July 8, 2022

Chukat

Hello friends! This week in jewsletter we have some stuff about the parsha and a very cute cat as pet of the week, with various thoughts and links in between.

CNs: internet harassment, mass shooting, racism

Jewish Calendar

This week's torah portion, parshat chukat, contains the red cow ashes purification stuff, one of many rituals that we don't (can't) do anymore. Also the death of Moses's sister Miriam. Ben Greenfield has a great twitter thread drash about Moses mourning Miriam and other potentials of original-language learning. Moses also goes on to angrily hit a rock which is not what hashem wanted, so then aaron dies (which is weird revenge but ok i guess). The haftarah is from judges and tells us the story of yiftach.

Jews behaving badly

Libs of Tiktok, a right-wing account run by an orthodox jewish woman that targets queer people resulting in harassment by her followers, has chosen to target Camp Ramah because of their trans inclusivity policies. Her tactics are spreading, too, with right-wing groups offering trainings on monitoring the social media pages of teachers.

I appreciated Rabbi Brant Rosen's writeup of Avodah's revoking Anna Rajagopal's internship. This is in the jews behaving badly section partly for Avodah but mostly for StopAntisemitism's antisemite of the week posts, which has repeatedly targeted Jews who are not pro-Israel. Anna also shared her perspective in an interview.

Antisemitism

Last week there was a mass shooting at a 4th of july parade in Highland Park, IL, a very Jewish suburb of chicago that also has a large latino population. I grew up near but not in Highland Park and am grateful that everyone I know in the area did not go to the parade this year. The guy who did it was a 22 year old Trump supporter, but NPR's pretty sure it's not politically motivated. It is almost certainly politically motivated but I do not know if it was antisemitic in particular; however, people (including highland park jews) have a lot of differing opinions on that

The religious discrimination lawsuit brought by a Jewish couple in Tennessee against a state funded christian adoption agency has been dismissed by the court. The reason behind the dismissal was at least in part because the couple successfully became foster parents (and mazel tov to them on having children in their home at last!). It is certainly not a good result to this lawsuit, but it is not a carte blanche for no jews allowed signs, as one widely spread tweet alleges.

The Pink Peacock, PWYW anarchist jewish queer space slash vegan cafe in glasgow, had their window broken again. If you want to donate them some money, I'd appreciate it.

Joshua Liefer's article on The Challenge of Defending Memory in Germany was extremely helpful to me in understanding the messy discourses resulting from the Highjacking Memory conference.

Books and Language

I recently found out about this collection of Jewish Digital Humanities projects, some of which i was already familiar with but others new to me like an archive of ilanot diagrams (Ilanot project page link, ilanot database link), Routes of Sefarad (or, Caminos de Sefarad, a project about pre-expulsion spain), a digital geniza for jewish morocco, a ton of periodical archive projects, projects on funerary culture and gravestone epigraphy, and more!

Speaking of, here's additional cool old tombstone inscriptions.

Love a bilingual translation! especially this one of the Iliad in Hebrew and Ladino!

There's a new automated twitter account publishing one Jastrow dictionary entry per day!

Miscellaneous

The Pickle became The Babka this week for a story about gentrification of babka baking.

I sure don't need more t-shirts, but what if i do. Baruch hashem for abortion!

Applications for the New Jewish Culture Fellowship are open thru the end of July, in which a cohort of Jewish artists (defined broadly) will get a stipend and meet weekly (approx) to talk Jewish art stuff.

New Voices is hiring a 10hr/wk remote Associate Editor for August thru November.

Hadar Cohen is teaching a 3-session class on Arab Jewish identity

Who wants to watch an hourlong animated movie in which Leonard Nimoy of blessed memory voices the Rambam?

Events!

7/7 T'fillat Trans 101: An Introduction to Crafting Trans Ritual with the Trans Halakha Project (trans and/or nonbinary people only)

7/7, 7/14: Shmita immersive: rest as resistance with Rabbi Elliot Kukla at SVARA

7/17 Yiddish: Biography of a Language​ book talk

7/10 Queer Yiddish Politics and Poetry: A Pride Celebration with Irena Klepfisz and Zohar Weiman-Kelman

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

The jewish pet of the week this week is Magpie, a lovely tuxedo cat who likes to stop and smell the roses.

<3

Meli