Pinchas
Hi all,
Welcome back! I enjoyed my break from writing last week but am raring to get back in the saddle, as it were. Because of the break I'm not quite as on top of my usual link and event sources, so if there's something you know of that I missed let me know and I'll put it in next week's.
Content Warnings for this issue are: G-d-sanctioned murder for prohibited sex (in the torah portion), violent antisemitism, holocaust appropriation, homophobia (including by Jews), use of skulls for art (ancient)
https://twitter.com/maimonides_nutz/status/1410645360540753922
Last week's parsha was Balak. Cannot believe I skipped the week with the talking donkey.
The parsha for this week is Pinchas. At the end of last week's parsha a guy named pinchas does a murder of two people while they're fucking, context being that israelite men went out and had sex with pagan women and took up their religion, but--! Anyway this week's parsha opens with G-d being like "good job, Pinchas my guy". Then a plague ends, there's a census, land is divided up as a result of the census, and a group of daughters was like "we would like to inherit". Moses asked G-d, G-d said yes. The entire rest of the parsha (Numbers 20:8-30:1) is details of various holiday offerings. This is where a lot of holiday torah readings come from.
Pride month is over, but queerness lives on. By which I mean I did not find out about this pride-themed collection of sheets on sefaria until today. See also: this lovely shop selling yiddish pronoun pins, and Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg's twitter thread of jewish queer books, and Rena Yehuda Newman's zines on Gumroad. Ben Yehuda Press's pride month sale is also on for a couple more days--I'm very excited for my copy of Torah in a Time of Plague.
Ladino singer and songwriter Sarah Aroeste has a new album out called Monastir. There will be an album release event on 7/7 from the National Museum of American Jewish History also linked in the events section below which has some more information about the album.
https://twitter.com/SarahAroeste/status/1408388778578923520
If you need more Jewish music content, UCLA's Lowell Milken Center for Jewish Music has a number of event recordings up on their youtube channel as well.
There's a new Jewish podcast about the TV show Supernatural, which while not my jam is directly adjacent to being my jam, so at least some of you will probably like it.
If you want to read something a little racy and a lot trans, Esther Alter has a new story out titled The Rabbi.
I love this Alma interview with Raviv Ullman. It's so nice to see people who are doing judaism and activism in intertwined ways.
https://twitter.com/roseberrycomix/status/1390687336678240261
My general opinion on open letters is "why", but at least i agree with the politics of this one calling out Jewish community leaders for not interacting with the actual real definitions of social justice-affiliated concepts like intersectionality and critical race theory.
You want to say tzedek, tzedek, tirdof is about courts? Fine by me.
It's easy for me to forget sometimes that Orthodox means a lot of different ways to practice judaism, including some that allow for women to be ordained as rabbis. Unfortunately, other groups really do not like that, and it results in consequences for the women (but never the straight men), like this woman who was banned from teaching at the London School of Jewish Studies. See also: this piece in Alma about queer orthodox jews.
Religion as a category is a protestant invention, says Shannon Schorey in a twitter thread not actually about judaism but echoed in Ancient Jew Review's preview of Mika Ahuvia's new book on Jewish angels and how, well, Ancient Jews believed in them. Love me some incantation bowl content.
https://twitter.com/Simcha_Gross/status/1408403359586033666
Anne Helen Peterson interviewed Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg in her newsletter about (among other things) repentance and repair. Elul this year is gonna be Rough.
Jewish Insider interviewed Adam Serwer about his new book, The Cruelty is The Point, as well as the relationship between Trump and Bibi Netanyahu, his views on Israel, and other topics. Serwer's book apparently contains a chapter about Jewish American solidarity with other oppressed groups through history, and where it conflicts with Jewish support for Israel especially under the right-wing government there, and I might have to get myself a copy. I am honestly impressed that he managed to get an impression of "from the river to the sea" in a positive sense into a mainstream jewish publication (even if the word Palestine or Palestinian does not appear):
I think, like most American Jews, I was raised with what I would describe as a liberal Zionist background. My current position is that I favor any settlement that leads to full political rights for all people between the river and the sea, and I am agnostic as to what format that takes, whether it’s two states or one state, as long as it does not result in further violence or denial of fundamental rights.
The Law and Settler Colonialism in Palestine Symposium is exploring, among other topics, the Jewish National Fund (JNF)'s role in Palestinian displacement alongside direct settler violence.
https://twitter.com/GottschalkHaim/status/1411040933043396610
I am so tired of talking about antisemitism. I am tired of Jews talking about antisemitism badly, I am tired of the way american conservatives use the yellow star to protest COVID restrictions, I am tired of white supremacist calls to antisemitism along other bigotries they espouse and tired of QAnon taking up the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. And yet I am incapable of shutting up about it because regardless of whether we do, people suffer, like the chabad rabbi who was stabbed in Boston this week.
That being said, i feel like we have probably had enough antisemitism czars by now.
Let's all calm down together with some shabbat poetry.
https://twitter.com/moontwerk/status/1411031798415597570
Events!
7/1 Freedom & Identity - The Extraordinary Journey of a Multiracial Jewish Family in Early America from SHIN DC
7/1, 7/8 The Last Days of Pompeii: A Jewish Perspective, sliding scale $36-60.
7/6 Jewish Life in the Arab World: A New Chapter?, also available in Spanish 7/7. Register
7/7 My Song Ends but My Singing Never Stops: Calls for Justice in the Yiddish Music of the Holocaust in Ukraine,” with Anna Shternshis
7/7 Sarah Aroeste Album Release with National Museum of American Jewish History (part of Songs of Our People, Songs of Our Neighbors series)
7/8 We Keep Each Other Safe: Safety Beyond Policing, part 3 of "Setting the New Agenda: A Speaker Series on Anti-Blackness and the Jewish Community" from Judaism on our Own Terms and Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, with closed captioning and ASL interpretation. fb event
7/8 Yiddish Ethnography and An-ski from Gabriella Safran through YIVO’s Yiddish Civilization Lecture Series
7/9, 7/10 Plague Wedding, a performance by Abigail Weaver. fb event, trailer
7/11 Hishbati Lina Morales "Were It Not for the Fear It Inspires: Prayers for the State and Hishtadlus", registration required
7/11 Yidstock Featuring Songs of Social Justice ($18)
7/11 Sephardic Culinary History with Chef Hélène Jawhara-Piñer
7/13 Jewish Prayer in Many Languages: From Sephardic Seattle to Syrian Brooklyn, Part Three (Shabbat part 2)
7/15 Yiddish & Zionism lecture from Rachel Rojanski through YIVO’s Yiddish Civilization Lecture Series
7/21 Songs of Our People, Songs of Our Neighbors: Susan Gaeta
8/18 Songs of Our People, Songs of Our Neighbors: Susana Behar
8/24 Jewish Prayer in Many Languages: From Sephardic Seattle to Syrian Brooklyn, Part Four (High Holy Days)
The jewish pet of the week this week is stavros avram, who (like all of us) appreciates a good vareniki.
https://twitter.com/cholent_lover/status/1405566818933161984
(And while we're here, Ben Yehuda Press is seeking Jewish cat pictures to include in their cat calendar.)
See you next week!
<3
Meli