Hello, holy chevrutot!

Well and truly, how does this email find you? At the time of writing I’m 70% exhausted, 20% despairing, and 10% grasping frantically to love and joy.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this video by Chiara Do’wal Sehi about how hope is not a necessary ingredient for revolution, action is. I bristled at it at first, it was so new and counter to everything I believed—but the video found me at a moment without hope, a moment I needed an answer to hopelessness. I wondered about how I move to action when not starting from a place of hope, and stumbled into the idea of starting from a place of imagination. I don’t need to know that collective liberation is coming, but I do need to be able to imagine it. It can’t just be a phrase, it needs to be a feeling that lives deep in my body. Baruch Hahsem for liberation cultural workers like kristianna smith, the Possibility Maven, for turning that kind of imagination work into a practice.

If we do them right, B’zrat Hashem, the following offerings will help ground you in action and imagination.

Love and Solidarity,
Tzvi Finkel
Rosh Yeshiva
P.S. There hasn’t been a hostile takeover of B”L, I just changed my name! ^{🏳️‍⚧️}

3 Oaths with Shel Maala (Online)

The Three Oaths: Studying the Foundation of Religious Jewish Anti-Zionism Join us Sundays April 12-26 at 2pm ET/11am PT for a three week journey into a core Talmudic text in our people's opposition to Zionism, its limits and its possibilities. No Alef Bet or prep work required.

The “Three Oaths” is a foundational text for religious Jewish antizionism, that has been a key driver of orthodox opposition to the state since it was first a twinkle in Herzl’s eye. In the text, we see a fiery disagreement between Rav Yehuda and Rav Zeira about whether one is permitted to move to Eretz Yisrael, and if so, in what manner.

This offering is affiliated with Ḥarifta: Jewish Learning Communities for Liberation. Learn more at instagram.com/h.arifta

Revolutionary Imagination and Olam Haba (in-person in Pittsburgh)

Spiraling about how much worse it seems like things are going to get? Come learn and dream with past and present sages about how good they could become! Join Beis Lakish (Tzvi & Olivia) in a four-week, whole-body Talmud deep dive as we make way for the World to Come. Sundays May 3rd-24th 1 to 5pm. (B”L classes are always free, come learn with us!)

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