Di Freye Froy

The Big Not Getting It

2007-05-21T07:22:00.000-07:00

Two important e-reads have passed my desk in the last few days, and since I have a professional obligation to report on both of them, I'd like just one minute to vent. The first is "The Continuity of Discontinuity", a new study put out by Steven Cohen and Ari Kelman on "new Jewish initiatives", and the second is The Hadassah-Brandeis Institute's most recent e-zine, with the clever title "Is Judaism a Girl Thing?" (playing off Rosh Hodesh: It's a Girl Thing!).

"Continuity of Discontinuity" is a long read, but I thought it was important to slog through: generally I find my position best summed up as Professional Young Person. (It's a step up from the Professional Jew niche I occupied during college.) In summation, it seeks to assuage older Jews who might read it (although its graphics, to my eye, were pitched to a young audience) that young Jews haven't, in fact, dropped out of the J-world; we just use radically different to engage with one another and with our culture. (And, yes, culture is an appropriate word there, because most of the conversation stayed away from religion, although I see an easy correlation between what were identified as cultural markers--an inherent dislike of hierarchy, lateral community building, etc.--in many of the religious innovations I personally use.) Surprise, surprise, we find the exclusivity of our elders repugnant; we find heteronormative, nuclear-family-oriented, non-progressive programming stifling and we like the internet. Whoa!

I know I'm being facetious and not very patient here, but I'm not only tired of feeling like the monkey in the observation tank, but I can't believe it both took the community so long to care about this stuff and that this is heralded as such news. It's good, it's great, even, that this may make its way into the hands of those responsible for the "Young Jews Just Don't Care" propaganda and assuage some of their loudly-held doomsday proclamations. God knows it just confirms everything I could have told these researchers. I guess that's what bugs me--I can't believe it takes a team of sociologists to uncover this. Just ask us! When Hillel published its report on Millenials (which, by the way, said many of the same things--was no one listening?), my Hillel director just snorted and said, yeah, we kind of knew that already. Which may be why she remains a very good friend--when she wants to know what I'm thinking, she asks! When my bosses want to know about new technology, or how do I use blogs, or where can information be found, or do I think young Jews are disengaged from x and for what possible reasons--they ask! They group they surveyed is exceptionally bright, no doubt (I've had the chance to chat with Aaron Bisman at parties, and he really is awesome), but they could have picked any four of the hundreds and maybe thousands of articulate, hard-working folks out there. I'm not mad they didn't ask other people--I'm mad that nobody seems to consider that a course of action. We've not yet turned into a movement that swears off the establishment entirely (and, thanks to said internet, we probably won't ever cohere that way)--so take the opportunity to ask us us, Establishment.

As for Judaism being a "girl thing" (and despite the "clever" title, isn't that a sweetly patronising way of putting the question?), I can't emphasize enough how sick I am of even the little simmering undercurrents of this conversation that I seem to keep have over and over. I know I should be more empathetic, and I do strongly believe that it's time to start actively working to include men--and boys--in Jewish life more consciously. But the kvetching really has to stop, and I mean now. I find the whole "the Reform Movement isn't comfortable with male spaces, and so boys are dropping out, because the woman-smell is overpowering" to be the biggest load of bullshit. This is how the Men's Movement's gonna work? Because then we really need to address gender stereotypes of exactly who are the snivelling whiners of the bunch. If, after 5,000+ years of patriarchy and misogeny, women can force themselves into the scene and demand to be taken seriously while overhauling the system to find themselves inside it, surely men, after 30 or so years of menacing Debbie Friedman songs, can say, hey, we really need to do our own spiritual-finding work, because the Women's Movement has shown us that the tradition really can be at least a little flexible and still full of meaning, and we were a little embarrassed to say this, but it hasn't been working for us either. But the blame-the-woman thing--and believe me, that's what it is--is disgusting. I'm disgusted. What a cop-out on the part of a population that should be thanking J Fems for trailblazing. I support curricular change and inclusion work and I support men's individual and even group efforts to locate themselves within Jewish culture and religion, but the moment you say "women took over" is the moment you lose the whole of my respect, and you can take that shit to the bank.

The morals of our story? Talk to young Jews and stop blaming women. Doesn't it feel like maybe we've been here before?

Update/Post-Script
Apparently, the head of the Reform Movement, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, had some pretty choice comments about how dealing with CUFI & co. (Christians United For Israel) is Bad For The Jews. Although I said some unpleasant things about him when he got a little simpery over Jerry Falwell's death, it seems I spoke too soon: he comes off strongly against co-operation with Christian Zionists and grounds his arguments, here, at least, in the fact that young Jews will (and do--hey there!) find such cooperation repugnant, alienating and traitorous to our own Jewish values. He said:

"[Young Jewish adults] respond negatively to those who disparage other religious traditions and who make exclusivist religious claims. They are insistently centrist in their political views on the Middle East. And they are suspicious of a Jewish establishment that they see as too focused on money and insufficiently focused on values.

And so whom do we offer to these young people as a spokesman for Israel? John Hagee, who is contemptuous of Muslims, dismissive of gays, possesses a triumphalist theology and opposes a two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. If our intention was to distance our young adults from the Jewish state, we could not have made a better choice."

Sounds kinda familiar. So good on you, Rav Yoffie. Where's everybody else?

JewStuff for the Real World

2007-05-04T10:24:00.000-07:00

I've sat out the last few weeks because I've been so wrapped up in the (secular) political scene that I thought I would probably just explode if I tried to write anything down.

Let's see how I do.

I've spent the last few weeks generally appalled at my government--a government that refuses to limit gun ownership but will outlaw medical procedures--as well as many of my fellow citizens, including those who were rooting for National Prayer Day. And then when you read that the Prime Minister of Israel has a 3% approval rating because he mangled a military situation and greatly magnified the body count and political damage and you think, why the hell is everyone so down on Israel for lack of political loyalty? I think the lowest recorded approval rating for a sitting American president has been in the low 20s. The low 20s, folks. Please don't hang up the next time John Zogby comes a-ringing, okay?

As happens, I'm now just waiting for the pendulum to swing the other way--the inevitable period of time when the mere sight of the NYTimes will make me queasy. In the interim, that strange middle state where I'm desperate for insight but simply cannot look at DailyKos again, I've taken my usual route, and have been searching out JewStuff that helps me think. JewStuff for the Real World, we might call it.

Thinking about abortion has been weirdly eased by the rereading of two articles--Kathleen Peratis' brilliant piece in the Forward, and a rather old piece in The American Prospect by Sarah Blustain. (I have a curious relationship to her work, as I currently fill a position she once held--and although our interests and stills are very obviously divergent, everything she does has a tinge of what-might-yet-be for me.) I am so impressed with the ability of these women to wrestle honestly with these questions that the abortion issue presents--something that Caitlin Flannagan aims for, and sort of gets, in this month's Atlantic. I think a willingness to grapple with the messy parts of a problem is a really Jewish thing to bring to the table--not in an essentialist way, but simply because the force of history helps it along. All of those rabbis and scholars dissecting point after point of Talmud, following arguments through because to argue is to accrue knowledge and engage in an admirable exercise. It's an argument I've made before, and one I plan to make many times again.

Plus, today's discovery of a very interesting post on Jewcy by David Klinghoffer, whose work I don't really know, provided what I've been looking for for weeks: a Jewish justification for gun-control laws. You should read the post, but the basic concept is that the injunction not to "put a stumbling block before the blind" is essentially a condemnation of providing people with that for which they have a weakness. And he inspired me to make the connections between Jewish law and democratic law that I've been groping for.

