issue #009: inching towards more light
to further imagine and enact liberation
this newsletter has officially been active for four months now, and just reached 5️⃣0️⃣0️⃣ subscribers! there is so much incredible programming and such beautiful offerings in our community, and i feel honoured to step up onto my little wooden crate to yell about a fraction of them here. thank you for coming along for the ride. compiling this newsletter is a real labour of love and takes me much more time than i care to admit, so i especially appreciate submissions through the form that make compiling 1000x easier 🙏🏻
i hope you are finding community, healing, and resistance wherever you are, and that the events below bring you closer.
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
🇨🇦 canadian events
event
🆕ZAFTIG FAYG / JUICY FIG (Gliklekh in Goles)
📆February 3, 2024 / 7:15-11:15PM PT
📍British Columbia > Vancouver > Gold Saucer, 207 West Hastings (2nd floor)
Bring your juicy selves to a feast of fruit, music, and solidarity with Palestine in reclamation of Tu BiShvat (the Jewish New Year of the Trees) with the incredible Brivele + Levoneh from Seattle! Together, let's taste the fruit of liberation from Zionist oppression!! Doors @ 7:30 / Show @ 8:00
This is another Give Yer Gelt for Gaza event! This time donations will be going to Donkey Saddle’s Palestine Grassroots Distribution Project. Learn more
For: Everyone
Tags: 🥳Social, 🌚Holiday Observance, ✊Social Justice, 🎶Music, 🇮🇱Israel/🇵🇸Palestine
🤔Questions? jfaygldmn@gmail.comexhibit
🆕We See Toronto: An Inclusive Viewpoint of OUR CITY (The Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre)
📆February 3-29, 2024
📍Ontario > Toronto > 750 Spadina Ave.
The Disability/Visibility Photography Project is an arts-based program created for young adults, between the ages of 18-35, who identify with the lived experience of disability. These young and enthusiastic photographers show the viewer how they see your city, their city, OUR CITY! Learn more
For: Everyone
Tags: 🎨Art & Craft
🤔Questions? deannad@mnjcc.orgcourse
Love at the Centre Chant Intensive (First Narayever Congregation)
📆starts February 3, 2024 / 4-6:30PM ET
📍Ontario > Toronto
It is time for us to place Love at the centre of our religious/spiritual practice and let the force of that love radiate out to penetrate every other aspect of our lives. Shir HaShirim is a hidden treasure that longs to be known. The Love of Shir HaShirim goes beyond the sentimental or romantic. This love is a force that connects the finite with the infinite, the known with the unknown mystery that lures us toward more expansive lives. This love reveals the beauty that is everywhere hidden in Nature, in relationships and in the depths of our hearts. This journey through The Song of Songs will be led by Alon Nashman, student of Rabbi Shefa Gold and chant leader at Narayever High Holidays. Email Alon to learn more: alon.nashman@gmail.com
For: Adults
Tags: 🎶Music, 🙏Religion & Spiritualityevent
🆕Toronto for Peace and Coexistence: A Conversation with Standing Together (Coexistence Toronto & Khouri Conversations)
📆February 4, 2024 / 11AM-1PM ET
📍Ontario > Toronto
A discussion on peace, justice and equality in Israel/Palestine with leaders from Standing Together. Livestream of Standing Together speakers Alon-Lee Green and Rula Daood at 11AM, followed by a discussion on community building in Canada, with panelists Urz Heer, Jeffrey Wilkinson, and Dyanoosh Youssefi. Learn more
For: Everyone
Tags: ✊Social Justice, 🇮🇱Israel/🇵🇸Palestinefestival
🆕Put a Yid on It! Festival of New Yiddish Culture (Rady JCC)
📆February 7-11, 2024
📍Manitoba > Winnipeg
The language of our ancestors remains ‘written in our bones’ and is a part of our unconscious lives. It’s hard to imagine that only 80 years ago eleven million people spoke, wrote, sang, and dreamt in this 1000-year-old language! In this festival you’ll see great works of Yiddish art – from some of the great gems of the Yiddish cinema of the 1930’s to Yiddish hip hop which moves Yiddish into a living, breathing present tense with its joy and creativity! And the best part is that you do not need to speak a word of Yiddish to enjoy every bit of this festival. Learn more
For: Everyone
Tags: 🥳Social, 🎶Music, Film, Yiddish
🤔Questions? snewman@radyjcc.comevent
🆕The Wall Between: What Jews & Palestinians Don’t Want to Know About Each Other (Dave Meslin)
📆February 11, 2024 / 2PM ET
📍Ontario > Toronto > Harbord Collegiate Institute, 286 Harbord (Auditorium)
The Wall Between is a new book written by two Ontario authors, a Palestinian and a Jew. Raja Khouri is a human rights consultant, a co-founder of the Canadian Arab/Jewish Leadership Dialogue Group, founding president of the Canadian Arab Institute and a former 10-year commissioner with the Ontario Human Rights Commission. Jeffrey Wilkinson holds a doctorate in Education from the University of Toronto and works actively on issues relating to trauma and the Israel/Palestine struggle.
