The Lilith Blog

December 3, 2008 by admin

Missing

While in China this summer, I read as much as I could about the country’s “orphan problem.” I particularly loved The Lost Daughters of China, written by Karin Evans, an American adoptive mom of a Chinese baby girl.

Evans’ book overflows with perspectives personal, academic, and literary. She talks about how the complete unprecedented-ness of this international exchange that brings babies from poor, rural families on one side of the earth to grow up with upper-middle-class families, usually of a different race and culture, on the other side of the earth (30,000 in America alone); shares an adoption researcher’s belief that adoption does important work stretching the notion of “family”; quotes a poet who addresses “these women of the world’s first international female diaspora”; and discusses the hundreds of thousands of women “missing,” scientifically speaking, from the world’s population.

What this means is that in many countries, especially in East and South Asia and the Middle East, there are not as many women in the population as are biologically expected: in nature, a birth rate of about 105 males to every 100 females and a better survival rate for females yield a nearly 1:1 ratio.

I had heard of China’s “gender gap” before, and I knew about female infanticide in China and of gender-selective abortions there and elsewhere (India especially), but I had never thought of the women missing as just that…real, individual people, people of all ages, across the world, who aren’t where they should be.

In China, old women, who were killed as infants in the 1930s and 40s, are “missing”; middle-aged women are “missing,” whose brothers were more likely to get their family’s last bits of food during the famine of 1958-61; girls and young women are “missing” from the advent of sex-determining ultrasound (since outlawed); and females of all ages who have been the victims of poorer health care, nutrition, and basic care than those received by their male counterparts are “missing.”

This is so haunting. I was glad Evans educated me about these women so I could think about them, honor their memory. In hindsight, the idea of not knowing about them made me sick.

I didn’t think until much later that this haunting presence had surely echoed, for me, our phantom population after the Holocaust: the millions, and the millions upon millions that their descendants would now be. They are in our peripheral vision when we look at our own community; to the left and right of us we know, eerily, the invisible branches on our family trees. I think, at our core, we are simply horrified knowing of so many people for whom no one was even alive to say kaddish.

Fifteen years ago, a government-sponsored survey in China showed more than 12% of that country’s baby girls missing, or more than one and a half million babies yearly. In all, about 30 million females are missing there, and worldwide, 100 million.

If we as Jews are the primary remembers of lost Jews, then we as women should – and will – be the primary remembers of lost women. They are an enormous and greatly diverse group that has amassed over the centuries right up to today. How can we memorialize them?

Info about infanticide on Gendercide Watch:
www.gendercide.org/case_infanticide.html

An appropriately angry blog post on the subject with an interesting slant (those articles about how hard it is for men in China to find wives):
http://www.anglofille.com/2007/01/13/the-chinese-holocaust/

–Anna Schnur-Fishman

The Lilith Blog

December 2, 2008 by admin

You're Invited to View My Photos!!!

I’m invited to view your photos!!!
But maybe, just maybe, I couldn’t care less?
Your swaddled new infant, in pink cap or blue cap
In mom’s arms, then dad’s arms, then still, fast asleep.
I’ve seen it before, far too many times over
First smile! First bottle! First eyes open wide—
Well I can’t be wide-eyed! Your blah blah baby bores me.
I can’t ooh and ahh when you cry “He adores me.”
So thanks for the photos, and sorry to Snap-
Fish around for another to view the whole slide show.
Though I’m sad to miss out on what Baby just did now,
Delete! To the trash! He’s a garbage pail kid now.
The phone rings. It’s you: “Did you look at my beauty?”
I grimace. I pause. I squeal: “Oh what a cutie!”

–Chavatzelet Herzliya

The Lilith Blog

November 24, 2008 by Mel Weiss

Madame Secretary!

