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[ID: a reddit comment by tomohawk12345 that reads:

"this sexual minority isn't part of the sexual minority group" 🤓🤓

and

Basically, a lot of truckers feel VERY attached to their trucks, to the point where it's common for truckers to refer to them as their "first baby".

So, knowing this, this trucker's wife organised a photoshoot where her husband's "first baby" got to meet his "second baby". Kind of like those pregnancy photoshoots with dogs?

And fat liberation says "It's okay to be fat!" and fat people say "I'm happy being fat and I don't try to become skinny!"

And it scares people that that is an option. It scares people to think that they have sunk so much time, so much effort, so much misery into avoiding being fat. And this person in front of them is just... not even trying. Rejecting the game. Saying You Don't Have To Do That.

If they accept that they didn't have to do that... then they made themselves so unhappy, for so long, for no reason.

They want their effort, their unhappiness, to have been worth it. To have meant something.

The view of obligation and duty in Xianity seems to be one of restriction - of limiting what you're allowed to do. And I won't deny there's a thread of that in Judaism - in most religions, even.

But there's another thread in Judaism - obligation limits what other people can stop you from doing.

If, for example, you are obligated to give to the poor, nobody can stop you because those people don't deserve it.

More famously, if you are obligated to violate the other rules to save a life, nobody can penalize you for the violation.

It's not just a religious concept, either - I have partners who struggle with feeling "selfish" any time they do something for themselves. By giving them an obligation to spend a certain part of their budget on pure luxury indulgences for themselves, I can circumvent that feeling.

That's a Christian transliteration and a Christian name. In Judaism that name isn't meant to be pronounced at all, and any authentic transliteration has been lost to time. It's considered so holy that the stand-in word for it (Ad-nai) is traditionally reserved exclusively for prayer. There are even rules about even writing it down on things which could be damaged or destroyed. Pronouncing it like Y****h or J*h**a could even be considered blasphemous from a Jewish perspective.

Just because we respect other people's right to follow their religion doesn't mean we have to respect their religion.

Let me be clear: We should respect other people's RIGHT to follow their religion. We do not have to respect their religion.

Demanding that non-believers respect religion laws is ludicrous, and if we give in to it the next thing we know we'll be hearing demands for blasphemy laws; punishment for anyone who offends religions sentiment. There have been many cases, mostly in Islamic countries, where even perceived insult to Islam is punished with death.

Just because someone acts offended doesn't mean they're in the right. Anyone can act offended. Acting offended is not an argument that's going to hold up in a logical debate about any issue.

Being a member of a persecuted minority also doesn't automatically make someone right.

I havent personally read it yet, but ive heard rave reviews of Robert Alter’s translation, it is available on libgen for free!

Besides the translation, are you having trouble relating to the stories, finding spiritual meaning, trying to find any sort of meaning? if you need help interpreting what its all supposed to mean, a good place to start is reading divrei torah, or torah commentaries, which will give interpretations and more detail on each of the 54 parshot (sections) of the torah. Some good sites are reconstructing judaism, reform judaism, hadar (great traditional but egalitarian resource!), and ofc chabad

If youre having trouble comprehending the language of the torah, you may find Rashi’s commentary helpful, as it has both interpretation but also has basic clarification of what the text is saying. his commentary is considered to be the gold standard of torah commentary, hes also hilarious sometimes so i highly recommend reading his commentary on song of songs! he has commentary on all parts of the tanakh, including all five books of torah. It is available on sefaria here

If youre looking for a more kabbalistic/spiritual commentary on the torah, the Or HaChaim is great, and i find it quite easy to digest. It’s also available on Sefaria here

I find commentaries best read alongside the original torah portion that they are discussing.

Don't start by treating the Torah like a literal narrative account. For many people, this is the only way they know how to engage with Biblical texts, but in Judaism, it's really not the main way we read the Torah at all.

