WOMEN – Page 3 – Don't Gel Too Soon

The War for the Souls of Orthodox Jewish Women (and Men) and Why It Matters

The young woman who wrote and recorded this song (watch it if you haven’t; it’s wonderful) is a “Singer/songwriter, vlogger, Orthodox Jew, and English major on the verge of ‘real life.'” Her name is Talia Lakritz.

The young woman who wrote and published this piece, which begins with the word “Hineni” (Here I am – a response to God’s call several times in the Torah) is a Maharat and a pioneer in ritual Orthodox Judaism. Her name is Rachel Kohl Finegold.

The young woman who was my best teacher of all things Jewish (and many other things) is a model for many. Her name is Aliza Sperling.

The young woman who helped to support traumatized victims of the “mikvah rabbi scandal” is a Maharat at The National Synagogue. Her name is Ruth Balinsky Friedman.

The young women who ranked highest among my other great teachers offered wise, knowledgeable, exciting education both in theory and practice. Their names are Laura Shaw Frank (JD and almost PhD), Rachel Weintraub (JD), Brooke Pollack (JD), and Aliza Levine (MD). There were more, too.

They are all treasures in my life; I wish every Jewish seeker could have so stunning an educational-religious posse.

So what’s going on? Why has The Rabbinical Council of America (RCA) stuck a stick in the eye of every Jewish woman, especially women like these – passionate Jews; learners and teachers – by issuing a kind of fatwa against the rabbinic ordination of Orthodox Jewish women. This is just the most recent episode in the soap opera that their effort to keep women from formal religious leadership. Predictably, outrage ensued.

From New York’s towering Modern Orthodox leader Avi Weiss LA’s Rav Yosef Kanevsky, word emerged that this blow was unacceptable.

Why does it matter? RCA claims that there are plenty of ways for women to participate and even lead, they just can’t be ordained. Why the uproar from college women and teachers and rabbis and parents and – generally – people who really like being Jewish?

Because it’s terrible to continue, with even more emphasis than usual, to shut half your community off — by fiat — from the privilege of spiritual leadership. Remember the slogan “If you can see it, you can be it.” Sounds right doesn’t it? But if you’re set apart, part of your soul is set apart too.

The Jewish people lose way too much, kept from 50% of the talent and strength and smarts and love in our own communities.

Read this story by the renowned feminist Letty Cottin Pogrebin, on the death of her mother:*

“One night about twenty people are milling about the house but by Jewish computation there are only nine Jews in our living room. This is because only nine men have shown up for the memorial service. A minyan, the quorum required for Jewish communal prayer, calls for ten men.

“I know the Hebrew.” I say. “You can count me, Daddy.”

I meant I want to count. I meant, don’t count me out just because I am a girl.

“You know it’s not allowed, he replies, frowning.”

“For my own mother’s Kaddish I can be counted in the minyan. For God’s sake, it’s your house! It’s your minyan Daddy.”

“Not allowed!” says my father.

Later she wrote:

“The turning point in my spiritual life….I could point to the shivah experience in my living room, say that my father sent me into the arms of feminism, and leave it at that….No woman who has faced the anguish and insult of exclusion on top of the tragedy of her bereavement forgets that her humiliation was inflicted by Jewish men.”

It’s heartbreaking, isn’t it? Such a loss for those who wish to serve and all of us who need them. Besides, as my friend Chana reminded me, in last week’s parsha God told Abraham “Whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you.” If only He’d get in touch with the RCA and remind them, too.

*Deborah, Golda and Me: Being Female and Jewish in America

Dirty Dancing and Planned Parenthood: a Perfect History Lesson

This showed up in my Facebook feed Thursday night and blew me away. It may have been funny to many, but it left me breathless.

I don’t know if it’s possible for younger people today to know how terrible that time before Roe was for so many young women like Penny, who faced the terror and hopelessness of an unwanted pregnancy, or what a real miracle it was that she was rescued.

Dirty Dancing is set in the summer of 1963, just before Francis “Baby” Houseman is about to leave for Mt Holyoke. I left only a year later, for Smith. So she and I are cousins, if not sisters. Each wanting to change the world, each with a wonderful, trusting father, each falling for a bad boy with such a different history from our own … and each inexperienced in realities such as those faced by a pregnant dancer with no money whose illegal abortion goes terribly wrong.

She nearly dies — saved only by the skill of Francis’ doctor father. The film is a fairy tale – in the love story for sure, but also in the story of the damsel in distress rescued by a fatherly wizard who brings her back from the brink. Most women in those pre-Roe days – and many again now, in states where abortion rights are savaged every day — faced real back alleys and unskilled procedures on kitchen tables with no wizard, or anyone else, to save them. Penny’s story was as real as they come, and it’s no joke to remind us that her fairy tale is in real danger of once again becoming the dark horror story it used to be.