Google’s newish ‘suggested search’ function can be irritating, but it also gives you a feel for what’s on the mind of The Public. Like when you search “Hillary Clinton secretary of state” and see that nearly a million and a half other folks have done the same, you get that nice cozy feeling of being on the same wavelength as so many others. For the record, it’s now pretty clear that, post-Thanksgiving, Obama’s going to offer Clinton the post and she’s going to say yes. Now, I know plenty of people are worried about plenty of angles on this one (and as a New Yorker, let me say me, too!, because we’ve got quite a situation on our hands here, and she’s been an amazing senator), but please allow me to list some reasons why this is a good thing:

Senator Clinton, in her own right, which is to say if you don’t think about the nasty things she and the President-Elect said about each other in the primaries, is an obvious and amazing choice for SoS. She’s clearly brilliant and capable, has sat on the Senate Armed Services Committee for a while now, has traveled for the Senate extensively (remember the vodka incident?), met and cultivated relationships with an amazing number of dignitaries during her tenure as First Lady, and, last but far from least, she’s tough as nails.

I can’t deny that the idea of two successive strong women in the position is appealing, even though Condaleeza Rice may no longer have any soul left to sell at this point in the game, which should disqualify her from my approval. [This week’s New York magazine has a surprisingly straightforward—and kind of depressing—article, not yet available online, about the Hillary Clinton/Sarah Palin bitch vs. ditz conundrum. I was won over to the idea that the ditz rep is far more damaging, so I say, the more aggressive, self-possessed, smarter-than-you-and-you-know-it women we can get back into the spotlight asap, the better.] Nor can I deny that, along with Bill Richardson and Janet Napolitano (and we can throw in Lawrence Summers for good measure), Clinton’s presence helps me believe that this is an administration that will manage to ‘look like America’ in a non-pandering, non-condescending kind of way.

And I know people are worried that they’re not going to be able to work together, and there’s been plenty of bashing of the “team of rivals” concept (many thanks to Doris Kearns Goodwin for popularizing that phrase), but I guess I just can’t help appreciating at least the appearance of adults acting like adults and putting the country before their own petty grievances.

And to all y’all who still fear that Obama is somehow not good for Israel, take a deep breath. This appointment will confirm that, sorry, you’re wrong. Even Republicans, during those years of the primary that now, in my mind, stretch back a decade or so, admitted that Clinton had a good record on Israel. Israelis certainly thought so.

Yes, this does open up, to quote Rachel Maddow, “about 1.7 trillion political questions.” Yes, it may cause conflict. Yes, it may well be concerning to note all these Clintonites and fairly hawkish folks in an Obama administration, especially in the foreign policy and diplomacy department.

But it still makes me smile*.

–Mel Weiss

*The fact that I won a bet by calling this appointment weeks ago is totally beside the point.

The Lilith Blog

November 18, 2008 by admin

Entry #6: On Gratitude

Needless to say, it’s been a long time since I’ve written. The fall months have swirled up and overhead, dried leaves rushing away from me, ungraspable. These months have been a whirlwind of academic rigor in my doctorate program, while the real conquest has been unspoken for. These months my mother has slipped quietly into doctor’s office, the obligatory testings. They count her blood cells and tap out her heartbeat, make sure one is multiplying slowly enough while another beats quick-tempo enough. I remember years ago now, when the doctor explained to us why my mother was subject to constant echocardiograms. Chemotherapy isn’t localized but attacks the whole body, depressing the heart, he had said. At the time, I swore my heart slowed too, depressed by the news. I pictured her strong beating heart then like a tired dog. I pictured the heart that had once brought life to mine. Back then I asked myself the most universal question—how do we cut out those damaging pieces in our life while protecting and not forsaking those most essential life-giving parts? Back then it was a funny puzzle for us to work out, how to keep the best parts of her.

These months we walk unsaddled by the immediate fears that cancer brings. These months there is no screech in the record player, we glide through the hum drum of busy daily monotony, in a premature victory.

It’s funny how quickly gratitude melts into the unchecked privilege of the daily grind. It’s unchecked because we just go, just do. We just fall into our deadlines, our paychecks, our minutiae of life stressors. We just consume, our daily meals our daily news, we are consumed. And through this I try so hard to ask mindfully, what is gratitude, how do I engage my thankfulness? Do I think of cancer often and daily, do I hum a silent morning ohm for motherhood and life? Do I let myself drive full throttle through the streets of daily life, full engagement as the ultimate act of gratefulness? How shall I be grateful for my hushed non-newsy existence these past months, for my mother prattling off Thanksgiving recipes and movies I ought to see and the blessed nag she has honed and crafted in her elder years? I still await the answer.

