April 22, 2022

Pesach's ending! Mimouna?

This week in Jewsletter we have: some links about Mimouna, my take on LibsOfTiktok and the aftermath (with context links), The Temptations doing a Fiddler medley, and a JEWISH PUPPY!

An administrative note: i'm going to take next week off. See you in two weeks!

CN: homophobia, transphobia, horrible right wing MAGA etc

Jewish Calendar

Pesach ends soon!

It's almost mimouna! Let's make and eat moufleta!

I think you probably need Blair Braverman's documentation of her retired sled dogs looking for the afikomen.

Omer counting

I have a daily email reminder that will send you the text of the blessing along with something about that day's sefirot. It looks like it's getting caught in a lot of spam filters and I'm very sorry about that. Please tell your spam filter it's not spam.

Shitty politics, including antisemitism

The LibsOfTiktok twitter account, which reposts TikTok videos to make fun of people and is popular among right-wingers like Joe Rogan, was revealed in a Washington Post article to be run by an orthodox jewish woman named Chaya Raichik. There's been a variety of responses and a great deal of drama around this, including but not limited to conservatives losing their shit about doxxing (which apparently they were fine with when Raichik was getting teachers fired), left-wing people revenge-harassing random women named chaya raichik (don't! it's a relatively common name in Chabad-ish circles), and Batya Ungar-Sargon claiming that it's ok because she's ""only"" transphobic (transphobia is not okay and people including LibsOfTiktok are in fact also homophobic). More from Dr. Hannah Lebovitz and R. P. Schwartz about the "MAGA-ization" of Orthodox communities, including women's social media spheres; I trust both of them, being frum women, to talk about this in ways that are in tune with the culture in question.

Meanwhile, AIPAC is supporting terrible politicians (including some antisemites) because those politicians support israel. Nobody is surprised but we're all disappointed.

Miscellaneous

Jewish Currents' fellowship is accepting applications

This nine and a half minute long Temptations medley of Fiddler on the Roof songs BLEW MY MIND (found via Fred MacDowell's twitter)

Rebecca Caplan wrote for StarTrek.com about The Golem in Star Trek, covering a variety of constructed people and their connections with the golem myth.

A Public Domain Review article going over the multi-cultural history of hand mnemonics led me to some extremely cool Kabbalistic texts and small daily calendars.

Classes coming up

• Jewish Anarchist Salon, a series of talks and discussions, every other Sunday 3/13-5/15 (drop-in)

• Unyeshiva mini classes (3 weeks each, 4/25-5/15 or 5/16-6/5). Isaiah, Karaites, psychedelics, gender, whatever.

• Planting Cucumbers By Magic: or, How to Get Away with Jewish Witchcraft, 4/24-5/15 Sundays, taught by Olivia Devorah thru Shel Maala

• Pirkei Avot for Goths 4/25-5/31 Tuesdays with Sophia Zohar

• Sefer Yetzirah: Meditation, Magic, & The Cosmic Architecture with R' Jill Hammer through Kohenet, April-June (check out their other spring classes too!)

• SVARA classes, including summer talmud zman 6/14-7/21

• Sweetening the Spirits: Introduction to Sefardi Herbalism, 4/26-5/22 Tuesdays or Sundays from bibiandni / Naomi Spektor. "This class will explore Sefardi herb traditions around two major themes: herbs for protection, and herbs for joy & blessedness."

Events!

4/23 Secular Third Seder with United Jewish People’s Order/Morris Winchevsky School (fb event with more info)

4/25 Seharaneh Storytime: Tales from Jewish Kurdistan

4/25 Herbal Wisdoms, Queer Magic, & Ritual in Torah & SWANA traditions with Mazal Etedgi of B'samim Apothecary, at Romemu

4/27 Guided Zine-Making for Jewish Embodiment: A joint zine-making program hosted by JOOOT and New Voices Magazine

4/28 50 Years of LGBTQ Families: From the "Queer Death Drive" to the Jewish “Gayby Boom.”

5/1 Jewish Resistance: 1960’s London and Beyond with Sarah Solemani and Jessica Yellin

5/2 “What Does Your Dream Tell You?”: B. Rivkin and Yiddish Occultism in America lecture. "The writer B. Rivkin (Borukh Avrom Weinrebe, 1883–1945) is known to scholars today as an important anarchist thinker and Yiddish literary critic who formulated the notion that Yiddish literature must strive to serve as a non-territorial homeland for the Jewish people. Less known is that Rivkin was also a firm believer in the occult who attended spiritualist séances and speculated about the possibility of telepathic communication." UM.

5/3 The Hebrew Bible and Disabilities from Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, RespectAbility, the Hunter College Jewish Studies Department, and ROSIES. (more info)

5/4 Jewish and Catholic Approaches to Americanization lecture

5/10 Italian Opera for the Yiddish-Speaking Masses in Early 20th-Century America – Pt. 5: Why Promote Italian Opera Via the Mame-loshn?

5/15 Jewish Queer Languages

5/15-5/27 Queer Yiddish Camp, an online intensive, 5/15-5/27. More info at the website.

5/25 Multilingual Jewish Prayer Throughout History: Performance and Analysis

6/7-6/10 Yidstock

6/12-6/14 Kavod v'Nichum North American Chevrah Kadisha and Jewish Cemetery Conference

Jewish Pet of the Week

The Jewish Pet of the week is Pippin!!! I am once again soliciting submissions for more pets of the week. (If at least one human in the household is jewish, the pet counts.) You also might get some repeats in coming weeks because some VERY cute pets were featured in the early days of this newsletter when I had way fewer subscribers.

Shabbat shalom! See you in May.

<3

Meli