The Lilith Blog

July 6, 2010 by Maya Bernstein

She’s A Boy

A month ago, a day after our son was born, my husband brought our “big girls,” ages 4 and 2, to visit me and the newborn in the hospital. “You have a baby brother!” I said to them. The big one, already old enough to know that boys have cooties, lamented the fact that it wasn’t a baby sister. The little one peered into his glass hospital basinet. “She’s a boy?” she asked.

Over the course of the past few weeks, I’ve been surprised at the reactions, including my own, to the fact that a male child was born into our family. I have been overwhelmed by the rituals and practices that surround the birth of a baby boy. I gave birth on a Wednesday, and came home on a Friday afternoon, exhausted, and ready to cocoon. That very night, though, while I nursed upstairs, our living and dining rooms were filled with guests; well-wishers who came to sing, tell stories, give blessings, and eat chick-peas. This traditional event, called a Shalom Zachor, which takes place on the first Friday night after a male child is born, is an opportunity for the members of the community to come and welcome the new child. It is an event that takes place only for boys; girls are welcomed into the Jewish people immediately by virtue of their birth. But since the boy has not yet been circumcised, he is, supposedly, despondent, and is cheered up only when throngs of people descend upon his exhausted parents’ house.

My husband and I hadn’t even wanted to partake in this ritual, but gentle communal encouragement won us over. And I must admit, that, as I sat upstairs, listening to the familiar voices of friends singing and sharing words of Torah, I felt a surge of, could it be, maternal pride, and had a few private moments of clucking around like a proud chicken; I had produced a male heir. I couldn’t help but feel that all of these people were here to celebrate me, and that I had done something right in giving birth to a boy.

This was reinforced in the wider world as well. When I was leaving the hospital with the bundle in my arms, a woman smiled at me in the elevator. “Is it your first?” she asked. I told her that I had two girls at home. “Well,” she said, “you’ve finally got your boy.” In fact, when I gave birth to our second daughter, the nurses wished me well when I was leaving, and said, “see you next year.” When I raised my eyebrows they smiled – “well, aren’t you going to try for a boy?”

Do we still live in a world in which it matters whether or not you give birth to a boy or a girl? Is there something particularly to be celebrated, in the Jewish community and beyond, when a male child is born? Or is it simply that after having two of “the same,” what is recognized is having something “different?” And what does my moment of clucking maternal pride say about me? Am I simply reacting to communal forces that, despite myself, have affected me? Or am I carrying hidden stereotypes that I have never expressed, even to myself? And how do I navigate that, as a mother?

I’m not sure yet. In the meantime, though, I’m reluctantly introducing male pronouns into my daughters’ vocabularies.

-Maya Bernstein

The Lilith Blog

June 24, 2010 by Susan Weidman Schneider

In case you thought all Jews were safely in the pro-choice camp…

When I visit the small towns in rural West Virginia that are an easy drive from where I live in Washington, DC., I have the sensation of entering an alternate universe. It’s one where I wouldn’t want to stop for too long, since among other indications that I’m in alien terrain are the churches with fake miniature graveyards set up on their front lawns, featuring signs saying things like “We mourn the thousands of babies put to death each year by abortions.”

So you can imagine how appalled I was to learn, when I opened the current issue of the Washington Jewish Week, that Christians aren’t the only ones using manipulative anti-choice rhetoric on abortion. A Jewish anti-choice organization is now rearing its head, too. It’s mission? To provide “Jewish unplanned pregnancy assistance.” And they don’t mean they’ll accompany you to Planned Parenthood. According to the front-page story, the goal of this so-called crisis pregnancy center is to encourage Jewish women who find themselves unintentionally pregnant to continue the pregnancy and either keep the child or relinquish it to adoption. Erica Pelman, its founder, says she has been doing in-person outreach to college students, and to high schoolers at a local Hebrew day school.

The website of her year-old organization, named “In Shifra’s Arms” for the midwife in the Passover story who saved firstborn Jewish sons from being put to death, puts out inaccurate information about abortion risks, including reiterating the utterly disproven hypothesis that abortion increases a woman’s risk of breast cancer—as if someone coping with an unplanned pregnancy doesn’t have enough to worry about.

