Podcasts

January 21, 2010 by admin

Interview with Senior Editor Susan Schnur

Associate Editor Melanie Weiss had an opportunity to sit down with Senior Editor Susan Schnur to discuss the Winter 2009-10 issue and its compelling theme, Our Bodies: It’s Complicated.

Listen in on Susan Schnur’s thoughts and meditations about the articles in this issue and how it came together as a whole.

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Don’t forget–you can find Lilith podcasts in the iTunes store, as well–download them for free!

Posts from the Field

January 21, 2010 by admin

Breast Cancer Advice Refusenik

In the wake of the recent controversy and confusion over proposed new guidelines cutting down on how often one should have a mammogram to screen for breast cancer, “Be Vigilant!” seems to be the rallying cry for women. Here, in a Lilith web exclusive, is one contrarian view of some commonly held wisdom. The opinions reflect the experience of this writer only, so… be vigilant and question even what you are about to read! It’s good practice for dealing with other medical matters, too.

Jewish women, as a group the best-educated females in the western world, are also among the most sophisticated medical consumers. We represent a pretty privileged cohort, with access to information and (because we tend to live in urban areas with many specialists) often access to the best medical care as well. We have to remember to use our smarts, be attentive to our own bodies and ask a lot of questions.

Breast-Cancer-Advice Refusenik

Judith Beth Cohen

I had four maternal aunts who died of breast cancer before age 50, so it’s not surprising that I began obsessing about cancer at an early age. When a friend was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 26, I decided it was time to start having yearly mammograms and to examine my breasts diligently every month. At 30, a doctor told me, “You have lumpy breasts,” and my fears skyrocketed. I consulted with specialists with comforting names like Dr. Cope and Dr. Love. Dr. Cope assured me that I did not have breast cancer, but he could not promise that I never would. “Maybe when you’re 80,” he said. I felt reassured. Dr. Love extracted fluid from my breasts and the lumps disappeared like magic; I left her office in a happy, lump-free daze. The years passed; my luck seemed to be holding. In November of 2006, it finally happened: I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I was 63, a long way from 30; not as old as 80.

I had a mastectomy in December. Since I’d spent years fastidiously monitoring my breasts and had helped three close friends through breast cancer, I thought I knew all about this disease. But when personally confronted with breast cancer’s complexities, I was shocked to feel very much at sea. I found that much of what I was told, and read about, was wrong for me. I needed to summon my own voice, trusting it above the flood of institutional givens that so often were presented as the One True Way. I feel called upon to challenge the following “truths” that I heartily disagree with. You can disagree too. Use your strengths, trust yourself, and figure out what’s right for YOU.

1. Your annual mammograms will diagnose breast cancer. Mine didn’t. Don’t be lured into feeling safe; screening mammograms never claimed 100% certainty, even though I always wanted to walk out of my annual mammogram and think, “Phew! Safe for another year!” Despite the current controversy about the usefulness of annual mammograms, I would never forgo this annual procedure. You have to be in touch with your body—literally. Mid-year I felt a very vague, tingling sensation and insisted (it wasn’t easy!) on an ultra-sound. My primary-care physician said she felt nothing. On the ultra-sound, though, a tiny black dot showed itself. The radiologist did a needle biopsy and said, “Don’t worry. It’s tiny, just .03 centimeters. It’s just a nuisance.” I will never forget those words. It turned out to be 1.3 centimeters, it was invasive and it had begun to move. (!) Given that we do not know the biology of my cancer, I don’t know if it was there at the time of the screening mammogram—but you need to be aware even if the doctor is blowing you off!

2. A mastectomy is devastating. Not for me, though Paid clinical trials show that the majority of women find the prospect of having a body part surgically removed can be psychologically traumatic. The only hard part for me was the one night I spent in the hospital. A week later I went to Mexico for a winter vacation. For me, at least, a prosthesis is fine! You stick it in the pocket of your bra and it feels like real flesh; it even has a nipple. Many of us stuffed socks or tissue into our bras when we were young, and today it’s impossible to find bras that aren’t padded, so why is having a fake breast such a horror show? Having one breast has not spoiled my sex life, nor has it affected my exercise or activity level. My husband’s comment: “It doesn’t matter to me at all—I’ve never cared that much for breasts.”

3. Breast reconstruction is the way to go. My (wonderful female) surgeon automatically scheduled me to see a plastic surgeon even before the mastectomy, so that both procedures could be done at the same time; this is very common. Breast reconstruction is viewed as a huge advance for women, especially in light of how devastating it can be for women who are undergoing prophylactic mastectomy because they are carriers of the BRCA gene; who would decline it? Well, I did decline it, and felt like a very bad patient. I’m athletic; athletic women can give up more than they think, though mastectomy is very different now than it was for friends of my mother who had radical mastectomies in the 1950; the same with changes in reconstruction.

