The Lilith Blog

March 4, 2008 by Mel Weiss

“From the Stone to the Rocket”

It is not a great time for Israel right now. The military has pulled out of northern Gaza, and it’s not looking too good. Fawzi Barhoum, the spokesman for Hamas, had this strategic planning to share: “What we learned from Hezbollah is that resistance is a choice that can work.” Great. On what could perhaps be called the upside of things, Haaretz reports that 64% of Israelis think that their government should engage with direct talks with Hamas with the aim of establishing a ceasefire. (If you’re interested in signing a petition in support, do it—the more moderate voices in the conversation, the better.)

If that weren’t enough, the New York Times magazine covered the problems of proving you’re Jewish…in the Jewish state. Although the article itself is about getting married, the problems of having a state-regulated religion come to the surface quite often, it seems. (The problems of getting married, while irksome, are surely not as bad as the problem of getting a get, a Jewish divorce, if the rabbinate doesn’t feel like granting you one.)

Talk about having your dirty laundry out there. And there are surely those who will use these two very different situations—military/political and social/legal—to trash Israel, which is a very simple-minded response. I’m put in mind of a conversation I had with a relative. I was trying to explain that the disaffected youth with whom I passed my time—people who went to protests for fun in college and now almost invariably work at non-profits and have big dreams for the world—didn’t hate America. When you care enough to work hard to change something, I wanted to explain, it must mean you love it very much. We can, we must and we will look at Israel without rose-colored glasses but with a pervasive sense of hope.

I’ve talked a lot recently about talking about Israel, and I’ve realized that it’s not easy for me. Honestly, I’m tired of defending my position from either extreme, and I generally prefer to keep my mouth shut. But everywhere I go these days, smart people keep telling me that the only way we can do this is to get everyone talking, peaceably. So please consider yourself invited to leave your thoughts, hopes, dreams, disputations, whatever, here. Keep it respectful and constructive, and we can all grow together from it

–Mel Weiss

The Lilith Blog

March 4, 2008 by admin

Orthodox Slam Safe Sex Campaign

Looks like Agudath Israel has taken a cue from Israel’s Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger. As the JTA reports, the “leading U.S. umbrella group of fervently Orthodox Jews” (the fervent equivalent to the more moderate Orthodox Union), “accused New York City of promoting casual sex”:

In a letter to the New York City Department of Health’s assistant commissioner for AIDS prevention, Monica Sweeney, Agudath Israel of America objected to a new ad campaign designed to promote condom use. Aguda argues that the ad campaign “affirmatively encourages young people to engage in casual sex.”
In our community — and, I am sure, in many others as well — the message our clergy, educators and parents try to impart to our children is that a lifestyle of promiscuity is not only dangerous but also inappropriate,” wrote David Zwiebel, Aguda’s vice president for government and public affairs. “By what right does the New York City Health Department deign to undermine that message?”

Whoa there, Nelly.

Is New York City responsible for not offending the moral sensibilities of conservative groups, or is the city responsible for the health of its residents?

A reader of Jewess sent in this article with the note, “Does this really affect the agudah community???” Clearly, the Aguda community is not the target audience of NYC’s safe sex campaign. But the city can’t choose who sees the advertisements for the NYC condom, which use the tagline “Get some,” hanging in the subway. Members of the Aguda community certainly ride public transportation (often with their heads in a book of prayer or Torah, I’ve noticed — perhaps an attempt not to look at such offensive ads or offensively dressed people). In that sense, the campaign does affect their community.

Most interesting is the Aguda’s acknowledgment that it does — that their youth are not immune to the messages of the culture outside the ultra-Orthodox community. Yet, also interesting — though not surprising — is their not acknowledging that this particular message of safe sex might actually be beneficial to certain members of their community. As the JTA mentions, “Aguda noted that it objected to the distribution of free condoms even without the sexy ads…” So it’s not just the message, it’s the actual distribution of condoms.

