mynameisgoliath asked:
Kiddush Levana is specific to our moon, so if you can’t see it, you don’t do Kiddush Levana. (Actually, it can be argued that you don’t do anything religious outside of Earth, but that’s a longer story.)
mynameisgoliath asked:
Kiddush Levana is specific to our moon, so if you can’t see it, you don’t do Kiddush Levana. (Actually, it can be argued that you don’t do anything religious outside of Earth, but that’s a longer story.)
“Choni Ha-Ma’agel,” or in English, “Honi the Circle-Man,”
Hello friends! I would like to Take This Time to point you to an interesting new online magazine, jGirls. It’s a space for creations by all self-identified Jewish teenage girls - a “forum for girls to create and engage in a Jewish community of peers on their own terms,” in their own words. They’re super cool! The actual content is going to start rolling out really soon, and until then, any submissions you have would be Very Much Appreciated.
Here is the link to their current webpage, and here is a link to Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up.”
Anonymous asked:
animatedamerican answered:
I … that’s a really good question. I can’t think of any immediate reason why not, but there may be something I’m forgetting.
Jumblr? Any thoughts?
Ooh, pick me!
Okay, I don’t know of a definitive answer, though I’m leaning towards “probably okay,” but I can definitely complicate this scenario!
1. Background:
Jewish burials demand that when a person is buried, they be buried in the ground in a plain wooden casket, so that they can “return to the earth” as quickly as possible. We’re pretty extra about the caskets. Wooden dowels used in place of screws so that there’s no metals, biodegradable materials only, etc. Also, in my experience, we’re not very squeamish about the caskets. I built a casket at age 13 at a synagogue event. (On second thought, that may not actually be considered normal.)
2. The question:
The relevant question, then, is whether the burial facilities on the moon count as “the ground.” I’m thinking about the creation story: Adam is created from ״עפר מן האדמה״, afar min ha-adama, or “dust from the ground.” (Bereishit/Genesis 2:7). Rashi comments on the seeming repetition of using both afar and adama: the double language is because Adam was created out of earth from all of the world, so that in every place that a person would die, in that place they could be buried.
So what does Rashi mean when he talks about the whole world?
Rashi uses the very vague term “from the four winds,” or “four directions.” (For the verse with Rashi in both Hebrew and English, see here). It is thus useful to look at the broader context of what is categorized as “the earth” vs. “the heavens.”
Generally, when the Torah or halacha wants to talk about something applicable to the whole world, they use the phrase “on the earth.” Similarly, a distinction is drawn between the “earth” and the “heavens” - the Torah is not in the heavens, for example, or see the verse in Psalms: the heavens are heavens for Hashem, and the earth was given to the children of man. There is a split between those who define the earth as literally the Earth and the heavens as anything, say, outside the atmosphere, and those who define the heavens as something spiritual, beyond our reach. In the second category, you can find older commentators such as the Ramban (Nahmanides), who defines “heavens” as the category of things that have no physical bodies, along with more modern rabbis who lived to see space travel and greater understanding of space generally. The first category contains more literalist interpretations of the world.
As far as I can tell, the definition of “the heavens” as something spiritual, leaving “reachable space” under the category of “earth,” is the better-supported one. After all, if the Torah is not in the heavens, but we are… does that mean we don’t have to keep halacha? What about the fact that in Devarim (Deutoronomy) there is a commandment to keep the Torah all the days you are alive on earth?* In addition, more and broader-accepted rabbis are behind the second category.
3. TL; DR - Conclusion:
As a result, it makes sense to conclude that Rashi’s “all four directions” could plausibly include “every physical celestial body,” making it permissible to bury Jews on the moon: it will count as “returning to the earth,” which, as mentioned above, is what Jewish burial is trying to achieve.
4. Footnotes and sources:
Footnote: if you have to live on a colony, I would imagine that rabbis would be pretty lenient in deciding whether you could have a proper burial there. After all, better an approved, if by small margins, Jewish burial than someone remaining unburied.
Second footnote: You would probably want a system that allows for decomposition of the body, since that’s part of “returning to the earth.” I don’t know how that would work on the moon.
Asterisk: There is actually an opinion that halacha doesn’t apply in space for these reasons, but it is pretty broadly rejected and viewed as radical. See here for some more details.
Some sources and relevant links: Is there a legal minimum on the amount of soil needed to make a grave, Can a Jew who dies on Mars be buried there (too literalist in my opinion, but presents one argument), What defines the earth from a halachic standpoint, and Does the Torah prohibit leaving Earth, all from Mi Yodeya. Also For it is not in Heaven…or is it?: On the Halakhot and Hashkafot of Space Travel, and this site about Halacha and space [responsa are in Hebrew, message me for translations]. Additional source: my grandfather.
blueandnoah asked:
hi! so i’m a non-jew, but i lived in a jewish residential building last year that was home to jews and non-jews alike. we were supposed to keep kosher in the dining room, but other areas in the house were fair game (i say this as an indicator of how liberal/not the house was). as a vegetarian there wasn’t much for me to eat at meat dinners so i’d have bread and margarine, but now that i know about ma’arit ayin, i wonder if i shouldn’t have done so. certainly one of the cooks once asked me if the margarine was butter (so it wasn’t totally clear what i was eating). so basically, as a non-jew obligated to keep kosher because of the rules of the house, should i also have followed ma'arit ayin, or is that a separate thing that didn’t apply to me? (i’m not living there anymore, so this is a question borne of curiosity and not of necessity.) thanks for any consideration =)
That’s a really thoughtful question! The quick answer: because of the fact that margarine is commonplace, eating margarine during meat meals wouldn’t have been a problem of ma’arit ayin even if you were Jewish.
