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#kosher rules for orthodox
kyliecatqueen · 29 days
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Every time I think of Human!Sam I imagine him having peyos instead of his flappy dog ears. And then Human!Max has a pair of very clean bunny ears that he found in a dumpster as a kid and fell in love a 2nd time (the 1st time was with violence, the 3rd time with his gun, and the 4th time with Sam). The bunny ears are meticulously cleaned and cared for, and they'd be the only thing on Max that he'd willingly keep such high maintenance on if it weren't for Sam forcing him to take care of himself as well as the bunny ears.
"Peyos" (or "Pe'ye" if it's singular) are uncut/unshaven sideburns, it's a thing done by a lot of Orthadox Jewish men and boys because one of the rules of the Torah that they uphold to is to "never shave the sides of their head". Most people wear them curled, and the literal translation of "Pe'ye" is "corner/side/edge".
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ageofxail · 1 year
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🍝🗒💖 !!
🍝 — favorite food(s)?
My ultimate meal consists of sauteed mushrooms, grilled asparagus, and a thick cut of well marbled hangar steak that's been cooked to blue rare Pittsburgh style-- that is, cooked in an extremely hot, well oiled skillet with a generous coating of heavy spices, so that it has a crunchy, crispy Maillard reaction crust thats full of flavour while the inside is cool and soft, melts in your mouth and the natural flavour of high quality beef shines incredibly brightly. Follow this up with a maple sugar creme brulee with turbinado sugar and an espresso americano? Absolutely perfect.
🗒 — what is/are your favorite genre(s)/theme(s) to write?
I love romance. I love shipping. I love writing love stories. They make me happy. I also enjoy writing fight scenes and hurt/comfort.
💖 — what was one of the greatest/happiest moments you’ve had in the rpc?
Technically not in the RPC, but related to it. I have had a Utah muse for years, and finally had a chance to visit Utah myself last summer. Interactions with locals affirmed a lot of the headcanons I've developed and touring museums affirmed that many of my historical theories about Gabriel were, in fact, accurate and plausible paths for a Personification of Utah.
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ripley-ryan · 2 years
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i’ve been keeping kosher since i was like ten but one thing i do really miss and i don’t think i’ll ever get over is that like dried little shredded pork bits??
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this stuff. as a kid sometimes id either hang out with my friend at her grandmas or hang out at her home and her grandma would be there and whenever someone made rice this would be there and it was so good. literally going kosher this was the hardest thing to give up
#personal#no my dad didn’t really raise me or my siblings kosher#my dad was fairly lax about pork for two reasons#one. he really fucking liked pepperoni pizza and just assumed it was made with beef well into his 30s#he ended up developing a ‘pizza exception’ where he would allow himself to eat pepperoni and/or sausage on pizza with cheese#two. he believed that agricultural practices had improved over the last few thousand years and that the pork ban had been created mostly#because back then it was more unsafe to eat them as they tended to be unclean as it was to eat other livestock#that’s also why i was still raised jewish despite being patrilineal (aside from the obvious bit where we aren’t orthodox)#because his reasoning was that back in the day you didn’t really know for sure who the baby’s father was so because you had no idea if the#father was a jew or not then you just wouldn’t count that and would only go through the mother who you can literally confirm the baby is#related to#and for me well. we only knew for sure i was blood related to my father#i know there’s the whole thing about how women are automatically more connected to gd and that’s why judaism passes through them#but all traditions are rooted in some degree of logic#anyways#so i wasn’t actually entirely raised kosher because my dad approached kashrut laws from a logic perspective#which id argue is inherently more jewish than just blindly following those rules but i digress#anyways so when i went kosher it was like okay cool and everyone was cool with it#my dad doesn’t eat bacon or pork the majority of the time he only eats it for his ‘pizza exception’ so the house was mostly kosher anyways#because really who was making a pizza at home. so that was all fine#but i still really fucking miss that pork stuff with my rice
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kemetic-dreams · 3 months
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All Abrahamic religions claim to be monotheistic, worshiping an exclusive God, although one who is known by different names. Each of these religions preaches that God creates, is one, rules, reveals, loves, judges, punishes, and forgives. 
However, although Christianity does not profess to believe in three gods—but rather in three persons, or hypostases, united in one essence—the Trinitarian doctrine, a fundamental of faith for the vast majority of Christian denominations, conflicts with Jewish and Muslim concepts of monotheism.
Since the conception of a divine Trinity is not amenable to tawhid, the Islamic doctrine of monotheism, Islam regards Christianity as variously polytheistic.
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Judaism and Islam have strict dietary laws, with permitted food known as kosher in Judaism, and halal in Islam. These two religions prohibit the consumption of pork; Islam prohibits the consumption of alcoholic beverages of any kind. Halal restrictions can be seen as a modification of the kashrut dietary laws, so many kosher foods are considered halal; especially in the case of meat, which Islam prescribes must be slaughtered in the name of God. Hence, in many places, Muslims used to consume kosher food. However, some foods not considered kosher are considered halal in Islam.
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With rare exceptions, Christians do not consider the Old Testament's strict food laws as relevant for today's church; see also Biblical law in Christianity. Most Protestants have no set food laws, but there are minority exceptions
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The Seventh-day Adventist Church (SDA) embraces numerous Old Testament rules and regulations such as tithing, Sabbath observance, and Jewish food laws. Therefore, they do not eat pork, shellfish, or other foods considered unclean under the Old Covenant. The "Fundamental Beliefs" of the SDA state that their members "are to adopt the most healthful diet possible and abstain from the unclean foods identified in the Scriptures".
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Proselytism
Judaism accepts converts, but has had no explicit missionaries since the end of the Second Temple era.
Judaism states that non-Jews can achieve righteousness by following Noahide Laws, a set of moral imperatives that, according to the Talmud, were given by God[k] as a binding set of laws for the "children of Noah"—that is, all of humanity. It is believed that as much as ten percent of the Roman Empire followed Judaism either as fully ritually obligated Jews or the simpler rituals required of non-Jewish members of that faith.
