by anne · Thursday, August 14th, 2008
Today brought new topics to my brain. Ari Weisbard changed the topic of his workshop on the fly and we addressed whether/how one might add a social justice dimension to the NHC outside the Institute. We didn’t succeed in figuring out if it is a good idea or not (Ari might not agree). In the meantime, we discussed the pros and cons of tzedakah collectives, with one participant describing the successes in the Fabrengan tzedakah collective that’s been around a long time. We raised other topics such as co-housing for seniors, but were brought back to what one person described as social justice issues inside the Institute itself. Two issues raised were our meager (my word) formal programming about Israel, and “the minyan issue”.
A word of explanation about that one, in the hopes of not starting a conversation on this list. For many years, egalitarian davening was the single “halacha” of the NHC. No mechitza minyanim were sanctioned scheduled events on the program and no sefer Torah was provided by the NHC for any non-egal services. And, now it seems to be on the table. This is, in some ways, the 800 pound gorilla in the room, since no one discusses it publicly… and that was deemed to be a social justice issue that this participant raised for the community as a whole to confront. Again. So, we’ll see how this plays out by the same time next year.
And then on to the class on post-feminism, where we spent the time on varying aspects of the work-life balance. What a change from the conversations on this topic that I’m used to being part of, where one party is usually arguing that the women’s movement has caused the crisis confronting Jewish institutions now that there are fewer women available for the truly low paying jobs in Hebrew schools, secretarial positions etc. This conversation was three-generational and there was great wisdom from women who are now retired from full-time work, as well as from women just entering the workforce. The second half of the class focused on Jewish communal concerns around this issue, for all people not only for women with children. We spent a fair amount of time so far in the class trying to understand whether or not this can be defined as a feminist issue.
More »
by feygele · Wednesday, August 13th, 2008
As Anne has asked, I’m going to write a bit about the conversations about gender at ‘tute. And there are so many, it’s hard for me to keep them, uh, straight in my mind.
Anne mentioned a class we’re both taking, and the conversations “about sex, gender and non-binary aspects of gender.” The conversation started with a long-since discarded and retracted article on intersex. The question was posed: does feminism include working beyond/outside the gender binary? And, if so, what might this look like in our Jewish communities?
The responses ranged from knee-jerk but typical of second wave feminism (no!) to confused (talking about gay men) to poignant, intelligent, and at times painful. It was wonderful to hear the older generations not getting the whole transgender and/or intersex thing - not from a place of ignorance or lack of knowledge or compassion, but from “I’m me, and you’re you, and what does it matter if he wants to wear frilly dresses, or she wants to be a tomboy? Why do we have to change our bodies? Why can’t we all just be?” Having had many of these conversations before - amongst friends, in academic settings, as an activist and advocate for queer and trans youth - I tried to sit back and watch the learning process.
But where I thought the class fell short was in addressing that second question. The conversation was not brought back to the Jewish context. My fellow havurahniks were left pondering transgender and intersex people in the theoretical greater society, world, but not in our communities. Not here at Summer Institute (where there is a visible, but small, group of transpeople this year), not in our Jewish communities at home. And I think it’s a conversation that needs to happen.
Interestingly, and perhaps this says something about how far this community still has to go, at tonight’s program, “Intergenerational Conversation on Gender in Judaism,” the facilitators ask the large group of us to end by offering ideas and suggestions for dealing with bringing gender challenges and issues (ranging from needs for gender balance in Jewish education to lack of equivalent life-cycle events for our children to gendered hiring processes in our Jewish institutions to including transpeople) to our Jewish communities, and how to deal with them there… And that was the flattest, least articulated part of the conversation.
We have a long way to come.
by feygele · Tuesday, August 12th, 2008
I’m taking a course at the Summer Institute, co-taught by Martha Ackelsberg and Judith Plaskow, on “The Unfinished Revolution: Jewish Feminism in a ‘Post-Feminist’ Age.” Today was the first class, and we spent much of the morning brainstorming as a group. First, what accomplishments had Jewish feminism made, and then what issues still had to be addressed.
Our class, large by Summer Institute standards at just over 20 people, ranged from 20-somethings to 60- (70? 80?) somethings, from across the US (coughand Canadacough), representing different sexual orientations… and though mostly women, included a few of us guys as well. (I’m happy to add that anne and YehuditBrachah are also in this class.)
