First, a note: I will be putting the jewsletter on hiatus starting next month, so this may be the last you hear from me for a while. I love this project and also want to use my creative time and energy for other things. It’s a six year journey we’ve been on, and I don’t know if it’s a break or a stop right now but it’s at least a pause. I want to get away from a place where my side projects are work, and to a place where they are creative and maybe even joyful.

If you are interested in a blog, which you can subscribe to by email (or RSS), I am planning to put miscellaneous writing (including potentially a Yom Kippur dvar I have yet to write) at https://meli.mataroa.blog/. I welcome emails if you want to stay in touch, too! Just reply to this message.

art interlude

Jewish Calendar

It’s almost the high holy days. The king is in the field. If you are still searching for a place to go for the high holy days, https://opencommunities.info/ is a good place to start; if you want further guidance, feel free to email me for help!

Need some handmade letterpress cards that say “May we be the head and not the tail”?

From last month’s newsletter:

• For your annual cheshbon hanefesh (soul searching/accounting), you can check out 10q, a Reboot project asking the same questions each year and returning the answers to us for contemplation.

• Ways of Awe, a creative review of some of our liturgy, is now available wherever you listen to podcasts!

The halachic left reader for the high holy days, titled HaYom Te’amtzeinu / Strengthen Us This Day, is generative and wonderful. You can also purchase print copies. SVARA also released a high holy days reader with explicitly disability- and trans-related readings (not yet read, looks great though).

Israel/Palestine, Antisemitism, and/or Antifascism

Conflating Jews with Israel Is Dangerous – Whether by Antisemites, U.S. Politicians, or the Israeli State, by Dov Waxman (not yet read, but I agree with the title!)

What is Jewish Anti-Zionism?: A Response - Eliana Fishman Responds to Irwin Kula’s response to Shaul Magid — I have not read the back-and-forths of this conversation but they are linked in the essay and perhaps relevant to your interests! Between drafting and sending this newsletter another (not yet read) in the back-and-forth also was published, and what i am guessing is the current wrap-up of this series from Shaul himself.

Overturning Anti-BDS Laws is the Next Fight for the Pro-Palestine Left, say Mari Cohen and Alex Kane in Jewish Currents (not yet read, but anti-BDS laws violate at least the ideals of free speech if not the letter of the laws themselves).

We have been here before; we will be here again, in Rabbi Sandra Lawson’s The Pattern We Keep Forgetting.

Books and Language!

In memory of Dolly Parton, check out yiddish Jolene or perhaps yiddish 9 to 5.

Let’s read, too, about yiddish revival globally and in the UK.

We, Traitors: Bundist Writings on Zionism, Palestine, and Socialism is available for preorder. I can tell I’ll want a copy of this on my shelf based on the extensive table of contents!

You can also preorder The Garlic Eaters, an illustrated childrens book by Madison Safer.

Also also for preorder, Black, Jewish, and Beautiful: Contemporary Blewish Voices, edited by Anthony Mordechai Tzvi Russell, Sara Feldman, and Brett Ashley Kaplan, was reviewed on Publishers Weekly.

It could be because I am myself a jew who loves nature, but To Life: Jews Exploring Nature, by Joel Greenberg, looks very cool!

Ancient Jew Review has an article from Jane Kanarek on Reclaiming Female Presence in Bavli Sotah, about her new book on the topic Beyond Brutality.

Sing to me, Muse, of two Moshes and their Odysseys! “Moshe Leyb Pitshenik translated “The Odyssey” into Yiddish. Moshe Ha-Elion translated it into Ladino. This is their epic journey.” (not yet read)

Yes, yet another Here Where We Live Is Our Country review, this time by Samuel Hayim Brody, interacting with several other reviews and commentaries on the book and the Bund in general, and actually tangling with doykeit then and now.

Binele review

As I mentioned last time, I was gifted a copy of Binele and it was in fact excellent! A few times while reading, I found myself wishing I understood Yiddish so I could check on what might be literal and what might be more of a translation quirk or embellishment. The book in general, with its episodic nature (it was originally published chapter by chapter), is well suited to put down and pick back up at your leisure.

The neither-here-nor-there-niks that Binele runs into on his way are great, as are (of course) his guide Eliyahu and Binele himself. Except the “wonders that are terrifying” like the river that bubbles up eyeballs and the goblet of blood. What the fuck (meant admiringly, of course). And when he gets there—I don’t want to spoil it but there is fruit for analysis for sure, it’s not just a simple wish fulfillment of childish views. Very enjoyable little book, very interesting little book!

