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The Lilith Blog
February 16, 2017 by Alice Sparberg Alexiou
Ivanka Trump Is No Woman of Valor
Photo Credit: Michael Vadon
Ivanka Trump knows what her father is. How could she not? When she was nine, he jubilantly dumped her mother, Ivana, in front of all the tabloids for another, younger blonde, Marla Maples. He discarded Maples five years later (and perhaps discarded their daughter, Tiffany, as well), six years after that married Melania, and all along the way grabbed pussies, insulted women because of their looks, called a breastfeeding mother “disgusting,” and so forth. The man’s boorishness knew no bounds. So how can Ivanka, the self-proclaimed feminist daughter, not have contempt for him?
On the contrary: she craves his approval. She co-hosted “The Apprentice” with him. At the Republican convention last summer, she told the whole world that Trump is “a man I have loved and respected my entire life.”
So what is the real story here? Is she afraid of him? He’s a nasty guy: look at all those Republican men who hate him but don’t have the guts to stand up to him. Or is she afraid that if she doesn’t act the obedient daughter he’ll take away all those perks that go along with being Donald Trump’s daughter? But Ivanka has her own business—her clothing line doubles as vehicle to promote herself as the voice of working mothers everywhere—and her own income. Plus, she married into the wealthy Kushner family. So she doesn’t need her father any more to keep living her glamorous life.
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February 15, 2017 by Cantor Barbara Ostfeld
“Fat Talk”: Then and Now
I had always believed that my numerical weight was also a measure of my professional dignity, my diligence and my self-control. I’d struggled with my weight since early childhood and had landed my first senior cantorial position immediately after having lost 40 pounds. That was back in 1976.
I assumed that losing weight and gaining a pulpit were connected.
Since I thought about my weight constantly, I figured that, despite my best intentions, my young daughters did, too.
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February 14, 2017 by Amy Stone
Upstanders
“We Stand for Refugees,” photo by Amy Stone
Rain, sleet, slush under foot, lower Manhattan’s tall buildings cloaked in fog.
Undeterred, hundreds of men, women and children turned out for the Day of Jewish Action for Refugees called by HIAS this past Sunday (Feb. 12). The rally was one of some dozen across the country.
I was unprepared for my emotional response – unlike anything I felt at the Women’s March in Washington. Tears triggered by the middle-aged woman silently holding a sign with the childhood passport picture of her mother – it could have been Anne Frank. And the message: Donald Trump, This is my mom, with her swastika covered passport. Germany 1937. Would you let her in? Jewish Values. American Values. We stand up for refugees.
The rally in Battery Park was just across the harbor from the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. But the anchoring landmark was Castle Clinton, where HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) welcomed Jews to America in 1881. HIAS has gone on to help settle newcomers to America regardless of where they come from or what they believe.
In the words of HIAS VP Rabbi Jennie Rosenn, “For the first time in history, the Jewish people are not refugees. We are a free and empowered people in America and around the world. And we have a role to play – a responsibility we must live up to. We are called by our mandate to welcome the stranger and to love the stranger. In cities across the country today, Jews are holding rallies, vigils and actions. Together, we are raising our voices up to say that we must keep our doors open to people who are fleeing for their lives.”
For more information: http://www.hias.org/day-of-action.
Check out these powerful images.
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February 13, 2017 by Shira Naomi
My IUD: A Story of Revolution
Prologue
Birth control and I have a sticky history.
The first (read: only) time I brought up birth control pills with my dad—in high school, years before I’d actually have sex with a male-bodied person—he responds,
“Well, you know the side effects, don’t you?”
I listed the typical suspects: weight gain, hormonal fluctuations… He cut me off.
“No. You can’t get pregnant.”
To use one of my people’s favorite expressions, Oy.
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February 10, 2017 by admin
Recipes for Solace
There are many ways to respond to our current political moment—phoning your representatives, protesting at airports, screaming into a pillow. But sometimes, we just need to decompress and eat comfort food. Here, four Lilith contributors share what they cook up when in need of emotional sustenance. Have your own recipe for solace? Tell us about it at info@lilith.org.
When I had my first inklings on election night of what the outcome was going to be, I abandoned the TV in my living room for my kitchen and made myself pancakes to sustain me to watch through to the bitter end.
Here’s the current iteration of my Whole Grain Pancakes. (more…)
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February 9, 2017 by Devorie Kreiman
The Wig Over My Eyes
It was a sliver of a moment, one that slipped away before I realized how much it mattered.
