August 13, 2021

Shoftim

Hello!

Content notes for this week’s newsletter are: antisemitism, including antisemitic murders and the shoah; antivax eugenics; grief and despair, sexual assault of minors

This week’s parsha is shoftim. In it, we appoint judges, see the source of the famous “Justice, Justice, Shall You Pursue” quote (in the hebrew: tzedek tzedek tirdof), and a lot more. We are supposed to avoid occult practices of the land you live in (this one didn’t stick as hard as a lot of men think it did); an instruction that if local judges can’t come to a consensus to bring it to Jerusalem and have the priest/judge there decide; and an exhortation to not let your king get too rich, for instance.

It is traditional to recite &or study Psalm 27 during Elul, the current month of the hebrew calendar; as such, my friend brin, who is working on a NEARLY complete kabbalat shabbat siddur, released a newly nonbinary version+translation of the psalm:

Hey American Jews! Let’s fill out some surveys!

There was another jewish cemetery desecration, this time in Ioannina. Ioannina is the city my dad’s mom is from. I have been there, including a visit to this cemetery if memory serves me. If it is the one I am thinking of, it is very poorly maintained because of lack of funds, so I do not know if this is a direct act of antisemitism or a passive one–by which i mean, is the antisemitism here from vandals who went specifically to a Jewish cemetery, or is it from a world who lets Jewish graves of nearly-eradicated communities fall into disrepair such that bored destructive people are more likely to end up there than other places?

Hey Alma has a lovely review of Not Going Quietly, the documentary about Ady Barkan’s healthcare activism. Very here for disabled joy, and for “peace out, motherfuckers” approaches to activism. I hope some of the screening options are available virtually; I suspect one or more of the film festivals is but have not checked them all yet.

The Oxford School of Rare Jewish Languages has opened registration for free online classes in Judeo-Arabic, Judeo-French, Judeo-Greek, Judeo-Italian, Judeo-Neo-Aramaic, Judeo-Persian, Judeo-Tat, Judeo-Turkish, Karaim, Ladino, and Yiddish. I just might sign up for judeo-greek. Keep in mind they are in UK time so make sure the time listed works for you.

Rokhl Kaffrissen’s latest is about stickers and other yiddish swag. go forth! purchase things supporting small artists!

I kickstarted Mud: A Golem Memoir from turtlebun back in the day, and played through my copy this past week. It was emotionally compelling and fun way to spend a quiet afternoon.

A collection of diaspora Jewish artists in solidarity with Palestine are holding an art auction on Instagram! You can still donate a piece of your own art if you want to help out.

Sarah Day Arts, twitter’s favorite BDS-compliant magen david necklace source, has reopened!

Did Maimonides ignite the cannabis craze? is a very different question than “did he prescribe cannabis” or “was he high when he wrote that” but frankly i’m interested in answers to any of these questions.

Mayim Biyalik is one of the new jeopardy hosts. She’s Jewish but i don’t like her because of her antiscience and even eugenicist beliefs.

Chabad rabbi Mendi Chitrik is on a jewish heritage road trip through Turkey. The politics of this feel kind of awkward to me, as Chabad is very interested in maintaining their ashkenazi orthodox judaism around the world sometimes at the expense of local traditions; but also, he is putting in the effort to communicate about the cultural heritage of ottoman jews when so many died in the shoah, and I am glad someone is doing this work.

Times of Israel has a long overdue exposé of a USY (Conservative judaism youth group) staffer who assaulted a number of teens during his time with the organization. Shit is extremely fucked up. I am so sorry to anyone who experienced this.

Meir Kahane was profiled in Prospect’s Altercation section including his erasure in American Jewish history. Sometimes you need an interesting enemy; maybe Kahane is that.

David Rovics, a Jewish Anarchist songwriter, has recently said some hinky things and collaborated with people “associated with white supremacy and holocaust denial”. It’s Going Down has a good summary and reflection on the mess.

