issue #007: a new year (again)

and how lucky to have multiple new years each year!

as a post-soviet jew, soviet new year’s / Новый Год has always been my favourite. it’s big and campy, colourful, loud, special. all the superficial elements of christmas, but decidedly not christmas. when i was a kid, it was everything. we’d go to a family friend’s house where there would be multiple tables covered with plates and bowls of the best food: blini with red caviar, herring under a red fur coat, boiled potatoes, shashlik, plov, olivye, every kind of pickled anything, cold-smoked mackerel, i could go on… with napoleon and smetannik for desert. there’d be a yolka (new year’s tree) in the living room decorated with my favourite concave-reflector ornaments. a tv would be blasting the campiest russian-language novy god programming (think the oscars but camp), and all us kids would run into the basement to choreograph dances to spice girls songs. we’d stay until about 3am, all the kids eventually falling asleep in a pile, and then head home and be delighted to find that ded moroz (grandfather frost) had delivered gifts under our own yolka.

it feels impossible to celebrate that way now, but two years ago — inspired by newfound post-soviet jewish community — i decided to get a yolka each new year’s and it’s given me a dose of that special, nostalgic time.

i know we jews have another new year (several, in fact!), but this one’s mine too and i unapologetically love it. it’s an opportunity to set goals and intentions, and recommit to (or discard) the existing ones. this past year i really leaned into prioritizing my creative pursuits, and it felt beautiful. this year i want more community and i want to be intentional in crafting it. i hope that, however you feel about this new year, you have health, healing, love, and community around you to keep resisting all the bullshit. C Hовым Годом, С Новым Счастьем!

postcard by by I. Dergilyov, 1974 via Soviet Postcards

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some housekeeping

• this newsletter post is “too long” for your email & will get cut off. go to shtetlcrier.substack.com to read the entire post

• new events that haven’t appeared in a prior issue are marked with 🆕

• an event appearing in this newsletter is not an endorsement of said event

• this newsletter is free & compiled with love for community. and i wouldn’t say no if you ever wanted to buy me a coffee

• i would love to see more canadian events outside of toronto in future issues. if you know progressive jews living outside toronto, please share this newsletter with them

& lastly: help me get the word out about 🧿SHTETL CRIER! share this newsletter / tiktok / instagram reel / instagram post / facebook post

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🇨🇦 canadian events

lecture series 
Yiddish Radicals: Yiddish Literature and the Progressive Left (UJPO Winnipeg) 

📆January 7, February 11, March 3, 2024 / 10:30AM CT
📍Manitoba > Winnipeg > 825 Lanark St. OR virtual

UJPO Winnipeg invites you to take part in our Yiddish Lecture Series with Dr. Itay Zutra, and I. L. Peretz Folk School Yiddish Teaching Fellow.
 
This lecture series will feature Yiddish literature from late 19th Century Eastern-Europe to contemporary North-America. We will discuss various writers and literary texts examining the radicalization of Eastern European Yiddish speaking Jews and the complicated and innovative ways Jews on the left chose to reflect on their Jewish past and form a new progressive future.

Jan 7 - Soviet Yiddish: Moyshe Kulbak's "The Zalmanyaners"
Feb 11 - American Yiddish Proletarian Poetry from the Sweatshop to Proletpen
Mar 3 - Post-Radicals: Daniel Kahan and the Legacy of the Bund 
Learn more

For: Everyone 
Tags: 📚Education, ✊Social Justice, Yiddish 
🤔Questions?

event 
Tu BiShvat Community Hike (Shoresh) 

📆January 7, 2024 / 2-4PM ET  
📍Ontario > Toronto

The New Year of the Trees is a wonderful time to get outside in the winter and spend time in the forest with your community. Join us for an all-ages hike to celebrate the new year/birthday of the trees through ecology awareness, guided exploration, and fun activities. We'll meet at David Balfour Park Trail Entrance (Ravine pedestrian access near 20 Avoca Ave, Toronto) and end at Milkman’s Lane access point. Learn more

For: Everyone, Kids 
Tags: 📚Education, 🌿Nature, 🌚Holiday Observance 
🤔Questions? info@shoresh.ca

performance 
🆕Sound & Sense - Lenka Lichtenberg’s Thieves of Dreams (Jewish Studies at York University) 

📆January 14, 2024 / 3-5PM ET  
📍Ontario > Toronto > Sandra Faire and Ivan Fecan Theatre, 110 ACE (Accolade East Building) at 83 York Blvd.

York University is proud to present 2023 Juno Award winner Lenka Lichtenberg and her deeply personal magnum opus Thieves of Dreams. The project is based on recently discovered poems written by her grandmother Hana in the years 1942-1945 while she was imprisoned in Theresienstadt, a WWII concentration camp in Czechoslovakia. In an immersive, multi-media performance, Hana’s powerful poems of love, relationships, dreams of far-away places, hope and faith come to life through a gripping narrative built on the music from the album, spoken word and storytelling, archival footage, sand art and videos. The show’s music ranges from multi-part a cappella compositions to chamber music and jazz, with songs and poems in their English translations. Learn more

For: Everyone 
Tags: 🎨Art & Craft, 🎶Music, Holocaust

event 
🆕Bubie’s Tapes (Jon Hedderwick, presented by Public Energy) 

📆January 17, 2024 / 8-9:15PM ET   
📍Ontario > Peterborough > The Theatre on King, 171 King St.

