#yamim

[apocalypseglobal]

THE BIG WHY

#BENIGNANT #Days AHEAD ANSWERS FOR LIFE THE BIG WHY? WHY OUR CUSTOMIZED PRODUCT LINES, REDRESSALS, RESOLVES, DEFINITIONS and ANSWERS WE DESIGN OR CUSTOMIZE ON OUR OWN ARE QUITE EXPENSIVE, WELL DESIGNED, ENGINEERED, EFFECTIVE, SAFE and USUALLY DOES WORK or PROVIDE QUALITY OUTCOMES. We at Ministry of Acoustics find bold, effectual, practical solutions to problems of poor design and build, and…

[extollingtheeveryday]

Susan Hahn // "Between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur" (1991)

[flamingkorybante]

If you missed our F.A.E. Kol Nidre service, this is the Kol Nidre prayer itself, shouted people's mic-style in the street by over a hundred radical Jews and comrades before our brass band came out and helped us dance the remains of empire out of our bodies.

We are not just here to protest violence; we are here to make it obsolete.

We are not just here to fight nationalism; we are here to make it obsolete.

The forces of faggotry are older and stronger than the forces of empire. We invoke them now.

[fairfieldthinkspace]

The Days of Awe

Rabbi James Prosnit

Jewish Chaplain and Religious Studies Lecturer

The Jewish High Holy Days begin this year on Friday evening, September 15th with the observance of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. At that time Jews around the world enter into a ten-day period of introspection leading up to Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement on Monday September 25th.  

We call this period the Yamim Noraim, the Days of Awe.  

While reflection and repentance are encouraged at all times, it is during this period that the urging is greatest. The shofar blasts serve as an alarm clock awakening us to the possibilities that await. This is a time of reverie not revelry.

A central teaching is that on Rosh Hashanah the “Gates of Heaven” open, only to close on Yom Kippur. During these ten days we have the chance to consider the fabric of our lives. We assess the past year and consider the gap between who we are, and what in our higher moments we know we can be. 

Human frailty is a given. But during these days if we are committed to an honest appraisal, in Hebrew we call that chesbon hanefesh, (literally an “accounting of the soul”), God will accept our prayers and grant forgiveness.

One of my favorite teachings is that even before the first human being was created, God established Yom Kippur as a day of repentance. In other words, God knew that these earthlings would have flaws, so God saw the need to create a day and time when we could reflect on our behaviors, seek forgiveness and be granted a fresh start. Of course, we are also taught that these days provide forgiveness for transgressions in our relationship with God. If we’ve wronged someone specifically, we’d better take that up with that person, before we turn our attention to the Divine.

The wish during this season is Shanah tovah u'metukah; not necessarily a Happy New Year, but a good and sweet year filled with blessings, wholeness and peace. 

The Fairfield community is invited to attend a Rosh Hashanah reception and celebration on September 24 at 4:45 in front of Egan Chapel, sponsored by Campus Ministry and the Bennett Center for Judaic Studies. It’s a chance to hear the sounding of the shofar (ram’s horn), learn a little more about the festival and taste some of the sweetness of this time of year.

[etz-ashashiyot]

Maybe I'll have something profound to say tonight once I've had a little time and have been able to mourn communally with my community, but I definitely don't right now.

Yes, it's been a full year.

Yes, Jewish time is a spiral.

No, there still are not adequate words.

Yes, this has changed us all, permanently.

Yes, we are in the middle of the Yamim Nora'im, a time of reflection and return.

And what are you going to do with this ring of the spiral? How are you going to layer over your steps, like return footprints in snow? Where will you set your sights, now that we are forever changed? Who are you becoming, even now?

[alostwanderernotfound]

On the 10 Commandments:

——-

The Fourth Commandment Explained

———————

People often still debate the meaning of what God’s Commandments are after the numerous translations. The Orthodox Jewish Bible actually contains the transcript of that speech I gave that day in Shemot 20.

