by chaneld1621 [➚] · Thursday, May 17th, 2012
Crossposted from Pursue.
Jewschool is a co-sponsor of Inside the Activists’ Studio 2012.
The theme of this year’s Inside the Activists’ Studio is “Finding Your Voice in a Global Movement,” and we know how challenging it can be to match your skills and passion to actual change-making. But we also know it’s a lot easier to find your voice with community support, and that’s why we’ve brought together a group of outstanding panelists to share their own experiences this Sunday. As a preview, check out some of their answers below to the question:
How do you amplify your voice for change?
Phil Aroneanu: I’ve been an activist on climate change nearly all my adult life. Since I first learned about the climate crisis from a goofy high school physics teacher, and throughout the next decade, I’ve felt that climate change encompasses a whole range of environmental and social justice issues that I feel passionately about. At first, I wasn’t much of an organizer–my first effort in high school was to organize a “No Car Day” with some friends. We got the local bagel shop to donate bagels and cream cheese, which we handed out to all the kids who biked, skateboarded or walked to school. It felt good, and we got a write up in the local paper, but in some sense it was ineffective. Even if I “raised awareness” about climate change and transportation, how many people who received a bagel would actually think twice about getting in a car the next day? More importantly, it taught me to think bigger than myself; I wasn’t going to solve the climate crisis by trying to change personal behavior. That’s certainly a part of the solution, but to solve the climate crisis, we really need to change the way the world produces and uses energy, which is a much, much larger, multi-faceted challenge. More »
by chaneld1621 [➚] · Tuesday, May 15th, 2012
Crossposted from Pursue. Jewschool is a co sponsor of Inside the Activists’ Studio.
On Sunday, May 20, Pursuers in NYC will gather for Inside the Activists’ Studio: Finding Your Voice in a Global Movement. The event will feature an incredible array of local Jewish change-makers speaking on a panel, presenting workshops, or performing. As a sneak peek, we chatted with workshop presenter Emily Saltzman, who will co lead a workshop with Erin Markman (click to read her interview).
What inspires you to work on issues of allyship (being an ally)?
Mutual learning and meaningful connection inspire me to do this work. Learning from and reflecting on personal relationships is one of the main ways that I have seen myself grow over the years. I find human connection to be incredibly powerful, so I hope to work toward removing barriers that would prevent that connection from occurring. For me, true allyship is an integral part of organizing for folks who hold privileged identities and should not be taken lightly. I do this work because one of the effects of oppression is that it dehumanizes us. It prevents us from connecting to each other in meaningful ways or it can stop us from connecting at all. Many of us have heard of stories where folks–typically white–work in mixed-race spaces in hopes of delving into their own experience in their privileged identity. This can most certainly be helpful and challenge folks to think deeply about the spaces that they occupy, although many times it falls on the folks of subjugated identities to educate the others. It is for exactly this reason that folks with privileged identities need to also have space to process their experience, socialized ideas and internalized superiority. There are feelings, values, thoughts and hurtful language that needs to be processed and challenged prior to and alongside all-identity organizing. While these spaces can be incredibly helpful and transformative, they can become problematic if not done alongside organizing in spaces where a variety of identities are present. More »
by chaneld1621 [➚] · Wednesday, May 9th, 2012
On Sunday, May 20, Pursue NYC, together with New Israel Fund-New Generations and the Young Leaders of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), presents Inside the Activists’ Studio: Finding Your Voice in a Global Movement. The event will feature an incredible array of local Jewish change-makers speaking on a panel, presenting workshops, or performing. As a sneak peek, Pursue chatted with workshop presenter Erin Markman.
What inspires you to work on issues of allyship (being an ally)?
The pursuit of liberation and love! That might manage to sound both grandiose and trite, but I really, deeply, mean it. I want to work toward a world where we all strive to be allies to one another, recognizing the systemic oppressions that circumscribe our lives and the interpersonal oppressions we perpetuate, and working collaboratively to undo both. That’s what’s going to make our movements work. It’s what’s going to move us forward together.
