laineystein

[laineystein]

honestly really sexy of tumblr to keep follower numbers private. how many people are following me? you'll never know unless I tell you. maybe it's a million, or a thousand, or five, or maybe it's just you. maybe you're the only one here, all by yourself, unable to see if there's anyone standing next to you.

and you'd never know, because status here is based on opinion and not numbers; how popular you think someone is is a vibes-only calculation, and besides the chronological algorithms-optional feed, it's genuinely the best thing tumblr's ever done.

[laineystein]

chag pesach sameach ! חג פסח שמח

Pesach sameach! 🩷

#ask things #chag things

[laineystein]

🎗️🎗️🎗️🎗️

Sometimes I think about what I’d do if (G*d forbid) anyone I loved was a hostage and let me just tell you I’d be grabbing my gun and burning cities down to get the people I love back. I don’t care how that makes me sound. The absolutely devastating pain of having someone you love stolen from you and knowing that they’re being kept in inhumane conditions is psychological warfare like no other. Wishing all of our hostages a swift return home and praying that Hashem gives all of H@mas the horrific fates they all deserve.

(And please don’t watch any of the videos those monsters release!!!)

#⚔️🇮🇱

[laineystein]

in light of the disgusting photo of shani louk winning an award, with her not even mentioned, i thought it was important to share photos of her when she was still alive. she was beautiful.

may her memory be a blessing.

#⚔️🇮🇱 #HYD 💔

[laineystein]

I feel like women don’t talk about the body issues you can have when you’re pregnant. I struggled with disordered eating for over a decade and despite my best efforts I still have an unhealthy obsession with exercise and eating healthy and making sure my body looks a certain way. And they don’t talk about how gaining weight during pregnancy can feel like the worst thing to ever happen to someone that takes body image so seriously. And I know this is something I have waited so long for and my body is doing amazing things and women’s bodies in general are so strong and capable and all of this is so so wonderful but mentally, it sucks. It’s a mindfuck. And I feel horrible for feeling horrible about it.

#Lainey things #but we are so grateful 😅🥹

[laineystein]

GIRL can people just let you live your life?! Seriously! You can’t win! People come into your inbox and trauma dump and then have the audacity to essentially criticize you as if their fucked up perceptions/experiences are your problem. FFS!!! LET A GIRL LIVE!

I love you so much 🤣😘

#ask things #DIS BITCH #I get to see you soon Elle! 🩷🩷🩷

[laineystein]

🥵🥵🥵🥵

#lainey things #will forever remind me of my wedding #which was over a year and a half ago which is BALAGAN

[laineystein]

Are we not friends? Friends.

Bridgerton Season Three Trailer

#I said I was putting fandom-esque posts on pause but I’m making an exception to let everyone know how excited I am for this #this was my favorite book in the series #because in this house we support women who want to f*ck their best friend’s older brother #it’s actually an integral part of my belief system #so here we are

[laineystein]

I understand and agree the very observant would probably adjust to life in Israel very quickly. I know there’s a lot of Israelis that are secular as well, and I think they live ok? I don’t know for sure. To my understanding though, the government is tilted to favor the more observant Jew. As someone who isn’t terribly religious, that concerns me as much as the bombs and the bomb shelters. As far as stuff like the weather, to each their own. I grew up experiencing Lake effect snow storms and still do. I couldn’t handle year round hot weather. Where I live, a 60 degrees Fahrenheit and a sunny day happening before the summer heat descends is considered an opportunity to wear shorts and sunbathe.

I respect your opinion and I’m glad you feel at home in Israel. To me, personally, trading a bomb shelter and bombs to escape colleges students aspiring to be terrorists isn’t a trade off that nets a positive gain. To me, it’s the same.

That being said, I hope you, your husband, and the growing baby are doing well. 🙂.

I think the key here is that, again, I have lived in both Israel and the diaspora so I can confidently state where I prefer to live. I see a lot of Israeli Jews and a lot of Diaspora Jews both saying they’d prefer to live elsewhere but none of them have actually tried. So their opinion is based on perception and not fact. I’m not discounting their opinions as invalid but it’s worth acknowledging that they’re based in theory, not actual experiences they’ve had.

Yes, our current government is more conservative and does favor a more religious society but that’s not indicative of our population as a whole and even many religious Jews don’t favor our current government and didn’t vote for them. I also think it’s dangerous to say that more observant Jews would adjust to life in Israel quickly because that’s not an accurate statement. I, as an observant Jew, find being observant here is easier than in the diaspora - my level of observance doesn’t make life here easier, my life is easier because my level of observance is accommodated for in Israel unlike in other countries. Many religious Jews move from the diaspora and struggle with things just as secular olim would. Anyone moving from any country to another will struggle to adapt to that country. An Italian who grew up in New York will struggle to fit in in Italy. It’s the same thing. They’re different places and even if some of the practices may be the same, they’re still different cultures and customs, etc etc etc.

