Thanks so much to everyone who has donated so far to help me and @treecultist support our friends @zain86942020 and @hamuwdi_khatir_
A reminder that we are in this for the long haul, so please keep donating and sharing.
PayPal.me/anniegcohen or [email protected]
Venmo @annsplaining
Monzo.me/martinnickolayblake
Today's episode should have been a halloween episode! This time, Dan sits down with Historian, Yiddishist, singer, and messenger of deep Jewish ritual practices, @annsplaining Annie Gottfried Cohen! Annie is based in the UK, teaches Yiddish through the Workers Circle, and has sung with Cantor Rachel Weston, the @isleofklezbos , and on her own Yiddish translations of folk and pop songs with Mikhl Yashinsky and our very own producer Beila Ungar! Alongside all that work, Annie created the website pullingatthreads.com, an incredible resource documenting the ritual practices of Jewish Women, especially but not limited to "Cemetery Measurers" and Klogerins or "Mourning Women".
After Dan and Annie discuss their journey's into Yiddish and discover many parallels in their Jewish stories, they turn to these women and their practices that peer beyond our physical world in to realms we might even call supernatural. Annie describes the process and the experience of uncovering the powerful stories of women who fulfilled communal roles like speaking with the dead, that beautifully enrich and complicate many standard narratives about our Jewish past. There's talk of superheroes, of how to connect to our ancestors, of magic, and measuring cemeteries in Lithuania, and what all those big and impossible ideas might mean for us in the present.
We also root this conversation in our horror and opposition to the genocidal devastation of Palestinian life that continues to happen in Gaza and in the West Bank, alongside many other horrible acts led by the US, the Israeli government, and other imperial powers around the world. In light of that, we are asking for your help supporting a campaign that Annie helps lead to to assist Mohammed Abdel Gatah Kamel Haggag, along with his multi-generational family, survive in a devastated and intensely dangerous Gaza Strip, Palestine.
You can find out more and donate at the link in our bio.
Next Tuesday at 7pm EST (midnight BST, in case any night owls want to stay up with me 🦉) Free registration, link in bio
@yenta_laureate and I will be talking to the one and only Anthony Russell about 'From Popular Front to Cold War', a new book on the International Workers Order, edited by Elissa Sampson and Bob Zecker, and including my chapter about the IWO and the International Brigades.
Come for the ever relevant history of immigrant and minority workers organising to help each other survive capitalism and fight fascism, all while grappling with (or failing to grapple with) the dogmas and prejudices and of their own movement. Stay for the stories of revolutionary theatre, chicken impersonation and anti-fascist 'capture the flag'.
There's very few things you can persuade me to stay up past my bedtime for these days, but this is one of them.
I've shared this before but seems worth sharing it again in light of the attacks on @greenpartyzack and the Green Party
In his memoirs, translated into English by Samuel Portnoy, the famous Bundist leader Vladimir Medem described having his words misconstrued by a Zionist journalist. Medem and other Bundists fought tirelessly for Jewish rights within the revolutionary movement, to make sure that the coming revolution would mean not just an end to persecution and violent pogroms but also full political and even national emancipation for Jews in Russia. Addressing a public meeting, he expressed the hope that recent pogroms, horrific as they were, were a sign that this change was coming. But the Zionist journalist twisted his words to make it sound like he was saying that violence against Jews was a good and even a necessary thing.
And there was nothing he could do about it, his responses were ignored. In fact, Portnoy notes in a footnote that as late as 1972, almost 50 years after Medem's death, this was still being repeated by Zionist writers.
Medem is arguably one of the greatest champions of Jewish rights of modern history. He learned Yiddish to be able to communicate with the Jewish masses, was the principle advocate of the Bund's position on Jewish national autonomy, and famously fell out with the Bolsheviks over their refusal to recognise Jews as a nation. But for Zionists, his opposition to the Jewish colonial project in Palestine made him an antisemite. In Medem's day, that was a minority position in the Jewish world, but today it has become the dominant one. Those of us who stand up for Palestinian liberation are often attacked, like Medem was, with Zionists finding ways to demonstrate that we aren't "real Jews."
Reading the news this morning, you'd think that the Green Party were behind the attack in Golders Green. It's almost obscene the way that violence against Jews is being manipulated by political pundits to attack their opponents— in this case, the one major party that actually wants to change the system. But it's all too fucking familiar. They've been playing these games for over a century, the only thing to do is to refuse to join in.
An update from Mohamed and his family in Gaza:
"Everyone believes that the war is over, but every day there are martyrs and bombings, and no one stops them. We continue living in tents without the most basic things. Now that summer is approaching, mosquitoes are starting to bite us and bother us a lot. Plus, there's a scary new problem: rodents have multiplied and are attacking people. They have attacked children and seriously injured some.
The bombing continues, and the martyrs are increasing every day. Hospitals are overflowing with martyrs and wounded. There's a shortage of medicine, blood, and equipment. We can't sleep a single night without hearing bursts of gunfire, the force of explosions, and the sound of tanks in northern Gaza. Not to mention the harshness and difficulty of life, the bleakness of the situation, the catastrophic living conditions, the tents and their inhabitants, the rubble of Gaza, the pollution of its environment, water, and sewage, the spread of diseases and viruses. This is life, this is reality. Talk about it, don't forget it, and tell everyone that everyone here is dying in Gaza in every way."
The video shows food distribution in the camp, which Mohamed emphasises does not happen every day. You can see here how desperate people are. There is still a huge shortage of food, medicine and other essentials, and on most days the only way to get these things are to buy them at extortionate prices.
Please keep donating so we can keep supporting this family and letting them know that people outside of Gaza have not forgotten them.
Chuffed link in bio or :
monzo.me/martinnickolayblake
paypal.me/anniegcohen
Or DM me for bank details
First spotting of "From Popular Front to Cold War - The Interracial Left and the International Workers Order, 1930–1954" in the wild! At @lighthousebks
Photo by @lutopianx , pictured here with their and Kenyon Zimmer's book "With Freedom in Our Ears: Histories of Jewish Anarchism"
Also a reminder that Lighthouse books holds a stash of masks from @edinmaskbloc if you want to be cool and safe like me and Anna 😷
Fun poem from the Volunteer for Liberty, the publication produced by and for the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War
Also: what the inside of my brain looks like since I got back to SCW research and we started speaking French at home
Also: what I mean when I say I have a "reading knowledge" of Spanish
