The Lilith Blog

August 20, 2008 by Modesty Blasé

Smart is Out, Mediocre is In

“These clever girls,” a friend said to me the other day, “they’re taking it too far now. My son isn’t going to want such a clever one. It’s not going to be so easy for her to settle down, make a home…”

“My daughter is doing brilliantly at university,” said another. “But I don’t know what good it’s going to do. It wouldn’t hurt her to be a little less clever….at least in public.”

For the first time in Jewish history, mothers are encouraging their daughters to underachieve. They shouldn’t be too pretty, too smart or too competent for fear of scaring the boys away. It’s particularly nerve-wracking for Orthodox mothers who are concerned that their daughters are pricing themselves out of the marriage stakes with all their accomplishments. “With a PhD under her sheitel,” thinks the anxious mother to herself, “a man is going to worry that my daughter will never be happy changing nappies and making kugel.”

I have spotted a trend, and you are reading about it here first: smart is out, mediocre is in. Many religious women in their 40s who went to university and worked briefly in their profession relinquished their fledgling careers to raise their families. While some of them dabble in voluntary activity and others are underemployed in part-time jobs, most of them are frustrated and bored. They were given the world, but their passport to travel has expired.

Fearing that the same thing will happen to their daughters, they are not encouraging their daughters to pursue high-flying careers, rather, they are persuading them to think strategically about jobs that will allow them to combine a family and work that is interesting enough. To address this issue, one secondary school in North-West London has introduced beauty therapy training as an alternative to A levels (an academic high school diploma). One has to applaud initiatives for less academically able students, but have they no imagination? Is beauty therapy the best they can come up with? You can’t get more mediocre than that.

I have been struggling to understand this phenomenon, and have come to view this quest for mediocrity as another component of the “modesty continuum” that started with an obsession about hem lengths and collarbones. Much has been written about modest clothing and if you simply Google “modest clothing,” you’ll find a plethora of websites catering to Jews, Muslims, Plymouth Brethren, Latter Day Saints and other modest-conscious groups.

Young women on the modesty continuum understand the sartorial expectations of the religious community, even if they seek ways to subvert it. For example, the little black dress deserves a study of its own. When I was a child, black dresses were for fat old ladies. Now, they are the uniform of religious women. Young girls and teenagers are clad from top to toe in all shades of black during the week, on Shabbat and at weddings. Only the most naive would suggest that this rather drab clothing is a sign of self-effacing piety worthy of applause. Rather, the very knowing, slim-line silhouette of these attractive young women is alluring and these young women with their little black dress aspirations are very wittingly imitating the chic elegance of New York’s skinniest. On the modesty continuum, where contemporary rabbinic edicts are often based on a concept of ‘not imitating the surrounding non-Jewish culture,’ there should be public burnings of these little black dresses.

Mothers have recognised the difficulties in controlling their daughters’ dress code, hence the move to control their daughters’ expectations. It IS difficult to combine a career and motherhood, but striving for mediocrity is not a viable strategy. Subduing young women in the hope that potential husbands will find them more attractive is a damning indictment on religious men and cannot be the basis for a healthy partnership between the sexes in the modern Orthodox world.

The only solution in the short term for these clever women is exporting them to Mount Isa, a remote mining village in northern Australia where the mayor, John Molony, and the glut of bachelors will be there to welcome them. “If there are five blokes to every girl, we should find out where there are beauty-disadvantaged women,” he suggested to the Australian media, “and ask them to proceed to Mount Isa.” Asked to comment on how he defined beauty, the mayor explained, “There is such a thing as disposition, temperament, manners, general attractiveness, attitude and demeanour; all those things tend to make a person attractive.”

Yes, just the sort of qualities to be found on the modesty continuum.

–Modesty Blasé

Cross-posted to the Jerusalem Post blog.

The Lilith Blog

August 20, 2008 by admin

The Saber vs. The Pen: Jewish Women in the Olympics

Like most everyone with a television set the world over, I too have been watching the Olympics — and getting more excited about sports and my country than I expected to be. When an article mentioning U.S. Fencing Team member Sada Jacobson, who is this year’s silver medalist in the women’s saber competition and who just happens to be Jewish, caught my attention (Jacobson “was honored in 2002 by the Jewish Sports Hall of Fame with the Marty Glickman Award,” according to her bio), I found myself wondering how many other, non-Israeli Jewish women are competing in this year’s Olympics.

