Trutharchivist

Happy (not) birthday!

So, I made a poll over on tumblr about which Cosmere faction is the most Jewish. If you're Jewish and you have a Tumblr account I invite you to answer; if you don't have a tumblr account - feel free to share your opinion here, including what you think I've missed. If there will be demand I might make a thread for it.

This is a status update that I posted here one Hebrew calendar year ago. I believe its content is still just as relevant as it was back then, including the birthday wishes. 

Thank you for reading, have a good day.

Holiday Supplemental no. 8 (actually more likely to be the last one): Shemini Atzeret/Simchat Torah
Warning: due to the events that occurred on this day last year, I might slip into recent events in this SU.

Anyway, I believe I mentioned regarding Sukkot that it lasts for a week. Even if you missed that, the SU right before this one is about the 7th day of Sukkot, so you may have noticed the fact Shemini Atzeret is immediately after, with no space in between. It occurs on the 8th day, as its name indicates - Shemini Atzeret means something along the lines of “a pause at the 8th”, or alternatively “8th day assembly”. If so, then why is it a separate holiday? Why is it not considered a part of the holiday it’s the 8th day of?

Well… I’m not completely sure. Probably because the special commandments of Sukkot don’t hold anymore (though diaspora Jews might still be sitting in the Sukkah for one day). Perhaps the way the commandment for it was phrased is considered as separating it. Certainly, its additional sacrifices don’t follow the template set by the days of Sukkot.

This day is a Yom Tov, meaning it’s forbidden to do most types of work on it outside of making food. And, just in case you wondered, it doesn’t mean restaurants work on Yom Tov. It just means you can cook at home, as long as you obey certain rules.

Either way, outside of that, this day doesn’t seem to carry much meaning if we go by the phrases of the Torah (the Pentateuch) alone. However, we can always trust the sages to have our backs, right? Surely, they’ll tell us of some historical event that occurred during this day.

Well, no. The only historically significant event I can think of occurred last year. However, the Sages do give added importance to Shemini Atzeret - as the beginning of the rainy season.

That is not a completely accurate description, but to sum it up: there are two occasions in the daily prayer where we mention the rain. One is praising G-d for pouring rain, the other is asking Him to give us rain. Generally, we do not say either of those during the time of year the rain would damage the crops in the land of Israel - the spring and summer, the time between Pesach and now. Sukkot itself is considered the time of year G-d decides how much rain we’ll have this year - its own type of a judgement day (or week). But we don’t start directly asking for rain during Sukkot, because it’s considered a bad omen. It’s likened to a servant bringing their master a cup of water only for the latter to pour it back at them. You might realise how staying in a leaf-roofed hut while it’s raining is inconvenient. I mean, this does serve as something of an exit clause - we don’t have to stay in the Sukkah while it’s raining - but it still means we’re not doing the commandment and is considered an indication of punishment.

Either way, that’s why we only start praising G-d for his ability to bring us rain during Shemini Atzeret. We don’t start asking for rain right away due to a remnant of Temple-era practices. Since Sukkot is a pilgrimage festival and it takes time for the pilgrims to get back home, we don’t start asking for rain until after the time it shouldn’t be inconvenient for them anymore. It would likely matter slightly less in the modern world, due to how fast transport is, but for now this is how it stays. And that would be it… for Shemini Atzeret.

All right. So. A slight thing you might need to know: every time I said some holiday was a Yom Tov? It’s practised for two days in the diaspora. In Israel most of the Yamim Tovim last for one day, outside of Rosh Hashanah (for some reason). Usually it doesn’t really matter much. This year it matters slightly more, because if you know a Yom Tov-keeping Jew who lives in the diaspora they’re going to be unresponsive for three day due to Shabbat coming right after the two days of the holiday. It’s important for this holiday in particular, however, because the second day is Simchat Torah. (In the Land of Israel the two days are merged.)

So, what is Simchat Torah? The literal translation of it is the Joy of the Torah. In case previous references had not made it clear yet, Torah is the Hebrew name for the Pentateuch, though it’s also used as a general term for the entirety of Jewish religious literature. Now, in order to explain how this day got this name, I would like to start by talking about an old Jewish practice - reading a portion of the Torah each Shabbat.

This practice originated back when the Land of Israel was still controlled by the Persians, under the leadership of Ezra and Neḥemiah. The basic idea is to go over the entirety of the Torah in regular intervals. The reading is done in public, with one person reading aloud from a scroll and the rest listening. During the times of the Hellenist and Roman rule in Israel there were periods during which such readings were prohibited, which led to people reading parts of the Prophets (meaning, the books of the Hebrew bible that are collectively called Nevi’im, prophets: Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Twelve small prophets. No Daniel, Ezra or Ruth) that were related to the portion that should’ve been read at this Shabbat - the origins of the Haftarah, reading those at the ending of the Torah reading. 

Anyway, by Talmudic times, there were two readership cycles: one in the Land of Israel, that finished the Torah once each three and a half years, and one in Babylon, which finished the Torah once a year. It took some time, but eventually the Babylonian practice took over. By now, there is no Jewish congregation that practises the old Israeli tradition. The Babylonian cycle divides the Torah into 53 portions, called Parashot. That is due to the fact that in the longest Hebrew Calendar year has 385 days, which are 55 weeks. During holidays, though, the reading of the Torah changes to something related to the holiday, and there are always at least two Shabbatdays that occur during holidays - thus 53. For the shorter years (which can get as short as 353 days), some Parshas are merged. There is also some slight organising - certain Parshas are required to occur before specific days. Either way, we always finish the Torah on the same Hebrew Calendar day, whether it occurs on Shabbat or not: Simchat Torah.

So yes. Tomorrow (or in two days, outside of Israel), we’re reading the last Parsha in the Torah - Moshe’s blessings to the Israelites before his death. And then we start again from Bereshit, Genesis! For the Haftarah, we read the direct continuation of the Torah in the Book of Joshua. Now, as you might remember, back in my first holiday supplemental I mentioned that we make a feast whenever we finish a religious book. I also mentioned how Simchat Torah is essentially that, so I don’t really have to repeat myself! (I did though. Repeat myself, that is.)

So yeah, we have a feast, sort of. We have lots of celebrations, we dance with the Torah scrolls around the Synagogue and we give out free candy to children for some reason (no, it’s not trick or treat, since it’s handed out at a synagogue and during the day. And no, the fact that some children go on a synagogue round to get as much candy as possible doesn’t change this, what are you talking about?). It’s not for naught that this day is called the Joy of the Torah.

It was during the dances when I heard the first alarm.

You see, missile attacks are something of a familiar occurrence to me. Sure, it doesn’t happen as regularly where I live as it does in cities around the Gaza strip, but it still happens sometimes. So, we get alarms, go to the bomb shelter and hope the missile will be intercepted. It took us two alarms to realise something very serious was going on, and our congregation’s rabbi declared we’ll continue in the basement. The upside was that the synagogue’s basement is actually a pretty nice hall, the downside is that this basement wasn’t the bomb shelter. The bomb shelter was sadly too small for the entire congregation, so only the women and children stayed there. Oh, I guess I forgot to mention that in case you weren’t aware, the Gregorian date was Oct. 7th.

I could continue on, describing how the beginning of this war was for me. I could tell you about how my uncle was already drafted before I got home (he stayed with us for the holiday). I could talk about how both my brothers went away too. In theory, I could talk about my own experience from the first day, but I don’t remember much. I do remember talking to KoI over Discord to distract myself from what was going on. I remember reading Psalms and praying. The next day, I was drafted myself, went to carry the bodies of the fallen for identification purposes. Thankfully, the corpses were covered in bags by the time I got there.

A lot has happened since then. For one, I got more active on the Internet, which wasn’t very positive. Lately I started a tumblr account, and I find it impossible to avoid things about the war. I don’t think I’ve found one Jewish account there that wasn’t full of content about antisemitism and Israel/Palestine. And here I am, derailing another post with that! It is relevant, though. Because now, this holiday is also the anniversary to one of the worst pogroms committed against the Jewish people, the worst since the Holocaust.

I could start writing apologetics here, explaining my stance regarding the Middle East and the State of Israel and Palestine. I’m pretty sure this isn’t illegal here to talk about politics in status updates. But I don’t know of what use will it be. So far, no one here spoke even one ill word to me, and I am grateful for that. I might assume that the people who were rude to me on the Internet might benefit from hearing my opinions, but it’s unlikely to cause much other than strife. The same is possibly true for sharing my opinions here.

I don’t actually know where I’m going with this. I guess… this day will forever be stained by this massacre. Many people are asking how we will ever feel joy again on this day. I don’t think I heard any answer that might suffice. But we have to endure, I suppose.

So… That’s it for now. Thank you for reading.

Holiday supplemental no. 7 (possibly the last one): Hosha’na Rabbah. At least one more supplemental will be coming soon, be prepared.

To begin: reading the SU I wrote about Sukkot is likely a good start before you read this one, so go ahead and follow the link.

So, Hosha'na Rabbah. This is kind of a weird one. As the seventh day of Sukkot, it actually has no special meaning whatsoever in scripture. However, the Talmud tells us of some odd practice from the time of the Temple - to set large willow branches around the altar during the days of Sukkot. Now, there's another point you must know in order to understand why it's relevant to this day. You see, since it's a 7-day holiday, there's always a Shabbat in the midst of the holiday. And there are certain problems with keeping certain commandments during Shabbat. Not sitting in a leaf-hut, this one is completely allowed, but shaking the Lulav is prohibited… kind of, it's complicated. The thing is, this prohibition comes from the Sages, which (due to how Judaism works) means it can't go against commandments directly from the Torah (Pentateuch). Shaking the Lulav, though, is from the Torah only for the first day of the holiday - so if Shabbat falls on every other day it's prohibited. How is this relevant for the willows and Hosha’na Rabbah? Please wait, I’ll get to it.
(Side note: nowadays we don't shake the Lulav during the first day if it occurs during Shabbat. It's a thing unto itself that I’m not getting into.)

You see, the thing is (for some reason), setting the willows around the altar was also problematic in Shabbat, so it wasn't done in the Shabbat that occurred during the holiday… unless said Shabbat was on the 7th day. Please don't ask me why, I don't even know where this practice originated from. But, to make a long story short: the 7th day of Sukkot is the special day of the willows. Which is probably related to the actual special practices we have on it to this day - and that neatly leads me to the Hosha’not.

Hopefully you’ve read my Sukkot SU and remember that I mentioned this practice in two words. This is something we do every day of Sukkot, after all - even if the 7th gets the biggest one. To elaborate: the Hosha’not are religious poems we… chant, I guess? While walking around the raised platform in the middle of a synagogue, holding the Lulav.

In hindsight, I can see why my brother might joke that it looks like a pagan practice. I promise this isn't magic! We just chant requests to G-d to deliver us (rough translation of Hosha’ Na, the two words that were merged to create the word Hosha’na - singular form of Hosha’not), with verses organised by letters in the Hebrew alphabet, and this is somehow related to rain.

In all seriousness, though, it's a form of prayer. It is a somewhat weird ceremony, I agree, but it's still a prayer. Either way, every day of Sukkot we say one poem like that and go one round around the platform. During Hosha’na Rabbah, the big Hosha’nah, we say many more poems and go for seven rounds. And then we take a bunch of willows and hit the ground with them.

Wow. I guess this is one of the weirder holidays, in hindsight. And it's not even a Yom Tov! Most work is allowed on this day, outside of the regular list of stuff forbidden during the mundane part of the holiday - which I may not have explained properly, but it's hard to do so in English. It does seem to count as not only a Yom Tov, but one of the High Holy Days, for certain bits of prayer, which is kind of weird. Certain traditions take this to be the really final end of judgement instead of Yom Kippur. Yet others claim that the truly final “for real this time! Seriously!” judgement occurs during Hannukah, so maybe take that with a grain of salt. Some people practice staying awake all night on that day. 

Another important point is, of course, the fact that this is the last day in the Sukkah (at least in Israel). There's a special prayer to say after eating one’s final meal in the Sukkah, referring to the world to come and a special Sukkah from the hide of the Leviathan that shall be built then. And I think that about covers this particular day, hope it was comprehensible.

Submitting it a little early - for many of you this day, Wednesday, is going to be tomorrow.

Thank you for reading, and have a good day!

In a perfect world I'd have made an effort to reach out to people throughout this day. But this year's High Holy Days didn't hit me the way I'd have expected.

So, I'm truly sorry if I hurt anyone here. Gmar Hatimah Tovah to the Jews in my audience.

So, umm...

I wrote a Tumblr post about Jewish religious literature. A topic that I probably shouldn't have attempted to handle. Anyway, here's a link to what I wrote. If you're blocked by the login wall and still want to see what I had to say, I am willing to post it here as well.

