Judaism

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

sinesalvatorem:

My college has a Christian youth group.

And black people are more religious than average.

So they keep going up to me and asking if I want to join, because I fit the profile of wants-to-join.

I could say I’m an atheist.

But I say “Sorry, I’m Jewish” and they get so confused.

I am proud of my life choices.

First thought: “Why is being black and Jewish confusing? When I first learned you were black and Jewish, I just assumed you were from the Ethiopian Jews. I mean, I gather that isn’t actually true in your case, but in general Beta Israel is a Thing.”

Second thought, addressing the first: “You know, just because we’ve heard of Beta Israel doesn’t mean it’s remotely common knowledge.”

Fair point.

(And while I had heard of the Ethiopian Jews, I was not aware until looking at the Wiki article while composing this that very few of them actually still live in Ethiopia. They’ve mostly moved to Israel, apparently.)

Tags:

#Judaism #reply via reblog

New law makes Canadian Jews second-class citizens | Toronto Star

Link ~ ~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

ilzolende:

nuclearspaceheater:

ayellowbirds:

quasi-normalcy:

So here’s a terrifying implication of Canada’s new citizenship law that I’ve not heard anyone mention before.

I expected this when I heard about the standards of the new law :

Can a Jew formally renounce their Right of Return in a way that Israel would consider binding?

IDK, maybe Israel would be willing to accept some conditional renunciation of the right? Probably not, though.

This seems like a mess.

to hell with Judaism I’m American

I thought I was safe the day I took the oath

“Welcome home,” they said

(we’ll see what “they will consider expanding“ means)

Tags:

#the people in this riding are ever so polite #they are kind and they do not insult you to your face #they may even believe on some level that they like me #but they’re going to elect *him* again #oh I’ll do my part to fight it #I’ll cast the vote he didn’t think I should have #and it’s not going to work #I see those blue signs all over town and I think of every proudly xenophobic message he’s had placed in our mailbox over the years #one time he talked about asylum seekers from the European Union #he said it was suspicious #as if anyone from such an advanced place could *possibly* need asylum #(I don’t think he used ‘advanced’ but that was basically the implication) #he said this a couple weeks after I saw news about a mob in Hungary trying to lynch a Romany family #to this day it is what I think of when I think of him #our home and cherished land #(it says it in every post I make about Canada) #(the elephant in the room) #(the unspoken word) #(*native*) #tag rambles

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

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straighttohelvetica:

Easily the most horrifying line of dialogue I’ve ever heard in an animated movie.

 

castielsunderpants:

NO BUT THIS WAS SUCH A GOOD GODDAMN MOVIE LIKE THE MUSIC IS FUN AND SUPERB THE CHARACTERS WERE REAL PEOPLE EVEN THE ANTAGONISTS THE WOMEN WERE GREAT IT WAS ALL GREAT. IT DOESNT MATTER IF YOURE JEWISH, CHRISTIAN, MUSLIM, ATHEIST, WHATEVER ELSE IT DOESNT MATTER ITS SUCH A GOOD MOVIE AND ITS LITERALLY ONLY 90 MINUTES OF YOUR DAY AND EXPERIENCE THIS HERE JUST CLICK IT LITERALLY IT WILL OPEN IN A NEW TAB GO WATCH. 

 

fifty-shadesofgay:

also can we point out that none of the characters were white? like damn accurate depictions of Biblical characters

 

riskpig:

I reblog every time Prince of Egypt comes up because holy fuck this movie is so good.

 

theparadoxymoron:

first movie i ever saw in theaters

 

comparativelysuperlative:

First movie I ever saw in theaters too! That’s probably not coincidence!

But, like, this line is part of why I grew up thinking utilitarians are monsters. And I mean that in the “check under the bed” sense—there are people who will do literally anything (depending on the circumstances) and not care if the Bible says it’s evil! And they might be coming for you!

And now of course I’m a utilitarian, and so are a lot of the people I think of as doing the most good. Turns out that genocide against a bunch of babies? Not actually a fair portrayal of people doing things for the greater good.

 

brin-bellway:

Also, I recognised this gifset as being from Prince of Egypt (through cultural osmosis; haven’t actually seen the movie), but skimmed the context, so up until “they were only slaves” I thought it was Moses talking about murdering every non-Jewish firstborn in Egypt. And I was glad that apparently somebody in the film had tried to call them out on that tactic. But no, it’s just the same-old-same-old.

