#maimonides of tumblr

[lem0nademouth]

I HAVE A QUESTION FOR THA YIDS

at what point during someone’s transition does shomer negiah begin/cease to apply

i would imagine it’s as soon as they come out, but is there like. a specific timeline? like my best friend is a trans dude (several years into medical transition, over a decade into social transition) so at what point would it technically have been no longer kosher to hug him. for the record i’m not shomer negiah i’m just curious.

[unsolicited-opinions]

Bro no one hates jews for ethnicity, news are hated for faith.

If you are an atheist "jew", no one gives a shit about you.

Stop pretending to be a victim and trying to appropriate antisemitic struggles.

I'll address these point by point.

Jewish readers, please share your thoughts!

You wrote: "No one hates Jews for ethnicity, [J]ews are hated for faith."

"Hitler...defined the Jews as a race and not a religious community, characterized the effect of a Jewish presence as a “race-tuberculosis of the peoples,” and identified the initial goal of a German government to be discriminatory legislation against Jews."

[Source]

More here

As David Baddiel put it, "I'm an atheist, but that would get me no free passes out of Auschwitz."

The Jews are a people. Judaism is the traditional religion of that people. A Jew who does not engage with that religion does not cease to be a Jew by Jewish definitions OR by antisemitic definitions.

You wrote: "If you are an atheist Jew, nobody gives a shit about you."

First, see above.

Second, you're incorrectly assuming that a Jewish atheist is not engaged with Judaism.

Here's the thing:

Judaism isn't necessarily theistic.

Let's set aside the explicitly non-theistic movement of Humanistic Judaism for a moment (huge topic for another time) and just talk briefly about theism in Judaism.

Most kinds of Judaism, while certainly encouraging faith, do not require it. There are no thought crimes in Judaism, no crucibles of faith, and no requirements that one announce or perform proof of belief for witnesses. Those things are often parts of Christianity and Islam, but in Judaism...not so much.

In Jewish thought, it is not what you believe about metaphysics which lifts you up, ennobles you, improves you, or makes the world a better place. In Judaism, you pursue those things by how you behave.

Sola fide is a Christian concept which Judaism does not share. Judaism is a profoundly existential religion with ethics which are overwhelmingly humanist.

I was raised in Reform and Conservative congregations...and non-theistic/atheistic/humanistic views were very common there.

When I was studying to become Bar Mitzvah, our congregation's Rabbi made crystal clear to me that there was no contradiction between my identity as a Jew and my inability to swallow the idea of an anthropomorphic, sapient, interventionist God who cared at all about petitionary prayer. He felt that wrestling with God was a very Jewish thing to do. He introduced me to Maimonides' apophatic theology. Decades later, I'm still grateful.

Many Jews pray, I believe, not to be heard by God, but so they can hear their own hearts and minds. This is why kavanah is important and why I disliked (and still dislike) prayer-by-rote and rituals performed for the sake of ritual. It's more mindfulness meditation than petitionary prayer.

There's a famous Hasidic story, recorded by philosopher Martin Buber in his "Tales of the Hasidim," about how Judaism views atheism:

The Master teaches that God created everything the world to be appreciated, since everything is here to teach us a lesson.

One clever student asks "What lesson can we learn from atheists? Why did God create them?"

The Master responds "God created atheists teach us the most important lesson of them all- the lesson of true compassion. You see, when an atheist performs an act of charity, visits someone who is sick, helps someone in need, and cares for the world, he is not doing so because of some religious teaching. He does not believe that God commanded him to perform this act. In fact, he does not believe in Goda at all, so his acts are based on an inner sense of morality. And look at the kindness he can bestow upon others simply because he feels it to be right."

"This means," the Master continued "that when someone reaches out to you for help, you should never say 'I pray that God will help you.' Instead for the moment, you should become an atheist, imagine that there is no God who can help, and say 'I will help you."

You wrote: "Stop pretending to be a victim and trying to appropriate antisemtic struggles."

I invite other Jews to advise if I have appropriated anything which is not mine.