The impact free condom distribution has on their community is more puzzling. Is Aguda trying to exert control over the morality of the city, trying to make it into a place they can feel spiritually comfortable living in (and if that’s it, what about the myriad of other morally questionable goings-on in the city)? Or are they objecting to the possibility that their members can also access those free condoms?

It seems to me there must be some concern about the latter. In which case, the Aguda should take its tacit acknowledgment that its community is not immune to ideas and influences from secular culture — nor are they immune to hormones, for that matter, which are not religiously observant by nature — to its inevitable conclusion: People will stray, and do. For whatever reasons, the ultra-Orthodox community is unable, or unwilling, to provide certain resources and protections to its members. The Aguda should be thankful that the city picks up its slack.

–Rebecca Honig Friedman

The Lilith Blog

February 28, 2008 by admin

Amelia Bedelia marries a Babylonian

As a child, I was a big fan of the Amelia Bedelia books. This popular series featured a dark stocking and apron-clad housekeeper who was famous for her silly but well-intentioned errors. In Amelia Bedelia Plays Baseball, the eponymous heroine is instructed to run home and so she runs all the way to her house. In Amelia Bedelia Goes to School, she is told to take her seat and walks out of the room with her chair. On in on, in story after story, Amelia Bedelia delighted me and countless other children with her literal-mindedness.

Although it is years since I read these books, I was reminded of Amelia Bedelia today when I learned daf yomi, a program in which Jews all over the world participate in a seven-year cycle to learn the entire Talmud at a page-a-day rate. We learned today about a man from Babylonia who married a woman in Eretz Yisrael who was strikingly similar to my favorite housekeeper. Here is the story as rendered on Nedarim 66b:

A man from Babylon came to Israel and married a woman there. He said to her: “Cook me two lentils.” She cooked him exactly two lentils. He got angry (literally “he boiled”) at her. The next day he said to her, “Cook me a seah’s worth of lentils (a very large quantity). She cooked him exactly a seah. He said to her, “Go bring me two pumpkins.” She went and brought him two candles (because in Eretz Yisrael, the Babylonian word for pumpkin means candle). He grew furious and said to her, “Go smash these candles against the bava (the Aramaic word for gate). Beside the gate sat the sage Bava ben Buta rendering judgments. She came to him and smashed the candles over his skull. He said to her, “Why did you do that?” She said, “I did as my husband told me.” He said: “If you did your husband’s will, God will grant you two sons like Bava ben Buta.”

Like Amelia Bedelia, this hapless housewife from Eretz Yisrael can’t seem to stay out of trouble. She takes everything literally, and is consequently always in a fix. As with the Amelia Bedelia books, which were written by children’s educator Peggy Parish as a way of teaching children about language, the Talmudic story serves as a lesson about the nuances of language (particularly as it varied between Bavel and Eretz Yisrael) and the danger of too much precision. The Talmud is comprised of halacha, legal discourse which deals with the right way to live life in all its minutiae, and aggadah, stories that fly in the face of legalistic details and show life in all its complicated messiness. This passage is of course a part of the aggadah, and it serves remind us that no matter how much we seek to dictate and regulate, there will always be the Amelia Bedelias among us who ensure that life is always full of delightful surprises – so long as your name is not Bava ben Buta!

–Chavatzelet Herzliya

The Lilith Blog

February 27, 2008 by admin

Achievements in Inclusiveness

In all the post-show analysis of this year’s Oscars, someone has finally noticed that the traditional gender-segregation of awards is not, well, natural. Sarah Churchwell writes in the Guardian, “Although supposedly we no longer believe that separate is the same as equal, we still segregate entertainment awards along gender lines. Imagine the uproar if we had Oscars for best performance by a black man in a supporting role, or best leading performance by a Jew.”

Of course, the trouble doesn’t stop there. As Churchwell notes, the alternative to gender segregation isn’t too appealing, either, since “awards which do not segregate on the basis of gender tend to overlook women altogether.” Case in point? The Nobel Prize in literature, which women have won only 10 times in 107 years. If there were only one Oscar category for “Achievement in a Leading Role,” it’s a good bet that women would be underrepresented.