I don't believe religious law should have any teeth in civil government--if you haven't caught on that far, you haven't been paying attention. I am an absolutist regarding the separation of Church and State, and I believe that the democracy embodied in the Constitution is a result of the Enlightenment, not religious establishments. That said, I obviously find a lot of beautiful things about Judaism, and I'm most impressed by its ability to train into us the same basic impulses towards good that secualr government at its best seeks to enstatue. Leave grain at the corner of your fields for the poor to collect? It's not an injunction towards charity--it's the recognition that there needs to be a dignified safety net for people. Even kashrut, as I learned at BJ's recently, is much more (in my opinion) about metaphor. It's a way of dealing with the omnivore's dilemma--aka free will. We need to train ourselves not to do hurtful things. And in these pre-Messianic, post-Sanhedrin days, we need a civil government that's going to kick the shit out of us when we screw other people over. (Although the current system--wherein the Rockerfeller Laws trump Enron, doesn't quite fit the ideal.)

I don't know--it's all still a mess in my mind. But I do take a lot of comfort in the fact that my Jewish Judaism helps keep my internal compass on the right path.

Kol tov.

We're Back to This Shit?!

2007-04-11T18:22:00.000-07:00

The April issue of Moment magazine--commendable in many ways--features an article by everyone's favorite Constitutional theorist, Dennis Prager. Except by "Constitutional theorist", I mean...not. This article (an opinion column, really) attempts to explicate, exonerate and apologise for Prager's now-famous remarks about Rep. Keith Ellison, the man who wanted to destroy the fabric of America by getting sworn into office with a Quran and not a Bible. Leaving aside for the moment that the actual act of swearing in features absolutely no theological literature, which can feature only in a later, non-ceremony, this is a huge load of bunk. Horse-hooey, to take my cue from Molly Ivins.

Prager argues any number of inane and incorrect points, still attempting to play on stupid, outdated, and did I mention incorrect, fears about what is or isn't good for the Jews. Now, let me be clear: I love Jews. I love Judaism. I think we're pretty much past the point of denying it. (Just look at where I work.) And I love America. A lot. This country is an idea, and an ideal, and I can go on for hours about the eerie similarities between the practices of Constitutional law and Conservative Judaism, but I won't. I just want to firmly afix my street cred here.

So, incorrect point of Prager's, part the first: the values upon which America was established were Enlightenment values, but Enlightenment values are merely extensions ("largely add-ons") of Biblical values. Sorry, not true. Admittedly closer to true for Jews than Christians, still useless in this argument because, well, not a lot of Jews among the Founders. The Enlightenment valued reason (and beauty, as reason's physical manifestation) above all else. Religion values faith above all else. Yes, the social values of Judaism fit an Enlightened social agenda--especially if you take a highly-Americanized/Westernized, liberal, latter-day Judaism as your example. Which sort of defeats the point. Anyway, anyone who claims the Enlightenment was merely an extension of Biblical values, especially given that the Enlightenment was a reaction to a Church-driven society, is fairly murky on the precepts of the Enlightenment. Locke, Voltaire, Rousseau: these men valued sound reasoning, the triumph of reason as man's birthright. I don't know what their feelings on Jews were, but they would not be comfortable in Boro Park today. Dogma was not part of the agenda.

Anyway, incorrections, part the second: "These Bible-based Christians did not need the Enlightenment to tell them that government should not be theocratic." Except, um, of course they did. Not in every case, of course: the originial Jamestonians seemed to have been relatively lax on enforced religion (as long as you were a Christian--for further commentary on that, please allow me to refer you to the decided lack of tolerance shown those native peoples resitant to conversion). The colony of Pennsylvania was famous for religious tolerance. But the Puritans were some of the most intolerant sons of bitches this country has seen--no small feat. Anne Hutchinson? The Salem witch trials? People were regularly excommunicated--not to mention executed--for religious transgressions. This is seventh-grade social studies stuff, guys.

Parts the thrid and fourth: "While the United States has no state-established religion, it was designed to be a deeply religious country. And America's religiosity was uniquely Judeo-based." Okay, first of all, the US was not designed to be a "deeply religious nation." It was designed to be a society in which deep religiousity would be left on its own, so long as it didn't infringe on the rights of others. But design specifically to be religious? James Madison, who, in addition to signing the Constitution and, y'know, being President, wrote a hefty portion of the Federalist papers and sold the idea of the Constitution to America, state convention by state convention, agreed with Thomas Jefferson that the Constitution should build a wall around religion. Dennis--know anything else we're supposed to build a boundry around? There's zero evidence offered to support Prager's assertion, by the way.

And as for America's Judeo-based religion--which Prager later amends to Judeophilia--what a load of bunk. Certainly America has always perceived itself as a sort of secular Zion, a triumphant underdog in its early days that beckoned with the sweet scent of promise well into the present day. I can understand, even agree with, the fact that America has a sense of Judeophilia. But that doesn't counter the fact that America is overwhelmingly Christian. Overwhelmingly. I don't feel compelled to document this further than to point out the 2% thing, but if America's so Jewish and so in love with us, I guess we can call off our dogs.

In response to the assertion that until 1800, you couldn't graduate Harvard without learning Hebrew (which I think was perfectly reasonable for a curriculum that taught classics in their original language), I would say a far more relevant example of Jews' place in a thoroughly Christian America would be the fact that this selfsame institution, along with its Ivy brethren (don't know about sistren) instituted Jewish quotas in the 1920s and 30s. Love the Judaism, hate the Jew?

All in all, I'm disappointed by this article. What's with the quarter-hearted apology? All of these points add up to some very wishy-washy scholarship in my book, and I don't appreciate yet another older Jewish man lecturing me on the ways of America and what is or isn't good for the Jews. I was appalled in the first place to have an Islamophobic argument about Quran vs. Bible be blamed on what's good for me as a Jew (Mr. Ellins: fix healthcare and you can be sworn in with whatever you want). My disgust at an apologist attempt to tack this onto America's "Jewish" values is ever greater. If you're gonna shoot big, at least stick to your guns.

For more information about the Constitution, check out constitution.org, American Rhetoric, or email my friend Jon. Bro knows what he's talking about.

Kol tov...

Newsflash: AIPAC=Psycho

2007-03-23T07:05:00.000-07:00

After the warm-and-fuzzy vibes of that last post, please allow me to take one moment to say this: the folks at AIPAC have gone fully friggin' crazy. Seriously. So say the good people at JewsOnFirst, and so say I.

They invited Pastor John Hagee of Christians United for Israel to speak--check out the first part of his speech:

The person screaming "I love you" nearly made me puke my morning coffee. I have neither the energy nor the inclination to point out the reasons why I'm uncomfortable with Christian Zionists--although, in Reader's Digest version, it probably has to do with the fact that they believe I'm doomed to eternal damnation--but I will say that I hadn't realized before the last few weeks how far to the right AIPAC has really veered. Forget denominationalism--the next showdown in and amongst American Jewry is going to be the uber-lefties versus the incipient Judeo-fascists. Luckily, both sides can bring their very own evangelical Christians. We Jews can take a breather!

By the way, even if you missed John Hagee, there were plenty of other nutjob speakers to keep you entertained.

I'm disgusted.

kol tov...

Pesach for the Rest of Y'all

2007-03-22T18:13:00.000-07:00

I had a whole post planned about how much I love Pesach, but I think I'll skip it. (Although I do love it, do think it encapsulates all that is vital in Judaism, do think that it is the most beautiful and complicated set of metaphors available to explore those vital issues, etc. If you're in Brooklyn and need a seder, track me down. It's a good time.)

