#like what do you expect them to go back to their rabbi and be like 'is like to return this conversion and exchange it for orthodoxy'

[spacelazarwolf]

most of the jews who barge into my inbox or onto my posts about jews by choice don't actually seem to know literally anything about how conversion actually works, so let me break it down for you.

conversion takes at the very least one calendar year, but can take upwards of several years or even several decades depending on the individual and when they feel ready.

the process (for people who are converting as adults, not people who were converted as children) usually looks something like this

person starts to question if conversion is right for them. this stage can take anywhere from months to years.

if the person is in a place with a jewish community, they start researching synagogues and eventually reach out to a rabbi or several. if they're not in a place with a jewish community, they'll need to decide if they want to move in order to convert.

some rabbis will be indifferent when contacted about conversion, some will send you away to see if you come back (there's an old tradition of sending prospective converts away three times, but this isn't as common practice now), some will be happy to talk to prospective converts.

the person now has a sponsoring rabbi. they will be signed up for educational classes that will teach them the basics of jewish history, jewish tradition, liturgy, etc. they will also be expected to do a lot of independent reading. most prospective converts meet with their sponsoring rabbi once per month or so.

most sponsoring rabbis want prospective converts to have a certain level of observance in order to practice what it will be like to live as a jew. there are some things they may ask prospective converts to hold off on until after their mikveh, like wearing a tallit and wrapping tefillin or wearing a star of david, some orthodox converts will intentionally break shabbat in order to not 'fully observe' until after their mikveh.

there are usually a lot of costs associated with converting. it's very possible to borrow books from libraries or find them for cheap, but many want to fill their bookshelf with as many resources as possible. there is also the cost of judaica, as most prospective converts do not have jewish family to inherit judaica from. this can get incredibly expensive.

the sponsoring rabbi is the one who decides if the prospective convert is ready for their beit din. once they approach the topic with the prospective convert and the convert agrees they are ready, the beit din is scheduled.

for their beit din, three rabbis (or sometimes non rabbinic scholars) will speak to the prospective convert about what their journey has been like, why they want to convert, what they find meaningful, how they have handled any antisemitism they've faced, if they are ready to align themselves with the jewish people for the rest of their life, etc. it's not just a 'u ready?' it can get very intense.

the beit din decides if the prospective convert is ready to join the jewish people. if they decide they're not ready, the prospective convert can continue to study and schedule another beit din in the future. if they decide they are ready, a mikveh is scheduled and the prospective convert becomes a jew.

after that, they're a jew. that's it. the end.

details can vary from community to community, but this is a general rundown of how it works. no one just randomly decides one day to become jewish. people who go through the conversion process, even through movements that are not as rigorous as orthodox movements, are required to do essentially a mini degree in jewish studies, uproot their whole life, potentially lose family, friends, and community, and align themselves with a marginalized people for the rest of their life. so anyone who tries to trash them can sniff my farts.

#jewish #jewish conversion

[edenfenixblogs]

hey, gentile here. just came across this post of yours and, first of all- it's SUPERB. it showed me a perspective on being a jewish ally that i really wouldn't ever have considered by myself, made me more confident in my choice to put combating jew-hatred above the friendships I've recently lost, and gave me a really useful direction on where to go as an ally to jewish people onwards. that being said, there's a few details about it I'd like to press you about, if it's not too much trouble.

this point is probably worthy of an eyeroll as i'm a culturally christian atheist (making a concious effort to not be *that* kind of atheist), but: when you refer to G-d as the creator of all things, you stress that that includes evil- but that, in so doing, G-d is not evil themself. now, I'm asking this with the express purpose of you correcting me, so: why does this G-d- as a G-d fundamentally distinct from the Christian conception of God as a Super-Mega-Ultra-Perfect God Who Can Do No Wrong Ever- create evil? i, personally, have been led to believe by @/spacelazarwolf that it is simply because G-d, too, makes mistakes just like any human being, but the way you worded it in this paragraph (which I've included as a screenshot below) had me interpret G-d creating evil as a concious, intentional action. did i just not read it correctly? and, if i didn't, then is the reason G-d creates evil part of this central struggle you went in detail into in the same paragraph, and as such, a very individual part of Jewish belief that no two jews agree on? and if that is so, would you be comfortable with sharing your version of it?

a few paragraphs after that one, you dedicated many words to make it absolutely crystal clear that, in the process of unlearning and combating jew-hatred in the society around me, i should, in spite of the vitriol that they propagate, love the former friends i lost to antisemitism. how- and *why* should i love the people who, on an early october 8th morning, actively celebrated the news of a massacre of Israeli civilians? who mocked- and still mock- the survivors and the families of hostages? who wield the memory of the holocaust as a baton against Jewish people's right to self defense? who deify terror groups who are up to their necks in atrocities? who make an active effort to spit on the face of *reality?* How could i possibly look at the face of a friend who chose allegiance to a terrorist group she did not even know existed four months ago over me- who she had actively interacted with for much longer?

would you rather we called ourselves "gentiles" or "goyim?" I've been calling myself a gentile for the longest time because i see jamming a word from a language i don't speak at all in an otherwise english sentence to be disrespectful and constitute appropriation, but you and other jumblr blogs have given me the impression that that is not the case. furthermore- i believe it was @/bambahalva who pointed out the usage of the word "gentile" in antisemitic segregation policies.

that is all- i hope this message finds you well. oh, yeah one more thing- what do you think of The Forward news network? i came across them by chance and next thing i knew I'd gotten into their newsletter.

WARNING: I HAVE FINISHED WRITING THIS AND IT'S LONGER THAN I EXPECTED AND ALSO MORE JEWISH THAN I EXPECTED LOL! I have done the most Jewish possible thing I could do and answered all of your questions with questions. I'm sorrryyyyyy! This is what happens when you grow up surrounded by rabbis and future rabbis! LMAOO

Oooh! What a good ask! I love this ask. OK, so! Let's go in order.

First of all, thank you so much for your kind words. And thanking you for backing your words with the action of prioritizing kindness over hatred. It matters. More than I can ever explain. Thank you.

You know, it's funny. People ask me a lot of questions about i/p that they think will have simple and straightforward answers that just don't. And I end up writing a lot of essays because of this. The questions you wrote me seem like they should be complex, but feel relatively straightforward to me.

Now, to your first bullet point: I don't know. I truly do not know. I think that G-d is fundamentally just...G-d, and in so being, G-d is truly unknowable to me. I think many Jews have many different interpretations on why G-d creates evil. I'm no rabbi, but one of my BFFs is and so is her mother and great grandfather. That doesn't give me any kind of authority. It just means I've spent a lot of time thinking about theological questions like this. As for my perspective, I'm a progressive/reform Jew, not a humanistic Jew. I do actually believe in G-d, but I vibe with the community philosophies of Humanistic Judaism a lot. So that's the perspective I'm coming from here:

I'm not a particular fan of the Book of Job, because I think it gets twisted and interpreted in Christian ways more than most Hebrew books and it can too easily be twisted into a "Don't question G-d, because G-d is perfect" narrative that I find to be fundamentally at odds with how I practice Judaism. Also, it's just a very sad story about how a good and kind man lost everything, and it makes me sad to think about. HOWEVER, that traditional "Don't question G-d" narrative is not how I learned to think about that book. The way I learned it, I believe the Book of Job describes this issue most explicitly. After Job loses everything he holds dear and talks to all his friends and begs again and again "Why? Why did G-d do this to me? Why would G-d do this to me when I'm a good person?" And basically G-d hears everyone answering for G-d with various reasons, "Maybe you were bad." "Maybe you should make an offering" Maybe this. Maybe that. And eventually G-d responds from within a storm (paraphrased of course) 'Why the fuck do you think it's your business to know? I made the whole universe! I made everything you see. I made the world that gave you your family in your first place. Why do you think you get to question my motives?'

The way I always interpreted that is: I don't fricking know! It's not really my business. What am I gonna do? Stop G-d? How does my knowing why G-d creates evil help anything? It doesn't mean we don't question G-d. It means we should instead focus on what we CAN control. I can't make 10/7/2023 not happen any more than I could stop The Holocaust or form an ocean. That's divine business, not human business. What I CAN do is make the world better now. What use is it challenging things that we cannot change? Things that are in the past? What's the point of asking why bad things happen when we can instead focus on stopping more bad things from happening. G-d named us his people when Abraham fought with G-d to stop the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham repeatedly asked, "But are you sure? But what if there are 100 good people? 50 good people? 10 good people?" And G-d kept responding, basically, 'I mean, there aren't. I know this cuz of how I'm G-d and know all the things. But knock yourself out looking.' My interpretation of this was that G-d doesn't get mad when we do our utmost to help our fellow human beings. G-d gets mad when we waste our energy that we could be using to help our fellow man to instead be angry and rage futilely against the past. I say this as someone with PTSD as someone who attempted to stop a tragedy from occuring and failed and can never understand why. What informs my trauma and what makes it so hard to get past isn't that G-d allowed it to happen. It's that people did. It's that I begged for help before it happened--over and over and over to dozens of adults in various positions of authority in order to prevent this terrible thing from happening (no, I will not now or ever disclose what that thing is). And all the people who could have helped failed me, and now two people are dead. Because someone did an evil, evil thing. And a bunch of other people let it happen. I'm not mad at G-d. I'm mad at people. And yet, I also know that hating people and finding reasons to dismiss them and despise them is what leads to more tragedies like that happening. So, despite my rage, truly the only thing to do is to love people. It's the only that helps. It's the only thing that repairs the world. It's the only thing that we can control. So, in short, my answer to "Why does G-d create evil?" is "Why should I spend my valuable time on earth trying to answer that question when, instead, I can spend that same exact amount of time asking millions of people, 'How can I help? What's wrong, and how can I help make any part of it better?'?" We don't need to understand G-d to make the world a better place. I'm fine leaving G-d stuff to G-d and spending my time on the human stuff.

Now, your second bullet point. Love their souls. You don't have to love what they've done. But they are human beings, as are we all. I think this can also easily be twisted into the Christian framework of "Hate the sin, love the sinner," but that's not what I mean at all. People's evil deeds are a part of them. They need to take responsibility. There is no divine absolution for crimes that people do unto each other in Judaism. If you harm a person, G-d cannot forgive you for that. Only the person or people you harmed can forgive you. And to a certain degree, we are all defined by our actions toward others. And so, no. I do not forgive the terrorists who woke up and decided to kill a bunch of Israelis and Israeli-adjacent humans. I do not forgive those who celebrate the deaths of Israelis because of some misguided sense of justice. I do not forgive the people who continue to send me hatred and death threats day after day after day after day. And I do not love the parts of them that did and do those horrible, unforgivable things. But my goodness. They were babies once. They either had parents who love(d) them, which is so sad, because they have this life of love and they chose instead to fill it with so much hate. Or they didn't have any parents or loved ones or anyone to guide them and, my goodness. That is so sad. How terrifying and alone that must feel. Maybe they have friends and family who love them and are instead wasting their precious time on this planet directing their energy at raging against me and 15 million other Jews they've never met. Or maybe they don't have anyone who loves them and they think that hating me and harming me will bring them some sense of purpose and joy. What a horrid way to live.

