Nitzavim
Hello!
Reminder, once again, that I'll be sending newsletters out weekly through the end of September (right before Shabbat Shuva) to make sure everyone's got the high holy days resources they need, then I'll be switching to monthly so i have the energy to work on this and also other projects as they come up.
Jewish Calendar
Parshat Nitzavim
https://twitter.com/red_loeb/status/1573028035112083457
The divisions of aliyot here are wild. i hope whoever has to read 3 knows what they're getting into, both with having a bunch of nasty curse content and with it being a good 13 verses long.
The sixth aliyah, though, really draws my heart in. There's beauty and meaning on a number of levels. Each of us, personally, was part of the revelation of torah at sinai; torah is not impossible, but is achievable by each person from wherever they currently are. It's a holy 'meet people where they're at'. You can do this.
https://twitter.com/babushkabarbie/status/1573314010354974720?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&utm_source=meli&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nitzavim-9781
Akiva Weisinger's new newsletter Volozhin and Kropotkin has a wonderful little drash this week about the radicalism of "it is not in heaven":
the Torah, and, to my mind, Judaism, are suffused with the idea that everyone ought to have access to Torah, and that that access not be mediated through one individual, or one institution, or an elite. It belongs to every member of Klal Yisrael. The point in these pesukim is that Torah needs to be accessible and that access needs to be equitable. It is not for one individual to go up to heaven to get the Torah, and then to decide who does and doesn’t get Torah.
As if that weren't enough, the 7th aliyah forms the basis for maimonides' concept of free will being within the grasp of humanity! wowie zowie.
High Holy Days Resources
Don't forget to get your bivalent covid booster if you're eligible (and you probably are, if your last booster was 2 or more months ago) so you have some immunity built up before the high holy days!
https://twitter.com/shvlman/status/1573410462116777984
Here are some resources, such as ritual guides or other supplements:
Nishmat Shoom's days of awe ritual guides
Zemirot HaMizraḥ sephardi/mizrachi egalitarian machzor
Also, one of my favorite non-services-related traditions is reboot project 10Q, which asks you a question each day for each of the 10 days of awe (reaching from rosh hashana to yom kippur) and then seals them in a vault, returning them to you the following year.
https://twitter.com/JewishLanguages/status/1572955034526306306
I love food puns. Don't forget to check out one or more of the sephardic seder resources, like Sephardic Brotherhood's Rosh Ashana Simanim Seder Booklet, or the new years' seder according to the persian tradition on OpenSiddur. Or learn more about the simanim seder from this Atlanta Jewish Times article! Or listen to the eastern sephardic version from Sephardic Bikur Holim Congregation / Zemirot.org!
https://twitter.com/ShammaBoyarin/status/1571868180087468034
Miscellaneous
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg's book On Repentance and Repair is out, and she's organizing a book club in her newsletter! I love this, and also am charmed by the psychedelic maimonides art in today's email.
I also love reading Samuel Glauber-Zimra's work on Jewish spiritualists, like this article on John Myers' spirit photograph in the 1930s.
https://twitter.com/roseberrycomix/status/1573001839968227330
Binya Koatz is launching Shpell Check: The Spell Check for the Radical Jewish Diaspora! There's a lot of us leftist types who aren't fluent but have meaningful connections with various traditionally jewish languages; this seems like a great way to make sure that design says what you think it does in a culturally appropriate way.
https://twitter.com/AndyEyeballs/status/1572036184020512773
TIME FOR A FIELD TRIP into some of Claude Cahun's lesser known works with Andy Izenson, including brand new translations of Uncle Claude's poems!
Fantastic Books is fundraising to put out a new Jewish Futures anthology and it's almost at their goal!
If you're UK-based, you really should be subscribed to Vashti's email list The Pickle. This week's is about a new Europe-based radical jewish calendar called Ma'agal. If you want a more regular jewish calendar, have you considered Ben Yehuda Press' Jewish Cat Calendar?
Siddur Masorti, the egalitarian sephardi/mizrachi siddur, is available to order for non kickstarter backers. It has been renamed Siddur Or Veshalom because that's the name of a shul that is using this prayerbook, which is incredibly neat. I hope to visit them and daven there if i'm ever in the Atlanta area.
https://twitter.com/UseYiddish/status/1572023719945732098
Tzitzit Project, a gender-expansive talit katan project, is fundraising for their launch this fall! if you send them money, you will get a lovely little ritual guide.
Events and classes
As always, bolded means it's newly added. Or a jewish holiday date. I'm figuring this out as I go.
9/25 In and against the community: Organising the Jewish and Bangladeshi lefts
9/25 evening-9/27 Rosh Hashana
9/28 Tzedakah as Mutual Aid and Jewish Values of Communal Care from JOC Torah Academy (Jews of color only)
9/29 Be Fruitful! The Etrog in Jewish Art, Culture, and History
9/29 Sutzkever Essential Prose with translator Zackary Sholem Berger
10/1 Shabbat Shuva shacharit on zoom with me!
10/2 Yom Kippur Morrocan Nusach lesson with Laura Elkeslassy
10/2 Soul Candles for the Days of Awe 5783 workshop
10/2 Symposium on Jews in the Gilded Age from the American Jewish Historical Society
10/4 evening-10/5 Yom Kippur
Kanisse's Multicultural Yom Kippur Services livestream
10/16 Experimental Liturgy: Shəmini Atzéret evening services led by brin solomon
10/20 Bad Jews: A History of American Jewish Politics and Identities book talk with author Emily Tamkin
10/20 Queer Crip Revelation: Disability Dance, Jewish Text, and the Sacred Potency of Difference, a talk from Julia Watts Belser
Jewish Pet of the Week
The Jewish Pet of the Week this week is Legion, whose human makes and sells tzitzit strings!
https://twitter.com/tinykyrios/status/1570530211061723136
<3
Meli