The site advises on how one can “overcome abortion pressure” and avoid “the emotional risks” of abortion without ever mentioning the psychological consequences of giving up a child for adoption, or the constrictions of having one’s schooling derailed for life. Instead, the organization offers to help young women with an unwanted pregnancy find an internship so they can “lay low” [sic] and not be “embarrassed” by having to attend their college classes with a big belly. Oh—and another wonderful offer—to show them how they can use elastic waistbands to create maternity clothes! Brilliant! And so helpful! What about education for the young mothers? What about financial support for the children? Childcare? Medical care?

There is plenty to find fault with in “crisis pregnancy centers,” which are often really disinformation centers, but this one rankles especially, because their website and Pelman’s comments to the Washington Jewish Week don’t mention the fact that one of Judaism’s strengths is the value placed on life, especially the lives of those already alive—namely, the mothers-to-be. Unlike religious strictures that, say, tell a Catholic woman that the fetus has rights that supersede that of the mother, Judaism privileges the person who is already born.

Not only does Pelman use the rhetoric of right-wing Christian anti-choicers, but she actually admits that she gets her training from them.

The fact is that Jews are overwhelmingly pro-choice. And even the most observant Jew can find support in Jewish law for having an abortion if her physical—or mental—health would be impaired by carrying a pregnancy to term. Will In Shifra’s Arms sway large numbers of Jews away from these core pro-choice beliefs? Unlikely. But while Pelman worries about young women choosing abortion because they are “embarrassed” to be pregnant and unwed (as opposed to being concerned about their futures, or their health, or their relationships), her new project is itself an embarrassment—at least in part because it is so callow and so shallow as to pretend it can help shape the future of women when it appears to have neither the resources nor the expertise to do so.

What this group has done is make me less smug. Next time I see the mini faux tombstones in front of a church I’ll remember that Jews, too, are adopting the techniques of the right, including promising more than they can deliver, to influence women’s reproductive choices.

-Susan Weidman Schneider
Editor in Chief

The Lilith Blog

June 16, 2010 by admin

The Marriage Train

I’m not exaggerating when I say that if I had tried to get engaged or married while in college, I would have been in some serious trouble with my mother. I can hear her rant (albeit a made-up rant, but nevertheless, the sound of her voice is a stunning likeness) about how we had all worked too hard to get me there for me to blow it on anything other than more hard work, no distractions as crazy as marriage. She knew something about marriage; she was in one for sixteen years that ended unhappily, and she had given up admission to a prestigious nursing program to get married. I was supposed to do other things, and finishing college was only the tip of the iceberg.

Marrying so young places an entirely different lens over the concept of matrimony-it’s no longer about taking years to find the right person and begin a life with them. Rather, it’s about starting out together, and hoping, believing even, that you will be able to overcome the hurdles that are inevitable when two people grow and change together. It seems particularly retro if you’re me, and along with your friends in their early 30’s, are either skeptical at best of the institution of marriage, or just starting to think about the idea.

It’s hard to explain to the newly minted college graduates around you that no, this behavior isn’t normal for most people their age. A marriage license and/or an engagement ring isn’t a requirement to receive a college diploma, although it seems like it might as well be. You can still be a member of a Jewish community without a ketubah on the wall of your apartment and with the last name you were born with. It should go without saying that all this is true, but it’s hard to believe when it seems like everyone else is doing getting married and/or engaged. Who will the role models be for young, single, serious Jews who don’t fit into or buy into this paradigm, especially young women? Only time can really tell us if young folks can resist the peer pressure to hurry and create a family (even if it’s not what’s right for them–now or ever) or if they will seek out other communities who can ultimately be more patient.

-Chanel Dubofsky

The Lilith Blog

June 9, 2010 by admin

A Voyeur's Garb

I admit it–I’m an Orthodox voyeur (fetishist, you might call it). As in, I am guilty of a certain degree of exoticization of the Orthodox community. For a while, I was convinced that in spite of my relatively non-observant upbringing, I could become part of it (see “Pants Embargo, 2003-2005”). I was wholly unsuccessful at it- I didn’t become more religious, I just didn’t wear pants- although I think on the outside, people bought it. At least, they were quick to comment as soon as the jeans made a reappearance.

