Balak
Hello friends! This week in jewsletter we have: the 17th (or 18th) of tammuz, a jewish astrology guide, community safety training, several new events for the list, and a dog!
Also I'm out next week. See you on the 29th.
Jewish Calendar
Usually I just fill this section with holidays and parsha info, but this week I have two links about actual calendars!
One is that preorders for the 5783 Radical Jewish Calendar are open!
And the other is this super cool DIY perpetual jewish calendar template!
https://twitter.com/babushkabarbie/status/1546883953004630020
Balak: the TALKING DONKEY PARSHA
In which Balak the Moabite wants magic-guy Balaam to curse the Israelites but Hashem does not want him to, and shenanigans ensue. At one point Hashem gets mad and the donkey Balaam is riding sees hashem's messenger and freaks out, so Balaam beats the donkey, so hashem makes the donkey say "what the fuck, my dude [approx]" and they have a whole conversation, Balaam and the donkey, before Balaam knows that it's hashem speaking through it.
This parsha is also where we get the beginning of the Mah Tovu prayer we say in the morning. Lessons include Hashem is mighty and don't curse Israel. The talking donkey is mentioned in Pirkei Avot too.
File:Nuremberg chronicles f 30r 2.png - Wikipedia
Mourning in Summer
Tzom Tammuz (the fast of tammuz) is this Sunday, and three weeks later we have Tisha b'Av. Technically we're having the 9th of Av on the 10th, because you don't do 18 tammuz fasting or 9 av fasting on shabbat, which is when those dates land this year.
https://twitter.com/Lexaphus/status/1547964645582942212
The time in between these is considered a special collective mourning period. This year I'm planning to read In the Narrow Places, a book of daily readings meant to help people through some introspection during the Three Weeks.
Israel stuff
Yair Rosenberg's latest DeepShtetl update is an interview with Walter Russel Mead about the history of the US-Israel (or US-zionism) relationship going all the way back to 1891! "[W]ho loved the idea of Zionism? Powerful non-Jews."
Books and Language
https://twitter.com/hannahpressman/status/1547993896273133568
In Geveb has a great round-up of their top 10 articles from the past year, which includes several pieces I linked in here, which personally I see as a sign i'm catching at least some of the good stuff!
David Bashevkin reads a book every shabbos. Admirable really!! I love reading books but I'm generally slower at finishing them, picking at any one of several I'm in the middle of for 30 minutes at a time or so.
Michelle Margolis on Mikhl Herzog on "The Culinary Treasures of the Language and Culture Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry". Tomatoes were treyf because they bleed when you cut them, apparently.
Ben Yehuda Press is fundraising on kickstarter for a print run of an alt-history anthology Other Covenants: Alternate Histories of the Jewish People, which i am quite excited to read. The book was originally going to be published with a genre fiction publisher, but that publisher has since closed down. I'm glad the book found a new home.
Happy birthday to Avrom Sutzkever!
https://twitter.com/holocaust_music/status/1547915207531368450
Miscellaneous
SURJ (Standing Up for Racial Justice) has organized a three session Jewish Community Safety Training Series on how to maintain community safety without police presence. Session topics include risk assessment, high holy days safety planning, and de-escalation training.
David Rosenberg reviews a couple books in a fascinating article about bundism in diaspora.
Naftuli Moser writes in Jewish Currents about an unfortunate pattern of Brooklyn progressive politicians not holding yeshivas to account. Moser is outgoing executive director of Yaffed, a nonprofit pushing for Orthodox schools to meet basic secular educational standards.
What counts as traditional klezmer? Irene Katz Connelly uses the frame to discuss this year's Yidstock festival.
https://twitter.com/candidamoss/status/1547155448800878592
According to this Jewish astrology guide, my mazal (using my new secret hebrew name) is pisces and uranus. What this means I could not tell you but it was fun to fuss with arithmetic.
From Odessa to New York City: The Unique Legacy of America’s Soviet Jewry
Events!
7/17 Yiddish: Biography of a Language book talk
7/17 Tzom Tammuz (minor fast)
7/19 "From the Jewish Provinces" by Fradel Shotk: conversation with the book’s translators. "Fradl Shtok composed stories that describe the travails of young women looking for love and desire in a world that spurns them. These women struggle with disability, sexual violence, and unwanted marriage, striving to imagine themselves as artists or losing themselves in fantasy worlds."
7/20 Avodat Lev service led by Simcha Halpert-Hanson
7/20 Israel-Palestine and the future of Jewish Politics in America from Jewish Liberation Fund and IfNotNow
7/24 Queer Yiddishist Shmueskrayz
7/27 Yiddish Abortion Stories from the Workers Circle
7/29 Queer Disability Shabbat (queer and disabled jews only, please, but with expansive definitions on all three of those identity labels)
7/29 Rosh Chodesh Av
7/31 Speculative Wisdom book club: discussing Depart, Depart! by Sim Kern
8/2-8/3 Real Torah / Real Life: Abortion, Beyond Law (includes a women-only component and an everyone component)
Jewish Pet of the Week
The jewish pet of the week this week is TOBOTHY, who I have almost certainly featured before but he's very cute so why not repeat.
https://twitter.com/AndyEyeballs/status/1517616070403702789
<3
Meli