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Author Archives: admin
June 4, 2020 by admin
Let’s Get To Work
White folks: how many of you have spent the week feeling paralyzed by the question: “What do I do?” I’m not going to answer that for you. Because we each have to answer that one for ourselves.
Yet whether any of us like it, we are responsible for one another. Your choices are my responsibility. Your silence is my responsibility. And mine is yours. That’s kind of how this white thing works (except spoiler alert: this white thing is definitely not working).
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June 4, 2020 by admin
Black Lives Matter: Read, Learn, and Act
In the wake of this most recent horrific moment of racist violence and white supremacy, the Lilith staff would like to share the articles we’ve been reading and rereading–the organizations we’ve been following, and resources we’ve been turning to.
We also want to hear from you: what have you been reading, asking, wrestling with, learning from, supporting? Because we’re in this with you- committing to listen, deepen our anti-racism learning & act in solidarity with Black communities, Jews of Color, Indigenous people, & communities of color for racial equity and a just world.
Read
- We are Dying Because of the Fears of White People by Dena Robinson for Lilith Magazine.
- It looks like Amy Cooper, the white woman in the viral Central Park video, is a liberal. That’s important. By Nylah Burton for The Independent.
- As the George Floyd protests continue, let’s be clear where the violence is coming from. By Rebecca Solnit for the Guardian.
Watch
- Ask Yourself by Lauren Whitney.
Donate
There are so many organizations doing incredible racial justice work. We wanted to highlight the following organizations that are run for and by women of color.
- Sister Song is a Southern-based organization with a purpose to build an effective network of individuals and organizations to improve institutional policies and systems that impact the reproductive lives of marginalized communities.
- The Loveland Foundation is an organization that provides financial assistance to Black women and girls seeking mental health support.
- #FreeBlackMamas is an annual campaign by National Bail Out seeking to raise awareness about the human and financial costs of money bail and emphasize its impact on Black mothers and caregivers.
Learn
- The Anti-Racism Resources List is a comprehensive list of resources to learn and engage in anti-racism work.
- 26 Ways to be in the Struggle Beyond the Streets is a list designed to celebrate all the ways that our communities can engage in liberation.
- Your Kids Aren’t Too Young to Talk About Race: Resource Roundup is a list of resources that are targeted at parents who want to teach their children to be anti-racist.
- The 1619 Project is an ongoing initiative from The New York Times Magazine that began in August 2019, the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.
Act
- #JusticeforFloyd: Demand the officers who killed George Floyd are charged with murder is a petition demanding the along with Derek Chauvin, the other three officers be arrested and charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter.
- NAACP: We Are Done Dying is a petition with 4 main demands. These are to arrest the remaining 3 officers involved in George Floyd’s murder, demand appointment of an independent special processor to lead the government’s full and impartial investigation of the murder of George Floyd, demand reinstitution by the Department of Justice of consent decrees on police departments and municipal governments across this country that have demonstrated patterns of racism towards and mistreatment of people of color, and demand for sweeping police reform, including federal legislation mandating a zero-tolerance approach in penalizing and/or prosecuting police officers who kill unarmed, non-violent, and non-resisting individuals in an arrest.
- Black Lives Matter: #DefundThe Police is a petition that calls for the end to the systemic racism that allows this culture of corruption to go unchecked and our lives to be taken. They call for a national defunding of police and investment in Black communities.
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May 30, 2020 by admin
A Debut Novel About Family
When La La Fine is eight, her mother disappears, and her father, Zev, starts taking her with him to work. Unfortunately, Zev’s work is part-time locksmith, part-time burglar. Fifteen years later, when Zev gets arrested, La La quits veterinary school to raise money for his legal defense the only way she knows how—robbing houses. What constitutes a good mother? A good father? A good daughter? A normal life? These are questions posed by R.L. Maizes in her compelling debut novel Other People’s Pets (Celadon Book, $26.99).
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May 29, 2020 by admin
We are Dying Because of the Fears of White People
“I’m not Black, I’m Jamaican.” Following in the tradition of many immigrants and first-generation Black immigrants, that was the tune I sang for most of my adolescent life. I ran from my Blackness. My mother came to the United States seeking a better life. Until she stepped onto U.S. soil, my mother had never known a country where you could be shot and killed just for existing.
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May 29, 2020 by admin
I Told Our Son He Can’t Come Home
He asked to borrow the car.
Just two weeks earlier, he’d been sheltering with us in our Hudson River town, where he’d stayed for the first two months of lockdown. Despite our pleas, he returned to Manhattan. On a whim before leaving, he took the antibody test and learned that, like 30% of people infected with the coronavirus, he’d had it asymptomatically. Considering himself safe, he asked if he could stay overnight before taking the Honda. I reminded him that no antibody test is highly reliable and that nobody knows yet whether a true positive test means a person is immune. I had to say no.
