It’s my birthday (and Rosh Chodesh) next week! Time certainly flies. You may notice there’s a lot of “not yet read” articles here—there are many things I wanted to link but i was pretty tired out by passover this year and didn’t get my normal jewsletter prep time in! Ah well.

Jewish Calendar

On 4/17 I am leading trans hallel! Register here to join us. Trans hallel is a trans-led hallel service. It will have a lot of hebrew but all hebrew will have transliteration available.

Iyar contains pesach sheni (we love a 2nd chance holiday) and lag b’omer, a minor festival during the counting of the omer, which we do during the entirety of this month.

Israel/Palestine, Antisemitism, and/or Antifascism

Arno Rosenfeld interviewed Mahmoud Khalil in The Forward, which politically is pretty interesting! (not yet read though.) As of today, Khalil is also one step closer to being kicked out of the country, which would be a grave injustice.

Adam Adra, brother of Basel Adra, writes about the year since No Other Land won an Oscar in Hollow Oscar for Vashti.

The Dangerous Impact of Antisemitism and its Weaponization: Jay Michaelson and Emily Tamkin talk for the Nexus Project (not yet watched)

A bad news unrelated to antisemitism or israel: Poking a Hornet's Nest: Breaking the Silence on Akiva Roth, EBJC, Camp Ramah and Cover-Up Culture in Conservative Judaism (cn: sexual assault, child abuse; not yet read in its entirety)

I’m tired of reading and writing about antisemitism. Here are some smart people saying a variety of things about it (have not yet read most of these so I don’t know yet who i agree with and who i disagree with but it’s interesting)

• Why We Are Failing in the Fight Against Antisemitism, Elad Nehorai

• Antisemitism Explodes on the Right, Watchdogs Blame the Left (but the Left has problems too), Jay Michaelson

• The Left Makes an Exception for "The Jews", Eric K. Ward

• Antisemitism appears from the left and the right, but not equally, David N. Myers and Joshua Goetz

• Post-Zionist Christian Nationalism, Shane Burley

I will say, regarding antisemitism and the left, right-wing antisemitism is more systemically present but left-wing antisemitism is in my house, or at least my neighborhood, so i take it kinda personally! It definitely exists on the internet both in seemingly innocuous corners and in uh-oh-alarm-bells situations. If you see it among regular people stomp it down but you’re definitely allowed to choose your battles for your own mental health and safety.

“’Thinking without Solutions’: Jews, Jewishness, and Judaism after the Zionist Consensus” Shaul Magid (not yet read)

Flowing Against Fascism: What Martin Buber has to teach us about community, resistance, and survival. (“Durkheim isn’t sufficient if we want to understand the fullness of [these] moments […] For that we need Buber, who teaches us that human relationships are where we find meaning—that in moments like these, the difference and space between us dissolves. That the face of the Other, our neighbor, is the face of God.”)

Books and Language

“Two women race to save Persian Jewish music before it fades: Using tapes of their grandfathers singing in Iran, Galeet Dardashti and Jacqueline Rafii are transcribing and adapting songs that echo centuries of tradition”

An Open Letter to the Jewish Book Council From a Concerned Group of Jewish Writers: “We are Jewish authors who believe in Jewish books, and for whom Palestinian liberation is a moral imperative.”

Molly Crabapple’s book about the bund, Here Where We Live Is Our Country, came out recently! there’s reviews all over the place, including the Forward and the Guardian; Crabapple also wrote in Harpers Bazaar about the book and also jail support work. There’s also this NYPL conversation with naomi klein about it which looks rad (haven’t watched it yet).

Jewish Anarchist Publishing with Circle Aleph, in Der Spekter

“Siddúr Limmúd, vol. 1: Friday night is a traditional-egalitarian, multilingual Hebrew-English-Spanish Friday night “Learning Siddur” with transliterations, translations, instructions and explanations by the Norwegian-Jewish scholar, Olve Utne, ז״ל‎ (1965–2024).”

The Correspondent’s Cheeks Are as a Bed of Spices: a conversation by Rachel Edelman and emet ezell, on place and (jewish) belonging and more. Bits and pieces of this stand out to me in particular (“What does it mean to belong to a place?” emet asks, “& what if that belonging skips a generation?”; “What might a language become after being silenced for a generation? Can revival also carry the weight of repair?”) Being let into someone else’s letters is a gift.

Miscellaneous

Check out this new Repository of the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki! The objects collection is fun to browse, including these megillahs for purim and this spice house(?) for havdalah and this embroidered challah cover! I did have to use a little google translate to figure out what things are.

Which Jewish Philosophical Path Calls to You?: an online quiz. I matched best with The Diasporist, followed by The Prophet.

Contemporary Jewish Museum puts its Libeskind-designed building in San Francisco up for sale :( I really liked this museum when i visited SF. It isn’t 100% shutting down, but the space was very special too. In other sad news, interfaith support group 18doors laid off most of its staff recently :(

A Tribute to Workers, Written in Chalk: Marjorie Ingall writes on memorializing the triangle shirtwaist factory fire victims, 115 years hence, as part of project CHALK.

Classes and Events

Georgian Jews and Their Treasures online class starts in May!

Starting this Sunday, Tzvi Finkel is teaching an online class on The Three Oaths: Studying the Foundation of Religious Jewish Anti-Zionism. Also in April, Rabbi Lauren Tuchman will be teaching Opening to Presence: Where Jewish Mindfulness meets Lived Disability Experience through Or HaLev.

Judaism Unbound has some mini-classes starting this week that look fantastic. Check out JU’s May classes as well, Rebbe Nachman: Justice Beyond Despair and Holy Chutzpah: Building your Jewish Meaning-Making Toolkit.

Starting 4/16, there’s a class on Sephardi Family Life in the Balkans through New Lehrhaus, or check out their radical jewish reading circle focusing on Emma Goldman!

The Halakhic Process: Jewish Worldbuilding Beyond Empire with Rabbi Avigayil Halpern class also starting 4/16 looks great! For more from her, check out the recording of "'My Rabbi Says It’s Okay!': Psak, Power, and Epistemic Justice"

Continuing the “more classes than your brain/body has room for” we’ve got going on here, Rokhl is running a Ashkenazi Folk Magic through the short stories of YL Peretz series starting this week!

events

4/14 Chaya Nove, “Making It (T)here: New York Hasidic Yiddish” lecture

4/14 “From Margin to Center, From Opposition to Power” – a Conversation with Dove Kent on her Vision for the Jewish Left (Boston Workers Circle I/P group)

4/15 Grave Questions: Office Hours for Queering End-of-Life Planning with Keshet and Kavod v’Nichum

4/17 I am leading trans hallel! register to join us. Trans hallel is a trans-led hallel service for rosh chodesh. It will probably be relatively short and all hebrew will have transliteration. If you are interested in future trans hallels, sign up for their mailing list.

4/20 Sacred Fragments (instagram link), about Reb Zalman’s Fragments of a Future Scroll: Hasidism for the Aquarian Age 50-year anniversary book event panel 1 (Shaul Magid, Jericho Vincent, Or Rose, Rachel Feldman, and Eden Pearlstein); direct zoom livestream link.

5/10 All Consuming: Germans, Jews, and the Meaning of Meat

Pet of the Month

The Jewish Pet of the Month this month is Faye, who would really like some pickles please and thank you!

With love,

Meli