While we are seeing increasing polarisation on the issue of Israel and Palestine, Jeffrey and Raja offer another approach: an approach based on sharing our stories with each, opening our hearts and facing the complex history that brought us to where we are. During this time of great sorrow and loss for both communities, we need spaces to come together to listen and learn from each other. Learn more
For: Adults
Tags: 🇮🇱Israel/🇵🇸Palestineworkshop / class
Listen & Be Heard (JQT Vancouver)
📆February 11, 2024 / 1-4PM PT
📍British Columbia > Vancouver > Or Shalom, 710 East 10th Ave.
Join your fellow Jewish queers, transfolk and enbys in an intentional space for sharing and listening to each other's perspectives on the Palestine/Israel conflict, including recent events in Gaza. Each person will be invited to share their experiences and views on a topic that can be difficult to discuss, and together we will open our hearts and listen to each other with presence and chasadim, loving kindness.
All perspectives are welcome. The goal of this gathering is to listen to each other instead of debate, and build our capacity as a community to create an intentional, supportive, safe, and healing space for our diverse voices to be heard. The session will be led by Alycia Fridkin, an experienced facilitator on equity issues and a member of the Vancouver queer Jewish community, and co-facilitated by Jewish therapist, Anat Kelerstein, who will be providing extra support to the group. Learn more
For: Queer & Trans Jews
Tags: ✨Wellness, 🇮🇱Israel/🇵🇸Palestine
🤔Questions? info@jqtvancouver.cacourse
Adult Secular B'Mitzvah (United Jewish People's Order)
📆starts February 12, 2024 / 7-9PM ET
📍Ontario > Toronto
Did you miss the opportunity to have a B’mitzvah (bar/bat mitzvah)? Were you unable to have a B’mitzvah because of gender or were you misgendered at your B’mitzvah? Did you have a B’mitzvah but are seeking a different experience?
The UJPO/Morris Winchevsky School’s Adult Secular B’Mitzvah Program is a chance to cover big Jewish questions and some fundamentals of Jewish “ancestory”, history, and contemporary identity. Drawing on a set of Jewish texts from across the centuries and around the world, we will critically examine where “tradition” comes from and what it might mean to us in a secular Jewish context. Our curriculum explores Jewishness as a civilization of many diverse cultures and practices, and approaches our rich history & present from perspectives focused on social justice. We do not assume prior knowledge of Jewishness or Judaisms. Learn more
For: Adults
Tags: 📚Education, ✊Social Justice, 🙏Religion & Spirituality
🤔Questions? info@ujpo.orgworkshop / class
🆕Yiddish Choral Singing Workshop (Peretz Centre)
📆February 13, 2024 / 7:10-9PM PT
📍British Columbia > Vancouver > Peretz Centre, 6184 Ash St.
Sarina Partridge will teach, by ear, 3 or 4 three-part harmony arrangements of Yiddish folk songs. Learn more
For: Everyone
Tags: 🎶Music, Yiddish
🤔Questions? info@peretz-centre.orgcourse
Mathematics and Jewish Spirituality (Or Shalom)
📆starts February 13, 2024 / 7-9PM PT
📍British Columbia > Vancouver > Or Shalom, 710 East 10th Ave.
Many people have a mixed experience with mathematics, recognizing in it the potential for something fascinating and even spiritually meaningful, while also sometimes feeling judged or alienated by their school mathematics education. In this three-session course, we will find our way into a new relationship with mathematics through Jewish spirituality, both by learning about mathematical ideas within our spiritual tradition, and by using techniques of Jewish study and reflective practice to renew our own histories with mathematics.
