Kislev 5786
light in the dark coming soon. let’s all hang together until then. Also: soooo many fascinating links this month!
Jewish Calendar
Our next month Kislev’s got chanukah in it. Don’t forget to buy your candles! Fortunately it’s not for a ways through the month—next jewsletter will actually arrive mid-chanukah!
We’re also in the season of ever-encroaching darkness, feeling like the sun is never coming back; i am hitching myself to little treats i’ve ordered coming in the mail and upcoming small vacation(s) as a reminder to get me through the everyday dark and rain and chilly slog, with tiny sticker rewards for leaving the house enough times in a week. How are you doing, dealing with all this?
Israel/Palestine, Antisemitism, and/or Antifascism
The NYT had an article about the jewish left(s). It asks “What will American Jewish communities look like in the future, and how will they think about Israel?” and features mostly groups I’ve heard of but at least one I hadn’t.
Israel deports two US Jews who volunteered to help Palestinians pick olives, banning them from the country for 10 years. In other Jewish allies in the west bank news, see Protective presence doesn’t work anymore.
The ADL Is No Longer a Civil Rights Organization. Here’s What We All Lose, from Rabbi Sandra Lawson.
Mamdani won in New York! good for him; good for New York. The drama in jewish spaces leading up to his election was so much. I don’t really want to write about the funhouse mirror madhouse of right-wing antisemitism right now, but Joel Swanson did contextualizing it with responses to Mamdani (“Needless to say, no tip line dedicated to antisemitism at the Heritage Foundation (let alone to the Trump administration) has been proposed by the ADL.”)
Democracy and Antisemitism: an Interview with Jonathan Jacoby
Things continue to be grim on college campuses. In Indiana, a vaunted Jewish studies program is upended by red-state politics over Israel and speech (also in The Forward); Jewish community members at Sarah Lawrence wrangle in an open letter with how to deal with antisemitism without furthering Trump and co.’s aims in attacking higher ed; Cornell kissed Trump’s ring to “resolve antisemitism claims” (the university “looks forward to resuming the long and fruitful partnership with the federal government”, sigh).
In other news, frog.
Here is a corrected version of it. It should have any and all typos taken care of - but feel free to point out any! I want this to be squared away before I make any prints! Thanks, #JewSky for your enthusiasm!
— Art by Emily K (@museum.of.emilyk.art) 2025-10-26T02:25:59.959Z
and yes, you can buy prints of the frog art.
The Flag in the Ark: American Zionism on the Couch; On the psychotheology of everyday nationalism. “Why is Zionism treated as the ‘ultimate concern’ of so many Jewish institutions and communities? What are the origins of idolatry?”
Books and Language
Judah Sussman at The Forward has had a couple interesting pieces about yiddish music lately, one focusing on Maria Ka and one on yiddish electronica. For other yiddish music news, see this interview with Ira Khonen Temple in In Geveb.
There are (at least) two fascinating online exhibitions I would love to explore more. One is Mapping Jewish San Francisco’s Honoring our Queer Elders exhibit; the other is the reason I’ve moved this to this section: Jewish Worlds Illuminated: A Treasury of Hebrew Manuscripts from The JTS Library.
The Workers Circle has fully digitized their 1929-1976 archive of their newsletter The Call! Lots to dig through here for curious people.
“Omar Rabbi Elozor” by Cantor Meyer Kanewsky and his choir (1919)—a public domain recording of the end of tractate Berachot with some truly excellent ashkenazi vowels.
Miscellaneous
Rest in power Rabbi Arthur Waskow. May his memory be a blessing and/or revolution. Since his passing, I have finally started reading his books, starting with The Bush is Burning, which was deeply fulfilling to read as a contemporary radical jew and a little depressing at times to see how little has changed, or maybe what has changed and then changed back. Memorials online include writings from Shaul Magid, Jay Michaelson, and more. You can also read a lovely interview with Waskow from his 90th birthday.
Also rest in peace Michael Smuss, who was a hero of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and a painter.
JIMENA did a couple studies in New York and Los Angeles of Sephardi and Mizrahi inclusion on day schools and camps. Some parts of the LA report gave me some rough feelings about gender inclusion and Sephardic culture so heads up.
Forgetting (and Remembering) Our Names is a powerful reflection from Kendra Watkins on the SVARA blog.
Speaking of studies, there was a fascinating multi-denominational one done on the rabbinate: The Rabbinic Pipeline Study. The demographics are neat but the parts talking about career paths were at least as interesting to me; the true rabbinic shortage seems to be based on whether people want to be congregational rabbis or not.
Unproductive Desires: On "Crushed Testes," Transition, Jewish Continuity, and Who's Allowed in God's Community, by Lexi Kohanski
Congregation Rodef Shalom, which I have no affiliation with besides following one of their congregants online, has a warm things charity drive and an auction that supports it. Might be a nice way to do some tzedakah!
Classes and Events
11/16 UW Ladino Day 2025: Sephardic Homelands: Spanish and Portuguese Citizenship and the Question of Belonging Today
11/18 The Jewish Leonard Cohen with Jannie Dresser (3 session class)
11/19 Peyos for Pansies: Exploring Queer Aesthetics and Jewish Masculinity
11/20 The Only Way Out Is Through: An Indigenous Perspective on Surviving, Being Witnesses, Bystanders, and Beneficiaries to Genocide, from Rosa Blumenfeld-Romero with American Council for Judaism and Queer Mikveh Project
11/20 No Pasarán! Jewish Collective Memory in the Spanish Civil War
11/21 Transhallel Kislev, a trans-led ritual space to do hallel together
11/22 Deepening into the Sacred Dark: Rabbi Fern Feldman and sleep tech Reuven McCullough provide Jewish and personal learning centered on nighttime, dreams, and sleep.
11/23 Brachot and Hakarat Hatov: Using Jewish Blessings to Recognize What's Good, with Rabbi Tiferet Berenbaum through Ammud
12/7 Here Where We Live is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Labor Bund, with Molly Crabapple and the Peretz Centre
Pet of the Month
The pet of the month is Kat’s little dog Coleslaw, who has the best name by a mile.
With love,
Meli