#Jewish good omens
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Author & Mensch: Reflections on the impact of @neil-gaiman on my life, in essay and doodle
As a woman of a certain age, I am a well-practiced overthinker. Nerd, geek, know-it-all, intellectual, the names have been biting or praise depending on who wielded them. They’re all true, and I embrace them.
In the early days of adulthood, when I was a wee 20-something overthinking nerd, geek, know-it-all, intellectual (20+ years ago), I became deeply interested in image and text and text-as-image. While friends were watching and arguing over Survivor, I was obsessing over Peter Greenaway’s The Pillowbook and Prospero's Books and Neil Gaiman’s Sandman. (To this day my copies of the Sandman graphic novels and the English translation of The Pillowbook of Sei Shonagon are proudly displayed on the good bookshelves—you know, the ones I want people to peruse.)
Sandman isn't merely good storytelling and good art, it teases at some of the fundamental questions to which my religion-major heart was consistently and reliably drawn. It modeled a way of rendering the questions—and suggested answers—I would never have imagined on my own.
In those days, I created an artist's book: an altered gift edition of Hamlet. I explored Ophelia’s femininity and the inevitability of her break with her mental health, caught as she is between Hamlet and her father. I imagined her story if she’d had true agency. I investigated the way art (fan art?!) had shaped my understanding of the play and my relationship to it. I layered in my story—my resonance and dissonance with hers—and my art, along with images of famous and not-so-famous paintings of Ophelia. I proudly named Greenaway and Gaiman as influences.
I imagined myself an artist. And, truthfully, I suppose I was one.
I read Good Omens back then, too, delighting over the religious tropes and subversions, the humor, and the fundamental faith in humanity that shone through.
In the two decades since then, below the din of “responsible” choices (that have mostly moved me away from imagining myself an artist) there has been a melody quietly bringing me comfort, shifting my perspective, and reminding me who I want to be. When I stop to listen for and name the music, I realize much of it generates from Neil Gaiman.
The Graveyard Book gave me comfort and hope as a new parent.
Ocean at the End of the Lane reminded me of the layers and the depths⏤the archetypes and metaphors⏤present in everything around me, if I am willing to seek them.
Neil’s anecdote about meeting Neil Armstrong has been a talisman against imposter syndrome. Or, more precisely, it has been a permission slip for forgiving myself when the imposter syndrome inevitably surfaces.
The episode of Dr Who he wrote (“the Doctor’s Wife”) changed the way I understand the entire Dr Who experience before and since.
Lucifer (tv), which his work inspired, gave me joy, comfort and distraction through a tough time in my life.
When, a few years ago, I realized he is Jewish, I had that swelling of pride and resonance that I always get when someone I admire shares that identity with me.
And now there’s the Good Omens tv series. It has opened something in me I didn’t realize was closed. Crowley and Aziraphale are helping me better understand myself, and love, and gender, and storytelling, and, believe it or not, Torah. I am writing again for the first time in ages. I'm drawing more often and with more joy than I’ve known maybe since childhood.
I’ve been getting back into my gratidoodle practice, drawing and writing what I’m grateful for. And when I decided to add Neil Gaiman’s face and some words about my appreciation for his work to my sketchbook, I realized he’s brought me full circle.
Text and image and text-as-image + Neil Gaiman + story is an old constellation for me. And once again, I find my thoughts dancing, shifting, blossoming to the quiet melody of (one of?) the greatest storyteller(s) of this generation.
And now that I am actively engaging with other Gaiman fans, I see how responsive and kind and encouraging he is to those of us who love his work, and his name is permanently etched on my heart: a benefactor, a teacher, a role model.
How satisfying and fitting that such a powerful and resonant voice, miraculously, thankfully, beautifully, also seems to be a genuine mensch.
B”H (thanks to God) that I am alive at the same time as such a one.
#I didn't realize I was going to write AND draw when I started this #but I felt I needed both #I wish I had a flatbed scanner #this photo doesn't do it justice #there's greater nuance in the color in person #Stories matter #Art matters #like, really matters #Neil Gaiman is a gift to this world #Good Omens #Crowley and Aziraphale #Ocean at the End of the Lane #The Graveyard Book #Neil Armstrong and imposter syndrome #The Doctor's Wife #So grateful for tumblr
#crowley x aziraphale#good omens#neil gaiman#david tennant#michael sheen#ineffable husbands#jewish good omens#aziracrow#jumblr#my art#ocean at the end of the lane#the graveyard book#the doctor's wife
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Every time I see “G-d” censored with a dash in the summary of a Good Omens fanfic, I know I’m about to read the most breathtakingly beautiful piece of literature in the history of time
#Jewish good omens fans are just#absolutely brilliant#i love yall#and yall are absolutely CARRYING this fandom#good omens#jewish good omens#crowley#aziraphale#ineffable husbands#good omens fanfiction#my txt
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Happy Jewish new year to everyone!
