#cw christian antisemitism

[todaysjewishholiday]

12 Menachem Av 5784 (15-16 August 2024)

Throughout the Middle Ages, one of the recurring strategies of the Catholic Church to place pressure on Jews to convert were formal debates between champions of Christianity and Jewish communal leaders. These debates were not voluntary for their Jewish participants, and the goal was not a fair and effective discussion of differing views. Catholic leaders were convinced that theirs was the one true faith and that Judaism by contrast was fundamentally false and misguided, and since they were generally the debate judges, there was little chance of a fair hearing for the Jewish participants. The goal of the disputations was the humiliation of Jewish religious leaders, and they were often accompanied by burnings of the Talmud and other Jewish holy texts. And when, as often happened, Jews argued well enough to instead embarrass their overconfident Christian opponents, that too was dangerous. Christian leaders did not take embarrassment well.

The 12th of Av 5023 was the beginning of one such debate, known as the Disputation of Barcelona. Paulo Christiani, a Jewish convert to Christianity, insisted that he could prove the truth of Catholicism from the Talmud and Tanakh, much to the excitement of Christian leaders. They clamored for the king to force the Jews to debate Christiani so that he could demonstrate the superiority of the Catholic religion. Nachmanides, already in his 70s and well known throughout the Sephardi community, was given orders to appear at the royal court to act as the defender of Judaism. Knowing that the disputations were often made unequal by well founded Jewish fears of punishment for speaking negatively of Christianity and limits imposed in debate rules on Jewish participants, Nachmanides agreed to participate on the condition that the king clearly state in advance that both participants would have full freedom of speech and would not be punished for any of their statements during the debate. The king, seeing the fairness of this request, granted the condition.

Nachmanides and Christiani debated over the course of four days in front of the king and his court. While Christiani’s arguments might have been accepted by a Christian audience without familiarity with rabbinical writings, Nachmanides was easily able to demonstrate their logical inconsistencies.

At the end of the disputation, the king announced Christianity to be the winner, but awarded Nachmanides 300 gold coins for his arguments, calling it the best defense of a bad cause he had ever heard. Going even further, the king attended synagogue services on the Shabbat following the dispute and addressed his Jewish subjects directly.

The Dominican Order, of which Christiani was a member, crowed eagerly about their victory in the debate. Nachmanides, in response, published a transcript to allow the public to consider the matter for themselves. The Dominicans were outraged. They pressured the king to punish Nachmanides, insisting that while he had been permitted by royal decree to speak freely before the court, that freedom did not extend to publication. Nachmanides was exiled from his homeland. Success in defending Judaism was punished harshly. Nachmanides was never able to return home. Centuries later, the same antisemitic views that had motivated the forced disputation and his exile were being behind the expulsion of all Jews from the newly united realms of Aragon and Castile.

Today is also Erev Shabbat. Shabbat HaMalka will descend to comfort us. Her peace is a great consolation in a world full of strife and hardship.

[notaplaceofhonour]

I was raised in the People of Destiny cult (later renamed, and more well-known as, Sovereign Grace Ministries, now Sovereign Grace Churches).

The valorization of martyrdom and The End Times was so ubiquitous it was ambient noise. We stood in the church lobby theorizing about who the antichrist would be, we argued about whether Jesus would rapture us all before, after, or during the Tribulation Period where Satan would be given free reign over the earth. There was a strong Christian Zionist fixation on Israel as the final battleground and capital of the coming Messianic Age. But the one thing we were all certain of was is that we were in the End Times, that we were not of this world and couldn’t get too attached to our lives here.

We were raised to believe our sin nature made us undeserving of life, that we deserved death and eternal conscious torture.

My parents read us the Jesus Freaks books (a series by Christian Rap group DC Talk about martyrs). I spent “devotional time” reading Fox’s Book of Martyrs. We had guest speakers from Voice of the Martyrs, their pamphlets were often stocked in our church’s information center. We grew up with our dad listening to right wing talk radio and making us listen to songs about how the Godless atheists were outlawing Christianity in America, that we could all become martyrs soon.

