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#ThowbackThursday: Converts, Cheesecake, and Other Reasons To Like Shavuot

May 21, 2015 By punktorah

My Letterman-style Top Ten Reason To Love Shavuot:

10. Cheesecake Brownies. It’s like shooting heroine and cocaine at the same time..only a lot healthier and legal. Dairy and Shavuot go hand-in-hand, and since I seldom eat meat this holiday glorifies everything I love that makes me fat.

9. You get to remember who Ruth is. Ruth is the national symbol of Jewish feminists. I kinda wish we read her megillah instead of Esther’s: instead of booing Hamen, we’d be applauding the Moabite.

8. Everyone stays up late studying Torah. Or just rockin’ the kiddush. If you’re an early to bed, early to rise type, just read our backlog of Shavuot articles.

7. Converts get some respect…for about six hours. On Shavuot, you’re the most Jewish person in the room…even if you were born with the name Christopher Jesusman. And converts are generally the only people who know what Shavuot is in liberal circles, so you get to feel like some kind of tzadik for your intense knowledge.

6. Work restriction. This year is the best because it falls middle of the week, then it’s over, then it’s Shabbat. It’s like taking a week off, since you mentally check out from work a day before any holiday anyway.

5. It has that kinda made-up feeling. Shavuot is a fairly minhag heavy holiday, in the sense that Ruth, studying and milchig is pretty much all there is to it and the rest is just customs to fill in the time. I like that because you never have to worry about doing the wrong thing on Shavuot. Hanukkah is like that, too.

4. Weird conversations. I like Shavuot chavrutah with eccentric people, because the combo of staying up late and heavy religious discussion always goes in strange directions: people passing out, talking in their sleep, stoner-like debates about whether or not Boaz’s foot was actually a foot or a euphemism for…ya know…the male part.

3. Energy drinks. When I was in the rockabilly punk band The Love Drunks, I used to slam energy drinks laced with vodka. I found the combination helped me stay up really late, and mellow out at the same time. I’m not into that kinda thing anymore, but Shavuot is my one time a year where I gorge myself on Red Bull.

2. The diversity of Jewish events. If you really want to pull an all day and all nighter, find a small child and force them to chaperone you to a Chabad family event. The ice cream sundaes are always incredible. In the afternoons you can generally find some JCC-type of place doing a late afternoon event catching after school/before dinner crowd, and then you can party with the grown ups all night.

1. The Torah!!!!!!!!!!! Come on, forget all that cultural junk. It’s all about the Torah, people.

Filed Under: Community Member Blogs, Random (Feelin' Lucky?), Shabbat & Holidays Tagged With: book of ruth, Chabad, cheesecake brownies, conversion to judaism, convert to judaism, darshan yeshiva, energy drinks, minhagim, online conversion, patrick "aleph" beaulier, patrick aleph, punktorah, rabbi beaulier, rabbi patrick aleph beaulier, shavuos, shavuot, ten commandments, the love drunks

Milk, Symbol of Sivan

May 21, 2015 By Ketzirah

Milk 2 by Andrew Magill, used by CC-A permissions
Milk 2 by Andrew Magill, used by CC-A permissions

Cross-posted from www.peelapom.com

It’s traditional to eat dairy on Shavuot, which begins the first week of Sivan. Because of this, we’re going to explore dairy for the month of Sivan.

Let’s start with the separation of milk and meat in the Torah. What it actually says is “don’t boil a kid in its mother’s milk” (לֹא-תְבַשֵּׁל גְּדִי, בַּחֲלֵב אִמּוֹ). This prohibition is found tthree times in the Torah: Ex 23:19, Ex 34: 26 and Deut 14:21, which means — seriously, don’t freaking do this we’re not kidding around!!! Most likely this was a prohibition on mixing life and death; milk being the source of life and death being meat, very literally in this case the meat of the kid goat. It was also, according to the Encyclopeida of Jewish Symbols, a common ancient pagan practice to give an offering of [Read more…]

Filed Under: Community Member Blogs, Judaism & Belief, Random (Feelin' Lucky?) Tagged With: convert to judaism, convert to judaism online, dairy, darshan yeshiva, food, kashrut, meat, milk, online conversion, patrick "aleph" beaulier, patrick aleph, punktorah, rabbi beaulier, rabbi patrick aleph beaulier, shavuot, sivan, traditions, wheel of the year

Five Ways To Reflect On the Holocaust

April 16, 2015 By punktorah

Yahrtzeit_candle

Today we begin Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. Here at PunkTorah, we have four resources that give pause to reflect on the meaning of the Jewish community’s greatest modern tragedy.