My Grandpa died last year. I have a wonderful family for whom I'm very grateful, and I even have good memories with my Grandpa. But he was not a good person. He came from an abusive home, and weaponized that abuse on his loved ones until he drove them all away. He was a narcissist. Not in the pop psychology sense. But in the actual clinical sense. He ruined every relationship that ever mattered to him--personal and professional. And in the end, because of his own actions, he died alone. He had pushed everyone so far (often with legal threats and action) that when he died, he laid on a slab for weeks because nobody could figure out who to call, because he had no one left. (For reference, Jewish burials are supposed to happen rather quickly and two weeks is...not good.) He was the only person in his generation who was not born in Israel--my family on his side has lived in Israel since looooong before even the British Mandate and he was the only person in his family born and raised in the US. As far as we can tell, the family on that side has been in Israel for as long as Jews have existed. He was religious. And while I've never been to Israel or met any of my family there, he did go. And he kept in touch with his relatives there before driving them away too. He was a wealthy man, but convinced himself that everyone only wanted him for his money and then decided to horde it instead. He left nothing to his children or to me. He left all his money in an endowment to his university--a place that uses that money to fund anti-Israel organizations now. He died alone, without his family that lived nearby, and with a legacy that will now cause active harm to the family that lived far away. He could have died surrounded by the loved ones from around the world who wanted nothing more than to be near him and loved by him. His story is a tragedy. The story of every person who chooses hatred over love is a tragedy. The story of someone who woke up and chose to murder others or to delight in the death of others is a tragedy. I love the soul in the center of these people. I loved my grandfather. I could not be around him. I cannot forgive some of the things he said and did. But I love the person he could have been. I love the part of him that gave me some good memories. I love the family he gave to me.

No, we do not all need to love or forgive those who have wronged us or terrorized us or murdered our loved ones. But that is different from mourning a human soul. From loving the potential of a human soul to do good in the world, and mourning the loss of that soul and its potential. Every human being--every single one no matter what they have done in their lives--has the potential to create goodness and make the world a better place. Every moment of every single day is a new chance to meet that challenge and do our best. Sure, not all of us have it in us to try our best every single moment. Sometimes life is hard and we're sad and tired and hungry and angry. And that's ok, because we have tomorrow, and an hour from now, and a minute from now. But the moment someone chooses to take action and decides that action should be to cause another harm or celebrate the harm that was caused? That's a tragedy. And when a life is extinguished, that is a life that loses its potential to try again and do better. We shouldn't love people because we deem them worthy of love. We should love people because they are people. And so are we. And how wonderful is that? I could choose to hate them. It would be so easy! But why should I do that? What do I gain? What do they gain? And isn't it so wonderful that I chose to love instead? And isn't it so wonderful that you can, too?

As for your final bullet point: I have no preference. I say goyim cuz it's easier for me. Goy/gentile/non-Jew are all fine to me. I have some icky feelings about the word gentile for a variety of linguistic reasons I won't bore you with. But some other people don't like when non-Jews appropriate Yiddish words. Others (including me) find it wonderful when non-Jews call themselves goyim. All my closest non-Jewish people call themselves goyim, including my sister! Non-jew is the most neutral in English and least likely to offend anyone. But it still separates Jews as an other whereas "goy" is a way to distinguishing yourself from Jews while also being an acknowledgment of our culture. As far as I'm concerned as long as a goy is being a goy (ally, positive) rather than a goy (derogatory) I don't mind that they call themselves goyim. LOL! Idk, friend. Do what makes you happy! What do you prefer?!

Regarding The Forward news network: They are a reliable Left-Center source with a high credibility and reporting rating and only one failed fact check in the past five years for which they issued a correction. I would consider them a reliable source. They cover legitimate issues of people who support Palestinan self-determination ostensibly being punished for their stances. They publish Op-eds critical of Netanyahu, who is terrible. And they address how antisemitism is harming diaspora Jews. They seem to consistently emphasize the humanity of everyone, which you can tell based on the rest of my post is very important to me, but they also avoid over-editorializing on news that is not in the Op-Ed section. I'll never endorse any source as perfect or guaranteed to be free of problems or harm or bad takes, but they do seem to make a genuine effort to be factual, clear, and wholly truthful. Note: I highly recommend that everyone installs the Media Bias/Fact Check extension on their web browsers. Get in the habit of checking and evaluating sources critically. It's a skill that will serve you your whole life.

@clawdia-houyhnhnm I hope this helps. And thank you for your thoughtful ask and commitment to intercultural understanding. <3

#ask me stuff #clawdia-houyhnhnm #leftist antisemitism #antisemitism #jewish muslim solidarity #jewish goyim solidarity #Judaism #jewish culture #jumblr #how to help #allyship #media literacy

[foone]

The fundamental problem with comedy is that the highest form is improv. Not "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" style formalized improv, where you ask the audience for suggestions and build a comedic scene around that, but the basic skill of "something just happened, make a joke about that". This got long, so it'll be after a readmore

It's a life skill, not a type of art you produce. Jokes like this don't make it into movies and shows and blogs, it just happens. You're with a friend or two and something funny happens and you make a joke about it, everyone laughs. It's personal, you tell the best joke because you know your audience, you have shared history.

And you can see how we try to capture this in produced comedy: it's why we have comedy movies and sitcoms, literally "situation comedy". It's not just half an hour of stand-up, telling joke after joke, it's about setup and putting the protagonists into situations, and having it be funny, usually with them making a joke about the situation they're now in.

But there's an artificiality to it: the same people writing the situations are the ones writing the witty jokes. They set up the dominoes and they're the one who knocked them over.

And hell, even stand-up is rarely as simple as just "setup->punchline, rinse lather repeat". There are some comedians who can pull that off, but it seems far more comedians are "observational comedians", meaning they're making jokes about the absurdity of the world and modern life. They'll tell a story, even if it's as simple as "so I went to the post office and it was annoying and people were mean and I made jokes about it!". They're doing storytelling: here's the situation, and here's what I said in response, either in the moment, later during this retelling, or some combination of both. (Ed Byrne has a bit where he says "yes I was very witty that day, almost like I had several weeks to come up with the perfect response!")

And maybe the closest we can get to this "in the wild" (meaning in a produced media form) is MST3K and similar riffing. The people making the jokes didn't make the story, so they have plausible deniability. And even if they've seen the movie several times and written out jokes ahead of time, they can feel like they're reacting in the moment.

But the funniest jokes will never be made this way. No sitcom or comedy film will be the funniest, no stand-up one liner or knock knock joke, not even an improv scene that makes you nearly piss yourself in laugher.

The funniest jokes are when you and an old friend are getting ice cream and the person in front of you asks for vanilla with extra sprinkles then sends it back because there's "too many sprinkles" and you turn to them and say "I thought my ex-wife moved back to Chicago!" and you have to leave the establishment because you're crying with laughter and can't get it under control enough to actually make your order. It's something that'll probably only ever make sense to you and your friends, and in that particular moment. You could sit down and explain the situation and the back story but that would never capture one tenth of the humor, and even if they understood, so much of why it's funny is that it happened in that moment and without the setup.

Because even if you are truthfully recounting what happened to someone else later, and don't need to explain all the back story, you're still implicitly telling a story that sets up a situation. This is now a joke, and you might as well start it with "so an Irishman and a Rabbi walk into a bar..."

You're setting then up for all the expectations of comedy. And that inherently ruins some of the comedy! Because comedy, in a way, is an error message. It's a mis-prediction. It's your huge brain trying to do what it does and predict what will happen and what you'll say next and understand the situation and figure out how it'll go, and realizing it's wrong, and fundamentally wrong. It made assumptions that were reasonable to make, but it had those assumptions proven very wrong.

Like, one way this has been described is the idea that jokes are telling two stories: the one you assume, then at the last moment they pull the rug out from under you and reveal there was a second story, and you have to mentally backtrack and retrace your steps to see how the second story is the correct one.

Like, simple example, and I'm sorry to ruin the joke (as someone said, explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog: no one's that interested, and the frog dies)

Doctor: I'm sorry, we had to remove your colon

Me Why?

See, the humor comes from how the setup primes you to think that "colon" means the body part, but then the punchline reveals it's talking about the punctuation. The way the first line is interpreted is totally changed by the second, and the humor is how your brain handles to "whoops made a big mistake in how I understood/predicted that!"

And that's why it's never going to be the same level of comedy when telling jokes as just improv'ing a joke while out in the world. You tell someone a joke, they know a joke is coming. They have heard jokes before. Their brain is in joke mode. They are trying to imagine how things could be taken different ways, how the joke could work, what the punchline is.

This is why "a comedian's comedian" is a thing. Your Milton Jones style comedy ("My grandfather invented the cold air balloon but it never really took off"), where it's very absurdist and includes a lot of anti-jokes. It's why simple jokes like the above are often called "dad jokes", because they're the kind of jokes you tell kids. Not just because they're not raunchy or anything, but because they're lessons in how jokes work. They're jokes that only work on people who don't yet know how jokes work.

Whereas absurdist comedy and anti-jokes can work amazingly on people who know how jokes work, if you're aiming for that audience. You basically write your jokes so that the audience expects the joke, predicts the punchline, but SURPRISE! the punchline is completely different or not a joke at all. For example:

I'm not like other dads

I’m a 19 yo woman with no kids

The comedy is your brain going into joke-mode and getting ready to figure out all the ways this joke could go and then WHOOPS the joke is that there isn't one and this is a straightforward statement that you got mislead into thinking was going to be a joke.

So, having said all that, hopefully you can understand what I mean. The best jokes are the ones that come out of nowhere because you are 120% not in joke mode. You're out somewhere with a friend trying to do something serious, something happens, then BAM! one of you comes up with something that just perfectly fits the situation and references some shared background/history you have together, and you were not at all expecting it. All your brains predictions were taken up with sensible boring things, and then suddenly BOOM! IN THE COMEDY!

And I think in a way, all produced, scripted (or hell, even unscripted) comedy is about trying to recapture that perfect moment. It's setting up situations for funny punchlines to exist in. It's making the setup so that the punchline works. But it can never fully match that unexpected moment, that perfection, because at its core its always artifical, or at least staged (as there's an expectation for this to be comedy). No one goes to an improv show expecting it to be Macbeth, but a production of The Scottish Play that turned into a comedy could be unexpectedly hilarious, if the audience wasn't expecting it.

