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The Lilith Blog
February 1, 2017 by Sheila Shotwell
Goodbye to Good Buys
“I need to pish,” she says, and hoists herself from the recliner. She grabs hold of the handle on her walker, and swivels around. Her tush plops down on the seat with a thud. Then she scoots to the bathroom, using her heels to propel forward.
Once she sits on the toilet, I make haste to tidy her room. I remove the dead flowers from the vase on the windowsill. The rotten, slimy stems are so stinky, I put them back in the vase.
I realize it’s a job that requires the sink. I hide the vase, so she won’t argue with me about the fact they’re dead. I shake the crumbs from her towel bib, smooth the wrinkles from the sheepskin on her chair, and with a tissue, pull the hairs from her comb.
I hunt for the week’s menu, so we can talk about alternative choices. For those days when pork is the entree.
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February 1, 2017 by Barbara Stock
Safe Travels
At the Women’s March in Washington, D.C. Photo credit: Shira Gorelick.
“Stay safe,” I repeated to everyone I knew traveling to The March. “Just keep yourself safe.” My caution surprised some but images of the ’60’s were haunting my sleep.
1963: I rode south with classmates as an exchange student for a few days at Hampton College, Virginia, a “Negro College.” We attended classes, slept in the women’s dorm, participated in discussions with students at the home of the college president. I rode the bus downtown with my roommate.
“Can’t we sit together?” I asked as she pointed me to a seat and then sat herself further to the back.
“No. I’m not looking to be killed. I’m buying material for my wedding dress.”
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January 31, 2017 by Eleanor J. Bader
“Not too long ago, some of the people who broke U.S. law to come into the country were Jews.”
As Donald Trump moves forward with plans to build a racist barrier between the U.S. and Mexico, signs Executive Orders barring most refugees from entering the country, and temporarily halts the issuance of visas for people from Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, many of us are angry and ashamed.
Historian Libby Garland, a professor at Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn, NY, shares these sentiments. At the same time, as a longtime researcher specializing in immigration policy, she is able to put today’s conservative momentum into a broader political context.
Her first book, After They Closed the Gates: Jewish Illegal Immigration to the United States, 1921-1965 [University of Chicago Press, 2014] looks at the impetus behind two exclusionary quota laws passed by Congress in 1921 and 1924 that were meant to limit the number of newcomers entering the United States. “The quota laws grew out of a widespread belief that some kinds of foreigners could be kept out of the nation, and out of a certainty that these groups could be recognized, counted and stopped from entering,” she writes.
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January 30, 2017 by Yona Zeldis McDonough
“The Fortunate Ones” — An Excerpt from Ellen Umansky’s New Novel
Back in summer 2011, Lilith published Take the A Train to Scotland, from a novel-in-progress by Ellen Umansky. The novel, now called The Fortunate Ones, has undergone a sea change (Umansky says that the section that appeared in Lilith did not make it into the final version of the novel) and is poised to make its debut on February 14.
The story begins in 1939 in Vienna, and as the specter of war looms over Europe, Rose Zimmer’s parents are desperate to flee. Unable to escape themselves, they manage to secure passage for their young daughter on a kindertransport, and send her to live with strangers in England. When the war is finally over in 1946, a grief-stricken Rose attempts to build a life for herself. Alone in London, she becomes increasingly focused on trying to retrieve a bit of her lost childhood: the Chaim Soutine painting her mother had held precious.
Many years later, the painting finds its way to America. In modern-day Los Angeles, Lizzie Goldstein has returned home for her father’s funeral. Newly single and unsure of her path, she carries a burden of guilt that cannot be displaced. Years ago, as a teenager, Lizzie threw a party at her father’s house with unexpected but far-reaching consequences. The Soutine painting that she loved and had provided lasting comfort to her after her own mother had died was stolen, and has never been recovered. This painting will bring Lizzie and Rose together and ignite an unexpected friendship that excavates painful and long-held secrets. Below is an excerpt from The Fortunate Ones:
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January 27, 2017 by Beth Kissileff
Why I’m Calling Out Jared and Ivanka
Photo credit Michael Vadon
Sometimes, it is not hard to figure out the right thing to do. When a tyrant tells you to do something wrong, resist.
The midwives did it, refusing to kill Hebrew babies. Why? Because they feared God (Exodus 1:17). Regardless of your theological stance, one has to acknowledge that one path to bravery is the understanding that there is something larger and broader beyond whatever a human tyrant demands that commands respect for values that go beyond the mere will of a despot.
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January 23, 2017 by admin
The Women’s Marches: A Special Digital Section
Reconnecting in D.C.—after 40 Years
In her twenties, they all lived together in a communal house in the District. Now, four decades later, they (and their landlord) are reunited in the nation’s capital.
Jewish Feminists Report Back from 18 Marches
From Anchorage to London.
A Rabbi’s Benediction from Sedona, Arizona
Sedona! Verde Valley! Hundreds turned out.
At Columbus Circle, January 19, 2017
Two nights before. A dispatch from a college student.
“Bring Your Teaspoon”
A rousing speech delivered by Rabbi Sandy Eisenberg Sasso in Indianapolis, Indiana.
A Picture is Worth 1000 words
Photographs submitted by readers from Women’s Marches around the United States.
