The Lilith Blog

April 30, 2008 by admin

Baby Food

Any Jewish grandmother worth her salt will tell you that all you need to do to conceive a healthy baby boy is stand on your head at dawn every day while eating an egg salad sandwich. Or was it a piece of brisket eaten quickly during your evening bath?

Sound a little bit like an “old wives tale?” Well so does this idea, published by my favorite Jewish bubbe, The New York Times.

“How much a mother eats at the time of conception may influence whether she gives birth to a boy or a girl, a new report shows. The report, from researchers at Oxford and the University of Exeter in England, is said to be the first evidence that a child’s sex is associated with a mother’s diet. Although sex is genetically determined by whether sperm from the father supplies an X or Y chromosome, it appears that a mother’s body can favor the successful development of a male or female embryo.”

According to the article, women who eat a high calorie diet and good nutrition around the time of conception, are more likely to have a boy than a girl.” Unfortunately, the Oxford study was based on self-reported data from mothers who provided records of their eating habits during the early stages of pregnancy. In other words, women who were likely to feel slightly embarrassed or overwhelmed by their new “eating for two” food intake regimen – and therefore more likely to fudge the truth about what they were actually consuming.

I’m not exactly a scientist myself – perhaps a woman’s body can be more receptive territory for a boy or a girl, depending on what she eats. But when it comes to having a baby, it seems like the best method is to enjoy the 9 months of completely uninhibited eating and then love the child that comes out, whoever he or she is. Call it a gut feeling.

–Leah Koenig

The Lilith Blog

April 24, 2008 by admin

Start Baking

Amy Ephron at The Huffington Post has a theory: “In order to be First Lady you have to have a cookie recipe.” Ephron’s tone is (of course) tongue-in-cheek as she describes Martha Washington’s “jumbles,” Jackie Kennedy’s peanut brittle, and Nancy Reagan’s coconut macaroons – but she brings up several serious questions.

If Clinton gets elected President, what sort of “cookies” will Bill be required to make? In other words, how would a woman’s presidency change the traditional roles of first spouse? And, more importantly, how would it change the presidency itself?

What sort of expectations of traditional “feminine/motherly” conduct would be foisted on Clinton in the White House? How would she balance her necessary role as Commander-in-Chief with these expectations (or would she)? Would she be pressured – like former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir was – to serve a literal “steaming pot of tea and [homemade] cookies” to diplomats? The answers to these questions remain to be seen – but if yesterday’s primary in Pennsylvania has anything to do with it, Bill better start perfecting his sugar cookie technique.

Golda Meir’s Chocolate Chip Cookies recipe here; Hillary Clinton’s Chocolate Chip Cookies recipe here.

–Leah Koenig

The Lilith Blog

April 18, 2008 by admin

Leveling The Playing Field: Advancing Women Professionals and the Jewish Community, Now in Book Form

Is my arriving late to a launch party for a book about work-life balance because I had to work late a valid example of situational irony?

Or is it just a sign that I should read the book in question, Leveling the Playing Field: Advancing Women in Jewish Organizational Life, very carefully?

The result of years of collective research and consulting work by Advancing Women Professionals and the Jewish Community (AWP) and Cambridge Leadership Associates (CLA), Leveling the Playing Field is co-authored by AWP founder/president Shifra Bronznick, AWP consultant Didi Goldenhar, and CLA’s co-founder/principal Marty Linsky, and is meant to be a guidebook for those who “believe that gender equity is vital to the health of Jewish communities and want to turn [their] beliefs into productive action.”

Um…yes, please!

Now it could just be that free mojito I drank at the launch party talking, but I think Leveling the Playing Field and its co-authors are on to something huge here.

The book — which is a surprisingly engaging read — and AWP’s mission operate under three self-proclaimed core assumptions:
1. Gender inequity is embedded in Jewish organizational life.
2. Gender equity is vital to the health of Jewish communal organizations.
3. Creating gender inequity will improve overall workplace effectiveness.
And I would add another:
4. You (yes, YOU), can create gender equity in your Jewish organization.

