Nothing New Under the Sun, The Lilith Blog

June 6, 2014 by Jill Finkelstein

Lego’s New Female Scientist Characters!! Did They Take Lilith to Heart?

Credit: Ellen Kooijman/ Lego Ideas

The Lilith blog has legs! Also arms and brains. Check out this news, and read a Lilith blogger’s advice to young scientists. 

Link Roundups, Nothing New Under the Sun

October 29, 2010 by Jill Finkelstein

Link Roundup: Breast Cancer Awareness

Everyday, we come across interesting articles and wonderful resources for Jewish feminists. Now we are bringing them directly to you in a new feature of the Lilith blog, our weekly Link Roundup. Each week we’ll post highlights from around the web. And, we want you to get involved! If there’s anything you want to be sure we know about, email us or leave a message in the comments section below.

Start here with a peek into the Lilith’s rich archives in this week’s special edition of Nothing New Under the Sun! For a look at Lilith’s unique take on breast cancer awareness, click here to download our 1995 article entitled “MASTECTOMY: Twelve Months after Surgery A Bathing Ritual for the End of Mourning.”

On Thursday, Jerusalem hosted its first-ever breast cancer race, sponsored by Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation. In honor of the event, the walls of Old City Jerusalem were lit up with pink lights. [Washington Post]

As it turns out, the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation and Israel have had a strong bond for a number of years. Israel was awarded the foundation’s first international research grant 16 years ago. The foundation has also invested $2 million in several research facilities in Israel, including Weizmann Institute of Science, Hebrew University-Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, Beit Natan and Life’s Door. [The Fundermentalist]

Over at The Sisterhood, Chanel Dubofsky explains her concerns in her blog post entitled “Why I hate Breast Cancer Awareness Month.” She cites Barbara Ehrenreich, who wrote, “To some extent, pink-ribbon culture has replaced feminism as a focus of female identity and solidarity” in her 2009 essay, “Not So Pretty in Pink.” Debra Nussbaum Cohen goes on to add that “ribbon culture as a whole — and its sister statements, the cause-related Facebook status update and the endlessly-forwarded email — have for many replaced meaningful social activism.” [The Sisterhood]

The Jewish Week reviews a new book called Previvors: Facing the Breast Cancer Gene and Making Life-Changing Decisions, by Dina Roth Port. The book documents 5 high-risk women who take extreme precautionary health measures to prevent breast cancer. The article notes that breast cancer is more prevalent among Jewish women because, “Ashkenazi Jews have a 10 times greater chance of carrying either mutated BRCA gene than the general population.” [The Jewish Week]

–Jillian Finkelstein

Nothing New Under the Sun

October 13, 2010 by admin

Nothing New Under The Sun:It's a Nobel Kinda Day

What Lilith publishes really has legs! Just look! Check out this item from today’s news, and then read what Lilith said earlier on this very subject.

The dust is starting to settle after the annual flurry surrounding the awarding of Nobel Prizes. From the Medicine award for IVF (we’ve written about that!), to noting the blatant absence of women among the winners, this year gave us lots to think about. The literature prize, especially, put us in mind to re-visit Evelyn Torton Beck’s sharp-as-a-tack 1979 review of I. B. Singer’s Misogyny. Enjoy!

Nothing New Under the Sun

September 22, 2010 by admin

Nothing New Under the Sun: The Enduring Fight for Abortion Rights

What Lilith publishes really has legs! Just look! Check out this item from today’s news, and then read what Lilith said earlier on this very subject.

Whoa! What a buzz is in the air already this election season! When Planned Parenthood’s reaction to the New York State primaries fell into our hands, it reminded us of a few articles from Lilith’s long history of rigorous reporting on the state of pro-choice politics. For just one example, have a look at editor in chief Susan Weidman Schneider’s 1990 piece, “The Anti-Choice Movement: Bad News for Jews.” The more things change…?

Nothing New Under the Sun

September 7, 2010 by admin

Nothing New Under the Sun: In Ruth Gruber’s Own Powerful Words

What Lilith publishes really has legs! Just look! Check out this item from today’s news, and then read what Lilith said earlier on this very subject.

A British soldier led me down a flight of slippery stairs into the prison cage, into which hundreds of half-naked men, women and children were wedged. It was a black and white drawing of the inferno. Blindly, I shot photos of their agony. Back on the dock, a young Haganah woman standing next to me said, “Now you will see the birth of the Jewish State.”

This is just one of the many stunning images which appeared in Ruth Gruber’s 1988 article in Lilith Magazine, “40 Years of Rescue.” Now you can get the full text here! Gruber is featured in this recent New York Times piece, and is the subject of a brand new documentary film opening at the Angelika in New York on September 10. And a happy upcoming 99th birthday to Ruth Gruber!