I want to do my best every day to hold myself accountable in the domains in which I have institutional privilege—being white, or able-bodied, or cisgender, for example. I want to hold myself accountable for assumptions, for microaggressions, for the false histories I’ve been taught, for the “-isms” I enact, for the oppressions that live inside me. I want to hold myself accountable to speak up, to challenge systems, policies, and practices that perpetuate oppression, especially when that act of challenging feels frightening. And I want as many relationships as I can get that make allyship explicit. I want relationships with people who expect allyship from me, who feel they can hold me accountable when they want to, who feel they can call me out in the moment or send me an email after the fact. I want to be told when I’ve hurt someone unintentionally. I want to be told when someone feels I’m missing, or misunderstanding, or misrepresenting an idea because of my privilege. I want that kind of accountability not as an academic exercise but as a lived component of interpersonal relationships. And I want to be given permission to hold others accountable as well. I want that accountability because I think it’s necessary to move us all toward where we want to go.
I want this with the urgency and rage and pain that oppressive systems elicit, but I’m trying hard not to let my desire to be an ally be driven by guilt (though I certainly still grapple with guilt). I want it to be about love. Because I don’t think I can love fully without consistently being in the process of undoing and relearning, of fighting against policies and practices of oppression and also fighting what I’ve internalized. Pursuing an ally identity is always messy and often painful and never-ending, but it is also a process full of love. It’s how I’ve loved my friends the best, and it’s how they love me best as well.
Systems of oppression, including the ones that bestow privilege on us, contribute to a world that robs us all of our humanity. The act of fighting against those systems which benefit oneself is, in my mind, in the service of pursuing mutual liberation. Audre Lorde makes the point beautifully:
“I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own. And I am not free as long as one person of Color remains chained. Nor is any one of you.”
How does your Jewish identity relate to what you do?
My Jewish identity is something that I’m still in the process of building and shaping and probably always will be! Allyship informs that process a lot. I love working with my Jewish friends to cultivate a Jewish identity that is rooted in anti-oppressive thinking and action and in which allyship plays a central role. For example, I’ve loved using a haggadah at our Seders that we’ve worked together to modify—building in discussions of racism, LGBTQ identities, and liberation struggles around the world. For me, that’s how my Jewish identity grows, and it often feels very joyful and playful. But there are real challenges as well. I’ve seen Jewish identity arise in very complicated ways in conversations about white privilege, for example. I’m working to cultivate a Jewish identity that pushes me to examine my white privilege and how I can take action to be a white Jewish ally. I want a Jewish identity that pushes me to be an ally to Palestinians. I want a Jewish identity that pushes me to address Islamophobia in the U.S. I want a Jewish identity that pushes me to stand up against all oppressions, and to ask others to do the same, all while authentically challenging anti-Semitism as it arises. I’m not there yet, but all of this work is about process!
What are you most excited about at Inside the Activists’ Studio?
I’m most excited about learning and building community. I love intentional spaces where we all come together to build and share. I’m very appreciative that the space has been organized—I know how hard that is—and I’m really looking forward to being a part of it.
Why should folks come to your workshop?
Folks should come to challenge themselves to think deeply and broadly about what it means to be an ally and why allyship matters to our movements, our relationships, and our internal selves. And they should come to challenge me, too! Our workshop is designed to be a site of group learning, in which we as facilitators are also learning, and I’m really looking forward to that. So I hope that people come to learn with me, bringing their experiences and sharing their stories. I anticipate it will be challenging and dynamic and will allow people to bring their full selves to the space.
by chaneld1621 [➚] · Tuesday, May 8th, 2012
Crossposted from Pursue. Jewschool is a co sponsor of Inside the Activists’ Studio.
On Sunday, May 20, Pursue NYC, together with New Israel Fund-New Generations and the Young Leaders of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), presents Inside the Activists’ Studio: Finding Your Voice in a Global Movement. The event will feature an incredible array of local Jewish change-makers speaking on a panel, presenting workshops, or performing. As a sneak peek, Pursue chatted with workshop presenter Sarah From of Do Your Best Work about how she found her own voice:
What inspired you to work on issues of personal ecology with activists?
Over a decade of work in nonprofits, I saw how lack of sleep, email overload, unmindful leadership, and inadequate personal organization could hinder the work. As I began to experiment with different strategies and tools to manage my own workload, I became more interested in the bigger picture. That is, how does the way we work for social change reflect the values we are fighting for? And what’s the cost if we’re changing our communities and the world but running ourselves into the ground in the process? The work I do now is to help social change leaders and organizations identify new ways of working that promote sustainability, productivity, and alignment with purpose and values.
How does your Jewish identity relate to what you do?
