Yiddish Praxis (Rokhl K)

@rokhl.bsky.social

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Teacher of Yiddish language, literature, and Ashkenazi culture. Specialist in "Everyday Ashkenazi Magic." Ask me about my b'nei mitzvah heritage tutoring! Also, writer of Rokhl's Golden City (2017-2024)

Elul is a Place Mondays at 7pm (EST), August 17, 24, & 31. ($125) As fall approaches, the air begins to cool down, and it carries the enticing smell of ripening fall fruit. Elul is a place where the living and the dead meet, and we will draw on all our senses to prepare ourselves for the upcoming season of penitence and renewal. In Yiddish literature, the Hebrew month of Elul is a time when a previously sleepy town is suddenly busy with visitors, whether they are Hasidim come to celebrate with their Rebbe, or family members returned to visit their deceased relatives in the local cemetery. This ritual, called "geyn af keyver oves" [visiting the graves of the ancestors] is a powerful one. The living visit the dead to unburden their hearts, to ask that they carry their prayers to heaven, and to request aid in the upcoming trial of the Yom Hadin, Rosh Hashanah - the Day of Judgment. While the mood was often somber, it also had its irreverent and mischievous side, as we will see. In "Elul is a Place," our journey will be conducted via short stories and poems, memory writing, prayer, ethnography, journalism, and song. Our focus is on lived religion: how ordinary people tasted, smelled, felt, prayed, and wept their way to a meeting with the divine and other worldly. This exploration of the Hebrew month of Elul will be conducted in English, using Yiddish texts with English translations. All are welcome. To register, just email me cjcrokhl@gmail.com to let me know you want to join us.
Join us for my evil eye class ROOSTER IN THE CRADLE Part Two. July 14, 21, and 28 at 7pm. We'll be learning directly from Yiddish texts in translation. Email cjcrokhl at gmail to register. $100. Open to everyone, Part 1 not necessary
Bumper sticker which says "Rolling Beis Medrash" with a cartoon car on top
Art by me depicting moses receiving the law at sinai
Today, the easy, unobtrusive Zionism of my Hebrew school days has become untenable. For my generation, passive Zionism was at least something to fill the slot for the stuff of Jewish identification. For younger people, the moral rot of the Occupation is simply inescapable. Making matters worse is the desperate counter-programming coming out of Jewish schools and camps, institutions which refuse to even acknowledge the problem. It was inevitable, then, that anti-Zionism has itself become a kind of substantive Jewish identity, one that burns with purpose and righteousness. And while I don’t identify with the anti-Zionist analysis, I get it. The search for a usable Jewish future is intimately linked to the absence of a usable Jewish past.