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The Lilith Blog
January 7, 2008 by Mel Weiss
Election Madness
I had the amazing opportunity this weekend to spend my time with a group of friends. We declared ourselves officially off the clock. And what did
we do? We talked about elections. Three elections in particular, in fact: Pakistan, Kenya and Iowa. And it’s not like election fever is going to pass anytime soon.
Kenya’s current troubles take a bit of explaining, at least to me, since my political knowledge of that part of the world is a little weak. Fortunately, Laura, one of my merry band, is interested in focusing her work in international relationships on religious conflicts, and Africa is her area of expertise. Here’s what I gather: the current tensions
in Kenya—which has included the deaths of hundreds of people—were sparked by recent elections, which quite possibly were rigged, but really, the
turmoil is tribal. The election results, contested by the international community and many Kenyans, are above and beyond their political import,
conduits for the aggressions among Kenya’s many tribal groups.
The political turmoil in Pakistan following the assignation of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto proceeded the upcoming election, in which Bhutto was to have been a candidate. Elections have been pushed back six weeks, and, while rather transparent attempts by General Musharraf to manipulate the upcoming vote come to light, voters are extremely tense.
And, of course, Obama and Huckabee. Huckabee and Obama. I resent that Iowa has so much power over the course of the election, but at least they
decided to make it a little more interesting for the rest of us.
Other than chew over these immensely interesting and varied elections, what I did this weekend is begin a book I’m both intrigued and intimidated
by: Judaism as a Civilization by Mordechai Kaplan, the guidebook to Reconstructionist Movement. I don’t know enough about the Reconstructionist movement, but as a lover of history, I’m loving this book. I am entirely struck by the notion of rebuilding Judaism as a holistic entity. And, while I’ve really only begun it, I look forward to a Jewish future where issues like, of, concerning and surrounding international elections is implicitly a Jewish thing to care about.
My weekend’s take-home lesson? Voting matters. Elections matter. And that the right to vote, not extended to all of our sisters, is a chance to really
participate in something. With that said, make sure you’re registered!
–Mel Weiss
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January 7, 2008 by admin
Orthodox Jewish Women Wear Burkas — and Their Men Don't Like It!
It seems made-up, but it’s not.
A group of haredi women in Israel have taken a cue from their Muslim neighbors and taken modesty to new heights (for Jews), donning burkas on the streets of Ramat Beit Shemesh and other ultra-Orthodox enclaves. Under the tutelage of one devout — and apparently ascetically inclined — mother-of-ten, these women have decided that the basic modest black outfit and wig or head-covering of their peers isn’t modest enough for them. They don’t want their flesh seen at all by men outside of their families, and wearing burkas does the trick.
Haaretz reported on the story in Hebrew but a rough synopsis in English can be found on the Muquata blog.
The new fashion has the religious authorities, none of whom have advocated this trend, baffled. As Muquata’s Jameel writes, “The radical Beit Shemesh tznius [modesty] patrol is even scratching it’s [sic] head whether someone managed to out do them, and leave them in the dust with the liberal left.”
Mother in Israel also has a post on the story and brings out an important point from the Haaretz article, that such obsessive modesty is akin to anorexia — “it’s obsessive behavior based on a desire to deny one’s femininity,” she writes.
This comparison to anorexia seems right on, but goes deeper than just the denial of femininity. [Side note: I’m no psychologist but growing up female in upper-middle class Jewish circles, I’ve come to learn a thing or two about anorexia.] Both anorexia and the burka-wearing phenomenon stem from an obsession with reaching an unrealistic ideal set up by society, be it a model’s lean and long figure or a model of modest virtue and spiritual purity. Both are ideals which the average woman cannot live up to, but trying to do so is an expectation of women in Western and fervently religious societies, respectively. The quest to reach both ideals involves self-denial, literally and figuratively. Anorexics deny themselves food in an attempt to wither away their physical selves (often the feminine curves that come with womanhood, as Mother in Israel points out), while burka-wearers are denying themselves the material pleasures of pretty clothing and physical comfort (it’s hot under there and hard to see) in an attempt to deny their physicality, to be purely spiritual beings. And both phenomena are about control, but here’s where the comparison veers off.
