunt and uncle almost always hosted a big family Seder, and it was the absolute best. A good Seder is educational, food-filled, and legit fun—it's a ritual meal that includes storytelling, singing, prayers, and a general focus on including and teaching everyone involved, regardless of age or even whether attendees are Jewish. (If ever you're invited to a friend's Seder, go! Do not bring a challah, which my actually-bar-mitzvahed brother-in-law did once as an attempt at a thoughtful host gift. We still make fun of him.)

And my uncle (the same one who officiated at my wedding, and the wedding of my other sister) may well be the greatest host/leader there is; over the years he compiled from a medley of sources what added up to his own Haggadah (basically the guidebook to the Seder—there are a million published and informal versions working off the same template, with readings and activities and interpretations that can go kid-centric or feminist or traditional or whatever). It was always just insanely fun, and warm, and joyous, with incredible food and an increasing array of baked-in, just-us traditions.

Since I went to college basically down the street from their house, and then lived just an hour away in Boston for so long, that was pretty much the heart of my and my family's celebration most years—right up until Passover 2020, at which point the pandemic negated what had been plans to travel from our new home in Illinois for it, and they also downsized and had their own kids scatter geographically and gain very little ones, so that particular tradition is at best on hiatus now.

But there are fun Seders everywhere—well, the Zoom ones of the pandemic years were a mixed bag, but we've found friends who've make a good go of it, over the years, too, if not quite as an elaborately planned out hourslong celebration as my uncle would do. When I studied abroad in Denmark, Boyfriend and I went to an Orthodox Seder that was in a mix of Danish and Hebrew, for instance—that was novel, and so much of the procedure and the Hebrew was familiar enough to follow along.

Still working on exactly where we'll be for those two nights this year (we haven't really met any Jewish families in Pittsburgh yet to garner an invite, and none of the Reform or Conservative synagogues seem to have community events, which is surprising? And I don't really want to go to Chabad?) but we'll figure something out.

That said, as fun as the Seders can and should be, the rest of Passover is a slog of not eating bread or adjacent products, and experiencing whatever it is matzah does to one's digestive system over the course of a week. It's a meaningful observance, and the fact that the relevant rabbinical boards have stopped including rice and legumes in the "no" column in recent years has been great, but...it's ultimately a holiday recalling the story of the Exodus, and how we were slaves once, so, like, there are some less-fun elements. But the freedom celebration parts usually outweigh that!

[meirmakesstuff]

1/2 Hi Meir! I saw your answer on WWC, and since you mentioned you're professionals, I figured I'd ask directly: I'm writing a second world fantasy with a jewish coded people. I want to be clear in the coding but avoid the "if there's no egypt, how can there be passover?" so I called them Canaanites. I thought I was being clever by hinting in the naming that the whole region does exist, but I've since read that it might've been a slur in fact? Do you have any advice on this?

2/2 I did consider calling the group in question Jewish, but aside from how deeply Judaism is connected to the history of the Israelites, I haven't used any present-day real-world names for any other group, (I did use some historic names like Nubia). I feel like calling only one group of people by their currently used name would be othering rather than inclusive? Or am I overthinking this?

Okay so I want to start out with some disclaimers, first that although WWC recently reblogged an addition of mine to one of their posts, I am not affiliated with @writingwithcolor​, and second that the nature of trying to answer a question like this is “two Jews, three opinions,” so what I have to say about this is my own opinion(s) only. Last disclaimer: this is a hard question to address, so this answer is going to be long. Buckle up.

First, I would say that you’re right to not label the group in question “Jewish” (I’ll get to the exception eventually), and you’re also right in realizing that you should not call them “Canaanites.” In Jewish scripture, Canaanites are the people we fought against, not ourselves, so that wouldn’t feel like representation but like assigning our identity to someone else, which is a particular kind of historical violence Jews continue to experience today. I’ll get back to the specific question of naming in a moment, but because this is my blog and not WWC, and you asked me to speak to this as an educator, we’re going to take a detour into Jewish history and literary structure before we get back to the question you actually asked.

To my mind there are three main ways to have Jews in second-world fantasy and they are:

People who practice in ways similar to modern real-world Jews, despite having developed in a different universe,

People who practice in ways similar to ancient Hebrews, because the things that changed us to modern Jewish practice didn’t occur, and

People who practice in a way that shows how your world would influence the development of a people who started out practicing like ancient Hebrews and have developed according to the world they’re in. 

The first one is what we see in @shiraglassman​‘s Mangoverse series: there is no Egypt yet her characters hold a seder; the country coded Persian seems to bear no relation to their observance of Purim, and there is no indication of exile or diaspora in the fact that Jews exist in multiple countries and cultures, and speak multiple languages including Yiddish, a language that developed through a mixture of Hebrew and German. Her characters’ observance lines up approximately with contemporary Reform Jewish expectations, without the indication of there ever having been a different practice to branch off from. She ignores the entire question of how Jews in her universe became what they are, and her books are lyrical and sweet and allow us to imagine the confidence that could belong to a Jewish people who weren’t always afraid.

Shira is able to pull this off, frankly, because her books are not lore-heavy. I say this without disrespect--Shira often refers to them as “fluffy”--but because the deeper you get into the background of your world and its development, the trickier this is going to be to justify, unless you’re just going to just parallel every historical development in Jewish History, including exile and diaspora across the various nations of your world, including occasional near-equal treatment and frequent persecution, infused with a longing for a homeland lost, or a homeland recently re-established in the absolutely most disappointing of ways.

Without that loss of homeland or a Mangoverse-style handwaving, we have the second and third options. In the second option, you could show your Jewish-coded culture having never been exiled from its homeland, living divided into tribes each with their own territory, still practicing animal, grain, and oil sacrifice at a single central Temple at the center of their nation, overseen by a tribe that lacks territory of their own and being supported by the sacrifices offered by the populace.

If you’re going to do that, research it very carefully. A lot of information about this period is drawn from scriptural and post-scriptural sources or from archaeological record, but there’s also a lot of Christian nonsense out there assigning weird meanings and motivations to it, because the Christian Bible takes place during this period and they chose to cast our practices from this time as evil and corrupt in order to magnify the goodness of their main character. In any portrayal of a Jewish-coded people it’s important to avoid making them corrupt, greedy, bigoted, bloodthirsty, or stubbornly unwilling to see some kind of greater or kinder truth about the world, but especially if you go with this version. 