Some vestiges have remained, in the form of what I can describe as situations in which I feel like an anthropologist in communities that I am theoretically supposed to be a part of. Example most recent: the JOFA conference (Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance). I love this space, every time it comes around, I rearrange things so I can go. It’s a strange place for me to find comfort and inspiration, because I often also feel insanely frustrated by what I perceive as collusion with a system that consistently, actively and aggressively subjugates and invisibilizes women.

I’ve been listening to the recordings of the sessions I didn’t attend while at the conference, and thinking about the creation of space as I do it. I thought a lot about what to wear this year. Ultimately, I wore a skirt, which in hindsight, I shouldn’t have done. I felt like I was in costume, undercover, but also, fake. With the exception of a few people I knew, everyone who saw me that day thought I was an Orthodox woman. In the past, I would have been okay with that, even grateful for the association, but no longer, because it’s not who I am, or who I ever was.

Ultimately, the genius of the JOFA project, whether purposeful or not, is the opportunity for ingathering of all different types of Jewish feminists, the welcoming of the lenses and the narratives. In doing so, we (okay, me) have to confront what we find most disturbing, meaningful and joyful about Judaism, as well as put our heads together to change it. It requires patience and commitment, but it also requires an unpacking of assumption-about Orthodoxy, Jewish women, Jewish communities, and ultimately, what it means to be Jewish ourselves.

-Chanel Dubofsky

The Lilith Blog

June 1, 2010 by admin

Reconceiving Jews

Last night, just for fun, I googled “childfree Jewish community.” (To be clear – the term “childless” implies that one wants children but does not have them for some reason, whereas “childfree” alludes to someone who’s happily without children and aspires to stay that way). What I found were feature articles written years ago, an assortment of alarmist opinions from rabbis and other Jewish communal figures on the declining Jewish birthrate, and one recent piece from Frum Satire called “I Don’t Want to Have Kids.”

As another Jewish woman who’s committed to living a childfree life, I was so excited to see this post, especially since it was written by a woman who’s committed to a halachic life. It’s hard to put yourself out there when you know you’re going to get skewered by your own community.

I destroyed my own bliss by reading the comments on Tova’s piece. It’s not like I haven’t heard most of them before-you’re selfish, you’ll figure it out when you’re older, you don’t know what you want yet, you have issues that you’re refusing to deal with. What wasn’t said was that in addition to being angry and frustrated, people are confounded by Tova (and me and every other woman who doesn’t want to be a mother). Who is a Jewish woman if not a nurturer, a creator? What does a Jewish woman look like if she’s not building a family or aspiring to build a family?

I’ve always known I didn’t want to parent, but I admitted it rather early. Now I’m 31 and my friends are on their second babies. I’m watching my avowed childfree life proceed as planned. In the secular world, people are confused and skeptical about my feelings, but in the Jewish world, it’s a different kind of message-a questioning. What are my priorities? How will I be a member of a Jewish community as an adult if I don’t have children? Don’t I feel a responsibility to the Jewish community to create more Jews?

The blogger and author Emily Gould said in a recent interview in New York Magazine, “I do think that people who write honestly about their lives are doing people who won’t or can’t a favor, to put it bluntly.” Part of writing honestly about your life is admitting that you don’t have answers, that everything you think and feel is complicated. This is especially true for women, since we’ve been socialized to not trust our instincts and therefore to dismiss our own emotions, lest we become consumed by them and be labeled hysterical. For me, there aren’t clear answers to the questions about what it means to be in a community that I consider to be mine when I feel at odds with it about so many things. There are only more questions.

–Chanel Dubofsky

The Lilith Blog

May 26, 2010 by admin

Intention

This evening, as I was leaving the building I will be working in for one more day, I ran into Sam, a lovely man whom I don’t see often enough. As we talked, I told him that I’d be leaving the organization, he asked me what I’d be doing next. “I don’t know yet,” I said, “but I’ll be okay.” He looked at me closely for a long moment. “Of course you’ll be okay.”

