Benedict: okay the history of the soviet union
Benedict: is sometimes pretty unbelievable
Maxie: oh?
Benedict: yeah so like
Benedict: tsar nicholas’s kid alexei, the
Benedict: idk if they called him the prince, like they didn’t exactly use that system? he was something called a tsarevich though which i assume boils down to the same thing
Benedict: like whatever, monarchies, call your heriditary business whatever you want
Benedict: anyway one of the noble dudes was agitating for a plan to gradually free the serfs, modernize things like the west
Benedict: and alexei had none of this and so he exiled the dude
Benedict: and like
Benedict: there’s a reason the ussr tended to kill its political dissidents rather than exile them
Benedict: because this guy, piotr, during all the revolution stuff, manages to get a telegram to alexei
Benedict: piotr had led one of the mass emancipations and was marching on the palace
Benedict: and the telegram said
Benedict: “serfs rise, ‘vich. bet you thought you’d seen the last of me”
Maxie: so, full disclosure
Maxie: i was distracted and saw the punchline first.
Benedict: aw
Benedict: idk whether to include the full disclosure in the basketball post
Benedict: what do you think
Maxie: I mean, don’t do it if you think it hurts the joke
Maxie: it’s not like Ivano be terrible, here.
Maxie: (I’m sure I’ve used that before, but bear with me, here.)
Maxie: (You gotta lemming get in what jokes I can.)
Benedict: i. really shouldn’t try to one-up you with soviet puns, should i
Maxie: eh, USSR the only judge of that.
Maxie: sorry, that one was pretty exkruschevating.
Benedict: fuck
Maxie: by the way, you know the big difference between the Siberians and the Mongols?
Maxie: at least, historically
Benedict: i don’t.
Maxie: well, the mongols, of course, were a culture very big on their horses
Maxie: but siberia never had the conditions to make horseback riding practical, so the people there ended up developing cross-country as a method of making long journeys instead.
Maxie: basically
Maxie: it’s a question of trot/ski.
Benedict: hhhhhhhhhh
Benedict: i have no one to blame but myself
Benedict: also you
Benedict: mostly you
Benedict: fuck you
Maxie: so stalin’s reading glasses started giving him a really bad headache later in life, but he refused to get a new prescription
Maxie: said it would be revisionism
Benedict: i’m gonna break something
everyone can wear makeup!!! all genders!!! makeup is for everyone! anyone can wear makeup. normalize makeup being seen as gender neutral because it is. makeup is for everyone
no one can wear make up! no genders! make up is for no one! no one can wear make up. normalize makeup being seen as gender nihilist because it is. makeup is for no one.
one person can wear makeup!!! only one!!! makeup is for one person! one person can wear makeup. normalize makeup being seen as the mark of god because it is. makeup is only for the one
I think that covers all the bases.
one person cannot wear makeup! it is fine for everyone else. everyone but that one person can wear makeup. normalize makeup being worn by everyone but him, because you fucking know what you did, Randy!
50% of people who apply to be makeup wearers can and must wear makeup because that is how you do a controlled experiment.
the other half will apply something they think is makeup, but is actually just powdered sugar
Anyone can wear makeup, but they can’t know what kind of makeup, and all makeup-related communication is taboo. All makeup-wearers are perfectly logical. If any makeup-wearers discover that they are wearing blue eyeshadow they must sacrifice themselves at sunrise.
People will put makeup on all people who don’t put makeup on themselves.
Everyone can wear makeup, but it’s illegal to buy. This is called the Swedish Model.
When rabbi telushkin talks about Elijah, he’s like “how did this grouchy, bad-tempered prophet become the mythical grandpa of the entire jewish people? Why not a more personable prophet? We could have had somebody nice and jolly like Santa Claus instead of this man”
And then he basically says it’s because Elijah just can’t be satisfied, he didn’t even die, he stayed alive and just disappeared into the sky out of sheer annoyance at the unsatisfactory nature of existence and he will be clumping around the world forever, glaring at things and yelling at people, until the messiah comes
“disappeared into the sky out of sheer annoyance at the unsatisfactory nature of existence”
omg please tell me about this Elijah dude, he sounds exactly like my kind of dude
Where to begin? He’s the Trickster figure of Judaism is what I always say, at once the loudest and the sneakiest of the prophets.
He spent his whole career denouncing a bad king and his even more problematic wife. They almost killed him a few times, but he survived, and as mentioned above, never actually died, just ascended into heaven in a fiery chariot. (This is after he basically tells God he’s just too damn tired to prophet anymore.) He brought a child back from the dead through prayer.
He held a prophet-off with the prophets of Baal. Basic challenge: we each put up a sacrifice. The one whose god accepts it with fire wins. He sits back and makes fun of them while they do their stuff…”YELL LOUDER. MAYBE HE’S ASLEEP”. When it’s his turn, he pours water all over his offering, and it goes up in flames from heaven anyway. (My teacher in my Nevi’im class mentioned, in passing, that there’s crude oil in the region.)
In his not-dead-just-semi-retired afterlife, he attends every Seder and bris worldwide. It’s said he will herald the arrival of Moshiach.
He was, and remains, kind of a crank. But he’s always there for the people who need him.
There are a million legends.
How does a grouchy, bad-tempered, prophet of Judea, dropped in the middle of a Forgotten spot in the Levant by providence, Poor but filled with vigor, End up being the Jewish trickster figure?
And then he basically says it’s because Elijah just can’t be satisfied, he didn’t even die, he stayed alive and just disappeared into the sky out of sheer annoyance at the unsatisfactory nature of existence and he will be clumping around the world forever, glaring at things and yelling at people, until the messiah comes
i’m elijah tbh
No but this is the best thing
I once read that Elijah’s central angst is that all the other Jews of his generation are abandoning religion or being killed and he is worried he’ll be the last one left in a dying religion (by the way, The Last Jew is a common Jewish angst trope in the 21st century as well) – see, for example, “the children of Israel have forsaken Thy covenant, thrown down Thine altars, and slain Thy prophets with the sword; and I, even I only, am left; and they seek my life, to take it away”, 1 Kings 19:10. So, Elijah complains to God and God sentences him to appear at every brit milah and every Seder – the rituals that last beyond most others (I have friends who are militantly secular and they hold Seders with shellfish and ham on the table. They are still holding a Seder). Like, “You think you are the last Jew?! You will see every Jew being Jewish from now until the Messiah comes”
i feel like “i’m not even gonna die bc the world is so unsatisfying, im just gonna keep on trying to fix it for all fucking eternity” is the most intrinsically jewish thing and i love it
This is why I remain Jewish. Because the world is a mess…and we just need to roll up our sleeves and get to fucking work on it.
Elijah is the grumpy uncle who at first you have to invite to everything and then, he just…shows up. AT EVERYTHING. And nothing is good enough for him, things were better in the old days, these kids today have no respect, what is this swill, why don’t you have any good Judean wine…
And he just continues to come. Until finally, you just pour a drink for him out of reflex.
Kimchi and Justice 