See, you have no idea how much that incident scarred me as a child. You’re supposed to hear that story and empathise with the oh-poor-Jewish-slaves-who-just-want-to-be-free, but I empathised with the Egyptian peasants. My fellow firstborns, slaughtered en masse for being born to the wrong families at the wrong time. Innocent, unknowing people, who happened to meet a totally arbitrary qualification that I met.

(My parents, in a desperate attempt to console me, tried to tell me I didn’t meet the qualifications. That in their place, I’d have been one of the ones with goat’s blood painted on the doorway. Thing is, being firstborn is more important to me than being Jewish 10.5 months out of the year, and even during Christmas season, it’s not so much “Jewish” that’s important as much as “not Christian”. (The Egyptians weren’t Christian either.))

That damned story was what made me really aware, on a visceral level, of my mortality. Learning how not to be viscerally aware of mortality (apparently some people do manage to function while aware of it, but I can’t imagine how) was an extremely long, painful process. By the time I’d more or less finished, it had taken me something like a third of my lifetime-at-that-point. (Then Five for Fighting released “100 Years” and started getting it played on all the radios and even a TV commercial, and I had to spend another few months re-doing some of the painstakingly crafted mental blocks. I swear, if I ever meet the one man who comprises Five for Fighting, I’ll…well, I probably couldn’t get away with punching him. I suppose I’d tell him about how he rubbed salt in a traumatised child’s wound, and let his own guilt punish him appropriately.)

Occasionally I hear of people who laugh at the idea that the Bible isn’t suitable for children. I’m not laughing.

 

comparativelysuperlative:

Yeah, people who say that presumably haven’t actually read it.

I always thought about this from the Egyptians’ perspective, too. Except I have an older sister, and I wasn’t sure if “firstborn” here meant “firstborn son” like it sometimes does, and was I required to hope it did because I’m supposed to treat others as more important than myself.

The Prince of Egypt gets credit for portraying the mass killing as a terrible thing. The other plagues are all exciting moves in a game between God/Moses and Pharaoh, and the viewer isn’t supposed to think about the collateral damage from, say, destroying all the crops in Egypt. But in the last one the musical number ends, it shows kids dying (and parents screaming? I don’t remember) and you’re supposed to notice that this is really, really horrible. But then Pharaoh says to leave, there is much rejoicing, and the movie forgets all about it.

Also, uh, “they were only slaves” is a pretty fair paraphrase of what I learned as the Biblical justification for what God did. (The “my son” part is earlier in the chapter. New Testament quote, but it’s pretty heavily supported in the Old.) I would like to think the Prince of Egypt people did that on purpose, but they didn’t.

(And now I’m picturing Rational Draco Malfoy killing a sheep and putting blood on his door, because if the people who were immune to the last nine plagues are doing it, you don’t need to know why to copy them.)

 

responsible-reanimation:

Also, about five minutes after the events of the movie, Moses lays out the rules for owning slaves.

 

ilzolende:

Reblogged for what comparativelysuperlative​ and the people after him (including him again) said.

Especially

I’m picturing Rational Draco Malfoy killing a sheep and putting blood on
his door, because if the people who were immune to the last nine
plagues are doing it, you don’t need to know why to copy them.

(emphasis mine)

That was just great.

(Also, not that the rationalists will say this, but to anyone thinking “this is why the Abrahamic deity was way worse in the Torah than in Christian religious texts”: Judaism doesn’t seem to have a concept of hell. Genocide bad, generation of infinite disutility infinitely worse.)

…when I saw this gifset was going around again, I did not expect it to be a branch with me in it.

(I’m glad to see my contribution was a positive factor in your decision to reblog it.)

Tags:

#Prince of Egypt #death tw #I’m going to file this under #my past self has good taste #though that tag is primarily for things that I merely liked during the previous sighting and am now reblogging for the first time

Baptism

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

comparativelysuperlative:

comparativelysuperlative:

The way the metaphor works, you’re being lowered into the water (symbolizing a grave) and being raised (resurrected) as a new creation free of sin. (Symbolically. More literally, the “free of sin” bit lasts about 0.4 seconds until you have your first conscious thought, and then you probably need more sanctification.) The question nobody ever seems to ask is, what happens to the sin afterward?

I mean, that water ought to be downright toxic. Original sin is a big deal, and in most denominations they don’t even try to dispose of the waste safely. In fact, the pastor is often standing in it the whole time.

