March 18, 2022

Tsav

Hello everyone! This week in jewsletter we have: a purim wrap-up including Judith Butler and Abby Stein (separately), a Deadly Exchange update, a banger of an article about TropeTrainer software, and a kitty!

Also, here, have some birds.

CW's this week are: antisemitism, war in ukraine, police violence

Jewish Calendar

This week's torah portion is Tzav. Mmmm, donuts--i mean bread-based thanksgiving offerings.

It was also pi day recently and ada has a gematria lesson about it.

It was purim this week!

...and there's some stuff that I didn't put in last week's jewsletter!

You still have a couple days to check out Vashti Strikes Back!, a radical purim schpiel radio drama available online from 3/16-3/20.

Nonbinary Jewish feminist Judith Butler (yes, that one) thinks latkes are better than hamantashen.

I am loving Rabbi Abby Stein's commentary mid-Megillah reading for Romemu. She's right! If you aren't using your privilege to help people what are you doing!!!!!

Ukraine war, Israel, Zionism, and Antisemitism

Check out this Ukraine solidarity toolkit from yiddishists with ukraine, ייִדישיסטן מיט אוקראינע (Thanks Maia!)

We also have a piece about Jewish masculinity stereotypes around President Zelenskyy called From Schlemiel to Super Hero (what a title!). There's some some digging into the bizarre binary view of soft diasporist jewish man to Zionist "muscle jew" ideal, regardless of his intent:

the chain of associations from diasporic effeminacy and the transformation of Zelensky[y]’s initial image in the West as a schlemiel into that of a Maccabee carries an often deliberate reference to both the Holocaust and the strong, virile Jewish state as its cultural redeemer. One can argue that Zelensky[y] has been transformed discursively from a Jewish “sissy” into gentile knighthood.

The activists behind Deadly Exchange have claimed for years that the programs sending US police to train in Israel are intensifying police violence here. Jewish Currents got access to an internal ADL memo from June 2020 (PDF link) confirming that 1) the ADL was aware of the bad press; 2) they were at least a little concerned about the relationship to police violence in the US. "Seeking to link Israel as a state to US police misconduct is a bizarre excuse," said George Selim, ADL SVP of programs, to Jewish Currents in summer 2020. “We must ask ourselves if, upon returning home, those we train are more likely to use force," said George Selim internally in summer 2020.

I am not at all claiming that these programs are responsible for the majority of police violence in the US, but the exchange program certainly does not help prevent it and seems likely to worsen the problem.

in other news, i am so tired of talking about antisemitism, and David Schraub nails one reason the discourse around it is always so terrible:

I'm glad to hear Elad Nehorai regrets his role in accusing the Women's March and, later, Ilhan Omar of antisemitism. Thanks for walking that one back. An actual apology would probably be better, not sure if that's happened, but here's a start.

An accidental little reactions essay

There once was a piece of software called TropeTrainer. It doesn't exist anymore but it was beautifully profiled by S.I. Rosenbaum in Input Magazine. Kol hakavod to S.I. and to editor Mark Yarm! This article hit so many of my interests in deeply thoughtful, engaging, respectful ways. Please click through and read it even if you're not interested in torah, or in queerness, or in software histories; but if you are interested in any of that, please for your own sake, give it a read.

I never used TropeTrainer, being at the end of the cassette tape bnei mitzvah generation, but its legacy is large. I love reading torah. I loved it since I got my first cassette tape of my congregation's cantor chanting "mercha teepcha munach etnachta" and such alongside a many-times-xeroxed handout showing each of those little weird marks that are sometimes printed with hebrew words that aren't the vowels. (If you want to learn yourself, tools other than tropetrainer do still exist, plus http://cantoreducator.com which I have not myself used but have heard good things about.)

I still only know one nusach (set of sounds or tunes) for leyning (reading/chanting) torah, and another for haftarah, and vaguely know how to chant megillah. But what I would love, one day, is to learn to chant the torah the traditional Sephardic and (especially) Romaniote ways, like my ancestors did on my father's side. Some of this is on me for not learning it--sephardic torah reading resources definitely exist--but on the Romaniote side, it's more complicated. So, learning the surprising breadth of nusach available in TropeTrainer really tugged my heartstrings, as it did for Alexander here:

And the queerness is relevant, too. I've been a queer jew all my life, though I spent a long time ignoring the queerness and a shorter-but-still-long time ignoring the jewishness. Hearing that this software's birth and maintenance featured collaboration between a gay orthodox man and a trans woman whose mother was a rabbi made me incredibly emotional. Queer jews have always been here, contributing materially to jewish culture. If the things we've made then disappear, it becomes that much easier for bigots to paper over our existence. Here is a piece of queer participation that will remain, even when the software itself is gone, due to the eloquent tribute.