Nothing New Under the Sun

July 7, 2010 by admin

Nothing New Under the Sun: Mmmm… Delicious!

What Lilith publishes really has legs! Just look! Check out this item from today’s news, and then read what Lilith said earlier on this very subject.

“Men eat meat, women eat chocolate”—at least, that’s what Riddhi Shah writes at salon.com this week. But what happens when the already complex relationship between food and gender is complicated even further by romance—and religion? Find out what Lilith contributor Cynthia Graber thinks, in her 2009 feature, “When Food and Love Collide.”

Nothing New Under the Sun

July 1, 2010 by admin

Nothing New Under the Sun: The Body Politic

What Lilith publishes really has legs! Just look! Check out this item from today’s news, and then read what Lilith said earlier on this very subject.

ABC’s new family drama, HUGE, has sparked some great out-of-the-box conversations about representations of the body in the mainstream media. As Ginia Bellafante writes in this week’s New York Times, HUGE “stands in some sympathy with a rebellion mounted against so many hours of ‘The Biggest Loser'”–a reality show and weight-loss competition.

Here at Lilith, we’re excited to hear these murmurs circulating because, as Barbara Gingold has written in our pages, “The body itself is a woman’s form of language.” Critical thinking about questions of body image, weight, dieting, and size-ism has long been important to Jewish feminists on the front lines of progressive thought and on the front pages of our magazine. For a sampling of Lilith writing on the subject, check out “Fat Talk” from 2001, and then browse through the treasures in Lilith’s rich archives for related articles. And tell us what you think! What have your own experiences been like?

Nothing New Under the Sun

June 23, 2010 by admin

Nothing New Under the Sun: Now with More Shakespeare!

What Lilith publishes really has legs! Just look! Check out this item from today’s news, and then read what Lilith said earlier on this very subject.

“God has given you one face, and you make yourself another,” quoth he—Hamlet, that is. But who gave Hamlet his face? Michael Posen raises the question this week in “Unmasking Shakespeare.”

Now check out Lilith’s 2008 take on this abiding mystery. “Alas, I am a woman, friendless, hopeless?” Maybe not so hopeless, after all!

Nothing New Under the Sun

June 15, 2010 by admin

Nothing New Under the Sun: Women in the Domestic Workplace

What Lilith publishes really has legs! Just look! Check out this item from today’s news, and then read what Lilith said earlier on this very subject.

In this New York Times article from June 2, 2010, “For Nannies, Hope for Workplace Protection,” Russ Buettner reports on workplace rights for domestic workers in New York.

For a Jewish feminist take on the issue, have a look at Lilith’s 2006 article, “Who Cleans Your House?” in which Alice Alexiou writes about acting ethically and responsibly when you hire household help.

And for a slightly different slant on some similar questions, inform yourself with Lilith’s poignant special section from 2002, “Jewish Girls and African-American Nannies.”

And when you’re done with that, how about “Gringa Guilt and Housework,” writer Janice Eidus’s incisive look at the intersection between cross-cultural adoption and “women’s work.”

Tell us what you think in the comments section below! And remember to send us your own suggestions for articles from Lilith’s archives which are a good match for what’s in the news now. We’ll use your suggestions and include your name.

Nothing New Under the Sun

May 11, 2010 by admin

Introducing Nothing New Under the Sun

Sometimes it feels like there’s nothing all that new in the news. Many of the subjects Lilith has tackled–in more than 30 years of reporting on Jewish women’s issues–continue to appear and reappear in the headlines long after you heard it here first.

So…tapping into these “firsts,” we’re bringing you this new column on The Lilith Blog: Nothing New Under the Sun, where you’ll get to see current news stories paired with some of Lilith’s original reporting on the same topic.

Breaking news often reminds us of articles in Lilith’s archival treasure-trove, and we’re excited to share these connections with you. We hope you share them with us, too! Send us your nominations for stories you see now in the headlines (or blog feeds) that you first read about in Lilith. We’ll use your suggestions and include your name.

To kick off this column, here’s a headline that just appeared in The New York Times: “Payment Offers to Egg Donors Prompt Scrutiny.” The article explores whether compensation for egg donors–especially those young college students coping with money problems–might inspire some “to donate against their own best interests,” especially since the offered compensation often exceeds $5,000.

Also, check out Gabrielle Birkner’s piece in The Wall Street Journal: “Fertility Treatment Gets More Complicated.”

Sound familiar? Lilith’s groundbreaking Fall 2001 story, “Jewish Women’s Eggs: A Hot Commodity in the IVF Marketplace,” covered much of this territory nearly 9 years ago! Download the original article and compare for yourself!

Do you have thoughts on the demand for Jewish women’s eggs? The repeating nature of history? Please leave your comments below!