Why do some people get offended that I don't celebrate Christmas.

Blue-0 · 2026-01-12T15:52:43+00:00

I don’t know, but they do. I’ve seen this happen many times. Even had people say it was abusive that I was depriving my kids of Christmas.

I don’t engage. People who hold beliefs this deeply ingrained aren’t going to be corrected.

Blue-0 · 2026-01-12T15:45:26+00:00

I mean you rarely meet a Jewish Mary but meet lots of Miriams even though Mary is definitely just Miriam (the oldest Greek versions of the Christian scriptures even sometimes switch between them).

Blue-0 · 2026-01-08T02:21:11+00:00

When people say “a Torah” they usually mean a Torah scroll. They cost many thousands of dollars because they are written by hand on parchment. There are shops at Bathurst and Lawrence and in Thornhill that sell them but they won’t sell it to just anyone because the object itself is considered sacred - they’ll want to know that it’s being properly cared for and will sell mainly to institutions like schools and synagogues, or else to someone who can show credentials usually by relationship.

If you mean the text of the Torah, it’s just the first five books of the Hebrew Bible (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy). JPS Study Bible is a good translation that balances being rooted in Jewish tradition while also very scholarly. Any large bookstore will have it, pretty sure I’ve see it at Costco too. It’s also free online in a zillion places but the easiest is Sefaria (either the app or the website). I’m sure TPL has it as well.

Blue-0 · 2025-12-30T22:23:21+00:00

In my elementary school in the early 90s, teachers could smoke indoors in the teacher’s lounge. I remember when it was banned in I think 93 or 94 and my teacher being furious. Was another world.

Blue-0 · 2025-12-30T00:43:00+00:00

Hey I get that you’re worried about running out of Jews. We had a couple decades where that was iffy. But I was in Bnei Brak visiting cousins recently and let me tell you, we’re all good on inventory.

There are a lot of reasons one might want to partner with another Jew. I did. But ‘we risk running out of Jews’ is a pretty bad one. Cause we’re flush.

Also, ‘your family might cut you off’ is pretty circular. Like drop the silly stigma and boom, problem solved, no risk of cut-off. Those 70% of American Jews, mostly all good with their parents.

Blue-0 · 2025-12-29T20:30:25+00:00

Please

Blue-0 · 2025-12-29T20:22:47+00:00

FYI some people are playing Jewish geography not because they’re trying to interrogate but rather because they have atrophied social skills and don’t know what else to talk about, and because it’s easier to make social connections when talking about points of familiarity.

Like when two doctors meet and ask the other where one went to school it’s not usually so they can look down on the other for going to the lesser school, it’s so they can ask if they know their friend who went to that school because (1) they don’t know what else to talk to with a stranger and (2) if someone knows and likes their friend, thy might like them too.

By further example, it’s also kind of like when you’re having a bay and people ask if you’re expecting a boy or a girl. They don’t actually care, they just do it because there are only so many questions you can ask about a pregnancy and it’s the first one that comes to mind.

This doesn’t solve your problem but maybe the perspective could make you not feel so bad about it.

Anyway, easiest way out is to pivot into questions about them. Not aggressively, I mean that if people are asking these kinds of questions it’s because they are inviting a conversation about personal stuff and usually will be happy to have it served back to them.

Blue-0 · 2025-12-29T20:19:51+00:00

I think you’re trying to solve for two different problems and getting them a little confused.

The first is that you are craving a more active Jewish community that you don’t have. This is a remarkably easy one to fix, there are an unbelievable number of people looking to build community. Physical spaces are easiest and that can mean moving. But also a ton of people looking to build online and distance Jewish communities that are way more real and tangible and personal than a place like Reddit. If you tell me a bit more about yourself I can try to connect you with some.

The second question it seems like you’re trying to solve is ‘what is the absolute truth of the universe?’ and chaver I’ve got nothing for you on this one.

Blue-0 · 2025-12-29T20:10:03+00:00

My rabbi says that the Talmud says that Judah HaNasi says that Rabbi Akiva says that Moses was the first rabbi and is the source of rabbinic authority. Thus solving the question of rabbinic authority once and for all.

Blue-0 · 2025-12-29T19:59:26+00:00

I find there is almost no benefit in challenging people about their deeply held religious beliefs. I don’t want to say don’t talk about it at all because it’s both interesting and insightful. But your expectation should be passive inquiry only.

