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Dear FIRST NAME,

Last fall, T'ruah was excited to launch Eh. More?: The Institute for (B)Old Jewish Thought. Our first few months were a huge success in terms of how many emails we sent you, and we have other goals as well. 

In addition to all the depressing issues T’ruah tackles, we hope that Eh. More? will contribute to efforts to fight climate change. Public discourse today is a lot of hot air. Unless cooler heads prevail, there will be no polar bears left by 2050. 

To be clear, we don't want to freeze anyone out of the discourse — that would run contrary to our democratic values. We just want everyone to chill.

And sure, at times, saving the actual climate seems beyond hope. But with your help, FIRST NAME, we can save the cultural climate — before the glaciers of indifference melt into a rising sea of misinformation that floods the basement of bigotry and leads to a lot of expensive repairs for liberal democracy. 

Thanks for being in this fight with us.

Rabbi Lev Meirowitz Nelson
Director of Climate Change Metaphors

P.S. Happy Purim!

With the success of Eh. More? T’ruah is excited to announce the launch of the following new think tanks. Taken together, these new institutions will stand up to the right-wing consortium of well-funded organizations on which we cheerfully lay all the blame.

Eh. More? is proud to offer deep, insightful analyses to the Jewish community, such as these Antisemitism Resources.

Eh. More? views the arts as a key part of contemporary Jewish life. Music helps us makes sense of the world around us.

Lyrics by: Eh. More? The Institute for (B)Old Jewish Thought
Music by: Adam Sandler shlita

Let’s gather in a quorum
Here comes Purim
Leave off all decorum
It’s time for Purim

Purim is a revenge fantasy of the Jews
Those who know the truth can find its subtext in the news.
When you feel like the only goy rooting for Haman (BOOO!)
Here’s a list of others who also want to hang that Jew….

George Santos makes jokes about the Shoah
Is he self-hating, or a regular antisemite? It’s kinda hard to know-a. 

Alex Jones and Sean Hannity get the same drops from Q
Maybe they meet up for a Mein Kampf book club, too. 

Of course we all remember when Kanye went Defcon 3
He may be unwell, but many sane people hit ‘tweet.’

Marjorie Taylor Greene, conspiracy doesn’t phase her
She’s still scanning the sky for a Jewish space laser.

J.K. Rowling’s nasty to trans folks, but what about the Jews? 
Look at the Gringott’s goblins… yeah, she’s a creep to us too. 

Nick Fuentes doesn’t read much, and he’s always lyin’ 
His favorite bedtime fable is the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. 

Let’s gather in a quorum
Here comes Purim

Leave off all decorum
It’s time for Purim

Have an upside upside upside upside down Purimmmmmm…

Eh. More? is for nerdy Jews of every generation. That's why we've teamed up with PJ Library to bring you these new picture books that will be arriving at your house whether you want them or not.

The Eh. More? Social Media Team (i.e., the infinite monkeys with laptops we affectionately call "interns") has been stymied ever since Elon Musk took over Twitter. Is it worth dealing with Twitter’s changed political landscape to put our presence there or not? In a word, is Twitter dead?

To answer this, we turned to our ancient Sages:

Talmud, Masechet Yevamusk 10k

We learned in the Mishnah, Even if one saw [Musk] purchase the site and drive off advertisers in real-time by randomly throwing around the word “woke,” one may not personally testify that the site died. The Gemara asks: Is this to say that if one was offline during one of his 3am weed-fuelled tirades, it is still advisable to Tweet in the same timeline? Rav taught: Even a Musk “joke-attempt” Tweet of 200 characters is enough to pollute one’s cause with the impurity of RTs from sketchy ‘crypto-bros.’ But Shmuel taught: 140.          

And what about the fledgling alternatives to Twitter? We had to go back to the original sources:

Deutoronomedia 21:1

“If someone slain is found lying in the open… your elders and magistrates shall go out and measure the distances from the corpse to the nearby towns.”

Mishna Socia 9.99

“Measure the distance” - this means the actual user metrics of Mastodon, Post and Hive. In case you might come to say: Anecdotal evidence of ‘all your friends’ claiming they use it. Why ‘all?’ In order to teach us, even friends we’re not really in touch with, but occasionally “like” their Facebook posts. ‘Like’ – does this include hearts and laugh-emojis, or literally just a thumbs-up? Some say…

This dispute was left unresolved, as the Rabbis subsequently went down “the hole of the rabbit”… on Twitter.

At Eh. More?, we’re bringing together people from all corners of the Jewish community to ask big questions, study Jewish texts, and hold courageous conversations about today’s most important moral and political issues.

In that spirit we present:

Dear Bibi,

We’ve been a democracy for a while now, and man, does our relationship with representative government feel stale. Our elections are ugly, Congress never gets anything done, and it turns out free speech is super annoying (lol, but seriously). Got any tips? 

Yours unconditionally (wink wink),

America 

Dear America,

It’s not easy being a democracy in the middle of a sea of autocrats. 

So my advice is: Don’t be a democracy! 

As I’ve been learning from my new pals in Bahrain, there are so many fun forms of government out there. Have you considered becoming a semi-constitutional monarchy? Don’t limit yourself! 

Secondly, whether you’re planning to represent their interests or — let’s be honest — not, remember: People LOVE voting. I recommend holding elections every 4 to 6 weeks. Keep it exciting by trying out new formats, like dipping your finger in green ink or texting SWAMP to 1776. 

Finally, it’s a good idea to disenfranchise at least 50% of the population. But you guys know that already. 

Both our countries are in rough neighborhoods, so we have to stick together.

Sincerely grateful for your foreign aid,

King Bibi (just trying it out)

Follow Eh. More? on: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, CashApp, Crypto, Fiddler, Spoutable, J Date, Hinge, Mastodon, T. Rex, Uber Eats, Duo Lingo, accept our friend request on LinkedIn, take our calls, stop avoiding us, send us money so we can keep making stuff. Jewish thought leadership doesn’t pay for itself. Send us an NFT? What even is an NFT? We thought it was a youth group. Just send us one! Follow us!!!!

T'ruah's Purim newsletter is brought to you by: Shira Danan, Julie Fishbach, Rabbi Marisa James, Rob Kutner, Rabbi Lev Meirowitz Nelson, Rabbi Bill Plevan, and Rabbi Ruhi Sophia Motzkin Rubenstein.