But, as the book makes clear, this is no easy task, and that’s why such a guidebook is necessary, to lay out for the prospective change-maker what the obstacles and pitfalls will be along the way, how to minimize personal risk and increase the likelihood of organizational success.

As to assumption #1, there’s ample evidence to support this claim (laid out in more detail in the book). Numerous studies in the last several years have found that, though women make up a large part of the Jewish organizational workforce, they hold only a tiny percentage of its top leadership positions, and earn salaries significantly less than their male counterparts. While gender inequities still abound in the general professional world, they are worse in the Jewish world, and Jewish organizations have been more reluctant to take on gender equity initiatives than many secular organizations have been.

Interestingly, many of the women who do hold positions of power in the Jewish organizational world — like Ruth Messinger, head of the American Jewish World Service, for example — have earned their chops outside of the Jewish world (in New York politics in Messinger’s case).

Which leads to assumptions #2 and #3. The book argues that because women are not being encouraged in the same way as men, their professional skills are not being developed properly — which means not only are these individual women losing out but so is the Jewish community, by not benefiting from their talents. Women are either languishing in mid-level positions in the Jewish organizational world or leaving the Jewish organizational world for better opportunities in the secular professional sector.

The book lays out several strategies and ideas for ways people on all levels of organizational life, from entry-level worker to major-donor, can increase gender equity in their organizations — from encouraging recruitment of women to increasing the flexibility of work schedules to accommodate the demands of family and other non-work life demands (which tend to be greater on women than on men, though both men and women benefit from such flexibility).

But gender inequity aside, here’s what gets me jazzed about Leveling the Playing Field. While as a guidebook it has a very specific purpose (advancing women professionals in the Jewish world, in case that wasn’t abundantly clear already), it’s also got tons of helpful advice that women — and men, too — can use in their professional lives in general, like, for example, “Ask for what you want and need.” Seems obvious, but how many of us wait around hoping for someone to make us an offer so we won’t have to ask?
In addition to practical advice on what to do, the book guides the reader in how to think about organizational life — how to approach the workplace strategically, how to effect change (hallelujah for the lightbulb-on moment of realizing that one can effect change instead of simply being a slave to the demands of the status quo), and how to get what you want, on an organizational and an individual level.

Because at the end of the day, it’s not about women so much as it’s about giving everyone a fair shot at the top and nurturing talent wherever it’s found so that everyone benefits. Years of inequitable systems have made this harder to accomplish than just saying the words, even with conviction, would make it seem. But the more people are aware of these inequities and the forces behind them, the more likely they will be to push for change, and the more willing they will be to adapt to new modes of working and thinking. Or so one hopes.

It’s unlikely that everyone who reads Leveling the Playing Field will take on a full-on gender equity fight in their workplace, but they may be more likely to ask for that raise, demand day care, or even recommend that bright young woman in the development office for a promotion. Ultimately, each small victory and sympathetic colleague adds up and makes the big gender equity fight easier if and when it comes.

–Rebecca Honig Friedman

The Lilith Blog

April 16, 2008 by admin

Maternal Myopia

My children are not perfect. I can say this because I have been a mother for almost seven years, and so have had ample time in which get used to the idea. But my god, how it hurt at first.

Most first-time parents believe that their baby is the most beautiful, the smartest, the most wonderful baby in human history. I know I certainly did. And we all know that everybody thinks that, and that everybody cannot possibly be right, but we’re still sure that we are.

Both sides are true: every child is absolutely perfect, and no child is absolutely perfect. The hardest part of sending my son to preschool when he was three was being forced to view him through other people’s eyes. And other people saw him, quite naturally, as flawed.

My son is now in first grade, and the parent-teacher conference my husband and I went to last week was not so bad. It gets easier as time goes on—I no longer cry in my car after these meetings. In fact, N’s teachers have many good things to say about him.

My daughter, a toddler, is still all mine, though my eyes are a bit clearer this time around. The tragedy—and salvation—of the second child is that her parents know she’s not perfect from babyhood. I am experienced enough now to know where she lags developmentally and to recognize her pigeon-toed, slightly lopsided gait.

I haven’t yet given R over to the system. Unlike her brother, she is not yet bound by institutional rules (however reasonable they are), and she is not one of many. There are days when I drive, exhausted, frazzled, and unwashed, past the daycare center at my husband’s place of work, and think “if only, if only.” And then I keep going.