What I found interesting was that we so easily agreed on what was considered an accomplishment. And then rattled off so many accomplishments that we ran out of room on the chalkboard. Accomplishments ranged from regendered language for G!d and prayer to having notices posted in women’s washrooms of Jewish buildings offering help for victims of abuse to female rabbis to increased/higher learning in all denominations of Judaism for women to Women Of The Wall to….
Where we became a little more stumped was when we paused, perhaps on a tangent, to discuss why people eschew the term “feminism” (or “feminist”). “I’m not a feminist but…” But? What makes people say this? What is it about the term or the concept that makes people want to stay away? If we’re able to answer this question, might the answer be different in a Jewish setting? I would be curious to see what you, O Jewschool Readers, have to say.
Meanwhile, I’ve taught the first day of my course, taught my workshop, and am very much enjoying the sunshine that has reappeared here in New Hampshire. Time to relax outside!
I see that anne has posted commentary on this class as well; looks like we posted within a minute of each other. I’m leaving this up anyway, in hopes that her extra details might add background to the questions I’m hoping will be discussed in this post.
by anne · Tuesday, August 12th, 2008
There’s a saying in New England: If you don’t like the weather wait five minutes. So true, with the gorgeous sunshine mixed with two rounds of drenching rain - and the day isn’t over yet.
I led a small text study this morning after breakfast with an aggadah from Sefer HaAggadah about a heretic asking Rabbi Akiva about who created the world. I would never have imagined that the group would find such depth and meaning in a one paragraph tale. That’s one of the aspects of this institute that I really like. The group will mine the depths of a text until the meanings appear.
David Seidenberg led a workshop called “22 Foundations for a Sustainable Civilization from the Sources of Judaism”. One of them, from the Torah, led to an insight I hadn’t experienced. Derived from Numbers 20:7-13, every aspect of creation participates in life. No thing is “dead”. Spirit is indivisible from what is physical. That led to the understanding that the word nefesh doesn’t always refer to something that is alive. I had never understood nefesh to mean anything other than a living person, but was reminded that Nefesh adam asher yamut (the nefesh of a man who is dead) is the phrase for a corpse. Nefesh chaya refers to a living soul. Of course there are implications for those who believe in an afterlife… The other 21 items in the foundation came from Torah, philosphy, kabbalah, halacha, chasidut, and some theological considerations, as he put it.
My morning course is The Unfinished Revolution: Jewish Feminism in a “Post-Feminist” Age, led by Martha Ackelsberg and Judith Plaskow. As a long-time member of the New York Havurah with them, and being with them in NHC settings, it was like the continuation of a long conversation that’s been evolving over the past 30 years - only with 20 other people in the room. It’s more mixed a group than I expected - four men, half a dozen women in their 20s and early 30s, a woman in her early 80s and a few in their 70s with the rest of the participants being baby boomer women. Two of the women are rabbis and one is a senior rabbinical student - a few in the Jewish communal world, and the rest of us earning a living in the secular world. We generated an impressive list of accomplishments in the past forty years of the Jewish women’s movement, including: ordination of women rabbis and cantors, the opening of advanced Jewish study to women - even in the Orthodox world, the normalization of ritual roles for women, rosh chodesh groups, acknowledgement of domestic violence and alcoholism in Jewish families, women in major leadership roles in organizations (the exception being major Federations), liturgical changes to some extent, greater acceptance of feminine imagery and aspects of God, changing tables in synagogues’ men’s rooms, women on the Conservative Movement’s Law Committee, Jewish women scholars, women’s philanthropy and a bunch more. Many of these are on a continuum of progress. It took well over 20 minutes to list them and Martha ran out of room on the large blackboard in the room. Most of the list seems to revolve around religious activity, and the group acknowledged that women have been the change agents who have challenged the status quo. Tomorrow we progress to the work remaining - we generated a short list to continue: Not relegating women to support roles in synagogue maintenance (kiddush, etc), closing the salary gap in professional clergy positions, raising the level of respect for childraising and perhaps making halachic changes in male requirements that would enable men to do this, redefining authority, destigmatizing the language of feminisim, and more. What a huge agenda for a four day course.
