i havenât yet seen black panther, but i have like so many questions in terms of Wakanda Jews.
Like at what point did the isolationism start in Wakanda so like up to where did we were last all on the same page in terms of various sefarim and interpretations of Halachot and Jewish history.
Cause like I canât imagine if I found out for the first time about the Holocaust so like imagine Jews from Wakanda finding out for the first time.
But also imagine them finding out that for the we are also by the millions back in our homeland and able to freely live and visit there for the first time since the destruction of the Second Temple.
Also imagine all the sefarim and minhagim that Wakanda Jews have written and come up with that the rest of the Jewish population donât know about.
Like I would love to know Wakanda Jews traditions.
Like think of all the new Zemirot and tunes to be learnt.
And like just like there is Ladino, Judeo-Arabic, and Yiddish there must be must versions mixing the various languages spoken by the people of Wakanda with Hebrew.
Also like what do their decorations look like for their Sukkot, and like how to they design their kippot, ketubahs, menorahs, shuls, mikvahs, mezuzah covers, haggadahs, and more.
What do their wedding look like and what traditions do they do.
Like Iâm just brimming with questions as to what Jewish life is like in Wakanda and what the Jews there have learnt.
Because think of all the Halacha questions that needed to be answered because they have such advanced technology and with new technology comes a million and one Halacha questions.
Like one of the really cool things about Jews is that no matter where in the world and when in time there are some things that just are always the same there is still just so much history and culture and traditions and philosophy and food to be sharedÂ
I canât help but think that in this universe where Wakanda exists for Jews it must be a really exciting time.
I imagine that the Wakandan Jewish community would be very old, especially considering that Wakanda was untouched by Arabic and European expansion into Africa.
Well, in the comics, Wakanda did know about the Holocaust, and King TâChaka (although this is from the 60âČs version where Tâchalla becomes BP about when Tony gets his ass blasted in Vietnam, so in MCU itâd be TâChakaâs dad) gave Howard Stark the vibranium to make Steveâs shield.
Like, they were still isolationists who protected themselves by giving an ignorant goat-herder impression to outsiders. They NEEDED to be underestimated if they were going to keep the war off their doorstep.
But TâChaka flies himself, in the dead of night, to Howard Stark, a man who would know exactly what kind of high-tech rig would be needed to mine, refine, and use this metal, and says âThat guy who punches Hitler in the face. He needs a better shield.â
TâChaka risked exposure, risked his country going into a terrible war, JUST to give Steve a shield.
A shield with a star in the center.
Fuck, man, Wakandaâs Jews were already on that ball.
ââ
But also, VIBRANIUM MEZUZAH, Iâm here for that!
Considering that MâBakuâs tribe has Hindu elements, with Hanuman, I wouldnât be surprised by there being Jewish Wakandans. I wonder when they may have arrived though, the Roman diasporia? Wakanda seems like they closed themselves off before then, though.
Given that: 1) Bast the panther goddess sounds like itâs linked to the Egyptian deity Bastet, 2) Wakanda is (currently) located near South Sudan, Uganda, Kenya and Ethiopia, and 3) there are established Jewish communities in at least two of those four countries, a connection between Wakanda and the Jewish people could potentially go as far back as King Solomon or the Exodus.
but isnât hiduism only 500 years old so how would that work if Wakanda closed off before then
Hinduism is much older than that.
Hinduism is older than Judaism.
I think the real important question here is how long do Wakandan Jews wait between meat and milk
The answer to this question will determine which Wakandan synagogues Iâll enter and which Iâll never set foot in.
I started going to the dojo when I was in sixth grade. It was a very masculine environment; there werenât a lot of other girls there but the male senseis who ran the place were great guys and they genuinely loved having female students because we were such a rarity.
Now back in sixth grade I was tinier even than what I am now, and now Iâm only 5â2. Then I was probably even under 5â0. I mean I was a squirt of a kid. But I loved to fight; I loved to be in the ring, I loved the adrenaline rush and I loved having punches hurled at me. It was fun for me. Our dojo did full-contact sparring, which was pretty brutal. These were the only rules:
you must wear a mouth guard and gloves
no hits below the belt
Thatâs pretty much it.
Anyway every Thursday was Fight Night, where all we did was spar each other. And on my First Night Sensei Divenâwho has since passed, bless his soulâpaired me up with this really cocky and assholish brown belt to show me the ropes a little. This brown belt kid was bigger than me by a lot; he must have been at least six feet and twice my weight. But man was I excited to get into the ring! I had a fight boiling in my blood.
Now, Sensei Diven was not a stupid man and he hated high-ranking kids that showed a bad attitude. This kid had a bad attitude. So he must have seen the evil gleam in my eye from a mile away and decided it was time for a little improvisation.
Anyway, Sensei yelled, âStart!â and I leapt into fight stance and the other kid didnât even put his hands up. He was laughing at me, sneering, the whole nine yards. âIâll give you a free one.â he joked, and he slapped his side. âYou barely weigh 100 pounds and youâre a girl. So go ahead, little girl. Hit me.â
And I hit him. I cocked my leg up as high as it would go and roundhouse kicked him right in the ribs with all of my might and all of the contempt I felt for his stupid cocky face which was covered in ugly-ass freckles and his nasty-ass braces. And I heard a crack. Like a real snap! sound. And the kid has a look of surprise on his face like it was nobodyâs business, and then he goes right to the floor like a sack of potatoes.