The University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication released a study last week evaluating the gender balance in Oscar-nominated films of the past thirty years. Overall, it found that for every speaking female character in a movie, there were about three speaking males, and for every non-white speaking character, there were roughly four white speaking characters. The factor that had the most impact on these numbers? “With a female director, the amount of female speaking characters jumped from 27 percent to 41 percent.” Only three women directors have ever been nominated for an Oscar, and none has ever won the award.

This has been a pretty crappy time for women and film in general (and no, the wild success of Juno, and Diablo Cody’s shiny new Oscar, do not make up for it). It only adds to my love of Helen Mirren that she said as much to the intolerable Regis Philbin during their brief tete-a-tete on the red carpet. The roles being written for women are not as rich and interesting as those being written for men (see the forthcoming The Other Boleyn Girl, which may star two bankable actresses, but is all about them competing for a man). I loved (loved) No Country for Old Men, and greatly admired There Will Be Blood, but those are only two of the most obvious examples of prestige films that imagined worlds that were basically devoid of women. These are legitimate visions, to be sure, but let’s look at the flip side. A movie that focused so relentlessly on women would be read as a deliberately feminist statement; it would be about women. These movies that hone in on men’s lives and experiences are understood to just be about people.

Really, it sort of blows my mind when I think about the odd stab at gender parity represented by having awards for Best Actor and Best Actress. I’m actually less interested in what this says about equality than in the very basic idea that, apart from “leading” versus “supporting,” there are two kinds of people who act in movies: men, and women. I’m certainly not advocating the creation of acting (or any other) awards based solely on identity, and I’m not in favor of abolishing gendered categories at the Oscars (not yet, anyway). But I do like when the lines start to get a little blurry. Consider Cate Blanchett’s “Best Supporting Actress” nomination for her portrayal of Bob Dylan. How do you begin to categorize it in these terms? And really, what’s the point in trying?

— Eryn Loeb

The Lilith Blog

February 25, 2008 by admin

Memory: Banishment or Salvation

I’ve been getting really into forgotten histories lately. In my academic life, it’s taken the form of some real decided interest in Yiddish literature from America, which I think has a lot to teach us about the development of Jewish identity in America. Every time I hear about second-versus-third-wave feminism throwdowns, I worry that we’ve either forgotten our collective history, or we’re buying the media’s version of a reconstructed history. Just moments ago, Austria won the Oscar for a film about the Nazis, and I wonder how we can balance remembering with putting that knowledge to use in the fight against anti-Muslim violence and bigotry in Europe today.

And then there’s the political version of forgotten histories, which the New Yorker hits out of the ballpark this week. Paul Kramer’s brilliant article on the issue of torture—standing in for the larger questions of imperialism and exported democracy—in the Philippine-American War is, really, an article about Iraq. Except—it’s not, it’s more than that. I don’t like to write about the Iraq war, because I feel so unqualified to say anything, but an article like this can prod even me into a statement. Read it, and learn how America’s problems aren’t in any way new—in fact, they’ve been dealt with before. And we’re ignoring everything we might have learned.

Somehow, America is in a position of having forgotten our history, and we’re looking at repeating it. (In fact, according to Mark Twain, we don’t repeat history so much as we “rhyme” it.) I don’t know how we managed to do this, because we haven’t been around that long. We strike quite a contrast to Israel, which can’t seem to forget or even maneuver its recent history at all. Usually, I think that’s a bad thing. Once you read Paul Kramer’s article, you may agree that awareness of our histories—even when they’re unpleasant, even when they make us uncomfortable or even make us fight—is totally imperative.

–Mel Weiss

The Lilith Blog

February 25, 2008 by admin

Chief Rabbi to Singles: No Pre-Marital Sex, And We Really Mean It This Time!

The latest “trend” in premarital sex amongst modern Orthodox singles has garnered Chief-Rabbinical condemnation:

In an attempt to stem a trend of quasi-condoned premarital sex among young modern Orthodox men and women, Israel’s Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi Yona Metzger has issued a prohibition against allowing single women to use mikvaot (ritual baths). In a letter dated January 24 and addressed to the rabbis of the Land of Israel, Metzger warns of a trend in which young modern Orthodox men and women use mikvaot to circumvent one of the severest prohibitions connected with sexual intercourse.
“It is absolutely prohibited to allow a single woman to immerse herself in a mikve,” wrote Metzger. “And it is an obligation to prevent her from doing so.”