[Editor’s note: The American Cancer Society website, www.cancer.org, discusses risks and benefits of different kinds of breast reconstruction.]

4. Chemotherapy makes you sick. The day after chemo I felt fine, because I’d been pumped full of steroids. The anti-nausea drugs worked, and I never vomited. I got mouth sores, but there was an easy remedy. I was even able to give myself the injections – at home – to raise my white cell count, something I’d been told I couldn’t do. Six months after chemo I was trekking the hills of northern Thailand.

5. Join a cancer support group. I felt pressure to see a social worker at the hospital for individual counseling and to join an ongoing support group. And then I thought, duh, I have four close friends who have had breast cancer – that IS a support group….

6. Don’t hide your disease. I got a lot of advice of the Alcoholics Anonymous genre: Be out there! Tell people what you’re going through! And this fits with my natural temperament. But I wish someone had told me that not going public might also be a good idea. I hated having everyone treat me like an invalid. I hated that everyone at work knew. I do not call myself a “breast cancer survivor.” I feel it trivializes survivorship. Plus, who knows if I’m a survivor?

7. Jewish genes are the worst. Man oh man, everyone told me this, and I believed it. When I did get cancer, it turned out not to be the genetic kind, despite my four dead aunts. Late in the game, my oncologist told me that new studies have shown that the highest percentage of BRCA mutation is found in non-Jewish Hispanic women. (Geneticists think that Jews expelled from Spain who landed in Latin America tended to marry within particularly tiny, hermetic communities, deeply narrowing the gene pool.) So, okay, these women descend from Jewish stock, but they don’t know it. When I learned about other groups with bad genes, it lightened my load.

8. Cancer makes you a better person. The ubiquitous Think Positive movement doesn’t work for me. I totally agree with Barbara Ehrenreich here (author of Bright-Sided:How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America). I need to hear the truth: Cancer is a pain, it required a ton of my time, resources and energy. And it may shorten my life. If anything, cancer has made me a worse person. I suffer fools less, and I’m less tolerant of bullshit. Those things aside, I’m pretty much the same as I was pre-cancer. Aging has made me a better person, maybe, but not cancer.

Bio: Judith Beth Cohen has written a novel, Seasons (The Permanent Press). Her short stories and articles have appeared in The Women’s Review of Books and in numerous literary publications.

The Lilith Blog

January 18, 2010 by admin

Accidental Maverick

A few people who read my last post, “Jews as Gentiles?”, referred to the content as “edgy.” And here I was, hoping I was being nice enough. So maybe I’m a Jewish bad-ass in spite of my peacefrog nature–and I haven’t worn my motorcycle jacket in over 10 years (what were we thinking buying things 10X too big for us back in the 80’s/90’s?). Interesting.

I’ve never been uber-knowledgeable about politics-in-general; and the politics I do know mostly occur within the state of Idaho (or should I say Planet Idaho.) And WOW, are there politics. Politics, to me, gets more confusing by the minute. I’m not even sure I know what the difference is between liberal and conservative ideology any more—and I wonder if I have a little of both. Thank heavens for my Jewish political adviser, Jon Stewart.

One thing I have learned a lot about is religion. Everyone knows about spirituality; they just don’t know it yet. One of my initial entry-points into feminist thought was a Woman’s Studies course about women and spirituality in graduate school—which blew my mind, permanently. Since then, I’ve been fascinated with the global patterns and behaviors of religion since religion began. I believe the proper term for this line of inquest is “heresy,” so it’s a good thing I’m not Christian.

How do I, this spiritual schizophrenic, see Jews, the tiny little yellow dot jumping over the globe for the last 5770 years, mostly while being chased? I think we’re pretty bad-ass in general. One of my favorite reference guides is “The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets” by Barbara Walker. Thousands of religions around the planet referenced in Walker’s books have, throughout time, morphed into the Big Five (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism)–with Jews, and women, the underdogs out. Now, most religions see a purpose to women, with our exclusive ability to breed and all, so long as we are kept squarely in our place. And while so many older religions have succumbed by sword or stake, or been otherwise absorbed by predominant religious cultures, Judaism has survived. One of the mythological themes I try to keep in mind for my personal sanity is “it’s better to be smarter than to be stronger.” The story of David and Goliath has served me well, and it has served Jews well.