So I didn't write anything on the Shard in the two weeks since my previous supplemental. And now I wanted to write a new supplemental to my Jewish holidays posts! Supplemental no. 6. There are going to be still more coming.

This one is about Rosh Chodesh - the first day of every Jewish month. Originally, I considered writing it at the first Rosh Chodesh of the ew Jewish year - the one of the 2nd month, since the 1st had Rosh HaShana instead. However, something happened between me planning that and the day I planned to write that at. That something was October 7th, 2023. So, after most of this Hebrew year has passed, I think it's time to talk about it in the last Rosh Chodesh of the year. Plus, this day has one or two more special things in it!

So, Rosh Chodesh doesn't have a historical event that it commemorates. Well, this specific one somewhat does - the third time Moshe went to Mt. Sinai - but that's besides the point. So, what makes a day Rosh Chodesh? The renewal of the moon, of course! I have talked a little about the Hebrew Calendar in a previous status update, but didn't elaborate much back then due to attempting to talk about calendars I don't really know well enough. So I intend to talk about it here with greater elaboration.

The Hebrew Calendar year is made of twelve or thirteen lunar months. Each month starts when the moon is renewed and starts waxing and ends when the old moon disappeares. The full moon is at the middle of every month, which makes Jewish holidays very uncomfortable for werewolves, since a couple of Jewish holidays occur in the middle of a month. Now, the average length of such a lunar cycle of waxing and waning is about 29 and a little more than a hald days. And that "little more" makes things a little complicated.

Now, originally, things were slightly more simple: the next month started when two witnesses came and said they saw the moon renewing. There was a whole ceremony around that, and it was very important - to the point where people who saw the new moon were allowed to go to Jerusalem during Shabbat, even if it meant breaking some of the rules. It had to be done by the central Beit Din - Jewish court, more or less - which is why it was usually in Jerusalem. But receiving testimonies for the renewal of the moon wasn't something that stopped with the destruction of the Temple - it continued for a couple of centuries beyond it. The Tractate of Rosh HaShana in the Mishnah and Talmud - yes, the one that's supposed to be about the first day of the new year - is mostly about the rules of how to check testimonies about the new month, how the knowledge was distributed and such things. Believe it or not, certain Jewish subgroups were determined to sabotage this process, and multiple points in the law were designed to address that.

But, like all good things, the time of Jewish capability to keep this up came to an end eventually. It was apparently around the time the Roman Empire made Christianity the official state religion that they started to heavily prosecute the Jewish leadership - the Nasi, head of the central Beit Din and the representative of the Jews in Provincia Syria-Palestina before the Romans. The Nasi of the time was Hillel HaSheni, Hillel the 2nd. Technically he was at least the third rabbi with that name, but he was the second one to serve as a Nasi, the first one being Hillel the Elder who lived at the time the 2nd Temple still stood.

Hillel saw the decline of the Jewish population under Roman role, and realized that soon there may not be a Nasi in the land of Israel anymore. That could mark a disaster to the Jewish people, since the requirements for getting testimonies for the new month couldn't be fulfilled outside of Israel. So, he made the calculations for the average renewal of months to come and based the Hebrew calendar on those calculations instead of getting testimonies. The details of those calculations passed by tradition and (as far as I know) were only made public by Rambam (AKA Maimonides), in his Halachic book. I have studied those calculations, to a degree, but it's honestly not very easy. Sure, everyone could use the calculations of the average month, use the standard rules of Rosh HaShana never occuring on a Sunday, Wednesday or Friday and find the right day for Rosh Chodesh this way, but those aren't all the calculations. Maimonidas spends a couple of chapters explaining the Astronomy of it all - and besides it being hard to understand, it's also based on the Aristotelian Geocentric model and that is sometimes confusing. There's a couple of stuff about angles in relations to some imaginary line in the sky, and the sky is mapped using the zodiac and I'm not really sure I understood this part properly. Here's a fun fact: in Rambam's time, there lived a rabbi in Provence (nowaday southern France) named Ra'avad. Rambam's books were very popular amond Provencial Jews, so this guy decided to write scathing criticism on it, noting whenever he disagreed with Rambam and usually insulting him over being wrong. Anyway, when he got to the point in Rambam's book where he talks about this topic, Ra'avad said that he doesn't really know nearly enough about this topic so he's not going to critique Rambam on it. The same comment also includes one last piece of critique and one slight jab at Rambam for claiming to be an expert on astronomy. So I daresay, it's ot just me having trouble with this topic.

The essential math, though, is pretty simple: the average distance between two moon renewals is 29 days, 12 hours and 793 parts - each part being 1/1080 of an hour. The first lunar renewal of the world according to Jewish tradition was 5785 years ago (more or less), on a monday, at 5 hours and 204 parts. Calculating any other moon renewal from that should be simple... Unless I was wrong about the precise year. That's a problematic point.

Either way, the rules of the Jewish calendar right now, beyond fitting as best as possible to the calculations of the lunar renewal based on the above numbers, are as follows: in every year, every other month lasts 29 days with the rest being 30, outside of two months that can change length between years. Rosh HaShana can't occur on Sunday, Wednesday or Friday, and Pesach can't occur on those same days only replace Sunday with Monday. Since the months between Pesach and Rosh HaShana have a set length, those things depend on each other. In a cycle of 19 years there are seven years with an additional month, 30 days long. It occurs during the 3rs, 6th, 8th, 11th, 14th, 17th and 19th years, and technically breaks the regular pattern - it exists to keep the year of lunar months in sync with solar years and seasons. This additional month is considered some sort of clone of another month, so even if you were born at it you still have a birthday every year. Unless you were born in the last day, since the month it's cloning is a 29 days long month. And no, I don't make the required calculations every time to see when the next month should start. That's what we have Calendars for.

Now, this last month was a 30 days long one. Due to that, we have two days of Rosh Chodesh - because back in the days they still accepted testimonies they could never know if today will end up being the first day of the next month or the last day of the previous one. What does this day being Rosh Chodesh means? Well, there's an old tradition to read the Hallel - Psalms 113-118 - only with two chapters (115 and 116) cut in half. We don't say Tachanun, which I might one day explain a little better, we read a portion of the Torah about the special sacrifices made at the first day of each month and have an additional Musaf prayer, which is also about those sacrifices. And... That's pretty much it.  Some people wear semi-celebratory clothes, but to be honest, they only forced us to do that in elementary school. So, we should be done here, right?

I'd have said no straight up if this thing wasn't long as it is. So, I'm going to be slightly more sensible and try being short about explaining the other stuff in this day. Firstly, tomorrow is the new year for the cattle. Which has implications to taking one tenth of one's herd and sanctify it to be sacrificed at the Temple for the owner to eat, but that's something that obviously can't be practiced nowadays. A more important point is, we're now at merely a month's distance from the High Holy Days, Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur. The next month - called Elul - is ususally taken as a time of repentance as preparation to the judgement in those days. Sepharadi and Mizrahi Jews start adding Selichot to the prayer for the entirety of this month, and Ashkenazi start reading the 27th Psalm twice a day. In addition to that, all Yeshivas start their first term of the year at the first day of Elul, which is incidentally nearly always close to September 1st. 

Since this is the last month of the Hebrew year, it's the time where you can see it coming around the corner, and in some ways already starting. It's still too early to wish people a happy new year, but it's just around the corner.

In short: Rosh Chodesh is the first day of every Jewish month, meaning it's the day the moon is renewed. There are lots of complicated calculations that decide when it occurs, but who needs them? We have a calendar that was already written in accordance to them! The next month is the last month of the Hebrew year, and new beginnings can already be felt in the air. Thank you for reading, and have a good day!

All right, hi! Supplemental no. 5 for my Jewish holidays series, upcoming. Hope you enjoy.

Tomorrow is one of the somewhat less prominent holidays - Tu B'Av, the 15th of Av. It's a day that sometimes get commercialised as something of a Jewish Valentine's Day. This is something I have somewhat negative feelings about - I might elaborate later in the post.

Anyway, what obscure historical event is tied to this day? Well... Buckle up, folks, because there are at least five. You see, the Mishnah in the Tractate of Ta'anit (the last one in this tractate, as a matter of fact) says: "Raban Shim'on Ben Gamli'el says: the Israelite has no days as happy as the 15th of Av and Yom Kippur." The Talmud, naturally, questions this statement. We are familiar with Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, and we can get why it's such a happy day, but what happened in the 15th of Av? The following answers are suggested, brought here in chronological order:

A. This is the day that the Deaths at the Desert stopped. What are those? Well, remember how we talked about the story of the spies in my Tish'ah b'Av post last year? So, following the Spies saying the Israelites won't be able to conquer the land and the latter group weeping over their presumed future demise, G-d declared in His anger that none if the Israelites who were over 20 at the time nay see the Promised Land, taking them instead on a lengthy tour on the desert during which this entire generation died. So, Jewish tradition has it that throughout the 40 years in the desert, every 9th of Av the Israelites would literally dig their own graves, go to sleep in them and those who wake up in the morning will cover the graves of those who don't. Hopefully no one overslept. Anyway, it is said that in the 39th year, they all got up in the morning. They were baffled. That couldn't be, right? Maybe they had the date wrong. So for an entire week they kept digging their graves, sleeping in them and everyone getting up in the morning as usual. Then they saw the full moon and realized, hey, Hebrew calendar months are lunar, meaning this has to be the 15th of the month, meaning they're officially off the hook! So they celebrated that.

B. This is the day the Tribes of Israel were allowed to intermarry. Why were they forbidden in the first place? Well, basically, the Promised Land was divided in twelve, so that each tribe had their own piece of land. But there were certain occasions when women could inherit lands, and when they marry their land would go to their children - who belong to their paternal tribe. So for the first few years, in order to solidify each tribe's territory, people were only allowed to marry inside their tribes. Which was probably not a great idea for the genetics, but it being short term might be fine. Maybe. Either way, this is the day they were allowed to intermarry, so hurrah! (The points about women inheriting and those women having to marry inside their tribes appear directly in the book of Numbers, towards the end - chapters 27 and 36.)

C. This is the day the rest of the Israelites were allowed to marry Benjaminites. Wait, isn't that... Exactly like the previous one? Well... No. No it isn't. Because this time we're talking about the story of the Levite's Concubine! How fun! The full story is laid out in the book of Judges, chapters 19-21. Short version: a Levite from the Mount of Ephraim attempted to make peace with his concubine from Judah. On their way back to his house, the Levite loathed staying in the Jebusite Jerusalem and opted to stay in the Benjaminite city of Gibe'ah instead... Where the people went all Sodom-like and ganged up on his host to rape either him or his concubine... The Levite pushed the poor girl outside, where the people did what they did and left her to die... The Levite then cut the dead body of his Concubine to twelve parts and sent her all around Israel, gathering most tribes to fight against Benjamin. It was a bloody war that ended with the Israelites vowing to not give their daughters to any Benjaminite to marry.

That's not the absolute end of the story, really. The following part includes the Israelites regretting the oath to practically extinct one of their tribes, then finding out the city of Yavesh Gil'ad didn't take part in the oath. So they massacre every man there (a part of the oath was also killing anyone who didn't participate. Go figure), and bring the women to the Benjaminites. Not enough? Not to worry! We're going to innocently send our daughters to dance in the vineyards, and it syre would be a shame if Benjaminites were to kidnap and marry them! (Wink, wink)

If you think this is messed up... Yes, you're right. Also, I just cross checked (wrote most of it from memory), and apparently there was a holiday in Shiloh, which was actually why young girls were dancing in the vineyards. The fact that the Mishnah I mentioned above also talks about a similar tradition in Jerusalem is obviously coincidental and has no relation. But. Um. I think there should be some other stuff...

D. This is the day the guards were removed from the roads to Jerusalem. What fresh horrors is this about to reveal? Well, much less than previously. Basically, when the Kingdom was split between Israel and Judah, the Israelite King Jeroboam (oh, traditional transliteration, how I did not miss you) was worried his citizens might go to the Temple in Jerusalem and suddenly recall that the Davidic Dynasty are their supposed rightful kings. (Granted, the Book of Kings was written by people from Judea and thus is likely to be biased.) Either way, he founded two Israelite (TM) worship places in his own kingdom and put up guards to prevent people from attending the rival worship site. Those have stayed there throughout the numerous dynasties, until Hoshea Ben Ellah decided that whatever, I don't have the budget for this, let's let people worship wherever they want. (The Israelites would like to say that this entire paragraph is full of Judean propaganda and shouldn't be trusted.) This action, according to the Talmud, took place in this day. So, congratulations, I guess. This particular civil disagreement ended up being less disturbing than the previous one!

