As we all try to get our bearings in this bewildering, terrifying new chapter of U.S. history, in terms of next-step thinking and action, here’s an early draft of a playbook -- in other words: it’s time to level up. (And here's where to start.) 🧵1/

LOOK TO THE EXPERTS: There are folks with deep knowledge of every issue and every methodology who have been working in the trenches for a long time. We must look to them for guidance and follow their lead. 🧵/2
buff.ly/48G6JXT

So, who wrote the Torah, anyway? (And what was their agenda?) (Specifically, Deuteronomy.) 1/7 During the reign of the Judean King Josiah (640–609 BCE), a scroll was “found” stashed away in the Temple. 2/7

In honor of Indigenous Peoples' Day, we are revisiting the *extremely* complicated question of Jews and colonialism. Jews have not been part of colonial projects in the way that colonizing nations have. But we have been, often, part of them. It's both/and. (1/8) Jews have been simultaneously settlers and refugees. But those two things do not cancel each other out. For Jews, the idea of Zionism sprouted from the fact that Jews were deeply unsafe, of looking for a place that pogroms could not touch — literally. (2/8)

1,200 people were murdered a year ago today. And that bloodshed then begat so, so much more bloodshed. (1/7) I speak of this one day, today, but I do not forget every other day—and all the horrors—that have been in this last year, nor can any of us. (2/7)

I share so many others' heartbreak, rage, grief, fury.

How many different times can a heart shatter?

There was never a military solution.

1/x Hersh should be alive.
And Carmel, Eden, Ori, Almog, Alex.

and about a hundred or so (if I've counted right?) other hostages.

And thousands and thousands of Palestinians.

All for all was on the table in October.

timesofisrael.com/meeting-netany…

I AM SO SICK OF BINARY THINKING AND BINARY THINKERS Eg! One can condemn the Israeli govt’s atrocities AND Hamas WHILE mourning all dead innocent who didn’t ask for this WHILE not abrogating one’s power analysis AND demanding a better future for everyone in the region (which doesn’t require eliding disproportionate harm/impact OR)

Here's a thread w/raw material ready for those sermons defending JD Vance as part of God's plan:

When the king returned from the palace garden to the banquet room, Haman was lying prostrate on the couch... (Esther 7:8)

1/x thread Late one afternoon, David rose from his couch and strolled on the roof of the royal palace (II Samuel 11:2)

Upon my couch at night I sought the one I love (Song of Songs 3:1)

When the sun rises, they come home & couch in their dens. (Psalms 104:22)

We have been saying: Never again is now.

The State is asking citizens to report their neighbors, whose children will be wrenched from them. If the parents don't face criminal charges this time, they will in the next round of bills.

Never again is NOW.

Do something.

1.x

https://twitter.com/RavBogard/status/1649427418459897857

You can't do all of these, I imagine, but I also bet that you might be able to do more than zero of them:

Show up when you see or hear of an action happening.
Support organizing (can often include lots that can be done virtually.)

AKA-- safe is good. Legal is good. But "rare," apropos of @toddiepeters' talk on our culture's implicit claim via Christianity that we need "appropriate" moral justifications for abortion--"rare" is stigmatizing.

Who decides whose reason is good enough?

1/x

https://twitter.com/emilydcrews/status/1649429091496480772

How does it feel to be part of the 1 in 4 people who can get pregnant who will have had an abortion by the age of 45 who hears "safe, legal, rare"?

Do you feel more or less like you can tell your story to someone you love?

Do you feel more or less shamed?

1/x thread.

In the 7th c BCE, Judean mercenaries began arriving to the Egyptian Elephantine island in the Nile, with their families. After the Babylonian conquest of Judea, more refugees came and a thriving Jew-ish community was rocking over there. A whole storehouse of ancient papyri from the 6th-4th c BCE- has been found—so this is while parts of the Hebrew Bible are getting written , for context—that offer an amazing glimpse into their lives.

Thread 1/x

The act of preparing for Passover can feel deeply spiritual in its way, but it also invites us to ask whether we're removing the spiritual leaven from our lives as well as the physical stuff. A lot of traditional commentators describe leaven as puffy & swollen—think of bread rising. They talk about spiritual chametz as the puffy, overextended parts of our ego—how we preen, to be someone in the world (or in the room)...

