new line: i didn't escape egypt to see this shit

Dayenu

So, for my job, I used to write things with a Rabbi... like emails and social media posts, etc...

A few years ago, at the first COVID Passover, there was no travel or social gathering, and very few people were able to visit family to celebrate the holiday. People were alone for their Seders and it was a new and isolating experience. Knowing how difficult this would be, I looked up some speeches and opinion pieces about Passover that might be inspiring and maybe lift some spirits...

I wish I could remember the Rabbi, but one write up was about how we say Dayenu (translated as, "It would have been sufficient"). Dayenu recounts all the wonderful things Hashem has done for the Jewish people and basically breaks it down that if Hashem had ONLY done this one thing for us, it would have been sufficient. It's a long list and one of them is, "If Hashem had brought us to Mount Sinai and not given us the Torah, it would have been sufficient." But that raises the question of what would be the point of gathering the Jewish people to Sinai and NOT giving us the Torah?

The answer is: Because this was the first time we, the Jewish people, had been gathered together specifically as the Jewish people. It was the first time we were gathered as a joint community.

I wrote how this related to us being isolated during COVID during the holiday... How did I connect this?

Even if we are sitting alone in our homes, we are all doing that together. All of us, all the Jewish people around the world - in the diaspora, in Israel, all the same nights and doing the same basic things (though traditions vary). We are still the Jewish people. We are still gathered as a joint community. We are still all connected to each other through this holiday - telling the same story of our freedom from slavery. We are joined by an invisible bond to all our fellow Jews with our identity intact, surviving thousands of years, telling our story year after year.

It was a call to remember we are not alone, even when we are alone.

I think about it again now because I see so many Jews on this site and on other media talking about how they feel isolated and alone.

I hope we all remember that we are joined together by that invisible bond still. That as we sit at our Seders and telling our story, there are millions of others who are doing the same and that we are still here as a community. We drink our wine (or grape juice or what have you) and dip our bitter herbs into a mixture of apple/nuts/wine/dates (or d'vash or whatever you use) for morar... We sing Dayenu and welcome Eliyahu... we do so separately and together... with family, or with friends, while hiding on college campuses, or in hotels with catered meals, at big tables and small, for the first time or for the 180th time, with chairs full and with empty chairs for the missing...

And I hope that for those that are feeling alone can somehow read this and know that they aren't alone. We are here with you. We are Jews with you. We are a community and we survive by telling our story every year together.

Sending you all love and hope for happiness and peace.

May it be sufficient.

So apparently there was a seder at the encampment at Colombia and I just can't.

So Jewish people were involved and at least one wore a watermelon kippah.

the seder was done during the day time.

in one person's interview they essentially universalized the Pesach story and they said later in the same interview and I quote "my privilege as Jewish person"

Excuse me.

At the seder the fears of Jewish students were downplayed and any antisemitism happening at Colombia university was denied.

And at one point in one interview it was talked about how the Passover story is about the Jews leaving of Egypt. And I kept thinking was and then were did they go after that?

I will be very honest, I do not at understand what these people are thinking or their logic.

I just keep thinking back to Purim and what Mordecai warns about how not to falsely believe that you are safe if you turn your back on your People when they are in danger.

Link to video

@absolutezerodeg

would you willing to share or link the video if you can?

what's so weird is that the story of passover, which at my family's passover, was always told in english and discussed in english. i know every jumblr account has been yelling about the hypocrisy but... did they phonetically read Hebrew and prepare talking points? did they have a discussion? challenge each other? or did they all nod their heads as they were preached to? you know... "preaching" as opposed to jewish 'arguing'? fucking weeeeiiirrrd. icky, icky, blackface type shit ick.

also every article I've read has cited JVP as the "jewish" org represented in the Columbia camp in.

So I saw this CNN video which I linked. I could not get the video to be viewed on tumblr itself.

It did not say anything about JVP in the video.

I would not be surprised if it was JVP because the whole thing felt very off and weird to me.

From what the video showed there was no discussion, no typical passover anything

it was called a seder but it was done during the daytime which again is odd because that is not how time works for Judaism

they made a bracha on the matza and then some talked about how if they don't discuss palestine they will not have fulfilled the passover

which was very strange because within the Haggadah itself there is a discussion about the importance of Pesach, Matzah, and Marror.

There was no seder plate that I could see in the video, no 4 cups, no anything that one would associate with Pesach.

Doing a Pesach seder in english is not strange, reading the Haggadah in English is not out of the norm, I've been to several seders where that has been done because that is what is primary language of everyone.