I’m thinking about that talk with Sam, because he has a remarkable and seemingly unassailable faith in the order of things, but also because of the comfort I was able to take from it. My genetic family has not been a source of support for me, so I’ve found safety and community in other places, odd places.

The process of doing this while working for Hillel has been frustrating, joyful and confusing, a lot like how you might feel about family. We create identity through family-we decide who we are and who we are not, based on the structures and expectations around us. We decide whether or not we want to be part of the family, and what we need to do to make it a place we want to be in.

The point of all this rumination is to say that as long as I’m invested in Jewish communities, they will be the places where I’ll feel the most injured, the most vulnerable, and the most resourceful. As I’ve discussed in earlier posts, the boundaries that Jewish communities create define who is allowed in and who is out. It has to, that’s how you create community, not everyone can be a part of it. Ironically, though, while I attack these boundaries as exclusive and damaging, they have grown me, they’ve constructed my spiritual and moral backbone. Feeling injured has galvanized me, but the same isn’t true for everyone. While it’s led me to activism, it pushes others out the door.

My students over the years have been a feisty, creative, cynical, deeply thoughtful bunch of characters. I want them to exist and flourish inside of a community that they build, that welcomes them because of who they are instead of who they are not.

-Chanel Dubofsky

The Lilith Blog

May 10, 2010 by admin

Fair pay beats flowery bouquets — and other post-Mother's Day reflections

I spend every Mother’s Day I can with my mom — and there are, to be sure, fancy-pants meals and spring walks. But she and I both know the holiday was born out of less flowery sentiments, ushered into the world in part by a native New Yorker, poet, abolitionist and suffragist named Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910) — yep, of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” fame. Her lesser-known “Mother’s Day Proclamation” of 1870 begins: Arise then … women of this day!/Arise, all women who have hearts!

Well, women have been rising up for some time now, securing the vote, breaking glass ceilings (go Mom!), transforming expectations and daily lives in ways Julia Ward Howe could barely have dreamed. But we’re not there yet. We can’t ignore the fact that women earn 78 cents for each dollar men make and that we pay more for everything from health insurance to haircuts. Or that women — especially single mothers (more than a quarter) — are more likely to live in poverty. Simply put: economic justice cannot exist without women’s economic equality, and poverty can’t be eradicated without fairer pay. We know that when women do well economically, their families benefit — so do their communities. This equation is so reliable that it’s now the foundation of anti-poverty programs in the developing world and here at home. In the words of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, global anti-poverty goals “depends fundamentally on the empowerment of women.”

So this Mother’s Day, I couldn’t help but think of all the great moms I know — including my own — and about how much better our society would be if it valued women and families through equal pay and family-friendly policies. Working women are still fighting tooth and nail just to be protected by laws enacted to prevent discrimination: Right now, the nation’s largest corporate employer is embroiled in the nation’s largest class-action lawsuit in American history. The company? Wal-Mart. The lawsuit? Gender discrimination and unfair pay. Late last month, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco voted 6-5 to affirm a federal judge’s decision to award class-action status to potentially one million women or more.

I’d like to see the plaintiffs win. This decade. I’d like to see stronger safeguards and more stringent penalties for discrimination like those in the Paycheck Fairness Act. And I’d like to see certain talking heads in the Jewish community — particularly the ones who loudly lament the prospects for Jewish continuity — commit themselves publicly to Jewish families by supporting family-friendly policies in all of the organizations and institutions that make up the Jewish communal landscape. Yep. I’d like to see them supporting family leave policies and committing themselves to actively achieving women’s equal representation on all rungs of the Jewish organizational ladder, not just the bottom. (Pssst: It’s good for business! Workplaces with family leave policies have loyal workforces and more productive employees. It’s a win-win!) To this end, the group Advancing Women Professionals and the Jewish Community, as the Forward writes in its “Invest in Families” editorial,

is persuading, training, cajoling and exhorting American Jewish organizations to adopt family-friendly policies. The goal: 100 sign-ups in 2010. Since only 35% of Jewish communal organizations have paid maternity-leave policies, even though three-quarters of their workforce is female, reaching that goal would have tremendous significance.

