Ki Tisa
Good afternoon! This week we are reading Ki Tisa, and it is shabbat Parah as well--a combination that happened on my bat mitzvah (mumble) years ago! Golden cow, red cow, both very important but very different. Makes me want to write a whole dvar about spring and cows and desperation. The golden calf is the creation of something artificial and present; the red cow, in post-Temple judaism, represents seeking unfindable purity. I dunno, gimme some time to workshop it, but there just might be something there.
Jewish comrade Rosa Luxemburg was born 150 years ago today! in celebration, Verso is offering 40% off books by or about her. Of course, many of her works are available free online as well.
It is also HIAS refugee shabbat. You can find resources or join them for havdalah on their website.
Jewish Currents has been up to quite a bit lately! They launched a fund for investigative Jewish journalism which got some irritating backlash from other jews who saw this act as antisemitic. Yesterday's email newsletter from them included an update from incarcerated writer Christopher Blackwell on how Solitary Confinement when used as a protective measure from COVID is still torture. Relatedly, Washington State, where I live and where Mr. Blackwell is incarcerated, has finally given a timeline on when people in congregate living institutions can be vaccinated--and it's a full month after employees working in those same institutions can.
This isn't explicitly jewish but my newsletter my rules. I am running a small informal asynchronous reading group for Mariame Kaba's new book, We Do This Til We Free Us. Let me know if you want an invitation to the co-reading Discord.
I was reading an article translated from turkish (PDF link; original turkish website) sent out by the Sephardic Brotherhood of America, and in that article they referred to gefilte fish as "gefiltefiş" and i think that's extremely charming and good.
In Tablet, Hannah Pressman wrote about Seattle Curtain Factory's Sephardi roots.
Friends of the jewsletter Jaz (check out their podcast Kosher Queers!) did an excellent twitter thread on how the six Talmudic sexes don't line up with our conceptions of gender and transness today.
The Facebook and Instagram page Butch is Not a Dirty Word had an extremely cute post about a Jewish couple this past week.
Ben Yehuda Press has 30% off a number of their books, including Rabbi Jill Hammer's guide to Sefer Yetzirah, a bilingual yiddish/english edition of Salomea Perl's stories, writings from a nineteenth century pacifist rabbi, and more. Their yiddish Dr. Seuss translation (above) is not included in the sale but is delightful.
Have you seen this twitter thread of cursed kippot?
My own mother sent me this yiddish language version of This Land Is Your Land. Thanks Mom! I love Daniel Kahn's translations and his music in general too. He also did an amazing version of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah a while back, and this version of a 1916 pandemic song last year.
Michael Sappir wrote for 972 mag about the differences how the JNF represents itself in the diaspora (in his case, in Germany) and how it acts in Israel. JNF purports themselves as politically neutral and primarily an ecological charity; instead, it's been "for the purpose of settling jews" in Israel since its founding.
On Venus, have we got a rabbi!
J-Pride is putting together a zine and collecting submissions through 3/15 with a launch party on 3/31. The theme is Out From the Narrow Place, Into the Wilderness.
And now, events!
3/7 (this sunday!) 2pm: Beyond the Binary in Life and Death: The Making of a Gender-Inclusive Chevra Kadisha. FB info link
3/7-3/9 KlezNorth, a UK-based klezmer festival
3/11 UW's Jewish Studies department brings us Israel Through a Colored Lens: African American Perspectives on Mizrahi Israelis
3/11 The Hadassah Brandeis Institute's event America and the Crypto Jewish Presence: Reclaiming the Legacy of Sepharad (more info at HBI link)
3/11 Seder Leading 101 event
3/14 Trans hallel Nisan led by Micha Chetrit (fb, zoom)
3/16 4pm PDT Jewish Zine Archive has an event called The Passover Haggadah Is The Original Jewish Zine. They're not wrong! Sign up here.
3/21 11a PDT Third Seder: a Yiddish Passover Celebration, including a looooot of very cool klezmer artists.
3/24 Theater Dybbuk is doing a reading of Exagogue, an adaptation of a play from the 2nd century BCE.
3/24 Kissing Through Glass: The Prose Poetry of Avrom Sutzkever as a Constructive Response to Tragedy
3/25 JOC-led Queer Mikvah Project Passover (signup link)
3/27 sundown Passover begins!
3/28 begin counting the omer
3/31 Trans Jews Are Here
4/4 end of Passover
4/9 Beyond Productivity: How Shabbat Values Underscore Disability Justice Principles, a special friday night service from Kol Tzedek
The Jewish Pet of the Week this week is Siri, who can’t resist Torah study.
See you next week!
<3
Meli