–Claire Isaacs

The Lilith Blog

April 10, 2008 by admin

The Last of the Chametz

In just a few hours, my colleague Efrat and I will set out for the London Book Fair, one of the major annual events in the global publishing industry. There thousands of editors, literary agents, authors, and booksellers from around the world will gather at the convention center at Earl’s Court to pitch new titles, sell rights, show off ever-younger and ever-more-daringly-experimental debut writers, and pop open many a bottle of Champagne at the afternoon receptions. There, too, I will dress in the Ann Taylor black slacks I pull out of my closet only on such occasions (as they are far too formal for my sundress-and-crocs Jerusalem lifestyle), and make my way from stall to stall for a regimen of 45 pre-scheduled half-hour appointments over the course of several days. Exhausted and overwhelmed, Efrat and I will return to Jerusalem on erev Shabbat which leads directly into Pesach, landing at Ben Gurion airport, no doubt, surrounded by throngs of tourists from around the world arriving for the holiday.

Returning home on the day before erev Pesach is not going to be easy, even though I am (thankfully!) not making a Seder in my apartment. Still, I need to get rid of most of my chametz before I leave tonight, and arrange for the sale of what is left. I also need to stock up on Kosher-for-Pesach foods, as the supermarkets will be a madhouse on Friday and will anyway all be closed by 1pm, when the city shuts down. It’s all a bit overwhelming, which is why I was more than happy to offer Efrat a few crackers just now when I came down to her office. “Please take some,” I said. “You’re helping me get rid of my chametz.”

“Don’t remind me,” she said. “I’m dreading this holiday.” Efrat is completely secular, and I was positive she does not keep kosher. So why does she hate Pesach? Surely she eats chametz throughout the chag. Noticing my bewildered expression, she explained what she meant. “It is impossible to get bread on Pesach in Jerusalem. None of the supermarkets sell it, and even the aisles with crackers and pretzels are covered up with wrapping paper. Usually I go out a few days before the holiday and stock up, but this year I won’t be here. I just put a dozen bagels in my freezer, as well as two bags of pita – hopefully that will last me.”

Efrat went on to explain that each year, on Pesach, she feels like she is under siege. She, and surely others like her, have suffered under the Chametz Law passed by the Knesset in 1986, which stipulates that a “business proprietor may not publicly display chametz products for sale or consumption.” It is true that last week the Jerusalem municipal court ruled that the sale of chametz in a store or restaurant during Passover does not constitute a “public” sale, and is therefore not prohibited by the current law banning the sale of chametz in public. Still, religious members of Knesset are now asking for an emergency session to change the law so as to preserve the uniqueness of the Jewish State – as they see it. Others, apparently, see things differently.

In these last few hours before we leave for the book fair, Efrat is stocking her freezer with leavened products, and I am trying to rid my freezer of even the slightest trace of breadcrumbs. When we arrive in London, each of us will try to eat as much bread as possible, buying fresh rolls at Café Nero and boxed triangle-shaped sandwiches from Pret-a-Manger at the bookfair kiosks. Each of us will feel like this is our last chance to freely enjoy chametz before the week-long commemoration of our people’s bondage in Egypt and their journey to the promised land – a land which, with its Chametz Law and its craziness, is (for better or worse) the place we both call home.

–Chavatzelet Herzliya

The Lilith Blog

April 4, 2008 by admin

"Frumka" Group Leader Arrested on Charges of Child Abuse: Reactions

The news broke last week, and the public, especially the Orthodox community, has been struggling to make sense of the whole thing and who is at fault for the shocking turn of events.

The leader of a bizarre sect of fervently Orthodox women in Israel, who cover every inch of their flesh and face in burka-like layers of clothing, was arrested “on charges of assaulting and neglecting her 12 children, some of whom are believed to have committed incest.” (JTA). The Rabbanit Bruriah Keren, as she is called, has postured herself as a kind of guru to her followers, acting as their spiritual guide. She has taken on herself extreme measures of modesty in the name of serving God and encouraged her followers to do so as well. Even to those who considered her methods insane, the news of a self-proclaimed holy woman allegedly abusing her children is a shock.