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Christianity encourages evangelism. Many Christian organizations, especially Protestant churches, send missionaries to non-Christian communities throughout the world. See also Great Commission. Forced conversions to Catholicism have been alleged at various points throughout history. The most prominently cited allegations are the conversions of the pagans after Constantine; of Muslims, Jews and Eastern Orthodox during the Crusades; of Jews and Muslims during the time of the Spanish Inquisition, where they were offered the choice of exile, conversion or death; and of the Aztecs by Hernán Cortés. Forced conversions to Protestantism may have occurred as well, notably during the Reformation, especially in England and Ireland
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frownyalfred · 7 months
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Hello! I’m not Jewish and I just learned about Pikuach Nefesh. Being Jewish yourself, I’m guessing you have a lot of thoughts on this and how it relates to Bruce’s no-kill policy. I’d be really interested in hearing them if you want to make a post!
Hey friend!
I absolutely have thoughts, but I must begin with a disclaimer:
My perspective does not cover all Jews, nor is it the authority on what is or isn't Jewish. I grew up Reform/Reconstructionist, in an ethnically Ashkenazi Jewish family, and these are just my thoughts as a Batman blog.
Another important note: different types of Jews hold the halacha (rules/principles) of Judaism to be far more important in their lives. An Orthodox Jew will observe halacha much more strictly than a Reform Jew. Despite what some people will tell you, this doesn't make either of them better. Just different.
Whew, okay. Now that that's out of the way, let's get down to business.
What is Pikuach Nefesh?
In very general terms, Pikuach Nefesh (hard ch sound in the back of your throat) allows Jews to override other religious "rules" or values in the pursuit of preserving or saving a life.
A good example of this is a an Orthodox Jewish person, who, following halacha, will not drive or operate items with electricity during the Sabbath (Shabbat). But what happens if someone has a heart attack and they need to call 911? Pikuach Nefesh would permit them to use electricity, despite it being Shabbat.
If a Jewish person who keeps total kosher is in a situation where they will starve if they do not eat non-kosher food, they are permitted to eat non-kosher food.
Exceptions
There are some notable exceptions to Pikuach Nefesh, which I suspect is what your question is getting at. The threat to an individual's life generally has to be known, urgent, and not abstract.
Murder is another large exception, with some conditions. Generally, the intentional act of killing another person, or injuring them to the point where they might die from their injuries, is not an act that can be permitted by the principle of Pikuach Nefesh.
The slim exceptions to this include highly specific cases of self defense of oneself or another against an aggressor. One may kill to preserve a life in very strict situations, but they cannot murder. There are even times where killing is obligated, such as war.
So how does this relate to Batman/Bruce's no-killing rule?
Okay. So. I've had a lot of discussions with folks about this, and the answer I've learned is: it doesn't. Not really.
Pikuach Nefesh refers to the principle that a Jewish person should preserve life over almost any other rule or halacha. It does, actually, permit Bruce to kill under very specific situations. It does actually forbid him from gravely injuring people and doing so in the name of fighting against abstract threats, which are both things he does in canon.
The last time I wrote about this, I was definitely off about the details of Pikuach Nefesh in regard to Batman. I was corrected and I stand by that correction. I didn't grow up in the Orthodox faith and I don't observe much of their halacha, which is where a lot of religious theory questions arise from. I'm not an expert, and my explanation is only as deep as my own experience.
I think a good way of looking at Pikuach Nefesh is not as a way to define what, if any, killing is acceptable, but rather, what are we obligated to do to save a life?
The more important Jewish principle shaping Batman's ideology (in my opinion)
"Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire."
This is much more of an important focal point for Bruce's Jewish-influenced ideology. The flipside of this quote, from the Talmud, is equally important: "Whoever kills one life, kills the world entire."
Bruce's no-killing rule is famously tied to his parents' deaths during his childhood. In a way, his entire world ended with their murder. He sees his mission to clean up Gotham as a way to prevent that loss from occurring for anyone else.
Saving one person, like he tells Barry in Justice League, is enough. That is a viciously Jewish thought. It is frequently quoted in reference to those who acted in support of Jews during the Holocaust, doing what little they could against a fountain of evil.
Conclusion
In that regard, yes -- Pikuach Nefesh tells us that preserving a life is the most important thing above all else. But Bruce's no-killing rule would swiftly be broken if he followed the principle of Pikuach Nefesh closely, in that he would a) likely have to kill someone in self-defense at some point in his duties and b) it would not allow him to injure or hurt people to the extent that he currently does in canon.
More importantly, Bruce's no-killing rule is a better reflection of the Talmudic quote that "he who saves/kills a life, has saved/killed a world entire."
It is not much of a stretch, in my opinion, to connect Bruce's trauma from losing his parents at young age to his outright refusal to kill later in life. The more interesting question, in my mind, is if the creation of this no-killing rule truly was shaped by Batman's Jewish creators and their view on life and death, especially post Holocaust.
Comics became more widely available during and after WWII and the Holocaust, during which time many -- many -- Jews entered the field as writers and artists. Their influences on the characters we see today are obvious, often intentionally Jewish, but just as often un-intentional.
Was Batman's no-killing rule a product of the post-WWII Jewish comic writers who shaped his character? Was it a coincidence that lined up well with the Talmud, but not necessarily all the conditions of Pikuach Nefesh?
How else does Batman represent, or not represent, the goal of Pikuach Nefesh (the necessity that a person act in the preservation of human life, above almost all else)?
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ask-a-jew · 6 months
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If I wanted to convert, is there a way to find a synagogue or avoid the ones that I might be ok or not ok with? For example, I know there might be more conservative Jewish cultures that might not be ok with a trans bisexual like me. Or if I can't keep up with the kashrut rules. Etc.
Hi Anon!
This is where I'd recommend doing your own research on what shuls are available in your area. Judaism has different branches with different relationships to observance and halacha as well as different minhagim or traditions based on where in the diaspora a group of Jews came from. Looking up LGBT-friendly or egalitarian shuls may help. It really depends on what you're looking for.
Different communities will have different attitudes and priorities in their Judaism and in my experience, not everyone's synagogue lines up with their own practices.
My synagogue is Reform with a mixed Ashkenazi-Sefardi minhag but we have people from all walks of life we have Modern Orthodox Jews who choose to attend here instead of the local Orthodox shul for whatever their reasons (the inter-community beef is never-ending), and we have Jews who only show up twice a year on HHDs, we have brand new Jews who are tzniut, keep kosher and shomer Shabbat, we have transgender bisexual Jews who teach Hebrew school (Hi, that's me, hello!) We also have an openly gay rabbi who is adored by the congregation, we have lesbians in their 60s and we have nonbinary people who lead services and leyn Torah.