Four years ago, I was working on criminal justice reform and on the verge of burnout when I attended a Selah leadership retreat. There, I learned how personal sustainability could be rooted in Jewish tradition. The big “a-ha” for me was that as a Jew, I am obligated to work for justice and I am obligated to rest. Too many Jewish social justice activists take the first obligation seriously and ignore the second.
What are you most excited about for Inside the Activists’ Studio?
I’m excited to provide space for activists to identify new and more sustainable ways of working. I love helping people who are both incredibly passionate and incredibly overwhelmed to find more spaciousness in their work and non-work lives.
Why should folks come to your IAS workshop?
Our movements are only as vibrant as the quality of the energy we are able to bring to them. By attending to your own sustainability, you can better use your time, energy and attention in service to the world you want to create.
by Charles Lenchner [➚] · Thursday, May 3rd, 2012
It won’t come as any surprise that the mission of repairing the world takes on many forms, including that of advocacy for the social rights of various groups. We have historically seen Jews and Jewish organizations at the forefront of rights based campaigns. In the 50s and 60s it was in the civil rights movement. More recently, we have been active in support of Darfur in opposition to a 21st Century genocide.
A century ago, we’d be talking about the Jewish role in the fights for labor rights, the 8-hour working day and workplace safety. But rather unlike today, those fights were not for some other oppressed group, but by and for Jewish workers, as part of the American labor movement.
In recent years, a thriving social justice movement has emerged that includes service-oriented Jewish organizations. These include Avodah and Bend the Arc, who joined previously established groups like the Workmen’s Circle, Jewish Labor Committee, and Jews for Racial and Economic Justice. Recent campaigns that received support from Jewish organizations include the fight for a domestic workers’ bill of rights and for agricultural workers raising tomatoes in Florida. More »
by Josh Hyman [➚] · Tuesday, March 27th, 2012
I’ll come out and say it: fear for your security from a persecuted minority group is bullshit. Anyone who hasn’t lived in India or South Africa or the Antebellum South or Nazi Germany can just rent a copy of District 9. I think you’ll get the point pretty quickly.
Does that mean that persecuted minority groups don’t act out? Um… what do you want them to do, exactly? We build aggressively on their land; we withhold their duly paid taxes; we actually argue in public that they don’t exist, and oppose their efforts to build a separate, democratic country. We subscribe to the doctrine of collective responsibility, blaming Palestinians who grew up in exile for an invasion from an entirely separate set of brown people in 1948. And we deny, to this very day, that we even gently encouraged people who had lived for generations, in what is now Israeli land, to leave. As if we became a majority overnight, by magic.
I needed to go to this conference to be shaken out of my complacency; I thought this was an issue of religion. I really did. At times, I vocally supported a one-secular-state solution, as I am first and foremost an American, and I believe that mixing government and religion causes trouble ten times out of ten.
But if you are a liberal, modern Jew, you have to confront two realities. One is that the State of Israel is a fundamentally well-intentioned thing which has done much good. The second is that it is a modern, blindingly obvious imperial power with a particular interest in its next-door neighbor, a la Ireland under England. The question of who got there first is irrelevant. The question of who attacked whom first is irrelevant. The question of who is “more civilized” – again, irrelevant.
More »
by Josh Hyman [➚] · Monday, March 26th, 2012
Ninety minutes to go before the Gala Reception, “a Ticketed Event.” I’ve spent the day puzzling, processing and arguing, a workout my brain hasn’t gotten in years. An event like this carries risk. You come here passionate, and your world views can be challenged. More than that: they will be challenged, try though you might to keep that part of your brain closed.
That’s partly because of the issue. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of history’s deepest mucks, and the two-state solution (which J Street does its best to promote, envision and implement) is a pair of quality all-weather shoes, but it is by no means a magic pair of shoes. It does not make the muck go away.
Everywhere we go is muck. We come here, a generation of high-energy, high-technology know-it-alls; we who elected a black President and invented Facebook and fought selflessly in Iraq and Afghanistan; and we pile over one another to get in the door and puzzle over this quagmire. For well over one hundred fifty years, two peoples have been nudging each other across a land, then being bought, carved up and turned violently against each other by Western empires, and finally making noises about trying to annihilate each other. We high-energy Millenials halfway around the world want nothing more than to make this problem go away, and we’re tenacious bastards.