Women and modern religion is particularly tricky business, what with all the religious dogma being re-written and manipulated by men. It makes our quest for spiritual and religious “truth” that much harder because, in order to be educated consumers, we need to figure out what everything said originally, and decide how well the product has held up over the years. What amazing, powerful woman has the time for that? It doesn’t take that much time, however, to get an understanding of the basics—such as women are the original vessels of divinity, as servants of the earth and keeper of the species. I can see how that might make some guys jealous.

When I moved to Pocatello, Idaho, my life’s rule book got tossed out the window, and I have completely lost track of what is edgy, or what is commonplace. I can barely watch “High Fidelity” starring John Cusack without thinking how lame, boring, and out-of-touch I’ve become, but somehow in the spiritual dimension I am a hopeless maverick. Funny how we can evolve—as Jews, as women, as people—when we give chase down whatever rabbit hole captures our own, individual, attention.

–Nancy Goodman

The Lilith Blog

January 12, 2010 by admin

Etz Chayim: Stepping off the Party Line

This week I have been thinking about what we choose to reveal and conceal about ourselves when we do political work. We’ve all heard the endless debates about “political correctness.” On one side there are the people who insist on the use of certain terminology. On the other side are those who say “What’s in a name?” Then there are those who point out that some people and institutions hide behind the “correct” language in order to mask oppressive realities (for example, “workplace diversity initiatives” that merely attempt to paper over deep-seated racism in hiring practices).

Language is obviously extremely important to political work. I constantly identify potential allies by the language they use — even when I’ve met someone minutes ago, I feel camaraderie with them once they indicate through a few key words that they’re tuned in to a particular political community. (For example, a potential new housemate came to check out my apartment yesterday. Once she said “CUNY,” “structural violence,” “locality,” and “anthology,” I started grinning and said “You should move in.”) And this is not about prejudice or stereotyping — when someone can converse freely in a particular jargon, it does indicate that they have substantial experience with a certain political milieu. This shared experience makes a certain level of intimacy possible — the same way that certain conversations become possible when you find out that the person you’ve just met is a Reconstructionist Jew just like you.

On the other hand, classifying people based on their language usage can oversimplify things. Some people share the same vocabulary but use it in different ways — and some people have entirely different vocabularies but the same — or at least compatible — values. (To continue the Reconstructionist analogy, different Reconstructionists can have different theologies, and one Reconstructionist may find that her theology has a lot in common with the theology of a particular Orthodox Jew that she meets.) Once the initial “Oh, you are? I am too!” passes, we may learn many things about each other that surprise us or contradict our assumptions. I’ve learned the hard way to be flexible about language — just because someone uses language in a different way than I do doesn’t mean that “they’ve gone over to the side of evil.” It might mean that they aren’t aware of something, and would be happy to be informed. It might also mean that I’m not aware of something, and if I ask them to clarify, I’ll learn something new. Or, it might just mean that there are different ways to say the same thing, each of which is grounded in a particular set of experiences. (Or that multiple things are all true, even if they seem to contradict at first glance!)

And sometimes, knowing all the “right language” can be a way to avoid engaging with the honest reality of doing political work. We’ve all known the people who say all the right things but don’t apparently know why they’re doing the work they’re doing, or who appear passionate and committed but then suddenly drop out and disappear. I’ve been that person in the past, easily able to rattle off a well-cited explanation for a certain phenomenon or political strategy, but struck dumb when asked a question like “Do you enjoy being part of this community?”

What I’ve noticed is that I’ve been able to develop my political self-awareness and integrity by paying attention to those moments in which language becomes messy. After all, I can’t stop feeling certain things just because I believe that I “shouldn’t” — I learn a lot more when, rather than denying or ignoring my experience, I observe and explore it. If I ask questions about why I might feel that way, I sometimes learn something new. For example, I’m all for gender egalitarianism in Judaism, and I dislike the gender binary (so much so that I prefer gender-neutral pronouns), and yet I sometimes enjoy being in a synagogue with a women’s section! What’s going on here?

My housemate told me another relevant story the other day. He used to be heavily involved in the politically conscious hip-hop scene. He told me that he met another artist who had a reputation for being somewhat self-righteous. The guy was putting on some brand-new Nikes (Nikes has been notorious for paying sweatshop workers next to nothing and then turning around and marketing exorbitantly-priced sneakers to impoverished urban youth). My housemate commented on the shoes, and the artist laughed and acknowledged that despite everything he stood for, he still liked to wear some nice Nikes. My housemate thought to himself, “Hey, this guy is human after all.” After some more conversation, the artist explained that as a biracial man, it was important to him to wear nice, styling sneakers (an important signifier of black masculinity) in order to publicly establish his black identity.

