The past several years I've spent the last bit of Elul getting frustrated and stuck, and then right before Rosh Hashanah something shifts and I think about the whole thing in a way I hadn't before.
This year I just thought - this period of atonement isn't just about asking God to forgive us. It's about us seeking to forgive God.
And maybe we don't deserve to be forgiven. Maybe God doesn't either. But we try to do it anyway, because that's what you do when you love someone and you don't want to be mad at them anymore.
I've gone off before about how being mad at God is an act of faith, trusting that out relationship is strong enough to survive a fight. Maybe part of that faith is forgiving God, even though we have no reason to think God will do teshuvah to us

I'm thinking about this, probably, because my father's yahrzeit is during the yamim noraim, and every year I say kaddish, and then I say the other part of the liturgy, added by William Goldman and Mandy Patinkin. I want my father back, you son of a bitch
But I'm not going to get him back, and no one else is going to get their loved ones back either, and underserved suffering will continue to happen for millions of people, and others will gain rewards they don't deserve. And we just have to forgive God anyway. It's hard.

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More from @JustSayXtian

10 Sep
This is a popular exegetical take in progressive Judaism - I hold by it for sure - and a good example of both projecting contemporary socio-religious ideas backward AND grounding them in the actual text.
To start off, there's the examination of how it fits in the narrative. At first glance, it seems counter-intuitive, right? God flat out says "Because you have done this ... I will bestow my blessing upon you". Seems straightforward enough. But then what *happens*?
After the Akeidah, God never speaks to Abraham again. The story tells us that *Abraham* returned to his servants and *Abraham* stayed in Beer-Sheba. Not Abraham and Isaac - just Abraham.
Read 19 tweets
9 Sep
Just before Rosh Hashanah I was arguing with some Edgy Atheists about the Old-Testament-God-is-Mean thing, and one of them pulled out "What about the binding of Isaac?" - so, some post RH thoughts about the Akeidah, biblical originalism, and exegetical norms in Judaism:
The question posed to me by Edgy Atheist (I can't find the original tweet, because I'm blocked now) was - what do you think was originally supposed to be the moral of that story? And of course, EA's answer was "obey God no matter what, even if God says to murder your son, duh."
But the thing is, if we're talking about the *original intent* we can't do that in the context of *contemporary norms*. We have to consider what the societal norms were of the people who were hearing this story for the first time.
Read 21 tweets
5 Sep
Progressive Christians, I'm gonna need y'all to reverse course on this crap right now. The people pushing regressive, theocratic laws are not doing it because they're too Jewish or too Muslim. They're doing it because they're *Christian* nationalists. Stop trying to avoid it.
It doesn't matter what you were *trying* to say, or that you were attempting to make some more nuanced point. What you are actually doing when you talk about "old testament God" or "the American Taliban" is associating the threat with minority religions and excusing Christianity.
You can't address the nationalist, theocratic wing of American Christianity by denying it's Christian foundations. If you want to attack it, attack the negative *Christian* interpretations.
Read 6 tweets
2 Sep
No, James, it could not 'perhaps' mean that. It's 6 weeks from the first day of the last menstrual cycle. Putting aside when one "should" realize one is pregnant, making major, difficult, sometimes traumatic life decisions extraordinarily quickly is not a sign of maturity.
There's absolutely no reason why anyone who isn't *trying* to get pregnant would take a pregnancy test before week four. Realistically, I don't think most people would really start to worry until around week five.
You really think 1 week is an unreasonably long time to consider a decision of this magnitude? You think that someone wanting to gather medical advice, discuss with their partner, really think through what life would be like for them, their child, their family is *irresponsible*?
Read 10 tweets
1 Sep
Actually Anne, while this describes the opinions of some conservative Jews out there, it does not describe settled Jewish law. Poskim differ on what they consider sufficient risk to the mother. Many rabbinic experts in Jewish medical ethics urge leniency in permitting abortion.
Rabbi Jacob Emden ruled in the 18th century that "there is reason to be lenient ... only so as to save [the mother] from woe"
Rabbi Eliezer Waldenberg ruled in the 20th century that abortion is permitted when keeping the pregnancy might result in "suffering and emotional pain".
Rashi argues that a fetus is not a full human being, a nefesh, until it enters "the air of the world". Joshua Falk in the 17th c. says "While the fetus is within the body of the mother it may be destroyed even though it is alive... [for it] is not described as a nefesh"
Read 7 tweets
26 Aug
Another really good thread by @Mandalorthodox following on the one I QTed yesterday. I agree with everything he's putting forth in here, AND I also have a bunch of thoughts sparked by it regarding the position of Reform and other liberal movements in Jewish continuity.
The issue I take with Orthodox Jews (not @Mandalorthodox ) positioning Orthodoxy as the ONLY legitimate continuation of traditional Judaism is not the assertion that seeking truth is important, it's that the other streams don't also make that assertion.

The positioning I keep seeing (and will probably see in the replies to this thread) is that the Reform movement was a *rejection* of the notion that there is a meaningful, truth-centered Judaism in continuity with Jewish tradition full stop. That's not at all what it was.
Read 24 tweets

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