This is major--BUT "A Vatican statement said the papal bulls, or decrees, 'did not adequately reflect the equal dignity & rights of Indigenous peoples' & have never been considered expressions of the Catholic faith" -- isn't quiiite owning the atrocities it encouraged/sanctioned.

https://twitter.com/IndianCountry/status/1641467898462912515

#LandBack

But also ferstinkin' own your role and complicity in the thing, friends. It's been 500 years. You can do it. We believe in you.

Someone asked me to explain what’s happening in Israel now.

1/x thread.

Picture it:

Trump won in 2020.

Has Senate & House, both by a narrow margin.

Steve Bannon is Senate Majority Leader.

Stephen Miller is Speaker of the House. They’re trying to pass two laws:

One, that anything illegal Trump ever has done or ever will do in office is A-OK (👌, if you will )

And two—well, the judicial overhaul bill doesn’t quite translate given how our branches work, let’s just say they’re trying to smash +

My latest is on a fascinating, complex, deeply loaded (for many) case of applied tumah laws (misleadingly often translated as “ritual impurity”) to the post-Temple era.

That’s right—it’s time to talk about that time (of the month).

(And also: Ejaculation.)

1/X thread 🧵 Well, to start off, if you missed last week's missive, it's on the whole business of tumah/taharah, my beef with the "ritual purity" translation, and kiiiind of an overview of the concept during the biblical era/Temple times. You can read that here:

lifeisasacredtext.substack.com/p/contracting-…

THREAD. 👇 This is going to be, I believe, one of the most important moments of Jewish learning in a long time.

People will, I predict, look back at this as a watershed moment.

https://twitter.com/rabbibecky/status/1637812556210356225

Both bc of the expansion of halakha specifically for trans Jews--which will be game-changing in ways that imho many cis Jews don't yet see (even tho we have SEEN halakhic revolutions before & what they can engender, pun intended jwa.org/feminism/hyman…)

but also:
METHODOLOGY

I am on a panel on religious ethics and space exploration and I GOT TO TRANSLATE GER/גר AS ALIEN!!! 👽

(As in widow, orphan, and ger) My main point was that we haven’t figured out how to organize a just, caring society down here, so (all major questions about space colonialism & exploitation & economic divides even notwithstanding) why on earth 🌍! do we think we can create functional societies up there?!

My latest missive is about a biblical concept that is, generally, wildly misunderstood.

It’s usually mistranslated in ways that lead to people getting the wrong idea, and honestly the whole thing is messy and complex enough without the red herring.

Soooo

1/x thread 🧵 A lot of people connected to Judaism and Christianity are aware that there’s a *thing* in the Torah. Some sort of ancient cooties a person can catch.

But when you translate it as “ritual impurity,” consciously or not, the moral shade of the word “pure” sneaks in a bit.

"Our central question should be: What is the obligation of the Jewish community at this moment, as we see law after law harming the transgender community?"

Proud to co-author this LTE with @rabbibecky & @KleinIdit.

Never again is now.

1/x

forward.com/opinion/letter… The Jewish community has used "never again" as a rallying cry for years, for good reason.

Never again should any population be singled out or targeted just because of who they are.

Never again should we stand idly by as hate is fomented, cultivated, made into law.

My latest newsletter is a thousand-year history of Purim Torah: saucy, irreverent spoofs of Jewish sacred texts, mostly tied to the holiday of Purim that happens this week, but some venturing widely out into deeply… shall we say… social and political commentary.

1/x thread 🧵 It begins somewhat innocuously—a piyyut (hymn) for Passover is spoofed into a drinking song in the 11th century.

But soon enough great rabbis are, well, having at rabbinic texts, making up ridiculous names for the sages of their “Talmudic” world, tracing the lineages of wine.

When your trans friends talk about genocide—

The UN definition of genocide incl: “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a group…Causing serious bodily or mental harm; Deliberately inflicting conditions calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”

https://twitter.com/AriDrennen/status/1630264669675073536

This threat could not be more real.

My latest missive is about the desire to understand, well, why bad things happen to good people—and the cultural tendency, as Rabbi Elliot Kukla puts it, to believe that “to be sick is to be a loser.”

And it’s about what else is possible.

1/x thread It is, perhaps, understandable that at least since the Bible, people have tried to answer the question of “why”? For example, the Book of Job is a 42 chapter meditation on this (complete with the unsolicited advice & mansplaining every sick & disabled person gets!)