But we’ve found ourselves trying to balance identity with justice, and that’s quite the Jewish conundrum. Kids my age like solutions, which is why we try so hard – we’re not used to failing with effort. The Jew in us wants to find the right away, and the Millenial in us JUST WANTS TO GO THERE GODDAMN NOW. Neither side will rest until it’s done.
More »
by shiri [➚] · Monday, March 26th, 2012
I woke up Saturday morning feeling a little bit of an overenthusiasm hangover-a little foggy, and a little confused about what happened during the fun filled night before. Usually pretty critical, I may have been a little seduced by the well-chosen speakers at the plenary. In front of me were three Israelis promising that change was afoot and that seeds of hope were being planted among an increasingly worrisome atmosphere. And while there is an element of what was said that will continue to motivate me, there are things that I am going to continue taking with a grain of salt.
I don’t agree with Amos Oz’s comparison that what will happen and what is needed is a “divorce” between two people. These people were never in a happy marriage, and this divorce will not be made on equal footing. One side has expensive, powerful lawyers, is abusive and hasn’t demonstrated lately any great investment in ensuring an amicable and equal separation. The other side really wants to get out of the relationship, is suffering from symptoms of abuse, doesn’t have the resources of expensive lawyers and has very little with which to negotiate. Maybe this is a small detail, but comparisons are powerful tools in rhetoric.
More »
by Josh Hyman [➚] · Sunday, March 25th, 2012
Amos Oz is a wise older man. He appears to be the spiritual father of our movement (hey, I’m new here). He’s also a refreshing, crisp speaker. It’s maddening taking notes from a professional writer and orator; it makes you wish your fingers were phonograph needles and the paper was spinning vinyl. Tonight, he outlined for us idealistic youth the reasons Israel and Palestine need to go to their separate corners and cool down, eventually meeting back in the middle to shake and be okay. Or, as Oz put it: “Make peace, not love.” Oz was the keynote speaker for the first night of J Street 2012, which is how I came to hear him talk divorce for Israel and Palestine, a divorce in which, he notes, “we’ll still have to share the same house.”
Oz started his two-state career by preaching peace and a Palestinian state to skeptical Jewish audiences here and in Eretz Yisrael. Back then, he says, he was marginalized from the right. Now, he comes to J Street – “Thank you, J Street; I have been waiting for you my entire adult life” – and he tells an audience of college students, activists and uber-activists that we are working for a slow, painful separation for Israel and Palestine. Rivals throughout history, he notes, don’t embrace each other and then achieve peace. They make peace through “clenched teeth,” and then, over the course of generations, hostilities subside.
It’s a compelling message. But it’s a hard message to swallow for a roomful of kids who have gone to school with Muslims and Arabs and who know them as friends, engineers, doctors, confidantes, sometimes romantic partners, and can’t understand how their parents can see these human beings as the Other. It’s a tricky thing to refocus on when, speaking for myself, I can’t help but see the failure of peace as a failure to understand each other’s humanity. I have to think about this one really carefully.
More »
by shiri [➚] · Wednesday, March 21st, 2012
When I lived in Israel, I was an activist. I felt engaged and informed. I went to protests and meetings and worked for organizations that represented controversial and important topics. My friends and I were inundated in politics- our conversations over dinner always touched by the situation in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. We were passionate, and it was exciting.
But when you live in Israel and you choose to be involved in politics, it’s also difficult not to feel like you’re drowning under a heavy, ever growing weight. Sitting on the plane back to the US after a year and a half abroad, I could feel this pressure float away. Now, if I don’t choose to open Haaretz.com, I can go weeks without knowing anything about Israel. It’s a seductive ignorance that is light and freeing, because I know that when I open the news, I feel stuck, angry and very, very sad.
So when I am asked to talk to young American Jews and motivate them to advocate against certain policies or for steps towards peace, I am hesitant because I know the costs of getting involved in this issue, and I doubt why young American Jews should feel inspired to do so. Questioning and challenging the policies Israel and the US together make is far more difficult, taxing and consuming than simply supporting Israel or obviously, avoiding the topic all together. American Jews my age (mid-20s) do not have thesame relationship that our parents and grandparents have with Israel. We don’t fully grasp how incredible it was for Jews all over the world to watch the building of this nation and thus, we don’t feel the tragedy of its failings.
