July 27, 2020 by admin

Acting Like a Jewish Woman

Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) forged her intellectual tools in feminist and civil rights communities during the 1960s and 1970s and used them throughout her life as an organizer, activist, and theorist addressing fundamental structural inequalities and the root causes of sexism, homophobia, racism, and anti-Semitism. Kaye/Kantrowitz adopted her last name during the 1980s as a part of her emerging consciousness about Jewish visibility; she retained the shortened name of her parents, Kaye, while reclaiming the more ethnically Jewish name Kantrowitz and uniting the two with an unconventional slash. She was the founding executive director of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice and is survived by her longtime partner, Leslie Cagan. While she did not live to see the events of the past few months, Kaye/Kantrowitz’s thought provides frameworks for understanding contemporary police violence and strategies for multiracial coalitions to challenge it. Kaye/ Kantrowitz was one of many lesbian-feminist theorists who contributed to fundamental feminist insights known today as intersectionality. The following excerpt from The Issue Is Power (1992), just published in a new edition which I edited, demonstrates the ongoing relevance of her work.—Julie R. Enszer

As Jewish women, we are often blamed for our strength. When I became a lesbian and no longer had to care what men, Jewish or otherwise, thought of me, I came into my power. As a lesbian, I learned fast and ecstatically that women liked me to be strong. I began to enjoy, build, and relax into my full self.

On the other hand, a few months ago, I was applying for jobs and was interviewed by an all-women’s collective for one job, and by english department faculty (women and men) for another. I found myself comfortable with the “english” people—the school was a city college, and most of them were either Jewish or very accustomed to women “like me.” With the women’s collective members— several of whom were lesbians—I had an eerie sense of unbalance. None of them were Jewish; I was a surprise to them.

This unbalance can explode into bitter repercussions. In one group, several of the women were having a hard time with “my style.” It had never occurred to me to count noses. But I counted noses. They didn’t look Jewish. Most of the women troubled by me had been sent to expensive colleges by their fathers; they spoke with well-modulated voices, and they quaked when I raised mine. They didn’t understand that to me anger is common, expressible, and not murderous. They found me “loud” (of course) and “emotional.” Interestingly, I got along fine with all the women of color in the group, one therapy buff, and one middle class WASP woman who was also a dyke and a radical and my best friend at the time—and who hipped me to the covert anti-Semitism (she explained since she’d been afraid of me, she could recognize it in others).

But I’m talking not just about differences and fear of difference. I’m talking also about power to suppress difference. Why ugly?

So when women say things like she has a “difficult” style as well as aren’t all Jews rich? (or, the more sophisticated version, aren’t all Jews middle class?) or, there are so many Jewish teachers women’s movement or, when they don’t say these things but assume them, we are not being paranoid if we hear familiar themes: pushy, loud, moneygrubbing, exploitative, and—especially—there we are taking over again, in the schools, the art world, even the movement.

Nor are we being paranoid if we point to anti-Semitism, in the United States, or in the women’s movement; and they say it isn’t really. Or, as happened last year in San Francisco, tell Jewish women wanting to meet as Jews, that this is divisive, that Jews are “really” white; or “really” European.

Or, if they hint that “all that” is over now, why are we making a fuss.

Or, if their ignorance compels us to explain that gentiles persecuted the Jews for thousands of years before the Nazis got efficient at it; and that a year after the Nazi defeat, in Kielce, Poland, a mob stormed a Jewish community center and killed, out of the tiny number of surviving Polish Jews who remained in Poland, forty-one Jews. And that pogroms then erupted all over Poland.

That even now, with a Jewish population of five to eight thousand (from 3.5 million pre-Hitler), anti-Semitism rises again, accelerates, in Poland.

I am pulled back to the theme of danger as the shared Jewish identity. As Jewish women, we need also to define ourselves by ourselves, on our own terms. As women and as lesbians we have learned to reclaim names like

dyke

bitch

manhater

golddigger

shrew

harpy

whore

cunt

amazon

(even) lesbian

even woman had first to be reclaimed from a place of squeamishness.

As Jewish women and Jewish lesbians, we need to reclaim words like

pushy

loud

politico

power

trippy

cheap

dominating

garish

sexy

emotional

always screaming bossy

scary temper

difficult style

(and, of course) Jewish mother

(and) Jewish princess

Take Jewish mother. Who accuses her of the heinous crime—of let’s face it—pushiness? Often, Jewish men; especially those who have climbed out of her class because of her help. Ironic, too, that success often comes to Jewish boys through an education which teaches them to be ashamed of their Jewishness, and of their mothers. Perhaps the familiar putdowns of Jewish women by Jewish men stem from male resentment of the strong mother; indignity that a successful Jewish man, unlike his idealized WASP counterpart, has to contend with uppity women.