Your opinion, though? Your view, as a non-Jew, about what is or isn't Jewish? On what is or is not mine in my heritage? Your claim, framed by your obvious and absolute ignorance of my life, my family's history, Jewish history, Jewish theology, and Jewish philosophy, that I have not experienced antisemitism and am "appropriating?"

I don't have a single fuck to give about any of that, and neither does any other Jew

Still, thank you for the writing prompt. It helps to crystalize my own thinking and provides an opportunity to educate.

[fromgoy2joy]

I forgot the name of Maimonides-

So I searched up "Jewish philosopher with opinions" and he was the first result.

[gaelic-symphony]

Hi. I am Jewish and live in Sterling Heights, Michigan, and every day my Arab "friends" make fun of me by telling me Arab colonialism against Jews was good. Meanwhile the goyim on Tumblr gaslight us by saying colonialism was invented by white people in the 19th century. Can you provide me with some information about Arab colonialism against Jewish people so I can use it to debunk disinformation? ty <3

Yes.

the Arab colonization of the Levant – Roots Metals

what was being a Jewish dhimmi like? – Roots Metals

What Do You Know? Dhimmi, Jewish Legal Status under Muslim Rule | Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies (upenn.edu)

The Treatment of Jews in Arab/Islamic Countries (jewishvirtuallibrary.org)

Maimonides on Jewish humiliation under Islamic rule - The Jerusalem Post (jpost.com)

[flagbridge]

Do you have an about me? I’d like to get to know you!

I've had this sitting forever and I figured I'd share a few things!

I don't have an About Me section, but here are some things that are "About Me":

I'm Flag, I'm 30something, and I live in North America. This is mostly a Phantom blog with some occasional stuff on Classics, other musical theater and opera stuff, cosplay, trading, and Jewish pride. I block antisemites.

AO3 Page: FlagBridge

Current WIP: All Vows (105K words right now, 18+, will be 130K words when complete). Ships: E/C, R/C, C/M. The story is a redemption arc following the Jewish process of atonement as taught by Maimonides.

Next Project: Nicknamed "Raoul Navy". If you've seen some of my other posts you'll understand that Raoul and I have a lot in common on our chosen vocation.

I sell Lego Phantom mezuzah cases on Etsy at PhantomJudaica (I'm taking requests for other characters and shows). Use the discount code tumblr for 18% off.

Uhhhh what else to people want to know about me?

[stupidjewishwhiteboy]

Hey.

Just curious.

What exactly is your tumblr icon? (I know it’s a cat)

And where did you find it?

I’m just curious.

Mine is Mesk from Star Trek: Lower Decks.

It’s the Jewish sage Maimonides as a cat. So, Meowmonides

[potentialtheophage]

“If he [who reads this] understands any of it in such a way as not to agree with the viewpoints of my illustrious predecessors, let him not interpret it to others, nor rush into disproving me, for it may well be that he has misunderstood my words. He would thus harm me in return for the good I wanted to do him and would be one ‘that renders evil for good’.”

- Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, translated by Chaim Rabin, written 1190 CE

“How dare you say we piss on the poor?”

- Tumblr, date and author unknown, apparently still causing the same problems as readers in the 11th century

[blogpostsofvariablequality]

rip maimonides you would have hated tumblr reading comprehension

[unbidden-yidden-deactivated20240]

I'm honestly not convinced that anon is even Jewish, because literally no born Jew has ever said stupid shit like this to me in real life, but I HAVE seen multiple anons or tumblr trolls try to start shit between gerim and Jews by birth. This is so over the top and dramatic (like backhandedly blaming gerim for the Shoah over-the-top) that I suspect it's the latter.

But just on the off-chance it's real or there are folks who think like this: you clearly haven't thought this through, because if you had you would've realized that you not insulting us so much as the rabbis who sponsored us and sat on our batei din. Because if conversion isn't real, there are a whole lot of Jews out there who disagree enough to actually *make* converts and you're essentially saying that you, a rando, know more about Judaism than they do.

In fact, you're saying you know more about Judaism than Rabbi Hillel, Rabbi Akiva, Rashi (quoted here talking about the conversion of Moshe Rabbeinu's father-in-law Yitro), Maimonides (who is sometimes quoted as not believing in conversion, which is debunked here), Yitzhak Luria, Rabbi Soloveitchik, etc. But okay! If you want to make that claim, be my guest. 🙂

Respectfully, from someone who is jewish.. You are born jewish. You cannot "Convert" its insulating to jewish families. If you could "Convert" My family would have to have not been put in a concentration camp.