More »
by Josh Hyman [➚] · Sunday, March 18th, 2012
I came to find out where Judaism went. I keep reading about this “New Judaism,” with its Joe Liebermans and its Bibi Netanyahus and its Eric Cantors. I keep meeting young Jews who explain to me that I just don’t understand; Israel deserves special rules for how it treats minorities, because it’s always threatened, and… and… and towelheads. I keep hearing the American House Majority Leader, a Jew – you know, the ones who “make money like Presbyterians and vote like Puerto Ricans” – I keep hearing him talk about how we can only clean up after tornadoes if we slash the welfare budget.
And then I go back to my memory banks and there’s my rabbi, talking about the imperative to do the right thing even when it’s hard… the imperative to overcome fear and reach across the aisle and bring out the better angels of our nature. About understanding the person who you, at first, think is demented, who you think is trying to hurt you. We’re all fallible creatures, but we, the People of Israel, were Chosen. God chose us to have stewardship over the Earth, not so that we could subjugate it, but so we could have true power: the power to overcome the basest human instincts. The power to set free the captive, to clothe the naked, to give bread to the poor. The power to change things from bad to good.
Then I turn on my computer, and there’s Bibi… oh, Bibi. ”Israel Mulls the Possibility of an Iran Strike Without US Support.”
More »
by dcc [➚] · Thursday, March 1st, 2012
Over the past week, the Jewish paper of record (The New York Times) has reported a few times on the Shabbatroversy in Houston, TX.
Robert M. Beren Academy joined the Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools for sports. Not surprisingly, TAPPS is dominated by Christian schools. It is Texas. When Beren joined, TAPPS told the school that there may be games during the playoffs on Shabbas. There were also no games to be held on Sunday, according to the by-laws.
After a week of pressure and very public backlash on the social medias and in the traditional press, Jewish orgs using very lame puns, and political and basketball stars chiming in, TAPPS has changed the tip off.
But I don’t care. It also seems that Beren didn’t care either. Sure the kids were bummed but the school made a CHOICE to join TAPPS and the school is filled with religious Jews. They clearly are going to pick Shabbat over B-ball any day and that is how it should be. I am lost at the outrage from the liberal movements and the community at large.
Congrats to the kids being taught that in a secular world, they can sue to get what they want religiously. Good luck with that in the real world. But now that they can play, I hope the beat the pants off those anti-Semites.
by chaneld1621 [➚] · Wednesday, February 22nd, 2012
When: Tuesday, February 28
Where: Nuyorican Poets Cafe, 236 East 3rd St. between Avenues B & C, Lower East Side
Meet the Change is Pursue’s quarterly networking series. It is an open invitation to change-makers from across the spectrum: teachers and students, social workers and social entrepreneurs, artists and lawyers, investors and innovators, organizers, educators, and agitators – anyone and everyone seeking co-conspirators for activating their Jewish and social justice values. Each event presents the efforts of a featured change-maker while encouraging attendees to connect with one another around their own ideas, desires, and plans for making change. Previous Meet the Change events featured the
Yes Men,
Sara Horowitz,
Ami Dar,
Rachel Tiven,
Billy Wimsatt, and
Jenni Wolfson.
by chaneld1621 [➚] · Saturday, February 18th, 2012
On Wednesday, The National Jewish Outreach Program (NJOP)-the folks who brought you Shabbat Across America and Read Hebrew America- picked the winners of its first-ever “Jewish Treats: Jewish Influencer Awards,” announcing the recipients as part of Social Media Week. The award is based on the “creative and strategic use of social media.”
It should not surprise me that this is what it looks like: white, Orthodox dudes (and white skinned folks overall-nary a Jew of color in sight), people espousing the awesomeness of frumkeit-I believe the kids call it kiruv-and representing “mainstream” to right wing Jewish organizations.
A colleague sent me this list; if it hadn’t been in the Huffington Post, I doubt I would have found out about it at all. NJOP is not a diverse, lefty, or secular organization, they have an specific agenda (which of course, everyone does), and it’s expressed here. This is who NJOP has decided are leaders, who gets to represent the Jewish community, who is Jewish enough and in the right way.
Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, it’s lacking in religious, political and racial diversity, and because of the wide spread readership of the Huffington Post, a lot of folks have probably seen it. It’s a sad example, with the exception of Esther Kustanowitz and Chaviva Galatz, of how a certain part of the American community represents itself to the larger world.
