Devarim
Hi all! Lovely to see you again.
Content notes for this week's newsletter are: tisha b'av related mourning, sexual assault, homophobia, antisemitism, genocide and apartheid mentions
https://twitter.com/jwaonline/status/1416071389333884932
This week's parsha is Devarim, meaning words or things. We're starting a whole new book of the torah this week! The words in question are Moses's, who spends all of Deuteronomy telling people stuff that already happened to them or to their parents and what the people should be doing next. Bit of a clip show, bit of a sermon. "Hey remember that time i told you to treat israelites and non-israelites based on the same laws?" "Hey remember those times you didn't listen to hashem and it went badly, and those times you did listen and it went well?" You know, stuff like that.
Speaking of torah, Ben Yehuda Press has a started doing a weekly parsha thread using sections from their books.
https://twitter.com/BenYehudaPress/status/1416092165550354437
This week also brings the 9th of Av. Tisha b'Av is a day of mourning the calamities that have befallen the jewish people, including the destruction of both of the holy temples in Jerusalem. Sefaria has a reading list if you want to do any text study around Tisha b'Av, as well as traditional kinnot
Either due to the mourning-related themes of the holy day, or due to the content of Eicha itself, many people relate tisha b'av to sexual assault. Most recently Sophia Zohar/Maimonideez Nuts has a piece about her healing process after surviving sexual assault.
Rebecca Pierce and Nakita Rakel are hoping to support other victims of a serial harasser in jewish left circles. They will not be naming the person. I don't know who it is and that's okay. The point of this is building solidarity between victims.
https://twitter.com/BL_HebrewMSS/status/1414982087690575876
Are you a fan of heist media? Leverage is back, in the form of Leverage: Redemption, and they had a weirdly good take on teshuva! Weird, that is, until I learned that the showrunner consulted twitter's own Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg while writing it.
Rugrats was the most authentic jewish respresentation of my youth.
It's that time again! Princeton University Press has their 50% off all in stock books sale going on through the 21st. There's a whole lot of Jewish books on there, ranging from Lila Corwin Berman's The American Jewish Philanthropic Complex to Gershom Scholem's book on Sabbatai Tzvi.
https://twitter.com/IMT_NMTtrials/status/1415248710829854724
My friend brin solomon's fully-nonbinary friday night siddur is almost ready to be released, but needs a little extra editing love, particularly if you can help review transliterations.
If you are of internship age-slash-experience-level, Jewish Currents is looking for remote interns
Jewish Week interviewed Ethan Marcus, Sephardic Brotherhood of America's managing director for their 36 under 36 issue. I have been thrilled with his work over the past year, including the sephardic digital academy, and it is great to hear about it in his own words. Other people highlighted include Dubbs Weinblatt for their LGBTQIA community advocacy work, Jewish prison chaplain Gabe Kretzmer Seed, a lawyer suing a whole lot of neonazis, and more, including a number of jews of color whose work is for other JOC. Guess I've got 2 more years to become impressive before I truly age out of this kind of thing.
Iraqi Jewish musician Loolwa Khazzoom's band Iraqis in Pajamas has a new LP out for all of $5! Great deal.
Pijamama EP Album - Khazzoom Healing Arts
Iraqis in Pajamas album featuring three songs in English and Hebrew - fusing Iraqi Jewish prayers, original alternative rock, and/or personal storytelling.
For an entirely different listening experience, yiddish book center has an English translation and radio adaptation of The Last Maximalist, the memoir of Klara Klebanova, “a middle-class Jewish teenager who becomes a Maximalist revolutionary fighting for the rights of peasants and factory workers during the first Russian Revolution of 1905.”
A Greek publication interviewed some Greek Jews living in Australia, including both Jews with Greek Jewish heritage and some with goyishe Greek heritage. It's interesting for a number of reasons, one being that the way Australian culture approaches, ah, less white european cultures is pretty different than in the US.
I'm mad at the JNF again, sure is a day that ends in Y. If you're not already please stop putting coins in their little blue box and instead give your money elsewhere. I favor medical debt relief fundraisers, personally.
Arno Rosenfeld writes for tablet: What if a quarter of Jews really do think Israel is a genocidal, apartheid state, along with survey analysis bonus details.
Rabbi Shaul Magid wrote in Tablet about how probably people should be less harsh on Jews like me: “Accusing anti-Zionists of being bad Jews is not new, interesting, or correct.”
https://twitter.com/rabbiandruekahn/status/1415312087073632261
I don’t particularly want to read about Jews and wealth, but maybe you do! Josh Lambert reviews several recent fiction books exploring these themes.
Shira Wokenfeld wrote for New Voices about the sexual culture of jewish youth groups. I am distressed to hear it’s at least as bad now as it was when I was a teenager. Another piece of this whole toxic mess: the expected sexuality is all tied up with the soft homophobia of jewish continuity-obsessed compulsory heterosexuality.
Much like many modern Jews, some ancient Jews ate pork.
https://twitter.com/protosemite/status/1412806634561323010
Yevgeniy Fiks' soviet queer yiddish dictionary looks absolutely fascinating! Read more in this conversation over at In Geveb.
I just recently found out about Woolen Honey, an instagram project where Al Coffey knits a small swatch each week inspired by the torah portion. It’s almost complete—just one book to go!—but wonderful to look over.
Events
7/17 Eicha Text Study with Lex Rofeberg (of Judaism Unbound) and Liana Wertman (of The Torah Studio). more details.
7/17 7pm Beth Chayim Chadashim Tisha b'Av service
7/17 sunset-7/18 Tisha b'Av
7/18 Tisha b'Av Day of Learning from Pardes
7/18 The Bene-Israel of India: an ancient living community, sliding scale $9-36
7/21 Songs of Our People, Songs of Our Neighbors: Susan Gaeta
7/24 Reverie: Tu B'Av Queer Cabaret
8/9 Selichot sessions with Ramon Tasat begin, lasting through Elul. Register on zoom here.
8/18 Songs of Our People, Songs of Our Neighbors: Susana Behar
8/24 Jewish Prayer in Many Languages: From Sephardic Seattle to Syrian Brooklyn, Part Four (High Holy Days)
The jewish pet of the week this week is Walter! I know we've been on a canine run lately but I have some cats stored up too, and would happily accept additional neither-cat-nor-dog options if you're looking to submit a friendly bird or chinchilla.
https://twitter.com/HappyLittleBush/status/1414643678027649033
See you next week!
<3
Meli