waiting on a miracle

But somewhere along the line they just… Disappeared. My mom says they’re not being paid and they’re not in collections. It’s almost as if someone out there did…exactly what Parker did.

People have been dangerously adulterating their products to make a bigger profit for THOUSANDS of YEARS. Rome famously had problems with people selling counterfeit bread and doctored wine.

meanwhile the (conservative) rabbi at the shul in my hometown will actively stop people from telling him or even implying that a particular reform ger's conversion wasn't fully halakhic because he doesn't want to be obligated not to count them

meanwhile before i went to the mikveh i sometimes had to remind *my own sponsoring rabbi* that i don't count in a minyan yet

meanwhile i've learned our prayers so thoroughly that the stranger standing next to me on rosh hashanah assumed i must've gone to hebrew school as a kid

meanwhile at my first shabbat morning service when i told the floor gabbai i was just starting the conversion class she double-checked which honors i could do then had me open the ark

meanwhile when i told another congregant i was studying to convert she immediately invited me to shabbat dinner

meanwhile my rabbi straight up gave me a set of tefillin when i couldn't afford to buy my own

meanwhile one of my friends recently offered to make me a tallit katan completely unprompted when i said i hadn't been able find one in my size

meanwhile when i went to the one year memorial for october 7th, only a month or two into studying, the ritual assistant from my shul said she was so glad i came because "you're already one of us"

meanwhile every jew who knows i'm a ger or who knew me while i was still studying has invariably welcomed me into the tribe with open arms, because the idea that that makes me any less jewish just isn't there. not even remotely

i asked my rabbi in september 2023, about three months into my conversion, if it would be okay to start wearing a kippah -- i had one from a bat mitzvah and wanted to wear it. he said yes and i've worn one ever since.

two of my best friends bought me a tallit after i went to the mikveh. one of them gave it to me at hebrew school so i wore it for t'filah that morning and got to show the kids what a tallit is and how it's used -- my friends were already enabling me to fulfill the mitzvah of tzitzit, but that day i got another mitzvah out of it by teaching it to the kids.

my best friend and i have been invited to the same friends' house for dinner the past two rosh hashanahs; they've shown us pictures of their grandson.

i sign up for aliyot as often as i can because the mi shebeirach for aliyah has become kind of crucial to my mental health and there's nothing more meaningful to me than to stand in front of the congregation and affirm that g-d gave us, all of us, the torah.

i've said this before but there was a fellow ger on my beit din, and having "avraham v'sarah" written twice on my conversion certificate is so special to me -- sometimes i think of gerim as a sort of tribe, in that we're all siblings, b'nei avraham v'sarah.

By Chana Bloch

It doesn't stand for the proposition that Jews are better than everybody else or that Jews are worse than everybody else. 

It stands for the very common sense proposition that Jews are the same as everybody else, that we have the same rights as other peoples do to live in our ancestral homeland.

And so it's very bizarre when people say they're anti-Zionists and claim at the same time not to be anti-Semites. 

What you’re saying, if you’re an anti-Zionist, is that Bulgarians have the right to live in Bulgaria, Japanese people have the right to live in Japan, Irish people have the right to live in Ireland, and maybe even Palestinians have the right to live in what they call Palestine—but Jews don’t. Jews alone are denied the same rights as everyone else.

The tendency in *some* spheres of Orthodox Judaism to venerate figures in Tanakh and Chazal, the Geonim, Rishonim, and Acharonim (as well as more modern Rabbis) and to treat every anecdote and statement they ever made as Halacha and as something good, and to accuse anyone who tries to humanize them and point out their character flaws or statements they made that are factually wrong, of heresy.....that tendency borders on uplifting human beings to godhood which is tantamount to Avodah Zara. *Especially* post-Tanakh figures in a post-Neviim world.

You can't go around treating the Rabbis like they were omniscient and all-knowing. They were incredibly intelligent and skilled people but they were still people, and sometimes they did or said things that were outright stupid or wrong. And that's okay! Because a Rabbi in Talmudic times saying something factually wrong about astronomy or goats or women doesn't negate their expertise in other realms of Halacha, just like some Nobel Prize winning physicist shouldn't be taken as an expert on botany or psychology or anything outside of their realm of expertise, and it doesn't negate their intelligence or accomplishments to say that. I say this as someone who grew up Orthodox and still considers himself Orthodox. I am a Rabbinic Jew. Rabbinic Judaism is what allowed us to survive as a people in a post-Temple world. I love Rabbinic Judaism!

Are you a religious Christian for whom a Pride parade is considered "work" and therefore something you would not be able to attend were it scheduled on a Sunday? Do you attend Mass on Sunday that takes all day and therefore limits your free time on Sunday? No? So then why is it such a hassle for things to be scheduled on a Sunday? In fact, many workplaces still don't give off Saturday as a given, but they do give off Sunday. Wouldn't you want more people (Jewish or not) to be included?

Jews, whether you like it or not, were and are deeply foundational to the modern LGBTQ Pride and Rights movement. Magnus Hirschfeld was a Jew. Harvey Milk was a Jew. Brenda Howard, the literal "Mother of Pride" was a Jew. They may not have been Orthodox Jews or Shabbat-observant, but Jews of all levels of observance and religiosity deserve to be included. And Jewish religious institutions have been supportive of LGBTQ causes for decades. And even if Jews weren't part of and supporters of the community from the start, Jews are part of the community now and ought to be included, as should people of all ethnicities, races, religions, and nationalities.

But honestly? My views have changed since I made that post that earned it a screenshot and post onto reddit saying "look how crazy and entitled those Jews are". I think the Western LGBTQ movement's exclusion and hatred of Jews now goes far beyond scheduling things on Saturdays. That's just the surface level. Things are far more overt when Jewish interest groups are quite literally banned from Pride events, when Jews are regularly harassed and attacked both off-line and online, when the overwhelming message from the Western LGBTQ world is that an LGBTQ person who is also a Jew is a traitor to their own kind. And it gets worse and worse each year as more LGBTQ people trade in their own safety and welfare and future prospects to spend their time, energy, and money hating Jews. Not only is it disgustingly hateful, it's counterproductive. LGBTQ rights are being attacked and stripped away all around the Western world, but people care more about investing their energy into best excluding Jews, Jews who, LGBTQ or not, would be and are supportive of LGBTQ causes. It's deeply insidious.

My schedule isn't more important than anyone else's. I know that. You know that, and you know that you were reading my post in bad faith. Jews are not the only people who would benefit from important Pride events not being scheduled on Saturdays. People who still have to work on Saturdays would benefit too. And I know you read a tiny snippet of my post and blacked out, because in that post I also mentioned Pride events being scheduled on Jewish holidays (Shavuot often times falls out in June). I think if you are in a community with a large number of Jews who are contributing members, it's only basic decency to be considerate. I am annoyed at conventions that do that same thing, mind you. But "niche interest conventions" are not a broad, umbrella movement the way the Western LGBTQ movement is. A science fiction convention isn't part of the same movement as a WWII history airshow, for example, and they are often not run by the same kinds of people and they are often not even attended by the same kinds of people.

a) he came a little (which is gay)

or