My afternoon class with Rabbi Jill Jacobs and Guy Austrian is “It Goes Without Saying… Power Passivity and Social Change”. Here too, an ambitious agenda for a class. We discussed types of power we encounter each day in our lives (bosses-subordinates, teacher-student, professional-volunteer, rabbi-congregants, people with big voices, people with lots of money…) and we listed some arenas in which we find them (school, workplace, universities, congregations, home…) We began discussing the nature of power - how we might define it and we got as far as distinguishing between “power over” (positional) and “power with” (relational).
Ending the loooong day of cerebral activity was a delightful workshop with Zach Teutsch leading us in a conversation “Getting Jewed: Towards a more positive and just relationship with money”. We explored feelings about money and being able to verbally communicate it to others - this proved to be quite a powerful experience for one participant who spoke about a positive experience she’d had while trying to fundraise for an organization. I’ll leave more about this workshop to Zach’s report which he said he’d post to this blog soon.
Need a nap!
More anon.
by anne · Monday, August 11th, 2008
The 2008 Summer Institute of the National Havurah Committee opened this afternoon at Franklin Pierce University in Rindge, NH. At the orientation this afternoon we were told that over 370 people would be in attendance for a week of study, workshops and fun. More than ever in the 30 years of the institute, there is a balance of age cohorts, with many people between 22-35 and many over 50, with a nice sized children’s program. Several of the attendees are over 80! And, 83 workshops will be presented over the course of the week. More about this as the week progresses and I get to some of them.
This evening’s program featured each of the two Poretsky Artists in Residence: Heather Stolz presented a session entitled Quilting Our Jewish Journeys while Bear Bergman presented Monday Night in Westerbork (which I attended), a creative one-person play set along the plotlines of the theater group at the Westerbork concentration camp. This presentation was entertaining, serious, engaging and thoughtful. At the end, I had an interesting conversation with the recent high school graduate I sat next to and we agreed that the play introduced new information to us.
As is traditional at the first night of the institute, an ice cream dessert tempted a few dozen folks who were hanging out jamming and gabbing. Being “of a certain age” I begged off the late night singing and jamming that was just beginning at 10:30 and am about to crash. More tomorrow from lovely Rindge, NH, as classes and workshops start kicking in.
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Sunday, June 22nd, 2008
ynet reports on the new Masorti campaign to get Israelis to marry according to halakha.. but not according to the Orthodox.
Israeli couples are increasingly uninterested in getting married according to the established Israeli system, with Orthodoxy monopolizing all legal lifecycle events, and going through a demeaning and complicated process in order to get married. Twenty percent -or more- of Israelis each year choose to live together as couples outside the framework of the Office of the Chief Rabbinate, either by not participating in any wedding ceremony or by going through a civil ceremony in Cyprus or elsewhere.
The Masorti campaign aims to bring Jewish couples in Israel back to tradition by showing them that it is possible to have a halakhic wedding which is not only according to Jewish law, but also includes personal touches, and can be more egalitarian… and doesn’t need to include demeaning lectures to the couple about their personal lives.
The campaign includes print ads and commercials on radio and Internet sites that direct readers and listeners to a well-put-together website, and has generated significant interest. In the first three days there were more than 25,000 unique hits on the website.
Of course, this has po’d the Establishment:
According to the Masorti press release
The Chairman of Shas in the Knesset, Yaakov Margi, petitioned the Israel Broadcasting Authority to ban the Masorti campaign from the airwaves. In a letter to Mordechai Sklar, IBA’s general director, MK Yaakov Margi charged that the Masorti movement “knowingly misleads and perpetrates a campaign of fraud.†He further claimed to be writing on behalf of “those who are spiritually lost and would not want to find themselves ending up in unseemly places.â€
MK Ophir Pines-Paz (Labor) responded in his own letter to the IBA that Masorti “faithfully combines tradition and progress†and suggested the Shas letter should be buried as “a foolish attempt at censorship.â€
by BZ · Tuesday, June 10th, 2008
A few years ago, Jewish Women Watching used to regularly hit them out of the park. “MAJOR Center for Jewish Breeding” was a brilliant parody of the “Jewish continuity” agenda. “Strange Bedfellows” was a much-needed warning about the Jewish community getting into bed with the Christianist right, and the JTS hoax was an effective gotcha.
Since then, they’ve gone into a bit of a decline. “Make A Buzz” was more about shock value than about substance, and insulted millions of progressive Christians by generalizing about the “Christian agenda”. As we discussed here, “Embrace the Treyf” marginalized the very causes it was claiming to support.
