#return to judaism

[secular-jew]

Found today -- Notice that Sinwar's bodyguard - Hani Zourab - is an UNWRA teacher from -- Ramallah -- with an Egyptian passport. UNWRA !!!! The UN (UNWRA) is in league with Hamas, and the UN should be defunded.

[indecisiveavocado]

sooo sorry we were raped and genocided and ethnically cleansed from our land and prevented from returning. totally our fault.

[saintmelangell]

i realize to some extent you shouldnt let your personal life interfere with your academics but its so hard to do that in theology (which you can only do on the assumption that you believe what you're talking about) . 5+ years of extremely intensive theological study and increasing suspicion around certain aspects of practice that i was unable to justify in scripture or anywhere else christianity just comes off as so fundamentally corrupted to me. and it sucks! it really does suck its a lot nicer to think that we can fix the problems in christianity from inside but audre lorde was right man. the master's tools WILL NEVER dismantle the master's house. and there is no original point in christianity that you can return to and pinpoint where it went wrong and say if we just revert to this purer form of practice we can fix it, because its corrupt all the way down, right down to consubstantiality being applied singularly and not generally at nicea, right down to john being the anti-jewish gospel transforming the crowds calling for jesus' death to simply "the jews," right down to יָרֵךְ being censored as thigh in the vulgate instead of groin (genitals, penis, loins), right down the propaganda of the gospels using highly typical judaic debate on right practice being equivocated to jesus personally and universally condemning pharisaic judaism, right down to the body of jesus being marked with wounds in precisely the same place the phylacteries would have been placed during worship.

[jewish-culture-is]

Jewish culture is ‘The Good Guys and the Bad Guys’, from The Return of Captain Invincible. Not just because it’s Alan Arkin’s solo, but because the lyrics.

.

[engagemythrusters]

right ways to get mad at catholics: your institution and your practice of beliefs has irreperably harmed millions of people, end the lives of more, and brought struggle and strife to many cultures on a global scale

wrong ways to get mad at catholics: you believe in "sky daddy" so you are stupid as fuck

[foursaints]

rosekiller would be on the streets protesting for palestine

i find it a bit.. tasteless or at least offensively cavalier to discuss real world genocide through the lens of harry potter characters. but i support you and entirely agree with where you’re coming from

donation link for medical aid for palestine

continuously updating google doc of palestinian escape funds (URGENT)

donation to palestinian children’s relief fund

gaza emergency appeal

donate to arab.org with one click

[rotzaprachim]

fundamentally a horror beyond words happened to my people and some people swore it didn’t happen and a bunch of other people who include also my people decided that terrible things would happen to civilians and idk how to be a part of my own culture atm in any way we should all be filled with shame I found out everyone hates Jews this week in particular white Americans I also found out there were Jews who would use what happened to us to commit ethnic cleansing everyone is screaming someone needs to die

[hyperpotamianarch]

So, I don't generally talk about politics. I am willing to make an exception, however, to the politics of 6th Century BCE Persia - mostly because it has no bearings on modern times. If, by happenstance, you find similar themes - well, as Kohelet says, there's nothing new under the sun. It's your choice on how much inevitable similarities affect your views.

So, today I want to talk about ’Ezra and Nahemiah, and Shivat Tzion in general.

It all started with Cyrus the Great (known as Coresh in Hebrew), king of Persia. Right after defeating the Babylonian empire that ruled the Middle East before him, Cyrus - who apparently was supportive of religious tolerance - had declared the Hashem, G-d of the heaven, had given him all the kngdoms of the earth and commanded him to build him a Temple in Jerusalem, and called to His people to come and rebuild the old Temple there. There is an archeological finding called "Cyrus cylinder" which includes a similar declaration towards a Babylonian religion, so it was likely generally a policy of his to claim that a local god has crowned him and support building temples to those various gods. But our interest currently lies with Judea.

So, Cyrus also tries to encourage people to go to Jerusalem to build the Temple, telling citizens to donate to the Jews in their area so they can go etcetera. He also supplies the Jews making the journey with the vessels and tools taken from the Temple by Nebuchadnezzar. The first wave of ’Olim (for lack of a better word) is led by Sheshbetzar, "the Prince of Judah"... Possibly. Or, he might just be a mediator between the Jews and the government, and the first wave is lead by Zerubavel ben She'alti'el and Yeshua’ ben Yehotzadak. That's not completely clear. Anyway, they get to Jerusalem, build a makeshift altar and start sacrificing on it, and start on building the Temple itself - ending up with an equally makeshift version of it a year later. The celebration is tinted by the crying of everyone who remembers the glory of the 1st Temple, but that's besides the point.

In the meantime, a couple of locals hear about the Temple ordeal and come wanting to join. And that's the point where things start getting actually messy.

You see, those local guys aren't Jews. They're the populace of the northern area of Israel and are usually referred to as "the adversaries of Yehudah and Binyamin". They claim to worship the Hebrew G-d ever since Esarhaddon brought them there - in short, they aren't the original Israelites to have lived there they are (for lack of a better word) converts, immigrants from a far-off land. According to the book of Kings, they only concerted for fear of lions they believed were sent by the local god and worshipped him simultaneously with their own gods.

Now, it's even more messy because these are the people eventually known as Samaritans, a real ethnic and religious minority in modern Israel who claim to be descendants of the Israelites. Researchers agree with this part of their claims, at least, on the basis that the Assyrian exile was never a complete exile, and that the ruins of the Israelite kingdom were populated by Israelites alongside the newcomers brought by Sennacherib and Esarhaddon. So... Yeah.

