#what isn't tanach?

[hyperpotamianarch]

Well, the one part of the question I didn't answer yet is what isn't part of the Tanach. Which, while it's a group that contains a lot of books (Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings aren't part of the Tanach, for example), we can still have a look at some books that potentially could enter but didn't. In addition, explaining why the Talmud isn't a part of the Tanach might also be helpful. So let us start talking about the codification and canonization of the Tanach!

Now, the codification of the Tanach, as in organizing the books that would enter and perhaps editing some of them, was a work done by Knesset HaGdolah - the Great Assembly of 120 Jewish rabbis and leaders that formed at the start of the 2nd Temple era, around 516 BCE (according to historians. There are some disagreement between them and traditional Jewish chronicles around this particular time frame). No decisive date can be put to the end of it, though. Some books that ended up in the Tanach were written around the early days of the Great Assembly - Ezra, for example - and the finalization of codifying and canonizing the Tanach likely happened some time after the books in it were written. It's likely that by the time Alexander the Great conquered the Land of Israel - around 332 BCE - there was a loose canon of texts, though I can't really say for certain. I would like to note, for example, that I've heard from Rav Aviah HaCohen that the book of Daniel contains words of Greek origin, indicating it has some degree of Hellenistic influence and thus was likely written when they controlled the land. From the perspective of a non-believer it also makes all the prophecies about the wars between the North and South kings more obviously about the Ptolemies and Seleucids. If it truly was written that late, it might well be the latest-written book of the Tanach.

Either way, there are evidence that by the time of the destruction of the 2nd Temple, the canon of the Tanach as we know it existed. It does not mean that it was undisputed - within the Pharisees, the 2nd Temple sect that gave rise to Rabbinic Judaism as we know it, there were still some disagreements about books that should be kept. Other sects (such as the Qumranites) wanted to add books, while yet others didn't accept the Tanach at all - the Samaritans still only consider the Torah as scripture, to this day. However, the Pharisees became the mainstream and thus based the canon.

So first, what disagreements were among the Pharisees? Well, for the most part, there were two books in dispute: Kohellet and Shir HaShirim. Now, there's also a disagreement regarding on which of them there was a dispute in the first place, which can get a little confusing. We'll just avoid that point for now and note that the problem with Kohellet was that it contradicted itself multiple times, and Shir HaShirim... well, it's kind of a romantic-erotic love song that doesn't exactly seem like it belongs in scripture, if we're being honest. However, both have stayed in canon - the Sages have explained the contradictions in Kohellet and Rabbi Akiva would have my head for suggesting the love song (commonly seen as a parable for G-d's love to the Israelites) doesn't belong in scripture. So that is that.

Now, another question that needs to be answered is what books could have entered, but didn't? There are many books that fit that title even if we only discuss Jewish religious books from that period (that aren't disqualified for reasons similar to the Talmud, elaboration on that later). To make things easier for me, I'm going to limit myself to talking about three particular books: the Book of Enoch, Ben Sirach and Maccabees. I could (and possibly should) stop here and not try explaining why they didn't enter the Tanach. However, if I had done that I could've just looked up a list of the Apocryphal book and paste it here. So, I'll attempt to get into the why. (In case you're wondering what apocryphal means, it appears the literal translation of the word is somewhere along the lines of dubious or inauthentic. In Hebrew those books are called Sefarim Ḥitzoniyim, meaning "outer books". Essentially - books that aren't a part of the Tanach's canon.)

The most problematic of these three is Ben Sirach. And I mean "problematic" in the sense it seems to have gotten the closest to entering. Ben Sirach is a book of proverbs and saying by a Jewish scholar, I think from Alexandria? Who wrote them around the time of the 2nd Temple. And this book is quoted in the Talmud a few times, with at least once that it's seemingly referred to as if it's a part of scripture. On the other hand, in the tractate of Sanhedrin (100B) Rav Yosef includes it among the books that reading in leads to exemption from having an afterlife. The weird part is that even he himself quotes from it a couple of lines later.

Well, a common explanation I've seen of that is that Rav Yosef there - as well as the Mishnah he comments on, which talks about Sefarim Ḥitzoniyim in general - don't actually mean one shouldn't read those at all. They merely mean that one shouldn't read it in the same way one reads scripture, and should remember it's not scripture. The reason Rashi gives to what the problem is with Ben Sirach is that it has some nonsensical or empty sayings (it's a little hard to translate, maybe it would be more accurate to say some of its sayings are rubbbish).

The Book of Enoch is an intersting one. It talks about the hierarchy of angels and the proper order of the world, from what I understand, and much of the lore in it is accepted as canon by both Christians and Jews (I think, though I didn't read the book). However, only one existing group in the world has it in their canonical Bible and those are Ethipean Christians. Well, I might be wrong - it could be that the Assyrian church also has it, as while modern editions lean heavily on the Ethipean version they still have other sources to lean on. Either way, this book - likely written during the Hellenistic period in the Land of Israel - is not a part of the canon of the Tanach. Why? I don't really know. Maybe the attribution of the book to such an old figure didn't sit well with the rabbis working on the canonization. Maybe they didn't believe it was written with any divine inspiration. Maybe it was written too late into the Hellenistic period, at a time when the canon was already set. Either way, it didn't get in, leaving Daniel as the only book in the Tanach that gives angels names.

Now, regarding the Book of Maccabees: there are actually four of them. I really don't want to get into all of them, so I'm going to focus on the first - which was likely written the closest to the actual Hasmonean rebellion, by someone who may have participated in it, and in Hebrew. And it still didn't get into the Tanach, though it gives much-needed context to the holiday of Hannukah. Why is that? Well, the most likely answer is that it wasn't written with divine inspiration. It's not something easily provable, and for a non-believer it's not going to mean much, so to rephrase - the people who canonized the Tanach didn't think it was divinely inspired. It just seemed like a chronicle of a war that was written after the prophecy was gone from among the Jews. Without prophecy, this book wasn't deemed a legitimate addition to canon and thus remained outside.

There are quite a few more books that didn't enter but you may have heard of - the book of Judith, the book of Jubilees, and many others. I have written a list in the first post of all the books in the Tanach - if it's not one of those, it's not inside. Usually under the assumption it wasn't written with Divine inspiration.

So, what about the Talmud? I am aware that you didn't ask this question. The Talmud is known to not be a part of the Tanach. But why is that? If it's a Jewish religious book, shouldn't it be included in the collection of our scripture? Well, to explain that we need to explain about the Oral Torah. This post is long enough as it is, however, so I'll try to keep it brief.

Basically, Orthodox tradition has it that Moshe got two Torahs on mount Sinai: one Written and one Oral, with the Oral one explaining the Written one and getting into the finer details of the law. Conservative Jews consider the Oral Torah to be a later addition by the Great Assembly, I think - if a Conservative JEw in the audience knows otherwise please do correct me. Its role doesn't change, however: it's always to explain the Written Torah, add some prohibitions to help avoid doing anything forbidden, and such things. The Oral Torah was codified into the Mishnah by Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi around the 2nd century CE, including in it various discussions and disagreements on details of the law. A couple of centuries later, a series of discussions and interpretations on the Mishnah were codified in the Talmud. In addition to these two books, the various Midrashim can probably also be considered a part of the Oral Torah.

You might notice I used the word "codify" and not "write". Even if you didn't, well, you should know that there's a reason for that: the Oral Torah truly is Oral, or at least was. It's very different in nature and purpose from the Written Torah and the Tanach. And that is why the Talmud isn't a part of the Tanach - because it's a part of the complex collection of interpretations on it.

I hope this was helpful! Thank you for asking (and for reading that), and have a good day! If you had trouble understanding something I wrote here, please don't hesitate to ask!

Secular jew here with a really stupid question about the tanach

What exactly constitutes the tanach? I think I've heard it's an acronym, so would the Torah be the t? what's the rest of the acronym? Which writings does it include? I'm pretty sure the talmud isn't part of it, what else isn't? Apologies if this is too basic of a question for you!

Hello! Thank you for the question!

The Torah indeed is the first part of the Tanach. Tanach is an acronym for the Hebrew words Torah, Nevi'im and Ketuvim. Roughly translated, those titles mean "Instructions", "Prophets" and "Writings", respectively. The Tanach, then, consists of 24 books divided into those three categories.

The Torah is the easiest one to define: it's the Pentateuch, the Five Books of Moses, however else you choose to call them, and they are generally known to be set apart. The books in it are Bereshit (Genesis), Shemot (Exodus), Vayikra (Leviticus), B'midbar (Numbers) and Devarim (Deuteronomy). Those are the books traditionally given to Moshe directly by G-d, and mostly focus on the formation of the Israelite people and its time under his leadership. It also includes all the commandments, basically.

Nevi'im are supposedly the books written by prophets, and half the books there are specifically books of prophecy (which is more messages from G-d than necessarily predicting the future). However, the first four books - Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings - are more historical in nature, chronicling the events from Moshe's death to the destruction of the 1st Temple. The last four books - Isaiah, Jeremaiah, Ezkiel and the Twelve prophets - are primarily books of prophecies and visions, with some stories sprinked in between. Most of them are concurrent with events in the book of Kings - except for the last three of the Twelve Prophets, who have lived around the building of the 2nd Temple. The Twelve Prophets are (by this order): Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Michah, Naḥum, Ḥabakuk, Zephaniah, Ḥaggai, Zacharias and Malachi. Names are written more or less in their traditional English spelling.