But when I bunkered down to tally up the Jewish-sounding names on the U.S. team’s website, it soon became obvious that my method was so inaccurate as to be worthless, and that the task, in general, is rather petty. (Not to mention that there are A LOT of Olympians and I have better things to do with my time.) What would be the point of saying there are such-and-such-number of Jews on the team? Am I so insecure about the athletic capabilities of Jewish women that I have to do a head count to prove that we, too, can be Olympians?

These questions run much deeper than the Olympics, though. We, Jewish journalist and civilians alike, often try to claim Jews who’ve made it into the mainstream spotlight (Adam Sandler’s “Hanukkah Song,” anyone?). But does it really matter that Regina Spektor went to a Jewish day school? That Seth Rogen mentions his Jew-fro in “Knocked Up?” That Sacha Baron Cohen was spotted at an Upper West Side synagogue on the High Holidays or that he spoke in Hebrew instead of Kazhak all through the “Borat” movie? And do I really care that Amy Winehouse (God help her) got married under a chuppah?

The answer, I find upon some reflection, is yes.

And here’s why. Secular, pop-culture has for so long been white-washed of any ethnic markers. The movies and TV have generally been an equalizer, creating a common American culture of assimilation. Many early American films, like “The Jazz Singer,” for example, dealt with the tension between the younger generation’s assimilation and their parents wanting them to hold fast to their tradition — and assimilation usually won out. Hence actors and performers changing their ethnic-sounding names to more zingy, “American”-sounding monochres with marquee appeal. And actors today, or a generation ago, still do this. (Hello, Winona Ryder?) In the last decade or two, ethnic practices were brought into media as a politically correct nod to multi-culturalism. But the pop-Jews mentioned above, and numerous other Jewish blips in pop culture that have come up lately, have come about organically, from people’s honest connection to their culture and their willingness to flaunt it, or at least talk about it. And seeing those examples of famous people who’ve “made it” in mainstream culture still clinging to their Jewish identity makes us all feel, at least subconsciously, a little prouder of our own roots, and like we, too, can be super stars, whether or not we go to High Holiday services.

And that’s OK.

Now, how to get out of this cultural diatribe and back into the Olympics? Oh yes. Sada Jacobson. Surely Judaism has little if nothing to do with her and other unaccounted for Jewish Olympians’ athletic prowess. But the point we can take away from this is that their being Jewish didn’t hold them back. Clearly there are many Jews who value athletics, but as a community, athletics for the sake of athletics is not a particularly valued pursuit, particularly not for women (and, no, spending 45 minutes on the treadmill three times a week does not an Olympic runner make).

One need only look to the sports leagues in Jewish day schools, where the cool sport that gives team members the most social capital is boys’ gym hockey (no ice, not even a field, just gym). And there is no equivalent hockey team for girls.

But it needn’t be that way. True athletics is not about running around a gym getting sweaty. It’s about form, skill, discipline and dedication – values that can be transferred to any task – physical or intellectual. So I call on all the yeshiva girls out there to go out and show the boys up: pick up a pair of ice skates and a hockey stick and start practicing for a girls’ ice hockey league, by far more impressive and more difficult than gym hockey.

Or, better yet, pick up a saber and start a fencing team. Because, while as a writer I hate to admit it, sometimes the sword really is, if not actually mightier than the pen, at least mightier-seeming, and seeming mighty is sometimes the key to being so.

–Rebecca Honig Friedman

The Lilith Blog

August 18, 2008 by Mel Weiss

Partying Like It’s…1981?

Man, somehow I woke up this morning and walked into the mid ‘80s. That’s how it felt, anyway, after I found a pamphlet from Mother Jones, circa 1981. For the record, 1981 predates me—not by much, but a bit—and so I count reading such material as history, normally. But this time…I don’t know. This little pamphlet delved into the issues its liberal authors saw as plaguing America: the rapid rise of Political Action Committees (with their undue effect upon legislation that may not be in the public interest), a recent tax act that heavily favored the wealthy and business interests at the expense of the still-a-lot-larger-then middle class, the harmful effects of jobs being shipped overseas, the rise of government debt, the disposal of nuclear waste, American dependence on oil, the backlash against contraceptives and abortion, disproportionate crime rates among young black men…

Um, any of this sounding familiar?