I want to talk, very briefly, about the personal importance Pesach has for me as a holiday that takes place in the home. First of all, there's all that proto-feminist, sanctification-of-the-domestic-sphere, mechitzaless-learning-space, isn't-it-funny-the-second-wavers-reclaimed-seders-first-except-it's-just-obvious jazz, not to be taken lightly. But more importantly, it's an opportunity--one of the only ones--for me to share everything beautiful about Judaism with the people I love.

I think maybe I'll never stop seeing the world through the frame of a sort-of-religiously-inclined person who hangs with a bunch of aggressively secular folk. And although working for some of my world's coolest people has provided an outlet for a lot of that, lifting the fog of depression that so dampened my Jewish renaissance, I still frequently feel like I live two lives. I think I'm pretty adept at navigating conflicting or just multiple identities, but it saddens me sometimes that I have this whole secret life that my friends don't know about. And, to be fair, that I try not to talk about too much, because I think it would be alienating and uncomfortable for them. Because these amazing and lovely people in my life almost uniformly lack any context for religion that's authentic without being batshit crazy. Except for The Girlfriend, a self-defining ex-Catholic who has a deep appreciation for the possibilities of religion--both to be beautiful and dangerous.

Pesach provides the opportunity for me to invite people into my home (and sometimes my parents' home) for what we might call some private religion. And because I'm generally appointed master (mastress? mastrix?) of events--even at aforementioned parents' house, because, surprise, I'm more religious than they are, too--I get to control how the story unfolds. And I get to editorialise, which is among my top-five favorite things to do. This year, I went so far as to make my own haggadot (although that was a decision influenced primarily by economics), which really allows me to take every opportunity to show, if not tell: This is it! This is the thing I love! These are the ideas behind all the stuff you see me do! See how much there is for me to love! I'd like everyone (my roommates, my parents, my near-and-dear-ones) to see and feel the beauty--and it's this magnificently three-dimensional beauty--of the holiday, but more than that, I at least want them to see why I feel it. And that I feel it. I want my decisions and committment and love to make some sense to them, and I want them, if only for one night of wine and endless, encouraged questions, to peek through a window into the other half of my life.

My boss said something the other day that gave me pause: she said she was always comforted that, even when she was going crazy pesadiking the house and cooking (and cooking and cooking...), everyone she knew was doing the same thing. Pesach, like everything else, is a much more solitary endeavor for me than it is for most of the Jews I know, but I'd like to think of this, too, as a double blessing: I can trade matzah-ball recipes by day with all these women I so love, but at night when I open my door to Elijah, I have a true understanding of what it means to say, "Yes, this is my home. Please, come inside for a little while."

Kol tov.

Conferences Coming Out My Ears

2007-02-26T20:47:00.000-08:00

But damn, they're all so good. Tonight, I went to one panel of the excellent "A Jewish Feminist Mystique? Jewish Women in Postwar America" conference, co-organised by the incredible Rachel Kranson. Tonight's presentation was about growing up in the '50s, and it was awesome. Although the worst moderated panel I've ever seen (and who knew moderating was something you could screw up?), it was probably the only panel I've ever encountered where all I wanted was for each of the four panelists (Alix Kates Shulman, Judith Shapiro, Anne Lapidus Lerner and Ruth Abram--an SLC alum!) to keep talking and talking and talking. They were funny and charming and inviting and their material was totally accessible, even to me, relative fetus that I am. Hopefully, NYU or JTS will post the video of tonight's goings-on, so be on the lookout and for sure watch it; I just want to touch on two points I felt were pertinent.

1) Cultural Jewish Identity Say What?
Although all the panelists professed a Jewish identity, there was definitely discussion of what mix those identities were, given the various components of religious, secular and the-goyim-treat-us-differently. Judith Shapiro made my jaw drop when she said that she thinks her generation was the one to find a firmly culturally Jewish identity, and that she didn't know if that would be possible nowadays. A rather audacious claim, I think. After all, I'm a Millenial. (Although, it did occur to me that, from an anthropological point of view--one Shapiro herself might engage--our own insane self-awareness as cultural Jews might interfere with the authenticity of the identity. After all, we're pretty ironic about our Jewishness.) I caught her on her way out, and we briefly discussed how much the Jewish community has moved to the right. I think she's right about that--it's one of many reasons, I think for this incessant and incredibly harping insistence that my generation isn't invovled, isn't affiliated, blah blah blah ad nauseum. But something wasn't jiving for me. And it wasn't until the ride home on the 1 train (that became the 7 train, that became the G train) that it clicked: Judith Shapiro, k'mo ani, is from New York. Her stories about the non-Jewish components of Jewish culture--Chinese food, basic menu skills in Italian--were so familar to me, because I've heard them over and over from my Bronx-born mother and I tell them myself. None of the other panelists shared as precise a connection to her exact definition of secular Jewish culture as my younger boomer parents would. We were both looking for the answer in time, but I'm pretty sure it lies in space. And I think that if this generation of Jewish youth changes that, it'll be because the prophets among us take it all to the internet.

2) Mommy, Where Do Jewish Feminists Come From?
Well, from the Civil Rights Movement, if you ask Alix Kates Shulman, which several people did. Shulman is sure that the over-representation of Jews in the CRM is directly related to the subsequent high number of Jewish women in the Women's Liberation Movement (and use of that term, by the way, is a rock solid way to date yourself). She maintains that it was impossible for women involved in the CRM to remain silent at the way women were expected to serve coffee to the revolutionary types. It set off "aha!" moments sort of en masse.

I like this theory a lot (especially the paralellism between how the Civil Rights Movement and what I would dub authentically Jewish feminism both alter their respective systems from the inside out, instead of advocating separatism--I think it marks them not only as doubly courageous but really more mature movements), but I don't think it explains everything. This is a question to be thought on much more: why? Why so many Jewish feminists? Because we know more about oppression? I don't know. I'm ready to think more. But until I do, I'm going to sit back and enjoy the fact that I heard four women in their sixties rock the (bobby) socks off their audience tonight.

Kol tov...

JOFA

2007-02-11T20:11:00.000-08:00

There's way, way too much to say about the JOFA conference that ended today--way more than one post and possibly even more than one brain can hold (mine, at least, on both counts). I have sheaves of notes and am still trying to synthesize all the separate phenomenon I witnessed. Smarter people than I will surely dissect the particulars of what was said there; I want to comment on two far more obscure phenomenon.

1) I had seen many of today's speakers before. Norma Joseph and Tovah Hartman, in particular, but a number of other presenters and participants. It was like meeting them anew. Perhaps because this is the time when they are trying to cheer their sisters in arms onward toward battle, Norma and Tovah especially were on fire. Seriously incendiary, and I got lit up right with them. I wonder how much of it had to do with not being the representatives of Orthodoxy, or at least the only representatives of Ortho feminism, up on whatever dias they found themselves on. Whatever caused it, I hope I get to see it again.

2) The universality of Jewish deity who, or which, supercedes gender is supposed to transcend denomination. It's tautological to say that an incorporeal God is genderless. But for whatever reason, it's women who drive that home. I was reminded today of a recent story Lilith ran about the first batch ever of Reform women rabbis--that is to say, women rabbis. One of the rabbis spoke about how the introduction of female clergy helped people conceive of God outside of an old man with a big beard. And when Norma Joseph said, "Can you see the idolatry of conceiving of God only in male terms?", it made me think that women maybe are really on to something here.

