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Fall/Winter 83/5744
In this issue: Porn in the Promised Land: is Israel awash in pornography? The wounds of war in Israel: a generation of burnt women. Poetry by Israeli women and Marge Piercy. Raising children of intermarriage as Jews: five parents tell how. Are feminists changing Judaism? Answers from two leaders of Ezrat Nashim, the game-changing Jewish feminist collective.
Porn in the Promised land
by Judith Bat-Ada
From nudie shoe ads in "family" magazines to exploitative blue movies for kibbutz couples, Israel has moved far from the egalitarian ideals of its founders. The country is now awash in a sea of pornographic images of women. Billboards, magazine layouts—even TV—feature material that degrades, insults and threatens women. A mass-media specialist argues that the rising incidence of pornography contributes significantly to an increase of rape and other violence toward women in Israeli society.
The Wounds of War
by Joyce Rosman Brenner
The ongoing tensions in Israel take a special toll on women, who see action only on the home front. Under considerable social pressure to nurture their soldier husbands, brothers and sons without complaint, they now confess to feeling burnt out, frustrated and powerless.
Israeli Mother Condemns Lebanese War
by Raya Harnick
Excerpts from the article that created a storm when it appeared in Hebrew in Israel. A woman whose son was killed while commanding an army operation in Lebanon last year accuses the current government policies of causing her son’s death.
Burning Air and a Clear Mind
by Sharon Weinstein
The powerful poetry of Israeli women in the first such collection to appear in English translation, anthologized by Myra Glazer.
After a Decade of Jewish Feminism The Jewry is Still Out
A group of women calling themselves Ezrat Nashim (help for women) set forth the earliest agenda for the nascent Jewish feminist movement in 1972. Now, more than a decade after the group’s landmark petition challenging the Conservative movement to expand women’s rights, and ten years after the Reform movement ordained its first woman rabbi, two leaders of Ezrat Nashim reveal why it’s taking so long to realize the promise of those events.
The Chuppah
poetry by Marge Piercy
Raising Kids Jewish in a Mixed Marriage
Testimonies by Sharon Lieberman, Zahava Jacobson, William Bly, Eileen Berry-Harahan and Inge Lederer Gibel Advice to Grandparents by Helen Latner; By the best estimates, of every three marriages involving a Jew, at least one will be to a non-Jewish partner. While many bemoan this trend, prevention and "cure" seem equally impossible an undesirable in an open society. Five Jews who have married non-Jews tell here how they're raising children with strong Jewish identities even under these complicated circumstances.