–I. Kramer

The Lilith Blog

November 17, 2008 by Mel Weiss

Marital Blues

The whole “same-sex marriage” thing has been on my mind a lot since the election, mostly because that’s where we lost. The succor of those magic words, “President-elect Obama,” has been a balm for me, but, to mangle a metaphor or two, the bloom is about to be off the rose and people still can’t get married. So. Let’s discuss.

For starters, in case you were overwhelmed by aforementioned magic words, allow me to remind you that just under two weeks ago, California, Florida and Arizona voted to make same-sex marriage illegal. Arkansas voted to make sure that no one not legally married—and that means y’all, too, straight single folks—can adopt or foster a child. That brings the number of states with a constitutional ban up to twenty-nine. (Not to mention those that have bans written into law but not the state constitution.) There are two states that will marry The Gays, eight states and a district that will guarantee some sort of vague, partnership-type legal relationship that may look like marriage and smell like marriage, but is definitely not marriage, and one clearly befuddled state, squeaking out legal gymnastics a Talmudist would be proud of, which will not permit gay marriage to happen instate, but will recognize it formally when performed in a state where it is permitted*. Basically, we’re not feeling the love.

So, why should Jewish feminists care, specifically? How many levels of outrage can this hit for us?

Well, first of all, there are some out there who’d say that the right to marry the person you love is a universal right, something every human should be allowed. But let’s leave them aside for a moment, because that kind of argument just shuts down debate. Historically, some of the early rifts between the secular feminists and gay folks (lesbians, mostly)—“Lavender Menace,” anyone?—didn’t exist between the Jewish feminist and Jewish queer movements**. We have a longstanding closeness and a history mutual aid and support—not to mention a vast pool of people with dual identification—so it’s time to step up.

Furthermore, this is an issue of the separation of church and state if ever I have seen one. Forget the ten commandments in public parks and school prayer; ask anyone who says that they think gays shouldn’t be allowed to get married—including that strange breed who insist that we should be given every legal right that accompanies marriage without the marriage itself—ask them to provide a definition of marriage unrelated to religion. Listen, if there are churches out there—or synagogues, say—that want to refuse to do gay marriage, I’m okay with that. I might find it painful, but it’s legitimate in the eyes of the law. But the nation doesn’t get to work that way. And Jews, especially, ever attuned to the ruling authorities’ views on state/religion, should be concerned and opposed to this sort of blurring.

Lastly, given that we’re a people with a reputation for economic acuity, we should all recognize that gay marriage will be good for the economy. And right now, just about anything that merits that praise should be strongly embraced.

The World Congress of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Jews points out that we’re not going to have a unified Jewish front on this any time soon. (Nu? Remember that old joke about two Jews and three opinions?) But I had to put this out there—even at the risk of raving at the choir—in case any of this could possibly change someone’s mind. Seriously—we are not the enemy, and we need every vocal ally we can get.

People have been taking to the streets, which is heartening***. Jews were an important part of the last civil rights movement, and I hope we stay just as involved in the next one.

—Mel Weiss

*I refer, of course, to my ancestral homeland, the big NY. The only analogous legal comparison I can make, actually, is to the recognition of non-Orthodox marriages in Israel. Coincidence?
**Lilith (ahem), particularly, has embodied that historical non-divide. If you’re looking for more academic sources, read Pamela Nadell’s chapter in Women Remaking American Judaism for details.
***Although wouldn’t it be so much better if we could all focus our energies on making sure everyone has food and a home and affordable healthcare?

The Lilith Blog

November 11, 2008 by admin

Election

Last Tuesday, as I flipped between channels, I was endlessly enthused by the number of people over 65 giving live interviews on television, and the number of people of all ages invoking their parents and grandparents.

Seeing older people acting as crucial sources of perspective in an election year, not as cute and endearing characters led onto camera or into stump speech anecdotes just to win our hearts over, was moving, orienting, and a joy.