As Jewish women, we need to look at our people with our own eyes. To see Judith, who saved the Jewish people; she flirted with the attacking general, drank him under the table; then she and her maid (whose name is not in the story) whacked off his head, stuck it in a picnic basket and escaped back to the Jewish camp. They staked his head high over the gate, so that when his soldiers charged the camp, they were met by their general’s bloody head, looming; and they ran away as fast as their goyishe little feet could run. Then Judith set her maid free, and all the women danced in her honor.

That’s a Jewish princess.

Or Anzia Yezierska, who told, in Yiddish-like-English, stories of Jewish immigrants, especially women’s struggles for love and education. Of her work, she wrote: “It’s not me—it’s their cries—my own people—crying in me! Hannah Breineh, Shmendrek, they will not be stilled in me, till all America stops to listen.”

That’s a nice Jewish girl.

Or Violette Kaye, who recently when I asked, ashamed, to borrow money for an airline ticket back East, and she said, of course; and then told me they’re retiring, and I said, this isn’t a good time for any of us, and she said, listen, if I have it, and I do, it’s yours.

That’s a Jewish mother. (Mine.)

From The Issue Is Power: Essays on Women, Jews, Violence and Resistance. Copyright © 1992 by Melanie Kaye/ Kantrowitz. Reprinted by permission of Aunt Lute Books. www.auntlute.com Julie R. Enszer, Ph.D., is the author of four poetry collections and editor of Milk & Honey: A Celebration of Jewish Lesbian Poetry (A Midsummer Night’s Press, 2011), a finalist for the 2012 Lambda Literary Award in Lesbian Poetry.

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The Lilith Blog

February 6, 2019 by Yona Zeldis McDonough

The German Girl Who Was Executed for Resisting the Nazis

German teenager Sophie Scholl went from student to resistance martyr after the Nazis took over her country. As member of the White Rose resistance group, Sophie and two other students distributed anti-Nazi pamphlets. They were arrested, and less than a year later, all three were condemned to beheading by guillotine. 

Scholl is the subject of a new historical novel, told in verse— White Rose, by Kip Wilson. Fiction Editor Yona Zeldis McDonough spoke with Wilson about her quest to find out what made the exceptional young woman tick and fictionalize her life.

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January 10, 2019 by admin

After Pittsburgh

At first I thought: we need space to mourn. Eleven of our own have been shot. We need to cry together. Alone.

There are a few versions of where this story goes from here. There’s a version where we who have perhaps forgotten how close the Holocaust is. There’s a version where we turn inward, enlisting more guards and more guns and more rules and more fear and more gatekeeping and letting some Jews in while keeping others out. After all, our sacred space was ripped apart and our people’s place in the fabric of the U.S. is under attack.

And there is a version of the story where the rent in the fabric is covered by the bodies of those who stand with us. The Pittsburgh Muslim community who raised over $120,000, and counting, to support the families of the victims. The astonishing words of Marcus Cole about growing up black in Squirrel Hill in the 1960s. The sheer outrage and fundamental insistence on our humanity, pouring out around the U.S. and the world, that shows the humanity of others. The messages from my friends who know that I’m safe and still need me and my family to know that we are loved.

We are writing the story now. The narrative is and must be ours, and I say it is the story of living, together, with others, as the best revenge. We are honored and made sacred by the support of others. We are made more human with our support for them in turn. It is when we stand with others that we are all best seen.

In these times, solidarity and caretaking are radical acts. And even as I mourn, I have learned so very much from my allies who teach me what we as a people once knew and some of us have forgotten: how to live with fear, and also how to stand with care.

The Pittsburgh shooting is the story of a people hunted and persecuted in our holiest of moments, but it is also the story of a people supported. Of a community of allies coming together. Of being sheltered. Of care as a radical act. Of resistance. Of finding, in our collective fear and our unique traumas, a way to love one another.

This is our new reality. This is a wake-up call, but it is also a call to stand in support of others. Let us spread our shelter of peace as far and wide as we can. This is what it means to be human, and what it means to be sacred. And we, along with our allies, are both.

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The Lilith Blog

July 14, 2017 by Eden Gordon

This Website Helps Progressive Female Candidates Run for Office

Eliza Cussen was on her way to see “Wonder Woman”, and listening to an episode of her favorite podcast, “Call Your Girlfriend.” This one focused on women in politics (or the lack thereof). Like many would in this situation, she was wondering: what can I do?

Right then, she decided to create what is now Project Sheila, an organization dedicated to helping female politicians launch campaign websites. Cussen has been interested in web design for most of her life, and was working as a digital communications specialist when she had the idea. She saw that although she did not have significant funds to donate to campaigns, she could use her expertise to help in another way. She put out a call to friends in her network, asking if anyone needed help with web design, and received several requests right away. Around three weeks later, Project Sheila went live.

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