The Lilith Blog

June 2, 2008 by Mel Weiss

Changing Times, Changing Minds

I was at the Strand bookstore when I found a forty-eight-cent copy of The Feminine Mystique. I’ll shamefully admit that the selfsame title heads a list entitled “Mel’s Summer Gotta Read!” if for no other reason than damn, you’ve got to read it. How did I make it this far in my life without having read Betty Friedan’s classic work? I’m not sure, but I’m happy to rectify the situation, and encourage everyone I know to do the same. Because it’s such an honest piece, and the historical picture she paints is so vivid, that I was able to work up a real appreciation for how radical the book must have been in the first place. (My bargain-rate copy is actually a crumbling original, and the cover breathlessly pushes the book as “The year’s most controversial bestseller!”) You can feel Friedan grappling with her imagined reader, repeating herself when necessary, reeling you in with a careful, historical, reportorial narrative until she’s got you. How it must have felt to have that book change your mind—and subsequently, your entire life. If you, like me, have somehow made it this far without this classical revolutionary text—as important as any Foucault or Fanon—get on it.

And so, in honor of my renewed respect for Betty Friedan and the feminists who’ve so radically changed the minds of so much of the world, a brief overview of some important mind-changes from the world of politics this week: (below the jump)

(more…)

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 19, 2008 by Mel Weiss

Appease This

As regular readers of this blog may know, I tend to take the news a little personally. So steam was pretty much coming out of my ears this past week, although I took great pleasure in the fact that the news cycle raising my blood pressure was a news cycle that might end up making trouble for the McCain campaign. And it just wouldn’t die.

First, let me say this, in addition to the abject horrors we all feel when we hear about massive body counts in the wake of natural disasters in Myanmar (Burma) and China, there’s a chance for us to de-trench, ideologically. I know that many, many people felt the immediate need of the situation and have responded with donations and in whatever ways they can—and I’d like to say that taking to heart the idea that even nations with whom we have bad relations are nations full of people is a good way. We can recognize enemies without painting the world into good guys and bad guys with the broadest of all possible brushes, right?

But back to the latest unforgivable offense by the only president we’ve got: speaking last week from the floor of the Knesset on a much-touted trip to Israel, President Bush warned against appeasing terrorists. Over the strenuous and incoherent objections of the White House, those who speak politics out here in the real world assure us that this was a shot at Barack Obama, who has said he would speak with the heads of states like Iran. The talking point memo was written up and distributed, and what did every conservative pundit and player talk about and reference? Neville Chamberlain.

Now, if you are sitting at home, scratching your head, wondering if obliquely referencing the Munich Agreement, in which Hitler was given a solid hunk of Czechoslovakia by the heads of Western Europe, is perhaps a cheap hit for the President of the United States to take from the Israeli parliamentary floor, especially if he’s still leading the country in a war on a global terrorist organization that, hey, we helped fund and train in the first place, well, all I can say is that I was with you, big time.

After initially supporting the President, and later realizing that it was, actually, a pretty bad thing to have said (not only because it reduces much of World War II and the Holocaust to an analogy about talking with a leader we don’t like, instead of training people to overthrow him, a la Salvador Allende or Mohammed Massadegh), John McCain chose the easiest route: obfuscation of his record, covering up his initial support.

Perhaps the insult to the memories of those who lived and died because of Chamberlin’s weak politics would have been sufficient, but follow the unraveling talking points and discover this absolute gem: Chris Matthews, far from my favorite media personality, nails a right-wing suit who, while chewing the scenery over Chamberlinesque appeasment, apparently has no idea who Neville Chamberlin was. Um…excuse me? I don’t think so. You don’t get to treat history with that kind of contempt—you must at least know what it is you’re accusing. This is not only because I say so–although politics could be a lot more exciting if we always used that as the litmus test–but because we have to take a stand and demand that media be used to educate the people. That’s what media’s supposed to do.

There was a lot going this past week in Jewish and feminist news both, but I can’t watch people mess around with media and history–the two life-support systems of an open society–without saying something. So I’m appealing to these two groups, Jews and feminists, both of whom are pretty split on whose Democratic candidate will be better for them, to not get too caught up in this fight: look at the bigger picture. It’s terrifying.