My suggestion would to be start looking into the different branches of Judaism: Modern Orthodox, Masorti (which I believe is called Conservative in the US- with a Capital C -unrelated to the political sense, usually) Reform, there's also Reconstructionist which I'll admit I know little about as we don't have any Recon shuls in my country.
I'll also add that do go into things with an open mind, yes there are Orthodox shuls and yeshiva that will be very binary gendered and exclusionary but assuming a binary of Orthodox = Old-fashioned and Reform = open-minded does a disservice to the frum queer and trans-Jews putting in the work to make their spaces more accepting and also it ignores that Reform shuls have to deal with homophobia, transphobia and interphobia/intersexism too.
It's more about finding a community you mesh with than finding a denomination. I would consider myself Masorti in terms of my values, my understanding of Torah and Jewish law and my level of observance but I wouldn't give up my Reform shul for the world that's my family. There are areas where you may only have a Chabad House in range, I would still recommend reaching out if that is the case, even if they have been pretty hit or miss in my own experiences with them.
When you're looking up synagogues in your area do your best to avoid anything that says 'Messianic', "Brit Hadashah" or mentions 'Yeshua' those aren't Jewish synagogues but Christian churches cosplaying as Jews as a means to convert and eradicate us. Even just googling "denominations of Judaism' gets you Jews4Jesus on the front page which shows you how insidious and well-funded these hate groups are.
Good luck shul-shopping and I wish you the best in your journey!
Resources:
Movements of Judaism (Judaism 101 -UK Based)
Ashkenazic and Sephardic (Judaism 101)
The Jewish Denominations (MJL)
Branches of Orthodox Judaism (Jewish Virtual Library)
Reconstructionism (Recon Judaism)
Choosing Judaism: Learn the Basics (Reform Judaism)
Keshet Equality Directory - Finding a queer-friendly shul (US only, unfortunately)
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mariacallous · 19 days
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A war stretching into its sixth month with no end in sight, more than 100 hostages still held by Hamas, nearly 120,000 evacuees from towns along the Gaza and Lebanon borders waiting to return home, and a sputtering economy. Any one of these issues should be enough to bring down Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but the greatest threat hanging over his government today is the question of whether the ultra-Orthodox should be conscripted into the military, an affair that has been simmering unresolved for more than 20 years.
At first glance, it might seem strange that in the Jewish state, the most intensely religious Jews refuse to serve in the military. But the ultra-Orthodox, or Haredim, have always had a problem with a Jewish state created by human action rather than by divine decree. To help win them over, Israel’s founding father, David Ben-Gurion, made a series of concessions to them around the time of independence in 1948, including exempting from conscription young men for whom “Torah is [their] occupation.” In other words, men spending their lives engaged in the study of religious texts.
It seemed like a minor issue at the time. Many Haredim were fighting in the war. Europe’s ultra-Orthodox community had been decimated by the Holocaust, and its numbers were tiny and expected to decline with assimilation. The total number who were to be exempted was about 400.
By the end of the 1990s, however, that concession no longer looked so minor. Thanks to an extraordinarily high birth rate, the Haredi population was growing rapidly. Today, it comprises about 13 percent of the population and by 2042 it may reach more than 20 percent, by the government’s own estimates. Meanwhile, state subsidies for the Haredim grew immensely after Menachem Begin and his Likud party took power in 1977, enabling the community to realize its ideal of a lifetime of Torah study for males. Even as they took money from the state, refusal to serve in the military became, for the Haredim, as sacrosanct as keeping kosher or the Sabbath.
The first serious challenge to this arrangement came in 1998, when the High Court of Justice ruled that it violated the legal principle of equality among Israelis—in this case, the “equality of burden” in regard to military service. That began a two-decade saga of legislation that failed to correct the problem, more court challenges, and foot-dragging. While the draft issue periodically became headline material, it quickly faded. Politicians from the left and the right were loath to touch the issue for fear of losing the support of Haredi political parties, which often hold the balance of power.
The fact that the controversy has suddenly been reignited is due to a confluence of events.
The first and most important is the war in Gaza, which has made the fact that some Israelis are fighting and dying while others are not more glaring than in many years past. Since Israeli ground forces entered Gaza in late October, more than 240 soldiers have been killed and thousands wounded. More reservists have been called up than at any time in the last 40 years. The sacrifice they have made has been underscored by the fact that most Israelis see the Gaza campaign and the fight with Hezbollah in the north as a war of survival unlike any the country has fought since the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. The sense of national unity that emerged after Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre has made it harder for the ultra-Orthodox to explain their unwillingness to share in the sacrifice.
That imperative for public sacrifice will not go away when the war ends. Oct. 7 has fundamentally altered Israel’s national security thinking of the last 20 years, which held that threats from Hamas and Hezbollah could be contained and that technology could replace boots on the ground. To ensure it has enough soldiers, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) plans to increase mandatory service and the number of days reservists may be called up every year. Even now, it is reportedly short some 7,000 soldiers in the standing army—which numbers around 170,000.
Before the war, the Netanyahu government promised the Haredi parties it would pass legislation shielding the Haredi exemption from future court challenges. Among the wilder ideas was to pass a quasi-constitutional law that equated Torah study with military service, thereby getting around the equality-of-burden problem. However, preoccupied with its judicial-overhaul drive, the government failed to act. Instead, the cabinet voted to give itself what has turned out to be an inauspicious deadline of March 31 to come up with a solution. It is now asking the High Court to give it another three months, but at a Feb. 26 hearing, the justices showed little sympathy for further delays. If they don’t extend the deadline, young Haredi men will, in principle, be liable for the draft starting April 1.
If Haredi political leaders recognize that the public’s attitude has changed, they have shown no signs of it. There was a brief flurry of news reports at the start of the war about ultra-Orthodox men signing up for military service, but it turned out to be overblown. The IDF’s Personnel Directorate told a Knesset committee last month that just 540 had actually enlisted. By comparison, a record 66,000 Haredim received an exemption over the past year. In a December survey of Haredim by the Jewish People Policy Institute, 70 percent said the war had not changed their opinion that they should be exempt (another 12 percent said they felt even more strongly about it). “We won’t agree to anything in regards to drafting yeshiva students. … Nobody can force us to abandon the Torah,” Rabbi Meir Zvi Bergman, an influential member of the rabbinical advisory panel of the United Torah Judaism party, vowed last weekend.
