May 7, 2021

Behar-Bechukotai

Hi everyone! This week’s parsha is Behar-Bechukotai. It’s got info about shmita aka “give the ground a break” year, debt stuff, rain, harvests, victories over enemies, monetary valuation of humans (eew) and more! Also, it’s the end of leviticus/vayikra, so next week we start a whole new book of the torah.

Content notes: antisemitism, nazis, racism by and about Jews.

There has been some obnoxious racism from members of the jewish community this week and I resent that I have to talk about it.

Gugulethu Moyo resigned from her position as executive director of Tucson’s Jewish History Museum in part due to her experiences of racism faced from board members and others while in that position.

The Jewish Institute for Liberal Values published an open letter about how anti-racism has just gone too far these days, echoing last summer’s Harper’s Letter and promoted as a Jewish version of such.

Last year, a few days after the original Harper’s Letter went live, The Objective published an explanation including some details of that letter and criticism of it. The following paragraph in particular applies to both open letters:

“What the signatories are describing are things that have happened to journalists, academics, and authors marginalized by their respective industries for years — just not in the ways the signatories want to highlight. The problem they are describing is for the most part a rare one for privileged writers, but it is constant for the voices that have been most often shut out of the room.”

The protective vague language and lack of context given for examples in the Jewish Harper’s Letter cover for a multitude of sins. There have been, and continues to be, abominable racism against jews of color and nonjewish people of color from white jews in the community; denying this serves nobody and will not lead to change.

In addition, several signatories have a history of harassing Jews with differing opinions about Israel. When the original Harper’s Letter came out in 2020, Jewish Currents responded by explaining how Bari Weiss and other signatories are still very excited to shut down pro-Palestine speech. This is as true in Jewish contexts as it is in secular ones. In fact, Bari Weiss is one of the five people (Jonathan Haidt, Steven Pinker, Nadine Strossen, Bari Weiss, and Cathy Young) who signed both letters, alongside some influential jewish community members who signed this one.

I know very little about the group that put this out, besides the list of people involve setting off some internal red flags. Twitter user @babyboymonaghan points out the funding behind this group is sketchy and opaque, and its existence is clearly new. I wasn’t sure whether it was a good idea to give them more attention, but it seemed like a good choice to provide additional context, especially as news of the open letter moves outside jewish publications only, but the #JewishHarpersLetter is very much a shonde.

Meanwhile, results from the next Pew survey of American Judaism are expected next week 5/11. What is the survey and why are some of us nervous about it? Dr. Jennifer Thompson has answers for you. I did a thread about this also, but it’s mostly feelings and reactions to the context. A related reminder: anti-convert sentiment fades directly into racism, a fact any Jew of Color can tell you. Don’t do it.

Critical race theory has lately been used as a bludgeon to mean all kinds of things. If you want to learn more about what it actually comprises, twitter user Uju Anya posted a wonderful short summary.

Brivele’s new album Cradle Songs, Grave Songs released last week! Contains bits of Janelle Monae and Howard Zinn, and lots of yiddish and feelings. Highly recommend buying yourself a copy.

Check out this lovely little thread of books with illustrations by Arthur Kolnik, featuring excerpted illustrations.

This article in Alma turned me on to the fantastic art exhibit Jewish Authenticity and Identity. You can view the whole exhibit online. Some of my favorite pieces:

• The first one featured in the walkthrough: Identity, a calligraphy piece by Kalman Gavriel Delmoor.
• One for the nerds: Moses meets MODOK.
• Judith Joseph’s block print [Inner Life of a Golem] (https://authenticityandidentity.com/inner-life-of-a-golem-by-judith-joseph/)
• The Devils on My Shoulders by Joyce Ellen Weinstein
• Jewraffe by Cassandra Clark
• Talit Katan by Rachel Kanter

Jewish art is all of these things and more. I absolutely wish I could browse this collection in person. Pictured below: Jewraffe, because I couldn’t resist.

This article about Baruch Spinoza is the biggest mismatch between headline and content I’ve seen in a while. It is not particularly about mental health and is (from my decidedly non-expert perspective) very much worth reading.

Back in January, Making Queer History profiled Salim Halali. I’m not gonna say I’m a fan of keeping pet tigers, but it is impressive that he had two of them. He inspired Si Kaddour Benghabrit to hide Jews from the Nazis in the Great Mosque of Paris. Apparently there was a movie about it in 2011, which featured Salim Halali as a character.

Tumtum, for those not yet in on the joke, is one of the six recognized sexes in rabbinic judaism. Or, as the original poster put it, Yes let’s be kinder to intersex people, Vitamin Water Brand Social Media account.

Here, have a brief thread from Ben Lorber about zionism, which was sold to us (myself included) as a liberatory project when it is instead a mad dash for safety at the expense of other oppressed peoples.

