The Lilith Blog

June 25, 2008 by admin

Is the Grass Always Greener?

It’s a little ironic to write about rural life—Jewish or not Jewish—as this week, I’m writing from Washington, DC. I’m eating amazing brioche with apples at Patisserie Poupon and watching the diverse parade of people. A young couple with their tiny two-week-old baby. And elderly woman with beautiful white hair sipping espresso with a short elderly man with an amputated leg. A young man with at least sixteen pierces reading philosophy. (Really…no lie.)

Over the last few days, I’ve walked from Dupont Circle to Georgetown, through the Mall and around town. No one knows me. No one stops me on the street. My hair, suffering the effects of increased humidity and a not-great night of sleep, has been a mess, but no one has noticed.

It’s not just diversity I miss.
It’s anonymity—it is easy to disappear in the city.

In New Hampshire, there is no such thing as anonymity. If this café was in my town, I would have spoken to all the other coffee drinkers. In my rural community, when I walk down the street/write on my laptop/shop for shoes, people recognize me. They say hello. And if they don’t, they introduce themselves.

In a small town, everyone knows when you’re having a bad day. Once, after scolding my daughter in the market, there were three messages on my machine:

Sarah, I heard you were having a bad day. Can I help?
Sarah, I heard from D and she said you looked pretty upset.
Sarah, this is your mother. Please call. (Well, that message comes all the time, no matter where I live!)

Anonymity is one of the things you give up when you enter a rural community (along with great Chinese food and the opportunity to wear all my high-heeled shoes). When you live in a small town, you give up the ability to disappear, to run your errands without interruption, to have a bad day unnoticed.

But you also never celebrate or deal with any of those bad days alone.

–Sarah Aronson

The Lilith Blog

June 20, 2008 by admin

Not Pregnant

Hi Tammy, it’s me.

I hope I’m not catching you at a bad moment. I have some big news. It means a lot to me to share it with you. Do you have a minute? You might need to catch your breath when I tell you this, and you should definitely be sitting down. OK, here goes. Well, you know all our friends are getting pregnant these days? Sarah, Stacy, Edna, Rachel – yes, it’s quite the thing to do. Well, I have news for you: I’m not pregnant. Yup – I’m not pregnant!!!! Can you believe it? I can hardly believe it myself, and it’s been nearly three months already. I hope you don’t think it’s too early to tell, but I’ve been keeping the news to myself for what seems like ages. Three months of not being pregnant, but I didn’t want to say anything, because
you know how it is, in the beginning you can never be sure, maybe that period was just a fluke. But it’s real, and I’m sure of it! For the past three months, ever since all our friends starting getting pregnant, I’ve been feeling just awful. Oh, it was the worst. I’d wake up in the morning—especially before big days at work—with this horrible feeling in my stomach. I had to run to the bathroom, and there would go yesterday’s dinner. This
happened day after day, this nauseous feeling each time someone else got pregnant. I was like, gosh, not being pregnant is agonizing, how am I going to deal with this??? Anyway, my doctor tells me it’s finally behind me – from here on, not being pregnant will be a lot easier to deal with.

Except, well, you’ve got to hear this. I crave chocolate! All the time. Especially at night. I have to eat something sweet. It’s really horrible. I hope it doesn’t go on for too long, because I’m beginning to show. I mean, if this chocolate craving continues, I’m going to have to buy maternity clothes even though I’m not pregnant! Wouldn’t that be something.

Anyway, please don’t tell anyone yet—I haven’t even told my mother. I’m not ready yet, though I think she might have guessed. The other day I noticed her looking at me somewhat quizzically when I ordered a huge glass of wine at dinner. I can do that, hurrah, because I’m not pregnant!!! It’s so exciting. You’ll have to come over so I can tell you more details. But really, please don’t bring a gift. It’s not necessary. I’m just glad to have your support. Thanks so much for listening—I wanted you to be the first to know.

–Chavatzelet Herzliya

The Lilith Blog

June 18, 2008 by admin

Introductions

My name is Sarah Aronson and this is my first post on the Lilith blog. Thanks to Mel for inviting me!

A quick bio: I am living the dream in Hanover, New Hampshire. I have two kids. I recently got married. We are an interfaith family. We drink coffee and eat more chocolate than the daily allowance. We have one bathroom.

I write novels for middle grade readers and adults. My first novel, Head Case, published by Roaring Brook Press, came out last September. It is about a seventeen-year-old boy named Frank who causes a terrible car accident, leaving two people dead. He sustains a complete cervical spine injury. The novel begins after he is released from the hospital. I like to think of him as a modern Hester Prynne of Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter.