Then we get to the Ketuvim, Written texts, which are... a little more vague. It's hard to say if there's a uniting theme. A couple are books of parables and songs are there, yet others are more chronicles of events, either ones that occured after the time of the book of Kings, before it or concurrently with it. A common assumption is that the difference between those and the Nevi'im is the level of prophecy in writing them - where the Nevi'im were written under direct prophecies, while the Ketuvim were only written in Ruach HaKodesh (roughly translated as "the holy spirit", but I don't want to cause any confusion with Christianity). Either way, the books in the Ketuvim are, in order: Tehilim (Psalms), Mishley (Proverbs), 'Iyov (Job), Shir HaShirim (the Song o Songs/the Songs of Solomon), Rut (or Ruth), Eichah (Lamentations), Kohellet (Ecclesiastes), Ester (or Esther), Daniel, Ezra (and Neḥemiah) and Divrey HaYamim (Chronicles).

If you count, you'll find there are 5 books in the Torah, 8 in the Nevi'im and 11 in the Ketuvim - 24 in total. Ther Twelve Prophets, known as Trei Asar (which just means twelve), are considered one book, The division of Samuel, Kings, Ezra and Chronicles into two books each is relatively late and only makes sense in Ezra due to the obvious PoV shift. Which kind of reminds me, maybe a brief explanation is required as to what each of those last 11 books is.

Tehilim is a book of prayers and religious poems, traditionally written by King David (though they were probably collected long after his time). Mishley is the proverbs of king Shelomo (Solomon), some of which were definitely written long after his time (as in, it's directly stated inside the book). 'Iyov is possibly a parable, possibly a real story which serves as a background to a conversation on the problem of evil that doesn't seem to be solved within the book. The five books from Shir HaShirim to Esther are considered the Five Scrolls, but actually share very little in common: Shir HaShirim is a love song that sometimes become rather erotic, written by King Solomon. Ruth is an origin story to King David's family that occurs during the Judges period, and is about his Great-Grandmother and her conversion to Judaism (she was from Moab, which was a neighboring nation). Eichah is a book lamenting the destruction of the 1st Temple and of the Kingdom of Judea, traditionally written by Jeremiah. Kohellet is a philosophical book pondering the meaning of life - it either finds none or finds solace in faith, depending who you ask - also said to have been written by King Solomon. Esther is famously about the first organised Pogrom in recorded history - one against the Jews of the Persian empire, occuring during the Babylonian exile in Persia. Daniel is about the vision of a Jewish slave in the court of Nebuchadnezzar, who somehow succeeds to stay in a position of power after multiple switches in the government. The story of Daniel isn't half as interesting as his weird visions, though. Ezra is about the rebuilding of the Temple and Jerusalem after the return from exile, more or less - Ezra and Neḥemiah are the major leaders of this time period. This is pretty much a chronicling book - as is the last one, appropriately called Chronicles (Divrey HaYamim). That one basically attempts to sum up everything that happened to the Jewish people throughout history until the building of the 2nd Temple.

I've already written a lot and am too tired to explain why those books were codified and others weren't, so I'll just leave it at that for now.

[inkasrain]

On Ezran

First things first:

This is extremely niche and probably very lame, but it's been on my mind for a long time.

As always, my thoughts about The Dragon Prince are just my own, and aren't official or canon or anything.

So. At some point early in the writing process for season 7, this song cycled up on my shuffle. It's been on my iPod (YES I STILL USE MY DINKY LITTLE IPOD SHUFFLE FOR MUSIC, MOVING ON) for probably 15 years at this point. It's not a song I really consciously hear anymore, it just exists familiarly in the background.

But with season 7 -- and particularly Ezran's story -- on my mind, I heard it differently. It took on a new meaning, and for me, became the musical embodiment of Ezran's personal, political, and emotional journey in this season. The song is a medley of two passages from TaNaCh (the complete Hebrew Bible.) The first is from the book of Kohelet (Ecclesiastes), and is pretty well-known as far as Bible vibes go: Everything has a time, and there is a season for everything under Heaven... A time to love and a time to hate; a time for war and a time for peace. (Shoutout Hall & Oates.) The second part of the medley comes from the book of Yirmiyahu (Jeremiah). It's much more obscure and is honestly not super easy to translate as the phrasing is very poetic and metaphorical. (The Prophets are generally very like "Figure it out, guys.") Approximately though, this is what it means:

"Isn't Ephraim my beloved son, My precious child, Whom I remember fondly Even when I speak against him? So my heart reaches out to him, And surely I will always be compassionate to him," Says Gd.

The important thing to know about this passage is that it is fundamentally about a broken bond -- how pain between loved ones can be repaired through the remembrance of healthier times, and choosing to feel compassion for each other. In a liturgical context, it's often used when requesting compassion and forgiveness from Gd, as we call back to times of a stronger spiritual connection. In the song, the passages intertwine at a critical and resolving point: The words "And surely I will always be compassionate to him" are woven around the first passage, with its last word -- peace -- repeated until the second passage completes. To me, this speaks so perfectly to Ezran's experience in season 7. How he was, for so long, the sweet, beloved son and brother, the innocent king. How he has been forced to suddenly grow up and confront the contradictions of love and hate, war and peace. How that tears him apart from the people he loves, when he most needs them to speak to him, and how destructive that distance can be. And how ultimately, it is his decision to choose compassion, and how that is met equally by Callum, Runaan, and others, that begins to heal those bonds and create a path forward. A path of love. A path of peace. The path that he had always hoped to forge, and is now so much stronger for having had to struggle to get to it.

[prisoner-000]

Let's talk Apples, Bauhaus, Ads & Kazui Mukuhara's MVs!

I've seen a lot of people talk about art history when it comes to both of Kazui's MVs, but usually, the analysis tends to focus on more surface-level aspects. I'm a bit of an art history nerd, so I thought - hey, why not, let's look into it some more when it comes to these two videos! Particularly I am focusing on 20th century art.

Everyone and their mom has already deciphered the appearance of Magritte's The Son of Man in half (Cat confirms the similarity by making a direct reference to the painting), but I'm gonna be quickly repeating it anyways without simply going off the Wikipedia summary.

The Son of Man is, like many of Magritte's works, about not giving the viewer all the details to understand the work. His photorealistic style contrasts with his phantastical subjects to create a dream-like atmosphere and to invite the viewer to step into this dream world of surrealism he's crafted. "half" borrows the surface theme of not being able to see everything about the man who is depicted, his face being obscured, almost as though he is wearing a mask.

But that's not all! The apple from this painting has been borrowed to be a symbol in Kazui's story as a whole.

The apple as a symbol of sin, desire and the downfall of man has been used in essentially all mediums of art since... the invention of abrahamic religions and the writing of the story of the garden of Eden? The Tanach/Old Testament (and, of course, the New Testament) and tales within it have inspired a lot of art symbolism (e.g. crosses, apples...) so it's not a surprise this pops up in modern anime music videos. Hell, the apple was even used as shorthand in Snow White. If you'd like to look more into apple symbolism and its origins, I'd suggest looking into this article. Especially interesting for us and theory-crafters, of course, is the 'desire' aspect of the apple symbolism.

So, "half" and "Cat" reference The Son of Man. But one connection to a painting isn't enough to warrant a theme of art history, is it? You're right! Let's talk about "Cat"'s visual style!

Many people have already pointed out Cat's print, advertisement-like style with its CMYK color scheme and torn paper at the edges. But it seems a lot of people in the fandom don't really know what this style in particular is called. The combination of these geometric shapes with print colors, slick design and the Helvetica font has its roots in Bauhaus design — it's based on the modern idea of the "Bauhaus" style.

Students of the Bauhaus school were mainly involved in designing furniture, architecture, and print design. Bauhaus' design philosophy was 'form follows function' — Walter Gropius' (the founder of Bauhaus) goal with his school was to streamline design as a whole and make mass production of designs possible. This led to a rather strict design process - students were encouraged to follow the school's motto and not add 'unnecessary' elements to their designs. This is why, more than 100 years later, designs developed in the Bauhaus school are still being used for print media and furniture.

Why is this important? What I want you to focus on in that aspect of "Cat"'s design is the inherent strictness that came with this philosophy of design. Bauhaus designs followed purpose rather than simply existing for art's sake (even originally being created with more political ideas, that being socialism, in mind).

In contrast to this, let's focus on what Bauhaus' groundwork design was used for in the late 20th century.

You might recognize the advertisement style presentation from more recent Pop Art works such as Roy Lichtenstein's big canvas works or, more famously, some of Andy Warhol's print works, which were also made by utilizing similar techniques in color and print. Particularly, you might have also drawn connections to Andy Warhol's Marylin Monroe prints.

Pop Art is (in)famously one of the most modern-culture-heavy art periods. Pop Art is all about consumerism and ads. And, in turn, consumerism and ads are about society, which is about upholding norms, which is Sometimes Also about gender and masculinity. So, we close this weird circle and we're all the way back to that suffocating masculinity theme.

The only thing in Cat that breaks away from the print ad influence is the ending section, where the background is a harsh red. That's on purpose. It's not really supposed to be part of the Pop Art world everyone that isn't Kazui seems to be living in.

I personally believe the progression from half's theater, Magritte-based symbolism to Cat's loud and modern Bauhaus/Pop Art style to be purposeful. Half gives you the story of a sad man trapped in a tragedy, Cat gives you the story of a liar who tries to embrace the societal standards that are suffocating him. While Magritte's work leads you into a world of dreams, Pop Art makes you face reality in the most obnoxious and colorful way possible.