So it’s good to see that JWW has returned to form. Their latest action, connected to Shavuot, returns to familiar themes and launches a scathing attack against the making-Jewish-babies industry. Go read the whole thing. My main criticism is that it doesn’t go far enough. They appropriately convey the idea that the “continuity” agenda demeans Jewish women, but leave out the fact that it also demeans Jewish men, and demeans Judaism. Jewish men may not have rabbis in their uteri, but are also objectified (albeit less invasively) when the Jewish community sees young adults only as potential parents rather than as individuals with their own needs and abilities. And Judaism itself is the greatest victim when it is transformed from a means of bringing holiness into the world to a means of making Jewish babies who can then make more Jewish babies, a genetic mutation devoid of content or value.
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Monday, May 19th, 2008
Week Five, Day two
Gevurah of Hod
According to the latest news, yes, there’s more, if you can stand it. The Des Moines Register reports that there was sexual abuse and an expectation of sexual favors, according to the workers,
If a worker wanted, say, a promotion or a shift change, “they’d be brought into a room with three or four men and it was like, ‘Which one do you want? Which one are you going to serve?’†said McCauley in an interview today with Des Moines Register editors and reporters.
To be fair, it should have been obvious that somethignlike this would be revealed - with all the other garbage going on behindthe scenes, this particular form of abusing the powerless should have been an obvious add-on feature.
RadioIowa mentions that America’s Voice, a group pushing for immigration reform, is asking Congress to investigate the owners of the Postville plant.
Mark Lauritsen, international vice president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) says reading the information on the Postville raid shows “shameful” action by the plant’s owners. Lauritsen says what’s ultimately shameful is that nearly 400 “hardworking men and women” are in detention, while the people who exploited them are free to roam the streets and start the cycle over again.
Lauriston says Agriproccessors has gotten away with the labor violations for too long. Lauritsen says: “There is not one other meatpacker operator in this country that has the same sustained long record of law violations as Agriprocessors, not one. They’re acting like a renegade in an already tough industry. It’s not good for the industry, it’s not good for the workers who work in it.” Sharry and Lauritson say the national strategy of ‘attrition through enforcement’ remains an ineffective solution to the immigration issue.
I hope they’re successful, but after all this time, who knows - it’s not like there haven’t already been tons of investigation worthy crimes over the past several years, with a pattern of disregard for the law. Again, our only quesiotn should be, where the hell is the Jewish community, and why didn’t we insist on OU’s hashgachah (supervision) being pulled with much greater force. Our lack of courage and refusal to go without meat is a chillul hashem - an embarrassment to God’s name.
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Tuesday, May 13th, 2008
Week Four, day Three
Tiferet of Netzach
Another New York Event. Sponsored by the UJA, and sounds like it could be quite the conversation - any panel that includes both Judith Plaskow and Blu Greenberg has got to be worth hearing:
In anticipation of Shavuot, UJA-Federation of New York’s Task Force on the Jewish Woman presents the third part of a series on women and politics
Gender and Justice:
How Activists Integrate Judaism and Politics
Thursday, May 15, 2008
5:30 – 9:30 p.m.
During the holiday of Shavuot, we celebrate receiving the Torah at Mount Sinai by engaging in all-night study.
In preparation, we will come together for an evening of study and performance, exploring ideas of Judaism, activism, feminism, and politics.
Featuring:
* Texts That Inspire Lives of Activism, a panel discussion with scholars Blu Greenberg, Miriam Margles, and Judith Plaskow, moderated by Dianne Cohler-Esses
* Text-study sessions presented by scholars Elana Stein Hain, Joy Levitt, and Stephanie Ruskay
* Becoming Israel, a Storahtelling performance by Shira Epstein and Naomi Less
Storahtelling brings us an abridged, staged reading from their newly debuted play Becoming Israel. Biblical and modern characters are intertwined in this piece to discover their shared story and their common name, Israel, “The One Who Struggles with God.” After the performance, Naomi and Shira will engage us in a discussion regarding the performance and theatre itself as a medium for text and activism.
Light supper will be served at 5:30 p.m.
Program will start at 6:00 p.m.
Cost: $25* or $15* for students and young professionals
UJA-Federation of New York
130 East 59th Street
New York City
R.SV.P. to Emily Loubaton at 1.212.836.1710 or loubatone {at} ujafedny(.)org.
*The cover charge represents the cost of the event and is not tax-deductible
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Monday, May 12th, 2008
But what the heck would I call it?
