ma3ayan reblogged
In Jewish thought, a sin is not an offense against God, an act of disobedience. A sin is a missed opportunity to act humanly.
Rabbi Harold Kushner (via crosbeast)
ma3ayan reblogged
“For three months I was disguised as a man, and very successfully… I passed my mother several times … she never recognized me.” Frieda Belinfante, a half-Jewish lesbian, used this disguise to hide from Nazi authorities. In a later interview she said, “I really looked pretty good.” Her involvement in the #resistance movement included planning the destruction of the #Amsterdam Population Registry in March 1943, falsifying identity cards, and arranging hiding places for those who were sought by the Nazis. She was forced to hide after many other members of the Netherlands-based gay resistance group were executed in 1943 by occupying Nazi authorities. In December 1943, Frieda escaped to Switzerland and later immigrated to the US. Frieda’s contribution showed the scope of complexity and diversity of the resistance movement to aid others that many faced during the era of the #Holocaust.
<3 A HERO <3
ma3ayan reblogged
ma3ayan reblogged
The Torah is often cited as the basis for religious communities to exclude, exile, and stigmatize transgender people—and even to deny us urgent medical care—but the Torah never commands, approves, or encourages such things. Even when Moses declares that those who cross-dress are “abhorrent” to God, he does not claim that God demands that they be “removed from camp.” Though there have always been people who do not fit into the categories of male and female, the Torah says nothing about us. It does not portray us as a threat or an abomination; it doesn’t declare us unclean or unfit to participate in communal worship or activities; it doesn’t demonize us, curse us, punish us, relegate us to the margins or the shadows, order gender surveillance to guard against our entry into the community or the Tabernacle, or organize searches to locate and expel us.
The Torah’s silence opened the door for the rabbis of the Talmud to adapt halakhah to enable intersex Jews to participate in Jewish communal life, and, more recently and locally, for Yeshiva University to tolerate my presence as an openly transgender professor. But because the Torah does not acknowledge that there are human beings who are not simply male or female, it shrouds us in silence and incomprehensibility.
The Torah’s detailing of defiling physical differences ensured that these differences could be recognized, spoken of, and understood by communities as part of being human. In order to fully include transgender people, Jewish communities have to follow the Torah’s example—to speak frankly about transgender identities, to recognize and pragmatically address our differences, and to face up to, and change, the communal policies, practices, and habits that, intentionally or not, lead so many of us to be removed, or to remove ourselves, from the camp.
Joy Ladin
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awriteroftales-deactivated20180
A brief list of Jewish traditions which Christians are legally allowed to appropriate
- Reading the holy book, cover to cover, every year, and learning every point of it in order to argue commonly-held answers to religious questions, for once
- That’s it
- (no seders)
- That’s it
ma3ayan reblogged
What is Shabbat all about? Shabbat is a time to stop. And when we stop that retroactively affirms that everything we have done until now is truly in service to G-d. If the boss closes shop and doesn’t want us to work why would we even want to do work? Otherwise we are confused and think we are self-employed. Shabbat reminds us that we just work here in this moment, in this moment, in this moment. Shabbat teaches us that the future that we are looking forward is not any more important than this moment right now in our service to G-d. Only the now is real and only now is the time to bring G-d’s presence into the world. Shabbat empowers us to stop, chill out, beat the rush and be at peace now.
Rabbi David Aaron
ma3ayan reblogged
so looking at the English teaching programs in Israel, I think I might really want to do it, considering I have so much family there and I’d be near Tel Aviv
honestly, waking up this morning and seeing the miserable cold and the city made me realize how much I miss the sunshine and Israel and the thought of new opportunities in Israel is just so exciting and hopeful
yo, i am doing one of these right now, let me know if you have questions!
ma3ayan reblogged
In the commencement of the war of 1861, I enlisted from Cleveland, Ohio, in the Union cause to sustain intact the Government of the United States, and became attached to the 23rd Regiment, one of the first sent from the “Buckeye State”. Our destination was West Virginia – a portion of the wildest and most mountainous region of that State, well adapted for the guerrillas who infested that part, and caused such trouble to our pickets all through the war. After an arduous march of several hundred miles through Clarksburgh, Weston, Sommerville, and several other places of less note, which have become famous during the war, we encountered on the 10th of September 1861, at Carnifax Ferry, the forces under the rebel Gen. Floyd. After this, we were ordered to take up our positions at the foot of Sewell Mountain, and we remained there until we marched to the village of Fayette, to take it, and to establish there our Winter-quarters, having again routed Gen. Floyd and his forces. While lying there, our camp duties were not of an arduous character, and being apprised of the approaching Fest of Passover, twenty of my comrades and coreligionists belonging to the Regiment, united in a request to our commanding officer for relief from duty, in order that we might keep the holydays, which he readily acceded to. The first point was gained, and, as the Paymaster had lately visited the Regiment, he had left us plenty of greenbacks.
