The Lilith Blog

July 3, 2007 by admin

The Anti-Feminist Diet?

As a sustainably-conscious foodie, I’ve recently come across a lot of press about “The Localvore Challenge”. The basic gist of the challenge is: wherever you live, attempt to only eat foods that are grown within 100 miles of your home. Food enthusiasts and novices across the country are taking part in this challenge—most notably amongst the bunch is Barbara Kingsolver, who chronicled her family’s year-long localvore experiment in her book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.

Localvores rightfully point to heavily-processed and packaged, calorie-heavy convenience foods as the root of many social problems:

• Obesity, diabetes, and heart disease
• Americans’ obsession with grabbing food “on the go” instead of sharing meals with friends and family
• The dismal connection most Americans have with where their food comes from.
• The erosion and destruction of farm land through industrial agriculture, and the disappearance of small family farms

Eating locally is a beautiful way to eat healthily and also reconnect to the sources of our food and the people growing them. Jewish tradition also has something to say about being intimately tied to the source of our food:

Rabbi Achia ben Yeshaya said: One who purchases grain in the marketplace—to what may such a person be likened? To an infant whose mother died, and they pass him from door to door among wetnurses and [still] the baby is not satisfied. One who buys bread in the marketplace—to what may such a person be likened? It is as if he is dead and buried. But one who eats from his own (what one has grown himself), is like an infant raised at his mother’s breasts.— Avot de Rabbi Natan 31:1

Along with the press and acclaim, the Localvore Challenge has also received its fair share of skeptics. Sure, eating locally is possible – and even a treat – in most places during the fertile summer months when local produce is widely available at farm stands, farmers markets, and through community-supported agriculture projects. But how does someone living outside of California find fresh vegetables during the winter months without having it trucked in from warmer climates? And doesn’t this whole localvore thing assume that the consumer has enough expendable cash to pay a premium for locally-grown veggies?

(more…)

The Lilith Blog

July 2, 2007 by admin

Responding to Rape in Darfur

To state it crudely, rape is the “trademark” of the current genocide in Darfur, the western region of Sudan. Genocide historians have remarked that although sexual violence has been a brutal component of past genocides, the scope and magnitude of rape in Darfur is unparalleled. Pamela Shifman, a U.N. expert on sexual exploitation, commented that rape is being used to “terrorize individual women and girls…to terrorize their families and to terrorize entire communities. No woman or girl is safe.”

The majority of the sexual assaulters are part of the Janjawid militia, a tribe that the Sudanese government has enlisted to carry out the genocide. A Darfurian refugee from Mukjar confessed, “When we tried to escape they shot more children. They raped women; I saw many cases of Janjawid raping women and girls. They are happy when they rape. They sing when they rape and they tell that we are just slaves and that they can do with us how they wish.” In addition to frequently contracting HIV/AIDS and experiencing reproductive complications, women also endure societal ostracism after being raped.

It is clear that we must take action against sexual violence in Darfur. However, what sort of action will truly be effective and not just guilt-alleviation for those of us who are aware of the situation?

I believe that the most powerful solutions are the innovative ones that look beyond the problem itself and find solutions in unexpected ways. Solar Cookers Internationals is an organization that has creatively responded to this crisis by working with Jewish World Watch and the KoZon Foundation (a Dutch charity) to disseminate solar cookers to the Darfurian refugees living in Iridimi and Touloum refugee camps in Chad. With solar cookers, women and girls no longer need to leave the refugee camp to go out foraging for wood. The task of collecting firewood is physically exhausting, environmentally damaging, time-consuming and extremely dangerous. When women leave their refugee camp they face a high risk of being gang raped by the Janjawid and men risk murder. However, after completing a training workshop, Darfurian women and girls can acquire their own solar cookers to safely sterilize water and cook food without stepping foot outside the refugee camp, where the Janjawid and Sudanese soldiers roam and plan their next attack.