The last option, my favorite but possibly the hardest to do, is to imagine how the people in the second option would develop given the influences of the world they’re in. Do you know why Chanukah is referred to as a “minor” holiday? The major holidays are the ones for which the Torah specifies that we “do not work:” Rosh Hashannah, Yom Kippur, and the pilgrimage holidays of Sukkot, Passover, and Shavuot. Chanukah developed as a holiday because the central temple, the one we made those pilgrimages to, was desecrated by the invading Assyrian Greeks and we drove them out and were able to re-establish the temple. That time. Eventually, the Temple was razed and we were scattered across the Roman Empire, developing the distinct Jewish cultures we see today. The Greeks and Romans aren’t a semi-mythologized ancient people, the way the Canaanites have been (though there’s increasing amounts of archaeology shedding light on what they actually might have been like), we have historical records about them, from them. The majority of modern Jewish practice developed from the ruins of our ancient practices later than the first century CE. In the timeline of Jewish identity, that’s modern.

The rabbinic period and the Temple period overlap somewhat, but we’re not getting into a full-scale history lesson here. Suffice it to say that it was following the loss of the sacrificial system at the central Temple that Judaism coalesced an identity around verbal prayer services offered at the times of day when we would previously have offered sacrifices, led each community by its own learned individual who became known as a rabbi. We continued to develop in relationship with the rest of the world, making steps toward gender equality in the 1970s and LGBT equality in the 2000s, shifting the meaning of holidays like Tu Bishvat to address climate change, debating rulings on whether one may drive a car on Shabbat for the sake of being with one’s community, and then pivoting to holding prayer services daily via Zoom.

The history of the Jews is the history of the world.  Our iconic Kol Nidrei prayer, the centerpiece of the holiest day of the year, that reduces us to tears every year at its first words, was composed in response to the Spanish Inquisition. The two commentators who inform our understanding of scripture--the ones we couldn’t discuss Torah without referencing even if we tried--wrote in the 11th and 12th centuries in France and Spain/Egypt. Jewish theology and practice schismed into Orthodox and Reform (and later many others) because that’s the kind of discussion people were into in the 19th century. Sephardim light Chanukah candles in an outdoor lamp while Ashkenazim light Chanukah candles in an indoor candelabrum because Sephardim developed their traditions in the Middle East and North Africa and the Ashkenazim developed our traditions in freezing Europe. There are works currently becoming codified into liturgy whose writers died in 2000 and 2011. 

So what are the historical events that would change how your Jewish-coded culture practices, if they don’t involve loss of homeland and cultural unity? What major events have affected your world? If there was an exile that precipitated an abandonment of the sacrificial system, was there a return to their land, or are they still scattered? Priority one for us historically has been maintaining our identity and priority two maintaining our practices, so what have they had to shift or create in order to keep being a distinct group? Is there a major worldwide event in your world? If so, how did this people cope?

If you do go this route, be careful not to fall into tropes of modern or historical antisemitism: don’t have your culture adopt a worldview that has their deity split into mlutiple identities (especially not three). Don’t have an oppressive government that doesn’t represent its people rise up to oppress outsiders within its borders (this is not the first time this has occurred in reality, but because the outside world reacts differently to this political phenomenon when it’s us than when it’s anyone else, it’s a portrayal that makes real-life Jews more vulnerable). And don’t portray the people as having developed into a dark and mysterious cult of ugly, law-citing men and beautiful tearstreaked women, but it doesn’t sound as if you were planning to go there.

So with all that said, it’s time to get back to the question of names. All the above information builds to this: how you name this culture depends on how you’ve handled their practice and identity. 

Part of why Shira Glassman’s handwaving of the question of how modern Jewish practice ended up in Perach works is that she never gives a name to the religion of her characters. Instead, she names the regions they come from. Perach, in particular, the country where most of the action takes place, translates to “Flower.” In this case, her Jewish-coded characters who come from Perach are Perachis, and characters from other places who are also Jewish are described as “they worship as Perachis do despite their different language” or something along those lines (forgive me, Shira, for half-remembering).

So that’s method one: find an attribute of your country that you’d like to highlight, translate it into actual Hebrew, and use that as your name.

Method two is the opposite: find a name that’s been used to identify our people or places (we’ve had a bunch), find out what it means or might mean in English, and then jiggle that around until it sounds right for your setting. You could end up with the nation of the Godfighters, or Children of Praise, The Wanderers (if they’re not localized in a homeland), The Passed-Over, Those From Across The River, or perhaps the people of the City of Peace.

Last, and possibly easiest, pick a physical attribute of their territory and just call them that in English. Are they from a mountainous region? Now they’re the Mountain People. Does their land have a big magical crater in the middle? Craterfolk. Ethereal floating forests of twinkling lights? It’s your world.

The second option is the only one that uses the name to overtly establish Jewish coding. The first option is something Jews might pick up on, especially if they speak Hebrew, but non-Jews would miss. The third avoids the question and puts the weight of conveying that you’re trying to code them as Jewish on their habits and actions.

There’s one other option that can work in certain types of second-world fantasy, and that’s a world that has developed from real-world individuals who went through some kind of portal. That seems to me the only situation in which using a real-world name like Jews, Hebrews, or Israelites would make sense. Jim Butcher does this with the Romans in the Codex Alera series, and Katharine Kerr does it with Celts in the Deverry cycle. That kind of thing has to be baked into the world-building, though, so it probably doesn’t help with this particular situation. 

This is a roundabout route to what I imagine you were hoping would be an easier answer. The tension you identified about how to incorporate Jewishness into a world that doesn’t have the same history is real, and was the topic of a discussion I recently held with a high school age group around issues of Jewish representation in the media they consume and hope to create. Good luck in your work of adding to the discussion.

[madamehearthwitch]

🔯 Chag Pesach Sameach! 🔯

Welp, Passover Seder is tomorrow and I cannot find Matzah in anything smaller than 6-10 lb boxes... and that's a lil much for just me.

I shall be trying to make them for the first time. Extra fun being I have 15-18 min from mixing to roll and get them into the oven so that they are Kosher for Passover.

I wonder how non-Kosher it would be to invoke Brighid's aid? lol.

(While my partner's family who has invited me to their Zoom seder are religious, they are also reform. The Rabbi in particular is very laid back. I mean no disrespect at all.)

Also on today's agenda is roasting a lamb leg so I can have the Zeroa for tomorrow's Seder plate.

Plus a small miracle: the kiddush cup I ordered from Tel Aviv which said on ordering that it would be here in time, and then said on shipping it would arrive a day late, arrived two days early! I'm taking this as a very good sign :D

[aparrotandaqrow]

Hineni

I went to shul for Rosh Hashanah services earlier this week. It was my first time being physically present at shul in 18 months; I was home to finally visit my family. I hadn’t thought I would go to services, since they would be in person, and with the delta variant surging, I didn’t think it would be safe. My dad was slated to lead Musaf services, though, and I dreaded the tension it would bring to have him go to services, in person, on Rosh Hashanah, one of our holiest days, while I stayed home out of a conviction that going would be unsafe. In the end, my father did not lead services, and services were moved outdoors, due to my father needing kidney stones removed (he’s okay) and his replacement urging for safer, outdoor services. We both went, and enjoyed services together for the first time in almost two years.