Jews For Racial & Economic Justice | Unraveling Antisemitism

A cultural organizing project and map for discussion, organizing, and struggle to win a world free from antisemitism

JFREJ NYC has an amazing new poster about antisemitism out called Unraveling Antisemitism based on their 2018 paper of the same name, with a deeply considered design and content true to the group’s Jewish roots. Their twitter account has done a few explanatory threads showcasing various parts of the poster, such as these vent diagrams illustrating opposing-yet-both-true-yet-in-conflict (i think this is what dialectic means?) statements. The two artists at the core of the project were interviewed in Canvas this past June about the experience and their work in general.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Jewish trauma, historical and present, whether that means the holocaust or things before and after. Yesterday was the secular calendar anniversary of the Night of the Murdered Poets in the USSR, when Stalin had 13 jewish antifascists killed in 1952, and tomorrow is the Jewish calendar anniversary of the Istanbul Neve Shalom Synagogue massacre of 21 shabbat daveners in 1986.

Trauma, and the expectation of future trauma, is baked into jewish culture; from this we get so many horrible things in jewish culture and outside it. I do not know how to escape the loop. Smarter people than I am, including but not limited to Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, have discussed the link between trauma healing and teshuva. How have we hurt others? How have we been focused on our own pain and trauma to the exclusion of others? Even after we recognize our mistakes as errors the first phase of teshuva, trauma, the dregs and relics of it, stick with us in charata (remorse), causing us to sit in our own self-wallowing pain, keeping cheshbon hanefesh (accounting of the soul) from being a true accounting rather than a castigation, centering ourselves even in our focus on our missteps rather than viewing the people harmed and considering their needs first.

And can we discuss trauma at all without discussing grief? Grief in the present, for those lost to and during the COVID-19 pandemic; and grief over yahrzeits (anniversary of a death); and disability grief for new and old capacaties to function in this imperfect world; climate grief; grief and despair run deep.

So, the answers (there are several, or none): cultivate hope? get up again and do what needs to be done, whether that’s feeding your kids or refilling a prescription, but sit in mourning following tradition, on the days tradition calls for? Participate in death care, as it will be needed going forwards?

I don’t know. Do what you can. Learn a half-dead language from a teacher across the world. Make art. Care for yourself and others. Look at a tree: it has been here a long time. Look at the ocean, or a rock: even longer timescales. Think about the oldest tortoise, who is gay. Breathe in air filtered of wildfire smoke and hope it won’t activate your asthma. Use your preventive medications. Get trained on giving Narcan. Build community. Make some tea. Go to bed early. Read a book that soothes your demons. Wake up tomorrow. Do it again.

And recognize: we jews are not the only traumatized people out there, and shoah exceptionalism is (at best) embarrassing, and we need to clean up our own house and get rid of the racism.

Jews Of Color initiative, linked above, published a report this week summarizing and tabulating the experiences of over 1000 JOCs. Some takeaways:

• while 40% of respondents converted to Judaism, 64% had one or two Jewish parents: stop assuming JOCs all converted! it is not shameful to convert but sometimes it’s racist to assume someone did.
• Predominantly white Jewish spaces can be uncomfortable for Jews of Color because of previous experiences of racism: 80% of respondents had experienced racism in a Jewish setting, and only 51% of respondents reported a feeling of community among white jews.
• Politically, things are complicated, especially around Israel/Palestine.

The whole study writeup PDF is full of information about and past these bullet points, and I recommend you read it. Nuanced and specific writeups are becoming available as well, like this one from Tema Smith about interfaith families.

Probably I should have a better ending to all this than “trauma is real but don’t be racist” but frankly, trauma is real, and also not an excuse for racism. Anyway, wanna check out some virtual events?

EVENTS!

8/14 Congregation Dorshei Emet’s Pride Shabbat with Rabbi Sandra Lawson

8/15 Jewish Heritage of Brazil from Qesher ($9-36 sliding scale)

8/15 Crip Camp Screening & Panel from Never Again Action’s accessibility team. FB event link. ASL interpretation and captioning both available.

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)

8/24 Sephardic vs. Ashkenazic: a study in liturgy. more info originally found in La Boz Sefaradi email list.

8/25 ACT UP’s Movement-Building Strategies: A Conversation with Sarah Schulman from Jewish Currents and JVP

8/29 Return: Daily Inspiration for the Days of Awe book talk with author Dr. Erica Brown on Sefaria

8/29 Sephardic Culinary History with Chef & Scholar Hélène Jawhara-Piñer Fruits & Spiced Round Challah for RoshHaShana.

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 Anna Rajagopal’s little buddy Mabel, who wants all of us to live our dreams!

See you next week! Shabbat shalom,

<3

Meli