Shabbat is over and so let's share what we read, thought about, or saw over Shabbat, or other thoughts about the week ahead.

Shavua Tov Rugelaites!

How do we feel about asking for photo uploads to be prioritized as a feature? I’m asking because I leave for Israel on 2026-12-19 and desperately want to share pics with all of you!

All hail @serge, Rugelord in chief, for his incredible development work!

Shabbat Shalom
Gud Shabbos
Bein Shabat

Another week has passed and so let's come together at the end of the week to share.

Let us know something about yourself. We have a bunch of new folks, so this is a good opportunity to introduce yourself. And for not-as-new folks to re-introduce themselves.

Say something that's alive in you, your thoughts, feelings, something on your mind. Talk about something you experience, you saw, or you felt this week.

Whatever this Shabbat looks like for you, you’re welcome at this table.

If you aren't sure what to write, copy me. If you are shy, one sentence is fine. If you want to write more, that's great too. The post will be here afterwards if you want to come back to it.

Last night my wife and I went to see You can See Everything, the latest film by Nathan Fielder. I have no specifics but this review contains some spoilers.

If you aren't familiar with Fielder's work, especially his recent work much of it revolves around a simulacra. That puts it in line with other Jewish creators such as Charlie Kaufman and Sasha Baron Cohen.

But You Can See Everything is beyond that, It, like the Rehearsal, peels back layers and layers on the subjects, Elizabeth Holmes and Billy Evans, but then, as is Fielder's signature move, a new layer is revealed, and then another, until the filmmaker finally turns the entire premise of the film on himself, questioning the very premise of not only the film, but the filmmaker. As my wife put it, it's an entire Talmudic passage, with multiple rabbis, told by one man to himself.

Adding into this is another point about Jewish storytelling. In traditional Jewish stories there is no central climax, no lesson, no saving grace. That's not what Jewish stories are about and what differentiates them from Christian or at least hegemonic stories. You Can See Everything similarly both has and doesn't have an ending. It leaves the viewer at a stopping point, but not one with a conclusion or place of satisfaction.

It's a Jewish story through and through, from a man I believe to be a one in a generation thinker. This film will taunt me for weeks.

For those who don't know me on Babka... when I'm not obsessing about my synagogue's proposed merger with another (and seriously, that eats up so much time), or my day job, or my life as a father and husband... I'm a brewer.

Actually, to be honest, I'm a Certified Cicerone®. It's the beer equivalent of a certified sommelier, and a certification that roughly five thousand people in the world hold. I don't do it as part of my day-job, but rather because I enjoy it... and as part of the studying to get the credential, I learned to homebrew so I'd understand the beer production process.

At this point, I'm cranking out about 18-20 batches a year - each batch yields about 2 cases - and having fun playing with different styles and variations on past successful recipes. And you're going, "T.J., what does this have to do with the audience here on Rugela?"

Half the fun of brewing is coming up with stupid names for beers.

There's my international dark lager called "Get the Golem".

An ordinary bitter (a British style) called "Tsurrus".

My dark mild (another British style) called "Nebbish".

I'm currently fermenting a Scotch Ale (a 'Wee Heavy') called... MacGroggers, which should weigh in at about 8.5% ABV and will keep till Purim.

And, when it gets a hint colder here (since I don't have temperature control for my fermentation), I'll make a Czech dark lager called "The Maharal's Monster".

The best part is that all these competitions I send beers generally have no idea where the names come from. I have to wonder what they think when they google the names...

It's nearly Shabbat and that means it's time again for a Rugela bake! For those of you who are new, this is something I do every week to talk about the changes to the site.

One of the developers is on vacation this week so it's been a bit of a light week, but I still have some exciting changes to talk about.