Americans lending their life experience included veterans of the Civil Rights Movement, the average citizen who remembers the time before the Voting Rights Act, and the average citizen who remembers someone who remembered it. One station’s anchor reported (spontaneously, it seemed) on his phone call with his mother just after the race was called. A famed presidential historian was on air – and described her grandmother’s childhood. The 67-year-old Congressman John Lewis from Georgia, a leader of the Civil Rights Movement, was, as always, a fount of stirring comments, but equally stirring to me were the leading questions of his interviewers: “I was just gonna ask,” one interrupted, “who it makes you think of, what are some of the names, what are some of the faces flying through your head right now?” It was the hugest night of the last four years, and it wasn’t the History Channel, but he was being invited to reminisce freely, the value of listening to him self-evident.

The names and faces flying through his head were Martin Luther King, President Johnson, President Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, the “countless individuals that stood in those unmovable lines in Selma,” and those young people who gave their lives for the cause.

Before Tuesday, I had never calculated that my parents were 16 years old when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated – I had never integrated the timeline of Civil Rights history with the timeline of my family history…to figure out when it was that, as my father proudly reports, my immigrant grandmother passionately encouraged him to join the movement.

Last night I heard a lecture by Kenyan-born author Ngugi wa Thiong’o. He said he remembered two things when the race was called last Tuesday. First, he imagined the first African captured and taken to America, and second, he remembered the story of an African-American man who, when Obama won the Democratic nomination, ran to the graveyard of his parents and grandparents. He had not expected or planned to do that, Ngugi recalled, but when the moment came, he just “wanted to be with them.”

In a way, I think we’ve all “run to the graveyard of our parents and grandparents” with this news in our hearts – in honor of them, in honor of those buried around them; out of elation, gratitude, and nostalgia; with questions; for information, confrontation, and celebration; to be sobered, to be reminded, to be made grateful, to relate the news, to receive a blessing, to herald a new day, to recall the old days – just to spend time with the soil in which they were buried.

As Jews, we know that history is always relevant, reliving it an imperative, and as women, we can be confident that the stories less aired have just as much to teach. Maybe we, as a nation, are too scared to take the long (and wide) view sometimes, but a shared, popular, primetime willingness and excitement to do so is one of the many phenomena of this election that I hope sticks around through January and beyond.

–Anna Schnur-Fishman

The Lilith Blog

November 11, 2008 by Modesty Blasé

Promoting Promiscuity?

The perils of public transport are too much to bear for some of the delicate flowers of northwest London. Golders Green and Hendon have a seedy side and many anxious parents insist on driving their daughters to and from school to shield them from the sort of people they are likely to meet on the bus en route to one of the religious schools in the area.

I have a different approach – stick our kids on the bus and let them see how the other half lives: girls with skirts up to their pupik [belly button], with pallid skin and multiple earlobe piercings, smoking nervously and looking pathetic hanging onto the shirttails of smelly, gangly and pimply boys. This has to be the most effective antidote to any frum girl’s aspirations to be ‘normal.’

There is a climate of fear about teenage girls. Media reports suggest that girl gangs take pleasure in gratuitous violence and target defenceless victims. We don’t know what to do about the young girls drinking alcohol to excess and starving themselves to death. The crowds will part in a shopping mall to let a group of prowling girls pass by. I know as I have done it myself – they can be very intimidating, even though underneath it all, they just want a young man to love them and look after them. This is why the UK has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in western Europe.

One of the obvious implications of multiple sexual partners is the increased chances of sexually transmitted diseases, and recent news that the HPV (human papillomavirus) vaccination, designed to protect against ‘the commonest causes of cervical cancer,’ will soon be available to 12 and 13 year olds has confused religious parents. The government sponsored brochure explains that the virus is very common and you catch it by being sexually active with another person who already has the virus…you need to have the vaccination before you start being sexually active. And, while most girls don’t start having sex before they’re at least 16 or quite a bit older, it is recommended that you have the vaccine at 12 or 13 years of age to protect you as early as possible.

Community responses has varied: doctor-mothers have not blinked an eyelid and are signing the parental consent form without hesitation while fathers who don’t like the innuendo implying that their religious daughters are sleeping around are wavering before signing on the dotted line. Most parents seem to have taken the ‘better safe than sorry’ route of agreeing to have their daughters vaccinated while in the same breath have expressed a wish that the Jewish schools would take more of an interest in coping with breast cancer and educating young women about proper self-checking as they get older.