#jewish good omens#jewish new year#shana tova#rosh hashanah#good omens comics#good omens#crowely#snake crowley#aziraphale#garden of eden#apple and honey#jewish tradition
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Out of all versions of Crowley I've watched/read/listened to, Book!Crowley kvetches the most and I adore it
#good omens#jumblr#anthony j crowley#crowley good omens#book crowley#book Crowley kvetches so much#as he should#no one can out kvetch him#jewish Crowley needs to be talked about more#jewish crowley#jews of tumblr#jewish good omens
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Good Omens Hanukkah headcanons 🕎
Aziraphale has one really old, gorgeous oil menorah he takes super good care of! and Crowley likes to buy one funky menorah every year to add to his collection (maybe his favourite is shaped like a snake?👀)
my beloved mutual Daniel on twitter came up with this one but: Aziraphale lights his menorah in the hillel tradition, crowley lights his in the shammai tradition. they're hereditary enemies (they love each other very much)
Re the last one, this conversation definitely happened:
Maggie, has never seen anyone light a menorah like this: what are you doing?
Crowley: it's the Shammai tradition
Maggie: cool, cool, who taught you that?
Crowley, casually: Shammai
Nina: *choking on her drink*
Crowley has tried to hustle people at dreidel. She fails miserably every time but Aziraphale thinks it's funny
Muriel fucking loves dreidel and they're the only one Crowley doesn't pretend to hate losing at it with
Nina has a special drink available in her coffee shop, it's meant to mimic the flavour of sufganiyot! (Crowley puts six shots of espresso in it, Aziraphale tried it but decided it was much too sweet and he preferred the real thing)
Maggie's record shop plays a 'holiday' record that is all Hanukkah music with one token Christmas song... oh how the turntables lol
Maggie is a bit of a candle snob and exclusively uses handmade beeswax candles in her menorah!
Crowley uses a mismatch of candles from years and years worth of Hanukkah candle sets (they tend to come with one extra) and they're all different sizes and colours and it's chaos
At least one of the nights they all celebrate together, and Nina and Maggie are a bit disturbed and fascinated when Crowley and Aziraphale say the blessings in perfect Biblical Hebrew
Aziraphale has Many Opinions about latkes and didn't speak to Crowley for a week once because they joked that they liked chocolate sauce on theirs
Maggie covers her latkes with ketchup and Nina thinks it's disgusting (she's wrong)
Aziraphale, Maggie, and Nina are exempt from the shopkeeper's association's mandatory Christmas lights rule
Aziraphale gifts Crowley a yamacopter (see photo) as a joke, he wear's it to commit to the bit and pretends to hate it but he secretly likes it bc it makes little kids giggle when they see him
Crowley, Aziraphale and Maggie like to joke about an expedition to the Vatican to 'steal the menorah back' (at least Maggie is 85% sure it's a joke? Either way Nina has offered to be their alibi and Muriel is 100% down to be the distraction
It's not a joke, the menorah is now in the backroom of Aziraphale's bookshop
Happy Hanukkah everyone!!!!!
#good omens#crowley#aziraphale#muriel good omens#nina good omens#maggie good omens#jewish crowley#jewish good omens#jewish aziraphale#they're all jewish fight me lol#slaps roof of good omens#this bad boy can fit so much judaism inside it#hanukkah#good omens headcanons#happy hanukkah have some headcanons!
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Hi!
This will probably won't make it to answered asks this Purim but maybe next Purim:
I've seen here Jew Omens fics that concern Hannukah (and one that pretty much covers all the Jewish calendar) but is there out there a fic focused on Purim?
This holiday has everything ineffable: food, wine, costumes, being kind to each other, drama, almost getting killed!
I know it's a generally lesser known holiday so it's understandable if you don't find anything.
Thank you for this wonderful blog, and Happy Purim/regular day if you don't celebrate!
Hello my dear and a very belated Happy Purim!
I think that the amazing borealowl has what you're looking for, or as close to as I've been able to find. If you haven't read it yet, it's a lovely series.
Four Cups of Wine by borealowl [rated G, 56K words]
Crowley is terrified of losing Aziraphale again, but unable to confess his feelings. He follows Aziraphale on an errand to America, where they end up invited to a seder and spend the next year being invited to other holidays and gatherings on both sides of the Atlantic. Is Crowley's pining painfully obvious to everyone but Aziraphale? (Yes.) Are the rabbi and her wife going to try and get them together? (Yes.) How many Jewish holidays will these two ineffable idiots be invited to before they finally admit their feelings to each other? (Read it and see!)