In my experience, it is important to create space for this type of conversation when engaging in political work. (And yes, a certain degree of trust needs to be established in order for such conversations to become possible — if someone says something I disagree with, I’m much more likely to believe that they’re wrestling with the complexity of the issue in a serious way if they are someone I know and trust.) I see this as one of the places in which spirituality is valuable in political work. To me, it is a spiritual process to cultivate enough self-awareness to know how we really feel about things, and to develop relationships in which we can explore those feelings honestly, no matter how surprising or shameful they seem to us at first glance. And it is through this process that we develop new insights about what we should be working towards. What does justice look like? What role does each of us have in bringing about a just world? Finding our place in the work becomes possible when we honestly assess what we, ourselves, want and need to build, and what we personally find exhausting or fulfilling.

–Ri J. Turner

The Lilith Blog

January 11, 2010 by admin

Jews as gentiles?

Pocatello, Idaho is not my first experience being a distinct religious minority in a small town. The first time I became known as everyone’s only Jewish friend was in DeKalb, Illinois, where I received my undergraduate degree in 1992 and graduate degree in 1997 from Northern Illinois University. 6 ½ years total spent living in the land of flying corn. Predominantly Catholic, I eventually learned why everyone had two middle names (saint names, you know), why everyone had a smudge of ash on their heads on that one Wednesday, and what that small paper scroll was hanging from everyone’s necks.

It was also here that a boyfriend told me about a mechanic who tried to “Jew him down (in his defense, he was properly horrified and ashamed upon learning why that expression was bad),” and I had a healthy argument with the student union cafeteria lady about why it was important to have Matzoh available during Passover.

While it was weird that the only Jewish fraternity at NIU was equally gentile, the DeKalb experience of being in a Jewish minority didn’t prepare me for the weirdness that comes from actually being referred to as a gentile. Which is what Jews, and all other non-Mormons, are considered in this part of the country.

When I was told at my job interview that the Pocatello, Idaho area was predominantly LDS (the official term for Mormons—Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints), I was immediately confused because I hadn’t seen anyone with bonnets or long beards cruising around in buggies during this first visit. I was not the full-fledged religious nerd I am today and thought Mormons were like Amish—and it all made sense to me when I saw an Amish family at the Salt Lake City airport on my return trip home. “Ah, there are the Mormons,” I said.

The attire and outward appearance of LDS members is not unusual come to find out, and many people outside the Mormon Corridor recognize members of the LDS Church as those pairs of young missionaries walking around in nice suits. The door-to-door salesmanship of Christ-based religion has been going on since the dawn of the common era, and at least now the people at your door are polite, well-groomed citizens with pamphlets or gold name tags. Just a few centuries ago, the people at your door were going to help you find Christ if it took every perverse, demonic instrument of torture they could design.

So proselytizing is a Christian thing, that’s always been the case, and the LDS Church based out of Salt Lake City is the latest Christian thing being aggressively marketed to the lost and soulless masses. There are many who claim the LDS Church isn’t “Christian;” and I suggest watching the first 10 minutes of Elizabeth starring Cate Blanchett (not for the faint of heart) to see that Christ-followers accusing other Christ-followers of “doing it wrong” isn’t anything new either.

The hot button issues between Jews and Mormons include the alleged affiliation between the two and the disturbing ritual of baptizing Holocaust victims and other Jews posthumously, which has since been discouraged by the LDS church. While I believe posthumous baptism is shocking and grossly misguided, It’s the issue of affiliation that provides the most consistent puzzlement living in the “Book of Mormon Belt.” I strive to manage this theological conflict gently, because often it’s more fun to try and get my LDS friends into a bar than get them into a religious debate where, ultimately, we’d have to agree to disagree. This certainly keeps me on my toes when it comes to my Jewish heritage; especially since, Mormon majority or not, Judaica out here is spread pretty thin.

–Nancy Goodman

The Lilith Blog

January 4, 2010 by admin

Jewish Community Involvement…and Skiing

My first job after college was at a therapeutic group home for adolescent girls. This group home, along with many other family and children services, was operated by the Jewish Children’s Bureau of Chicago (now Jewish Child and Family Services). Were any of the group home residents Jewish? No. Were many of my co-workers Jewish? No. Was there a Jewish education component? No. But, like other urban religious counterparts such as the Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Chicago, the Jewish Child and Family Services was backed by such a strong and committed Jewish community, it had a reach that could extend far beyond the five books of Moses.

In more rural areas, be they in Illinois, Idaho, Georgia, or New Mexico, the Jewish capacity for greater social justice and involvement, one of the cornerstones of Jewish ethics, is greatly reduced. It seems, at least here in Pocatello, Idaho, that it’s often hard enough to simply maintain a solid base of active Jewish community members to keep Temple Emanuel‘s lights on.