While preparing a pot of matzo ball soup for his daughter, Jon Hedderwick recounts personal and family experiences from the Russian Revolution, through the Holocaust and beyond, as told by his Bubie Sarah in cassette tape recordings she left behind. Through these stories, Bubie’s Tapes reveals much about the history and ongoing impacts of antisemitism in Canada and around the world. The piece also explores the current rise in antisemitism alongside Islamophobia, and the ways that charges of antisemitism have been mobilized to forestall criticism of the State of Israel. Learn more

For: Everyone 
Tags: 🥳Social, ✊Social Justice, 🙏Religion & Spirituality, 🇮🇱Israel/🇵🇸Palestine, Food, Theatre
🤔Questions? Admin@publicenergy.ca

event 
A Very Fruity Tu B'Shvat (LGBTQ+ at the J) 

📆January 25, 2024 / 7-9PM ET  
📍Ontario > Toronto > Miles Nadal JCC, 750 Spadina Ave.

Celebrate the birthday of the trees with LGBTQ+ at the J! Jewish people around the world give their gratitude to plants and eat delicious fruit to welcome in the blossoming spring for Tu B'Shvat. We hope you'll join us to celebrate with your LGBTQ+ Jewish community, fruity snacks, and some holiday themed crafts. Learn more

For: Queer & Trans Jews 
Tags: 🥳Social, 🌚Holiday Observance 
🤔Questions? emunahw@mnjcc.org

course 
🆕The Behemoth in the Wild: Compassion, Uncertainty, and the Quest for Meaning in the Book of Job (Lishma Jewish Learning Project) 

📆starts January 31, 2024 / 7-9PM ET  
📍Ontario > Toronto > 750 Spadina Ave.

This introductory course is intended for those seeking a foundational understanding of the biblical Job story, in which the phenomena and consequences of human suffering and uncertainty are explored at length. Drawing upon existential and archetypal modalities, course instructor Benjamin Hackman will seek to illuminate what the text has to teach us about cultivating acceptance to the unknown and to reconciling ourselves to existences in which bad things happen without discernible cause. Learn more 

For: Adults (20s-30s) 
Tags: 📚Education, 🥳Social, 🙏Religion & Spirituality 
🤔Questions? LaurenS@mnjcc.org

course 
🆕Revisiting Israel from the Dawn of Modernity to Our Time (Lishma Jewish Learning Project) 

📆starts January 31, 2024 / 7-9PM ET  
📍Ontario > Toronto > 750 Spadina Ave.

This course will explore some ways “Israel” has been understood in the modern world, by Jews and Christians from the sixteenth century to the twenty-first, and provide foundations for out-of-the-box thinking about the future of Israel/Palestine. Far from a comprehensive history, the course will offer a view into lesser-known approaches to “Israel” – the people, the concept and the place – that have played an undeniable role in shaping Jewish-Christian relations, messianic movements, Zionism, and Western understandings of the middle east. At the end of the course we will engage with a work of Palestinian history and its view of Israel, to consider the possibility that a more diverse understanding of “Israel” on our part may build bridges and provide connections that were initially harder to find. Learn more

For: Adults (20s & 30s) 
Tags: 📚Education, 🥳Social, ✊Social Justice, 🙏Religion & Spirituality, 🇮🇱Israel/🇵🇸Palestine 
🤔Questions? LaurenS@mnjcc.org

course 
🆕The Mitzvah of Pleasure: Embodied Sex and Relationship Education (Lishma Jewish Learning Project) 

📆starts January 31, 2024 / 7-9PM ET  
📍Ontario > Toronto > 750 Spadina Ave.

Grounded in the Jewish belief that pleasure is one of the core foundations to a healthy, fulfilling, spiritual life, this workshop series will provide the space for us to explore pleasure, both in theory and action, as it appears in our inter- and intra-personal lives. This course will be delivered through movement and body-awareness activities, poetry/text readings, self-reflection and group discussion, with the goals of increasing our mind/body connection, deepening our relationship to self, inviting more pleasure into our daily lives, and improving the health of our relationships. All activities will be accommodated for participants of any/all abilities (physical, emotional, etc.). Learn more

For: Adults (20s & 30s) 
Tags: 📚Education, 🥳Social, ✨Wellness 
🤔Questions? LaurenS@mnjcc.org

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💻 virtual

workshop / class 
Creative Rest with K. Shoshana Brown (Jewish Studio Project) 

📆January 4, 2024 / 6-7:15PM ET, 3-4:15PM PT 
💻virtual

Sustenance for collective liberation! Nourish your creativity to sustain yourself in the work of collective liberation. Come relax into reverie, replenish and unwind in Creative Rest with K. Shoshana Brown! Together we will explore spiritual multiplicity and the path to aligning our spiritual practice with our political values and how to find our way home.

