Writer, Hobby-Artist, and Fan

this is conceptually yoinked from a very thoughtful acquaintance on facebook, who posted a series of thoughts in relation to the sort of Usual YK Posts you see in lefty-progressive jewish spaces, and some conversations i had with friends about this post. the original argument centered around three common (and not completely untrue) narratives or truisms we see in the lead up to yk, presented and then offered up for dissection:

teshuvah doesn't mean atonement - it means (re)turning [to the correct path]

chet doesn't mean sin - it means missing the mark (with corollary: judaism doesn't really have a concept of sin; that's a transposition of christian ideas onto a totally different religious framework)

the root verb yira (as in yamim noraim) doesn't actually mean fear - it means something more like awe.

obviously because i work on the impact biblical translation has across cultures and historical contexts, a post that encourages us to more seriously interrogate these truisms about biblical translation is going to do it for me. i found this post really useful to think with, and i encourage us to move past these 101-level ideas into a more 201-level conversation. the original poster in question had proposed counternarratives or counter-questions, which I am going to summarize below with a little of my own sauce (& also sauce from discussions i've had with friends i've had as a result) on top.

sometimes, you have done harm. does softening the idea of repentance stop you from actually confronting what you need to atone for? one of my friends mentioned the fact that the rabbi at a [suburban, prosperous, progressive] synagogue encouraged people to physically prostrate themselves, and no one liked that idea at all... are we making things that are big, scary, and overwhelming so palatable that we've entrenched ourselves against change? that we've entrenched ourselves against actually confronting our pride, and actually confronting our personal ability to cause harm to others? what does it mean to repent for the harms we have perpetrated against others, the harms we have stood aside and witnessed—at the beginning of every new year, and at the beginning of this new year?

yes, the modern, anglophone concept of "sin" owes FAR more to christianity than it does to judaism, and yes, it's good to de-christianize our understandings of religion. HOWEVER. that is still a framing that centers christianity as the default religion, and we can do better. let's take one step past that framing, together. so sin means something different in judaism, because it doesn't have the christian connotations of damnation and earning forgiveness. so: tell me. what does it mean? what does sin mean, in our context, in our tradition? what does it mean to consider our individual and communal transgressions against our community's laws, against our country's laws, against what we know to be right—at the beginning of every new year, and at the beginning of this new year?

the word yira means both fear AND awe, in various measures depending on context. it's not one or the other, it's both. yes, it feels more warmhearted to focus more on awe, on the altered state many of us enter into fasting on yom kippur. but fear has a place in that awe, too. the high holidays celebrate the beginning of a new cycle of the year AND the unavoidable death that awaits us all. ritualizing grief is important. ritualizing mortality is important. ritualizing fear is, actually, critical. the emotions we feel on yom kippur in the face of g-d and our community are a dress rehearsal that lets us experience them without flinching when they appear in our real lives. that can be holy, too. what purpose does softening our ability to confront fear, to confront death serve—at the beginning of every new year, and at the beginning of this year?

Most period illustrations of Landsknechts are black-and-white woodcuts…

…though in 1905 a book called „Geschichte des Kostüms“ - History of Costume - assembled a bunch of black-and-whites and added colour.

If they look excessively gaudy, they’re not, because these next prints were coloured in-period by an artist called Erhard Schön, and it’s fair to assume he was representing what he saw.

we got this

Murphy is survived by his foster son, Baby 23-126, who was successfully released into the wild, and a second foster eaglet he was still caring for; this eaglet is expected to be able to be released as well.

Before I knew that I was intersex, I identified as a trans man. And I went the way any trans man has to go if he wants to transition in my country. My parents thankfully were supportive but I was afraid to tell my grandparents. My grandparents were German and lived/were raised during the third reich. While both of them never said or acted in a way that suggested that they had fascist views (my grandfather was until he died part of a leftwing political party), but there still was this fear in me. "They are old, they grew up surrounded by abhorrent beliefs...". And then there was my aunt. Who would constantly claim that my grandfather was homophobic.

The problem was, back then, there were no openly out gay people in our area, so I never got the chance to see my grandfather interact with someone who was queer. So I just believed her. Because she was so insistent on it. And because it confirmed my fears and my brain loves to be constantly afraid.

But I knew I wanted to come out. I had to, eventually, because I had stopped my estrogen treatment (back then, I did not know that I got that because I was intersex) and went on testosterone instead and first physical changes began to show. We all lived in one big house, so my grandparents would eventually notice.

I was so afraid that my father at some point offered to talk to his parents. I waited outside in the hallway that led to their kitchen and listened.

My father explained, easy to understand, that I was going to transition from female to male because I felt terrible in my body. My grandfather asked, "Is that why the child* is so depressed all this time?" I had been in and out of multiple clinics for manic depression at that point. My father gave a yes. And my grandmother made the incredibly selfish comment, "Can't that wait until I am dead?"

Before I even got time to be upset, my grandfather slammed his fist down on the table. I had never seen or heard him do anything like that before. He was a very calm and collected man who preferred to leave the room before he got too angry. "No, it can't wait. The child gets to get well now. And if that is what is going to help, then it needs to be done."

From that day on, he never used my deadname again or used the wrong pronouns for me. Sometimes, he would stop in a sentence to think and remind himself, but he did always address me correctly.

He celebrated with me when my name was legally changed. He built the bed frame for me and my boyfriend's bed when we moved in together, just like he had built the first adult sized bedframe for me when I outgrew my small bed. He drove my boyfriend to his chemo sessions because my grandfather also had cancer and knew how terrifying it was to go alone.

Did he fully understand what it means to be intersex? To transition? No. But he understood that one of his loved ones was suffering and that he could help to alleviate that pain. And so he did.

He taught me calligraphy. He taught me how to sew. He taught me bookbinding. He gave me many gifts.

But the biggest gift he gave me was, that when someone hated me for what I am, I could stomach it. Because this man was willing to unlearn the bigotry he had been taught for decades so he could love me for who I am.