Anorexia is often said to be an attempt for the individual going through difficult circumstances beyond her control to take back some semblance of control by determining her food intake and controlling her own weight. Yet, when controlling her food intake and weight becomes an obsession, it ceases to be in her control. And when she becomes so skinny that she looks as though she’ll break in half, she has gone beyond society’s ideal and is not considered desirable but rather sick and unattractive.
These burka-wearing Jewish women have also becomes undesirable to their society, yet they maintain control over their social status. They’ve taken modesty to such extremes that their society deems them freaks — one man has even taken his wife to the beit din for violating shalom bayit [peace in the house], and he was issued a divorce because his wife was considered so outlandish. Yet, unlike with anorexia, these women still maintain a kind of control. Muquata, paraphrasing/translating Haaretz, calls the trend a “radical chareidi feminist ‘invention’,” and, while, on the one hand, the idea of wearing a burka as a feminist act seems absurd; on the other hand, insomuch as these women have been socially chastised yet persist in their behavior, there is an element of subversiveness to it that lends them power. They are adopting the ideal of modesty that to some extent has been ingrained in them by male religious authority (and no doubt by female authorities, too), but they are doing so on their own terms. They are taking the power of dictating women’s dress away from the male religious authorities in their community, deciding for themselves what modesty means and, in classic fashion, being persecuted for it.
These women have the right to wear whatever they want, but we should also question the values that have led them to such extreme decisions, and the society that perpetuates those values.
–Rebecca Honig Friedman
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January 3, 2008 by admin
Vaera: Plagued by the Parsha
I knew it was a mistake to take on so much Torah reading this week. I ought to have learned my lesson by now. But when the minyan gabbai (who is thankfully no longer myself!) called to ask me if I would read the majority of the ten plagues this week, I got excited about the drama of the story, and agreed, perhaps too readily. Since then, I have been afflicted by the Parsha Syndrome – the events I am leyning have started to shape my life in ways that are most unwelcome….
Let’s see, where did it begin? First, I woke up early in the week with beating, pounding tooth pain. I felt like someone was dropping several pounds of mortar and bricks on me, all of which were landing squarely in the tiny surface area of one of my top left teeth. The more I felt oppressed, the more the pain increased and spread out, so I came to dread the pain.
Finally I appeared before the dentist, who had been in the middle of a root canal treatment on one of my other teeth. “What would you like me to do about the pain,” he asked. “Take it away!” I pleaded. “And when would you like me to do that?” he asked. “Tomorrow!” I cried. (I still haven’t figured that one out. Tomorrow?) He said, “I will do in accordance with your word, so that you know that there is no one like your great dentist.” His fingers were in my mouth during much of this conversation, though I think I still got the message across in spite of
my impeded speech.
The dentist prescribed antibiotics, and I promptly filled the prescription. The next morning, I woke up with a few red spots on my legs. It looked as if someone had taken soot from a kiln and thrown it up to the sky, so it all landed on my thighs. By the afternoon, the red dots had spread all over the surface of my lower body, so that no one was able to see my lower body. Then it spread, and only in the region of my face were there no dots. I itched all over, as if infested with lice or with a very severe pestilence.
Then I summoned the doctor at Terem and said to her, “I plead with you to remove these spots from my lower body.” The doctor told me that I was allergic to the antibiotics, but I should keep taking them lest the tooth flare up again. To relieve the itching, she prescribed antihistamines. When seven days had passed, she told me, I would finish with the antibiotics and be myself again.
The doctor did not tell me, though, that antihistamines make you drowsy. And so I got into bed and stayed awake itching, but then slept late into the mornings. I would try to wake up in the morning and feel a very heavy darkness surrounding me, a darkness so heavy that I could feel it. For three days I could not get up from bed, and I missed daf yomi and swimming and arrived bleary-eyed at work. I began to wonder: How long would this continue to be a snare to me?