3) The question of whether denominationalism is really the best methodology for transporting Judaism, sustainably, into the future has come up in this blog before, but you can expect to see it reemerge with a vengence: I'm becoming more and more convinced that it's an idea whose time has gone. Maybe we're more evolved now. Maybe we're just bored.

So much to say, so little sleep. Sigh. Kol tov...

Jewish Masculinities

2007-01-19T13:20:00.000-08:00

I know: it's not what people expect to hear about from a raging, raving feminist. But I think the (de/re)construction of masculinity is definitely a feminist issue--it may be one of the most important one we have on the horizon. The way I see it--which is, admittedly, not the way most people see it--the feminist movement(s) really have accomplished a great deal, not the least of which is a very real awareness of the complexity of gender, especially for women. Well, let's make it women and queerfolk, anyway. But there hasn't been any corresponding men's movement. (For more on all this, check out Brendan O'Sullivan's article in BITCHFEST.) If you don't think this is so, ask yourself why "gender studies" programs are not only generally about women (and sometimes queerfolk), but they're expected to be populated by women and the non-gender-normative. It's sad, really, and something better be done soon, because the options are pretty limited for the dudes out there.

So, that said, let us move on to Jewish masculinity. On oft-cursed thing, that J-masc, and very much tied to what's gone on with Jews since the 1800s. It should be noted that I recently read The Jewish Woman in America, and since it's pretty impossible to talk about the evolving roles of Jewish women without the corresponding roles for Jewish men, it's a pretty instructional read for those interested in this topic. To ruthlessly paraphrase, Jewish gender roles didn't really evolve into what we might consider a typically Western framework while in Europe. (Please note! I'm talking about Ashkenazim here, who laid much of the framework for American Jewish society and certainly are the basis for generalizations about "American Jews", regardless of how relevant such generalizations might be to specific communities within America. I think much of what I'm about to argue could be applied to Sephardic communities that continued living on the European continent post-Inquisition--namely that of the Balkans--but for Sephardim of Northern Africa, and Mizrachim, much of this essay doesn't apply. I'm sorry. I'll come back to you another day, I promise. Let me read some more first.) The evolution of these anamolous gender roles has both intrinsic and extrinsic roots. No one, I think, can deny that literacy and scholarship are Jewish values. Once in Diaspora, Jews tended to invest whatever autonomous power they were allowed in their religious and learned leaders. Simultaneously, there were power systems that denied Jews economic progress (and sometimes livelihood) through land-based means. To grossly generalize, these two factors set the Jews apart from the feudal/peasant societies of Europe. Jewish women assumed roles, economic and, correspondingly, social, that allowed them to thrive as the breadwinners for many European Jewish families. The overt, the public, the money-handling, the pushy--all were "female" and not particularly valued by men, whose worth, although it could be achieved via wealth, was really only validated through learning and piety.

Whew. Okay, so this unexpected system of gender roles climbs into steerage and hauls ass over to America, where it is totally antithetical to the upwardly-mobile among the immigrants--it prevented assimilation into the American bourgeois. Within a few generations, we have the pervasive image of the weak yiddishe yingele--effeminate, small, thin, pale, bookish, meek, etc. (Not to mention totally domineered by his incredibly aggressive mother and/or wife.) And you have writers like Philip Roth just ripping into this material, propogating it and spreading it along. Certainly parts of this image had roots in reality, but it was blown truly out of proportion and into something that stuck pretty well.

Zionism helped both keep such images alive as well as give Jewish men and boys a means by which to reclaim their "manhood" in, ironically, a more Western-acceptable way. (Often, there was a kind of parity between Zionism and Socialism in the social change they engendered among Jews, but in this case, I think Zionism wins the prize. The refashioning of Hebrew probably helped, but the real coup d'etat came in Zionism's eventual ability to include the vast majority of religious Jews. It opened up the possibilities for so many people.) Eli taught me a lot about this topic when we were sophmores in college: a lot of his interest in Jewish stuff seems to have emerged from a rejection of this emasculated male image and the desire to refashion Jewish manhood.

But after spending a week reading Etgar Keret and Shalom Auslander, two contemporary Jewish writers who each liberally apply scathing humor, I'm hopeful. Both of them seem, at least, to have transcended the gender-obsession of, say, a Philip Roth--their humor, all about poking fun, isn't particularly preoccupied with how a Jewish man should deal with the vital conundrum of being an emasculated Jewish male, but rather on the gallows humor and delight in the somewhat cruel absurd that has marked truly fine Jewish literature for centuries. Good stuff.

ANyone who's read this blog or, you know, talked to me knows that I could stay up and fight gender stuff out until the churchbells chime for morning (oh, Brooklyn). But I don't think I will right here--not enough time. I leave you with the thought of: how might be improve ourlives by taking some time to consider the baggage that comes along with our gender identities. Jewish men in America are only just now looking for a place to rest their worries--we can help with directions along the way.

kol tov....

Holiday Grab Bag

2006-12-17T08:07:00.000-08:00

First of all, a big chag sameach to everyone. Maybe because I work in such a Jewed up environment, I don't resent Hanukkah this year the way I often do. (It's NOT the Jewish Christmas, and please stop asking me--that kind of thing.) I got to teach someone how to make latkes, but it's been lower-key than usual, and I am profoundly grateful. Let's keep it that way. Some interesting other things:

1) Big ups to de little yout'
I saw Matisyahu in concert last night (with my parents!). Quite a different crowd than three years ago, in a basement at Sarah Lawrence. The experience was a bit diluted by the unruly crowd in my area, and the fact that a lot of people didn't seem to bring the same Jewish connection. Still, there's nothing like doing the bracha for the candles in alt-shul Yeshivish with a Lubovitcher reggae star and four hundred other people. Ditto the calling of Moshiach. Maybe because his sound has gotten so (over) souped-up, there have been moments when I've doubted his sincerity, but seeing Matisyahu live pretty much wipes such doubts from your mind. I don't ascribe to his particular beliefs about a lot of things, but it's beautiful stuff, and he helped spark the JewMusic movement that has meant so much to me. Vos ir lebt hundert-tsvontzik yorn un makt muzik di ganse zeit, Matis.

2) I know this is old news, but I was thinking about Dennis Prager and his ridiculous rant about Keith Ellison recently (check out Jewschool or pretty much any J-blog for many vitrolic commentaries). All I have to say is Article Six, Section Three, you dumb mofo. Try reading the handbook next time, or James Madison and I will come by and kick your ass. End of rant.

3)I was musing on Hannukah this week and the relative levels of importance that it plays in American Jewish and Israeli culture. By now the fervor has, I'm told, dropped down in Israel, but a certain Zionism professor once explained that because this is a holiday that focuses on Jewish military victory, it was one of the few recognized by the early vatikim. I guess it doesn't hurt that you can get through a big chunk of the story without mentioning God. Quite a contrast to America, where it's capitalism and not raging idealism that has elevated the status. But hey, at least we get a lot of fried potatoes. Who doesn't love fried potatoes?

Kol tov...

When a Faygele Becomes a Rabbi

2006-12-10T14:55:00.000-08:00

I cannot believe it's taken me so long to get to mentioning this, but's it's been an insane week. The Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of the Rabbinical Assembly of the Conservative Movement has voted to ordain openly gay and lesbian rabbis! It's very exciting, although I'll temper the news in just a bit. Wednesday, when it happened, there was a suddenly flurry of activity--I was getting emails, work and personal, from all sorts of people who seemed to crawl out of the woodwork to get me the news. I spoke to Idit Klein of Keshet, who seemed exceedingly cool, and Rabbi Menachem Creditor, easily one of my favorite people on the planet since I was about sixteen, in order to clarify for myself exactly what the accepted teshuvot permit and do not permit.