So Jewish community involvement in a smaller town is more individual–at least in the smaller town of Pocatello. And Temple Emanuel in Pocatello has members at nonprofit clinics and co-ops, on community and philanthropy boards, and involved in interfaith dialogue and relations.

The beauty (and curse) of a small town is that everyone knows everyone. A joke that a friend of mine once made is that there are .6 degrees of separation between everyone in Pocatello. Meaning, we all know each other from at least one source, if not more. So while our arms are stretched taut and our fingers are cramping, the Jewish population in Pocatello does weave a significant ribbon through the greater community, and our local participation in the bettering of the world is significant.

Collective Jewish outreach, I believe, will always be a challenge in a smaller town, or any city with a small number of Jewish residents. While it’s definitely a good thing that one can’t simply walk into a city office and request a complete mailing list of Jewish residents, it’s hard even to reach out to members of our own faith. But, Temple Emanuel’s mailing list is growing, and members who grew up in larger Jewish communities bring their ideas and energy to advance the growth and community outreach of the congregation.

And so it goes on. Now that the winter holiday festivities are wrapping up, it will be a relief to step away from my annual month-long quest for improved religious diversity and appreciation in Pocatello and into some ski boots. The snow dances are in full-force as we pray with Mary, Temple Emanuel member and manager of Pebble Creek Ski Area, that the lifts will be open soon.

Pebble Creek Ski Area is the social hub of the winter season. During the summer in Southeastern Idaho, the outdoors enthusiasts are all dispersed—on bike trails, rivers, mountaintops, gardens, climbing areas. But people you don’t see all year long become regular pals when the snow flies. You might ride the chair lift up with a city official, or share a pitcher of beer and the best cheese fries ever with a member of Rotary. As a small business owner, board member of Pocatello Neighborhood Housing Services, Girls on the Run coach, or whatever else I have my hands in at the moment, there’s always an opportunity to advance a cause on the deck of Pebble Creek. Unless it’s a powder day and I am overcome with God’s majesty in the Far Glades.

–Nancy Goodman

The Lilith Blog

January 4, 2010 by admin

Etz Chayim: Hanukkah, Christmas, and Jewish Theology in a Christian Context, Part 2

In last week’s post, I wrote about some of my experiences growing up Jewish in New Mexico, living with fear of assimilation as well as attraction to certain aspects of Christian spirituality.

This week I want to reflect on some of the broader political and spiritual implications of what we might call “theological assimilation,” or the fact that many of us have a “Default G-d” idea that is derived from the mainstream Protestant theology that is ambient in the US. In the US, when someone says “G-d,” the words “faith,” “belief,” and “doctrine” aren’t too far from our minds (in my experience, at least). To me, this reflects the fact that this country is essentially mainstream Protestant, and as a result, Protestant theology pervades our “national” idea of “G-d,” no matter what faith background we come from. How does this “Default G-d” contribute to Jewish theological assimilation in the U.S.? (Now, I’m no theologian, and my knowledge of the history of religion is spotty at best, so keep in mind that I’ll be speaking as a layperson. I would love to hear the thoughts of other laypeople, and also of any experts out there who think I’ve got something here, or even that I’m totally off the wall!)

To state the obvious, Christianity and Judaism have been influencing each other for centuries, so the impact of Christianity on Jewish theology is neither new nor specifically United-Statesian. However, I think the fact that many young US Jews (not to mention Christians) have grown up with little exposure to Jewish theology and practice means that Christianity has the ability to influence with a broad brush (perhaps unlike earlier eras when Christianity was subtly, or forcibly, influencing Jews who were profoundly steeped in Jewish life). In my experience, many non-observant Jews from my generation and my parents’ generation unconsciously “fill in the blanks” of what we know about Judaism with concepts borrowed from US Protestantism.

I began thinking about this two weeks ago when I was trying to explain my relationship with G-d to an agnostic friend. I found myself explaining to her that I consider myself to have a relationship with G-d, but I don’t necessarily “believe in G-d” or have “faith in G-d” or subscribe to any doctrinal “creed” about the literal existence of or nature of G-d.

At first I thought that I was using these terms because I was speaking to an agnostic — someone who feels no conviction about the existence of G-d — and thus I was attempting to emphasize the non-literalness of my relationship with G-d so that she could better relate to my experience. However, upon further reflection, I recognized that the terms I was using (belief, faith, creed, doctrine) were all terms that I associate with Protestantism’s emphasis on redemption through faith in the literal existence of a supernatural, omnipotent, tripartite God. In other words, my sense of “what it generally means to believe in G-d,” and my (correct) assumption about the G-d my agnostic friend feels distant from, were fundamentally based in a Protestant theology.