So yes – it’s always fun when cultural references inform reality. But it’s hard to enjoy even this clever comparison when the lives of so many Pennys and her sisters are in such terrible jeopardy.

Emmys, Women of Color and the Wonderful Awesomely Luvvie

Listening to Viola Davis last night and reading responses from so many of my friends was inspiring, but hardly surprising. I’ve written often about the gift, through the Internet, of access to the ideas of women of color their perspectives on America and race.

But last night and this morning, it was as if it was brand new, with this post from AwesomelyLuvvie saying it all. The depth of joy and pride wasn’t surprising, of course. It was just so wonderful and passionate. I remembered all the “first women” of the 70’s and 80’s: astronauts and VP Candidates, fire fighters and West Point grads, Supreme Court justices, rabbis, and orchestra conductors, and could only imagine how much bigger this must feel – especially since Davis’ speech was so phenomenal.

So hats off Luvvie! And hats off to Viola Davis and her sisters, those who won, those who didn’t and the fierce women who supported them.

WWI, Women and Jon Snow: Testament of Youth

The bravest women of their (and just about any other) time, they left their protective parents and a world of white gloves and chaperoned afternoon teas, where they were barely permitted to touch the hand of a male companion, for the French battlefields of World War One and the hellish field hospitals there, washing naked, wounded men, treating their wounds, the stumps of their amputated limbs, their lost sight, their mustard gas-poisoned lungs and their shell shock. Mocked as privileged snobs out for a thrill, they struggled to prove their strength and capacity over and over again, and they did.

vera-brittain-008 — Vera Brittain as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse, 1915. Photograph: the VB Estate/McMaster University Library, Hamilton, Canada VIA The Guardian

Among them was Vera Brittain, who’d fought to be one of the earliest women at Oxford, her father permitting her to enroll and risk “becoming a blue stocking” only because her beloved younger brother Edward refused to go if she could not. Testament of Youth , the story of her struggles to attend Oxford, her brief presence there and her life-shattering experiences as a wartime nurse, is a classic, still in print and still beloved.

Now it’s a film, and the stature of the cast, including our own Jon Snow, Kit Harington, as her fiancé Roland Leighton, The Wire‘s Dominic West as her father, Emily Lloyd as her mother and Miranda Richardson as her mentor suggest that British headliners wanted to be part of her remarkable, very British story, even in a small, if gorgeous, art film like this one.

I first met Vera in the 1979 PBS Testament of Youth series, moved from there to her trilogy: Testament of Youth, Testament of Friendship and Testament of Experience and found a sister. A young activist in the 60’s, I understood her need to contribute, to be part of the crisis alongside those she loved, and as a woman fighting to function in a mostly-male profession, her battles as a woman were mine too.

So, if you share the political memories, ideal and goals of so many of us, Testament of Youth needs to be part of you, too. Go see it.

Barcelona and The Spanish Civil War Revealed

This poster recruiting women to join and support the anti-fascist militias was just one of the remarkable graphics and photographs shared during this tour of civil war history in Barcelona.

The tour’s guide, Nick Lloyd offered a passionate, rich, information-crammed account of the war and the complicated situation that preceded and followed it. The topic is thrilling, but it’s the teacher – the guide – who makes it real – and he does just that.

B Nick 2 — Spanish Civil War guru Nick Lloyd delivers his lessons and brings clients to the edge of their “seats” — actually, feet….

The stories are stunning. The first: the International Brigades from all over the world who came to help, including the Abraham Lincoln Battalion – the first integrated US military force, the second, the alliance among the police, the workers and the community – anarchists, communists, socialists, liberals – all trying to stop the viciousness that was the emerging Fascist machine. The next, individual courage demonstrated among so many under cruel, sadistic conditions.

The women, of course, did find a place in the movement. This first poster is the emblem of the Anarchist women in Spain. The second, was for the “people’s Olympics” conducted in protest of the “real” 1936 games in Nazi Germany. Young people came from everywhere for the event and many remained to support the struggle to sustain democracy and keep the Fascists at bay. And the third – a shattering portrait of American “Negro” contributions to Spain’s struggle.

Very few stories combine romance, politics, evil, idealism, danger and courage as well as those surrounding the Spanish Civil War. Some of the stories were so moving they were hard to bear. To the people of Barcelona, they are still real, and tangible and tough to hear and recall. For the rest of us, they bring pain and inspiration and sadness at how often similar tragedies have entered our history. And never seem to have taught anything to those who came after.

Don Draper, Dick Whitman, Peggy, Sally, Joan, Coke, Mad Men and Us

The farewell to Mad Men, at least on Monday’s morning news programs, was all about “the Coke commercial” (indeed a brilliant, brilliant presence in the episode) the 60’s, advertising, capitalism and a Don Draper not at all like the man he described to Peggy in this phone call:

“I messed everything up. I’m not the man you think I am…. I broke all my vows. I scandalized my child. I took another man’s name. and made nothing of it.”

or his physical transformation – messy hair, plaid shirt and jeans – that returned him, at least briefly, to the “Dick Whitman” he once was. Even his expressions were those of a country boy with a squint.