Listening to the sound linked at the end of the article, I looked it up and found Bereshit 24:53. How fitting that at the end of all this, we finish with a piece of a love story--well, before the love part, during the betrothal negotiation of Rivka and Yitzchak. (Twelve verses later she goes "oh no he's hot" and falls off her camel.) A beginning of a new life for Rivka, and the end of her life as it was. The beginning of--not a new life for TropeTrainer, but a new set of public memories and facts, a remembrance that more completely serves the people who brought it into existence, a fitting memorial for a wonderful piece of technology that facilitated so much leyning.

Miscellaneous

I also highly recommend reading Abraham Riesman's article on (mis)understanding the book of Job, about despair and misery and rolling up your sleeves to fix things when G-d won't, of Job's depression snark riffing on torah passages, on the different ways Christians and Jews interpret our shared biblical texts. And: when the future disappears (which also may be a trauma and/or burnout thing), we mire ourselves in that grief until somewhere in the process, in the yelling and suffering and complaining and working through things, we can cultivate a type of hope in pitiful screwed-over humanity. "Maybe the moral of Job is this: If God won’t create just circumstances, then we have to."

Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg's Life is a Sacred Text email this Monday was about the ten commandments, specifically comparing what Judaism traditionally thinks and says around them (via Maimonides) and what twitter randos mostly raised in christianity think. (I did also add a lecture she'll be giving on Sunday about Torah of Repro Rights to the events list below.)

Apparently one of the top level domains (TLDs) available is .kosher, but unfortunately for us weirdos it's controlled exclusively by OK for use by actual kosher establishments. Which I suppose is fair, on one level, but it does also mean we will never get a .kosher equivalent of kosherqueers.gay. (Other hechshers are like "wtf this is a silly monopoly", apparently.) Also awkward: ICANN denying an application for .halal to be a TLD because religious matters are too sensitive. Hrm.

Matir Asurim, an organization helping incarcerated folks in the US and Canada, is collecting submissions for their pesach mailer! The deadline is 3/25 to submit things. I participated in the Tu Bishvat mailer by modifying something I had already, though, and that was a great way to contribute without a ton of extra work on my end, if I'm honest. Maybe you already wrote (or drew) something about Pesach! submit it there.

The first US bat mitzvah was 100 years ago, of Mordecai Kaplan's daughter Judith, and we have at least one picture of it!

Yiddish book center's got an annotated guide to shalom aleichem (the author). Love an annotated guide.

The food site The Nosher is hiring an editor/writer. Or, if you'd rather spend money, you could buy an excellent pendant or print at 25% off at Sarah Day Arts!

Whether or not judaism and psychedelics is your thing, the new Speaking From Experience column from Ayin Press just might be.

I missed this previous Jewish Community Library event Dybbuks, Robots, and Golems: Exploring Jewish Science Fiction and Fantasy with Valerie Frankel, but good news! it's on youtube, as are other events like How Judeo-Arabic Literature and Culture Shaped Judaism as We Know It with Miriam Goldstein.

Classes coming up

• Working Knowledge: Labor in Jewish Thought 3/7-3/28, four standalones from Dr. David Zvi Kalman

• Jewish Anarchist Salon, a series of talks and discussions, every other Sunday 3/13-5/15 (drop-in)

• Reinventing Conversion: Discover Its Origins, Imagine Its Future: a one-shot from Shel Maala, 3/30

• Queer Yiddish Camp, an online intensive, 5/15-5/27. More info at the website (link updated)!

Events!

3/19 Crying Nazi Dinner Theater: An Antifascist Purimshpil (Part 2)

3/20 The Torah of Reproductive Freedom by Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg (lecture)

3/22 The Israeli Black Panthers’ Struggle for Human Rights (register)

3/23 Death Over Dinner: Jewish Edition

3/24 Trans Halakha Project One-Year Anniversary Celebration! (trans people only)

3/24 Haggadah zine workshop

4/2 Queer Yiddish Camp Cabaret Fundraiser!

Jewish Pet of the Week

The Jewish Pet of the Week this week is Saji! What a helper.

Shabbat shalom and happy belated Purim,

<3

Meli