I need everyone to be careful not to paint Israel and Israelis with such a broad stroke brush. Just like every country, we are diverse and nuanced. Just like every country, those differences both cause difficulties and are what make Israel and Israelis so great. Half of the people in my life are not religious in the way that I am and they are all proud Israelis who would never want to live elsewhere. Some of them despise our current government and I have a few secular friends that vote Likud and always have. Again - it’s important not to fall into the same propaganda trap that we see with the pro-H@mas group that all Israelis are radical zealots with close minded viewpoints that enable us all to support a problematic government. That assessment applies to like 0.0001% of the Israeli population. Israelis are not a monolith, our government and levels of religious observance cannot be viewed through a monolithic lense. That’s just not how life works.

Bottom line - I don’t care where y’all want to live. Everyone should be able to live where they want to live. I just think a lot of diaspora Jews in particular essentially talk themselves out of living in Israel because it’s just unfamiliar to them and they feel that it makes them a bad Jew for not wanting to live here. Which is inaccurate because again, I don’t think anyone cares. I certainly don’t. Live where you want to live. Jew do Jew.

Thanks for the well wishes. Eye injuries aside, we’re all doing great BH 😅

#ask things #Israel things #thrive in the diaspora my dude I could not care less #Jew do Jew

[laineystein]

If I may? You seem to have an incredibly rosy view of Israel and live comfortably there. And I am happy you do! I just also have seen Israelis on tumblr speak of the struggle with the rising cost of living.

This includes having to be self conscious about the price of brands to pick, and the rent of apts. (Which are pretty common things to deal with anywhere lately). I’ve also seen an Israeli blogger say that if you don’t have a background in engineering and tech, there’s not much of a future for you in Israel-or at least not one where you can live well.

On a personal level, I struggle to comprehend the idea of bomb shelters being a conscious part of every day life in so many parts of Israel. I don’t know how you guys do it, I really don’t.

I’ve been passive-aggressively criticized for having what some would deem a rosy view of life in general so I don’t know if I’m the best person to be giving you my feedback. What I can say confidently is that I have lived elsewhere and I will forever choose to live in Israel because it is the place I truly feel is home. Yes, things are expensive but they’re expensive where I lived in the diaspora as well. Homes here are not any more expensive than they were where I lived in the diaspora. Our economy is certainly curtailed to specific professions but so is every economy. Being an engineer and being in tech is also currently the most lucrative profession in the diaspora. I’m not saying that Israel doesn’t have its issues. It does and I reference them often. I’d probably talk about them more if I wasn't so used to a lot of it; I’m used to sirens and bomb shelters and tzahal and I don’t know how to explain that to someone who isn’t. It’s just always been apart of my life and it’s not going to change anytime soon so it is what it is. I also have no problem acknowledging that I grew up very privileged and still live a very privileged life so that may have something to do with my viewpoint. But here’s the thing - I just can’t live in a non-Jewish world. I can’t live my life comfortably in a non-Jewish world. And that’s not solely because of antisemitism. I keep kosher. I keep Shabbos. And nearly everyone I love (in the diaspora) is visibly Jewish. The men wear kippot and tzitzis. The women dress tznius and cover their hair. When you are this religiously observant it’s difficult to exist in a non-Jewish world. Our holidays are different and it’s not a default to have them off and not every company you work for will be fine with you taking them off - even if it’s illegal for them not to. In the US, you can’t make friends with coworkers because you can’t see them on the weekends or eat at their restaurants or in their homes. Sending your children to a Jewish school like the one I attended is like paying college tuition per child, per year; my parents paid over 100K every year sending me and my three brothers to school - the same school would be much more affordable in Israel. We’re nothing but pawns to the political system there - the right and the left both hate us. We are politically homeless and we’re too much of a minority for it to matter. So there’s a million reasons *not* to live in the diaspora as a Jew. For me, there is also a million reasons to live in Israel. The proximity to our holy sites. The weather. The fact that we have beaches and deserts and mountains and forests and rain and snow and sunshine. The diet and the healthier lifestyle. The joy. There’s so much joy here and I feel sorry for anyone that disagrees. I can be openly Jewish here. My Jewishness is not an inconvenience here. I do not have to apologize for it or hide it. And yes, I will forever feel safer here than I ever have in the US. Is Israel also an absolute dumpster fire sometimes? Of course it is. I’m not saying it’s for everyone. Living here will be a huge shock for many Jews. But for some of us, it makes sense and the pros will forever outweigh the cons.