The group’s theology was damaging & traumatic in a lot of other ways that contributed to the suicidality I have continued to struggle with for the rest of my life. For a long time I did not believe I would live past 20. There are times when the idea of giving my death meaning by using public suicide to make a political statement has appealed to me.

So now, seeing so many social media posts glorifying the suicide of a US Airman this week, I have been furious. Reading his social media posts, I recognize so much about the way I was raised in his all-or-nothing, black-or-white mindset, the valorization of death-seeking & martyrdom, and the apocalyptic fire-and-brimstone imagery of self-immolation. The moment I saw people I followed celebrating his self-immolation, I said to myself “this feels like a cult”

So when I learned he was raised in a cult too, nothing could have made more sense to me. His political orientation may have changed, but his mindset did not—it was no less extreme or cult-like.

I’ve talked about so many of the reasons this response from the broader left scares me, including how it’s laundering that airman’s antisemitic beliefs, but I cannot think of anything that would hit me in a more personal place than this specific response to this specific situation has.

When I see the images, I think: that could have been me. That scares me, and what scares me more is that so many prominent people are overwhelmingly sending the message to people like me that there is nothing else we can do that would have a more meaningful impact than killing ourselves for the cause.

I do not believe that. I will not even entertain it. And having to see his death over and over and over again, to argue against people who are treating this like an intellectual/moral exercise or a valid debate we all have to consider has been immensely triggering and fills me with a rage I rarely feel. It’s unconscionable that we are even putting self-harm on the table, and that pushing back against that is somehow controversial.

There is hope. Our lives do have meaning. There are far more effective means of fighting injustice. And the world is a better place for having you in it. Don’t fall into believing this is a way to give life purpose.

[chelledoggo]

friendly reminders/spicy hot takes:

you can (and should) support Palestine and oppose Zionism WITHOUT being anti-Semitic. practicing Jews exist in Palestine, even if they are a minority there.

to Christians supporting Israel because they "support their fellow Christians": Christians exist in Palestine, too.

also to Christians: Revelations was never meant to be a literal prophecy of the future. we don't need to "protect Israel" so "Jesus can come back." (i know. this is a lot to take in. i was surprised when i first learned this, too. feel free to sit down and process this.)

one more to Christians: if you "support Israel" but hate Jews, stop and take a look at yourself in the mirror because what the fuck is wrong with you?

don't boycott your local Jewish-owned small businesses if you don't know for certain whether they support Israel, you weirdos.

if you support Israel just because they're "LGBTQ+ friendly," you have your priorities messed up. (and i'm saying this as a queer person myself. government pinkwashing does not excuse war crimes.)

war is hell and by no means should we be okay with violence or death of civilians. we want peace and freedom for Palestine, not more death.

literally anyone can drop into your DMs and claim to be a Palestinian in need of financial support. make sure to thoroughly verify their genuineness before considering donating. (the person in the DMs claiming they're verified by 90Ghost is NOT sufficient proof.)

beware of AI "photos" and videos. (i can't believe i need to say this we live in the worst timeline i s2g)

Israel's government is the enemy. innocent civilians of Israel are not. (unless they support the war, but in that case they are likely brainwashed by their government. no one is immune to propaganda.)

people can care about other current issues while also caring about Palestine. don't freak out because someone is talking about the hurricane or election season "instead of" talking about Palestine.

for the love of GOD don't shame people for taking a mental health break from the news.

k bye

[dwellordream]

“Medieval scholars inherited the idea from ancient times that there were seven primary colours: white, yellow, red, green, blue, purple, and black. Green occupied a central position, symbolically balanced between the extremes of white and black. It was also regarded as a soothing colour. Scribes often kept emeralds and other green objects nearby to rest their eyes. The poet Baudri de Bourgueil even suggested writing on green tablets instead of white or black ones for this reason.

Michel Pastoureau writes that “the true medieval opposite for white was not so much black as red.” This can be seen in the way Europeans adapted chess. When the game was adopted in Europe, the pieces and chessboard were painted in white and red, contrasting with the black and red sets common in India and the Middle East.

It was only towards the end of the Middle Ages that the white versus black dichotomy became more favoured. A key factor in this shift was the advent of printing, where black ink was used on white paper, reinforcing the perception of these colours as natural opposites.

