Naso
Happy pride month, friends! I'm skipping over some of the heavy stuff this week not because there isn't relevant news, but as a burnout prevention strategy, and also because I'm still working through my thoughts on some concepts that will still be equally relevant next week.
Jewish Calendar: Parshat Naso
https://twitter.com/red_loeb/status/1534932644684775424
In this parsha we get the sotah ritual, which happens when a woman is accused of adultery. It's weird and maybe sexist and maybe abortion related and there's a whole talmud tractate about it.
We also get the laws of the nazir, or nazirite vow, where people can vow to take on restrictions similar to (but more extreme than) those of the kohanim (hereditary priests) and to live in a kadosh (holy) manner and not cut their hair for somewhere between 30 days and a lifetime. Samson is a nazirite, and the story of his birth forms the haftarah associated with this parsha. My delightful chevruta ada sent out a bit about nazirite vows, complete with zoharic interpretation, sobriety, and queer haircuts in their own newsletter Etz Hi. It absolutely makes me think about what a contemporary queer nazirite experience is, or can be, and makes it sound awfully tempting to take one myself.
This parsha also includes the 🖖priestly blessing🖖 which I am mostly linking as an excuse to use the spock hands emoji.
Books and Language
https://twitter.com/AdneSadeh/status/1534218455041310726
Stanford U Press has a big sale on (80% off list price!). It includes a bunch of jewish books, and you can filter to browse just the sale books in Jewish Studies, Religion--Judaism, History--Jewish, Literary Studies--Jewish, or their jewish history and culture series. It's a great time to snap up Devin Naar's Jewish Salonica: Between the Ottoman Empire and Modern Greece, or maybe Between Iran and Zion: Jewish Histories of Twentieth-Century Iran, or Bad Rabbi And Other Strange but True Stories from the Yiddish Press.
If fiction's more your jam, Storybundle has a Best of [israeli science fiction author] Lavie Tidhar ebook bundle on sale.
The Torah Studio put together a guide to various english translations of the tanakh.
I don't have a link for this, but according to an email I got, the Sefaria app includes a dictionary lookup option now!
Yiddish translation of spongebob squarepants! Brought to you by Eddie Portnoy (translation) and Cameron Bernstein (singing)!
https://twitter.com/AlbertBaram/status/1534805530983669760
Miscellaneous
ShavuotLIVE recordings are available to watch now! The event from the Jewish Zine Archive involved attendees collectively writing a piyut (liturgical poem), which you can read on the project's instagram.
There's a popular thread going through some jewish perspectives of G-d that are not "old man in the sky".
AI-generated art has been all over lately. Some golems getting boba or saying trans rights, some avocados. Check out this avocado doing hagba, an article about the jewish avocados twitter account, and some journalism about the hidden labor underpinning most AI.
https://twitter.com/avocados_ai/status/1531922488082432000
Lovely chuppah inspiration (including many pictures) in the replies to this tweet
Golem Zine is looking for submissions around the theme of "out west" for issue 2! They're specifically looking for "art, poetry, prose, kvetching" from Jews from Arizona, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, or Nevada.
The mermaid x deep-sea diver art that spawned a yiddish story-writing contest (nsfw image)
Disabled jewish history photo of wheelchair-using kids learning about chanukah!
https://twitter.com/jorosenfeld/status/1535299648289636354
Jewish Magic, Healing and Arts Summer Cohort 2022 / 5782, a six session online class series, is open for registration!
Susan Barocas and Sarah Aroeste are putting together Savor: a Sephardic Music and Food Experience, which pairs amazing-looking foods with Sephardic songs! They are fundraising currently.
Opening prayer for the 12th U.A.W.–C.I.O. Labor Convention in Milwaukee, by Rabbi Joseph Baron (1949), gave me nice leftist feelings. Thanks OpenSiddur.
Aid us in our individual and collective efforts
to rebuild this world
for a society more free,
more just,
and more splendid than ours,
for an order that will truly approximate
the hope of Thy Kingdom.
Events!
New event additions to the list are bolded.
6/12 Cain and Fable: Radicals Re-Exploring the World's First Murder with Shel Maala
6/12 Book Talk: Women Writing Jewish Modernity
6/13 The Soviet Jewry Movement, Revisited, a panel presented by Jewish Currents
6/13 Preparing for Juneteenth: A Conversation about Racial Justice and the Jewish World
6/16 Working toward a Healthy Generation: An Archival Show-and-Tell on Jewish Women’s Health in Eastern Europe
6/17 Juneteenth Kabbalat Shabbat 2022 with Rabbi Sandra Lawson, rabbinical student Dr. Koach Baruch Frazer, and Rabbi Josh Lesser
6/22 “Rae Dalven: The Life of a Greek-Jewish-American Woman” book talk by Adi Liraz (scroll down for english details)
6/27 Resistance as Liberation: Judaism and Abortion Care, from Ratzon: Center for Healing and Resistance and the Jewish Anarchist Salon
6/30 Antisemitism and the Impact of Philanthropy on Public Discourse (part of a series)
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 Pets of the Week this week are Chewie and Beau!
https://twitter.com/queerapika/status/1532807100778389507
Shabbat shalom!
<3
Meli