Haredi apologists offer up a variety of justifications for the draft exemptions. They claim that the military doesn’t actually need them and point out that many Haredim volunteer for civilian rescue services. Ultra-Orthodox rabbis contend that Torah study is no less important than military service because it ensures Israel’s divine protection.
But even many believers acknowledge that some of the men who shirk the draft are enrolled on paper in yeshivas but don’t actually study. The real reason the Haredi leaders fear the draft is that it threatens the barriers they have so carefully erected: In the military, young enlistees would encounter non-Haredim in a serious way for the first time in their lives; see the outside world; perhaps learn a useful skill or trade; and, worst of all, meet secular women. Many may never come back.
For Netanyahu, the Haredi case for exemption or the military’s personnel needs are secondary at best. What concerns him is keeping his coalition intact. If the two ultra-Orthodox parties quit over the draft and take their 18 Knesset seats, the coalition won’t survive. Yet Netanyahu cannot, as he has in the past, assume his party and far-right coalition partners will do as commanded. Ordinarily spineless Likud backbenchers have said that a solution involving at least some Haredim being drafted is unavoidable. Even Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, an extreme rightist sympathetic to ultra-Orthodox interests, has picked up on the change. “The current situation is outrageous and cannot continue,” he said during a visit to a yeshiva for more moderate Orthodox students who do enlist.
In the end, most of these renegades will fall in line with Netanyahu; they, too, are focused on their political survival. But that may not be true in the case of the National Unity, a centrist party that joined the coalition at the start of the war, and in the case of Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, a Likud politician. Gallant laid down the gauntlet on Feb. 28 when he said he would not back any conscription bill that did not have National Unity’s support. The party has laid out a relatively moderate plan for drafting Haredim, but nothing Haredi leaders would ever consent to.
As a result, Netanyahu is boxed in. On the one side is Haredi obduracy; on the other, Gallant’s position raises the risk of National Unity and even Gallant leaving the coalition if they don’t get what they want. Technically, the prime minister doesn’t need National Unity or Gallant to stay in power. But their exit from the coalition would leave him in a difficult position, running a complicated war with mostly inexperienced and extremist ministers. The Haredim may feel boxed in as well, in which case they might force an early election—as a way of buying time. A caretaker government would not be allowed to deal with such a critical issue, putting it off until the formation of a new government.
Netanyahu may try to kick the can again by giving the High Court a plan for a Haredi draft that looks good on paper but is designed to fail. If it’s vague enough and impractical in the long run, the Haredim might be willing to go with it. The problem is that in the post-Oct. 7 reality, almost no one else would accept it.
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ryuutchi · 2 years
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I am prepared to accept that my background limits my atheism. Do you have any good references I can learn from, by ex-Jews who have rejected Judaism from a Jewish perspective? I want to further develop my atheism, and be able to properly disbelieve in more Gods (or G-ds) than I do now. (Yes I know Jews don't think that ex-Jews are a thing, [unless they willingly convert to Christianity, of course]. I'm talking about self-identified apostates.)
I look guys, "apostasy" in the way you’re thinking is rare and p much only a thing in really super religious communities. Like, my mother left Judaism for decades and afaik still doesn't really believe in G-d. I don't think my father has ever believed in G-d. But they don't identify as anything besides Jews because orthodoxy-- right thought-- doesn't matter to the vast majority of Jews. I'm sure many Orthodox Jews would consider me apikoros or at least off the derech-- I don't keep kosher, Shabbat, or most of the rules, all of which is way more important than my not-terribly-certain faith in the existence of the direct will of a godhead.
There's an old Jewish joke:
Two men, Goldberg and Schwartz, who are walking to synagogue. They are stopped along the way by someone who asks them where they are going. They casually tell the man that they are both on their way to synagogue.  The man responds, “Goldberg, I know why you go to synagogue. You believe in God, and you’re an observant Jew.” Then he adds, “But Schwartz, you don’t believe in God, why are you going?” Schwartz responds, “Goldberg goes to synagogue to talk to God, and I go to synagogue to talk to Goldberg.”
This judgment, this argument to apostasy, it's just so bizarrely puritanical and Christian considering the broad community of Jews who just... don't believe in G-d and don't feel the need to write a book about it because it's not remarkable.
Anyway, I'm a librarian, so I still wrote a list of books from or about Jewish atheists in the vain hope that Christian atheists will learn how much their antisemitism is a part of the cycle of violence against Jews, and that most "apostate" Jews still consider themselves Jewish atheists not “apostates”. You’re not going to find anything with “self-identified apostates” in Jewish texts because “apostate” comes from Latin and is not something Jews call themselves.
"All Who Go Do Not Return", by Shulem Deen, and "Cut Me Loose" by Leah Vincent, both of whom left ultra-Orthodox communities. (I also like "Becoming Eve" by Abby Stein, but she left ultra-Orthodoxy because she's trans and is still practicing)
Oliver Sacks has written about his experiences with Judaism (and everything else) in "On the Move"-- although he's best known for writing on psychiatry, he called himself an "old Jewish atheist" and touches on the way his relationship with his homophobic mother affected his relationship with religion.
I've heard good things about "Candidate Without a Prayer" by Herb Silverman although I haven't read it.
"Waiting for God" by Lawrence Bush is about grappling with a god-less spirituality as a "reluctant atheist" in the Jewish tradition.
"Believ­er, Beware: First-Per­son Dis­patch­es from the Mar­gins of Faith", an anthology edited by Jeff Sharlet and Peter Manseau of KillingTheBuddha.com, is a book of essays covering a broad range of people from different religions, including Judaism, grappling with their identities.
On more academic levels, "Betraying Spinoza" by Rebecca Goldstein is an interesting but slightly dense text about the way the experience and suffering of Jews affected Spinoza's rationalist work (he's the most famous Jewish atheist, there is a LOT of discussion about him). And "Hid­den Heretics: Jew­ish Doubt in The Dig­i­tal Age", by Ayala Fad­er is an anthropological analysis of contemporary Orthodox Jews who have rejected or are questioning belief but have not left the physical communities.