Beginnings are hard. Like any Chapter One, this entry needs to tell you who I am. What I want. And where will we be going. You need to hear my voice.

I need to hook the reader.

Here’s a story:

I grew up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, aka The Christmas City. Even as a young girl, I felt like the token Jew. Every December, my friends joked that ours was the “dark” house. They called me Matzoh Girl, Menorah Girl, and my favorite, The Beak. I was the Barbra Streisand of my class, a girl with a lot of drama and a lot of opinions. It wasn’t easy.

Otherness never is. And being Jewish made me different. It made me other. It made my ethnicity an issue that some found interesting, others feared. I knew this as early as first grade. I lived close enough to my school to walk. There was only one main street to cross, and that was manned by a sixth grade crossing guard. A guy with a flag. And authority.

He decided not to let me cross. He held the flag at my chest. “You have to wait,” he said. “Because you are Jewish.”

This was the late 60’s. It was a time when everyone—especially the adults—wanted to fit in. I wanted to fit in. We ate at chains and all bought the same clothes. People said: “Don’t make waves. Go another way. Cross the street somewhere else.”

That kind of advice has never worked for me. Instead, I stood my ground. I was late almost every day that year. Today, I’m more of a compromiser. Living in a rural community does not make being Jewish easy. There are many issues that bump up against my Jewish needs. I often think of Hester Prynne—how she did it. How she grew into a member of her community without giving up her identity. And I look to my children and the children of our local Jewish community and ask how best to foster a Jewish identity in a place like this.

That’s what this blog will be about. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

–Sarah Aronson

The Lilith Blog

June 18, 2008 by admin

Are Women Really Taking Over Judaism, And Is That So Bad?

The general consensus on these questions appears to be Yes, women are taking over Judaism, and Yes, that is bad. But I’m having trouble working up concern over this supposedly dire state of affairs.

A new study confirms these assertions social-scientifically, reports the Jewish Exponent, showing that among the most liberal strains of Judaism (Reform, Reconstructionist and Renewal), significantly more women and girls are actively participating than are men and boys, who, one theory goes, are being alienated by women’s takeover:

Some are calling it the feminization of liberal Judaism, but few say so out loud.
“It’s not politically correct,” says Brandeis University sociologist Sylvia Barack Fishman, whose new report “The Growing Gender Imbalance in American Jewish Life” gives statistical muscle to anecdotal evidence that’s been piling up for several years in liberal Jewish circles.

Even if Fishman’s report is on-target, as someone who focuses so much on Jewish women’s achievements, I can’t help but find the “feminization of Judaism” a point of pride rather than worry.

And yet, despite what Fishman’s numbers may say, I remain unconvinced of the general takeover. Because when you look at the numbers on various lists of influential Jews, you’d still be hard-pressed to find one that’s dominated by women:
Take the umbrella organization the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, for example. Though it now has a woman at its healm (you go, June Walker), she is one of the few women among the heads of its member organizations. The breakdown is similar in the Forward’s last “Forward Fifty” feature, which included only 17 women (and that’s, given such lists in the past, a decent showing). And even NY Jewish Week’s 2008 list of “36 Under 36,” a measure of the younger generation’s Jewish innovators, includes more men than women (though the numbers are far more equitable than most such lists). So it’s hard to take the claim of women’s domination that seriously.

And anyway, the suggestion that women’s supposed domination is a “crisis” is downright offensive. Rabbi Rona Shapiro put it very well in her 2007 op-ed in the Forward, “The Boy Crisis That Cried Wolf,” excerpted here:

…Thirty-five years ago — when women were not ordained as rabbis, when girls in the Conservative movement celebrated a bat mitzvah on Friday night, when Orthodox girls did not receive an education remotely comparable to that of their brothers, when women were not called to the Torah for aliyot or allowed on the bimah at all — where were the headlines proclaiming a girl crisis?
[…]
Given the history of women’s exclusion within the Jewish community, approaching equality should be something to celebrate, not a crisis in the making.
[…]
More insidious is the assertion made by some boy-crisis advocates that men are retreating from active engagement in Jewish life because women now dominate it. This characterization simply smacks of backlash.
Women have maintained their involvement in a Judaism dominated for centuries by men, but the minute women get a toehold in leadership, men pick up and leave? Pollack, the boys’ development researcher heading up Moving Traditions’ major new initiative, refutes the inherent sexism of this argument, insisting that women’s leadership is not responsible for boys’ retreat from Jewish life.
“Boys haven’t found a way to” adapt to the sharing of power with girls and women in Judaism, he argued, “because men haven’t found a way to change.” If Jewish men, young or old, are turned off by women’s leadership, then our commitment to justice requires that we call this what it is — sexism — and work to change the attitude instead of accommodating it.
[…]
Men and women need to work together to address discrimination against women in the Jewish community, as well as men’s perception of Judaism’s irrelevance to them. We need to prepare our daughters to be both strong leaders who are well armed against the sexism they will face in the media and employment and mothers who are able to raise young men who share an interest in their sisters’ achievements, have full access to their feelings and are engaged by Jewish life.

