January 25, 2021 by admin

Honey on the Page

Yiddish children’s literature, created all over the world, largely during the period between the two world wars, includes writers who considered themselves secularists, and nevertheless shared stories about the magical aspects of keeping the Sabbath; as socialists they wanted to encourage workers not to let capitalists own them seven days a week. On the occasion of the publication of Honey on the Page: A Treasury of Yiddish Children’s Literature, editor and translator Miriam Udel, was interviewed by Laura Shaw-Frank, on the feminist underpinnings of her research on Yiddish children’s literature. Many female writers still did not have “a room of their own,” so there is a limit to the number of female authors she was able to include. But she highlights some iconic female protagonists such as Dovid Rodin’s Shprintse and Kadya Molodovsky’s Olka. This webinar was co-sponsored by JOFA, Maharat and Svivah.

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The Lilith Blog

April 16, 2019 by Justine Orlovsky-Schnitzler

A Secular Feminist Embraces Shabbat

The first time I observed Shabbat according to the laws of the Torah, it snowed in the desert.

There was a certain degree of irony there—that hell had frozen over, and now I was celebrating the Sabbath in the home of an Orthodox friend. 

I was anxious in the hours leading up to sundown, watching large, wet snowflakes blanket the cactus in my front yard. It was the kind of anxiety that comes with imposter syndrome—all my Jewish celebrations had thus far involved a wide margin of error. My partner and I didn’t worry much about saying all the right prayers in the right order, because our practices were secular expressions of our shared culture, not an expression of religious devotion.

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