I'll note, most of these writers have left religious Judaism but generally still consider themselves "Jews", not "apostates", so
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batboyblog · 3 months
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Okay you may ignore this question so dearly because I can freely admit this can chalk up to my personal religious-political ignorance on how things truly operate so I apologize in advance;
Regarding Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, since he holds the highest office in the land that’s been long regarded as the Holy Land for both the Jewish people and faith, does he have influence over the faith akin to how Pope Francis at Vatican City has the influence over the Roman Catholic Christian faith (to which I belong too but I digress) Or is Netanyahu’s office a purely secular position with no tangible influence on the faith?
Again this is purely my complete utter ignorance on this subject and I offer all my sincerest apologies
Short answer: No the Prime Minster of Israel has no religious function or influence.
For one thing Judaism unlike Catholicism is not a top down religion with one agreed on "head" who can make rulings that all Jews agree to. So While there's a Chief Rabbi of Israel (actually there are two) his rulings are unlikely to be even be noticed by American Jews, and if any do its out of respect for the Rabbi's learning not so much his office and the power of it.
For another thing, for millennia, Jews have believed and hoped for a coming Messiah who would unite the Jews and return us all to the Land of Israel and found a Kingdom there etc. From time to time since the exile waves of Jews would go to the holy land believing the moment was at hand. In the 19th Century some Jews who had become more secular but hadn't given up on the dream started talking about maybe a secular political movement could return the Jews to the land, they also felt with rising violence against Jews in Eastern Europe that a safe place for the Jews was needed. All this crystalized into the Zionist movement around Theodor Herzl and his book "The Jewish State" in 1896 and the first Zionist Congress in 1897.
Herzl himself was very Secular, and the generation of leaders that came after his death in 1904 were more secular and the Zionist movement quickly became socialists. Soon there was a pretty strong conflict between Zionists and ultra Orthodox Rabbis. The Zionists felt like over strict obedience to the laws of Torah had made the Jews in exile passive. The Rabbis had long rejected ANY involvement in secular government, fearing angering the Gentiles. Indeed to this day there are ultra Orthodox who feel that the only defense of the Jews is the study of Torah and the involvement of Jews in politics is not Kosher, a leading Rabbi, Yitzchok Sorotzkin, called on Jews not to rally against antisemitism in Washington last month (500,000 did any ways) but study Torah
Understandably the Holocaust greatly changed the relationship on both sides with many homeless and stateless Jews settling in the new state of Israel after 1948. But the founding generation of Israel remained very secular and socialist and the Religious Jews remaining at best lukewarm to cool toward the state and many using the term "Non-Zionist" or even "Anti-Zionist" As the founding generation of Israel left power in the 1970s and secular socialist Labor Party became less dominant relationships between the state and the Religious has slowly warmed and Israel's political class has become less defiantly secular for better or worse. In 2021 Naftali Bennett became Israel's first prime minster to wear a kippah regularly.
Before I wrap up, I should note that while the Prime Minster is a secular job with no religious role or influence. Israel is not a purely secular state the way the US is. Family Law (marriage, divorce, child custody) are governed religiously. Meaning there are judges paid by the state who are religious experts who rule on divorce cases and other family law matters, and that representatives of the faiths are the only people who can marry people. There are a number of religions recognized by the state, Judaism of course, Islam, the Druze (an important Religious-Ethinic minority in Israel) and a number of branches of Christianity. As part of that there's an officially recognized Chief Rabbinate of Israel, which has two Chief Rabbis, one Ashkenazi one Sephardi. Together they can make rulings on "who is a Jew" which determines if a group might immigrant to Israel, they also oversee who is licensed as a Rabbi and oversee the Jewish Courts that rule on divorce and the like. As a religious body that is supported by the state and has real powers in it, its very controversial both in Israel itself and among American Jews who tend to be much more liberal religiously than Israeli Jews who are religious. There's not much space for liberal religion in Israel its very Secular=liberal religious=conservative
Also while Israelis can't get civilly marriage in Israel (so no interfaith or gay marriages) the state is required to recognize any marriage carried out overseas so for generations secular Israelis and interfaith couples have taken vacations to nearby Cyprus to get married and in the 21st century Zoom weddings were recognized leading to a boom of gay marriages by Zoom officiated from Utah of all places
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nullbutler · 6 months
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okay but jewish orthodox communities are fucking nothing like catholic/christian groups of that nature AT ALL
source: I visit Muncy to see family and have seen that family since i was very small, i KNOW this community
and specifically this community...this community where the women cover their hair and wear ankle length skirts, where the men have payot and wont be caught dead withous a tallis, THIS Community where every resturaunt is kosher and you'll be squinted at if you drive on shabbat, THIS COMMUNITY has been so chill. for context i usually stay with my grandparents where we spend all day at an old folks home. not only is most of the staff dedicated, smiley folk from all over the world (jamaican, ukrainian, probably coming in from new york -- not really worth mentioning but they're all so nice and JKLD my grandma's old nurse didnt do half of her job and they still kept her for a year which :( but also yeah!! no xenophobia that i could pick up on, quite the opposite) but even some of the oldest members of the community decide not to follow the religious 'rule.' old ladies will wear pants, shorter skirts, reveal their hair, and they will recieve NO flack for it FROM ANYONE
and when i was sitting outside one time next to a group of old ladies, one of the ladies had a little 1 year old grandson who was bored out of his mind, so as I was waiting for my grandma to get back from a walk i sorta played peekabo with him for the better half of an hour. and the ladies looked over at me and went "oh how nice of you ^^" even though I was (1 very obviously queer (2 very obviously not from the community
and also after my grandma outed me to my slightly more religious aunt (as in EXTREMELY religious WILDLY religious MATRIACH of the community religious), her response was just "shrug. she'll do what she wants. lets get dinner as a family :)"
they almost all have phones, MOST people have access to the internet. it felt like I was walking through the 80s, honestly, kids playing with chalk on the sidewalk and riding bikes and walking to the convenient stores. the biggest drama was the fact that my boy cousin wanted to impress the people he was going to camp with, so he asked his sister to drive over and bring his 'cool' pants, and she was like...'what. why.' 'i want to look cool' 'is everyone wearing dress pants' 'no, just me' 'wh' and she did it anyway so she could pick up icecream on the way back HJGJLDS
and even my littlest cousin, who is very obviously autistic, definitely isn't recieving any school mandated support but is handled with the loving community approach of "oh, let him do as he pleases, he means no harm" and if anyone bullies him they have to deal with his parents
its just AAAAGH its so wholesome, and even as far the more conservative approaches go, its more of a dartboard than a specific community rule. like for instance even if the people nearest to the center of the board were extremely strict with the rules and narrow minded, the people in the outer ranks would be much more accepting. its like different social circles, you cant get ostracized by the entire community because everyone has different levels that they're willing to go, and to everyone in the area its more unusual to be as extreme as my aunt
AHGHHHHH college is making me long for a simpler life drawing chalk on the sidewalks and living in blissful ignorance of what fandom drama is. TAKE ME BAAAACK
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Random but is artificial/lab-cultured meat kosher?