During this 75 minute virtual session we’ll start with a spiritual framing grounded in Torah from Rabbi Adina Allen before hearing from our guest presenter. Using the Jewish Studio Process - a unique methodology combining practices from the field of art therapy with a reimagined approach to Jewish learning and spirituality - we’ll process and integrate what’s been shared. Together we’ll build our collective understanding of and strategies for creative rest to sustain us in the work of social change. Learn more

For: Everyone 
Tags: 🎨Art & Craft, ✊Social Justice, 🙏Religion & Spirituality, ✨Wellness 
🤔Questions? info@jewishstudioproject.org

concert 
Challenging the Theatre of Memory: Yiddish Songs Beyond Kitsch and Stereotype (YIVO) 

📆January 4, 2024 / 7-9PM ET  
💻virtual option

Performing Yiddish music in post-war Germany and Austria comes with a set of expectations and assumptions about Jewish culture. In this lecture-concert, Yiddish musicians and researchers Isabel Frey and Benjy Fox-Rosen confront these expectations, challenging the so-called “Theater of Memory” where Jewish roles are limited and often instrumentalized to fit into the broader dominant cultural narrative.

The evening’s musical journey begins with nostalgic Yiddish songs before moving to unaccompanied folk songs collected through ethnographic fieldwork. It continues with partisan and resistance songs from the Holocaust and concludes with new Yiddish music by the artists themselves. Through musical performance, dialogue, and short essayistic fragments, Frey and Fox-Rosen reflect on the myth of the shtetl, the ruptures and continuities of oral transmission, the weight of Holocaust memory culture and their own attempts to creatively deal with the expectations inherent to performing Jewish music in the German-speaking world. Learn more

For: Everyone 
Tags: 🎶Music, Yiddish, Holocaust 
🤔Questions? info@yivo.org

course  
🆕Zohar with Dr. Shaiya Rothberg (The Torah Studio)  

📆starts January 7, 2024 / 12-1:30PM ET, 9-10:30AM PT
💻virtual

Discover Torah anew with Judaism’s core book of mysticism, the Zohar. Each week, explore the Kabbalistic worlds hidden within a selection from the Torah, with activist and teacher Shaiya Rothberg. No prior experience with Torah or Kabbalah is expected. Soak in the secret waters! Get a Class Pass for all 10 weeks, or buy a Drop In ticket any time, all for $5-25 a class (CWYP). Learn more

For: Adults
Tags: 📚Education, 🙏Religion & Spirituality 
🤔Questions? lexi@thetorahstudio.org

workshop / class 
Creating with the Moon: Rosh Chodesh Sh'vat (Jewish Studio Project) 

📆January 7, 2024 / 1-2:30PM ET, 10-11:30AM PT
💻virtual

Nourish your creative spirit through art making with Rabbi Bec Richman (for those of all genders!). Ground yourself in the power of the new moon! As the tiny crescent becomes visible in the night sky, Rosh Chodesh offers us an opportunity to refresh our dreams and desires. Together we’ll reweave ourselves into the cycle of Jewish time and nourish our creative spirit so that we might enter the month refreshed and renewed.

During this session we’ll use the Jewish Studio Process, a unique methodology combining practices from the field of art therapy with a reimagined approach to Jewish learning, to cultivate our inherent creativity as a spiritual practice. Learn more

For: Everyone 
Tags: 🎨Art & Craft, 🌚Holiday Observance 
🤔Questions? info@jewishstudioproject.org

course 
A Spark of Impenetrable Darkness:  Queer Kabbalah for the Revolution (Elana-June Margolis)

📆starts January 7, 2024 / 4-6:30PM ET, 1-3:30PM PT
💻virtual

Join Elana-June Margolis for a deep dive into the Es Hayiim (Tree of Life) in beloved queer/trans community. In this time of enormous shattering and unspeakable horror, we will invoke the diasporic magic & mystery of the Es Hayiim to guide and hold us through the transformation required to meet this moment and endure this time together, in service of our personal healing and our work towards collective liberation for Palestinians and all peoples, including us. Learn more

For: Queer & Trans Jews 
Tags: 📚Education, ✊Social Justice, 🙏Religion & Spirituality 
🤔Questions? elana.june.margolis@gmail.com

course  
🆕Psalms with Lexi Kohanski (The Torah Studio)  

📆starts January 8, 2024 / 8-9:30PM ET, 5-6:30PM PT
💻virtual

The psalms sing -- of wild nature, the pursuit of justice, of our all too human lives. Why do the wicked prosper? What is our place in the world? Who is God to us? In the face of these unanswerable questions, the Psalms respond with songs of the heart. If you're looking to find meaning and support in the hard times, this is your class. Each week we'll learn one psalm in Hevruta/Learning Partners. We will use the framework of poetic images to understand the text, and we'll use Shefa Gold's "shining line" to develop personal meaning. Get a Class Pass for all 10 weeks, or buy a Drop In ticket any time, all for $5-25 a class (CWYP). Learn more 

For: Adults
Tags: 📚Education, 🙏Religion & Spirituality 
🤔Questions? lexi@thetorahstudio.org

courses 
YIVO Winter Semester Courses (YIVO) 

📆start January 9, 2024  
💻virtual

So many courses to choose from! Here are some that caught my eye:
- The Food Culture of Ashkenaz: On Two Sides of the Atlantic
- Jews and American Radicalism in the 20th Century
- The Jews of Argentina
- Yiddish Culture in the Ghettos and Camps
- The Final Draft - A Creative Writing Workshop (taught by the Irena Klepfisz!)