I'd like to call this one a win. Not a full win, maybe, but an amazing win. Although the status quo is still an acceptable pose for an individual congregational rabbi (or movement seminary, although let's just not go there for now) to take, the C movement has also accepted a new halakhic interpretation that says Leviticus bans only male anal sex, and thus postulating that gays can be rabbis and can officiate at committment ceremonies.

If you're up for it, check out the links and commentary provided here, because this will prove much more useful than any attempted explanations I could provide. However, two things os special note:

1) Please, do not use the term "gay marriage". It is factually unsound, as I informed the JTA on Thursday when they sent out an email (shockingly, a request for money) that said that the CJLS had approved gay marriage. The next email they sent had different wording. Whoops!

1a) What's the difference? you may ask. Gay marriage would include a whole set of ceremonies that are, to my extremely limited understanding, halakhically traif for non-heteronormative couplings. So, like, no kiddushin, etc.

1b) Why don't I sound more enraged about this technicality? you may ask. After all, I get thoroughly self-righteous when the question of "gay marriage" comes up in a US legal context. Well, that's because I don't think laws, at least in a country that includes the separation of Church and State among its highest civil values, ought to decide things based on religious understandings of situations. Religion, likewise, shouldn't decide things based on political understandings of things. This is religion sticking to religion, and I like that. Plus, I've been learning more about truly Jewish, halakhically-respectful, committment ceremonies, and I'm starting to be okay with them--how beautiful!

2) I learned from the amazing Danya Ruttenberg about a very interesting mathematical situation: the CJLS has twenty-five members and needs a majority vote to pass such a teshuvah. Both the original policy (no gays) and the new paper (yay gays!) got thirteen votes--just a majority. It means somebody overlapped. Intrigue!

So, while this doesn't mean that I'm going to rabbinical school at all/any earlier than my forties, it is SO NICE to be able to look at the Conservative Movement and say, "Damn! I am so proud to count myself among their numbers." It doesn't happen often enough, so let's just leave it with a big ole mazal tov to us all, today.

Kol tov...

War on Whatever

2006-11-30T19:40:00.000-08:00

I try not to be bothered by this bullshit, but the fight over War on Christmas has returned. I like the part about "persecuted Christians". This isn't China. The "Jewish" part of this is tangential, barely attached, but I hold my civic American values at the highest level of secular life, and the fact that this is the nonsense on which we spend our energy and best intentions (and media time and tax dollars) makes me want to vomit. Has PCism run too rampant? I don't know. I do know that when people tell me that America was founded directly upon Judeo-Christian codes of morality, I want to ask them if they've ever heard of the Enlightenment. Smith? Locke? Voltaire? The movement that planted the seed of "We hold these truths to be self-evident" and engendered the rise of modern nationalism? Riiiiight. (By the way, for the Yidn out there: The movement which also spawned modern Zionism, albeit about a hundred years later because European Hasidim and Maskilim were busy beating the shit out of each other?)

On the other hand, speaking as an American Jew, I've been so bothered by the fact that this is the public face of dispute for Jewish identity and presence? For real? I grit my teeth and swallow the Christmansization, the materialism, the unwarranted popularity on this lesser of holidays, but I don't have to like yet another reminder or example of this.

And on the third hand (as my boss says), there's the gut instinct of disgust. I am just disgusted. Genug.

Speaking of both disgust and Judeo-Christian codes of morality, the Committee from the RA votes on the homos next week. I am very, very curious.

And hopeful, however tentatively.

Kol tov...

A Nation Among Nations

2006-11-19T17:36:00.000-08:00

Recently, I spent one week traveling in Israel, and then a week thinking about having traveled in Israel. Both were instructive.

The first night I was there, slightly inebriated with jetlag, Eli took me to meet some of his friends and to see and hear the rally going on in Yitzchak Rabin Square. I have to say, for something that supposed to be apolitical, there was massive representation by pre-Army blue-shirted lefties. (If my first trip to Israel was spent in what I described to Ilana as a proto-Zionist fog ["I can't believe all these people are Jews "], than the first night of this second visit was spent agog at the fact that The Movement is alive as ever.)

Not that I understood a fraction of enough of what was said around it, but it was rather electrifying to hear David Grossman speak. (I did have the advantage of several Dorot-sponsored simultaneous translations.) I was most struck by what he referred to as a need to develop a civilian Israeli culture--a culture that has nothing to do with military might. In fact, just calling it a civilian culture keeps it tied into the dialectic, so let's call it a peace culture. I spent a lot of time before going to Israel reading David Grossman, and in retrospect I think he's really on a mission to do just that. His stories don't really deal with the conflict, but they do rely a lot on very Israeli language, I think. (I say this because I lucked into what I think is an excellent translation of Be My Knife. Vered Almog and Maya Gurantz did an excellent job of preserving what Dara Horn calls the levels of Jewish language--language that's evocative of Biblical phraseology and images, but used in an entirely secular context and without intention to evoke or subvert the meaning of the text in its original source.)

It also got me to thinking about an impromptu and impassioned little speech that my adorable Hebrew teacher gave a month or so ago. A secular Israeli who's been in New York long enough to know about Whole Foods, even though she still asks me about the silent "e" at the end of some words, Dganit believes fiercely in the need to bridge the glaring cultural gap between Israelis and American Jews. She has, I thinki, an excellent point, although I don't have enough satisfactory answers for her. It was something I thought about a lot in Tel Aviv with Eli, though. If there's a city that could possibly bridge the kind of gap Dganit wants to end, and to do it in a way that ultimately supports David Grossman's dream, it's going to be Tel Aviv--beautiful, secular, progressive, graffiti'ed, healthy-by-technical-sociological-definitions Tel Aviv--that's going to be the mainstay in forming the kind of urban Israeli culture that's going to fly with the secular kids of the Diaspora.

It's going to be a terrifying transition on both fronts--the loss of the military identity and the public acknowledgement among Diasporic Jews that Israel is indeed a country like other countries--neither founded in imperialistically-minded bloodlust nor really the Eretz Israel of messianic lore. I don't think I need to plumb the collective Jewish psyche for why those two things are so scary, nor do I know that they'll be pulled off successfully, nor that they are absolutely as their two disparate proponants make them seem. But I'll say one thing: I'll feel a lot better about Israel's chances of long-term survival when I see Jewish leaders and laity recognizing their need.

Thoughts?

Kol tov...

A Jewish Woman Among Jewish Men

2006-10-30T20:40:00.000-08:00

...or, An Unusual Situation. I spent tonight alternating between Rabbi Jeremy and Philip Roth. Quite the whiplash of Jewish masculinity have I.

Tonight's class at Ansche Chesed was, like last week's really excellent. We started mostly with the need for a balance between midrash and halakha--how midrash without acts is impotent and halakha without understanding is ignorant. I like that--it elevates Judaism out of the realm of philosophy. Rabbi Jeremy has a lovely idea about what it really is to approach Judaism with an historically-aware mentality (and the correlative awareness of sometimes fundamental differences of opinion that various scholars have held through time), that it enables a "conversation through time, without homogenization".

The conversation aspect really did get to me. It's pretty Menachem-esque, which is both unsurprising and ever-indicative of something that I'm going to want to look at more closely. Menachem was fairly enamoured of Heschel's concept of God in search of (hu)man. It's very Conservative-Judaism, but put poetically: a constant search and a constant back-and-forth and commitment to finding answers without the ultimate (and ultimately somewhat infantile) pleasure of easy answers.