Rabbi Shlomo Aviner has ruled that it is forbidden for girls to enlist in the army. “It is forbidden! Forbidden like kashrut! Forbidden like Shabbat! And especially forbidden like modesty!”
And while you’re at it, go get me a coffee, purity girl.
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Monday, May 12th, 2008
Week Four, Day two,
Gevurah of Netzach
Since yesterday was mother’s day, and today’s sefirotic interpretation of the Omer quirkily translates itself in the book I’m using as “Discipline in Endurance” …
Jewish mothers are a dying breed. Is this good? Is it bad? I don’t know, but I don’t know anyone who qualifies under the stereotypical description. But it’s more than that. As I’ve mentioned before, the Jewish community, for all its frothing at the mouth about continuity, makes it nearly impossible for young Jews to make the parenthood choice in any rational way.
While the Conservative movement recently told us all., yet again, to have more babies sooner, no one is willing to take the step of saying that the Jewish community needs to make a commitment to things like: paid parental leave for every Jew employed by a a Jewish institution or agency. Quality day care subsidized by our communities. Day school for everyone who wants to send their kids to it -and heavily subsidized so not only the well off can afford it- and a much better system of religious education for those who don’t. More truth telling about the flaws of Israel within a context of love for the country and its inhabitants.
But the truth is, that’s not really what the Jewish community wants. It’s far easier to wail and moan about how Jews growing up don’t value Judaism, how we’re all so individualistic that we don’t care about community, and how all the young people don’t care about Israel, and women aren’t having enough babies because they’re busy having careers instead. None of it’s true, but it’s much easier than looking ourselves in the face and doing something hard: changing the way we live.
Oh and while we’re at it, why don’t we throw out nonsensical solutions to problems, like saying that since boys aren’t flocking to liberal Judaism, the best thing we need to do is start having men only clubs and meetings. yes, that certainly will solve the problem, because as we all know the reason boys are leaving Judaism (YAWN) isn’t because boys have much greater pressure to excel at sports, or because their parents let them quit after bar mitzvah, or because Judaism is treated as hobby. Nope, it must be the girls, because as we all know, teenage boys aren’t interested in being anywhere around girls.
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A new graphic novel, “The Rabbi’s Cat,” taking place in Algiers in the 30’s, starring a rabbi and a nameless talking cat.
I haven’t read it yet, but I surely will soon.
The other, longer story in the new volume is “Africa’s Jerusalem,” a zigzagging tale that starts out as a “Tintin”-like adventure and eventually evolves into a love story, graced at its conclusion with bracing flashes of eroticism. (Tintin, in fact, comes in for a drubbing: He turns up for a page as an arrogant, racist reporter, Sfar’s upraised middle finger to French comics master Hergé’s infamous “Tintin in the Congo.”) In an introductory note, Sfar claims that “Africa’s Jerusalem” is “a graphic novel against racism,” which it is, but it’s also another opportunity for him to avoid the risk of the series falling into a formula.
The story begins when the rabbi receives a mysterious crate; instead of the books he expects, it contains a Russian Jewish painter who has tried to ship himself to Addis Ababa to find a rumored Jewish homeland in Ethiopia. (He only speaks Russian, and the Algerians don’t understand it at all; fortunately, the cat understands all languages.) Joined by a rich, arrogant local Russian man and the rabbi’s cousin, a sheik who’s also part of the Sfar family, they drive off to find Jerusalem in Africa.
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Saturday, May 3rd, 2008
Day 14, week two, day seven
Malchut of Gevurah
Good news or bad? Hard to say. Methodists overwhelmingly defeated measures calling for divestment from companies that allegedly enable Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.
Divestment doesn’t strike me in this case as the most precise tool, especially given the supersessionist theology background grumbling that goes along with this movement, apparently. But OTOH, we don’t seem to hold the evangelicals to such a measurement when they say they will “support” Israel in any action they take.
SO when we have allies who disagree with Israel’s policies, what can they do to show it without being labelled as haters?
Well, There’s always J-street, now!
Day 13, week two, day six
Yesod of Gevurah
Ynet reports on the lastest mishegas:
Rabbi Shlomi Aviner has ruled that God disapproves of pants on women even when women are alone(!) Apparently the fact that God is not male and does not lust after women has been lost sight of somewhere. You should not even sleep in pajama pants since sleeping is a grand opportunity to show off your filthy, sinful bodies, ladies. Cover them up!!!
