May 19, 2023

Sivan 5783

Welcome to Weird Jewish Digest! This week we've got online study opportunities for shavuot, a trans read of Yentl, the jewish x italian handshake, and plenty more links, including a new sephardi conversation focused column from Ayin Press!

Jewish Calendar

Before the next issue of Weird Jewish Digest goes out, we'll go through the following parts of the weekly torah reading cycle (can you believe we're already starting bamidbar?!):

• 5/20 Parashat Bamidbar / פָּרָשַׁת בְּמִדְבַּר; newsletters from that week in 5781 and 5782

• 6/3 Parashat Nasso / פָּרָשַׁת נָשׂא newsletters from that week in 5781 and 5782

• 6/10 Beha’alotcha / פָּרָשַׁת בְּהַעֲלֹתְךָ; newsletters from that week in 5781 and 5782

Shavuot

We all love the cheesecake and revelation holiday but I don't have any cheesecake or revelation links. However, I learned recently about jewish papercuts for shavuot (via + more images), which are gorgeous:

And let's not forget tikun leil shavuot: everyone's favorite all night study session! It feels like there are more either entirely online or hybrid options than last year. Here are the ones I'm aware of:

• 5/25 8pm -5/26 8am Eastern (5pm-5am pacific) Kohenet shavuot

• 5/25 5pm-8pm PT ExploringJudaism's Tikun Leil Shavuot

• 5/25 7pm - 5/26 1am PDT TischPDX Up All Night (hybrid)

• 5/26 9am Pacific - 10/27 9am Pacific ShavuotLIVE 2023

• 5/26 6pm-1am Eastern (3pm-10pm Pacific) Up All Night Hinenu (hybrid)

• 5/26 6pm-11pm Pacific Kadima Seattle (hybrid)

Books and language

It's Jewish American Heritage Month this May! Rutgers University Press is offering a 30% discount on all their books, and RainbowCrate put together a recommendation list of 15 jewish queer books.

Check out Heymish, a new online yiddish zine put together by Sarah Biskowitz and Cameron Bernstein that was recently reviewed in the Forward!

Sefaria put together a great little source sheet about translation.

Miscellaneous

I have never seen Yentl. Jett Allen's comic Yentl Meltdown explains why. Being nonbinary makes traveling through feminist women-dressing-as-men media fraught, knowing that the issues they navigate and the issues i navigate are the same yet different.

Dr. Tamar Ron Marvin, whose excellent newsletter is finishing up a series on the Rishonim, has a wide-ranging recap of jewish learning resources she's featured, including several I hadn't heard of before.

JTA recently featured some cool-ass jewish TTRPGs. If digital's more your style, check out Shtrinkl, a puzzle game "centered around the Yiddish poem 'Longing' by Rachel Korn", or interactive fiction games Mourner's Kaddish for Golems.

Rabbi Elliot Kukla writes about chronic illness, bees, and climate crisis on SVARA's Hot Off The Shtender blog. On Yeshivat Maharat's blog, Rabbanit Dr. Liz Shayne writes about neurodivergent torah and talmud.

Additional various links

• Jewish dragons are cool!

• Let's explore a 3d model of an incantation bowl! (via)

• Some call it the ancient pact, some call it the Jewish x Italian Handshake.

• Did you know a cupcake carousel makes the perfect seder plate?

A Sephardic finish

A Sephardic tomato rice recipe + a leftovers cookbook interview mark a recent free issue of Leah Koenig's The Jewish Table newsletter. More about SAVOR, mentioned towards the end of the newsletter, here in HeyAlma.

Dr. Devin Naar writes in his new Ayin Press column Moabet about, among other things, Ladino culture's multi-rootedness and how it can destabilize the perceived binary of homeland and diaspora. I also love the bit at the end about "papelikos satanikos [which] reveal perspectives about the past that present-day gatekeepers may prefer not to acknowledge, for the counternarratives they unlock may threaten the status quo." They remind me of tales of discovering hidden queerness in archives, gently rediscovering dirty secrets folded away, whether those are subversive in terms of anti-nationalism, queerness, or something else entirely.

Classes and events

Classes and series

• Alefbet Soup for the Soul: A Crash-Course in the Magical Letters of Judaism (6/4-6/18 Sundays) taught by friend of the jewsletter ada morse--this is not an alefbet 101, it is much cooler than that!

• Revolutionary Reading Group for Trans Halakha Project teshuvot--every two weeks on Wednesdays from May through September we come together to discuss one of the teshuvas in community!

• What We Need to Win: a four-session series on economic empowerment for progressive jewish movements, via New Israel Fund NewGen, Jewish Liberation Fund, and Rise Up Initiative--topics include art, JOC-centric organizing, and more

Events

5/21 Rosh Chodesh Sivan

5/21 TransHallel Sivan (more info)--even if you can't make this one, don't forget to sign up for the TransHallel newsletter!

5/21 KlezKanada Zine-Making Workshop: The Single-Page Zine as a Yortsayt for the Future

5/24 A Rose Among Nations: Floral Imagery in Persian Jewish Poetry

5/25-27 Shavuot

5/25-5/27 Shavuos anarchist bookfair from Pink Peacock (all talks BST and on youtube; highly recommend at least browsing the topics)

6/5 Yiddish to the Core: Wedding Music and Jewish Identity in Postwar New York City

6/8 Shaping Tradition, a fundraiser event in honor of SVARA's 20th birthday

6/10 Freedom Is A Verb: A Besere Velt Yiddish chorus 25th Anniversary Concert with special guest Daniel Kahn

6/12-6/14 Chevra Kadisha and Jewish Cemetery Conference

Jewish Pet of the Month

The Jewish pet of the month for Sivan is Kugel! Thanks for sending him in, S Ep-Ep!
One last link: Ben Yehuda Press is soliciting cat photos for their next jewish cat calendar, and it's been a while since I featured a cat here too--anyone got a cute kitten (of any age) who wants to be pet of the month?

<3

Meli