For: Adults 
Tags: 📚Education
🤔Questions? info@yivo.org

event 
Beyond Redlining: Grappling with Jewish Identity and Justice for Palestine (Boston Workers Circle) 

📆January 9, 2024 / 7-8:30PM ET, 4-5:30PM PT 
💻virtual

Jewish identity in the United States has increasingly become conflated with unwavering support of, allegiance to, and belief in the State of Israel. How then, when we have a strong critique of Israel’s actions (especially in recent weeks) or perhaps even its foundation as a religious or ethnonational state, can we connect meaningfully with our Jewish heritage and find a home in the larger Jewish community? And how can we withstand the pressures of redlining, or threats of expulsion from the larger community, designed to force a consensus that may violate our values?

Come learn about three progressive Jewish communities who have dealt with this challenge, and whose Jewish identity and understanding of justice for Palestine are neither defined nor constrained by the Jewish establishment’s positions on Israel.

Rabbi Brant Rosen – Tzedek Chicago
Talie Lewis – Kavod Israel/Palestine Task Force, Boston
Rabbi Rebecca Zimmerman-Hornstein – Boston Workers Circle 
Learn more

For: Everyone 
Tags: 🇮🇱Israel/🇵🇸Palestine 
🤔Questions? info@circleboston.org

course 
🆕Art Midrash with Jay Smith (The Torah Studio) 

📆starts January 9, 2024 / 8-9:30PM ET, 5-6:30PM PT
💻virtual

Looking to creatively connect to the weekly Torah portion? Join teacher Jay Smith to discover how art-making can deepen your relationship with the Torah. Each week there will be a new series of creative prompts to spark conversation and provide scaffolding to push you (warmly) out of your comfort zones. Join us to learn more about yourself, the text, and most importantly, the relationship between the two. This class is for people who are interested in:
- Developing a text-based, spiritual art-making practice
- Diving deeper into your existing art practice utilizing creative prompts and exploring new materials
- Discovering new ways of relating to sacred Jewish text
Get a Class Pass for all 10 weeks, or buy a Drop In ticket any time, all for $5-25 a class (CWYP). Learn more

For: Adults
Tags: 🎨Art & Craft, 🙏Religion & Spirituality, ✨Wellness
🤔Questions? lexi@thetorahstudio.org

course 
Confessions of a Yiddish Writer: The Life and Work of Chava Rosenfarb (Yiddish Book Center) 

📆starts January 10, 2024 / 7-8:30PM ET, 4-5:30PM PT 
💻virtual

Chava Rosenfarb (1923–2011), a major Yiddish novelist, essayist, and short story writer, was one of the few writers to compose fiction about the Holocaust in Yiddish. Her works remain essential reading on World War II-era and postwar Jewish life. After beginning her literary career by writing poetry in the Lodz Ghetto, Rosenfarb endured Auschwitz and Bergen-Belson and lived in a Displaced Persons camp before settling in Montreal, where she spent the rest of her literary career.
 
Join the Yiddish Book Center’s Seb Schulman, Rosenfarb’s daughter and translator Goldie Morgentaler, and other special guests to delve into Rosenfarb’s short stories, essays, and novel excerpts, while considering questions of translation, literary portrayal of genocide and atrocity, and the challenges of being a woman Yiddish writer. This course is designed for a general audience. No knowledge of Yiddish is required. Learn more

For: Everyone 
Tags: 📚Education, Yiddish 
🤔Questions? jyoung@yiddishbookcenter.org

course 
🆕Torah Study with Liana Wertman (The Torah Studio) 

📆starts January 10, 2024 / 8-9:30PM ET, 5-6:30PM PT
💻virtual

Torah Study is our foundational course led by founder Liana Wertman. Take this opportunity to learn, refresh, and deepen the skills of Torah study that will guide you in this class and beyond. Do it one parsha/Torah portion at a time. Give yourself the gift of learning not only with an incredible community, but also in the ancient learning cycle of our people. This kind of learning only gets better with practice, and we’ve created this space exactly for this purpose. Get a Class Pass for all 10 weeks, or buy a Drop In ticket any time, all for $5-25 a class (CWYP). Learn more

For: Adults
Tags: 📚Education, 🙏Religion & Spirituality 
🤔Questions? lexi@thetorahstudio.org

course
🆕Revolutionary Jewish Nonviolence (Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb) 

📆starts January 10, 2024 / 7-8:15PM ET, 4-5:15PM PT
💻virtual

Strengthen the vitality of Jewish revolutionary nonviolence through ritual practice in multi-heritage/multi-generational ceremony directed at social change. Explore legacies of Jewish and multi-heritage rituals born out of catastrophic loss and loving solidarity. Share how ceremony functions in contemporary emergent multi-heritage/faith networks dedicated to revolutionary nonviolence and social change. Learn more