Aviner, Beit El’s rabbi and one of Religious Zionism’s most prominent leaders, was asked in a cellular Q&A session published in the “Small World” bulletin, “When a girl goes to relieve herself at night, is she allowed to say the ‘Asher Yatzar’ (’he who formed’) prayer while wearing a short-sleeved shirt and trousers?”
The rabbi replied that it is permitted to say the prayer in such a case, but added that “in general, a woman must always wear modest clothes even when she is alone and in the dark, because the Holy one blessed be he is everywhere. And yes, trousers are a self-prohibition even when a woman is alone.”
However, Tsomet seems to have gotten the point that was made a few months ago when it came out that Hareidi women had begun taking upon themselves the modesty wrappings as seriously as Rabbi Aviner does and wrapping themselves in Burqas and more.
Rabbi Israel Rosen, head of the Tsomet Institute, has claimed an article published in synagogues over the weekend that “too much modesty leads women to the opposite direction, from abstinence to immorality.”
Rabbi Rosen also slammed the haredi norm to omit names of women from newspapers and from invitations, comparing it to the veil phenomenon in Muslim countries.
“For so-called modesty reasons, the woman is only presented as ‘his wife’, nameless, veiled, and my heart twitches,” he wrote in a weekly column published in synagogues over the weekend. “Is there no psychological connection between the hypocrisy of concealing the name and hiding the face under the ‘Taliban-style’ veil?”
You don’t think?
by Rooftopper Rav · Thursday, May 1st, 2008
JTA reports:
Bahrain will name a Jewish ambassador to the United States, a report said.
Huda Azar Nunu, a Jewish woman who is a lawmaker in Bahrain’s upper house, will be named to the Washington position, according to a report this week in A Sharq al-Awsat, a Saudi-owned pan-Arab daily published in London.
“The sources denied that the appointment of Nunu as a woman and a Jew is a public relations campaign by Bahrain in the West, emphasizing that Huda Nunu has proven her qualifications, whether through her membership in the Consultative Council or through her work in human rights associations, of which she is an active participant in Bahrain,” the newspaper said.
Full article here.
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Thursday, April 24th, 2008
Hod of Chesed
We’re all (by now) familiar with the story of the Orange on the seder plate. Not only the famous midrash (note I am not calling it fact) of Susannah Heschel and the man who claimed women should not be Jewish leaders, but also the misty origins of said story in the a woman telling lesbians that female homosexuality is a minor sin, like putting bread on the seder plate. Nevermind why the relentless deconstruction of this midrash is an example of why modern midrash sucks (I’ll talk about that some other time).
Instead, take a look at a post by Mel of Stirrup Queens and Sperm Count Jesters. Normally her blog is about infertility and its side issues from the perspective of an observant Jew. In this post, she writes about Thomas Beatie, the pregnant man and how putting an apple on the seder plate, for her, revived the original facts of the orange midrash…
representing reproductive rights for all people because truthfully, just as the changed story of Heschel’s speech has a man shouting about women belonging on the bimah as much as an orange belongs on the seder plate, empty symbolic gestures do not have a space at my table. It is apples and oranges; I am taking back the fruit. If I believe in reproductive rights for myself–and believe me, I want my reproductive rights well-covered–I need to believe in reproductive rights for all who act out of love or my shouting for myself becomes merely symbolic, self-serving, meaningless.
Mother Jones, in August 2006, ran a survey of fertility clinic directors. Only 59% believed everyone has a right to a child. 48% said they would likely turn away a gay couple seeking a surrogate. 20% would turn away a single woman. 17% would turn away a lesbian couple. If you want reproductive rights for yourself–and I’m fairly certain that no fertility clinic director would wish to be told that they cannot or must have a child–we should be concerned about others. Because I’m not just talking about those experiencing infertility who need to utilize assisted conception when I speak about reproductive rights–every single person on this earth should be in control of whether or not they reproduce or parent. Put an apple on the seder plate for that.
by Kung Fu Jew · Monday, March 31st, 2008
I’m not the most knowledgable about agunot, women seeking divorce by orthodox law and unable to get it, meaning in Israel there are all sorts of civil and legal consequences, but it’s a subject that fascinates me. Haaretz and NYTimes both covered the issue last month.
