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Rishus Cold Yetzer Profile picture
Rishus Cold Yetzer
@JustSayXtian
Not a Christian myself, but tired of Christian hegemony I accidentally started a Daf Yomi study server - see link below. Jewish | American | He/Him
Joshua Cypess Profile picture Rachel Profile picture dmnsqrl Profile picture Rabbi Debora Gordon Profile picture Potato Of Reason Profile picture 7 subscribed
Oct 19, 2023 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
If there is any other people who know what it is like to be a nation of refugees, it's Jews. 75 years ago European Imperialists did what they do best - pitted two peoples that they had themselves driven to desperation against each other. We don't have to play that game. I believe this, fully. I believe that inevitably, eventually, we will see that we have more in common than we have dividing us. That we can sit together as brothers. That there is literally nothing to do but just stop.

Oct 8, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Jewish joy:
When it's time to leave Simchat Torah and your toddler begs to stay a little longer, and then says "I miss synagogue" from the back seat on the way home. Jewish joy:
Watching a gaggle of kids in the middle of an unrolled scroll rush around finding where each book starts, and recognizing a word here and there, and trying to convince each other they found an imperfect letter.
Sep 26, 2023 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
I love @LizShayne's piece on a neurodivergent Jonah - an understanding of his character that seems obvious to me - and I want to share a bit of Yom Kippur learning I received this year that harmonizes with her article: We don't get much in the book of Jonah itself about who Jonah is, but one thing we do get is his name - Yona ben Amitai. Literally translated, "Jonah, child of my truth". The obvious meaning, of course, is that Jonah's dad was named Amitai, no big deal.
Jul 28, 2023 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Not to make everything about Christian hegemony, but everything is about Christian Hegemony.

I am fully convinced that this is an "everybody knows" bit of probably wrong common wisdom rooted fimly in the Christian doctrine of original sin. Augustine of Hippo codified as doctrine that mankind is *innately* evil because of inherited sin, and there's not a single damn thing we can do about it. That idea wasn't normative even with Christianity until around the 4th century CE, and isn't normative in other cultures.
Jun 26, 2023 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
There's been a lot of noise in my mentions recently around a couple of comments from people saying that Christianity is all about love and Judaism isn't, and it's got me thinking that sometimes we undermine some great things about Judaism in the process of countering anti-Judaism Like, the gut level response is to counter things like "Christianity is all about love and Judaism is not" by saying "nuh uh, OF COURSE we're all about love" And that's not wrong, love of your neighbor/fellow humans is *very* central to Judaism. But also ...
Jun 23, 2023 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
The reason Poe's Law works is that for most Americans, "Nazi", and by extension "Hitler", just means "enemy". The actual ideology of nazism and the social context in which it arose as a reactionary movement are of less importance, or inconsequential altogether. It's a direct result of the way 20th century history is taught - the focus is on the US winning WWII against the Bad Guys - the Nazis. The Holocaust is certainly taught, but primarily as a sort of hyperbolized "they were SO MEAN, like bad guys are" way.
May 12, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
The graphic is a straight up lie. Per the 2014 Pew income report (not the 2009 report cited) 44% of Jews *live in a household* with an income *greater than $100k/year*. The threshold for the top 1% of earners is ~$825k per year. It is not possible to tell from the Pew report what percentage of the top 1% of earners are Jewish because:
1) it doesn't get any more granular than '>$100k', far lower than the 1% threshold, and
2) it doesn't specify how many earners/non-earners in a household.
Jan 12, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
I too have a family anecdote about how I and my children wouldn't have a Jewish identity today if not for the Reform Movement's acceptance of my ancestors. But I'm not going to share it because it doesn't matter, Reform Jews don't need to justify their right to their Judaism. Image There's no such thing as a squandered Jewish soul, only squandered opportunities to embrace each other in our glorious plurality, as we are instructed - repeatedly - to do.

אהבת לרעך כמוך.
כל ישראל ערבים זה בזה.
Jan 11, 2023 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
SOLOMON: I mock the demon and ask him "If demons are so strong, how come you have to do what I say?"

DM: The demon says he'll tell you if you remove the chain with the Divine Name binding him.

SOLOMON: I remove the chain

DM: ... seriously?

SOLOMON: Remove. The. Chain. DM: Ok, fine. You remove the chain. The demon immediately picks you up, throws you halfway across the world, then casts Disguise Self and steals your identity.

