Toldot
Hello!
Content notes for this week's newsletter are homophobia, transphobia, white supremacists, sexual assault, and probably more?
Jewish Calendar
This week's torah portion is Toldot. Kadin Henningsen summarized the plot of the parsha in a dvar for a previous year's Trans Day of Remembrance. There's family stuff in there, and masculinity stuff, gender role stuff, power stuff, plenty of stuff. Since Jacob and Esav were twins born of a genderweird mother I can't say I'm surprised by the sheer amount of gender.
https://twitter.com/nonstandardrep/status/1456312553504653315
Some people view Jacob as trans for being smooth/unhairy and smaller and a vegetarian; I personally think this is silly, and he can still be a man and be those things--if he is assigned male at birth (as he was), and grows up to be a man (as he does), I am not convinced this is a trans narrative, even if he transgresses gender norms on the way there (as he does)--sometimes gender non conforming people are still cis. Other people view Esav as the trans one, or more queerphobically as a "man who has sex like a woman".
A lot of these views of either brother as queer boil down to stereotypes used to vilify queer people that, frankly, are also used against jews. We're all shifty and hiding our true nature, or are really too showy about our uniqueness rather than trying to fit in; too meek or too flamboyant, eating the wrong foods, assimilating too hard or avoiding it too hard.
Maybe the story of Jacob and Esav is one of getting stuck in internecine battles and kinship difficulties. The high stakes of the blessing-stealing are so foreign to my mind. The idea that someone can steal someone else's blessing by pretending to be them sounds completely fake!
And: who comes out of this story with a positive reputation and who comes out of it vilified? Who is queer, and are they labeled by a queer person, or one of our allies, or enemies? Both brothers leave with tangled emotions and a blessing of one kind or another, marked by the traumas of the fight and by the strange choices of Rivka and Yitzchak.
What are we doing? Why are we so tied into the ideas of false scarcity of blessing, of supremacy and triumph over others rather than doing what we can to equalize?
Israel problems and antisemitism problems
The ADL's Never is Now virtual antisemitism summit has some decent-looking panels grounded in solidarity and countering online extremism, and some others that, at best, place antizionism and antisemitism as the same and make me want to yell into a pillow.
Israel's accusation of six Palestinian human rights organizations as terrorist continues to make waves and is now officially based on forced testimonies from people not actually associated with any of these six groups. There is a resolution currently in the House of Representatives' Foreign Affairs Committee asking the US to officially push back against these designations. If your representative is on that committee, maybe call them about it.
The Haredim in Israel are being shitty about Women of the Wall again. For context: women are prevented from certain kinds of worship, including holding or reading from the torah, at the kotel (western wall of the temple). An organization called Women of the Wall tends to do some type of protest or action at the kotel on Rosh Chodesh, a holiday where the torah is typically read; often there are counterprotests. This month, the ultraorthodox / pro-traditional-gender-segregation protests were amplified by none other than former prime minister Netanyahu and had a much larger than usual turnout. To the best of my knowledge nobody was injured, despite their best attempts. The article from the Washington Post includes additional frustrated (and very relatable) comments from the feminist activists. (Thematically related, though diaspora content: France ordained their first woman rabbi THIS YEAR.)
Austin, TX has experienced a fair amount of white supremacist activity (and Jewish pushback), including a likely arson attempt at a synagogue. They are fundraising for the repairs. Proud Boys and other white supremacist groups have a habit of traveling in a group place to place and demonstrating, trying to stir up hate and violence. They were recently in my city of Seattle also, though fortunately I do not know of any resulting violence here. Meanwhile, the Charlottesville trials of asshole Unite the Right neonazis continue, and the left-wingers involved are increasingly frustrated with "both sides" reporting when one side literally keeps being bigoted and also committing perjury, and Trump did some more casual antisemitism.
Miscellaneous
I'll be honest, my reaction (even before reading) to Marc Tracy's piece "Inside the Unraveling of American Zionism: How a new generation of Jewish leaders began to rethink their support for Israel" was YESSSSS. I am so glad that reporting and conversations about non- and anti-zionist jewish people, including clergy-in-training, are expanding beyond the jewish press, and that through articles like this more people can find their way to the contemporary jewish left (secular or religious). I love that he explicitly mentioned the spectre of Jewish Continuity and its role in this mess, and that zionism has not always been the unifying call contemporary communities treat it as.