But at the same time, even staying in the area of Shakespeare, there's clear differences between, say, Twelfth Night and Romeo and Juliet. The former sets up a bunch of elements that are clearly going to be used for comedy: identical twins, crossdressing, recursive crossdressing, metacrossdressing, unknowing homosexual relationships, disguises, and mistaken identities... All are clearly set ups for comedy. Even at the time, nearly half a millenia ago, these were old, well known tropes in comedy. Shakespeare sets up all the cans knowing he can knock them over later. These things exist in the story so they can lead to comedy, and they do. Maybe not in the ways the audience expects, but they'll lead to hilarity.

And even if there's not a specific punchline, the two-stories thing can be the joke, even when the audience is on it. Like, in the scenes where Olivia is professing her love for "Cesario" (who is actually not a man, but Viola dressed as one).

The audience knows Viola is a woman (and they presume a straight one), but Olivia doesn't (and she's also presumed to be straight). Even without a punchline about this situation, there's inherent comedy in the two separate understandings of the situation. Olivia thinks she loves this nice young man, and wants to woo him. Viola is stuck trying to politely reject her advances, without revealing her disguise. That's uncomfortable (for her) and amusing (for the audience) enough, but then Shakespeare goes one step further and has Viola asked to woo Oliva for her employer, Duke Orsino. That would really twist the screws and make the situation more awkward as Viola has to attempt to woo the woman who is already in love with her, but under false pretenses... Except Shakespeare goes ONE FURTHER and has Viola fall in love with Duke Orsino herself! While Viola can't herself express this love, because as far as Duke Orsino knows, she's a man named Cesario.

And then Viola's identical twin brother shows up and marries Oliva, who thinks he's Cesario, and IT JUST GETS WACKIER. There's plenty of jokes to be had at this absurd situation (and many of them are made!) , but the "first joke" of the whole situation is the way different characters have completely different understandings of what's going on. Olivia thinks she's just in love with a nice young man, Duke Orsino thinks his page is wooing Olivia for him (and definitely his page isn't in love with him), while Viola is stuck in the middle, having to balance maintaining her disguise with not offending Olivia, not failing her master, and then her own love for the Duke just makes everything more complicated.

It's an old story. Literally and figuratively. You set up a weird situation so that it's inherently somewhat funny, then you can put jokes in the moutha of the characters, and you can make the audience laugh at how you took a bunch of people stuck in this absurd situation and then made it weirder.

Anyway, so the reason I wrote this was because I was leaving my house this morning to go grab a coffee, and I saw a truck for a local construction company, "Tech Line". I immediately shouted "Tech L9ne! Cha!" which would have been the funniest thing in the world except no one else was there to hear it, and explaining it ruins the joke.

So instead I just rambled on about the nature of comedy and the truest form of it for 28 paragraphs. This is called a "Shaggy Dog Story". It's also called "ADHD".

#Comedy #The nature of comedy #my writing

[baronessblixen]

Family Principles

Day 3 for the Eight Nights of Mulder: celebration and my prompt for the 24 Days of X-Mas Files Challenge: family Christmas with separate beds

Summary: They're spending Christmas at Mrs. Scully's house and Mulder is in for a surprise. (AU, fluffy fluff, William is there; wc: 715)

Tagging @today-in-fic @eightnightsofmulder

She should pinch herself, just to make sure she isn't dreaming. In many ways, this Christmas feels like a fantasy. One she had many, many years ago. But it's real, all of it.

Over there, surrounded by a few of her mother's neighbors, stands Mulder. He's grinning from ear to ear, quickly becoming the star of the party. At least as long as their son is napping.

William is without a doubt the not-so-secret superstar of this holiday get-together. With his dimples and his charming smile, he wraps everyone around his little finger. Including her grinchy brother, who tried his damnest not to be swayed. He lasted all of five seconds before he, too, oohed and awwed at his nephew.

"I saw you staring at me." Mulder's voice is a soft murmur as he puts his arms around her, holding her close. She must have been so lost in thought that she didn't even notice him walk over to her. "Do I have something on my face?" He nuzzles her neck, making her giggle.

"You do," she says, swatting at his hand. They may have been a couple for a while, but here, in front of everyone and her family, their public display of affection is new and she doesn't yet know how she feels about it. "You're grinning."

"I'm happy," he says simply. "Your mother throws great parties."

"She invited you every year," Scully reminds him. The first few times she asked him she wondered whether it was because of Christmas. But he never celebrated Hanukkah either. A fact they're planning to change next year so that William can learn about the festival, too.

"I'm a late bloomer." His lips graze the shell of her ear and she shivers. "Do you think anyone would notice if we snuck away?"

"They might." Though she's not sure she cares. "William will wake up soon, though."

"I can be patient," he promises, kissing her cheek. "We have all night."

"If you're prepared to sneak around." Mulder's confused pout makes her smile. She hasn't had time to speak to him about the sleeping arrangements yet. And he's not going to like what she has to say.

"My mom decided to put us in separate bedrooms." Mulder stares at her as if expecting her to admit she's making a joke. "She said, and I quote, she can't let us share a bedroom in good consciousness." Her mother loves Mulder, and she dotes on her youngest grandchild, but she's a woman with principles. One of which is no shared rooms and beds when unmarried.

"Is it because of what I said earlier?" When her mother and Father McCue talked about baptizing William, Scully intervened, saying they weren't sure yet what to do, with Mulder being half Jewish. And his skepticism towards organized religion, but she kept that tidbit to herself. Both her mother and Father McCue had looked surprised and then Mulder decided to call William a religious remix, which caused a few more shocked gasps from both of them.

"Surprisingly not," Scully says. "It's because we're not married."

"Well, I'm sure we can find someone here to change that. We have a priest, a rabbi, and a pastor. This could also be the beginning of a bad joke. This is a joke, right?" Scully shakes her head, and Mulder pouts fully.

"She knows we live together," Mulder says and she nods. "We have a child together." She nods again. "She knows that we- you know."

"Not in her house." He sighs loudly.

"What if I promise her to marry you as soon as possible? I'm gonna ask. You know what? I'm gonna use Willam to argue. He's my secret weapon." He kisses her mouth, his grin returning. He runs off like she's used to, but for once, she doesn't mind one bit.

She just watches as members of her family pat Mulder's back, or engage him in short conversations. Everyone loves him. And he basks in the attention. She knows one Christmas won't erase the years he suffered, where he was alone - sometimes by choice. But it's a beginning.

She knows that her mother won't change her mind about the sleeping arrangements, but she also knows that no matter what, they will find a way to be together tonight.

#ficmas2023 #this one was so much fun to write #they will spend more time with the scully family #msr #xf fanfic #my writing #my fic

[keshetchai]

Heyyyy do you have any advice for a potential convert/person exploring Judaism going to services for the first time. I have big anxiety and want to show up respectfully but not totally sure what to expect and how to approach it.

Sure! I definitely have advice.

First, like I said recently, we're currently still in the month of Tishrei, and every Jewish professional is absolutely drowning because this month is jam packed with the high holy days, & Hebrew school/Sunday school is starting back up. This is the absolute busiest time of year for anyone who is a "professional Jew." (Rabbis, cantors, synagogue front admin, etc etc).

What that means is this: I strongly recommend waiting until after October 15th (which will begin the Hebrew month of Cheshvan) to try contacting anyone about conversion. You're just much more likely to be able to get in touch with someone, send an email or make a phone call and get a timely response and/or someone with enough bandwidth to really engage with you.

I'm not saying they'll ignore you right now, or to stay away! Just that your email could end up lost or the people in question might be hard to reach because they're doing 50 million things right now. And I wouldn't want you to think that was personal or to make you anxious!

Okay so, the list looks like this:

Try reaching out after Oct 15th this year (when Tishrei is over).

A good basic book you might be able to find in a local chain bookstore is Anita Diamant's To Choose a Jewish Life which is all about conversion! She is a liberal Jew (reform) and the book leans that way, but it does just cover some general considerations and topics as a good starter.

You can try browsing myjewishlearning.com or watching Bimbam videos (youtube) for basic 101 concepts.

If you've found a local synagogue you would like to try visiting, go to the website. See if you can find the admin assistant email or the rabbi's email. Then send an email explaining you're interested in exploring/learning about Judaism and have considered you may be interested in converting and would like to attend a shabbat service for the first time. This is basically all I did! I sent an email to two rabbis at two synagogues I was considering, and one of them replied immediately and I went that very week.

I have anxiety too but it was extremely easy for me, and I'm pretty lucky that my rabbi is pretty familiar with converts and conversion. Not every rabbi has had converts or even a fair amount of converts though, so some of them might be navigating a new thing to them too!

What made my first shabbat really easy was this:

- basically the response email answered my dress code question, assured me I was welcome to join the next service as a guest and he would be happy to meet/do introductions, and then he gave me the name of someone at the synagogue who would be a great community member to sit with/who could help me follow the service, and said he'd introduce me.

So like, to me, that was the most helpful part, which was that when I arrived a little before the start time, we got to say hi and then he introduced me to a woman who sat with me and was able to help me gain a footing. Or at least who could help me when I was totally lost lol! If no one suggests it to you unprompted, you can always ask if there's anyone in the community they'd recommend you sit with to help you acclimate. It's also totally okay to sit in the back.

You won't know everything the first few times! There's also no musical notation if people sing (so it doesn't matter if you read music or not)! I can't guarantee the synagogue will have full transliteration into English for the service! There's a whole other language you probably don't know being used. Lots of people who show up could do the service with their eyes closed. It is OKAY that you don't start there! It's okay to have no idea when to bow or to not know every prayer ahead of time!

Don't worry that you're not sure what's happening. Most of the time people will be super friendly! They'll also want to know all about you. You can either tell them you're wanting to convert/learn more or you can tell them a limited truth.

If I don't feel like explaining my whole backstory to someone, I usually just say "oh, my parents weren't really/super religious." (This is true for me! my parents werent super religious! But they are christians who aren't super religious. I usually just say I converted nowadays, I don't feel a need to hide it if pressed, but yanno. Sometimes I didn't want to have to explain I never went to Jewish summer camp to a stranger at a random event who wants to play Jewish geography)

Anyways most people will probably be very friendly to a new face/stranger and want to know allll about you at oneg (usually like, snacks after shabbat service) if they don't recognize you and you seem alone. (it's also highly likely there will be a lot of regular people who are a lot older than you, so don't be surprised if you basically get treated like a visiting grandkid. It's kinda great.)

Eventually you learn a lot just by immersion and showing up again and again. There's a pattern you can pick up. Tunes to songs may change and eventually you'll come to recognize the most common ones.