The JPost article explains the halacha [Jewish law] involved in the issue but the basic gist is that by going to the mikva, single women make it (debatably) more halachically okay for themselves to have sex (see here for one single woman’s confession about engaging in this practice). Rabbi Metzger maintains — and surely the majority of other Orthodox rabbis would agree with him — that regardless of whether premarital sex can be technically acceptable from a Torah law perspective, it’s still completely unacceptable from his perspective, that is, the perspective of Rabbinic law, which banned premarital sex for its own sake — it is bad, wrong, forbidden in and of itself, not just because of technicalities involving menstruation.

The debate over the merits and demerits of premarital sex, however, should be regarded separately from the debate over mikva use amongst single women. The latter is more nuanced and, as such, bears some similarity to the debate over abstinence-only vs. comprehensive sex education (a debate largely held in the Christian v. secular arena that has recently opened up in the Jewish conversation).

Most educators on both sides agree that teenagers should not be having sex, but comprehensive sex educators acknowledge that they might, and in the event that they do, should be given the means to protect themselves. Proponents of abstinence-only education, on the other hand, say that giving kids information about contraception and STD prevention will only encourage them to have intercourse.

Similarly, the Rabbi Metzger camp says that premarital sex is prohibited and that we should not in any way enable single men and, especially, women to have sex. Perhaps Rabbit Metzger believes — naively, many would say — that the prohibition of niddah bears so much halachic weight to that it will deter women — unable to release themselves from its clutches without using the mikva — from having sex. Allowing unmarried women to use the mikva is only encouraging illicit behavior.

But others, like Prof. Tzvi Zohar of Bar-Ilan University, argue that some singles are probably going to have sex anyway, and the community should not prevent them from doing it in the most halachically fit way possible. To continue the sex education debate metaphor, shouldn’t we give people the means to protect their souls, as it were, rather than dismissing them completely as sinners whose sins can’t be mitigated?

To take the argument even further, why shouldn’t consenting adults who are fully aware of the relevant halacha have sex in whatever way see fit?

And that is, of course, what makes this debate completely different than that over sex education. We’re talking about adults, not children.

I’m not arguing that mikvas should put up a welcome mat inviting in single women, and they certainly don’t. The practice is already banned. Rabbi Metzger was just reiterating the ban, since apparently people had stopped listening. Even still, it’s been my understanding that mikva ladies do not knowingly allow single women in. But a don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy seems more befitting of adults, who have the right to make their own decisions. From a halachic perspective, it’s certainly better than unmarried women having sex without going to the mikva, and it’s better then single Jewish men “sowing their wild oats” with non-Jewish women, who are halachically “safe” from the laws of niddah.

But this insistence on barring single women from using the mikva brings up an unrelated but perhaps even more important question. Why can any man or boy use the mikva whenever he wants to spiritually purify himself while women are only allowed to use it within the very specific context of niddah? There’s no good reason why, if I’m feeling in need of a little spiritual cleansing, no matter what my age or marital status, why I shouldn’t be able to use the mikva.

The only reason is fear of what bodily defiling such a spiritual cleansing might lead to. And that fear — why is there so much fear? — results in rabbinic authority’s unwillingness to give women control over their own bodies.

–Rebecca Honig Friedman

The Lilith Blog

February 20, 2008 by admin

Baby Bites

There’s a lot going on out there in foodie land these days – a giant, mostly symbolic meat recall by Westland/Hallmark Meat Company (ahem, 143 million pounds), the OU declaring that food from a cloned animal is kosher (seriously? yep.), Martha Stewart acquiring (eating up?) chef Emeril Lagasse’s media properties – it can put your head in a tizzy.