Where’s the list of the most creative and influential lefty/radical/progressive/ queer/feminist/non or post denominational/secular, etc. Jewish social media personalities? Who would be on yours?
by chaneld1621 [➚] · Wednesday, December 7th, 2011
This piece was orginally posted at the Pursue Blog. (www.pursueaction.org)
by Erika Davis 
How do you make giving meaningful? Tzedakah, the Jewish commitment to righteous giving, is something that most people are familiar with. Tzedakah boxes are things of childhood memory for many Jews, except me. I tithed. Growing up with a Baptist mother, a Methodist father and educated in Catholic schools, the idea of giving charity was not lost on me. I can remember my mother reaching into her pocket book every Sunday morning to fish out crisp dollar bills for my sister and I to put in the collection plate that was passed around. I don’t remember what it felt like to put that money in the shiny gold plate, because it wasn’t my money.
Fast forward two decades and now I’m a Jewish woman with a giant student loan balance. The promise I made in the mikveh comes with the responsibility to give funds according to our Jewish tradition. Student loan payments aside, the idea of giving money rather than time sometimes seems like a cop out. Why get your hands dirty helping the poor when you can write a check and not think about the people in need? Just giving money rather than time and energy seems like a way of avoiding the situation by throwing money at it. More »
by Dan Ab [➚] · Tuesday, November 29th, 2011
The Forward just published Conservatives Grapple With Gay Wedding Rite. In an effort to create a typical news article conflict, it misses the bigger picture. Three Conservative rabbis were tasked to create a standard ritual for gay weddings. They tried to hew as closely as possible to the typical non-egalitarian ceremony with the goal of minimizing the differences between homo and heterosexual marriage rituals. While a valiant goal, many of the top decision makers in the Conservative movement (the other members of the Committee on Jewish Laws & Standards of the Rabbinical Assembly), thought the text didn’t work and asked the drafting group to make more radical changes to the text with the goal of a more egalitarian ritual. The only critique in the article that wasn’t from a Conservative rabbi is a quote from Jay Michaelson. I read a comment of Michaelson on Facebook where he said he was more supportive of this effort than his quote that ended up in the Forward article portrayed.
The draft text and suggested revisions are not publicly available so I can’t directly critique them. Still, we can discuss why this effort matters.
There are some great examples of couples doing intense study to create their own ceremonies. BZ has a great series on this. More and more resources are out there. For example, there is Danya’s Alternatives to Kiddusin.
There are still unnecessary barriers for people who want to use these rituals. Here’s the example from my heterosexual wedding (predating both BZ’s and Danya’s writings). We used a non-standard & more egalitarian Ketubah text. While the text was available, we couldn’t walk into most Judaica stores & buy an beautiful ketubah with this text pre-printed. We wouldn’t have even known this text existed if we didn’t have friends who adapted it for their own wedding. To use the text, we needed to contact the author, a total stranger named Aryeh Cohen, to get an electronic version of the text that the ketubah scribe could lay out and then hand inscribe. Even this modest change to a more egalitarian ketubah text required added effort and additional costs. Our discussions regarding variations on the ceremony didn’t go much beyond rings, who walks around who, and whether the object of value should be a ring or a banana.
While finding a wider range of rituals is slightly easier now, egalitarian hetero or homosexual wedding rituals that are rooted in Jewish history and tradition are still an elite decision for those who decide the extra work is worth it.
Conservative Rabbis and other Conservative leaders have long officiated at weddings using a variety of rituals. Some were performing gay commitment ceremonies or weddings before the Committee on Jewish Law & Standards (CJLS) said it was ok and more have done so afterwards. Still, officiants are all piecing together new ritual based on the work of others and their own research and innovations.
Perhaps someone else will correct me, but I think this is the first attempt by a major Jewish organization to create a single, standardized ritual for homosexual weddings. Standardized ritual can remove barriers. A CJLS approved ketubah text for gay weddings will be pre-printed in beautiful ketobot by more suppliers with non-fancy verisions sitting in more synagogue rabbis’ cabinets. New wedding rituals will be in Rabbis’ manuals next to guidance for other lifecycle events. If the new rituals end up being firmly anchored in Jewish texts and traditions, egalitarian, and flexibly gendered, they will see usage in heterosexual weddings whether or not that was the CJLS intention.