Today I had to make another dentist’s appointment to deal with the infection that led me to take the antibiotics in the first place. I was supposed to see the dentist as soon as possible, but I know better than that. I scheduled the appointment for two weeks from now, parshat
Beshalach, when we are safely out of Egypt and free of the plagues. Given that I’ll probably leyn next week too, I’m not taking any chances.
–Chavatzelet Herzliya
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December 28, 2007 by admin
Jewish Women Sing Their Songs Out Loud, Albeit Different Songs
What could possibly shock Hollywood, California, anymore? Robin Garbose is hoping a dose of modesty will do the trick. She is about to stage what is probably the first-ever Hollywood film premiere for a female-only audience. Garbose, a professional director who became religious at the start of her career in Hollywood (she says it happened between her first time directing an episode of the eighties sitcom “Head of the Class” and the episode’s broadcast), is making her feature-film directorial debut with “A Light For Greytowers,” which has a mostly female cast and is, she claims, “the first-ever ‘for women only’ feature movie musical.”
The film premieres this Saturday night, December 29th, at the Sherry Lansing Theatre at Paramount Studios. The cast, which includes Broadway actress and Orthodox Jew Judy Winegard, is made up of professional actors and well-trained students from Kol Neshama, an Orthodox girls performing arts academy Garbose started a few years ago. The “gala event” is intended to raise funds for scholarships to Kol Neshama’s camp program. Writes Garbose in an email invite to the premiere, “It is my heartfelt belief that this film — which is the collective work of many talented artists — will truly be a dazzling Kiddush HaShem, IY”H.” The Forward has more on Garbose and the film.
On the opposite end of the Jewish-women-performing spectrum, equally as dazzling though in a much dirtier way, is “Nice Jewish Girls Gone Bad,” also the subject of a recent Forward article. Rather than talking about “Kiddush Hashem,” the comedians and burlesque-esque performers of “Nice Jewish Girls” deliver quips like “You get dinner on JDate and laid on Craigslist” (that one belongs to the show’s founder Susannah Perlman) and dance around scantily-clad onstage, shimmery and shimmying, and in front of men, too.
It’s safe to say Robin Garbose, who sometimes consults her rabbi when making directorial decisions, would not consider “Nice Jewish Girls Gone Bad” in line with the values of her film; yet both projects, in their own distinct ways, celebrate the talent and power of Jewish women. And both would be great fun for an (age-appropriate) “girls’ night out” outing.
Just another reminder of the wonderful diversity amongst Jewish women.
–Rebecca Honig Friedman
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December 26, 2007 by admin
Season's Greetings–And Eatings
We’ve made it to the final stretch of the “holiday season” (read: the inclusive euphemism for Christmas and New Year’s Eve). Despite my friend’s insistence that, “no one says Merry Christmas in America” (he’s from England where supposedly everyone says Merry Christmas as if they have a tic, and now lives in New York City), the holidays – and particularly Christmas – can literally be felt, regardless of one’s religious beliefs.
This phenomenon holds particularly true with food. No matter that Chanukah celebrations peaked half a month ago – holiday food is ubiquitous. From late November through New Year’s Eve, red-and-green wrapped chocolates seem to pop up out of nowhere. Alcohol, cookies, pie, and heavily salted snacks also take on “how-did-that-get-into-my-hand?” properties. And whether we spend Christmas dinner with friends, or celebrate the “Jewish way” with Chinese food and a movie, holiday foods have a tendency to find their way, often in excess, into our mouths.
During this time of year, I often find myself dancing between indulging in these foods, and worrying about gaining weight. On the one hand, I adore surprise chocolate – in fact I think it might be the best kind of chocolate. On the other, I’m bound up in the worry that I might not fit into my pants after December. I enthusiastically read (and then generally fail to implement) the guides to “avoid holiday weight gain” or “get thin in the New Year” that pop up around the internet. Guilt ensues. I make a few pathetic stabs to stop myself but feel rather helpless until the last Ghiradelli square is gone.