All are welcome—in particular, all levels of experience and comfort with mathematics are welcome, from enthusiasts and experts to those who shudder at the memory of long division. Learn more
For: Adults
Tags: 📚Education, 🙏Religion & Spirituality
🤔Questions? programs@orshalom.caevent
🆕ISRAELISM Screening + Panel (Independent Jewish Voices & IfNotNow Toronto)
📆February 17, 2024
📍Ontario > Toronto > Redwood Theatre, 1300 Gerrard St E.
Independent Jewish Voices and IfNotNow Toronto present ISRAELISM, an extremely powerful film exploring changes in Jewish attitudes towards Israel. Followed by Q+A with director Erin Axelman and a panel of local Jewish activists. Two screenings: one at 4PM and another at 7:30PM.
For: Adults
Tags: ✊Social Justice, 🇮🇱Israel/🇵🇸Palestine, Film
🤔Questions? info@theredwoodtheatre.comlecture series
Yiddish Radicals: Yiddish Literature and the Progressive Left (UJPO Winnipeg)
📆February 18 & 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.
Feb 18 - 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?💻 virtual
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.comworkshop / class
🆕Are Jews Indigenous? A decolonial, anti nationalist, Indigenous & Jewish perspective (Queer Mikveh Project)
📆February 4, 2024 / 10:30AM-12PM ET, 7:30-9AM PT
💻virtual
The right wing has weaponized Indigeneity to justify the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza right now and the Occupation of the last 75 years by saying that the Jewish people are Indigenous to the Holy Land.
Come hear from Rosa Blumenfeld-Romero, an Indigenous woman from the Muisca people in Boyaca, Colombia, and the daughter of a Holocaust survivor. Some questions that Rosa will be addressing:
- What are nation states for?
- What is the difference between a historical connection and a current identity?
- Where do anti-semitism and Indigeneity intersect?
- What are our responsibilities to stand up to this myth as Queer Jews?
- What about Mizrahi and Palestinian Jews?
Learn more
For: Queer & Trans Jews
Tags: ✊Social Justice, 🇮🇱Israel/🇵🇸Palestine
🤔Questions? queermikvehproject@gmail.comcourse
The Book of Worlds to Come (The Torah Studio)
📆starts February 4, 2024 / 5-8PM ET, 2-5PM PT
💻virtual
THE ONLY LANGUAGE-LEARNING GAME OF ITS KIND -- An immersive tabletop roleplaying adventure for learning Biblical and Rabbinic Hebrew. Designed and run by Lexi Kohanski, now in beta-testing.
Inspired by the high fantasy magic of Dungeons & Dragons and the collaborative liberatory storytelling of games like Dream Apart, Worlds To Come lets you harness the language of Torah and Talmud to imagine what it looks like to fight for a better world. Play as a group of spellcasters traveling Roman-occupied Judea/Palestine after the destruction of the Second Temple. Meet the peoples of the Land and help them as they reel from war and exile. Fulfill merit-generating mitzvahs, face the demonic consequences of sins, and use your newfound Hebrew knowledge to cast spells that will reshape your broken world. Learn more
For: Everyone
Tags: 📚Education, 🥳Social, Hebrew, Games
🤔Questions? lexi@thetorahstudio.orgevent
🆕A Global Conversation by and for: the Mizrahi/JSWANA/Arab Jewish Left (Mizrahi + JSWANA Left Project)
📆February 5, 2024 / 12-2PM ET, 9-11AM PT
💻virtual
Join us, Mizrahi/JSWANA/Arab Jewish left activists, organizers, and cultural workers, committed to Palestinian liberation and the Mizrahi struggle in Israel-Palestine and beyond. We first came together in November, with 70+ folks joining us from Israel-Palestine, France, Tunisia, United Kingdom, United States, Canada, and beyond. It was a beautiful and profound opportunity to connect across borders designed to divide us amidst devastating violence.
Over the last 2+ months, a planning group has taken time to synthesize learnings from our first call, grow our team, strengthen our foundation, and shape future opportunities to collaborate. We look forward to gathering again, recognizing the need to sustain struggles for freedom and liberation amidst the relentless and horrifying attacks perpetrated by the Israeli government and military on Palestinians from Gaza to the West Bank, with backing from many of our governments, in addition to surges in political repression, antisemitism, Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism globally. Learn more
For: Mizrahi Jews, Swana (South West Asia North Africa) Jews, Arab Jews
Tags: 🥳Social, ✊Social Justice, 🇮🇱Israel/🇵🇸Palestine, Identityworkshop / class
🆕Zine-Making Workshop for the Queer / Lefty / Yiddish Future (Queer Yiddish Camp, Rad Yiddish, & Gliklekh in Goles)
📆February 5, 2024 / 7:30-9PM ET, 4:30-6PM PT
💻virtual
In this workshop, Jess Goldman will show us how to use the single-page zine to explore queer lefty Yiddish futures! They will delve into a few historical examples of Jews who have used DIY crafts to adorn the past, the present, and to re-imagine the future, and engage us in collective dreaming!