(And because someone requested it, there is now a link to brief explanatory notes about the various Jewish terms at the beginning of each chapter.)
-Mod AB
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I haven't seen anyone say it but Aziraphael's "but we're the Good Guys" bit absolutely gutted me because
Demons bad, Angels good. Sure. But Crowley has been showing Aziraphel for centuries that it's so much more complex than that, that "good" and "bad" aren't states of being, they're actions, and there's so many shades of gray, and to have Aziraphael turn around and go "demons bad, except you, you're the exception"????
Fucking gutting.
To have someone say "you're not like other members of you're group, you're the one that doesn't suck" when you know full and well that you are like others of your group, that's why you're part of that group, and that suddenly all the love and trust that you built feels very fucking conditional? when they say that you're special but you realize that it's because they're actively not looking at the parts of you they don't want to see, and you have to wonder "how long until they turn?" and "was any of it real?" and "why can't they love me as I am?"
as someone who's been told over and over "you're not like the other people exactly like you, you're one of the special ones I can project onto", it's such a violating and horrible feeling, and Aziraphael is going to need to address that in S3
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Something about Good Omens from a Jewish perspective, something about Crowley, about questions, something about how we are not in heaven, about how we get to decide the rules here on Earth, something about discussion, about wrestling with G-d, and something about how G-d is outnumbered and doesn't get a say, something about how "heaven" and "hell" don't really matter, about trying to make things better from the context of our lives, something about leaving the world a better place than you found it, something about drinking and enjoying life right here and now, something about "they tried to kill us and failed, let's eat".
#mr gaiman is Jewish and i see it#Thinking about Good Omens from a Jewish perspective has me unwell and in the midst of an existential crisis a few days before Rosh Hashanah#and i think that's beautiful#and very Jewish of me personally#the way a show about the very christian Armageddon has me questioning and falling in love with jewish philosophy again is very sexy#jewish#rosh hashanah#good omens#jewish omens#neil gaiman#mine#jewblr#Judaism
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one of the things about crowley/aziraphale that really, really gets me is the fact that crowley loves seeing aziraphale happy. he tempts him not because he is a demon, but because he delights in his love's pleasure
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I am imagining Aziraphale and Crowley in Jerusalem in 70 CE. Aziraphale is aiding the Romans’ siege (because, God’s plan). It is Crowley’s suggestion to smuggle Yochanon Ben Zakkai out in a coffin (because, thwarting God’s plan. Also corpse uncleanness for a holy man). Crowley is with Yochanon’s disciples in the hills outside the city. They watch the Temple burn and they weep. Crowley weeps with them; they are losing their connection to God, as he did in the fall.
One of the assembled asks the rebbe how they will serve God now that they can no longer offer sacrifices. When the answer comes back “acts of loving-kindness will replace Temple sacrifice,” the demon rolls his eyes, and almost immediately sights the unlikely blonde head in the distance. The sun catches it and the halo is visible even to his snake eyes. “Acts of loving-kindness will be repair our severed connection to the One,” the rebbe says again.
There is a stillness as the rebbe’s words settle into the hearts and minds of the men (and one man-shaped being) around him. The demon stares at the halo bobbing around the edges of the mayhem far below, and for the first time in a long time, he feels something a little like hope.
#crowley x aziraphale#aziracrow#neil gaiman#Biblical history#Talmud#Based on what we saw in the Job minisode#Crowley empathizes with human relationships with God#Crowley is all about acts of loving-kindness for his Angel#Jewish good omens#good omens#ineffable husbands#good omens Talmud mashup#it’s a niche audience#maybe Neil himslef?
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Happy Passover🍷
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So in our family we have a (slightly annoying) tradition of "building a human Chanukkiya" for the eighth day of Hanukkah. Usually it will take an insisting uncle to actually make it happen (in here I imagine it would be Aziraphale!)
#jewish good omens#hanukkah#good omens season 2#neil gaiman#chibi good omens#crowley and aziraphale#muriel#furfur#shax#eric the disposable demon#beelzebub#michael good omens#saraqael#gabriel good omens#jim good omens
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aziraphale lights his menorah in the hillel tradition. crowley lights his in the shammai tradition. they’re hereditary enemies (they love each other very much).
happy hanukkah! 🕎
#shammai and hillel beef minisode when???#good omens#good omens art#good omens fanart#aziracrow#ineffable husbands#hanukkah#chanukah#hanukah#jewish omens#digital art#my art#artists on tumblr#drawing#illustration
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Jewish gomens headcanons
I originally put this on twitter but I am running away from there so here they are on tumblr!