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May 28, 2020 by admin
When Will the Counting End?
The Jewish holiday of Shavuot starts tonight. My husband, Aryeh, and I have been counting many things over the past several months: 1) the days of quarantine. 2) the omer. 3) the days that Darwin Ramos will remain with us in our home. Like everything else this year, Shavuot will be different. Not only because of the quarantine, but also because we will be spending this holiday in quarantine with Darwin.
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May 26, 2020 by admin
Making a Feast of Mezze
by Susan Barocas
As a writer, cook, filmmaker and travel enthusiast, I have loved traveling to many places and, of course, eating my way through cuisines. I’ve done this enough to know my favorite way to eat. Many of my favorite dishes have been part of mezze, an abundance of cold and hot plates full of flavor and a wide variety of ingredients.
The mezze of the Mediterranean and Mid East, called salatim in Israel and tapas in Spain, are traditionally a prelude to stimulate the appetite for the main meal to follow. But for me, mezze is a wonderfully social, leisurely way to eat the meal itself. Whether dishes are brought out one by one–cold first and then hot, as is traditional–or served all at once, mezze encourages tasting, talking and slowing down.
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May 12, 2020 by admin
Poetry: Thirteen Ways of Looking at Life Before The Virus
I.
I remember shaking hands:
damp sweaty hands and dry scratchy hands,
bone-crushing handshakes and dead-fish handshakes,
two-handed handshakes, my hand sandwiched
between a pair of big beefy palms.
I remember hairy hands and freckled hands,
young smooth hands and old wrinkled hands,
red-polished fingernails and bitten-jagged fingernails,
stained hands of hairdressers who had spent all day dyeing,
dirty hands of gardeners who dug down deep into the good earth.
II.
Thousands of years ago, a man stuck out his right hand
to show a stranger he had no weapon.
The stranger took his hand and shook it
to make sure he had nothing up his sleeve.
And that is how it began.
III
I remember sharing a bucket
of greasy popcorn with a boy
at the movies
(though I no longer remember
the boy or the movie)
the thrill of our hands
accidentally on purpose
brushing each other in the dark.
IV
I remember my best girlfriend
and me facing each other to play
a hand-clapping game, shrieking
“Miss Mar…Mack! Mack! Mack!”
and the loud satisfying smack!
as our four palms slapped.
V.
I remember high fives
and how we’d laugh when we missed
and then do a do-over.
VI.
I remember the elegant turn
of shiny brass doorknobs
cool to the touch.
VII.
I remember my mother’s hands
tied to the railings of her hospital bed
and how I untied them
when the nurse wasn’t looking
and held them in my lap.
VIII.
I remember holding my father’s hand
how the big college ring he wore
rubbed against my birthstone ring
and irritated my fourth finger
but I never pulled away.
IX.
I remember the joy of offering
my index finger to a new baby
who wrapped it in her fist
as we gazed at each other in wonder.
X.
I remember tapping a stranger
on the shoulder and saying,
“Your tag is showing.
Do you mind if I tuck it in?”
She didn’t mind. I tucked it in.
XI.
I remember salad bars and hot bars.
I remember saying, “Want a bite?”
and offering a forkful
of food from my plate.
I remember asking, “Can I have a sip?”
and placing my lips
on the edge of your cold frosty glass.
XII.
I remember passing around the kiddush cup,
each of us taking a small sip of wine.
I remember passing around the challah,
each of us ripping off a big yeasty hunk.
I remember picking up a serving spoon
someone had just put down
without giving it a second thought.
XIII.
I remember sitting with a mourner
at a funeral, not saying a word,
simply taking her hand.
–Lesléa Newman
Copyright © 2020 by Lesléa Newman. First appeared in New Verse News. Used by permission of the author.
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May 11, 2020 by admin
When the Clapping Stops
I may no longer know what day it is, but I can set my clock to the nightly applause that rumble in my neighborhood at 7:00 PM sharp. A time reserved for New York City residents to step outside (if they can) and bang on pots, whoop, or clap wildly to show their appreciation for the healthcare workers who are tirelessly on the frontlines combatting the deadly Coronavirus. What will happen when the clapping
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May 4, 2020 by admin
My Version of a Kippah
It was the day after my wedding, and I was annoyed. Now that I was married I was trying to cover my hair, but the scarf kept slipping off my head. I folded and refolded the cloth, and tried to tie it as tightly as possible.
My brand-new husband and I were still in the hotel room in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where we had spent the night after our wedding. The previous day had been the best of my life. Joy, crying, singing, dancing, an after party on a rooftop, and now – well, now I was folding and refolding a goddamn scarf. Why was I doing this?
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