Oh, sure, there were some indications of how dated the thing was—predictions that the next big war would be nuclear, terminology that gave computers and robots equal weight as concepts, a foreign citizens’ language guide that included Yiddish but not Chinese or Arabic or Russian—but these paled in comparison with the stark, blinding and frankly terrifying similarities.

The eighties theme continued with Brazil, a film from 1985 that has actually nothing to do with South America’s largest nation. The movie is the disquieting story of a totalitarian state, and there’s much ado in all the reviews and synopses you’ll read about the similarities to Orwell’s 1984. If you happen to be watching 23 years later, on the other hand, it’s impossible not only to identify the dehumanizing effects the system portrayed has on its inhabitants, allowing for the existence of a procedure of torture for those suspected of terrorism.

Um…? Anyone?

(As a side note, one of the most chilling themes in the film is that when the terrorists—who do seem, somewhere, to exist—detonate big bombs in public places, no one rushes to help the wounded. Although the world’s hot spots for exploding buildings don’t yet seem to have reached this soulless state—and I am of course thinking of Israel and Iraq here—it’s very, very scary to imagine that such a day might come.)

Surely, this is all anecdotal and not worth a lot as hard evidence of anything. And yet, I don’t they can be ignored. And I’m starting to get pretty seriously worried here, folks. Rick Warren is the one who’s getting the candidates-to-officially-be to sit at the table together. (He opened by quoting Scripture, y’all. The hell?) Gallup has McCain and Obama tied. I’d say it was the end of the world, but I think it’s worse—I think it’s history, coming back to bite us in the ass again. And with the 2008 election looming ever closer, we need to be extra vigilant.

So let’s make a pact, all of you with longer memories and more experience. How about you all start talking to us young ‘uns. Tell us the stories of what happened—political battles fought and won (or lost), nightmare scenarios and dreams for the future you once had. Help us identify issues and problems that have appeared before. The news media isn’t helping our institutional memory, and we’ve abandoned most of the civil institutions that might help. And then, we can help draw up the new plans, because clearly, something has got to change.

If we don’t stop this political cycle, who knows? Big hair might even come back into fashion, and I’m not sure the nation could survive that.

–Mel Weiss

The Lilith Blog

August 13, 2008 by Modesty Blasé

Jewish Spirituality

The news that Spirituality for Kids, intimately and unashamedly connected to the Madonna-made-it-famous-and-I-want-a-red-string-too-Kabbalah Centre, has wormed its way into several London state schools has made the rabbis quite antsy. Perhaps rightly so, as the celebrity cult status of the organisation is enough to make me wary.

However, I’d like to see a lot more small ‘s’ spirituality for small ‘k’ kids. All around me are parents focussed on providing for the material needs of their children including designer (modest) clothes, lavish (separate dancing) parties and fancy (glatt kosher) holidays while pointedly ignoring some of the more complex issues of spirituality and morality that should also be part of a religious lifestyle.

While spirituality is a highly personal experience that cannot be regulated by the number of times one should wash their hands, many young people would like their rabbis to show a form of spiritual leadership that focussed on the quest to understand life’s big questions rather than political manoeuvring and obsessive concern about the minutiae of ritual observance. If you speak to young teens who go ‘off the derech” (i.e. the in-vogue phrase for ceasing to be observant), you will often find that they are thoughtful young people who became disillusioned with a system of control that did not meet their spiritual needs.

Rabbis often describe women as more innately spiritual – some rabbis will patronisingly explain that this is why women don’t need to wear a kippa because they don’t need reminding of a higher authority. Some rabbis will say women don’t need to learn Talmud because their innate sensitivity and spirituality would not allow them to cope with the rigors of Talmudic argument. Does that mean being spiritual is a code word for being a bit stupid and not having a ‘gemora kop?’

On a recent visit to the UK, Mrs. Devorah Heller told her female audience to search for the spirituality in making challah. Women are often reminded how they can create a ‘Torah-true’ atmosphere by thinking holy thoughts as they wash the floor and cook the evening meal. Most women I know are too tired to be spiritual.

