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The Lilith Blog
September 15, 2016 by Yael Massen
Dual Citizen
Dual Citizen
Haifa, Israel
The sea is warmest at night
The sea is for soldiers and the old
The soldiers pull American girls into the sea
The night is for girls to find their soldiers
The soldiers find paradise in the central bus station
The central bus station is by the sea
The central bus station is for going home
There is no bus that can bring me home
The buses never arrive on time
The old avoid the buses
The drivers do not wait for the old to find seats
The most dangerous part of the bus is the bus
The bus already moves
The soldiers do not take off their backpacks
The bus poles are for more than steadying
The soldiers’ hands always find their way over mine
The soldier’s hands have lifted me over his head
The soldier in the club does not put me down
The American girls all love to dance like this
The buses take so long to arrive at night
The bus watches its riders
The bloodshot driver watches the road
The American girls are taught who to watch
The most dangerous part of the bus is the bus
The radio on the bus says a bus exploded
The driver takes the coins from my hand
The American girl is nervous because of a brown man
The buses do not explode throughout the week
The American girls return home throughout the week
The soldiers are not seen throughout the week
The empty bus drags the old up the mountain
The view from my window is in darkness
Yael Massen is an MFA Candidate in Poetry at Indiana University and former Nonfiction Editor and Associate Poetry Editor of Indiana Review. Her work is forthcoming in DIAGRAM, Hobart, and The Journal, and can be found within the pages and URLS of Mid-American Review, Southern Indiana Review, Ninth Letter Online, and Day One. She is a recipient of the 2016 Vera Meyer Strube Academy of American Poets Award, the 2016 Kraft-Kinsey Award from the Kinsey Institute, and was a 2015 TENT Fellow in Creative Writing at the Yiddish Book Center. She volunteers as an On-Scene Advocate and a Legal Advocate at Middle Way House, a domestic violence shelter in Bloomington, Indiana, where she lives, works, and walks.
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September 15, 2016 by Ellen Steinbaum
The shiva rice pudding
The shiva rice pudding
was the only one I ever made
that turned out wrong—watery
beneath the cinnamon-sugar topping.
And I forgot the raisins. She
made it year after year in the old red
wedding gift baking dish, then
in the new red baking dish she bought
after the first one broke.
It’s always more or less about the food—
the chicken soup, the casseroles, and, yes,
rice pudding, her mother’s recipe.
Still, what else can we do but bring out these
pale reminders year after year and set out plates?
Ellen Steinbaum is the author of three poetry collections. Her work has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize and is included in Garrison Keillor’s anthology, “Good Poems, American Places,” “The Widows’ Handbook,” and “A Mighty Room: a collection of poems written in Emily Dickinson’s bedroom.” An award-winning journalist and former Boston Globe columnist, she writes a blog, “Reading and Writing and the Occasional Recipe” which can be found at her web site, ellensteinbaum.com.
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September 12, 2016 by Stephanie Baric
The Unregretted Decisions of Actor Mira Furlan
Mira Furlan, an iconic Yugoslavian film and theater actor, came to the U.S. in 1992 as an exile, driven out of her native land by a toxic blend of anti-Semitism and misogyny.
I was working as a journalist in Zagreb at the time. When I read these attacks against Furlan, including one titled “The Hard Life of an Easy Woman,” I felt physically ill. I am a woman of Croatian and Jewish descent and this was the first time in my life that I’d encountered anti-Semitism and misogyny at such a personal level.
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September 9, 2016 by Amelia Dornbush
Are You a Jewish Studies Scholar with a Baby? Here’s Good News
wecometolearn
When scholar Andrea Lieber and her husband were at the early years of their academic careers, attending the annual Association for Jewish Studies conference meant “we just roamed the hallways with our six-month-old baby and connected with other scholar/parents on the margins of the conference,” recalled Lieber. This was 2001, and there was no on-site child care like the buddle nursery group. At this year’s conference, parents who are also professional academics will have another option.
Last week, the Association for Jewish Studies (AJS) announced that, after more than a decade of organizing by affiliated academics, it will offer highly subsidized child care for attendees at its 2016 conference, to be held December 18 – 20 in San Diego.
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September 6, 2016 by Rochelle Newman
Tenements and Air Rights: A Cautionary Tale
Veronica ML
In Welsh, it’s called Hiraeth. There is no English equivalent. It’s a nostalgia one feels, a homesickness for a place that doesn’t exist anymore. For me, it’s how I feel when I visit my old neighborhood, New York’s Lower East Side. I haven’t lived in Manhattan for over 20 years, but I have been back and forth enough to adjust to and even appreciate changes. On the West Side, The High Line is change at its best. I’m even excited about the recently approved Lowline, an underground park-like experience that repurposes an abandoned trolley terminal at the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge. My anxiety over what feels like an Etch-a-Sketch erasure of an historic community wasn’t triggered by things happening below the pavement. My sense of loss really kicked in when I read that Katz’s Delicatessen had sold its air rights.