We learned from this text (among many). I'm not 100% sure that I can decipher the Hebrew attribution, so I'll come back and edit another day:

"One finds in the Torah both 'And God spoke to Moses..." and 'God said to Moses...' Yet one also finds: 'And Moses said to God.' And 'Moses spoke to God.' This is like the parable of a cave by the sea shore. Sometimes the sea surges and fills the shore. And the sea water never leaves the cave, but hence forth the sea water fills the cave, and the cave water returns to the sea. So it is that God spoke to Moses and Moses spoke to God."

Beyond the simple Ecclesiastical feeling to that, it's really poetic. (And I can't tell if it's just the nature of an image of Creation as the shift that sets into motion a constant swirling of waters that keep mingling and mixing and return to mix again, sliding from cave to sea throughout the ages, but there's got to be a Yehudah Amichai poem about this somewhere.) There's something profound and almost solemn about accepting God as a partner in life--it removes the comforting clarity without undoing the ultimately unknowable aspect of the Divine. One of the women in the class was perturbed by what she perceived to be the "distancing" that building this kind of relationship entails. I guess she has a point; the relationship I have now with my parents is certainly less innocent and, in a way more "distant" now that I understand them to be gloriously fallible people than when I was sure they could do no wrong. But it's much more intimate, not to mention intellectually fulfilling, and such are the creature comforts I seek.

We touched briefly on the whole gay thing. I have much, much more to say about this, but in some possibly perverse way, I appreciated Jeremy saying he's pretty much glad it took the movement nearly fifteen years to reach the answer that everybody knows they're going to give in December. (If you don't think they're going to go with the obvious, don't say anything to me. I'm incubating some hope over here. On the other hand, I gave John Kerry a fighting chance in '04, so I've learned how to deal with bitter disappointment pretty well...) He thinks it has increased the depth and span of Jewish learning going on around this issue. Anyway, more some other time.

The really exciting news is that I got to flash my little official feminista card. In speaking about mikvah, Jeremy was repeating two of his critical points: that there is meaning to be found from doing each and any of the mitzvot (I agree) and that the mikvah passed the Rosenszweig (sp?) test of Verification; meaning that "hundred of thousands of people [meaning women, given the context, but whatever] have done it and it enriched their lives. After explaining to him that on Point A we are totally agreed, I pointed out that the Voices of the Happy-Mikvah-Goers are pretty lacking. Not because people hate the mikvah; but where are these women meant to come from, especially the "we've been dead for hundreds of years" crew. We just don't have those voices. Jeremy agreed. And ten minutes later, somebody asked if I were a rabbinical student. Awesome.

More to come when I'm awake...
kol tov.

"Values are for babies. Deeds are for grown-ups."

2006-10-23T20:41:00.000-07:00

I went to the first of two free classes that Rabbi Jeremy Kalmanafsky of Ansche Chesed is having about why he's so in love with Conservative Judaism, and kind of down on this whole post-denominational thing. My friend Jenn has told many good things about Jeremy, and it's been years since I've had anyone talk about how much they liked the big C--plus, I scratched out most of a draft about, as my notes read, "J-fem & JPD", and I wanted a different angle to crash around my head for a while.

The class was great--he's an excellent speaker. None of it was that revolutionary to me, but the contrast to p-d, which was pretty much just hitting the scene the first time I learnt all this, was very interesting. Jeremy is put off by what he considers to be the smugly self-congratulatory tone of much post-denominationalism. Then again, he also said something to the effect that "almost every post-denominational Jew is a Conservative Jew", so I guess any detected smugness would be doubly irksome. More on this later.

Pretty much, he's devised a slogan for Conservative Judaism: "Faithfulness and Critique". He explains this as the difference between authoratative and authoritarian Judaism, or between rabbinic and halakhic. (I've also heard the phrase "living halakha", but I bet a lot of people would be even more put off by the implications of that phrase than by the contrast with "rabbinic".)

He discussed the difference between a "sect" (small, chosen, intense, demanding) and a "church" (large, often inherited, accomadating), as presented by certain German philosophers whose names I lost on the late-night G train. The tragic flaw with the system, of course, is the fact that sects, if they are successful, generally attract a lot of people and become churches, which kind of suck and certainly don't get the theological problems tackled with the same weight.

He acknowledged that the name of our movement totally sucks ("but only because 'Positive Historical Judaism' is even more lame"), but he has a very interesting view of the role denominations play in our lifes. Quoting George Lindbeck, R. Kalmanafksy said that denominations function much like cultural idioms, providing us with our view of the world. For this reason--also, he claims that only a movement can found institutions (an interesting point of view for somebody whose kid goes to the Heschel School, which doesn't identify and which I have heard held up as THE example of a p-d institution)---he's very into them.

What I thought the most interesting moment of class came not during the discriptions of what Conservative Judaism is, although phrases like "the search for the possibility of truth in majority and dissenting opinions" strike at something deep inside me. (Frankly, I don't need to be sold. At sixteen, with the smartest rabbinical student I'd ever met, I was sold hardcore. But I did appreciate the comments about "a sane traditionalism".) I love the idea that Jewish practice and learning should function as a path towards, not from God. I love the balance between faith and questioning, the implication that the best way to honor an idea is to do it because you love it and not be afraid of poking at it some. I am more comfortabe with the idea of "striving for God" than any other summation of what Judaism should do for me. And these are all the ideas that were being espoused. So the best moment really gelled when a really nice rabbinical student named Brett explained that he understood why Jeremy would cherish and promote the Judaism he had just explicated for almost two hours--but why did he feel that that Judaism is (or, perhaps better, "still is") Conservative Judaism? Although our seminaries are grappling with these issues, they're not really being addressed in the synagogues. I don't know if they're being addressed sufficiently in the Schecter system or Ramah, either (I wouldn't...). And United Synagoge? Say what now?

I was so pleased that this was brought up. Because the problem that was brought up--that Conservative Judaism is too pareve these days--is a far too flippant way to see the issue. I have known some of the most inspirational Conservative Jewish rabbis and rabbinical students--Menachem Creditor, Risa Weinstein, Danya Ruttenberg--and I know that they get it, and they all manage to pass the fire along. But I also learned the phrase "post-denominational" from Danya at a conference, and I think that there are a few too Jeremy Kalmanafskys in the world. I think that he's on to something brilliant with the theory that the Judaism he practices may be the only one to really live on into a "post-Liberal world", but the absolutely terrible PR scheme we've got working for us know might just cause a permanent mutation into a Post-Denominational Movement. And, as long as the thing itself survives, who cares what it's called?

Kol tov...

Lesbians Until Graduation and Jewish Liminal Space

2006-10-18T23:52:00.000-07:00

(For Rachel, because I think better when you're around.)

We're considering doing an article on the L.U.G. phenomenon at work. These are my thoughts on the matter.

At first, and mainly to one potential author, the issue seemed to be that there are a significant number of women who "turn straight", especially in their immediate post-collegiate years. And this is a much-talked about phenomenon in the gay world--there are definitely jokes, and bitter stories, about "hasbians". The feminist issue here is not to hard to find: I (along with many other, smarter people, including one author in BITCHfest, my new definitive guide to post-'90s feminism) would posit that what's really at work here is not that women are "turning straight" but that a societal need for bounded sexuality makes people "switch" categories that never really fit in the first place. I think it's safe to say that a lot of the anxiety comes from queer people who feel that their identities are under attack (even in this day and age, coming out is stressful, even traumatic, for many; it's also hard to feel really secure when people across the country are voting on whether or not your desire to be legally coupled could result in the destruction of the nuclear family), and a sort of tribal, you're-one-of-us-or-you're-one-of-them mentality really comes into play. Forcing people to fit into a binary, despite everything we know about human sexuality existing on a spectrum, is not only repressive, but it distorts some of the basic realities of life.

