Vayigash
Hello everyone!
https://twitter.com/em_aytch/status/1467994371035332608?utm_source=pocket_mylist
Jewish Calendar
This week's torah portion is Vayigash, bringing us towards the end of the Joseph story and the 2nd to last parsha in Genesis/Bereshit. It's got hinky ethical choices being made and plenty to wrangle with, about power and teshuva and priorities; maybe next year I will be in a place to dig into some aspects of it myself.
Illegal antiquities, jewish edition
Maybe you've heard of hobby lobby president Steve Green's antiquities smuggling case this past summer. Did you know that evangelicals don't have a monopoly on weirdos smuggling massive amounts of antiquities. no, judaism has one of our very own: Michael Steinhardt, hedge fund jerk who now has to repatriate about 180 of the 1000+ artifacts he illegally obtained "mostly from middle eastern countries". He's been up to this since the early 90s, with a number of his pieces loaned out to reputable museums and the like.
Language and culture
SVARA has their spring classes online, with options ranging from alef-bet to how the rabbis of the talmud determined the shmita rules to a disability-centric class "explor[ing] classical Jewish texts in dialogue with the writing of contemporary (mostly BIPOC) Disability Justice thinkers". Synagogues Rising is also gathering interest for an online alef-bet class.
https://twitter.com/YiddishBookCtr/status/1468653513047740431
Apparently 14th-18th century Jews in Europe liked the Arthurian legends enough to translate them into yiddish! I am side-eyeing the way the author defines Ashkenazi as European, as I imagine many sephardim and other jewish populations were either living in or being kicked out of various countries in europe at the time, but otherwise found this post very educational, and I am a complete sucker for gorgeous illuminated manuscripts.
Sarit Kattan Gribetz wrote about her family's food history centering around her 80 year old father in How Baba's Surprise Pastries Kept Our Family Together. A difficulty of pandemic times for so many of us: eating together in groups or restaurants isn't safe, but food and culture are so intertwined. What can one aging dad do? Re-learn to cook the foods you remember and mail them to relatives.
Misc
Want to relieve some medical debt in honor of the shmita year?
Geoff Manaugh seems to have accidentally reinvented eruvin in his book The Burglar's Guide to the City.
H. Melt's latest poetry book has some surprise jewish content, because none of us are only one segment of identity at a time (cn: nazi content at link).
There's a few chanukah items I want to belatedly link:
amazing pokemon chanukah card
13 branched menorah shitpost thread
menorah themed game jam
and the second annual cheese plate menorah, an idea so good i am tempted to steal it.
https://twitter.com/MarisaElana/status/1467333744474435587?utm_source=pocket_mylist
Events!
12/12 Ladino Day at UW
12/14 philosemitism and antisemitism: anti-racist tools for solidarity and resistance (UK)
12/14 The Justice of Shmita: Debt Cancellation & Building the Spiritual Muscle of Release
12/15 Conversation: Yiddish and Social Justice
12/16 Di Feygl Sho (every other Thursday)
12/16 Yiddish and Social Justice conversation wrapping up YIVO's social justice theme year
12/21 Bubby and Them screening and discussion event with SMQN, Keshet, and SAJ (zoom registration link)
12/25-12/30 Yiddish New York, which includes a 4 day social justice workshop
12/26 Jews vs Aliens: A Chanukah Story, an RPG playthrough
Jewish Pet of the Week
The Jewish Pet of the Week is Jasper, whose human Avra is a subscriber to this very jewsletter! 
See you next week, and shabbat shalom!
<3
Meli