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January 18, 2017 by Laura Bernstein-Machlay
Election-Week Thoughts and Goodbyes
I am a poor lover of the moon/I see it all at once and that’s it/for me and the moon—Leonard Cohen
Leonard Cohen (Nov 10, 2016)
Who thought this news, brutal though it is, would so surprise me at this point—what’s another layer of terrible over the terrible, right? But of course it does. So I’m shocked and shattered yet again. I’d already been moaning his Everybody Knows at the back of my throat, since I grasped what we as a nation had done—what we’d undone—in our most recent election. Since I had to admit that others, so very many others, greeted the same results with glee, and how that baffles me to the marrow of my bones. So I went on humming to distract myself which didn’t really work, an endless loop of everybody’s talking to their pockets, everybody wants a box of chocolates and a long stemmed rose. Then this morning, the NPR report, the perfunctory statement delivered in mournful tones.
You heard? asks Husband-Steven from his perch on the couch.
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January 17, 2017 by admin
Lilith Magazine at Women’s March
Photo Credit: Shira Gorelick.
Lilith magazine—independent, Jewish & frankly feminist—will be present at the Women’s March on Washington on Saturday, January 21, co-sponsoring Shabbat activities at the 6th & I Historic Synagogue in Washington the evening before the march and Saturday morning, where participants will gather to march as a Jewish cohort toward the U.S. Capitol.
In honor of this occasion, Lilith will be offering discounted subscriptions at $18 to anyone who participates in a women’s march, in Washington D.C. or in cities around the world. For further information, email info@lilith.org.
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January 16, 2017 by Arlene Jaroslaw
If He Was a She
Nov. 12, 2016
Donald J. Trump had just been elected President of the United States of America and my brain was in overdrive; a bottomless pit of despair. For the first time that I could remember, sleep eluded me. Harry suggested I try a sleeping pill, and though I resisted at first, in the end, I relented and found myself giving in to a tranquility that wrapped itself around me like a benevolent lover only to be betrayed a few hours later by a fitful and disturbing dream; a dream that moves the calendar back and the clock from evening to early morning.
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THE DREAM
Harry, always an early riser, has brought the newspapers in from our front door and they now lay scattered on our dining room table with the news section opened to the editorial page. I sit, sipping my morning coffee resolved to ignore any news and just get on with breakfast. But the headline in front of me is too toxic to ignore.
EDITORIAL: May 7, 2016 A28
A Jezebel Nominee for Highest Office in the Land
We all thought that the race in this year’s Presidential primary campaign could not get any dirtier. Well, it could and it has. Samantha Drew, who first served as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and then Attorney General under President Garner before throwing her name into the ring is under pressure to step down from her position as the favored nominee of her party following the release of a video in which Ms. Drew is heard bragging about her predatory sexual exploitations of young men in her employ, including under age adolescents. Her depravity is almost too graphic for print journalism. However, the Editorial Board of this newspaper has determined that, in this case, with so much at stake in our national election, fair and factual reporting eclipses decorum.
In the video we hear Ms. Drew speaking to an associate who is obviously enjoying and encouraging her titillating revelations. Ms. Drew boasts of her power as Attorney General. “Those young boys on my staff? There were times I just had to kiss them. I couldn’t help myself. One of them had a 15-year-old brother who was performing in an all male dance recital at his high school. The family invited me to the recital and before the curtain went up, while the kids were dressing for their roles, I just waltzed into their dressing area. Some of those boys were really hot!” Her associate marvels at this, “And they didn’t say anything?” “No, of course not. When you’re important you can do anything; even grab their cocks!” Then there is more laughter.
This from the woman who purports to be the leader and the moral compass of the free world. Given the power of the President, what further lecheries would she be capable of? Ms. Drew’s campaign manager would have us believe this was merely “girl talk.” We say “no!”
No to such sugar coated palliatives and no to her ambitions. For make no mistake about it; Samantha Drew threatens the very sanctity of womanhood which holds that fair gender to the highest human standards. Ms. Drew in no way befits the scriptural injunction of a woman of valor.
The world awaits the words of President Garner who will be holding a press conference at noon today. Ms. Drew’s husband, Mr. Hadley Garrison Drew, who served as Ambassador to France under President Moore and who is now Chief Advisor to the Open World Foundation, which financially supports civil society groups around the world, is also expected to make a public statement this evening regarding this turn of events. Their two children, Sarah and Alexander are studying abroad. Ms. Drew, aided by her record of public service devoted mainly to underserved children and families, the family’s long established connections to the country’s political and financial power brokers and the know-how of her well oiled campaign strategists, has managed to survive other questionable aspects of her past; namely; Mr. Drew’s past marital infidelities, the infamous Blackwater scandal and her too cozy relationship with corporate America. But these new disclosures add a dimension of indecency that cannot be overlooked.
The good people of this country will not abide a sexual predator as President. The nation, indeed, the world is convulsed in outcries of censure. Protesters are spilling out into the streets of every city and hamlet; from east to west and north to south. Never before, in modern campaign history has there been such an outpouring of public condemnation. The high moral ground has even eclipsed party loyalty.
We join politicians from both sides of the aisle, spokespersons from the “alt-right,” libertarians, socialists; people of faith and non-believers alike including; ironically (but as yet unconfirmed) His Eminence, Charles Cardinal Murphy of the Archdiocese of Ms. Drew’s home state in demanding that Ms. Drew step down and allow the three other well qualified nominees of her party to get on with the business of campaigning without the taint of immorality hanging in the background.
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Nov. 13, 2016
The next morning I awaken from my dream into the real world and a real nightmare. A sexual predator actually is President Elect of the United States.
Ms. Jaroslaw, a retired clinical social worker, mother of four and grandmother of 10, battled over her 81+ years for civil rights, a woman’s right to choose and gender equality. Her memories and lessons learned from the “old” Bronx strengthen her resolve to keep fighting in the days ahead.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Lilith Magazine.
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