You are born Jewish. Like how you are born Gay, Trans, white or black. You cannot convert to Jewish.

I'm going to tag jumblr in this post because L + ratio + ur wrong and the vast majority of jews accept converts + jews always come to back me up when someone says something like this.

[qaraxuanzenith]

[image ID: the “was anybody going to tell me” meme, captioned to read (in the first frame) “Okay, was anybody going to tell me that the first episode of leverage: redemption quotes Mishneh Torah Hilchot Tshuva“ and (in the second frame “or was I just supposed to sit through ten thousand ads on the ctv site, with no hope of watching the rest of the show anytime soon, to discover that myself?”]

Anyway rights to show Leverage: Redemption in Canada were bought by the absolute hellscape that is Bell Canada, so I genuinely don’t know when if ever I will be able to watch the rest of the show, but that “In the Jewish faith” line that Hardison gives at the end is accurate and A+ Jewish content, this is direct from Rambam, like Leverage was always a show about tshuva but now they made it explicit and I love that???

[goodbearblind]

"Non si dovrebbe credere che tutti gli esseri viventi esistano per il bene dell'uomo. Al contrario, anche tutti gli esseri viventi sono stati voluti per il loro stesso bene e non per il bene di qualcos'altro" . (Maimonide) . . #maimonide https://www.instagram.com/p/CVrqnV3Na6E/?utm_medium=tumblr

[phoukanamedpookie]

Forgiveness and atonement arcs

A while back, I made a post about the distinction between redemption and atonement and how emphasis on the former reflects a Christian normative lens through which to view character transformation arcs.

There’s another post going around about redemption arcs someone made an interesting point that many people conflate forgiveness with redemption. Someone else made a separate point about the role of forgiveness in atonement: Since Tumblr is giving me an error message, I can’t reblog directly from them, so here we go.

The whole post is worth reading and engaging with, but I want to focus on one particular piece: 

You are required to try to make amends for your misdeeds and ask forgiveness of those you have wronged at least three times, but they are not required to forgive you. In fact they’re not even encouraged — unlike in Christianity, there’s no moral value placed in forgiveness or turning the other cheek or whatnot.

Like most things in Judaism, though, it’s not quite that simple.

In Judaism, the essence of forgiveness is allowing the relationship between the wronged and the wrongdoer to be healed. It is for this reason that forgiveness can only be granted by the person who was wronged. It can’t be given on behalf of someone else. This is why murder, for instance, can’t be forgiven by human beings. Some things only God can forgive.

While Judaism doesn’t take a “turn the other cheek” stance, forgiveness is important. Someone who wrongs another is obligated to do what they can to make amends. 

According to Maimonides (Mishneh Torah):

Neither repentance nor the Day of Atonement atone for any save for sins committed between man and God [...] but sins between man and man [...] is ever not absolved unless he makes restitution of what he owes and begs the forgiveness of his neighbor. And, although he make restitution of the monetary debt, he is obliged to pacify him and to beg his forgiveness. Even he offended not his neighbor in aught save in words, he is obliged to appease him and implore him till he be forgiven by him.

But there is a limit to how far someone is obligated to go to make amends:

If his neighbor refuses a committee of three friends to forgive him, he should bring to implore and beg of him; if he still refuses he should bring a second, even a third committee, and if he remains obstinate, he may leave him to himself and pass on, for the sin then rests upon him who refuses forgiveness. 

Indeed, after a certain point, refusing to forgive becomes its own form of inflicting harm:

It is forbidden for man to be ill-natured and unforgiving, for he must be easily appeased but slow to wrath; and when a sinner implores him for pardon, he should grant him pardon wholeheartedly and soulfully. Even if one persecuted him and sinned against him exceedingly he should not be vengeful and grudge-bearing, for such is the path of the seed of Israel and of their excellent heart.