Our next business was to find some suitable person to proceed to Cincinnati, Ohio, in order to buy us Matzos. Our sutler being a co-religionist, and going home to that city, readily undertook to send them. We were anxiously awaiting to receive our matzot and about the middle of the morning of Erev Pesach a supply train arrived in camp, and to our delight seven barrels of matzot. On opening them, we were surprised and pleased to find that our thoughtful sutler had enclosed two Hagodahs [sic] and prayer-books. We were now able to keep the seder nights, if we could only obtain the other requisites for that occasion. We had a consultation and decided to send parties to forage in the country while a party stayed to build a log hut for the services. About the middle of the afternoon the foragers arrived, having been quite successful. We obtained two kegs of cider, a lamb, several chickens and some eggs. Horseradish or parsley we could not obtain, but in lieu we found a weed, whose bitterness, I apprehend, exceeded anything our forefathers “enjoyed”. We were still in a great quandary; we were like the man who drew the elephant in the lottery. We had the lamb, but did not know what part was to represent it at the table; but Yankee ingenuity prevailed, and it was decided to cook the whole and put it on the table, then we could dine off it, and be sure we had the right part. The necessaries for the choroutzes [sic] we could not obtain, so we got a brick which, rather hard to digest, reminded us, by looking at it, for what purpose it was intended.
At dark we had all prepared, and were ready to commence the service. There being no Chasan [sic] present, I was selected to read the services, which I commenced by asking the blessing of the Almighty on the food before us, and to preserve our lives from danger. The ceremonies were passing off very nicely, until we arrived at the part where the bitter herb was to be taken. We all had a large portion of the herb ready to eat at the moment I said the blessing; each ate his portion, when horrors! what a scene ensued in our little congregation, it is impossible for my pen to describe. The herb was very bitter and very fiery like Cayenne pepper, and excited our thirst to such a degree, that we forgot the law authorizing us to drink only four cups, and the consequence was we drank up all the cider. Those that drank the more freely became excited, and one thought he was Moses, another Aaron, and one had the audacity to call himself a Pharaoh. The consequence was a skirmish, with nobody hurt, only Moses, Aaron and Pharaoh, had to be carried to the camp, and there left in the arms of Morpheus. This slight incident did not take away our appetite, and, after doing justice to our lamb, chickens and eggs, we resumed the second portion of the service without anything occurring worthy of note.
There, in the wild woods of West Virginia, away from home and friends, we consecrated and offered up to the ever-loving God of Israel our prayers and sacrifice. I doubt whether the spirits of our forefathers, had they been looking down on us, standing there with our arms by our side ready for an attack, faithful to our God, and our cause, would have imagined themselves amongst mortals, enacting this commemoration of the scene that transpired in Egypt.
Since then a number of my comrades have fallen in battle in defending the flag, they volunteered to protect with their lives. I have myself received a number of wounds all but mortal, but there is no occasion in my life that gives me more pleasure and satisfaction than when I remember the celebration of Passover of 1862.
Joseph Joel writing in the Jewish Messenger, 30 March 1866 about my favourite seder of all time. I don’t know what’s the best bit - his transliteration of charoset, the “Yankee ingenuity” of the lamb, the fact that they forgot to ask the sutler to pick up haggadot but he did anyway, the literal brick substituted for charoset, the Maror Incident that was so bad they literally used wartime opiate supplies, or the fact that despite there being twenty of them no one knew what they were doing.
ma3ayan reblogged
One way of reading Torah suggests that every character in Torah can be found within the reader. This suggests that we, too, have moments of being humble like Moses — and we, too, have moments of recognizing that we are not merely an accident of happenstance.
I can relate to Moses’ humility. Who am I, after all, to hear a direct call from the One? But in this telling, at least — God insists otherwise. God calls us into service. God knows that we have gifts the world needs — even if we don’t always see them in ourselves. Our lives are no coincidence. We are placed here for a reason.
Rabbi Rachel Barenblat
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The Schwartz family triplets celebrate their bar mitzavh
Words from the parsha / haftorah of Yitro
i need a frum lesbian fashion icon
today at shul we started singing this after our tu b’shvat seder and i started crying like a loser lmao i love being a jew!!!!!!!!!
there is nothing more meaningful in my life than being jewish
ma3ayan reblogged
Ruth was un-Jewish by birth. Moses was un-Jewish by upbringing. But both knew that when they saw suffering and identified with the sufferer, they could not walk away.
Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik called this a covenant of fate, brit goral. It lies at the heart of Jewish identity to this day. There are Jews who believe and those who don’t. There are Jews who practise and those who don’t. But there are few Jews indeed who, when their people are suffering, can walk away saying, This has nothing to do with me.
Maimonides, who defines this as “separating yourself from the community” (poresh mi-darkhei ha-tsibbur, Hilkhot Teshuva 3:11),
says that it is one of the sins for which you are denied a share in the
world to come. This is what the Hagaddah means when it says of the
wicked son that “because he excludes himself from the collective, he
denies a fundamental principle of faith.” What fundamental principle
of faith? Faith in the collective fate and destiny of the Jewish people.
Who am I? asked Moses, but in his heart he knew the answer. I am not
Moses the Egyptian or Moses the Midianite. When I see my people
suffer I am, and cannot be other than, Moses the Jew. And if that
imposes responsibilities on me, then I must shoulder them. For I am
who I am because my people are who they are.
That is Jewish identity, then and now.
Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks
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Judaism is about faith as a journey. Why so? Because to be a Jew means not to be fully at home in the world. To be a Jew means to live within the tension between heaven and earth, creation and revelation, the world that is and the world we are called on to make; between exile and home, and between the universality of the human condition and the particularity of Jewish identity. Jews don’t stand still except when standing before God. The universe, from galaxies to subatomic particles, is in constant motion, and so is the Jewish soul. We are, we believe, an unstable combination of dust of the earth and breath of God, and this calls on us constantly to make decisions, choices, that will make us grow to be as big as our ideals, or, if we choose wrongly, make us shrivel into small, petulant creatures obsessed by trivia. Life as a journey means striving each day to be greater than we were the day before, individually and collectively.
Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks (via yidquotes)