two ocean waves heading towards the shore

In Jewish folklore, a golem is an animated anthropomorphic being, created entirely from inanimate matter.

The most famous golem narrative involves Judah Loew ben Bezalel, the late 16th century chief rabbi of Prague, who reportedly created a golem to defend the Prague ghetto from antisemitic attacks. Depending on the version of the legend, the Jews in Prague were to be either expelled or killed under the rule of Rudolf II, the Holy Roman Emperor. To protect the Jewish community, the rabbi constructed the Golem out of clay from the banks of the Vltava river, and brought it to life through rituals and Hebrew incantations. As this golem grew, it became increasingly violent, killing gentiles and spreading fear. A different story tells of a golem that fell in love, and when rejected, became the violent monster seen in most accounts. Some versions have the golem eventually turning on its creator or attacking other Jews.

The Emperor begged Rabbi Loew to destroy the Golem, promising to stop the persecution of the Jews. To deactivate the Golem, the rabbi rubbed out the first letter of the word “emet” (truth or reality) from the creature’s forehead leaving the Hebrew word “met”, meaning dead. The Golem’s body was stored in the attic genizah of the Old New Synagogue, where it would be restored to life again if needed. According to legend, the body of Rabbi Loew’s Golem still lies in the synagogue’s attic. Some versions of the tale state that the Golem was stolen from the genizah and entombed in a graveyard in Prague’s Žižkov district, where the Žižkov Television Tower now stands. A recent legend tells of a Nazi agent ascending to the synagogue attic during World War II and trying to stab the Golem, but he died instead.

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And when you cut it open:

What are Dybbukim? How can we interpret our tradition surrounding them during this fraught moment, as Jewish communities cling to and cleave from tradition, spirituality, and ḥesed (loving-kindness)?

What are our dybbukim?

How does the tradition of Dybbukim engage with our values of Hereness?

As we seek international solidarity while remaining rooted in Jewishness; transformational and yet, demanding of us to be present and connected to the past, never without our roots & the conditions that we re-imagine this ancestral wisdom in.

The stunning images were created by @mygolem_is_here and photographers Aaron Farley and Magda Chudzik.

As a reminder, this is one interpretation and experience of Jewish folkore and folklife. This post focuses on the experience of Ashkenazim in Poland. Jewishness is diverse & vast: this post serves as representation of one facet of it.

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apparently this is a new talking point that’s going around social media, so that’s fun.

not the first time Slow Factory has participated in historical revisionism and erasure of Jewish history, culture, identity, and ties to the region.

https://www.instagram.com/p/C9aL_8NPKFe/?igsh=MThidHI0MWUyY2Jqdw==

For the women of Italy, though, the Torah scroll is not just a beloved ritual entity: It is a witness to their special role within their Jewish communities. In Italy, the women have traditionally held a deeply personal relationship to the Torah scroll—a rapport so unique, and so persistent, that there is a prayer said about this connection every Shabbat in Italy.

“He who blesses our matriarchs, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah, may He bless all the daughters of Israel to merit in creating a skirt or covering for the Torah scrolls, or set up candles in the synagogue for the glory of the Torah,” reads the prayer that is said on Saturday mornings in synagogues in Italy using the Italian liturgy, moments before the Torah scroll is placed back in the ark after the weekly portion reading. “May His Blessed Name return the favor and reward these righteous women; let us say, Amen.”

Putting a special prayer for women smack in the middle of services, and invoking the matriarchs of Judaism, is quite peculiar in Orthodox Jewish synagogue customs. Yet this prayer is said every week in Italy because the Torah skirts mentioned in this prayer tell the story of the history of Italian Jewry and the role of women in that society. These Torah skirts can be seen in synagogues all over Italy, as they are used every week, and inside the Jewish Museum of Rome, where Torah skirts that are hundreds of years old have been restored and are on display.

