HEY JEWS

Pesach is upon us. Who up in this bitch is keeping Kosher for Passover?

Nope. My excuse is that my wife wouldn't tolerate it, but really it's me, not her.

Yep. With family for Passover and they're huge kosher-keepers, so we're also kosher-keepers by default.

I'm all for eating some matzah, but no way I'm koshering my kitchen.

Also: not actually Jewish, so technically not obligated to do shit.

i'm invited to a house for passover where they'll be drinking and smoking lots of trees

Haha, ditto. Possibly the same one.

What does koshering actually involve, anyway? I'm vaguely aware of boiling water and possibly some earth or dirt or something? I know you can kosher stainless steel sinks and dishwashers etc but not ceramic or enamel ones. It must be enough of a pain that people cover their counters for Passover rather than deal with it.

strut around with a candle looking for leavened shit

Okay so I read this thread title to the tone/pace of the sample starting Front 242's 'Welcome to Paradise.'

xxp

My parents fill their sinks with boiling water, then drop a burning hot brick into the water in the sink until it overflows on the counter. I think that's how they kasher their sinks. I know one guy who uses a blowtorch.

whoa

Oh yeah. You can't really blow-torch the Corian, can you. I guess I assumed you'd have to get a rabbi in for the ritual re-purification. Is that actually a DIY project? Cool!

We got offered a couple of really cheap apartments in a Lubavitch nabe, until they found out my roomie has a dog. But I specified that we wouldn't be a religious household, or keep kosher, and they were like, whatever, we can take care of that. So...really? The oven, too?

Self-cleaning oven.

And yeah, this stuff can all be done DIY style. As long as you know the laws, there's nothing you need a Rabbi for.

Awesome. I do love the endless ingenuity, practical AND theological.

I'm celebrating Passover by saying something about it on the internet.

we have some matzah in the house and will probably be going to a seder. I don't bother with the kosherness, I ain't wandering in any stupid desert.

i really like passover, am i crazy?

no its usually my fave

i bought kosher for passover coke yesterday. it's delicious.

ooh nice

it's like thanksgiving, in april, without bread

OH SHIT PASSOVER COKE. Need.

I am going to a seder (my first), but because the hostess can't do it on the usual night(s), we're doing it on the 18th. Pseudo-seder. But I'm still psyched. Might try to sort of keep kosher-ish just to see what it's like.

Ooooh and I'm in charge of making charoset for the pseudo-seder, so recipes pls!

lol i read that coke thing really wrong.
xposts

Also: how much hebrew vs. english at your seder?

I never understood why anything other than unleavened bread is necessary though? I mean no bread as a symbol/reminder of events passed makes sense, keeping kosher out of respect for the period I can see, but, like not being allowed to eat corn? What's up with that?

um are you unfamiliar with the passover story or what

oh snap

During Passover, Jews refrain from eating chometz: anything that contains barley, wheat, rye, oats, and spelt, and is not cooked within 18 minutes after coming in contact with water. No leavening is allowed. This signifies the fact that the Hebrews had no time to let their bread rise as they made a hurried escape from Egypt.
Jews of different backgrounds do not observe all of the same rules. Ashkenazi Jews, who come from Europe (most Jews in America), also avoid corn, rice, peanuts, and legumes as they are also used to make bread and may have other grains mixed in. These items are known as kitniyot.

I thought it was anything that swells in contact with water? Or something like that. No corn syrup, in any case, which gives us delicious REAL SUGAR COKE.

The Torah instructs a Jew not to eat (or even possess) chometz all seven days of Passover (Exodus 13:3). "Chometz" is defined as any of the five grains (wheat, spelt, barley, oats, and rye) that came into contact with water for more than 18 minutes. This is a serious Torah prohibition, and for that reason we take extra protective measures on Passover to prevent any mistakes.

Which brings us to another category of food called "kitniyot" (sometimes referred to generically as "legumes"). This includes rice, corn, soy beans, string beans, peas, lentils, peanuts, mustard, sesame seeds and poppy seeds. Even though kitniyot cannot technically become chometz, Ashkenazi Jews do not eat them on Passover. Why?

The Smak (Rabbi Moshe of Kouchi, 13th century, France) explains that products of kitniyot appear like chometz products. For example, it can be hard to distinguish between rice flour (kitniyot) and wheat flour (chometz). Therefore, to prevent confusion, all kitniyot was prohibited.

I'm throwing myself in with the Sephardic camp this year.

Take a Hot Dog
and make it Kosher

Oh makes more sense, and yes, I know the story, but I'm wondering why go so much further than just bread, I mean, Matzah is just unleavened bread, still has wheat in it and all, it's not like they didn't have enough time to cook pasta when escaping Egypt.

Keep hearing the spoken intro to "One Step Beyond" when I see this thread title.

Which is to say, eating corn is a long ways away from letting bread rise.

