Truly insane to me that circumcision caught on in America. Like, goyim really looked at all of our other customs and went, "Hmm, ritual penis trimming. You know what, I think you're on to something, Jews!" Like, that one. That was the one you wanted to appropriate. Gotcha.

26 Iyyar 5784 (2-3 June 2024)

Once again, we have a yahrzeit of two influential teachers centuries apart who shaped Judaism and demonstrate Jewish diversity and adaptability.

Saadia ben Yosef, Gaon of Sura, was born on the banks of the Nile in 4652, roughly 200 years after the Islamic conquest. Thus, rather than the Greco-Roman and Persian cultures of the Tannaim and Amoraim, he grew up in an Arabic speaking world shaped by a rival Abrahamic tradition. He was the first Jewish scholar to write primarily in Judeo-Arabic, the language later adopted by the Rambam Moshe ben Maimon. At the age of 20, Saadia began compiling a Hebrew dictionary. He soon went to eretz yisroel for further study, and after ten years there moved to Babylonia where he became a member of yeshiva of Sura, which had been in continuous operation from the time of the Amoraim. Within two years the Jewish exilarch appointed Saadia as Gaon of the academy.

From the start, Saadia’s career was shaped by disputation and sharp debate with those whose stances he found theologically or socially objectionable. The tenor of those disputes was shaped not only by Jewish tradition, but by the open conflict between Mutazilite and Mutakallamist scholars of Islam, who in Saadia’s time remained in dispute about whether the Quranuc text was a created object like other creations, or co-eternal with G-d and fundamental to the divine essence. Parallel debates about the Torah have raged in Judaism, but Saadia borrowed the shape of the qadi’s arguments rather than their content, engaging in sharp disputes about the proper way to calculate the Hebrew calendar and striving to defend rabbinic Judaism in fiery exchanges with Karaite scholars who accepted only the written Torah and rejected the oral traditions central to rabbinic practice. Saadia’s fiery temper and forceful personality soon put him at odds with his benefactor the Exilarch, and they spent several years in bitter conflict, each going so far as to issue cherem against the other. Their eventual reconciliation allowed Saadia to return to his position as head of the yeshiva of Sura, a position which carried great weight of authority for Jews throughout the Islamic world.

A prolific scholar, he composed numerous translations, publishing much of the Tanakh in Arabic translation, numerous linguistic texts on the Hebrew language, works of halakha, theology, and Jewish mysticism, and a large number of polemics against his various ideological opponents. He died in Sura in the year 4702 at the age of sixty, reportedly of severe depression from his many conflicts with the exilarch and others.

Moshe Chaim Luzzatto was born just over eight hundred years late than Saadia, in 5467, in the Venetian Ghetto (the first Jewish quarter to be called by that odious name). He received a wide Jewish and secular education, and may have attended the university of Padua. In his teens he began to compose poetry, including his own collection of 150 Hebrew psalms in full biblical style, and study Jewish mysticism. At the age of twenty he claimed he had been visited by a Malakh and began writing down mystical lessons from this heavenly mentor. This claim of divine tutelage shocked and offended the Venetian rabbinical establishment, and he was only saved by cherem by agreeing to cease his writing and teaching of mysticism. He then emigrated to Amsterdam where he continued his mystical explorations while working as a diamond cutter, thus following closely in the footsteps of a controversial Jew from a century before, Baruch Spinoza. Disappointed by the difficulties of life in Amsterdam, he traveled to eretz yisroel with his family three years before his death and established a shul in Acre. He died during a plague outbreak in Acre at the age of 39, leaving behind an immense body of poetry, drama, and theological, ethical, and mystical instruction despite the seizure and destruction of much of his early work by the Venetian Jewish authorities. His works were soon praised by the Vilna Gaon and became central to the Mussar movement, and his Hebrew poetry and blending of secular and Torah learning and literature became a major inspiration to the Haskalah. For his rabbinic teachings he is known by the acronym RaMCHaL, for Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto.

do you find there are any similarities between cree culture and jewish culture? if so, what are they? what do you think the jewish community should be doing to support the indigenous peoples of the americas?

Sorry this took an incredibly long time.

I feel a lot of the same values are shared, a lot of the same heartache, the same pain, the same loss.

I grew up with my dad telling me the story of creation (Cree) as a bedtime story? And I remember just seeing a man in a small boat, roll and roll and roll clay until it became land.

There is an isolation of both sides of my family. For example, we both have invited and even helped others who have later tried to destroy us.

Being denied so many things, other groups take for granted. Education for example.

How am I supposed to want to bring a child into this world? Knowing that they will go through hell because their mother and I decided to have them, because we wanted to be parents and have a child. That's not fair. How do you justify wanting a child when the world is so corrupt and broken...

I don't know what Ashkenazi needs to hear this but the old country sucked and the shtetl isn't your homeland.

I’m someone who tends to keeps kosher loosely, I follow all the dietary laws beside the mixing of meat and cheese (I love cheeseburgers 😞)

But as of lately I’m considering keeping my dairy and meat separate,

if anyone has any tips on easing my way into this or maybe just some alternative food products, please please pleaseeee recommend some!

I have the biggest intellectual crush on my rabbi. When she goes off on a tangent about some obscure topic, I’m like 😍 please teach me more things.

Petition to make all jews rich so atleast the stereotypes are right

10pm sundown is a BLESSING. accidentally took a 5 hour nap this afternoon, woke up at 6pm with none of my pre-shabbos chores done, still have three hours to finish them. in the winter i will suffer but in the summer i am thriving