Category: LIFE

ASTOUNDING JEWISH WOMEN: THE JEWISH ORTHODOX FEMINIST ALLIANCE

Jofa_sat_niteA little over ten years ago some remarkable women, all Orthodox Jews, decided that the only way to have an impact on the role that women play in worship and governance in the Orthodox world was to organize.  Under the leadership of the legendary Blu Greenberg, JOFA ( Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance) was born.

From the beginning of my involvement in the Orthodox community, just three and a half years ago, I’ve been urged to be part of this group.  For a long time, and still, I feel a bit under-equipped.  I can argue for change and believe in it, but I can’t cite the texts that support either current or possible future perspectives, and in Orthodoxy the texts are a big part of every Halachic (religious rules) argument.  I study quite frequently now, but compared to those who grew up in the parallel universe of Jewish day schools and have such a head start, I don’t know if I’ll ever feel confident in my knowledge.  Even so, I have spent much of this weekend at a JOFA conference here in Washington, and it has been thrilling.  And disturbing.  But thrilling.

Mekudeshet_2There was a film — Mekudeshet — about the Agunah – women whose husbands refuse to grant them a Jewish divorce.  Orthodox women, without this  Jewish divorce, or "get," can’t remarry.  Any children they may bear are illegitimate and may only marry other "children of the get."  Clearly, as in any other form of spousal abuse, it’s a control issue.  Abusive husbands, men living with new women and even with new children, can leave their wives in limbo forever.  This is one of the areas JOFA works to change.

More universal were the panels.  One, on gender roles in K-12 education, was very provocative.  In many  Jewish day schools study of religious texts moves from coed to single-sex after somewhere around the 5th grade.  Of course when we do that by choice, and call it women’s education (I went to Smith and found it enormously liberating) we appreciate the freedom to be ourselves and not be cowed by louder, deeper voices.  The difference is that in Jewish education, when genders are separated, it’s more often for holiness, the perceived gender difference in roles and the presumed "danger" women bring to distract men than it is to empower young women to learn more completely.  It’s an interesting question.  When we choose it, many of us love- and are grateful for – single-sex education.  Quite correctly, I believe, resent it bitterly when we are "banished" to the girls classes, leaving the boys behind.  Is it possible to truly assimilate what is useful for girls in studying only with one another if there’s no other choice?  Or is it always going to re-enforce the frequent sense of gender inferiority that this conference works to remove?

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My choice for the second panel was one dealing with women and text – and all the factors of interpretation that emerge as more and more women become fluent in religious texts.  You aren’t going to believe this but for a long time, women were not allowed to study many of the interpretive works, and held in a kind of limbo as far as religious learning was concerned.  Change is coming in this arena though – from the co-ed Maimonides Jewish Day School, founded in Brookline, MA in 1937 and emerging as the institution that broke the stranglehold on single-sex text Talmud study, to all the new institutions like Drisha to deeply educate women in text and religious rulings (Halacha.)   Now it’s common for women to study these works.  I go to class every Tuesday night – but it’s still considered "progressive" to offer girls (and women) equal access to all learning.

I always find it empowering, even inspiring, to attend conferences of women.  Every year my days at BlogHer are treasures that sustain me all year.  WAM!, the Woman and Media conference, has the same effect.  This one, though, was especially moving.  Brainy, funny, lively and open, these Orthodox women are working to change more than a government, an attitude or a movement.  Sustained by and committed to a faith more than 5,767 years old, observant in the laws of Kashrut and family law, they work to ensure that Jewish life will be even more meaningful, and equal, for their daughters (and sons) than it has been for them.

SAD MUSIC, GREAT BIG SEA, STONE PONIES, BEATLES – RIDING THE WAYBACK MACHINE

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Have you ever heard a song that caught you up short and brought you almost to tears?  Boston to St. John — sung by Great Big Sea, does that to me, no matter how many times I hear it.  In fact, when we pass over St. John on the way to Europe and it shows up on the map on the little TV, I get weepy just hearing it in my head.  What is it about this romantic, acoustic song accompanied by a pipe and a guitar?  Just listen (this one has lyrics posted) – it’s a nice thing to end the week with.