The rabbis (we have two) both spoke during their sermons on the respective days of the importance of the word “Hineni”--”Here I am.” It’s a word that shows up several times in the Torah, and is the title of a prayer chanted by the person who leads Musaf during High Holy Day services. In the Torah, it is a response to a question, “Ayeka?”--“Where are you?” The prayer is also an answer--as if to say, here I stand before you, in my entirety, hoping to lead my congregation in prayer and repentance. I hope it’s good enough.

In the Torah, God asks Adam, after he has eaten the fruit, “Ayeka?” Adam does not answer, and instead hides. But Abraham, Jacob, and Moses all respond “Hineni” when God calls out to them. The prophet Isaiah declares that when the people turn to deeds of justice to repent for their sins, rather than meaningless self-flagellation, then when the people cry out to God for relief, God too will respond, “Hineni.”

“Hineni” is meant to be an expression of readiness, and of humility before the task. A reassurance that we are present, and committed to help.

When Abraham responds, “Hineni,” it is at the end of a long list of difficult crises, including the banishment of his son Ishmael and his mother, Hagar. The sages, the rabbi pointed out, teach that Abraham did not say “Hineni” with the vim and vigor of someone eager to go into battle, eager to leap into the task. He said it almost reflexively, as easily as a breath. He was present, and simply being present for God’s next task was his default state of being.

The other rabbi spoke about how climate change is a task that calls for us to say, “Hineni.” We may cry out to God in the face of such adversities that climate change will bring, "Ayeka?" But God might respond, "Hineni; ayeka?"

"I am here, but where are you?"

We must be present, we must each see our own role in the fight, and commit to facing it, rather than turning away from the task. Not a single one of us will solve the problem, and most of us won’t live to see it solved, but we can’t desist.

Rabbi Tamar, speaking on the second day, spoke about the pandemic. And how sometimes it feels like each day we have to say, “Hineni,” and keep going. One more day, after well over 500, after hardship upon hardship. One day more. Hineni.

I think this is something many of us Jews perhaps understood innately, and which gets to the root of my confusion and bewilderment at the behavior of many of my non-Jewish peers. Jews know suffering. As the Christians were screaming about Easter gatherings in April 2020, we Jews shook our heads, remembering our Passover Seders held over Zoom, which we had done without question so that we might save ourselves, our relatives, and our neighbors. So many people give up, decide the pandemic is over, and let their guard down. And then cases rise once more. So many people rail and scream against the prospect of another lockdown, insist it’s not fair, and refuse to wear their masks or socially distance.

They’re not wrong, either. None of it is fair. All of it sucks.

But, hineni. Living is struggling, but here I am. Here we are. One more day. Sometimes, this is simply the way of things. All we can do is be present for the immediate task before us, no matter how many tasks we have already been asked to complete. We don’t get to choose to not live a life of suffering; that is merely the hand we are dealt. But we accept it and we move on. We keep fighting. We survive. Hineni.

Some people view each day of the pandemic as a temporary inconvenience, a day stolen from their promised lives of plenty, which will need to be repaid.

I simply view each day as living. This is my life now, until the world changes and it isn’t. Until then, I simply live. My people suffered for millennia; why should my life be any different--so hineni. Here I am.

Every day, when I put on my mask, I perform the ritual. I take the steps that through the magic of science and public health, will protect myself, my loved ones, and the strangers around me.

Hineni. Here I am.

It is both an inhalation, the breath you take before lifting the heavy box, and an exhalation, the sigh of resignation as you go back inside for yet another box.

Hineni.

It is breathing.

Here I am.

When I log in to Zoom for Saturday morning services with my shul, each face staring at me through a small square on the screen, each of us apart, and together only through the internet--Hineni. Here I am.

As I walk the 10 kilometers to my bubblemate’s apartment, so neither of us has to be alone, and later as I walk the 10 kilometers home, each step taking me further away from my past, from the previous month, week, minute of isolation and pandemic hardship--Hineni. Here I am.

I trudge through the snow in the weak light of the setting winter sun, the sun and the snow my only companions for months, my bubblemate thankfully home with her family. A trail of footprints stretches behind me in the empty park, like words of Torah inscribed on parchment.

Each step--hineni.

I am here. I will not vanish, I will not shy from the task at hand. Hineni.

I take another step.

I type the words of my PhD dissertation, my mind and soul crushed by over half a year alone, but determined to finish the work of the past 6 years. My fish swim behind me in the home office I have constructed for myself. Hineni.

My feet pad softly across the concrete in the early morning, a long walk to a long-awaited destination. The nurse plunges the needle into my deltoid muscle, and I exhale through the momentary pain. Hineni. I thank her for being present with me, 14 kilometers and 14 months from home, and now one shot closer to returning. Hineni.

News of the delta variant grows, and Ontario pauses the reopening. The vaccines alone will not end the pandemic, and my trip home will not be the grand reunion I had anticipated.

I put my mask on as I leave, again, like each day before. Hineni.

The pandemic goes on, and so do I. Hineni.

This is what I could not understand, and also what those who screamed, and complained, and refused did not understand.

Each day I perform the rituals. I say the words, and take the steps that one day will end the pandemic. Hineni.

But they do not perform the rituals. They don’t know they’re supposed to say the words. They have been told what to do, but what they were told has changed, and they don’t understand. And I did not know that they do not understand.

When I say, “Hineni,” this is not a language they understand. They don’t know what it means to simply resolve yourself to yet another day, yet another week, another month, another year. To say, “Hineni.”

To not give up.

I thought Minnesotans would understand more than others; that our familiarity with storms would guide us. We know how to hunker down when the sirens go off, to go someplace safe and bow our heads until the storm has passed.

But storms never last; they are temporary. Now, Minnesotans shop at Target without their masks, as daily cases hit levels not seen in Toronto since the worst of the winter surges.

Perhaps if they knew that sometimes, all you can do is perform the ritual, and say the words. To wear your mask, and get your vaccine. To stay home with your loved ones. To say, “I am here. I am present.”

And hope that it will be enough.

That next year will be better.

Hineni.

[random2908]

You know, I was thinking about this the other day, and I AM religious. I mean, look.

I’m going to two (zoom) seders this weekend.

I keep kosher, and with a few lapses, have done so my entire life. In fact, between being a vegetarian and not eating kitniyot on Pesach, I keep kosher to a degree that, while well within the minhag I was raised in, people from other minhags would consider fanatical (there was a whole schism over kitniyot!).

I may not be shomer shabbos, but I do remember shabbat and try to refrain from working on Saturdays--and try to discourage my subordinates from working on Saturdays, as well. They shouldn’t violate the Noahide laws (or really, overwork themselves in general) on my account.