And in my own words: If you do not hold anything else, hold & speak my commandments. Let us review the originals as they were intended- the speech with the teaching summary. Any & all attempts to do harm and/or cause suffering by bypassing the Commandments with “loopholes” will be considered with harsh penalty.

“Remember Yom HaShabbos, to keep it kodesh. Sheshet yamim shalt thou labor, and do all thy work: But the Yom HaShevi’i is the Shabbos of Hashem Eloheicha; in it thou shalt not do any melachah, thou, nor thy ben, nor thy bat, thy eved, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy ger that is within thy gates; For in sheshet yamim Hashem made Shomayim and Ha’Aretz, the yam, and all that in them is, and rested Yom HaShevi’i; for this reason Hashem blessed Yom HaShabbos, and set it apart as kodesh.”

‭‭Shemot‬ ‭20‬:‭8‬-‭11‬ ‭TOJB2011‬‬

https://bible.com/bible/130/exo.20.8-11.TOJB2011

Keep at least one good day or Sabbath “set aside” or spiritually different than your other days of the week. Spirituality can mean many things, but ultimately there is an underlying belief that “lifting the soul” or caring for that intangible part of yourself is essential. The intangible is often our intuitions, our feelings, our connectedness to ourselves & the universe & just like how we see that expressed in so many different way across a variety of cultures, Christianity as a practice can also be expressed that way.

You must dedicate at a minimum 1 day out of 7 to rest & having a focus on practices to lift the soul. Your community, anyone that even steps foot near your land as a guest, & those that work with and/or for you must also do the same. That can mean a lot of different practices & not always necessarily the practice of going to church, but ultimately it’s a focus on practices that nourish your soul. God wants you to take care of yourself.

You can find other versions/passages talk about punishment for not holding Sabbath in reverence, but that is for more specific situations. For example, If you claim yourself to be of this God, benefit, and then exploit people by making them work everyday without any rest you will be sinful in God’s eyes.

You have to remember Christianity back when it first was being introduced to people was INCREDIBLY radical in comparison to the way countries were run, the concept of kingship, & it also advocated for the abolishment of slavery.

Many commonly held interpretations of a variety of Christian practices & teachings are a result of the original documents being censored & altered by kings, empires & politics.

It originally was perceived as a disruptive force because it didn’t ask for equality, it demanded it in a tenuous time period of geopolitical instability.

Moses was known as the guy who had freed a bunch of slaves. You really think the political forces that existed during that time frame were really just going to let a “criminal” get up on a public platform & say whatever they want with the risk of him causing more slave uprisings?

Absolutely not. And it changed the world forever.

[todaysjewishholiday]

Elul Practices

Unlike with the high holy days, the shalosh regalim, or even the period of the Omer, there are no specific ritual mitzvot for the month of Elul. Instead, the entire month is oriented around the most fundamental biblical mitzvah: teshuvah, ie return. Return to our best selves, return to HaShem and the covenant, return to the care for each other that can heal the world.

But Judaism doesn’t leave us without resources to promote mindfulness of this work during Elul.

I. Shofar

Many Jewish communities begin weekday shacharit prayers with a shofar blast. This serves as a spiritual wake-up call, a reminder of the upcoming encounter of the Yamim Noraim. In the Torah the sound of a shofar blast proceeded from the cloud atop Mount Sinai at the making of the covenant between the newly liberated multitude and HaShem. Even before Rosh HaShana became the Jewish new year during the exile in Babylon, the first of Tishri was known as Yom T’ruah (Day of the Shofar Blast) or Zikhron T’ruah (the Memorial Shofar Blast). Because the watchman’s sounding of the shofar would also be used to call the community together in times of calamity or attack, the sounding of the shofar served to shake our forebears out of their routines and focus them in preparation for the Day of Atonement ten days later. The sounding of the shofar on each weekday in Elul brings this wake up call even earlier and invites us to set our lives in order.