Keep hearing the spoken intro to "One Step Beyond" when I see this thread title.

Don't eat that - EAT THIS

passover is a great holiday.
G R E A T

BUT, the Haggadahs have not arrived in the mail from my grandfather yet and I'm also getting a bit nervous about seating... also, anyone have a good veggie matzoh ball soup recipe? vegetarians certainly won't eat teh brisket.

good god how do vegetarians ever survive during Passover without the grains?

apparently quinoa is ok.

good to qui-know-a

Seven days of quinoa and matzah sounds . . . constipating.

Can we turn this thread also into a list of all of the awesome things about being jewish in general?

1. Chosen people.
2. Latkes

3. Talmud

4. hot sabbath sex

5. Neuroses

6. control of the media/money

good god how do vegetarians ever survive during Passover without the grains?

― quincie, Monday, April 6, 2009 11:58 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

This may explain my increased secularism that started around the time I became vegetarian.

6. Noodle kugel

which could’ve explained some of the condescension

I’ve said it before but I generally reject the division of Jews into two camps that are either “Zionist” or “anti-Zionist.” To me it just feels like diminishment of our already pretty small tribe.

the sermon is here in case people are interested in reading: https://rabbiblake.org/2024/10/04/rosh-hashanah-5785-a-letter-to-our-anti-zionists/

lots of mention of "innocents caught in the crossfire," not much mention of the brutal death and devastation rained upon people for nearly 365 days. not one mention of lebanon.

Our sermon sounded like it was written on Oct. 8, 2023. As my friend said, he grew up at this temple, the old rabbi was his old rabbi, but he'd never heard the talmud cited to justify vengeful violence before.

Just to be clear, this is a liberal reform temple in an extremely liberal area of Chicagoland.

yep, similar demo at mine

shana tova to all. I am not a synagogue attendee but my mom came over last night with honey cake for me and my brother. would be nice if 5785 was very different from 5784, somehow

My rabbi condemned those who claim to speak for all Jews or who say all Jews must believe a certain way. Then he said that most religions crave homogeneity but Judaism craves differences. If each of us is made by God and we’re all different and that is worthy of blessing. Ambiguity is good he said. .Referring to the Talmud and other things he said Judaism is an interpretative religion. And he noted the joke that 2 Jews equals 3 opinions. He said that
Nowhere are Jews opinions more different than on Israel and he suggested people need to hear each other out. He also brought up the U.S. election. But he never addressed specifics, and regarding addressing different views he never got into how fraught it can be , especially if one person involved is just using emotion and misinformation.

This synagogue has had members of the Israel - based Standing Together group of Jews and Arabs speak, but the sermon never got into that .

Side note: a few years ago my older kid helped successfully lead a campaign to get the local public schools closed for the high holy days, which was impressive. Yesterday I asked my other kid, the one still in high school, if any of the kids were even aware of why the school was closed and she rolled her eyes and told me how many people asked her what she was doing on the day off.

True, but at least your kids aren't missing stuff in class. My job had a meeting yesterday that I missed. I called a colleague later to find out about what went on. That co-worker asked me about what I do on that holiday.

My college kid did have to go to class yesterday for something that was unmissable.

This synagogue has had members of the Israel - based Standing Together group of Jews and Arabs speak, but the sermon never got into that .

― curmudgeon, Friday, October 4, 2024 2:22 PM (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

P sure that’s the group who just spoke in my town. My neighbor organized it and my wife went.

A year. You always know that when demagogues say it will be a short, simple war, it never actually will be, and I knew it wouldn't be any different this time, but man, what a queasy, nightmarish situation it is. I feel a kind of depression around it all - I'm perfectly functional, but I feel very withdrawn, like I don't want to have opinions about anything, don't want to express anything, don't want to participate in things. I've been less social, haven't been playing music. I went to a party finally last night and a couple people said they feel like they haven't seen me in a while. I feel somewhat useless. I would only express this kind of borderline self-pity ITT, it's very small compared to what's going on. It feels like no good outcome is possible, for Palestinians, for Lebanese, even for Israeli Jews on some level. I feel overwhelmed by things I haven't even begun to be able to process yet, probably never can.

Standing Together’s Instagram post for October 7

https://www.instagram.com/p/DA0u5g4t0eI/?igsh=MW10b2U4YXJtbGUxMw==

I wish I felt more comfortable talking about this stuff here, but I don't, which is ultimately a me problem but still possibly indicative of a broader problem.

I don’t really talk about it either, and have yet to do so on my own social media. Plus I know some Israel right or wrong folks , and I don’t talk to them about it either.

I also know vehement anti-Zionist folks and I don’t discuss these issues with them either

My universe of people I feel comfortable talking about any of this with is exceedingly small and shrinking.