Furthermore, while I usually think of myself as a “new Jew” theologically (i.e. someone who has departed from a traditional, literal theology in favor of a highly metaphorical, eclectic theology), it is possible that my theology is actually quite traditional in some respects, and that one of the main reasons it seems highly non-traditional (or, more precisely, non-literal) is because I’m comparing it to Protestantism, rather than to traditional Judaism. (In other words, when I was explaining my relationship to G-d to my friend, I felt at first that I was explaining how G-d fits in with “modernity,” but perhaps I was simply explaining how G-d fits into Judaism as opposed to Protestantism.)

Now, the friend to whom I was speaking is a non-Jew. However, I’ve had similar experiences with Jews. For example, when I told one of my sisters that I was considering rabbinical school, she said, “That’s nice, but I really don’t get it.” After talking with her further, I discovered that “it” means “G-d”: she feels utterly unrelated to the concept of G-d. This is one reason, I think, that throughout her adult life she has been essentially uninvolved with Jewish practice. Now, far be it from me to say that everyone should be involved with organized religion. However, I think it’s somewhat sad, or at least ironic, that there are Jews who feel removed from Judaism because they experience “an inability to believe” in G-d — since the “ability to believe” is, in my experience, primarily a Protestant concept. While G-d as a figure is certainly at the core of Judaism, the “ability to believe” in a specific theological manifestation of G-d seems to me to be peripheral at most. (Admittedly, in some cases, this confusion may spring from the fact that a particular local Jewish community isn’t providing any compelling spiritual alternative to doctrinal theology.)

Now, I know that Protestantism is more than just the Creeds, and not all Protestants emphasize doctrine (and not all Jews don’t!). But I think that there is a prevalent stereotype, among both Christians and Jews, that having a relationship with G-d means “believing in G-d.” And this is unfortunate, because there are lots of other ways to relate to G-d besides “believing,” and these other ways don’t get enough press — with the result that people who will never “believe in G-d” are unnecessarily exiled from spiritual life, which is a loss for everyone. I’ve had several friends say to me that they “just can’t get into the G-d thing,” but wish they had access to the community life and the deep meaning on which their religious friends seem to thrive. When I peel off what I imagine to be the “Protestant overlay,” it seems to me that traditional Jewish theology may provide a storehouse of useful tools for relating to G-d in ways other than through “faith,” and as a nascent spiritual leader, I’m interested in exploring how to offer those tools to those who are intrigued but as yet uninvolved.

–Ri J. Turner

The Lilith Blog

December 28, 2009 by admin

Etz Chayim: Hanukkah, Christmas, and Jewish Theology in a Christian Context, Part 1

Happy (belated) Chanukkah to all you readers!

The winter holiday season is a time when many United-Statesian Jews become aware of their level of visibility. (By the way, I like to use the term “United-Statesian” rather than American to respect our hemispheric neighbors, who also consider themselves American, but don’t live in the US.) We United-Statesian Jews may feel invisible when we are wished “Merry Christmas” for the hundredth time, and we may feel hypervisible moments later if we choose to respond, “Actually, I’m Jewish.” (See Nancy Goodman’s recent post below for stories of Jewish visibility in Idaho during the winter holidays.)

Since I’ve been living in Brooklyn, and avoiding malls and the radio, I haven’t been too overwhelmed by the Christmas behemoth this year. Nevertheless, I can’t help but be reminded at this time of year that I’m living in a predominantly Christian country.

I don’t know about you, but I grew up hearing my mom say things like “Oh G-d, that sounds so Christian,” for example when she encountered certain specimens of contemporary Reform liturgy. Similarly, a Jewish friend of mine (also someone I’ve know from childhood) was recently telling me that she finds it “too Christian” when a mutual Jewish friend of ours says things like “G-d was working through me.” “That Jew is too Christian” — sound familiar? (Not a rhetorical question — please leave comments about your experiences!)

As a community of “Jews becoming white folks” (click here to learn about Karen Brodkin’s excellent book on this subject), I think United-Statesian Jews are understandably jumpy about “sounding Christian.” I also think it’s no accident that the Jews I knew growing up (in Los Alamos, NM) were particularly sensitive to this issue, since many of them were displaced East Coast Jews who were raising children in an overwhelmingly white Protestant community. (Let me not neglect to mention the many Hispanic Christians who were also living in the area. However, due to high levels of professional and class segregation along racial lines, my parents and the other Jewish parents that I knew did not view most Hispanic adults as their peers–nor most Hispanic children as our peers–and thus did not consider Hispanic Christians to be a serious threat to our Jewishness.)

