help me out, people who don't eat kitniyot... what are you making for pesach? I have never done a no kitniyot pesach in my life I need ideas :-)

i'm vegan (as well as non-kitniot, but yes quinoa) and use a lot of nuts

dips for matzah:

salad

mains

dessert

Contact lenses are shaped like yarmulkes. This is because they help your eyes to be more observant

barbie movie tumtum discourse

barbie is perhaps the worlds only tumtum representation. is barbie able to perform chalitzah

Torah ark curtain made from a woman’s dress

Izmir, Turkey, dedicated in 1929

Velvet silk in a satin cotton frame, couched metal threads and coils embroidery on cardboard cut-outs, sequins

Inscribed in Hebrew with dedication in memory of Jacob Haim son of Mazal Tov

-Rabbi Nachman of Breslov explaining the concept of hitbodedut

I haven’t seen anyone on Tumblr talking about the visual symbolism of this music video so if you’ll hold my purse a minute –

The lyrics of this video are an alphabet chant, very Kabbalistic, combined with the Hoshanot prayer. The words are found in Hebrew in the description of the video and an English translation is here, in someone else’s Tumblr post.   

The prayer she’s manipulating is sung during the holiday of Sukkot, the harvest festival (every morning but especially during the service for Hoshana Rabbah, the seventh day).   It is a song of salvation, of thanksgiving for harvest, and the deep desire for rain, the hope of earning God’s blessing.  It’s one of the oldest and most important prayers written when Judaism was largely an agricultural community, rightfully obsessed with the need for rain.   The leafy branch she beats against the blackboard at 1:43 is an aravah branch from the lulav, which is an actual religious ritual that many Jews still observe, albeit on the floor of the synagogue, not in a classroom.   That act of bending over and beating the aravah is alluded to in the choreography of the schoolgirls in several places, including 3:01.  

When all the girls draw marks on the board at 3:23, they’re drawing the rain, the healing source, the life-giving source, which the video animates to depict a storm, complete with sound effects.  But it’s drawn on a green chalkboard and that color is also important:  don’t those dancing marks equally resemble grass growing, springing to life after the rain?

The arc of the video also mimics the shape of a holiday prayer service, from a simple beginning where most are sitting down and following one person chanting, to communal song, when all voices rise up together in melody and action (Sukkot services in particular are full of organized movement, learned choreography) to pierce through to the glory of Heaven and obtain the blessing of rain.  In order to receive the falling rain, we move our own bodies around and around.  Stagnation is drought.  Staying still is empty prayer.   

This song is deeply religious artwork, reimagining and reinvigorating old traditions for 21st-century presentation.    And it’s equally important that Victoria Hanna is reclaiming a prayer written by and for men, asserting her right to create art and perform prayer in a cultural space that historically excludes her.

Stay tuned for another post on the subtle transgressive feminism happening in the imagery and the clothing.

More religious and cultural imagery:

The letter ע (Ayin- eye) shown on a girl’s forehead, the blackboard, and the singer winking all elude to a constant theme of eyes and watching. Within Charedi Judaism girls are told to dress as plainly as possible to avoid the gaze of not just men, but the Ayin Hara (Evil Eye) as well. Girls are told not to wear flashy colours, flashy hairstyles, speak too loudly, lest the Ayin Hara be tempted to cause harm. I would also suggest that the ע on the forehead is also a reference to the letter branded on Cain’s forehead- symbolizing the ostracization women and girls face if they step out of line.

She is also emphasizing the “hard” pronunciation of ע, which is absent from Ashkenazi communities but is retained in some Mizrachi communities. In the beginning of the music video she is also demonstrating the range of Hebrew letter vocalizations and vowels, which includes other Mizrachi pronunciations. She is teaching not just Hebrew to the class, but her culture as well.

The honey dripping on the books with Aleph-Bet (Hebrew Alphabet) on them is a reference to an old tradition of when a child (read: boy) first begins his education, he is welcomed by honey being dripped onto the pages of his books to symbolize the sweetness of Torah. The honey being dripped onto the girls’ books is symbolic of girls rebelling and learning Torah.

The girls’ uniforms are also important- the style of uniform is typical of Charedi girls schools. As someone who went to Charedi girls schools for most of my life, these outfits bring back some bad memories. In fact, the way the girls are dressed is almost exactly the way I dressed for my school in Beit Shemesh, except my uniform shirt was blue, not pink. The fact that the girls are singing and harmonizing is also transgressive- in many communities, it is forbidden for a man to hear a woman sing.

christians: what could possibly be in that evil book…. what horrible spells does it hold within its pages… what black magic does it propagate….

the talmud: so if you send your kid off to Torah school but he has a really hard time with it, send him back home and go to school yourself instead so that once you’ve learned Torah you can go and teach your entire family. in fact, once some rabbi went out to go to Torah school and do just this, and on his way he came through this town and he asked if he could stay in the synagogue for the night. and of course the rabbi said yes but weird enough no one was in the streets and something was kind of off about the whole place. so our hero went into the synagogue only to find a seven headed demon just hanging out in the library!! our hero is terrified and prays super hard and because of this the demon is vanquished. he goes back to the rabbi and is like “dude wtf” and the rabbi was like “listen i know this is unorthodox but you’re well known for how good at praying you are and this demon has been terrorizing us for well over a month and we were desperate. we knew you wouldn’t die” and the guy was like “i didn’t know that!” who do you think is in the right? hm. tough question. anyway. what were we talking about again? oh right. what if you make your sukkah doorway 1/7 of a cubit too short. would that be fucked up or what

look up Bavli Kiddushin 29b <3

As it is Passover again, it is time for the annual debate as to whether the frog plague, which thanks to a quirk in the Hebrew, is written as a plague of frog, singular, rather than the plural, plague of frogs, was in fact, as generally imagined, a plague of many frogs, or instead a singular giant Kaiju frog. This is an ancient and venerable argument that actually goes back to the Talmud because this is what the Jewish people are. If we can't argue for fun about this sort of thing, what are we even doing.