SOLOMON: I tell the first person I see that I'm the King

DM: She laughs in your face

SOLOMON: I tell her again.
Dec 12, 2022 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
I think part of the popular mistranslation of "mitzvah" as "a good deed", instead of the actual meaning of "a commandment" is that the Western (and especially US) obsession with freedom as the highest possible value rankles at the idea of being *commanded* to do anything. And I think that's related to the characterization of the Law as a restrictive burden that people need to be freed from, as expressed both by 'religion is just a way to control people' atheism and 'Jesus freed us of restrictive legality' Christianity.
Nov 30, 2022 • 32 tweets • 6 min read
We're on day three of adamant resistance to the idea that Christmas decorations and/or celebrations in public school classrooms are a problem, so -

A thought experiment thread. Take a deep breath. Relax your shoulders. Limber up your imagination. Put aside for a minute whether Christmas is a religious holiday or not. It doesn't matter for now. What matters is that it's *your* holiday, *your* family tradition. Imagine, now, that in the US, almost everyone does *not* have that tradition.
Oct 14, 2022 • 29 tweets • 5 min read
Some thoughts about how Jewish texts are treated drastically differently in Christian scriptural contexts than in Jewish ones, based on a recent interaction I had with the book of Wisdom from the Catholic Old Testament: First off, Wisdom (aka The Wisdom of Solomon) is a Jewish text, but it isn't Jewish scripture. Just because it's in the Old Testament doesn't mean it's in the Tanakh, let alone in the Torah. It was written far too late (1st C) and in the wrong language (Greek) to be canonized.
Sep 30, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
A thing I love about Judaism is this acceptance that we drift, over time, from our truest, best selves, and the notion that we can intentionally reorient ourselves to who we *really* are - templated on divinity

"Kedem" is one of those beautiful words - I translated it emotionally in the QT above. It's often translated as "days of old" or "times gone by". It also means "Eastward". Thematically, in Jewish scripture, Westward is where danger lies. The narrow places.
Sep 28, 2022 • 18 tweets • 5 min read
Last year I was thinking a lot about the Akedah. This year I'm thinking a lot about Hagar and Sarah. So...

Some thoughts on Reading The Torah In Hebrew (or at least examining the Hebrew), and why we read the passages we do at Rosh Hashana: In the Torah portion for the first day of Rosh Hashana, when we get to the part where Sarah wants Abraham to exile Hagar and Ishmael, we get this super clear example of wordplay in the Hebrew text. Right after we hear about 'Yitzchak' Sarah sees Ishmael 'metzachek'.
Sep 21, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
One more thing about this - the halacha I'm citing here about who must eat on Yom Kippur is all from the Shulchan Arukh, Orach Chayim 618. I'm quoting that language - it says "we feed them". Not they feed themselves. Not they sneak food where we can't see. *We* feed them. The mitzvah, the obligation, is not just on the individual. It's on the community. It is *our* responsibility to feed those who must eat on Yom Kippur. We are supposed to be participants in guarding the health of those who cannot fast.
Sep 20, 2022 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
Halacha says people whose health may be at risk *must* eat on Yom Kippur. The halacha on who is in danger if they fast is *extremely* lenient - basically, we trust a person on if fasting would endanger them. It's the disregard for life and dignity here that mocks Jewish practice If several doctors say a person could fast, and one doctor says no, we feed them. If several doctors say they can fast and the person says no, we feed them. If the doctors say eating would harmful and the person says they need to eat, we feed them.
Sep 19, 2022 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
What I got from this thread is that if you raise your kids with a bunch of bigotry and hate AND the idea that God hates them for things they didn't do and they have to believe in a demigod savior to avoid torture, a fair few of them will keep the bigotry and abandon the self-hate I'm honestly kind of shocked by the spate of "no true Christian" claims on the grounds that they aren't fundamentalist *enough* this week.

Sep 18, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
"Not once did Eleanor Roosevelt use the word “Jew”; the story of “these people” was not the point. By then, the Jewish catastrophe was everyone’s to claim, and the “lessons” of the Holocaust were already in the process of becoming a strangely American form of national self-help." James McAuley's review is insightful and on point throughout, but this is a theme that I think is particularly vital. It's true that American Holocaust education glosses over America's failures and overstates it's successes in countering Nazism, but that's not the biggest problem
Aug 16, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
There are a lot of benefits to a pluralistic society, but one thing our nominally secular culture sucks at is handing death. If there was ever a group of people that needs communal rules for offering support, a defined set of expectations for what happens next and who does what, and a ritualized method for handing emotions, it's mourners.
Aug 1, 2022 • 15 tweets • 3 min read
Jewish ethics are complicated, and certainly not without debate over how to apply them, but the idea that we cannot value one life over another is pretty fundamental. That includes valuing someone else's life over our own. Martyrdom is not a virtue, usually. There are exceptions - a famous example is that if a Bad Guy hands you a weapon and says "kill this other person or I'll kill you", one is not permitted to kill the other person. Doing so would be valuing one life over another by choosing your own life over the other person's.
Jul 28, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Antitheists love to talk about the "three big monotheistic religions", so this is just a reminder that one of those "big three" is actually tiny, and is only ever called out by name because it's the special target of the biggest one. There is no logical reason for Judaism to get it's own pie slice here instead of being included as part of "Other Religions". That "Other Religions" pie slice? That includes Sikhs. There are twice as many Sikhs as Jews. Sikhism is the 5th largest religion in the world.