i guess i’m a tired of the whole “jews fight god behind the dumpster of a wendy’s” shtick bc how can you read the torah and not see a God so wholly and fully obsessed w the israelites who just wants to love and be in relationship with us
one of my favourite pieces of torah i’ve learned this past year is from my friend @claire_ism: God knew that being alone was bad for people, because all God knew was being alone. God created people to know them - dude doesnt wanna fight, dude wants to love and chill.
i think i just don’t like the way people have come to fully identify bnei yisrael’s relationship with God as “let’s fight this bitch” because it’s not that. i understand struggling and questioning but that isn’t our entire identity, nor our main relationship w God
this phenomenon started on jumblr 😤😤 stop making it a twitter thing
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why yes i did choose the frog plague to present on in class so i could talk about the Giant Frog of The Nile
but also this plague is turning out to be a really great metaphor for the jewish people in egypt and i’ve learned a lot a lot from this small chunk of text
first we have 2 very interesting words used when referring to the frogs: שרץ and עלה. both of these words are used in the first perek - bnei yisrael swarm in their expansion, and one of pharaoh's fears is BY alah-ing 'min haaretz'. v specific imagery that binds them together
ive just been informed it's coming out day. there are so many days now.
anyway.
identifying as anything outside of the cisheteronormative frameworks that govern jewish communities can be really fucking hard and super isolating. i've been there. sometimes i'm still there (1/6)
i dont think we ever fully leave the struggle behind. but we choose our derech, we live our lives and we love ourselves as best we can.
and if you're at a place where you can't do that yet because you feel unsafe or unsure or like you couldn't possibly be LGBT+ and jewish: (2/6)
i was closeted for a long time and i always had guilt about it: i should've been out and showing other young jewish kids that you can be gay and frum at the same time.
at the time, i wasn't ready. i chose myself over my community. but i like to think i'm that person now. (3/6)
i bloody love that the last chapter (or in the very least the last 3 pesukim) of the torah reveals that it's actually just a really long love letter to moshe.
bereishit is basically just a prequel -- 'look at the great people who got us to this point' (1/5)
and then bam, shemot hits and all of a sudden it's about this new dude moshe. he puts up with a lot. but God loves him and he loves God and despite their faults he leads bnei yisrael through thick and thin (2/5)
we watch him evolve as a leader and shape the nation. we watch him make mistakes and repent. we have a front row seat into the life of this man whose entire being was dedicated to God's nation and Godself. (3/5)
i often debate whether or not to post more serious personal things, but decided to throw caution to the wind for this one.
i don't like going to selichot anymore. there was a while there i enjoyed it, but for the past few years i just cant bring myself to go (1/12)
it's not that i dont have things to repent for. i have a long bloody list of things i should be atoning for, of things i know i should speak to god about, but instead without fail i will stand in that room and the only thing i will think about is the fact i'm gay. (2/12)
look. i joke a lot about how i think having a bit of internalised homophobia is a good thing because it keeps us humble but this goes beyond that. let me state outright that i do not hate myself. no self-hatred here. (3/12)