For: Everyone 
Tags: ✊Social Justice, 🙏Religion & Spirituality
🤔Questions? rabbilynng@gmail.com

course 
🆕Choosing the Tribe: Jewish Conversion, Past, Present, Future (Judaism Unbound) 

📆starts January 14, 2024 / 7-8:30PM ET, 4-5:30PM PT
💻virtual

‘You can’t convert to Judaism, right?’ ‘Don’t you have to be turned away three times?’ ‘Did conversion even exist in the Bible?’ ‘Are converts real Jews?’ Let’s separate fact from fiction, bust some myths, and discover exciting new frameworks about conversion to Judaism. In this three part mini-course, we’ll see what conversion looked like thousands of years ago, how the Rabbis of the Talmud ‘invented’ the concept as we understand it today, and how there has always been a wide range of attitudes to conversion, from the hostile to the welcoming. We’ll also look at how modernity shifted the discourse on conversion as Jews discovered new freedoms in a new world and what the reality of conversion looks like today on the ground. Finally, we’ll take a speculative look at the (exciting and important) future of conversion and take into account new developments, including the Internet, emergent communities in the Global South and the post-COVID era. Learn more

For: Everyone 
Tags: 📚Education, 🙏Religion & Spirituality 
🤔Questions? hello@judaismunbound.com

course 
🆕Cosmic Bodies: Celebrating the Wisdom Within Us Through Creativity (Judaism Unbound) 

📆starts January 15, 2024 / 8-9:30PM ET, 5-6:30PM PT 
💻virtual

LGBTQIA+ folks are among the most creative people on this planet, creating realities and reimagining a world from the inside out—not of how things are but to how things could be. We are visionaries. In what has been a time of isolation for so many people, this interactive workshop is a space to connect–to community, ourselves, and to creative curiosity. We will gather as an online vibrant collective of LGBTQIA+ folks who want to nurture their inner artist by creating uplifting and empowering art through exploring and celebrating the diversity, complexity, and beauty of Queer and Gender Expansive bodies. We will forge new relationships to creative practice as a tool for personal and collective transformation weaving in culture and spiritual identities. Each workshop is divided into: solo exploration of your creative craft, community connection where we discuss our work as a group, and quiet time for personal reflection. We will be using some Jewish sources about the magic of the body as a springboard for exploration. Learn more

For: Queer & Trans Jews 
Tags: 🎨Art & Craft, 🥳Social, ✨Wellness 
🤔Questions? hello@judaismunbound.com

course 
Hablando Torah: Hablando Torah: Conversations On God, Faith and Jewish Theology (Jewtina y Co.) 

📆starts January 16, 2024 / 7-8:30PM ET, 4-5:30PM PT
💻virtual

We don’t talk much about God these days. For many, the word itself can be off putting. And yet, there is a palpable search and yearning for spirituality in our communities. Jewtina y Co. and Jewish Educator, Ruben Rais warmly invite you to a four-part learning series where we will attempt to revisit questions of God in Jewish thought. What do Jews believe in and how do we talk about the divine? What language and ideas in our ancient traditions resonate with us today?

Session 1 - Between Faith and Doubt - What Does It Mean to Believe?  
Session 2 - How Do We Talk About God?
Session 3 - Dealing with Tragedy
Session 4 - Wrestling with God 
Learn more

For: Latin Jews 
Tags: 🙏Religion & Spirituality 
🤔Questions?

course 
🆕Mishnah Unbound (Judaism Unbound) 

📆starts January 16, 2024 / 8-9:30PM ET, 5-6:30PM PT
💻virtual

"Mishnah." It's a word that floats around a lot in Jewish spaces, but often without being defined. Maybe, at best, it is termed "the first part of the Talmud." This is...true. Sort-of? But it's also incorrect in a number of senses. And more than just being incorrect, there are ways in which this notion of the Mishnah -- where it is valuable only because it leads to a later text (the Gemara/Talmud) -- comes with many downsides. So we're gonna embody a different orientation to the Mishnah, through a participatory, interactive, 3-session class! Here, we'll treat the Mishnah not as a precursor to anything else, but as deeply wise on its own terms. Learn more

For: Everyone 
Tags: 📚Education, 🙏Religion & Spirituality 
🤔Questions? hello@judaismunbound.com

course 
🆕Jewish and...Buddhist? Pagan? Christian? Can You Do That? (Judaism Unbound) 

📆starts January 16, 2024 / 12-1:30PM ET, 9-10:30AM PT
💻virtual

Let's talk about the experiences of people practicing Judaism alongside another religion. Wait, what? Why? How? Actually, people all over the world are multiple religious practitioners. In Japan, historically people have observed both Shinto and Buddhist traditions. Across the Americas, people practice indigenous traditions, or African diasporic traditions, or both, alongside Christianity. How does this intersect with colonialism, other forms of non-binary or fluid identity, and intercultural or mixed race heritage? And, what are the benefits and challenges when one of your religions is Judaism? Join author Susan Katz Miller, the foremost expert on interfaith families practicing more than one religion, for a lively three-session conversation series on religious multiplicity. Learn more

