Chag Sameach!

[ProfX]

A Happy Passover, to all those who observe.

I am leaving out extra Manischevitz for the Tax Man this year.



Or enjoy your Good Friday/Easter.... Peeps.





Also a blessed Ramadan, and a glorious Vernal Equinox/Eostre, and whatever else is going on this time of year.

[carmenjonze]

Chag Sameach!

[Motor City]

Happy Holidays

[Number6]

Enjoy the "Pink Moon" this weekend.

[marindem01]

Chag Sameach!!!!!

[Motor City]

This is pretty good article



Imagine a Bible With No Moses, No Story of the Exodus

One copy of the Slave Bible, first published in 1807, sits today in the permanent collection of the Fisk University Library in Nashville. Originally intended for use in worship by enslaved people in the British West Indies, the biblical text was carefully redacted to exclude all references to the Exodus from Egypt. Imagine a Bible with no Moses, no burning bush, no Israelites fleeing slavery, no split sea and no revelation at Sinai.

This version of the text, gutted of that central narrative, was designed to fulfill a two-part objective: to introduce enslaved people to Christianity and to preserve the system of slavery. The problem was that the Exodus story — bearing the promise of freedom over slavery, dignity over degradation — is powerful and dangerous. The slaveholders were surely concerned that enslaved people would see themselves in the Israelite struggle for liberation, that they would find strength in God’s identification with the oppressed and be inspired by the triumph of faith over even one of the strongest regimes of the ancient world. They may have feared that this story would plant the seeds of possibility, if not the seeds of rebellion.

This week, Jews around the world will sit at Passover Seder tables and retell the very narrative stricken from that Slave Bible: the Exodus from Egypt. In Hebrew it is yetziat mitzrayim, literally “emerging or leaving from the narrow place.” This, our origin story, has animated and sustained the Jewish people for thousands of years. It’s read not as a remembrance of a one-time event but as an eternal promise, a frame of reference for all future struggles — including those we face in our time and our own country.

The Exodus is a tale of a tyrannical ruler who violently......

the stranger danger term and its roots

.....The Exodus narrative demands of us full partnership in the grueling, unending work of building a just society, one that stands as countertestimony to the brutality the Israelites experienced in Egypt. This is why the treatment of the ger, the stranger, the vulnerable one, becomes the central obsession of the five books of Moses. The many biblical commandments regarding treatment of the stranger are all rooted in the same principle: “Do not oppress the stranger, since you know the soul of a stranger, for you also were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Exodus 23:9). .....

....Freedom was hard won for the ancient Israelites, coming only after God unleashed 10 formidable plagues on Egypt. The plagues are commonly read as punishments levied against the Egyptian people for the terrible suffering they forced upon the Israelites, but there is another way to interpret God’s actions. One medieval rabbi, Sforno, argued that the plagues were actually brought to awaken the conscience of the oppressor, “to increase the chances that Pharaoh would finally see the light and become a genuine penitent.” In other words, what God desired was a true change of heart. God wanted Pharaoh and his people to take responsibility for the injustices they committed. Tell the truth. Make amends. Offer reparations. Chart a new course, together with the Israelites.

In this reading, the objective of the redemption story was the liberation of not only the Israelites but also the Egyptians. They needed to be liberated from the morally perverse mind-set that justified their cruelty in the first place. True redemption requires the transformation of the oppressed as well as the oppressors......

[ProfX]

Grrrrrrrr. These flyers were left in several cities around the country at peoples' homes in "Jewish neighborhoods" outside during Passover. Even some I think on Miami Beach, also in Pittsburgh.



Other flyers claimed, natch, "All Aspects of the Media are Jewish" and "Communism is a Jewish Conspiracy" and "The COVID Agenda is Jewish".