II. Tehillim

Psalm 27 is also added to the morning and evening prayers during Elul. This change also reminds us of the spiritual focus of the month, with the poet’s appeal, “Hear, HaShem, when I cry aloud; show mercy to me and answer me. My heart tells me to seek your face. HaShem, I seek you.”

III. Selichot

Selichot (from the Hebrew word selichah meaning forgiveness) are special piyyutim written throughout the generations of Jewish history to aid in the spiritual work of teshuvah. In Sephardi communities, the custom is to hold a Selichot service every day beginning on the second of Elul, while in Ashkenazi communities Selichot services generally begin roughly a week before Rosh HaShana, with only four services. Whatever your minhag or personal practice, the selichot prayers can help direct the soul towards the repair that Elul invites us to seek.

IV. Other Practices

In the past half century, the Reform, Reconstructionist and Renewal movements have seen a flowering of new practices to guide teshuvah during Elul. Search the web and you’ll find Elul workbooks and meditations galore. Many Jewish communities across the spectrum also see Elul as a time for interpersonal reconciliation as well as soul-work and emphasize reaching out who we have harmed or offended in the past year to attempt to mend what we can. The work of tzedekah— our obligation to provide assistance to those in poverty from what resources we have— is also a crucial aspect of teshuvah that is explored in many Elul traditions.

Teshuvah is deeply personal, and it’s good to remember that no specific practice is obligatory. These are not mitzvot, they are tools we can draw on as we seek to fulfill the ultimate mitzvah of return to ourselves, our righteous vows, and our G-d.

While this work is deeply personal, I encourage you to counteract the overly individualist and isolating spirit of our times and remember that the heart of teshuvah is in relationship, and in recognizing the webs of reciprocity and community and obligation we’re woven into. Recognizing our collective connectedness is at the heart of the healing that we’re offered through the path of teshuvah, and we cannot repair ourselves in isolation. May your labors this month prove fruitful, whatever type of teshuvah you may choose to seek.

[unbidden-yidden-deactivated20240]

G'mar Chatima Tova chaverim! We are almost to Yom Kippur and I want to wish you all a meaningful day and an easy fast for those fasting. To help you get into the spirit, I have made a list of some of my favorite Yamim Noraim music:

Shana tova tikateivu, may we all merit to be inscribed in the Book of Life and for a good year, and to have a clean slate entering 5784!

[sagescented]

I am literally buzzing, I'm so excited for the High Holidays coming up. Everyone thinks I'm weird because they're my favorite part of the entire calendar. But literally nothing is more beautiful to me. Best holidays ever. I don't make the rules.

Like. Listen to me. Tell me, though ... Where else is the acknowledgement that Humanity is flawed so normal and normalized? Where is missing the mark, and mucking things up to be expected? Where is forgiveness, and starting over, and genuinely striving to better yourself so embraced that it is even ritualized and made holy? Where!

The entire lead up of Elul, where we reflect on the past year, and what it means to be a good person and live a Holy Life. Rosh Hashanah, when we usher in a new year of new opportunities; when the Book of Life is opened, and we are passed not only before HaShem during Yamim Noraim, but also before our fellow Humans, for judgement. And all of it culminating on Yom Kippur with the final ask of forgiveness before the Book of Life is closed again until the next Reckoning.

It's beautiful to me. It's the most beautiful thing.

As a very tiny side note: Happy 1 year anniversary of finally officially starting my Conversion journey (after everything I went through for the 2 years prior)! ... Actually I'm technically roughly around a month overdue, because apparently (checking the Archives) I started on August 4th / 17th Av. But whatever!

[deconstructingchabad]

Songs of my childhood

I've been pretty busy with the Yamim Noraim and personal matters, so I haven't had the time to make really big deep-dives lately, but I still want to post on this blog, so I've decided to start a series breaking down the songs from my childhood in Chabad and the harmful messaging in them. Since each post will only be one song, they won't take as much work as a really extensive deep-dive on one specific topic.