For: Everyone 
Tags: 📚Education, 🙏Religion & Spirituality 
🤔Questions? hello@judaismunbound.com"\

workshop / class 
How to Hold an Inclusive B'Mitzvah (LGBTQ+ at the J) 

📆January 17, 2023 / 7-8:30PM ET, 4-5:30PM PT
💻virtual

Wondering how to plan an inclusive b’mitzvah for a queer child in your life? Hoping to find ways to blend traditional and modern b’mitzvah practices to fit your family’s needs? Just curious about different kinds of b’mitzvah practices? Join LGBTQ+ at the J for a workshop on inclusive b’mitzvahs from an LGBTQ+ lens. Learn more

For: Everyone, Queer & Trans Jews 
Tags: 📚Education, 🌚Holiday Observance, 🙏Religion / Spirituality 
🤔Questions? emunahw@mnjcc.org

lecture 
Two Tribes: The Story behind the Graphic Novel, with Emily Cohen (Yiddish Book Center) 

📆January 18, 2024 / 7-8PM ET, 4-5PM PT 
💻virtual

In her poignant debut graphic novel inspired by her own life, Emily Bowen Cohen embraces the complexity, meaning, and deep love that comes from being part of two vibrant tribes: she is both Jewish and a member of the Muscogee Nation. She spent her childhood in Okemah, OK, and her teen years in Montclair, NJ. Emily will share the story behind her new book. Learn more

For: Everyone 
Tags: Jewish Identity, Race 
🤔Questions? info@yiddishbookcenter.org

lecture 
🆕Introduction to Demystifying Jewish Sacred Arts ~ A Virtual Salon (Pushcart Judaica & Aravah Berman-Mirkin)

📆January 18, 2024 / 8-9PM ET, 5-6PM PT  
💻virtual

Join us for a virtual salon to learn more about the current industry of klaf (parchment) used for STaM (Sefer Torah, Tefillin and Mezuzot) and shofar production, and why we are invested in an alternative movement rooted in the diaspora for the creation of these sacred ritual objects. The salon will include an overview of the current status of the production of these judaica, special guest Yonathan Reches will share about his experience reverse engineering kosher vegan tefillin, include details about our upcoming retreat: L’Shem Kedushat: Demystifying Jewish Sacred Arts, and end with a Q+A. Learn more

For: Everyone 
Tags: 🎨Art & Craft, 📚Education, 🙏Religion & Spirituality
🤔Questions? info@pushcartjudaica.com

course 
🆕Jews and Land Study Group - Season 1 (Jewish Farmer Network) 

📆starts January 18, 2024 / 7:30-9PM ET, 4:30-6PM PT  
💻virtual

The Jews and Land Study Group is a five-part weekly online gathering to explore a people’s-level history of Jews in relationship to land--from the creation myths of the Torah to the times of sovereignty in ancient Israel, from the diasporas to immigrant farmers in the US. Together we’ll explore books, articles, and other resources on these topics. We’ll learn how we can engage with historical and religious texts in a participatory way, uncovering what stories lie at the grassroots of the past and the truths that endure today. Learn more

For: Everyone 
Tags: 📚Education, 🌿Nature, ✊Social Justice 
🤔Questions? liel@jewishfarmernetwork.org

workshop / class 
🆕Rooting into Tu Bishvat: An anti-Zionist ritual and learning space (Bear Roots Herbals) 

📆January 21, 2024 / 1-2:15PM CT, 2-3:15PM ET, 11AM-12:15PM PT
💻virtual

This will be a space for anti-Zionist Jews, folks who would like to be in a Jewish learning space regardless of background, and folks unlearning or questioning Zionism who are seeking Jewish ritual practices. There will be an overview of the holiday of Tu Bishvat, the New Year of the Trees, its relationship to Kabbalistic teachings, a guided meditation, and some open discussion space about how to create a meaningful anti-Zionist ritual around this time.  Learn more

For: Adults 
Tags: 📚Education, 🌿Nature, 🙏Religion & Spirituality, 🇮🇱Israel/🇵🇸Palestine 
🤔Questions? bearrootsherbals@gmail.com

course 
🆕The Priests Eat At Midnight: A Sumptuous Dive into the World's First Mishna (Shel Maala) 

📆starts January 21, 2024 / 2-4PM ET, 11AM-1PM PT
💻virtual

When the Rabbis compiled the Mishna, they weren’t just writing a book - they were creating a vehicle for diasporic survival and cultural transmission across all space and time. They were honing Judaism down to its DNA, putting it in a seed, and letting it loose in the wind. The teaching they chose to start this compendium, the first Mishna of Brachot (“blessings”) is an archetype of the work as a whole, and contains the radical drops that presage the revolutionary ocean to come. 

