Rachel
banner
rachelneedsanap.bsky.social
Rachel
@rachelneedsanap.bsky.social
Religious Studies & Hebrew Bible PhD student📚/Jewish✡️/ADHD & Autistic🎧/Mythology Nerd🏺/Recovering Attorney ⚖️/Perpetually Sleepy💤
(she/her)
Pinned
A little about me:

I’m an #Autistic #PhD student in #ReligiousStudies, researching myth & ritual in the Hebrew Bible. I was an attorney for 10yrs, until I hit autistic burnout & decided to build a new career around my special interests in myth & religion. Nice to meet you all!
The autism IS moving along nicely today, though, if I do say so myself.

I’m gonna go eat my samefoods & read my little books now.
TRUMP: And the autism -- that's moving along?

RFK JR: We've commissioned now dozens of studies, maybe over 100, and we're gonna get those done for you

TRUMP: Good. That's so important.
January 29, 2026 at 8:28 PM
Reposted by Rachel
The existence of autism is only a problem if your believe in eugenics.
TRUMP: And the autism -- that's moving along?

RFK JR: We've commissioned now dozens of studies, maybe over 100, and we're gonna get those done for you

TRUMP: Good. That's so important.
January 29, 2026 at 5:35 PM
Whenever you say anything about the Tanakh or Bible online, there’s always a few of these replies!
"I enjoy teaching people about the dirty puns Hamlet makes in Act 3, Scene 2."

"Umm actually, Hamlet never said anything, because he's fictional! 🤓 Please clap for me."
January 29, 2026 at 8:21 PM
Reposted by Rachel
Antisemitism in the U.S. is at historic levels. At the same time, the term antisemitism has been increasingly weaponized in ways that exploit Jewish suffering and fear to advance anti-democratic agendas.
January 29, 2026 at 3:38 PM
Reposted by Rachel
I’m so thrilled that @nexusproject.bsky.social is building an antisemitism research center. We need research & leadership from Jewish orgs dedicated to Jewish safety & solidarity with other targeted groups rather than prioritizing Zionism & Israel
NEW: Today, we’re excited to announce the creation of the Nexus Center for Antisemitism Research (NCAR), which will work to improve the quality of research, data, and analysis available to advance the broader mission of confronting hate and promoting Jewish safety.
Senior ADL antisemitism researcher leaves to lead competing effort at watchdog Nexus - Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Aryeh Tuchman will direct a new Nexus research center focused on improving data, definitions and public understanding of antisemitism.
www.jta.org
January 29, 2026 at 7:36 PM
Apparently people on bsky like Torah lessons! As I do my reading this term, I’ll see if I bump into any other fun facts for y’all.

But yeah, in Hebrew it’s “yam suf,” Sea of Reeds!
I love seeing Christians’ first reactions to the Hebrew text of the Torah. Today, my Catholic classmate learned for the very first time that Moses split the “Reed Sea,” not the “Red Sea.” It blew her mind! #Jewish
January 29, 2026 at 3:58 PM
Reposted by Rachel
But if you lose the word “suf” (reeds), you lose the connection to the story of Pharaoh’s daughter finding Moses in the “suf” of the Nile! So correct translation makes the themes & metaphors clearer & stronger.
January 29, 2026 at 3:30 PM
Reposted by Rachel
Apparently, the mistranslation as “Red Sea” goes back to the Latin Vulgate, so it’s a very old & very tenacious error.
January 29, 2026 at 1:15 AM
I love seeing Christians’ first reactions to the Hebrew text of the Torah. Today, my Catholic classmate learned for the very first time that Moses split the “Reed Sea,” not the “Red Sea.” It blew her mind! #Jewish
January 29, 2026 at 1:15 AM
Reposted by Rachel
I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis. It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good.