And, really, isn't that just what Kazui is all about? Dreaming? Closing his eyes to escape the print ad reality he lives in? Waking up to see something he has never faced before, dark red, color splotches that don't fit into this ideal CMYK world, splattered on the sidewalk below?

[hindahoney]

i've been getting more into judaism after being raised jewish. i was never bat mitzva'ed, so im wondering if i should do that? also wondering what other steps to take.

Well, I have great news! You don't need to have a bat mitzvah, you are a bat mitzvah! If you would like the celebration, you certainly can have one, but it isn't necessary.

I didn't grow up with really any Jewish observance, so I was essentially a complete beginner when I decided to connect. So, my suggestions come from personal experience and the experiences of some others I know who are baal teshuva.

Some more steps you could take to foster a stronger relationship with your Judaism is first to reach out to your local rabbi, and see what events or classes their shul has going on. Showing up to these opportunities can open doors to figuring out what feels right for you, and I've found that making friends who are at a level of observance that you strive to be at can inspire you to keep learning. If you get in touch with a rabbi beforehand, they could probably arrange to have you meet with someone who can show you around and introduce you to people. While this can be really intimidating at first, believe me when I say that many Jews will be happy to help you and won't pass judgement. Many Jews have been in your shoes, you're not alone.

Or, you can pick a few different shuls and just go to each one until you find one that feels right for you. Don't feel pressured to commit to one over the other. Don't get bogged down by the labels of movements. If you have a personal goal in mind or a certain aspect of observance you want to do, just start doing it, even if it feels awkward at first. Over time, it'll be easier. Find some local study groups, or join one online! During quarantine I joined a Torah study group from a shul hundreds of miles away from me. They didn't care that I'd never step foot in their shul before, they were just happy to have a fresh face who wanted to learn. You could also try Partners In Torah, which is a website that can connect you with a chavruta.

Chabad is always a great option for those who are looking to deepen their relationship with Judaism because they always have resources specifically for people looking to reconnect.

If you live in a place with a significant Jewish population, you could find a Young Jewish Professional's group that can introduce you to more people.

I would recommend getting a siddur with Hebrew and English, if your Hebrew is shaky. I would also recommend starting to read the parsha every week, or starting the Tanach from scratch and reading it like any other book. I suggest The Living Torah and The Living Nach by Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan because the translations are in modern terms and easier to read, and they have commentary by Rashi. I also can't recommend enough Joseph Telushkin's books Biblical Literacy and Jewish Literacy, they're incredibly comprehensive guides to living a Jewish life by forming a strong Jewish educational foundation. Seriously, I've mentioned these books a million times on my blog because I love them that much.

Also, you could just start small! Saying modei ani in the morning when you wake up, saying hamotzi or the birkat, or even just saying Shema before bed can be a great way to start the process of opening up.

This last recommendation might be a little out there, but I think that doing some traditional Jewish cooking or baking can help motivate you to keep learning. This is how I started. I bought a few kosher cookbooks and just started making anything I had the ingredients for. It's not necessarily a "standard" way to connect, but my soul felt like it was reaching through time and space and connecting with all the Jews before me who had prepared and eaten the same thing.

As always, if anyone else has suggestions for anon, the more the merrier! I want to express my sincere excitement for you. Enjoy the journey you're on, don't be so caught up on "but I wish I was more observant this way" or "I'm not Jewish enough in this way" because it's all nonsense. Reconnecting is an amazing and life-changing experience, so enjoy the path that you're on, not necessarily the destination. When I first started, I was so insecure about how much I didn't know and worried others would judge me, but I found most people genuinely just want to help. Learning was exciting, and in some ways I'm envious of all the new experiences you're going to have. I would have enjoyed it a lot more had I just relaxed and accepted that it's okay not to know things yet.

Good luck!!

[nova-alien-jewposting]

welcome to my blog! 🌈🤎

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about me 🌈🤎

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🤍 hi there! i'm nova/ariel (נובה/אריאל), and welcome to my jewposting sideblog where i will be posting stuff having to do with judaism and israel! i am over 21, jewish, israeli, ukrainian, and american. i have deep ties to israel especially, with most of my family currently living or having lived there.

🤍 i don't feel like i align neatly into any specific sect of judaism. in terms of practice i'd say i'm conservative leaning, but i'm an avid tanach learner and enjoy examining orthodox and chasidic teachings.

🤍 i am currently a student at a major university in the united states under federal investigation for how severe its antisemitism has gotten. i will not be disclosing which university this is, but just know i am experiencing firsthand what has been going on in terms of these issues.

🤍 i block freely, and i don't owe an explanation to anyone about who i block or why. i do so for my own comfort, and you're welcome to block me as well. i don't care.

🤍 i am autistic and ADHD, and am mentally ill. if i accidentally say something questionable, please TELL ME! i want to do better, so please don't pull that "you know what you did" shit. i promise you i literally have no clue what the hell i did.

🤍 want more info on me? see my carrd here!

🤍 the character you see on this profile is one of my own! i love him very much and i hope you do too. all things retro and nostalgic are huge sources of comfort for me. :3

art by nekonekodesu23 on toyhouse!

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🤍 i am not pro-israel, nor am i pro-hamas. i don't give a shit if you-re pro-palestinian. i have a problem with the hamas supporters/antisemites. i've hated bibi (netanyahu for you non-israelis) long before this conflict broke out, as do many other israelis and jews alike. i don't agree with a lot of the shit he says or how he is handling the current situation. i hate both sides of this conflict. imo, the hostages should be returned, and a PERMANENT ceasefire should be honored (this does not mean hamas consistently violating the ceasefires set in place; october 7th WAS a ceasefire violation).

🤍 so many of my family members are currently in the IDF being forced to fight in a war they never had a say about, and i don't know who out of them is still alive. i don't think the IDF's intent is to completely annihilate gaza, because trust me, they could have turned the entire strip into a fucking parking lot MONTHS ago. that said, i don't like what bibi and his posse are making them do over there. they're mostly just scared college kids forced into combat.

🤍 if you believe that jews control the media, that jew = zionist and vice versa, that israeli = jew and vice versa, that jews are responsible for all the world's problems, that all jews and/or israelis are evil and want to murder palestinians, that antisemitism isn't real, that october 7th was justified/didn't happen, that hamas are "freedom fighters," or anything similar, get the fuck off my blog. i don't need antisemites here. similarly, if you cannot have a conversation with a jewish person without bringing up the i/p conflict, you are also not welcome here.

🤍 i don't consider myself to be a zionist, nor do i consider myself to be an anti-zionist. you can call me whatever you want. but as a jewish israeli, i'm not cool with people trying to justify the largest massacre of jews since the HOLOCAUST, or calling for the destruction of the only country i've felt at home in. i don't give a shit if it's a one or two state solution or what, i just want peace. i don't want anyone else killed or maimed on either side. i have no issue with advocating for and supporting the palestinians OR criticizing israel as long as antisemitism isn't thrown in.

🤍 the second anyone as a non-jew starts saying what they think antisemitism is or isn't, they're getting blocked. if you wouldn't say something about any other marginalized group (POC, queer, disabled, neurodivergent, mentally ill, homeless, etc), don't say it about jews. and if you would, you're DEFINITELY not welcome here.

🤍 this is the ONLY blog i will be posting political things on. do not bring politics from this blog on to any of my other blogs, or you will be blocked. i keep my blogs separate for a reason.

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[springstarfangirl]

Hiya! I'm trying to write a Jewish character, can I have some help please? I really want to make her good positive representation

Sure thing! Though do keep in mind that I am only one girl from one stream of a religion that has itself a history of over three millennia, so I can only speak for what I know, that being Orthodox Judaism.

(also this is getting quite long, but I don't know what I expected- the rest is going under the cut.)

So one thing to keep in mind is that Judaism is more than just a religion. It's also a culture, and even just being raised around it- even if your character is secular (doesn't perform the commandments) or atheist/agnostic (doesn't believe God exists/doesn't know if God exists)- it will very much affect your character's mindset and possibly show up in their life in other ways.

In fact, the reason why I separated secular from atheist/agnostic is part of that- Judaism, due to putting more emphasis on the doing than the believing, doesn't really care if you actually believe in God. There are people who very much perform Judaism as a cultural ritual more than as a religion, and they are just as valid as the people who believe that God is there in every corner.

Okay, so what kind of cultural mentalities can you add?

For instance, the idea of proselytizing is forbidden in Judaism. So the way charity differs from tzedaka can be huge. Tzedaka comes from the root word tzedek, justice, and is seen as a way to help someone who's down on their luck to get back on their feet. Not an opportunity to convince them to join your religion. *stares angrily at American charity orgs*

This has a massive effect on how Jewish people see the world. Giving to and helping other people makes us happy, and that in itself is reward enough.

On the more cultural aspect, the menorahs you always see on TV shows? Inaccurate. Those are specific to one holiday, Chanukkah, which is not only a rather minor holiday but is also sometimes viewed as the "Jewish Christmas" when it really isn't. Instead, what any Jewish household would really have is books, and lots of them. The way we view the Tanach is very different from how a lot of Christians view the Bible- it's rarely literal- and so often you'll find a lot of books about Jewish law hanging around. Also, prayer books and candlesticks. Adult Jewish men are supposed to pray three times a day, so someone is bound to leave their prayer book lying around. And the candlesticks are from the "ceremony" (I say, struggling to find a better word) where we welcome Shabbat on Friday just before sunset. A lot of families keep them out all week.