The heat hasn’t completely come off of this (I know this from reading blogs, not newspapers, so somebody write me if your local newspapers does a particularly great or terrible job of coverage), which I hope works a little bit toward humbling the arrogance of those who, while on foreign soil, make vague and massively inappropriate historical allusions to trash their political enemies back on the home front. If nothing else, maybe this will inspire partisan hacks everywhere to crack open a high school social studies textbook before their next appearance in tv. Perhaps not too much to ask.

–Mel Weiss.

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 7, 2008 by Mel Weiss

You Can Pick Your Friends, But…

But you can’t, if you’re running for president of the United States, always pick the lunatics who endorse you. Each of the candidates has learned this lesson by now, although some have had to learn it harder and faster and uglier than others. I am, of course, referring to Barack Obama and Reverend Jeremiah Wright. My feelings toward Rev. Wright, unfavorable though they may be, are not the issue here, and neither, frankly, are Senator Obama’s. I’d like to talk about a different candidate and his own crackpot reverend. Not sure who I’m talking about? Funny thing, that.

Maybe if, like some people I can think of, you’re addicted to the liberal media, you’re aware that the Pastor John Hagee has endorsed Senator John McCain in his bid for the presidency. Yes, Pastor John Hagee, leader of CUFI, the man who wants you, if you are Jewish, to move to Israel in order to hasten the Second Coming. The man who thinks God punished New Orleans for it tolerance of homosexuality by sending Hurricane Katrina. The man who has referred to the Catholic Church as “the great whore.” Didn’t know that? Weird! Because Jon Stewart has noticed some strange patterns in news coverage. Specifically, that while Obama has been slammed again and again for Wright’s endorsement of him, and while media meticulously documents the ferocious battle between the two Democratic contenders and how it’s, of course, tearing the liberal movement apart, there has been far too little interrogation of McCain, his policies (and the fuzzy math that far from explains how he intends to pay for them), his chummy relationship with the White House (at a time when you’d think any reasonable human being would want to distance themselves from a president with a 71% disapproval rating), his views of the war in Iraq, and his generally ability to be terrible for America.

I am so unbelievably tired of the arguments between Democrats. I am so tired of infantile, absurd threats that “If s/he gets the nomination, I swear I’ll vote Republican.” I am so tired of letting the media tell me that the story is Democrats fighting Democrats, and not the issue of how the hell the country could possibly survive (ptu ptu ptu) another Republican administration. I am tired of arguing over which Democrat is going to be better for women, and better for Israel. Of course there’s going to be continued fighting between Clinton and Obama. I understand that, and that’s fine. But for goodness’ sake! There are real issues at stake here, and most of the state primaries are over. So let’s focus on the bigger picture here, folks. Let’s get together and come up with real questions—not personality questions, but policy questions—and let’s demand that news coverage give us answers we deserve. The real fight has barely begun.

–Mel Weiss

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

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 28, 2008 by Mel Weiss

In the Desert

(I apologize to those of you who may be irritated by my constant references to New York. I am sad to report that, while the following is indeed local news, I bet there’s not a place in the world where you couldn’t tell a similar story, changing only what are ultimately minor details.)

The judge responsible for the Sean Bell trial returned a verdict of not guilty for all three officers, who shot Mr. Bell in Queens last year. (They thought he was armed; he was not; he was a few hours away from his own wedding, etc.) I’m still pretty much in shock about it. It saddens me immensely when something like this goes down in the first place—not just because, obviously, it’s horrible when someone dies for no reason, but also because this sort of thing serves to sour any progress made between races, between poor people and black people who feel, not without good reason, that they’re targeted by the police. The NYTimes reports that people are taking this relatively in stride—there have been no riots, no outpourings of public rage so noticeable that they affect everyday life.

As a citizen of my city, I obviously appreciate this. But reading in shul this week—it was the crossing of the Sea of Reeds, most appropriately—I was thinking about the Israelite slaves who, when the situation got bad, immediately wanted to go back to Egypt. Slavery had eroded their will to live as free people. And isn’t it true that we convince ourselves that bad situations aren’t so bad? It’s part coping mechanism, I think, and part deadly ennui that lies like a dense fog. When we live in a world where it takes bold action to puncture what Betty Friedan called “a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction.”

I’m not advocating rioting in the streets of New York—that’s not a productive sort of awakening. But we quit the bonds of slavery, all of us together, and we made it through the sea, and now we’re alone together in a big, big desert. Our work, in fact, is only beginning.

–Mel Weiss

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