HEY JEWS

i would never be so churlish as to be literally offended when somebody tells me "merry christmas" but all the same i feel it as a small good thing when someone says "happy holidays," not a big deal, just a microgenerosity like holding a door open

i say "merry christmas" to people who i know to be christian and "happy hanukkah" to known jews and "happy holidays" or "have a good holiday" or "happy new year" to strangers

I want a new non-denominational thing to say to people. Happy Holidays is such weak sauce

"Congratulations!"

"You're Welcome!"

"Mary Poppins!"

Tomboto how much Jewish stuff is going down in casa de Tomboto these days

Like maybe you should come over next week for latkes and hot sauce, which is how we roll here

I dunno if I mentioned this already but I am back in Jew School. I love the rabbi, he is a really engaging teacher! Anyway I'm pretty sure that at some point itt Mordy or others recommended I give the shulchan aruch a go. I mentioned this to my Jew School rabbi his eyebrows knitted in a concerned manner and he said, haltingly, "I... don't actually suggest you embark on that. It's only laws!"

Anyway Jewish ethics is a main area of interest for me so I dunno what I should read.

i'm like 99% sure i never recommended you read the shulchan aruch! unless you were looking for a book of codified laws

like generally shulchan aruch is what students becoming rabbis study to become proficient in laws related to kashrut and family purity - ie very technical material mostly. when you got to an orthodox rabbi with your discolored chicken (or... underwear?) and expect an expert opinion, rabbi is likely using shulchan aruch as source for their ruling. even if you did want to just learn laws there are better works for laypeople including the kitzur shulchan aruch which is an abridged shulchan aruch and probably more relevant the chofetz chaim's work the mishna berura.

Yeah I went back and searched the thread and I have no idea where I got the shulchan aruch idea from!

I just gave myself a small coronary at the thought of going to this (or any other) rabbi with my underwear.

I wonder if the shulchan aruch addresses family purity for women like me who have evicted their uteruses (uteri?) from the premises.

not to be crude but afaik if you're menstruating it needs to be practiced and if you're not it's not (acc to the shulchan aruch making no normative judgements about what ritual practices people should or shouldn't incorporate into their personal lives)

Nah nothing crude about it, but women who have have hysterectomies but kept ovaries and are pre-menopausal obv still have "periods" i.e. menstrual cycles, but no "period" in the "show undies to rabbi" sense. Saves trips to the mikveh I guess?

afaik yes - it's all about the blood [or lack therefore]

I've taken to telling people Hail Yule

Anyway happy Chanukah!

was listening to a podcast and someone told the story of Hershel and the Goblins. it was very cool!

Happy Hanukkah!

this looks very cool:
https://shabb.es/product/ethics/

if you've never read pirkei avos before i highly recommend it (i've quoted it a number of times on ilx, it's where the quote "were it not for the fear government, man would swallow his fellow alive" comes from) and tho i haven't read this version it looks great.

more famously it's where "if i am not for myself, who will be for me?" comes from, as well as "who is wise? he who learns from everyone."

huh yeah that does look good

does look cool. Mordy do you know the ppl behind it?

i do not - i only know that friends on fb were sharing it. i've ordered a copy.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C4ty8T7XAAMBSy-.jpg:large

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C4tyaxiWcAEYsUN.jpg

a nice little lol there is that the highest rating is 91 - approval that Jews have for Jews. we love ourselves.

another fun graph that suggests that the older you get the more you like jews

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C4vf-BWWMAEs5wE.jpg

https://qz.com/915527/in-photos-bene-israelis-the-ancient-jewish-community-of-india/

whoah nice

yeah cool stuff - i'd love to see the exhibit but i do not plan to be in the new dehli area any time soon

delhi*

would love to see some of my jews (looking at you mordy) out at this downtown NYC show that I'm working with:
http://www.greenwichhouse.org/announcements/uncharted-innov