Food is also massively important. Do your research on what's kosher and what's not (though if your character is Reform this may not apply as much- again, I speak from my own experience only) and try to stick to that. That might involve a Jewish character avoiding eating outside the house unless it's a packaged item (which they might check for kashrut symbols), or whispering a blessing before they eat. Kosher meat and cheese are both very hard to find outside of places with a lot of Jews, so they might be vegetarian.

I can't think of anything else right now, so I'll tag @unbidden-yidden because as a convert, they have much more experience with the mindset distinctions between Christianity and Judaism.

Jumblr, feel free to throw all your additions at this post- I need all the help I can get.

I hope this helped at least a little!

[multiplicity-positivity]

Hii hope you&'re having a good day/night! Here's the thing uhm, one of our sysmates really likes Judaism and wants to convert; however the body isn't Jewish and conversions are finicky in our country, not to mention not free and we're disabled and unemployed... It's only them; not all of us. We were wondering if any Jewish system can help us on what to do responding on this post as we're unsure on going off anon out of fear of judgement.; while we do support them, it's a process of their own; not a collective one.

hi! we’re actually in the process of converting to judaism! it’s definitely a long road for us (we’ve been walking this path for 4 years now!) but it’s absolutely enriched our lives and helped us find purpose.

we’re not jewish (yet!) but we will say that you don’t have to be jewish to learn about judsism! you don’t have to speak to a rabbi or attend a synagogue in order to begin the learning process.

we’ll open this up to any of our jewish followers! but we’re adding a potential reading list and a personal note under a cut :)

🐢 kip and 💫 parker

here are some excellent books we’ve added to our jewish library which have been insightful for us!

1) the tanach!! you don’t have to be jewish to read the tanach - we bought ours at a used bookstore for $14 usd :)

2 & 3) choosing a jewish life and living a jewish life, both by anita diamont

4) essential judaism by george robinson (an essential read - it’s a big text but it’s easy to digest!!)

5) jewish literacy by rabbi joseph telushkin (also a big text, but chock-full of info)

6) to life! a celebration of jewish being and thinking by rabbi harold kushner

also we’re a system who’s really into podcasts - here’s some jewish pods we listen to!

1) unorthodox

2) queer yid podcast

3) rabbi shais taub’s soulwords

4) take one - daf yomi

5) unsettled podcast

and here’s a note, from one convert-in-progress to, potentially, another:

one thing we wish we knew more about when we started learning about judaism is palestine, its people’s struggle for freedom, and the occupation of its land by israel. this is an incredibly difficult topic, and one that many jews we’ve spoken to are incredibly willing to ignore. information and news surrounding the israeli occupation of palestine and the ethnic cleansing of the palestinian people is rife with propaganda and disinformation. even our own rabbi for our intro to judaism class would not field questions regarding palestine, and refused to acknowledge the displacement and suffering of the palestinian people in our class.

please, please educate yourself and learn from all sides, if you can. israeli sources regarding the state’s formation are vague, secretive, and delicately worded. the truth is, over 700,000 people were displaced by zionists in the nakba of 1948, and even today 5.6 million palestinians are refugees. we’re including some links to sources where you can learn more. it’s worth noting that the unsettled podcast is an anti-occupation podcast put together by jews fighting for palestinian liberation! there are anti-occupation jews out there, but they can be hard to come by, especially in public spaces.

(^ this is the first in a documentary series. if you can stomach it, we suggest watching the whole series!)

[lightdancer1]

And oh yes, a few other story elements with Death that tend to be under-used:

The only one that I kind of downplay is that she's canonically a total nerd and dork for Disney films. This is because as the writer I do not really care to focus on the Disney canon nearly that much as a bit of a backlash to how much Disney has become MomCorps. Instead I have it take a bit subtler forms and use different facets of Death's comics characterization as most humanlike cosmic entity to give her a very specific theme that isn't 'Dream of the Endless in a tophat.'

Specifically Death is humanlike, but not human. This isn't exactly a Pinocchio Syndrome, as she does become mortal every 100 years and then ol' Kenny of the Endless dies at the end of that one day. As I like to adapt aspects of the show but set in a DCU type setting this also means that like Kenny her Mortal Days sometimes go very badly, like say, Apokolips and Warworld, where she never makes the full 24 hours.

But it does shape her view of mortals, her view of interacting with them, and her problems distinct to that of her siblings in a way that accounts for her canon self's no small amount of solipsism and self-absorption to match anything that Dream shows in his own appearances. It also shapes my view of her granting immortality, and a paradox. A being who lives (and dies) as much as she does grants immortality freely, and with a casual halfassing of her day job, in one sense. Very much the inverse of Marvel's Mistress Death who hires a contract killer and gets into pissing matches with the superheroes.

Death is the most casual about her power and her natures of all the Endless, because she can and does freely give it up. None of the others are truly willing to do this and Destruction very much does not do this. He retires from family life and governing his realm but in his own place in the mortal sphere he is not human with appearance of Destruction, he is Destruction of the Endless with all the immense power that goes with that. Death spends her mortal days powerless.

Further, she is only shown in her realm in her second miniseries, where it shows the same fluid elements of reality and interaction of her will and those of mortals that the Dreaming does, and is shown as a dark and cold and shadowy place (hence my portrayal of it as a blend of the Sumerian afterlife, the Tanach Sheol, and the Norse Hel (and hence also why it's the Land of Twelve Rivers like Norse Hel itself).

Her apartment, which is a small NYC apartment in size, is her home. It is not her realm. She lives in the mortal world by analogy in a way that none of her siblings do. Meaning, in other words, that her interaction with her realm, what is to be an Endless, with her function and her duties, are all vastly different.

Further still she is not bound by the laws and fetters of the other Endless. This is spelled out with a complete lack of subtlety across multiple aspects and facets of Sandman media. The only limits she has are what she accepts. She is not her brother Dream, who is overly rigidly bound by laws and to which challenging them is his central story motif. She has no laws, she is utterly unbound (as such if something did change this what would be moderate in other contexts has a vastly different psychological impact for all these reasons).

And of course if you look closely at her interactions beyond her job, Death is more feckless in interacting with people than Dream. We see it but a few times, and only a few and what is seen in this raises some interesting points that are very obvious factors and facets of her identity. She truly becomes mortal, she is the most like mortals, yet that 'most like' and 'actually is' are a huge gulf she cannot cross, and in a way not understanding other people really does make her the most human of the Endless in the most ironic possible fashion.

Finally, we do have that one story where Death speaks in her own voice, the only Endless besides Despair who does so save Dream himself. And I believe very firmly that what is shown in A Winter's Tale shows that she is very much struggling with depression and with a fundamental dislike and distaste for her job and by extension her own being that was never actually resolved. And in that she is much more like Dream than either of them would be likely to accept and both are tragic in very different ways.

And with all that sadness comes the ultimate reality, and one that would in its own way account for all these other differences. She outlives the universe and she leaves it. When that day comes Death of the Endless is dead, for there is no universe to be an Endless to oversee. The being who was Death of the Endless continues to exist, with all the memories of her world and of her siblings. In short, to her the Endless part of her is a title and a moment in time, not a fixed reality.

And that, to me, would account for my take, ultimately, on Death and Hob Gadling's relationship. Dream and Hob become friends, but that was not her intent or her motive in that moment. It was about Hob's view of life and death itself. Hob and Dream had the willingness and the ability to make her own choices, Death is his sister, not his mother, nor someone interested in playing the kind of manipulative games the other Endless do....nor, judging by her interactions, someone very good at them if she tried to do so.

[strangesmallbard]

Correct Answer: No Role At All

Jesus does not play a role in Judaism. That includes both the Tanach, which is arguably our primary religious text, and the daily religious/cultural practice of Judaism. He certainly plays a role in Jewish history—largely a negative one, as his followers have persecuted Jews for multiple centuries. There is evidence that he may appear briefly in the Talmud, which is a compilation of Jewish legal commentaries and teachings that modern Jewish scholars study throughout their lives. However, this is not a commonly-known fact amongst Jews (I myself didn't know this beforehand), nor do regular practicioners ever discuss him in Torah Study or services. (If any Talmudic scholars want to comment on this, absolutely feel free to!)

Nothing described above constitutes a role in Judaism. One trend I saw in tags was the assumption that, since Jews often engage in scholarly and/or religious debate, we likely discuss Jesus amongst ourselves. We don't lol; if there's a consensus about anything in Judaism, it's probably the Jesus thing. There is slight variance amongst individual Jews; for example, some consider him a wise rabbi/teacher with good ideas, while for others he's just some Jewish guy who probably existed and caused problems.

For every non-Jew who believed he had a role, I urge you to reflect on this assumption. Where did it come from? Who gave you this information initially—a Jew or a gentile? Why might a Christian source want you to believe we accept Jesus as a prophet or prominent figure? I also urge anyone who grew up Christian (or in a Christian culture) to reflect on any emotional reaction you had to learning this information. Were you shocked or uncomfortable? What do you feel about Jews who don't like Jesus at all, no matter how "good" his ideas might be?