Learn About the Holocaust on Darshan Yeshiva

Our Intro to Judaism course has a great series of Jewish history videos, including ones on the Holocaust. Register today for a 14-day free trial.

Jewish Philosophy After the Holocaust

How could a loving God allow the Holocaust to happen? This is one of many questions Jewish philosophers sought to answer. This two part video series covers the debate, and many others.

Never Forget This Video

This video made by PunkTorah was released three years ago on Hitler’s birthday.

A Poem For the Holocaust

Written by YentaPunker, a poem that demands us to “take a number”.

Irena Sendler: the Non-Jewish Holocaust Hero

In 1999, a group of Kansas students began a research project dealing with the Holocaust. During their research they heard a rumor about a “female Oskar Schindler” and decided to investigate. Their investigation turned into an incredible account of a Polish woman who managed to save over 3000 Jewish lives during the Nazi occupation of Poland.

Filed Under: Random (Feelin' Lucky?) Tagged With: convert to judaism, convert to judaism online, darshan yeshiva, Holocaust, online conversion, patrick "aleph" beaulier, patrick aleph, premium, punktorah, rabbi beaulier, rabbi patrick aleph beaulier, Yom HaShoah

What a Buddha Hand Made Me Realize About Tu B’Shvat

February 3, 2015 By punktorah

Tu B’Shvat is the best holiday a Jewish environmentalist could ask for. The New Year for the Trees gets us to think about the natural world, and indeed I’ve enjoyed that focus at Hazon’s Tu B’Shvat seders the last couple of years. However, my Tu B’Shvat observance has often been at odds with my general environmental outlook on food. Whereas I normally prioritize locally grown produce from a farmers market, for Tu B’Shvat I adore exotic, varied fruits. Celebrating the full bounty of nature isn’t consistent with limiting your carbon footprint if that oddball fruit had to travel 3,000 miles to get to you.

My love for Tu B’Shvat dates back to my freshman year of college, when a Chabad Shabbat dinner featured 44 different types of fruits and nuts instead of the regular brisket or chicken. Since then I’ve hosted a series of non-seder gatherings in which I tried to present a diverse array of fruits. At the Tu B’Shvat Disorder! ’08, I served coconut, horned melon, persimmons, pineapple, uglifruit, honeydew, cantaloupe, bananas, grapes, apples, peaches, tangerines, olives, starfruit, figs, dates, cherries, blueberries, kiwis, pistachios, almonds, pine nuts, cashews, walnuts, filberts, and Brazil nuts. Let’s just say that it hadn’t all been grown locally in Virginia in January.

This year’s I-can’t-stop-thinking-about-it fruit is the Buddha hand, also known as a fingered citron. (Many readers will be familiar with the etrog, another type of citron, which is used on Sukkot.) I’d seen the Buddha hand at a NYC Whole Foods store a few times before, but I’d never found any legitimate reason to buy this masterpiece of citrus. When I spotted a California-grown Buddha hand that appeared to be giving me the finger on Thursday—so close to Tu B’Shvat—I knew I just had to spend $3.14 for it.

The Buddha hand was a big hit at a Shabbat potluck the following night. We started amputating fingers off the Buddha hand left and right. One guy ate an entire finger (including the rind), and he put a little nub in his wine and called it sangria. Several of us gnawed into the flesh at the base of the fingers instead. We passed around the opened Buddha hand to appreciate the scent. After the night was over, I was able to salvage the base of the hand for some flesh. I cut some of it up and put it in tea, and as of this writing, I’m not sure what I’ll do with the rest.

