#inspiring jews

[worfsbarmitzvah]

there’s such an attitude among ex-christian atheists that religions just spring up out of the void with no cultural context behind them. like ive heard people say shit like “those (((zionists))) think they own a piece of land bc their book of fairy tales told them so!!!” and they refuse to understand that no, we don’t belong there because of the torah, it’s in the torah because we belong there. because we’re from there. the torah (from a reform perspective) was written by ancient jews in and about the land that they were actively living on at the time. the torah contains instructions for agriculture because the people who lived in the land needed a way to teach their children how to care for it. it contains laws of jurisprudence because those are pretty important to have when you’re trying to run a society. same for the parts that talk about city planning. it contains our national origin story for the same reason that american schools teach kids about the boston tea party. it’s an extremely complex and fascinating text that is the furthest thing from just a “book of fairy tales”

[notaplaceofhonour]

I feel like there are two truths, that we rightly celebrated when Pharaoh’s army were drowned, and that at the same time G-d was heartbroken that their creation was drowning—and neither response is wrong.

Both are entirely valid and normal responses to have to the death of evil men (who nevertheless were still people), and you just kinda gotta live with that complexity. like, you can’t expect people not to grieve the death of any part of G-d’s creation, but you also can’t expect people not to sing when their persecutors are gone.

I think G-d made us to feel both, and they made some of us to feel one more than the other, and that’s okay.

[shalom-iamcominghome]

I've been doing a lot of reflection as of late, especially after this past class.

This past class was about the Torah and Tanakh in general, and the way the rabbi talked about the commandments (specifically the ten commandments) has made me really reflect on how I interpret them, specifically the fifth commandment, or honoring your mother and father.

This is a commandment I have wrestled with for a long time - in fact, it brought me away from g-d at multiple times. I was severely abused when I was incredibly young by my mother, and I used to feel insulted at the implication that I were to honor her while she got to live a better life. It was hypocritical, in my eyes.

But this rabbi surmised that this particular commandment was because parenthood is an act of creation, something that is like the g-d from which we come from. My realization is this: I don't think we're necessarily meant to take even these commandments literally.

I this particular commandment is more of a call to honor creation - creation is a gift, and like any gift, many people simply will not like it and will discard it. The person who abused me created me, but she did not honor creation. She didn't honor me, but I can still honor it.

I have started to honor creation much more. I'm too young, too unstable, not mature enough to be a father (though I fantasize about it), but I create all the time. I create relationships, I create with my hands through crochet. I create memories, I create my world. And I can honor who I am and where I came from that made me who I am. I've been learning one of the mother tongues of my family (Italian, since part of my family originates there) and it was judaism that inspired me to do this.

I don't think g-d wants me to honor my abuser. I think He wants me to remember the Holy action of creation. When I am a father, that act of creation will be Holy, and indeed, I am already joyful about the thought.

I have seen many people struggle with this particular commandment, but I think this perspective helps me personally. I don't think I ever have to forgive my abusers (plural), and I don't think I am commanded to simply because they happened to be family. I am commanded to recognize the holy, to elevate the mundane. In doing so, I will remember g-d. Through creation, I honor g-d and everything he has done for us, for me, and for our collective people.

[librastrai]

don't ask a woman her age, a man his salary or the irish government what the 1963 commission report on their very own final solution for the "itinerant problem" is or how many jews / roma live in ireland

[adiradirim]

one of the funniest/saddest things about having a jewish post breach containment is you'll read tags that are super loudly excited about how much they just looooove judaism and the jews (tm) and you'll be like "oh?" and click on their blog to see what else they've been saying and reblogging and be like oh

[still-searching-for-something]

I'm a Zionist.

I'm tired of pro-Palestine anti-Zionists trying to turn 'Zionist' into a bad word, an antisemitic slur. And they demand that we Jews reject Zionism and that we only embrace alternative responses to antisemitism that they approve of.

You know what happened to the Jewish proponents of other solutions? The assimilationists, Bundists, territorialists, and Jewish communist revolutionaries were murdered. And now, the left wing antisemites hate the Zionists too. Why? What did the Zionists do that was so offensive to the anti-Zionists? I'll tell you what they did.

Zionists created the first independent Jewish state since the Bar Kokhba revolt. Zionists tried to bring as many Jews to safety as possible while the rest of the world closed their doors to them. And when they couldn't do so legally, they risked their lives to bring Jews home covertly during the Aliyah Bet. Zionists restored an indigenous people's sovereignty over their own land after a millennia of colonization, deforestation, and dispersion. Zionists restored an ancestral and historic language after millennia of forced disuse. Zionists took in and saved the lives of the Mizrahim when they were violently expelled by their home countries. Zionists created a prosperous, liberal democratic nation state in a part of the world very hostile to every word of that. And Zionists successfully defeated one, two, three, four, and are currently fighting off a fifth genocidal war of annihilation against all of their accomplishments and people.