It takes very little to get me to free-associate over to talking about the Tanakh.

I study EVERY DAY. I have been studying every day my whole entire life--if you believe my parents, since before I could speak, before I could walk. Not always the law and the commentaries--although sometimes the law and the commentaries--but it’s all relevant. Science, social justice, all of it is relevant to understanding the universe, my place in it, and how to be a good person.

The thing about Judaism is you don’t have to believe in God to be religious. It’s not required. It’s considered a nice bonus if you believe, but as long as you aren’t encouraging others toward atheism (and I would never tell others what to believe about something unfalsifiable) you’re still in good standing. I have family members (on both sides of my family!) who are Orthodox who are atheists; there’s no contradiction.

[pargolettasworld]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXqEcW3U0JM

The composer David Amram just turned ninety years old this year, and I got to hear him give a Zoom interview about his life.  He’s a lovely, personable guy, even if he did get a bit patronizing toward the end.  And, to be fair, he was provoked by a question from someone whose work I respect but who can be unbelievably patronizing toward anyone younger than he is.

Anyway, you might know David Amram from his more secular work, like scoring the original (1962) version of the movie The Manchurian Candidate, which to this day is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful movie I've ever seen in my life.  But Amram has composed a lot of Jewish music as well, both for the concert stage and the synagogue.  He’s especially proud of some of his Jewish concert music, because when he first started composing, it was not Done to program (imagine his voice dropping to the most gravelly basso profundo possible) ETHNIC music on The Classical Concert Stage.  He also wrote a very Jewish opera about a group of Auschwitz prisoners trying to hold a Passover seder, and I might put up a bit from that if I can find it, because it was amazing.

But I wanted to highlight this piece in particular.  This is part of a Shabbat service that he wrote for the Park Avenue Synagogue in 1943, which was served at that time by Cantor David Putterman.  Amram’s father is Sephardic, and his mother is Ashkenazi, and he grew up on an isolated farm in Pennsylvania, where his family were the only Jews in town, and his father led services for the family.  Amram grew up learning Hebrew with Sephardic pronunciation (when he was a kid, there was a difference between that and Ashkenazi), and the Park Avenue Synagogue had a largely Ashkenazi pronunciation.

When they commissioned this piece, Amram went to check them out, and was deeply puzzled by the Ashkenazi pronunciation they used.  He discussed with his father and a couple of colleagues whether to compose for Sephardic, which he considered “correct,” or Ashkenazi, which PAS used, pronunciation.  His father told him something wise that I think more people need to hear:

Neither pronunciation is inherently “incorrect.”  Sephardic pronunciation is correct for Amram’s family, and for Sephardic communities, and ultimately, for the State of Israel, which made that choice.  But Ashkenazi pronunciation is equally correct for the PAS congregation in 1943.  That was their community, and their way of speaking, and it was no more or less correct for them than Sephardic pronunciation was for Amram.  Therefore, Amram père said, Amram fils should honor the PAS congregation, which had commissioned the music, by writing it for them, using their pronunciation, so that it would feel like something for them.

Anyway, this is the Ma Tovu from that service.  And, as you can hear, it’s composed to fit the Ashkenazi pronunciation.

[night-filled-mountain]

Personal miscellaneous.

The simultaneous up side and down side of quarantine (for me, I mean--many people’s down sides are obviously much, much lower than this) is having so much time.

And I don’t even mean having time to do things, just...having time to think.

On the one hand, this has always been important to me, and increasingly hard to do in recent years: taking some time to myself to just Contemplate My Life, and Get In Touch With Myself, and feel like a distinct, individual human being who’s In Touch With Her Past and In Touch With The Universe and Fully Present In Her Body, etc. I’ve never been able to do that stuff automatically, if that makes any sense. Like...my husband and I have talked about this, and he feels like he gets his sense of self from the people around him and his interactions with the world. I love the people around me, and I love interacting with the world, but I’ve never been able to shake that deep dark lifelong introvert need to take some time out and make sense of things in the quiet of my own brain.

But then you’re not going to work or social engagements, and your sleep schedule gets thrown off--or rather, goes all to hell, because this is on top of waking up at all sorts of odd hours with chronic pain--and your ADD is thrown into overdrive by the lack of structure, your concentration on “productive” tasks and even fun tasks goes to pieces, you’re isolated, tired, and ornery, and you just...can’t...stop...thinking.

Sometimes I’m tempted to write/post about my thoughts, but then they’ll look different in the light of day, and I can’t be sure what to snatch on and examine further, or what to let go as the unhealthy product of an unhealthy brain that’s only going to gnaw away at me if I let it.

Lots of death stuff. Change, fear, loss, depression, the same old (practically lifelong) songs. Lots of identity stuff, lots of relationship stuff. Lots and lots and lots of baggage from a certain intense toxic wonderful-and-terrible romantic friendship that I’ve occasionally posted about before. Lots of that apparently ubiquitous quarantine impulse: “Should I write to her? Should I check on her? Will I spend the rest of my life wanting her, needing her, like this, and comparing her to everything in my life now, and finding it wanting? Is it actually something else I want and need, something she may have given me (along with all the pain) but that I can actually seek and find in other people and relationships, or within myself, if I’m willing to try? How the hell do people let these things go?”

Also lots of Tumblr stuff, weirdly enough. Because my feelings about sexuality and relationships were in the past, and maybe still are in insidious subconscious ways, deeply tied into the culture of this site (or the circles I’ve tended to move in on this site), and nothing has ever made clearer to me the incredible cocktail of Very Very Helpful and Very Very Toxic that is Tumblr Culture. I both want and do not want to write more about this. As with everything else these days, I don’t know which impulse is healthier.

 This August, almost certainly, my husband and I are moving in with our two best friends (the lease is signed, Dragon’s lease is ending, I have no idea what the world will look like at that point, but assuming none of us are sick, there are no laws/advisories against moving, and we can manage it in a way that’s safe for everyone involved, it is presumably still happening). I’m very excited to be a part of that household. I’m hoping--and expecting--that it will bring me to a calmer and happier place, and do something to quiet this obsession (ex-roommate wouldn’t associate with my friends, and didn’t like it when I did, either--she used to socially withdraw from me if I came home after spending time with them--these are the kinds of things I need to remember).

Dragon and I are doing Zoom storytime every single night, reading books out loud to each other. He read me The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers, and I’m now reading him Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner. Before and after reading, we just talk about our days and laugh and love each other dearly. It’s truly, truly wonderful, and I treasure every moment.

Before quarantine started, I was reading Silence of the Lambs for the first time. I’ve since finished it, then re-watched and discussed the movie with Kit, followed by Red Dragon, then Manhunter (possibly my favorite), then plunged into reading the book Red Dragon (well into it now but not done yet), and finally started re-watching the Hannibal TV show with Kit, though we probably won’t go past season 1, and neither of us has any intention of ever watching season 3.

