Bereshit
Bereshit: IT BEGINS (again). No, not the Israeli space robot that spilled a bunch of tardigrades on the moon last year, the parsha it is named after. We all know these stories: creation (told twice, with some differences), Adam and Eve and the tree, their kids Cain and Abel, a bunch of begats, then this guy Noah shows up but his story’s mostly in next week.
My BDS Etrog adventures have continued, as have my adventures in silly humor. I made jam/marmalade, but it didn’t quite set right, but it is delicious. Locals: hit me up if you want some.
And, unfortunately, a few upsetting politics links:
Alma had a decent overview of the ways antisemitism has been showing up in qanon
Talia Lavin has a new book coming out and has been doing a virtual press tour for it. I do not have the inner strength to do extra reading on white supremacists besides reading the excerpt about her experience catfishing on a whites-only dating site but I trust her research and readings of the situation as she’s a jewish woman who’s been targeted by them multiple times.
But nice jewish things also exist! Like this soup!
And this lovely interview with the internet's Jewish uncle Mandy Patinkin! https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/mandy-patinkin-is-still-singing "I was a little boy soprano, and the ladies would pinch my cheek after I would sing 'Sim Shalom.’” It does include him talking about a failed play he did where he played a trans woman, which—I wish he had not done that, and also the way he talks about it seems like he comes closer to understanding things than a lot of cis people do.
The Pink Peacock Cafe anarchist vegan Yiddishist space also got a few write-ups lately, in both jewish and goyishe media. If I am ever in Scotland I hope to visit them.
Have you wanted to learn how to study Mishnah? Xava will teach you.
There’s a few fundraisers that have crossed my path lately for marginalized Jewish people: this one for a Black Jewish woman to support her family, and this one for (full disclosure, a twitter mutual/friend) a trans woman’s gender conformation surgery.
Want to instead learn about medicine, health and jewish stereotypes? There’s a thread for that too, or a series of them.
For more concentrated or in-depth learning, there’s also a big Duke University Press sale on. I recognize most people do not actually read academic monographs for fun, but I do, and you might also. It’s a 50% off all dead tree books (and paper journal issues) sale with code FALL2020. There’s a lot of Jewish, jewish-adjacent, and judaism-related books in there, including the following list, none of which I’ve read:
Traveling Heavy, a Ruth Behar memoir about her “Yiddish-Sephardic-Cuban-American family”
a book called Sociology Confronts the Holocaust
The Un-Americans: Jews, the Blacklist, and Stoolpigeon Culture, about how HUAC was not just anticommunist but also antisemitic
Black, Jewish, and Interracial: an academic with one Black parent and one white Jewish parent writing about multiracial jews
“In The Communist and the Communist's Daughter Jane Lazarre weaves memories of her father with documentary materials—such as his massive FBI file—to tell her father's fascinating history as a communist, a Jew, and a husband, father, and grandfather.”
The Wandering Signifier: Rhetoric of Jewishness in the Latin American Imaginary, if you want to read about jews-as-metaphor
Several print issues of Tikkun, including the ones on food politics, nonviolent statecraft, and hope amidst climate disaster.
An anthology of Secularisms covering multiple religions
Iraqi Jewish theorist Ella Shohat’s essay collection called Taboo Memories, Diasporic Voices
The Jewish Pet of the Week this week is Zero! Look at those paw tufts. And the little pink nose. Amazing. I have seen this cat in person and can confirm: very cute.
See you next week!
<3
Meli