If you haven’t seen the sort of baptism service I’m familiar with, it involves a bathtublike container maybe a third the size of a Jacuzzi, with a church leader doing serial baptizing.  Any Christian can baptize someone, but usually it’s one of the ranking people in the church. Catholics probably bless the water first (it’d be weird if their religion includes holy water and they don’t use it for this) but in most denominations holy water isn’t really a thing. So there’s no confounding variable from that direction; it’s just water plus enough of humankind’s innately fallen sin nature to damn someone to Hell a couple dozen times over. And the pastor, along with whoever goes last, is standing in it.

But that very fact tells us it’s not all that dangerous. Concentrated evil sounds scary, but apparently a normal mustard-seed-sized amount of faith can protect people from it. 

image

There’s a ritual described in Leviticus 16. On the Day of Atonement, the High Priest places all the sins of the Israelites onto a goat (hence our word “scapegoat”), and then sets it loose in the wilderness. The population at the time was a bit over 600,000 (source: the for once incredibly convenient Book of Numbers). So we just have to find that goat (we can use my time machine), make it more intelligent until it’s capable of becoming a Christian, and baptize it. From a safe distance. Because seriously, that much concentrated evil is probably radioactive or something. We’re talking the sins of a nation here; this is a decent fraction of the stuff that motivates prophecies of Armageddon.

image

Sacrifices aren’t really a thing anymore. If I remember right, the branch of Judaism that eventually became the current one hasn’t done animal sacrifices since the destruction of the Temple back in ‘70. (The apostrophe stands for “A.D. ”) I don’t know how many Jews have lived in the last 1945 years, but it’s a lot. That many person-years worth of sin is going to mean one seriously scaped goat.

So that means, you just have to find the Ark of the Covenant, reconstruct the Most Holy Place, and get whoever’s in charge of the tribe of Levi these days to do the ritual. No time machine required. Then kidnap the goat, convert it to Christianity, and do the other ritual. The new convert rises as a new creation free of sin (in the process thoroughly messing up the parable of the sheep and the goats) and you’ve got a bathtub metaphorically full of more evil than has been seen in one place since the Crucifixion. Use it wisely.

And by “wisely” I do not mean point a squirt gun at the Pope.

WHEN LAST WE LEFT we were storing every sin committed since A.D. 70 by any Jew who was not also Christian inside a large bucket. It’s time to try more.

When you have an almost unprecedented amount of a thing, obviously you look for bonuses that stack. Several places in the Bible confirm that it’s possible to multiply sin (e.g., Isaiah here), but infuriatingly there’s no actual procedure stated for this.

The best I can find is a handful of lines from the Apocrypha, which is not canon depending on your denomination but is at least a really cool word. Sirach 3:11 says “they multiply sin who demean their mother,” which is nice and direct, but the person in question didn’t really have a mother. She was a literal goat, and probably not covered by any commands about respect for one’s elders. 23:11 says how to double a particular sin, but it only applies to oaths and doesn’t look very retroactive.

I think our best chance is in 23:16:
“Two sorts of men multiply sin, and the third will bring wrath: a hot mind is as a burning fire, it will never be quenched till it be consumed…” The first one is more interesting than the second, so let’s stop there. I don’t actually know what it means by a “hot mind” but actively trying to increase the amount of extant sin had better qualify.

So after you kidnap/rescue the scapegoat and uplift it to human intelligence, convert them to Discordianism or something first instead of Christianity. Something that’ll want to go along with this. Allow the multiplication to do its thing. (The Book of Ecclesiasticus didn’t say what the sin gets multiplied by, but it’s large enough that it matters when it’s an individual doing the sinning, let alone a civilization.) Then you convert them, get them saved by grace through faith, and steal the water after their baptism. Put it in the chemtrails of jets flying over your least favorite nation or something. Have fun!

If you’re wondering what was that verse’s second sort of man who multiplies sin: “a fornicator in the body of his flesh will never cease till he hath kindled a fire.”

In other words, it is actually an available option to start with an apocalypse-causing amount of violations of the law of God—

—which has to be one of the most horrible, terrifying, EVIL things you could possibly think of—

and MULTIPLY it

by SEX.

Tags:

#puns #overly literal interpretations #I don’t think I reblogged the first part of this #I’m rectifying that now

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Reblog with what you would tell your 13-year-old self in the tags.

