January 20, 2023

Shvat 5783

Welcome to Weird Jewish Digest! This month we have content relating to Tu Bishvat; fan art of Spock's bar mitzvah; midcentury Reform antizionism; Algerian Jewish sign language; neohasidism; and more!

Jewish Calendar

Before the next issue of Weird Jewish Digest goes out on February 17th we'll go through the following parts of the weekly torah reading cycle:

• 1/21 Vaera / וָאֵרָא; newsletters from that week in 5781 and 5782, and a liberation-centered addition from Bayit

• 1/28 Bo / בֹּא; newsletters from that week in 5781 and 5782

• 2/4 Beshalach / בְּשַׁלַּח; newsletters from that week in 5781 and 5782

• 2/11 Yitro / יִתְרוֹ; newsletters from that week in 5781 and 5782

Chanukah's far behind us, but there were some great pieces of jewsletter worthy design, such as this from the People's Graphic Design Archive, and whimsy, like the chanukah goose.

happy new year by abba, in yiddish

Tu Bishvat

The 15th of Shvat! the trees and fruit holiday! I love this one so much that I made a haggadah zine about it a few years ago that I encourage you to download and use if you so desire.

This year, Thursday Bram and I made a different zine meant to work as a tu bishvat seder supplement. It's not ready to download yet, but you can pre-order (is it still a preorder if it's free?) at the link above. The zine can attach to any four worlds seder and apply a pacific northwest indigenous foods approach to the diasporism that many of us use to celebrate this holiday. It contains instructions for a seder plate of four plants local to our area (or metaphorical replacements for them) and important to indigenous peoples of our region: beaked hazelnut, camas, salal berry, and redcedar. The zine is free to download, but please donate to an indigenous-led community group in your area if you have the means. We have supplied a few links on the download page.

We focused on the PNW since it's the region we both live in; we encourage people outside the PNW to still download the zine and use it to learn about the history and also as inspiration regarding your own tu bishvat activities.

spock break!

Are there men on this planet?!?! on Tumblr

Spock’s bar mitzvah. He did not have fun

Antisemitism, Israel, and/or Jews Behaving Badly

Paula Vogel's play Indecent was set to be performed at an arts school in Florida, but was cancelled due to its "adult content". As the play itself is about censorship of jewish queerness, it hit a little close to home for many of us, including the playwright herself, who put it in cultural context.

Israel's present government is worrying at best. Left-wing israelis are protesting the new government, and explainers like this one from 972 explain the cues Israel's taken from America's far right, or this more general one from Haaretz. There are more and more people speaking out about how Israel's government is rotten, and that it goes farther than the current administration--see this twitter thread from Aryeh Cohen on twitter for one example. I hope that people speaking out against this far-right government continue to criticize Israel as appropriate if the government swings back leftwards.

There have been antizionist jews in every denomination that exists (and for longer than we've had denominations), and it is easy to find stories of how people drifted from zionism. However, 20th century Reform Rabbi Morris S. Lazaron's Why I Was A Zionist And Why I Now Am Not, dramatized in a wonderful Theatre Dybbuk episode, is one of the best I've read--and distinctive in its age and timing, as Rabbi Lazaron's antizionist actions were before, during, and after the founding of the state of israel.

The orthodox world may have come a long way regarding LGBQ equality, but it continues to be virulently transphobic. Ezra Furman has a deeply affecting twitter thread about how this transphobia has affected her jewish life.

Books and Language

Congrats to the Jewish Book Award winners! I don't know if any of them subscribe to the jewsletter, but I've got several on my TBR (to-be-read) list, including Koshersoul (book of the year!), On Repentance and Repair, and The Heresy of Jacob Frank.

I loved this thread of cat-related yiddish vocab. Dos katzele lekn di lape!

Let's learn about Algerian Jewish sign language!

OpenSiddur has a 1907 german book of tehinot, paraliturgical prayers often written by women, newly translated and added into their prayers database

The Jewish Monster Hunter blog has assembled for us a reading list covering quick summaries, essays, and books on a variety of topics related to jewish monsters and the hunting thereof.