Devorah described how, on the day of a wedding, she visits the bride, taking along a prepared dough. As the bride performs the mitzvah of “hafrashat challah” (taking a piece of the challah dough and setting it aside) she prays for a list of people who may be ill or need to find their own groom. Then, a few hours later, a freshly baked challah is awaiting for the newly married couple in the Yichud room where they go to immediately after the chuppah.

Many brides may have preferred one of Devorah’s challahs to putting their faith in Wrapit, the online wedding gift service that closed down last week in the UK. Founded by a Jewish woman, Pepita Diamand, many of Wrapit’s 2000 clients were Jewish and featured in a recent article in the Jewish Chronicle. Hundreds of guests who bought gifts for friends and relatives getting married will have lost money (unless their credit card company reimburses them) and newlyweds across the country will be starting life without that matching dinner set or fluffy set of bath towels.

Mr. Blasé refused to set up a wedding list, and I am still regifting (see Seinfeld, The Label Maker) to unsuspecting friends. However, like my stance on many of life’s big questions, I am ambivalent about wedding lists. On the one hand, it makes sense to give the couple something they would like, but on the other hand, when an invitation arrives in the post with a note telling me where to purchase the gift, it does seem to reduce our relationship to yet another financial transaction, albeit under the barter system. The groom and bride will provide a meal with loud music and boring speeches, and in return I will pay for a babysitter and a gift of their choosing.

Lists are instructive in Jewish life. There are the lists of people you want to invite to your simcha, and then there is the longer lists of people you have to invite. There are the lists of shomer Shabbat families in the neighbourhood who are compiled into a booklet of small businesses and local professionals assumed to be reliable and trustworthy. There are the Rich Lists, published in national newspapers, and from which the Jewish newspapers make their own Jewish Rich list. This is often the preferred Friday night reading material. There are the bikkur cholim lists – a list of Jewish people in local hospitals who would welcome a visit from someone to relieve the boredom of their sick bed. At shul there are lists: those who donate money, those who complain, those who make things happen and those who are dead.

A woman’s lists are never done: not only does she carry around a list of kosher brands, indispensable phone numbers and school holiday dates in her head, women are expected to attend tehillim groups where a list of those who are ill, having fertility problems or looking for shidduchim are presented and women spend an hour or so reciting psalms with these names in mind. Women are matchmaking all the time
and they receives lists of attributes: from the boys, they want girls who are slim, pretty and slim; from the girls, they want boys who are tall, good learners and funny. Women have lists of places to be, food packages to deliver, kindnesses to mete out.

There is only one list a woman dare not make: the list of things she would like for herself.

–Modesty Blasé

Cross-posted to the Jerusalem Post blog.

The Lilith Blog

August 12, 2008 by Mel Weiss

Tisha b'Av: A Family Story?

Gosh. I leave New York—and my trusty laptop—for a few days, and the world goes beserk. John Edwards and his affair, Russia invading Georgia, random violence at the Olympics, and a scandal involving Sudan’s profit margin on the same kinds of food the world is shipping its starving citizens. Yikes.

Yet through all of this, I couldn’t stop thinking about Tisha b’Av, for obvious reasons. It’s one of those holidays I have to really work to connect to each year, but this year, I had some unexpected help from soon-to-be-rabbi Kate Palley, who gave a great drash about ways to connect to the Temple. I will admit that for me, the Temple is a big ole abstract symbol. I get it intellectually, a little, but it’s an all-head-no-heart deal, and that’s sad on a holiday that should be mostly heart. But Kate spoke about how the Temple was the last time the Jewish people could come together automatically, like a family, and that’s when it clicked. Family has been on my mind a lot, too.

Actually, the reason I was away from my hometown (and aforementioned laptop) for a few days was to be with family. Family that lives far away, that I care for very much but that lead different lives from me. For a while, in fact, parts of my family led flat-out divergent lives—away from one another.

So when I thought about the Temple, and tried to reach around for that mourning, I found it helped to think about my family, writ large. And you know what? It is a damn shame when families break apart, drift away, lose touch. It’s not just the story of my family, either—it’s certainly the story of the Jewish people. (If you don’t believe me, check out the comments section of any article on Ynet or Ha’aretz or the Jerusalem Post website. People say stuff to and about each other you couldn’t make up on your own. Whew!) It’s not just “two Jews, three opinions”—multiple viewpoints are not the problem here. It’s more like, “two Jews who never have a face-to-face conversation because they’ve both written the other off as the source of all ills in the Jewish world.”