While Jesus doesn't play a role in Judaism, Christianity does play a large role in antisemitism. This may also be new information to you. If you feel shame or guilt about your reaction and/or not knowing, I gently urge you to unpack that before engaging in any more conversations—if either emotion is the driving force of your allyship, you will burn out. And here's me talking specifically, because I can't speak for all Jews lmao: you don't need to confess or repent. You just need to show up and trust the perspectives of Jewish people about both our religion/culture and experiences with antisemitism. (You'll notice that all the sources I've included above and below are from Jewish organizations!) That's the first step, and I appreciate any non-Jews who take that step and keep going afterwards.

Results/Quick Analysis:

Thank you to everyone who participated! I was actually blown away by how seriously folks took this question; I've been joking to friends that I haven't ever seen this many goyim be normal towards Jews LMAO + genuinely curious to learn more about our religion, culture, and history. The bar is wildly low, but it's still cool to see it surpassed, and to see an absolute Torah Study happening in those tags.

Very Quick Analysis: the results were both relieving and worrying. Relieving because most people got the right answer! Worrying because, well, nearly half of the respondents did not. This isn't a verifiably solid sample size by any means, but that's still roughly 44% of 44,027 respondents, not including everyone who voted "something else." (Some of those answers veered from "very wrong" to "techically right," so it'd take a bit to accurately quantify).

That being said, the three primary wrong answers are not equally wrong. There are some important and interesting nuances to oberve here, and I plan to do so in a much longer post (hopefully) later this week. However, if you're interested in a quick explanation/breakdown of the wrong answers, click the read more below.

Wrong Answer One: Jesus is a Jewish Prophet

Jesus is not considered a Jewish prophet by any major sects or traditions. There are approximately 48 recorded prophets in the Tanach, none of whom are the guy known to Christians as Jesus. (I say approximately because the number has been contested before in the Talmud). There may be individual Jews who believe that Jesus should be a prophet or a significant religious teacher in Judaism, such as this guy I found in a 1971 New York Times article.

Here's the definition of a Jewish prophet, according to JewFaqs:

A prophet is basically a spokesman for G‑d, a person chosen by G‑d to speak to people on G‑d's behalf and convey a message or teaching. Prophets were role models of holiness, scholarship and closeness to G‑d. They set the standards for the entire community.

In very simple terms, Jesus is not a prophet because we don't believe he spoke on G-d's behalf. I was very tickled by the description of Jesus as a "good Jew" in some tags, because, well. No he ain't, according to most commonly accepted definitions of a Jew who practices Judaism and participates in Jewish culture. (Some disagree with this, however! That is where debates can happen between Jews. Just not in Torah Study).

There are also Messianic Jews/"Jews for Jesus", who have alternative beliefs about Jesus' role in Judaism, to put it mildly. However, Messianic Jews do not reflect the beliefs of anyone but themselves. Many Jews (myself included) do not count Messianic Jews as Jews. To learn why, please read that article I've linked there.

According to the tags, there appears to be two main reasons for this assumption. The first is the one I expected: While Jesus is not a prophet in Judaism, he is a prophet in Islam. This conflation is somewhat understandable, especially for Muslims/those who grew up Muslim, plus anyone who only knows a few facts about either Judaism or Islam.

The second one is honestly shocking to me: some Christian schools (including day schools and extracurricular programs) are apparently teaching y'all that Jews believe Jesus is a prophet!!! Hello lmao. They are Blatantly lying to you! This is fascinating. And it explains so much about Christian assumptions of Judaism and our relationship to JC. But what the fuck. Anyway, I plan to analyze Why I think they're teaching y'all that in the future Big Post. In the meantime: feel free to toss that lesson out. garbage

Wrong Answer Two: Jesus Appears in the Torah

Nope! The Torah's historical timeline is complicated, especially when you consider both the oral traditions and the written text. However, Jesus definitely doesn't appear in there. In general, the Torah describes the first five books in the Tanach, which consists of three major sections: the Chumash (the Torah), the Prophets (Neviim), and the Writings (Ketuvim). The Tanach roughly correlates to the Christian Old Testament; there are some key differences in which texts are included in the latter versus the former.

Anyway, as many have pointed out in the tags, the Torah was written way before Jesus was born. There's no full consensus on when the written Torah (as Jews know it today) was completed, but it was definitely before the birth of JC. He missed the whole party and we're not giving him any party favors.

According to the tags, I believe there are also two main reasons for this assumption. The first is plain and simple ignorance. Many gentiles don't know what the Torah is; in fact, many assume that it's the full Old Testament. Others don't know that Jesus only appears in the new one, especially if they weren't raised Christian/only know stuff about Christianity through osmosis. And it's okay to not know things! But now you know. Woe! Google Scholar be upon ye

The second is a bit more complicated: according to Christian theology, Jesus' birth was predicted in the Old Testament, aka the Tanach, aka the Torah. In this context, it makes sense why Christians/anyone raised vaguely Christian might misremember that Jesus himself shows up. Or they might count these predictions as him "showing up." But this is only true of Christianity. Jews do not believe that Jesus shows up in the Torah. Theologically speaking, that would be as absurd as the Buddha showing up in the Torah.

"Wrong" Answer Three: Jesus is a Rejected Messiah/Religous Figure

Actually, this answer isn't technically wrong. Anyone who voted this answer gets the metaphorical consolation prize. Put simply, Jews very much do reject Jesus as the prophecied Messiah in Judaism. (Someone in the poll reblogs wrote a great explanation as well - I'll either link it here or reblog it after posting this!) Furthermore, some Jews classify him as a "false Messiah" - belonging to a wider group of other Jews who claimed to be a Messiah and were rejected for various reasons.

The reason why I included this answer is because I was interested in how gentiles would intepret it. Some definitely questioned whether this answer should be separated from "no role at all," and others wanted to know my intended meaning first. For the sake of simplicity, my interpretation is this: Jesus can only be a "Rejected Messiah" figure in Judaism if that rejection is active—something we do as a part of everyday Judaism.

However, our rejection of Jesus is ultimately very, very passive. To actively reject Jesus, we'd have to seriously consider him as a contender. His divinity and/or importance would need to be a subject of debate. And he isn't. For the majority of Jews, rejecting Jesus has the same theological relevance as rejecting any major religious figure from a different religion. To use a common phrase from the tags: to us, Jesus is very much just some guy.

In any case, I do think my original hypothesis holds true: selecting this answer over "no role" shows that you approached the question from a Christian perspective, rather than a Jewish one. To be clear, I don't expect you to have that Jewish perspective ready to go. However, the Christians don't only believe we rejected Jesus; many believe that Jews killed him. (Jews did not kill Jesus. If Jesus existed, the Romans killed Jesus). This antisemitic canard is the basis for other antisemitic canards, including blood libel, which has led to multiple pogroms. (Also: many of these pogroms have historically occurred during Passover).

To put it even more bluntly: the Christian belief that Jews reject Jesus gets us killed. That's why it's important to consider the Jewish perspective over the Christian perspective. That's also why it's important to separate the two religions in your mind. Judaism is not incomplete Christianity, nor a proto-Christianity. It's an expansive tradition spanning thousands of years with multiple sects and diverse histories. And Jesus plays no significant role in that tradition.

Concluding Thoughts (Where's the Long Analysis?)

Thanks for reading the short version (haha) of the analysis! I hope to have a longer one out sometime this week, but it may be longer, as I'm hoping to get imput from other Jewish folks before publishing. Everything I described above is within my wheelhouse of knowledge, but the Longer Version requires a research journey and more in-depth sourcing. (That being said, @ Jews, please feel free to offer corrections or alternative perspectives!)

If anyone has any questions about the poll or what I wrote above, feel free to shoot me an ask or dm! (Anon is unfortunately off because I get nervous every time one of my Jewish posts makes the rounds). If I don't know the answer, I'll either provide a source you can check out, consult another Jew who's up for answering questions, or point you in the general direction of where to find the right answer.

[hyperpotamianarch]

what does the Tanach say about the concept of love?? Like romantic love, the love that permeates the soil and allows life to grow, love that is everywhere? I was learning the portion for this week and yitzchak is the king of commitment, and this seems to be the basis of love: an ability to commit no matter what. I was just wondering though if you know if there's anything else??

The Tanach doesn't technically say anything about the concept of love. By which I mean, it doesn't have a list of concepts that it explains. So everything you can learn is by looking at context, results, and at how love is being expressed. In addition, the Tanach isn't called the Book of Books (at least in Hebrew) for naught: it's made of twenty four to thirty six books (depends how you cout Trei 'Asar and Ezra&Nehemiah), and has varied authors. We can perhaps extrapolate what the word means when it's used in different contexts, but it may well be tainted by the view of the author.

You actually were right on the money to start talking about it now, though, because this is the first time in the whole Tanach love is mentioned! ...However, when looking at the future of their marriage, it's... A bit marred.

Next week's portion is the only one that focuses of Yitzchak. And you can see his character from that, I suppose. He's certainly committed to one wife, unlike his father or son, but he does not consult with her when he tells Avimelech she's his sister. As a matter of fact, the only direct interaction between Yitzchak and Rivkah is when she tells him she can't have Ya'akov marry anyone from Canaan. But, to be fair, that doesn't actually mean anything. The Torah only tells us what's relevant, and perhaps Yitzchak's daily life with Rivkah isn't that relevant. I still wouldn't take them as model marriage, though - they both pick favourites among their children and by the time they get to the Blessings Rivkah seems to not trust Yitzchak to listen to her if she tells him Ya'akov deserves them more. A lot of that us about how you choose to interpret the text, and I might be biased by a Shi'ur I've heard from one of my Rashei Yeshiva once.