It was 9:30 at night. My writing workshop had just ended. I’d read bits from my memoir about loss and soul and faith in God. I was slipping my laptop back into its case, when a few of the women in the group came up to me.
“Are you Hassidic?” “Yes.” I said.
“Don’t Hassidic women cover their hair?”
And all I had to do was say, “Yes. I cover my hair. I’m wearing a wig.”
Instead I smiled without saying anything. The moment passed. We all went home.
It niggled at me — the question and the blank space before my non-answer. I’d let the opportunity go. I’d let the woman who asked the question assume that while I was Hassidic, I didn’t cover my hair. I thought about it all the way home, and then for days afterwards. Why hadn’t I told her that I was wearing a wig?
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February 8, 2017 by Lisa Greene
What Do You Wear To Get Divorced?
I stood in front of the mirror talking to my father and my grandmother, debating what to wear.
Grandma Ruth said, “You need pearls with that, dear.”
Dad reminded me to put on lipstick. “Look like a million bucks! What about an elegant black suit?”
I argued, “I can NOT wear black!”
It was a remarkable conversation since both my father and grandmother are dead. Yet it was as if they were standing with me that morning, in front of the full-length mirror in my linen closet. And thank goodness for Dad and Grandma’s guidance, because no one tells you what to wear to get divorced.
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February 7, 2017 by Amelia Dornbush
What Kashrut Taught Me About Being an Atlanta Falcons Fan
Atlanta Falcons
I am fifth-generation Jewish Atlantan. My great-grandmother was a child when Leo Frank was lynched. My grandfather was sent to Christian school and converted to Christianity as a young child, actively working to make sure no one discovered his Jewish roots. To his then-chagrin, my father did, and began attending synagogue in the same place that past generations of Dornbushes had. The Temple, whose walls are full of old photographs of my family members who died well before I was born, was where I officially converted.
I love Atlanta. The city is in my muscle memory and in my subconscious. It’s been five years since I lived in Georgia, but I can still walk through the backroads around Emory without getting lost. I sometimes wake up craving cheese grits from Georgia Homegrown. My nightmare—a recurring dream of driving off a highway overpass—was spawned by Atlanta’s heavily congested interstates.
Atlanta builds and rebuilds, constantly reinventing itself, never quite acknowledging or healing the scars of its past. I know the city not just by its current places, but by the places it used to have. Ponce City Market I know also as City Hall East. For my Dad, it’s the Old Sears Building. He told me that the shopping center across from Ponce City Market/City Hall East/The Old Sears Building, which I know as The-Place-That-Used-to-Have-a-Borders-and-Still-Has-a-Whole-Foods was home to a minor league baseball team, called the Atlanta Crackers, when my grandfather was a child.
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February 6, 2017 by Yona Zeldis McDonough
Reclaiming the Character Lilith–for a Young Audience
Illustration by Arna Baartz
Lilith, this publication’s namesake, doesn’t seem the most likely subject for a children’s book. And yet Monette Chilson, an award-winning writer whose work “celebrates the feminine in God and God in the feminine” has chosen to examine and explain the mythological figure for a young audience. Chilson, author of Sophia Rising: Awakening Your Sacred Wisdom Through Yoga has also contributed to numerous anthologies as well as yoga publications. Her quest along spiritual paths led her to feature the character of Lilith in this book, where her haunting, elegant text has been paired with Arna Baartz’s lush and colorful illustrations.
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February 3, 2017 by Amy Stone
Film: ‘Heather Booth: Changing the World’ Don’t Despair. Organize!
Photo credit: Shira Gorelick, taken at the Women’s March in Washington, D.C.
Filmmaker Lilly Rivlin hit it right on this one.
“Heather Booth: Changing the World”—the final film in Rivlin’s trilogy of activist Jewish women (Grace Paley, Esther Broner) premiered in New York at the Manhattan JCC just before the Trump inauguration. The documentary of a woman whose lifelong work has been organizing for progressive change ends with the date November 9, 2016 (11/9 – the eerie reversal of 9/11) filling the screen, the date of Trump’s electoral college victory. Then Trump’s face fills the screen, and we hear Booth’s voice: “We will organize. We will stand up.”
The three-year project was a collaboration between filmmaker Rivlin (hard to believe she’s now 80) and Booth, now 71. Booth insisted that the film be a tool for organizing. And it is.
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