And at those same seders at some point, usually at the meal part, there will be various discussions about diffrent things to do with seder, the Haggadah, the story itself, if there are young children they will give a torah speech that they learnt in school, you know they kind of stuff you expect to have at a gathering of Jews on a Jewish holiday.

what was going on in this video was nothing like that. there was no debate, no discussion, no nothing, it was just all in agreement with each other.

and it is not that jews can't agree with one another it is just that even when we agree with one another we have to have a conversation about it.

we don't just do thing silently and quietly.

it is not in our nature as a people.

so while in the video it said nothing about JVP I would not be surprised if that was the case. because nothing about it felt Jewish, nothing about felt authentic.

Turns out it's hard to take a proper picture of the top of a 12 foot giant skeleton.

My aunt and Uncle’s dog was barking really loudly and growling at the outside so I said that he was barking at Elijah.

*while making out* so, you think it was a singular giant frog or multiple frogs?

"In a historic “first-of-its-kind” agreement the government of British Colombia has acknowledged the aboriginal ownership of 200 islands off the west coast of Canada.

The owners are the Haida nation, and rather than the Canadian government giving something to a First Nation, the agreement admits that the “Xhaaidlagha Gwaayaai” or the “islands at the end of world,” always belonged to them, a subtle yet powerful difference in the wording of First Nations negotiating.

BC Premier David Eby called the treaty “long overdue” and once signed, will clear the way for half a million hectares (1.3 million acres) of land to be managed by the Haida.

Postal service, shipping lanes, school and community services, private property rights, and local government jurisdiction, will all be unaffected by the agreement, which will essentially outline that the Haida decide what to do with the 200 or so islands and islets.

“We could be facing each other in a courtroom, we could have been fighting each other for years and years, but we chose a different path,” said Minister of Indigenous Relations of BC, Murray Rankin at the signing ceremony, who added that it took creativity and courage to “create a better world for our children.”

Indeed, making the agreement outside the courts of the formal treaty process reflects a vastly different way of negotiating than has been the norm for Canada.

“This agreement won’t only raise all boats here on Haida Gwaii – increase opportunity and prosperity for the Haida people and for the whole community and for the whole province – but it will also be an example and another way for nations – not just in British Columbia, but right across Canada – to have their title recognized,” said Eby.

In other words, by deciding this outside court, Eby and the province of BC hope to set a new standard for how such land title agreements are struck."

-via Good News Network, April 18, 2024

Press release by the Haida Nation about the vote

Two really great things about this:

1- they didn't have to go to court. Cases like this usually take years or decades and are incredibly expensive for First Nations, even if they win.

2- to quote the press release: "In the agreement, British Columbia recognizes and affirms that the Haida Nation has Aboriginal title to the lands of Haida Gwaii. This recognition does not create title – Haida Title is inherent." That's a big deal!! The difference between Canada granting title versus recognising Aboriginal title is incredibly important in matters of sovereignty. Haida sovereignty and Aboriginal title is inherent; it does not need to be "given" by the Canadian government.

duality of man

go-karting

Unmute !

Oh my goodness, that's a lot of opinions.

Rolling AND crispy meows.

3/5

when programs fucking autocorrect <3 to ❤️ and :) to 😃,,,, do you have any idea what you’ve just done?? what you just fucking destroyed ?

A) It's irritating when systems turn lovely ascii art into crude little pictograms, and

😎 It's even more frustrating when you weren't actually trying to make an emoji.

I've been rolling something around in my head.

If everyone receives Minimum Basic Income, what happens to all the relationships where one of the individuals no longer has to depend on the other(s) to survive?

Just let that marinate for a moment.

Not just the economic landscape but the social landscape could be transformed.

Not for nothing, but this is literally part of the entire point of Universal Basic Income.

When abused people can just literally walk away, knowing they can still have enough money to live, the world will be a lot less sheltering of abusers and that is a massive fucking benefit.

It gets better than that, if we go with my ideal UBI scenario, in which we peg UBI to "enough to live in any major metropolitan city in the country" and do NOT adjust it for cost of living.

Suddenly, the poverty and scrabbling for survival of rural areas? Gone. That UBI will go a whole long fucking way out there. Suddenly, people who had to move to the cities to get jobs that paid enough? Can afford to move back. Heck, they can afford to get decent fucking broadband out there and continue working, just, not in the city. Suddenly, people who live in rural areas but want to move to the cities with like-minded people? That's affordable, too. Suddenly, people who want to have a bigger house, but are stuck in a tiny apartment in a city? They can afford to move out to where there are bigger houses.

Universal Basic Income would realign our whole damn society, and I think it would long-term be for the better.