January 7, 2022

Bo

Hello everyone! Please enjoy the following extremely boss pair of pants.

CW's: death, zionism, pandemic, antisemitic conspiracy theories, sexual harassment

Jewish Calendar

This week's torah portion is Bo. Avigayil Halpern writes about firstborns and gender and egalitarianism.

It's also almost tu bishvaaaaat!!!! 🌲🌴🌳 I love this holiday. Its rebirth in contemporary times has been very zionist but I feel like there's deep diasporist potential if you hop back a few centuries instead. I made a zine about it a few years ago that you can use to run your own nonzionist kabbalistic four worlds seder, and I'll be doing one online 1/16 at 5pm pacific time. Reply to this email if you want the link, or there's a couple other online options with different focuses listed in the events section below!

Israel, Zionism, and Antisemitism

Some Utah techbro blamed COVID on us jews and then went on to say the pope was secretly jewish, which is hilarious on a number of levels. He has since had a "you can't fire me i quit" experience. Bye bye! As is frequently the case, his views expressed on social media were at least as bad as those in the email, which people were already paying some amount of attention to since he's a pretty major donor to Utah republicans.

In that weird overlap between antisemitism and israel, an israeli academic philosophy journal had a special issue about disproportionate jewish influence, including a piece by antisemitic contrarian academic Kevin MacDonald. The editor in chief of the journal, by the way, is famous for writing the IDF code of ethics.

meetings humor break

These gave me a variety of feelings

pronouns.page, a site about gender pronouns available in a wide variety of languages, has a ladino translation! My little queer sephardi heart cried happy tears at this. Other Ladino learning opportunities include two new weekly bits on Sarah Aroeste's social media, one of cute kids and one translating and explaining explaining proverbs.

I'm hearing more and more about (and from) ex-orthodox folks on a variety of paths, most recently Elad Nehorai's Why Running A Jewish Publication Led Me To Leave Orthodoxy post.

Michael Faccini wrote about kashrut standards and racism and class in Washington Heights for the Flavors of Diaspora blog. Related: grappling with Jewish intergenerational wealth in America, regardless of whether your immediate ancestors had that wealth, can mean a lot of things but is probably vital if we're gonna be decent people in the long run.

While I'm ambivalent at best about anything associated with pussyhats, i love that grandmas in Germany and Austria are organizing against the far right.

Candy Parfitt wrote about her family's experiences with disabled jewish family life.

Judith Plaskow wrote about a decades-old experience of sexual harassment in academia and how she was not allowed to name the experience while accepting an award named for her harasser.

Miscellaneous

NYPL has a LibGuide about LGBTQ Jews

garlic bread / babka otp (no-knead savory babka recipe). I bet it would be equally delicious with pesto or zaatar or some other flavorful mix in the filling, if you want to mix it up.

Chabad claimed they had the first VR jewish center. They are wrong and also it sucked. More in this great thread from the mensch who brought us the PocketTorah app. Don't buy into ~meta~ or NFT hype, kids.

The YIVO Vilna Online Collections project is entirely online, having finished an extensive digitization process! Kol hakavod!

There's some cool stuff in BuyOlympia's annual clearance sale, including Tsilli Pines' hebrew alphabet posters and David Lester's poster of anti-nuclear activist Mordechai Vanunu.

Jews of Color Initiative featured Black Jewish Liberation Collective in their newsletter.

73 Forward's repro shabbat is January 28-29th this year.

Events!

1/9 Matir Asurim Penpal training

1/9 Queer Nigun Project Song Circle

1/9 Historical and linguistic overview of Jewish languages in Iran (more info)

1/12 Yiddish Metal as a Manifestation of Postvernacularity lecture

1/13 Rad Yiddish Presents: Reb Noyekh's Gay Yiddish Textbook

1/10-1/14 Big Bold Jewish Climate Fest

1/16-1/17 Tu Bishvat

1/16 5pm pacific Meli-style Tu Bishvat Seder (reply to this email for a link)

1/16 IJV Tu Bishvat Seder

1/16 Workers Circle tu bishvat seder

1/16, 1/23 two-part Torah, Trees & Time class (sliding scale $50-ish; has ASL interpretation)

1/18 Torah beyond zionism: Israel and the Book of Joshua with Rachel Havrelock

1/26 Black Studies and Jewish Studies in Conversation: Du Bois Before Warsaw, Fascism Before Racism

1/27 Shakespeare & Yiddish with Ilan Stavans

1/30 Judeo-Hamadani, Judeo-Isfahani, Judeo-Yazdi, and other Median languages (more info)

1/30 New York Ladino Day

1/30 and 2/6 Cultivating Culture: A Virtual Gathering of Jewish Farmers

Jewish Pet of the Week

The Jewish Pet of the Week this week is Mets Willets Point, who lives with RV Dougherty! Amazing footwork, look at those paws, 20/10.

<3

Meli

PS. Take a deep breath. Shabbos is coming.