E. Well, I think by now we're kind of back to somewhat normal stuff, because this one is just about wood for the Temple. You see, this is the beginning if the end of Summer in the Levant. The Temple required wood to feed the fire on the Altar all year round, but during the Fall or Winter it tended to be too wet or something? So they had to chop off trees for it during this season, up untill this day, and then there was a big celebration. Which is actually fun, for a change! Will this hold?

F. No. No, it would not. The fifth and final cause to celebrate is related both to my SU on Tish'ah b'Av and to the later one on Lag Ba'Omer and the Bar Kokhva revolt. You see, Beitar was the last stronghold of the Bar Kokhva revolt, which fell tragically after two years of independence, signing the fall of the last Jewish independent rule in the area until the founding of the State of Israel. The date of its fall, traditionally, was the 9th of Av. And for the week afterwards, the Romans did not allow for anyone to come and bury the dead fighters. Then, at the 15th of Av, they left and let the Jews bury their dead.

To be fair, this presentation is rather harsh when it probably was a simple matter: the Roman Legionnaires took a week to make sure they completely stumped the rebellion before letting civilians come around. Either way, the Sages decreed this a happy day, because they could finally bury the dead, and those dead were miraculously preserved - even though this is still summer, which is rather hot here, and in such temperatures bodies tend to rot quickly. They also added a fourth part to the blessing said after eating bread, which is an entire thing that I'm not getting into right now.

During the time of the Mishnah there was apparently a tradition for women to borrow dresses from each other and go dance in the vineyards for the explicit reason of finding a match. The Talmud goes to detail how every girl harped on her strong suit - the pretty ones remarked how important beauty is, the rich ones noted that money is also good, and the well-born ones (which doesn't necessarily overlap with being rich) noted that being of important descent is very important. This might come off as slightly disturbing in several ways, but this is probably how match making was done at the time. And yes, there's also a portion on what the poor, not well-born or pretty ones said, which is basically "acquire your purchase for the sake of Heaven, provided you adorn us with golden jewelry". Which might still be disturbing, but is sounds hilariously close to "for heavens sake, if you take us at least give us money". Which would be a gross mistranslation, but it's still kind of funny.

And then, we get to modern day practices. This is another one of the days were we just don't say the Tachanun prayer but otherwise there's no change in religious practices. But then, there's the "Jewish Valentine's" thing.

To be honest, my dislike of that angle might be simply a symptom of my general aversion to most things to do with romance. I would like to note I don't hate romance - some of my favourite bits in books are romantic! But this aversion is something I had from a young age and it didn't disappear when I grew up. However, I like to think it has more to do with how it is yet another symptom of Jews copying Christian traditions. To be fair, I don't really know how Valentine's became what it is today, so this might be a gross misunderstanding of the day. It still feels like that, however, when I pass by a shop that tells you to buy flowers for your girlfriend for "love day". I considered writing a full blown rant about the whole idea of Jewish holidays being actually the same as Christian ones with slight changes, the worst example being the invention of the Hannukah Bush, which is an obvious knock-off of a Christmas tree and has no root in Jewish traditions. I decided against it, though - I might've blown off the steam imagining the rant. I may still do it at some point, we'll see.

So, to summarize: one if the supposedly happiest days of the Hebrew Calendar, during which 1. The Israelites stopped dying in the desert; 2. The Tribes of Israel were allowed to intermarry; 3. The oath against marrying the Tribe of Benjamin was undone (it's actually not about the whole dancing in the vineyards thing, weirdly enough - it's supposedly something that happened a generation later, since the oath only applied for that generation); 4. The guards were removed from the roads between the northern Israelite kingdom and Jerusalem; 5. The chopping of wood for the Temple was finished each year; and 6. The casualties of Beitar were brought to burial. Nowadays, it's commercialised as some sort of "love day", somewhat similarly (from my ignorant perspective) to Valentine's day. 

That would be it for now. Thank you for reading, and have a good day!

So, I have a Tumblr account now. You can see it in my contacts, but here's a link for your comfort.

Why is this relevant? Well, the thing is, the Blog feature of the Shard is scheduled to be removed, maybe, at some point. I already have backups for my blog entries, so if indeed something happens to my blog here I'm probably going to republish those entries over there. Plus, I intend to provide somewhat more varied content there, though it would still be familiar if you've read my SUs. So, if you're interested, it's there.

Thank you for reading, and have a good day! (Yeah, this is usually reserved for longer pieces, but I had no other idea on how to finish that.)

So, this is another supplemental to my Jewish holidays. But, somewhat unlike the others, this one is about a day that isn't well known or remembered even among Jews: the 20th of Sivan fast, which occurs tomorrow. The reason for this fast not being well known is... well, it isn't much practiced. Apparently, some people even claim it was added only temporarily. But before I dive into why does this fast day exist, I would like to note that incidentally, this day is also the Hebrew birthday of one of my fellow Jewish Sharders - @Silva! So you may go wish her a happy birthday. 

Back to the topic, though. What is the story of the 20th of Sivan? Well, it all started in 12th century France, in the city of Blois. It was between the 2nd and 3rd crusades - which themselves weren't very pleasant for Jews. Essentially, there was a Blood Libel.

A Blood Libel, in case you didn't know, was (and maybe still is) a common antisemitic accusation. The basic idea is that Jews kill Christian (or sometimes Muslim) children and drink their blood. Sounds outlandish, right? well, apparently, every medieval European would disagree with you on that, and quite a few modern ones will as well. Usually, Blood Libels occur around Pesach, and the accusation is that Jews bake the blood of Christian children into Matzahs. I find it particularly funny, because Christians technically claim to drink the blood of a Jewish person - Jesus - during mass. I think. Do correct me if I'm wrong about this.

Anyway, the Blood Libel in Blois wasn't the first recorded Blood Libel. That honour (at least when speaking of Europe) goes to the Norwich Blood Libel - an accusation mad by a monk named Thomas against the Jewish population of Norwich, about 30 years before the Blois BL. In short, a Christian child was found dead in the forest, and the Jews were accused. While the government didn't necessarily accept those accusations, there were incidents of violence against Jews following it.

So what was special about the Blood Libel of Blois? Simple. It was the first occasion where local authorities were not only involved, but actively participated. What happened, apparently, was that a Jew went to a nearby river at the same time as a Christian slave. Said slave saw him carrying something that he apparently thought was a body, and went on to tell his master. Significantly, it wasn't that someone was reported absent. It appears that the local nobleman had sizable debts to a rich Jewish widow and wanted her gone. So, based on this little evidence, the local count conducted a trial. Apparently at first he only wanted monetary gain, but then a priest came to convince him that you can't take money in exchange for a murder. So instead he imprisoned thirty of the local Jews and condemned them to death by fire. Fun, right?

Said widow, BTW, apparently was somewhat close to the count and tried convincing him to not burn the 30 Jews. So, predictably, she ended up joining them. There is a legend saying they died saying the Aleinu prayer - a prayer of proclaiming G-d's kingship, essentially. Another legend claims that two of the people in the fire had their bounds burn before dying, so they jumped out and claimed that they were tested by the fire and found righteous. They were promptly thrown back into the fire.

This burning has occured in the 20th of Sivan, so one of the greatest rabbis of the time - Rabenu Tam, as he is widely know, though his name was Rabbi Ya'aqov ben Me'ir - declared this a day of fasting, with special additions to the prayer, etc. He himself died approximately two weeks later.

The fast has been widely accepted by Ashkenazi Jews... for a time. As genararions went, it was slowly forgotten and not practiced anymore. Likely, it was because of how it was dedicated to one event that, while horrible, was somewhat commonplace coming the next couple of centuries. And so, this day remained obscure and forgotten...

Until the 17th century Ukranian uprising.

Historically, this is probably a complex story about political tension between local Orthodox Christians and invading Polish Catholics or something. I'm sure if you ask a Ukranian knowledgeable about their counrty's history they'll be able to tell you more about Bohdan Khmelnytsky and his valiant fight for independance. To me, this is largely irrelevant. What is relevant is that his Cossaks enjoyed murdering Jews on the side - likely due to the fact Jews often served as middlemen between the local noblemen and serfs. That led to some of the worst pogroms in history, called collectively "Pera'ot Taḥ V'Tat", meaning "the pogroms of '408-'409", after the Hebrew years during which they occured. I can't say I know much details, and I don't really want to check too much, so let's just say it ended with about 40,000-50,000 Jews dead through actions of any side of the conflict. So, the local Jewish authority - the Council of Four Lands - declared the 20th of Sivan a fast day again. The reason for choosing that day specifically was due to an invasion to a certain city and a massacre of the Jews there that occured during this day, but it's likely they also remembered the old, defunct fast day and built on it.

That fast wasn't built to last either. It, too, was forgotten - or, well, fell out of practice. Nowadays you will be hard pressed to find people still practicing it. Still, I view this as a good day to talk in more general terms about Antisemitism through the ages.

You see, those are just two occasions. Both incredibly horrible, with the latter being so bad some people thought it was the end-of-days war - I kid you not, G-d willing I'll get to that in my History of Judaism essays. But there were also many other events.

During the 11th century, at the time of the First Crusade, there were calls for killing the heretics across Europe - including Jews. During those events, called Gzerot Tatno in Hebrew or (apparently) the Rhineland Massacres in English, many Jews were forced to choose between conversion and death. Three of the most prominent Jewish congregations of the time - the ones in Speyer, Worms and Meinz - were almost completely destroyed. To this day, we say lamentations on that in Tish'ah b'Av, one written by the prominent Jewsih commentator Rashi who studied in some of those congregations in his youth.

During the time of the Black Plague, Jews were accused of poisoning the wells and causing the plague. Supposedly, less Jews died in it than Christians. It led to massacres of Jews across Germany, including Frankfurt Am Main (which those of you who read my blog might find familiar) and Strasburg - which is significant to me personally, since my family originated from there.

Blood Libels were, as I mentioned, not uncommon antisemitic ploys. The original story of the Golem of Prague was all about protecting Jews from it, and one occured in the Ottoman Empire as late as the 19th century, taking the involvement of rich Western Jews to stop it.

Throughout history Jews were murdered, banished and/or forced to convert by multiple forces, Christian and Muslim alike. Well, usually Christians more than Muslims, but that always depends on the era. There are, though, two misconceptions that might only exist in my head, but that I nevertheless wish to dispell: firstly, the Nazis aren't the be all, end all, inventors of antisemitism. Considering what I just wrote I think you realize how much of an understatement this is. Besides all the shows of antisemitism from medieval Christians, there was also antisemitism among Pagans in ancient times. Those ideas are way older than a national-socialist party in 20th century Germany.

Secondly, antisemitism isn't gone from our wonderfully Westen, enlightened world. It's nice to think that, but antisemitic incidents occured not only through the 20th century, but also during the 20s of the 21st century. Here. Now.

I'm not just referring to the October 7th attack, though I do consider it an incident of antisemitism. Yes, Arabs are also Semites, but the term is used for hatred to the Jewish people and that's how I'm using it. If you want, you can translate "antisemitism" to "Judophobia" or something. Anyway, the point is that besides that, there were incidents of Jews murdered for their ethnicity and religion in modern day Europe. While, admittedly, I did not double check it, I was told that there's a rise in antisemitic incidents through the last couple of months.

So, yeah, this turned from a holiday supplemental post to a somewhat political post, but I think you can see why. These are my people who suffer because of this, around the world. And even if I'm sheltered from some of it by virtue of living in Israel, I still care about what might happen to my brethren in Britain, in France, in Germany, in Sweden, in the USA and Canada. I have literal relatives in some of those countries, some more distant than others, but it's not just that. I care about my people, wherever they are.

Sadly, I don't have any advice for you on how to battle antisemitism. I, myself, can't say I did much to battle it. The most I do is note encountes I have with people who think my nation is somehow responsible for every bad thing that ever happened, or those more subtle ones who claim I'm not really Jewish because it makes them more comfortable with hating me for some reason. But I beg you to remember those two things: antisemitism isn't new, and it didn't go away. It's been something of a constant in the world for centuries now, and stopping it isn't just a matter of stopping white supremacists or Neo-Nazis. It's something deeper, and much harder.

So, for now: Thank you for reading. I hope you have a good day. Oh, and happy birthday, Silva! עד מאה ועשרים!

All right. So, I know I said my next supplemental will be in a month, but Jerusalem Day is upon us again and there are some things I'd like to cover that I missed in my previous post. I mean, I did say there that I didn't nearly cover enough, and honestly I'll never be able to completely fix this, but I can add some other stuff I skipped but now I think are important, or things I found out on later.