I know it's hard to like hear "hey it's okay don't worry too much" if you have anxiety, because, well, I have anxiety! I know you can't just turn it off! BUT I assure you, if you are made to feel unwelcome or bad, then that just isn't a good synagogue to be going to anyways. It's more likely they're just not a good fit for you than anything wrong with you, yanno? And the first rabbi you talk to may not be the one you want to stick with. That's okay too!

I was extremely nervous my first few services, and honestly everyone was just really nice and helpful. I think the other rabbi I emailed didn't end up replying to that email (it probably got lost!) and it ended up being fine, I stuck with the one who replied right away because we got along and clicked.

My last piece of advice is to go ahead and buy yourself a notebook/journal and keep a book for yourself.

This book can/should be any number of things!

For some inspiration, this book can be:

A journal about your religious journey prior to this point and currently

Write about what you believe now, what you think, what you aren't sure about

Write down the books you're recommended, given, or borrowed

Write down questions you have

Write down the complicated or uncomfortable things you worry or think about

Write about experiencing x or y thing for the first time and what you were interested in, confused by, etc

Cut out/copy down Jewish recipes!

Note things that you find joy in or are confused or bored by!

Take notes during classes/readings of books/etc

Write down notes during meetings with your rabbi!

Torah study notes! What'd you learn? What'd someone else say you found interesting? Questions? Thoughts? Etc.

It's a big process! A lot is going on, and it's worthwhile to record your personal feelings and studies in some way! It doesn't have to be a serious diary or a really studious study notebook, it can literally just be...a catch-all book and it is for no one but yourself to benefit from, so it doesn't have to look any which way. But it's very worthwhile, even if you later change your mind and don't convert, you'll still have all that spiritual exploration journaling and notes for yourself as part of your growth!

[whumpsday]

Kane & Jim #50: On Your Own

Chronological masterlist / Writing order masterlist

content: angst, parental death, kids grappling with newfound orphanhood, religious angst, pandemic, discussion of foster system, very vaguely referenced past child abuse, flashback to hospital setting

takes place 4 years before You're Mine Now. the hardest time of Jim’s life pre-Kane. he doesn’t like to think about it very much. this isn’t really ‘whump’, more ‘angst’, but i hope you enjoy it anyway.

@amonthofwhump​ March Trope-A-Thon Day 5: Sickfic / Fevers / Cold/Flu / Headache / Blankets & A Hot Drink

Jim kind of expected someone to come after the funeral. A social worker or orphanage owner or however this shit worked. Did orphanages still exist, or was that just in movies? He never thought he'd have to think about it.

But no one came.

Well, people came. His friends, Mom and Dad's friends, Rabbi Geller, other people from temple, Liz's friends' parents, even Liz's teacher from the elementary school. They brought food, and said I'm sorry for your loss and May their memory be a blessing so many times that the words lost all meaning.

It felt like the kind of thing Mom would tell him to just be polite for, but Mom wasn’t here. Mom would never be here again. It still didn’t feel real.

But that wasn't what he meant. Someone was supposed to come get them, right? Because he was only fifteen, and Liz was only eleven, and they didn’t have any other family. Right?

Someone was going to come help him, right?

Liz was a nightmare. Jim felt like he didn’t even have a second to think. He was used to watching Liz- Mom and Dad worked long hours, after all- but now it was all time, especially because they hadn’t gone back to school yet.

She was throwing another tantrum. Jim felt like they were only getting worse. He cringed as a plate flew into the wall, shattering with a crash barely audible above Liz’s incessant screeching.

“Lizzie, you gotta stop. You’re too old for this.” Jim fought off his pounding headache as he got right in front of her, blocking her as she reared her arm back to throw another.

“No I’m not!” she yelled, darting to the side and throwing the plate as hard as she could, shattering it against the wall. Tears streamed down her face.

Jim let out an exasperated groan. “Stop! Yes you are! Go to your room!”

“You can’t tell me what to do!” Liz ran back into the kitchen.

Fuck, she was gonna get another plate. Jim ran after her, blocking the cabinet. “Yes I can! I’m in charge now, go to your room!”

“I hate you!” Liz shouted. She kicked him in the shin before running up the stairs, slamming her door.

Jim rubbed his temple, his headache only getting worse. He thought about breaking into Mom and Dad’s drink. It wasn’t like anyone was around to stop him. But he didn’t.

Instead, he fought back tears and grabbed the broom and dustpan. He was tired of crying. Just when he was finishing cleanup, Liz appeared at the top of the stairs, holding her bear tight in her arms. She hadn’t carried that thing around since she was 6, but things were different now, he figured.

“You calmed down yet?” he asked.

“Sorry.” She squeezed her bear tighter, avoiding eye contact.

Jim shrugged, dumping the last of the shatters in the trash. “It’s cleaned up now anyway.” His eyes drifted over to the stove. “How about I make some hot chocolate?”

“But it’s summer,” Liz protested half-heartedly.

“Who cares? We’re sitting shiva,” Jim pointed out. “Do you not want hot chocolate?”

“...I want it.” She sat herself on the couch.

This was something he could do without fucking up, at least. He barely even had to think about it, just focus on the steps. Set some whole milk over heat. Cocoa powder, sugar, a dash of vanilla, and the part people always miss: chocolate chips and a little bit of cinnamon.

He poured in some half-and-half to make it extra creamy and cool it enough that Liz wouldn’t burn herself, and topped it with some mini marshmallows before bringing the mugs out, handing one to Liz.

“Thanks,” she mumbled, sipping immediately without blowing on it.

“You’re gonna burn your mouth, stupid,” Jim chided lightheartedly.

Liz rolled her eyes. “No I’m not ‘cause you always put extra milk in after.”

“Because you never give it a minute to cool down!” He ruffled her hair. “No more throwing shit, okay? Or if you need to, use stuffed animals or something. Why’d you do that, anyway?”

Liz was quiet for a long moment, sipping her drink. “I dunno,” she mumbled.

“How about next time you wanna do that, come get me. We can make it into a game, yeah? We could play catch or something. Not with plates,” he suggested.

“It’s not supposed to be a game.” She took another sip, eyes too stormy for an eleven year old.

Jim took the blanket off the back of the couch and draped it around Liz’s shoulders. “Okay. Come get me anyway. We’ll figure it out.”

-

No one from the government came. Even after a week. Even after they were done sitting shiva and Jim made Liz start going back to school, another nightmare of an argument.

He wished he could’ve asked Mom or Dad for advice. Liz almost always listened to them, at least about the important stuff. It felt like someone was tearing a fresh shred in his heart every time he missed them.

After he finished walking her, he turned and made his way to temple on a whim. He only went to temple a couple times a year, on the holidays when Mom wanted everyone to go as a family. He hadn’t even brought his kippah. But he doubted anyone would really care, and he needed advice, and it was this or a teacher, even if Jim hadn’t talked to the guy since his bar mitzvah. Before the funeral, that is.

“Hey, Rabbi Geller.”

“Good morning, James.” The rabbi gave him a sad smile. “How are you and your sister holding up?”

“Uh, y’know.” He shrugged awkwardly. “I was wondering if I could talk to you for a sec?”

“Of course. Let’s go to my office for some privacy.” The rabbi led him to the office and gestured for him to sit. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m not here for anything, uh, spiritual or whatever,” he clarified quickly. “I just needed some advice about something. Um, is someone gonna... come get us?”

The rabbi’s brows furrowed in concern. “No one’s come to get you? Who is it you and your sister will be staying with? I know Beth said she didn’t have much family...”

“Mom and Dad were both wards of the state or whatever,” Jim said awkwardly. “Kinda thought we would be too, now. But, uh... no one came. I wasn’t really sure what to do. Plus Liz is throwing things and refusing to go to school and stuff.”

“I’m so sorry you’ve been left floundering. I should have been there to see to it.” The rabbi sighed. “Things have been hectic. This flu’s taken quite a toll. It’s lucky you even caught me here. If you ever need something and can’t find me, the funeral home’s likely where I am.”

Jim knew he was one of the lucky ones. He and Liz both got sick too, but they recovered. It was no wonder they all got it, with Mom being a nurse and all. He didn’t really feel lucky right now.

“The government... tends to overlook this town,” the rabbi continued. “No one wants to come here, even during the day when it’s safe. I can certainly get in touch with people for you and make sure someone gets you two set up in a foster home. I’d just like you to think about your options first.”

“Options?” Jim questioned.

“James, do you remember your bar mitzvah two years ago? I sure do. You were very well-spoken.” The rabbi gave him a kind smile.

“Uh-huh.” He kicked his feet, unsure where this was going.

“A bar mitzvah is when a boy becomes a man, as we discussed. Now, I certainly don’t believe a thirteen year old boy to be a man in the modern day, nor a fifteen year old boy. But you are the man of the house now, and you’re going to have to make some adult decisions no one should have to make at your age.”

The rabbi sighed again, his breath full of grief. “The foster system isn’t known for its kindness. I’m not sure how much your parents have told you of their own experiences. Children your age aren’t likely to be adopted, and you’ll be spit out three years later and possibly separated from your sister. Since no one’s come to claim you, one option you have is to continue living where you are. Your parents managed to buy a house here, and you won’t get much from its sale, if you’re able to sell it at all- again, this town is not most people’s destination."

Mom and Dad didn’t like to talk about their childhoods much, and Jim never pried. He figured that if they didn’t want him to know, he didn’t want to know either.

“This isn’t a decision you have to make right away. You’re grieving. Someone from the state may come to collect you yet. Both options have their benefits, and I don’t want to force you into either one of them. Just know that I’m here if you need anything I can provide, and that God is watching over you,” the rabbi said warmly.

Jim could barely hear anything over Liz’s crying and the sounds of the hospital. One of the nurses was trying to pry her off of Dad’s body, but he was too focused on Mom to pay much attention.

She wasn’t conscious anymore. Her last words before she fell asleep were ‘I love you’, and that scared him, because he knew she probably did that on purpose.

He prayed and prayed, despite his unsure feelings of God’s existence. It was the only thing he could do. Tears streamed down his face as he offered more and more words to the higher power Mom believed in with her whole heart, his voice still raspy from his own recently-gotten-over flu.

He wasn’t sure whether it was the ringing in his ears or the flatline until a nurse pushed him out of the way.

“I don’t really believe in that stuff anymore,” Jim muttered.

“Yes, I imagine you might not. That’s perfectly normal.” The rabbi gave him a pat on the shoulder. “Still, I’m certainly real, and I’m here for whatever you need.”

Jim knew that didn’t include taking them in. Rabbi Geller had four kids of his own, and no one lived here if they had a lot of money.

“Thanks, Rabbi. Um, thanks for the advice. And for not just calling the government on me and letting me pick and whatever. I’ll think about it.”