In the Jewish Tribune, one of the weekly charedi newspapers, a news article on the 30th October explained the vaccination and cited support by key members of the community including a prominent rabbi and a frum doctor. However, in this week’s edition (6th November) the Office of the Rabbinate of the Union of Hebrew Orthodox Congregations issued a large advertisement saying that

“It was reported last week in certain newspapers that the Rabbinate has given its approval to the current vaccinations programme, for girls, against HPV. This report is untrue, and the Rabbinate has not advocated participating in this project.”

Have the Rabbis advocated anything? Would it be too much to ask that they advocate seeking a medical opinion? This ambiguous proclamation, without citing medical evidence or consultation, is irresponsible and places families guided by rabbinical authority in an invidious position. The implicit message is that if parents allow their daughters to have these vaccinations, they are suggesting that their young maideles could be promiscuous and we, as a community, are condoning behaviour that is contrary to a religious lifestyle.

This approach is so naive and endemic of the “hush hush” approach to relationships and a denial of the changing social mores that are trickling through to every part of the religious community. There will always be unblemished boys and girls from good families who will marry very young, however, there are sexual diseases in the religious community acquired in a number of unsavoury ways and we have a responsibility to the young girls of the community to protect them. The percentage of people affected may be much smaller than in the general community, but how can these medically unqualified leaders who intimidate their community into avoiding this vaccination carry the burden of potentially contributing to an unnecessary and devastating illness in the future?

–Modesty Blasé

Cross-posted to The Jerusalem Post blog.

The Lilith Blog

November 10, 2008 by admin

Out with "the Sarah Palin," in with "the Marie Antoinette?"

The new hair of Orthodox married women?

The most recent garment-related decree of Rabbi Yosef Sholom Elyashiv, of modesty courts fame, has given us a great new marketing idea for Orthodox women’s fashions. In a recent talk, R. Elyashiv announced that contemporary sheitels, as wigs worn by married Orthodox women are often called, are not an acceptable way to cover one’s hair in accordance with the tradition for married women. A woman who wears one, R. Elyashiv said, is considered as if she is going bareheaded, reports Yeshiva World News. Given that wearing sheitels — often pricey, designer models — is common practice amongst married women in many Orthodox communities, this pronouncement is a big deal.

It’s not the concept of wearing a wig that R. Elyashiv considers problematic, though (indeed, a Talmudic discussion deems them acceptable as a form of head covering); rather, it’s that today’s wigs, “contemporary” sheitels, look too much like real hair.
(Rabbi Elyashiv’s talk (in Yiddish) can be viewed online here. )

Not everyone agrees with the controversial ruling. Hirhurim’s Gil Student, for one, explains some of the relevant halacha and why he disagrees with R. Elyashiv. For once, though, we can see R. Elyashiv’s point — that “covering” your real hair with even nicer looking hair misses the point of the matter — and we appreciate that in this instance he blames both women and their husbands equally for allowing the offending practice (after all, one reason the Gemara says wigs are okay is because they make women more attractive to their husbands.)

But sheitel-machers and wearers need not fear. In forbidding only “contemporary” sheitels, R. Elyashiv has left open a huge and untapped niche in the sheitel industry, and we smell a huge opportunity here for the fashion-forward Orthodox woman: vintage and vintage-style sheitels.

If “contemporary” is the problem, go for old. If real-looking is the problem, go for over-the-top. No one said sheitels can’t be pretty or interesting, just that they can’t look to much like your real hair. (I’m reminded that an unmarried friend once suggested she might cover her hair with a clown wig when she gets married. One wonders if that would pass muster…)

R. Elyashiv did not specify when exactly the “contemporary period” of sheitel-making began, but we figure if you stick to pre-Victorian styles, you can’t go wrong. And looking to high fashion from previous centuries and other countries would be a great source of inspiration. After all, Marie Antoinette was a style icon of 18th century French fashion, and she had some of the biggest wigs around. (“Let them eat sponge cake!”) By comparison, the Sarah Palin wig that made a splash last month is plain and school-marmish. Even with the matching Kawasaki 704 glasses.