Speaking of jewish continuity and compulsory heterosexuality, Allison Darcy's short story Zochreini is about sex and gender and sexual assault, and how "nice jewish boys" are often not all that nice. A lot of people have similar stories from their jewish youth, as the Union for Reform Judaism and others are discovering--and extra points to JTEC (Jewish Teens for Empowered Consent) for explicitly naming the heternormativity going on here.
https://twitter.com/DBashIdeas/status/1456712522866769923
The Workers Circle is an old-school leftist secular Jewish group that is still doing the good work, including agitating for voting rights.
Happy Jewish Book Month (link includes some delightful vintage posters)! Syracuse University Press has a 50% off jewish studies books sale (Bundist Counterculture in Interwar Poland! Diary of a Lonely Girl, or The Battle against Free Love (translated from Yiddish)! Tenants and Cobwebs: A multilayered novel following the intimate lives of Jewish and Muslim residents of an apartment complex in 1940s Baghdad!), and McFarland has a 25% off one (basketball! The Jewish Story Finder! Superheroes and their Ancient Jewish Parallels!). If I didn't have a huge backlog of books to read I would absolutely be doing some personal shopping. Nebraska U Press, which distributes JPS titles, also has a chanukah sale.
Miranda Sullivan is reviewing zines for New Voices Mag, like these Chanukah zines by Thursday Bram.
Sefaria has a new round of webinars in the upcoming weeks! I highly recommend checking out one (or more) of them if you're interested in using Sefaria more effectively.
Christians are so fucking weird about jewish food and culture, whether it's spanish kosher wine or a cookie-related post probably written by AI that made several people go "am i having a fucking stroke".
404 Not Found – Shop Sarah Day
Sarah Day is a Jewish artist and illustrator based in Seattle. Shop for Judaica, Jewish gifts, vinyl stickers, rainbow-makers, art prints, and jewelry.
Sarah Day Arts uploaded a whole bunch of new products, mostly jewelry but also a few very cute masks!
Hilchot Niddah is not my thing, but if you've always wanted to learn more of it from a less-cis-hetero-perspective, check out Jessica Spencer's new substack!
And a request for help: does anyone have tips on text study with dyslexia? If you cannot reply on twitter, reply to this email and I'll pass your response along.
https://twitter.com/CollagenThief/status/1455335082785447937
Events!
11/7 Singing Sephardic: a concert of Ladino music ($5)
11/11 Mah-jongg in American Jewish Life, a Yiddish Book Center multimedia talk
11/11 Binyan basics: dressing up our roots, a SVARA lesson by Amir Weg
11/14 Documenting Endangered Jewish Languages: Practical, Ethical, and Cultural Issues (panel with speakers of Judeo-Shirazi, Judeo-Arabic, Jewish-Neo-Aramaic, and Judeo-Georgian)
11/14, 11/28, 12/11 Singing into Warmth & Light: 3-Session Workshop with Rena Branson (sliding scale, $54-108)
11/15 The Voice of the Mothers: A Look into Sephardi Feminist Approaches to Tradition with Dr. Angy Cohen ($10)
11/16 Why am I Bukharian if I am not from Bukhara? ($10)
11/18 Trans Day of Remembrance & Resilience: A Night of Learning (with SVARA, Keshet, and Shel Maala)
11/23 A Bukharian Jew in Uzbekistan ($10)
11/28 Chanukah begins
11/30 Reclaiming Identity: Jews of Arab Lands and Iran share stories of identity, struggle and redemption
12/2 The Rich History of Jewish Papercuts, with Deborah Ugoretz. The art, not the injury.
12/12 Ladino Day at UW
12/15 Conversation: Yiddish and Social Justice
Jewish Pet of the Week
The Jewish Pet of the Week is Sluggo, doodled by his human! Check out these cute drawings!
<3
Meli