So, I may have reduced the Crusaders' control of Jerusalem too much - they managed to have it for certain periods, one of 88 years from 1099 to 1187, and another of 15 years between 1229 and 1244. Not too significant, but important. I'm still not getting into the different Muslim rulers - suffice it to say that it was part of the Umayyad Caliphate at first, held by the Seljuks for a short while, ruled by the Ayyubid dynasty and later by the Mamluks, who were later succeeded (that is to say, conquered) by the Ottomans. Which I mistakenly but continually referred to as Othomans in my original post - due to how it's spelled in Hebrew. Either way, I'm intending to talk about them a little today.

You see, Jerusalem was a walled city... For certain portions of its time. It was during the Jebusite era, and King David did not break the walls in order to conquer it. Throughout the days of the Kingdom of Judea, multiple kings have made their effort to keep the city safe. After the breaching of the walls following the Babylonian siege, the city fell into disrepair. It took about a century for the walls to be rebuilt by Nehemiah - but this is the portion of history where the accounting of years is a bit confusing. By the end of the 2nd Temple time, there were apparently three different walls surrounding Jerusalem, most of which built by the Hasmoneans or their non-independant successors, Herod and his descendants. The Romans destroyed them all, obviously. Multiple rulers of the area rebuilt the walls, including at least one Byzantine empress (emperor's wife) and a couple of Muslim rulers. But the walls you can see standing today, surrounding what is known as the Old City, were built by the Ottoman ruler Sultan Suleiman.

There was one legend I vaguely remember about a dream that led him to build it, but I made a habit of not talking too extensively about legends (plus I don't remember it well). Anyway, it is him who gave us those walls, so thanks are due.

If I was slightly less lazy I might've started talking about, say, the various gates; sadly, I am lazy, so I'll just mention that Jaffa Gate is the one through which one enters in order to get to the Western Wall (it's the closest), I think Damascus Gate leads to the Muslim quarter but I might be completely wrong, and the Lions' Gate - which actually has leopards etched over it and not lions - is the one through which the Paratroopers entered when they conquered Jerusalem, and it led somewhat more directly to the Temple mount. While I do live in Jerusalem, I'm pretty sure I entered the old city usually through either Jaffa Gate or Dung Gate (which leads to the Jewish quarter. A pleasant name, don't you think?). I may have went through one or two of the others, I don't really remember. Yeah, I'm not really your first puck as a tourist guide, I'm afraid.

Another point I wanted to touch is something of a theme naming in the Bible - there are two people who are said to be kings of Jerusalem (well, one is Shalem but it's assumed to be Jerusalem), and both of their names end with Zedek, which means justice in Hebrew. Incidentally, Isaiah prophesized that at some point Jerusalem will be called the City of Justice.

Anyway, that's just a random note. And this is because there's something I want to actually focus on today, and that's a certain song: Jerusalem of Gold.

The story of this song starts in 1967. There was some tension brewing up around Israel. Preparations for war were being made, and it was clearly visible. During that time, the mayor of the Israeli half of Jerusalem - Teddy Kollek - wanted to have a song about the city sung at the Israeli Sing Festival. So after some inquiries, he turned to Naomy Shemer to write it. 

Now, part of what I'm going to say is based on my memories instead of clear cut facts, but I think Shemer - a prominent songwriter at the time - didn't want to compete in the Festival, which is why her songs weren't much present in it prior to this. She was promised that this song won't be part of the competition, and so she wrote this song - about Jerusalem that is divided. 

Three weeks later, the war started. I went over it briefly in my previous SU on the topic, and while it wasn't detailed I'm going to mostly skip it because despite my attempts here I'm not really a historian. Relevant points might include that when Rav Goren - then the chief rabbi of the IDF - got to the Temple Mount he sounded the Shofar, a ram's horn that is ritually blown in during certain events in Judaism. There's also a very famous picture of the Paratroopers at the Western Wall. So, Naomy Shemer was asked to add a verse to the song, to celebrate the reuniting of Jerusalem - which she did.

This song is a big deal in Israel. Most everyone who remembers Jerusalem day will sing it during it. There was a period when it was suggested as a replacement national anthem. Shemer became considered by many (except for herself) as the National Songwriter due to it. And I might not have successfully imparted here the significance of that song, I'm sorry.

I think that will be it for this year about Jerusalem. If I really wanted to get deeply into its history for every year from now on, I'd likely have never finished. My current plan for pseudo historical essays is more about Jews and Judaism, and I intend to post them in my blog - the next one there (once I get around to writing it) will be about Conservative Judaism, then I intend to talk about Sabbateanism and its effects, which is going to be (IMO) an interesting journey. Thank you for reading, and have a good day!

Holiday Supplemental 2: Lag BaOmer

Oh, where do I start this...

First, the counting of the Omer. I explained it a bit at the start of my Shavuot piece last year, so you may want to check it out, but basically: the Torah says that in the day after Shabbat - taken by Rabbinic Judaism to actually mean the first day of Pesach (Passover) and not Saturday - we should sacrifice the first sheaf of barley harvested, a sacrifice called the Omer sacrifice. Before this sacrifice it's forbidden to eat from the newly harvested grains. Also from this day forward we count 50 days - seven weeks - until Shavuot. This means that every evening since Pesach ended, in the synagogue, we say how many days has passed since Pesach. Today, for example, is 33 - which is why it's called Lag BaOmer, it's a gematria thing (Lag is how we read the combination of letters ל and ג, which are the equivalents of L and G in pronunciation, though ג is the equivalent of C in Alphabet placement. BaOmer means "in the Omer", so it's basically saying "the 33rd day of the Omer counting").

Now, in addition to the regular counting, for the period since Pesach until today we also practice certain mourning traditions - such as not shave or cut one's hair, not marrying and some people also don't listen to music during this time. Why, I hear you ask? Well, I'm afraid it requires some background.

You see, at the time after the Temple's destruction (about 70 to the Christian count), there was a certain Rabbi called Rabbi Akiva. I can't get into too much about him - suffice it to say that he was very prominent, even though he started studying the Torah at 40 as a condition for marrying his second wife. It's more complex than that, but that's the basic story. Anyway, even after starting that late, Rabbi Akiva managed to teach 12,000 pairs of students - who all died tragically in a plague during the time between Pesach and Shavuot, due to not respecting one another (as a punishment from G-d). So yes, it's them we mourn at this time period, due to a huge loss to the world of Torah studying. Rabbi Akiva,  BTW, refused to give up and went to "our Rabbis in the south" to teach five more students - those being Rabbi Yehudah, Rabbi Yosei, Rabbi Shim'on, Rabbi Me'ir and one other that is less certain - either Rabbi Nehemiah or Rabbi El'azar, I think. Those are... How shall I put this... If you open the Mishnah at a random place, go over a few pages and don't see even one of those names - and in this case it's important to note that it's only if there's no father name afterwards, because those names weren't unique but they're the only ones that don't need additional clarification - anyway, if that happens please tell me which tractate it is you opened, I'm fascinated to see it. Another thing is how some of the very basic books of Jewish literature - the Mishnah, the Tosefta, the Sifra and Sifri - each were written by students of one of those rabbis, and whenever in such a book no name is given for something that was said, it was it's respective rabbi who said it (Rabbi Me'ir for the Mishnah, Rabbi Nehemiah for the Tosefta, Rabbi Yehudah for the Sifra and Rabbi Shim'on for the Sifri). So basically, yeah, they're all very prominent rabbis. Maybe one day I'll elaborate on them some more.

But now, if we return to our topic, it's easy to see that something is odd. If Rabbi Akiva's students died between Pesach and Shavuot, why do we stop the mourning practices today?

The short answer will be that traditionally they stopped dying at that day, which later was also Rabbi Shim'on's date of death. And that's, my friends, is where stuff get weird!

So, I didn't tell you much about Rabbi Akiva or his students yet, but each has (obviously) their own personality. And nearly none is known more than Rabbi Shim'on. This guy has a thing against the Roman Empire - rightly thinking them selfish - and wasn't afraid to say that (though not publicly, someone snitched on him). He was sure the world revolves around studying the Torah to the level of considering working for a living problematic as it takes you away from studying. Well, not exactly, but you can take what he said to that extreme. Anyway, while on the run from the Romans because apparently they can't take an insult he went to stay in a cave for 13 years and study Torah all day, more or less. He even had a miraculous Carob tree and fountain to take care of his physical needs. 

In addition to that he had a somewhat high opinion of himself, you could say. Not to the level of disrespecting his fellow rabbis, apparently, but... There are certain things said in his name that indicate he was very certain of his righteousness, let's leave it at that.

All that is fine and all, but he became really popular only once in the 13th century, when Rabbi Moshe Di León - a Spanish-Jewish Kabbalah student - claimed to have found a book by Rabbi Shim'on called the Zohar. So, umm...

All right, let me get it off: I'm no expert in Kabbalah. I know a thing or two from here and there, but I don't know much about it. It is possible that Rabbi Shim'on always was a traditional important figure in studying it. I also don't want to talk too much about whether the Zohar really was written by Rabbi Shim'on. Most researchers agree that it wasn't, but many Orthodox Jews still wholeheartedly believe it was.

To my understanding, the Zohar is the source of some legends centered around Rabbi Shim'on - not the cave one, that's from the Talmud, but stuff like "when he died a pillar of fire appeared on his deathbed". Those things later evolved into a Jewish tradition of lighting campfires at this day. In addition, during most years people pilgrimage to his supposed burial site - not this year due to security issues. Rabbi Shim'on is considered one of the first prominent teachers of Kabbalah and for some reason became very popular - only another person in the list of "people who were pretty harsh originally but became popular later", along with Eliyahu the Prophet. Yeah, I mean the guy who killed 400 priests in one day. That guy's very popular, and not because of this story.

Anyway, I'm sure some of my fellow Jews here will be shocked at how little I talked about Rabbi Shim'on. You didn't even get the entirety of the cave story! But it's kind of long and I don't currently have the willpower to explain it.

Another Lag BaOmer tradition is shooting with bows and arrows - more accurately, children playing with those. This one is slightly defunct nowadays, as children enjoy collecting firewood instead (for over five weeks before Lag BaOmer. It can be a menace sometimes). There are some who tie it to the Bar Kokhva revolt - a Jewish uprising at the time of Rabbi Akiva (around 130 in the Christian calendar) following some actions of the Roman Emperor of the time in Jerusalem (trying to found a pagan temple on the ruins of the Jewish Temple). The Revolt was led by Shim'on ben Koseba, who Rabbi Akiva thought was the Messiah and was due to that nicknamed bar Kokhva, "son of a star". He successfully repelled the Romans for a short while and founded an independent kingdom in Judea that lasted for three years - believed by many to be the last Jewish independence in the land until the State of Israel. But, unsurprisingly, the Romans managed to regroup and squash the rebellion, with the last city left standing being one called Beitar, in which Bar Kokhva himself stayed. This city too fell to the Romans (during the 9th of Av, traditionally), Bar Kokhva died, and that was the end of it.

Except for, you know, the fact that for six days the Jews weren't allowed to go over there and bury their dead. Oh, and the fact that Judea was devastated by the fighting and many people had to move north to the Galilee - which is still a part of Provincia Judea, but a different region.

Anyway, yeah! Let's just leave you with that to ponder. Also, just in case someone will be confused: this is before Constantine. Christianity was still very young and in development. The early Christians likely opposed Bar Kokhva since he considered himself a Messiah, and most of them were still Jewish.

All this likely doesn't cover Lag BaOmer all that well. The issue is, I come from a family that's mostly skeptical of Kabbalah and is relatively rationalistic. Due to that, my experience with this day is very different from that of my peers. For example, going to Rabbi Shim'on's burial site isn't something I did very often and I don't find it too important a site - in addition to the fact it was discovered roughly at the 16th century, so it's really dubious. I should probably help differentiating Bar Kokhva from Rabbi Shim'on - rabbi Shim'on is also known as Bar Yohai, the son of Yohai, so they're two different figures even if they share a first name. Another random note - Bar Kokhva was taken by modern secular Zionists as a symbol, so they tended to glorify him. Pretty funny when you consider that his revolt's original purpose was likely to refound the Temple.

Anyway, that's it for today. The short version is: today is Lag BaOmer, during which we light campfires and sometimes children play with bows. The reason for the former having something to do with the death day of Rabbi Shim'on bar Yohai - a prominent rabbi from the first/second century who is credited as the writer of an important Kabbalah book - which for some reason is celebrated. The latter might be related to a revolt that occured at roughly the same time. Hope this was informative! Thank you for reading, and have a good day!

Holiday SUs Supplementals: Pesach 1.2

The Shabbat during the Holiday and the seventh day

So, trying to make a pattern for future usage here, but don't expect it to last. It won't. Anyway, here I am to talk about a couple of other stuff I missed in the original Pesach SU!

