#reform rabbi

[faggotry-enjoyer]

guess who is now officially a conversion student

[gay-jewish-bucky]

The CCAR Worship and Practices Committee felt that bet mitzvah best reflected our determinants of inclusivity, honoring Hebrew, and using familiar or existing language.

Importantly, we do not intend for this term to replace “bar mitzvah” and “bat mitzvah” but rather to be an additional, inclusive option for families and youths. While “bet mitzvah” will be our default general term in CCAR materials, we hope that each student will be encouraged to choose the term that’s most meaningful to them.

[greenflower21]

Ok just hear me out:

Omega’s Bat Mitzvah

[facts-i-just-made-up]

How did one fend off a vampire before the invention of Christianity?

There's a scene in an old vampire movie where a woman holds a cross up to the man trying to drink her blood and he just responds, "Oy vey, have you got the wrong vampire." Indeed, Jewish vampires existed long before the Christian variety, and these "Abrahampires" as they are known are not susceptible to the same weaknesses as modern Christian vampires.

Instead of a simple wooden stake through the heart, the stake must specifically be date palm, willow, and myrtle, and combined with a citron, be shaken in the four cardinal directions and then plunged into the vampire's heart. They are not averse to garlic, and will in general put tons of garlic in literally every single thing they cook. Sunlight is the only sure way to defeat one, as when exposed to direct sunlight, an Abrahampire will inevitably become disinterested in whatever outdoor activity they were involved in and go back inside so as not to bother.

Again, please let me notify newcomers that I am Jewish and thus all these cliches are not racist stereotypes, but self parody, and are approved as Jewish humor by my reform orthodox Rabbi, Bill Clinton. Seriously did not expect that to become a phrase overnight.

Like seriously wtf how did that guy get in there?

[deathbypufferfish]

Need to figure out FAST how to speak about something serious with an authority figure without wanting to throw up and cry

[rotzaprachim]

the vaguely fleabag-inspired awkward jewish dramedy of my dreams au

Well, Jyn may have had a list of methods to ruin her estranged father’s second marriage, but punching her boss’s shmuck of a husband during the rehearsal dinner sure wasn’t one of them.

And neither was shagging the rabbi.

[princessg3rard]

is it okay to eat the bible?

well ur not supposed to harm holy parchments, like it counts as disrespect and desecration- BUT a lot of bibles technically aren’t printed on parchments, and also any rabbi will tell u that we don’t count christian bibles as holy so u can technically have a nibble at any christian bible you’d like !! (from a jewish perspective the New Testament is kinda like a shitty sequel that is nothing like the og film)

as it stands with jewish bibles (tanakh singular, tanakhim plural), consult a local rabbi before consuming, but ur safest bet is ones that are paper printed with hard covers (so u can claim u want to protect the text and so on) :3

also we can go into what “eating” would be in that scenario, but that would make this post the next scroll in the bible so we can leave this one out for tlnext time :)

[faketokufan]

Everyone thank reformed Orthodox Rabbi Bill Clinton for Eldon Ring

[omni-rhombus]

[hollywoodbabylondean]

Beit din next month!!!!

[marxism-leninism-utenaism]

idk what to tell yall when someone calls bill clinton (frequent target of right-wing conspiracy theories, also not even close to jewish) a jew (frequent target of right-wing conspiracy theories, thankfully not responsible for bill clinton), you should be suspicious lmao

[viksalos]

realizing i will probably never be normal about religion. every era of my life adds another layer of weirdness in this regard and i’ve been ruminating about it a lot lately, so i tried to list all my weirdnesses chronologically in the hope that it will help somehow. i gloss over a fair amount of related abuse and medical trauma so it’s ideally not *too* much of a bummer, but nonetheless it is still very long so don’t feel obligated to read. would appreciate a like if you do read all the way through though, if for no other reason than it seems like a lot of the time this history makes me feel i don’t quite belong anywhere other than in a random assortment of friends and mutuals lol

maternal family is Pennsylvania Dutch & Lutheran, grandma flees central PA to escape judgement surrounding her shotgun wedding to my grandpa/birth of my mom

mom has me, baptizes me Lutheran, then later has a change of heart and converts to Judaism, completes the process when I am 4 (thus by halacha my Jewish status is sometimes a matter of theological debate--I was born and raised by a Jewish mother, but she wasn’t Jewish *when* I was born)

dad suddenly gets really weird about mom “disrespecting our Christian heritage” despite not really practicing Christianity before, divorces her shortly after her conversion, they get joint custody so 1 week with dad 1 week with mom

antics ensue. on Mom Week we get taken to synagogue, on Dad Week we get taken to random churches including a black church one time (?? we’re white) and Xenos Christian Fellowship for a few months

tangent: look up Xenos Christian Fellowship if you want to head down an awful rabbithole sometime. tl;dr it operated as a megachurch while we were there but its true strength/horror lies in its home church & small group activities. it’s 100% a cult