Arthurian romances, one of the most popular forms of literature in the High Middle Ages, frequently employed colour symbolism, particularly in the depiction of knights. Pastoureau notes that these narratives used colours to convey deeper meanings and character traits. He writes:

The color code was recurrent and meaningful. A black knight was almost a character of primary importance (Tristan, Lancelot, Gawain) who wanted to hide his identity; he was generally motivated by good intentions and prepared to demonstrate his valor, especially by jousting or tournament. A red knight, on the other hand, was often hostile to the hero; this was a perfidious or evil knight, sometimes the devil’s envoy or a mysterious being from the Other World. Less prominent, a white knight was generally viewed as good; this was an older figure, a friend of protector or the hero, to who he gave wise council. Conversely, a green knight was a young knight, recently dubbed, whose audacious or insolent behavior was going to cause great disorder; he could be good or bad. Finally, yellow or gold knights were rare and blue knights nonexistent.

During the Early Middle Ages, monastic rules stipulated that monks should not concern themselves with the colour of their clothing. However, over the centuries, their attire became increasingly darker. The Cluniacs, one of the most influential monastic communities, believed that black was the appropriate colour for one’s habit. This perspective faced backlash in the twelfth century when the Cistercians adopted a white habit.

The debate over monastic colours was intense among the leaders of these orders. Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny, argued that black represented humility and renunciation, while white symbolized pride and was suitable for holidays and resurrection. In contrast, Bernard of Clairvaux, abbot of Clairvaux, claimed that white stood for purity, innocence, and virtue, whereas black symbolized death and sin, even likening it to the devil’s appearance.

Green is widely associated with Islam, but this association only developed in the twelfth century. The Quran mentions green eight times, always positively, as a colour representing vegetation, spring, and paradise. The Prophet Muhammad favoured green garments, including a green turban. While green was linked to Muhammad’s descendants, different colours were associated with the ruling Islamic dynasties: white for the Umayyads, black for the Abbasids, and red for the Almohads.

Pastoureau believes that green became a unifying colour for Muslims in the 1100s. He writes, “Its symbolism is associated with that of paradise, happiness, riches, water, the sky, and hope. Green became the sacred colour.” Consequently, many medieval copies of the Quran had green bindings or covers, a tradition that continues today. Religious dignitaries often wear green, whereas green gradually disappeared from carpets to avoid trampling on such a venerable colour.

Michel Pastoureau’s book on blue begins by highlighting the neglect this colour faced among the ancient Greeks and Romans, who rarely wrote about it or used it. He even explores the intriguing question of whether ancient peoples could perceive blue at all! This neglect persisted through the early Middle Ages until the twelfth century. “Then suddenly,” writes Pastoureau, “in just a few decades, everything changes – blue is ‘discovered’ and attains a prominent place in painting, heraldry, and clothing.”

The first significant shift in the ‘blue revolution’ was the use of blue to represent the clothing of the Virgin Mary. The scene of Mary mourning Jesus’ crucifixion was popular in the Middle Ages, and once artists began depicting her cloak in vibrant blue, it quickly became the standard. Additionally, artists, especially those working in stained glass, overcame technical limitations in creating blues, allowing the colour to be used in various mediums and clothing. Pastoureau notes that by the thirteenth century, monarchs such as France’s Louis IX and England’s Henry III began wearing blue, leading it to become the colour of medieval royalty.

Yellow initially benefited from its resemblance to gold, which bolstered its reputation. Many medieval heraldic symbols incorporated yellow, and possessing blonde hair was considered highly fashionable. However, in the Later Middle Ages, yellow began to acquire negative associations, including envy and heresy. Judas, the apostle who betrayed Jesus, was increasingly depicted wearing yellow clothing. Consequently, it was unsurprising that when the Catholic Church convicted the Czech reformer Jan Hus of heresy in 1415, they dressed him in a yellow robe for his execution.

Yellow also became associated with Jews, and as European Christians enforced clothing regulations on Jewish communities, yellow was often (though not always) included. By the early modern period, yellow fell out of favour, perceived as gaudy and unpopular.”

