fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3153 ]

[ SECRET POST #3153 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3153 ⌋

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Anything with Jews always has them making a massive deal about Hanukkah, mostly because it's a convenient drop for "oh it's Jewish Christmas lolol" and let's them have a character mention they're Jewish for .3 seconds and move on.

Hanukkah is great, don't get me wrong, but it is far from being the most significant holiday of the year. Every time I see it it annoys me.

Do you mind me asking what are some of the more important holidays? I don't know much, but I'd like to learn!

Yom Kippur and Pesach are the biggies.

DA

Also Rosh Hashanah and Sukkot!

Sure! I'm rating these more in terms of "emotional importance" rather than "actual importance", because from a Jewish perspective it's kind of difficult to 'rate' holidays, for various reasons. Top-tier is all the ones listed in the Bible, but that's a bunch.

I'd probably rate the most important one emotionally as Passover, actually, aka Pesach. It's to celebrate when the Jews were freed from slavery in Egypt. We do this HUGE meal, like start around idk 7-8 and finish past midnight, with lots of singing and storytelling. Some families have skits and dressup, really there's so many fun traditions around Passover. I know many people who are less than observant, but still will celebrate the first night of Passover.

After that is probably the High Holy Days, specifically the Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashana), and the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur). The New Year is also a time for the family to gather, and includes way too much eating.
The Day of Atonement is the most important fast day of the year, when we get a clean slate for our sins for the upcoming year. It generally involves a lot of praying, and once again, some generally non-observant Jews will still take some note of this day. In Israel, there are almost no cars in the streets on this day - you can go walking on highways and stuff. It's pretty neat.

Sukkot, or Tabernacles, is a very fun holiday but afaik more commonly observed in the Orthodox community (an example of 'Bible importance'=/=emotional importance, because this one's in the Bible so technically a Big One). For this holiday we built little huts in the yard, roof them with branches, and eat (and sometimes sleep) in them. Lots of decorating and such, there are even competitions. My family made a paper mache Enterprise and Death Star to hang in our Sukkah :3
Often ignored is Shmini Atseret, which is right on the end of Sukkot, but a Bible holiday in its own right. This one doesn't get much attention, though, usually.

Shavuot is 50 days after Pesach. It's a huge deal among Orthodox, who will stay up all night studying Torah, and it's nice 'cause in recent years in Israel at least they've been putting together classes all night that are open to everybody, and some on more "general" themes, also for non-religious society. So it's becoming more of a big deal, and more social.

Then you've got second-tier, which are Hanukkah and Purim. Purim is celebrated by gifting each other with baskets of food and candy, dressing up in costumes, getting drunk (though that's a bit frowned upon), and reading the book of Esther. It's super fun, lots of parties.

A third-tier holiday which is very popular in Israel is Lag Ba'omer. It comes 33 days after Passover. Its roots are a bit complicated, but it's generally celebrated by BONFIRES EVERYWHERE. It's pretty cool to fly in/out of Israel on that day, because you can just see fires dotting the countryside all over the place. Stinks, though.

It should also be noted: three of our holidays are a week long (Hanukkah, Sukkot/Tabernacles, and Passover). Most holidays involve tons of eating, but we have some fast days to counteract that. Most Jewish holidays tend to commemorate disasters we got saved from.

This is super-super short. If you have any other questions, feel free :)

Read the Passover scene in Wonder Boys, by Michael Chabon. It is one of the most perfect summations of contemporary Jewish identity and practice that I've seen, not least because almost nobody in the scene is actually Jewish.

And the uncritical Jewish support for Israel. Sorry, that is mom's generation that does that. A lot of us young Jews are on the same page as everyone else in thinking the current Israeli government and policies are pieces of genocidal shit. Sure, Iran might hate us, but every country is hated by someone. It is time that Israelis grew the hell up. Just don't ask me to repeat that at dinner with mom and grandma though.

I heard some jaw-dropping shit in the news about college students who happened to be jewish who were running for various student government spots being questioned by the student council with things like "being a jewish student, how can you be trusted to be unbiased, how is putting a jewish student on the student council not a conflict of interest since many students support Palestine" and shit. Like are you fucking kidding me.