There will be time to work on your one-page zine and/or submission to the Volume 1 of Rad Yiddish & Queer Yiddish Camp's Versions of the QUEER / LEFTY / YIDDISH FUTURES Zine. Learn more
For: Everyone
Tags: 🎨Art & Craft, 📚Education, 🥳Social, ✊Social Justice, Yiddish
🤔Questions? radyiddish1@gmail.comworkshop / class
🆕The Land Justice Sessions (Miknaf Ha'aretz)
📆February 8, 2024 / 7:30-9PM GMT, 2:30-4PM ET, 11:30AM-1PM PT
💻virtual
In our latest virtual series, we want to explore the entwinement between our struggles and solidarities with peoples across the world and across time. We will explore the abolitionist roots of land justice, Palestinian liberation, the Kurdish struggle, revolutionary shepherding and its link with migrant justice, & how the Right to Roam movement & wider UK land justice movement are bringing about this vision in the UK and re-imagining the commons as a treasury for all. Learn more
For: Everyone, including non-Jews
Tags: 📚Education, ✊Social Justice, 🇮🇱Israel/🇵🇸Palestine, Land Justice, Abolition, Land Access, Kurdish Solidarity
🤔Questions? hello@miknafhaaretz.co.ukcourse
In Our Strangeness: Exploring a Jewish Reckoning with Alienation (Sara Klugman and Risa Dunbar)
📆starts February 11, 2024 / 1-2:30PM ET, 10-11:30AM PT
💻virtual
How have Jews throughout history experienced and reckoned with alienation? How have Jews throughout history metabolized their own alienation? How might contemporary Jews aspire to experience, reckon with and metabolize a contemporary experience of alienation -- and what might be possible? As two rabbinical students and educators who fled Jerusalem for Europe during the War, and have since returned, we are motivated by the power of the lived experience of alienation – both personal and communal.
Through study and discussion, we will grapple with our core questions through multiple modalities. In addition to ancient and rabbinic texts, we will draw on philosophical texts, modern literature and poetry, visual art and media, and contemporary cultural critique. Our learning, too, will center our own reflections and personal narratives with the hope of helping us make meaning in relationship to these teachings and their wisdom. Learn more
For: Everyone
Tags: 🎨Art & Craft, 📚Education, 🥳Social, ✊Social Justice, 🙏Religion & Spirituality, ✨Wellness, 🇮🇱Israel/🇵🇸Palestine, Philosophy
🤔Questions? sara.klugman@gmail.com + risa.c.dunbar@gmail.comworkshop / class
Creating with the Moon: Rosh Chodesh Adar (Jewish Studio Project)
📆February 11, 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 90-minute, virtual 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, 🙏Religion & Spirituality, ✨Wellness
🤔Questions? info@jewishstudioproject.orgworkshop / class
Explore Healing through the Jewish Yearcycle (Rabbi Jessica Rosenberg & Rabbi Ariana Katz)
📆February 11, 2024 / 5-6:30PM ET, 2-3:30PM PT
💻virtual
At least one of the layers of every multifaceted Jewish holiday is remembering, retelling, and embodying some part of Jewish collective memory and history. How did experiences of harm and violence, survival and resilience, shape Jewish holidays and the Jewish year? How can we, as ritual leaders interested in healing and resilience, work with the wisdom within each holiday to create experiences of sustenance and connection for diverse Jewish communities?