I agree with Shapiro’s arguments, and think they are extremely important to the discussion of this issue. But, admittedly, she does ignore — as I have been until now — the most practical problem the numbers disparity presents, which is the other “crisis” making headlines, the “singles crisis.”

Fishman sees both as crises of continuity:

Fishman said that as Jewish men outside the Orthodox fold become increasingly estranged from religious and communal life, the more likely they are to marry non-Jewish women, her report suggests. And because women usually set a home’s religious tone — even if non-Jewish women are open to raising Jewish children — they’ll rarely do so because they are not encouraged by husbands who are “ambivalent at best, if not downright hostile to” Jewish tradition, she explained.
She concluded that this crisis is leading to a continuity issue that will not be resolved until liberal Judaism finds a way to engage its boys and men.

But I think Fishman’s concern over continuity is premature, and her spin on the problem, from the male perspective, seems besides the point. Rather than counting the babies who aren’t being born — an unproductive and rather silly task — we should be focusing on the more immediate issue — those Jewishly committed women who are having trouble, right now, finding Jewishly-committed men with whom to partner.
That is a point of concern, not because of the babies they’re not having, but because of the frustration and dissatisfaction they’re feeling.

–Rebecca Honig Friedman

The Lilith Blog

June 10, 2008 by admin

Entry #1: Owning Our Processes

06/07/08

The bus sighs and coughs to a halt. I awake startled from sleep on the overnight bus from Bangkok to Mae Sot, Thailand. We’re stopped on the side of the road. It’s a thickened midnight despite my watch reading 5 a.m. A Thai police officer walks the aisles, holding his flashlight like a baton. He’s checking this seat and that, waking sleepers, checking passports. He has a blue mask over his mouth for pollution, but it makes him look menacing. He’s checking for refugees. This is how I know we’re almost in Mae Sot, a border town chock full of NGOs, Burmese refugees, police arresting unlucky migrants, and Thai folk who (mostly) don’t give two hoots. I hurry to get my passport, but the officer shakes his head. My skin tips him off; I’m of the wrong ilk or maybe the right.

I panic for a moment before I regain my calm and realize where I am. I think of home then, all I’ve left, all that lies in wait, an unfed animal at the front door. I wasn’t sure about this, pulling myself out of my life, coming back here and working with the Burmese refugee women I’ve grown to love. I knew it was the right thing, but then. Mostly I would’ve stayed for her, and that’s the one reason she told me to go.

How can I quantify this year, this lonely miracle year my mother pushed through again? It came again this past fall, a second fiercer gale, come to sweep the harvest. We held tight, blue tarp black stake. We offered her breasts and held tight the ribcage. We kept her. How could it come back, a night dream I never wanted? I moved past the question quickly enough, past the crowds and into a quieter room. Cancer patient. She’s so much more than that bare, flop-shoddy word. I deliberate, how not to cloak her in the sickbay of cliques, how not to scrub-dry the humanity out of all the clinical jargon?

How do you name her the same woman, the same perfume lingering through the years on her wintered sweaters, the same second-wave feminist who dances to Motown with two fingers towards the sun, only with a diagnosis of quickly multiplying cells? How do you reconcile a nag-drawn woman with the desire to have her live forever? How do you merge a once tenuous relationship and make it unbreakable? For once, I don’t deliberate. This union was no mistake. For once, I do.

I can’t attribute this transformation to a melding of congruent personalities. We are not soft-waxed and flame-tipped. Maybe overcommitted, oversensitive, and generous.

Perhaps it’s not us but the space between us. In that reflected pool, I now see the smallest clock and it is ticking. We don’t have the time for personalities to align or taut edges to slacken. I need to dive in. I need to love her now. I have seen the rough road and it is motherless. I will always choose the guilt-worn path, potholed, fret-marked.