...This very high concentration of serial-killer media probably does not sound healthy at all, but funnily enough, it’s been one of the absolute highlights of this time for me. Something about plunging back into this universe--this very dark, very complicated, very Problematic universe, only bits and pieces of which I will ever deign to have any relationship with at all--has made me feel incredibly safe and happy and invigorated. And the whys of that would be a whole other discussion that has very little to do with anything I usually post about on this blog (...though I don’t think my love for Critical Role or [especially!] LA By Night is entirely unrelated to my general love for Very Dark Stories With Rays of Hope).

On Saturday, Kit and I picked up a ton of homemade food from Dragon’s front step and attended his epic Zoom seder, and on Sunday, we hid our Easter baskets from each other and hunted them down and ate some of the eggs we’d dyed, and right now, I should be making annotated lists of recommended e-books, and tutorial videos for Hoopla and OverDrive and Kanopy, and doing virtual trainings to make me a better librarian.

Also, I’m trying to write a novel about a medieval heist gone wrong.

And to catch up (well, catch up further) on LA By Night.

And it’s stormy outside. And I still have to write that post about Veth.

This has been a Quarantine Update.

[glompcat]

Friends, I am trying to see if anyone would be into some sort of low key seder thing over zoom or something this year, and figure why not invite any internet friends who may be interested in joining. 

So let me know if you’d be interested!

On any given night of pesach, why limit ourselves to the first two nights if another night would work better.

[pdad58]

A Passover Unlike Any Other

Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, the Jewish holiday that begins next week will be celebrated in new ways—and gain new meanings.

ILLUSTRATION: RUTH GWILY

By Adam Kirsch

Updated April 3, 2020 12:25 pm ET

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How is this night different from all other nights? That question, which Jews ask every year as part of the Passover celebration, will get a new answer in 2020. When the holiday begins on Wednesday night, for many Jews it will be the first time in their lives that they cannot attend a Seder—the ritual meal that commemorates the Israelites’ journey from slavery in Egypt to freedom in their Promised Land.

According to a 2013 Pew Research Center poll, the Seder is the most widely practiced Jewish tradition in the U.S.: Only 23% of American Jews regularly attend a synagogue, but 70% go to a Seder. In the age of Covid-19, however, bringing together old and young people in a small space to share food is simply too dangerous. In Israel, where all gatherings of more than 10 people have been banned, the Health Ministry has urged Jews to limit their Seders to their nuclear family. Chabad, the international Jewish outreach organization, has posted a list of frequently asked questions on its website, including “Can I at least invite my neighbors?” The answer is “no, no and no!”

This advice is in keeping with the traditional Jewish principle that the preservation of life overrides almost any other duty. And a Seder is a religious duty, not just a chance to see extended family and enjoy holiday dishes.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

How will you celebrate Passover this year? Join the conversation below.

Seder means “order” in Hebrew, and it involves an ordered series of ritual actions, prayers, songs and stories—15 steps in all, which are recorded in the Haggada, the Passover prayer book. The core of the Seder is a long script, usually recited by the guests in turn, which narrates the Exodus and draws out its meaning. One reason why Passover is the quintessential Jewish holiday is that you celebrate it by talking about it. As the Haggada says, “everyone who discusses the exodus from Egypt at length is praiseworthy.”

In fact, the Bible implies that while the purpose of Passover is to remember the exodus, the exodus took place in part so that Jews could celebrate Passover. “And this day shall be unto you for a memorial; and ye shall keep it a feast to the Lord throughout your generations; ye shall keep it a feast by an ordinance for ever,” God tells Moses and Aaron in Exodus 12, on the eve of the Israelites’ flight from Egypt. That Biblical passage is the origin of Passover practices that Jews still follow today—such as eating matzo, unleavened bread, in memory of the Israelites who had to flee before their dough had a chance to rise. 

Over the last 2,000 years, Jews have managed to celebrate Passover in the face of far worse challenges than Covid-19.

Over the last 2,000 years, Jews have managed to celebrate Passover in the face of far worse challenges than Covid-19. In the year 70, the ancient historian Josephus reports, the Roman general Titus besieged Jerusalem three days before Passover, at a time when the city’s population was swelled by the vast numbers of pilgrims who came to offer a Passover sacrifice in the Temple. The result was pestilence—or as we would now say, an epidemic—and famine, which according to Josephus’s estimate killed 1.1 million people. Yet the holiday went on—as it did even in Auschwitz during World War II, where some survivors recalled clandestine Seders conducted without a Haggada.

By comparison, the Passover obstacles of 2020 seem minor. The internet is already full of guides for conducting a virtual Seder, in which guests can read and pray together while eating separately. Orthodox Jews ordinarily don’t use electronic devices on holidays, but this year may be different. Last week, 14 rabbinic authorities in Israel issued a statement permitting the use of Zoom or Skype to connect people during the Seder, provided that the app is turned on before the holiday begins and not turned off until it ends. Other rabbis disagreed, however, and practice will probably vary from household to household.

ILLUSTRATION: RUTH GWILY

However people connect on Passover this year, they will likely find new resonances in the Seder. Everyone is thinking about the importance of handwashing these days, as a way to prevent transmission of the coronavirus, but washing your hands has been one of the first steps in the Seder for many centuries, as a preliminary to handling food. One Passover meme making the rounds lately rewrites the order of the Seder so that instead of handwashing occurring once, it’s repeated between every stage of the meal.

Covid-19 also gives new concreteness to the section of the Seder dealing with the ten plagues. The Book of Exodus relates that, in order to convince the Pharaoh to “let my people go,” God sent Egypt a series of afflictions: water turned to blood, the land was inundated by frogs and locusts, cattle were killed by disease, day turned to night. Yet each time Pharaoh refused to relent, until the worst plague of all, when every firstborn child in Egypt died on the same night. In this way God requited the genocidal decree of Pharaoh, who had ordered all Israelite boys to be killed at birth.

But the Israelites were spared, since God had sent them into a kind of quarantine: “None of you shall go out at the door of his house until the morning,” he instructed Moses and Aaron. The name of the holiday commemorates this event, as the Haggada explains: “It is a Passover offering to the Lord, because He passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt when He struck the Egyptians with a plague, and He saved our houses.”