Essentially, due to ma’arit ayin, some actions are prohibited despite not technically breaking halacha because they look like you’re breaking halacha - like, imagine you went to a Jewish community which had never seen soy burgers before and started eating one with cheese. They’d probably assume you were breaking kashrut, even if you weren’t, and so that wouldn’t be okay from a perspective of ma’arit ayin.
In the modern day, margarine is well-known. People use it a lot, and even if it initially looks a little strange, we can reasonably assume that you weren’t eating butter. (The cook may have asked because you weren’t Jewish and they weren’t sure if you had, I dunno, forgotten about milk and meat, but given the respectful tone of the ask I’m going to assume you were reasonably well-trusted in this area.)
One caveat: the sources I looked at about this discussed only how Jews should behave. It is possible that I have missed a nuance that comes with you not being Jewish, or missed something elsewhere. As usual, followers please feel free to respond/add to the post. And anyone who wants to ask me a question can always do so in my ask box or by messaging me.
Hey,
I’ve been thinking a bit about this blog and… okay, so I get a decent number of asks/messages, and they’re pretty split: many of them are “hey look at this cool supernatural thing! can we talk about it in Jewish/halachic terms!” or “hey I have this halachic question!” while others are “is this antisemitism?” or “are Jews white?” or “can I convert?” or “can I call myself part of x/y/z group?”
In the past, I’ve answered both types of questions, albeit occasionally uncomfortably. I am not going to do this going forward.
I will continue to happily answer all of the weird halacha and similar questions from a Jewish perspective as thoroughly as I have been doing so far (… and probably with the same time delays… I’m sorry…). But I do not have the mental or emotional energy, or the expertise, to answer the second group of questions. That is not what this blog is for.
Thank you all for understanding.
In response to the ask I just received (which I am looking into right now!), I want to clarify: I am 100% open to answering fanfiction trope halacha questions as well as fantasy questions. Like, I am so down for it. Please ask me fanfiction trope questions.
grandenchanterfiona asked:
If the Temple was still standing in the time period you were living in, then yes, you’d be obligated in sacrifices just as anyone else would be.
I think your rabbi might have been right in asking you questions about what you meant! Let me know if I’ve misunderstood and there’s a nuance I’m not seeing.
Anonymous asked:
Hey anon!
It took me a long time to answer this because I wanted to reach out to queer Orthodox people I knew first to see what they said, because I thought their voices might be more helpful than mine.
As I probably should have expected, they had a lot of different answers. The key point they all made, though, is this: nowhere in the Torah is attraction prohibited. It’s that simple. Nowhere in the Torah is attraction prohibited. If someone is trying to tell you that it’s bad for you to like the same gender, they don’t have anything close to a foot to stand on. (Also, I will fight them for you.)
In terms of further discussion - for example, saying attraction is okay works, but people tend to feel the need to express sexuality - I would recommend talking to people one-on-one. There are a lot of answers that speak to different people. On tumblr, a few people offered to talk to you over private-message, whose blogs I can tell you if you message me and I can connect you to other people as well off tumblr.
(I won’t give anyone else your information, if you’re worried about that.)
One last thing: being queer and Orthodox can be hard and lonely. I don’t like that that’s the case, and I hope that will change over my lifetime. I just… hope that you know that, no matter what, there are frum people who will fight for you, who will accept you without a second thought, who will share your simchas, no matter what your gender is and what gender you love.
“Choni Ha-Ma’agel,” or in English, “Honi the Circle-Man,”
I’ve seen it rendered as “Circle-Maker” but that’s not quite right either? “Circler” would be the word if that were a thing in English.
I’m just sort of confused as to the op blog name and content. Is the suggestion we draw a circle and refuse to step out if it until people stop being hateful?
It’s not a suggestions blog (that would be alternativestodiscourse I guess?), just a blog for discussing Torah study and related things instead of The Discourse.
Although now you’ve got me thinking …
“He drew a circle in the dirt, and called out, Master of the Internet! I will not stir from this circle until the toxic discourse ceases.”
“At once the entire Internet fell silent.”
“Honi called out, Master of the Internet, it is not this ceasing I mean; for is not a drought of speech surely as terrible as a drought of rain?”
“At once the entire Internet burst forth again in speech, in finger-pointing, and in shaming.”
“Once more Honi called out, Master of the Internet, it is not this I mean either, but a debate for the sake of truth.”
“And there came a mighty voice from above, and it spake: my dude, the Unfollow button is there for a reason. And Honi saw that it was so.”