And, sadly, this is the story of the feminist movement, too. First, it happened in the movement’s youth, when younger members of the women’s liberation movement rebelled against the more staid NOW. (For more on this fascinating and far-too-little-known aspect of history, check out Ruth Stone’s The World Split Open, which will blow your mind.) As I’ve kvetched about before here, this infighting (often baited by the media) goes on still.

And, if Russia invading Georgia—regardless of the specifics, which it’ll take me several days of sifting through newspapers, blogs and my stand-by foreign policy wonks to form an opinion about—during the Olympics, yet!—doesn’t remind us of the insane tensions and grudges we hold in our larger human family, well, I don’t know what would. In truth, I have no interest in finding out. Who hasn’t seen a reference somewhere, in the great piles of words written every day about the Arab-Israeli conflict, to the story of Isaac and Ishmael? It’s like we save our deepest rancor not for those who are most Other, but those who are most like us. Those who are family. Even in America, where we share so much in common and have such a joined future, we fight like animals. We waste time that could be spent building up our common causes breaking each other down.

It would all be a bit too depressing for me, except I spent the last three days hanging out with my family, and it was fantastic. Did it take a lot of work for everyone in that room to be there, and be there for each other? Not in the present, really, but in the not-so-distant past? You bet. Keeping families together sometimes takes a lot of work on everybody’s part, but so what? It’s so, so worth it. And it is, truly, within our reach if we want it badly enough.

So one year soon I’ll hang around Jerusalem for Tisha b’Av and really focus on the proper political, historical and religious contexts. For now, though, I’ll trust that the personal really is the political, and I’ll think about my many families, large and small, all over the world—my family that is the world, in fact—and I’ll rejoice that some of the rebuilding has already begun, and that so many show up every day to keep at it, and when I think about the Temple, I’ll mean it when I say, “May it be rebuilt speedily, and in our days,”

–Mel Weiss.

The Lilith Blog

August 12, 2008 by admin

Swimming in the Early Days of Av

My friend Roni saw me on my way to the pool last week and was surprised to see where I was going. “You? Swimming during the nine days? I’m shocked! Even I don’t swim during the nine days.” She was referring to the well-known custom of refraining during the week before Tisha b’Av from pleasurable activities, including buying new clothes, eating meat, and bathing for pleasure (an activity that is commonly thought to include swimming). Rather than try to defend myself, I asked her, “Why don’t you?” She thought for a moment and then responded, “Because how else would I get in the right mindset for Tisha b’Av? I don’t eat meat, and I rarely buy new clothes – so it’s only the prohibition on swimming that actually reminds me of the time of year.” I was glad that I had asked her, because in hearing her explanation as to why she does not swim, I realized why I do.

Unlike Roni, it would be impossible for me to forget what is going on in the Jewish calendar now. I feel like I have spent much of the last month getting ready for Tisha b’Av. I have been teaching classes for the last few weeks about the symbolism of the Temple for the rabbis, and I wrote an essay about this same subject. I have also been to several lectures about Tisha b’Av, most notably a class last week at Beit Avichai about forms of mourning in Jewish tradition, and a shiur last night about tragedy from ancient Greece to Shakespeare to the Talmud. I have leyned several of the haftarot from Jeremiah and Ezekiel about the sinfulness of the people and the destruction that awaits them. When not leyning these haftarot, I have been practicing the perek of Eicha that I will chant at the Kotel tomorrow night. In addition, my chevruta and I have been learning the fifth perek of Gittin, which includes all the stories about the eve of the destruction of the Temple. (Unfortunately, although Daf Yomi is also on Gittin, we hit the fifth perek two weeks after Tisha b’Av, which is appropriately tragic.) And for the past two weeks, I have been reading the final chapter of the first volume of Rabbi Benjamin Lau’s Chachamim, which deals with Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai (most famous for his cry, later paraphrased by Patrick Henry, “Give me Yavneh and its sages!”), the zealots, and the events surrounding the destruction of the Temple. I even inadvertently invited Bar Kamtza for dinner this Shabbat!