Sometimes I stare blankly at the doctors, the numbers, the people in the ‘movement’ rattling off breast cancer odds. You won’t hear me ticking off stats. I am not a metronome, and this is not my piano recital (Amen). You won’t hear me waving pink flags swirled in white cursive ‘Cancer Survivor’ lettering. None of that she-beat-the-odds banter. Call it a life subjected to Jewish superstition. Call it depressive. This isn’t a survival pep rally. I want her to do more than survive. I want her to re-question, how shall I live? We all have our own process. This one’s mine.

–I. Kramer

The Lilith Blog

June 2, 2008 by admin

And Speaking of Israeli Culture…

One of the bands raising the temperature in Israel and making waves in America right now is Habanot Nechama, a group of three super-talented women, all of whom have careers in their own right, making beautiful music together. I was privileged to attend one of their recent American tour concerts, at the Highline Ballroom (up-and-comer Chana Rothman opened with a beautiful set), and was wowed. Their ultra-tight harmonies, often-quirky sensibilities, multi-lingual lyrics, and comedic inter-song banter set them apart from the pack. And there’s nothing “girl groupy” about them, just three strong women creating really powerful music together.

So since it was recently Lag B’Omer, the day in the the counting of the Omer [the mourning period between Passover and Shavuot] when music traditionally becomes acceptable again, thought I’d share some YouTube clips of Habanot Nechama. These were obviously taken from someone’s cell phone, but bear with the shaky camera and horrible lighting. It’s all about the music anyway.

“Lovers” a.k.a “Meah Achuz Or,” Habanot Nechama, at a concert commemorating the 12th anniversary of Yitzhak Rabin’s death.

“So Far,” Habanot Nechama

–Rebecca Honig Freidman

The Lilith Blog

May 25, 2008 by admin

Meditation on Turning Thirty

Today is my thirtieth birthday, which falls out each year during the period in which it is traditional to learn Pirkei Avot, the tractate of the Mishnah that contains many ethical precepts and teachings relating to Jewish learning, among them the following:

Age five is for learning Torah
Age ten is for learning Mishnah
Age thirteen is for observing the commandments
Age fifteen is for learning Talmud
Age eighteen is for marriage
Age twenty is for pursuit [of a livelihood]
Age thirty is for strength….

The Mishnah seems to suggest that a person is expected to attain certain intellectual and personal milestones at particular ages. I find myself often internalizing this way of thinking. “I am almost thirty – I should think about having children!” “I need to finish the Daf Yomi cycle before I turn 35!” “Before another year passes I must learn how to drive!” And on, and on.

There is a value in this way of thinking — it challenges me to set goals for myself, and to strive to attain them. But the older I get, the more convinced I become that there is no such thing as a “right age” for anything.

Last night I had coffee with a dear friend named Mira who lives with her husband and five children in a settlement over the green line. When we first met three years ago in a Jerusalem book group, she was in a crisis because she was turning 40, and I was in a crisis because I was getting divorced. Back then, she told me she envied me because I was so young and had my life ahead of me; I told her that I envied her because she was so stable and settled and sure of her future.

Last night, over hot apple cider in a cafe in a quiet Jerusalem alleyway, it became clear that the tables had turned: I was on the eve of my thirtieth birthday, and she was planning to divorce her husband, something she has wanted to do for a while. Both of us were considerably happier than we were three years ago, though there was a certain wistfulness I sensed when I folded my bare arms over one another to stay warm in the chilly evening air. Having experienced the pain of divorce, it is hard to see someone else celebrate such a moment, especially when the couple in question has five children. And while a birthday is always a time of celebration, it is also hard to accept that time can never be retrieved, and that some decisions are indeed irreversible.

Is thirty really an age of strength, as the rabbis declare? I should like to think so. But I should like to think every age is a time of strength – the strength to face whatever challenges happen to lie in front of us at that particular moment. With the small candle in a ceramic jar flickering on the rickety café table, I close my eyes for a moment and wish for this strength to steady my steps in the years that lie ahead.

–Chavazelet Herzliya

The Lilith Blog

May 9, 2008 by admin

Is Downloading Photos of Natalie Portman A Proper Way To Celebrate Israel's 60th Birthday?

Israel’s 60th Yom Ha’atzmaut, Independence Day, fell on Thursday, and the momentous anniversary is being marked — and marketed — in America with a slew of cultural events designed to forge connections between American Jews and Israel in as a-political a way as possible.

