"...For generations, Jewish women in Eastern Europe utilized threads to measure cemeteries & graves. These threads were used to create special soul candles known as neshome likht... Typically overseen by skilled women called feldmesterins, activities such as feldmestn (cemetery measuring) & kneytlekh leygn (laying wicks) were most prevalent during Elul to prepare soul candles for Yom Kippur.
...The session will include...Yiddish songs, reciting tkhines (Yiddish prayers) and reading poems, some of which are focused on this ritual. Delving into the history of this tradition will shed light on how cemeteries were perceived in shtetl society, serving as a means to communicate with the deceased & seek their assistance. At the end of this Immersion, you will be able to host a cemetery measuring event in Elul or any other time of the year..."
"...A BRIEF TOUR OF THE BROAD HORIZON: WORLD-WIDE HYPER-CRISIS
I intend this essay to be...a pointer to how it could fit together into not only a renewal of Judaism but a transformation of it — of us. That...could meet our own needs and the needs of a multi-level, worldwide crisis.
In some countries, the crisis of globalization has so tormented parts of the people who feel excluded from it that they have turned to hyper-nationalism.
...The long-powerful communities — white, Christian, and male — are also entitled to a place and shared power in an expanded democracy. They are not entitled to exclude the newly visible communities, as some politicians have trumpeted with a silver trumpet often made of cash and contempt, not a sacred shofar.
The result of all this: Two world-wide crises: the Democracy Crisis and the Climate/ Extinction Crisis..."
Israel’s Jewish humor show offers a serious message for a dark time: We will survive By Ben Sales May 23, 2024
"...So the show’s catalog includes spoofs of the story of Purim and the invention of the mezuzah, but it also features joke after joke about the Nazis, the Spanish Inquisition, the Yom Kippur War, the destruction of the Second Temple in ancient times and any number of other lachrymose episodes of the Jewish past.
...So after Oct. 7, the program confronted a question: What to do when the tragedy isn’t historical but current and — for many Israelis — ongoing?
This week, we got our answer: In unprecedented times, “The Jews Are Coming” did something unprecedented: It got serious..."
In Egypt, a piece of Jewish pottery suggests a woman’s role that was stolen from history - Rabbi Jill Hammer May 23, 2024
"...While the Temple in Jerusalem is the only Jewish temple mentioned in the Bible, there were other Jewish temples, including one in the Egyptian city of Elephantine. Built in the 6th century BCE and destroyed in 410 BCE by priests of the Egyptian god Khnum, the temple was a place where local Jews, often Israelite soldiers hired by Egypt, could offer sacrifices. According to some scholars, the description of the temple at Elephantine is similar to the mishkan, or tabernacle, described in the book of Exodus.
One of the interesting features of this community, aside from that it performed Jewish sacrifices outside of Jerusalem, is the presence of female functionaries in the temple..."
This story was originally published on My Jewish Learning.
Extraordinarily proud to have been the editor on this book. The author is a wonderful soul and her deep dive into the lives of her mother and father really resonate. It was an honor and a privilege.
All for You: A World War II Family Memoir of Love, Separation, and Loss https://a.co/d/iF1GlHd
An Indiana court ruled that Jews have a religious liberty right to abortion. Here’s why that matters.
Michael A. Helfand April 11, 2024
"...Indiana’s abortion restriction, it turns out, has lots of other exceptions. For example, it has exceptions — like many other abortions restrictions across the country — for rape, incest, in vitro fertilization and even a narrow exception to protect the physical health of the mother. Where a state grants all these exceptions that weaken the objective of a law — in this case promoting fetal life — then it cannot turn around and claim that its interest is so important that it can’t grant exceptions for religion. After all, how important can the government’s interest be if it already provided all these other exceptions?"
Things I have always known about #Judaism but only now understand Part 1:
We are a tribe. And we also invented the word.
We don't have much power over society as a tribe even though many of us are very successful, we know how quickly things turn.
We may be the only people that people on all political extremes see as the source problem of everything they don't want to take responsibility for themselves.
Almost all of our holidays are about our enslavement and genocides. #jewish#jews
The #book is “#Judaism Is About Love: Recovering the Heart of #Jewish Life,” and it comes out this week.
"First, it’s probably important to say that love is not primarily an emotion. Love has an emotional manifestation. But love is an existential posture. It’s a way of comporting ourselves, a way of orienting ourselves in the world. That’s really important because you cannot build a spiritual life on a feeling. Feelings come and go. I can be a compassionate person even if at this moment what I’m feeling is frustration."
Searching Internet Archive images section for "Jewish" or "Judaism" brings up page after page after page of antisemitic memes, conspiracy theories, and Holocaust denial. Depressing.
I'm always happy to see when someone very cool like Rabbi Danya agrees with me on important points of a difficult translation & interpretation.
Several years back I got a lot of flack for writing that the Sotah ritual is a different thing from passages describing what to do if your wife is adulterous. If your wife commits adultery you can have her stoned to death or you can divorce her, or say nothing.
But what if you love your wife, don't want to kill her, but don't want another man's child to inherit your property?
The Sotah ritual is essentially a forced abortion if a man is being cuckolded. The Woman has no say at all in the matter.
The abortion is commanded here. It's not murder. There's no soul until the fetus takes a breath.
Forcing someone to stay pregnant is no different than forcing someone to have an abortion. It is a denial of a woman's right to bodily autonomy & decision making.