Through it all, though, I have been swimming nearly every day in the Olympic-sized Jerusalem swimming pool on the ground floor of the office
building where I work. To my delight, the pool has been considerably less crowded this past week, since so many of the religious people don’t swim.
(On Monday night, when there is “all women’s swimming” for the sake of religious women who will not swim with men, the pool was nearly empty; for
the first time ever I had an entire lane to myself!) While I swim, the melody of Eicha often runs through my head, and sometimes when I swim
backstroke, I find myself practicing out loud. At other times I keep the copious notes I am taking on Rabbi Lau’s book in a plastic sleeve at the
edge of the pool, and review the material between laps. Swimming is one of the few activities I do that does not involve feeding new ideas into my
brain. When I swim, I reflect and process and digest. If not for swimming, I don’t think I would remember half of what I have been studying all summer about the history surrounding Tisha b’Av. Perhaps, then, I could have answered Roni by saying, “Why do I swim? Because it helps me remember all about Tisha b’Av!” The reasoning might be hafuch-al-hafuch (that is, topsy-turvy), but it’s true.

–Chavatzelet Herzliya

The Lilith Blog

August 6, 2008 by Modesty Blasé

Jewish Women and Netball

Recent news that the Israeli netball team found glory in Ireland brought a warm glow to my face that I almost confused with the beginnings of a hot flush.

A couple of years ago, I heard about a friendly Jewish netball game in London (a common game in Great Britain and Commonwealth countries). As I started to explain that it had been many years since I last played and that I was not in the best shape, Jenny, the team organiser, gently interrupted me: “Don’t worry,” she said. “Everyone says the same thing. You’ll be fine.”

And so it happened, that after 25 years of self-imposed netball exile, I picked up a ball again. Although I felt the coach staring at me in disbelief as I struggled with the complicated and unseemly warm up exercises, I was feeling great. The bibs were distributed and I was assigned GA – goal attack. Apparently, new-comers are always given the less-favoured positions of GA or GS (goal shooter). After five minutes of play, I understood why. I was completely exhausted and ready to go home, willing to admit defeat and delusions of grandeur. But I persevered and made it to the end of the game, feeling very proud of myself and determined to return the following week.

And I did. I have returned nearly every week, and have been upgraded to Goal Defence, the same position I had as a teenager and that allows me to run across two thirds of the court.

Netball distinguishes itself from basketball by the rule that a player cannot run with the ball. In a fast paced game, the ball is barely in your hands before it has to be passed to the next person. People are running around the court in their assigned areas with speed and focus, following the ball in anticipation of its destination. No dribbling and no wimps here. However, there is one considerable difference between the delicacy of women’s netball and the sweat of men’s basketball. Women say sorry when they miss a catch, ill-time a throw or snuff a goal. It’s sorry, sorry, sorry. It’s as if they don’t even believe they’re entitled to be on the court.

Aside from the obvious physical benefits of running around for an hour, there are existential benefits that are harder to measure. As I play, I’ll often smile to myself because of a fleeting flashback to my teenage playing years. I’ll suddenly remember the embarrassing moments such as getting a period in the middle of a game or the euphoric memories of blocked goals and brilliant throws. It seems as if everyone is carrying the repercussions of their teenage years around the court.

When people ask me who I play with, I usually answer that it’s a bunch of 40-year-old overweight Jewish mothers. But the truth is, as usual, more complicated and I have come to see this group as a microcosm of the fractures that make-up the lives of contemporary Jewish women. Some are much older than 40, and some are their teenage daughters. Some are devoutly religious while for others, chicken soup is as Jewish as it gets. Some have scarves tightly bound around their hair and are wearing a skirt on top of their long tracksuit bottoms, while others are in skimpy shorts and singlet tops. Some are single professional women, others are working at home looking after their large brood. Many are struggling to juggle work and family commitments. Some are married, some are looking for marriage and a couple are happily settled in lesbian partnerships.

Some are avowed Zionists who visit Israel regularly, while others prefer Majorca. In the milli-seconds of friendly chit-chat between goals, our partners (or lack thereof), financial troubles, children and beauty anxieties are shared. This hour together is an opportunity to see each other as women, stripped of our Jewish allegiances that have so often served to separate and stereotype us. It is an hour that has spawned great friendships across these divides and if women in Israel can also use a game of netball to enable these sort of relationships, and also with Arab women in their neighbourhoods, then it’s certainly a sport worthy of some funding from private and public sources.

–Modesty Blasé

Cross-posted to the Jerusalem Post blog.