Torah is a collection of stories and laws and poetry – the fact that we Jews believe that it is divine in no way means that we believe that it is all literal; this is much like how the fact that English lit scholars tend to believe that Poe was a great writer doesn't at all mean that they think he literally slept in a tomb by the sea.

When approaching Torah, there are four main methods of interpretation:

First, there's p'shat or "surface meaning": This is the closest thing we have to literalism, but even p'shat is not exactly biblical literalism in the way that Christians tend to mean. Think of this as "that type of literary analysis you did in high school" and you won't be too far off. A p'shat interpretation of Edgar Allen Poe's "Annabel Lee" would be something like "the narrator loved this women so much that angels killed her, and now he lies down in her tomb – the rhyme scheme, repetition, and meter conveys the narrator's intense mournfulness."

Second, there's remez or "hinted meaning": This is something more like a higher-level literary critique, involving more hidden or symbolic meanings within the text. A remez interpretation of Edgar Allen Poe's "Annabel Lee" would be something more like "when you contrast Annabel Lee with poems such as The Raven, Ulalume, and To One in Paradise, you see an evolving view of the concepts of death and doomed love."

Third, there's derash or "inquiry": This is a more active engagement with the text, where scholars draw meaning and stories out of what's written by contrasting multiple texts, and then additionally reading between the lines of what's written. A derash interpretation of "Annabel Lee" might be in the form of an imagined dialogue, in which Annabel Lee's ghost responds to the narrator's assertions in the original poem by quoting passages from Edgar Allen Poe's other works – and this dialogue could end up suggesting a meaning in which the young love referred to in the poem was symbolic of something else entirely.

Finally, there's sod or "secret meaning": This is an esoteric form of interpretation which I'd steer clear of entirely until you have a fairly complete understanding of the contents of the text and their more simple interpretations. A sod interpretation of "Annabel Lee" might look like someone pointing out that Edgar Allen Poe tends to use the letter "L" for all of his doomed female love interest characters, then going into a thesis-length analysis of the symbolic meanings of the letter "L" throughout all of English literature, and then arguing that a connection they've discovered between "Annabel Lee" and Shakespeare's "Measure for Measure" through analyzing the nature of the letter "L" elucidates a deeper human meaning of the nature of love and tragedy.

Gender is like G-d: You will struggle with it, fight it, curse its name some days… and you will curse yourself for failing its standards, for resenting it. You will remember that you love it, that it’s a source of deep comfort and solace in your life… and then you will struggle with it once more.

Gender is like G-d: Esoteric and ineffable. You will spend your whole life searching for the right words to describe what it means, how it feels, to you; and you will spend your whole life discovering new facets and layers to that meaning.

“Charity” and “tzedakah” are not synonymous. To many Jews this is relatively clear, but I have seen gentiles struggle to understand the difference. So let’s look at each of these concepts.

Charity, the predominant word used to describe “giving money to people/entities to help make the world a better place” in the west, is a Christian term. And at its root it means giving out of the good of your heart to a person/entity/cause for the betterment of mankind. The word itself is derived from caritas, a Latin word for love. When we speak of charity in the west, we talk about wanting to help people, and then giving our time or money to someone or to some entity for that purpose. If you’re giving money to a good cause but you don’t want to, it’s forced upon you or you’re doing it for social cache, we treat it as a lesser form of giving, because you didn’t mean it. It’s not “real charity.” Charity is giving to your fellow because you love him as you love yourself.

Tzedakah is not at all like that. It too refers to the concept of giving money or other aid to those in need, but it has nothing to do with loving other people or wanting to help people. No, the root of tzedakah is “Tzedek,” which means justice. Giving aid to those in need (or to organizations that will help those in need) is doing justice, and though it’s nice if someone “means it” that is in no way required. Tzedakah is a recognition that it is unjust to have more than you need while denying help to those who don’t have their needs met yet. You can help them begrudgingly, or angrily. You can hate every second of it. But if you give to those in need it is still tzedakah. Because personal feelings, though very relevant to the “love” at the root of charity, are irrelevant to justice.