To ensure security for the 2.5 million Darfurian refugees, they ultimately need a robust international peacekeeping force. According to a recent agreement, the United Nations is planning on working with the African Union to provide a “hybrid” security force in Darfur. However, it is unclear when the United Nations troops will actually be deployed and the African Union is too under-funded and understaffed to deal with the crisis alone.

In the murky waters of failed international interventions, we must rely on the compassion, creativity and goodwill of individual groups. Thankfully, organizations such as Solar Cookers International have confronted the issue of sexual violence through their innovative solar cooker initiative, which has ensured that at least the women of Iridimi and Touloum refugee camps do not have to risk being raped merely to cook dinner.

–Sophie Glass

The Lilith Blog

July 2, 2007 by Mel Weiss

Supreme Court to Home Health Workers: Screw You

In yet another example of how the U.S. Supreme Court devalues women, we have the settlement of Long Island Care at Home v. Coke, and it is grim. Essentially, the ruling states that home health care workers—a group that logs in at over 90% female—should be included in what are legally known as “companion services.” This is a big deal, as the 1974 Fair Labor Standards Act exempts “companion services” from the minimum wage. Just to clarify, before the Court assigned home health workers this legal position, the category of “companion services” was mostly populated by babysitters, dog walkers, and that neighborhood kid you pay a dollar to come feed your cat. (For more on this, check out a great NOW article on the subject.)

Leaving entirely aside for the moment the fact that even if these women were accorded the minimum wage, they might not be clocking in a living wage, let’s turn briefly to the incredibly patronizing tone this decision inscribes into law. This is an immense devaluation of some of the hardest work being done in this country—notably, work that has been historically handled by women.

This isn’t merely a case of straight-up and down misogyny (or racism, for that matter, with women of color radically outnumbering all others in the field of home health care), especially since the workers won their first round, pre-Supreme Court, in the NY State Court of Appeals. Jacki Lyden and Nancy Solomon of NPR report on the case made by lawyers during the trial that paying home health aides and others in the field a minimum wage would bankrupt an already imploding health care system. I won’t be the one to say that isn’t true—but it sure isn’t a solid reason not to pay these workers the wages they’re most certainly due. (And, as the child of a health-care-oriented social worker, I’m assured that many of the problems bound up in our entirely backward system are going to remain problems until the people who work on the ground with patients—meaning nurses, aides and home health providers—are paid enough to feed their own families.)

Lilith has been dealing with the related social justice issue of domestic workers for a while, so I know there’s a tzedek issue at the base here, but in the spirit of bi-partisanship, let’s explore the me-factor, the thing that ought to drive this home for us all: we have grandparents. We have parents. We have ourselves in ten, twenty, fifty years. We may need someone to help us or our loved ones into and out of bed, in or out of the tub, help eating, help with medication. And if we value ourselves and our loved ones, we should value those upon whom they and we will rely.

The Supreme Court’s ruling was embarrassing and demeaning, and it will only serve to hold together for whatever meager amount of time remains a faulty and punishing national system of health care. Rock on, team.

For those of you who are into that sort of thing, you can read the full decision here, and check out the official statement by the 1199SEIU HealthCare Workers Union.

–Mel Weiss

The Lilith Blog

June 29, 2007 by admin

Jew to Jewess: I've Got My Eye on You

When I started writing about women and Jewish life for the Jewess blog, I was really excited about the opportunity to create discussion about women’s issues in a Jewish context and to celebrate women’s contributions to the Jewish community and the world at large. I did not expect that some of my most avid and most vocal readers would be men.

On the one hand I certainly welcome male readers and find their interest flattering (the remnants of adolescence where any male attention is coveted, though, for the record I am very happily married). But on the other hand, I’m puzzled. Here I am working hard to create this forum for discussion by and about women in Judaism, and men are the ones who seem most interested in doing the discussing.

I have come, however, to realize and appreciate the significance of this phenomenon: Jewish men realize what Jewish women might not yet, that we are driving the future of Judaism.