-

Liz was being a brat again after Jim walked her home from school. Before Mom and Dad died, she only had bad days every once in a while, but now it was every single day. Wild mood swings where she’d get angry and even violent, before she calmed down and apologized tearfully.

Part of him, the part he’d never dream of voicing, almost wanted to take Rabbi Geller’s offer to help them get placed in a foster home in the hopes they do get separated. He didn’t know how much more of this he could take.

But he knew he didn’t actually want that.

“I’m sorry,” Liz said, helping him tidy up the living room after she’d finished trashing it. As if reading his mind, she asked, “You’re not gonna go too, right?”

Maybe she could just sense how irritated he was. But it was right then and there his mind was made up.

Jim smiled at her. “I’m not going anywhere.”

-

taglist to be added in reblog!

#amow tropeathon 2023 #sickfic #kane and jim #whump #my writing #angst #emotional whump #minor character death #parental death #whump writing

[torchflies]

She Loves Them; Girl!Slider, Jewish!Slider

Something that's been kicking around in my drafts and listening to TTPD brought it back out 😂

Slider does anything she can for the boys she loves.

—

Ronnie Kerner never expected to be a blushing bride. 

But she never expected to be sitting in the middle of her childhood bedroom crying either, sitting cross-legged in her wedding gown, in a puddle of tulle and taffeta. 

She scrubs at her face with a handful of wet wipes, knowing she’ll need to redo her makeup before the ceremony begins — she can't let Tommy down. 

She's never been able to let him down, not then as her seven-year-old butterball of a best-friend with bruises and hurts that she could never hope to heal and not now as her pilot, her oldest friend, the man she lov — no. She can't, she can't say that. She can't.

Ice loves her, she knows he does. He loves her like a sister, like his RIO, his best-friend, like a body in his bed; a poor compromise for the one he really wants to hold.

She's never been able to deny him anything. 

Now, in a few hours, she’ll be his wife, his forever cover story, his canopy of protection so that he can be with the man he loves. She’ll be his wife to keep him safe, to make their families happy, to give him the children he wants. 

She loves Tom. She loves him in every way someone can love. How was she supposed to say no when he asked her? 

“It's just until you find someone,” Ice said that first night, his head tucked against her shoulder the way he's always done, “When you want the divorce, just say when and it’ll be done, Ron. I promise.”

It's only ever been you, she didn't say.

“I'm happy you found someone, Tommy.” She said instead, socking him in the gut to make him cough and laugh. “Even if it is Mav.”

She fixes her makeup with a small, handheld compact mirror and is perfectly presentable by the time her father, Ice and his parents appear at her door. They do things a bit out of order, having already signed the ketubah the day before, so she simply holds out her veil for the bedeken. The lace is delicate but thick and layered, designed to obscure her entire face as tradition dictates. Ice lays the tiara on her waterfall of red-brown curls and tucks the veil over her face, hiding her amongst the white blooms. 

The Bible says that Jacob was tricked into marrying the wrong woman because she was already veiled, so the groom must do the veiling — to be sure that he's marrying the right person. 

“Thank you.” Ice breathes, barely a whisper and she nearly shudders at the sound. 

This is wrong. 

I'm Leah, aren't I? 

Tom goes first, led out of her room and down the stairs to where the chuppah has been erected in their backyard. He is led arm-in-arm by his cold Admiral father — the man Ronnie has hated with a passion since the day she was old enough to understand the reason why her best-friend was always beaten black and blue and jumped at the slightest of sounds — and his soft-spoken doormat of a mother. Ronnie is led next, by her father, the Rabbi. He holds her tightly so she doesn't fall, whispering how proud he is. She just fights back another wave of tears. 

She joins the man she loves under the chuppah, circles him seven times for the home they're going to build together and she smiles in front of their family and the men they fly with, those who have become their brothers in all but name. They are the only ones who know the truth, well, not her truth but Ice’s. 

Hollywood’s shout of mazel tov! is the loudest and a beat behind everyone else’s. Sunny and Chip nearly throw Tommy off his chair during the Hora to a chorus of whoops and Mav’s abject horror.

While Wolf steals her away for a dance that leaves her laughing and smiling genuinely for the first time all night. “Are you okay?” He whispers, the moment they get close enough. She debates what to say for several more steps, so long that he prods her with a soft, “Sli?”

She eventually brushes his concerns away with a smile composed of more broken glass than their future mezuzah will be, “I’m fine, Wolfie.” His own smile wavers, like he doesn't believe her. But she's swept away before he can say anything else. 

Eventually, she bumps into Maverick. 

Maverick Mitchell himself, the jumped-up little idiot who stole her pilot’s heart and ran away with it. At least he always comes back — with Tom’s heart at least, she has no idea what Mav has done to her own. 

“Don’t you look lovely, Sli!” He teases and she whips off a heel to mime bludgeoning him with it. 

He’s too used to her to be scared though, just holds his nose with a grin. “Geez, put that back on before you stink up the joint.” He tacks on nasally and she rolls her eyes. 

Before she can be tugged away, back into the fray, he presses a Budweiser into her hand. She looks from the closed top and down to her fluffy wedding dress in one swift motion that has him snatching the bottle back with a scoff and popping it open on those ridiculous rabbit teeth of his. 

“Here then, Mrs. Kazansky.” He snaps, with enough venom to surprise them both. “I didn’t… I’m sorry, Sli. I know this is helping, I’m just…” 

She nudges his shoulder with the bottle, he’s wearing his bomber jacket over his khakis. It’s ridiculously out of regs, but he looks adorable. “It’s okay, Maverick.” She sighs, gentle and fond. “I get it.”

She doesn't take a sip though, she can't. 

She presses the bottle back into his hands. 

He looks down at the bottle, then at her, then lower and goes pale. 

She squeezes his hand, “It's a commandment, you know, for us to be fruitful and multiply.” 

“Veronica, I —” She shakes her head, cutting him off. It's strange to hear him call her Veronica. No one calls her Veronica. 

“I hope you have a good night, Mav. Caspian Hotel, down the strip, your room is 228, if he hasn't told you yet. Enjoy your night.” She whispers, a parting gift, before she holds her head up high and disappears into the crowd of her own wedding party, wondering how it is that she’s managed to have her heart broken twice in one evening. 

#tom iceman kazansky #pete maverick mitchell #top gun maverick #icemav #top gun #marriage of convenience #jewish iceman kazansky #kit writes stuff #ron slider kerner #now i'm sad #I don't own the above images #slicemav

[unbidden-yidden]

Archive Masterpost

Since tumblr refuses to fix its search function and/or make its tagging system reliable, to keep things tidy around here I am going to start a masterlist of posts that I think are helpful, funny, or that I am likely to want to reference again for some reason.

(If I've spent more than a couple minutes searching for a post ever, it's going on this list so I don't have to waste my time again)

This is primarily for my own reference (so I will not be taking requests or unsolicited advice) but feel free to use it if you're looking for something of mine.

Religion/Theology (typically tagged with "every hour is theology hour around here apparently")

Extremely long post explaining differences between Xtianity and Judaism

Trinity post

This extremely excellent post by @/a-queer-seminarian about why the Tables Flipping Incident isn't what a lot of lefty Xtians like to say it was

Jumblr takes on the Tables Flipping Incident

A good test of the value of any given religious belief

Progressive Xtians need to step up, Now

Religion doesn't change my morals; it enhances them

Why are so many Xtians so insecure about their religion in how they relate to Jews?

Shituf (wrt Xtianity)

Culturally Xtian atheist discourse #1

Culturally Xtian atheist discourse #2

Culturally Xtian atheist discourse #3

Why I say 'Xtian'

Questions for converts of any type

Spicy theology question

Questions I regret asking about biblical literalism

Holy Envy quote: Rabia of Basra

Things I don't understand about the Xtian Sabbath

Hey what happens if you reject your baptism according to inclusive Xtians?

Judaism: Religion & Conversion

Do you ever feel crazy for believing in God?

Xtians should be Xtians by Choice:

What to expect at your first Shabbat (@/bneiruth)

First-timer tips for shul: [1], [2]

What you might be asked your first time talking to a rabbi about conversion (@/bneiruth)

Conversion resources (by @/keshetchai)

Do NOT convert to Judaism if your intent is to syncretize it with anything else, and especially don't convert for Lillith of all things.

Trust me, no you didn't embarrass yourself too much to go back to shul

No, really

Having a lot of thoughts about what genuine, compassionate kiruv might look like to interfaith couples

Judaism: Jewish culture & politics

On the diversity of what people mean by "Zionism" and "Anti-Zionism" by @/3tznius5this

On Jewish music vs. Xtian music (pt. 1, pt. 2)

Times of Israel article re: Israel's court reform

Israel is more similar to Liberia

Chelm stories?

Judaism: personal experiences

Eretz Yisrael post

Conversion journey

The music of our prayers

An Ode to the Holy Dark

Hashem, the soul you have placed in me is pure

Singing Hallel for Av

Messianic mishegas:

Why messianics aren't valid (long post by @/sorekbekarmi)

Why messianics are antisemitic (also by @/sorekbekarmi)

Interview by @/sorekbekarmi about his experiences being raised messianic

Conversion requires a lot of unlearning

Yoshke is probably a mamzer

Messianics still aren't valid, pt.2

Antisemitism: (more generally)

@/schraubd article about Jews being caught in the middle between Right and Left talking over Jews on antisemitism

@/schraubd post about a possible art simulation of Jewish experience

Dara Horn post

"But... but... Jews are disproportionately wealthy!"

Post about Jewish regeneration through large families; discussion on names

It's not the 1940s anymore, but in the 1940s it wasn't the 1890s anymore...

If I find this massive antisemitism write-up by (I believe) @/penrosesun I will lose it in a good way because it was so good [Edit: I finally saw it on my dash again!!]

Compilation of important dog whistles to know & avoid (by @/dzamie)

Antisemitism inherent to Xtianity?

Khazer theory debunking

No means no applies to proselytizing

Missionizing is awful and Jews should not have to become experts in Xtianity to fend it off

"Diaspora" doesn't even really cover it

Tentatively adding "attributes every failure of institutions and systems to intentional malice rather than ignorance or incompetence" to my List Of Conspiracy Theory Red Flags

Desecrating a sefer Torah is NOT the same as desecrating a printed bible

Jumblr: (mostly memes and other more lighthearted or inspirational Jewish posts)

Pesach tinfoil post

Apparently "fucking" is transliterated exactly into Hebrew

Subarot

Why the Jews are Better Off Without Xmas Trees

You wouldn't drive in your house

"Dual loyalty"

Goyische chol hamoed

The prettiest, most aesthetic sukkah I've seen

Mezuzah friend

A cruel God

Who's ready for Yom Kippur?

Goats have too many sins

First photo released from Mars

Rashi's big frog

What if we advertised Torah study like Bible study?