Either way, the returning Jews refused to allow them to be involved, saying it isn't for them to join in building a Temple to G-d. This drove those "adversaries of Yehudah and Binyamin" to try their best to harass the Jews and stop them from building, steeping into sending letters to the king. One such letter recorded in the book of ’Ezra calls Jerusalem a rebellious city, and convinces king Artaxerxes to command a pause in building the city (after finding archival evidence to support the letter). And since I just stopped to clarify the Samaritans thing I'm going to completely sidestep anything to do with the Persian Achaemenid dynasty, the Missing Years, and the difference between the City and the Temple. If you want to get a headache, I recommend looking up the first two topics. They do wonders to frustrate everyone.

Speaking of which, king Darius (probably the one predating the aforementioned Artaxerxes, possibly the one after him) is asked by the authorities of the other side of the Euphrates if the building of the Temple is legal, because this bunch of Hews have tried to start again with the encouragement of their prophets. Darius looks into his archive to check, and lo and behold - it is legal! So he supplies the Jews with some donations to the Temple, and commands said authorities to also support them.

Come ’Ezra ben Srayah, for a nice change of pace. This guy is learnéd in G-d's Torah, and is sent by king Artaxerxes (want to guess which one?) to Jerusalem, to serve as a religious authority. He collects around him a group that includes Cohanim, Leviyim and asserted other Jews and converts - but because he's shy to ask the king for armed guards, he prays to G-d for the success of his journey. He manages to get to Jerusalem, and there he finds out something terrible - a large percentage of the Jewish people there have intermarried with local women, which he immediately sets out to fix by fasting in public, praying to G-d and calling on everyone to divorce the foreign women. His actions have some degree of limited success.

That about sums up the first part of the book of ’Ezra in the Tanach - the part about the Return to Tzion and ’Ezra the Scribe. It's not done yet, as any piece on the topic not mentioning Nehemiah will be lacking, but it's a start. Plus, Nehemiah is such a character that deserves to have a post all about him. For like G-d, we must remember to him favourly all the deeds he had done.

[secular-jew]

[apenitentialprayer]

Seedling, by John A. Copley, acrylic on canvas, 2008.

One day, [Ḥoni] was walking along the road when he saw a certain man planting a carob tree. Ḥoni said to him: "This tree, after how many years will it bear fruit?" The man said to him: "It will not produce fruit until seventy years have passed." Ḥoni said to him: "Is it obvious to you that you will live seventy years, that you expect to benefit from this tree?" He said to him that man himself found a world full of carob trees: "Just as my ancestors planted for me, I too am planting for my descendants."

Tractate Ta'anit 23a:15

This is what we are about. We plant the seeds that one day will grow. We water seeds already planted, knowing they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. […] We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker. We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own.

from a 1979 prayer by Fr. Kenneth Untener, the future Bishop of Saginaw

Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.

Gandalf (J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Return of the King, page 190)

[jdsquared]

Bava Batra 164b

[cynically-optomistic]

bizarre to me how the same people who insist we have to hold space for grace and forgiveness for literal neo-nazis and missionizing evangelicals in conversations will feel comfortable turning around and saying the vilest shit about a theoretical satmar bochur who has never been exposed to a different viewpoint and probably never will. No this isnt about something in particular, its a tendency i noticed over the last few years and it pisses me off.

[sugarpsalms]

i am once again crafting a longpost so niche and so so unasked for! but never fear, i will use the readmore function. y'all welcome

[arielmagicesi]

Every day I regret titling a fanfic after one of the less good CXG songs because whenever I get kudos for it, I get goddamn "Camp Kvetcher Girl" stuck in my head

[over-fen-and-field]

The religion section of my bookshelf has been growing more quickly as of late (something about the spring and autumn always gets me, I don't quite know why), and I am growing so tired of the incredible condescension toward anyone who leaves the faith community of their upbringing or heritage, either to join another tradition or to seek a secular life.

Most often, the 'failure' (and it's always framed as a failure) seems to be pinned on the individual as a sort of shallowness -- that they don't adequately understand their own tradition and if they'd delved deeper into such-and-such or so-and-so, they would have inevitably found renewed interest and commitment, or that they're too enmeshed in their day-to-day life and comforts to accept the inconveniences, discomforts, etc. that arise from maintaining a practice and/or holding the mental and spiritual space their tradition requires, or that they're merely giving into social pressure. In other cases, the authors gesture toward institutional failures -- inadequate outreach and programming (particularly for young adults or families without children), lack of support for struggling members, refusal to change with the times and address the anxieties and joys of their members, etc.

Certainly, both of these things can be true, and I don't mean to say that they aren't, but I wish the authors of the books I've been reading would leave some space for the simple fact that different things work for different people. If, after serious consideration of their own innermost desires and their relationship to their faith and associated community, someone finds themselves seeking a better fit for their values, sense of community, or other priorities, that seems like something that should be congratulated. Maybe they'll find that what they wanted was there all along and reaffirm their commitment to their tradition, maybe they'll find something else fits them, maybe they'll find that they need to step outside of faith communities to meet a certain need, in whatever degree each of these might entail -- regardless, good on them for being willing to explore themselves and the richness of the world around them!

Inevitably, questions of faith, belonging, and seeking are complicated and bring up a lot of difficult feelings and history, especially in marginalized or persecuted communities who've had to fight to maintain their faith and traditions, but that means you need a complicated and compassionate answer to them, stemming from a place that seeks to understand the range of individuals' experiences and desires rather than to immediately condemn them. No one tradition is going to work for everyone, and in any tradition, there's beauty and love to be found and nurtured.

[gay-lil-meowmeow]

Let your words become our words

Let your pains become our pains

Let your joys become our joys

Let your community become our community

Let your G*d become our G*d

Let your Tribe be our Tribe.