Vezot Habracha
In the continuing “all the shabbats have holidays on them” news, tomorrow is Shemini Atzeret in addition to being the shabbat where we read Vezot Habracha, the last weekly parsha. Today is Hoshana Rabbah, where we whap the willows from the lulav on the ground until the leaves fall off and pray about rain. Tomorrow, Shemini Atzeret. The day after that, Simchat Torah, where we restart our reading of the torah.
Buuuut which day you’re on depends on which denomination’s rules you follow and where you are on the planet. I am tired and nondenominational so I go with non-Reform diaspora rules, where today is Hoshana Rabbah (the sukkot season finale) and tomorrow is Shemini Atzeret (and shabbat) and the day after it is Simchat Torah.
Calendars are so confusing.
On sukkot (specifically, on Shabbat during sukkot) we read Kohelet/Ecclesiastes, so of course I’ve had “Turn, Turn, Turn” stuck in my head all week. It’s a lovely little song of the beginning of the third chapter. And then I listened to a bunch of other Pete Seeger music, including his version of Djankoye, a song about “shut up Jews can totally be farmers” that ~just happened to~ come out around the time the Soviet government was hoping people would move to the middle of nowhere and farm. But I digress.
Here are some online events happening soon:
Urban Adamah is hosting a Yemeni songs event with Anat Halevy Hochberg
A woman-led and -centered Simchat Torah:
Greek Jewish news (thanks, Sephardi Brotherhood of America mailing list, you’re a real pal):
an article about attempts to keep Uighur culture from being wiped out featuring Devin Naar’s parallel work on Thessaloniki Sephardi culture
In Greece itself, there’s good news (no more Golden Dawn party!) and bad news (the Jewish cemetery in Athens was covered in neonazi graffiti).
I’m planning to write up BDS LulavQuest 2020 at some point in zine form, or essay form on the blog. I have not done this yet because my dayjob has been taking pretty much all my energy lately, but I will link it here the week I actually do it. It did resolve well though, if a little late (a few days into the holiday).
I sadly do not have brain-energy for much right now, but if I did, it would decidedly involve Necessary Angels, a book I found out about in the Jewish Currents shabbat reading list relating the works of Kabbalah scholar Gershom Scholem, Marxist philosopher Walter Benjamin, and author Franz Kafka to each other. I have been slowly chipping away at one of Scholem’s kabbalah books, and have been faintly meaning to read Kafka for ages, so this seems like a nice addition to that aspirational reading list set.
Miriam Saperstein also has a zine out called Besamim for Heartbreak. What happens when two people in an interwoven community break up? A havdalah, of sorts. PWYW, 72 pages, looks amazing. There was an interview about it up on New Voices back in September that I missed (oops).
Jewish Pet of the Week is this sweet doggo!
Hopefully next week I’ll be a little more with it and be able to include digressions that are a little more planned, and events and things I actually look for rather than keeping this list to whatever falls on my lap. In any case! see you next time, friendos. <3