Come to think of it, men wore wigs back then, too. Maybe we could start thinking about replacing kippot with, say, an English barrister’s wig. It wouldn’t look any more out of place than a streimel.

–Rebecca Honig Friedman

The Lilith Blog

November 10, 2008 by Mel Weiss

Go and Find

Well.

I triple-checked the non-profit guidelines section of the IRS website, so it is without fear that I am endangering anyone here that I say: OH MY GOSH, WE WON WE WON WE WON*.

That’s a pretty nice feeling. And an unbelievable fit with this week’s parsha of Lech L’cha. Going to a new and unexplored land is a great metaphor for what this new administration will feel like. (And it’s a nifty vox populi, vox dei moment, too.) This may be more true for some of us than others: I was sixteen years old when George W. Bush was elected. His is not the only Presidency I can remember, but is the backdrop to my young adulthood and my political consciousness, so you can see that this would be not only a big deal to my cohort—as to everyone—but a real sense of beginning something new and utterly, utterly unknown. I’m not even sure how to have a non-oppositional relationship to the leader of my nation. But I’m ready to set off and find out, you know?

Sure, it’s a little hubristic to even implicitly connect Obama to Moses—especially since we apparently think he’s Jesus or something—but we’re still flying high on election victory, and it takes my mind off the thousands and thousands of files being shredded at the White House as I type. And I think of Abraham and the wells, and the way this patient man dealt with those out to make his life difficult, and I think…we could do worse for a comparison.

The Talking Heads That Be have spent almost a week now repeating over and over that this was not a victory for the left, not a victory for progressivism, just a victory for this certain man that may or may not be traceable to the bottom falling out of our economy. To this I say…whatever. We won, and while some of us may be savoring this strange and powerful elation, there’s much to come. While I’m looking forward to knowing that all my friends and family have healthcare they can afford, and to knowing that a long and bloody war will come to an end and that those fighting it will have the support they deserve, I think I am, somewhat dorkily, looking forward to the President’s expectations of me. I’m ready to be asked to serve, and I am way not alone in that.

Voluntarism—the idea that participation in certain spheres is entirely one’s choice—is a dicey thing. We must respect people’s personal freedoms, of course, but doing away with all expectations is rarely salubrious. I’m knee deep in an overview of American Jewish history right now, and the main theme may well be “voluntarism tripped us up.” The marketplace of ideas is a wonderful thing, but when you let people loose in it, they don’t always come back. In fact, it often takes a raising of expectations to get people to engage at all. Expectations and opportunity, combined with new ways of thinking and including people, get people invested. (Wait, this is sounding familiar…)
And that’s what I’m looking forward to most.

So we set off now on a grand journey. The great work begins. I can’t wait.

–Mel Weiss

*I’m speaking here of the electoral triumph of President-elect Barack Obama. In case you hadn’t heard, or in case you were judging the success of this election on the basis of how many states denied gay folks their civil rights. We’re getting back to that sometime soon, don’t worry.

The Lilith Blog

November 6, 2008 by admin

Black Dogs

Today I was surrounded by eight ferocious dogs and saved by the power of Torah.

I was jogging, as I often do, near Ramat Rachel, a kibbutz hotel near the southern part of Jerusalem that overlooks Bethlehem and the Judeaen hills. Usually when I run that route, I go no further than the giant statue of the matriarch Rachel who stands tall and proud with two little children clinging to the hem of her skirt. The base of the statue bears an inscription from the book of Jeremiah: “And the children shall return to their borders” (31:16), part of the prophecy about a future time when Joseph’s sons will be restored to their land. At this point, I pause for a moment to read these words about returning, and then turn around and head back north.

This is generally a route I run on Friday mornings, when I can listen to Reshet Moreshet, the frum radio station that broadcasts songs about that week’s parsha from 8-9am. I time my runs accordingly, ending at about 9am at the shuk, where I buy fresh challot for Shabbat and take the bus home. I run with several items in my back pocket: shopping list, bus pass, house key, some money, MP3 player, and a folded-up Xerox of my leyning for that Shabbat, which I review when I ride the bus back.

