February 25, 2022

Vayekhel

Hello everyone! The world is shit but also contains the two cute cats at the end of this email, and a whole lot of really cool jews (like you!).

CW's this week are: antisemitism, anti-Palestinian violence, sexual assault

Jewish Calendar

This week's torah portion is vayekhel! Please listen to its asks in at least one specific case, and observe shabbat as a day of rest (though obviously without the death-to-non-observers part. i'm not about that). Take a breath and put down the stress rectangle (smartphone) and do something else, or nothing for a little while. Shabbos is coming! Or here, depending on your time zone.

This is also shabbat mevarchim rosh chodesh, or the shabbat where we announce the new month: Adar II begins (already?!) on March 3rd. You know what that means...

It's almost Purim!

New TTRPG zine Esther and the Queens, a playable purim retelling through a feminist and queer lens, is fundraising on Kickstarter and has a demo available on itch.io. Looks cute!!

Also, I would love to virtually attend a megillah reading. Got any cool ones?

Matir Asurim is seeking submissions to their purim mailing, due March 5th.

Israel, Zionism, and Antisemitism

Hoo boy this week we are mad about the way mandatory zionism plays into jewish philanthropy, and jewish philanthropy in the seattle area in particular.

First, there's this report from Jewish Currents about Alan Sussman attempting to direct funds from his family's donor advised fund at Federations to B'Tselem, an Israeli human rights group. That donation was blocked, since Federation sees B'Tselem's belief that Israeli policies amount to apartheid as a disqualifier. In 2019 Federation blocked a similar donation to IfNotNow, calling them divisive. As the article points out, it's within Seattle Jewish Federation's right to do this but it is frustrating, and part of a pattern. Right wing zionists can be as loud as they want with their abhorrent views, but stray too far in the direction of pro-Palestine talk and you have to shut up for fear of alienating people and dividing the community.

The other piece, which has gotten quite a bit more attention, is the Benaroya family asking UW for their $5 million donation to be returned because an Israel Studies professor was too critical of israel--and UW decided to go along with this and return it. Universities are notoriously tight-fisted. My guess is they wanted to maintain a relationship to try for future donations, or perhaps this donation didn't have a no take-backs clause as most large donations do.

[Halperin] said there were “donor expectations that were not and could not legally have been stated in the endowment agreement” that became apparent. It became clear, she said, that the the holder of the Benaroya chair was expected to refrain from making “certain political statements” and to “accept the proposition that study of ‘modern Israel’ is incompatible with the concurrent study of ‘Israel/Palestine.'”

If you're an academic in Jewish or Israel Studies and are so motivated, you can sign a letter of support for Dr. Halperin here. The Association for Jewish Studies has released a letter criticizing the decision as well.

I'm aware that having "israel studies" as its own department is a whole political mess. I'm not defending that label, and I'm of the mindset that "political project" and "scholarly field" are never entirely separate in the first place. That being said, direct donor control like this is hinky at best. In this particular example, the support take-back is also pulling the rug out from under the Sephardic Studies department via its treatment of Dr. Naar, who also signed the May 2021 letter--and who is portrayed in The Cholent's feature as some kind of nexus of encouragement spreading dangerous sentiments.

The Cholent even directly compared the May 2021 letter to a letter encouraging Klan ideology, which is frankly hilarious. The letter that started all this, signed by Dr. Halperin and Dr. Naar and many many others, does bring up settler colonialism and Palestinian welfare, and does criticize the Israeli government. It is a document by and for Jewish Studies academics, the vast majority of whom are jewish. It was not antisemitic. Calling Israel colonizers of Palestine is not an antisemitic trope.

Israel's policies are, on the face of things, built to ensure safety and security for Jews, and secondarily as a democracy when possible. Words like apartheid or colonialism are concerning when applied to israel not because they are false, but because they are true. We, as Jews, should be appalled by the actions of the Israeli government, military, and settlers--and many of us are! But when we express this, we are punished or removed from full participation from many Jewish communities.

While this is all building towards some kind of reckoning in American Judaism, I am increasingly convinced Jewish nonprofit funding will be the battleground, somehow. I don't know what it will look like. The path there will be, at best, uncomfortable. But it's past time. I know I am not the only one who's been a part of Jewish events--often not even about Israel!--where we accept funding from Federations or similar with the tacit (or explicit!) agreement that nobody brings up BDS, for instance, or talking around issues of Palestine in general, only discussing it when the funders can't see. This is how our regular religious education programming is. Something has to change, at home and abroad.