The defense for Keren claims the charges are part of a conspiracy against her, waged by the ultra-Orthodox establishment who do not approve of her extreme ways. Honestly, it wouldn’t be that surprising if there was some truth to that, but whether or not the religious-powers-that-be have had a hand in her demise, clearly something was very wrong in that household.

Still, there’s also something wrong with the way certain parties have been reacting to the news, laying blame where little, if any, is due.

There’s a general feeling of “I told you so” amongst those who have been following, disapprovingly, the whole frumka story since it was first featured in Israeli newspapers a while back. Keren and her followers’ extreme displays of modesty have struck many as abnormal, even psychotic. How perfect that the leader of this sect is now shown to be, allegedly, a depraved individual, harmful in a way that is more concrete — not to mention criminal — than the fuzzy, harmful psychological influence she’s had on her followers. Now everyone can agree she’s a bad egg.

There’s nothing wrong with that, per se, except for the hint of satisfaction (a-ha, I knew it!) such thinking lends to hearing about the abuse of children.

More disturbing even is the perspective of Life in Israel blogger Rafi G, who, after acknowledging that it would not be fair to demonize the whole frumka group just because one of their members is a “sicko,” writes:

But now I have just come into more information. The woman arrested, it turns out, was none other than Rabbanit Bruriah keren, herself. The founder and leader of the group. So the group is not just an eccentric group with on sicko as a member. the group is rotten from the core.”

Rafi G.’s statement touches on a larger philosophical debate about whether a message can be valid if the messenger’s authority has been invalidated (can one can learn Torah from a sinner?), but it doesn’t specify that the group’s principles are rotten; rather, he insists that the group’s members are.

Questioning the sincerity and basic goodness of an entire group of people because of its leader is wrong.

More likely, Keren’s followers are more distraught and confused about this news than the rest of us. This more compassionate view was the focus of a recent JPost article: “A fringe sect of Jewish women with a Taliban-like dress code will be overcome by a major spiritual crisis after the arrest of the group’s leader on charges of child abuse, haredi sources in Beit Shemesh predicted Wednesday.” That sounds just about right. And, interestingly, The Awareness Center, which specializes in combating rabbinic sexual abuse, has taken a similar view, posting a note that treats Karen’s followers as potential victims rather than potential perpetrators: ” If you or anyone you know is involved Bruria Keren or any other group like her’s there is a great deal of information that you might find as helpful. … Please feel free to contact us if there’s anything we can do to help,” it reads.

But to go back to those “haredi sources in Beit Shemesh” who predicted an oncoming spiritual crisis for Keren’s followers. With that understanding comes another implication of I-told-you-so — that following an “independent” spiritual leader rather than the established spiritual authorities will lead to crisis. Said Shmuel Poppenheim, spokesman for the “zealously religious” Eda Haredit group, “We always knew those women were crazy … Now we have been vindicated, and those women will have to stop their insane behavior.”

But wait, there’s more: “Even the strictest rabbis who require women to wear black head coverings and black stockings understand that a woman must allow herself to be a woman,” Poppenheim said.

As long as she’s a woman in the precise way the rabbis prescribe, that is.

While it is in some ways refreshing to see ultra-Orthodox authorities acknowledging that there are positions too extreme to be psychologically healthy, it’s also maddening to see them putting the blame for such extremism on others rather than acknowledging that, just perhaps, their own preachings might have something to do it. Writes the JTA:

Established Orthodox communities, including the fervently Orthodox Chasidim and haredim, have dubbed the sect “the Taliban” and described it a Jewish aberration. Some believe its members were secular women who in embracing religion took it to an unusual extreme.

Sure, blame it on the baalot teshuvah who don’t know how to keep their newfound zeal for religion within the “normal” boundaries of Jewish practice. Indeed, most of us know newly religious people who go to greater extremes in their observance or religious philosophy than we might think normal or healthy, but these extreme ideas don’t come out of thin air.