For Aliza Lavie, an Israeli academic and author of A Jewish Woman’s Prayer Book, the Torah skirts, and this prayer that is dedicated to them, are a reminder that women played an outsized role in Italian Jewry as far back as the Middle Ages. “The women were deeply involved in the community, which was very different from other parts of the world, where women were not given opportunities in the synagogue,” Lavie said. “This prayer is so unique because it is not typically the story of Jewish women. You can’t compare it to any other community.”

Precipizi, an Italian Jewish Hanukkah dessert.

ah i see you have made the mistake of sending a snarky anon about something you know absolutely jack shit about.

anyway since y'all are allergic to google, i'll go ahead and tell you about italki jews.

italkim are a separate rite from sephardim or ashkenazim. our history is different, our liturgy is different, our food is different, and our languages are different. roman jews are one of the oldest jewish diaspora communities.

this is edda servi machlin, who wrote a fantastic book about italian jewish cuisine. i'm lucky enough to own a copy.

we created a ton of food that italians love.

the world's oldest surviving torah scroll, about 800 years old, is - you guessed it - in italy.

our musical traditions are still alive.

here's an album that showcases a variety of italki, sephardi, and ashkenazi melodies.

here's another album that i listen to on repeat bc it's amazing.

anyway.

if by "opt out of privilege" you mean make the claim that italki jews aren't white, you'd first have to admit you think all ashkenazi jews are white and all non ashkenazi jews aren’t white, which erases the existence of ashki jews of color as well as the existence of white non ashki jews. because minhagim aren't races. and, as i said in another post, the insinuation that all ashki jews are white and therefore all ashki jews are privileged is conspiracy theory level garbage that we do not tolerate on this blog.

This writing fragment is nearly 1,000 years old, and it was made by a child who lived in Egypt during the Middle Ages. Several letters of the Hebrew alphabet are written on the page, probably as part of a writing exercise, but the child apparently got a little bored/distracted, as they also left a drawing of a camel (or possibly a person), a doodle that resembles a menorah, and an assortment of other scribbles on the page.

This is the work of a Jewish child from Fustat (Old Cairo), and it was preserved in the collection known as the Cairo Genizah Manuscripts. As the University of Cambridge Library explains:

For a thousand years, the Jewish community of Fustat placed their worn-out books and other writings in a storeroom (genizah) of the Ben Ezra Synagogue ... According to rabbinic law, once a holy book can no longer be used (because it is too old, or because its text is no longer relevant) it cannot be destroyed or casually discarded: texts containing the name of God should be buried or, if burial is not possible, placed in a genizah.

At least from the early 11th century, the Jews of Fustat ... reverently placed their old texts in the Genizah. Remarkably, however, they placed not only the expected religious works, such as Bibles, prayer books and compendia of Jewish law, but also what we would regard as secular works and everyday documents: shopping lists, marriage contracts, divorce deeds, pages from Arabic fables, works of Sufi and Shi'ite philosophy, medical books, magical amulets, business letters and accounts, and hundreds of letters: examples of practically every kind of written text produced by the Jewish communities of the Near East can now be found in the Genizah Collection, and it presents an unparalleled insight into the medieval Jewish world.

Sources & More Info:

Cambridge Digital Library: Writing Exercises with Child's Drawings

In Yiddish, the Holocaust is known as der khurbn ("the destruction"). This loshn-koydesh word directly connects World War II to previous Jewish catastrophes, chiefly khurbn-bais-rishn and khurbn-bais-sheyni, the destruction of the First and Second Temples respectively, and to other moments of violence, such as the pogroms of the 19th century and the ravages of World War I. By calling this event "khurbn," it becomes part of a culturally understood cycle of persecution and perseverance, an extreme event with both historical antecedents and a future beyond it. This is in contrast to the English term Holocaust and the Modern Hebrew term Shoah ("calamity"), which both single out the event as an exceptional moment in time without parallel, precedent, or comparison.