The Lilith Blog

August 6, 2008 by admin

Jewish Women Leaders: Mourning One's Loss, Watching Another On the Rise

Let’s face it. It’s hard for women to rise to the top in the Jewish world. Whatever the reasons, only a handful of women sit at the highest echelons of major Jewish organizations. And so we mourn the loss of June Walker, former head of Hadassah who spent this last year as Chair of the Conference of President of Major American Jewish Organizations, not just for the many contributions to the Jewish community but for the example she set for Jewish women, and the doors she opened.

Walker was only the second woman in the Conference of Presidents several-decades-long history to hold the position of Conference of Presidents chair. As the JTA notes, the nomination was “something of a departure for the Presidents Conference, the main communal umbrella body on foreign policy, which in recent years has been headed by prominent businessmen.” In contrast to the Wall street businessman, Walker was “a respiratory therapist, former college professor and health-care administrator,” and “a longtime community activist.”

In other words, she rose to power in the Jewish world not because she wielded her checkbook, but because she was smart, dedicated to the community, and hard-working.

Aged 74 at her death, Walker was born at a time when women had to fight even harder to climb the professional ladder: “Walker went a long way beyond the housewifely routines inculcated by her mother,” notes the JPost, “who insisted that women should ‘iron their husbands’ underwear.'” Regardless of whether she did or did not follow her mother’s directive, it didn’t stop her from rising above the station such a sentiment would seem to advocate for women.

Even a seven-year battle with cancer didn’t sideline Walker from pursuing her duties for Hadassah, the Conference of Presidents and various other Jewish organizations. In the weeks before her death, she attended the 94th National Hadassah convention, presided over a meeting of the Conference, and attended various other events.

But as we mourn the loss of this remarkable woman, we can also take heart in, and keep our fingers crossed for, the rise of another strong female Jewish leader — Tzipi Livni. Currently the front-runner to succeed Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert when he steps down in September, Livni would be the second woman to ever hold the position. But she still has a hard-fought battle ahead of her — and part of that fight will no doubt revolve around her being a woman.

Like Walker, Livni is well-respected and even well-liked, but in a race for Israel’s top political position, the question facing her is, is she tough enough? To help beef up her “toughness” factor, Livni has hired former aides to “warrior-politician” Ariel Sharon to help run her campaign, reports the Telegraph.

But her main competition in this political contest, former defense minister Shaul Mofaz, has hired the “New York based Republican political consulting firm of Arthur Finkelstein, most recently known for the ‘Stop Her Now’ campaign against Hillary Clinton.” We can only assume that means he’s gearing up for a no-holds-barred attempt to use Livni’s gender against her in his campaign. And it could work:

Naomi Chazan, a former member of the Knesset, or Israeli parliament, said that the leadership of Ms. Meir, who served from 1969 until 1974, was an exception rather than the rule, and had opened few doors for female successors. “She (Ms. Livni) is going to be attacked, subtly and not-so-subtly, because of her gender,” she said.

But if anyone has shot at overcoming gender biases and proving she is tough enough for the position, it’s a woman who served as a Mossad secret agent, the “daughter of Jewish guerrilla fighters” who “was told war stories in her childhood by Menachem Begin.”

Both Begin and Sharon, Livni’s role models, were tough-as-nails men who ultimately fought for peace. That’s just the combination Livni is now offering Israel, with a record devoid of corruption, and it’s just the combination Israel needs.

–Rebecca Honig Friedman

The Lilith Blog

July 28, 2008 by Mel Weiss

“How Many Acts of Genocide Does It Take to Make a Genocide?”*

I had a whole post planned about rising gas prices, but Netflix finally came through with a movie I’ve been waiting literally years to see. That movie, which I’ve just finished watching, is Hotel Rwanda, and I don’t think I’ve felt this punched in the gut since…well, since the first time I saw Schindler’s List. Because that’s the pretty much the inevitable comparison, and it’s down right eerie how much they have in common. It was horrifying.

But there was one thing that was more horrifying than what was in the movie, and that was what came before it. Don Cheadle, the lead actor, made a special request for Darfur. For people to care. The movie came out in 2004, the DVD came out in 2005. The deepest horror here is not, in fact, that genocide happened before. Not that it happened in Rwanda. It’s that it’s happening right now. It’s still happening.