I can keep ruining every good part in this by talking about the next time romantic (or more likely erotic) love appears, but I think we can skip Shechem and Dinah. That story is horrible without talking about what love is there, though it might lean into committment considering Shechem's love leads him to want to marry Dinah instead of having this be a one night stand. This stands as a stark opposition to Amnon, who hates Tamar immediately after raping her and is frankly a disgusting human being, but that's another story.

If we want to look at romantic love in the Tanach, going one by one on every mention of love and weighing whether or not it's romantic is going to be exhausting though. So let's just jump into the most obvious book on the topic: Shir HaShirim, the Song of Songs!

Honestly, considering my opening I should probably just direct you in that direction and leave it at that. I marred everything with the touch of my opinion so far, maybe I should let the Tanach speak for itself. Especially since I don't really know how to talk about love in the Song of Songs.

Now, don't get me wrong, this is one of my favourite books of the Tanach, despite how it's one of the only two to have semi-erotic descriptions in it. It's widely considered a parable for the love between G-d and the people of Israel, but as I've heard from Rav Aviah HaCohen - if the story in the parable has no worth, then the moral would be empty as well. (Paraphrased from memory and translated to English, please cut me some slack if it doesn't carry the exact right meaning.)

Maybe I'm having trouble talking about that because I never actually experienced romantic love (though I'd be hesitant to call myself aromantic). I could (in theory) talk about the dedication to each other the lovers of the Song of Songs show - "I am for my lover and my lover is for me". Maybe. But I'm not convinced I can say what the Tanach says about love from that. The book is certainly full of passion and dedication. Maybe I should just gently direct you to read and study it yourself, I don't really know.

So, a couple of points: first, thank you for asking me about the Tanach, I love it and actually am currently studying to teach it. However, I would like to ask people who might send farther asks on it to not ask about such nebulous concepts. The Tanach doesn't really have a clear line on it. It would be easier to talk about love in Judaism in general, and that is a complex topic unto itself: you have the commandment to love G-d with all your heart, soul and being; you have Rambam's definition of loving G-d - like a man who is lovesick and can think of nothing but his beloved; then you have the Hassidic terms of love like fire and love like water, the idea of always seeking closeness as one type of love, and simply enjoying the presence of one's loved one presence as another. But point is, it's hard to answer such a question straight from the Tanach, and as a person who did not experience romantic love I'm likely the wrong person to ask.

Please, do ask about the Tanach - but be aware that you're asking me, a person with his pwn biases and conceptions. Be aware you're asking about a collection of books that touches many, many things from multiple different angles. Be aware that I can't really touch all of them. And be aware that when all is said and done, I am just a 20-odd years old guy who studies the Tanach, not an outstanding expert. I still hope I helped, though I'm not all too sure about that.

Thank you for asking, Shabbat Shalom! If you've hoped for a nice Wort to say on the Shabbat table... well, I'm really sorry I wasn't more helpful.

[wouldnt-it-be-hilarious-if-i]

Books to Read (Judaism Edition)

Currently listening to: Melting by Kali Uchis

Judaism

It's a Mitzvah! By Bradley Shavit Artson

The Outsider's Guide To Orthodox Judaism by Rabbi Arnie Singer

Living a Jewish Life by Anita Diamant

Choosing a Jewish Life, Revised and Updated: A Handbook for People Converting to Judaism and for Their Family and Friends by Anita Diamant

A Short History of the Jewish People by Raymond P. Scheindlin

The Complete Tanakh (Tanach)

The Jewish Holidays by Michael Strassfeld

Jewish Literacy Revised Ed: The Most Important Things to Know About the Jewish Religion, Its People, and Its History by Joseph Telushkin

Notes

One thing about me is I have the attention span of a well-fed rat. So, I definitely can't promise I'll read all of these immediately. But I identified a few things I thought I could learn more about and decided to add them to a list of books that came up on my fyp on tiktok.

I follow a lot of orthodox Jews on there, and for some reason, it's not something I ever thought about before they started coming up on my fyp. But I find a lot of their traditions and rules very fascinating, so I thought I'd include a short guide on the basics so that I can understand what they're talking about.

Two of the creators I see most on there are Melinda Strauss and Miriam Ezagui. I find their content to be some of the most fascinating because if I'm being entirely honest here, I have almost never seen orthodox Jews outside of science fiction or historical fiction. And that's not because it's super common to see orthodox Jews in sci-fi. It's just because the first time I remember ever learning anything about it was actually on the X-Files.

I learned a strange amount about Judaism from the X-Files, now that I think about it. Because that's also where I first learned about golems. Anyway, I find these two women incredibly fascinating also because they share and explain so many things I straight up just never would have never thought about.

Recently, I think Melinda's daughter, Nora, had her bat mitzvah and it was the cutest one I've ever seen. I see a lot of Jewish creators on my fyp outside of these two, and there was one girl who was rating all the bat mitzvah t-shirts she had gotten over the years. It's a super funny series because she's a really funny person, but it reminded me of the amount of people who have shown their bat mitzvahs on tiktok and also just on other apps as well, and whenever I think about it (which isn't very often but definitely whenever I see any of Melinda's videos now), I cannot get over how cute Nora's was. It was like this super cute 80s/lightning bolt theme? The colors were like pink and black, I think. Very girly. But the t-shirts and everything were so cute.

Anyway, Melinda also goes really into detail about what is kosher and what isn't, talks about all the different rules of Shabbos, and all the different religious observances. It's so cool. Miriam is similar. Her daughters are much younger, but the videos she post really show her life as an orthodox Jewish woman. She talks a lot about marriage. One of the most fascinating things to me was learning about the wigs. It confused the fuck out of me at first because I was thinking it was like a modesty thing, but apparently it's not.

I am also really interested in reading the torah. Y'all have no idea how shook I was when I saw a real one for the first time. My friend showed me and I was like ITS A SCROLL???????? Shook. Like I actually can't name anything else that shocked me more than that. I don't know why but I just wasn't expecting that. But anyway, I found an online translation into English and I'm super interested in it.

Before I stop myself from writing anymore, I was thinking earlier about how when I was a child, I wanted to convert. I was a very serious Catholic, but I think I had a lot of trouble with my faith. So, I remember asking my mom if I had to be Christian and if I could be Jewish instead. She didn't say no. She just ask me if I really believed Jesus wasn't the son of God and if I was really ready to give up Christmas.

The question always freaked me out so badly as kid because the very question felt a tiny bit like I might go to hell for saying anything short of yes. So, I'd just let it go. But I came back to that question a lot throughout my childhood and teen years. Now I really just like to learn as much as I can because I am very passionate about being a good ally to my Jewish friends, and because I lowkey have a type and I do not want to keep sounding like a total dumbass whenever I talk to Jewish girls.

The main things I want to work on learning about are 1). keeping kosher (what is and isn't kosher) because I really want to cook for my friends but I want to stay respectful and ask them what is okay but also have a general idea of what is okay and what isn't. 2). Understanding the nuances of Israel (and Palestine) in politics and in Jewish communities. This topic always makes me so nervous bc I have absolutely no idea where to start and every single time it comes up in conversation people expect me to already have an opinion on it. 3) Knowing more about some of the basics: How to act in synagogue, what to say on the different holidays, what each holiday entails, etc.

My next reading list will be for books about Islam!

[luanna801]

Apart from Job (which J. Michael Straczynski already used to brilliant effect in Teen Titans Spotlight), are there any other 2:2 verses which sound applicable to Two-Face?

Okay, this feels a little blasphemous to answer, but it's also super interesting, so let's do this! 😅

Clarification before we start: I'm using this online translation of the Hebrew Bible/Tanach (w/ some minor adjustments because I actually speak Hebrew and have Opinions), so there's no New Testament here, and may be some books not included in the Christian Bible. (I'm not exactly sure what their canon does and doesn't include.) But other bloggers should definitely feel free to build on this and look up some cool New Testament quotes!

Genesis 2:2

"On the seventh day God finished the work that He had been doing, and He rested on the seventh day from all the work that He had done."

You know what? I like to hope Harvey will get there someday. Goodness knows the poor man could use a good rest! I like to think this quote represents the sense of peace and tranquility he'll find someday when he's in a mentally/emotionally healthier place. A nice hopeful start to this list!

Judges 2:2

"And you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land; you shall pull down their altars: but you have not obeyed my voice: what is this you have done?!"

This is a quote that feels VERY true to how I can imagine Harvey's mentality as DA. I can definitely see him thinking about his mission as almost a holy war, to "tear down the altars" of crime rather than idolatry. "You shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land" of course refers to his frustration with the corrupt law enforcement in Gotham, who constantly collude with criminals instead of actually doing their jobs honestly. And I imagine "What is this you have done?!" is a feeling he'd have very, very often when he looks at the city around him and sees how utterly the system he's part of has failed it.

Jonah 2:2

"Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish."

A very famous image here, and one with a lot of symbolic potential, I think. You've literally been swallowed alive, surrounded by the raging storm of the sea (described in the lines following this one) - the most hopeless situation possible - and yet you still choose to pray. To cling to that hope that all isn't lost somehow. And, in the story of Jonah, sure enough he finds his prayers heard and against all odds he ends up safely onshore again.

Micah 2:2

"They covet fields, and seize them; Houses, and take them away. They defraud men of their homes, And people of their land."

Again, sadly probably very relevant to someone working in law enforcement in Gotham.

Psalms 22:2

My God, my God, why have You abandoned me? why so far from delivering me and from my anguished roaring?