So, to start off strong, we'll start with "A Child Alone on the Shore". From a cursory search, the first online published lyrics of this song I found from a compilation of Chabad camp songs in 2008, and in a blog post from 2009, I found it attributed to the album "Oh Rebbe 2", an album released in 1998 by Mendy Chanin and Meir HaLevy Eshel. So, this song has been around for at least 25 years. It's no surprised that it first sprang up after the death of Rabbi Schneerson, since it contains really heavy Messianic overtunes and allusions to his "bodily death", as believers put it, and the belief of his return. So, without further ado, here is the song:

A child alone on the shore, Waving a light up so high. To signal a ship that no one can see, In the rough open ocean and vast darkened sky. As every sailor passed by, They questioned the boy with the light, 'Why little one do stand at your post, There is nothing and no one in sight?' The young boy looked up, his face all aglow, And waved his small lantern above and below. 'Please wait here with me, the ship we will see,' 'Dear child explain to us how do you know?' 'I'm firm in my faith, the answer is clear, I'm so very certain the ship will appear. The captain has told me and promised he'll come, Of course I believe him, for I am his son.' The Rebbe, our captain, his promise will keep, Knowing a chossid's emunah proclaims. 'I'm firm in my faith the answer is clear, V'hu Yigolainu - Omein.'

Notes:

Chossid- word for follower of a Chassidic movement, in this case, a follower of Chabad Chassidut and specifically of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson

Emunah- Hebrew word for faith

The last line is a Hebrew transliteration and translates to "And he will redeem us, Amen".

Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson and his wife, Chaya Mushka Schneerson, never had any biological children of their own, and a common sentiment in the Chabad community is that "the Rebbe didn't need an heir because we are his children". The idea of being the spiritual children of a spiritual leader isn't really a Jewish value- we're all descended of Avraham Avinu, the first Patriarch, and we certainly are Bnei Yisrael, the children of Yisrael/Yaakov, but that's because from a cultural and ethnic perspective, we literally are- Judaism is a descent-based ethnoreligion, so we are most of us descended from a single entity. But you'd be hard pressed to find followers of any other Rabbi call themselves his children.

The idea of referring to your spiritual leader as your father is, well, something you see a lot in Christianity, especially in denominations where the clergy take a vow of abstinence and thus would not have biological children of their own. But Judaism has no such thing- sex isn't the sinful thing it's treated as in Christianity, and spiritual leaders especially are encouraged to lead by example by marrying and procreating.

We don't know why exactly Menachem Mendel and Chaya Mushka Schneerson never had children- whether it was a choice or because they struggled with infertility- and it feels wrong to speculate or ascribe judgement because, well, at the end of the day, whether it was a choice or not, it's still very personal, and they themselves might not be alive to hear the way we talk about them, but other couples might. Having children or not having children is morally neutral.

But what's not theologically neutral is assigning divinity to a human being, something that is explicitly forbidden in Judaism. You'll also notice that any mention of G-d is absent in this song- it's the Rebbe that's the father, the Rebbe that's the redeemer. If not for the last stanza in the song, I could totally see it be a song about the Jewish people's relationship with G-d as our Parent and our yearning to be ingathered from our exiles with the coming of the Messianic age. This would not be a foreign theme- Avinu Malkeinu, a prayer recited on public fast days and on Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur, literally translates to "Our Father, our King", and is exactly that- an expression of longing for connection with our God. Which is what makes "A Child Alone on the Shore" all the more, well, spiritually icky. It takes the relationship we have and yearn for with G-d and replaces G-d with a human man. A human man, mind you, that was dead at the time of publishing this song.

I'm sure you all know where I'm going with this......

(Spoiler: It's idolatry)

[transmascpetewentz]

there are only two things that are inevitable in life: driving 1 mph through the traffic jam in the very jewish town my shul temporarily relocated to for yamim naraim and taxes

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

The 10 Commandments

1 And Moshe called kol Yisroel, and said unto them, Shema, Yisroel, to the chukkim and mishpatim which I speak in your ears today, that ye may learn them, and be shomer to do them.