What did the anti-Zionists do? They opposed every one of those things.

So, when you anti-Zionists hurl that label at my feet, 'Zionist', as if it were something to be ashamed of, something dirty, something to run away from, it won't work, because I will pick up that label and wear it as a badge of honor.

[hazel2468]

Something that I need people to understand, especially on this hellsite. Is that oppression does not depend on who you actually are.

It depends on how the world sees you.

If the world sees you as X identity. They will treat you as X identity, whether you are or not. If the world sees that you are not X identity, but they can use the oppression of X identity as a cudgel to make you act the way they want you to? They will use it.

Oppression is NOT dependent on who you actually are. It depends on how the world sees you. It depends on how people see you and what they decide to put on you because of that.

Oh. And when someone experiences a form of oppression that is NOT based in the reality of who they are? It's still that kind of oppression. It's not "misdirected"- it is still that kind of oppression being leveraged to maintain the current social climate.

[hotfudgecherryrosy]

If i had a quarter for every time dc made one of their biggest superheroes jewish and then refused to follow through..

I would have two quarters. Which isnt a lot but irs weird that if happened twice

[grecoromanyaoi]

i apologize in advance for admitting i watch booktok review/drama youtubers anyways to gaze upon wicked gods sounds insane in general but a part of it thats often glossed over which i think is utterly hilarious is how she looked at like the one place the romans didnt colonize and was like what if the romans colonized it instead of the people who actually colonized it

[ineffablecrisp]

Do I or do I not want to make Tom Kazansky a Soviet immigrant

[artcinemas]

it’s sad how india who once recognised palestine as it’s own nation is now assisting israel in it’s genocide it’s awful it’s sick. as a country who was colonized and invaded for centuries, are ignoring the value and parallel of the palestinian resistance. especially those specialists in history. rot.

[canichangemyblogname]

For some 20 years, Israel has been claiming that Hamas uses civilian infrastructure to hide themselves behind children and other innocents. And I have maintained that it doesn’t matter how much they claim this, it doesn’t matter where Hamas hosts a command center, the means (carpet bombing civilians) do not justify the end (striking Hamas), and, in fact, using these such means to strike a blow against enemy combatants is expressly forbade. One war crime (hiding among civilians) does not justify another war crime: targeting and killing non-combatants.

After the 2008 Gaza War, the UN deployed a fact-finding mission to conduct an investigation into allegations that Hamas uses civilian locations to shield military activities. The UN issued the “Goldstone Report,” which said among other things that, “On the basis of the investigations it has conducted, the Mission did not find any evidence to support the allegations that hospital facilities were used by the Gaza authorities or by Palestinian armed groups to shield military activities and that ambulances were used to transport combatants or for other military purposes.”

You can read the report below:

As I have previously explained, if you target the civilian population and its infrastructure, you inevitably create a climate where the idea of self-defense is no longer considered radical, but a necessity and you hasten the radicalization of an entire population and their international allies.

[shalom-iamcominghome]

Me to people who are using "judeochristian" imprudently

[merrymorningofmay]

you know when people go "funny how ukraine got instant western support and palestine didn't, blegheugh" and the usual counter argument to this is that the support was actually 8 years late and before that the west was perfectly comfortable with mass human rights violations and torture camps because there was russian oil to buy and netrebko galas to attend.

and that's all true and relevant.

but what gets to me is that even if we agreed that russian violence in the donbas+crimea before feb 2022 was Not Big Enough to warrant attention, it's just so disingenuous to pretend as if ukraine got handed that juicy western support on a silver platter just for being very sad little guys, when in fact literally all help the us+europe is giving us is because our diplomats and officials work fucking hard for it, demand it, negotiate it, haggle for it; because our activists, public figures and experts use every platform available to argue for it, to reason with the west and explain our needs to it.

(the only "support" we didn't have to fight tooth and nail for was like, von der leyen tweets. which. if that's the help you're demanding for palestinians, then sure.)

if we are in any way privileged compared to palestinians, it's not our """whiteness""" that makes us so. it's that we have a government that represents us and can speak with other governments for us. it's that we have institutions that can speak with other institutions on our behalf.

and, yeah, we truly did luck out in this regard, and i'm grateful for it every day. has nothing to do with the west's supposed good will (lol) or affinity for us (lmao), though.

[kotekling]

My take on Kyle of the Drow Elves for some stick of truth au that I won't write out

or maybe i will idk

[ladyimaginarium]

hellsite dot com stop being antinative for five fucking seconds challenge (impossible)