This workshop will focus on some of the tools and technology in the Jewish calendar that invite in healing to the months and our holiday observances, and invite us into considering how to call that healing into our own ritual practices. Learn more
For: Everyone
Tags: 🌚Holiday Observance, 🙏Religion & Spirituality, ✨Wellness event
🆕Jewish Herbalist Gathering (Jewish Farmer Network)
📆February 12, 2024 / 6:30-8PM ET, 3:30-5PM PT
💻virtual
Join us for a JFN Jewish Herbalist gathering! This is an opportunity to connect with other Jewish Herbalists (and herbalist-adjacent folks) who are interested in co-creating community and learning together! 🌼🌱🌸 Learn more
For: Everyone
Tags: 🥳Social, 🌿Nature
🤔Questions? liel@jewishfarmernetwork.orgevent
Horizons Blossom, Borders Vanish: Anarchism and Yiddish Literature (YIVO)
📆February 12, 2024 / 1-2PM ET, 10-11AM PT
💻virtual
Spanning the last two centuries, Horizons Blossom, Borders Vanish: Anarchism and Yiddish Literature by Anna Elena Torres combines archival research on the radical press and close readings of Yiddish poetry to offer an original literary study of the Jewish anarchist movement. Torres examines Yiddish anarchist aesthetics from the nineteenth-century Russian proletarian immigrant poets through the modernist avant-gardes of Warsaw, Chicago, and London to contemporary antifascist composers. The book also traces Jewish anarchist strategies for negotiating surveillance, censorship, detention, and deportation, revealing the connection between Yiddish modernism and struggles for free speech, women’s bodily autonomy, and the transnational circulation of avant-garde literature. Join YIVO for a discussion with Torres about this new book, led by scholar Amelia Glaser. Learn more
For: Adults
Tags: 📚Education, ✊Social Justice, Yiddish
🤔Questions? info@yivo.orgworkshop / class
Queering The Jewish Wedding (LGBTQ+ at the J)
📆February 13, 2024 / 7-8:30PM ET, 4-5:30PM PT
💻virtual
This event is the second in our Queer Jewish Lifecycle Events series. Wondering what you need to think about when planning a Queer Jewish wedding? Hoping to find ways to blend traditional and modern marriage practices to fit your needs? Attending a Queer Jewish wedding and curious about what you might encounter?
You’ve come to the right place! Join LGBTQ+ at the J and Toby King for a workshop on Queering the Jewish Wedding based on archival work during their time in the Queer Jewish Incubator. Toby conducted interviews with couples and clergy who have had, planned and officiated Queer-Jewish weddings and union ceremonies of all kinds and will offer their findings on this webinar. Learn more
For: Queer & Trans Jews, Everyone
Tags: 📚Education, 🙏Religion & Spirituality
🤔Questions? emunahw@mnjcc.orgworkshop / class
🆕Have You Made Art About It Yet? Love Edition! (Jewish Studio Project)
📆February 15, 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! We need more people in love! Not in love as in a romantic, gushy kind of love, but love as in it lights you up, it sparks your senses and softens your heart, it permeates your being and taps you into the beating heart of the world. These cozy winter months are a time to explore the soft and tender places in our heart and open our capacity to love. 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 draw on the power of creativity to reconnect us that which we love so that love may be the ground from which all of what we do comes and towards which all of what we do flows. Learn more
For: Everyone
Tags: 🎨Art & Craft, ✨Wellness
🤔Questions? info@jewishstudioproject.orgworkshop / class
🆕The Crisis in Gaza: Navigating Difficult Conversations (Science and Nonduality)
📆February 16, 2024 / 12-1:30PM ET, 9-10:30AM PT
💻virtual
A Q&A with Dr. Gabor Maté & Daniel Maté
No statement, no words can speak to the immense suffering, devastation and horrendous humanitarian crisis intensifying in the Middle East. The current tragedy awakens existential fear, acute grief and deep despair. It also creates a rift among friends and families. Many are in a state of deep shock and in need of support, and the obstacles to communicating with loved ones only intensify the anguish.
In this Q&A session, Dr. Gabor Maté and his son Daniel will discuss ways to listen and communicate across different perspectives and narratives. They will draw on their personal experiences and professional perspectives to help us foster a compassionate dialogue, even when grappling with divisive narratives, intergenerational trauma and incapacity to face hard facts. Learn more
For: Everyone
Tags: ✨Wellness, 🇮🇱Israel/🇵🇸Palestinecourse
🆕Fire & Rain: Magical and Mythic Jewish Ecologies for Climate Crises (Judaism Unbound)
📆starts February 19, 2024 / 3-4:30PM ET, 12-1:30PM PT
💻virtual
In our current ecological crisis, wildfires & drought are no longer far-fetched biblical plagues, but an ever encroaching reality. What resources does the Jewish ecological imagination offer us to build new relationships to rain and fire? In the various climates Jews have lived in throughout the diaspora, how have they combined technology, ritual, and magic to increase irrigation and avert wildfires?