The implication here is that we have to be very careful that our need to hold people who wrong us accountable for their misdeeds does not turn into a desire to punish and humiliate them. We are cautioned against offering cheap grace, but withholding the possibility of reconciliation allows interpersonal wounds to fester and become toxic.

So where does this leave reformed bad guys and flawed heroes? Are other characters obligated to forgive them? Maybe. If the former villain takes the steps to repair the damage they’ve done and asks for forgiveness, I don’t see the point of withholding it. As a matter of fact, constantly holding someone’s past mistakes over their head can veer into vengeful self-righteousness.

That’s my take on it, at least.

[deliciousmeta]

Forgiveness and atonement arcs

A while back, I made a post about the distinction between redemption and atonement and how emphasis on the former reflects a Christian normative lens through which to view character transformation arcs.

There’s another post going around about redemption arcs someone made an interesting point that many people conflate forgiveness with redemption. Someone else made a separate point about the role of forgiveness in atonement: Since Tumblr is giving me an error message, I can’t reblog directly from them, so here we go.

The whole post is worth reading and engaging with, but I want to focus on one particular piece:

You are required to try to make amends for your misdeeds and ask forgiveness of those you have wronged at least three times, but they are not required to forgive you. In fact they’re not even encouraged — unlike in Christianity, there’s no moral value placed in forgiveness or turning the other cheek or whatnot.

Like most things in Judaism, though, it’s not quite that simple.

In Judaism, the essence of forgiveness is allowing the relationship between the wronged and the wrongdoer to be healed. It is for this reason that forgiveness can only be granted by the person who was wronged. It can’t be given on behalf of someone else. This is why murder, for instance, can’t be forgiven by human beings. Some things only God can forgive.

While Judaism doesn’t take a “turn the other cheek” stance, forgiveness is important. Someone who wrongs another is obligated to do what they can to make amends.

According to Maimonides (Mishneh Torah):

Neither repentance nor the Day of Atonement atone for any save for sins committed between man and God […] but sins between man and man […] is ever not absolved unless he makes restitution of what he owes and begs the forgiveness of his neighbor. And, although he make restitution of the monetary debt, he is obliged to pacify him and to beg his forgiveness. Even he offended not his neighbor in aught save in words, he is obliged to appease him and implore him till he be forgiven by him.

But there is a limit to how far someone is obligated to go to make amends:

If his neighbor refuses a committee of three friends to forgive him, he should bring to implore and beg of him; if he still refuses he should bring a second, even a third committee, and if he remains obstinate, he may leave him to himself and pass on, for the sin then rests upon him who refuses forgiveness.

Indeed, after a certain point, refusing to forgive becomes its own form of inflicting harm:

It is forbidden for man to be ill-natured and unforgiving, for he must be easily appeased but slow to wrath; and when a sinner implores him for pardon, he should grant him pardon wholeheartedly and soulfully. Even if one persecuted him and sinned against him exceedingly he should not be vengeful and grudge-bearing, for such is the path of the seed of Israel and of their excellent heart.

The implication here is that we have to be very careful that our need to hold people who wrong us accountable for their misdeeds does not turn into a desire to punish and humiliate them. We are cautioned against offering cheap grace, but withholding the possibility of reconciliation allows interpersonal wounds to fester and become toxic.

So where does this leave reformed bad guys and flawed heroes? Are other characters obligated to forgive them? Maybe. If the former villain takes the steps to repair the damage they’ve done and asks for forgiveness, I don’t see the point of withholding it. As a matter of fact, constantly holding someone’s past mistakes over their head can veer into vengeful self-righteousness.

That’s my take on it, at least.

[brehaaorgana]

Expanding a little more:

Op is (I assume? I know I did) riffing on the original word for angels — malakhim, which *literally* translates to messengers. So they are a message carrying service/messengers. They're not necessarily one way though, not even in the biblical sense.

My "what if angels are black holes?" was inspired by a medieval Jewish theologian (quoting Jewish virtual library here):

[Maimonides] considered the word "angel" a homonymous term denoting not only the separate intelligences, but all natural and psychic forces, both generic and individual. Thus, the formative power which produces and shapes the limbs of an embryo may be called an angel; the libidinous disposition aroused by the sight of a beautiful woman may be spoken of as "an angel of lust" (as in Gen. R. 85:8); the spheres and elements, too, may be referred to as "angels" (Guide, 2:6–7).