Stay free
Bruce Springsteen - Streets Of Minneapolis (Official Audio)
YouTube video by Bruce Springsteen
youtu.be
January 28, 2026 at 5:02 PM
Reposted by Rachel
An autistic woman attributes the bulk of her mental wellbeing to the violent video game she knows back to front, it has been reported.
Autistic woman’s mental wellbeing held together by video game she has memorised entirely
An autistic woman attributes the bulk of her mental wellbeing to the violent video game she knows back to front, it has been reported. Ima Onwugbenu, 28, has been playing Wild West action-adventure…
thedailytism.com
January 28, 2026 at 6:02 PM
Reposted by Rachel
It is literally false that the Jews being hunted by Nazis were citizens, because the first step toward genocide was stripping them of citizenship and making them stateless. As Arendt reminds us, citizenship is a legal category created to facilitate a machinery of exclusion of the out-group.
January 28, 2026 at 4:19 AM
Reposted by Rachel
The music swells. The mysterious man slowly reaches up to remove his mask. He reveals his face to the audience! Gasp!

And I have no idea who he is, because I’m faceblind, so this plot twist flies right over my head. #ActuallyAutistic
March 20, 2024 at 2:05 PM
Reposted by Rachel
I struggle to recognize faces. While I’ve never been formally diagnosed, the term for it is prosopagnosia. I don’t recognize people by their face but rather their style, piercings, clothes, hair, etc. I’ve walked past people on second dates multiple times. So I have this constant anxiety when 🧵
January 28, 2026 at 4:32 AM
Reposted by Rachel
Subtweet.

It does not fill me with the warm and fuzzies that the messaging on RFK Jr. focuses on the harm the antivax movement is doing/will do, without addressing the hatred of autistic people that is the antivax movement's life blood.
January 28, 2026 at 3:21 AM
I fucking hate the term “Judeo-Christian.”

A single hyphenated word to co-opt Judaism & erase Islam. 🤢
January 28, 2026 at 1:13 AM
Reposted by Rachel
Gentiles, I wholeheartedly encourage you to memorialize trans, gay, Roma, disabled, and political victims of the Holocaust, today.

They deserve to be remembered.

But, maybe, don’t treat this like a zero-sum game where it must be “reclaimed” from Jewish people.
January 27, 2026 at 2:29 PM
“The original editor of Mima’akim, Yehuda Eismann, described the work as a ‘memorial stone for Polish Jewry.’”
Translated from Yiddish into English for the first time, this historic collection documents experiences of Jews attempting to survive Nazi persecution.
'Out of the depths' on Jewish News today: www.jewishnews.co.uk/holocaust-er...
#HolocaustMemorialDay #booksky
Holocaust-era songs composed in Nazi ghettos published for first time in English - Jewish News
www.jewishnews.co.uk
January 27, 2026 at 5:49 PM
Reposted by Rachel
On #holocaustmemorialday, we're sharing the Ephraim and Neumayer collection. Vera Ephraim was a Dalcroze Eurhythmics teacher and her husband Hans Neumayer was a blind musician and teacher. Both Germans of Jewish ancestry, they were killed in the Holocaust.
January 27, 2026 at 11:56 AM
Reposted by Rachel
Works by German-born Jewish artist David Ludwig Bloch (1910-2002), who spent 4 weeks in Dachau following the pogrom night of 1938. He was able to leave, first to Shanghai, and from 1949 to the USA. Others were not so lucky. 'My Family History'; 'Crying Hands', late 20th c. #HolocaustMemorialDay
January 27, 2026 at 12:54 PM
Reposted by Rachel
We are watching Holocaust history being rewritten in real time to justify Israel committing genocide & Trump authoritarianism. This is a form of holocaust denial wrapped up in a defense of Jewish safety
January 27, 2026 at 5:05 PM
Reposted by Rachel
Jewish memory calls on us not only to mourn, but to act – to honor life, to defend human dignity, and to dismantle systems that thrive on hate and dehumanization. 3/4
January 27, 2026 at 5:12 PM
Reposted by Rachel
Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

We remember six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust – and the vibrant Jewish lives, cultures and futures the Nazis tried to erase. 1/4
January 27, 2026 at 5:12 PM
Reposted by Rachel
Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Queer and trans people were persecuted during the Holocaust well as Jewish people, Roma people, disabled people and many others.

Check out this resource by Eli Erlick
You can read it in full here: elierlick.com/transholocaust
January 27, 2026 at 2:02 PM
Reposted by Rachel
Starting a new post and linking directly to the fundraisers because Bluesky accounts are getting deleted so often. I will then comment with the Bluesky account below the fundraiser so you can follow or chat with them and try to update as needed. I also fixed the graphic because it was bugging me.
January 5, 2025 at 8:25 PM