This course maps the ways that Jews engaged with the dangers of fire and the scarcities of water, both through action and creating animate ways of viewing water & fire. We'll encounter unknown histories of Jewish firefighting, myths of rain as an erotic ecological event, the evolution of theories of irrigation, the cosmology of water rituals in the Second Temple, salamander & challah fire-magic, angels of fire and ice, and explore why Jews in early-modern Ashkenaz were sought out by their Christian neighbors to use fire amulets to help extinguish urban wildfires. These various chapters in the history of Jewish ecology offer us animate ways of viewing our entanglements with water & fire and can help motivate new models of ecological solidarity and revolution. Learn more
For: Everyone
Tags: 📚Education, 🌿Nature, 🙏Religion & Spirituality
🤔Questions? hello@judaismunbound.comcourse
🆕Jubilees: A Gateway into Jewish Apocrypha (Judaism Unbound)
📆starts February 21, 2024 / 8-9:30PM ET, 5-6:30PM PT
💻virtual
Over 2100 years ago, somebody looked at the book of Genesis. Their main takeaway? “This is an okay book. Maybe a 7 out of 10. But it could really use some edits if I'm being honest.” So they channeled all their chutzpah, and went ahead with tweaking it! They rewrote the book of Genesis -- keeping much of it the same but shifting many details, adding new characters, and orienting the whole thing around cycles of 49 years (called “Jubilees”).
In this interactive class, we'll journey our way through all 50 chapters of Jubilees, compare and contrast it with the book of Genesis (also 50 chapters!), and consider how books left out of our traditional canon nevertheless can help us envision our Jewish past, present, and future through more expansive lenses. Learn more
For: Everyone
Tags: 📚Education, 🙏Religion & Spirituality
🤔Questions? hello@judaismunbound.comcourse
🆕Re-imagining Biblical Animals: Beyond the Talking Donkey (Judaism Unbound)
📆starts February 21, 2024 / 1-2:30PM ET, 10-11:30AM PT
💻virtual
Animals are part of the landscape of human life. So, as the Tanakh describes human life, it tells many stories about animals, too. Snakes and ravens share meals with people. Donkeys and sheep work alongside us. Eagles and lions inspire us; locusts warn us. How should we read their stories? What can they teach us about ecology, spirituality, and ethics?
Together we will look at Torah texts with fresh eyes. We'll discover the writers' respect for their fellow creatures. And we might even notice their sense of humour! As we read selected texts, we'll draw on personal experience, biology, Kabbalah, midrash, Indigenous wisdom, and appreciation for the artistic skill of Biblical writers. As we study, we'll combine discussion with lecture. We will draw on, but also go beyond, the teacher's book *Mouth of the Donkey: Re-imagining Biblical Animals.* The Sefaria website will be our source for biblical texts, but feel free to bring your favorite edition or translation. Learn more
For: Everyone
Tags: 📚Education, 🌿Nature, 🙏Religion & Spirituality
🤔Questions? hello@judaismunbound.comcourse
🆕Fractals in Jewish Time (Judaism Unbound)
📆starts February 22, 2024 / 3:30-5PM ET, 12:30-2PM PT
💻virtual
Jewish time invites us to move in cycles within cycles, with deep imprints of fractal time. Across time and space, Jewish tradition marks time in various ways through mindful awareness, blessing and ritual, making meaning and beauty and, ultimately, uplifting the very holiness of the moment.
Join Kohenet Keshira haLev Fife for a creative exploration of time and ritual, bringing together the Jewish Studio Process with opportunities to examine our relationships to time and ritual. Each week, we’ll delve into a different Jewish ritual, considering both its origin and resonant modern application, and tying it to an aspect of time. By journeying together in this way, we’ll steep in deep time, engage embodied ritual, and reclaim creativity as a sacred act. This class is for those who love to make art or ritual magic, and those who yearn to wonder at the intersection of time and space. Learn more
For: Everyone
Tags: 🎨Art & Craft, 📚Education, 🙏Religion & Spirituality, ✨Wellness
🤔Questions? hello@judaismunbound.comcourse
🆕Judaism In-Bound: An Introduction to Judaism for Everyone (Judaism Unbound)
📆starts February 22, 2024 / 7-8:30PM ET, 4-5:30PM PT
💻virtual
Take a deep dive into Judaism's core ideas, texts, and practices. In this class, explore what being Jewish has looked like in the past and scout ahead for what it could look like in the future. Judaism In-bound is a perfect course for those considering conversion, in multi-faith relationships, seeking to unlearn/relearn a new framing around Judaism, or just curious about Judaism.