MORE IN IDEAS

A Passover Unlike Any Other April 3, 2020 

The Science of Staying Connected April 2, 2020

Amy Compton-Phillips: A New Frontier for Medical Technology March 28, 2020 

W. Bradford Wilcox: Marriage With Family at Its Center March 28, 2020 

For most people alive today, the idea of a plague that strikes a whole nation—so that “there was not a house where there was not one dead,” as the Bible says—was until recently hard to imagine. Covid-19 is nowhere near that deadly, but it has given us an inkling of the fear of and vulnerability to disease that all human societies lived with until the 20th century. For the Jews of Europe, times of plague were doubly dangerous, since they were often blamed by their Christian neighbors. During the Black Death of 1348, hundreds of Jewish communities in Western Europe were attacked, despite the intervention of Pope Clement VI, who pointed out that Jews were dying from the plague just like everyone else.

The Seder acknowledges the horror of such afflictions with a distinctive ritual. When it comes time to recite the ten plagues, participants remove a drop of wine from their cups after each plague is named, either with a finger or by spilling it. The customary explanation for this practice is that it’s a way of symbolically decreasing the joy of the celebration, in acknowledgment of the suffering of the Egyptians. In the words of the Talmud, God “doesn’t rejoice over the downfall of the wicked.”

Throughout the Seder, in fact, joy and sadness are inseparable. Modern scholars have argued that the Seder is modeled on the ancient Greek symposium, a drinking party in which men would talk, joke and listen to music while reclining on couches. On Passover, likewise, Jews are supposed to drink four cups of wine and recline at leisure (a practice seldom followed today, when people are more used to sitting upright at a table). These are ways of demonstrating that Jews are no longer slaves, as in Egypt, but free people.

At the same time, one of the key ingredients of the Passover meal is bitter herbs—often represented on modern American plates by horseradish—which is eaten as a reminder of the bitterness of the lives of the Israelite slaves. Another dish, charoset, a paste made of fruit and nuts, is meant to resemble the clay used by those slaves to make bricks; and matzo is referred to in the Haggada as “the bread of affliction.” This year, for Jews separated from loved ones in the shadow of a pandemic, the chastened happiness of Passover will have a new meaning and relevance.

[ruminativerabbi]

Bouncing Back

We human beings are essentially adaptable creatures, but we don’t think of ourselves that way most of the time. In fact, just the opposite is how we usually see ourselves: as creatures of habit so used to our ways that it takes a seismic shift in the environment to move us into new modes of behavior or attitude. But then, when there is simply no alternative and we suddenly do have to adapt, we somehow manage it nevertheless. We all exemplified that ability in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy back in 2012, for example, when so many of us were suddenly without electric power not for minutes or hours but—for many of us—for almost two weeks. Somehow, we figured it out. We cooked on disposable hibachis in the backyard. We read by flashlight or by candlelight. We drove into Queens to retrieve our email in the first public library we passed that had wi-fi available to the public. For the first day or two, it was challenging and almost exciting to figure out how to survive. By day three, not so much. A week later, we had all had enough. But my point for today is not really how adaptive we were, but how fleeting all those changes proved to be: as soon as the power went back on, no one was interested in frying eggs in the backyard or in reading in bed at night by candlelight. It was real change, real adaptation. But it didn’t last: as soon as the power went back on, we all went immediately back to where we had been before the storm hit.

When the COVID crisis was just upon us, I imagined at first that this would be like that, that the coronavirus would be the viral version of Sandy. And, indeed, in the beginning, that was exactly how it seemed. We struggled for a while to figure out how to get things done. And then, when we really were out of eggs and toilet paper (and not in that order for most of us), we adapted because we simply had to. We figured out how make face masks out of t-shirts. We figured out how to order groceries, toiletries, and prescription drugs online. We figured out how to get our daily exercise without a gym to drive to or a public pool to swim in. Houses of worship learned how to conduct their services on zoom platforms. Teachers of all sorts, myself included, figured out how to teach on those same zoom platforms. Here and there, the cloud even showed a bit of silver lining as people conducting zoomed seder meals suddenly realized that they could invite relatives from all over the country, even from all around the world, who would otherwise never have been able even to consider coming. Instead of declining, participation in daily worship actually increased as the possibility of coming to minyan in the morning without having actually to go outside in the cold beckoned to non-regular worshipers and inspired them to embrace daily prayer in a way that they either never had or at least hadn’t for a long time. So, because we had to, we adapted quickly and—speaking of our life at Shelter Rock specifically—almost remarkably efficiently and effectively.

Will things just go back to normal when this is all over? In 2012, that’s exactly what happened when the power went back on. But I don’t see that happening this time ’round. Indeed, what I’ve been sensing just recently is that we are being altered by this experience in ways that will remain with us long after the crisis passes, and that that is going to be true in many different settings. All sorts of businesses currently conducting business from their employees’ homes will wonder why—given that they have no walk-in trade anyway—they bother paying all that rent to have a central office in the first place. Houses of worship that are attracting more, not fewer, people to worship will wonder what the benefit would be in going back to the previous mode of operation. Schools too will be prompted to wonder if their entire operations couldn’t be streamlined—and made dramatically less expensive to operate—by making off-site learning the rule rather than the exception. True, there’s no way to conduct a choir on the zoom platform. And neither would it be possible to teach lab-based science classes to people with no physical access to the kind of equipment in well-stocked labs. But listening to lectures about history or literature, or learning a language—it seems less obvious that these couldn’t be conducted with as much success via distance learning as when teacher and pupils are all in the same physical space.

At the core of the issue is not really the question of ease, however, but one of human nature. And that is my real topic for today.

Jewish tradition is crystal-clear about the need for a minyan—a prayer quorum of ten—if worship is to take place in a non-abbreviated way that reflects the sanctity of the undertaking fully and meaningfully. The reason given in classical sources for that specific number—or, for that matter, for there being a number at all—is, however, not particularly satisfying. The Mishnah offers a list of all the parts of regular worship that require a quorum of ten. The Talmud then responds by asking where that rule came from and then by offering an answer to its own question in the form of a tradition taught by Rabbi Chiyya bar Abba in the name of Rabbi Yochanan, one of the great rabbis of the talmudic era, according to whom the requirement derives from a verse from Leviticus 22 that features the statement that God, by divine nature, seeks to become sanctified amidst the people, which the rabbi took to imply that all the most sacred parts of the service—the parts that lead to the name of God formally and publicly being sanctified—may only be undertaken in the presence of a quorum, of a minyan. The Talmud finds that assertion obscure and wonders aloud how that verse can possibly lead to that conclusion. It’s an excellent question, but most moderns will find the answer somewhere between obscure and unsatisfying. The verse from Leviticus says that God will be sanctified amidst the children of Israel. And a different verse uses that same word, amidst, when—in telling the story of the desert rebellion of Korach—God is cited as telling Moses and Aaron to separate themselves from amidst the congregation of rebels so that they will not suffer their fate. And then, because the word “congregation” had been used just a few chapters earlier to refer specifically to the ten spies Moses sent out to reconnoiter the land and who later opposed Caleb and Joshua and encouraged the people to give up any hope of ever establishing themselves in the Land of Israel—that, the Talmud triumphantly concludes, is why we need ten people to constitute a minyan.