This week I am training for a race, so I decided to run on Monday as well. As usual, I headed to Ramat Rachel. Instead of Reshet Moreshet (which broadcasts in the mornings only on Fridays) I listened to a daf yomi shiur about how land and moveable property are acquired. Inspired perhaps by all the talk of vast expanses of land for sale, I decided to run a bit further and head into the fields behind the hotel, which contain 200 olive trees planted in concentric rows. Part of me knew I was being a little daring in running in a deserted field near an Arab neighborhood, but I was engrossed in my shiur and light on my feet, and I threw caution to the wind.

I ran to the edge of the olive grove and looked out over Har Choma until I could run no further, and then I turned around. Off in the distance I saw a dog looking at me suspiciously, but I continued onwards down the dirt path. When next I was aware of what was going on, there were several dogs in the distance all barking to one another and looking angrily in my direction. The dogs came closer. They barked louder. They came closer still, and barked louder still. Soon I was surrounded by eight dogs at waist level, all barking angrily and running alongside me.

Terrified, I remember thinking that it was most important that I not show the dogs that I was scared. I thought about a scene in the most recent Maisie Dobbs novel I read, in which the beloved British postwar sleuth thinks she is alone in an abandoned barn when all of a sudden a threatening dog rears its head. Maisie, through intense powers of concentration, manages to calm her whole body so that the dog, convinced that she is not afraid, backs off. If only I can stay calm like Maisie, I thought, I’ll be OK. Then my thoughts drifted to more frightful literary canines, the terrifying black dogs of Ian McEwan’s eponymous novel. I thought of June Tremaine’s encounter with those savage bloodthirsty beasts in the French countryside in the months after World War II, and I shivered as I always do when I think of that nightmarish scene. Unlike Maisie, I had no way of calming myself down; unlike June, I did not have a knife in my pocket. My literary imagination could distract me for only so long; how was I going to ward off the very real dogs that were surrounding me there and then in that very moment?

The Kiddushin shiur was still playing in my ears; just as I had not thought to stop running, I also did not think to turn off my MP3 or take off my headphones. *If someone hands over ten animals all tied with one halter and says “acquire this,” are all of the animals acquired? *(Kiddushin 27b). Dear me. Given the subject of today’s daf, I was not likely to forget myself any time soon.

The next thing I knew, a verse was running through my mind: “A beloved doe, a graceful mountain goat” (Proverbs 5:19). Surrounded as I was by dogs, I was not sure why I was suddenly beset by words about does and goats. And then I realized: This was the verse that Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi used to quote when people would ask him how he could draw so close to lepers. “Do you not worry that you will get sick?” they would ask. “A loving doe, a graceful mountain goat,” Ben Levi would respond. “If Torah graces those who learn it, will it not also protect me?” (Ketubot 77b). I recited Ben Levi’s words to myself again and again: “If Torah graces those who learn it, will it not also protect me?”

Somehow inside me I sensed that with the shiur playing in my ears, I would come out of this situation OK. I thought about King David who learned that he was destined to die on the Sabbath and therefore spent every Sabbath studying Torah; so long as he was learning, the Angel of Death was unable to overcome him (Shabbat 30b). I thought about the Gemara in Sotah which interprets the verse: “When you walk it will guide you” (Proverbs 6:23) to mean that Torah protects us wherever we walk in this world (21a). Is Torah not a tree of life to those who cling fast to it? The olive trees around me swayed in the breeze, as if nodding in agreement.

Just as I was running out of sugyot about the protective power of Torah, I came to the main road at the edge of the field and saw a truck in the
distance. I did not want to cry out lest I provoke the dogs, but I began waving my hands wildly in the air, and the truck turned in my direction. The dogs, seeing the approaching truck, immediately dispersed, their barks growing fainter and their heads hanging low in defeat. I thanked the driver for rescuing me, but I knew the true source of my salvation.

My heart slowed to its normal exercise pace as I made my way back down towards Derech Chevron. Next time I jog, I hope to find a running partner (or should I say a chevruta?). And graceful mountain goat notwithstanding, next time I’m sticking to the main road.

–Chavatzelet Herzliya