by Yehuda Amichai

A man doesn’t have time in his life to have time for everything. He doesn’t have seasons enough to have a season for every purpose. Ecclesiastes Was wrong about that.

A man needs to love and to hate at the same moment, to laugh and cry with the same eyes, with the same hands to throw stones and to gather them, to make love in war and war in love. And to hate and forgive and remember and forget, to arrange and confuse, to eat and to digest what history takes years and years to do.

A man doesn’t have time. When he loses he seeks, when he finds he forgets, when he forgets he loves, when he loves he begins to forget.

And his soul is seasoned, his soul is very professional. Only his body remains forever an amateur. It tries and it misses, gets muddled, doesn’t learn a thing, drunk and blind in its pleasures and its pains.

Episode I

Bereshit

bara Elohim et hashamayim ve'et ha'arets.

Veha'arets hayetah tohu vavohu vechoshech al-peney tehom veruach Elohim merachefet al-peney hamayim.

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Episode I

In The Beginning

God created heaven and earth.

Because here's the thing: if you acknowledge that structural antisemitism exists, you then have to support efforts to undo structural antisemitism and consider the fallout of historical antisemitism.

If you contain it to one tragic event (no matter how huge) and also minimize it (because it's not the only genocide, have you considered __?) and universalize it (this teaches us about the inhumanity of people towards those who are *different*) and atomize it (people can be so weird about Jews and Judaism, they must really be an unusually hateful person)

Paddington Bear first appeared in the children's book "A Bear Called Paddington" 65 years ago on October 13, 1958. But did you know that the little bear with a big heart was inspired by Jewish children who escaped the Holocaust on the Kindertransport? The Kindertransport was a rescue mission that took place between 1938 and 1939, during which 10,000 Jewish children were sent by train to safety from Germany to England, traveling alone and without their parents. Paddington's creator, Michael Bond, was motivated by his memories of children arriving at London's Reading station during WWII. These young refugees each carried a small suitcase and wore labels around their necks for identification. It's no coincidence that in the book, the little bear is found sitting on his suitcase at Paddington Station in London with a note around his neck that reads, "Please take care of this bear. Thank you." Photo: Felicity McCabe Contributor: @jggoltz

What they mean: "I want to know whether to activate my short term waiting mode where I just wait and do nothing else, or activate my long term waiting mode where I occupy my mind with something else. I fully understand that both are possibilities, and I have no problem whatsoever with either one, but I want more information so I can best adapt to the situation."

The Shechinah, the Divine Presence, is described in feminine terms and She goes with the Jewish people into galus, exile, at the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. What does it mean, for us to imagine G-d as being in exile with us? It's a profound image. We are exiled from our land, from the Beis HaMikdash and the closeness to the Divine Presence that it allowed, yes. But we are not totally cut off; the grief we feel is shared by Hashem Herself as we build a sacred remnant together in the diaspora. What does it mean, for the Divine Presence to be in exile with us, instead of whole? What do we learn from the idea that the sacred feminine is broken, exiled, and alienated along with the rest of klal Yisrael from the masculine Malchus? What does it say that the world will only be perfected (takken olam) when Hashem is One and Ha-Shem is One?

There is another image of the Divine that I've described here before, the holy darkness. The sacred dark that was before the beginning, that begins our days with ma'ariv, and that teaches us the lessons of infinity as the backdrop of the universe. To me it is a beautiful image, this idea that we are all sheltering under the wings of the Shechinah - that our darkness is the protective dark of an embrace. That we are held in a sukkat shalom - a shelter of peace. Like our sukkot, this does not mean we are safe or protected from the elements, but more that our home - our true home - is under the stars, and that no matter what, we are not alone. This article had a lot more fascinating things to say about this as well.

And finally, this image of a hidden G-d, a G-d that weeps for our suffering in G-d's hidden place (mistarim), who speaks silently, in the still small voice within our hearts. There's a drash that I'm still trying to track down about this because it was from several years ago, but it was about this hidden place of Hashem that G-d retreats to in order to grieve the sorrows of the world and how, if we truly want to be close to G-d, we will sit silently in that hidden place alongside Him.

you gotta be able to say "suicide"

you gotta be able to talk about "sex"

they're uncomfortable topics, YEAH for SURE

because LIFE is uncomfortable. Death and suicide and sex and pain are straight up going to happen. not having words for the way it discomforts you doesn't make it more comfortable, it just makes you less able to reach out about it.

even more vital, you gotta be able to say words like "rape", "abuse", "queer" or "racist". cause we fought fucking hard to name those experiences. to identify "rape" as distinct from "sex" and "racism" as distinct from "acceptable behaviour" and "queer" as distinct from "invert"