The Jewish angle is a little harder. Susan Schnur pointed out to me that a lot of the discussion about this "phenomenon" takes place at coastal, liberal undergraduate institutions, where Jews generally comprise a large percentage of the student body. Totally agreed--although I think that this takes place everywhere, and only gets theorized to pieces in some places (there's also something a little classist going on in here). But I think that there's more.

Jewish culture is definitely couple-minded and family-minded. Our institutions and community functions are largely family-driven. The desire to be permanently coupled is very Jewish, and maybe this makes people "decide" to go straight--or just to pick an easily understood sexual orientation--as soon as society is ready to perceive them as "single adults" (instead of "students"). Even a lot of institutional gay Jewish life is what I would call "gay" instead of "queer", there being an understanding that if you're there, you're gay. Not a lot of room for ambivalence. Anyone who's been recently can also tell you that Jewish singles events are not for people who enjoy being single--they're for people who are currently uncoupled and seeking to change that. I think all of this stress on coupling creates an atmosphere that, however consciously or unconsciously, makes people (women, especially) feel that they have to commit to an identity that will most easily facilitate finding a partner, and often, "queer", "undecided", "sometimes I date boys and sometimes I date girls" isn't that identity, so they go with what's most prevalent, most prominent, or easiest.

And, finally, this is a Jewish-feminist issue because one of Jewish feminism's lasting legacies to Judaism was its encouragement to explore liminal space. I think Judaism is--or appears to be--a very cut-and-dry religion that really functions by separating things into discrete categories (kosher vs. traif, priestly class vs. not, etc.). And what the texts didn't solidify, thousands of years of tradition did. But J-fems really challenge that--sometimes by calling for direct confrontation with text or rituals, and sometimes just by pointing out that there are ways of doing Jewish that may appear radical or "wrong", but that just exist in a somewhat marginal space within Judaism. (I think the tallit piece in the Fall issue--Schnur-authored, of course--showed this so, so beautifully. Susan basically said that there are more spaces that can be sacred than meets the eye, and that it's possible that men and women perceive the sacred differently. I don't like the essentialism here, but there's something beautiful about the validation it provides for women/people in general who experience the holy outside of traditionally-bounded places, times or experiences.) And maybe the "phenomenon" of Lesbians Until Graduation just demonstrates that there are still frontiers left for us to work on.

So let's get started.
Kol tov...

JPD, part the first

2006-10-08T16:57:00.000-07:00

Rambling here is going to be my prep for two (!) articles that I've managed to snag on the topic of post-denominationalism and (Jewish) feminism. If just reading that made you want to throw up in your soul a little, click on. It's going to be a mouthful.

So, from the beginning: while there's not a hell of a lot written about post-denominationalism (at least Jewish post-denominationalism--now to be known as JPD, ere my fingers fall off), but I found something on MyJewishLearning.com, cribbed from Contact Journal. The author describes JPD as a movement constituted by Jews who "abjure" the concept of denominations--not those who merely don't see themselves as affiliated. The author, Steven Cohen, calls JPD "quite a healthy phenomenon" in Jewish life, and cites several examples, including Pardes and Kehilat Hadar. He also strongly leans on the Conservative Movement as the source and pool-of-resources for JPD. These are all important points, but I've got a lot more to say about the subject. Let's begin.

Working perhaps backward (not so much a first for me), I want to talk about the rise of cool cultural Judaism. By now, everybody and her mom (or, in my case, her dad), has heard of amazingly popular Matisyahu, and although I guess the argument could be made that he's not entirely secular entertainment--although I think a majority of his fans are using him as iPod fodder rather than a religious experience--he's still only indicative of a general upsurgence in Cool Jewish Stuff: everything from Jewzapalooza to Chosen Couture to Heeb magazine. We had a guest in the office last week who said that for the very first time in her life, she understood how someone could call him or herself a cultural Jew and really get something out of it. For the purpose of this train of thought, the only thing I'd like to take away from this is that there has been, if not a forerunning, at least concurrent phenomenon of reimagining taking place in Jewish secular life. Ten years ago (and this is being generous) there wasn't really much going on that was Jewish and cool. Of course, there have always been tons of Jewish musicians and artists, etc., but from Irving Berlin to Bob Dylan to Natalie Portman, the whole name-changing-and-not-mentioning-the-Jew-thing didn't really help shake the self-image of uncool Jews. Of course, there's been a rise of ethnic-as-cool across the board, which probably helped spike this phenomenon, but I'm seriously digressing here, so let's put it away for a while.

I'd like to take a moment to talk about Evangelical Christians. (I know, I know--hold on.) The New York Times just published an article about the movement's concerns over losing its teens--read it here: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/06/us/06evangelical.html?ex=1160798400&en=53f06f3b16392e8e&ei=5070&emc=eta1. The point is, whether it is the nature of the youth to rebel or there's something in the water these days--like the rise of secular humanism--that's drawing people away from their religious bases. Hillel, in its "Millenials" report, found that today's young Jews lack interest in traditional Jewish institutions. (Hillel didn't publish their findings--although I saw a very impressive PowerPoint at the 2005 GA--but you can read more at http://www.pbcsmarketing.com/hillel/article4.php.) So, there's resistance to current religious institutions across the board, and a current rise of street-level empowerment, made possible by the rise of the Jewish hip. What's going to happen?

Well, obviously, a hell of a lot of Jews are going to drop out of the scene. Interestingly, for those who don't drop out, or who drop and later drop back in, there's a new sense of agency in the creation of The Jewish Now. And although JPD is a movement which draws its movers and shakers out of a Conservadox Millenial pool, I think there is a strong arugment to be made, theoretically, that this movement is an inheritor of the Jewish feminism of the 1970s.

A common enough phrase around the Lilith office is "voting with your feet". Just today Susan Schnur told me she believes in it--but I don't think she does, not the way I mean it. Especially not Schnur, a woman who believes that we're just biding our time before we take over the liturgy and rework it to make it more feminist. From Paula Hyman & co's statement that "we are your daughters", Jewish feminism was the pioneering movement of our time that really called for a radical restructuring of the very core of Judaism (and Jewishness)--from the inside. While contemporary secular feminists urged a departure from organised religion, Jewish feminists of all stripes were calling for a New Jew Order--revolution from the ground up. While Queer Jews are definitely an offspring of this methodology, I'm ready to explore the possibility that post-denominationalism will be the feminism of my generation--a shift in the paradigm of Judaism that starts from the ground up. It works well with what we've seen are the tendencies of Millenials--we're "hypercommunicators", we're tech-savvy and we deminstrate an awareness of living in an increasingly "flat" world. All of these are helpful attributes if you're going to democratize an often extremely hierarchical religion.

There's a lot more to be said about this, and I'll get around to it, but I think I need to go do some research now. Please leave ideas!

Kol tov...

Homey Don't Pray That

2006-10-03T21:49:00.000-07:00

For the chag, I managed to hit up three shuls in under thirty hours--a personal record, and I'm proud. I snuck into Anshe Chesed (don't believe your friends when they say that no one checks tickets for Ne'ilah)--and was struck by the humor of a still-a-"Millenial"-even-though-I-graduated-college sneaking in to services.