- Michel Pastoureau, “Colour in the Middle Ages”

[yardsards]

do people who weren't raised evangelical Know that the main reason why so many evangelical christians support israel is bc they see israel as a pawn in enacting a prophesy to bring back jesus and cause the apocalypse? bc that's very much A Thing

[some-teeth-in-a-trench-coat]

You asked not to be followed by very religious Christians, so what's your opinion on Muslims? Asking as a Muslim.

As long as you're respectful and won't proselytize, it's totally fine. I mention Christians specifically because Christianity, unlike Islam from what I understand, has been founded on antisemitism and especially supersessionism is woven into it and many Christians seem to think they're on a mission to appropriate Judaism and convert Jews. I also want to state for the record that it's not "very religious Christians can't follow", it's "any religious Christian must ask permission before and show that they can respect my boundaries."

Thank you for asking for clarification, I appreciate you taking the time to make sure!

[fictionkinfessions]

it always weirds me out when non christian / non american countries have distinctly christian american holidays. baby girl you are from every continent in Africa, why you celebrating 'not thanksgiving' in your canon? [thats not racism thats a reference tyvm] Also it's hilarious when ppl kin with canonically Jewish characters celebrate new years day on january 1st. uhhhh baby girl. ykw nevermind.

📦

[sarasa-cat]

Receives bizarre self published huge print book in mail. Nothing i ordered, addressed to me.

Well, i have been targeted by “son of rabbi ex-jew discovers jesus which led him away from his ‘dirty(sic)’ prior life”. Ew. Just ew.

Why are religious conversion attempts legal?

Seriously. This is a real question.

This shit is gross.

Like literally a steaming pile of dog shit smeared on my mailbox.

.

(it raises odd questions as i have never been a member of a synagog or jewish org’s mailing list so like… the spam quotient is disturbing. Never been christian though either so i just. Yeah. Dogshit. In my box with my name and addie on it.)

[regicide1997]

This is in reference to the reddit post I reblogged a couple hours ago. Making my own post because this is going to be a very much Christian-ish perspective and since OP of the other post is Jewish I'd rather not clog their notes with this stream-of-consciousness rant.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around how someone can fuck up that badly.

Sure, Peter's vision in Acts 10 allows you to eat otherwise unclean meats, that's one valid interpretation—I recently learned it's not the only interpretation, but it is probably the interpretation that Paul was following when he wrote this to the early church in Rome:

13 Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in the way of a brother or sister. 14 I am convinced, being fully persuaded in the Lord Jesus, that nothing is unclean in itself. But if anyone regards something as unclean, then for that person it is unclean. 15 If your brother or sister is distressed because of what you eat, you are no longer acting in love. Do not by your eating destroy someone for whom Christ died. 16 Therefore do not let what you know is good be spoken of as evil. 17 For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, 18 because anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and receives human approval.

19 Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification. 20 Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food. All food is clean, but it is wrong for a person to eat anything that causes someone else to stumble. 21 It is better not to eat meat or drink wine or to do anything else that will cause your brother or sister to fall.

22 So whatever you believe about these things keep between yourself and God. Blessed is the one who does not condemn himself by what he approves. 23 But whoever has doubts is condemned if they eat, because their eating is not from faith; and everything that does not come from faith is sin.

(Romans 14:13-23)

TL;DR: In the presence of those with religious/moral/ethical dietary restrictions stricter than your own, follow their restrictions; and above all else, don't be an asshole. Now, I'll admit, I'm not the biggest fan of Paul, but he really hit the nail on the head with this one.

I'm reminded of a few minutes I glimpsed of an episode of The Big Bang Theory (back when I had cable, and before I had gained the common sense to change the channel when The Big Bang Theory was on) in which Sheldon's very much Evangelical mother comes for a visit and prepares food (it might have been turkey? or chicken? [looked it up, it was chicken]) for the protagonists, and she said to the one protag who was visibly of South Asian descent [looking it up: Raj], "I hope it's not one of the animals you people think is magic."

Yeah, it left a bad taste in my mouth, too.

