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.