It’s a great idea, because goodness knows Israeli politics ain’t doing the job. And Israeli culture, particularly music, is better — and more popular in America — than ever. (Israeli singer/songwriter, Yael Naim, even has a song featured on a Mac commercial, the pop music equivalent of selling out Carnegie Hall.) The JTA has written all about it.

The musical celebrations fit nicely into Israel’s latest P.R. strategy, whose gist is, we’ve got more than religious icons and gas masks. We’ve also got fantastic music, literature, and beautiful women, including Natalie Portman (the Israeli-born film star hosted this past Wednesday’s gala 60 at 60 concert at Radio City Music Hall and could be the best thing to happen to Israeli public image since, well, ever).

Wednesday’s concert was the culmination of a 60 at 60 musical tour that’s been going on since the beginning of May and will continue through June 1st, and music really is a brilliant choice for a cross-cultural celebratory experience. Of all art forms, it is the most accessible and the most universal. Even those who don’t understand Hebrew can appreciate a good beat or a catchy tune.

But is appreciating Israeli culture the best way to celebrate its survival as a Jewish State — which is really what we’re celebrating? Is liking Israeli music likely to forge a meaningful connection to the land that produced it? And are these fun artistic events just a slick marketing tool, used to gloss over the difficult politics that still run through the core of Israeli society?

It could be. Take the abysmal attempt of the Israeli Consulate last year to woo American men with a photo spread of hot female IDF soldiers in Maxim magazine. Such “celebrations” can quickly devolve into a gross superficiality (and sexism for that matter).

But celebrating culture doesn’t have to superficial if we put it in the right context. Which is that a vibrant cultural and artistic life is a sign of a nation’s health. As we know well from America’s failing public school system, the arts are the first thing to go when there’s not enough money, and the same is true for societies in general. A nation at war tends not to be quite as focused on putting money into, say, the film industry. So the point of these cultural celebrations is not that Israeli music rocks but that after 60 years Israel has evolved from a nation struggling for mere survival into a thriving country with the resources to develop amazing artists whose music has the opportunity to rock, and measure up on the world stage.

By the way, for the appropriate answer to that Maxim photo spread, see photographer Rachel Papo’s “Serial No. 3817131,” a slightly more politically charged but significantly more meaningful collection of photos of female IDF soldiers, in full uniforms, not bikinis.

–Rebecca Honig Friedman

The Lilith Blog

May 2, 2008 by admin

Shalom Bayit Classes for Engaged Couples

Wedding season is upon us and for engaged couples hemming and hawing over flower and band decisions, here’s a (possibly) more productive use of your time — the S.H.A.L.O.M. workshop.Approved by Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski and other “prominent Orthodox Rabbanim,” the S.H.A.L.O.M. workshop guarantees a successful marriage, or the get [Jewish divorce] is free.

No…not really.

Though the workshop does claim that a survey of S.H.A.L.O.M Workshop participants, conducted by the Shalom Task Force, found that “96% resolve their differences more effectively.”

Nothing like quoting your own study for good publicity, but hey, I’m sure it’s true. And anything that gives a leg up on building a healthy relationship is a-okay, as long as they don’t teach things like “Wives, do what your husband tells you.”

Fortunately, it doesn’t seem like they do. Here’s the blurb:

The goal of the Shalom Workshop is to teach engaged couples practical tools to achieve a healthy marriage. The ability to easily and effectively meet each other’s emotional needs helps build a strong foundation for a true Bayis Ne’eman B’Yisrael [faithful house in Israel, observant Jewish home].
In just one or two sessions the Chassan [groom] and Kallah [bride] will cover important issues such as:

–Increased understanding and sensitivity to each other’s feelings
–Communicating effectively through a sense of mutual respect
–Promoting self confidence in each other
–Financial Management

The S.H.A.L.O.M. Workshop teaches specific, easily learned methods for successful communication and effective problem-solving. Participants emerge with a deeper self-knowledge and the tools to build a happy, successful and long-lasting marriage.
This workshop is an important addition to traditional Chassan/ Kallah classes

Workshop dates and locations in the NY Metro area are listed on the workshop’s website.

If I seem a little ambivalent about the S.H.A.L.O.M. workshop, it’s because, well, I guess I am. It’s not that I don’t respect its mission or think that helping couples foster good communication is a good thing. I most certainly do. But something rubs me the wrong way about the how it’s being marketed, as I suppose is obvious from my sarcastic comments above.

It bothers me that one needs to have rabbinic approval to take part in something like this.