I thought this was a lovely sermon by way of Josie (who grew up at our temple!):

https://bsky.app/profile/josie.zone/post/3l6bd5jfovj2b

I had a surprisingly nice YK. We got invited last minute to a break-fast with some other families from the synagogue, all of whom we already know. We wound up talking a lot about the various versions of Judaism we grew up with and how they compare to this one, and I kind of had a realization that the best reason (for me at least) to be involved in Judaism is the community, and that I had finally found a place where I could live near, send my kids to public school with, and go to synagogue with, the same group of people, where I also actually like the parents (I have even played cover band gigs with a few of them). I realized that the particular way in which a synagogue does services or its particular traditions matter to me a lot less than just having that feeling of community, which I have finally found.

That was kind of the theme of our sermon today, (loosely) about the importance of community. I don't think there is something necessarily uniquely special about Judaism, but I find there's a comfort that comes from being with other Jews that is different from the other friendships I have. I know my kids have both independently discovered that for themselves as well.

Yeah for sure.

So our rabbi, who steered completely clear of Israel and Palestine on Rosh Hashanah, dove right in on Yom Kippur. I didn't want her to do this because I wasn't confident in her ability to handle it gracefully but you know what, I think she did a really good job, reminding us that the reality of our oppression does not mean and will never mean we're unable to oppress or excused from our moral responsibility not to ("Is this the fast I asked of you?" you know the drill.)

And here's what's interesting -- people I know in the shul who I think of as on the right in a way that annoys me, i.e. people who are constantly complaining about their fear in our mid-sized American city as Jews, "rampant anti-semitism on our campuses" etc. etc., to my surprise they were not mad at this at all. I thought they would be. But to my surprise, the acknowledgment of Jewish suffering was completely enough for them to hear from our rabbi at the pulpit that we, Jews, are killing people who have the same right to life as we do, and that it's un-Jewish and it has to stop. And maybe that's what they have always thought and I didn't give them enough credit.

I wanted to say this here rather than in the Israel thread because I don't like the performative feeling of it, but I feel ill from what I have been seeing. In addition to the horrors, something that has been disturbing me a lot is watching people who claim to have the same tradition and religion that I grew up in and that I think made up a significant part of forming who I am, and yet somehow seem to arrive at exactly the opposite of everything I got from it. I don't always think of myself as extremely religious, and yet I feel like I am watching people desecrate my religion, like watching someone piss on a Torah, only they act like pissing on it is worship. Obviously there was "support for Israel" as part of my synagogue upbringing, but I never saw anyone justify anything like what is happening today - if they justified things it was presumably because they simply didn't know what was going on, as it was possible to not really know back then.

Two videos in particular that keep ringing out in my head, one of a soldier reading torah to a blind, bound man on the ground, almost as a taunt. He may very well have been a Hamas commander, it doesn't matter, it still disgusted me. The other was at the beginning of the war, this awful, honking singer entertaining the troops about to invade Gaza with a song about being a "light unto the nations." This is what I mean by feeling like I am watching people desecrate Judaism. It's like the way I always pictured the scene of the golden calf.

yes that is what is happening

it's things like this that lead to major schisms, and we're on the road to one

on a different note, this was read from the bimah on Rosh Hashanah at my congregation and I found it pretty moving. Maybe it doesn't have the same impact on the page, but being read aloud in the community it was really something.

http://www.auroralevinsmorales.com/blog/vahavta

That is beautiful

I feel similarly snout the “feeling ill”. I don’t want to renounce my Judaism, but I do want to renounce whatever part of my community condones what’s happening, and right now it feels hard to figure out how to have it both ways.

Judaism's a spectrum (it's always been that way), they don't have any exclusive claim to it.

The Torah is the story of G-d coming down and asking “what the fuck are you doing what is wrong with you?!” over and over again.

we're livin the dream lol

We are all god in this scenario

66% of israeli jews want trump to win, while 72% of jewish americans support harris. the gap is widening and it’s a real problem. as is the decision by nominally liberal jewish groups to continue their support full-throated support of israel as it descends even further into fashyland

sources:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/poll-shows-israelis-massively-favor-trump-over-harris-in-us-election/

https://jewishdems.org/new-jewish-voter-poll-harris-72-vs-trump-25/

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/is-it-time-for-compassionate-judaism-to-split-with-vengeful-racist-judaism/?_gl=1*vki0h9*_ga*MjA3NjUwOTg3MC4xNzQ3NzAxNjAy*_ga_RJR2XWQR34*czE3NDkxNDE3ODMkbzUkZzEkdDE3NDkxNDE4MDkkajM0JGwwJGgw

I was surprised to see this in The Times of Israel. The subhead is almost verbatim a thought I have had a lot in the last few years:

"I wonder how my synagogue, day school, and summer camp can be part of the same movement as people who joyfully sing 'Death to the Arabs'"

Never read the comments as a rule but really really don’t read the comments on that article :/

Nothing I haven't seen before. Same old tired arguments. "You don't even practice real Judaism." "We have more kids."

yeah, just so dispiriting to see someone coming from that world making even the slightest attempt to take a step back and say "is this really who we are?" and everyone immediately jumps down their throat with so many crap arguments - self-hating jew, whataboutism, you're weak, etc etc.