I'm cheating here, but, I just had to include this one because, owwww. Yeah. I imagine Harvey feels this way quite a lot, both before and after he becomes Two-Face. This is one of the most powerfully raw and painful lines in Psalms, I think, and one that really captures how someone feels when they're at their lowest moments.

Song of Songs 2:2

"Like a lily among thorns, So is my darling among the maidens."

Harvey/Gilda feels, anyone? Also, while the "thorns" here are pretty clearly a metaphor for the other maidens (#notlikeotherthorns), I like to think here it also serves as a metaphor for the dark, painful existence of living in Gotham, and specifically all the horrible things Gilda's lived through. And yet in Harvey's eyes, she's still like a flower, blooming strong and bright and alive among the thorns.

Ecclesiastes 2:2

Of revelry I said, “It’s mad!” Of merriment, “What good is that?”

Harvey @ the Joker.

No, I kid, I kid. I honestly think there's a lot of applicability here, from the mad revelry of Gotham, to the way that Harvey loses any sense of joy in his life as he spirals into depression and obsession with his work.

Nehemiah 2:2

"The king said to me, 'Why does your face look bad, though you are not ill? It must be bad thoughts.' I was very frightened..."

Pretty self-explanatory I think, but I'm fascinated by the connection here between "bad thoughts" (also translated as "an affliction of the heart") and having a "face that looks bad". Lots to think about with how Harvey (rightly or wrongly) comes to see his deformity as the physical manifestation of his "bad thoughts".

Those are just the ones that particularly leapt out at me, but I strongly encourage you to check out the link up there, and see if you find any more! The way that website is laid out makes it quite easy to look up the 2:2 verses, and there may well be some that inspire you in ways that didn't occur to me.

[judaismandsuch]

So this is interesting. I debated replying to it for a while, but there is enough here that bugs me that I want to get into it.

First of all I want to give the perspective that I am talking from: Religious Jew. Which means I do believe the Torah to be the word of G-d.

I will also put everything below the cut, as it may get long:

Now I will argue directly with a few of the points as technically it is impossible to prove whether Judaism evolved from polytheism, or was a monotheism that degenerated into poly, and then reverted.

If it were possible to definitevly prove one way or the other, well, religion would look different.

That being said, the Religious read of the plurals has a few explanations:

1)Grammar was crazy loose. 2)Plural was a sign of respect (akin to how we say the 'royal we', or french uses 'vous' for singular on occasion) 3)G-d was talking to the angels. 4)Plural for a mixed gender group in Hebrew defaults to the masculine, and singular must be masculine or feminine, so by pluralising it indicates the g-d is neither/both.

Any/all of these are valid interpretations, and there are more.

As for reading Christianity/prophecies into Torah/Tanach being antisemitic?

No. Is it wrong/ blasphemous? I believe so cause I am Jewish, but that doesn't make it inherently antisemetic.

Twisting/mistranslating some of the lines to indicate Christianity? Maybe.

But take what Hashem said to Adam and Chava about their decendent crushing the head of the snake.

Do I think that that is a prophecy about Jesus, or really anyone? Fuck no. Do I think that it is an issue that Christian's interpret it as such? Not really.

It is their holy book as well, though they don't care that much about it.

As long as the interpretation is in the realm of good faith, I take no more issue with it than I do with some of the super shitty interpretations I see some Jews make. Less even.

One thing that *must* make it's way into these discussions is: "What if Christianity *is* correct?" (it isn't, nor is any version of any religion except the one I personally follow)

*If* it is, then it makes sense that there *would* be references to the trinity in the Torah.

Which isn't an antisemitic thing to say.

When we compare belief systems, religions, and how they interact, it *cannot* be done from a purely historical 'Neither of these are true, so lets remove belief from the equation' perspective.

I understand how attractive it is, but it does a major disservice to the conversation.

Again, I don't believe those views of the Torah. But that doesn't make them anti-semitic.

I’m Christian but want to challenge what I’ve been taught after seeing your posts about the Old Testament having cut up the Torah to fit a different narrative. Today I was taught that the Hebrew word Elohim is the noun for God as plural and therefore evidence of the holy Trinity and Jesus & Holy Spirit been there at creation. Is that what the word Elohim actually means? Because I don’t want to be party to the Jewish faith, language and culture being butchered by blindly trusting what I was told

Hi Anon.

NOPE! The reason G-d is sometimes called Elohim in the Tanakh is because during the First Temple period (circa 1000 – 587 BCE), many of the ancestors of the Jewish people in the Northern and Southern Kingdoms practiced polytheism.

(A reminder that the Tanakh is the Hebrew bible, and is NOT the same as the “Old Testament” in Christian bibles. Tanakh is an acronym, and stands for Torah [Instruction], Nevi’im [Prophets], Ketuvim [Writings].)

Elohim is the plural form of Eloah (G-d), and these are some of the names of G-d in Judaism. Elohim literally means “Gods” (plural).

El was the head G-d of the Northern Kingdom’s pantheon, and the Southern Kingdom of Judah incorporated El into their worship as one of the many names of G-d.

The name Elohim is a vestige of that polytheistic past.

Judaism transitioned from monolatry (worshiping one G-d without denying the existence of others) to true monotheism in the years during and directly after the Babylonian exile (597 – 538 BCE). That is largely when the Torah was edited into the form that we have today. In order to fight back against assimilation into polytheistic Babylonian society, the Jews who were held captive in Babylon consolidated all gods into one G-d. Shema Yisrael Adonai eloheinu Adonai ehad. “Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.”

So Elohim being a plural word for “Gods” has absolutely nothing to do with the idea of the Holy Trinity in Christianity.

Especially because Christians are monotheists. My understanding of the Holy Trinity (please forgive me if this is incorrect) is that Christians believe that the Holy Trinity is three persons in one Godhead. Certainly, the Holy Trinity is not “three Gods” — that would be blasphemy.

(My sincere apologies to the Catholics who just read this last sentence and involuntarily cringed about the Protestants who’ve said this. I’m so sorry! I’m just trying to show that it’s a fallacy to say that the Holy Trinity somehow comes from “Elohim.”)

But there's something else here, too. Something that as a Jew, makes me uneasy about the people who are telling you these things about Elohim and the Holy Trinity.

Suggesting that Christian beliefs like the Holy Trinity can somehow be "found" in the Tanakh is antisemitic.

This is part of “supersession theory.” This antisemitic theory suggests that Christianity is somehow the "true successor" to Second Temple Judaism, which is false.

Modern Rabbinic Judaism is the true successor to Second Temple Judaism. Period.

Christianity began as an apocalyptic Jewish mystery cult in the 1st century CE, in reaction to Roman rule. One of the tactics that the Romans used to subdue the people they ruled over was a “divide and conquer” strategy, which sowed division and factionalization in the population. The Romans knew that it was easier to control a country from the outside if the people inside were at each other’s throats.

Jesus led one of many breakaway Jewish sects at the time. The Jewish people of Qumran (possibly Essenes), whose Tanakh was the “Dead Sea Scrolls,” were another sect.

Please remember that the Tanakh was compiled in the form that we have today over 500 years before Jesus lived. Some of the texts in the Tanakh were passed down orally for maybe a thousand years before that, and texts like the Song of Deborah in the Book of Judges (in the Tanakh, that’s in the Nevi’im) were first written down in Archaic Biblical Hebrew during the First Temple Period.

There is absolutely nothing of Jesus or Christianity in the Tanakh, and there is nothing in the Tanakh that in any way predicts Christianity.

Also, Christians shouldn’t use Judaism in any way to try to “legitimize” Christianity. Christianity was an offshoot of 1st century Judaism, which then incorporated a lot of Roman Pagan influence. It is its own valid religion, in all its forms and denominations.

But trying to use the Hebrew bible to give extra credence to ideas like the Holy Trinity is antisemitic.

It is a tactic used by Christian sects that want to delegitimize Judaism as a religion by claiming that Christianity was somehow “planted” in the Tanakh over 2500 years ago.

This line of thinking has led Christians to mass murder Jews in wave after wave of antisemitic violence over the last nearly 2000 years, because our continued existence as Jews challenges the notion that Christians are the “true” successors of Temple Judaism.

Again, the only successor of Temple Judaism is Rabbinic Judaism, aka Modern Judaism.

This line of thinking has also gotten Christians to force Jews to convert en masse throughout the ages. If Christians can get Jews to all convert to Christianity, then they don’t have to deal with the existential challenge to this core misapprehension about the “true” successor to Temple Judaism.

And even today, many Christians still believe that they should try to force Jews to “bend the knee” to Jesus. When I was a young teenager, a preacher who was a parent at the school I went to got me and two other Jewish students to get in his car after a field trip. After he had trapped us in his car, he spent the next two hours trying to get us to convert to Christianity. It was later explained to me that some Christians believe they get extra “points” for converting Jews. And I’m sure he viewed this act of religious and spiritual violence as something he could brag about to his congregation on Sunday.

Trying to get Jews to convert is antisemitic and misguided, and it ignores all the rich and beautiful history of Jewish practice.

We Jews in diaspora in America and Europe have a forced immersion in Christian culture. It is everywhere around us, so we learn a lot about Christianity through osmosis. Many Jews also study early Christianity because Christianity exists as a separate religion within our Jewish history.

But I don’t see a lot of Christians studying Jewish history. Even though studying Jewish history would give you a wealth of understanding and context for your own religious traditions.