In addition to being the name of this trance-inducing musical style, the term gnawa also refers to the people originally from kingdoms spanning Mali to Ghana who were enslaved by the Moorish rulers and brought North to present-day Morocco. The Jewish presence in Morocco dates back to over 2,500 years ago and upon interaction with the gnawa community, a bond formed over appreciation for gnawa music and its healing powers. Gnawa music pre-dates Islam and originally centered around animistic, spiritual, mystical concepts sung in sub-Saharan languages such as Bambara, Fulani and Sudani. Upon embracing Islam, gnawa songs began to incorporate Arabic language and themes around the Muslim prophets. Sebitiyin, meaning The Saturdays in Moroccan Arabic, is the collection of songs that grew out of the gatherings hosted by the Jewish community for the revered gnawa maalems whom they deeply respected. Themes of these songs still include the original elements of spirits and the natural world, and later came to incorporate shared saints from their Abrahamic traditions. Today, it is still rare to find a maalem that knows this full repertoire so we are especially lucky to have Maalem (Master) Hassan Ben Jaafer, son of the late Abdallah Ben Jaafer, lead us through a powerful moment of unity in music.

wow that sounds fantastic - and on 4/20 no less. it'll be an ask for sure (late night show in the city) but maybe we can make a long weekend of it or something. i'll def see what i can swing.

please do, it should be rad. fifteen buck ticket! affordable! free beer and wine at the show!

the price is def not the problem. the two hour drive is the bigger obstacle. but we'll see. might be nice to get out of philly for a weekend. are hamilton tickets still impossible to get?

i'm gonna guess yes. and in any case, the price is def the problem there.

That show sounds fkin cool
Signed a goy

Goys welcome

this speech was given by one of my yeshiva rabbis last week. it's v much addressed to the orthodox community and some of the challenges facing it (particularly what is known as the "off the derech" or "off the road" aka "leaving Judaism" crisis and a related drug addiction and overdose crisis). because of that i'm not sure if the language will be a huge barrier to ilx posters (and some of the ways of speaking are not at the level of sophistication, particularly about non-orthodox communities, or sophistication of secular humanism, that ilxors might expect) but i thought it was beautiful and i cried multiple times watching it. the ideas being floated in it are not something that are super prevalent within the orthodox community yet but that's why i went to learn w/ him many years ago - bc i thought he was onto something new about the value and meaning of judaism to people's actual lived lives and relationships. at one pt during the speech there's a gasp bc some of the things he's saying are shocking to hegemonic orthodoxy and someone asks if they can record the lecture. from an anthro-social value alone i think it's worth checking out even if u get nothing else out of it: https://www.theyeshiva.net/item/4151

ive been reading Moses Maimonides "The Guide for the Perplexed" and 45 pages in i am quite enjoying it. how prevalent is the idea that God is incorporeal? it is a point he keeps returning to, indeed it is a major theme of the work, which so far has been tasked with introducing the concept of homonyms and words having multiple, contextual, meanings that tend to be reduced to a literalization.

lol and he keeps making fun of people who think the world is flat. this is in the 12th century!

God being incorporeal is broadly accepted in Judaism I can't think of any serious denomination that contradicts that tenet. Maimonides (aka the Rambam) is probably the most canonical figure in the Jewish world (particularly the Orthodox world) and penned the 13 principles of faith that essentially delineate the borders of traditional Judaism. Guide to the Perplexed is fantastic. You'd probably dig this as well - a letter he wrote about Jewish belief in the resurrection of the dead: http://rambam.merkaz.com/Class%2013%20-%20Letter%20on%20Resurrection.pdf

he was also a physician (and some say advisor) to Sultan Saladin. he lived in Cairo and signed all his letters as (paraphrasing), "The one who is sinning by living in Egypt."

yeah i am loving this book! he is really a brilliant thinker, he seems quite hip to the current scientific theories for so long ago. i really like how he talks about the anthropomorphize-ing that usually takes place wrt God. the idea being that we say "God sees" but it is not the same as saying a person sees. he goes on about the different bodily organs involved in perception and the senses, how this is related to sin, how this must be regulated for the goal of worldly moral perfection. he doesn't go deeply into addiction but at one point he notes often people have a peculiar appetite for a particular sense. on the contrary God needs no bodily organs because creation requires nothing that is outside of him. he is incorporeal where we need an ear to hear and an eye to see. his "sight" is a completely different thing than, humans or animals, who are both material and organ-based.

https://www.wdl.org/en/item/3962/#q=maimonides

incredibly ornate illuminated manuscript version of his "Mishneh Torah". really neat psychedelic doodles all over the place. that site is so cool. they have also an original of the "Guide for the Perlexed".

https://www.thejc.com/lifestyle/features/it-s-an-all-jewish-town-but-no-it-s-not-in-israel-1.25044

my brother went to yeshiva with a kid from azerbaijan

https://kavvanah.wordpress.com/2017/06/04/interview-with-yuval-harari-jewish-magic-before-the-rise-of-kabbalah/

- maybe of interest to some here (adam b?)

that is very cool! i had heard of the Sword of Moses. so neat to see a new translation!

