Passover is the Jewish festival of freedom.

Israel has 133 hostages, alive and dead, still held in captivity. I'm grateful for each one released, but as long as some of our people, Jews and non-Jews alike, are hostages, we all are. Also, yesterday alone, Israel saw no less than 6 terrorist attacks (attempted or thwarted) with zero casualties, and I'm grateful no one got hurt, but what kind of freedom do we have, when this is our daily reality, and it's not even recognized?

At the end of every Passover Seder, for 2,000 years now, Jews have concluded the holiday feast with, "Le'shana ha'baa bi'Yerushalayim (לשנה הבאה בירושלים)," next year in Jerusalem.

(here's a Passover Hagaddah from Casablanca, in Morroco, with this phrase and a drawing of the Hebrew Temple in Jerusalem -)

Passover is the festival of freedom, the story of a nation breaking its bonds of enslavement, it's a story of emancipation, and as such, it is a beacon of hope and a reminder that freedom is possible for all those who yearn for it. That's why slaves in the US south adopted this language, and expressed their hopes for freedom through the story of the Jewish exodus from Egypt.

But the story doesn't end as soon as the Israelites have left Egypt, it doesn't end in the desert. Achieving freedom is a process. That ancient story demonstrates that, but we have other, more recent examples. Jews liberated from the Nazi camps were still re-living the horrors of the Holocaust every night, if not more often than that. The hostages who have been released from their captivity at the hands of murderous, rapist Hamas terrorists are still working to recover. Freedom is a process. And in the story of the exodus from Egypt, which Jews have been re-telling annually for thousands of years, guiding our thoughts and understanding of what our freedom is, the story doesn't end when our ancestors left Egypt. The final note of the story defines our freedom as only being fully achieved after going through the journey in the desert, the process, when we are once more living freely in our ancestral, promised land, when we return to our holy city. And no matter where we live, we express this idea in Hebrew, our native, ancestral language.

(here's another Passover Hagaddah, this one from 1940's Cairo, in Egypt of all places, with this same phrase -)

Poet Amnon Ribak (whose career was originally in hi-tech before he started delving into what his Judaism means to him) once wrote, "Every man needs some sort of an Egypt, to deliver himself from its house of slaves, to leave in the middle of the night into a desert of fears, to walk straight into the waters and see it parting in front of him." He takes the Jewish exodus and turns it into a metaphor for personal challenge and growth. And how does he finish this poem? (my emphasis) "Everyone needs an Egypt, and a Jerusalem, and one long journey to remember forever through the feet."

Here's the poem composed as a song (composing poems is an Israeli tradition. And while we're at it, this is a reminder that the biggest center of original Jewish culture and art in the world today is Israel):

This Passover, we will be remembering and re-telling the story of our ancestors' exit from Egypt, we will collectively yearn for Jerusalem again, we will do our best to learn from this ancient story as if each of us has been personally delivered from Egypt, we will cherish the freedoms that we have, and keep in mind the ones we still have to fight for, first and foremost the literal freedom of our hostages. Please, if you celebrate Passover, consider leaving an empty chair at your Seder table for all the people who are not yet free.

And may we all have a happy and meaningful Pesach! <3

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

The Christian world, circa 600 A.D.

Zionists spread propaganda that all Islamists from countries dress like this:

Say you're Islamophobic without saying you're Islamophobic

Look what propaganda I saw from Zionists

They seriously believe it, I live in fucking Poland and I see that this shit has nothing to do with reality, yes, there are people who dress like this, but spreading the word that every Islamic country dresses like this is like saying that every Jew looks like this:

I don't think I need to tell you how stupid this line of thinking is

I am so fucking outraged. Look at these pro-hamas terrorist supporters at Columbia university harassing our Jewish brother. They didn’t ask his beliefs or if he was a Zionist. They simply took one look at him and assessed that he was a Jew so they surrounded and harassed him. Don’t any of you EVER tell me it’s “anti-Zionism not antisemitism”. We are now approaching 1940’s Germany level of antisemitism. I am sick to my fucking stomach. Daven for his well being and mental health.

I can't stop thinking about my 19 year old friend, one of 604 soldiers who gave their lives for the people of Israel during these past six months.

I can't stop thinking about how they're never going to hug their loved ones again, or dance at a friend's wedding. But they also won't be experiencing so many *little* things that make life, well, life. They're never going to feel the triumph of sprinting to catch the bus and making it at the last minute, or the exasperation of spilling soup on their pants or the absurdity of meeting old highschool friends on the train. It's so deeply and incomprehensibly sad.

On Passover we remember the first organized attempt to put an end to the Jewish people. If I counted all the times since then, we'd be here all day. But this time, we have an army. We have a country. We're not going anywhere.

This Passover I'm thinking about the 604 souls who aren't going to celebrate Pesach with their families. And I'm hoping that their sacrifice isn't in vain, and that we can have seder and continue with our lives in peace and in safety. I hope we see all the hostages home safe, that the refugees return to theie homes, that we eradicate Hamas once and for all and see the Palestinians live under a healthy government.

חג שמח

והיא שעמדה לאבותינו ולנו

שלא אחד בלבד עמד עלינו לכלותינו

אלא שבכל דור דור עומדים עלינו לכלותינו

והקב"ה מצילנו מידם

פסח שמח לכולם

And she (the torah) that stood for our forefathers And for us

That not a single one, stood upon us to destroy us

But rather, that in each generation, they stand upon us to destroy us

And God saves us from them

Happy Passover everybody

Peace be upon you, Jewish Tumblr

It's me, the annoying Muslim with all the annoying questions.

I was just wondering

Besides, like, the Torah, does anyone have any, like, Jewish stories they'd recommend?

I'll take anything 🤷 whether it's a nonfiction story about Jewish people, or even just a short story fic about some Jewish characters with Jewish themes and such. Just like.... yknow, some Jewish stories!

I'm reading a lot of nonfiction lately, my current fiction read I'm kind of burnt out from (the third in a trilogy) and idk I'd just like to read about something new!

Definitely trying to branch out of the "white European background perisex cishet alloro/allosex" lead!

I don't think I've ever read a Jewish themed story, which when I think of it makes me sad.

So I'll take all the recommendations!

Israel's Real Iron Dome

Arab Leaders were installed to safeguard Israel and Western interests, not to liberate their occupied lands nor liberate Occupied Palestine.

Happy Passover!!

חג שמח וכשר!

May the hostages be released soon!

I sincerely don't know how these all still shock me, but they do. The first one is from an anti-Israel protest in the UK, where apparently everyone was allowed to cross the road, other than Jews. "But the police are just trying to protect these random Jewish passerby!" If everyone can pass peacefully by anti-Israel demonstrations, other than Jews, what does that say about these protesters?

The next vid is from Colombia University, in the US. There's an interview from October 2023, where a Hamas senior explicitly says that they will be carrying out Oct 7, the biggest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, again and again and again. I'm gonna be honest, I can't understand how that interview alone hasn't shocked the world, and wasn't talked about by everyone. I guess this footage is the answer. Because some people are actually on board with that.

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

Jewish protesters at the National March for Palestine in 📍London today 🍉

Photos: X: JustjewsUK

Important for people who are still stuck accusing people of antisemitism when they say genocide is actually not right.

Kol Yisrael Arevim Zeh Bazeh .

All Jews are responsible for one another.

-Talmud, Shavuot

On Twitter there are currently a lot of Christians and Muslims getting really angry about ways that Jews work around restrictions on work during Shabbat, and, like, honestly I do not understand why they care? Just a lot of non-Jews telling nice Orthodox Jews that they’re doing their religion wrong for no reason.