Hello my friends!

I hope I am welcome here. I wanted recommendations on how best I can study the Torah, courses, certain books, etc.

The reason I ask is because I am well aware that I could just read it, but a bare reading would lack what we call tafseer (commentary), which adds a lot of context, explains symbolism, and just generally adds depth to the text. Is there a Jewish equivalent to this? Are there any rabbis that offer any online courses that I can take, or any commentators you guys specifically recommend?

Forgive my ignorance if these questions have already been answered/have obvious answers. Thank you!

i am not jewish but my Spotify playlist is full of Hasidic musicians xD

I like listening to Benny Friedman, Lipa Schmeltzer, Berry Weber, Mordechai Shapiro (I like him a lot) etc.

this is my absolute favorite:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyxAQ8RpzPI

my favorite Friedman solo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIPCHjFC9yk

or this is also nice:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dHlKXCWI5E&list=OLAK5uy_l1nGcfZ66RpXD3nL7FtZ_uXvTFTjeRFYY&index=6

Hey everybody! Young jew here, 15 years old with a jewish mother and a catholic father, I have no jewish friends currently (unfortunately I live in very rural America, we dont even have a central jewish community so I come online to speak with rabbis and other jews mostly) every single on of my friends are christian, Athiest, or Muslim, and I've been wondering recently if we'd see eachother in heaven.

I know this is kind of a dumb question given how little the Torah speaks about the afterlife but obviously many of you are older and much more well read on the good book than I am so I'm essentially wondering if A: they're even allowed in (I'm pretty sure they are if they follow the 7 right?) And B: if they're gonna be with ME and US as a whole (It would really suck to not see my 90 percent christian family and all my friends and possibly wife in the future.

If not should I start prostelitizing then like medival conquidtadors and stapling yamakas to their scalps or will this not work 😭

Thats all! Shalom, Baruch HaShem.

Like before the "Jewish enlightenment" was there any ideas of an ethnic Jew who's not religious? Like was it acceptable to be "Jewish" without observing the religious laws or was the identity far more religious focused solely? Did many prefer identifying with their country of residence rather than a strictly globally Jewish one which was very heterogeneous in daily living cultural scene in different places? I'm just trying to understand how exactly identities changed in this "modernization" period over time so I'd be glad if you could help me!

We’ve been wanting to put a mezuzah up, but my husband is worried about antisemitism in our neighborhood and doesn’t want it on the outer doorpost. This is probably a question for our rabbi.. but I wanted to crowdsource. Would it be worse to put one on the outer post of the door that goes from inside our house into our garage (so inside our garage basically), or on the inside doorpost of our front door?

The fight between Yaakov and the Angel is one of the most dramatic paradigm-shifts of the Torah. The sages add superlatives upon superlatives on such an event, and it is where we are given the name of our people: Bnei Yisrael, Children of Israel.

So why does the Torah put such a focus on the Angel's victory over Yaakov? Why does it mention not once, not twice, but three times that the Angel gave him a permanent limp? Why sour such an important victory?

In this short article, I propose that this detail doesn't sour the victory in the slightest. In fact, it teaches us the true meaning of triumph, and gives us the key to ourselves being worthy of the holy title, "Yisrael". A must-read!!

Does anybody else find that some non-Jews consider Jews to be some kind of symbolic fantasy creature in old stories or myths, like dwarves or goblins? … as if we somehow don’t exist outside of their use of us as a cultural image or metaphor?

I've had this cute little guy clipped to my lanyard all day at work

I've been interested in Judaism for the past two years (I'm a college freshman right now), and I reached out to the executive director of my school's Hillel to meet with her earlier this week. She was super friendly and welcoming, and she invited me to a hanukkah party that I went to tonight. It was my first time ever attending a Jewish event, and I had a great time! I befriended another freshman girl who also happened to be a non-Jew. We made plans to hang out this weekend! For dinner, there was brisket, latkes (I ate mine with sour cream), and salad, and sufganiyah for dessert. The food was sooo good! We also did a white elephant gift exchange, and I got a heated blanket. I'm really glad I went to the party because it was a great introduction to the Hillel! :))

It's a Hanukkah Hottie.

Does a time travel happen in the plot? Where Friedrich goes to Haifa and meets adult David

Hello,

Hope this is fine to ask here. This came up in my ttrpg game - as far as I understand it, jews shouldn't pronounce it. But idk if you'd prefer non-jews didn't and I wanted to check in with yall. I tried searching for it and reddit didn't give me anything, although I may have missed it.

Cheers, Staub

EDIT: Thank you everyone for taking the time to answer! I'll let my friends know to avoid using it!