This class is built around the notion that Judaism is constantly changing and is currently in a period of especially radical change. We believe that there is no singular way to teach “what Jews believe” or “what Jews do,” as Judaism and Jews are constantly evolving. Even more, it isn’t entirely clear how best to introduce people to something that may look very different before too long. As such, this class is a lecture series, a study club, and a spiritual laboratory; a class designed both to teach and to challenge mainstream Judaism. Learn more
For: Everyone, People Considering Conversion, People In Interfaith Relationships
Tags: 📚Education, 🙏Religion & Spirituality
🤔Questions? hello@judaismunbound.comcourse
SVARA Spring Zman (SVARA)
📆starts February 26, 2024
💻virtual
Join in for another unforgettable season of SVARA learning. Spring Zman runs from February 26th to April 18th and we can’t WAIT to get back to the bet midrash! Folks of all backgrounds and experience levels are welcome.
Course offerings include:
- Alef-Bet Basics
- Queer Talmud for Beginner's Mind
- Bet Midrash: All in One
- Bet Midrash: Chevruta Plus
- What Does Obligation Really Mean?
- Torah for the End (and Beginning) of the World
Learn more
For: Queer & Trans Jews
Tags: 📚Education, 🙏Religion & Spirituality, Hebrew, Text Study
🤔Questions?course
From the Personal to the Political: Mizrahi & JSWANA Families' Migration Stories & Global Struggles for Justice (Mizrahi Left Project)
📆starts February 26, 2024 / 12-1:45PM ET, 9-10:45AM PT
💻virtual
This workshop series is organized by a small group of Jews from across the US and Israel/Palestine interested in strengthening ties and solidarity among Mizrahi JSWANA Left and progressive movements, most especially the Palestinian freedom movement. We aim to deepen our understanding of the progressive values that are fundamentally intertwined with Mizrahi + JSWANA heritage/culture, and move into action. We will ground ourselves in our own family histories to better understand our way forward, combining cultural learning, community building, and changemaking. Learn more
For: Mizrahi Jews, SWANA (South West Asia North Africa) Jews
Tags: 📚Education, ✊Social Justice, 🇮🇱Israel/🇵🇸Palestine, Identitycourse
🆕Psychics and the Occult in Modern Jewish Culture (YIVO)
📆starts March 3, 2024 / 11AM-12:30PM ET, 8-9:30AM PT
💻virtual
Many Jews in the early-twentieth century had a deep interest in the occult, both as practitioners and as patrons. Modern occultism emerged in the mid-nineteenth century as a loose collection of beliefs and practices concerned with hidden dimensions of reality, which were often articulated in scientific language. Jews held séances and consulted with psychics, analyzed their horoscopes and explored hidden powers of the mind. Jewish occultism flourished in a time of increasing modernization and often functioned as a spiritual bridge that linked the metaphysical unknown with an increasingly secular urban reality.
This course looks at Jewish engagement with modern occultism with a focus on eastern European Jewry and its diaspora. We will utilize primary, secondary, and digital sources to explore the social changes that led Jews in the early-twentieth century to engage with occult practices and beliefs; the role of the Yiddish press in the popularization of occultism; the Jewish psychics of Warsaw and New York City; Jewish participation in the spiritualist movement; representations of occultism in modern Yiddish literature; and rabbinic responses to Jewish occultism. We will end the semester with a discussion of the continued relevance of occultism and other alternative spiritualities in contemporary Jewish culture. Learn more
For: Adults
Tags: 📚Education, 🙏Religion & Spirituality
🤔Questions? info@yivo.orgcourse
Embodied Jewish Anti-Zionist Praxis: A Politicized Healing Group (Eliana Rubin)
📆starts March 8, 2024 / 12-1:30PM ET
💻virtual
The fight for Palestine is a fight for all of our aliveness. We cannot afford to be numb. The ongoing colonization of Palestine and current genocide we are witnessing can feel unbearably devastating. And yet, we must keep feeling so that we can keep fighting. As Jews, our trauma has been weaponized as a moral cover for genocide. We must keep feeling. We must keep resisting. We must keep transforming. Join this group to connect with our bodies in strengthening our resolve to organize for our collective liberation.