The whole thing can be rather stressful and leaves me craving January when all this “holiday season” business is finally over.
Still, I know there is untapped wisdom to be found around holiday eating – wisdom that goes beyond “avoid the eggnog.” At the Hazon Food Conference this past month, Nati Passow of The Jewish Farm School gave a keynote during which he said:
“I’ve heard the expression, “eat to live, don’t live to eat.” The idea being, don’t just go from one meal to the next always thinking about food. But I believe that as a society, we could use a little more living to eat. We need to give more attention to our food, not less. We need to celebrate real food, not consume it in liquid or energy bar form. We need to take hour long lunches, have meals with friends, bake our own bread, brew our own beer, grow our own corn.”
I think Nati is on to something. Perhaps one answer to the holiday feeding routine lies in a shift of focus towards living to eat, instead of struggling to curb our cravings and feeling guilty when we don’t succeed. This idea might sound counterintuitive at first – doesn’t living to eat lead to eating way too much?
But living to eat as Nati describes it does not mean eating huge amounts of absolutely everything. It means releasing our deep-seated fears and taboos around food. It means focusing our lives and celebrations around healthy, nourishing meals. It means getting involved with our food by growing it or learning to make it from scratch. It means eating more “real food,” – food that fills and sustains us without needing to gorge on it.
The holiday chocolate is not going to go away, nor should it. But my blessing for the rest of this holiday season (and throughout the year), is that instead of fighting with our food, we all discover what it truly means to live to eat.
–Leah Koenig
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December 24, 2007 by admin
Fighting Back
A gut-wrenching blow was recently dealt to the Orthodox feminist cause. The kind of punch to the stomach that makes your insides churn and your whole body shake, leaving you stunned and speechless for a minute as you fathom the damage done to you. But that, after a minute, when you realize you’re okay, makes you angry at whomever tried to damage you: Anger propels you to fight back, and you attack like a crazy person, out for blood from the person who wronged you.
That’s the kind of punch the National Council of Young Israel dealt when it decided recently to bar women and converts (the latter is a separate blood-boiling issue) from becoming Young Israel synagogue presidents, and banning women’s prayer services and megillah readings from its synagogues. The NCYI also decreed that it must approve all of its synagogues rabbinic hires.
(Forgive my above hyperbole, but this really makes me mad.)
The NCYI’s new bylaws are about a lot more than feminism. They’re essentially an attempt by the Young Israel’s national umbrella organization to assert control over its constituent synagogues and, insomuch as Young Israel is the only modern-Orthodox synagogue “brand,” it’s an attempt by the NCYI to impose its iron will over what it means to be modern Orthodox, suppressing diversity and taking away individual congregations’ and rabbis’ ability to make decisions about what is appropriate for their own communities. Yeshiva University’s paper, the Commentator, has a comprehensive report of the NCYI’s modifications and the YI synagogues’ reactions to them, but for the purposes of this post, we’ll focus on the repercussions for Orthodox feminism.
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December 24, 2007 by Mel Weiss
'Tis the Season
I’m prone to complaining about the world falling apart, um…most of the time. This has been brought to my attention, and in the spirit of the season, I thought I’d share something that I’m just thrilled about—and very thankful for: this year hasn’t seen the “War Against Christmas” crap of recent years. For this I am grateful simply because I might not have survived another season.
Of course, this isn’t to say that there isn’t plenty of ridiculous religion in politics this day. You have Mike Huckabee comparing homosexuality to necrophilia (don’t worry—his advisers have clarified that they’re not on the same side of the sin spectrum), Mitt Romney and the comparison that wouldn’t die to JFK (they both held the religious minority niche and addressed the conservative church faction about it—any vague similarities ends there, as Kennedy made a point to throw the separation of Church and State in the faces of the Southern Baptists he was addressing; Gov. Romney made a point to assure Evangelical leaders that his Mormonism wouldn’t get in the way of his evangelical enforcements), and Alan Keyes’ bizarre wig-out during the Iowa caucus debate (after yelling at the moderator, his answer for what we can do to fix education is to “put God back in the schools”).