Although it was written in a way that makes clear that this character is coming from a place of ignorance and Christian supremacism, she at least demonstrates a (half-hearted) attempt to be accommodating of other people's religious dietary restrictions (or at least what she assumed might be there; I might be wrong, but if I recall, the punchline was that Raj was an atheist. not going to bother looking it up, this post isnt meant to be an analysis of a fucking tbbt scene). Even though the wording is disrespectful of the beliefs surrounding the dietary restrictions, and even though the question of dietary restrictions (religious or otherwise) should've been addressed to the whole room (and not just the one person whose ethnicity reminded her that foreigners exist), she nonetheless acknowledged and was somewhat prepared to accommodate such dietary restrictions.

All of this to say: Imagine being worse than Sheldon's mom. Imagine not only knowing ahead of time that your guests (in particular, your son-in-law and his children, whom you invited for a meal) have dietary restrictions, and not only failing to prepare a meal that meets those restrictions, but purposely preparing a meal that violates those restrictions, and presenting it to your guests as if it satisfied the restrictions. Imagine being so disgustingly hateful, and claiming to act in love's name. Imagine having the audacity to demand an apology when the clanging cymbal of your hateful acts is met with similarly harsh words.

may god have mercy on your wretched souls, for were i in his place, i sure as hell would not.

If those parents-in-law had actually followed the New Testament guidelines they professed, then there should not have been any pork on the table, at all—not even as a side option for the sake of the Christian side of the family. When you (Christians) invite people for a meal, and all or the majority of your invited guests are Jewish, you don't take the non-kosher food out of the fridge; you prepare a kosher meal for all to enjoy. (Even if they say ahead of time that it's okay, you still do your best to go the extra mile to make your guests comfortable.) And above all, you don't be a fucking asshole.

And that's just the religious aspect of it. Religious aspects aside, the violation of trust, the violation of basic hospitality, the violation of consent entailed in preparing food that contains ingredients your guests have told you they cannot consume—regardless of reason—and serving that food to those guests under the pretense that it does not contain such ingredients... I'm not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure that qualifies as assault.

[lemonsharks]

Nearly every christian sect in the US is a doomsday cult. Not just the postmillerite ones.

[todaysjewishholiday]

20 Sivan 5784 (25-26 June 2024)

The history of antisemitism is full of paranoid rumor-mongering and fantastical invention. One of the most persistent and damaging lies has been the blood libel, the claim that Jewish Passover rituals require Christian blood. How this would make any sense when Pesach was celebrated for over a thousand years before Christianity began is never explored. Nor is the irony that the lie of Jews using Christian blood has justified numerous horrendous Christian acts of bloodshed and violence against the Jewish people.

One of the first such massacres took place on 20 Sivan 4931 in the French village of Blois, in the midst of the antisemitic panics whipped up by the crusades. Blois had a small Jewish community that included several students of Rabbeinu Tam as well as an influential female moneylender, Pulcelina. But when a servant at one of the local estates claimed that he had seen a Jewish man dumping the body of a Christian child into the river, it hardly mattered that no local children were missing and there was no evidence of any kind to corroborate the servant’s tale. The townsfolk and their rulers wished to believe it. The entire Jewish community was imprisoned and on the twentieth of Sivan over thirty Jews were burned alive on the basis of the foul rumor.

Other Jewish communities throughout Europe were horrified by the brutality of the massacre of Blois and Rabbeinu Tam immediately declared the twentieth of Sivan as a fast commemorating the unwilling martyrs when he was informed of the massacre. Centuries later this fast gained added weight as the Ashkenazim of Poland made it a day of remembrance for the many Jewish victims of the Chelmnietsky Uprising of the Cossacks.

[chelledoggo]

real Christians don't excuse Nazism.

"b-but!! the Jews killed Jesus!!" NOPE. the government and corrupt religious leaders killed Jesus.

[roundearthsociety]

Cmon man don’t start with that “ jews have it out for the Christian’s” shit .

Mediocre quality bait, consider trying harder

[haveyoumetmythief]

Not if you're parroting antisemitic speech. If you hear someone talking about secret global elites and you don't hear antisemitism, it's because you've missed the (obvious) dog whistle. There is an inherent difference between saying "billionaires run the world" and "global elites control everything" and if you didn't know the difference, now you do. If you are not an active fan of fascism, it is your job to learn how to distinguish fascism in its basest terms, which includes their talking points.

