Bamidbar
Happy pride month, friends!
Jewish Calendar
Parshat Bamidbar
This week we're starting a new book of the torah: Bamidbar/Numbers! Bamidbar means "in the middle of nowhere" or "in the wilderness" or "in the open space". Dunno about you but I do feel a little bit in the wilderness about a lot of things right now.
Anyway, this week's reading includes a census of the 12 tribes (not counting Levites, who deal with the tabernacle instead), and instructions on how the camp was to be arranged.
Plus, we go straight from shabbat to shavuot!
Shavuot
It's time to eat cheese and study Ruth starting Saturday June 4th at sunset. Salonikan shavuot traditions include the velada, an all night study session with zoharic origins that other communities call tikun leil shavuot. There's a few overnight (or late night) of those happening online this year:
Tikun Leil Shavuot from Congregation Beit Haverim
Two years ago, Shavuot happened during an uprising of protests, and many people (including twitter user Birdsong) had to choose between traditional observance and praying with their feet. CW for police violence in the linked thread.
https://twitter.com/JewishLanguages/status/1532374400883773441
Antisemitism, Zionism, Israel and Palestine
A collection of Jewish leaders and community members put out a response to the ADL's (and more specifically Greenblat's) conflation of pro-Palestine politics and antisemitism: We Must Fight White Supremacy with Solidarity. I've filled out a form to add my name as an additional signer. If you agree that "Jewish communities must embrace anti-Zionist and non-Zionist voices, along with all other voices for justice. While we may have a range of perspectives on Palestine and Israel, we are all clear that equating anti-Zionist groups to white nationalists is beyond the pale and cannot be tolerated," you can add your name too.
Pillsbury is one of the brands targeted by the BDS movement, and owner General Mills has agreed to divest its business from the occupied Palestinian territories. Something of a win, probably!
I am very tired of talking about anything related to Harry Potter, but maybe you want to read this article about Hogwarts Legacy and goblins and antisemitism.
Miscellaneous
Regular everyday Christian hegemony has harmful effects, and fixing those is part of tikun olam. Some American Jewish soldiers who died in Europe during World War II had Christian burials, and their descendants are doing reconsecration ceremonies, including replacing crosses at their burial sites with more appropriate symbols.
Queer Jewish maker Artlush has a beautiful rainbow hamsa necklace for sale in honor of pride month.
Two incarcerated women got married recently in a lovely Jewish ceremony. Mazel tov to them, and thank you to wedding attendee Aviva Stahl for writing it up so beautifully.
18forty put together a wonderful introduction to learning talmud in honor of Shavuot.
https://twitter.com/YiddishBookCtr/status/1532024806073311241
Shelby Handler has a lovely lyric essay in Poetry Magazine titled “Astrological Speculum,” and Other Objects Found on My Way to the Ancestors. In other "my local jewish community" news, I love klezmer folk punk band Brivele's new lil album!
University of Nebraska Press, which distributes for JPS, has a 50% off summer sale. Ben Yehuda Press also has a 25% off sale sale on their torah-related books for Shavuot.
The Button Box, a children's book about two cousins who are friends, sounds absolutely adorable. One of the cousins is a Sephardic Jew and the other is Muslim, and they time travel back to Medieval Morocco together.
Dayenu's Taking Down Goliath: Climate Organizing Training for 18-32 Year Olds is accepting applications. There's a $50 stipend for attendees. That could be you!
https://twitter.com/aesthetikeit/status/1532759307590111232
Syrian Jewish Mexicans and the Language of Everyday Orientalism by Evelyn Dean-Olmsted
I found this blogpost about Izmir Sephardim in the early 1900s fascinating and even a little funny--they were shocked Judezmo (Ladino) was more or less mutually understandable with Spanish!
There's apparently a musical about cuban jews called the golem of havana.
In Keshet's latest Joy and Resilience podcast, Dubbs Weinblatt and Anthony Russell interview Souks Soukhaseum about (among other things) the Free Synagogue of Flushing, where he works as historian and director of community affairs, bringing in his gay, jewish, and asian identities.
Laura Elkeslassy is teaching a 10 week class about the Moroccan Kabbalat Shabbat service at EAJL (European Academy for Jewish Liturgy)
JeLiThIn has their next round of online discussion groups open!
https://twitter.com/jwaonline/status/1532760281486696453
Danielle Durschlag writes about going to purim at a modern orthodox shul with a mechitza (gender separating partition) dressed up as a mechitza. I am glad she did this but also, as a trans person, I am tired.
Speaking of being trans and tired, the Conservative movement published a teshuva (rabbinical report) about how to use gender neutral language to call someone up to the bimah. It is pretty good! But then, in this same document about how to behave inclusively about nonbinary community members, it refers to the person being called up as "him or her". Nonbinary people can absolutely use he/him or she/her pronouns, but I do feel like this is the exact wrong context in which to assume "him or her" covers everyone.
Being Chana is an autobiographical piece on disability and conversion to Judaism.
Events!
New event additions to the list are bolded.
6/3-6/5 Festival Sefardí, a hybrid event with poetry, song, stories, and more.
6/4-6/5 ShavuotLIVE 2022: a 24-Hour Festival of Jewish Learning! 5pm eastern-5 pm eastern.
6/5 Introduction to Abolition with Matir Asurim
6/7-6/10 Yidstock
6/8 Forging Our Own Derekh: (Re)-defining Halakha with the Trans Halakha Project (trans and nonbinary people only)
6/12 Cain and Fable: Radicals Re-Exploring the World's First Murder with Shel Maala
6/12 Book Talk: Women Writing Jewish Modernity
6/12-6/14 Kavod v'Nichum North American Chevrah Kadisha and Jewish Cemetery Conference
6/13 The Soviet Jewry Movement, Revisited, a panel presented by Jewish Currents
6/16 Working toward a Healthy Generation: An Archival Show-and-Tell on Jewish Women’s Health in Eastern Europe
6/27 Resistance as Liberation: Judaism and Abortion Care, from Ratzon: Center for Healing and Resistance and the Jewish Anarchist Salon
6/30 Antisemitism and the Impact of Philanthropy on Public Discourse (part of a series)
7/29 Queer Disability Shabbat (queer and disabled jews only, please, but with expansive definitions on all three of those identity labels)
Jewish Pet of the Week
This is Kayleigh, a black and white furball who looooves her mousey.
https://twitter.com/EmExAstris/status/1532797212521926657
Shabbat shalom!
<3
Meli