2 Hashem Eloheinu made a Brit with us in Chorev.

3 Hashem made not this Brit with Avoteinu, but with us, even us, who are all of us here alive today.

4 Hashem talked with you panim b’panim in the har out of the midst of the eish,

5 (I stood between Hashem and you at that time, to show you the Devar Hashem; for ye were afraid by reason of the eish, and went not up into the har) saying:

6 I am Hashem Eloheicha, Which brought thee out of Eretz Mitzrayim, from the bais avadim.

7 Thou shalt have no elohim acharim before Me.

8 Thou shalt not make thee any pesel, or any temunah of anything that is in Shomayim above, or that is in Ha’Aretz beneath, or that is in the mayim beneath ha’aretz;

9 Lo tishtachaveh (thou shalt not bow down thyself) unto them, nor serve them; for I Hashem Eloheicha am an El Kannah, visiting the iniquity of the avot upon the banim unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Me,

10 And showing chesed unto thousands of them that love Me and are shomer over My mitzvot.

11 Thou shalt not take the Shem of Hashem Eloheicha in vain; for Hashem will not hold him guiltless that taketh Shmo in vain.

12 Keep shomer Shabbos to set Shabbos apart as kodesh as Hashem Eloheicha commanded thee.

13 Sheshet yamim thou shalt labor, and do all thy work:

14 But the Yom HaShevi’i is the Shabbos of Hashem Eloheicha: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy ben, nor thy bat, nor thy eved, nor thy maidservant, nor thine ox, nor thine donkey, nor any of thy cattle, nor thy ger that is within thy she’arim; that thy eved and thy amah may rest as well as thou.

15 And remember that thou wast an eved in Eretz Mitzrayim, and that Hashem Eloheicha brought thee out thence through a yad chazakah and by an outstretched zero’a; therefore Hashem Eloheicha commanded thee to be shomer Shabbos on Yom HaShabbat.

16 Honor thy av and thy em, as Hashem Eloheicha hath commanded thee; that thy yamim may be prolonged, and that it may go well with thee, in ha’adamah which Hashem Eloheicha giveth thee.

17 Lo tirtzah (thou shalt not murder).

18 V’lo tinaf (neither shalt thou commit adultery).

19 V’lo tignov (neither shalt thou steal).

20 V’lo ta’aneh v’reacha ed shav (neither shalt thou bear false witness against thy neighbor).

21 V’lo tachmod (neither shalt thou covet, desiring) thy neighbor’s wife, neither shalt thou covet thy neighbor’s bais, his sadeh, or his eved, or his amah, his ox, or his donkey, or any thing that is thy neighbor’s.

22 These devarim Hashem spoke unto all your Kahal in the mountain out of the midst of the eish, of the anan, and of the thick darkness, with a kol gadol; and He added no more. And He wrote them in two luchot of even (stone), and delivered them unto me. — Deuteronomy 5:1-22 | Orthodox Jewish Bible (OJB) Orthodox Jewish Bible Copyright © 2002, 2003, 2008, 2010, 2011 by Artists for Israel International. Cross References: Genesis 15:13; Exodus 18:20; Exodus 19:1; Exodus 19:18; Exodus 20:2-3; Exodus 20:5; Exodus 20:21; Exodus 23:1; Exodus 34:17; Leviticus 19:11; Numbers 14:18; Matthew 5:21; Matthew 5:33; Matthew 15:4; Mark 2:27; Luke 13:14; Luke 18:20; Luke 23:56; Romans 7:7; Hebrews 8:9; Hebrews 12:18

Read full chapter

What are the Ten Commandments? What is the Decalogue?

[resuri-art]

I was curious about which ships is the most popular among the conspire boys. I know it's probably Thiefshipping, but there's also a good amount of Deathshipping and Tendershipping fans around. Let's find out! 🌟