When people decide that certain lives are acceptable targets, it is put up to you as an outsider to either be complicit or make the effort to be better. So maybe you don't know Nazi dog whistles. Personally, I've always found the fact that I could unknowingly make a fascist feel safe horrifying, so I've prioritized not doing that. And you can either get defensive and argue that you're "normal" or you can get on track, learn the tells, and shut that shit down.

And to be clear, if you think people use it "as an excuse" to be antisemitic, you've missed the plot entirely. The antisemitism, anti-blackness, anti-disenfranchised is their WHOLE POINT. When someone's goal is to eradicate a people, the response isn't to call them abnormal. Fuck, antisemitism is normalized. Every single day there are more and more attacks on Jewish lives. And if you aren't willing to combat fascist rhetoric, you're complicit.

had to unfollow yet another leftist on tik tok after i heard them say “oh those conspiracy theories that say there are a group of elites ruling the planet aren’t conspiracy theories they’re true there really is a group of elites running the planet” BESTIES YOU CAN BE ANTICAPITALIST WITHOUT USING ANTISEMITISM AS A TOOL. WHETHER OR NOT YOU PERSONALLY THINK JEWS ARE THE SECRET CABAL OF RICH PEOPLE RUNNING THE WORLD YOU ARE STILL PLAYING INTO ANTISEMITISM BY USING THAT RHETORIC. PLEASE USE UR BRAINS!!!!!!!!!!

[caffeineandsociety]

There's a specific genre of shitty antisemitic joke that I have seen fly under the radar (as it was designed to) a LOT more often lately - especially since Kanye started going full mask-off nazi - so I feel the need to issue a warning about it. Namely, the genre is jokes that get spread around by people who aren't willfully antisemitic because outside of conspiracy brain rot land, it appears that the point of the joke is absurdism.

As an example, let's examine the 23-and-me lizard DNA test that I've sadly seen floating around unquestioned.

Because, see, to the average person who isn't willfully antisemitic, this genre of joke comes off as nonsequiturs, or hilarious mistakes - you, as a person with some level of basic observational and critical thinking skills, living on Earth and not in whatever batshit mirror dimension conspiracy theorists think we live in, might very well end up getting a giggle out of it because, HAH, we KNEW those DNA ancestry kits were a scam! If you're not a deliberate antisemite but not really up on the dogwhistles, it doesn't scan as anything awful because you're put in mind of things like feeding a photo of something decidedly not human into that one selfie-to-anime neural net, which sometimes works and produces interesting results because the thing is looking for specific patterns and trying to make anything fit - not things like blatantly lying about doing something like that in the hopes that normies who see the absurdity and want to have a laugh at a scummy company's expense will pass it along to people who unironically believe that Jewish people are actual literal lizard aliens and the test proves it.

This is the same strategy that guy at the game awards pulled. You, a person living in reality where the main source of political corruption is just the basic consequence of an economic system that makes power pool in the hands of anyone willing to exploit enough people, a world of banal mundane evil, know damned well that QAnon-pizzagate-satanic ritual abuse cult conspiracy bullshit is, well, bullshit, if you're even familiar with the details of what they believe at all. When someone crashes the stage and thanks Rabbi Bill Clinton, you may very well laugh because to YOU it is a blatant absurd nonsequitur.

Problem is that to someone else, someone who's deep into that shit, it's either someone letting the truth slip, or someone backing the deep state into a corner - whichever is more convenient to believe.

This is one form of how the far right uses memeification (CW: the example discussed in the link is a rape "joke") - it means something totally different to the in-group than it does to the out-group. To you, it's funny because it's nonsensical; to them, it's fun because they think they're onto something huge and they're about to blow this shit wide open and it's going to be their great moment of triumph.