And yes, you’re reading this post on the blog of an organization that has family friendly policies. Not enough organizations and companies do. Let’s hope that the AWP succeeds. Spread the word!

–Erica Brody.

This post was originally published here, on jspot.org.

The Lilith Blog

May 10, 2010 by Maya Bernstein

Nesting

In the leafy bushes immediately outside of our front door, a hummingbird has built a nest. For the past three weeks, during which time my husband has grown a beard in mourning for his mother, and I have swollen into the last month of my third pregnancy, the mother hummingbird has been sitting on her two tiny eggs, which recently hatched two Lilliputian, helpless, hummingbird chicks. We’ve been trying not to use our front door, but none of us can long resist the desire to tiptoe past this minuscule miracle, and peer inside.

Our daughters are delighted. They’ve told everyone. “Our hummingbird made a mest,” says my two year old, and the four year old chimes in, “and all day long she sits like this, without moving, keeping her babies warm.” She imitates the bird, staring straight ahead, unblinking, until she turns her big, light-filled eyes to her audience, waiting for them to become infected with her joy. Though the chicks have hatched, still the hummingbird sits, keeping the live little chicks warm, but now she also flits around, gathering whatever it is that nourishes tiny birds, and bringing it in her beak to her ravenous brood. She feeds them and sits on them again.

Often, I find myself hovering near our front door and gazing protectingly outside. If the mother is out foraging, and I notice a crow or robin nearby, I hiss angrily. My own children seem to me like frightening giants when they leave our house, squealing and excited to gaze at what the natural world has laid at their fingertips. “Quietly! Gently! Not too close!” I warn, knowing that I am partly talking about myself, about the turning, stretching new life within me, slowly descending, soon to hatch. I identify with the beady-eyed, resigned, taught expression of the mother hummingbird, an expression which acknowledges with resolve that fragile life is within its care.

Each morning, when my husband returns home from the morning minyan he attends daily to say Kaddish, the mourner’s prayer, he reports on the state of the birds. “She was sitting on the nest,” he shares, or “she must have been out gathering food.” Each day we wonder whether or not they are surviving, and what the next day will bring. In the evening, the children put their hands on my belly. “It’s moving!” they shout as a fist or foot sweeps across my translucent belly. At night, when I toss from one side to another, seeking elusive comfort, my dreams are a-flutter with hummingbird, tranquil and stoic on her nest. Sometimes I dream that I am her chick, curled up beneath her warm, breathing body, and sometimes I dream I am she, and am overwhelmed by a desire to fly far and fast, away, even as I sit.

–Maya Bernstein

The Lilith Blog

May 10, 2010 by admin

Looking Up

I spend a lot of time riding the bus. I prefer it to the subway, because you can see the city, and because it’s easier to read on the bus-it’s slower. So I am unhurried in getting to my destinations in the city, but impatient about the snail’s pace of making change in the world and in my communities. As one of my favorite students, as well as Walt Whitman, is fond of saying, “I am large, I contain multitudes.”

Doing any kind of social change work requires a certain level of optimism. It’s often hard to find reasons for it, and even hard to maintain those reasons when things get worse, or when it never stays good for very long. Optimism is not innate to my personality, but it has become essential to my activist life.

Two years ago, I attended a three day long training for Jewish educators with Keshet, a Boston based organization that works for the inclusion of LGBTQ Jews is all aspects of Jewish life. It was truly a restorative experience for me, to see folks from so many different Jewish organizations being challenged and given impactful tools to challenge others. The fact that I was encouraged to attend the training by Hillel was a source of  great relief and pride for the organization I have worked for for years.

There are a lot of reasons to feel positive about change in the Jewish  community: The ordination of gay and lesbian rabbis, the establishment of robust Jewish feminist spaces, the creation of new ritual, the funding and nurturing of organizations that work for real inclusion. The question remains as to the depth of the change we will be able to make, and what the cost of addressing change on a level of pure lip service will be. It’s not simply a matter of giving folks permission, of tolerance (oh, how I  hate  that word), it’s about changing a culture. We have to bring what is considered marginal into the mainstream, to take this as seriously as the charge to learn Torah, defend Israel and grow ourselves as a people.