So, all of this is to say, I encourage you to study Jewish history and Jewish religious practice. Without an understanding of the thousands of years of Jewish history, it is easy to completely misinterpret the Christian bible, not to mention the Hebrew bible as well.

[hyperpotamianarch]

Secular jew here with a really stupid question about the tanach

What exactly constitutes the tanach? I think I've heard it's an acronym, so would the Torah be the t? what's the rest of the acronym? Which writings does it include? I'm pretty sure the talmud isn't part of it, what else isn't? Apologies if this is too basic of a question for you!

Hello! Thank you for the question!

The Torah indeed is the first part of the Tanach. Tanach is an acronym for the Hebrew words Torah, Nevi'im and Ketuvim. Roughly translated, those titles mean "Instructions", "Prophets" and "Writings", respectively. The Tanach, then, consists of 24 books divided into those three categories.

The Torah is the easiest one to define: it's the Pentateuch, the Five Books of Moses, however else you choose to call them, and they are generally known to be set apart. The books in it are Bereshit (Genesis), Shemot (Exodus), Vayikra (Leviticus), B'midbar (Numbers) and Devarim (Deuteronomy). Those are the books traditionally given to Moshe directly by G-d, and mostly focus on the formation of the Israelite people and its time under his leadership. It also includes all the commandments, basically.

Nevi'im are supposedly the books written by prophets, and half the books there are specifically books of prophecy (which is more messages from G-d than necessarily predicting the future). However, the first four books - Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings - are more historical in nature, chronicling the events from Moshe's death to the destruction of the 1st Temple. The last four books - Isaiah, Jeremaiah, Ezkiel and the Twelve prophets - are primarily books of prophecies and visions, with some stories sprinked in between. Most of them are concurrent with events in the book of Kings - except for the last three of the Twelve Prophets, who have lived around the building of the 2nd Temple. The Twelve Prophets are (by this order): Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Michah, Naḥum, Ḥabakuk, Zephaniah, Ḥaggai, Zacharias and Malachi. Names are written more or less in their traditional English spelling.

Then we get to the Ketuvim, Written texts, which are... a little more vague. It's hard to say if there's a uniting theme. A couple are books of parables and songs are there, yet others are more chronicles of events, either ones that occured after the time of the book of Kings, before it or concurrently with it. A common assumption is that the difference between those and the Nevi'im is the level of prophecy in writing them - where the Nevi'im were written under direct prophecies, while the Ketuvim were only written in Ruach HaKodesh (roughly translated as "the holy spirit", but I don't want to cause any confusion with Christianity). Either way, the books in the Ketuvim are, in order: Tehilim (Psalms), Mishley (Proverbs), 'Iyov (Job), Shir HaShirim (the Song o Songs/the Songs of Solomon), Rut (or Ruth), Eichah (Lamentations), Kohellet (Ecclesiastes), Ester (or Esther), Daniel, Ezra (and Neḥemiah) and Divrey HaYamim (Chronicles).

If you count, you'll find there are 5 books in the Torah, 8 in the Nevi'im and 11 in the Ketuvim - 24 in total. Ther Twelve Prophets, known as Trei Asar (which just means twelve), are considered one book, The division of Samuel, Kings, Ezra and Chronicles into two books each is relatively late and only makes sense in Ezra due to the obvious PoV shift. Which kind of reminds me, maybe a brief explanation is required as to what each of those last 11 books is.

Tehilim is a book of prayers and religious poems, traditionally written by King David (though they were probably collected long after his time). Mishley is the proverbs of king Shelomo (Solomon), some of which were definitely written long after his time (as in, it's directly stated inside the book). 'Iyov is possibly a parable, possibly a real story which serves as a background to a conversation on the problem of evil that doesn't seem to be solved within the book. The five books from Shir HaShirim to Esther are considered the Five Scrolls, but actually share very little in common: Shir HaShirim is a love song that sometimes become rather erotic, written by King Solomon. Ruth is an origin story to King David's family that occurs during the Judges period, and is about his Great-Grandmother and her conversion to Judaism (she was from Moab, which was a neighboring nation). Eichah is a book lamenting the destruction of the 1st Temple and of the Kingdom of Judea, traditionally written by Jeremiah. Kohellet is a philosophical book pondering the meaning of life - it either finds none or finds solace in faith, depending who you ask - also said to have been written by King Solomon. Esther is famously about the first organised Pogrom in recorded history - one against the Jews of the Persian empire, occuring during the Babylonian exile in Persia. Daniel is about the vision of a Jewish slave in the court of Nebuchadnezzar, who somehow succeeds to stay in a position of power after multiple switches in the government. The story of Daniel isn't half as interesting as his weird visions, though. Ezra is about the rebuilding of the Temple and Jerusalem after the return from exile, more or less - Ezra and Neḥemiah are the major leaders of this time period. This is pretty much a chronicling book - as is the last one, appropriately called Chronicles (Divrey HaYamim). That one basically attempts to sum up everything that happened to the Jewish people throughout history until the building of the 2nd Temple.

I've already written a lot and am too tired to explain why those books were codified and others weren't, so I'll just leave it at that for now.

[fromchaostocosmos]

All forms of hate require those not affected by said hate to participate in the fight against said hate and the dismantling of the systems that profit of the hate and that encourage it.

Because you can't just have those affected by the hate be the only doing the work or that wide scale change does not happen.

That is the unfortunate reality about hate and discrimination and they why and how a lot of discrimination can last so long and can parts of chipped away at, but still have other parts still exist.

To me I think because most goyim and some Jews sadly do not understand our history and how old we are as well just how much history we have they do not understand that they never was a reckoning in regards to the hate and discrimination of our People.

That is never ended and was never really chipped at. That no one besides us really ever worked with us do get anything done.

The closest there has been to anything of anything is in the USA and that is just falling under other standard anti-discrimination laws and it isn't really much of anything for us specifically.

Then in some countries primarily European ones there is laws in regards to the speech and Holocaust denial, but that is not there for us, but rather because of those countries and their owns histories in regards to Nazi Germany.

Ask a goy who built the Colosseum and they could maybe tell you that slaves did, but rarely will you find one (outside certain fields of study/special interests) who can tell that it was Jewish slaves.

Ask the same question of a Jew and rarely will you find a Jew who won't know that answer.

Point to a place on the map and ask any one of us about it and more then likely we there will a Jewish history to that location that is not pretty.

I read this vent and I too was hurt and upset. But I could not say I surprised. When in our 4,000 years of existence have those outside of our People given a care for pains, our hurts, our sorrows?

There is a reason we have become so good at in-community building, at seeing to the needs of our community that goyim often think that because there isn't data there is no need/problem when in reality the data is there, the need is there is all just being addressed inside the community because we are so trained to do it that, so used to having to do it that way, and so don't trust outside the community including the governments we exist under that the data is hard to find if you don't know where to look or how to look.

We shoulder everything alone and this just proves why.

This just shows how much our deaths wanted, our lives do not matter, how little meaning and value we have because in their eyes we are not human and can never be human.

That is the message we have be always been told we are lesser and we are vermin. So who cares what happens to vermin. We are beneath notice. We are not even worthy of pretending to care about.

That is how they see us.

But I remind you of all the others who did the same. Who treated us the same. And I ask you where are they? Who speaks their tongue? Who wears what they wore? Who carries their names? What came of their great empires, their might, their strength and power? What of their conquerors?

But we are here, our names still carry on, on tongue still spoken, our dress still worn in a sense, our culture still strong, our songs still sung, our stories still told, our children still born, the Tanach still learnt from, our ways still kept, our traditions still followed, our joy still shared and so forth.

We endure, we survive, we thrive. Am Yisrael Chai.

I don’t know why I did this to myself but I pulled up the headlines to compare

NBC news, about the AI All Eyes On Rafah image

May 28, 2024, 7:38 PM EDT

An image calling for people to pay attention to Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza has drawn more than 44 million shares on Instagram in less than 48 hours

NBC news, when six hostages were murdered:

Aug. 31, 2024, 6:11 PM EDT / Updated Sep. 1, 2024, 10:25 PM EDT

Six hostages, including Israeli American Hersh Goldberg-Polin, found dead in Gaza

The hostages, taken by Hamas during the Oct. 7 attack, were recovered in a tunnel under Rafah, President Joe Biden said.

Times of Israel:

1 September 2024, 9:25 pm

Autopsy finds 6 hostages were shot multiple times at close range in last 48-72 hours

Findings indicate captives were executed by Hamas guards as IDF troops closed in on Rafah tunnel complex; IDF chief visits site where bodies were found

on May 27th, 28th, when every celebrity and influencer and their cat and internet rando shared the All Eyes image, 44+ millions times (there are 15 mil Jewish people alive), it makes me feel insane how fake that was. it meant nothing. they did it to feel good about themselves.

August 29th and September 1st is only three months later. the hostages were there when they were all posting their shitty meme. when they were killed, not one of them cared.

they’re blinded even if they don’t know it, by hate and by privilege.

I can’t believe they suffered there and nobody has eyes now. three months when they could’ve been saved.

.

[2shebears]

OP are you talking about שכינה? Hashem's never referred to as היא and shechina isn't used in Tanach, so even construing op's mention of "Torah" to mean our entire scripture then I'm not sure to what op's referring. But if we're referring to Jewish tradition having a deity with (grammatically and narratively) masculine and feminine elements, that has textual support in the talmud & zohar!

“God is a woman” Well actually according to the original text of the Torah God doesn’t have a gender and is referred to with both he/him and she/her pronouns so…