I cannot stress enough that no matter how absurd an antisemitic conspiracy theory sounds to you, there are people who believe it, unironically. There are people who unironically believe that Jewish people are very literally not human and no amount of evidence to the contrary will ever change their minds. There are people who believe that we're born with horns and tails and pointed ears and have them surgically altered to fit in with good Christian humans like some kind of extremely high-stakes game of Among Us. There are people who believe that we steal, ritualistically abuse, and kill Christian babies. These beliefs, while fringe enough that, yeah, most of you who this post is aimed at have never heard them in the wild before very recently, are not nearly as fringe as you probably think they are. Just look at fucking Kanye. This asshole has more fans than there are Jewish people in the world.

So I'm begging you to please, bare minimum, be careful of "absurdist" jokes about Jewish people, especially if they reference lizards, money, banking, or government power. Also, you may see Jewish people debating how religious laws may apply to fictional creatures, but outside of that context you should also be wary of any time Jewish people are mentioned in the same sentence as vampires, dragons, goblins, zombies, fantasy demons, or any number of other fantasy creatures known for greed, feeding on humans, or both.

If the reason it seems funny to you is because you'd have to be really stupid to believe it's true or makes any kind of sense - it's probably looking for you to spread it to people who are, in fact, that stupid.

[todaysjewishholiday]

6 Elul 5784 (7-8 September 2024)

The fifty fourth century was a golden age for the Ashkenazim of Bohemia, Moravia, Galicia and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. As with all such golden ages for the Jewish people, it was not without dangers, and it ended in a devastating conflagration, but while it lasted it was a time of a great flowering of rabbinical study and remarkable freedom of movement for Jews across the eastern lands of Europe. More than anything else, it was this age that established the strength of Ashkenazi Judaism from which modern Jewish orthodoxy has fed. And one of the great lights of this time, whose rabbinical career carried him across the full breadth of Ashkenaz, was Gershom Shaul Lipmann ben Nathan haLevi Heller, known to his contemporaries as the Tosfot Yom Tov.

Heller was born in 5339 in Bavaria, days after his father's sudden death at the age of 18. Despite Nathan Heller's brief life, he had fathered four children. Gershom was taken under the wing of his paternal grandfather, Rabbi Moses, who began his education in Torah study. After several years of study in a yeshiva near home, the adolescent Heller traveled on his own to the beit midrash of the Maharal of Prague, a giant of both Torah and secular studies who regularly debated with the great gentile scholars of his time. Shortly after his eighteenth birthday, Heller received semicha from the Maharal and an appointment as a dayan in Prague. He remained there for 27 years, producing a number of treatises including the one whose title became his rabbinic eponym, before journeying to Moravia to take up a rabbinical post there, and being offered the position of Chief Rabbi of Vienna after barely a year in the region.

Yom Tov was of great service to Vienna's scattered Jews, receiving permission to establish a centralized community, and creating a communal constitution and various communal institutions for the good of all. However, his organized and thoughtful approach soon made him enemies among the wealthier members of the kehilla. When the Gentile authorities imposed harsh taxes on the city's Jews, Heller led the community's leaders in deciding to collect the tax progressively as a percentage of individual wealth, rather than as a simple poll tax, to lighten the burden on the community's poor. The rich, however, were not happy being asked to pay their share, and accused their chief rabbi of slandering Christianity. Heller was arrested and sentenced to death, but his allies were able to persuade the Emperor to reduce the sentence to a fine of 10,000 thalers, and a ruling that he was not to serve as a rabbi anywhere in the Emperor's realm. As soon as the fine was paid off, Heller left for the eastern border.

He was warmly welcomed into the Jewish community of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and soon appointed to the Council of the Four Lands, which functioned as a Jewish proto-legislative body and as a gathering for Jewish leaders to discuss issues for which they needed to collectively appeal Gentile authorities. Yom Tov served for three years as a rabbinical authority in Nemirov, then moved to Ludmir, and from there to Krakow, where he served as one of the Av Beis Din of Krakow's rabbinical court, and also as head of the Krakow yeshiva. It was during his two decades in Krakow that the horrors of the Chmielnicki Revolt passed through the Commonwealth. He survived the massacres, and passed away six years later on 6 Elul 5414. He was laid to rest in a humble grave in a corner of Krakow's Jewish burial ground.