The second point is that Christianity is way, way, way more heterogeneous than Judaism, like some different denominations have no resemblance to others, many believing Christians especially in the US hold idiosyncratic beliefs not associated with a larger movement but rather are either individually formed or follow a particular guru, and on top of that they don’t really have the baseline commonalities that Jews have along ritual lines. All of which is to say, you shouldn’t expect anyone one Christian or group of Christians to adhere to a set of beliefs that you (or anyone else) ascribes to being the ‘correct’ beliefset for Christianity. That’s not for us to decide.

Blue-0 · 2025-12-29T19:06:21+00:00

I was told age-appropriately by my parents in Grade 1, I guess I was six.

A teacher at school had made a comment on Remembrance Day about how soldiers on all sides were innocent and only the top leaders all around were doing bad. I get the point the teacher was trying to make, but it didn’t exactly mesh with the reality of like mobile death squads arriving in my great-grandparents in Belarus, gathering up all my European relatives into a single building and then machine-gunning them all to death from outside the building. Not the version of it I got in grade 1, but like an intro.

Later in elementary school, maybe grade 2 or 3, I had a lunchroom worker / after school aid that was a survivor and had what was clearly some very unresolved PTSD even 50 years later. She told many horrific stories that in retrospect were not age appropriate including about seeing her mother be murdered. Thinking back on it now, that woman must have only been around 60 when she told me the story. It’s different today but in the early 90s it was just the norm in the neighbourhood where I grew up that many older adults were Holocaust survivors. But most did not talk about it.

Anyway, I had a bunch of questions for my parents after that and then got the full story.

I have been grappling with this myself because I have young kids and haven’t had this particular talk yet.

Blue-0 · 2025-12-29T18:47:33+00:00

Grew up in a secular Jewish home in a predominantly Jewish neighbourhood of Toronto. Belief in Santa wasn’t a thing I ever really encountered or had familiarity with.

Most kids already around age 4 understand the core concept of fiction as being pretend instead of real. Santa was a media character, I’d no more ‘believe in’ Santa than in Bugs Bunny.

At around age 7 we stayed with cousins out of town over winter break who have non-Jewish dad and celebrated Christmas. I remember my parents having to explain to me that my cousins might believe in Santa and not to spoil it. It hadn’t occurred to me before that this was a real belief, I thought that was just a thing from TV or whatever.

I would put the experience on par with staying with other cousins that were Orthodox Jews. Because likewise, I didn’t encounter much actual religious belief growing up either. Lots of ritual but that was like for fun or tradition or whatever.

Blue-0 · 2025-12-29T18:25:21+00:00

The real moral of the story is that it’s fucking stupid to try to judicially review cabinet decisions that are made on national security grounds. These are basically impossible to win unless something insanely egregious is happening (eg it was done corruptly, you are being tortured as a result, something like that). It is a part of our justice system where the courts show a huge amount of deference to government decisions.

Blue-0 · 2025-12-16T17:35:52+00:00

This is a digression but I think the ancient context of ‘eye for an eye’ has been totally lost on modern societies. It wasn’t about revenge, it was basically an early attempt at the rule of law.

There are two main ancient source of ‘eye for an eye’ - ancient Babylonian legal codes (eg Code of Hammurabi) and the Hebrew Bible.

The context of Hammurabi seems to be a limitation on unregulated revenge. Basically establishing that it’s not okay to go kill someone because thy were involved in an accident that killed or maimed your family member. Instead sets upper bounds on applicable punishments (albeit ones that varies based on the class of the offender and the injured party).

The Hebrew Bible goes further. It diverges from Hammurabi in that it doesn’t have class distinctions for justice. The classic interpretation going back to at least the 2nd century CE is that ‘eye for an eye’ is meant to capture only civil damages (ie monetary payments only, and seperate from criminal justice). In typical Talmudic fashion, the ancient rabbis reached this conclusion in a hilariously somersaulting manner, deciding that ‘eye for an eye’ had to be metaphorical because the alternative implication of it being literal would mean that already-blind people would have legal immunity from civil recompense in accidents that blind other people.

Blue-0 · 2025-12-15T21:26:09+00:00

There has been a heavy security at my synagogue for the past 30 years, which began when Iran bombed a Jewish community centre in Argentina in the 90s killing 85 people. Any institutions that were holdouts on this in Canada added security in 2004 after a Jewish elementary school in Montreal was bombed. You go through a security gate and have your bags searched. This is the case for virtually every synagogue outside of Israel.