It bothers me that, with all the pressure that exists on engaged couples, this seems like another added pressure and task to accomplish. If it catches on, will this be one more thing that one needs to do, and spend money on, in order to be considered appropriately ready for marriage?

But mostly it bothers me that things like showing “sensitivity to each other’s feelings” and “mutual respect” need to be taught to couples who are about to get married. Shouldn’t one have already learned these things by the time one reaches the decision to marry?

All of which I guess is to say that certain things about the way the workshop’s target demographic — the frum community – approaches marriage bothers me. I don’t think a couple needs to live together for three years before getting married, but I think a certain level of intimacy, mutual respect, independence and — dare I say it — love, should be reached before taking the plunge into a life-long commitment.

Perhaps that makes me a naïve romantic, but there it is.

Now pardon me while I go finish reading Wuthering Heights.

–Rebecca Honig Friedman

The Lilith Blog

May 1, 2008 by admin

Yom HaShoah

When the siren went off all over Israel at 10am this morning for Yom HaShoah, I watched as the country came to a momentary standstill. From my third-floor office overlooking the Jerusalem municipal swimming pool, I watched swimmers freeze mid-lap and stand at attention in the water. Just beyond, on the busy shop-lined artery of Emek Refaim, I saw merchants leave their stores and stand in the doorways; I saw drivers turn off their engines, get out of the front seat, and stand beside their vehicles; and I saw burly strong-armed workers stop unloading groceries from a truck and put down their crates for two full minutes of silent commemoration.

This memorial siren will go off twice again next week, on the evening and morning of Yom Hazikaron. It has been sounded every year on Yom Hashoah since the early 1960s, and, as such, might be considered a national symbol. It is even the subject of a video installation, as I learned two nights ago when I went to an exhibit on contemporary Israeli art that opened this week at the Israel Museum. In this video, called “Trembling Time,” the young Israeli artist Yael Bartana filmed the Ayalon Highway as the siren sounded at the start of Yom Hazikaron. Using slow-motion photography and the reverberating sound of the siren, Bartana shows how time comes to a halt even on the busiest thoroughfare.

I wish I could say that when the siren went off this morning, I was entirely focused on the victims of the Shoah. I wish I could say that my head was in the right place, that I was absorbed in solemn reflection and engaged in heart-felt prayer. While I was grateful to have the time to commemmorate, I found myself, in those moments, also marveling at what it means to stand still. I am not a person who likes to stop – “How dull it is to pause,” I often find myself quoting from Tennyson. I would rather walk for 45 minutes than wait five minutes at a bus stop. When I come to a red light, I usually walk to the next corner instead of waiting for the light to
turn green. In my work, too, I rarely take breaks; instead I usually do three things at once, regarding my efficiency as an aesthetic of sorts. And so stopping–for a siren, or for anything–is very much against my nature.

And yet Judaism is a religion that demands that we stop. Each week on Friday afternoon, we have to put aside whatever we are doing for at least 25 hours and greet Shabbat. (“Creative people have often told me that they find this impossible,” Avivah Zornberg once commented.) We stop the rhythm of our normal days for holidays – for celebrations as well as commemorations. Our lives unfold on an axis of personal time—our jobs, our needs and wants, and the needs and wants of those we love—but always against a backdrop of sacred time. We move not just at our own pace, because with every step we take we are pulling along behind us thousands of years of Jewish history, like a cumbersome bag of oddly-shaped objects which is constantly bumping against our heels. As Jews, we cannot move forwards without looking back at what we are carrying along behind us, and occasionally even sitting down on a bench for a while to open the bag and examine one or another of its contents.

When the siren goes off for Yom Hashoah and Yom Hazikaron, I remember what it means to live simultaneously in personal and sacred time. I want to keep going about my daily business, but instead I stop and attune myself with the sacred rhythm in the streets and shops all around me. I remember that the world can be repaired also when we only stand and wait. And if those two minutes sometimes feel like an eternity, I tell myself that perhaps this is because they bring us ever closer—as individuals, and as a people—to the Eternal.

Yael Bartana filmed Trembling Time from a bridge over the Ayalon Highway, as the siren sounded at the start of Israel’s National Memorial Day for fallen soldiers. During the minute the siren sounds, everyday time comes to a halt: it is pulled taut, and, as the name of the work tells us, appears to tremble. The effect is achieved by the use of slow motion and the reverberating sound of the siren. As drivers are trapped in a time capsule, the routine time-flow of busy highway that traverses Tel Aviv is transformed before our eyes.

–Chavazelet Herzliya