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

{{OP by thursday}}

Tags:

#so you know how you don’t quite trust devout Jews? #(if you haven’t decided you distrust them yet please forgive me) #(you know how terrible we are at remembering *when* things happened) #(and having a functional ultra-long-term memory compiler–while totally awesome and highly recommended–does not make that easier) #(it just gives you an even *wider* span of time in which the thing may have happened) #(anyway) #it doesn’t quite seem *right* that they’re so enthusiastic about Heritage #and you kind of suspect that given half the chance they would force you into their mould #heedless of what bits they would have to carve off of you to make your proverbial peg fit in that hole? #(and denying all the while that they’re carving you) #(because you have the same Heritage so of course you must already fit) #(they’re only making you see it) #well you had the right idea #but the first time around you didn’t apply it broadly enough #you were born to and raised by feminists #and that makes feminism part of your Heritage too #I’m not saying don’t be friends with enthusiastic feminists #the same way you shouldn’t avoid being friends with enthusiastic Jews #but keep them just a little bit distant #just distant enough that they can’t take a whittling knife to your soul #(and hope like hell that the divergent-timeline butterfly doesn’t have you fall in with a *worse* crowd) #so that’s the bad news #here’s some good news #depending on how far you are into 13 you may have heard of asexuality #and you thought it was great and wished you could be like that #well you *wanted* to be like that because you *are* like that #also: there’s this thing called hypno-fetishism #it’s possible for hypnosis to be *sexual* for some people #no don’t worry I’ll wait here while you re-evaluate your entire life #…

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Anonymous asked: Sort of a silly question, but what was your internet community journey? For instance, my first community was fanfiction net, mostly HP and danny phantom stories with frequent lurking on deviantart and 4chan for fanart. Later I shifted to reddit and tumblr, with occasional forrays into lesswrong and some other hubs of interest. Now its just tumblr and twitter pretty much, though I visit other places. Or if you don’t want to get into all of that, what was just your first internet community? :)

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

theunitofcaring:

No that’s not a silly question it’s really cool and now I want all my followers to reblog with internet community journeys. 

 I hung out on Yahoo! Answers for a couple years (12-14), lurked various advice columns because I find them fascinating, got into Harry Potter fanfiction on fanfiction.net, found Methods of Rationality and through that LessWrong, where there are embarrassing posts as a record of my age-17 Eliezer-fangirl stage, got into the tumblr Silmarillion fandom, burned out of the tumblr Silmarillion fandom, got into tumblr SJ, and wound up here. The only sites I read reliably now are tumblr, slatestarcodex, and aforementioned advice columns. 

This tracks only slightly with my special interests during the relevant time periods, which from high school forward were the TV show 24 , Crichton/King/Grisham generic adult thrillers, Christian apocalyptic fiction, LessWrong, the Silmarillion, the manosphere and neoreaction, Clara, the Silmarillion again, social justice, and Current Special Interest which is a secret for obvious reasons. 

 

(This ended up much longer and more detailed than the other responses I’ve seen. I hope it’s long and detailed in a good way.)

When I was young, the primary places I went on the Internet were Nethack fansites (though I only lurked), the official Chalkzone discussion board on the Nickelodeon forums (my first fandom (and first perseveration that I can recall*), age eight), and–slightly later–Neopets. These aren’t connected to later events, though.

The continuous journey, the one that led me to where I am today, started when I was thirteen, and I saw that under the “other” section of the Girl Scout day-trip medical form Mom had written that I was autistic. (Her point being that if the supervisors saw me sneaking off to find a quiet spot to recover from all the noise and activity, they should let me.)

She later insisted that she’d already told me a few years previously, but either she misremembered, or she’d told me but not explained and I’d registered it as a meaningless, forgettable word (like I had “Presbyterian”), because it was news to me.

Of course, I had to learn more about this. Some news article led me to The Autism Crisis, which despite the name is a neurodiversity-based autism blog. This led me to other neurodiversity-based autism websites (at one point around this time I read the entire autistics.org library), and from there other neurodiversity sites. (This is why part of me always feels surprised when people who have been hanging out on the Internet for a while don’t have at least a basic working knowledge of multiplicity. Within a month or two of venturing out into the big wide Internet, I knew how to parse a caret in someone’s name.)

(During this time, the summer of 2007, I also read through the entire mental health section of when was then my local library. (It was a pretty big library.) The juxtaposition of these books with the blogs I was reading was an interesting experience.)