It's complicated.
First, there are a lot of potential Halakhic issues we need to dissect:
-Ever Min HaChai: The prohibition against consuming meat from an animal that is still alive. Currently, "lab-cultured meat" utilyzes cells from a still living animal. Would that be considered eating flesh from a live animal? How small a quanitity of live cells would it have to be to not constitute Ever Min HaChai?
-Is the "source" animal kosher/ fit for consumption?: If the animal isn't kosher, how small would the amount of cells have to be that they're not regarded?
-Mar'it Ayin: The custom to not do something that might appear as doing an Averah so as to not lead others astray. If the artificial meat, whether or not it's just really good plant-based imitation or lab-grown, looks like inherently non-kosher meat like pork, would it constitute as Mar'it Ayin for a kosher-keeping Jew to eat? If a kosher-keeping Jew is seen eating it, would we have to worry that someone would think it's actually pork, and be led astray?
These are some of the many discussions that are taking place among Halakhic authorities.
With that in mind, "lab-cultured meat" hasn't yet been released for general consumption, and is still in the experimental stage. The Halakhic status of "lab-cultured meat" is still up for debate, because it's extremely complicated. It's at the moment, a very deep Makhloket- Halakhic debate.
"Impossible Pork", highly realistic plant-based "pork", has been ruled as non-kosher by the Orthodox Union because of concerns of Mar'it Ayin. The ingrediants in "Impossible Pork" are kosher, and indeed other "Impossible" products are certified kosher, but the Orthodox Union would not give its certification. Whether other kashrut agencies will certify it remains to be seen.
Now, my personal opinion: I'm vegetarian. I'm also very much aware of the laws of Ever Min HaChai. For myself, I don't think I'd eat "lab-cultured meat". I don't eat meat anyway, so I don't really have any desire to have meat. It just feels halakhically grey and icky to me, too. But, that's my personal choice, and "lab-cultured meat" isn't on the market yet, and I'm by no means a halakhic authority.
Sources and further reading material:
Is Lab-Grown Meat Kosher?
Is Cultivated Meat Kosher or Halal?
Halachic Insights into Genetically Engineered Meat
Impossible Pork Won’t Be Certified as Kosher
Ever Min Ha-Hai
Marit Ayin: Avoiding the Appearance of Violating the Law
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when-wax-wings-melt · 2 years
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Hey Summer! Do you have any tips on writing Jewish characters?
I do! Keep in mind that I'm a conservative-jewish American teenage girl so my experiences are certainly not universal or all-encompassing for every Jew (since every experience is different) but this is basic stuff that should help.
Naming your character:
Traditionally, babies are named after dead relatives. If you want to look for names, you can add that in as a detail. Keep in mind that being named after a relative doesn't necessarily mean you take the exact name; I was named after my great grandmother, and our names just have the same first letters.
Many Jewish names are Hebrew or Yiddish. They might come from the Torah (Adam or Moshe or Sara or Leah). You can Google Israeli or Hebrew names and their meanings, but common ones are Miriam, Aviva, Aliza, Noah (Noa for a girl), Nathan (or Natan), Ezra.
Please do not give your Jewish character the last name "Goldstein". While the name certainly exists and is common enough, it's become enough of a stereotype.
Last names can be difficult to navigate. Many Jews changed their last names to sound less Jewish when they came to the US or during world war ll but typically you can look up common Jewish last names and find what you want from the list.
Different types of Jews:
There are a lot of different kinds of Jews. Typically, we're divided into three basic categories: orthodox, conservative, and reform.
Orthodox are the strictest. There’s different kinds of Orthodox Jews, with ultra-Orthodox, the Jews typically portrayed in media, with the long beards, top hats, etc, and there’s modern Orthodox, who are more modern and have newer style clothes, modern culture, etc. If you're planning on writing an Orthodox character, there are a lot of different sections within that. Ultra-Orthodox will marry other Orthodox people and likely have as many kids as possible. They're very strict and the women dont participate in much modern culture; I don't know much about modern orthodox or their day to day lives, so I'm not an accurate source of how one would portray them. I’d ask an actual Orthodox person for this!
Conservative people prefer old traditions, but are flexible. They are a range from going to synagogue every week to only going on important holidays. Conservative people tend to keep kosher but not all do, and they do shabbat but not all will keep it. There are conservative women rabbis, but this was more recent. They're pretty okay with women but some more old style Jews will not approve of bat mitzvahs and such.
Reform Jews are the most relaxed about the Torah and most laws. There are less who keep kosher, services are shorter, they're more accepting of women and other people, more likely to marry out of the religion.
Conservative and reform are more integrated with regular life, and so are modern orthodox do a degree. If you want more detail about any of these, you can ask!
There are different types of Jews outside of the level of observance as well! Jews can be Ashkenazi or Sephardic (which are the main ones I’ve seen) or other lineages (which are smaller but still important) including the Eastern, Ethiopian, and Yemenite communities as well as others! These depend on what place your ancsestors came from. Different lineages might have different ways of chanting Torah, preparing food, interpreting Torah and laws, or vague rules, but many people are a mixture of the two depending on what traditions they prefer and who their teacher/family is. Unless your character is religious, they probably won’t make a huge distinction.
Traditions and holidays:
All Jewish holidays begin and end at night.
This includes Shabbat, which begins Friday night and ends Saturday night. Shabbat is a relaxation day. More observant Jews will abstain from any work or spending money, and avoid technology, which includes phones, ovens, cars, and electricity. Orthodox typically will leave their lights on and cook their food before Shabbat begins. Conservative will vary in observance and might drive but not spend money or just light candles and ignore the rest. Reform usually don't worry about it beyond lighting candles and maybe going to synagogue, but again, it will vary.