Firstly, during the formation of the holiday SUs I've started talking about the portions of the Torah, Prophets and Writings (the three parts of the Hebrew Bible: the Torah is the Pentateuch, the Prophets include Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the Twelve Prophets, and the Writings include the rest of what you'd call the Old Testament, as long as you don't add any LDS or apocryphal books. And yes, Daniel, Ruth, Psalms and Chronicles aren't part of the Prophets). So, in Pesach, this includes... Umm... From the Torah, most anything that includes a commandment about Pesach. Sukkot is way easier in that regard - it only goes through the sacrifices of each day. Those are completely identical in Pesach, though, so they aren't enough to fill the quota.

From the Prophets - we read of Joshua's Pesach in the first day, during the Shabbat - the Dry Bones Vision of Ezekiel, and during the seventh day... You know what? I'll get to that later.

From the Writings, we read the first of the books called Scrolls in the Hebrew Bible: the Song of Songs. (By now I think I went over all others of the scrolls, which are this, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes and Esther. The sharp eyed of you might notice I already said when each of the others was read.)

Why the Song of Songs? Well, as per usual when the actual reason is unclear, I can give two answers off the top of my hat. One is that the Song of Songs is a parable for the love between G-d and the people of Israel, and this story started with the Exodus - which we celebrate in this holiday. The other is that this is the one book in the Bible with descriptions of spring - the season during which the holiday is required to be in. The book itself is an interesting case, because it's easy to claim its contents aren't exactly fitting to be put in the Bible. It was canonized, though, and I'm really not qualified to explain why.

Right. The seventh day, then. What's the deal with it?

Like the first day of the holiday, it has more strict prohibitions on work - weaker than those of a Shabbat, but stronger than those of the mundane days of the holiday, in which we are now. During this day, we read the Song of the Sea (Exodus 14-15) and from the Prophets we read David's Song from Samuel. Why is that, you ask?

In theory, I could go over it the long way, but I'm not exactly in the right state of mind for that currently so I'll just say that according to Jewish tradition that's the day when the Red Sea got torn. It basically goes like this: the Israelites get out of Egypt - supposedly for three days - accompanied by spies for Pharaoh; three days pass and when the Israelites show no sign of returning the spies go back to report; they arrive after three additional days, during which the Israelites change course and end up somewhat closer to Egypt, on what is now known as the Gulf of Suez (probably); Pharaoh doesn't take too long to reach them, and the fun begins.

By which, of course, I mean the Israelite panic and ask Moshe (Moses) if he found Egypt lacking in graves and that's why he took them to doe in the desert. A nation of former slaves, you see, doesn't deal well with their former masters chasing them on chariots. So G-d tells Moshe to tell the Israelites to go forward - yes, into the sea, can you see any other direction? - and meanwhile to hold his staff over the sea, and it will be torn. For an entire night, the Egyptians chased the Israelites with the Pillar of Cloud protecting the latter from the former and a great wind blew to tear the sea open. The Israelites walked through it, the Egyptians followed, G-d told Moshe to hold his staff over the sea again and it will go back to how it was, and when morning broke - so it did.

I'm sure you've heard the story once, so you knew what was coming. And in case you were wondering - yes, the verses do specifically say it all happened during the night. Just saying, people seem to forget that.

Anyway, that's basically it. The seventh day of Pesach is this Monday. For our brethren outside of Israel it lasts another day, during which they read other stuff which I don't think I'll go over. We're still living on unleavened bread here, thank you for asking. And reading. Oh, and have a good day!

So I said I might continue with my Jewish holidays series. Well, here is the beginning of covering things I've missed!

It's around this time of the Hebrew year that we get back to the time I wrote my first SU on the topic - regarding Pesach, AKA Passover.

Barely a single year has passed, and yet - it was a lifetime. I've been reading Frugal Wizard this time last year.

But enough about me! We're here to talk about some of the things I didn't cover regarding Pesach, and I actually want to go for one of the... Slightly less remembered facets. I want to talk about the 7th fast - one of the ones that don't usually count. Also, it will serve in part to talk about something related to the holiday the war here begun at.

So, Ta'anit Bechorot. The Fast of the Firstborn. It's a day of fasting on the day right before Pesach. Most all religious Jews know about this fast, and yet you'll be hard pressed to find even one person that fasts during it. Why is that? And why does such a fast exist in the first place?

Let's start from the latter question. It's kind of easy, because it's in the name. Remember the 10th Plague? The Plague of the Firstborns? Well, during it G-d could've just as well killed the Israelite firstborns as well. They were supposed to die, but G-d took pity on them. For this reason, the firstborn of every family supposedly belongs to G-d and has to be ceremoniously bought back by his parents from the Cohen, the Priest. Oh, yeah, and it holds just for the male firstborns. So for some reason, it also means they should fast during the day before the Plague was to hit.

So yeah, it's a fast only for male firstborns, or fathers of male firstborns whose children aren't of age yet. So is that the reason it's hard to find anyone fasting? Because there aren't many male firstborns?

Wrong. For obvious reasons. Every family has a firstborn (especially nowadays, when death rates among infants are significantly lower in relation to older eras), and it's a 50/50 chance it'll be a boy. Sure, the firstborns are still a small number of the population, but not that much. So why is that?

Well, the thing is... This fast doesn't have much to stand on regarding its origin. It's first mentioned in a relatively late source: it's not from the Torah, Prophets or even the old Sages. It's more of a tradition than a rule. And thus, it was agreed by several rabbis that if there there was an occasion during which there's a religious reason to eat - such as a wedding, for example - the firstborns can eat from it, and afterwards they don't have to fast any longer. But the usual escape isn't via weddings - it's using another mechanism, about which I want to elaborate: the Siyum feast.

You see, Judaism is heavily structured about learning and studying. Our books, written throughout the ages, our our holiest possessions. And so, it is said in Midrash Rabah on the Song of Songs that from the feast king Shelomo (Solomon) made right after his dream we learn that one should make a feast after finishing the Torah - likely because he asked for wisdom, it's as if he just studied the entire Torah or something. Anyway, that developed in what is known today as the Siyum (meaning finishing) Feast: every time someone finishes studying a book - usually one of the 37 Babylonian Talmud tractates, though a tractate of the Jerusalem Talmud or an Order (a collection of tractates, of which there are six) of Mishnah can also count - they gather around as many people as possible, hopefully at least 10 men (a Minyan). They then read out and explain the last paragraph of the book they've studied, sometimes talk a little on thoughts they had while studying it, and then they read out a couple of prayers: telling the book that as they repeat it, it will repeat them (don't ask, it's kind of weird) and that as they remember it it will remember them, both in this world and the next. Then they ask G-d to make the Torah pleasant for us to study, so that us and all our descendants will keep studying it; then they thank G-d for putting them among those who study the Torah. Lastly, they ask that like they finished this book, they could go on to study more of them. After that they say the Resurrection Kaddish and start eating. Though some people start the eating way earlier.

In case you were wondering, yes, it's a whole ceremony - but not a long and tedious one, really, it's mostly relatively short prayers, really. The Kaddish requires ten adult men to recount it, which is why they are needed. 

There's technically a slightly different text for finishing a book of the Tanakh. In addition, one can say a similar text on other religious books that weren't listed. Still, traditionally it's a tractate of the Talmud.

In a way, the holiday of Simchat Torah - the day everything went south for the State of Israel - is just a very large Siyum. You see, every year we read the Pentateuch, divided to 53 portion - with one being read every Shabbat (Saturday), every week of the year. There are some derailing with Shabbats that are during holidays and calculations of reading a specific portion at a specific date, which all lead in the end to the next to last portion being read during the last Shabbat right before Sukkot (unless Yom Kipur is in Shabbat, in which case it's the previous one). The next time we read from the Torah in the regular order is Simchat Torah, and there is much joy during it - we dance with the scrolls of the Torah in the synagogue. We also read the begining of both the entire Pentateuch (Genesis) and of the Prophets (Joshua) - which serves to show both the cycle of studying and repeating and continuing studying farther. Which leads me to another, somewhat less common tradition - of starting the next book you study during the event of the Siyum.

So, generally there are lots of Siyum Feasts during the day before Pesach, and most every firstborn goes to those - and this is why it'd be hard finding anyone practicing the fast.

So, that'll be it for now! I do still have more things I forgot to mention last time about Pesach, but I'm not going to say them right now. Be sure to check out the original SU if you didn't see it yet, for more information I likely won't repeat. Happy and Kosher Pesach to those who celebrate! To those who don't, have a good day!

So, I'm slightly depressed lately (only slightly), and I wanted to share two stories I thought of. Not stories I wrote, but stories I've gathered or read. 

I'm not going to give context, because there isn't much to it. If you somehow succeed in finding a logical context know that you're likely wrong, but I would love to hear what you thought of. Anyway, here they are (trigger warning - book burning, some references to suicide and general injustice):

The first is from around the first century to the Christian accounting. During the Roman rule over Judea, there were times they forbade on Jews to study the Torah. Rabbi Haninah ben Teradion (Haninah the son of Teradion) didn't care much for that and taught the Torah in public. The Romans decided to execute him in a somewhat creative way: they wrapped him with vines with a scroll of the Torah in his arms and set him on fire. To prolong his suffering, though, they took water-soaked wool and put it on his heart so that he won't die quickly. They say his students told him to open his mouth so that the flames would enter and kill him quickly; he replied that he who gave him his soul will take it. (Yeah, you have to open your mouth to talk, I know. Please activate your suspension of disbelief.) His students then asked him what he sees, and he replied: "scrolls burning, and letters floating in the air."

At some point later, his executioner asked him if he will get to heaven if he'll make him die quicker. Rabbi Haninah said it will, and swore on it, so the executioner took of the water-soaked wool and when Rabbi Haninah died he also jumped to the fire. A voice from the heaven then welcomed both Rabbi Haninah and his executioner.

Take what you will of this story. It comes from the Talmud, and I've actually read it all in one place - though it wasn't the Talmud, there are books that collect stories from the Talmud.

The second story is quite a bit later - at the middle of the 13th century, in Paris. I didn't read it from one source, I mostly heard of it from here and there.

Once upon a time there was a Jew who converted to Christianity called Nicolas Donin. He had a mission: to convince all Christians everywhere of the inherent wickedness of the Talmud and that it should be forbidden to study. It led, eventually, to a public trial and debate - between Jewish rabbis like Rabbi Yehiel of Paris and Rabbi Moshe of Coucy and Christian judges. In a Christian country in the middle ages.

Can you guess who won?

Anyway, after the debate has ended, there were brought twenty four wagons filled with copies of the Talmud - all hand copied, because the printing press didn't reach Europe yet - and all were burned in the middle of Paris, in Place de Grève (now known as Place de l'Hôtel de Ville). This marked the end of an era to Jews in France - if I ever get around to write about eras other than the Ahe of Enlightenment I might tell you about the Tosafot at some point. Rabbi Yehiel is said to have fled France to the holly land following this debate.

At the time, there lived a Jew in Germany, in the city of Rothenburg, called Rabenu Me'ir - often referred to as Maharam of Rothenburg. He was apparently a student of Rabbi Yehiel. When he learned of the event, he wrote a piyut - a religious poem, in this case a lamantation - over the burning of the Talmud. We say it every year at the ninth of Av to this day - it's called "Ask, o Burned One". 

Maharam of Rothenburg was later imprisoned by local authorities for unrelated reason and forbade the local Jews to pay too much ransom over him. He ended up dying in jail and a rich Jew had to ransom his body to get to bury him.

That would be it for today, thank you for reading and have a good day.

Happy birthday!

Why, yes, I do remember it's not your birthday. I don't remember when it actually is, so I chose to wish you today.

I actually did the same thing with Facebook when no older than how you were when you joined here.

Hello there!

No, I'm not General Kenobi. You, on the other hand, aren't Grievous; I think you're just a spambot.

I'm pretty sure you're a spambot.

So, remember that series of essays on the History of Judaism I wrote? Well, guess what? I just recalled it too! not only that, I actually wrote the next installment and published it! Here it is, it's about Modern Orthodox Judaism - the group I'd consider myself to be a part of.

For the previous parts about Haskalah, Reform and Ultra Orthodox, just click on the links!

Hopefully you'll enjoy it.

Hello! It's been a while, hasn't it. So, short reminder of what I do here: I write pieces about Jewish holidays, explaining their origins and traditions as much as I can remember at the moment, more or less. And now, we're getting close to exactly 12 Hebrew months since we started - which would be next Sunday! Yet, I still have one more holiday to talk about. It's special in various ways, but every holiday is so I guess there's no need to make a big deal out of it. So, anyway, the holiday of Purim!

