#nesyapost

Some of my favorite Hassidic Purim pictures

Source: Rachel Wahba

Yentl, the Yeshiva Boy by Isaac Bashevis Singer

Photo: Edinburgh Hebrew Congregation stained glass windows by me

Scene from the most famous Yiddish play The Dybbuk by the Vilner Trupe. 1910s.

"Jewish law teaches that the person harmed is certainly not obligated to forgive a perpetrator who has not done the work of repentance. And even if repentance is wholehearted and demonstrable, if apologies have been offered and amends made, how and when forgiveness factors in is not always straightforward. Is forgiveness something the victim can choose to do at any point? Definitely. Can it sometimes be a useful part of the healing process? For sure. Is a victim obligated to forgive? Well, as we rabbis are fond of saying, that’s a whole other conversation. It’s worth mentioning that forgiveness isn’t the same as reconciliation—returning to some sort of relationship that will continue into the future. Regardless, I want to spell out that, in Judaism, a person can do real, profound, comprehensive repentance work and even get right with God—experience atonement—even if their victim never forgives them. Repentance and forgiveness are separate processes." On Repentance and Repair by Danya Ruttenberg

On November 23, 1909, more than twenty thousand Jewish Yiddish-speaking immigrants, mostly young women in their teens and early twenties, launched an eleven-week general strike in New York’s shirtwaist industry. Dubbed the Uprising of the 20,000, it was the largest strike by women to date in American history. The young strikers’ courage, tenacity, and solidarity forced the predominantly male leadership in the “needle trades” and the American Federation of Labor to revise their entrenched prejudices against organizing women. The strikers won only a portion of their demands, but the uprising sparked five years of revolt that transformed the garment industry into one of the best-organized trades in the United States.