Nisan 5786
Purim lano, Pesah a la mano! (lyrics in ladino and english)—Purim is over, Pesah is at hand!
Jewish Calendar
This coming month contains passover, which starts the evening of April 1st this year. I love attending and/or running seders every year and I am excited to see my people at them. I like not being the person hosting in my house but being the person leading, so as to split up some of the stress of it all. Usually I use the basic maxwell house haggadah and add my own flair, but lots of people prefer a haggadah that comes pre-flair’d. If you want to chat about seder hosting or leading hit me up!
I haven’t watched these yet, but Fordham Jewish Studies put a couple recent talks about the history of the haggadah online: Medieval Evidence of Passover Rituals; and The Birth and Early History of Stand-Alone Haggadah.
Israel/Palestine, Antisemitism, and/or Antifascism
Multiple (at least three, as of this writing) synagogues in Toronto have been shot at recently, and Temple Israel in Michigan was rammed and attacked. It is not looking great out there as antisemitism goes, but fortunately there were few to no injuries from these (well, the suspect was killed and possibly one of the security guards was injured in the Michigan attack).
Several people’s comments make me want to bang my head against the wall repeatedly about antisemitism, but emily tamkin’s doesn’t! “[M]aybe we can’t fight antisemitism if we think about it in isolation. Our identity — and the suffering that can accompany it — does not exist in a silo.”
I do not have an update about israel/palestine this week. Please use other sources to get your news about that.
1,100+ rabbis sign onto letter supporting immigrant rights: ‘Do Not Oppress the Stranger’
There was a Smol Emuni conference bringing together left-inclined religious people of multiple viewpoints on zionism, which is a hard needle to thread at the best of times (and this is not the best of times). An interesting peek into a milieu i am not a part of.
I haven’t read these two yet but they’re definitely relevant:
Whatever Happened to American Jewish Liberalism? asks Abe Silberstein in ARC
We all love to hate on the ADL here, as does Daniel Sieradski in Jewschool with The ADL has put a target on all of our backs
Books and Language
Sarah Biskowitz posted A Roundup of Yiddish Culture/Klezmer Festivals and Series on In Geveb! Also from In Geveb: How to Read Without Text: A Book History Perspective on Tkhines, by Nora Cornell, who takes an “object- rather than text-focused” approach in her research.
Jewish Anti-Zionism as Political Theology: The Major Writings of Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum, translated by Shaul Magid, is available open access.
Radical Jewish Calendar’s Call for Artists 5787 is available! They are focusing particularly on Jews of Color, or Black, Brown, Indigenous, and Melanated Jews (BBIMJ).
Chava Shapiro on the Tinok and studying talmud amidst the horrors: “I need to know that our tradition is one that values human life because all human life is inherently sacred […] What I find, when I refuse to treat the text as purely technical and instead treat it as the tradition working something in real time, is that the Gemara is asking my same question.”
Miscellaneous
The words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart (or: why I refuse AI), by the velveteen rabbi herself Rachel Barenblat. I don’t use gen AI either and avoid it when I can.
Reboot’s short film Mashdad is available to stream on youtube for a short time, about some of the complexities of iranian jewish life. (I have not yet watched this)
Two new DC congregations cater to Black Jews, featuring Ma Nishtana (Rabbi Shais Rishon)’s modern orthodox Ohel Eidot Chemdat’a and Rabbi Koach Baruch Frazier’s interdenominational Kehillat Sankofa.
Remember the religious freedom challenge to the abortion ban in Indiana, brought by (among others) Hoosier Jews for Choice (what a name for an organization)? it looks like it worked!
Left Lane Straight, “A Greek-Jewish odyssey stitched across two continents and four generations”, is a documentary which includes embroidered art. It looks like it premiered in Thessaloniki recently and I’ll be seeing it on Sunday in Seattle!
Hungarian Jewry and Their Ways with Paprika: Culinary Culture and Jewish Integration in Modern Hungary (have not read this yet)
Classes and Events
Tzvi Finkel is teaching an online class on The Three Oaths: Studying the Foundation of Religious Jewish Anti-Zionism this April.
Also in April, Rabbi Lauren Tuchman will be teaching Opening to Presence: Where Jewish Mindfulness meets Lived Disability Experience through Or HaLev.
The Torah Studio is starting their spring classes soon, almost all drop-in as usual, and Judaism Unbound’s spring courses (8 week intensives) start soon too.
3/15 Halachic Left Day of Learning: Jewish Reckoning with Power | Part 1 (Boston) (hybrid event)
3/16 Radical Yiddish Workers’ Songs
3/18 transhallel (a trans-led hallel service)
3/19 At Lunch with Beth Oppenheim, CEO of HIAS
3/20-3/22 New Insights into the Hebrew Bible virtual conference
3/22 The Roots of Doikayt
3/22, 3/26 How to Go Inside: Leading Jewish Ritual in Prisons and Jails with Matir Asurim (two separate occurrences of the same event)
3/24 Shared Struggles, Shared Stories: Black Power, Jewish Politics, and the Fight for Justice book talk
3/24 Midrash & Imagination: Writing the World We Want - Passover Edition with dayenu: a jewish call to climate action
3/25 For the Love of Labor: The Life of Pauline Newman book talk
3/26 Shaping Tradition 2026, SVARA’s annual fundraiser
3/26 Russ & Daughters: 100 Years of Appetizing with Niki Russ Federman and Josh Russ Tupper, a yiddish book center book talk
3/29 Passover: The Script, The Set, The Spectacle, from Ammud JOC Torah Academy (allies welcome)
3/30 The Prophet at the End of This Seder: Eliyahu HaNavi Throughout the Ages
4/1 Pesach starts (!!)
4/5 Pathways of Transformation: Insights on The Counting of The Omer, from Ammud JOC Torah Academy (allies welcome)
Pet of the Month
The Pets of the Month this month are Ishtar (left, regular catte) and Tomoe (right, small kitten)! I am so pleased they get along this well because it means I get to see lovely photos like this.
With love,
Meli