Basically the forces of nature which "communicate" God's will — that is, the functioning of the universe, laws of physics, chemistry, etc. But also emotions/feelings, illnesses, etc. They function like DNA/mRNA, atoms (& protons, neutrons, electrons), radio waves, x-rays, magnets, neurons, gravity, and so on and so forth. Since he was directly referencing Aristotle and spheres, he almost certainly was meaning "atoms," in the ancient philosophical sense.

Which is why *I* suggested black holes are angels, because they "communicate," - that is, they emit information.

This is an old article from 2008:

They find that the 1s and 0s of your address book could be recovered as quickly as 1,000 bits per second—far faster than previously expected. "The black hole really behaves like an information mirror," says physicist John Preskill of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

Scientific American

a ton of people got all Well ACTUALLY,,, at me when I said "black holes sing," but whatever that's exactly how the New York times phrased it as of May 7 2022, so I was right years ago and I still am! (Very first line!) Also NASA has a Tumblr which I didn't realize. (Another article on CNN)

So y'know black holes emit information (which is a form of communication) AND idk science did a thing to turn waves into a "sound" that we could hear, which we liken to singing, which angels also are known to do. Their accretion disks also glow with halos of light.

QED, a black hole angel *could* fuck a cell tower and viable offspring would result, as long as we assume they're similar enough that it's like ...a horse and a donkey, or two different breeds of dog.

🤝🏼

an angel would fuck a streetlamp and it would be nothing. it would be like a dog thoughtlessly rutting against a couch: pure instinctual pleasure chasing with something that may elicit but not share in your libido. but if an angel fucked a cell tower then viable offspring could very well result

[baeddel]

I’m putting this under a readmore because its really just a white woman learns racism is bad hallmark story fdgsdfds and not everyone wants to read that but yea (consider it notes for a ‘guide for the perplexed’ for white fringe radicals encountering ideologically contaminated anti-racisms - uh, it’ll make sense when you get there...)

When I first came to tumblr & was acquainted for the first time w/ like... the sj culture stuff... after some initial hostility I became really almost kinda obsessed w/ it and I’d spend hours and hours reading those anti-racism resources for white people that was everywhere back then, you know... There was that blog called like, racismschool and it had a page for white people, you know, on like... how to unlearn racism. I would like - friggin... get this - I printed that page out & like highlighted bits w/ a highlighter & everything & kinda comitted it to memory... I took it really seriously!

Anyway, despite being somewhat definitionally a tryhard white ally, this was definitely one of the most significant periods of personal transformation that I went through... the mission to ‘unlearn’ my racism!

So, as the years went on, I’ve gradually, not all at once, but piece by piece, discarded everything that I had learned in that period. Realistically, none of it was any good. It was all, obviously, liberal oversimplfications, ad-hoc justifications and words said in anger by marginalized people... a worldview built out of arguments that were immediately defensible rather than truly useful. What I had perceived as a destructive process - the unlearning of a pre-existing inculcation through the acceptance of simple truths - was really a constructive process, of building a self-solving worldview. After unlearning that, I find myself, five or six years on, only now in the position to begin the work.

Despite this, that journey was I think an important one... As a racist teenager I was in no position to start thinking about ‘the big questions’ of identity & power but was in the position to consider misguided but challenging ideas about my place in the world. This is perhaps a little bit of what Maimonides means by “necessary beliefs” separate from “true beliefs” (applied, obviously, in a separate domain)

Anyway, whats the point of such an embarassing autobiographical post? (It’s my blog, jerks!) Mostly: as important as it is to overturn bad anti-racism - and it is important - there is also perhaps some ground for a permissive attitude towards it. It is, in some ways, the best posed for the task it sets itself.

[betoqa]

Domingo de lectura #Metafisica #TomasdeAquino #Aristoteles #Avicena #Heidegger #Maimonides #Metaphysique (en Coyoacán, Distrito Federal, Mexico) https://www.instagram.com/p/CbnkSiGOVdf/?utm_medium=tumblr