Firstly, I'd like to answer the (unasked) question regarding how twelve months have pased and yet it wasn't a year. Lucky you, I talked about it a bit in the past here. But it appears I didn't elaborate on this specific point, so let's do that a bit: the Hebrew year is a lunar one, but there's a commandment on Pesach (Passover) that says it has to occur during the spring. So, for this reason, every two-to-three years there's an extra month in the Hebrew calendar. Incidentally, it's a double of the month we're currently at, called Adar. This year is a leap year, so we have this extra month - but the month's holidays are kept for the second of the two, which is why we're in this situation now. There's a reason for that, but this isn't our topic and frankly, has taken too much space as it is.

So, Purim! The last holiday in the Hebrew Bible, nicknamed the Last of Miracles (not commonly so, but still). The only holiday which story both starts and ends while the Jews are in exile. Technically the first of the Sages' holidays (its story predates Hannukah), but in the yearly cycle it comes after. Being a Sageic (is that a word?) holiday, you can bet it has a story - one we actually read during it, because the book documenting it did get canonized in the Hebrew Bible. So, say hello to the Book of Esther!

Our story begins with the Persian king Ahasuerus, commonly assumed to be Xerxes I. You see, he held a feast for over half a year-

groans

Oh, come on, it's not that's bad. That's how it's told in the Bible!

You can shorten it, though.

And I'm going to! I was about to do that when you interrupted. Rude.

Anyway, Ahasuerus had his feast for all his ministers and governmental workers for about half a year. Then he held a week long feast for all of the citizens in his capital. He became drunk, asked his wife to come so he can show her off, and when she refused he opted to get rid of her.

That's not shortened! And besides, what does all that have to do with Jews?

Fiiiine, I'll try actually making it short. You see, the Book of Esther is unique in multiple ways. Two defining features are: a. It's one of the only two books in the Hebrew Bible to not mention any of G-d's names. Literally, G-d is completely absent for the entirety of this book. b. It starts and ends with the deeds of a foreign king - Ahasuerus. And one of the most compelling explanations for that is that it wasn't written solely boy Jews for Jews; it was also written to sit in the bookcase of Persian history.

It's still mostly about the story of the Jews there - how incidentally a Jewish girl was picked to become queen; how Mordechai the Jew saved the king from an assassination attempt; how Haman the Agagite rose to power and decided to plan the first recorded genocide on the Jews (unless you count Pharaoh's, I guess) as a petty revenge over Mordechai not bowing to him; and finally, how Haman - and later his attempted genocide and ten children - were rid of by a collaboration of Mordechai and Esther. That would be the short summary, the longer variation includes death sentences over various crimes, rules that can't be changed, regal horses and clothing, and one can't forget the feasts! And fasts, too. If you want the entire story, go read the Book of Esther. It's not that long and can easily be found for free on the Internet, here and here, for example (former is a Jewish resource, latter is Christian).

So woohoo, the Jews were saved from genocide! (And killed 75800 people who were supposedly attempting said genocide. All across the Persian empire.) That's... a pretty good cause for celebration. No questions asked, right?

Well, there are a couple before we get to the holiday practices and traditions. Those are: is this the only time Jews were saved from genocide? If not, why then don't we have other holidays celebrating similar things? What does "Purim" mean, and why is this holiday called that?

The answer to the first and second questions is basically that there were other averted genocides - and that they were celebrated. Honest! There was a time were every other Jewish community has its own Purim. Literally so, because it was often called this community's Purim. But in modern times, with so many Jews emigrating to specific centres, this practice all but disappeared. That is likely because most weren't as wide as the attempt at Purim to wipe the Jewish people off the Persian map. But what of the Holocaust? I hear you ask? Well, we... umm... weren't exactly saved from it. Also, it ostly hit Ashkenazi Jews - which isn't all that relevant, but still.

The third question is tricky, and not just because it's a double question. The first half is easy enough: Purim is the plural form of Pur, which the Book of Esther itself explains to be lot. So Purim means, essentially, lots. Now, I once read a book that asked this question and took a few chapters to answer it; I can't really do that here, so I'll give a short answer that is also related to G-d's absence: the story is full of coincidences. There is a huge miracle here - but it's hidden with the natural works of the Persian Empire. Purim, then, is the holiday when seemingly random chance - a lot - saved us. So it's called appropriately, while somewhat hiding that G-d's hand was in it.

So, it's time for practices and tradtions! First, there are two days during which Purim might be celebrated - the 14th of Adar for most places, every city that isn't walled since the time of Joshua/Shushan (in which the miracle occured, since it was the capital of the Persian Empire at the time), while the walled cities celebrate at the 15th. The original reason for that was... Well, remember the genocide I've mentioned? It had a date attached. It was supposed to occur (or at least start) during the 13th of Adar. Mordechai and Esther saved the Jews by sending a second decree that called the Jews to fight against the genocide-committers at this same day. When this day came around and the Jews killed 500 people in Shushan, Esther and the king talked for a bit, and Esther convinced him to give the Shushanki Jews an extra day for vengence. Or something like that. So, the Jews around the Persian empire rested at the 14th of Adar and made it a celebration, while in Shushan the Jews didn't get to rest until the 15th of Adar. The reason for the "walled cities" rule is slightly more vague and has a couple of explanations I don't want to elaborate on right now. This year, the days of the holiday are next Sunday and Monday. I live in Jerusalem, so I usually practic the later of the two, but since my Yeshivah isn't in a walled city, I'm celebrating both.

During whichever day you celebrate, there are four major practices: reading the Scroll (=the Book of Esther), handing money to the poor, giving each other food (kind of a reverse trick-or-treat) and last but not least: feasting!

To try not to derail much, I'd say that according to the Talmud tractate for the holiday (it has one, unlike Hannukah) - those practices are paired with each other. The food sent should be served as part of the feast, and the poor wair for the Reading of the Scroll to receive their money. The reading occurs twice - once in the night before (since Hebrew calendar days begin with sunset) and once in the morning. The feast has to be during the day - not that it stops people from feasting during the night as well. There are certain definition for how much food/money to give your friends/the poor, but I don't have the willpower to elaborate on that.

The holiday has a couple of traditions, and honestly - I'm bound to forget something. For example, I didn't find a place yet to talk about the fast the day before Purim - at the 13th - which is practiced early this year since it occured during Saturday and we don't fast during Shabbat. And by "early" I mean "right now" for me, so excuse me if my hunger gets the better of me. This day is called "the Fast of Esther" - likely after the time Esther fasted three days before coming to see Ahasuerus. The reason for the fast might be to commemorate that - but this fast actually occured during Nissan (the next month), so this connection is a bit dubious. Some claim that during the fighting the Jews fasted - presumably the ones who didn't fight, becuase it's not a great idea otherwise. It has all the regular fast practices like the 17th of Tamuz, the Gedaliah Fast and the 10th of Tevet, though it's the least important of the six yearly fasts - supposedly you're allowed to eat if your eyes hurt. It's in some ways the flimsiest of the fasts - outside of the Fast of Firstborns, which I only mention here as a random tease and will likely never bring up again.

Also, going with the traditions that are more well based, we read from the Torah at Purim from Exodus 16 (I think) - the War with Amalek, due to the tradition that Haman was an Amalekite - a descendant of Agag, the king of Amalek at the time of King Shaul (Saul). We don't say Tachanun during Purim, but we don't read the Hallel either - the reading of the scroll sort of replaces that. There are also some other traditions going with the Shabbats around Purim, but I don't think I can push it here.

But now, let's get to the meat of it. Because if you ask the average Jew, when they hear Purim they don't think of reading the Scroll. Most of them will think of two things: getting drunk and wearing costumes. The getting drunk part derives from the feast, but it's kind of an expansion on that. The Talmud is what actually brought it up - one Amora (a sage of the Talmud) said that every Jew has to get so drunk in Purim that he couldn't tell the difference between cursing the villain and blessing the hero of the Book of Esther. This is paraphrasing, but this is the gist of it - or, well, being unable to tell the difference between the hero and villain themselves is more the gist of it. So... yeah, people get very drunk. Some people (such as myself) lean more on softer interpretations, like drinking until you sleep (maybe drinking and then sleeping is enough?) or drinking just a little more than you're used to (which isn't much, in my case).

The costume tradition has much, much less basis. I honestly don't know of evidence it even existed over 500 years ago. It's still surprisingly old, though - it's mentioned in a halachic book from 500 years ago. You could say it's copying Hallowe'en, but it's not very close to it in the yearly cycle. There are a couple of explanations for that - including the idea it's part of the flipping theme of the holiday. Which exist, because "on the day during which the enemies of the Jews hoped to rule over them it was reversed." (Esther 9, 1). So everything is flipped. Kind of. An additional point I forgot to mention that is tangentially related is the fact the Talmud stated: "once the month of Adar [during which Purim occurs] starts - happiness shall be added" (rough translation, it's kind of hard to translate). In modern day, it means that the somewhat topsy-turvey atmosphere of Purim is expanded to the two weeks before it - though TBH, I think it's most apparent in schools, where a Purim Rabbi is appointed to say a humurous sermon (so to speak, I honestly am having a hard time finding good terms). Or, well, sort of - I'm not sure I've ever seen a prooper Purim Rabbi, but I've heard quite a few Purim Torahs, which is the term for such a humurous sermon. There's also the "turning the entire school into something else" day, having special rules temporarily added to the school charter, having an equivalent of Secret Santa only with mostly food, parodying teachers, and the obligatory "come to school in a costume" day. And we've circled right back!

In addition to wine and other alcoholic drinks, Purim has its own trademark food. The Hamantash(TM) is a triangular pastry, usually filled with poppy seeds or - if you're slightly saner - chocolate. It's known as 'Ozen Haman (lit. Haman's ear) in Hebrew, since there's a rumor that the holiday's villain had triangular ears. Maybe they were even full of poppy seeds! Anyway, some claim that Hamantash(TM) are actually named that because they're poppyseed pouches, and the Yiddish word for such a thing would be montash - with the Ha- added as the Hebrew equivalent of the defining article (the o and a sounds tend to be swapped for each other among Ashkenazi Jews sometimes. Long story, this isn't precise but I don't have the willpower to elaborate right now). This is, obviously, heresy, and we will bear no such thing said regarding the Hamatashen(TM). There is also an annual debate in the Univesity of Chicago whether the Hamantash(TM) or the latke is the superior food. The actual answer is obvious (it's the Hamantash(TM), as long as it's filled with chocolate), and yet they keep debating. At least they enjoy it.

There's also a tradition to make noise every time Haman's name is read in the Scroll, which led to the marvelous line of toys that have no purpose other than making noise appropriately called noisemakers. I may have forgotten some other things that are still relevant - if you note such things, feel free to inform me. 

Sadly, this year I didn't find the time to make myself the costume I wanted, so I'm going to wear an old Johnnie Walker costume of my father's - ironic, since I myself don't drink Whisky. 

Short version of all of the above: during the time of the Persians they tried to kill us. They didn't succeed due to some political maneuvers and heavenly help (which isn't really mentioned). It was, in fact, reversed back on them. Let's celebrate!

Anyway, have a happy Purim! I may or may not continue this series in order to round off all the bits I skipped. I also may or may not try to record those things and upload them to YouTube - it's something I've considered, but I know nothing about video editing. So I'll guess we'll have to see if and where you're going to see me next!

So, perhaps I'll go a bit early this time. I even have a reason for that, on which I'll elaborate inside. 

So, welcome to another installment in my Jewish holidays status update series! Ad we're back with the fasts - actually, with the last (or first) of the four fast days for the destruction of the Temple. There is still one more fast day I might mention, but it's another story entirely. So, we're talking about 'Asarah B'Tevet, or the 10th of Tevet - which occurs this Friday. Unlike the 17th of Tamuz and the 9th of Av, this fast isn't known to have multiple events in it - but unlike the fast of Gedaliah, there actually are events that are said to have occured in close times, which gave us two additional, optional fasts - at the 8th and 9th of Tevet. This is why I decided to post this now - though I should mention that I don't think I know anyone who actually fasts during those days.

But let's start with the 10th of Tevet itself. What historical event happened at this day that we fast at it? Well, that's where our chronology gets flipped, because the event is actually the start of the Babylonian siege on Jerusalem, which (naturally) occured before breaching the walls in he 17th of Tamuz, the first fast we've mentioned. It's not very hard to digest, really - this is more or less the first time we've breached the chronology, and unless you're trying to compare multiple cycles inside the year (the three Pilgrimage holidays, the High Holy Days, the Fast Days and the Rabananic [from the Sages] holidays) it's... well, it's going to happen one more time, but c'mon. It's just twice, and it would've taken me three years if I would've tried to stay completely loyal to the chronology - at the very least, possibly more. Anyway, going back to the topic, not everything happened in one year. It's normal, especially in warfare, especially during that era. So yes, the siege started at the 10th of Tevet, lasted for about three years, and ended between 9th-17th of Tamuz, with around three weeks-a month of pillaging the city.