Now, Sensei Diven leisurely strolls over from the group of black belts who are laughing their asses off at me, the tiny little white belt, sending my Goliath to the floor. I mean theyâre laughing so hard they look like theyâre about to pee themselves. They think itâs a game. And in his great booming voice he hollers:
âBrown Belt! Why are you on the floor? Do you not see this white belt has been assigned to fight you?â
And meanwhile he is just crying. I broke one of his ribs.
And Sensei Diven just squats down next to this poor kid and whispers, âDonât you know that women are made of pain?â
I AM SCREAMING.
âDonât you know that women are made of pain?â
Hey, unpopular opinion, apparently. But people donât just âhave pain for no reasonâ doctors say this all the time (especially to women and chronically ill people) and the truth is, Thats literally not possible. Even if your pains are psychosomatic (a word I hesitate to even use because of the way its used so often) there is a reason you are having those pains whether its mental illness, abuse, etc. If your doctor consistently tells you that âwell some people just have pain for no reasonâ get a new doctor. Thatâs a doctor who is not going to give a shit what your actual symptoms or experiences are.
I just wanna add to clarify the psychosomatic thing.
That word DOES NOT MEAN youâre making it up. It doesnât mean youâre imagining the symptom. What it means is that the symptom ISNâT DIRECTLY CAUSED BY ANY OF THE THINGS THAT WOULD NORMALLY CAUSE IT.
I fought to get a PCOS diagnosis for 2 and a half years. For the ENTIRE time I was fighting, I was dealing with 3 cysts that were not going away by themselves and eventually required surgery to remove. At one point close to the end of the battle, I suddenly went blind. I was visiting my parents and was standing on the veranda looking out over the tree we had planted in memory of my dog and suddenly I got one of the shooting pains that I was quite frankly used to at that point and my vision started to go dark. It was like the sun was setting while being completely hidden behind storm clouds but it was 2pm in the middle of Summer on a clear day. Within about 30 seconds I couldnât see ANYTHING. I was 27 years old and I was screaming for my mother.
My mum raced me to her doctor (he was a 15 minute drive away as opposed to 45 minutes to the nearest hospital) and he quickly worked out that there was nothing wrong with my eyes and what had happened was totally unrelated to them. Then he said it was psychosomatic and I freaked out, yelling that I was NOT making this up and I definitely wasnât imagining it. Very quickly he calmed me down and said he believed me and I had misunderstood. He explained that whatever was going on with my abdominal pains (he suggested PCOS which I hadnât even heard of at that point) had been ignored for so long that my body was starting to do things other than the normal pain response to try to draw my attention to the problem. My sight going was my body basically jumping around in front of me going âHEY ARE YOU EVEN LISTENING TO ME HELLLOOOOOOO??????â
He gave me some prescription strength painkillers and my sight started to come back as soon as they started to kick in. About 45 minutes after it started I could see well enough to walk around without help and within a day and a half I was back to normal. On top of that I finally had a scan booked to figure out what the hell was causing all the pain.
Psychosomatic symptoms are NOT imagined or fabricated or happening for âno reasonâ. Experiencing them DOES NOT make you a liar. It makes you someone who has been battling with something serious for so long that your own body has started to get impatient with you.
The eyes-in-the-front thing (usually) only applies to mammals. Crocodiles, arguably the inspiration for dragons, have eyes that look to the sides despite being a predator.
hey what up Iâm about to be That Asshole
This isnât a mammalian thing. When people talk about âeyes on the frontâ or âeyes on the side,â theyâre really talking about binocular vision vs monocular vision. Binocular vision is more advantageous for predators because itâs what gives you depth perception; i.e, the distance you need to leap, lunge, or swipe to take out the fast-moving thing in front of you. Any animal that can position its eyes in a way that it has overlapping fields of vision has binocular vision. That includes a lot of predatory reptiles, including komodo dragons, monitor lizards, and chameleons.
(The eyes-in-front = predator / eyes-on-sides = prey thing holds true far more regularly for birds than it does for mammals. Consider owls, hawks, and falcons vs parrots, sparrows, and doves.)
But itâs not like binocular vision is inherently âbetterâ than monocular vision. Itâs a trade-off: you get better at leap-strike-kill, but your field of vision is commensurately restricted, meaning you see less stuff. Sometimes, the evolutionary benefit of binocular vision just doesnât outweigh the benefit of seeing the other guy coming. Very few forms of aquatic life have binocular vision unless they have eye stalks, predator or not, because if you live underwater, the threat could be coming from literally any direction, so you want as wide a field of view as you can get. If you see a predator working monocular vision, itâs a pretty safe assumption that there is something else out there dangerous enough that their survival is aided more by knowing where it is than reliably getting food inside their mouths.
For example, if you are a crocodile, there is a decent chance that a hippo will cruise up your shit and bite you in half. Iâd say that makes monocular vision worthwhile.
Which brings us back to OPâs point. Why would dragon evolution favor field of view over depth perception?
A lot of the stories Iâve read painted the biggest threats to dragons (until knights with little shiny sticks came along) as other dragons. Dragons fight each other, dragons have wars. And like fish, a dragon would need to worry about another dragon coming in from any angle. Thatâs a major point in favor of monocular vision. Moreover, you donât need depth perception in order to hunt if you can breathe fucking fire. A flamethrower is not a precision weapon. If you can torch everything in front of you, who cares if your prey is 5 feet away or 20? Burn it all and sift among the rubble for meat once everything stops moving.
Really, why would dragons have eyes on the front of their heads? Seems like theyâve got the right idea to me.