I would love for one of the more messed-up-positive animation studios to adapt this into a movie or perhaps a series. Not sure I’d recommend this story for actual children unless you read it first or your kid is particularly about weird creepy stuff, but for adults? heck yeah.

The publisher, Ben Yehuda Press, is running a “back to shul special” if you want your own copy of this or another of their publications! They have been a friend of the jewsletter for a long time, and are running a kickstarter for a new anthology too (with a good number of names i recognize positively!), and copublishing an amidah guide with Bayit.

Miscellaneous

Jewish farmers planted an ancient seed. Now the fruit is making its American culinary debut, about the qishut melon!

Sefaria has a new CEO coming and he’s from Meta’s pervert glasses division and is hoping to continue their AI-forward direction. I, personally, am not thrilled. More on AI (not yet read): “The Nullification of Torah Is Its Foundation”: A Hasidic Drash on AI; On the death drive & other wayward desires, from Aron Wander.

A Very Good Prayer with Twenty-Four Things in It, from an Italian-rite maḥzor (1446)

Reflections of an Autistic Rabbinical Student: “Mati Boulakia‐Bortnick is a student rabbi at the École Rabbinique de Paris and the Educational Director of the Jewish Autism Network. In this intimate and generous article, he describes his experience as an autistic and multi‐disabled person within the Jewish community.” (not yet read)

A fascinating duo of writings: first, on Rav Jericho Vincent’s Ivri movement, There’s a new Judaism in town — or maybe it’s very, very old; then Rav Avigayil Halpern’s reaction, What Makes Judaism Transformational?. I don’t quite know what to think about all this, as a relatively traditional thinker who likes to leave space for the new. I do wonder how much of ivri and similar movements’ rituals and roles are actually new spiritual movements rather than the ancient reawakenings they claim, but either way it’s interesting.

For institution-based gossip/inside baseball, check out this article on NCJW’s recent change in focus: “When National Council of Jewish Women, in a bid to stay relevant in fast-changing times, presented its new strategic plan to local sections last July, it gave them three options: integrate, affiliate or disaffiliate”

There are some excellent photos in this review of Magid Ensemble’s crank puppetry production of ‘Shterna and the Lost Voice.’

Classes and Events

Judaism Unbound is running their intro to judaism class again, as is the Washington Coalition of Rabbis.

SVARA’s fall/winter class catalog is up, including a talmud-and-midrash class!

YIVO’s seminars include one on Bodies, Desire, and Sexuality in Eastern European Jewish History, and one on pogroms and self-defense. Both start in October.

You can also learn Memoir Writing Then and Now: Reading and Writing with Rokhl Feygenberg's The Winding Road, taught by Rokhl Kafrissen at the Yiddish Book Center.

For learning hebrew, check out Mekom Torah’s offerings! I am a happy alum of their Biblical Hebrew for Everyone class, but their other cohorts look excellent as well, including a reading group doing a deep dive into the siddur beginning in January. As far as other languages go, it looks like New Lehrhaus is running a ladino course starting in November!

Events

9/8 and 9/16 Kirva Teshuvah Workshop 5787

9/10 Ruth Rubin and the Study of Yiddish Folksong Today

9/10 Workers Circle Virtual Benefit 2026: An American Tail

9/12-13 Rosh Hashana

9/13 BIJOCSM-BIPOC Rosh Hashanah Virtual Seder with JVP Lab

9/15 Conversation: A Jew in the Woods: Pages from a Diary with Miriam Leiber

9/17 “An Epidemic of Lunacy”: Art, Entertainment, and Fashion in 1930s Warsaw, with Judy Batalion

9/21 Yom Kippur

10/11 Jewish Currents Live (livestreamed all-day event)

10/11 Kaplan, Unmasked – Reading Mordecai M. Kaplan as an “Autistic Hero”

10/12 New Jewish Institutions Skill-Building Boot Camp (livestreamed, not hybrid workshops)

10/15 Montparnasse and the L’école Juive (Jewish School of Paris) “inspired by the Brooklyn Museum’s fall exhibition From Cezanne to Modigliani. […] Following in the footsteps of Chagall,”

10/18 The Pickled City: A Biography of New York Pickles book talk

Pet of the Month

The pets of the month this month are a repeat, Davey and Alexis (yes, named after the siblings from that one tv show!) in a somewhat unseasonal (hanukah-themed) photo). Thanks Alicia for sending them in!

With love,

Meli