we weren’t there long enough to get the worst of it but one of my clearest childhood memories is being taken away from the adults’ service in the megachurch to a side room for the kids’ service, where we were told that if every one of us converted 2 people tomorrow, and every one of our converts converted 2 people the next day and so on, the entire world would be Christian in a month. it is/was a factory for turning kids into little missionaries designed to spread the religion like a virus

both parents get mad or upset when I express any amount of belief in the “opposing” religion or nonbelief in theirs. another clear childhood memory of being *really* little in synagogue and deciding not to say aloud the words to a prayer--mom asks why and I said something like “well Daddy said we shouldn’t because we’re not *really* Jewish.” I thought I was doing the right thing and following my parent’s rules, now mom’s crying. felt really bad for that one

especially: no bat mitzvah for either myself or my sister bc it would make my dad mad. this is another theological wrinkle in my Jewish status also I think, especially because mom’s Reform so there’s no debate about whether girls should do bat mitzvot

teenage atheist phase. easier to just believe nothing at all, right? this neatly absolves me of having to deal with any of that previous war-of-the-religions nonsense, and the burgeoning New Atheist movement at the time allows me to have an online escape from my home life as well as encouragement as an aspiring scientist that science will replace religion as humanity’s candle in the dark. unfortunately the New Atheists prove to be dogmatic in their own ways, and bigoted in ways that people in the movement didn’t really seem to have the words to describe until the oncoming social justice movement finally splits them apart.

another memory: confessing to my mom that I didn’t believe in God, saying that all religions are harmful, when what I probably meant was that so far religions have been harmful to *me.* mom’s crying again, felt bad for that one again. but it was part of the unravelling of New Atheism for me and as a whole I think: their critiques of religion were mainly with Christianity, and they posited religion as the sole source of so many complicated sociopolitical ills, such that all other religions were thrown under the bus and rampant antisemitism and islamophobia was the result

(dad starts randomly saying he’s a Buddhist. doesn’t really change how he acts or try to teach us any Buddhist concepts or whatever, it’s just a thing he says. weird)

eventually (late college/early master’s degree?) (re)discover secular Judaism, and Jewish concepts of wrestling with God. decide to tell my mom and sister I want to start participating in some of the holidays and rituals with them again. joke that struggling with Jewish faith under adverse conditions (dad custody weeks) might actually be pretty Jewish. bitter laughter all around, understanding

move to Pittsburgh for my PhD, no longer have access to my home synagogue, don’t have time to join a new one, eventually the pandemic hits so I couldn’t even if I wanted to

get engaged to my now-husband. in-laws are Catholic; his grandpa was a deacon. mother-in-law is upset that we won’t get married in a church. mother-in-law is upset about a lot of things with me, in general. we are now estranged

get into dnd with my new friends in Pittsburgh. all of my characters are heretics or syncretists or outright zealots. surely there’s no reason for this

get into heavy metal because the blastbeats and mostly unintelligible lyrics help me focus on my work. metal really loves its Satanic imagery as an ostensible “fuck you” to Christianity, which I find compelling but moreso just campy & fun. don’t really think about it too hard for a while

have a really hard winter mental health-wise from late 2020-early 2021. get recommended Lingua Ignota around this time, probably due to the heavy metal and the mental health. here though I think, is someone who struggles with God in a way I can relate to. later in 2021 she releases Sinner Get Ready which uses central Pennsylvanian Christianity as a backdrop, in which my whole family story started, and which seems present even as it creeps into the outskirts of Pittsburgh. for these reasons among others it’s just really unfortunate for my brain worms

get vaccine, get married by my hometown synagogue’s rabbi as he’s the only clergyman myself or my husband are comfortable with. my dad does his part, walks me down the aisle, then sends me a letter during our honeymoon about how being Jewish is disrespecting my husband and it’s why my in-laws don’t like me. one week later on the night of Sinner Get Ready’s release, during my first listen, i burn the letter and mix its ashes with black dye for my first battle jacket

make more Jewish friends and metalhead friends, be mostly accepted by them. get one of my Jewish metalhead friends to take me to a lingy show in his city in exchange for me taking him to an Epica show in mine. joke that headbanging is kinda like bowing in prayer

make friends with a couple local shape note singers, and most recently--inadvertently end up being invited into both a secular Sacred Harp choir and a witch coven by one of them. (that this is the same person is so funny to me. she is also my labmate’s wife and was one of my bridesmaids. she is very dear to me.)

the witches let me light my hanukkiah at their solstice gathering. they think my impromptu battle jacket fire ritual is very cool; they do a lot of fire rituals themselves. (this is relieving because I was sure that telling anybody i’d done it would get me sent to the psych ward.) they lend me a book on Pennsylvanian folk magic.

so that’s where i’m at right now--haven’t even read the book yet.

[thisseriesisfalse]

Congratulations to Bill Clinton for winning Game Of The Year. Honestly didn't think he had it in him, but he knuckled down and showed that world that sometimes, something other than God of War can win the award.

[deathbypufferfish]

Love when someone you respected and trusted turns around and lets ignorance and blind trust erase their humanity.

[crowcaws]

[argentumconfidimus]