With the 2008 Olympics right around the corner (the first athletes start arriving today), there is another opportunity to speak loudly at every chance about Darfur. AJWS has done an amazing job of keeping Darfur in our faces, and fighting for more coverage to push the issue as much as possible.

Divest from companies supporting the genocide. Petition Congress to help with strengthening the peacekeeping mission and supplying healthcare workers. Spread the word. Send money. Find other ways to help. Get creative. What else can we do?

–Mel Weiss

*This quote courtesy of the U.S. State Department.

The Lilith Blog

July 24, 2008 by Modesty Blasé

Miss Sheitel 2008

News that two young Jewish women, Leah Green and Samantha Freedman are in the running for the Miss England title was apparently meant to make me feel proud. After all, Miss Green told the Jewish Chronicle, “I thought that maybe I could try to get the message out that it’s not a bad thing to be voluptuous and a size 12 [a medium in the U.S.],” while Miss Freedman does the tzedaka shtick, “All the contestants have to raise money for a particular charity.”

Their accidental Jewish birth hardly seems relevant. They are not being judged on answers to soul-searching questions about their Jewish identity and they are just too skinny. Neither have the zaftig [Yiddish for ‘plump’ or ‘juicy’] beauty we associate with a little too much lokshen [Yiddish for ‘noodles’] in Friday night’s
chicken soup. Are we so insecure that we need to prove that Jewish women can also aspire and achieve the socially acceptable paradigm of Western beauty?

Advocates of the hijab have come up with the perfect counterpoint. In May 2008, Denmarks Radio’s youth club, ‘Skum’ announced a competition entitled ‘Miss Headscarf 2008’. The idea was to present ‘cool Muslim women’ who ‘often make up a very fashion-conscious and style-confident part of the Danish street scene’.

While only the actual hijab was being judged, the rules suggested “it should not be too flashy, expensive, show class or race differences, or draw too much attention to the wearer.” Muslims and non-Muslims were allowed to enter and 18-year-old Huda Falah was chosen because of the bright blue colour of her headscarf..

Here’s my plan for ‘cool religious Jewish women’ – Miss Sheitel 2008. Send in a photo of yourself in your favourite sheitel [Yiddish for ‘wig’]. Whether it’s the
‘Jackie’ with cascading curls, ‘Sandee,’ with luscious locks, or ‘Randy’ with a hint of mystery, you could be in the running for this prestigious award.

There are rules: no hair from the undernourished please. As one sheitel seller explains, “nutrition affects the quality of hair. Therefore, we do not buy hair from
the poorest places in the world and we do not take advantage of people’s misfortune. Rather, we buy the hair at decent price, and use only virgin, healthy and strong hair…So the hair we provide is healthy, gorgeous, bouncy, silky-soft and full of life.”

Good thing the hair is full of life, because I don’t want any faces full of life, otherwise I can’t publish photos of the winners in the haredi newspapers where
photographs of women are not allowed, or when they cannot be completely eliminated, their faces are airbrushed out.

In Golders Green, women who use George may have the competitive edge. Gorgeous George – half man, half Greek God – he has the Jewish women swooning as he snips and shapes their sheitels. With his bag of tricks, he performs trichological miracles for women behind the safety of their oak panelled doors and expensive security systems. Anyone winning this competition would have to dedicate it to George.

Bushra Noah, a young Muslim wannabe hairdresser could learn a lesson or two from George. She recently brought a case of discrimination against Sarah Desrosiers, the owner of a trendy hair salon owner who did not offer Bushra a junior position. Sarah argued that when Bushra made it clear that she would not, for religions reasons, remove her headscarf at work, Sarah felt that this young Muslim woman would not fit in with the image of the salon. Bushra was angry, appealed to the English legal system and to the public’s horror, a judge actually ruled in Bushra’s favour and ordered Sarah to pay £4,000 for “hurt feelings.”

While Bushra might be feeling vindicated in the short- term, if she had any sense, she would learn a long- term lesson from George and others who service her sheitel-wearing cousins. Here is a perfect opportunity to become THE Muslim hairdresser for Muslim women who may want their hair trimmed in the privacy of their own homes. Combine this with door-to-door hijab selling (cash only) and Bushra could be on the way to running a real yiddisher business.

–Modesty Blasé

Cross-posted to The Jerusalem Post blog.