Something that complicated the situation in Los Alamos was that, in my experience, the Jewish community was somewhat spiritually uninspired. From my mom’s mutterings about people and things that were “too Christian,” I knew that I was supposed to hold on to my Jewishness. And, I shared some of my parents’ skepticism about and fear of Christianity (or, perhaps more accurately, of Christianity’s dominance), especially as I began to confront the subtle anti-Semitism and the conservative political leanings of the white Protestant community, who dominated local affairs. Also, my father raised me to be fiercely anti-dogmatic, and I knew well that local Protestant churches were highly doctrinal.

On the other hand, I was always deeply spiritual, and the local Jewish community, where most people seemed to attend “because it would look bad if we weren’t there,” just wasn’t doing it for me. The following anecdote will give you an idea of the extent to which personal practice went unacknowledged: I remember practicing reading the V’Ahavta in my Hebrew school class, at age 10 or 11. I was able to read it quickly, and I mentioned that this was because I recited it twice a day as part of my personal practice. Upon observing my classmates’ expressions, I quickly blushed and said “Just kidding” — because I distinctly felt that by admitting to a personal practice and a personal relationship with G-d, I had rendered myself ridiculous in their eyes, and thus dangerously vulnerable. (To be fair to the Jewish community of Los Alamos, I think there were, and are, many highly intentional and spiritually committed people at the Jewish Center. It is possible that the community was as embarrassed about faith and personal practice as I remember, but it is also quite possible that I grew up feeling so vulnerable about my own faith that I projected my own embarrassment and judgment onto the community at large.)

As a result of all this, I was slowly being drawn into the local Lutheran church, where my best friend (now studying to be a Lutheran pastor) attended services. No, I didn’t believe in the Father, the Son, or the Holy Ghost, but dang it all, the congregents seemed to be there because they wanted to be there, and because they cared about G-d and about living reflective and generous lives. They might have cared too much about doctrine and blind faith for my taste (although I did try really hard to believe in their G-d, in order to do away with these obstacles), but they seemed to have a level of intention and commitment that I just wasn’t finding over at the Jewish Center.

So I didn’t want to be one of those “too Christian” Jews, but I also was beginning to be attracted to some aspects of local Protestant communities (and I was bombarded, like most United-Statesian children, by the ambient Protestant theology of the mainstream US). What was I to do?

I’m going to sign off for now, but next week, I’ll share some of my questions and reflections about the prevalence of Protestant theology in the US mainstream, and its effects on Jewish theological assimilation.

–Ri J. Turner

The Lilith Blog

December 24, 2009 by admin

The Newest Jew in Jewdaho

This past Sunday, the Jewish community welcomed its newest member. Baby Miriam Aviva was born December 10 to Temple Emanuel members and Iowa natives Amanda and Naomi. Amanda, who converted to Judaism shortly before her commitment ceremony with Naomi, is a doctoral student in Biological Sciences at the local university. Naomi is an attorney specializing in immigration law, and is now looking forward to staying home with Miriam.

Both Naomi and Amanda have been very active in the Jewish community since moving to Pocatello for Amanda to attend graduate school. Naomi is the Temple Emanuel board secretary (or “Chief Information Officer” when we are feeling fancy), and facilitated the resurrection of Purim last spring by insisting on having a blow-out Purim carnival, even if we had to drag kids in from the street to participate. Naomi and Amanda have also created and facilitated a monthly Rosh Chodesh group for the women of Temple Emanuel in the past.

Last month Miriam’s baby shower brought out many of the women from Pocatello’s Jewish community. Joan, the matriarch at 90 years young. Debra, English faculty turned IT goddess. Gail, a Jewish convert from the east coast whose daughter currently lives in Israel. And Judith and Mary, non-Jewish wives of the congregation’s lay rabbi and board President, who are as strong a presence in the Temple Emanuel community as anyone.

Miriam’s baby naming and Friday’s Chanukkah party brought many people from the Pocatello community who had never previously been inside Temple Emanuel. It’s a brief tour. Foyer, classroom, coat rack, restroom, community room, kitchen. The crowning glory of Temple Emanuel is the chapel, draped on three sides with gorgeous stained glass works. When afternoon light hits that perfect spot, the air fills with color.

Temple Emanuel sits on a large lot in a residential neighborhood. Caught up in one of the hot civic issues, the synagogue has had to face the prospect of hillside development behind the synagogue property line. Pocatello sits in a valley and is surrounded on many sides by gorgeous low mountains, which developers look at and say “I wonder how many houses will fit there, especially if I take a big grader and flatten out those problematic hilly parts.” This is in direct opposition to the belief that “just because you technically have the ability to build a house on a 15-25% grade hillside, doesn’t mean you should.” I’ve spent many a night glaring at city council members and development attorneys trying to protect the tremendous natural and historical resources in this area—with some success, I might add.