What the Orthodox authorities aren’t acknowledging is that these women have been taking the establishment’s own severe teachings about modesty to their most extreme conclusions: Women should cover their elbows, throats, legs, and hair — but covering their faces is crazy! Women should not be publicly acknowledged because it’s not modest — but women who choose to stay at home and take themselves completely out of the public sphere are insane! Women’s voices should not be heard by men lest they arouse desire, but a woman who refuses to talk to a man on the phone is a total nut job!

If it weren’t so sad and so real, this whole thing could be viewed as a kind of satire — a group of women holding a mirror up to the society in which they live and showing the reality of the ideals being preached to them. The ideal of moderation, of striking a balance between taking part in the bodily/secular world and yet being apart/ from or above it, is one most consider central to the practice of Judaism, yet it is no where to be seen in that reflection. I

If the Beit Shemesh community can recognize Rabbanit Bruriah Keren and her followers as a distorted reflection of themselves, even if they can’t publicly acknowledge it, perhaps they can find a way to restore some of that balance, and some good could come out of all this.

–Rebecca Honig Friedman

The Lilith Blog

April 2, 2008 by admin

Joseph and the Amazingly Expensive Commodity Crops

Today, I disagreed with Michael Pollan. (I know – I’m a little bit scared too.) According to an article in today’s NY Times, my favorite foodie believes that the rising price of commodity crops like wheat, corn, and soybeans is a good thing. The Times reports:

“[Pollan] likes the idea that some kinds of food will cost more, and here’s one reason why: As the price of fossil fuels and commodities like grain climb, nutritionally questionable, high-profit ingredients like high-fructose corn syrup will, too. As a result, Cokes are likely to get smaller and cost more. Then, the argument goes, fewer people will drink them.”

In other words, if the price of a Big Mac goes up high enough, then people will switch to purchasing vegetables at the farmers’ market. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am happy to be member of Pollan’s shul – I buy his argument that paying more for “good” food like free range eggs or organic milk is worthwhile, and that cheap foods are falsely cheap (though perhaps not for long).

But I think Pollan’s assertion that: A (foods made with commodity crops) + B (higher prices on those crops) = C (consumers purchasing more fruits and veggies from small farms) doesn’t necessarily hold up for the majority of the country’s eaters.

It makes great sense for me – a religious farmers’ market shopper and CSA member who has access to local products more or less whenever I want them – to eschew the Mickey D’s and feel really good about buying local . But what about the many moms (and dads) who don’t have access to healthier alternatives? The Times reports:

“Someone on the margin who says ‘I’m struggling’ would say rising food costs are in no way a positive,” said Ephraim Leibtag of the United States Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service.

Those folks who study Torah (or have ever seen the hit musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat) know the following story: After interpreting Pharoah’s dream, Joseph convinces Pharoah to stockpile grain for seven years. When famine hits the region seven years later, Egypt is the only country with adequate food reserves.

Pollan’s assertions that higher priced commodity crops could lead to a significant change in consumer behavior assume that we (America) have already done adequate “stockpiling” work. But we have not. Farmers’ markets and CSAs – let alone fruits and veggies – do not yet reach into many of country’s poorest cities and rural areas. And according to a CNN report, “global food reserves [are] at their lowest in a quarter century,” which means bad weather this summer could send prices soaring even higher. With this in mind, I just don’t think it’s fair or particularly effective to say to lower and middle-class people people, “Okay, now your cheap food is expensive – have you thought about buying [also expensive] local food?”

So, while Pollan might be correct that the rising price of commodity crops might encourage some people to make the switch to local, grass fed, non-commodity foods, as long as the majority of consumers’ “fork votes” are going towards cheap food, “the intellectual musings of the food elite,” as The Times states, “might be trampled in the stampede to the value menu.”

–Leah Koenig

The Lilith Blog

March 28, 2008 by admin

Weaving Words

We are often told that the way to learn to write well is by reading great literature. But I think that it is just as important to listen to a good speaker again and again, internalizing their style and learning to craft sentences that echo the cadences of their speech.

I learned to write by listening to my father speak in shul all throughout my childhood. Each Shabbat morning I would arrive in shul just before the Torah reading — the time when my father, the rabbi of our synagogue, addresses the congregation. He taught me how to be eloquent but straightforward; how to engage with a joke or a catchy opening; how to hint towards conclusion without ending, and then how to actually end. Although I now live thousands of miles from home and get to hear my father’s drashot only on occasional trips home, it is his voice that I hear in my ears whenever I sit down to write.