Your Jewish character will most likely celebrate Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah, which take place during early autumn.
Yom Kippur: you go to synagogue for hours the morning after it begins. You fast (no food, water, gum, etc) from erev (the night of) Yom kippur and break the fast the following night. This is typically a fun party with friends. No work or school during this time, but some people let their kids go to school.
Rosh Hashanah: the Jewish new year! You skip work to go to synagogue the morning of, and you eat apples and honey and other sweet things to hope for a sweet coming year
Pesach (Passover) occurs around April or may and is an important holiday. It lasts eight days and no risen foods may be eaten during that time. The first night (and sometimes the second) there's a Seder with family and/or friends.
Hanukkah is not important but it's fun! Children like it because there's food and games
Yom Ha’atzmaut: Israeli Independence Day! Israelis obviously celebrate this more than American Jews, and celebrations differ; some don’t observe this at all, but a lot of synagogues hold a party or families will have Israeli foods for dinner. You don’t have to support Israel’s actions to eat the food.
Yom HaShoah: Holocaust remebrance day
There are a lot of other holidays during the year of varying importance! You can ask if you have questions!
Things to avoid:
I mentioned this before: don’t name your Jew [firstname] Goldstein. There are other good names for you to try!
Do not make your Jewish character: any sort of demon or demonic formed creature, unnaturally greedy or money-hoarding (there are levels to this one), oily/greasy, having a large nose, having horns or another trait associated with demons, a vampire (for drinking blood reasons), some sort of goblin, explicitly stated to be untrustworthy (especially in regards to business or banking), etc. If you’re worried that something might be iffy, you can ask!
Characters can be greedy without being stereotypical, and they can be ambitious just like anyone else. Jewish characters can definitely be villains, but there are degrees of what kind of villains they should be. Do they steal children? Are they slimy or manipulative? Do they have horns, red skin, or tails? Do they automatically hate Arabs or Palestinians? 
These are the most prevalent stereotypes out there. You can ask if you have any more questions
Extra:
When a member of the community dies, the family might hold Shiva, which is a seven day period where the family is provided food, help, company from friends and the community. The family shouldn’t have to cook or work too hard while they’re in mourning; this is a somber occasion, but it’s a chance for the family to be reminded they’re not alone. People will have normal conversations and give the family their condolences. Typical foods brought are brisket, fruit, veggie platters, kugel, bagels, and other long-lasting, easy to prepare dishes.
Common Jewish foods include kugel (sweet or savory noodles in a dish), blintzes (similar to crepes), knishes (filled dough, like baked dumplings), latkes (fried potato pancakes), shakshuka (eggs cooked in tomato sauce), and others. A huge part of Jewish culture is the food, and there are different ones for most holidays!
Brisses or baby namings are affairs for the whole community! The parents invite their friends and hold a party and announce the baby’s name (and gender, sometimes, although these aren’t typically gender reveals).
Bar/bat/bnei mitzvot are important ceremonies. A 13 y/old boy (or 12.5-13 y/old girl) will read Torah first time and lead at least part of the service. They get their tallis, become a full member of the community (a Jewish adult), receive gifts from the community, and typically hold a luncheon after. The service is on Saturday morning, but many will have Friday night services as well, and an afterparty that Saturday night
Feel free to add on/correct something if you’re Jewish or ask questions if you’re not! My inbox is always open!
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bringmemyrocks · 12 days
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On being "more religious"
This post was inspired interaction with orthodox-leaning conservative Jews who measure everything by the standards of Orthodoxy and by a blog post by CrazyJewishConvert, whose page is currently under construction. Archived link here. Text from Hillel: If not now, When? by Rabbi Joseph Telushkin:
...[I[f two Jews are speaking about a third, and one of them asks if the person being discussed is religious, the answer is invariably based on the person's level of ritual, not ethical, observance. "He keeps kosher, he keeps Shabbat; yes, he is religious," or "She doesn't keep kosher, she doesn't keep Shabbat; no, she's not religious." It is virtually inconceivable that you would overhear the following conversation: 
"Is so-and-so religious?" "Oh, definitely." "How do you know?" "Because he's very careful never to embarrass anyone, particularly in public. And he always judges other people favorably."
Conversations such as this simply don't happen. Religiosity today - and perhaps even during Hillel's time - is assessed on the basis of ritual observance. If a Jew is known not to observe Shabbat or kashrut, that individual is regarded as nonreligious, even if his or her ethical behavior is exemplary and is based on what the ethics of the Torah and Talmud demand of him. In such a case, people might say, "Unfortunately, he is not religious, but he's a wonderful person." On the other hand, if a person keeps Shabbat and kashrut, but violates, for example, Jewish laws on business ethics or, in violation of the Torah, speaks unfairly and inappropriately of others, it wouldn't occur to people to say that such a person is not religious. Rather, they might say, "He's religious, but unfortunately he's not ethical."
I would also add that even among people who are more ritually observant (kashrut, keeping shabbat, TH, etc.) there are still differences, and being machmir (extra observant) looks totally different depending on the community, including within orthodoxy.
Not only can we argue that "more religious" does not have to mean "more observant", but what "more observant" even means starts to break down once you examine the orthodox world more closely.
For example, no Jew would take up all of the following practices because they would be contradictory, as they come from different communities:
Daily mikveh immersion (common among men in some hasidic communities)
Studying hasidic texts or following a particular rebbe in the hasidic tradition (Tanya, Likutei Moharan, etc. depending on the hasidic community)
Keeping cholov yisrael (extremely strict kosher dairy observance that R. Moshe Feinstein, followed by many orthodox Jews, ruled was unnecessary). There's an idea among liberal Jews (and even some conservative ones) that more restrictions = more religious, or at least more restrictions = more observant. That simply isn't the case.
Excluding kitniyot over passover if they're not ashkenazi. No matter how religious this person is, if they are sephardic and live in a sephardic community, giving up kitniyot is not sign of additional observance. More restrictions =/= more religious ("machmir").
Holding by sephardic rules (no eggs, no sugar) when making challah if they're ashkenazi/living in an ashkenazi community.
Minhag (community custom) matters a great deal.
So even if we agree that "more religious" = "more observant" rather than "more religious" = "more ethical", the distinctions only carry you so far. Observance is not an either/or decision, even if you agree that orthodoxy is correct.
