Re'eh
Hello!
Content notes for this week's newsletter are: antisemitism and not-antisemitism-called-antisemitism, anti-Palestinian bigotry, probably more if you click through to things I'm sorry
This week's parsha is re'eh. We are instructed once again to worship only Hashem, and to do so only in the ways that THEY want to be worshiped and only in the place THEY want that worship to occur. We are also not supposed to take on cutting the skin or head-shaving as mourning practices, and receive a collection of rules about kosher animals. There's a reminder about debt remission every seven years also, and miscellaneous other commandments. If I were inclined to expand and/or deep dive with a bit of this parsha, I would take the lessons about when and how to honor G-d and apply it to a consent lesson on how we interact with each other, especially as many of us are still struggling to re-learn our own comfort levels with in-person social interactions.
https://twitter.com/culhebrewmss/status/1422935382987997188
Elul is almost upon us! Last week I did a mini round-up of online elul programming and forgot to include a piece that's been in my events section: daily selichot sessions with Ramon Tasat. The Judaism Unbound folks will also be doing twice weekly Elul Unbound emails focusing on the upcoming Shmita year.
Along similar lines, Rosh Chodesh Elul is one of the 87923984732 (ok, 4) new years in the jewish calendar, rosh hashana labehemot! It is ANIMALS TIME Y'ALL. Send me your pics.
You might want to purchase your 5782 calendar soon. The Radical Jewish Calendar ($12-36 sliding scale) is available (Europeans can order it from the Pink Peacock for faster shipping), or you can preorder Ben Yehuda Press' Jewish Cat Calendar ($18). I assume people following this newsletter are primarily interested in social justice and cats but other options exist too, I suppose.
https://twitter.com/wrkclasshistory/status/1422111183570624512?s=12&utm_source=pocket_mylist
In the words of Ben Lorber, hasbara orgs just keep posting their Ls this week.
Time is a flat circle and we are forever going to be discussing definitions of antisemitism and what does and doesn't count and what "antisemitic tropes" mean. Someone says "evil money manipulated this [election]" and the ADL comes down on them as antisemitic when that's not what was being said; and at the same time, I don't want to wipe the concept of "tropes antisemitism" off the slate of options because it's helped me, personally, in the past point out what's wrong with 4chan style early alt right "happy merchant" memes and the like. I am tired and embarrassed that we are still talking about antisemitic tropes and what they mean and what they don't mean and when they're bad and when they're a sign of bigotry. There has to be some actual link to the jews or antisemitism present for it to be antisemitic; anticapitalism is not antisemitic.
The ADL and PayPal have joined up to monitor for extremist activity, and i am of many minds about this. What do we mean by extremist? Absolutely kick white supremacists off, but many people are concerned that the primary use case will be freezing paypal accounts belonging to Palestinian activists.
Elsewhere, JTA reporter Ben Sales writes: Did a pro-Palestinian campus group actually call for the ‘defunding’ of Hillel? Answer: no. No they did not. But that didn't stop a number of popular twitter users, ranging from well-meaning and afraid to clearly bad actors, to spread this rumor. I am not a particular supporter of Hillel, as they neatly embody the pro-israel-or-gtfo ethos endemic to popular American Judaism; if you are a college student, or believe in the importance of jewish organizations on college campuses, consider looking into Judaism On Our Own Terms.
Yiddish Illustrations: "From Chagall to Diego Rivera" | Yiddish Book Center
Explore Yiddish Book Center Bibliographer David Mazower's top ten Yiddish illustrated books.
This extensive list of leftist online collections includes the Russian-language archives of Tribuna (journal of the Society for the Land Arrangement of Jewish Workers in the USSR), Cornell's archive of Jewish People's Fraternal Order, and the Israeli Left Archive, alongside others that contain Jewish content like the Anarchist Library.
Mikhail Krutikov's wonderful review of Marc Caplan's Yiddish Writers in Weimar Berlin: A Fugitive Modernism is available in both English and Yiddish, which is neat.
What is Jewish food?, asks food writer Jason Diamond in a review of (yet another) New York Jewish restaurant. I am not presently equipped to have an extended discussion of the role of cultural appropriation as a concept here but I do feel like I should bring it up, in the context of a white ashkenazi restaurant owners making their name on multicultural jewish food. I am glad people are toying with Jewish Food as a wider concept than ashkenazi new york appetizing dishes, though. If you want to also, Leah Koenig has a roundup of essential sephardi cookbooks that I'm highly tempted to use as a shopping list.
https://twitter.com/TheJewishMuseum/status/1423313461510029314
Rabbi Sandra Lawson has a new youtube channel all loaded up with a bunch of her wonderful work. Go check it out! Looks like she will be putting new exclusive content there as well going forwards.
Comics site ComicsXF has a writeup titled Superman the Jew.
There is a Jewitches podcast! It's 3 episodes in so far, and has discussed dybbuk boxes, antisemitism in witch-hunts, and the relationship between witchy stuff and judaism. Full disclosure, I have not yet listened as my brain is only sometimes set up for podcast listening, but maybe you'd like to! If you (like me) are more of a written word kind of human, there's a jewitchery writeup in Lilith that covers quite a few things and lumps them all together under "jewitch stuff".
https://twitter.com/JoCInitiative/status/1422255964388999171?utm_source=pocket_mylist
Events!
8/9 TransHallel Rosh Chodesh Elul!
8/8 Pickle Soup and Other Tales for the Curious, an all ages puppet show from Jenny Romaine and Elana June Margolis
8/9 Selichot sessions with Ramon Tasat begin, lasting through Elul. Register on zoom here.
8/12 Jews of Color Initiative Survey Results Talk
8/15 Jewish Heritage of Brazil from Qesher ($9-36 sliding scale)
8/18 Songs of Our People, Songs of Our Neighbors: Susana Behar
8/19 Holocaust in the Balkans: “A Question of Survival” Screening and Discussion hybrid event
8/22 Queer Women's Torah Workshop from Shawn Harris
8/22 New Rules Judaism: High Holy Days, 3 hour workshop, sliding scale $18-59
8/23-29 KlezKanada, including concerts, lessons, kids' programming, and more! You can register for the whole festival or only a portion, so the fee varies.
8/24 Jewish Prayer in Many Languages: From Sephardic Seattle to Syrian Brooklyn, Part Four (High Holy Days)
8/29 Return: Daily Inspiration for the Days of Awe book talk with author Dr. Erica Brown on Sefaria
8/31 “All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days” Book Talk, about Jewish woman resistance fighter Mildred Harnack, "the only American in the leadership of the German resistance".
9/7 Rosh Hashana
9/12 Virtual Walking Tour: Jewish Porto, Portugal, $18-36
9/16 Yom Kippur
The jewish pet of the week this week is Pasha! He is named after Pavel Chekov on Star Trek and I am on a beit midrash discord server with his human.
EDIT: I am sorry he is sideways I don't know why. It was not sideways when I uploaded this.
See you next week!
<3
Meli