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September 6, 2016 by admin
Michal Nachmany: Lower East Side Communities–in Mixed Media Art
What: There is an evening reception for Artist Michal Nachmany’s new exhibit called “Three Balconies and a Door.” This exhibit reimagines the histories of found objects as mixed media art pieces are placed between three different balconies. Each of these balconies represents a community in the Lower East Side of New York City.
Where: The Jewish Communal Fund and Ernest Rubenstein Galleries at Manny Cantor Center. 197 East Broadway, New York, New York, 10002, USA.
When: Monday, September 12, 2016. 6:30-8:00 pm. The exhibit is on view from August 30-November 1.
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August 29, 2016 by Eleanor J. Bader
Community Colleges Are Often Ridiculed. This One-Woman Show Prods Us to Value Their Students More.
ronnalevy.com
Ask most middle-class Americans to conjure up images of college students and they may picture Frisbee-throwing kids on a campus green, political protests, all-night cram sessions in a smoky room and beer. Lots of beer. But for the 50 percent of U.S. students who begin undergraduate life at a community college, more often than not commuting to school from their childhood bedrooms, the campus stereotype is completely disconnected from reality.
And actor-playwright-teacher Ronna J. Levy [ronnalevy.com] wants to be sure you know this.
Her one-woman play “This Gonna Be On the Test, Miss?” introduces audiences to the diverse students who’ve found their way into the developmental – sometimes called remedial – English classes she has taught for more than two decades. It also offers an insightful look into the joys and frustrations of teaching in this setting.
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August 18, 2016 by Rachel Russell
Learning to Feel My Worth as a Jew — In Spite of the Gawks and Sneers
Suzie Tremmel
In typical Catholic-school fashion, I began resisting my religious education in middle school. But while my teachers might have thought differently, I never meant to disparage Catholicism. I asked questions because I craved answers, not because I wanted to be confrontational or facilitate classroom disruption. I had misgivings about Jesus, and longed for a more nuanced relationship with G-d that didn’t fixate on sin and the afterlife.
During my sophomore year at a secular high school, a friend invited me to her family’s Passover Seder. After one night of following along in the Haggadah and listening to everyone chant in Hebrew, I felt something inside me roar to life. I had never felt so enthusiastic in my 16 Christian years, and drove home afterwards trying to hold onto the spark of fascination, worried that it might somehow escape. It never occurred to me that Judaism was something I could join; I resigned myself to the fact that in spite of my deep admiration and curiosity, my relationship with Judaism would be limited to admiring it from the outside. When I finally learned that I could convert, that spark that I’d felt before grew even stronger. But my omnipresent anxiety made it seem too good to be true—almost too easy.
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August 17, 2016 by Ana D. Tailorman
Tattooing Family Memories
“They are beautiful,” an elderly relative once admitted to me at a family gathering, “but now you have to find a nice Jewish man who will accept both you and your tattoos.”
I thanked her and laughed, genuinely surprised her reaction was not as harsh as I had imagined. Still, I wanted to play it safe and avoid any awkwardness, so I redirected our conversation accordingly.
While these words were coming from a good place, and from someone who values my happiness and wellbeing, they implied several things. First, that my tattoos are a detriment to my femininity. Second, that it will be difficult to find a man of my culture who will marry me with my now tainted skin. And, finally, that I am even looking for a man.
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August 11, 2016 by Amelia Dornbush
This Jewish Women’s Foundation New Grant Policy Is Already Spurring Change
On August 4, the Jewish Women’s Foundation of New York (JWFNY) published an editorial in The Forward explaining a dramatic new policy to award grants only to organizations offering their employees at least four weeks of paid parental leave.
The response on social media was positive––and swift. And, significantly, the editorial also caught the attention of employers. “Three organizations have already talked to me saying that they’re going to revisit their policy,” says Stephanie Blumenkranz, Assistant Director of JWFNY.
The changes decided on by the JWFNY board were driven, says Blumenkranz, by a desire to take concrete action. “We’ve advocated for paid parental leave for a few years now, and for us to be true advocates we can’t just talk about it. We have to do something about it. Because we’re a foundation, we felt that the best way to bring about change was with our grantmaking dollars.”
Julie Sissman, a JWFNY member who was part of crafting the new policy, noted the significance of specifying parental leave as opposed to just maternity leave. “It is important to be bold and not stand on the sidelines of the national conversation about parental leave. To achieve gender equity we need systems in place that break women and men and people of all gender identities out of gender-stereotyped silos and assumptions. All employees starting their lives as new parents need equal support. Paid parental leave is a key component of creating real change,” says Sissman.
Blumenkranz called the response to the new policy very positive. “A lot of people, especially in the Jewish community, felt like this was really needed.”
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