Shel Maala’s Co-Rosh Yeshiva Binya Kóatz will be guiding us through the original text, rabbinic commentary and historical context to uncover the deeper meaning(s) of the first mishna, and the possibilities it contains. Five weeks, SVARA style, slow, deep, raunchy, gay and fun. Learn more

For: Queer & Trans Jews 
Tags: 📚Education, 🙏Religion & Spirituality 
🤔Questions? shelmaalayeshiva@gmail.com

course 
Adamah at Home Winter Series (Adamah) 

📆starts January 22, 2024 / 8-9:30PM ET, 5-6:30PM PT 
💻virtual

This is a 7-week course to build food skills and cultivate Jewish ecological wisdom in community. We will dig into content from the Adamah Farm Fellowship program where we have been cultivating the soil and the soul for the past twenty years. Over five hundred fellowship alumni have gone on to be earth-connected Rabbis, Jewish-connected farmers, food justice advocates, composters, healers, and everything in between.  

Not everyone has the ability to join us on the land in Falls Village for the three-month residential fellowship, so we are offering the winter series to be accessed at home via the internet. Each session will blend the elements that we’ve found so transformative here on the farm – ritual, collaborative learning, and hands-on skills. Learn more

For: Everyone 
Tags: 📚Education, 🌿Nature, 🙏Religion & Spirituality 
🤔Questions? luna.manela@adamah.org

workshop / class 
Have You Made Art About It Yet? Tu B’Shvat Edition! (Jewish Studio Project & Dayenu) 

📆January 25, 2024 / 12-1:30PM ET, 9-10:30AM PT
💻virtual

Explore the power of art making as a tool for personal and collective renewal with Rabbi Adina Allen! During Tu B’Shvat we take stock of our relationship to the earth, to the ecosystems that sustain us, to where we are as a species. We open our hearts to sit with our questions, our grief, our desire for change and ask: What may be possible that we can’t yet quite see? Using the Jewish Studio Process - a unique methodology combining practices from the field of art therapy with a reimagined approach to Jewish learning and spirituality - we will feel into the grief of what has been lost, and tend to the wilds of our imagination to bring forth new visions of what yet might be. This session is offered In partnership with our friends at Dayenu: a Jewish Call to Climate Action. Learn more 

For: Everyone 
Tags: 🎨Art & Craft, 🌿Nature, 🌚Holiday Observance 
🤔Questions? info@jewishstudioproject.org

event 
Tu B’Shvat Seder (Boston Workers Circle & Kavod) 

📆January 28, 2024 / 2-4PM ET, 11AM-1PM PT
💻virtual option

Join us for a unique Tu B’Shvat seder, marking the “New Year for the Trees.” Readings, songs, and poems will reflect the origins of the seder adapted to progressive secular Jewish life in the 21st century. Learn more

For: Everyone 
Tags: 🌚Holiday Observance, ✊Social Justice 
🤔Questions? info@circleboston.org

lecture 
🆕Reading Ourselves Into History (SVARA) 

📆January 28, 2024 / 7-8PM ET  
💻virtual

How did we develop skills, language, and inspiration to see ourselves in traditions that were not clearly designed for us? What skills have we used in this process? What stories of tradition did we inherit and where did we create new stories? Featuring Rabbi Jill Hammer PhD, Joy Ladin, Shahannah McKinney Baldon, and Rabbi Benay Lappe

Part of SVARA's virtual conversation series that brings together Jewish thinkers, teachers, and learners to discuss how queer Jewish traditions continue to shape The Unrecognizable Jewish Future. Learn more

For: Everyone, Queer & Trans Jews 
Tags: ✊Social Justice, 🙏Religion & Spirituality 
🤔Questions? ellik@svara.org

course 
🆕Ruach (Wendy Elisheva Somerson & Dona Hirschfield-White) 

📆starts February 1, 2024 / 8:30-11PM ET, 5:30-8PM PT
💻virtual

Ruach means breath/spirit in Hebrew. Ruach is a Jewish body-based healing group for anti-Zionist Jews. In this group we will:

- Engage in body-based practices that build our understanding of ourselves, increase our sense of agency, and help us be more present and connected.
- Feel ourselves, each other, our ancestors, and spirit through our bodies.
- Connect with other anti-Zionist Jews through practice.
- Tell and honor our Jewish stories in an embodied way with ritual. Learn more

For: Anti-Zionist Adults 
Tags: ✊Social Justice, 🙏Religion & Spirituality, 🇮🇱Israel/🇵🇸Palestine, ✨Wellness 
🤔Questions? wsomerson@gmail.com

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🌎 retreats outside canada

Legacy Trip Alabama: Jewish Edition with Kohenet Dr. Harriette E Wimms (Legacy Trips) 

📆May 3-5, 2024 
📍USA > Alabama > Montgomery

Together, we will face the truth of America's history of anti-Black racial terror and violence, self reflect on the ways each of us have upheld and perpetuated white supremacy in our lives, and embrace our ability to affect change and dismantle racism, first within ourselves, and then in our families and communities. Our purpose is to listen to and learn from Black leadership, utilize antiracism tools and resources  to strategize ways to do less harm, be better co-conspirators to BIPOC and develop ways to move forward with mindful action toward collective liberation. Learn more 