Stuff about snake-oil autism treatments led me to the skeptical blogosphere. One of the more religion-focused ones had a link to the Left Behind tag on Slacktivist, which I have updated here to reflect his move from Typepad to Patheos. (If there’s a way to make that show in chronological order, I don’t know it. I’ve linked to what is currently the last page.) I read the posts and left. I didn’t read the comments. Not yet.

When I was bored, I spent a lot of time reading TV Tropes. This gave me a lot of cultural osmosis that still serves me well today, as well as an epiphany about my sexuality. (No, really. It had never occurred to me that “fetish” was a framework that could apply to my particular fascination, but once they pointed out that was a possibility, I realised it made so much sense.)

It was probably from TV Tropes that I found the Protectors of the Plot Continuum. (Their sporkings are a little mean for my tastes these days, and I haven’t read any new ones recently, but I still like their characters and worldbuilding.) Back in the day, I even posted on their forums for a while, under a name I never used elsewhere.

Since I was in the general realm of sporking, there were more links to the Left Behind posts. I went through the “oh, right, that exists. *catches up on posts* *leaves*” cycle a couple more times. At one point, sometime around the autumn of 2010, I decided to stay. I read the non-Left-Behind posts. I read the comments.

In the comments, I discovered a thriving (if sometimes flame-y**) community of people. They used the comment threads like a forum, discussing not only the original post, not only tangents that could diverge quite widely from the source, but new topics that they brought to the table themselves. They also had the Greater Slackti-sphere, the blogs written by people who commented there, most of whom also commented on each other’s blogs.

On Christmas Day, 2010, I got up the nerve to join them. I took on a new name. I became Brin.

(I kept reading Slacktivist long after I should have stopped, after I began to realise that social justice was literally driving me insane, because of this importance to my history and development. I do still read and comment on some of the less sanity-draining Greater Slackti-sphere blogs.)

In May of 2011, we were having a conversation in a Slacktivist thread about Star Trek: DS9. Lonespark, a fellow Slacktivite, told us about this place called DS9 Rewatch, where people gathered in a chatroom to watch DS9 together and talk about the episode as it was happening. Like watching TV with your friends, only text-based and with people scattered across the world.

If you followed that link, you’ll have seen that I now run the Rewatch. The thing about “like watching TV with your friends, but with people scattered across the world” is that said scattered people pretty quickly become your friends. Not including me, only one of the people who was there when I joined is still there now, but I maintained friendships with some of the 2011 rewatchers even long after they left. (*waves at justice-turtle​*) (And of course, I also made new friendships with the relatively new rewatchers.)

It was probably also from the Slackti-sphere that I learned of Ozy, who at the time was a co-blogger at “No, Seriously, What About Teh Menz?”. I liked them–in hindsight because they were the least sanity-draining feminist activist I had ever met–and followed them through a couple of blogs before losing track of them for a while.

I don’t remember whether it was through them that I heard of Less Wrong, but it was sometime around then. I read a couple of posts, a few comments, felt extremely intimidated, and left. In hindsight, this may have been a mistake.

(I liked the idea of HPMOR, but didn’t hear of it until after I reached the “perpetually buried in reading material” stage of Internet usage, and have never gotten around to it. I did read Luminosity, and greatly enjoyed it. The protagonist’s clever exploitation of the local laws of nature reminded me of the books of Jewish folktales I loved as a child***, and I found it very refreshing that said protagonist was allowed to not only want, but seek out immortality, without the desire being seen as a character flaw. (I’ve had transhumanist sympathies probably since reading Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom as a pre-teen.))

One of those Greater Slackti-sphere blogs was (and is) Mock Ramblings. I not only read it, but kept an eye on his blogroll, reading any posts that looked interesting and occasionally following a blog if it was interesting consistently enough. Michael Mock reads Comparatively Superlative, and as it was consistently interesting, so did I. At one point, shortly after I commented there using a profile containing a link to my Tumblr, I received a “comparativelysuperlative is now following you” notification. I read his Tumblr archive, found he was consistently interesting there too, and followed him back.

A few months back, he reblogged a post from you. I don’t remember which one it was, but it was interesting enough that I looked into the rest of your blog.

It was…I’m not quite sure how to put it. It was like seeing a braver version of myself, saying publicly the things I had hardly dared even to think. I…may have read your entire archive, and been disappointed when I found you had only been blogging there for eight months. I spread my net, reading other rationalist Tumblrs you linked to. I found that when I had encountered some particularly unhealthy piece of social-justice writing and it was getting me down, reading them helped me feel better. I realised that this was where I needed to be.

