thoughts on paper talisman but written in yiddish/hebrew? I think Ive seen only a few from one person and they looked really pretty.
Like an amulet?
I've posted my own rendition of a traditional Jewish birthing amulet here before, I think Jewish amulets are so cool.
If you feel like an amulet is something you need in your life (provided you're Jewish, goyim, please don't purchase or make Jewish amulets), then B'Hatzlacha!
One thing to remember: They carry the same status as other Jewish holy texts, and thus if they need to be disposed of they should be disposed of properly in a genizah rather than thrown in the trash, so even if your amulet is made of paper, it should be treated with the same respect that a parchment amulet would be.
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I bought this lovely little morning/evening set over a year ago. One card has a pretty graphic and a version of the modeh ani on the back, for use in small morning meditation and prayer. the other has hashkivenu on it, for use in small evening meditation and prayer.
I used them pretty regularly for a while and I really loved them! I fell out of the habit, and I am hoping to cultivate a more consistent practice and engagement with prayer in my life. I remembered I had these in my little 'spiritual area' in the house, and got them back out this morning. They're so pretty and helpful, thought I might share.
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not every story is a fable
(reposted from Twitter)
So in reading Christian commentary on NT parables, and its wild and ugly claims about first-century Jews and Judaism, I often find myself wondering how they got there. And I think I've discerned the process.
It goes a little something like this:
Christians receive traditional interpretations of what the parables “mean." E.g. the prodigal son means you should forgive people, the good Samaritan means you should help people in need. These meanings are, generally, banal.
Rather than reading the parables as stories, Christians read them as fables with a moral. They read them through the lens of that moral instead of approaching them without a predetermined interpretation.
Christians also believe that the parables must contain revolutionary, radical truths.
So now, they somehow have to resolve the idea that the stories are radical with the fact that their received interpretations are obvious/banal/the same thing plenty of other people have said.
And that goes a little something like this:
Since (what they believe are) the morals of these stories don't sound radical to contemporary Westerners, they project that radicalness backward onto the parable's original context and audience. That is, it must have been radical/shocking at the time, to the people who first heard it.
Now they have to resolve the dilemma of how something that sounds so banal and obvious to us could have been radical and shocking and scandalous(!) to the original listeners.
Most of them aren't going to say "Jesus's Jewish listeners were incredibly malicious and/or incredibly stupid," at least out loud. So they move to: Projecting that onto Jewish culture, Jewish law, "religious law," etc.
So then they need to make up norms/customs/attitudes that would make the parable "shocking." If they can find a source that maybe seems to say something that hints in that direction, they'll claim it says a lot more than it does and that it was normative. (E.g. Ben Sira saying you can tell things about a man from how he walks ends up meaning "the villagers would have stoned the father for running to greet his long-lost son" and of course that running to greet your long-lost son would be S H O C K I N G to the listeners.)
It's why they love throwing "ritual purity" in there so much.
The father in the Prodigal Son story wouldn't embrace his son because he was ritually impure! (If the father was out doing farm stuff and wasn't going to the Temple any time soon, most likely, so was he.)
The kohen and the Levite in the Good Samaritan story passed by the dying man on the side of the road because they were afraid he would make them ritually impure! (The story is very clear they were headed AWAY from Jerusalem, and thus the Temple, so no.)
The Pharisee in the Temple has contempt for the tax collector and doesn't want to stand next to him because he's ritually impure! (No, if the tax collector is in the Temple, he is in a state of ritual purity.)
An anthropologist friend of mine told me that when anthropologists/archaeologists are confronted with an object from an ancient culture and they don't know what it's for, the default category is "ritual object."
Did you dig up a weird-shaped ax that doesn't seem well-designed for either being a weapon OR chopping things? Ritual object.
Find a statue with some odd characteristics? Ritual object.
"Ritual purity" appears to be to Christian understanding of Jewish customs what "ritual object" is to anthropologists. Anything that doesn't make sense to you, put down to "ritual purity."
So, anyway, the process goes like this:
parables must be shocking >
they're not shocking to me >
they must have been shocking to Jews >
make up supposed Jewish customs/laws/attitudes that would have made normal behavior "shocking"
It’s exhausting.
(Photo credit: Andrea Piacquadio)
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if there is no G-d, why stay Jewish in practice?
An interesting question I saw in a Facebook group. Some of my favorite responses that resonated for me:
"It's still the mythological language that feels authentic to me, and I still need love it and crave it in a pre-rational part of my self."
"God might not exist but the Jewish people definitely do."
"At no point in my life has believing in g-d felt like a requirement for my Judaism. Judaism has always, for me, been more about philosophy, practice, ritual, justice, community, and action. The concept that any religion doesn't have meaning or value without belief in a deity is really foreign to me and kind of strikes me as a Christianity-derived idea."
"Rabbi Moses Mendelssohn wrote that in contrast to protestantism, which values faith above all, Judaism values practice above all. He suggested being Jewish one needn't be theistic at all."
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Channukah Ritual Guide | Digital Download
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