Whenever I talk to my partner about their work at the Jewish nonprofit, I am struck by how *Soviet* their dilemmas are. My childhood heroes are all people who ended up homeless, in prison, or dead, because they could no longer bear making such compromises. A handful of nonprofit organizations, which are run by and…
Judaism is a Materialist Religion
Sounds like an oxymoron, right? God is central to Judaism and you can’t write them out of it. But the question of the nature of God is not really an important one in Jewish traditional theology; we’re not preoccupied with God, we just accept that God exists and don’t worry about it too much. The…
A word on Shabbes
I never notice how much stress I’m carrying in my body until I uncover my eyes and am bathed in the light of the Shabbes candles, letting it flow over me like warm water, carrying with it the tension of the week. In fact, Friday afternoons are the hardest, as I’m running around cleaning and…
How the dreidel illustrates the way “Ashkenormativity” is misapplied outside Israel
In Medieval Eastern Europe, a game began to spread using a four-sided top with letters printed on it. Those letters stood for “all”, “none”, “half”, and “put in”. When this game was adapted by Yiddish speakers, they used the Yiddish letters gimel, hey, shin, and nun to stand for “gants” (all), “halb” (half), “shtel ayn”…
The Jews are tired, part 389
[Image: The “Is this a pigeon?” meme. An android marked “Goyish leftists” holds his hand up to a yellow butterfly labeled, “Basic things about Judaism,” and asks, “Is this Zionist propaganda?”]
Drashe for Yom Kippur 5781
Here on Earth, in our lives, is where we learn the meaning of being human; we hurt and are hurt, we cry and laugh, we make mistakes and are given the chance to make up for them and learn from them. When we left Ganeyden, we left with a newfound knowledge of good and evil, right and wrong, harm and reconciliation. It is so integral to who we are, as beings with free-will.
The fabled “Labor Zionism”
Spotted on Haaretz English.
Now more than ever, American Jews can’t afford grifters and bullshitters
Brooke Goldstein’s article “The Time Is Now for a Jewish Civil Rights Movement” takes an opportunity to make an argument for Jews and uses it instead to take cheap shots at trans people, anti-ICE activists, and Palestinians.
Was Karl Marx a shining example of Jewish leftism?
Marx was baptized, raised Protestant, and knew nothing of Judaism his entire life. His father had gone to great pains to escape his Jewishness and provide a better life for himself and his son, even changing his name. As a result, Marx was inevitably brought up with a considerable amount of internalized antisemitism.
Does Judaism try to control the lives of Jews?
Someone asked in a comment on The Queer Diasporist facebook page whether or not Jewish communities try to control the lives of its members. Here’s my attempt at an answer: