#mitzvah

[hiddurmitzvah]

[babka-enjoyer]

I have a Daily Mitzvot app that tells me one new mitzvah every day at 9 a.m. and some of these are wild as hell to read first thing in the morning

[girlactionfigure]

ajewishresistance

This is a Jewish resistance.

[jewish-culture-is]

jewish culture is (I think) taking on tiny mitzvots that nobody else really notices/connects to the judaism. Not eating that one specific food even if you don't keep kosher or carrying hairpins for who needs them if you're going to schul or wearing kinda nice headdresses that cover the back of your head all the time, even if you don't panic when you nearly lose one.

.

[dangerphd]

Calling All Spinning Ships, There's a Rising Tide (of yarn spindles)

So, I don't actually need all these spindles and got carried away with the process of designing and printing them (yay, new toy!). After setting aside a set for my one IRL buddy who spins, I have, um, some extras.

This is a first come first served post, good until I run out/never feel like printing another batch. I'll delete the post when that time comes.

If you are someone who cannot afford to support small businesses and creative types by purchasing a supported or drop spindle from a maker, can't make one from a hobby wheel/furniture coaster + dowel for whatever reason, are ready to try out spinning, willing to promise to show us pics of the string you make, and don't think it's too weird to send your mailing address to a stranger on the internet...

Hit me up with the style you want {supported (cone or globe whorl) or drop (top or bottom whorl)} and your mailing address. I will send you a whorl and a shaft (probably not glued, just components), and some floof.

Please do not hit me up if you are well enough off to support the maker community, or able-bodied enough to craft a spindle on your own, I am trusting karma to allow me to commit a mitzvah.

A caveat: these are very much prototypes! They are all functional and centered and spin well, but may have some cosmetic blemishes from filing/sanding off the printer supports, or rough patches I missed. Spindles received may vary from the ones in this pic, but they'll be this style/rainbow gradient ABS.

[eretzyisrael]

Mitzvah grocery shopping Parshat Kedoshim 

[my-orly]

We live by faith, we bring prosperity Genesis 12:3 Read, know we bring blessing to those who help us! So contribute to my rabbi destroyed home! ״Seen If, G-d doesn’t bless you!״

[septembergold]

"Holiday Mitzvah Train" by Michoel Muchnik

[hindahoney]

is halachot different than the 613 mitzvot?

This is an interesting question I never thought to ask!

The answer is yes and no. All mitzvot are halacha but not all halacha are mitzvot.

Halacha is essentially the daily application of mitzvot. Halacha covers pretty much everything, from death and life, to your community, to prohibiting leaving trash on the ground. It is an incredibly comprehensive living system of laws that we follow in order to live our lives in a way that is good for us and the world around us.

Mitzvot, on the other hand, are commandments given by God (and some by Rabbis in addition to the 613). These mitzvot are pretty specific "dos and don'ts" such as no fire on shabbat, and giving tzedakah. Whereas there are halachot regarding regulating where you can build things and how you can build them, but these are not mitzvot.

Hope this helps!

[thepomegranatewitch]

Today's inspiration yielded this wee bracha. Use it in good health.

Image description. A leafy green background with white lineart of ssuk repeated in the background. There are drawings of a shadowed almond blossom in top left, a gilded white California rose in top right, and a gilded tekhelet blue California rose on far left middle. Text os white serif with a black border. A heavier bordered larger text at top reads "a bracha for asking for and receiving help." Thinner bordered and slightly smaller text reads "blessed are You, Gd our god, Sovereign of Space Time, who invites us to help others fulfill the teachings of connection." Black text and logos at bottom give the handle @ the.pomegranate,witch for instagram, tumblr, and kofi, and Sahar Bareket for redbubble. Bottom right has the author's chop in red.

[girlactionfigure]

"And these words, which I command you this day, shall be upon your heart... You shall bind them as a sign upon your arm, and they shall be a tefillin between you eyes"

- Devarim 6:6-8

The Mitzvah that binds our minds with our hearts and deeds, and allows a daily reunification within ourselves and with G-d. 

[sophieakatz]

Thursday Thoughts: Structure, Flexibility, and Torah

(I wrote this d’var for tomorrow’s Shabbat evening services. Turns out I won’t be leading services tomorrow after all - so I’m sharing it here instead!)

I love being a Jew. I see it as an active thing – BEING a Jew. Living a Jewish life, making Jewish choices, taking part in our rich, meaningful traditions and fulfilling the mitzvot of the Torah.

However, if I said that I was living a Jewish life in every possible way – making all Jewish choices, taking part in all our traditions, and fulfilling all mitzvot – that would be a lie.

Those of you who come to Shabbat services regularly on Friday nights know that you will nearly always find me here, now. However, if you also come on Saturday morning, then you know that you will almost never find me there, then. I bake challah, but I do not light Shabbat candles. I take time off from my day job on Jewish holidays when I can, but I’m not always able to. I eat kosher foods, but I do not have kosher dishes, since I share my kitchen with three people who do not keep kosher.

I do what I can. Sometimes, I feel like I’m not doing enough.