The development issue, while currently dormant because the bubble crashed here just like everywhere else, has served to bring Temple Emanuel more into the neighborhood scene. I’m sure there will be continued solidarity with our neighbors to insure that safety, privacy, and quality-of-life is preserved.

This weekend, Temple Emanuel was flush with visitors and activity. The latkes disappeared so fast on Friday I barely got to taste Jim’s curry ones. And with the arrival of baby Miriam, Amanda and Naomi doubled the number of children congregants and brought everyone together to celebrate. It’s been a joyous and busy weekend in Jewdaho, indeed.

–Nancy Goodman

The Lilith Blog

December 17, 2009 by admin

Introducing Etz Chayim

Hi everyone, my name is Ri, and this is my inaugural post as a Lilith blogger. To find out more about me and my writing, check out my bio here.

Here’s the question that I hope to explore with you all here on the Lilith blog: What does Judaism — and particularly Jewish spirituality — have to do with activism?

To me this is a question about understanding the relationship between my tiny personal world and the “big world out there.” If I sleep poorly, or have a fight with a friend, or start keeping Shabbat — do these things have anything to do with race? Gender? Economic systems? International relations?

Sometimes I see myself as a magnet, being drawn back and forth between two poles. Sometimes I throw myself wholeheartedly into the political, only to be drawn back, sometimes violently, to focus on developing balance in my personal life (balance — which for me is at the core of spirituality). Inevitably, that focus only lasts so long before I am snatched back into political life with a bump. Is it possible to integrate these two aspects of my life, to acknowledge their intersections, to get beyond the feeling that they’re in conflict?

I’ve known for a while that my activism is inspired by my knowledge about how I fit into the big picture. When large-scale social injustice feels irrelevant to me (as it sometimes can, due to the insulation afforded me by my relatively privileged race, class, and citizenship statuses), or when oppression seems so big and overwhelming that I don’t know where to start — in those moments, it’s easy to throw up my hands and say “I can’t do anything anyway, so forget about it.” And yet I know that I’m implicated, and that even if I could “forget about it,” “it” will never forget about me.

I also know that when I work on these issues without understanding why they matter to me personally, I am not effective, and I don’t find the work sustainable. A quote attributed to Australian Murri activist Lilla Watson sums up this idea: “If you have come here to help me, then you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”

I don’t think I’m alone in the experience of trying to figure out where I fit into large-scale social justice issues. I think that most activists spend time working out the relationship between our own lives and the broad movements in which we take part. I also think that the relationship between self and political issue differs depending on whether, in a particular context, we are working to end the oppression of an identity group to which we belong (for example, Jews working to end anti-Semitism) or are working in an “ally” capacity (for example, straight people working for LGBTQ rights).

As a white US Jew who cares about ending racism, one of my particular political commitments is organizing other white folks (including or perhaps especially white Jews) against racism. And I believe that the first step to organizing is education — and I believe that a key part of education, for white allies in particular, is coming to understand, in the words of Watson, why our liberation is bound up with the liberation of people of color, both in the US and globally.

I believe Judaism has a lot of insight to offer about the relationship between microcosm and macrocosm. In mainstream Western culture, to generalize broadly, we are often encouraged to compartmentalize. By contrast, in my experience, Judaism encourages integration: scholarly, legalistic texts provide insight for communal living, the pursuit of social justice is conjoined with the celebration of life’s pleasure, and everything in life is shot through with the search for spiritual vibrancy and ultimate meaning. This integrative model is well symbolized by one of the core organizing principles in Kabbalah: the Tree of Life, or Etz Chayim.

In addition to being a metaphor for the Torah (and, perhaps, a relic of ancient goddess worship — click here to read more about that), the Tree of Life is a diagram that describes the fundamental structure of the universe. Its graphical depiction often looks like something out of modern topology (click here to see an example), with edges connecting ten (or, controversially, eleven) nodes known as “sephirot.” Sephirot are sometimes described as emanations, or aspects, of G-d or divinity. The underlying structure delineated by the Kabbalistic Tree of Life unifies all things: not only do the sephirot describe the nature of divinity, they also describe the structure of the universe as well as the structure of the human body and spirit.

Thus, the Tree of Life is a key Jewish representation of the relationship between micro- and macrocosm, local and global — and spiritual and political.

Stay tuned to “Etz Chayim” for more explorations of the sacredness of activism and the politics of spirituality over the coming weeks and months.

–Ri Turner