*It was also the first that I could recall at the time; I remember being surprised when it shifted.

**The thing that we now call “callout culture” tends to get treated as a Tumblr-specific or at least Tumblr-induced problem. It’s not. I experienced it in the comments of a Typepad blog, before Tumblr took off. Back then it was called “nuking”, and we lived in fear of the nukers then just as we do now. (Sure, one’s posts didn’t gain as wide a reach there, but it was a lot harder to block the nukers it did reach.)

***Possible factor in the disproportionate Jewish-ness of rationalists?

Tags:

#long post #Brin talks about herself for a *reason* this time #the story of my Internet life #overly enthusiastic parenthetical use #the standard tag for this sort of thing is #my issues with sj let me show you them #(the following category tag was added retroactively:) #our roads may be golden or broken or lost

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

animatedamerican:

so tonight I’m at synagogue, listening to the Purim Night reading of the Book of Esther, like you do

and near the end of this chapter my brain presents me with the following:

nooooo ooooone plots like Haman
calls the shots like Haman
plans a genocide by casting lots like Haman

(It only works with the Hebrew pronunciation of Haman, which, like Gaston, is accented on the second syllable.)

By the time we get home my brain has added:

for there’s none so well-favored and kingly
yes, we all can be certain of that
he’s so rich that his pockets are jingly
and he looks really sharp in a three-cornered hat

*face in hands*

Tags:

#Judaism #Purim #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #someday I should listen to that Gaston song so I know what tune to sing the parodies to #on the other hand that would make them more earwormy #so maybe not #besides it’s still funny regardless of whether you know how to sing it

~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

straighttohelvetica:

Easily the most horrifying line of dialogue I’ve ever heard in an animated movie.

 

castielsunderpants:

NO BUT THIS WAS SUCH A GOOD GODDAMN MOVIE LIKE THE MUSIC IS FUN AND SUPERB THE CHARACTERS WERE REAL PEOPLE EVEN THE ANTAGONISTS THE WOMEN WERE GREAT IT WAS ALL GREAT. IT DOESNT MATTER IF YOURE JEWISH, CHRISTIAN, MUSLIM, ATHEIST, WHATEVER ELSE IT DOESNT MATTER ITS SUCH A GOOD MOVIE AND ITS LITERALLY ONLY 90 MINUTES OF YOUR DAY AND EXPERIENCE THIS HERE JUST CLICK IT LITERALLY IT WILL OPEN IN A NEW TAB GO WATCH. 

 

fifty-shadesofgay:

also can we point out that none of the characters were white? like damn accurate depictions of Biblical characters

 

riskpig:

I reblog every time Prince of Egypt comes up because holy fuck this movie is so good.

 

theparadoxymoron:

first movie i ever saw in theaters

 

comparativelysuperlative:

First movie I ever saw in theaters too! That’s probably not coincidence!

But, like, this line is part of why I grew up thinking utilitarians are monsters. And I mean that in the “check under the bed” sense—there are people who will do literally anything (depending on the circumstances) and not care if the Bible says it’s evil! And they might be coming for you!

And now of course I’m a utilitarian, and so are a lot of the people I think of as doing the most good. Turns out that genocide against a bunch of babies? Not actually a fair portrayal of people doing things for the greater good.

Also, I recognised this gifset as being from Prince of Egypt (through cultural osmosis; haven’t actually seen the movie), but skimmed the context, so up until “they were only slaves” I thought it was Moses talking about murdering every non-Jewish firstborn in Egypt. And I was glad that apparently somebody in the film had tried to call them out on that tactic. But no, it’s just the same-old-same-old.

See, you have no idea how much that incident scarred me as a child. You’re supposed to hear that story and empathise with the oh-poor-Jewish-slaves-who-just-want-to-be-free, but I empathised with the Egyptian peasants. My fellow firstborns, slaughtered en masse for being born to the wrong families at the wrong time. Innocent, unknowing people, who happened to meet a totally arbitrary qualification that I met.

(My parents, in a desperate attempt to console me, tried to tell me I didn’t meet the qualifications. That in their place, I’d have been one of the ones with goat’s blood painted on the doorway. Thing is, being firstborn is more important to me than being Jewish 10.5 months out of the year, and even during Christmas season, it’s not so much “Jewish” that’s important as much as “not Christian”. (The Egyptians weren’t Christian either.))

