In this episode we speak with three organizers of the United Jewish Peoples Order (UJPO) to explore their organization's storied century-long history, and its present work as a community organization committed to developing secular socialist Jewish life in Toronto (and Canada more broadly) through educational, cultural and social events and programs.

Join UJPO, Naomi Klein and others on June 11th for UJPO's Centennial Celebration (Available virtually and in person)

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Ben and Zach are joined by Emanuel Ovadia, creator and editor of Gazoz De Frambuaz, a Ladino-centering zine based in Miami Florida. Gazoz De Frambuaz (Raspberry Soda) serves as a metaphor for the cultural exchange that's served as a a wellspring for Sephardic culture across the region that Sephardic Jews made their home after the Spanish Inquisition: Southwest Asia and North Africa. Our conversation grounds us in the history of the Ladino language, before exploring contemporary Sephardi cultural institutions to situate the contribution of Gazoz De Frambuaz to modern Sephardi culture.

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Print your own copies!

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Ben and Zach speak to Daniel Grossman, a member of Na'amod and fellow (former?) organiser within the British Jewish community, including the Union of Jewish Students and Board of Deputies. Our paths have crossed before...

Member of UK Jewish body resigns over failure to call out Israel on Gaza | UK news | The Guardian (That's Dan!)

yourparty.jewishdiasporist.com

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Zach speaks to Leah Robbins, one of the organisers behind the Achvat Olam Community Day School, the groundbreaking project to establish the first diasporist Jewish day school in Boston.

(apologies for the audio being a bit rusty - Z)

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Big thank you to Aly Halpert for continuing to allow us to use her music!

Chaia of Kleztronica and Rabbi Chel Mandell of Santa Cruz CA's Tzimtzum Community the first ever episode of the Jewish Diasporist recorded with a live audience. This episode was recorded live on September 15th.

Chaia is an electronic composer working at the intersection of Yiddish culture and electronic club music. She weaves archival Yiddish samples with techno and ambient frameworks, creating hybrid folkloric-electronic compositions that situate ancestral sound within global and liberatory rave ecologies.

We work closely to partner with radical communities like Tzimtzum and cultural activists like Chaia to create Jewish spaces like this which foster the world to come both on the earth and across cyberspace.

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Naomi Seidman, Director of the University of Toronto's Center for Diaspora and Transnational Studies joins us to explore the young academic discipline of Diaspora Studies, its history and contents, and its relationship to other academic fields.

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Big thank you to Aly Halpert for continuing to allow us to use her music!

In this episode, we are joined by Deatra Cohen and Adam Siegel, authors of "Ashkenazi Herbalism" and recently: "Woven Roots; Recovering the Healing Plant Traditions of Jews and their Neighbors in Eastern Europe." Their new book expands on their earlier work by foregrounding the ways plant medicine served as a medium for coexistence in a land that's often only remembered as a place of Jewish suffering.

Through concrete examples, we explored the implications of diaspora for herbal and medicinal traditions. These traditions, often considered backwards and lost to history, can continue to teach us about what it means to be in right relations with all of our neighbors.

Get your copy of Woven Roots from Jewitches!

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Big thank you to Aly Halpert for continuing to allow us to use her music!

We made it to Episode 50! Today, it's just Zach and Ben talking about the recent elections to the World Zionist Congress. They start discussing by how Zionism can (and should) be defined, followed by an overview of the voting process, the participating slates, they pros and cons of voting, and some possible alternatives to Jewish self-determination.

Zach's ongoing "Bundism Today" series can be found here

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Big thank you to Aly Halpert for continuing to allow us to use her music!