I appreciate that the holidays, and the barrage of coming caucuses (cauci?), really brings out the loony in presidential candidates. I would hope that these sort of antics go further towards convincing everyone who’s not a Christian that these nuts are not your friends. Yes, the Democrats trot out their church credentials, too, and goodness knows I’m one of the biggest fan of religious liberals you’ll find in New York. I think it’s fair to say, though, that the Grand Old Party is no party for those of us who rock the mogen davids.
So thank you, candidates, conservatives and Michelle Malkin, for not accusing me of ruining your holiday with my insidious, deity-hating “Happy Holidays!” I wish you, um, a nice Tuedsay. If anyone out there is roaming Brooklyn looking for good Chinese food and a cool movie on Christmas, give me a call—I’m on it.
And last, I can think of many people who probably appreciate seeing this sort of honesty in the NYTimes. (Unless you’re part of the demographic doomsdayers.) Enjoy!
–Mel Weiss
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December 17, 2007 by Mel Weiss
Paint by Numbers
Look, I love a brilliant analysis as much as the next person, and probably more. But I watched some of the Iowa caucus debates (ugh) and what impressed me the most—far more than anything any of the candidates had to say—was the way the moderator, Carolyn Washburn, editor of The Des Moines Register, handled herself. She took zero crap from the grandstanding candidates, was not intimidated by some of the scarier antics and asked hard-hitting questions. It made me remember how important the media can be in politics—and how much good work it can do, in general, when it tries. So in that spirit of straightforward factuality—and shamelessly stolen in structure from Harper’s–some numbers, for your pleasure. Just facts ’n’ figures you might find interesting. I sure did.
10–Number of percentage points by which Rudy Giuliani promises to cut government spending across the board—non-military, only, of course. (Asked in the Iowa caucus debates what sort of sacrifices this might entail for ordinary Americans, our man Rudy replied, “Well, it would require them trying to figure out another way to do it. You know, not having the government do it for them.” Please do your part to ease the national debt by reminding your grandma that she’d better go out and earn those diabetes meds, damn it. The government’s not doing it for her anymore.)
2/7— fraction of President Bush’s vetoes spent denying children healthcare, in shooting down the revised S-CHIP two times. (When you consider that Harding was the last President to clock in with under ten vetoes, that somehow seems even more impressive.)
13—Number of government programs dedicated to preventing teen pregnancy (this information comes courtesy of Mitt Romney’s talking points and has not been independently verified by a non-waffling source)
3—percentage by which teen pregnancy has gone up between 2005 and 2006 (following a proceeding 34-point drop from 1991)
170 million—number of dollars spent on abstinence-only education by the US federal government in 2005 (bonus number: over 80% of the abstinence-only curricula, used by over two-thirds of Special Projects grantees in 2003, contain false, misleading, or distorted information about reproductive health.)
68—percentage of Americans under 65 who had private health insurance in 2005
30–number of seconds it takes someone in America to file for bankruptcy in the aftermath of a serious health problem.
900 billion—number of dollars estimated to be held by China (If China decided to flood the market with dollars, our economy would take a pretty serious hit. Also, aren’t they supposed to be Communist or something?)
3—number of overall reviews that the President and NATO have ordered on the Afghan mission. (It’s not that I don’t appreciate it, it’s just…now? And because we don’t have a plan past 2008, don’t know how to keep the Taliban from resuming its strong hold and have no troops readily available? I think we can file this under “too little, too late,” don’t you?)
56—approximate percentage of eligible voters who clocked in for the 2004 presidential election. (Are you registered? Do you know where your polling site is? When your state’s primaries are held?)
6—the number of major corporations controlling over 90% of mass media in 2000 (according to journalist Ben Bagdikian—although this number has since fallen).
Support independent media—it’s absolutely vital. Find the facts—and fight them. The numbers are right there.
–Mel Weiss
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