While standardization can sometimes decrease innovation, I think it is the opposite in this case. People who want to innovate wedding rituals will still do that. A new standard text just shifts the starting point, with an easily found and hopefully well documented and researched text.
by chaneld1621 [➚] · Saturday, November 19th, 2011
The Promise is a 4 part BBC miniseries portraying, in the words of producer David Aukin, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict “as it is seen through British eyes.” Each episode is divided between the point of view of Erin, a young woman from Leeds spending the summer in modern day Israel/Palestine, and the flashbacks of her grandfather, Len, a soldier in 1945 British Mandate Palestine. The first episode was shown Wednesday, November 16th at the JCC in Manhattan as part of the Other Israel Film Festival.
I’m sure Claire Foy, who plays Erin, gets this all the time, but she looks like a cross between of Rory Gilmore and that Kirsten Stewart person from the Twilight movies. Moving on. The episode begins with Erin’s discovery of her grandfather’s diary, kept during the British Mandate, in his apartment. Her mother tells her to throw it away, but Erin keeps it, and after informing her mother that she’s going to Israel for the summer with her friend Eliza, who’s beginning her army service, she begins reading it on the plane, starting with his account of liberating Bergen Belsen. Then we see a lot of black and white footage from the camp. Or rather, the audience did. I kept my head down and scribbled. “I wish everyone could see what I’ve seen,” writes Len.
Eliza, Erin’s friend, has dual Israeli/UK citizenship, and her parents live in Caesaria, in a crazy house with glass everything and a giant pool. They take a walk on the beach wearing white and drinking wine and the whole thing makes me think of folks who own houses in the Hamptons or Martha’s Vineyard. “It’s like paradise,” Erin tells Eliza. “It’s not what I expected.” “You thought we lived in bomb shelters,” Eliza says. Cue a montage of Eliza and Erin cavorting in the streets of what looks like Tel Aviv-shopping, sitting in cafes, Erin gawking at the sight of a soldier’s gun, and then, in a night club, where Erin passes out and has a seizure.
Meanwhile, in British Mandate Palestine (BMP), Len is told by an army commander that “These Jews see returning to be this place as the fulfillment of the promise of Gd,” but that the Arabs see things differently. The goal of the army is to get both parties to live together peacefully, “like the meat in a sandwich.” (The creepiest simile ever used to refer to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict?)
A moving scene follows of Jews jumping from an arriving ship into the water, and being greeted and pulled to shore by British soldiers. There’s a woman with a skeletal face, her wet hair clinging to her head, slogging towards land. The camera lingers on her for a minute too long, or maybe I just imagine that. We learn that there is a quota on Jews entering the country, and when Len tries to smuggle a woman through, he’s reprimanded.
Erin and Eliza, clad in her IDF uniform, drive to her army base to begin training. The front entrance is blocked by Peace Now protestors. As they drive to the other entrance, Eliza tells Erin that her brother is one of them. “I know you think it’s idyllic, but it’s total bullshit,” she says, admitting that she’s terrified of being the army. Erin proposes that if she really can’t take it, she’ll bail her out and they’ll run for the border. (Things I would love to see happen in a future episode.)
BMP: Len is in some kind of swanky club, with other soldiers and ladies and lots of alcohol, and he meets Clara, prompting me to worry that we’re going to see some sex really soon. (Spoiler: we do not.) Clara tells him that this is all propaganda, that she and many other women are being paid to entertain soldiers, and that “100,000 soldiers equals 100,000 opportunities,” and that he’ll undoubtedly write letters home to his family telling them about how well he’s being treated by the Jews of Palestine.
Len has a look of perpetual torture, which only gets worse when he’s ordered to attend a rally against the Jewish quotas, a project that Clara and her father are involved in, in civilian clothes. “Be a Jew for a day,” his commander tells him, urging him to get information on any insurgency the Jews might be planning. Clara, in the meantime, confesses to him that her mother met another man while in the concentration camp. “Not every concentration camp story has an unhappy ending,” she says.
Bon Iver. Bikini. Swimming pool. Erin floats around on a raft until she’s surprised by Eliza’s “insane” brother, Paul, who’s visiting his parents. Erin tells him about her grandfather, Paul tells her that his grandfather fought in the Irgun. Over dinner, things get a little American-Jewish community when we learn that Paul is an anti Zionist who believes Israel is a military dictatorship. Fight with parents about the occupation ensues. Eliza shows up in her IDF uniform and gun. Everyone stares. Later, Eliza tells Erin that once, Paul was very hard core about the army, before he went to Hebron.