I first learned that passage of Talmud when I was a student at JTS more than forty years ago. It didn’t seem too convincing to me then. It still doesn’t. The whole notion that that kind of elaborate word play can be used to develop actual laws that affect real people in the course of their daily lives is not something I would particularly want to defend in public. Mustn’t there be some other reason for needing a physically real, extant, present community of people in the same place to worship fully and meaningfully?

The journey to spiritual fulfillment is a journey each of us takes alone. The ancient model has to do with the pilgrimage to Jerusalem that the Torah ordains be undertaken three times a year: each pilgrim is best imagined traveling as a party of one to commune with the one God, as a solo traveler making personal progress, yes, to the glimmering real city in the distance, but also to a private Jerusalem in which the two—the Israelite and the fully present God of Israel—will henceforth be able to dwell in each other’s presence even after the former returns home and resumes normal, everyday life. It is, in fact, in that specific way that the pilgrimage was deemed to be a transformational experience and not merely a task to be undertaken thrice annually.

That is not the full story, however. Each pilgrim following a private, wholly idiosyncratic path towards a personal destiny in God was also a traveler moving forward with countless others on the real road to the real Jerusalem, the actual city that in ancient times housed the actual Temple in which God was imaged to have settled the divine name and thus at least in some sense to have become approachable and knowable. And that image of people pursuing their personal redemptive moment fully alone, but also in the company of countless others attempting to do the same thing along the same path—that is the model for worship in our day that serves as the equivalent of the pilgrimages undertaken thousands of years ago to the Holy City. In my mind, in fact, it is that specific concept of being alone together that this whole zoom-worship experience has taught me to value in a way that I hadn’t really previously.

I like joining our zoom­-minyan each morning and evening. (Readers who haven’t tried it out are welcome to enter through the Shelter Rock website at www.srjc.org. Morning worship is at 7:30 from Sunday through Friday; evenings are at 8 PM Sunday though Thursday.) I too like the idea of not having to go out into the cold when it’s blustery and freezing outside! But there is something about the physical presence of others traveling the same road to the same golden city wholly on their own but also in the same space I myself am occupying that I find very satisfying, and that no virtual community will ever be able wholly successfully to recreate.

In our modern world, aloneness—equated by many with loneliness—is rarely a sought-after thing. The books about aloneness that I’ve written about in this space over the years—Thoreau’s Walden; Admiral Byrd’s terrific Alone, his deeply affecting account of his time spent totally on his own in Antarctica for several months in 1934; Clark Moustakas’s many works on the topic including particularly his final work, Loneliness, Creativity, and Love—these are all about the way that image of being a lonely pilgrim on a personal journey to redemption can work in the secular context. In the spiritual one, though, the image is of a room of people together in the same space as each pursues his or her personal path forward, lonely (because the spiritual quest is by its nature a lonely one) and also not lonely (because the room is filled with friendly, encouraging faces, some of whom the worshiper has been davening with for decades). And that is why life on the zoom platform, for all it has to recommend it, will never replace a real-life minyan of people lifting their hearts in prayer to God as individuals in the company of others who, together and alone, are at the very same time also progressing towards their private Jerusalems along the dusty byways of ancient Israel…and also in the context of real life as it is lived in the bosom of a community of caring friends.

[marcusbutworse-archive]

Stop like....putting synagogues on the level of churches this spring with the pandemic. In america Christians handling Easter is NOT the same as how I’ve seen synagogues handling Passover and Seder dinners. I literally don’t know a single person who had a Seder dinner with their community or with family outside who was already living with them. Every online Shabbat service I have attended in the past three weeks over zoom from the east coast to my time zone (depending what time i woke up and was ready) were ALL making plans to host Seder dinners with others over zoom so no one would be put in danger of getting covid19. This is NOT the same as catholic and otherwise churches holding services on Easter Sunday to bring in larger donations from their congregation.

And for future reference as a whole, maybe just stop grouping Jewish people with a religion that, yes while has many of the same origins in way of locations, certain stories etc, has a long history of oppressing and erasing Jews and Jewish voices.

[queer-suburban-homestead]

I was raised Catholic although I never really felt like a practising Catholic and realised it wasn’t for me in my teens. I’ve been a practising witch pretty much my entire life - because I live in the UK, my practise has always had a strong Celtic element to it, particularly around solstices and esbats. I don’t do any kind of deity work, but I do read tarot, do candle magic, have about as many crystals as you’d expect your average queer millennial woman to have...

For the past decade I’ve been feeling very drawn to Judaism (this is a much longer post that doesn’t really fit here). I don’t entirely know what that means for me yet, other than resonating deeply with a lot of the reading I’ve been doing and the services my local temple has kindly let me join/observe via Zoom these past few months. Last Friday’s Tu B’Shevat seder in particular felt like...coming home, in a way I can’t quite describe.

There are so many questions I need to ask myself and answer before I even think about embarking on a path that might lead to conversion, but my largest one is if and how my witchcraft can coexist with Judaism. I consider my witchcraft a spiritual path, a practise in the sense that is something I do as well as something I am, something that’s so intertwined with how I live my life that I don’t know how I could give it up without radically reshaping who I no am. And maybe that’s what I’m supposed to do!

I know there are plenty of people who identify as both Jewish and a witch, but I feel like as a convert I’d have to choose one or the other.

I’m not sure this is a question rather than just a vague word vomit and request for guidance or thoughts if anyone has any to spare. For clarity, I wouldn’t even so much as approach my local rabbi formally until I’ve figured out if this is something I can reconcile - if it isn’t, then I need to reflect deeply on which path and community is the one I should be on. I would never consider conversion half heartedly - I want to bring my whole self, but first I need to figure out if that self is compatible.

[higglety]

Ok so step one is don't panic! It's different from a normal meal in that there's more structure and ceremony, but the cool thing is the instructions for how to do it are literally built right in- it's the delicious and religious version of the Cha Cha Slide.

The Passover sedar exists to preserve the memory of the Jewish people's flight from Egypt, and it functions both as a reminder and as a way to pass the story on to those who don't know. That's assumed by tradition to be the children present, but any goyim present end up filling this role, too, just by default (and that's not a judgemental thing, that's a "this is stuff no kne would reasonably expect you to come in already knowing" thing).

Although there's a basic structure, there's a TON of variation on how each individual family or group observes the seder, but the basics are this: one person, usually a patriarch or head of household (in my family it was always my grandma or mom, whoever was present, or me, now, if we don't travel) will lead the ceremony. There's a book, called a haggadah, which the leader of the ceremony will read from. Often everyone at the table will have a copy of the same haggadah, since there's parts where everyone reads along together, but that's not 100% necessary. Think of the haggadah like a script- it tells the story of Passover, and also contains all the prayers to be said and points out the timing of when to say them.

