Some things for April
Podcasts
UnPacking the Campus AntiSemitism Narrative (On the Nose)
The Jewish Currents podcast put up an important conversation about the complexity and trouble with antisemitism on college campuses. I found the discussion about anti-DEI movements instrumentalizing Jewish identity for illiberalism incisive.
“Say My Name” (60 Songs That Explain the 90s)
In honor of the last episode of 60 Songs I present my favorite episode: the Destiny’s Child episode.
Sex in Philosophy with Dr Manon Garcia (What’s Left of Philosophy)
I’ve been thinking about this podcast that touches on the Trad Wife phenom and led me to Manon’s book “We Are Not Born Submissive: How Patriarchy Shapes Women’s Lives.”
Readings
”Where Does Culture Come From?” by Terry Eagleton (London Review of Books)
”The only good reason for being a socialist, apart from annoying people you don’t like, is that you don’t like to work. For Oscar Wilde, who was closer in this respect to Marx than to Morris, communism was the condition in which we would lie around all day in various interesting postures of jouissance, dressed in loose crimson garments, reciting Homer to one another and sipping absinthe. And that was just the working day.”
Blood: The Science, Medicine, and Mythology of Menstruation by Dr Jen Gunther
There’s so much we don’t know about the uterus, but what we do know is dispensed in interesting, with evangelical fervor, by Gunther.
Poems
In honor of National Poetry Month a few of my favorite:
If I Should Come Upon Your House Lonely in the West Texas Desert by Natalie Diaz (from Postcolonial Love Poem)
”I will enter the door of your throat,
hang my last lariat in the hallway,
build my altar of best books on your bedside table,
turn the lamp on and off, on and off, on and off.”
If The Come for Us by Fatimah Ashgar (from If The Come For Us)
”my people my people I can’t be lost
when I see you my compass
is brown & gold & blood
my compass a muslim teenager
snapback & high-tops gracing
the subway platform
mashallah I claim them all”
I Loved You Before I Was Born by Li Young Lee (from The Undressing: Poems)
”I give you my blank heart.
Please write on it
what you wish.”
Things I wrote and said
“Christians cannot remain silent about the plight of Gaza”
Grateful for the Faith and Leadership conversation about Gaza. This is the kind of leadership Christians need right now (I need right now!): vulnerable, nuanced, politically clear. Thank you for modeling.