HI! 💖

dean in random episodes because i miss him so much ↳ 1x12

trouble is, idk what to do with the fear that we're going to wake up to seeing people dragged out of their homes and shot in the streets around the world, like that feasibly feels like a thing that is coming. and that will be justified by the left when it does

eta: i am not being overdramatic, as an example:

I want you all to see this to understand even a sliver of why I'm not using this evil, godforsaken website, not that it's limited to tumblr because it is now the incessant, constant reality everywhere. I'm an "all of the above" statistic on this. you cannot possibly comprehend the despair and the depths of what this is like unless you are entrenched in it and seeing people futilely trying to combat it every day. too many people unaffected can't even recognize what they are seeing, or don't care, or are participating in it. my dash is COVERED in it daily, from mutuals. I got tired of blocking people and prayed maybe some of what I said would get through instead, but it didn't. people literally participating in this were liking my posts? it's almost laughable if it weren't so deeply wounding and concerning. this has been the daily reality for Jewish people trying to exist online (or anywhere) since that horrible day. there is no respite from it. we are battered and broken and angry and devastated. there is no space for our grief except from each other. there is no recognition of our collective humanity. I said this already over there, but I'll say it again - this killed something in my soul. every single person who has perpetuated this or was utterly silent about it (and continues to be. do you think we don't hear the silence too?) has destroyed something irreparably. idealism, trust, hope, safety. it is inescapable, it is violent, it is relentless. everyone else will eventually move on and we'll be trapped in the aftermath of knowing how prevalent this hatred is. that people we considered friends would stab us in the back and supposed allies would cheer harm done to us for the crime of being Jewish. because that's what this is about. none of this rhetoric is about anything but that anymore, not when conspiracy theories are being woven, lies are being perpetuated, victims and atrocities are being denied, and any Jew, no matter their beliefs or political spectrum, is being attacked for existing. we are not the same. we will never be the same. I will never forget or forgive the response from this, from "friends," from strangers, or from the whole world.

hi followers <3 curious after the reblogged discussions yesterday:

if you'd like to reblog this to elaborate what happened or in which fandom(s), you are more than welcome to.

😘

Jewish Journal

Hersh and a Story of Love

He was everyone's Hersh.

He was everyone’s Hersh.

Hersh’s charismatic smile let you know he was, as his mother Rachel described, a “happy-go-lucky, laid back, good humored, respectful and curious person.” He was, as the death announcement put it, “a child of light, love and peace.” People were drawn to the story of a young man who loved soccer and music, had a passion for geography and travel, who had just gone to six music festivals in Europe over the span of nine weeks.

And then came October 7th. Hersh’s last messages to his family, at 8:11 AM on October 7th, were “I love you” and “I’m sorry.”

Hamas kidnapped 251 hostages that day. But a statistic doesn’t ignite the same passion as an actual person; and through Hersh, the world connected to all of the hostages. Heads of state spoke about Hersh. At the Democratic National convention many in the crowd openly wept for Hersh, and chanted “bring them home.” His image was posted everywhere; “Bring Hersh Home” was graffitied on walls and printed on posters. Tehillim groups prayed for Hersh, and a Sefer Torah was written in his merit.

And after Hamas murdered Hersh, millions of people cried; and they cried for all of the hostages, including [those] who remain in captivity.

Hersh’s story is one of love. His parents Rachel and Jon Goldberg Polin advocated for him 24/7. Despite their overwhelming pain, what Rachel called “our planet of beyond pain, our planet of no sleep, our planet of despair, our planet of tears,” they found the superhuman strength to advocate every single day, to remind the world how many days it was since Hersh was held captive. Rachel and Jon traveled everywhere to do everything and anything possible to bring him home.

Most of all they told the world how much they loved Hersh, and got the world to love Hersh as well. Even at the funeral, with an otherworldly expression of spiritual strength, Rachel declared that “I am so grateful to God, and I want to do hakarat hatov (offer gratitude) and thank God right now, for giving me this magnificent present of my Hersh…. For 23 years I was privileged to have this most stunning treasure, to be Hersh’s Mama. I’ll take it and say thank you. I just wish it had been for longer.”

The Rambam says that when you truly love someone “you will recount their praises and call on other people to love them.” And that is what Rachel and Jon did.

Love has its limits. At Hersh’s funeral, the speakers apologized to him for being unable to bring him home; sadly, this immense outpouring of love could not accomplish what everyone desperately wanted. But the Song of Songs says “love is as strong as death.” Jon declared at the end of his eulogy that Hersh’s memory “can begin a revolution.” And without question that is what love can do.