But the thing that caught my attention today was a new blog on Fit Pregnancy’s website, “Mom Appetit: We Are What I Eat.” Each blog post details an aspect of author, Zoe Singer’s “journey” as an eater for two: soy or no soy? grazing or meals? what do you eat when you’re too nauseous to eat?

Compared to some of the zinger stories above, a blog about eating while pregnant seems pretty mundane. But reading through the posts got me (a 20-something who is not considering having kids yet, but recently acknowledged it is within the realm of possibility in the next half decade or so) thinking about the power of pregnancy on the expectant-mother’s consumer choices.

In many cases, it seems organic food becomes crucial. Eating a pesticide-drenched apple on your own is one thing, but choosing to eat it while pregnant brings up a whole different set of ethical questions. Food diversity also becomes a big concern. Pre-baby, chinese takeout or scrambled eggs for breakfast, lunch, and dinner seems perfectly acceptable – not so once you’re nourishing a growing being. There is so much research out there about foods that are potentially dangerous or particularly beneficial for a fetus, that – if you read any of that stuff – it’s almost impossible NOT to think about what you put in your body while you’re feeding someone else.

Of course it’s possible to go overboard with these concerns – and much of the “official research” out there is contradictory and potentially bogus. But I think there’s a food lesson to be learned from pregnant women: perhaps we should all eat as if we were nourishing not only ourselves, but someone else whom we cared about.

–Leah Koenig

The Lilith Blog

February 19, 2008 by admin

Costco Lessons

My husband and I decided that what was missing in our lives was a Costco membership. And so we went, babes in the woods, with our two babes in tow.

Here is what we learned:

1. Costco on a weekend afternoon is the suburban equivalent of a mosh pit.
2. It costs a minimum of $50 to become a member. Membership buys you the privilege of spending more money.
3. Think carefully before you buy a pallet of toilet paper. True, toilet paper is something you’ll always use, but you may prefer to keep your assets more liquid. (If you don’t mind tying up your money for a year or two, note that CDs give better returns.)
4. Some people feel they need 6lb. cans of corn niblets. I don’t understand it either.
5. Cement floors do not make for a comfortable shopping experience. You will discover this when you are as far from the doors as possible, which is also approximately when your child will need to pee. My own child decided to deal with this by placing a hand inside his underwear and clutching himself.
6. Unless you work as greengrocer, avoid the produce department. I don’t see how it is possible to consume a flat of mangoes before they rot without developing dysentery, but evidently there are legions of Americans out there with bowels made of sterner stuff than mine.
7. Not only are Costco’s containers of grapes huge, the grapes themselves are huge. You know how there are grape tomatoes? Well these are tomato grapes.
8. Guacamole is sold in boxes of three tubs. The label suggests eating one now and freezing two for later. Who freezes guacamole?
9. Melons come in pairs. Seriously.

–Claire Isaacs

The Lilith Blog

February 17, 2008 by Mel Weiss

Movin' On Up

Well, the primaries are a-passin’, and while the outcome’s definitely still up for grabs, it sure feels like a picture is coming into focus, doesn’t it? Some candidates are movin’ on up a little bit faster than others, I think. And so we, the nation, must move our thoughts along as well. I enjoyed the constant infighting and logarithmic calculations provided by such a large initial number of candidates, but the focus keeps telescoping, and now we’ve got columns in the NYTimes advising Obama and McCain on how to attack each other,
and a piece by Camille Paglia at Salon.com about the meta-attacks happening in each party. (Also? I know I just linked, without irony, to something Camille Paglia wrote. The next time I claim any level of inclusivity, I’m holding this up as evidence.)

Apparently the news about Kosovo’s independence caused a lot of public celebration in New York today. Of course, the opposition stepped it up as well, as Serbian youth rioted in Belgrade. Last night, a friend and I saw the truly excellent “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days”, a Romanian film that deals with a needed abortion in the Nicolae Ceauºescu era, so that part of the world was on my mind anyway. Although I refuse flat-out optimism right now, that film reminded me both that there are revolutions worth having, and also that they don’t always work out perfectly. I will try to remain hopeful that Kosovo really is moving up.