That damned story was what made me really aware, on a visceral level, of my mortality. Learning how not to be viscerally aware of mortality (apparently some people do manage to function while aware of it, but I can’t imagine how) was an extremely long, painful process. By the time I’d more or less finished, it had taken me something like a third of my lifetime-at-that-point. (Then Five for Fighting released “100 Years” and started getting it played on all the radios and even a TV commercial, and I had to spend another few months re-doing some of the painstakingly crafted mental blocks. I swear, if I ever meet the one man who comprises Five for Fighting, I’ll…well, I probably couldn’t get away with punching him. I suppose I’d tell him about how he rubbed salt in a traumatised child’s wound, and let his own guilt punish him appropriately.)

Occasionally I hear of people who laugh at the idea that the Bible isn’t suitable for children. I’m not laughing.

Tags:

#long post #Brin talks about herself for no particular reason #death tw #(kind of a meta death-tw) #(it’s a story about how *I* needed death tw’s for a few years) #(I haven’t had a full-on 100-Years-style breach of the psychological barriers in a long time) #(but sometimes there’s still little leaks) #(there’s something about the way Florence Welch sings ‘I’m going to drink myself to death’) #(something about the way Cecil says ‘blood’ when reciting the Night Vale Community College minutes) #(that reminds me of being seven) #(I’m glad I’m not seven anymore)

{{next post in sequence}}

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

magpieandwhale:

allofthefeelings:

In response to ameliarating’s point that holiday AU suggestions fandom posts tend to be CHRISTMAS AU suggestions fandom posts, may I present:

  • “I know you’re just trying to take a smoke break but we ran out of matches and it’s Chanukah can I steal you for five minutes” AU
  • “We both forgot to buy candles until the last minute and now there’s only one box left in the store” AU
  • “My friend dragged me to their grandma’s ridiculous sufganiyot party and I don’t know anyone here but holy crap that person’s cute” AU
  • “We are out of potatoes we are OUT OF POTATOES the latkes aren’t done this is not a drill please help” AU
  • “I accidentally set the kitchen on fire frying things and you are an attractive firefighter” AU
  • “What do you mean you’ve never played strip dreidel LET ME INTRODUCE YOU TO THIS PERVERSION OF THE GAME” AU
  • “We’re the only two people at this office ‘holiday’ party who seem uncomfortable with the way it’s all transparently Christmas stuff so let’s talk over here in a corner about how much we hate everything” AU
  • “This Chinese restaurant is so crowded on Christmas Eve do you mind if we share a table?” AU
  • “You seriously want me to teach you how to knit, just to make ugly Chanukah sweaters and prove a point?” AU
  • “I agree with you that Chanukah is a minor holiday that we’re only making a big deal out of because of cultural forces surrounding Christmas but since we’re already at this youth group party in the synagogue basement do you maybe want to dance? :D?” AU

MORE JEWISH AUs, PLEASE. (Feel free to prompt me any of these for the MCU. My feelings on Jewish Bucky Barnes should be known at this point, but if not, Jewish Bucky Barnes is everything.)

Tags:

#Judaism #Hanukkah #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #’what do you mean you’ve never played strip dreidel’

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

flutterflyinvasion:

melorapazlar:

I saw a post complaining about the lack of Hanukkah-themed stuff during the spate of holiday (= Christmas) fanworks that start appearing ‘round this time, and I realized that sadly, in the Star Trek universe this makes sense. because Christmas has produced far more commercial and secularized traditions that non-Christians are well aware of; so Starfleet officers would have a vague knowledge of mistletoe but not dreidel. (wait a sec, is there really NO RELIGION among Federation members? damn you, Gene.)

but then I was like “okay who among the DS9 humans would be most likely to have Jewish heritage, even if it’s wayyy in the past” and well — not the O’Briens, not Bashir, so the most likely contenders are the Siskos.

and then I imagined SISKO MAKING LATKES and GRANDPA SISKO LIGHTING THE MENORAH and this is the story of how I died

Sisko making latkes = best thing ever.  GODDAMMIT I MIGHT HAVE TO WRITE A ONESHOT ON THAT NOW.

Tags:

#Star Trek #DS9 #Benjamin Sisko #Judaism #…yes #Sisko making latkes #yes I like that #I bet Sisko would make awesome latkes