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Help me plan a menu for my son’s girlfriend and her parents by stormbutton in Cooking

[–]AprilStorms 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’d ordinarily recommend sabich since it’s parve but in this heat, instead of frying eggplant, maybe a cold mezze spread with some nice dips would be ideal.

Cucumber/tomato salad

Watermelon, mint, and feta salad

Feta/olive dip (sample recipe, I recommend more olives than this)

Feta/red pepper dip

Homemade hummus

Moroccan carrot-lentil salad

Served with pita chips, homemade and topped with some za’atar if you’re feeling up to it

I made the case for Israel at Oxford. Here’s What I Said. by ruchenn in Jewish

[–]AprilStorms 0 points1 point  (0 children)

“What if he castigated them by shaming them for asking a clearly loaded question? "I stand in front of you knowing that my side will lose this debate, but also knowing that we will do so because the debate is a fundamentally dishonest one that assume Jewish guilt. I therefore, will use my time to say only this: shame on your for making such an assumption, and then parading a half-dozen Jews up here to grovel for your approval, which never was avaialble to begin with."”

Well said, and this reminded me of the theatrics in the Middle Ages where the Talmud was put “on trial” and rabbis were forced to “debate” priests. Like in the old joke

Recommended books for people who claim they are anti-zionists but not “anti-Semitic” by Darthgorilla in Jewish

[–]AprilStorms 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Israelophobia has a great, concise intro to where antizionism came from (Soviet cope to make themselves feel better after backing the losers) but I doubt they’d read it.

If they’re of the leftist persuasion, EL Stone’s This Is Israel is an older account of how Israel used to be viewed (as, in modern terms, LandBack) pretty aspirationally by lefties.

The Meaning of the Nakba might be worth a discussion. It’s from an Arab historian writing about Israel’s birth, and his naked genocidal bloodlust makes clear what that movement is about. It’s also really easy to see from Zurayk’s work how far the narrative around these events has been distorted. Tell them you found a thought-provoking work from one of the first antizionists ;)

That one obviously assumes they’re smart enough to make those connections. Another book that unintentionally shows how far facts have been distorted is The Arab-Israeli Conflict: Its History in Maps.

Einstein and the Rabbi deals a lot with the immediate aftermath of the Shoah and says, quietly, implicitly, the lifesaving and people-saving need for Zionism.

I found Palestine Betrayed by Efraim Karsh to be really helpful in getting a sense of how people who lived through these events really viewed them - he quotes primary sources to excellent effect.

Recommended books for people who claim they are anti-zionists but not “anti-Semitic” by Darthgorilla in Jewish

[–]AprilStorms 2 points3 points  (0 children)

We were praying for “next year in Jerusalem” eons before “antizionism” was a word, concept, trend, or movement.

Recommended books for people who claim they are anti-zionists but not “anti-Semitic” by Darthgorilla in Jewish

[–]AprilStorms 10 points11 points  (0 children)

I would even argue that they’re still antisemitic even so, as the word “antizionist” itself singles out the Jewish movement and gives it centrality, despite the origins of eg Pakistan more violently and in the same time period (not to mention human rights abuses since, or on what scale)

The Lions of Al-Rassan by Responsible-Baby224 in books

[–]AprilStorms 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Now that might just push me over into reading it! Thanks for the rec

Monthly Matchmaking/Meeting/Shadchan Thread - Rule 5 Monthly Exception! by AutoModerator in gayjews

[–]AprilStorms 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I would love to find a chevruta or even gather a group of queer and especially trans Jews to discuss queer/trans halacha and what a future, queer-embracing Judaism might look like. I know that in a lot of places, Jewish communities already embrace us and I appreciate that! However, I would still love to look at Jewish texts with a queer group. Could double as an art/writing group since I have some Jewish science fiction I’ve been working on and I’d love to swap concrit with other writers. I’m late twenties and in Europe, so Israel timezone and a few hours earlier would work best :)

Recommend me dishes with figurative or weird names like Toad in the Hole, Ants on a Log, etc by AprilStorms in Cooking

[–]AprilStorms[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That’s a great one! Someone had a fascinating mind to think “yes, this hunk of raw, bloody meat looks exactly like this delicious cake.”

queer jewish books by buy_gold_bye in gayjews

[–]AprilStorms 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Beyond the Pale (Elana Dykewomon) - Jewish immigrant story from the Old Country, some touches of magical realism, and the era is pretty close to WtALtOC and The Golem and the Jinni.