Miscellaneous

Aaron Valance wrote about birkat hamazon for food substack Vittles, complete with embedded song samples when viewed in the browser. Wonderful! Full of feelings.

There's some delightfully familiar names in this article about the tzitzit project, which is selling tzitzit / talit katan for people historically excluded from this mitzvah.

Albania is getting a museum about the jewish community there, past and present.

Anti-work

Jewish Currents' latest issue is about rest (see also, the NYT profile of Jewish Currents), and their responsa is about anti-work and the potential of shabbat. Whenever anti-work comes up, i hope for (and usually do not find) some acknowledgement of disabled people who cannot work. This time the closest we get was acknowledgement that not working is not the same as creating rest, via Rashi's take on hashem creating rest on the seventh day.

For a beautiful long article on how disability justice and anti-work, see Sunny Taylor's 2004 The Right Not to Work: Power and Disability. It is not explicitly jewish, so you may have to put the shabbat language back in yourself, but an important piece that (in my opinion) pairs well with the Jewish Currents responsa. (Thank you to Toby for reminding me about this article!)

(Neo)hasidim and post-halacha

Shaul Magid's new Teiku column in Ayin has all of one essay out (Paradigm Shift & Jewish Law: Exploring Zalman Schachter-Shalomi’s Post-Halacha as a Sin for the Sake of Heaven) and I can tell just based on the title it'll consistently be fabulous.

Chasidance (1982) - the 1st electronic arangment of (Chabad) Nigunim.

Gashmius: Towards a Progressive neo-Hasidism is a new online magazine full of some wonderful and fascinating articles. Their resources page looks extensive and helpful for anyone interested in neohasidim, and their intro to (neo)hasidim page is helpful as well for people with any level of knowledge--definitions can be so varied in this realm it's important to see where people are starting from!

Events and classes!

Recordings and Movies

• The Jews of Corfu: Between the Adriatic and the Ionian, including a "past and present" talk and a roundtable about manuscript conservation

• Miami Jewish Film Fest runs from January 12th through the 26th and has a bunch of Jewish films streaming nationwide.

Online classes coming up

Yiddish Book Center's Shakespeare & Yiddish: An Online Course will be running this March

Judaism Unbound's got some pretty great unyeshiva courses yet again, running for 12 weeks starting the week of February 5th.

Yosef Rosen has a five session course on Sundays, also starting Feb 5th, about Shamans of Ashkenaz!

Events

1/22 A Psalm for the Wild Built book discussion from Speculative Wisdom

1/23 Rosh Chodesh Shvat

1/24 Forging Our Own Path: (Re)Defining Halakha With the Trans Halakha Project (trans people only)

1/25 Book Talk: “Shekhinah Speaks” by Dr. Joy Ladin

1/29 Kontar i Kantar: The 6th Annual New York Ladino Day

2/6 Tu Bishvat

2/16 Bryan Roby, “Blackness in Motion: The Centrality of Black Thought for Afro-Asian Jewry in Israel”

2/16 Irena Klepfisz: Her Birth and Later Years: New and Collected Poems, 1971-2021 from the Workers Circle

2/16 Wounds into Wisdom: A Conversation About Healing Intergenerational Jewish Trauma with Rabbi Dr. Tirzah Firestone and Dr. Gabor Maté

2/19-2/20 #Farbindungen23 Yiddish Futures conference (register)

2/21 Rosh Chodesh Adar

3/2 The Ninety-Minute Mishnah: A Crash Course on Torah 2.0

3/6 Purim (yes, already!)

3/27 Columbia Rare Book & Manuscript Library Curatorial Shorts: An Anti-Fascist Yiddish Children’s School in 1930s Paris

3/30 Understanding Rabbinic Innovation: Five Sources of Law from Laynie Solomon at SVARA

Jewish Pet of the Month

The Jewish Pet of the Month this month is Hotspur, who wants you to get yourself a copy of Other Covenants! (Or ask your library to get a copy for you to read!)

A bonus pet, I am not sure if he's jewish, is this cat with his own little matzo ball soup on instagram.

<3

Meli