Rabbi Ruti Regan

Chag sameach!

In the old park, they let the kids flick the light switch for the bull!

I probably would just root for the home team except that I find Red Sox fandom unpleasantly intense.

Oh, that’s a good point!

Do they still put the games on the radio?

I think it's pretty inevitable that some longshot candidates are going to go viral and people will get excited and donate to them.

And I think those candidates bear some responsibility for what they do with that.

This is why those candidates should *really* be splitting their donations somehow.

I live in the Boston area, so rooting for the Yankees is *way* more drama than I'm interested in. What's wrong with the Astros and Dodgers?

If you're struggling with something, it is by definition not easy. If it's hard, it's hard.

The world is wide and it's full of people doing amazing things, mundane-but-important things, and people doing medium things.

I want to care about that.

If you ever get the chance to learn from Rabbi Wendy Amsellem, take it. She is amazing.

I should probably find out who is on the team I want to root for, right?

That changes from time to time but also has some continuity, right?

Like, they don't re-form the teams every year but new players get added or traded?

One thing I like about baseball is that it has lore. So maybe I should pick a team and find out about that team's lore?

I want to care about who wins enough for it be fun to follow baseball, but not enough that it starts to seem reasonable to riot when my team wins, you know?

(This is why growing up in Chapel Hill has given me a lifelong aversion to basketball fandom.)

But the nearest major league team to me is the Boston Red Sox, and rooting for that team seems kind of unpleasant to me.

I don't like it when sports fandom involves actual hatred of the other teams and their fans.

How do you follow minor league games? Do you have to get a paper in the area that team plays in?

For minor leagues, I can root for the Durham Bulls — I went to a lot of their games growing up and it was super fun. (I didn't pay a lot of attention to the actual baseball but I have a lot of fond memories of the baseball-adjacent stuff.)

I think another approach to picking a team is that you just root for the team that's where you live or where you grew up?

I think I would like to root for the A's because I went to one of their games once as a kid and it was fun, and also because I really like Sesame Street.

This baseball team brought to you by the letter A!

When is baseball? How do I watch games?

Does it work to follow a team that isn't nearby where I live?

How do you pick which team?

An autistic kind of request, I think: I'm interested in following baseball and being a fan of a team and everything. Could people who know how to baseball give me some advice?

I want to build things. I want to help people build things.

That goes better if I remember that other people are doing things worth respecting, and if I seek out things to respect in specific ways.

I think there's a lot of pressure, sometimes, to focus on contempt and disdain in a way that really crowds out the ability to notice things that are worth respecting.

When we don't notice the worthwhile things that people are already doing, it gets really hard to *help*.

There are a lot of contemptible things happening right now, and I don't want to lose sight of that.

*AND*

There are a lot of people doing important things worth respecting, and I want to pay attention to that. And I don't think that happens by itself; I have to do it on purpose.

Something akin to a new year's resolution: This year, I want to spend more time on respect than I do on contempt.

This isn't the first time moms have been blamed for their kids' autism One of the earliest theories of autism is centered on “refrigerator mothers.” Echoes of it can be found in plans to Make America Healthy Again.

ICYMI: @bcrodriguez.bsky.social and I dug deep into the history of blaming moms for their kids’ autism and how some moms see echos of that dark history in MAHA

Things to consider:

Document the violence & violations--on camera, w/photos, saving images--any way you can. Speaking as a historian- it will matter

Point out violations--w/images & text--even if you think it won't matter. It will. It needs to be called out & exposed

You are a witness.
Expose it.

In hindsight, the only thing wrong with that remark is that she apologized for it.

Whatever major change we’re talking about, it affected charedi communities as much as non-charedi communities.

They’re very much *not* pre. They live in the same century as everyone else; pre-modern forms of Jewish communal life are no longer possible.

They’re a reaction to modernity.