This is all well and good, but... hmm, not sure if anyone wonders about the "why" that much. I mean, maybe you do, but... it's an important event in the downfall of the Kingdom of Judea. It's the beginning of the end for Jerusalem - the start of a downward spiral that led to the 1st Temple's destruction and to the exile. 

But what actually happened? Well, prepare yourselves, folks, because this is going to be a lesson in Biblical history (istory based on the Bible). 

It's hard to point out a specific starting point, so here's a brief summary of some stuff: there was the United Kingdom of Israel, headed by David and his son Solomon after him. Then most of the Israelite tribes - basicalley, everyone except for Judah, Benjamine, and some of Levi - decided they didn't like the next king in line (Reḥab'am), so they crowned someone else called Yerov'am (transliterations done by me and are, as per usual, imperfect). That split the kingdom between Yisrael and Yehudah. fast forward a couple of hundreds of years and the Kingdom of Yisrael is on it's back leg, suffering from a big decline. Sennacherib, king of Assyria, felt like expanding his empire, so he came over, destroyed Yisrael and exiled its people, leaving mostly foreigners in their place. At the same time, he also went south to Yehudah, fighting against king Ḥezekiah. He destoryed most of his cities, putting a siege around Jerusalem and trapping Ḥezekiah as a bird in a cage.... and then leaving, according to the Bible - due to a miraculous plague hitting his troops and killing a bunch of them in one night. Ḥezekiah still has a lot to rebuild.

Now, I could talk more about Ḥezekiah, but it's less related. What is related to our matter is that he was one of the righteous kings, and that after the Assyrian withdrawal from his kingdom he accepted messengers from the King of Babylon and showed them all he had, including treasures from the Temple, which Isaiah, the prophet of his time, informed him G-d didn't approve of. So much so, in fact, that he promised him his descendants will be eunuchs in the King of Babylon's palace - though this and the complete destruction of Yehudah won't be during his days.

Well, Ḥezekiah's son is one of the evil kings, as is his son after him. the latter one, though, gets assassinated after two years on the throne. The people - or perhaps the nobels, it's not completely clear - prefer leaving David's line on the throne, so they kill the assassins and appoint 8-years-old Yoshiah to be king.  

Now, it wasn't unheard of; just a couple of generations ago Yoash was appointed king at a similar age. Solomon did say "woe to you, the land whose king is a boy!" )Ecclesiastes 10, 16), but apparently no one listened. But what's interesting is what happened when Yoshiah grew older, at the ripe age of 26. it was the 18th year of his reign, and he sent his scribe Shafan to check out that everything was fine with the maintenance of the Temple funds and stuff. Incidentally, the current high priest - Ḥilkiah - just found a fascinating discovery - the Torah scroll. But Arch I do not hear you say but kind of hipe you're wondering, what's so interesting about a Torah scroll? It being their scripture means they know its content, isn't that so? Well, no, I'm afraid. The thing is, the evil kings Mennasheh and Amon reigned for 57 years combined. It's kind of a long time, during which the Torah may have fallen out of use a little. 

So, Ḥilkiah reads to Shafan from the Torah scroll, and the latter decides to go show it to the king. The king hears what the Torah says and tears his clothes in... anguish? I guess? don't know the proper descriptive. Anyway, it appears he realized they didn't keep the Torah very well and that the Torah states they're going to be punished for it. So he sends a few of his people to Ḥuldah, the prophet. Ḥuldah literally means "rat" in Hebrew, and she's one of the rare female prophets in Judaism. Anyway, Ḥuldah doesn't have many nice things to say to the king's messengers. Essentailly, she says: "you're right, your kingdom is due to fall in the near future, but due to you repenting you get a thumbs up and not to see your kingdom's fall". So... yeah.

I don't know why, but telling this story always sounds better in my head. So I guess I'll make it short, maybe. Yoshiah starts a religious reform - and a very thourough one, at that. He removes all altars and temples except for the one in Jerusalem; he kind of takes over the lands that once belonged to the Kingdom of Yisrael and basically destroys their false idols too, fulfilling by that a prophecy as old as the Kingdom of Yisrael itself; he makes a huge Pesach celebration, one of the only... five, I think? directly mentioned in the Bible. But then, Pharaoh Necho decided he wanted to go north to Mesopotamia, to kind of help one of the sides in a dispute between the falling empire of Assyria and the rising empire of Babylon. Now, while it's true that one can't go from Egypt to Mesopotamia (an area around modern-day Iraq) without passig through the modern day area of Israel, technically Yoshiah's land was only the southern Kingdom of Yehudah, which didn't really stand in the way all that much. But as I said, Yoshiah took over the lands of the northern kingdom as well, and he didn't want an army headed to war passing through any part of his land - according to the Sages, due to an interpretation of the blessing verses in the Torah.

So, Pharaoh basically told Yoshiah: "what dispute do you have with me? I'm just passing through, your little kingdom doesn't really interests me." Yoshiah didn't listen to him, though, and made his stand in Meggido. Does this name ring any bell for you? Oh, it sounds a tiny bit similar to Armageddon? Well, surprise surprise, it's actually related! Armageddon is just a bad transliteration of the phrase "Har Meggido", lit. The Mountain of Meggido. Apparently the origin of the idea that this will be the site of the end-of-days battle is in the New Testament, so I have no obligation to talk about it. It might be related to a verse in Zachariah, though - in the last chapter there, he talks about the battle of the end of days, and says that the lamentations in Judah and Jerusalem in that day will be as plentiful as some lamentations on Hadadrimon in the valley of Meggidon. The Aramaic translation of the phrase separates it to two different deaths - one of King Ahab of Yisrael, who (is said to have) died by the hand of Hadad - hence Hadadrimon, and the other of King Yoshiah (usually translitrated Josiah) in Meggido. So, umm, there you have the connection.

Anyway, yeah. Yoshiah died battling someone he didn't even have to fight. He was mourned by many people - among them Jeremiah, the last prophet og the 1st Temple. It is said that Lamentations was written by Jeremiah, and that the fourth chapter there was written about Yoshiah - who is nicknamed at one point "The breath of our nostrils, the anointed of the LORD." (Lamentaions 4, 20 NIV), or alternatively - the Messiah. But hey, that's completely normal - his whole line is made of Messiahs, technically. Still, he's one of at least three people that may be considered Messiahs in Judaism (not going over them right now), and one of three (different) people who are the only ones called "the LORD's anointed one" in the Hebrew Bible - those being King Shaul, Kind David, and him. He's also the last king who's the common father of all the kings after him. Because three of his sons (and one grandson) were kings.

Well, I did not cut it short, so I'll try better with the next few kings: Yehoaḥaz, who was mostly forgotten due to ruling only for three months before Pharaoh decided he needed replacing; Yehoyakim, the puppet king of Pharaoh, who was conquered by Babylon but rebelled against them; his son, Yechoniah, who ruled for three months before surrendering to Nebuchadnzzar and being exiled, along with the elite of the kingdom; and finally, Zedekiah. Well, his original name was Mataniah, but if Nebuchadnezzar decided someone's name is no longer their name - it's no longer their name. Zedekiah is rather stupid, since he decides to rebel against Babylon again.

One more thing you need to know is that ever since Yoshiah died Jeremiah only had one thing to say, which is basically "surrender to Babylon or G-d will send you to exile", aand... there we go. All the pieces are in their proper places. So after Zedekiah makes his mov, Nebuchadnezzar makes his - moving his forces to put Jerusalem under siege. 

Once the Babylonian armies, headed by Nebuzaradan (Nebuchanezzar's Master of Butchery), arrive at Jerusalem, among the people exiled with King Yechoniah there's a Cohen, a priest, named Ezekiel. And he is told to write down this day, as it'll go down in history as the first day of the siege. And that's it, that's why we fast during the 10th of Tevet. The siege itself was pretty bad all around, but I'm honestly too tired to elaborate on that right now. 

But Arch, you promised explaining about two more fast days, didn't you?

I did, didn't I. Oh dear. Well, the likelihood of anyone reading this far is low, so I can just say whatever, I guess. But yeah, the two other days: 8th and 9th of Tevet. What's their story? Both could benefit from more limelight, but I'm currently really tired, so I'll sum it up as the day the Torah was translated to Greek (ever heard of the Septuagint?) and the day Ezra the Scribe died, respectively. Ezra has, in many ways, reshaped the way Judaism looked like for the next two hundred years - and thus, he is worthy of elaboration, as is the reason the Torah being translated is a cause for mourning. Sadly, this isn't going to happen right now - comment if you actually want this to happen.

Anyway, that's it for the - well, for the ancient part of the history. Just going over the fast practices - no eating or drinking from sunrise to sunset, a couple of additions to the daily prayers... and that's more or less it, I think. Oh, except for the day of General Kaddish thing.

You know what, I'm too tired to use the ask-and-reply method right now too. so [insert baffled noises here], which should be you, and answer - oh, yes. that thing. Basically: there's a prayer in Aramaic called a Kaddish, which JEws say many times during a daily prayer. One type of Kaddish is the Mourner Kaddish, which is said by mourners during the first year after their loved one passed away, and at the dte of their death every year afterwards. But what if you don't know when your loved one died? This is an issue that arose mostly after the Holocaust. And as an answer, this day was made: the day for saying Kaddish for those whose date of death isn't known. In that way, it serves as the religious Shoah (Holocaust) Rememberance Day, due to issues with the official Israeli one and the international one. So, there you have it, I guess.

So, in this post I've talked about the events leading to the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem, the fast of the 10th of Tevet, the other two fasts around it and the day of General Kaddish. Yeah, it's more of a summary than a TL;DR, I honestly don't have the willpower to write one right now.

Thank you for reading, and have a good day! 

Yours truly,
                    Trutharchivist the Hebrew

So, hello and welcome (again) to my irregular status updates! If you've been expecting an update on my personal state regarding the war after it lasted for two months - ha ha, you've been had, it's actually just me trying to return to the regular Jewish holidays SUs! Hope you enjoy that. (A summary is at the end.)

Anyway, the next holiday starts tomorrow evening and is one you all know and love (maybe) - Hannukah. Or, Chanukah, or one of the other ways to spell it in English. Did I ever tell you that I hate transliteration? Anyway, I say "you all know" due to an interesting cultural fenomenon where, due to it coinciding at around the time of Christmas (this time actually two and a half weeks earlier, but who's counting?), it became the Jewish equivalent of Christmas in the eyes of the average American. At least it looks like it, what with all the inclusive Hannukah specials in TV shows or random slight showcases of Jews lighting menoras in Christmas specials. And while some claim that the time coinciding is no coincidence, and there are a couple of things I can cite on that topic relating to the winter solstice, I'm going to refrain from that and talk about Hannukah from an average Jewish perspective - meaning, not much scholarly stuff.

So, Hannukah is the last holiday added to the Jewish calendar that was accepted by the majority. That would be the majority of Pharisee Jews, probably, possibly, 2nd Temple sects are a thing I don't really want to get into. Basically, all Rabbinic Judaism accepts it as a holiday - unlike, say, Israel's Independence Day. It's the only holiday not mentioned in the Tanakh - because the book of Maccabees isn't part of the Jewish Biblical canon, though this isn't saying much on whether it might be historically true. (Umm, did I say no scholarly stuff? Well, umm, sorry, that probably doesn't count.) This makes it kind of unique - and it's considered alike to Purim, a holiday I'll get to in three and a half months, in that both aren't from the Pentateuch. Those are the d'rabanan holidays, the holidays from the Sages, and they're considered as somewhat lesser holidays. But that's the technical part, what's the story of the holiday? Historical event?

What is Hannukah? Well, the Sages inculcated [surprisingly good translation, though outside of daily use]: in the 25th of Kislev those are the days of Hannukah. Those are eight, during which one is not allowed to eulogize or fast. Because when the Greeks [actually Seleucids and Hellenists, but let's run with that] entered the Sanctuary, they made all the oil there ritually unclean. And when the Hasmoneans overcame them and emerged victorious, they looked all over and found just one little cruse of oil with the seal of the High Priest on it. There was only enough oil to light the Temple's Menorah for one day in there, but there was a miracle and it sufficed for eight days, and in the next year they made those holidays of praise and thanks to G-d.

This, more or less, is what the Talmud has to say on Hanukkah. Something is kind of missing from this Talmudic paragraph. I mean, "when the Hasmoneans overcame and emerged victorious" - what happened? Are we going to just... Gloss over how a couple of peasants overthrew one of the greatest empires of their time off their backs?