In Israel, violence against Palestinians has accelerated. Jerusalem neighborhood Sheikh Jarrah is at the core of this wave, with Israeli settlers removing Palestinians by force and overtaking their homes. More photographic and video proof is available on the hashtag #SaveSheikhJarrah. It is important as jews that we speak out against this violence done in our name. This article from Al Jazeera explains the legal and political context. Pay attention to the similarities between US-based structural racism. including police violence. J-Street has been discussing it on Twitter as well.

It’s a good week for recordings of previous events, like:

• Fenster’s Art & Artists on Being Black & Jewish
• UCLA’s Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies’ youtube channel also has quite a few interesting looking lectures, including The Sultan’s Communists: Moroccan Jews and the Politics of Belonging - Alma Rachel Heckman.
• Cornell’s Di Linke: the Yiddish Immigrant Left from Popular Front to Cold War conference
• Dr. Mika Ahuvia’s talk on angels in ancient jewish culture

JQT Vancouver is celebrating May as JQT Heritage Month 2021 with a number of events, panels, performances, and more.

You can spend your upcoming Tuesdays learning about Sephardi perspectives on balancing communal and personal responsibilities, or learning about the jewish calendar as cycles within cycles from Yesod Farm.

And now, upcoming events!

5/8 The role of the JNF in the Palestinian Nakba. “Ilan Pappe will describe the crucial role of the JNF and its leaders in developing the ideology and strategy of ethnic cleansing leading up to 1948. He will also illustrate some of the ways in which the JNF is implicated in the military operations for the expulsion of the Palestinians from their lands and how the JNF thwarted the Palestinian Right of Return.”

5/9 A Virtual Coffeehouse in Twentieth-Century Cairo with Dr. Alon Tam, $32

5/9 Rebuilding Jewish Anarchisms: a conversation between Cindy Milstein and Shane Burley

5/10 12 PDT ‘Second class citizens’: LGBTQ students allege culture of alienation and fear at Yeshiva University, a livestreamed discussion based on anti-discrimination lawsuits against Yeshiva University

5/10 A Link in the Chain: Shavuot and Sephardic Perspectives on the Transmission of Tradition from Hamaqom

5/11 Jewish Prayer in Many Languages: From Sephardic Seattle to Syrian Brooklyn, Shavuot edition

5/12, 8am PDT, TransHallel Rosh Chodesh Sivan

5/12 UW Sephardic Experiences of Modernity Colloquium, including The Ladino Press: Using Machine Learning to Excavate Visual Content in Historic Ladino Newspapers, The Modernization of Education and Its Impact on Midwives: The Case of Jewish “Bloody Midwives”, and Mapping Early Migration from ‘Turkey’ to Seattle: A Social History of Seattle’s First Ottomans

5/13 Virtual Women-Led Megillat Ruth Reading from JOFA

5/14 The Jewish People of Color National (Virtual) Shabbaton

5/15 3pm through 5/16 9pm PDT Shavuot LIVE

5/16 Queer women’s torah workshop part 1

5/16 Measuring the Literary Horror of the Talmudic Accounts Involving the Supernatural Entities presentation as part of PhilosophyCon 6: Metaphysical Horror conference panel (Not So) Dunwich Horrors

5/16 3pm-9pm PDT Miles Nadal JCC (Toronto, ON) Tikun Leil Shavuot, fb link

5/16 4pm PST-5/17 8AM PST with an overnight break, small congregations shavuot

5/16 5:30pm through 5/17 2am PDT The Paul Feig z”l Tikkun Leil Shavuot from Marlene Meyerson JCC

5/20: Gabriel Abensour (Hebrew University of Jerusalem): Rabbi Yosef Knafo’s Struggle for Democratization of Knowledge in Fin de Siècle Essaouira

5/23 From Northwestern University’s Arab-Jewish Culture, Identity, and Language: Past and Present series: Performance and Conversation With Tair Haim, Acclaimed Soloist of the Band A-Wa

5/23 SMQN event: Junt@s: A U.S. + Latin American Queer Hangout

5/25, 5/27 Reading Jewish Texts in an Age of Climate Change lectures from Julia Watts Belser

5/26 SMQN Chai & Chat with Sigal Samuel, author of Osnat and Her Dove

6/6 Ancient Jewess Magic, a talk by Mika Ahuvia, author of On My Right Michael, On My Left Gabriel: Angels in Ancient Jewish Culture

6/13 Jews and Prison: Jewish Values Behind the Walls, presented by Elaine Leeder

6/13 From Anti-Semitism to Anti-Racism: Why Jews Should Support Defunding the Police

The Jewish Pet of the Week this week is Bob the Dog!

See you next week, friends.

<3

Meli