You can argue "halachah=/=minhag" when it comes to issues of challah, but especially with issues of cholov yisrael, that distinction is blurred to the point of non-existence.
Because if you decide that orthodoxy is correct and all other forms of Judaism should measure themselves in relation to it, you still have to decide which orthodoxy you're measuring by.
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hindahoney · 1 year
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Hey, I go to a combined Liberal and Reform shul and wanted to debunk some of those misconceptions on your post.
Being Reform/Liberal is not at all, even slightly, about level of observance. We have many, many men in kippot and tzitzit with payot who come to our synagogue to pray every single week. We wear kippot out and about in town, we wear Magen David proudly. We sing our prayers with all of the life and vigour of any Jews. Many of the people who pray with us also attend classes with the rabbi twice per week, in their own free time. I personally study Talmud and biblical Hebrew with my Reform rabbi every week. We have people who keep kosher extremely strictly, more than people who don't. Jewish history is hugely important to us and we honour our ancestors every single day.
Reform Judaism is just about having slightly different values to Orthodox. In shul, we are taught that the difference between us and Orthodox Jews is that Reform Judaism adapts expectations of Jewish people to be reasonable for living in the modern world, whereas Orthodox values tradition and keeping things the exact same way they have been for thousands of years. The rules about electricity use on Shabbat are loosened to allow people with hearing aids to be spoken to, to allow powered wheelchair users to leave their homes, to make sure every Jew has the opportunity to get in touch with their emergency contacts. There is no "better" or "worse" denomination, only ones that fit each individual Jew best, if any.
We still abide by kosher and the teachings of Torah, but we do not place pressure on other Jews to do the same. We do not shun or scold others for not abiding by these laws, and are open-minded to the possibility that they have very good reasons for not doing so.
We adapt some traditional ceremonies, such as holding a B'nei Mitzvah for non-binary children, and adapting conversion ceremonies for trans and non-binary adults. Jewish law is much more de-gendered in a Reform setting, with the same expectations and freedoms afforded to both men and women. Many of us choose to keep to traditional gendered roles and expressions, but queer Jews are celebrated even though they are different.
We are absolutely not Jewish "in name alone". A Jew is a Jew is a Jew. Some of us are very very religious and frum, others are not, but every Jew is always welcome at our shul, because this is a community space that does not ask any Jew to 'prove' they are Jewish enough to join in with our customs, and pray with us during service.
I am disabled and queer, and due to my circumstances I must choose how to live my life Jewishly in a way that suits me. I would not be able to do nearly as many mitzvot if I tried to meet Orthodox standards -- because my needs for care and assistance would break the laws of shabbat, and I could not live up to gendered Orthodox standards very easily as a non-binary person. This is why I choose to pray at a Reform/Liberal synagogue instead of an Orthodox one -- I am more able to do mitzvot in a Reform/Liberal context. While I know there are many Orthodox synagogues that would accept me anyway, it's always a case of trying to work out which congregations I can feasibly become part of, whereas with Reform Judaism I know that I will almost never find any difficulty or judgement.
Being Reform is just another way of practicing Judaism. It isn't lesser, and it isn't less serious, or less religious, or less frum. Really, we are just like you. I think the world would be better with less segregation between denominations. Anti-Orthodox sentiment makes me sad, but I very rarely encounter Orthodox Jews who respect Reform Judaism for what it is. A lot of us don't feel safe in Orthodox synagogues because we are shunned there.
I understand feeling more comfortable in a reform shul because of their gender or sexual identity. Though it has changed pretty drastically in the past few decades and there are many more groups to help gender non conforming and queer people feel more comfortable in orthodox spaces, there are still many who hold strongly to gendered traditions.
However, I need to point out that orthodox Jews do still wear hearing aids and use motorized wheelchairs and pacemakers. If it is a medical necessity it is permitted. In any case, I do not forsee anyone judging someone else for using a medical device on Shabbat.
Thank you for sharing. I do feel like this cleared things up for me!
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lostsometime · 2 years
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so my dad was explaining to some gentile friends we had to our seder how most jewish holidays last 2 days, except in israel.  and they were surprised to hear that because, y’know, it seems counterintuive, but my dad explained it like, well, so they would calculate when the holiday was in israel and then they had to convey that information to the rest of the world, so we give it an extra day just in case something happens and you miss it!  and i was thinking... how many jewish traditions aren’t actually ~Commandments~ but just, we’re doing this just in case.  like, g-d probably didn’t actually mean for driving a car to be considered “labor” in the same way that, like, driving a wagon was - because wagons involve animals and cars do not.  BUT.  just in case.  just in case he meant it like that.  no driving a car on the sabbath.  just in case.
or like, when determining what stuff is kosher for passover - the text really only says “unleavened bread,” but really orthodox Jews will also avoid things like oatmeal during Passover because, well, when you cook oats they kind of swell up?  And that’s sort of like rising, and g-d probably didn’t mean for that to count but just in case.  
we’re a people of widespread anxiety and like half our rules are just ok but what if i’m interpreting this wrong, i’d better be extra-careful.
JUST. IN. CASE.
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real-shul-stories · 5 months
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An Alaskan Altar
Guy calls from Alaska two days before Rosh Hashanah. He said he went with his friends to become B’nai Noah (a noahide, or christian who wants to become Jewish but doesn’t want to put in the actual work of conversion and just wants a gold star for showing up), and the ceremony was performed by a rabbi.
After becoming b’nai noah, the guy called up his second cousin, who is a modern orthodox kosher certification rabbi for slaughterhouses. I’m not entirely sure how we got from point A to point B, but his cousin pointed out that a noahide could build and maintain an alter for ritual slaughter anywhere (Jews can’t do ritual slaughter unless the temple is rebuilt, but noahides apparently aren’t bound by those rules).
So now this guy is trying to get an altar built in Alaska and was wondering if anyone in the Jewish community in our city would be interested in getting the animal sacrifice part of Judaism going again.
Some notes: He initially asked if a rabbi was available. I told him that 2 days before a major holiday was a pretty bad time to get ahold of a rabbi. He responded that he knows, but wanted to speak to a rabbi anyway.
I also checked to confirm whether he was actually trying to reach us and not the Beth Shalom that I know is up in Alaska but he actually was looking for us.
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