-crowley and aziraphale were very involved in how Purim came to be celebrated today! it's a holiday of dressing up (imo your outfit should always be at least a bit campy) and drinking a ton of alcohol and heckling, tell me that doesn't sound like smth they'd do
-crowley and aziraphale know ancient hebrew and it confuses the fuck out of any jewish religious leaders and modern hebrew spakers they meet bc,, why are they speaking perfect biblical hebrew,, what is this fuckery
-aziraphale likes to crochet and he has crocheted a ton of kippot for himself in all sorts of fun colours and styles
-crowley has worn both traditional men's and women's head coverings and is comfortable with both (art of crowley in a tichel should exist please i love her sm)
-aziraphale is exempt from the shopkeeper associations rule about christmas lights and his menorah for hanukkah is one of the oil cup ones bc he's a traditionalist
-crowley can walk in a synagogue without hurting his feet bc if G-d banned everyone who ever asked questions from entering there literally wouldn't be a single person allowed inside
-Crowley loves rosh hashanah because people always offer them apples and they think it's hilarious
-crowley and aziraphale do their own version of tashlich where they through peas into the water in st james park, knowing the ducks will probably get to them first
-yom kippur is the one day a year where you'll see crowley wearing white and it's as uncomfy for everyone around him as it is for him bc it looks so weird
-them going to the ritz after armageddon was literally just "they tried to kill us, they failed, let's eat" that's so jewish of them!
-at some point someone jokes about the temple menorah being in the basement of the vatican and crowley convinces aziraphale that they should immediately go on a clandestine undercover mission to find it and return it
-one of aziraphale's many certifications/talents is being a sofer
-crowley likes to try to stump aziraphale's knowledge of jewish texts and theory with hypothetical scenarios (think "if we took cells from a living animal and cloned them and sectioned off a chunk of the new stuff and did it again and grew meat that way would it be kosher?")
-both of them skip the ritual hand washing blessing because while they aren't sure it would harm crowley, better safe than sorry!
-aziraphale has lots of opinions about latke toppings and once he didn't talk to crowley for a week bc crowley joked that he likes chocolate sauce on his
-maggie and nina are jewish and after aziraphale goes to heaven he spends rosh hashanah with them and they teach muriel to make round challah (this one is courtesy of twitter moots)
-crowley doesn't fast on yom kippur bc we are supposed to "be like the angels" and he only likes one (1) angel who loves to eat! so instead he just eats a bunch of aziraphale's favourite foods
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i read When The Angels Left The Old Country in three days and i'm already tempted to go reread it...
#i read it to fast to draw so i do NOT have a good grasp on how these guys should look#apologies in advance if i've done anything comically wrong#when the angels left the old country#poor little ash and his constantly sore feet bird feet are not made for shoes#for anyone who hasn't read it: it's like a jewish good omens and i say that with every drop of praise i possibly can#angel and demon affectionately bicker their way through the immigration process#my art
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ok so here's the thing. here's the thing. Aziraphale has lots of insanely old books in his shop, and he is a fan of religious works, right? Like prophecy books and Bibles etc. Also we know he can read and speak Hebrew and Aramaic, since he was in the middle east during the time those were colloquially spoken.
Conclusion: Aziraphale definitely has some Tanachs* from like the 14-1800s, likely a few from the middle ages, probably a couple as old as the Dead Sea Scrolls, and I'm guessing some of the supposedly burnt pages of the Aleppo Codex.
He also, I'm certain, has at least one full first edition Vilna Shas** (1800s), a Bomberg (first printed edition, 1500s), and probably a few handwritten ones from the Geonic*** period as well.
And might even learn a few pages with you if you asked very nicely and promised not to buy any of his books.
*books containing the full Hebrew scripture, what is called the Old Testament by Christians
** a set of the 37 volumes of the Talmud, the foundational work on which modern Jewish law is based, consisting of compiled legal discourse and a wide range of heated arguments civil discussions about various aspects of Jewish life in Babylon and Judea from around 100-500 CE (with several layers of footnotes dating from 11th-18th century). AKA the world's oldest forum thread.
***~500-900 CE. Texts from this period reference the Talmud a bunch, but the earliest editions of the Talmud we have copies of are from the 12-1300s.
#talmud#jumblr#good omens#aziraphale#a z fell#jewish texts#gemara#judaism#this is what it is like to be a jewish good omens fan#dear lord i would love to learn talmud with Aziraphale and his squirrely squirrely brain#he is so suited for it too this guy loooooves his loopholes#also he was probably there for some of it#can you tell I went to jewish day school?
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