Miscellaneous

The trans halakha project is accepting applications to their teshuva writing collective, in order to communally wrangle and build trans halakha. There are more things they're looking for, but only two requirements to join: to be trans, and to have a passion for/personal investment in halakha. "In 2022, [the project] will be addressing she'elot (halakhic questions) related to milah (circumcision), niddah (practices that center menstruation), or another topic that members choose."

Check out this beautiful Kiddush-related art collaboration between my friend and their friend!

The Cairo geniza fragment of the month is in Judeo-Syriac, and contains excerpts from psalms 20 and 15 with a lovely explanation of the social context.

I missed the daring Eve Adams book talk last week but it's online now! Let's watch together. This collection of Eve Adams documents was linked in the event email too.

I can't read this entire post as I refuse to give Substack money, but the free preview of this piece about Miriam Anzovin, the daily daf tiktoker who's faced a boatload of sexism, is big, as is the tiktok itself. More on sexism in Orthodox Judaism in Dr. Hannah Lebovits's twitter thread about harassment she's experienced. I respect the hell out of women who push back on this, whether they remain in orthodox judaism (as in Dr. Lebovits' case) or leave (as Anzovin did).

I'll likely repost this closer to Passover, but Chanda Prescod-Weinstein recently wrote What to the Black Jew Is Passover?, a genius title if i've ever seen one. The content is, of course, also well done: discussing race and american judaism and pesach traditions with important nuance and context. tl;dr keep an eye out for nonblack appropriation of black struggle in a passover context.

Classes coming up

• Hiddur Mitzvah at home, 2/27-3/20

• judaism is so gay, with Rabbi Nikki DeBlosi, 2/28-3/21, $75

• Glikl and her Sisters: The Creative Lives of 17th-Century Jewish Women, 3/8–29, 2022, $75-100, through the Yiddish Book Center

• SVARA's Gemirna Workshops on the sages and rashi, 3/13 and 3/31 (drop in)

• JeLiThin's online cohorts are running for 10 weeks, starting 3/13 and running for 10 weeks--may or may not be a class, but fits well enough in here.

• From Narrowness to Freedom: Preparing for Passover with Fat Torah 3/13-4/10, $90

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

• Queer Yiddish Camp, an online intensive, 5/15-5/27. More info!

Events!

2/27 Undertorah book talk with Rabbi Jill Hammer

2/28 Jewish Languages Today: Endangered, Surviving, and Thriving

3/1 Breaking Walls: Historical and Contemporary Mizrahi Feminist Struggles for Housing in Israel/Palestine. "Sapir Sluzker Amran along with Yali Hashash [...] discuss the role of alternative and community archives by showcasing feminist activism from the 1950’s onwards"

3/2 A Wandering Scribe and his Illustrated Esther Scrolls. "Aryeh Leib ben Daniel of Goray, an 18th century Jewish scribe whose journey across Europe is documented through the decorated and illustrated megillot he created along the way."

3/3 Designing the Daf: The Creation of the Talmud Page as We Know It

3/4 Alt Shabbes: Buenos Diyas (Ladino 101)

3/5 Oneg Havdalah & Concert with Rena Branson, Batya Levine, Rachel Chang, & Aly Halpert

3/6 Jewish Wordle: a conversation with the creators of Ladino, Yiddish, and Jewish English versions

3/8 Italian Opera for the Yiddish-Speaking Masses in Early 20th-Century America

3/9 Wrestling with zionism: a storytelling workshop, from JVP Havurah Network

3/9 Creating Jewish Identity in Twentieth-Century Iran: National Belonging, Education, and Integration

3/13 Gender-Inclusive and Nonbinary Hebrew: Innovations and Classroom Applications

3/13 Vashti Party: an Afternoon of Torah Learning for the Fallen Queen

3/15 Legal Knowledge and Everyday Practice in Medieval Ashkenaz lecture. How representative of everyday life were rabbinic responsas of the time?

3/16 Taanit Esther with Hadar: a full day of online programming, including mincha services

Jewish Pet of the Week

The Jewish Pet of the Week this week is a twofer of void cattes named Loki (shorthair) and Leah (longhair).

<3

Meli