That is Mom and Dad's work, again. Thanks for screwing it up for the rest of us. Yeah, the big push by the older generation to make Jew synonymous with Israeli is really fucking things up royally. It is possible to be Jewish and think Israel has some serious questions to answer. You'd think a race that has always-arguing as one of its most fond stereotypes would be able to criticize their politicians, I dunno how they managed to convince everyone we ought to all fall lock step into one mind over Israel and be endlessly uncritical. I know it still gets pushed by my parent's generation though. Like I get that what happened in the 30s in Europe was a big deal, but that isn't an excuse for everything now though. We got to move on.

well, at the same time, all the lovely "well I'M a Jew and I think Israel is shit and believe uncritically every single UN condemnation" is also screwing it up for all of us. Congrats.

"Like I get that what happened in the 30s in Europe was a big deal"
do...you not notice rising antisemitism in Eurpoe now or...? Are you one of those "we bring it on ourselves" types? ugh

Mom, is that you? Sorry, but you are deliberately conflating anti-Israeli feeling and anti-Jewish feeling there. Deliberately. And your whole implied stance of if you aren't with us you are against us, is just generally shitty. If you don't like people, including other Jews, criticizing Israel then stop sending money back there until they clean up their act. I might not be one of the Jews for Palestine types, but that doesn't mean I'm going to be a Jews for Israel type either.

Don't argue with that one, pretty sure they're cray cray hyper-nationalist Jewish anon

That is how they sound like, including the "you ruined it for everyone".

That doesn't excuse the stuff other people have said. I'm not an Israel supporter but a lot of what you said sounds really dickish.

Those attitudes are much, much less pronounced among younger Jewish people than among older ones, but they're still present.

I am pretty sure these folks would be your mom's generation, OP, and they're outspoken about their feelings:

(I feel I should put a trigger warning, as the first image that comes up could potentially raise a pro-Zionist's blood pressure quite significantly. So consider yourself warned. Caveat clickor &c.)

http://www.nkusa.org

It really depends. I went to an extremely liberal school which also happened to have a lot of strong support for Israel. And there was a fairly even mix of Jewish students who were pro-Palestinians and Jewish students who were pro-Israel. The pro-Israel student group was really strong on campus. It caused a lot of problems and this was probably the most controversial issue on our campus with a lot of strong feelings on both sides. It always surprised me considering how large a portion of our student body was socialist and how we were probably one of the most liberal schools and known for being the most liberal law school.

OMG YES. This is exactly what I came here to say.

To be fair, in America Hanukkah has become the biggest celebrated holiday for a lot of Jews just because of the Christmas correlation. My Jewish friends observe the other holidays and acknowledge that they're more important, but they "celebrate" Hanukkah the most, for fun. It has a lot to do with commercialism pushing that angle (most people here celebrate Christmas, Jewish kids felt left out, companies saw the opportunity and took it) but I don't know anyone who minds, although some more devout Jews do I'm sure.

Also on that note, Christmas isn't technically the most important holiday in Christianity either, Easter is, but you wouldn't know it looking at things here either.

so glad someone else said this! I didn't want to steal anyone's thunder, but the idea that Christmas is the most important Christian holiday annoys me. It's the most celebrated, but NOT the most important.

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[ SECRET POST #3153 ]

Re: Vent about things fans get wrong about certain cultures, languages, countries, etc

Re: Vent about things fans get wrong about certain cultures, languages, countries, etc

Re: Vent about things fans get wrong about certain cultures, languages, countries, etc

Re: Vent about things fans get wrong about certain cultures, languages, countries, etc

Re: Vent about things fans get wrong about certain cultures, languages, countries, etc

Re: Vent about things fans get wrong about certain cultures, languages, countries, etc

Re: Vent about things fans get wrong about certain cultures, languages, countries, etc

Re: Vent about things fans get wrong about certain cultures, languages, countries, etc

Re: Vent about things fans get wrong about certain cultures, languages, countries, etc

Re: Vent about things fans get wrong about certain cultures, languages, countries, etc

Re: Vent about things fans get wrong about certain cultures, languages, countries, etc

Re: Vent about things fans get wrong about certain cultures, languages, countries, etc

Re: Vent about things fans get wrong about certain cultures, languages, countries, etc

Re: Vent about things fans get wrong about certain cultures, languages, countries, etc

Re: Vent about things fans get wrong about certain cultures, languages, countries, etc

Re: Vent about things fans get wrong about certain cultures, languages, countries, etc

Re: Vent about things fans get wrong about certain cultures, languages, countries, etc

Re: Vent about things fans get wrong about certain cultures, languages, countries, etc

Re: Vent about things fans get wrong about certain cultures, languages, countries, etc

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