I liked having a holiday with a lot of different things going on, the different melodies, the different agendas of of rabbinical and lay leaders. Susan told me on the phone this morning how surprised she was to have really enjoyed Yom Kippur this year, and I realized how much I had enjoyed mine as well--everywhere I went there were friendly faces, and I took a very long walk in the bright sunshine up to Jenn's apartment before mincha. Usually, being a Wandering Jew (not having a set shul of my own) makes me feel sad, or, alternately, depressingly young and unfinished--like I'm still tied to the excuse that I'm in school, or just not ready to settle down yet.

But this yontif I really experienced the pleasant side of treating synagogue life as a pick-your-own adventure. The fact of the matter is that I'm really not prepared to settle into one steady pattern of shul life. It was lovely to be davening with a totally unfamiliar set of people, and, given that two of the services I attended were free, I had access to a really interesting cross-section of New York Jewish life. (More on why it's demoralising for shuls to be capitalising on High Holidayism some other time.)

I'm going to make a more conscious effort to enjoy the opportunities I have (and can further create) to go out and sow me some wild shul-oats. I feel as though I've spent a lot of time recently meditating on how the profusion of JewLife in New York causes people to almost burn out a little, and although all of the conversations have focused on cultural activities, I wonder if the same isn't true of synagogue participation. Although it's wonderful to find that Special One that fulfills all your spiritual needs, I imagine it can be informative, diverting or downright healthy to go out and explore a little bit. That's right: I'm advocating Shul Non-Monogamy.

That said, here is a partial listing of shuls across the city:http://www.ecben.net/nysynagogues.shtml. Maybe it's not the most comprehensive ever, but they should be forgiven, because they show the borough flags.

So enjoy. Go be a player, yo!
Kol tov...

Dear Lieberman Ad, Kindly Shut Up

2006-09-28T21:56:00.000-07:00

In the relative lull that comes immediately after sending an issue to the printer, I generally try to scurry around, doing all the odd jobs that don't get done when everyone's operating on deadlines, especially as we're currently internless. Some of these things, like recrafting certain campaigns and writing Susan Schnur's hilarious manuscript rejection letters, are diverting; I spent two hours today scanning backlogged J-press from around the country for relevant articles, which is less diverting. (Additionally, I got newsprint all over my keyboard. Yuck.)

I've been surprised by the number of Republican ads appearing in these papers, from San Fransisco to Indiana to NY's very own Jewish Week. There's the Jimmy Carter ad, which I think is silly because it's so decontextualised, although I understand why it upset people. (Check it out here: http://www.rjchq.org/news.asp?FormMode=Detail&id=1154. If you're looking for some really wacky Carterisms on Israel, read his book, The Blood of Abraham, written while he was still the governor of Georgia; be prepared to wade through a metric ton or two of evangelically flavored observations.) But what really pisses me off are the ads that seek to tie the Democratic Party's dismissal of Joe Lieberman into some sort of anti-Semitic whatever. It's not even that--it's the implication that since you, dear reader, are of the yidn, and Joe is of the yidn, clearly he should have your support. My Landsman (Lieberman?), right or wrong. Except, wrong, because that's not how things ought to function in a democracy. (Mostly because that sort of nonsense might best be described as tribalism.) Might I be more inclined to listen to what a candidate has to say because he or she is Jewish? Maybe--at least my eye will be momentarily caught. But beyond that, I have to, you know, AGREE with the candidate.

The Republican Party may not appreciate the emerging Democratic consensus that, at the very least, Iraq has been mishandled, and needs a new plan. (There is not, of course, that much difference between a dove and a chicken. They're both birds, right? With feathers? And funny noises?) Joe Lieberman has, for an extremely long time, taken a different stance on this, an issue that promises, like in the '04 race for the presidency, to be a huge one for all Congressional seats. Dear Jewish Republicans, we're operating the system the way it's meant to work. (Voting with our brains and not our tallitot.) Please desist.

We're a cohort who's number-one question might very well be, "But is it good for the Jews?", but I'm hoping we vote smart enough to think, long-term, of what's best for everyone. If we're going to choose an issue to stand out as knocked about by the Left, it's Israel and Diaspora Zionists (although come on down to some of the Israel rallies at the UN plaza--and watch the politicians of every ilk make political hay while the sun shines). Maybe it's that I live in New York and am perfectly comfortable that I am safe as a Jew here, but this Abe-Foxman-ication feels like it diverts away from the real issues.

Sorry you lost the Dems, Joe, although if you're surprised, it just shows that you should come up for air from George Bush's tush a little more often. Rock out as an independent, and I hope you have an easy fast.

Kol tov...

Daze of Repentence

2006-09-26T20:13:00.000-07:00

The repenting has really barely begun and already I'm procrastinating. I have gone the whole day without doing teshuvah, and although the day's not over yet, I can't help but feel that I should be more on top of this. Last year, with all the fervor of the newly quasi-religious, I was so revved up and anxious that I practically leapt into the awkward, over-earnest apologies everybody just loves.

I'm also sitting this year on something written by the incomperable Rabbi Susan Schnur, whom I hold in the highest esteem, even when she makes lots of extra work for me. (Momentary pause for shameless self-promotion: www.Lilith.org. Live it. Love it.) Schnur wrote about why sometimes, saying "I'm sorry" is the wrong thing to do, especially for women, often socialised into apologising for everything--and also often taught that not being forgiving makes them one of the dreaded b-words (it rhymes with "itch"). She says that holding onto your anger over something is often the only empowered/empowering/cathartic option available, and that women who need to should take it and not think twice.

It's the sort of lyrically subversive line of thinking that's classically Schnur, and I loved it enough to have mailed the article to my mom, who appreciated it immensely. We talked about it briefly, as it engendered (ha ha) discussion of whether that sort of knee-jerk apologetic manner is a trait solely of women. After much listening in the Lilith office, I've come to the conclusion that Susan Schnur is something of a gender-essentialist. (That I think she's brilliant anyway is testament more to the unbridled eloquence with which she crafts her ideas than to any sort of symapthy for what I feel is an outmoded and hindering school of thought.) Anyway, my mom was saying that she thinks my brother, too, displays such behaviour, and that got me off on a tangled tangent, during which I tried (unsuccessfully) to explain what I think are the multifaceted gender roles at work in my very heteronormative nuclear family.

But it did get me thinking. I inherited a lot of my poor emotional habits from my dad (not his fault--I think), and early on adopted a sort of stoicism that I use for emotional distance and "stability". Much like good dental hygiene, kids pick up their life habits for this sort of stuff young, and I've had a lot of time for plenty of what I felt to be reinforcing episodes. As my girlfriend pointed out to me not twenty-four hours ago, after many minutes of my semi-sensical apologies, I have a lot of barriers inside my head and heart. And I don't deny that it's true. What I like about this forced repentence is that is gives us an opportunity to to be a little gender-transgressive (and we all know how much I like to be gender-transgressive): it pairs agency with vulnerability. Even if halakhically we're supposed to apologise to everyone we've wronged in the last year, anyone whose ridden the rush-hour E train knows that it's just not possible--you'd never be able to track everyone down. So we pick and choose to whom we repent, and how, where, when and, to some degree, for what--but when we do, we open those inpenetrable gates.

I spent a year decoding feminist literature, so I could definitely create some great sex-based metaphors, but lest I create more things for which to repent, I'll leave it at this: giving people an order to repent, but then handing the reins over, is, I think, the most sensative way to deal with individual emotional blockage and baggage. (There's much to be said for the pros and cons of group confession and group assumption of sin--a powerful and highly contrasting methodology to other major religions--but it's late and I'm totally pooped.)

So we'll see if roommate #1 is off the phone yet, or if #2 comes home before I'm asleep, because even bone-tired, the spector of forgiveness is beckoning.

Shana tovah v'kol tov...