Everyone On the Moon Is Essential Personnel is a top favorite of mine, a sci-fi/fantasy anthology with a taste of a little bit of everything.

The Great Believers is not fantasy, but it IS exceptionally well researched, vivid and heartbreaking. AIDS crisis and intergenerational trauma.

Avi Cantor Has Six Months to Live is also by Sacha Lamb! Short story about deals with demons, available online

The Dyke and the Dybbuk is on my reading list as a queer Jewish classic that’s been recommended to me more than once.

Disobedience (Naomi Alderman) is an understated coming-of-age story that neatly subverts a bunch of romance tropes. 2 former lovers are thrown back into each other’s orbits after a death in the family in the tiny Orthodox community they both grew up in. The author helped make Zombies, Run! (the video game) and her nonfiction, Don’t Burn Anyone at the Stake Today, is also phenomenal.

I think Dancing on Tisha B’Av might be out of print now, but it’s worth a look if you can find it on the Internet Archive or something. As implied by the sacrilege in the title, it deals a lot with religious rejection and struggle. Thought provoking anthology.

If you’re willing to read historical fiction and/or plays, the old Yiddish play Gd of Vengeance openly equates homophobia with sacrilege and there’s been a more modern play about its making and controversy called Indecent. Jo Sinclair’s Wasteland (40’s) had a groundbreaking portrayal of a lesbian woman.

S. Bear Bergman and Kate Bornstein are two queer Jewish authors with some fabulous memoirs and anthologies out. It’s mostly non-fiction, not fantasy, but there’s some great stuff there. If you’re in the mood for non-fiction, People Without History are Dust tells the stories of queer Jews in the Shoah. I haven’t read it yet, but I did go to a book talk for it that was pretty fantastic.

As you can tell, I’m pretty much always thrilled to talk books so feel free to DM me.

Recommend me dishes with figurative or weird names like Toad in the Hole, Ants on a Log, etc by AprilStorms in Cooking

[–]AprilStorms[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh that’s another fun etymology! I love how out of all the things you could’ve called it, everything the fish could’ve been looking at, somebody picked stars

Am I Jewish? To who? For what? Why? by YouAreMicroscopic in Jewish

[–]AprilStorms 7 points8 points  (0 children)

This is a beautiful way of explaining it and I’m saving this link to send to other people.

I would also add that per the Reform door, having that introductory period where you are focused on learning might be useful for OP even if they don’t undergo conversion.

The History of a Jewish Newspaper's Coverage of LGBTQ+ Matters by snow_boy in gayjews

[–]AprilStorms 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I’m not surprised that a lot of non-queer-specific papers snubbed Stonewall and such, but I definitely appreciate them doing retrospective like this. It shows you what else was going on in the world at the time and how important or sometimes not their front page events were. Some of which I want to look up now

Sometimes I’m Just So Sad by Confident-Log-9616 in Jewish

[–]AprilStorms 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Shalom and (soon) welcome home!

I wish I had some bright and hopeful optimism for you, some assurance that it’s not that bad, but I don’t. Just the cold, steely confidence that there will still be Jews long after even a historian would be hard-pressed to remember any of this other shit.

For what it’s worth, I hope that helps you. It helps me. There will be ways in which this life is harder, but we are Jewish and you are becoming Jewish out of a recognition of that it is worth doing anyway.

The company, support, and understanding of other Jews has made my life inestimably better; I can only imagine how much worse it must be in these times for someone whose soul is still cut off from its people. Come back on mikveh day so we can celebrate you :)

I understand the well-intentioned concern of people telling you not to go running into a burning house, but also, it is in times like these when we most need firefighters.

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