In that spirit, I would like to submit a third possibility, which is that in fact it was one perfectly normal sized frog, who was absolutely acing Untitled Frog Game: Ancient Egypt Edition. One particularly obnoxious frog, who through sheer hard work, managed to plague all of Egypt.

The Book of Alayne: Chapter 1

intro post | tag | AO3

It happened in the days of Robert Baratheon—the Robert Baratheon who reigned over a hundred and twenty-seven provinces of Westeros from the Iron Islands even unto Dorne.

In those days, when King Robert, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, occupied the Iron Throne in the imperial city King’s Landing, in the third year of his reign, he gave a banquet for all his councilors and courtiers – the elite of the Seven Kingdoms, the great Houses and the bannermen of the provinces in his service.  For no fewer than a hundred and eighty days he displayed the vast riches of his realm and the splendid glory of his majesty.

At the end of this period, the king gave a banquet for seven days in the Great Hall of the Red Keep for all the people who lived in King’s Landing, the imperial city, lords and smallfolk alike.

ALT

shavua tov and happy new greggy (short for gregorian calendar year)

clearly they are attempting kiddush levana

Apropos of that post, there is a dog training technique whereby each day you put 100 ordinary kibbles in a jar and make it a goal to give them all to your dog by the end of the day. This creates a closer, more positive relationship between you and your dog, causing the dog to feel rewarded by doing simple things that you want it to do, such as sitting quietly during mealtime

Now. The rabbis recommend saying 100 brachas a day. Do you see where I’m going with this

These are both true but I was actually thinking “shaping the behaviors of your difficult god through positive reinforcement”

i keep thinking about the number of parrots and mimicking birds that say love you! as part of their vocabulary. how often they must hear that in order to learn it as a song.

when i was a child and learning how to train dogs, we were warned against using puppy too much around the dog - it might get confused and think the word puppy was a name. we were supposed to use mostly command words - keep it simple and clear.

but when my dog is in the middle of a nightmare, i say i love you to him, and he calms down. i say i love you! and he starts wiggling, delighted. when i first rescued him, i love you got no reaction. he understood i love you! before he understood what stairs are. the first thing i ever trained him to understand, maybe, before even his name: i love you.

my sister used to say i love you! and her cat would come running. he knew his name, too, but her voice saying i love you was enough.

there's some debate about how many words our pets understand. maybe they understand the tone more than the actual word. science almost always seems to be coming out with new exciting information about just how much animals can learn and understand language. it often more seems that the only true barrier is that we don't understand them when they answer back.

goblin doesn't know it yet, but for the last 3 days, i've been telling him about the new bed i bought him. i had to save for a while in order to afford it - but it's specifically for big dogs like him, and (supposedly) won't flatten out after 6 months. it was twice as expensive as my own mattress, and i'm way-too-excited to give it to him. i keep reading him the stats - it says it'll help any joint pain! and one more sleep until it comes! he wiggles in joy at the tone in my voice, this thing i know i'm not really communicating, but something he seems to understand-anyway.

as of 7:30 AM today, the new bed is on the way. goblin is asleep on my couch, happily snoring. the truck is two towns over. i keep refreshing the delivery updates.

something about telling these creatures in our lives i love you, even knowing they can't understand exactly. even knowing each word in that phrase holds a concept maybe-outside of real communication's possibilities - to understand "i/you", to understand love, to understand holding love and passing it through you into something else. knowing, really, we've probably trained them with this phrase comes petting. and then saying it, over and over and over through the little lonely hours of our day.

hoping, with repetition and action and practice: we'll find a way to tell them anyway.

Anyway this week reading Genesis I was musing on Jacob's folly in blessing Ephraim and Manasseh, Joseph's sons. This manipulative stinker thinks that just like he stole the birthright from Esau, so he can upend tradition and elevate Ephraim the younger son over Manasseh, and they're not even twins!

But that's not even the most interesting part. The best part is that Jacob lays it on REAL thick in Genesis 49 about how Joseph's kids are the most specialist ones ever. No other grandkids get a shoutout from Jacob on his deathbed. The rabbis say (compellingly tbh) that maybe Jacob wanted to publically acknowledge these boys since their mother was the daughter of an Egyptian priest, the ultimate idolators. Yes, I bet that was part of it. But the other part was obviously Jacob's confidence that Joseph's lineage would reign supreme throughout the generations. After all, isn't that what all those old prophetic dreams were about?

The dramatic irony is that over the generations, Ephraim and Manassah underperform as leaders. Half of Manassah even refuses the heritage of Caanan and lives across the Jordan. Joseph's descendents disappear with the 10 Lost Tribes like no one special. It's Judah and Benjamin who survive, from whom we trace our legacy as Jews.

Jacob was a horrible father and a lousy clairvoyant, who died thinking he'd got the upper hand on the birth order tradition, as if that's what's most important in a family. Judah, on the other hand, who accepts and atones for his mistakes, is a better father, brother, and leader, and from him is merited the Jewish people's future.

that post that's like “why is it so easy to find lesbians on tumblr but not in real life where are you guys” except instead of lesbians it's trad-egal jews

washington heights or baka for $200, alex

last night listened to a lecture by Rabbi David Silber where he casually mentions that Jonathan is the hero of the Book of Samuel 🤯

these scholars just throwing out galaxy brain takes like it's nothing! Jonathan the tragic hero, the heir who abdicates for love, is everythingggggg