The Lilith Blog

October 26, 2010 by admin

Back Home in my New Home

These past few months, I’ve been alternately migrating and nesting. We, my husband Yosef and I, taped up boxes, zipped up luggage and flew from the Middle East to the Northeast. From the crowded corridors of the shuk to the tight aisles of (the) Fairway. From Jerusalem’s alleys to New York’s avenues.

Yosef and I just got married in August, the day after Chelsea Clinton, in the Jersey synagogue where I grew up. Now, we’re both back in rabbinical school at JTS. I’m still playing with head-coverings (see my letter from Jerusalem for more on that) — a striped spandex wrap, a brown herringbone cap and the absence of accessories above. Here is some of my writing about coming into a new space and a new self:

Threshold

לֶךְ-לְךָ מֵאַרְצְךָ וּמִמּוֹלַדְתְּךָ וּמִבֵּית אָבִיךָ, אֶל-הָאָרֶץ, אֲשֶׁר אַרְאֶךָּ
Get going, from your land, from your birthplace,
from your parents’ home to the place I will show you. . .

“Hi Manny,” I say to the doorman. He and Yosef are standing under the scaffolding, talking about El Salvador and how fierce the soldiers are there. “You don’t want to mess with them cause they’re like.” (Manny slants his eyebrows and furrows his lips, in an imitation of the no-nonsense, no-negotiation stance of the soldiers of his homeland.) Manny tells me I have a package at the desk.   (more…)

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The Lilith Blog

July 21, 2010 by admin

Letter from Jerusalem: Listening on the next generation of Conservative women rabbis

“Get yourself a teacher, acquire for yourself a friend.” – Pirkei Avot 1:6

Blessed are You, God, who clothes the naked. My mother’s closet is full of clothing from various eras of her life. Suits hang in every jewel-tone from decades of shul-going. She has even saved her Bat Mitzvah dress, yellowed lace with patches of pastel. When I was younger, I used to love playing dress-up in her closet, awaiting the day I would grow into her clothes.

Among the diverse discussion topics when a group of women rabbinical students gathered in Jerusalem living rooms this past year was the contents of our own closets: how we see ourselves and how we are seen; the ways we choose to cover and uncover; the garments we have inherited and those we have taken upon ourselves. My hevruta (study partner), Kerrith Solomon, and I convened this group of women from the Jewish Theological Seminary and the Ziegler school so we could talk with our peers about things we have not yet had safe space to explore within our schooling, reclaiming and exploring our identities as women on our paths toward the rabbinate in the Conservative Movement.  (more…)

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