The potential for change, when we are empowered to ask honest and provocative questions about the present and future state of our
communties, is truly stupendous. We have to be optimistic enough to believe that such a thing is possible.

–Chanel Dubofsky

The Lilith Blog

May 10, 2010 by admin

Readers Respond! To "How 20-Somethings Mate Now"

Lilith has gotten many responses to our recent article on “How 20-Something Mate Now”. We’ve posted a few below, but we encourage you to leave your own thoughts as comments below!

“Your observation that the “normative Jewish experience” is generational is so true and I can actually extend that from my personal experience. My husband and I met at Brooklyn College through a group of all Jewish friends. I thought marrying him was free will too–I never realized the smallness of the world I was inhabiting. We separated almost two years ago and here I am–single in Austin, Texas. I have plenty of Jewish friends through my temple but a great majority of them are in interfaith marriages. The norm looks different in Austin, TX for my generation. And the world has opened up for me. I am in a deep and happy relationship with a wonderful kind man who is not Jewish. In fact, he is German. I too, am struggling with the questions these 20-somethings are asking. And, yes, at some point, I will write about it.” –Esther Moritz

“The piece you sent me is just fabulous! I had such a good time reading it and quickly sent it on to about 15 family and friends… I want [my daughter] to read it to hear those incredible girls you interviewed. They are amazing and you captured them perfectly! Thank you so much for sending it my way. It would actually be a really fun piece to read and discuss with the kids in her Temple High School. That’s a fun idea! I’ll let you know.” –Jenifer Firestone

“I thought your article in Lilith was an amazing article which in effect creates a language for the experience of seeking commonality with a partner on the issue of religion.

Lately because of my own relationship I have been spending a lot of time thinking about what is necessary for me in a relationship in the context of my own strong Jewish identity.

I am currently a member of a Modern Orthodox synagogue. When out of town, except for B’nai Jeshrun in NYC, I daven at modern orthodox congregations. In terms of practice, I am really more Conservadox. My girl friend of many years has decided after some effort that she is not into Orthodox Judaism and left to her own devices would rather go to an art museum on Shabbos than synagogue. So, I have been struggling with this issue.

I am friendly with a Chabbad rabbi in Brookline with whom I recently had an intriguing conversation. He said that having similar ritual practices is not important. Going to shul together is not important. He sees things through the prism of the Orthodox perspective where male and female roles legitimately differ. From his perspective, the most important thing is for both people to have a relationship with Ha’Shem though that relationship would obviously not be the same for each person. As I have reflected on this idea of both people having a relationship with Ha’Shem, it makes a lot of sense to me. This idea seems to track with many things that you are saying in your article.

One of the main things that I got from your article was the idea of the importance of each person having a religious “sensibility.” For my purposes, I would phrase this as each person having a Jewish sensibility. Having said this, I am not yet sure what this means. One possible explanation of this phrase that I gleaned from your article is: sharing a knowledge base about time and space that is Jewish – the lifecycle, holidays, history and having a framework to talk about these things. I also think that having a Jewish sensibility might also mean having a relationship with Ha’Shem. That relationship would lead to manifestations such as: caring about one’s Jewishness; having kavanah about one’s religious practice whatever that may be; seeking greater understanding over time of that relationship and how it plays out in the world through study of Jewish ethics, law, precepts of social justice and putting these into practice.

Your article has helped me move further in my thinking now with the advantage of having a richer language through which to consider the issue.

Thanks to your daughter and her friends and yourself for the experiences and thoughts shared in the article.” –Barry

“Greetings, and first off, a compliment. I just read “How Twenty-Somethings Mate Now” in Lilith and could not put it down. It was fascinating and provocative. I loved the way Susan Schnur used an oral history approach akin to Studs Terkel’s technique. And, I liked the way she gave her own succinct interpretation at the end. I was sad that these three young women grew up so immersed in Judaism and yet likely will end up without Jewish partners. Still, like Susan Schnur, I realize that they are not abandoning their faith.”
–Linda K. Wertheimer (Linda also wrote a response piece to this article, which you can read here.)