I’m Jewish. I invite you all to celebrate any Jewish holiday. But they’re all stupid religious bullshit other than the food part, so I wouldn’t bother.
I agree. Unfortunately, with Jewish holidays, you have to sit through what feels like about 10 hours of prayers in Hebrew before you get to the food.
Which especially sucks when you’re a hungry kid who doesn’t understand Hebrew.
I have the best Jewish friends. They’re not strict Jewish, they adapt a lot of the traditions to suit themselves. For example any of the food heavy holiday’s they invite their non-Jewish friends over but do most of the religious stuff before we show up. So for me, I get to visit with friends, eat pretty good food (I’ve learned what to avoid like the unleavened bread), and help them celebrate something that’s important to them. They make no expectation for us to actually participate, just respect that they are. It’s a good time.
I feel for their kids though, they have to do the 10 hour thing.
Yep. Half my family is Jewish, half is Catholic. My dad (Jewish atheist) made me sit through a really long seder once and afterward said he forgot how boring they are. And also didn’t warn me about the bitter herbs lol. Next time we went to a seder it was wayyy more streamlined.
I dated a girl who is Jewish many years ago. Her parents would just throw dishes at each other while arguing in Hebrew. To hear you say that it can’t be entertaining slightly offends me.
Food holidays are my favorite holidays, and also because of Jon Stewart, I irrationally appreciate the abundance of Jewish holidays.
Which Jewish holidays should I celebrate?
Well the problem is that Passover has the best food, but it’s also celebrating a genocide, so I don’t really have a good recommendation.
Purim maybe? It’s mildly less stupid than the others since it’s actually based on something that really happened? But it’s still based on an arranged marriage, so even that’s kind of fucked up. I don’t know. The Bible is ridiculous.
Hamantaschen are amazing and I’ll make them year round, no one can stop me!
I also make the donuts for Hanukkah for my mother
At least we’re out of the years where we were making like a gross of them. That was exhausting.
Every year my mother buys jelly donuts for us when we come to visit for Hanukkah and every year, we all tell her that we don’t like jelly donuts.
At least she doesn’t try to cook them. She’s an awful cook. And she doesn’t understand food. She makes latkes in the oven (not fried) the day before we come, freezes them, then defrosts them when we come over. And we eat two and pretend we like them and cover them with enough sour cream so that we can’t taste them.
We used to go home and make our own another day, but they’re also kind of a pain in the ass to make, so we just deal with shitty latkes once a year now.
Her matzoh ball soup is fine, but it’s very hard to fuck that up.
Oh, the homemade donuts, all 122 of them were well received! As well as the hamantaschen. But when you’re making a gross of them, it just takes a long time.
I like latkes, but it was one of them few holiday cooking things that I did not get pushed into doing as a kid (and now several decades later still do for the family)
Challah, hamantaschen, donuts…mostly all the dessert things, I guess. And the charoset! There’s more, but I forget until I get the call and start baking for her.
There’s plenty of Jewish food cookbooks out there! I’m personally a big fan of kugel.
My (fairly religious) aunt introduced me to latkes when I was a kid and it became a lifelong love affair.
Judaism is a closed religion, lighting candles for Hanukkah is one thing and that’s cool if you want to partake in some fun. Saying prayers over those candles is markedly different and definitely appropriation.
There’s a whole part of Passover, inviting in strangers and caring for them, as we would have liked when we were strangers in Egypt. Entire sections of the Haggadah are didactic exercises for Jewish children, AND anyone invited to the sedar who doesn’t know it’s history.
When Judaism is closed it’s because we’re hiding from people who want us gone, not because we’re some secret society.
I wouldn’t call it appropriation. Appropriation would be claiming those weren’t Jewish prayers or a menorah, they were Christian (or whatever).
A non-Jew saying Hebrew prayers doesn’t offend me. My non-Jewish wife has done it before because she got a masters in folklore and wanted to take part. She didn’t claim it as her own, she just took part in the ceremony. And plenty of non-Jewish spouses of Jews have done the same thing.
Honestly, if you’re curious and you want to take part in Jewish ceremonies, go for it. Judaism is not as closed as you think. If it was, you wouldn’t have famous converts like Sammy Davis, Jr. and Isla Fisher (and Ivanka Trump, unfortunately). It’s not a simple process like turning around three times and saying “I’m a Jew!” but it’s not exactly a ridiculous challenge either.
A non Jew saying Jewish prayers is absolutely appropriation. There’s a rather clear line of thinking surrounding this in the greater Jewish community especially amongst the rabbinical crowd, and the Messianics are a rather large part of it.
