Nisan 5785
Hello friends!
Jewish Calendar
We have passover coming in (gulp) about two weeks. I ain’t ready but i’m getting there. There is a virtual seder or two in the event links below, but I recommend doing your own seder, in person or online. Leading one is easier than it seems, though it can definitely be exhausting! Here’s some tips.
Meli’s quick and easy seder hosting/leading guide
Pick a haggadah! there’s a million options. I like maxwell house because i’m a traditionalist and it has the full original text and translation (and i believe some transliteration). There’s always the pay-what-you-want A Haggadah Of Our Own, too, or you can use haggadot.com to put one together, or one of the linked ones in the books section below.
Go over the haggadah before the seder, making sure you’re passably familiar with it; it’s been at least a year. Your haggadah should also have a guideline to additional items you’ll need for the seder plate or ritual itself.
Plan your food and beverage situation. Seders work best if the leader is not the one doing the food, and the person doing the food is hosting using their own kitchen. I do recommend having snacks for pre-dinner mid-seder crunching; crudites and a dip maybe, since you are allowed to eat most vegetables after karpas. Make sure there’s grape juice or other non-alcohol option for the 4 cups.
Just do it! I believe in you. I’m here for any last minute email-based pep talks you need. During the seder, you can make other people read parts of Maggid (storytelling) to mix it up a little, or skip parts that don’t work for you—I give you permission. Encourage people to talk back or otherwise participate. But most of all, have fun!
Israel/Palestine, Antisemitism, and/or Antifascism
I haven’t fully read this Itamar Mann and Lihi Yona piece on the IHRA definition of antisemitism but it comes well-recommended. Skimming it now, i want to underline and share and blast to the heavens the section title “Reclaiming Jewish religious freedom from the state”.
The United States government has been disappearing pro-Palestinian student activists, including Mahmoud Khalil (who had a green card) and Rumeysa Ozturk (here on a student visa; at time of writing, her lawyer did not have access to her location). This is only one of many alarming actions the government has been up to lately; if you need information on more of them, check out https://whatthefuckjusthappenedtoday.com/, but this one in particular is being pushed as an anti-antisemitism necessity, leading many Jews to say “not in our name”. Columbia professor Marianne Hirsch writes in the Forward, “I grew up under a terrifying authoritarian regime. Mahmoud Khalil’s arrest is right out of their playbook”; more on how this echoes anti-Jewish oppression in McCarthyism from Emily Tamkin in Haaretz; Andrew Silow-Carroll adds for JTA, As ICE targets a Palestinian activist, some Jews are asking if this is the fight against antisemitism they signed up for.
And, with the ceasefire over, Israel is once again attacking Gazans with Trump’s support.
The ADL is further cracking under the pressure to be both a right-wing anti-antisemitism group and a left-leaning general anti-bias group, most recently by closing down their A World Of Difference anti-bias program.
Particularly if you’re modern orthodox or an orthodoxy-adjacent jew, you might appreciate this JTA article about Smol Emuni US. And for diasporism around the world, Vashti writes about Židovský hlas solidarity – Jewish Voice for Solidarity, a Prague-based Jewish group focused on solidarity rather than zionism.
If you or a member of your family is LGBTQ and looking to move within the US, check out Keshet and Hebrew Free Loan Society’s new Move to Thrive program.
i am so overwhelmed, you know? But there are salves. Sally Pirie’s Look For The Helpers comic/cartoon art series profiles people who are helping and shares ways we can join them, for one.
Books and Language
The Asufa Haggadah is available again this year, a collective art project where artists each get a page of the traditional hebrew haggadah text to represent. There is a bilingual edition as well. Jewish Currents is also selling the Israeli Black Panthers Haggadah if that’s more your thing. Izzun Books and The Louis Jacobs Foundation have collaborated on a new haggadah as well: A Quest for Our Times, with traditional text and lots of english-language commentary.
A lovely little thread from Ben Yehuda Press about the yiddish song Dona, Dona and its famous covers through the years.
A Prayer for Reading the News by Zackary Sholem Berger, in hebrew, english, and yiddish.
Ancient Jew Review, which has a great name, did a whole review panel of Rafael Rachel Neis’ When a Human Gives Birth to a Raven, a fabulously queer looking (and open access) book I have not read but hope to do so someday. Syndicate Network has also published a review carousel (okay, a symposium) about Julia Watts Belser’s Loving Our Own Bones, a book I have read and did very much enjoy.
Farbindungen 2025: Dispatches from Bad Yiddishland, a review of a conference from In Geveb
Some fascinating identity politics are gestured at in this book review of Entwined Homelands, Empowered Diasporas about Spanish-Speaking Jews of Morocco.
Reclaiming Jewishness as Alterity: A Review of the New Translation of “Our Comrade, Avreml Broide”
Eddy Portnoy shared some old yiddish satirical cartoons about immigration that are all too relevant today.
Miscellaneous
Rabbi Lauren Tuchman writes on the tradition of reading psalms in difficult times. In addition to the recommended habits and where-to-start suggestions in her article, I love my current practice of studying the psalms more deeply in chevruta a few verses at a time. We’ve been going for years but we’re in the 140s—close to done!
Rena Branson is crowdfunding a second album, “In Doing & In Dreaming: eighteen songs that weave together ancient Jewish texts with original prayers for transformation”
Yeshiva University Recognizes L.G.B.T.Q. Club After Lengthy Battle—I’ve posted about this before and wanted to include the (likely) end to the story, so to speak.
I know y’all love an incantation bowl or other old jewish demonology, so I’d better link Demonesses All Around: “Amulets for warding off demons become portals to meditations on women and history in two new (free) essays by Avigail Manekin-Bamberger and Andrea Gondos”.
Keshet’s Threads of Identity report is “the first of its kind to comprehensively explore the unique experiences, challenges, and resilience of LGBTQ+ Jews of Color in Jewish spaces.“
Events and Classes
Firestorm Books’ event on Jewish Anarchist history with Kenyon Zimmer, Anna Elena Torres and Shane Burley is available on youtube.
There’s a currently-recruiting cohort of Dismantling Racism From The Inside Out, a Mussar-based antiracism training, that’s specifically for POC.
Mondays at 5pm, The Torah Studio is organizing Trans Torah for Our Terrible Times, a drop-in course featuring some big names in trans jewish learning!
Ancestors At Our Backs: an immersive Talmud Study Course for Anti-Zionist organizers — more info on instagram
3/30 TransHallel Rosh Chodesh Nisan
4/3 Yiddish Studies in the Digital Age: 10 Years of In geveb
4/6 Past, Present, and Future: The Passover Third Seder and 125 Years of the Workers Circle
4/6 Omer Calendar of Biblical Women Virtual Launch Event
4/8 Agunot in the Ashkenazi Realm, 1648-1850: book talk
4/9 Instant Yiddish: Passover Edition with the Workers Circle
4/13 Making Mensches 2nd Annual Queer, AZ Passover Seder (hybrid seder)
4/15 American Denominational and Cause Haggadot, a lecture by Hollis Granoff Landauer
4/22 An Evening of Sephardic Art Song
4/28 Oral Histories of the Soviet Jewish Diaspora in the US, 1973-1980, a lecture
5/8 The Quality of Mercy — Act I workshop, “An operatic re-telling of The Merchant of Venice thru a queer and Jewish lens” by friend of the jewsletter brin solomon (support this production via crowdfund here)
5/8 “Bringing ‘Tikkun Olam’ to the South: New York Jews in the Civil Rights Movement” lecture
Pet of the Month
The pet of the month this time around is Tiamat! Look at those beautiful golden eyes.
With love,
Meli