The clear answer is yes. Yes we are. Kind of. You see, basically all the other sources for the holiday actually talk more about the miraculous victory and the tactical genius of Judah Maccabee and his brothers. What everyone seems to agree on is that the holiday was made for the rededication of the Temple after the Seleucids destroyed it - but let's draw back for a second. What was the Seleucids' story? And why did the Hasmoneans feel the need to rebel against them?

So, we are taken back a couple of decades, to the time of Alexander the Great. I hope you know enough about history to remember his conquests - basically, this area was Yahud Medinta as a part of the Persian Empire, and was conquered when he defeated the Persians. I could make another SU about Alexander in Jewish literature, but that's not very relevant. In short, he didn't destroy the Temple - which should be enough for you to understand the state of affairs. I assume you all know the story of his inheritance, so I'll just say that two of his inheritors are of some interest to us: Seleucus and Ptolemy, who got the area of Persia and Egypt, respectively - both were great empires in their time.

So, the area that was Yahud Medinata until recently was now right between those two, and both wanted it, since it's basically the bridge between Africa and Asia and a commercial crossroad. What follows is, of course, war. It was long lasting, and the area was transferred a couple of times. In the meantime, there was some cultural effect on the area - some Jews really liked the modern Hellenistic culture. Oh, and the High Priests could buy their position from the current ruler, for one reason or another. Anyway, it came to be that Antiochus the 3rd conquered the area once more for the Seleucids, died and left the land to his son, Antiochus 4th Epiphanes. And Antiochus 4th thought that, well, this Jewish culture isn't really fun. They should all be a part of the great Hellenistic culture! So, he started giving decrees against barbaric things Jews did, like circumcision, keeping the Shabbat, keeping their calender etc. Not getting into every detail right now, but at some point, after too many uprisings from the more religiously-inclined Jews, Antiochus more or less destroyed the Temple. I mean, he left most of the building standing (I think) but it was definitely not whole anymore. Surprisingly enough, that's not the event that supposedly started the rebellion. You see, Antiochus now came to the conclusion he should force the Jews to be polytheists, like every civilised person of the time. So he tried forcing them to stop worshipping their one G-d and start worshipping others.

In a village somewhere in Judea, there lived a family of priests, known as the Hasmoneans - Matityahu son of Yohanan and his five sons. Matityahu was apparently the village elder, and was told to sacrifice a pig to some idol. He refused to commit such an act against his faith, so another Jewish villager, who probably liked Hellenism and didn't understand what the fuss was all about, decided to go sacrifice the pig in Matityahu's place. It... Did not end well for him.

Matityahu is said to have taken a sword and kill the guy trying to make the sacrifice, then turning on the soldiers and calling to all the pious people, those who still follow G-d's commandments, to his aid. And they came, and started a guerilla war against the Seleucids.

I won't get into detail here. Suffice to say Matityahu died of old age and left Judah in charge. And Judah was a great tactician... Or strategist? Maybe both? Not sure about the difference. Anyway, he led the war effort pretty well. And eventually, he made it to Jerusalem and freed it, and went to the Temple mount to find the Temple in shambles. So he and his followers worked, and eventually got the Temple into shape again, celebrating its rededication in the 25th of Kislev for eight days - as many as the days of Sukkot.

But Arch, I hear you asking, didn't you say that the eight days thing was because of the oil lasting for longer than expected? Well, yes I did. I also said that this miracle was oddly absent from other sources. Not the point, though - this miracle is very important. I'll leave it at "the Book of Maccabees says it was because of Sukkot" and move on.

So, the Menorah at the Temple. Why did they start with it? And why is the oil so important? What is the Menorah, anyway?

Well, I can't really answer all these questions, because it's not completely clear. But I'll try, starting with what the Menorah is.

The Menorah is a candelabra, more or less, only with all its seven candle holders in line, at the same height, with the same curve, made of gold. Just look it up, it's not very hard to find. Just make sure you're looking at the Temple's Menorah and not a Hanukkah one - the difference would be the number of candle holders. The original one was made by Moshe in the desert, but the one the Hasmoneans lit wasn't it. Without getting into whether it was ever returned from Babylon, the Seleucids definitely took the Menorah that was in the 2nd Temple - because it was a shiny golden thing. So, the Hasmoneans had to make one from iron rods.

Now, the oil for the Menorah has to be specifically olive oil of the best quality, of which there isn't much. Plus being ritually pure is kind of a requirement. There are still plenty of questions over there, like why the Menorah was so important zince it wasn't the only thing in the Temple that was tended to daily. But I'm not going to get into all those right now, because this SU is getting long and I really should get to the end of it.

What more is left to say? This victory wasn't the last of the Hasmoneans' effort. You better believe founding an independent kingdom between two quasi-empires isn't easy, and they probably had Roman support at some point. None of the sons of Matityahu lived to die of old age as he did - at least two of them died in battle, and one was assassinated. They continued ruling the area for a time, until infighting turned them into a Roman province. But that's far later.

One may wonder at the meaning behind the holiday. It can be success against all odds and independence, or it can be all about stocking to faith even in times of darkness. Or, well, it's probably actually both. Secular Jews tend to glorify the military side more, though, and religious Jews tend to go the other way - which may be seen in the difference between the Talmud and the Book of Maccabees. So there's that.

How is this holiday celebrated? What are its practices? Well, the central commandment of the holiday - the (so to speak) equivalent to unleavened bread in Pesach and leaf huts in Sukkot, so to speak - is lighting candles each evening. It's not from the Torah (since, you know, nothing in this holiday is), but from the Sages - making it one of the seven commandments they added. Technically, one candle each evening for a house is enough, but as an addition to the regular terms one can have a candle for each person in the house, and as a further addition (with a disagreement of whether it's instead of the first addition or in addition to it) one can add a candle for each evening - lighting two candles on the second day, three on the third and so on. The candles should be lit at night (or, well, you can light them earlier as long as they have enough fuel to stay lit for half an hour after dark), on the outside of the door so people can see them - windows are also fine, though it shouldn't be too high for passersby to see. Most people light in menorahs of nine candles - with the ninth being there for light, as it is forbidden to use or enjoy the light of the Hannukah candles. There are blessings for lighting the candles, but that's a regular thing for many commandments so I won't elaborate. There are two traditional sings basically everyone sings after lighting the candles - one from an ancient rabbinic source (probably from after the time of the Talmud) called Ha'Nerot Halalu (lit. These Candles) talking about why we light the candles and mentioning it's forbidden to use them, and the other is an actual song called Ma'oz Tzur Yeshu'ati (lit. O Mighty Stronghold of My Salvation. It works way better in Hebrew) basically laying out a list of historical trouble the Jewish people had and how G-d saved us, and asking for him to save us from our current trouble and bring the Messiah. In the morning we say the Hallel (Psalms 113-118) and read from the Torah about the dedication of the Tabernacle (the stuff in Numbers, not Exodus or Leviticus) - the predecessor of the Temple. At the Shabbat that occurs in the holiday (since it's eight days, there's always at least one), we light the candles before Shabbat enters, read the regular portion of the Torah (something I didn't elaborate on yet due to the war) but change the portion from the Prophets - reading a part from Zechariah talking about a golden Menorah. If there is another Shabbat we read at it the dedication of King Solomon's Temple from Kings 1. In addition, there's a paragraph added to daily prayers and blessings on food, about thanking G-d for the miracle of tge Hasmonean victory. And those are the more religious practices.

as for the other practices - it's traditional to eat deep fried food, because the miracle was with oil. There's also playing with spinning tops - and I'm not getting into the explanation to that, thank you. There's also the Hannukah gelt - real money or money made of chocolate given to the children. Heaven knows why, but it's fun.

I hope that by now you see that outside of occuring during a similar time period and the length there is little relation between Hannukah and Christmas. I mean, sure, both are light festivals, but that's just because of the season (winter, not "the holiday season"). It's not as important to Judaism as Christmas is for Christianity, and is celebrated in a completely different manner (I think). I must say, I get irritated when people compare these two - though there are things that remain to be seen on the topic, I honestly don't think there are many likenesses. The least said about Hannukah bushes the best - suffice to say they are a clear sign of assimilation under pretence, which is rather ironic considering the holiday's entire point is standing against cultural assimilation. 

So, this is Hannukah: the holiday of lighting candles in the middle of the winter, celebrating the Hasmonean victory on the Seleucids and the rededication of the Temple. Further questions about it, my current state (it's fine, thank you), or my Ookla name are welcome - I may not be Ookla the Questioning this year, but it's not due to changing my stance on questions. Thank you for reading, and have a bright day!

Well. That was to be expected. I actually planned to prepare in advance, but I guess I'm a tad late. Anyway, I'd like to thank all the happy birthday wishers! I know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve. (Wow, I don't belive I've found an actually good occasion to use this!)

Now, I've seen @Cash67 a couple of times in Sanderson Memes, I think? And @Ravenclawjedi42 in This Stupid Ranks, weren't you the one to copy my crew idea? But the rest of you - @Lightweaver2 and @Silver Phantom - I don't believe I've had the pleasure to encounter. Either way, I'd guess all of you followed this pattern, more or less: you scrolled down in the main page to see today's birthdays. For some reason, my name caught your eye - maybe because you've encountered me in the past, maybe it wasn't specifically me and you went over all of today's birthdays - there aren't many of those. That, BTW, applies to future well-wishers as well.

Anyway, right after visiting my profile, you've seen where I live. I'm not going to try and guess what went on in your minds - and perhaps you've seen my latest SU, which showed some of my feelings over the current state. That may not apply to future well-wishers, who may only see this SU which remains rather vague, but who knows?

Anyway, a couple of things: first, I don't actually celebrate my birthday today. I've celebrated it two weeks ago, because I work by the Hebrew calendar and not the Christian one. Your blessings are still well appreciated, and, I mean, it's not like you've had any way to know that when my Hebrew calendar birthday came by. So, again, thank you.

Second: staying safe. It's been a month and a half by now, and I'm not sure how many times someone wished it to me. And, question: what do you mean by that?

I'm not running away from my country when it's at war. Currently it's also illegal for me (I technically still count as an IDF soldier), but I wouldn't anyway. I'm not actively endangering myself, but it's not necessarily that much in my power to "stay safe". When there's an alarm I go to the shelter, so I guess in that respect I am keeping myself safe. But whenever the IDF calls to tell me I'm needed somewhere I come. It's never even close to the front lines, but it may put me in some danger. Mostly emotional and mentak danger, considering the things I've worked with so far.

So, to certain values of safe I am safe, relatively. To others, I am not and can hardly do much to avoid it. So I don't know. I would've asked you to try and be more creative, but to be fair, the current cituation here doesn't call for much creativity.

Anyway, thank you for reading (and for wishing me happy birthday two weeks after I've celebrated it. Though "celebrate" is a strong word, considering the fact I was at a funeral for quite a lot of this day), and have a wondelful day.

It's been a month.

A month since, in the middle of a holiday, the Hamas terrorists went to the Jewish towns and cities near the Gaza strip and murdered about 14 hundred civilians. A month since a war started here. A month since I stood in the synagogue talking about the importance of Piyutim, religious poems, while the many dead were carted off - and perhaps the massacre hadn't ended yet, I can't know.

How much can the world change in a month? How much can a person change in a month?

A lot, apparently. I went from reading Psalms with a slight panic while my brothers were packing, through carrying dead bodies for identification purposes, to resting a week at home - all while slowly understanding what happened and what's going on, because one can't really expect to digest that in one day - and through a week and a half at the Yeshivah and now three funerals.

All through, many other random things happened: trying to join a DnD group; talking about the war with some people on Discord; working with an AI generator (apparently? For some reason, the chronology doesn't sound right, but it fits); trying to work on my theoretical cloak (if everything will go as planned you might see it by this Purim, in five months); writing two piyutim; studying in the Yeshivah; and... Well, it all seems to be forever ago, not merely a month.

I also had too long to think about how I may be remembered, but I'm yet to arrive at any conclusion. I'm still somewhat lost, I think, though there are some things I've found so far.

Well, it's been a month. And this month has not been easy. I don't know whenever it may end, and am sure the next month will be just as hard.

That has been, for now, your monthly update. Don't forget to comment below if you have any further questions and remarks, leave a like it's not an upvote farm, Mr. Arch! You can't do that here! Umm, I mean, and subscribe Storms, Rust and Ruin, man, are you trying to kill me? You remember I send a PM to every new follower, I have limits to my messages per minute!

All right, all right, then thank you for reading, and have a good day. Or, you know, month. At the very least have a better one than what Israel had - though that kind of sets the bar very low.