In this group we will:
- Disentangle from Zionist propaganda
- Root into anti-Zionist histories of resistance
- Explore inter-generational trauma
- Connect with queer, Jewish, and anti-fascist ancestors
- Workshop difficult conversations
- Debrief organizing experiences
- Tell stories as an embodied practice
- Create space for our collective grief
- Co-create a transformative environment through popular education and applied practice
Learn more
For: Adults
Tags: 📚Education, 🥳Social, ✊Social Justice, ✨Wellness, 🇮🇱Israel/🇵🇸Palestine
🤔Questions? eliana@sanctuaryembodied.org🌎 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 Justiceretreat
🆕L’Shem Kedushat: Demystifying Jewish Sacred Arts Retreat (Pushcart Judaica & Aravah Berman-Mirkin)
📆May 16-19, 2024
📍USA > Massachusetts > Deerfield > 107 Keets Rd.
30 participants will spend four days learning hands-on skills from Jewish educators on the margins, who have worked hard to learn about the production of Jewish ritual objects.
This gathering builds on the ground-breaking efforts of a first generation of historically excluded parchment-makers (and scribes), begun in the early 2000’s. Our goal is to support the next generation of makers to ensure the future of diasporic sacred arts is inclusive of those of us on the fringes and continues the long-standing Jewish tradition of crafting our ritual objects. Together, we will learn the first steps of making klaf (parchment) used for STaM (Sifrei Torah, Tefillin, Mezuzot), and shofarot, all of which are derived from animals. We will center diasporic production, land and animal welfare, and explore ethical alternatives to the current harmful supply chain. Throughout the weekend, we will participate in hands-on demonstrations, hear talks, listen to sacred stories, and get the chance to practice some of these skills while building relationships and connections. Learn more
For: Adults
Tags: 🎨Art & Craft, 📚Education, 🌿Nature, 🙏Religion & Spirituality
🤔Questions? aravah.berman.mirkin@gmail.com📢 announcements
announcement
🆕Shevet: A Jewish Mindfulness Community for Young Adults (Institute for Jewish Spirituality)
📆Mondays / 8-8:30PM ET, 5-5:30PM PT
💻virtual
Amidst the great challenges and joys of our ever-changing world, spiritual practice in community can nurture our capacity for wise response, compassion, resilience, and well-being. Join IJS and our growing young adult community for 30 minutes of weekly Jewish mindfulness practice for folks in their 20s and 30s. Hosted by IJS Core Faculty Rebecca Schisler, each live Zoom session is guided by a leading guest teacher of Jewish spirituality and mindfulness, and includes an additional 15 minutes of optional Q&A and sharing. Participants are invited to join our Shevet Jewish Mindfulness Community WhatsApp group to connect with other spiritual seekers. Learn more
For: Young adults in their 20s & 30s
Tags: 🙏Religion & Spirituality, ✨Wellness
🤔Questions? support@jewishspirituality.organnouncement / request
Jewish Herbalism at End of Life, Death, and Grief: Call for Submissions (A Collaboration of Jewish Herbalists)
📆Deadline February 15, 2024
This is a call for submissions of personal stories, anecdotes and recipes for using and connecting with plants during End of Life, Death, and Grief, to be made into a beautiful book. No story is insignificant, and what might seem small may hold immense power. Although much of our ancestral wisdom and connection to plants may have been severed over generations, it still grows and lives inside us, through impulses, feelings, yearnings, childhood experiences, we dig our hands and our souls deeply into the earth, searching. The plants bring us together. Learn more
For: Everyone
Tags: 📚Education, 🌿Nature, 🙏Religion & Spirituality, ✨Wellness, Plant Medicine
🤔Questions? communitychevra@proton.meannouncement / request
🆕Zine Submission: Version(s) of the Queer / Lefty / Yiddish Future(s)! (Queer Yiddish Camp & Rad Yiddish)
📆Deadline February 29, 2024
💻virtual
The QUEER / LEFTY / YIDDISH FUTURES are multiplicitous - There is not one version but MANY co-mingled versions/visions/experiences/futures - and we want to experience yours!
Send us your collages, writing, poetry, digital art, photographs of your art, and more! Submissions will be open until end-of-day Thursday, February 29. Learn more
For: Everyone
Tags: 🎨Art & Craft, 📚Education, 🥳Social, ✊Social Justice, Yiddish
🤔Questions? radyiddish1@gmail.comyelling 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