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12 Sep

Have you ever asked yourself 'Why is it I never heard about Lord Rindsfleisch before?!" or 'What's the connection between him & King Richard I, the Lionheart, exactly?'

Well, you're about to do both; a short historical thread.

The year is 1298. Bavaria and the surrounding region are in the midst of a civil war between King Adolf of Nassau & Emperor Albert of Austria.

The Jews found themselves without the protection they had been afforded by the latter until then.

A man called 'Lord Rindsfleisch', either because he was a knight or so nicknamed because of his acts of butchery (Rindsfleisch means 'Butcher', 'Beef' in modern German) claimed that the Jews of Rottingen had stolen & tortured a consecrated host, a common medieval accusation.

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10 Sep

Rav Saadia Gaon explains that this week's parasha is 'divided' in two, as we read Nitzavim last week, and Vayeilech this week. This is in contrast to other double parashiot, which are joined together. What's the difference?

A short message on Rosh Hashana, Kippur & Jewish Unity.

To join two entities means that you are taking two disparate elements and associating them to each others. They existed on their own, but through commonalities, they can be joined together but are never quite one.

Those parashiot share a common 'theme', but stand on their own.

When you divide something, first it was one, and then separated. Even though it is now technically standing on it's own, it is inexorably linked to what it was cut from.

Usually we read both before Rosh Hashana, and the theme is Jewish unity. What is gained by separating it?

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30 Aug

"Mengele saved my life, twice. To this day I don't know why."

Weird words to hear out of the mouth of a pious, simple, old religious Jew, and yet that's something that was said by an old man who passed away last year.

Here's the story, and a powerful message for Rosh Hashana:

When they were sent to the camp, he was 16. They had been rounded up and they were put on a train to Auschwitz. The day prior, they had received the Torah on the holiday of Shavuot. On the second day of Shavuot, the day marking King's David death, they made their way to theirs.

When they arrived, they were told to leave all of their belongings in the train & to get on the platform. They all lined up and got out in the cold morning. A freezing morning. So bad, he decided to jump back on the train to get his beloved father's coat so he wouldn't be cold.

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@shevereshtus

25 Aug

There is something deeply sinister to the current attack on the Hebrew language, and most specifically the use of 'goy'. A short thread to explain why:

"The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history." - George Orwell

People are trying to rewrite the history of Hebrew, pretending that the word 'goy' is a slur when it isn't & never was.

There's a sinister reason why:

It's an attack that begins by saying 'You shouldn't call [x] group [y], because it's bad'. The next step is 'Well since you already agree that it's bad in this context, surely you agree that it's bad in other contexts as well, so how about you just stop using it altogether?'

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22 Aug

High Holidays are in a mere couple of weeks, and we're about to see all the takes about how expensive tickets are.

Here are a few common complaints and why they are wrong:

1) "Prayer should be free!"

It can be. Nothing stops you from organizing a minyan, finding a space, informing people, finding a cantor, someone to read the Torah, you can even skip on the Rabbi if you want, same thing with security, etc. You can decide to absorb the costs, too

2) "Back in Temple days you didn't have to pay"

Wrong. Not only was the half-shekel collected from the whole population in order to take care of the upkeep of the Temple. People donated throughout the year and there were collectors going around collecting as well.

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29 Jul

I have seen a lot of confusion regarding Zionism and it's relationship to Judaism recently, so I made an in-depth thread to explain the basic differences & similarities.

When someone posts that 'Judaism & Zionism are indivisible part of each others' or that 'Torah was always Zionists', it makes a lot of Orthodox Jews uncomfortable, but not for the reasons you might think. And it makes a lot of non-religious Jews look at Orthodox Jews askance.

Defining terms is one of the most important tool prior to a debate or discussion, and the fact that there is a lack of defining terms when it comes to Zionism leads to confusion and unnecessary frictions.

There are actually three different discourses on Zionism:

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