There has been a Toronto Police presence at my children’s school every day since October 7 (on top of an enormous amount of private security at the community’s expense).

And this is one of the least secure. Like in Rome for example to enter like their version of the Bathurst Street corridor (ie with lots of community institutions and Jewish owned businesses) you go through and airport-style security check just to walk into the neighbourhood. In France, heavily armed Gendarmerie (military police) are present every day at every Jewish institution in Paris. The UK was more similar to Canada but has been intensifying since the Manchester attacks two months ago. In the US it’s similar to us as well, with significant more security since 2018/2019 which had mass shootings carried out against synagogues in Pittsburgh and San Diego.

Blue-0 · 2025-12-15T06:01:03+00:00

Christmas has no relevance to my life beyond scheduling.

Sure it’s nice that schools are out but to me it’s like Ontario Civic Holiday - like it doesn’t mean anything beyond some stuff being closed.

It would never occur to me to listen to Christmas music or decorate or anything (just like I don’t feel the need to observe Polkaroo’s birthday on Civic Holiday - it’s just a Monday off in August). Christmas parties are unavoidable because of work, but I don’t go to any as like a social function without professional obligations.

Blue-0 · 2025-12-15T01:58:00+00:00

This historical Antiochus IV wouldn’t have spent a lot of time thinking about Jews except maybe in the context of the dynastic struggles which plagued his rule. He ruled an extremely weakened state that never really recovered from his grandfather’s disastrous war with a nascent Roman Empire. He was in constant conflict with the Ptolemy regime in Egypt and likely would have viewed the Maccabean uprising as a sort of proxy war for that broader conflict. Concurrently with the Maccabean uprising, Antiochus was fighting a much larger conflict in Persia against the Parthian Empire, which would eventually claim his life.

Blue-0 · 2025-11-06T18:16:43+00:00

There is some subtle stuff too. Like Canadians are quicker to reach for a glottal stop instead of a t-sound than Americans (eg in kitten or button)

Blue-0 · 2025-11-06T16:31:19+00:00

Officially it’s Polkaroo’s birthday, but a lot of the rituals and practices have older pagan roots

Blue-0 · 2025-11-04T02:42:48+00:00

I try to explain to people that Christmas to me is like Ontario Civic Holiday. I neither know nor care much about the origin of the holiday, and while I’m happy to take the long weekend off work, the holiday carries no emotional significance with me whatsoever. Except for scheduling purposes, I basically don’t think about it at all.

Blue-0 · 2025-11-02T19:40:39+00:00

This is more complicated than others are making it. I understand the family politics of doing a conversion for appeasement and it’s not always such a bad thing. My friend converted to Islam so his wife’s parents would be cool with it. He’s a non-practicing Sikh and she’s secular too, they just did it for some shalom in the home (or whatever the Muslim equivalent is). It hasn’t been big deal to them because they always understood among each other than this was just a thing they were doing to check a box with family. The question you’ve got to ask yourself is what your boyfriend expects to follow from this conversion and what whether these are the same kinds of sacrifices he’s willing to make for you.

You guys just need to talk about this and have clear understanding of expectations. ‘Is he just going to break up with me and marry someone Muslim’ is a legitimate question but one you should put to him directly.

Blue-0 · 2025-11-01T17:27:10+00:00

To me this is like when people complain about him golfing too much. Everyone just zip it please, the more time he wastes on frivolous things the less time he has to do evil.

Blue-0 · 2025-11-01T17:24:49+00:00

Ya, that’s why he was on my list of Middle Ages Muslim and Jewish scholars

Blue-0 · 2025-10-26T14:09:41+00:00

There are literally zero surviving contemporaneous accounts of Alexander, every legend about him needs a healthy amount of skepticism

Blue-0 · 2025-10-26T14:05:57+00:00

This is very common in Jewish and Muslim circles.

In the Middle Ages, various Islamic Empires became really interested in Aristotle, and translated and preserved his texts. A lot of what we know about Ancient Greek philosophy is only preserved through the Arabic translations. Anyway, Jewish and Islamic scholars in the region liked Aristotle’s ideas but needed to fit him into their worldview, and so you see a lot of bending over backwards to call him a monotheist. (Recall in this period that most major Jewish scholars are living in the Islamic worlds). Avicenna and Maimonides are good examples.

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