On every front, women are keeping Judaism vibrant and moving it forward. In Reform institutions, women and girls are predominating so much that some have declared a “boy crisis” in the movement (see the last issue of 614: an HBI eZine); in the Conservative movement, women are playing more of an active role than ever in synagogue life and lay leadership; and no group has made more waves for progressive change in Orthodox Judaism than the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance (JOFA) and its supporters.

In Israel, Jewish women are at the forefront of the peace movement, building bridges with Palestinian women through groups like the Coalition of Women for a Just Peace, Bat Shalom and OneVoice, to name a few.

Even in the secular American world, Jewish women’s groups like the National Council for Jewish Women and Hadassah are on the forefront of the fight for reproductive rights (NCJW’s Plan A campaign for contraceptive use), stem-cell research (Haddassah led the lobby for recent bill that passed the House), and an end to hate (NCJW co-chairs the Hate Crimes Task Force), and others.

I would go so far as to argue that women are the driving force behind the increasing insularity and restrictiveness in the ultra-Orthodox world, though passively so. Recent restrictions imposed by the halachic arbiter Rav Yosef Sholom Elyashiv have been targeted particularly at women—banning them from pursuing higher education and imposing a modesty hashgacha on women’s clothing—and reflect an extreme fear that haredi women will be influenced by the freedom and status that women have gained in the secular, and even in the modern Orthodox, world. Unfortunately these ultra-Orthodox women are bearing the brunt of the reaction to the progress the rest of us are making.

But back to men. Whether they are our allies in these progressive fights—cheering us from the sidelines or fighting alongside us—or our adversaries—trying to reign us in or show us the errors of our ways—they realize that we are stirring things up, not to mention raising the next generation of Jews, and they know they’d better keep an eye on us.

—Rebecca Honig Friedman

The Lilith Blog

June 26, 2007 by admin

Dinner and a Revolution

The first time I saw Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party was not at the Brooklyn Museum, where it is currently a featured exhibit, but on spring break at the New Orleans Museum of Art.  I was a freshman in college in the process of shedding the sheltered, suburban skin I’d developed throughout childhood and hungrily trying on new modes of existence.  I was excited to be alive-excited to be a vegetarian, excited to vote for Gore…or Nader, excited to protest against environmental injustices, and excited to be in an unknown city, with my new college boyfriend, on what felt like my first adult vacation. 

I stumbled upon The Dinner Party while wandering around the museum that afternoon in New Orleans.  Tucked into a wing of Chicago’s other work, I found a large triangular table covered with 39 ornately designed plates, each set with a napkin, goblet, and silverware, in honor of a famous historical or mythical woman.  The room was darkly lit-sacred and cathedral-like-with single spotlights beaming onto each renowned woman’s plate.  Walking the perimeter, I saw pre-historical goddesses and biblical figures like Ishtar and Judith mingling with Common Era heroines like St. Bridget, and more contemporary revolutionaries like Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, and Georgia O’Keeffe.

At that point in my life, I didn’t yet know how to cook (let alone have any idea that food and cooking would become such an important part of my life), and had never thrown my own dinner party.  But as I walked around the place settings-wishing I could run my finger along the edges of the plates and peek inside the chalice-style goblets-I could sense a sort of electric power emanating out of the table.  I felt the shadows of these women around the table, sharing their stories of hardship and struggle, quietly murmuring consoling words to another over lost loves, and crying out with delight over triumphs.  Their stories were all their own and also part of a shared history.  And although I probably couldn’t have articulated it standing in that museum room six years ago, I somehow knew that all of their stories were mine as well.

Chicago has said that The Dinner Party (which was created in the five year span of 1974-1979) was “meant to end the ongoing cycle of omission in which women were written out of the historical record.”  But I think it does something more than that.  In choosing to create a dinner party as the vehicle for honoring these historical heroines, Chicago turned the notion of dinner as “women’s work” on its head.  She also, though less explicitly, confirmed the role of the dinner table in revolutionary work.  Dinner tables are the place, Chicago seems to say, where bread is broken together and community solidified.  And it is only after the community is strong that the seedlings of so many world-changing revolutions can be sown.  There is a line in the Talmud that says, “…[I]f there is no flour, there is no Torah…” which inextricably links nourishment, study, and life.   Chicago’s Dinner Party seems to extend this idea to say, “If there is no dinner, there is no revolution.”