The Buddha hand was fun, but did this fruit—which we did not even consume to a significant extent—really help us to respect the Earth?

In celebrating Tu B’Shvat, it’s important to have foods that are native to Israel and that represent the different categories of fruits and nuts: those that have edible insides but inedible outsides, those that have edible outsides but inedible insides, and those that are edible throughout. Beyond that, if you have a choice and you truly want this to be a holiday that is good for the Earth, buy local when possible.

Filed Under: Random (Feelin' Lucky?), Tu B'Shevat Tagged With: buddha hand, buying local, convert to judaism, convert to judaism online, darshan yeshiva, heebnvegan, michael croland, online conversion, patrick "aleph" beaulier, patrick aleph, punktorah, rabbi beaulier, rabbi patrick aleph beaulier, shevat, tu b'shevat, Tu B'Shvat, What a Buddha Hand Made Me Realize About Tu B’Shevat

Tu B’Shevat Happy New Year Trees

February 3, 2015 By punktorah

em_fwf_wa_rainforest

Tu B’shevat is very much a minor holiday to us today, perhaps it’s because most of us no longer work the land to provide for our families and communities. Perhaps it’s because few people care for the Earth as deeply as we once did. Whatever the reason is this is no longer a holiday celebrated by most families with a full Seder. It’s now seen almost as an Earth day or Arbor day. A day that even most people in America don’t tend to celebrate. Tu ‘B’shevat is important to me though, it is the new year for the trees. What exactly does a new year for a tree mean? One thought holds trees as one of the closest to immortal things living on this planet today. While no tree is immortal some are very old. The oldest non-clonal tree in the world today is known as The Sisters or the Sisters Olive Trees of Noah, The sisters are believed to be over 6,000 years old and is thought to be where the dove found the olive branch to bring Noah at the end of the great flood. What is another year for them? What does that mean for us? The trees new year means for them an awakening. Almost all trees especially fruit baring ones go through a dormant phase during the year and Tu B’shevat is the time that inside of them they grow another ring. This ring might be thin or thick depending on how the growing season treated them. You can learn a lot about a trees life from their rings. So what does that mean for us? It’s hardly time to plant trees the only thing right now you can do is prune the dormant and dead branches.

Well for us I believe that Tu B’shevat is a great time for our own awakening. It’s time to awaken to ourselves and to our soul. The great thing is that we don’t have a yearly dormant phase but perhaps our community involvement or passions or even our spirituality does. Perhaps you were volunteering your time more frequently around Rosh Hashanah. Or maybe you get in the mood to let your passion of baking run wild for Chanukah (which would make a ton of sense considering you may have been meshuggah enough to host a giant Thanksgivukkah party.) However, lately you have found that you haven’t been doing these things as much as you would like. Perhaps you were taking comfort in going to minyan and meeting new people and then for one reason or another just stopped. Inside of you as with the trees it is time for an awakening. One that will allow you to flourish and blossom just like our trees. This doesn’t happen over night. Our trees won’t bud tomorrow, they will simply begin to put their energy in that direction, that will allow us to appreciate them. Perhaps you can take this Tu B’shevat and begin to use that energy to awaken yourself so that you can greater appreciate the world around you. We don’t have the luxury of living up to 6,000+ years but if we can appreciate today maybe we can plant the seeds for others to appreciate their tomorrow.

Melissa Bullins is an Atlanta based chef and is active in the local Jewish community at Shabbat Atlanta. Come hang out with Melissa and the Shabbat Atlanta chavurah!

Filed Under: Judaism & Belief, Random (Feelin' Lucky?), Shabbat & Holidays, Tu B'Shevat Tagged With: convert to judaism, convert to judaism online, darshan yeshiva, Melissa Bullins, online conversion, patrick "aleph" beaulier, patrick aleph, punktorah, rabbi beaulier, rabbi patrick aleph beaulier, tu b'shevat

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