BMP: Len attends the anti quota rally, and a man is killed whom the British believe to be an instigator. Later, some of his friends are killed in a shooting. It’s unclear who’s responsible, but in a move that I can only regard as insanely ironic, the remaining solidiers break into an Arab home in pursuit of the actual shooters. Clara’s father tells Len that he’s no longer welcome in their home, even after Len assures him that he’s on their side. “We may be stateless,” says her father, “but we are not stupid.” In the stairwell, Clara and Len embrace secretly.
That’s the end of the flashbacks. Erin and Paul travel to Ramle so she can see the graves of Len’s friends, and she freaks out when she sees the graves of two who aren’t dead in the journal yet. And then we’re in Paul’s car driving into the Territories. “I thought it was dangerous,” Erin says. “You’d rather be back by the pool?” Paul says, and she doesn’t answer. In Nablus, Paul speaks at a Combatants for Peace meeting, along with Omar, a former member of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. Erin watches, enraptured. She’s surprised to learn later that Omar is an Israeli Arab, and watches, horrified and confused, as Omar is stripped searched and detained at a checkpoint after confronting a solidier about his treatment of a Palestinian woman. “Welcome to Israel,” Paul says, as they drive away from the checkpoint after Omar has asked them to leave him there. “Isn’t it to stop the terrorists?” Erin wonders. Paul responds by showing her the separation barrier and explains that the goal of the checkpoints and the barrier is to force Palestinians off their land and into such a state of despair that they leave all together. He yells a lot. Erin looks confused and scared.
At the entrance to a cafe, a bewildered Erin gets searched by a security guard. She and Paul drink beer. She says she loves it in Israel, he says it’s because she lives in the safe world of his parents, who, he admits, are lovely people. He tells Erin that when he was little, his father took him to a border and pointed out the difference between Jewish and Arab land. “Look what they’re done with the land in 2000 years and look what we’ve done in 50,” his father said. Paul: “He was telling me that they aren’t as deserving as we are.”
On the way out of the cafe, Erin’s glance lingers on a couple coming in. Paul realizes that he’s left his wallet inside when they get to the car and tells Erin to wait. And then there’s a explosion in the cafe. End of episode one.
Are you still reading? Good. After the episode, there was a q/a in the Speakeasy cafe with Liel Leibovitz and producer David Aukin. The idea of the series began with a letter from a solidier who served in Palestine during the British Mandate, which inspired Aukin to portray the conflict through a British perspective. The series was shot on location in Israel/Palestine and the crew represented a cross section of Israeli society, which, according to Aukin, resulted in very real tensions and arguments.
In response to an audience member’s question about the source and prevalence of Britain’s anti-Israel boycotts, Aukin said, “There is no memory in the current British narrative about the Mandate. It doesn’t exist anymore. If anything, this film is anti-British. What we’re dealing with now are the seeds of what the British left behind.”
In case you’re wondering what happened at the end of episode one of The Promise, you can see the second episode this coming Monday, November 21, at the JCC in Manhattan at 7 pm. Episodes three and four will be show on Wednesdays, November 23-December 7th. For more information, visit www.jccmanhattan.org/cat-content.aspx?catID=2928&progID=24759.
by zt [➚] · Wednesday, November 16th, 2011
This is a guest post from Staci Akselrod, a student at Hampshire College:
Join us for the Queer Jews and Allies Conference at Hampshire College, in Amherst, MA, on Sunday December 4th! This free, day-long conference will offer workshops, panels, plays, and more, addressing the unique experiences of queer Jewish identities as they weave among spirituality, sexuality, secular culture, gender identity and expression, political perspectives and movements, and religious traditions. This event welcomes all queer, gay, trans*, lesbian, and bisexual Jews and allies to learn, network, and create community in a safe, respectful, and accountable space. Kosher lunch and dinner will be provided for registered participants.
To see a workshops, our keynote, sponsors, and a schedule please go to our website here:
www.hampshire.edu/queer-jews-and-allies-conference.htm
Register for the conference:
www.surveymonkey.com/s/queerjewsandalliesregistration
Contact us:
queerjewsandallies@hampshire.edu
Accessibility notes
The conference will be primarily located within a wheelchair-accessible building. The food served at the conference will be kosher dairy and kosher vegan, and the conference schedule has been timed to best utilize the PVTA bus system.
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