I don’t think I’ll ever get over the wonder of what music has come to mean to me, again.  Of course I was a typical teen fan, and then in my college years obsessed with Bob Dylan, the Beatles, The Doors, Cream, anything by Ellie Greenwich, anything from Motown, Linda Ronstadt (especially the Stone Ponies phase) – listen to this primo girl song:

I also loved the great folkies like Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, Phil Ochs, Judy Collins, Joan Baez ( oh – and Peter, Paul and Mary (need I go on?) and Simon and Garfunkel — among others.  Then I went into semi-retirement.  I made mix tapes for my kids – Good Day Sunshine, Hippy Hippy Shake, Here Comes the Sun, the Garden Song, Carolina… you name it.  And we sang a lot.  But the deep, gut-wrenching feeling you get when the music drills right to the center of your soul — that all came back more recently.  And differently.  Once, my Deadhead son asked me why I had never gone to one of their concerts.  The answer was peculiar, I guess.  I heard all my music for free at marches.  And peace rallies.  Who needed to buy tickets? 

The music was, literally, the soundtrack to my life.  Every song I hear pulls a movie into my head — me on a bus to Manhattan for a march, in a boat on Paradise Pond with my boyfriend, dancing like crazy someplace or other.  Now, though, the music seems to bring the mood to me, rather than meeting it half way.  I can be moved from zero to 60 – solid to weepy – in about one chorus.  Maybe it’s the passage of time.  Maybe it’s that I hear far more of it alone.  Maybe it’s just that much of what I listen to evokes other times in my life.  Today, driving home, I had my iPod plugged into the car radio, on random shuffle, and Pete Seeger singing All My Life’s a Circle did it. Again. 

Of course, anything from the Juno soundtrack just makes me laugh.  And lots of Bruce just makes me want to dance.  It’s not all sad stuff.  I guess I should try to figure it out, but I’d rather just think I’m newly available, or RE-newly available, to those feelings.  And be grateful for the music that brings them.

GOOD NEWS ABOUT A VA HOSPITAL. NO, REALLY

Va2_3Since I married a doctor while he was still a med student rotating from specialty to specialty, I’ve been in plenty of hospitals.  Among them, VA hospitals.  Most of those are enormously sad; dark, often smelly and grim, especially compared to private institutions.  And we all read those terrible stories about Walter Reed Medical Center.

So, much as I love our friend, (we’ll call him Fred here) I dreaded my visit to him yesterday; dreaded entering the kind of public hospital environment I knew from our years in New York.  Boy was I wrong.  The DC VA seems to be sunny, with lots of windows, very nice people, well-informed volunteers and committed and apparently knowledgeable medical staff. Even the guards were nice.  Granted, Fred is so lovable, well into his 70s, that it would be tough to be mean, or even impatient, with him, but believe me, harried hospital staff can be, well, brusque.  Not here.

I didn’t do an expose, go examine day rooms or rehab floors, food services or ICUs but from my limited exploration, and the karma in the lobby and the halls, reception by volunteers, charge nurses, orderlies, other patients and even the doctors, it was, for a hospital, a pretty good place to be.   No big news bulletins, but when there’s so much bad news out there about how our veterans are treated, this is just a little bit of the better.

JULIE’S SHOWER: WHO EVER THOUGHT RAISING SONS WOULD BE SO GREAT!

Running_kidsOK so I grew up with sisters.  And I went to a women’s college.  And most of my life I’ve worked in offices with more women than men (amazing, no?)  So, when I was pregnant I was terrified at the idea of having boys.  They were so strange — so noisy — I had no idea what was coming.  Except that what was coming was Josh. And then Dan.  And it turned out that — hang on sisters — boys are a blast, great company, luuuhhhv their moms and — boys are easier!  I know this because I’ve watched my friends raising daughters and the tensions are fierce.  Girls and their mothers — boys and their dads.  Not easy.

But let’s get back to basics.  Little boys run around a lot and make noise.  They jump off things.  They ride the dog around and fall off and hit their heads and need stitches.  They, later, seem to be trying to kill each other much of the time.  And before I go any further – let me tell you that there’s an old shrink saying that therapists never believe that babies are born with personalities until they have their second child.  This is also true with many women regarding gender differences – it hits you once they show up.  My kids are feminists and very good to the women in their lives as far as I can tell – but they are men and they were boys and that is not like being a girl.  Nope.