Love is belittled because it is bewildering. It is immaterial, a force that ought to be reckoned with but cannot be measured. Charles Darwin wondered whether altruism would disprove his theory of natural selection; to sacrifice oneself for others contradicts a theory based on a single-minded pursuit of survival. (A person of faith grappling with the same question would see the traces of a divine love tucked away in the DNA of the universe.) From a political standpoint, love is the frail runner up to raw power. Machiavelli wrote that “it would be best to be both loved and feared. But since the two rarely come together, anyone compelled to choose will find greater security in being feared than in being loved.” In a world about survival and strength, love is seen as the veneer that covers up far uglier forces.

Judaism sees love as the very center of the universe. There are commandments to love God and to love all of humanity, both one’s neighbor and the stranger. Hillel explained that the entire Torah can be reduced to the commandment of loving others; one first experiences the divine in interpersonal connections, and only from there does the rest of the Torah become comprehensible.

The world begins with love; the Book of Psalms (89:3) says “the world was created in kindness.” Rav Saadia Gaon and Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto see love as God’s very motivation in creating the universe. Love becomes the spiritual blueprint for all of existence.

The very human love we have for others reflects this larger divine love. Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook offers a fascinating perspective on Shir HaShirim, the Song of Songs, a biblical book written in the style of a love song. In the Talmud, Rabbi Akiva already reinterprets Shir HaShirim as a metaphor of the love between man and God; ordinary love songs don’t belong in a holy text. Rabbi Kook offers a fascinating reinterpretation of Rabbi Akiva, and explains that the ordinary love songs in Shir HaShirim are actually a small-scale reflection of the greater love between man and God; and that is because our “ordinary” loves are not ordinary at all. All loves lead one to the divine.

It’s difficult to talk about love at a time of war. Love sometimes requires one to go into battle to protect one’s family, reluctantly but resolutely. But that is not at all the goal; Isaiah dreamt of a world where the swords are beaten into plowshares. War is our nightmare; the dream is peace, of each person sitting contentedly under their own vine and own fig tree.

And that is the love we continue to search for, an otherworldly force that will transform history. Rachel explained that Hersh had a unique ability to bring people together that he had “befriended… German (soccer) fans over the years when they visited Jerusalem to watch their team play soccer. Together they painted a peace mural with both Arab and Jewish residents near our home in Jerusalem…” One prays for the day when this will be more than a mural.

Judaism proudly asserts the power of love. Machiavelli’s approach is tempting; sometimes all that matters is pure strength. But the mistake is that brute force works for a generation or two, until there’s a crisis. Then the fear disappears, and the ruler is deposed. Power is as finite as those who wield it, grasped tightly by princes whose lives are short and temporary.

To survive for a generation or two, one needs power; to survive for millennia, one needs love. And that is the story of Jewish history. Jews are a people who never quit because they had a passion for God, Torah and the Jewish people. The love Jews around the world had for Hersh (who was named for a great-uncle who perished in the Holocaust) is part of this same never-ending story. The Jewish people are living proof that love can outlast power.

The day of Hersh’s funeral, several posts on social media reported about children being named Hersh in the memory of Hersh Goldberg Polin z”l. These were not relatives or even acquaintances of the family. Just ordinary Jews who cared, and wanted Hersh’s legacy to continue onward. They were naming their children after a man they loved but never knew.

They were sharing Rachel and Jon’s remarkable love for Hersh with their own family.

And in doing so, they were starting a revolution of love once again.

May Hersh’s memory be a blessing, and a revolution.

though this is from September, I had never read it until last night, and I think we need it this week.

one thing about me i’m the leaver. i will leave

Sleeping Beauty (1959)

someday i will stop checking my other blog for ghoulishness but unfortunately that was not today

how many of them would tell people to their faces that they think there is no sanctity of life and no such thing as innocents and that certain groups deserve to be erased from existence in the most violent ways possible? or do they reserve that for their cowardly hot takes on their blogs for dopamine hits from other ghouls? never regarding the expense to anyone else because they have lost their capacity to be humane.

they actually sit there and say people should be exterminated and then don’t think they’re fascists. fascinating. idk what’s worse, if my dash is uniquely evil, or if everyone is seeing this but just accepting it.

i would never say these things about people anywhere, including all the ones i disagree with. i wouldn’t say it about the insurrectionists who stormed the capitol on jan. 6th even though they’re virulently hateful and a danger to society, because wishing torture and slaughter on people is bad? but they will say it out loud about literal children???

edit: too many people on this horrible website and elsewhere across the worldwide web have proven themselves incapable of condemning this bigotry and heinous acts because they’re so steeped in their hatred and echo chambers of outrage that they have sacrificed all sense of reason and empathy, it is despicable and devastating to see it. they lust for blood and violent death because they are insulated from it and egotistically believe they will never experience it and have the right to dole it out without fear. but being heartbroken is a strength they will never comprehend.

“Without ever wanting to become reserved and shy, she had spent so long alone, with no one to love, that it was difficult for her to talk, even casually, to another person without self-consciousness and an awkward inability to find words.”

— Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House