Attorney Susan Weiss, founder of Yad L’Isha and the Center for Women’s Justice, is speaking in NYC on April 10th, 7:30 pm on the Upper West Side. Fighting for Agunot (”Chained” Women) in Israel’s Religious Courts, RSVP to New Israel Fund for location details.
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Sunday, February 17th, 2008
Recent postings on the uterus problem (see here) have been right to question the tshuvah that recently was issued from the bowels of the CJLS. I’m sorry that I got scooped on this because it’s a long standing argument that I have been having with my teachers (whom I respect very much, despite our disagreements) for years now. First of all, here is the URL for the actual tshuvah. I recommend reading it.
Secondly, I want to give kudos to Rabbi Jill Jacobs’ and Rabbi Jason Miller’s comments on the post at jspot. Both of them note that there need to be more social supports put in place for people to have children, Rabbi Jacobs noting:
–Would rabbinical students be more willing to have kids while in grad school if the rabbinical schools offered on-site child care?
–Would it be easier for Jewish women professionals (and men) to participate in professional conferences (such as the RA, from which I just returned, and where I bumped into a few poor women trying to nurse on the floor of the bathroom), if these conferences offered nursing rooms, child care, or other accommodations? (a shout out to the Wexner Foundation for being a leader in this regard)
–Would Jewish women professionals be able more easily to “have it all†if more Jewish institutions offered flex time, family health insurance, on-site child care, and paid for child care when the mom or dad is on the road?
And Rabbi Miller adding:
— not just for the women. As a 26-year-old rabbinical student whose wife was working full-time, I often felt the challenge of sitting in a class while bottle-feeding my baby son. An on-site day-care facility at JTS would have been an important resource.
He also on his own blog made some comments.
(Although I do want to note that I can’t imagine why any women were nursing on the floor of the bathroom, since the hotel in question is luxurious to the point of ridiculousness, and the WC had an anteroom with, I’m told, quite comfortable chairs and, I’m told by a nursing friend, the heat turned way up so that it was a perfectly comfortable place to strip down and nurse if necessary. Of course, the very luxuriousness of the hotel was apparently rather a sore point amongst the many, many Conservative rabbis who lack large convention stipends or, indeed, any, such as those who aren’t pulpit rabbis, or who are, but whose pulpits are more modest, say, under 500 members. A sore point indeed).
More »
by YehuditBrachah · Friday, February 15th, 2008
Props to Hannah Farber over at jspot (Jewish Funds for Justice’s blog) for her short, pithy piece entitled “I’m Going to Count to Three, and Then All Rabbis Need To Get Out Of My Uterus” on the hysteria (pun intended) about Jewish women reproducing, as the RA explains it to make up for the Holocaust.
Since I began working in the Jewish community, I’ve heard this advice again and again, and it never fails to get my ovaries in a twist, not least because of the implied (or explicit) criticism of professional women (never of professional men) who postpone childrearing to accommodate their career goals. I say: if the rabbis are so committed to making this a communal issue, the rabbis should raise the children. In fact, given their comfortable salaries and high communal status, they have no excuse: they should be adopting and converting children by the dozen.
Also contains links to good refutations.
by YehuditBrachah · Monday, January 28th, 2008
Samantha Shapiro of the NYTimes Magazine takes the Hartman decision to ordain women as Orthodox rabbis to the pages of The Slate. (If you’ve never seen the words “achudus ha’am” and “ahavas yisrael” in a mainstream pub, here’s a chance. Also a particularly amusing cartoon of a lady rabbi.) Basically, she, like Rabbi Haviva Ner-David, questions whether this will really make a difference for Orthodox women seeking to be rabbis.
On women becoming non-rabbi spiritual leaders and law-decisors:
These strides are significant, but there’s a question of the trajectory of these quasi-rabbinic roles. A man in any of these women’s positions could expect after a few years of service to be promoted to main rabbi. It’s fairly unlikely, however, that these women’s careers will advance much further. Without an accepted orthodox rabbinic ordination, there is nowhere to be promoted to.
And, on these women’s ability to even remain within the Orthodox movement:
Women who believe so passionately in the divinity of the Torah and its laws that they want to remain in the Orthodox community have to do a difficult dance. If they get rabbinic ordination through Hartman or other institutions, they are likely to move themselves outside of the norms of their communities and not really be able to influence them as a rabbi would—and if they don’t, well, they’re still not rabbis.
Full article here.