6) Why are you personally interested in magic?

Some ten years ago, when I was sitting in an Oxford coffeehouse and pondering about the book I was about to complete, the following sentence came to my mind: magic is a rather boring matter. I knew immediately that these were going to be its opening words. And indeed, in itself, “magic is a rather boring matter: practical action, supernatural technology. In its simple version, a few words are uttered, some of them meaningless. In more developed versions, some acts are performed and then the words are uttered.”

I’ve studied philosophy, Jewish thought, Early Christianity, Gnosticism, Kabbalah and comparative religion. I encountered profound thinking, ideological systems, myths, ethics and sophisticated means of expression. Magic technology is very far from that. It was like turning to the study of Ritual Engineering. Nevertheless, as I also wrote there, something in it captures the imagination. But there is much more than that.

First, there are people behind the praxis. Magic recipe literature is a broad map of human fears and anxieties, distresses and needs, aspirations and desires. It is a practical literature that, focusing on daily needs of the individual, slips beneath the radar of social supervision and reflects life itself in a fascinating way.

Second, magic is highly democratic. It focuses of the individual and, indifferent to religion, race or gender, takes personal needs of all kinds very seriously. It supports the individual at times of crises and assists him or her in fulfilling personal wishes. Bronislaw Malinowski viewed magic as ritualization of human optimism and I totally agree with him. Belief in magic is an expression of human optimistic decision to act rather than to despair and give up.

Unfortunately, power always involves potential aggression and the promise of magical power also has a destructive facet. Books of magic recipes reflect that facet with instructions of how to harm and abuse the other. Painful as it is, here too magic literature mirrors life itself.

Finally, because of the vague borderline between magic and the power of “true religion,” magic discourse is political by its very nature. It concerns knowledge and power, ideology and hegemony, exclusion and reproduction of social structures. That is true concerning all times – past and present.

I’ve studied philosophy, Jewish thought, Early Christianity, Gnosticism, Kabbalah and comparative religion. I encountered profound thinking, ideological systems, myths, ethics and sophisticated means of expression. Magic technology is very far from that. It was like turning to the study of Ritual Engineering. Nevertheless, as I also wrote there, something in it captures the imagination. But there is much more than that.

this has always bugged me a little. what is he talking about wrt "magic technology"? he says he has studied all of these fields of knowledge that are all about rituals and magic and the secret sophisticated meaning of these perhaps superficially silly myths and yet says magic is "very far" from sophistication. i wonder if it has to do with the writer. he also admits to being an atheist and sort of condescending towards the mystical aspects of those spiritual fields. it is my understanding that "magic technology" in its time was a sort of practical folk craft/conceptual art form/role-playing game that was canonically (through the mystical/esoteric post-Xtian Talmudic commentary) integrated into the theological and philosophical sophistication he praises in the Abrahamic religions.

mostly i don't understand why he can say he has studied the Kabbalah and found it "profound... and sophisticated" and then say that magic, the speaking of magical worlds, is not. it seems like he is holding two conflicting opinions at once. i thought the Kabbalah was all about magical words, didn't he just do a translation of The Sword of Moses? maybe he is talking strictly pagan (folk practices w no references to Abrahamic whatsoever) but he does not specify as such.

i am reading Maimonides right now and he is talking about prophets, how prophecy is closely tied to imagination, that the imagination is an important force that can be hampered during times of depression or emotional turmoil (or helped, as some claim). he talks about there being different levels of prophets, from the miracles-producing saint to the streetside fortune teller, and how Moses is sort of the pinacle of the human prophet, above all others, simply due to his superior nearness to God. my understanding is that classical magic is a holy thing, that everyone from the post-Xtian mystics to medieval cosplay theorists to Golden Dawn hipsters treated it as such, with respect to prior ideological/theological systems, myths, ethics, and sophistication.

magic technology = things like amulets, spells, etc. things meant to accomplish real world tasks (heal illness, help fertility, vex an enemy, etc). by contrast kabbalah and other ideological systems generally do not have any practical element.