Don't walk in front of me I may not follow....

"Ruth was un-Jewish by birth. Moses was un-Jewish by upbringing..."

Gender garbage: (personal, often heavy, posts about my own experiences)

Convergent gender

"Indentifying as" language

Labels are for recycling bins

We pick one

Untitled

I don't have preferred pronouns really

Transandrophobia discussions

General trans- and queer-posting:

That one reblog about The Birdcage

Ways to improve discourse around gender wrt to understanding that all genders have the same needs regardless of what patriarchy has told us

Feminism & Reproductive Rights:

Uggghhh this post has too many notes

Conservatives are coming for no-fault divorce

If someone in tech designs this, it's not my fault

Memes and other lighthearted posts:

Why does everyone seem to reblog this one kinda throwaway comment directly from my blog?

Spouse and I are very silly about words sometimes

Boulevard of Broken Dreams

Hey if the diaper fits

Miscellaneous:

Be careful what you say, because I might remember it forever

The Sneeze (germ video)

Tech halp:

How to get rid of upload notifications

How to do the small text

Yes, you can actually have a comma in the tags

General/Housekeeping:

Original introduction pinned post (retired)

[drifting-pieces-blog-blog]

Listen there is so many characters that represent intergenerational trauma in bemis run, (Ra as Khonshu's dad and a foil to Elias, Ernst as the personification of the people who killed Marc's family) but then Bemis doesn't explore that or botches the exploration

Like we already the Khonshu-Elias foil from Lemire run and then there's the grandfather Marc never knew. Who he only knows about through Yitz. and like I hate Yitz and Ernst being the same person (and a rabbi, it's not egdy it's just antisemitic) but Ernst is compelling to me (you are allowed to also be bored by him).

Here is the personification of what your father escaped and hey maybe if you kill your grandfather's murderer you'd get closure? Ha ha no.

But also clearly that's a story that Jews, not edgelord messianics get to tell.

I refuse to ever say anything nice about Bemis.

So the characters that represent intergenerational trauma do NOT come from Bemis' run.

Let's head back to "Death of Elias Spector" by Zelenetz.

This is where we get the story of the generational trauma and start to understand Moon Knight… Where we start to understand Marc Spector.

Up to this point, we have seen him be angry about Antisemitism, fight neonazi scum, and protect Jewish shop-keeps and the likes. We see him get angry about the bombing of a Synagogue and we see him become emotional over the loss of friends.

Before Zelenetz, we understood these to all be proper responses for a Jewish man. Or even just a man in this time period.

But it's when we see the generational trauma that was put so heavily on Marc's shoulders that we start to see those responses as more. We start to see his inner struggles with identity and expectations. We see him be a good man that sees himself as a bad one.

Bemis didn't see any of this.

Bemis said "What if the Rabbi is a Nazi and Marc witnessed him killing people?" He wants it to be more about personal betrayal and revenge than about the horrors of what an actual Nazi is!

There was no undertone. There was nothing deep. This was a man TRYING to tell a deep story for the sake of feeling an egotistical rush so he can pat himself on the back and let people think he's a good Jew.

You don't have to make a Nazi into a supernatural serial killer out for blood to make them into a horror figure.

The real horror lies in the fact that they were regular people that did these things because someone with a little power told them that it was okay.

But let's play with the story a moment. For argument's sake.

Ra as Khonshu's father SHOULD have been a fantastic foil to Elias. Much like in MCU when Ammit was a foil to their mother.

We should have gotten the dissapointed father. We should have gotten the failure for Khonshu to change the world for the better. We should have seen Khonshu change and grow and be able to rise up and declare that HE protects the travelors of the night. That he has chosen a perfect Avatar that can change the world. That he is the Pathfinder, the Embracer, the traveler, and the Defender.

And with that, there is more than violence and fighting. that he can be gentle and kind too.

But we didn't get that.

And Khonshu remains the same.

Moving on to the grandfather. Marc's whole family was murdered in WWII. None of them made it out except for his father and mother.

We don't need an enemy to be a murdering Nazi that specifically targeted his grandfather to make Marc angry.

We don't need a revenge story. That isn't what Moon Knight is about. Because he can't forgive a Nazi. And a Nazi should not live. And there is no way Marvel is going to show him killing a former Nazi out of pure revenge and not have that mess up the character of Marc Spector.

This isn't a revenge story of him hunting down Nazi.

He should never have touched on this. Because there ARE real Nazi that got away with it. There are real Nazi fucks that did terrible things and then wandered off to live normal happy lives.

Having him hide in plain sight AS A JEWISH RABBI is such a kick in the teeth.

And I'm going to do a review specifically on this run in a bit. Expect that soon.

I liked having Yitz as YITZ. Marc getting close to an older Rabbi because he couldn't get close to his own father is a good story. It shows his disconnect with people his own age and his father. It also shows him studying the Torah and working hard to be a good perfect Jewish boy, which leads into Steven's side of things and then further into Jake's take on the spiritual protector.

Heck, an interesting story would be if Yitz had done something that he felt betrayed his trust because then we have a good solid role model that somehow abandoned him or hurt him in some way. And it wouldn't have had to be something terrible. Maybe he left to another state to be with a different Synagogue without warning. Maybe he died suddenly? Any of those things could have hurt him and made him feel alone, since he already didn't connect to children in his school or his own father. We know that Marc feels alone and worthless. It's not a far stretch to show that maybe it started from losing someone he looked up to as a good Jewish person and then not having a role model anymore.

I did not like Ernst. Was he interesting? Probably. I get where he can be compelling as a villain. We all want to hate a good Nazi villain. It's one thing Hollywood has shown time and time again.

But there is no closure in this. There will never be closure in this. Marc still lost his family. His grandfather was a drop in an ocean and if they REALLY wanted to put Nazi fucks in the story, they should have just had young Marc accidentally walk into a KKK rally or something. Because we don't need the threat of the old Nazi. The Nazi just changed their hats. They're still out here today.

This is a story Bemis should never have touched.

I apologize it if sounds like I'm angry. I'm not angry at you by any means!

I'm just so pissed off at Bemis. I respect your wanting to see a better story from the stones Bemis laid before us. It's nice to dream that he could have been a better writer.

Marvel has a lot to answer for and this is just one more thing they managed to really screw up.

#Moon Knight #ask away #Talk to me about Moon Knight #I want to punch Bemis in the face

[nysocboy]

Episode 3.6, Continued: Kelvin and Keefe fight, BJ and Stephen fight, and nobody likes hologram Aimee-Leigh

.

The Second Reconciliation Attempt: Keefe enters with a rocking chair carved with Kelvin's name on a tree. This is way too much for a "let's stay friends" gift: he is attempting a reconciliation. You're the one who left, dude. You could just ask to get back together.

He is not wearing a sexy outfit; actually he is sweaty and rather disheveled, as if he rushed over the moment he finished the chair.  

Why a rocking chair for an athletic 34-year old?  "This is true love: we'll be together forever."  I am reminded of Robert Browning's famous lines from "Rabbi ben Ezra": "Grow old with me -- the best is yet to be." 

Keefe expected Kelvin to be alone to accept his gesture.  Nope, Taryn is there. 

Kelvin looks nervous and decidedly guilty, as if he has been caught cheating; he pulls Keefe into a bro-hug, asks inane questions ("Is that chair made of wood?"), and stammers "We were just...um...we..." until Taryn takes over and explains that they are just working together.  

Platonic pal advocates, pay attention:  Taryn wouldn't think it necessary to inform Kelvin's buddy that he has nothing to worry about, they are not having an affair.  Either she has inferred that they are lovers, or one of the guys told her.   

Keefe turns on the jealousy, and asks if Taryn has replaced him. As assistant youth minister, of course. But he means as a romantic partner.

Angry at the implication, maybe feeling guilty because he was planning to start a relationship, Kelvin plays along: he asks Taryn to give them a moment alone, touching her affectionately on the back to usher her out, exactly as you would ask your girlfriend to give you a moment to talk to your ex.  

Keefe continues to lash out, demanding to know if Kelvin and Taryn have had a "physical connection."   Romantic but not sexual partner advocates, pay attention:Kelvin and Keefe must have had a sexual relationship, or Keefe wouldn't think to ask about sex with his "replicant."  

Kelvin goes on the defensive, denying that he has anything going on with Taryn, but quite accurately pointing out that "You left me."  They have broken up; he has every right to see other people.  

He tries to touch Keefe's shoulder, and upon being rebuffed, pulls back from the romantic partner term "left" to the good buddy "ditched": "You ditched me. If you had said yes to Immigrant Outreach, we could still be dudebros."  Keefe rolls his eyes; even after the break-up, Kelvin can't say what they were.  

He continues: "What was I supposed to do?  Just sit around, be lonely?  Wait for you to deliver some stupid rocking chair?"  He would be going to work regardless, so "sit around, be lonely" returns to the romantic relationship.  He's telling Keefe that it's too late; he's moved on, he is in fact with Taryn now.

The reconciliation attempt failed, Keefe starts to cry.  He says "I will not disrupt what you and Taryn are building together," referring to the heterosexual trajectory of marriage and family.  Kelvin grimaces in disgust at the thought of becoming Taryn's husband.  

Keefe runs out, doing a cartwheel on the way to demonstrate the hotness he's missing.  Kelvin kicks the chair and screams.

We fade out to a close-up of the Kelvin tree. 

More Humiliation: At home, BJ is working out.  He reads on Judy's laptop that Stephen is asking for another hookup -- after everything that's happened!  His wife and kids are gone -- he's alone in the house, if she wants to stop by.  Pretending to be Judy, BJ responds "Coming." 

The Aimee-Leigh Hologram:  Later that day, the family -- except the partners, all in the midst of marital riffs --  gathers in one of the Gemstone theaters for Jesse and Baby Billy to unveil the hologram Aimee-Leigh.  

They hate the hologram: disrespecting the memory of their loved one, turning her into a carnival sideshow or a Sith Dark Lord. Eli starts to cry.  Judy and Kelvin rush up and destroy the hologram machine, and then quit their jobs as co-ministers.  Now it's Jesse by himself.

The nude fight: BJ goes to Stephen's house, sneaks inside, and finds him in the bedroom, masturbating. If he thinks Judy is coming over for a hookup, why isn't he waiting?  BJ attacks. They fight for three full minutes of screen time, through the house and out into the yard, with Stephen completely nude throughout. Stephen beats BJ into near-unconsciousness, but BJ triumphs.  Fans wondered if there were consequences -- an arrest for aggravated assault?  But Stephen's story has ended; he is not mentioned again. 

BJ goes home, all banged up, and tells Judy: "I hope you like me now."  Amber, BJ, and Keefe could all be asking that of their partners as we fade out. The end.