For: Everyone, Black Jews 
Tags: 📚Education, 🥳Social, ✊Social Justice

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📢 announcements

announcement  
Join Standing Together Toronto! (Standing together Toronto) 

Official group chat (soon org?) of Standing Together in Toronto! Standing Together is the largest Israeli & Palestinian solidarity org on the ground. Join the WhatsApp group chat

For: Adults
Tags: ✊Social Justice, 🇮🇱Israel/🇵🇸Palestine 
🤔Questions? max.fine@student.uva.nl

job posting
ISO - Beginner Yiddish Teacher (United Jewish People's Order) 

📆starts February 1, 2024 
📍Ontario > Toronto

The United Jewish People's Order is looking for someone to fill a Yiddish teaching position for around 8 weeks starting in February. It would be a beginner class of around 6-12 students, meeting once a week for approximately 1.5 hours (TBD). Would be in person in Toronto. Details around timing are flexible.

The classes are being offered by UJPO which is a secular, leftist Jewish org in Toronto and the content of the class would have this angle. No official job posting yet but learn more about UJPO 

For: Everyone 
Tags: 📚Education 
🤔Questions? info@ujpo.org

announcement
Progressive Community Chevra Kadisha (Khvalyes Kollectiv || Kollectiv Gali) 

📍British Columbia > Vancouver

Join a small but growing queer-led group of Jews in Vancouver who want to learn about end of life, death, and grief rituals together, and make them accessible to all within the Jewish community. We meet regularly both in person and virtually, and are slowly building resources, trainings, and community spaces to talk, learn, and embark on the long-term work of building a caring and supportive community during the vulnerable times of end of life, death, and grief. We come from many backgrounds and orientations to Judaism, including secular, cultural, and spiritual. This group is community-based and not affiliated with a specific shul. Learn more

For: Queer & Trans Jews (& allies)
Tags: 📚Education, 🙏Religion & Spirituality, ✨Wellness 
🤔Questions? communitychevra@proton.me

fellowship
PUENTES Leadership & Resiliency Fellowship (Jewtina y Co.) 

📆starts January 31, 2024 

The PUENTES Leadership & Resiliency Fellowship provides participants with the opportunity to engage in a 10-month leadership and resiliency development program with other Latin-Jews. The experience includes in-person and virtual learning workshops and community gatherings, and aims to empower participants to spark change in their communities. Learn more

For: Latin-Jews 
Tags: 🥳Social, ✊Social Justice, Leadership 
🤔Questions? community@jewtina.org

Daily Shloshim Gathering (Rabbis for Ceasefire) 

📆Daily (except Shabbat) / 12PM ET, 9AM PT
💻virtual

In the face of loss, Jewish tradition recognizes our profound need to mourn. When a loved one dies, a thirty-day period known as shloshim (lit. thirty) begins, where grief is our primary task. After the horrific massacre of Israelis by Hamas on October 7th, the collective Jewish world entered into an acute and unprecedented period of mourning. Our hearts then cracked open again - and continue to crack open - as thousands of Palestinians in Gaza are being killed by Israeli bombs and an Israeli ground invasion, and Israelis continue to die. From the depths of our despair, Rabbis for Ceasefire is opening a daily online shloshim gathering space for each life lost in Israel and Palestine on and since October 7th. 

Continuing until we observe shloshim for every life lost, we will gather to grieve and learn the Torah of Ceasefire in their memory. Shloshim serves as a kind of portal between the depths of our most acute mourning and our first steps towards action. Learn more

For: Everyone 
Tags: 🙏Religion & Spirituality, ✨Wellness, 🇮🇱Israel/🇵🇸Palestine

Daily Nechama Minyan (ALEPH Alliance for Jewish Renewal)

📆Daily except Fridays / 9PM ET, 6PM PT
💻virtual

The Nechamah Minyan meets nightly, providing nechamah (comfort) beyond time and space. Serving to connect people across denominational lines; people who need a place to pray; to heal; to grieve; to experiment with different forms and modalities of prayer; the Nechamah Minyan is a container for the end of the day and to say kaddish. It has helped attendees relax into the night, soothe sleepless souls, and connect with one another. It is different every night - depending on who is leading — so come a few times to get an array of musical, liturgical, meditative, and poetic styles. Learn more 

For: Everyone 
Tags: 🙏Religion & Spirituality 
🤔Questions? rrayzel@shechinah.com

workshop / class 
Daily Meditation in Challenging Times (Or HaLev)

📆Daily / 1:15-1:45PM ET, 10:15-10:45AM PT
💻virtual

We are in the midst of an immensely difficult time. Cultivating safety and love and support is how we all move through this with our humanity intact. Join the Or HaLev Community for a daily 30 minute virtual meditation Monday through Friday. Each day will have a different teacher. We’ll keep this going as long as we need. This is a free offering available to everyone. Learn more

For: Everyone 
Tags: ✨Wellness, 🇮🇱Israel/🇵🇸Palestine 
🤔Questions? carrie@orhalev.org

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yelling into a virtual megaphone 📣
while ringing a virtual bell 🔔
while unfurling a long parchment scroll 📜
— and sending love as i do it,

💖 vlada, AKA your shtetl crier