#lainey things #ask things #israel things #my heart my home

[laineystein]

So a funny story…

My two year old nephew accidentally punched me in the eye so I went into Pesach with a deep corneal abrasion and today (after the migraine pain I’ve had since flared and became so unbearable I nearly felt like I was going to pass out) I finally did the thing that all doctors hate doing - I went to the fucking doctor. But it’s yontif so I had to go to the ED and let me tell you, it was a comedy of errors. Is this what y’all deal with all the time? Oy gevalt. First the nurse asks how far along I am. I tell her. Then my husband makes a comment about how I should mention that I had a head injury a few months ago that I never got treated. I wanted to kill him. So the nurse asked what caused the head injury and I told her I had an IED blow up near my head and she asked where this happened and I said Khan Younis and she was like 👀 and I was like 👀 and it was silent for a bit while she did math and then silent for a bit longer when I refused to apologize for my aversion to medical self care and just asked when I could see the doctor so she could prescribe me erythromycin so I could be on my way. The nurse was like 👀 and I was like 👀 and she goes “you’re a doctor?”. I nodded and she rolled her eyes. Then the doctor comes in and she knows I don’t want to be there and she doesn’t want to be there either because the only thing worse than a doctor going to the doctor is a doctor needing to treat another doctor. So she doesn’t even scold me for not getting my head checked out after I got back and instead barely asks any questions and just authorizes my script so I can leave. It was two hours of my life that I will never get back and honestly if I wasn’t pregnant I’d risk the eye infection because what a nightmare that was.

#Lainey things #hashem is a comedian

[laineystein]

I have so many questions for people that send me these things. I wish y’all didn’t do it on anon because I’d love to know what goes through your brains when you send these. Did you get angry that I said your side of things is terroristic so you decided to come into my inbox and…prove me true by using violent language? Like do you think I’m going to say “okay” and do it? I have questions!!!!

Petition to let the pro-H@mas crowd dress their anon avatars in a keffiyeh so we can clear the ignorance up real quick 🤣

#ask things #big LOL #say it with your chest Jonny #the schmucket continues to grow in size

[laineystein]

I posted these polls after I watched a diaspora Jew and an Israeli Jew agree that they don’t understand why anyone would ever choose to live in Israel over the diaspora. It was a comment I did not at all agree with but at the time I decided it was a perfectly acceptable opinion to have despite not relating to it in the slightest. I also wondered if maybe my love for Israel and my comfort here over anywhere else in the world, aside from it being my home, is because I’m frum — hence the train of thought in the polls above. But I wonder now, with everything going on in the diaspora, ie. the way antisemitism is soaring at insane rates, if anyone who voted above saying they feel safer in the diaspora has changed their mind?

I have had some really interesting conversations the past few weeks about where Jews should live and where we feel the safest. So I’m curious…

#👀👀👀 #because: antisemitism #Jew things

[laineystein]

Apparently Columbia is now having everyone go remote. The president is offering the protestors a chance to “come to the table” and “talk things out.”

I have no idea if she truly believes that dialogue will start to fix things. But tbh I also think it’s a political move. That way when the “protestors” inevitably get worse, she can say “we offered a chance for them to come to the table.”

Remote learning was just for today, I believe. It’s stupid and performative because it’s Pesach so a majority of the Jewish students likely weren’t attending classes anyway. This was not an effort to resolve tensions, it was a PR move to keep their rapidly declining social image from deteriorating any further. And probably to call donors and make amends as millions of dollars of funding are disappearing because Columbia has decided to appease terrorists instead of protecting their students.

I don’t think President Shafik is delusional. She’s playing the “there are good people on both sides” card because Americans are struggling to call out terroristic behavior when the people espousing the ideas happen to be people of color or a minority in any way. It’s the same reason the President had to mention that all forms of bigotry and bigoted language were hurtful, despite antisemitism being the prevalent hatred they’re dealing with. No one seems to be able to acknowledge Jew hatred and the damage it does to Jews without acknowledging other forms of bigotry because G*d forbid Jews be allowed to acknowledge and receive support for our pain. If you read any of President’s Shafik’s messages on any of this, she continues to point to supposed radicalists and non-students that have apparently co-opted the pro-Palestinian narrative on campus because that is easier to do than to acknowledge that a majority of the student body is pro-H@mas and openly so. If she truly didn’t think that these people were students, there’d be nothing to talk about. Her acknowledgement and encouragement for alleged “talks” to happen shows that she knows a majority of these people are students and that she doesn’t think they’re all hateful antisemites and have an opinion worth being heard.

And at the end of the day, these protestors have the same capacity for reason as H@mas. There is no negotiating with terrorists and it’s clear there is no negotiating with their supporters either. Until we start calling antisemitism what it is - Jew hatred - and until we start calling these people what they are - Jew haters - none of this will ever get better.

#ask things #Columbia university of antisemites #because: antisemitism

[laineystein]

Pesach sameach 🥬🥚🫓🦴💛

#Lainey things #chag things

[laineystein]

Did your family make aliyah to Israel recently?

Nope! My father was born here. My mother made aliyah when she was 15. I was born with my citizenship and have lived in Israel on and off all my life. I did come back full time in May of 2022 BH 😇

#ask things

[laineystein]

⬆️ Latest update. Do we laugh or cry?

edenrachelcohen

@columbia

#if you said laugh WRONG we make Aliyah #if you said cry ALSO WRONG we make Aliyah