The full review, with nude photos and explicit sexual discussions, is on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

#the righteous gemstones #kelvin gemstone #keefe chambers #adam devine #tony cavalero #BJ Barnes #Stephen Schneider #Tim Baltz

[wonderlandleighleigh]

"Runaway bride" Midgelenny?

Midge's champagne colored wedding dress floofs out around her as she sits alone at the train station, her suitcase by her side. She can't tell whether she's relieved or nauseous as she waits for her train out of the Hamptons.

She's supposed to be marrying Gordon right now. Literally, this very moment, she is supposed to be standing under a chuppah, with Gordon and a rabbi and a priest and all of their friends and family.

Almost.

Almost all of them.

She sighs and slips the engagement ring off her finger, gazing at it sadly. How many more relationships is she going to run scared from?

"Every one that isn't the right one," she mutters to herself and slips the ring into her handbag for safe-keeping, to be given back to Gordon at a later date.

Midge closes her eyes and takes a breath, trying to calm her nerves. She knows this was the right choice. She know marrying Gordon would have been fine, but did she really want fine? Did she wan another marriage with someone who didn't really love her? Who had mistress (Gordon definitely did) and who expected that she would also have a boyfriend on the side?

That conversation had been a doozy, and the night before the wedding, too. Learning that Gordon's expectations had been so different from her own. That 'this is what everyone in show business is like. Do you think your precious Lenny Bruce is any different?'

Lenny.

She misses Lenny.

He's been in California for an entire year. He sent her a postcard once. 'The weather is here. Wish you weren't so fucking beautiful. Tell Abe I say hi.'

And she'd called him to tell him about the wedding. To ask him to come.

"We'll see," he'd said, his voice tense. "I'll try, Midge."

But he hadn't been there.

And she wonders if that was the last straw. Looking in on the guests and realizing he was nowhere to be found.

Not that she needs his approval to get married. Or do anything. It's just...

He's played her barometer for a long time. Practically since their friendship started, showing her a path forward, and if he's tepid on her marrying Gordon than maybe...

Maybe it's all wrong.

Coupled with that conversation with Gordon about "other partners" the night before and...

Well, here she is.

She's tried so hard not to miss Lenny. So hard to convince herself that Gordon was the one, and he's just - not. He's not. There is a 'one' already but he only wants to be friends, and-

"That is some traveling outfit," a familiar voice tells her.

Midge doesn't open her eyes. "For fuck's sake, Lenny."

He shifts on his feet - she can hear him do it. "I guess you're not having a very good day."

"Nope."

"Ran away from the wedding?" he asks gently as he takes a seat next to her, trying not to sit on her dress and failing.

"Yep."

"Why?"

"Because he has a girl in Brooklyn," Midge explains. "And he expects me to find my own...girl in Brooklyn."

"Don't tease."

"You know what I mean."

He pauses for a moment. "Yeah."

Midge finally opens her eyes and looks at him. Lenny looks tired. A little thin, but not entirely unhealthy. "What the hell are you doing here?"

He sighs heavily and shrugs, looking a little ashamed. "I maybe...felt bad about...about not coming to your wedding. And then on the plane I got to thinking about-" he pauses.

"Were you going to object at my wedding?" she asks, stunned.

"Gordon's a louse."

"Lenny."

"He is!"

"You can't keep doing this," she scolds. "You can't - tell me you want to be friends and then turn around and do things that are entirely romance-driven. That's not friend behavior."

"Oh, I'm deeply aware," he huffs. "But you're all I think about these days, along with writing deadlines, so..."

"I thought you were seeing someone," Midge says softly.

He shrugs. "It ended. A little while ago. And I just...miss...you. I miss you. And I'm a wreck. Staring down four months at a workhouse and struggling with the drugs, and maybe it's utterly selfish of me to come to you like this but I had five hours on a plane and then another hour on the train to think about the idea that maybe you and I could be...something again. And if I'm fooling myself then I'm fooling myself. Fine. I'll go back to California and we can go back to being whatever the hell it is we've been to each other these last handful of years, but-"

"Lenny," she says softly.

"What?" he asks, gazing at her with more vulnerability than she's ever seen.

"You know what the worst part about Gordon Ford is?"

"Aside from the cheating and wanting you to cheat right back?" Lenny asks. "Which - I've been in that situation. It's not sustainable."

"Well," Midge huffs. "Aside from all of that, the worst part about Gordon is that he's not you."

He stares at her in surprise.

"And If we're confessing feelings here, I'm just tired of denying that that's what's-"

She doesn't get to finish her sentence, before he's kissing her, cupping her face and pulling her close, and Midge is lost in the feeling of this man, and this moment.

"Your dress is awful," he whispers against her lips.

Midge groans and slumps back. "I told them champagne is an awful color and no one wanted to listen to me," she grumbles

Lenny chuckles softly, and holds her hand tightly.

#fic #au #tmmm #Midge/Lenny #Midge x Lenny

[germiyahu]

If it’s non denominational people will probably be wearing a mix of clothing so you probably won’t stick out no matter what you choose. Some might be wearing a full suit and tie and some might be wearing khakis. Don’t wear the polo though that’s too casual. I would wear a nice dress shirt or button down and dress pants with a suit jacket or sports jacket depending on what shirt you’re wearing. You don’t need official dress shoes but nicer leather shoes would look good.

I personally wouldn’t bring money because it’s Shabbat, but it’s up to you. You can plant a tree in Israel in their honor through JNF and you get a certificate from that which you can give to them, you can get them a piece of Judaica (Tallis clips are a great choice) the envelope of money depending on how religious the family is might be controversial.

Don’t worry about telling people your story. Nothing you do unless you grab the microphone from him on the bimah will take away from him being the star of the celebration. Bar Mitzvahs are fun and joyous and unless you’re the kid himself or his parents, they are not stressful.

(If the Bar Mitzvah is literally tomorrow then ignore everything I’m saying and just have a good time)

Thanks for your advice! The Bar Mitzvah is next week, I already committed to a khaki colored sweater vest so I think I’ll be going with my existing khakis that taper at the legs, but I did still buy ugly black straight fit dress pants that make me look like a beach ball creature 😭 I don’t want to wear a jacket because then I’d definitely have to wear a tie… should I wear a tie btw??

I’ll definitely be emailing the Rabbi because it’s her congregation and she knows the people and the general etiquette like the back of her hand. She can also confirm if it would be out of order to give a gift, or merely cringe but harmless.

I’m being facetious when I say I’d be pulling focus, but it is something I’m naturally pretty averse to, being the center of attention, people celebrating me, people perceiving me, people forming opinions about me. And the Rabbi said explicitly that after I’m a Jew she would highly encourage me to have my own Bar Mitzvah like oh… attempting stand up comedy would be less harrowing 😭

I’ll probably just meet a few people and say “I’ll be taking classes with the Rabbi,” and leave it at that. She expects me to attend services somewhat regularly so as the next 18 months go on I’ll definitely form relationships and I’m sure my Journey and my Truth and the Truth of my Journey™️ will be much more naturally shared by then.

#jumblr #gerim #jew by choice #jewish convert #jewish

[meatmensch]

I read May His Memory Be A Blessing months ago and commented then, but I'm still thinking about rabbi Miriam and what a brilliant character she is. Especially in her POV, just seeing her thought process is so interesting. She's so full of wonder and love, exactly the kind of person I'd expect to be a rabbi. No real point to this just saying thanks for this woman I think about now and then

Awe, thank you so much! Because May His Mem Be a Bless was one of the first fics I published, it's sad, and it's Jewish, it hasn't gotten at much attention as some of my other fics. It's the one I feel to be the most artistic though, haha. So, anyway, I really appreciate comments and messages like these!

I'm glad you like the character of Rabbi Miriam! The whole idea for the fic was born because I thought it'd be interesting for Dean to express his genuine, personal anger with God to an atheist, who is a religious leader. My original thought was to make him be in a church alone, just sobbing/screaming at the idols, and a pastor's like, "You good?" Then I remembered I don't really know what church or pastors are like, lmao. And, the concept of an atheist rabbi made more sense to me than an atheist pastor. From there, I just tried to make her loving, quirky, bold, passionate, wise, and helpful.

Some more Rabbi Miriam tidbits that (for now) only exist in my brain:

She plays the fiddle

Her wife is a fat Black Jewish woman who's a mechanic and owns/runs her own garage. They met at community college when they both went back to school to take a class for fun

Their son Dudi's adopted, trans, bi. DOES TRY to hit on Dean when they first meet, but then Miriam's like, "Young man WHAT are you doing? This is my friend the widower with the recently revived husband I've been telling you about." "Oh SHIT, sorry y'all. Hey Dean, good to finally meet you!"

She drinks a lot of Manischewitz which Dean clowns on her for cuz "Rabbi it's WINE. If you're going to drink, have a real drink, like beer" "Dean that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard" "And it's so sweet! You'll be pissing corn syrup!" "What I piss is none of your business"

She has a sister. That sister has a husband and 2 kids. Dean dated one of them in high school. Yes, Lenny Cortez. Neither Dean nor Rabbi Miriam have realized this connection yet

She and Sam aren't as tight as her and Dean, but they do love to hang out and talk about literature

Her and her wife both grew up with Yiddish speaking grandparents but they didn't retain much. When they got together they decided to relearn Yiddish together. Their son's a native speaker

She did a lot of peyote back in the day

Her and her wife have EXTENSIVE record and book collections. Just walls of them

#i hope u do not mind how i went off here #spn #my posts #my art and writing #mail #jupernatural

[a-normal-exorcist]

First Post: 10/4/2023

My name is Naomi Aaronson. I’m 23 years old, stand at 5’7” and weigh 149 lbs. I have very unkempt black hair and brown eyes. Not a big fan of flashy clothing. I grew up in a jewish household, but I don’t practice anymore. Not after all I’ve seen.

I’m writing all this because…

Honestly I’m not sure. I’m not even sure who I’m writing it for. Anybody willing to read I suppose. There’s not really anybody left to talk to. Anybody nearby I could talk to would understand. Maybe it’s because I know you won’t believe me that it’s easier. You can treat it as just a little campfire story. You can pretend it’s made up and enjoy hearing it. Maybe someone making light of all this is what I need right now.

I’m an Exorcist. A Licensed Magician given legal authority to deal with special interest targets. Cryptids, Monsters, Spirits, Cults, Anomalous Phenomena, that sort of thing. The office I work at is based out of Louisiana. There’s a reason why, but I don’t want to dump too much on you guys at the start.

I imagine your first questions are along the lines of: 

How much do Exorcists get paid?

Can anybody become a Magician?

How do I become Licensed?

To answer the first question. When you start out you can be expected to make roughly 190,000 a year. My current salary is in the seven figures. Taxes are kept low as another incentive.