And, just when I was feeling that all this political stuff was so removed from me, I discovered that I heart Hannah Farber. Her post on jspot, Jewish Funds For Justice’s blog, calling out both the Atlantic and the rabbinical council (and, really, much of the Jewish establishment) for the ridiculous marry-and-reproduce pressure facing Jewish women is awesome. The personal is damn well political, and I was so pleased to hear an intelligent and articulate Jewish woman throw down like that. Unfortunately, I have since been reminded that the well-worded arguments she makes are in no way new—that this pressure has been something Jewish feminists, and others, have been attacking for some time. Who’s ready to move on up from here?

–Mel Weiss

The Lilith Blog

February 14, 2008 by admin

The Vagina Monologues

This week marks the tenth anniversary of V-Day, Eve Ensler’s international movement to end violence against girls and women. In its lifetime, V-Day has raised $50 million, and the organization gives away more money than any other group to fight violence against women (still, what they give annually amounts to what’s spent on about ten minutes of the war in Iraq).

It all started with a play: the now ubiquitous Vagina Monologues, which Ensler wrote and performed off-Broadway beginning in 1994. V-Day was founded 2 years later, on Valentine’s Day, when a star-studded benefit performance brought in plenty of dollars and attention. Since then, the play has been translated into 45 languages and performed in 120 countries. “The most radical play I ever wrote was the one that was accepted into the mainstream,” Ensler told an audience at the New School last week.

To me, that’s the most inspiring part. My mom and I first saw Ensler perform the Monologues at a tiny New York City theater in 1999 or 2000. Afterward, I went home and taped Ensler’s headshot up on my wall, and wrote my college admissions essay that same year based on the premise of the play. I’ll confess to having become somewhat disillusioned with V-Day in recent years, probably due mostly to having overdosed on its particular style of hot pink enthusiasm back in college. I’m also uncomfortable with the idea that to keep women from being violated, we have to treat our vaginas like the eighth wonder of the world instead of, you know, a body part. But that doesn’t mean I don’t admire what Ensler has done, and is doing. Listening to her triumphant pep talk last week (part of a speaking tour aimed at rallying the troops for the tenth anniversary, and encouraging everyone to come to New Orleans in April for a super-deluxe V-Day event that will “reclaim the Superdome“), I was struck by the way The Vagina Monologues has managed to become a mainstream sensation without sacrificing its edginess (though the degree of it has certainly changed, and not only because its content has become more accepted).

It’s easy to forget that there are lots of places where “vagina” is still a dirty word. Luckily, every once in awhile someone comes along to remind us that some of those places are major U.S. cities! This year it was the Seattle Times, which refused to run an ad for the Monologues because the vulva-centric artwork was not “appropriate” for its audience.

The best part? The ad — which seems pretty tame to me — was created by the National Council of Jewish Women’s Seattle office, which is co-sponsoring performances of the play. And the poster version had already been hanging in several area synagogues without protest.

A tenth anniversary edition of the Monologues is out now from Villard. Unlike the slim, deckled edge volume I once bought in a theater lobby, this substantial paperback reads like a primer on the V-Day ethos, with a new introduction from Ensler, sections outlining the history of the movement, testimonials from those involved in it, and a timeline of victories. There are also five new “spotlight monologues,” composed in response to particular kinds of violence against women in specific places and situations: transwomen, the Comfort Women of Japan, women in Islamabad who have had acid thrown in their faces. It sometimes feels like Ensler is writing the same monologue over and over again, and the tone of them — pain and despair, tinged with hope — becomes a little predictable.

Stories of abuse may not always translate well to the page (they probably fare better onstage), and I realize that’s not the point. In her talk last week, I was mostly encouraged to hear that Ensler has chosen a new word to impress upon the public: femicide. “Femicide” acknowledges that violence against women is not random; it is systematic, a pattern. “Naming femicide allows us to treat the issue fundamentally rather than remedially,” she said. The word may be even
more controversial than vagina. One high-level UN official already told Ensler it made him “uncomfortable.”

— Eryn Loeb