So basically, when the seder starts, there's going to be a series of prayers over specific bits of food, an explanation of the symbolism of these bits of food, and then you eat these bits of food. These are the bits on the seder plate. There's a blessing over the wine, then you drink some of the wine. There's a retelling of the story of thr exodus, some more symbolic foods and prayers, and then you eat. The actual dinner itself can vary widely depending on cultural background, personal tastes, and how much energy the cook has, so whatever you come up with for a zoom seder will be perfectly fine, I would personally just steer clear of leavened bread and obviously non-kosher food like pig and shellfish out of general respect for the vibe. Afterwafd there's some more wine and prayers, and that's pretty much it!

In your situation, will your partner be present with you, or will you be zooming in from different locations? If you'll be together, I would imagine you should be able to take your cue from them; just watch when they eat and drink and do the same. You should be fine even if you're on your own, though- unless they're VERY orthodox, they'll probably do what my family does; we conduct most of the ceremony in English, and we read the prayers first in Hebrew and then again in English, since not everyone is fluent enough to get the full meaning of the Hebrew without the translation. And the prayers are pretty self-explanatory and easy to follow.

If you want to do some further reading, this is an excellent breakdown of the full sedar and the meanings behind each part. But all this aside, it certainly wouldn't hurt to ask your partner what their family's Passover traditions are, and what to expect. You might even consider asking if you can get on chat with the dad ahead of time to talk about what to expect. I mean I don't know him, but if it were me or anyone in my family, we would absolutely be not only receptive but actively thrilled to get a "will you please teach me a bit about this so I can respectfully participate in this important event?" request. Especially a rabbi, whose whole thing is supposed to be teaching.

Anyway good luck, have fun, and also please let me know how they handle the cup of Elijah in a zoom seder because I am picturing somebody turning a camera towards a lone cup and just letting it sit there the whole time and that is deeply amusing to me.

Jewish Tumblr, I Need Your Help!

So, my partner is Jewish. One of my partner's parents is a Rabbi.

I have been invited to join the WHOLE DANG FAMILY for Passover Seder via Zoom. (Note: I have met the parents once previously over a Zoom call, but none of the rest of the fam).

WHAT DO I DO? I have no idea of what to expect, how to behave, etc. And while my partner is wonderfully supportive, they're also a little ummm... shall we say socially awkward? Combine that with my own social awkwardness and cue me entering a panic spiral.

To be totally fair to their parents at least, they are super chill and seem so friendly. This fear is entirely of my own social wtfs (especially after a year in lockdown).

I do have a Seder plate (I found a beautiful one we plan to use in our home), and a general understanding of what goes on it. But yeah, any advice, tips, etc for a pagan gal (their parents know) meeting a big religious Jewish fam for a Passover Seder would be hugely appreciated.

[kentonramsey]

An Overwrought Intro and 3 Outfit Ideas for—That’s Right!—Going Nowhere

At some point midway through last week, I started to realize that even though I have been defending the act of getting dressed (we launched a hashtag, have hosted multiple conversations on the topic, and my mirror selfies have not waned) I haven’t actually been doing it myself. I have thought that I am doing it, but really, I’m just slapping on cotton or silk sleep shorts or gym shorts and pairing them with dressier blouses or colorful t-shirts and socks. Is that actually getting dressed? I think my having to ask means that, at least to me, it’s not. Obviously, though, it would be helpful if I could say what getting dressed means. So let me think about it for a second.

Okay, I thought about it and ultimately it entails more than the act of putting on clothes. This seems to be what Harling was getting at when we e-mailed about this topic last week. Getting dressed infers a third-party gaze—the onlooking of a stranger who is conjuring opinions about who I am based purely on what I’m wearing. Redefining yourself by changing your clothes daily is thrilling if you’re the kind of person who likes to spice shit up without actually spicing it up. It’s a way to change without actually changing—to envelope all the parts of yourself in fractured moments that illuminate these fragments separately, no one more important than the other. They’re just different.

And I definitely haven’t been doing that. Partially because I haven’t felt the need—who would I be illuminating these parts for? The tenants who sublet my body for 9 months from late 2017 to early 2018? They know me inside out! Literally! My partner of 10 years? Him too.

[20 minutes later]: When I first wrote the above before sojourning to the kitchen, I specifically omitted myself from the above group because it seemed redundant but maybe it’s not. Maybe it would be helpful to remind myself—or to ask you to consider reminding yourself—of the different roles we get to play, activated by the different people and situations we encounter in life outside of quarantine. Or maybe this is all dumb as hell and you just want to carry on. I can’t tell if I’m losing it or gaining it but here are three outfit ideas in case you want some inspo, to make fun of me or simply for if you are curious enough to feel the sensation of a zip fly waistline pressing up against your stomach—which leads me to:

Exhibit A, for the minimalist who likes a flare sleeve

I put on jeans last Saturday and kept them on for about two hours because it made me feel like I was coming from somewhere or about to go out. I did not expect they would give me a jolt of life but was pleasantly surprised to find that whereas I’d been quarreling with myself over whether jeans are in fact style nirvana or actually the latest garment to out themselves as oppressive, it seems they might be a combination of both. Anyway, I highly recommend it, if only on the weekend when you’re in pursuit of an excuse to “get ready.”

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Exhibit B, for the maximalist at heart

I wore this to my Passover seder last Wednesday, which was conducted on Zoom with my side of the Medine-Cohen family. Worthy of note is that if Exhibit A illuminates the more streamlined, down-to-business part of me that still deplores an ironed out wrinkle, Exhibit B is more like a return home to the extent that it probably presents pretty chaotic, even though I did put some thought into it. I think it just occurred to me that I tell people, “Only you could pull that off,” what I mean is, “I don’t exactly get it, but it’s clear that you do.”

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Exhibit C, for dreaming

Consider this one a prompt: What will you wear on the first day post-quarantine? Be as specific as possible—where are you going, who are you meeting, what are you doing, what is the weather and how do you feel? My answer, illustrated in the image above entails a weekday morning. It’s 78 degrees and sunny. I’m going to the Great Lawn in Central Park to sprawl out on the grass, sin mask, and stare up at the blue sky before I meet two friends (pending my actually retaining any!) for a boat ride. I might lick their faces depending on how far we’ve come and will definitely be carrying a bag of food with freshly prepared items by every open restaurant that I pass on my gallop to the park. I intend to stay out until the sun begins to set, at which point I relocate to a sidewalk cafe to order a drink the size of my head. I feel full for the simple reason that by this point, I smell like that perfect, faint mixture of summer body sweat and outside. Do you remember the one? Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh.

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Graphic by Lorenza Centi.

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