Stories and Comments

• Seeing who Starred a Post- You can now see who starred a post on the post. It's right on the context bar!
• Seeing who Starred a Comment- You can now see who starred a comment by clicking on the number of stars on the comment.
• More Stories by- If you're on a story and the author has written other posts, you can see a selection of them on the side
• Improved Display of Deep Threads- We found in testing that if replies became very deep, they could go further than a phone screen. That can't happen anymore, and similarly we've improved deep replies on wider screens too.
• The Edited Line- On a story or Post we show the time the it was made. We now show an * and if you hover it, you can see when the last edit was made.
• Colors- We tweaked the color of the context bar so it's a bit easier on the eyes.

Markup and Composing

• Hidden text- On posts, you can add a content label so people who don't want to see something potentially upsetting won't see it but we didn't have a solution to comments. Now we do! You can use the new || syntax in Markdown to hide text. And better yet, if you put something in brackets after that, like ||[warning] Some hidden text||, then the warning will show up for the person. That covers everything from upsetting content to spoilers and more. And this syntax is covered in the formatting sidebar when you write a post.
• Previews- It used to be that when you wrote a post or comment, you'd have to submit it to see how it would look, which meant that if you wanted to change how it looked, you'd have to edit it. Now we have a Preview tab next to the Write tab, so you can preview how your post or comment will look before it goes up.

Search

• Spelling Suggestions- If your search doesn't find anything, the search now suggests similar spellings, eg Hanukkah for Hanukah
• Search and Content Filters- We now apply your content filters by default, and you can turn that off with a checkbox
• Look and Feel- We made some small tweaks to the look and feel of the search bar and search results.

Link previews

• More Images- We had some trouble with some site's images getting into previews. We've fixed that where we can.
• More sites- We've improved Rugela's ability to get link previews generally.

Misc

• Filters - We renamed the "Content preferences" settings tab to "Filters". We think that's easier to find/read.
• Legal Document Versioning- We'll occasionally need to update our legal documents with new versions. For example, this week we updated the privacy notice about search. We offer each version of our legal documents for transparency.
• Speed Improvements- We've made a few speed improvements across the site.

What do you think?

What's your favorite new feature? Do you like the new preview system? Do you like the hidden text feature?

What's something you wish was a little different?

Reply below with your thoughts! Or as always, you can send your feedback to suggestions@rugela.com!

Hello people, I’m Miri. I’m on the fediverse via a small professionally-oriented server run by a friend. Not on Babka for that reason, and so I’m especially eager to see what this place might become. Thanks, @serge, for making it. I think we really need it.

Honestly, I’ve never regretted putting on tefillin. So maybe I should do it more. I mostly have trouble sustaining habits.

Wow this is a really nice posting interface.

It's nice to finally be able to move over here from the Fediverse. The other place I've been kind of hanging out is the new community from Ark Media called The Fold, and that's been nice too. I'm still looking at Mastodon sort of for now, but if Serge decides to retire Babka I can't say I blame him.

In other news, videos from this year's Oud Festival are starting to come out so maybe I'll post some of those here.

Alon Shaya’s Safta’s Table, an Israeli-inspired neighbourhood café in New Orleans, has been awarded a Bib Gourmand in the 2026 Michelin Guide American South, just seven months after opening.

I play mah jongg. I teach mah jongg. I have strong opinions about mah jongg tiles. I’ve also become an avid needlepointer, with an ever-growing collection of canvases, an alarming investment in colorful threads and more than a few opinions about both. Somewhere along the way, my free time became devoted to what the internet has affectionately dubbed “granny hobbies.”

“It connected me to other people that were very instrumental to my broader Yiddish interests,” said Lana Adler, a 2013 Hampshire graduate who went on to work at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, which houses the largest collection of Yiddish-language works in the world. “It was an incredibly important space for Yiddish.”

What ever happened to the Dat protocol? It seemed like it was going so strong and now there’s this confusing site about everything but the protocol.

We deserve nice things.

Howdy y'all, I just wanted to say hi and thanks for having me! You might know me as @em@babka.social. I'm most often a lurker on social media, but since there's nothing telling me what I should post here, I'm doing this!

Thinks I'm currently thinking a lot about:

• building a DnD one shot campaign for my friends
• writing a shiur on kabbalah + hanukkah for my shul
• making our house more cozy / beautiful

nice to see / meet y'all