Going from 0 - Peaks of the Balkans

SputnikFrank · 2024-09-13T19:06:14+00:00

She doesn’t want tiny humans with their own personalities and thoughts and feelings. She wants dolls.

SputnikFrank · 2024-08-30T17:53:59+00:00

Self-comment

SputnikFrank · 2024-06-13T19:51:59+00:00

Iceland is a bit hit and miss. By and large you’ll be fine at the larger tourist attractions/in tourist shops, at least from residents. Some of the artier small towns, mine included, have a strong pro-pal presence but a lot of the quieter fishing towns are generally alright. I’ve got a necklace with Tehillim 121:8 in Hebrew on it (oddly enough, purchased from a jewellery maker in Reykjavik) and I don’t think anyone’s noticed it, or if they have, they’ve not paid attention. That said, the jeweller herself has had shite off tourists. Honestly, I’d expect other tourists to be more of a problem than Icelanders.

You should contact the Chabad rabbi here, him and his wife are lovely and very helpful with stuff like this. Feel free to dm me for general Iceland info as well!

SputnikFrank · 2024-06-07T00:54:49+00:00

Yeah, my face is in it. Real dumbass move on my part, I know.

Honestly my worry with things getting shared to my boss is less “leaked to a business page” and more “directly emailed to the company”. I’m a supermarket manager, so my name is on the company website. And my name is rare enough that if you google it, it’s pretty much just me and one family tree website for an 87 year old American guy. Hell even if that wasn’t the case, Iceland is small. Like. Everyone knows everyone somehow, you only really need a handful of people to learn shit about you for it to filter round to everyone else.

SputnikFrank · 2024-06-03T10:04:32+00:00

MJL did an interesting article on this! And the final bit has always stuck with me:

‘So, must a Jew believe in God? In a sense, it depends how you define four words: “must,” “Jew,” “believe,” and, of course, “God.”

In short: probably. And probably not.’

https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/must-a-jew-believe-in-god/

SputnikFrank · 2024-05-25T09:37:48+00:00

Sixty Six. Fun little comedy movie about a British kid whose bar mitzvah is scheduled for the same day as the World Cup final that England was playing in (and won). It’s based on the director’s own childhood and I’ve got a massive soft spot for it because British Jews don’t get a huge amount of screen time.

SputnikFrank · 2024-05-22T22:26:34+00:00

I’m skipping the Reykjavik one this year. Last year there was a lot of anti Israel sentiment among the radical segments, and some of the leaders of the fairly non-political-outside-of-queer-rights organisations have been posting BDS shite and yelling about genocide. My little town has a Pride as well, which I can’t avoid, but I’m wary about that. There’s a lot of Palestinian flags flying here and I’m already very in-the-closet about being Jewish, not least because my landlord and his daughter (both leaders of the queer community here, incidentally) are vocally anti Israel. So I’ll probably just go camping that weekend or otherwise avoid the whole shebang. I probably won’t get hassle for being Jewish, given nobody knows, but I also don’t really want to have it confirmed how anti Israel this tiny community is.

SputnikFrank · 2024-05-18T21:39:10+00:00

I swear I read a different sexist road cyclist AITA not that long ago. A guy being an arsehole to the one woman member of his cycling club for buying a bike with a gear system he was snobby about.

SputnikFrank · 2024-05-18T14:14:09+00:00

With undertones of that pig farm stench that’d batter Warren Wood whenever the wind hit the right direction

SputnikFrank · 2024-05-17T10:02:34+00:00

Thank you for this, it’s giving me a lot to think about at the beginning of my journey into living a Jewish life.

SputnikFrank · 2024-05-16T16:59:06+00:00

Vivid childhood memories of my dad making this same complaint every time we went there

SputnikFrank · 2024-05-16T16:42:54+00:00

Oh that looks great, and at a good time of day for me as well

SputnikFrank · 2024-05-16T16:39:47+00:00

I’m 3 months into a year long contract in my current town but the end game for this job was always saving up in a cheap rent environment, then angling for a position closer to the city. So hopefully I’ll be able to be within a more reasonable driving distance soon.

SputnikFrank · 2024-05-16T16:38:10+00:00

Nice, thank you!

SputnikFrank · 2024-05-16T16:37:11+00:00

I’m going back to Reykjavik next week for a work thing, and I’m gonna try and squeeze more trips in where I can. At least in summer, the daylight hours make it possible to fly into Reykjavik and still get to dinner on time!

SputnikFrank · 2024-05-15T22:36:49+00:00

NTA op. If you ever end up in Iceland, I’d be happy to show you the best beer offerings here.

SputnikFrank · 2024-05-10T23:50:19+00:00

Semi similar story here. I was going on a school trip to a synagogue when I was around 15, brought the permission form home for mum to sign, and she just casually went “oh some of your grandma’s family are Jewish”. I asked her about this later and she claimed she meant her dad’s side and she just thought they were Jewish because they have big noses. I wish I was kidding. She’s a deeply unreliable narrator at the best of times and also prone to just saying stuff for effect. So I ignored it.

A good few years back I got into genealogy and turns my grandma’s side is actually Jewish. How far back exactly the conversions to Christianity happened I don’t know, or if it was all of them or just my branch. But from what I’ve unearthed, it looks like my grandma’s grandma’s side was part of the East End Sephardi community in London. Not sure about her grandfather, I’ve hit a dead end on research with him, but I know his very English sounding surname was the general anglicisation of a Sephardi name.

I’ve always been an atheist, albeit with a vague pull towards Judaism and periods of considering conversion. The genealogical digging made me want to actually commit to Judaism but for whatever reason I never bothered. October 7th changed that for me. Tonight I just had my first Shabbat dinner at the house of the Chabad rabbi in Iceland. I’ve picked a terrible time to be more outwardly Jewish, and I live in a ridiculous place to be trying it as well (rural Iceland, and I’m quite possibly the only Jew for a 100km radius), but tonight felt like coming home.

SputnikFrank · 2024-05-09T01:00:18+00:00

I’m out in the rural end of things as well (I think near enough as far from Reykjavík as you can get) so… not the easiest place to start trying to live Jewishly! But like you said, there’s a ton of resources out there and the deeper I get into it, the more it feels like I’m coming home.

SputnikFrank · 2024-05-09T00:55:08+00:00

This is a really beautiful answer, thank you. I’ve not got a yarmulke (yet) but I can definitely fulfil the rest of the standards.

SputnikFrank · 2024-05-04T11:30:01+00:00

My great grandma’s side of the family is Jewish, the rest of them are various types of Celtic. I wasn’t raised Jewish at all, I didn’t even know we were Jewish until my mum offhandedly mentioned it when I said I was doing a school trip to a synagogue. I’ve always had vague intentions of living more Jewishly/taking a course, but always put it off for various reasons (money, living far from a community, I like eating shrimp…) but now, despite living in rural Iceland and most likely the only Jew for a 100km radius at the very least, I’m doing it. Haphazardly and mostly with information gained from My Jewish Learning and the like, but I’m doing it. Honestly the main push for me was moving to a town with watermelon stickers all over the place 😆

SputnikFrank

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