So... I'm not Jewish, but my wife is and we're raising our kids that way and we go to a reform temple for special occasions but not regularly. In all the times that I've been there since Oct. 7th, there hasn't been a lot of acknowledgement of what's going on apart from sorrow and prayers immediately after (my kid's bat mitzvah was on Oct. 7th) and every service the rabbi thanks cops and firefighters and the soldiers in Israel and the INNOCENT Palestinians. Which has always rankled me. Who decides innocence? Why not make that distinction for the Israeli soldiers that are innocent and not bother praying for the rotten ones? There have been comments about the antisemitic student protestors without acknowledging what the protestors are protesting.

There's not a more liberal temple in town that I know of, and my wife's family has roots in the temple as long as Jewish people have been in the area. My wife and kids are on the same page as me, but are my expectations misplaced? Is a temple service not the place to address this? I realize the rabbi is trying to lead a diverse congregation and a lot of them are old and pro-Israel. As time goes on, I wonder more and more if we have a place there but that's not really my place to say.

Part of me wants to speak directly to the rabbi, who I get along with well enough, and ask him WTF? Maybe I should talk to my mother-in-law and get her take on it. She goes regularly and is not a zionist.

Has anyone left their temple over this? It's probably safe to assume that our temple sends money to Israel. I don't know what I'm trying to say or if this is the right thread to ask about it. I know our temple does a lot of good in our community, I just.... How the hell can anyone be on board with this?

It's a hard issue. I was raised in a Israel is always right synagogue long ago (and would not want that now) and only in more recent years have been occasionally around Rabbis who provide the context you mention. Then a Rabbi who I thought would address things well post October 7 based on his pre-October 7th sermons has disappointed me. So I luckily found a different rabbi at another synagogue who is better (but life has led me to only going occasionally to services or doing them by zoom). Maybe talk to your mother-in-law first and decide from there whether to try to discuss with the Rabbi in private. After my son's bar mitzvah with a fairly good Rabbi which is now some years ago, we attended services less and less.

Is it actually reasonable to assume your synagogue is donating money to Israel? You mean like the synagogue itself, not its members? Is that something synagogues do?

FWIW we are at a small, building-less reconstructionist synagogue where the views likely range from liberal zionist to outright anti-zionist. I don't think anyone is Likkud or even centrist on Israel. The synagoguge had a discussion of the Beinart book and people on the listserv were promoting a screening of No Other Land. Even still, the (outgoing) Rabbi sometimes used what I thought were clunky and uncomfortable ways of expressing concern for Palestinians - I guess it's a touchy thing where rabbis feel like they have a hard time finding the right way to express things without stepping on some of the members.

My wife has said that the synagogue is probably sending money to Israel, and I just assume that she knows more than me. Googling tells me that it is common for synagogues to send financial contributions to Israel which is what I had assumed.

I don’t know what I seek to accomplish or know, or what obligation the rabbi has. It’s probably my desire for somebody besides me to do something. At the very least it might be an interesting conversation with the MIL.

There are so many lines being crossed now that I feel as though I need to figure out where other lines are that I hadn’t considered before.

it is rich seeing clergy from my childhood synagogue, who pray for peace weekly, if not daily from the bimah, posting bloodthirsty drivel about israel's strength and the need for iran to be "neutralized"

it was the same shit in the immediate aftermath of oct 7. nominal empathy for palestinians, but no self-reflection at all

I have learned not to accept Facebook friend requests from anyone associated with our temple because some of them are turds and it is so disheartening to see their hearts laid out like that. It’s like seeing old friends wearing a MAGA hat.

Watching Israel destroy Gaza has really broken my spirit and my heart in a lot of ways. And it just continues, now watching them (or the "contractors" or whatever) treat people seeking food like animals.
I felt the need to say that somewhere, and I don't really like posting stuff like that in the I/P thread - in fact I don't really like posting there at all, it feels performative and I also strongly dislike a couple of the frequent posters.

yep, and it’s even more disheartening to see people i once respected continue to cheerlead and spew the talking points even after all that has happened

Yeah. I mean among the people I actually respected, IDK if I quite see "cheerleading," but there's certainly a good amount of denial and deflection. Which I kind of relate to, because I get stuck doing it sometimes!

It's very hard not to feel defensive as part of a small global minority that was almost wiped out.

Also, people do say stuff that isn't true all the time, so if you want to distract yourself by just arguing with those things and ignoring the bigger picture, it's very easy to.