It’s easy to imagine that G-d might also think that I’m not doing enough. After all, there are 613 mitzvot in the Torah. If your boss gave you an employee handbook with 613 rules for employee conduct, then you would assume that this is a strict boss with a very structured work environment, someone who wants you to obey their instructions without fail or flexibility.

But this week’s parsha makes it clear that “obey without fail or flexibility” is not an entirely accurate description of G-d’s expectations for Jewish people.

This week we read Parshat Vayikra – the beginning of the book of Leviticus. Incidentally, Leviticus has 243 of the 613 mitzvot – more than any other book in the Torah.

(If you’re curious, second place goes to Deuteronomy at 203 mitzvot, Exodus comes in third at 109, Numbers is fourth at 56, and Genesis has only two.)

So, Leviticus is the Big Book of Rules, right? In Vayikra, the start of this book, there are a lot of rules about making offerings at the temple. These are sin offerings. A person would admit wrongdoing and atone for their sin by making the offering. In Leviticus chapter 5 verse 6, the Torah explains, “he shall bring his guilt offering to the Lord for his sin which he had committed, a female from the flock, either a sheep or a goat, for a sin offering.”

But it doesn’t end there. The next verse, verse 7, reads “But if he cannot afford a sheep, he shall bring as his guilt offering for that [sin] that he had committed, two turtle doves or two young doves before the Lord.”

And then if we jump ahead a couple verses, to verse 11, the Torah reads, “But if he cannot afford two turtle doves or two young doves, then he shall bring as his sacrifice for his sin one tenth of an ephah of fine flour for a sin offering.”

(An ephah is a unit of measurement here, and according to Google, it’s about the size of a bushel. So you would bring a tenth of a bushel of flour. I’m not sure exactly how big that is, but it doesn’t sound like much. Certainly it sounds less than a whole sheep.)

So – the commandment here, the mitzvah, is to make a sin offering. And through the Torah, G-d gives specific instructions about what to bring and what to do with it – you bring a sheep, and this is how you kill it. It’s a structure for atonement. But the Torah also provides exceptions or alternate options for this sin offering. If you can’t bring a sheep, bring two doves, and if you can’t bring two doves, bring some flour. The Torah provides structure, and it also provides different structures depending on your individual means.

In doing so, the Torah takes a behavior that could be very limited – something that only rich people could do, the people who could afford to give up an animal because they had plenty more to eat or breed – and turns it into something that anyone could do, within their means, in the way that works best for them. It’s flexible. It’s also encouraging in a way – having these different options for how to participate in the mitzvah makes the whole idea of making sin offerings feel more accessible for anyone.

And this ties in well with how I see and experience Judaism. It’s accessible for all of us. Yes, there’s structure. Judaism includes instructions for every part of our lives. And like I said before, it’s an active thing. I don’t think that you can really BE a Jew if you aren’t doing ANYTHING that’s Jewish.

But you don’t need to do EVERYTHING.

You don’t need to obey EVERY commandment in exactly the same way as everyone else in order to live a Jewish life, make Jewish choices, and participate in the Jewish community. G-d empowers all of us to show up when we can, and how we can, in the way that works best for us, to create a meaningful life as Jews. For me, tonight, that means standing up here in front of you, delivering this d’var. Last week, it meant sitting in the back row with my friends, and next week, it will mean traveling home to spend Passover with my family. And every week, every day, we get to make those Jewish choices, to create our Jewish life. Shabbat shalom.

[menachem-bluming]

Menachem Bluming Muses: Judaism’s Teaching on Reincarnation

I remember at school a friend failed his end of year exams and had to repeat a grade. He stayed back for a year and was no longer in our class, but rather the class below. We all moved on but he was held back.

Some think reincarnation is like repeating a year at school. While some souls graduate to the next world after their life in this world, others are sent right back down to get things right in another life.

That is not quite how Judaism teaches that it works.

A better metaphor would be a mobile data rollover plan. The phone company gives you 15GB of data per month. Any part of that data you don't use in one month rolls over to the next month. So if you only used 14GB in May, that 14GB is gone, but the remaining 1GB comes back for you to use in June.

Your soul has multiple gigabytes of spiritual energy and divine potential. This is the power G-d has invested in you to fulfill your mission in life. You use that potential by doing good deeds, performing mitzvot. Every mitzvah activates another gig of your soul energy. You have been given an allotted number of days in this word to utilize your gigs for good.

At the end of the billing cycle, when your time comes to leave this life, the activated parts of your soul go up to a higher place, because that part of you has completed its mission on earth. But if you have unused soul potential, if you didn't activate all of the energy invested in you to do good, then that unused part of your soul comes back again in another body to finish the job.

So when someone passes away, we pray that their soul should find rest in heaven, because that's where the already used part of the soul is found. As for the unused part of the soul, it will come down for another gig.

Mendel Menachem Bluming and Rabbi AM and many other sources based on Arizal, Shaar Hagilgulim Chapter 14

[eretzyisrael]

Source

[my-orly]

Gift when all else it lost. To rebuild lives lost by tragic accidents to calamities! As such, the term mitzvah has also come to express an individual act of human kindness in keeping with the law. The expression includes a sense of heartfelt sentiment beyond mere legal duty, as "you shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Leviticus 19:18).