I have great memories from when they were little – stomping around singing Free to Be and Da Doo Ron Ron Ron and The Garden Song and Abiyoyo, skiing down black diamond slopes and going to Yankee Stadium to see Billy Joel and Carnegie Hall to see Pete Seeger and Madison Square Garden to see Sesame Street on Ice and being dragged to an infinite number of Police Academy and other disgusting movies.

And I lived in alien space much of the time.  Some of our hit toys (ie things I would NEVER have had in my house if there were not these strange male creatures inhabiting the premises — and pre-video game age of course):
One of those Radio Shack electronics build-your-own thingy kits that make bells ring and bulbs light up if you hook them up correctly.
Legos
Anything aviationary
Anything Star Wars
Anything GI Joe
Voltron
Weird wrestling stuff (boy did I fight that one!)
Folk music (that’s my fault though)
Baseball cards  (and proudly, I did NOT throw them out)
Stuffed animals
Ernie

No  Mary Poppins books (I tried) but I did get to read all The Great Brain and Ralph S Mouse and Timothy Goes to School and a gazillion baseball player bios.

There’s serious stuff to having sons, of course.  We have to be sure, no matter how much we love hanging around with them, that they get enough alone time with their dads or some other male figure.  And wave bravely as they off together on a Sunday (also your day off after all) without you.  We have to accept and celebrate the guy stuff.

Just like girls, but differently, we have to let them know we think they can take care of themselves – enable independence at each landmark, if we think they can handle it, even when we really want to help.  It’s so easy, with a boy, to want to remain more connected than is useful for them as they grow.  At certain points they may pull back for a while, when they need to untangle.  We have to let them and respect the struggle

With regard to respect for women – I am deeply impressed with my sons’ perspectives.  I hope that being honest and respecting their developing attitudes, helped.  I never threw a Playboy out of our house but I made it very clear how I felt about them in the (brief) period they were around.  Anything like that, of which I (or my husband) disapproved, had to come out of their allowance.  They had to put their money on the line – and I think that helped more than locking it all out of the house and pretending they weren’t interested.  It also helped us understand where their heads were.  Although that is easier for boys because they are, honestly, more straightforward.

Of course none of what I write here applies to all boys.  Much of it may apply to plenty of girls.  But it was my experience and in a kind of stream of consciousness baby shower kind of way it’s what rose to the top.   The bottom line though, is that even though it’s scary if you’ve lived in a world of women, as I had, they are just wonderful.  Most of all, because I know Julie, from reading your blog for so long, you  would be a great mother to any child with whom you were blessed, this kid is in for a great life.   And where advice is concerned, I say take it only as far as your gifted mother gut takes you.  Where the two collide, trust yourself.  Girl, boy or android, that way your little one will always be in the right hands.

Now Is the Time: Martin Luther King, Neshama Carlebach and the Green Pastures Baptist Church Choir

Nice_neshama

Every year we celebrate the birthday of
Martin Luther King in a joint concert between our synagogue and Reverend Roger
Hambrick and his New York-based  Green Pastures Baptist Church Choir.  DC and New York, white and black, Jewish and Christian… we gather to honor the holiday for
this man who meant so much to all of us.  This year, the choir was joined
by the legendary Neshama
Carlebach, daughter of the revered Sholmo Carlebach and a talent in her own
right.

It’s a strange thing really – Orthodox Jews
and Bronx Baptists dancing in the aisles singing Kivo Moed — Now is the
Time… quite remarkable.  It’s always moving – and no
less so tonight — just not much original to say about it.  Just take a
look and enjoy it for yourself.

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Then stop over to this week’s boomer blogging carnival.  It’s fun to read and I am really enjoying being part of it.

FABULOUS SCRABULOUS, LAWRENCE LESSIG AND A FACEBOOK CRISIS

ScrabulousWay back a million years ago in the 1990s, the Internet mantra was "information wants to be free."  In other words, if you could figure out how to get something up on the Web, it was meant to be there.  So there was Napster – all the music you could grab.   Books, games,  news, music, images — whatever you wanted you could find. — for free.  Just like, right now, you can find the wonderful Scrabulous on Facebook.