In the Jerusalem shul where I currently daven, no one speaks on Shabbat. I miss getting to hear my father each week. But I have found another voice that speaks to me and informs the shape of my writing and thinking. Every Tuesday night I attend the shiurim of Avivah Zornberg, who speaks for an hour and a half about the weekly Torah portion. Throughout her class I sit there in a trance, mesmerized by her power to stitch words and weave them together into ideas that change the fabric of my thoughts. Avivah gives roughly the same shiurim year after I year, and still I return, now for the third year in a row. “Haven’t you heard everything she has to say,” I am often asked. But as I see it, Avivah’s words are divrei Torah and Avivah, then, is Torah. I read the same parshiot year after year, but each time they sound different– because I am different, and because nothing around me has stayed the same either.

A life of listening – first to my father, and then to Avivah Zornberg – has taught me how to express myself effectively in words. I am grateful that when I sit down to write, it is their voices, most often, that resound in my ears.

–Chavatzelet Herzliya

The Lilith Blog

March 26, 2008 by admin

To Ignore Bad News Or Not To Ignore Bad News?

I was tempted to ignore this item of news entirely since, as I’m fond of saying, it’s bad for the Jewesses. Scratch that, it’s just bad in general. The female principal of an ultra-Orthodox girls school in Melbourne, Australia has been found to have, allegedly, molested several of her teenage students (the exact number is unknown), reports the Australian paper The Age and the Forward, and several other news organizations. I was tempted to ignore it because I prefer to focus on positive news about Jewish women, but I realized that if it had been news of a man molesting children, I would almost certainly make note of it, and not doing so in this case would be sexist of me.

We’ve unfortunately become somewhat used to hearing about male religious educators (rabbis and priests) molesting boys and women, but a woman doing similarly is more shocking. Such lecherous, disgusting behavior is inherently male, we tend to think; but, of course, it’s not. Women are capable of it, too (though they appear to be guilty of it far less often). Unfortunately, we can’t pick and choose where women should be treated equally to men and where they should not be. But interestingly, the ultra-Orthodox community in Melbourne — in which men and women are generally not treated in a way most us would consider “equally” — seems to be treating this case similarly to the way Orthodox communities have historically reacted to cases involving men molesting children — community authorities covering things up, reluctance to alert outside authorities, etc. (though school authorities deny the worst charges against them, that they gave money to Leifer to flee the country). And the forces that seek to combat such abuse, namely The Awareness Center, have also been giving this case the same attention given to abuse by male religious authorities.

A few months back I wrote on this blog about abuse by rabbis, arguing that the lesson we should come away with from all these scandals is that rabbis are no more inherently spiritual or pure than the rest of us. The same can be said now of women. We are no more inherently pure than men. Full equality requires we acknowledge it.

The Awareness Center is having a mini-conference next weekend, “From Darkness To Light: Ending Sexual Violence in Jewish Communities.” For more information and to register for the conference, click here.

–Rebecca Honig Friedman

The Lilith Blog

March 19, 2008 by admin

Queen Esther the Vegetarian?

In this week’s Jerusalem Post, Dr. Richard Schwartz writes: “Queen Esther, the heroine of the Purim story, was a vegetarian while she lived in the palace of King Achashverosh. She was thus able to avoid violating the kosher dietary laws while keeping her Jewish identity secret.”

Well, sort of. As a vegetarian and a woman, I find Dr. Schwartz’s line of logic tempting. Hooray! Queen Esther, the sassy savior of the Jewish people, loved tofu! But he has the midrash backwards. There are actually conflicting opinions about what Esther chose to eat and refuse in the palace (one commentator suggests that she was actually served pork!). But the midrash that stuck is that she ate beans and legumes. If this was the case, then Queen Esther avoided meat so as to not violate the kosher laws in her non-Jewish surroundings. Her intention would not have been to eschew all flesh, as Dr. Schwartz suggests, just the non-kosher kind.

(more…)