#Students with DU chapter of #JewishVoiceForPeace speak on DU’s “failure to consider the entire student body, only prioritizing the voices of the #Zionist sect of #Judaism on campus” & how #JewishStudents who support the encampment are “continually being overlooked & misrepresented by upper administration & peers,” according to the encampment’s media representatives.
Extraordinarily proud to have been the editor on this book. The author is a wonderful soul and her deep dive into the lives of her mother and father really resonate. It was an honor and a privilege.
All for You: A World War II Family Memoir of Love, Separation, and Loss https://a.co/d/iF1GlHd
A US Department of the Interior staffer has become the first Jewish political appointee to publicly resign in protest of #US support for Israel’s #genocide.
Lily Greenberg Call, a special assistant to the chief of staff, accuses #JoeBiden of using Jews to justify US policy.
so much coverage on met gala but they’ll try hard to hide that there is a huge crowd of #protestors outside the met rn in support of #palestine that have been marching across the city all day. meanwhile #israel is bombing and enacting their invasion on #rafah as we speak
From Mayyim Hayyim:
Being a Mikveh Guide means showing up for another person as they mark a meaningful transition in life. Alongside a virtual community of Trans & Nonbinary Jews, participants will gain new knowledge and skills to facilitate this ancient ritual, reimagined for modern use.
#Israel is not #Judaism and criticism of Israel isn't #antisemitic. By dishonestly conflating the two, lawmakers are diluting the meaning and significance of #antisemitism, and providing the nation of Israel (and its current #Likud government) with special protections. Bibi would love to be able to hide behind the stigma of antisemitism, and shield himself against legitimate criticism by redefining language, but we should forcefully reject this switcheroo.
We cannot talk about Passover, a holiday celebrating Jewish liberation, without talking about the extreme violence and dispossession carried out against Palestinians at this very time in the name of the Jewish people.
I’ve translated below the words of Simon Assoun, who organizes with me as part of Tsedek!, a collective of decolonial Jews in France. Simon’s words exactly convey my feelings at this time.
One challenge of #Pesach ( #Passover ) is that besides doing a Seder or two, there is not a lot to do during the rest of the 7 (or 8, depending on your minhag) days of Passover besides maybe attending a festival service and of course avoiding chametz (grain products, except for Matzoh).
So I've been thinking about what I can do to make this time more meaningful. The theme of Passover is about #liberation and #peace, but that is, of course, a complicated thing when so many people, especially in #Palestine / #Israel, do not feel free or safe.
An Indiana court ruled that Jews have a religious liberty right to abortion. Here’s why that matters.
Michael A. Helfand April 11, 2024
"...Indiana’s abortion restriction, it turns out, has lots of other exceptions. For example, it has exceptions — like many other abortions restrictions across the country — for rape, incest, in vitro fertilization and even a narrow exception to protect the physical health of the mother. Where a state grants all these exceptions that weaken the objective of a law — in this case promoting fetal life — then it cannot turn around and claim that its interest is so important that it can’t grant exceptions for religion. After all, how important can the government’s interest be if it already provided all these other exceptions?"
Things I have always known about #Judaism but only now understand Part 1:
We are a tribe. And we also invented the word.
We don't have much power over society as a tribe even though many of us are very successful, we know how quickly things turn.
We may be the only people that people on all political extremes see as the source problem of everything they don't want to take responsibility for themselves.
Almost all of our holidays are about our enslavement and genocides. #jewish#jews
I can't think of many things more counterproductive than #prayer. It's even worse than people deciding to do nothing because at least the clear display of apathy towards an issue could influence people who do care to take action, but if everyone is convinced that prayer works (which it doesn't) then what motivation would they have to do anything themselves if they believe they can solve their problems through magical incantations? #atheism#atheist#Christianity#Islam#Hinduism#Judaism
Union for Reform Judaism pledges to divest millions from fossil fuel industry By Asaf Elia-Shalev April 10, 2024
"...While many individual Jews have been active in the climate movement for decades, the URJ pledge is emblematic of the increased attention communal organizations are paying to the climate issue in recent years. It comes less than 2 weeks after Oregon’s two Jewish federations announced fossil fuel divestment plans, the first to do so across the...federation system.
The apparent trend suggests that the Jewish community could eventually catch up to other faith-based groups that have long expressed their values through their investment strategies, whether on climate, tobacco or guns.
The Jewish divestment push is being led by the...advocacy group Dayenu, whose founder & CEO, Jennie Rosenn, is a...rabbi.
“I commend the Reform Movement for...ensuring our investments are not furthering climate destruction...”
A little over a year ago, originally due to an interest in the deeper history of #compilers, I started diving deep into the #Talmud, studying #Aramaic, #gematria, and doing #DafYomi etc in what has become my deepest engagement with the rabbinic corpus yet -- the Talmud isn't a compiler but rather an extensible interpreter, compiled by compilers over the course of many centuries (build times have gotten significantly faster, my G-d), with novel extensions in the form of rabbinic commentary, glossia and the like being added nearly every century by publishers competing to compile the most elegant editions (Vilna Shaws being paradigmatic). And through studying Talmud and the greater body of rabbinic literature I've found myself encountering #magic/sorcery occasionally, and I just gotta say -- the #SICP metaphor of programming as pure magic, with the #hacker as a sorcerer, goes insanely deep when you start to dig into it.
Bernie Sanders: Israel is ‘becoming a religious fundamentalist country’
“Bottom line, Hamas committed an atrocity. ... Israel certainly had the right to defend itself, but it did not and does not have the right to go to war against the entire Palestinian people. ... Two-thirds of the casualties and deaths are women and children. Unacceptable.”
The #book is “#Judaism Is About Love: Recovering the Heart of #Jewish Life,” and it comes out this week.
"First, it’s probably important to say that love is not primarily an emotion. Love has an emotional manifestation. But love is an existential posture. It’s a way of comporting ourselves, a way of orienting ourselves in the world. That’s really important because you cannot build a spiritual life on a feeling. Feelings come and go. I can be a compassionate person even if at this moment what I’m feeling is frustration."
A spokesman for #JStreet, accused Aipac of attempting to impose a narrow definition of what it is to be pro-Israel:
“#Aipac may hope to silence and intimidate political leaders who believe that settlement expansion, endless conflict and permanent occupation are harmful to Israel, the Palestinian people and US interests. Ultimately, however, these common-sense views are too popular, widespread and important to be suppressed.”