Then attorney and — really — guru of the Information Age Lawrence   Lessig launched an entirely new way to define copyrights and began to institutionalize a new perspective on information.  Basically, since musicians, film makers, visual artists and authors were all sampling previous works within their new creations, Lessig demanded a new approach to the protection of intellectual property. 

So our beloved Interweb offers us a chance to find out anything about anything and gather any information from any source, but it also offers us real ethical problems:

For most of my life, I’ve made my living producing television news pieces and being pretty well paid for it.  Now, I’m often compensated for my work on the web – except for this blog.  I wrote and published a book, published book reviews for years and have written and published other features.  I get paid for my work; that’s how I live.  If all information were to break free — who would pay the creators?  Or, for that matter, the distributors.  Even if books are published online they need to get there; advance URLS have to be sent to reviewers, someone has to edit and proof-read.  That work, unlike information, does not want to be free.  Lessig would say it’s too late to worry about that – online access has released the information so stop complaining and find another way to monetize your work.

Fair enough.  I have heard Lessig speak about this and it’s thrilling.  The 60’s girl in me loves the anarchic idea — after all, information does want to be free.  But the analysis and creation of that information – not so much. Right now Hasbro and Mattel are trying to get a restraining order against Facebook, requiring the removal of the Facebook version of Scrabble, Scrabulous, for copyright violations.  Created by a couple of brothers in India and posted for free, it’s one of Facebook’s stars.  I’ll be devastated if the game is actually removed because it’s such a kick.  At the same time, I understand the concept of getting paid for distributing content, not just for creating it.  The Scrabulous brothers chose to built and post Scrabulous for free.  That’s their decision.  But even company employees (including the people who make Scrabble boards and design their labels and ship the game to gift shops and Toys R Us, also have to eat.  It’s as if all sides are right.  Lessig’s exploration of all this is invaluable, but there’s no answer yet – except of course in the law, which currently favors the terrestrial owners of such properties.  Josh Quittner, in his Fortune blog, has another perspective.  We’re on a journey here just as we’ve been with the rest of the wonders and miracles that are the Web.

What do you think?  It’s worth a comment here, no?   

THE STORY OF STUFF: DOES IT WORK?

Story_of_stuff_2
This film was screened in Berkeley in early December so I’m a little late (a lot late?) writing about it but it’s worth a conversation any time.  The Story of Stuff *is an extremely effective exposition on the consequences of overconsumption – and the origins of the habits that led us to our current environmental crisis.   It’s riveting.  And most of it makes horrifying sense; it’s the accumulation of so many common sense facts that has the power.

Somehow though, I wish for a bit more.  Much of the rhetoric, while the facts may be real, is intense.  I keep thinking that if the data were relayed in a way that gave us a second to breathe and absorb the most impressive**, and if the relationship between government and business were described a bit less simplistically (as almost a conspiracy,) the effect would be greater.  The problem is that all those businesses are where people work.  The first thing many will hear when we talk about villainous companies is the threat to their livelihood.  That doesn’t make the facts less true; it just means that we have to talk about the issue in ways that address these fears.  Otherwise, the film provides a great vehicle for the converted but not much firepower to reach those who may buy into the issue generally but not into the condemnation of what keeps their family alive.

I’m only dwelling on this because the film is such a great tool – and its flaws will reduce its impact.  Those passionate about the environment, especially now, when people seem so much more ready to listen, want to get everything into the conversation.  But I’m afraid, in this very good job, they’ve included elements that will prevent those least engaged from joining the battle. Take a look – what do you think?  Here’s the introductory chapter.  You can see the rest here or on You Tube in chapter elements.

*Funded by the Tides Foundation

**     For example, these:
*In the past three decades, one-third of the planet’s natural resource base have been consumed.            *In the United States, we have less than 4% of our original forests left.
*The U.S.has 5% of the world’s population but consumes 30% of the world’s resources4 and creates 30% of the world’s waste.
*The average US person now consumes twice as much as they did 50 years ago. 
*In the  US, we spend 3-4 times as many hours shopping as our counterparts in Europe do.
*Each person in the US makes 4.5 pounds of garbage a day – twice what we each made 30 years ago.