I haven’t yet visited The Dinner Party exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum, and I’m curious how I will feel when I do (besides having the urge to throw a serious dinner party of my own!).  I’m no longer a freshman in college or struggling to piece together my independent identity.  I’m still excited by the world around me, but do not walk through it with the same wide-eyed intensity.  And to be honest, I am far less of a “revolutionary,” in the traditional activist sense, than I fancied myself six years ago. But I look forward to stepping once more into Chicago’s Dinner Party – I will reintroduce myself to these amazing women, and raise a glass to the future.

–Leah Koenig

The Lilith Blog

June 25, 2007 by admin

Training Our Instincts Toward More Distant Compassion

Ideally, we would have infinite hours in a day to tikkun olam, help repair the world. In reality, the amount of time we set aside for this mitzvah is limited. This begs the question: where should we direct our good intentions with the finite time and energy we have? Should we focus on our local community and the people we understand? Some argue that the more personal your connection to a person, the deeper your empathy and the greater your motivation to assist him or her. Another opinion is that we should direct our attention to the most clamant situations, irrespective of their geographic or relational distance.

For the past three years, since before I began college, I have been actively involved in STAND, a student movement that works to end the ongoing genocide in Darfur, Sudan. I have attended conferences and spearheaded my school’s chapter of STAND. At first glance, my efforts are directed towards the most dire situations (genocide), as opposed to the most immediate, local causes (hunger and homelessness in NY, immigration issues etc).

But if you take a second look, my Darfur related activism includes personal connections. To see the people of Darfur as the faraway “others” with no connection to my life would be denying several important bonds that we share. For instance, my family history includes my grandparents’ escape from the Holocaust. This painful and personal legacy of genocide ties me to Darfurians, who are currently enduring genocide. I imagine that the grandchildren of those who survive the genocide in Darfur will recall their ancestor’s stories, just as I, a third-generation survivor of the Holocaust, can recount my grandparents’ memories of surviving.

Additionally, my female identity ties me to the women of Darfur. The women of Darfur endure, and often die as a result of, sexual assault inflicted by the janjaweed militia and the Sudanese army. I have never experienced anything similar to the gruesome and horrific sexual abuse that these women have (baruch hashem). However, even in the United States I know that I am at risk for sexual assault and abuse. I never walk home alone in the dark and have learned how to spot and avoid sexually aggressive men. Living in this world as a woman is not entirely safe yet, and my fight to protect my body is intimately related to my fight to protect the women of Darfur.

These examples illustrate how even though I have never met a person from Darfur, nor have I had the opportunity to travel to Sudan I still feel that there are tangible links between my life and the life of a Darfurian. I believe the real challenge is not to choose whether to be a community activist addressing local issues or a “neediest cases” activist, often acting on behalf of people you have never met. The more important struggle is to turn these seemingly distant and harrowing crises into personal issues. The power of the media and our access to information allows us to see our own reflections in the faces of others, though they live thousands of miles away and speak foreign languages. With our limited energy, I believe that we must address the neediest cases with the compassion and attention to complexity that we instinctively grant to our neighbors.

–Sophie Glass

The Lilith Blog

June 24, 2007 by Mel Weiss

Jews, Women, History, Politics

I read the newspaper a lot.  I read blogs, I have a news-journal habit I can’t afford, and I listen to my roommate playing NPR in the morning.  I am into politics.  I am a Jewish feminist who is into politics.  They’re vital.  Molly Ivins used to say that people can’t afford not to be interested in politics—they affect every waking moment of our lives.

I’ll be spending my time on this blog going after political issues and figures large and small, but I wanted to take one post to explain what I see as the intersection of my identities with how I view the political playing field—it’s only fair prep.  My view of the world is governed by two defining ideas, and I’m pretty sure they spring from the same places as the Jewish feminist thing.