Second question. Most Magicians are born this way. There are ways to become a Magician without being born with The Spark… but those ways are not worth it.

Third question. You’re approached by another Exorcist and recruited, then brought to an office. You do not want to be recruited.

Growing up as a Magician is a strange experience. First off, most animals are deathly afraid of you, so pets are a bit of a no go. Spirits of all kinds are drawn to you as well. I’d say about 75% are completely harmless. Ghost especially. Most just want something that’ll pay attention and actually talk to them and are just unfortunate enough to be scary looking.

It’s the other 25%. The Troublemakers.

Some of them are just aggressive. Noisy and handsy things that’ll haunt your dreams and break things. It’s uncomfortable and traumatizing, but… you can get over it. Others actively want to harm people. The worst ones want to take you over. Wear your body and soul like a suit and parade around. Most demons are like that. They don’t brute force their way in. They chip away at your mind, eroding your ability to resist, clipping your thorns that might bleed them dry on the way in so they can comfortably use you as a host.

Demons love Magicians. Usually they’ll take any body they can get, especially ones that submit freely, but they prefer a host they can use well. So Magicians are at risk of possession far more, even though we have a better chance of fighting back.

For as long as I can remember, my dreams have been haunted by Demons and other Troublemakers. My parents weren’t magicians themselves, and at first I don’t think they believed in these kinds of things. But they believed me. They did what little they could to offer me comfort and help. I’ll always be thankful for that.

They were the first people I lost.

I still remember that day vividly. It was a cold autumn evening, October 8th. One particular Troublemaker, a Demon called Mr. Ruddy had been trying to get a hold of me for some time. I always resisted, spat him back out. So Mr. Ruddy changed tactics. Instead he targeted my father. My father was a good man. A loving man, his faith as strong and sturdy as the oldest mountain. He told me to leave and find Rabbi Tobias Kravitz. If anybody knew how to help, it’d be him. Always a man of strange interest. In hindsight, he may have been a Magician like me, just interpreted it through a religious lens. It took a while to find him, but when I told him what had happened, what I’d seen, he came to the house as quickly as he could.

The exorcism lasted ten days. My father held out for so long. It had to be one of the hardest things anyone has ever done. While his body was twisted and his mind eaten away by that demon, he remained lucid. Every breaking and healing of bone, every tear and knitting of muscle. Awake for every moment, certain that he’d win. But eventually Mr. Ruddy won.

Mr. Ruddy used my father’s voice to get my mother to break the bindings. He tore through her and Rabbi Kravitz. Then he came after me. My father’s body wasn’t his anymore. He was some hunched, gangly thing with spindly digits and the top knobs of his spine jutting out from him. His muscles were so swollen and stretched that the skin had torn, exposing the fibers underneath. And that smile. His lips were pulled so far to the corners that his jaw hung open.

Whatever remained of my father spoke to me. Told me to do what needed to be done.

So I burned him. I burned him until his bones cracked like firewood and turned to ash. Mr. Ruddy left with him. I don’t know if the flames destroyed his spirit or if papa dragged him to the beyond to face some kind of judgment. I hope it was the latter. I hope that bastard got to feel small.

That’s when an Exorcist showed up. Andreas. I could’ve gone with my family, stayed with one of my aunties… but I accepted his offer. Got a new place, met new people who saw what I saw and understood what I felt. I even made friends. That last thing was my biggest mistake. Because every friend I made I lost. The lucky ones just got killed. Some were possessed and exorcized, but the trauma was so intense you could hardly call them the same person. Some were truly lost, and I had to do to them what I did to papa.

Eventually I wised up. I stopped trying to make friends in this line of work. It was easier to do that. Building walls is easy. Just a straight up barrier around your heart. Simple. Clean. It’s a lot easier to break a bridge than a wall. It’s lonely… but it hurts less than seeing more people I care for die.

I’m not doing this job because I enjoy it. I’m doing it because it has to be done. I hate it. I hate every waking moment of it. But I won’t let anybody feel what I felt that day.

I’ll try and keep you guys updated as best I can. But the job is busy so I may get pretty spotty. Feel free to ask me any questions.

#supernatural #urban fantasy #horror #qna #character qna #questions and answers #ask me anything #story #fiction

[thenightlymirror]

Trying to unpack today

Was supposed to be off at some meeting all day. They decided I didn’t need to go. I didn’t. But I was sort of looking forward to seeing some old friends. They said they missed me. That was nice.

Started work and all management and admin staff were at the meeting. The sales manager was late. Two counselors weren’t coming in, and the others were late. The superintendent was asked to help at another cemetery.

Two burials were basically ready for tomorrow.

Irina calls me to say that a big stone they were waiting until today to install for the family has a giant scratch in it. $25,000. Something like that. I get there and the superintendent is filling it in with black marker. She’s watching.

I call the engraver to see what he can do. He’s out somewhere else all day. He’ll come in tomorrow.

No one is doing the paperwork I’ve asked them to. And now there are suddenly two more burials for tomorrow. (Guess it was a good thing I was there.)

Ricky is missing a permit for the burial that is about to happen that he isn’t here for. Nice. Also, he has a signed document with no space number on it. Also for tomorrow. He sends me a cellphone pic of the document via text message. I print it out on the Konica.

I come over to help the sales office and get stuck there for the rest of the day.

I’m mostly trying to get the burial paperwork finished, but if they make me wait, they can also make me do their jobs as I wait. Bit of a pickle.

Family comes in and their marker is backwards. Woman comes in to yell at me because her monument isn’t installed. Who said it would be? New guy. November 2nd. Amazing guess. Wrong.

A woman calls and says she needs proof her mother and grandmother were buried in the Jewish parts of the cemetery. I can tell her where they’re buried, but she can’t have our documents. What the hell for? Rabbi needs them or else her daughter can’t get married. She just keeps telling me to xerox some legal documents “for Jewish purposes.” Oh. Well if you put it that way.

The thing is, I want to just make her a map, and maybe say, yeah they’re here. Signed, Me. But I cannot find documentation for her mother anywhere. Fucking anywhere. I try fucking everything. Finally, she just goes to work. I say I’ll call her tomorrow. I’m going to have to get up on this ladder and just go through interment books to find her.

So of course there’s a line now. It’s only me in this office. I have a totally different job that is managing the headstones in this giant cemetery, which would just be a golf course, except for all the headstones. But I’m here. Woman wants to by evergreen grave coverings, for a couple people. A little cash. A couple credit cards. Wants to see the silk flower collection. It’s in the back and no one’s pulled them out in a month.

Sometimes people come in asking about markers and, I swear to fucking God every time, yes, they bought one, but they never designed or “ordered” it. It’s just money sitting in a bank. Every fucking corporation these days is just the First Bank of Starbucks. So they’re like “Where is it?” and it’s like, Did you say Simon says? I’m sorry. Then it doesn’t exist. It’s still just frog eggs in the swamp.

They aren’t doing my blind checks still, they’re out standing services.

A woman comes from Arizona having a panic attack and wants her mother’s unused plots. Just because. Maybe she could have called for a thing like that. She’ll wait for the manager.

I end up staying an extra hour. One file for a burial tomorrow just hid on a counselor’s desk for hours. Woops.

One still isn’t done. The other never got dug. It’ll get done tomorrow. Instead of getting more stones in.

New guy said “…You’re so calm.”

I don’t show my face much in the other office, because they just expect me to be the receptionist when I’m there. New guy’s never seen someone in that space not writhe in hysterics immediately. I was. I was.

[batboyblog]

Hi! I don't know if you remember me, but I'm the anon from a couple weeks ago who just found out their grandma was jewish. I didn't know at first if I should get you a follow up, but your attention and kindness are still so dear to me, I decided it wouldn't hurt, at least (plus you called me friend, which is a win in my book)

So, I didn't talk to my grandma at first - my mother and aunts did. It was a very charged conversation, everyone was sore after a few days, but afterwards Grandma called everyone in the family to talk. She told us the broad strokes of the story, which was also very intense. She said she won't expect any of us to take this stuff to heart and start being Jewish, as she put it, but that she was happy with what we could share. She's kind like that. I know she's scared, I don't think she could not be, but she's been patient. I've taken opportunities to talk to her in small increments about it. I am really very open about learning about it, if not from a religious standpoint at the very least from a cultural one. She shared her secret for babka with me, as I asked her to. I learned it was her father's mother who taught her sister when he was young. It feels surreal to know this, a lifetime and an ocean away. But I'm happy she got to share this. I'm not the greatest baker, but I'm excited to try and bake it.

It's about to be Purim, right? A couple days away? My aunt is thinking of suggesting grandma that we celebrate it. I don't think we'd know what to do much, since grandma hasn't celebrated it in like, 80 years, but maybe she'd like that. Or maybe it's too soon. We'll see!

Anyways, I just thought I'd let you know. It may not have been much to you, but your words have really mattered to me. Thank you!

(also to whoever linked the song 'we are a miracle' in the notes of one of my asks, thanks for the song. I cried listening to it! I'm still very hesitant to say I'm Jewish, since I'm so removed, but to have even 1/1000th of connection to this history is honestly an honor.)

first off, of course I remember! its one of the more interesting things I've heard through this blog!

I'm glad you reached out I've been wondering ever since our last back and forth.

I'm also very glad you've been able to talk to your grandma and get a little family history and baking

yes Purim is coming up, it starts on the 6th, Jewish days start at sun down so a Jewish day would be night fall the 6th to nightfall the 7th, with the 7th being Purim (or the 14th of Adar in the Jewish calendar) you should totally ask her

IDK what Jewish community life is like where you live, if you live somewhere with LOTS of Jewish life or not. But I was thinking about after our last talk you should ask your grandma if she'd like to speak to a Rabbi, clearly these things do still mean something to her. I don't really know again how much Jewish life there is around you as far as options, and I also don't really know what your grandma would be comfortable with. Any ways she might find it comforting and easier to have one on one chats with a Rabbi rather than trying to dive into finding holiday services to go to.

one thing you might do for Purim, is the traditional cookie of the holiday, hamantash I mean who doesn't like a plate of cookies?

any ways if you live somewhere without a lot of Jewish resources, feel free to message me and we can brain storm ways to connect your grandma with resources. And feel free to message me any ways

also, this is a hard conversation, but you know, this is the end of her life, and while at the time I found it very hard to have the conversation with both my grandparents during their lives, after they passed a few years ago I found knowing what they wanted done as far as the funeral and stuff very comforting I felt very much like I was helping them. Sorry I know it's a very hard thing to talk about but... before it's too late your family should ask, does she want a rabbi? a Jewish funeral? a Star on her grave stone? her Hebrew name?

I wish you, and your family the best of luck (and happiness) with all this and to repeat my ask box and messages are always open for all questions, thoughts, updates etc

#Jewish #Judaism #Jumblr #asked #answered