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The Lilith Blog
October 4, 2018 by Rabbi Phyllis Berman
Pharaoh’s Family Separation Policy: A Midrash
This midrash was written in a wonderful class taught by Sabrina Sojourner at the National Havurah Institute in July 2018. We had just gotten home from a trip, organized by the American Federation of Teachers to include religious leaders, teachers, and activists to Tornillo, Texas, on the border between El Paso and Mexico, where children, separated from their parents after crossing the border, were being held by our government.
From “locals” who live in El Paso, we were told that in Tornillo, where our government has just shipped thousands of migrant children to tent cities in the dark of night along with the detention center that has housed “kidnapped” children for months now, the drinking water is tainted, much like the water in Flint, MI. As Michael Moore said in his movie Fahrenheit 11/9, that’s one way to get rid of people you don’t want in your country…
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October 4, 2018 by Rabbi Arthur Waskow
Imagining the Author of Deuteronomy as a Woman: a Midrash
In this midrash, Huldah’s musings are “overheard” by Rabbi Arthur Waskow, director of The Shalom Center. The midrash was written for a class at the National Havurah Institute of 2018, led by Sabrina Sojourner. Huldah was in fact named by the Tanakh and the Talmud as one of the seven women recognized as prophets. (Many translations turn “neviah” into “prophetess,” but in the 21st or 58th century, that seems as inappropriate as “Jewess: or “poetess.”)
For biblical passages on Huldah, see II Kings 22:14-20 and II Chronicles 34: 22-28. She became the wife of Shallum, keeper of the king’s wardrobe—a prestigious and powerful role. As for the Scroll she authenticated as truly Torah, most modern scholars think it was Deuteronomy, and most of them also think that Deuteronomy was written in a Hebrew style characteristic of the time of Huldah and Jeremiah, separate from the other texts of the Five Books.
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September 27, 2018 by Roseanne Benjamin
The Sukkot Ritual That Meant Everything to Me
Growing up, my family loved to celebrate the holidays. Jewish, non-Jewish, it didn’t seem to matter. I delighted in making my own Halloween costumes and Valentine’s Day cards. We decorated the house with flags every year on the 4th of July, ate cherry jelly candy on Washington’s Birthday, and looked forward to my mom’s boiled cabbage and corned beef on St. Patrick’s Day, when we all wore green, of course.
There were huge family dinners on Rosh Hashanah and on Passover. I looked forward to dressing up as Queen Esther on Purim. My father’s pride and joy was our backyard sukkah, and each year I held the stakes as he wrapped them in burlap and watched as he threw cornstalks across the roof.
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September 26, 2018 by Yona Zeldis McDonough
The Mysterious Doctor Who Put Preemies on Display — and Saved Their Lives
“What kind of doctor puts his patients on display?”
Fiction Editor Yona Zeldis McDonough recently spoke to novelist Dawn Raffel about her new work of nonfiction, “The Strange Case of Dr. Couney: How a Mysterious European Showman Saved Thousands of American Babies” which tells the real story of a doctor who revolutionized neonatal care, “a marvelously eccentric man, his mysterious carnival career, his larger-than-life personality, and his unprecedented success as the savior of the fragile wonders that are tiny, tiny babies.”
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September 21, 2018 by Aileen Jacobson
A Forgotten Lillian Hellman Play That Deserves Another Chance
Set in a small town in Ohio and revolving around a workers’ strike at a brush factory, Lillian Hellman’s little-known play, “Days to Come,” was a resounding flop when it debuted on Broadway in 1936. Hellman, who had enjoyed great acclaim for her first play, “The Children’s Hour,” went on to even wider success and fame with her next play, “The Little Foxes.”
But at the opening night of this one, her second-born, as she recalled in her 1973 memoir “Pentimento,” she stood at the back of the theater, sensed that things were going wrong, and vomited. Then she saw William Randolph Hearst and his six guests walk out during the second act. Bad reviews and a quick closing followed.
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September 20, 2018 by Rebecca Sassouni
Why I Didn’t Talk for The Duration of Yom Kippur
Jews throughout time and space have a practice of atoning during Yom Kippur by refraining from eating and drinking for 25 hours. From time to time, including this year, I choose to add to my dietary fast by voluntarily abstaining from speech, too.
Evidently this practice is called Taanit Dibbur (a speech fast), but I only learned that after I had already adopted the practice about five years ago. (You can find out more with a Google search.) I am not a rabbi or Torah scholar, but I am a mom, wife, daughter, sister, friend, attorney, writer, trustee and advocate. Thus, words and speech are the very stuff of my life. Like most stuff, words can accumulate, get cluttered, and need to be purged from my mental space. For this reason, taanit dibbur is a valuable clarifying spiritual exercise I highly recommend.
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September 20, 2018 by Susan Weidman Schneider
When You Say #MeToo, What Dangers Lurk?
We’ve heard a lot recently about becoming an upstander, rather than being a passive bystander when you’ve witnessed a bad event. We’re learning how to defuse a threatening situation on a street or in a crowd, how to offer support on the spot to someone being bullied or harassed.
But now, especially in the wake of Yom Kippur, I’ve been thinking about how we can become attentive to other aspects of wrongdoing or suffering that seem less obvious. We fast and beat our breasts and recite our transgressions and shortcomings each year to improve. And one of those ways is to become more aware of the less obvious needs around us—something that recent trends in feminist activism can help us do.
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September 20, 2018 by Amie Newman
Sorry Brett Kavanaugh: Religious Women Use Birth Control
Before the big story of Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings switched to an alleged attempted sexual assault from his youth, he had already earned women’s groups’ ire: he quoted a right-wing religious talking point, calling birth control “abortion-inducing.”
I’ll share a secret with you: that argument pushed by groups like Priests for Life, the group Kavanaugh quoted during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings last week, has nothing to do with the reality of what religious women do. They use birth control.
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September 18, 2018 by Rishe Groner
A Prayer to Forgive Yourself on Yom Kippur
(See last year’s prayer here.)
Yom Kippur is here, and I churn.
Like my foremothers, who stood at the helm of domestic technologies
Spinning
Weaving
Churning
Kneading
I feel my insides move and dilate.
It’s hard to think straight.
Am I here to offer apology?
To demand pardoning?
To ask forgiveness?
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September 13, 2018 by Rabbi Joshua Stanton
As a Male Rabbi, I Plan to “Lean In” to Childcare
This year will be a year of profound change in my life – and the opportunity for my spouse, Mirah, and me to change minhag, the customs of our people. It is no secret that clergy in committed relationships often crater their partner’s careers. I have seen colleagues use holy words as pretense to ignore their partner’s needs – and at my worst, might have done so myself. It is narcissism wrapped in the language of Torah.
We denigrate both ourselves and our tradition when we demean the people to whom we 
should be most committed – especially when we do it in the name of God. When people decry organized religion, it is our hypocrisy as clergy that gives them legitimacy.
I enter this Rosh Hashanah, Jewish New Year, filled with trepidation about what I might do, or fail to do, when a new baby enters our lives. We both plan to continue working and will do our best to co-parent. But I fear that my failure to lean into parenting will ruin Mirah’s career.
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