Vaera
Hello new friends! This newsletter was mentioned in the Trans Hallel zoom and on a queer jewish zoom events Facebook page, and now there are more people reading this than I ever expected (89 subscribers!) Very exciting!
Monday is MLK day. Every year on that day I read something he wrote in order to commemorate it, such as the Letter from a Birmingham Jail (especially as the excoriation of white moderates hits more forcefully and accurately in context). If you would like to take on this tradition, please read a whole speech(/letter/article/etc), not just inspirational pull-quotes.
In other news I am very tired but fortunately it is almost shabbat.
Tikkun put out a neat interview with the guy who runs Narrow Bridge Candles touching on reimagining judaism from the ground up, jewish antizionism and ritual, and more.
Also, Sheldon Adelson died! He was a bad person and now he is gone. I really don’t know if the landscape of Jewish philanthropy will change or not, as his family seems similarly positioned to him politically, but if nothing else he’s been a symbol of deeply conservative pro-Trump American Jewish zionism and we could all use a little less of that.
This excellent explanation of Arendt’s banality of evil caught my eye this week, though it remains difficult to justify centering Hannah Arendt due to her antiblack racism.
Ma Nishtana has a Kickstarter campaign for a new commentary on Bereshit. It is orthodox and “not left-leaning just to be left”, but it does profess to hold a “modern and non-myopic lens on race and gender”. It will be interesting to see how this turns out.
Finally, events! Most events on here I included last week; new ones have an asterisk at the front.
1/15 Rabba Rona is doing another LGBTQ kabbalat shabbat service, 6:30 PM tonight
*1/26 there’s a radical tu bishvat seder $18-36 run by actual experts and professionals, unlike mine, which will be by the seat of my pants
1/27 i am gonna have an internet seder about the trees holiday at 6pm PST using my zine haggadah.
Saturdays at 5:30 PST Micha Chetrit runs a weekly sefardi/mizrachi havdalah. Email him at smhavdalah@gmail.com for weekly reminders.
Sephardi Mizrachi Q Network has a few events coming up.
1/24 Tour Italy via the music of italian jews: Cantanta Ebraica $20
2/12 next Trans Hallel zoom
*3/7-3/9 KlezNorth is a UK-based klezmer festival that will be online this year.
*3/17-8/31 Folklore of Ashkenaz YIVO class
The Jewish Pet of the Week this week is Cinder.
I am almost through my backlog of pets to feature! If I haven’t featured yours and you’d like me to, send me a picture over email or twitter.
Shabbat shalom,
Meli