1) Historical context.  I am obsessed with historical context. I think it goes to the core of pretty much any political—or for that matter, sociological—phenomenon.  I don’t think a Jew can afford to be devoid of a solid understanding of historical context—it’s better than psychiatry for helping you crack the code of why people do like they do.  Jews, particularly, are a people with a long collective memory, and I’ve whetted my historical teeth on the ideas in this extended history.

2) A global context for local action—and for global action as well.  Going well beyond the dictum that all politics are local, this is something I think feminists were quick to grasp onto, owing probably to the fairly universal phenomena of patriarchy and misogyny.  Things going on in one part of the world generally have repercussions in other parts—more now, in our hyper-interactive world.  Think Turkey’s current struggle in balancing Islamism and democracy—much more complicated than it sounds, actually—isn’t going to affect Israel’s regional relations?  Try again.  I want to understand the global ripples for each individual drop into the pond.

These two things deal, temporally and spatially, with the interconnectedness of everything.  Such is the governing concept of how I deal with the politics, and you’ll be able to see how those two things emerge for me in looking at the everyday goings on wheelin-n-dealin’ machinations of political machines of all sizes.

—Mel Weiss

The Lilith Blog

June 22, 2007 by admin

Hip-Hop Track about the Shoah

As promised in the pages of our (upcoming) Summer 2007 issue, here’s a chance to view the music video put out by Israeli rapper Subliminal (Koby Shimoni) and U.S. hip-hop violinist phenom Miri Ben-Ari, via their new collaborative project, the Gedenk Movement.

Watch the video here.

The debate has died down some, but the question remains unanswered–what is this, exactly? Innovative attempt to teach today’s youth about the Holocaust by getting them where their iPods are? Crass and inappropriate “educational” material? Slick and commercial bid for attention? The jury’s may be out, but the conversation’s still on.

The Lilith Blog

June 22, 2007 by admin

A New Home for the Lilith Blog!

Welcome to Lilith’s re-launched blog! We’re getting cozy in this new home and are so excited about our new line-up of bloggers! (You can read all about them in “About Us.”) Don’t worry–all of our old posts are below.

As ever, there are always updates, news of goings-on, and information about the magazine on our main site, but the Lilith blog is the place to go for solid Jewish feminist fare in between issues of the magazine. (We don’t want you to have to wait.)

Interested in blogging or guest-posting? Want to let us know about your righteous blog? Drop an email to Mel Weiss, blog moderator. Enjoy!

The Lilith Blog

April 19, 2007 by admin

Women's Lives Are in Danger

The Supreme Court has voted to uphold the Federal Abortion Ban, and it is a sad and scary day in America (we’re having a lot of those this week). You can actually read the decision in its entirety here. The most detrimental feature of the decision from a legal perspective is likely to be the precedent it sets NOT to make any exceptions for the health of the woman. This is a particularly important in light of halakhic rules that require us to place a high value on the woman’s health in such cases. For more on the Supreme Court Decision, check out Feminist Majority, The National Council of Jewish Women and NOW. Read Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Dissent, which she took the rare step of reading aloud to the Court. Although Justice Bader Ginsburg’s move was derided as “politically greedy” in some right-wing blogs, we see it as a powerful example of a Jewish woman who refuses to shut her mouth in the face of injustice.

Lilith has been covering issues of choice for over 25 years. We invite you to download and read one such article: “Is Abortion Murder? Jews and Christians Will Answer Differently” by Leila Bronner from our Winter 1997-98 issue.

Please post your comments or thoughts below, or feel free to send them to Lilith’s blog moderator, Mel Weiss.

Update: We’re Not Giving Up
Despite the discouraging vote by the Supreme Court, we’re not giving up so easily. The JTA has just reported that groups are revving up to fight the ruling (check out the quote from Lilith’s own Susan Weidman Schneider).

In a show of amazing timing, the Freedom of Choice Act has been reintroduced. (Read the ACLU’s press release.) The bill has been reintroduced by Representative Jerrold Nadler (D – NY) and–no surprise here–Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA).

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