Joan faye peggy2 — Joan, Peggy and Faye in the elevator in especially poignant episode about the women of Mad Men

Preoccupation with “the commercial” overrode discussion of how important Mad Men has been to women: not only those who were teenagers as Don ascended and for whom so many scenes brought back memories of the scandalous neighborhood “divorcee,” of the Women’s Clubs and Garden Clubs and all the other “activities” suburban mothers created — but also for those who came after, for whom some of what they saw of women’s lives was just a relic but way too much was way too familiar.

Don Draper’s journey, from brothel to executive suite to Esalen, is very much that of America through the 60’s and beyond. It was a traumatic, scary, strange and exhilarating time, and whether you were there or you arrived later, it’s clear that Don’s misery and confusion mirrored what many of us, and, even more so, our parents felt every day.

Oh, and that Coke commercial? It was so perfect I laughed out loud as it appeared: all that we had hoped for and dreamed of, laid out in an air-brushed, multicultural, Benetton panorama. I don’t think we knew then how far we would be today – maybe forever – from that dream, but watching it now, it seems quaint how sentimental we were, even in our days of rage. Just like Don.

Prettiots! Just a Little Listen

I went to YouTube to hear (and see) these girls because proud papa Danny Goldberg posted them on Facebook and he never does that. He’s spotted so many talents and supported so many more that I figured I should at least take a look.

They’re adorable, ironic and so young. How exciting it must be for someone who has been spotting talent for – well — a long time, to find some so close to home.

Once in a while it’s good to remember that music — all art really — evolves. We miss so much if we stick to our old favorites all the time. There are always new folks adding to the adventure.

So for your pleasure, meet these three Prettiots. Thanks for the introduction Danny, and all the other music you brought us, and congratulations!

So Much Pain

All women are sisters. If you don’t believe me, write about a miscarriage and see what happens. A week ago I described my own experience, now more than 30 years old — memories made fresh by a private newsletter conversation.

Two amazing (but not surprising) realities emerged: 1) This is one pain that stays right there – buried under daily events and worries and happy times — but not gone. Never gone. 2) It is a gift to have a place to discuss or describe the things that wound us, change us, leave silent but permanent marks. Offering that space is one particular gift women give to one another. Here are three who shared my “place:”

Nobody ever talks about it but the reality is that many people have been through it (multiple times even) and I think there is comfort in shared grief.

I like to be tidy with emotions (I never am – HA!), but the grief I feel about these losses have a layer of guilt around them – as if I shouldn’t be so upset. But I am.

I am in tears! I was on Facebook, saw your post on miscarriage and just oh my goodness. I have had 2 miscarriages in the past year. It been hard, but it’s made so much harder that the whole subject has a weird taboo around it. It’s not like people won’t ask me when I’m planning to have kids. I’ve heard a thousand times “when are you going to have children?” and had to make light of a situation that I was still really sad about.

That’s all.

My Miscarriage: Memories that Don’t Fade

A Lost Possibility: Women on Miscarriage - from The Nib — A Lost Possibility: Women on Miscarriage – by Ryan Alexander-Tanner, from The Nib

NOTE: In a newsletter, Nona Willis Aronowitz posted two stories about miscarriages. As I began to respond, this emerged:

My sons are 40 and 35. Between them I had a miscarriage. She was a girl. It was the first day I had told anyone I was pregnant and begun wearing maternity clothes.

It happened on Election Night 1978 and I was in the studio producing the “house desk” results.

When the pain got serious I raced home, lost most of the fetus in the bathroom, and called our OB. We went immediately to the hospital; in the morning I had a D and C. It was devastating.

Then came the reaction:
VP of News: You work too hard.
Secretary to Pres of News: What were you doing working all night? Didn’t you want this baby?

On the other hand, I also got notes from people ranging from my aunt to a colleague, all with the same message: “I’ve never told anyone before but I had a miscarriage (anywhere from 1 to 30) years ago.” The pain for each was still real.

I was lucky though. My OB was from Czechoslovakia. He had a real (maybe European, maybe Socialist, maybe just father of daughters) respect for professional women and, as he had been in my first pregnancy was wonderfully supportive. He ran a cell test to determine whether there was a distinguishable cause (there was – a serious genetic issue – although we didn’t learn that for months, it has been a comfort.) He explained the D and C, urged us to take time to grieve but also reminded us that we were far from finished with efforts to have more kids, kept me in the hospital an extra day so I could pull myself together before I went home and had to tell our nearly-three-year-old son.

He wanted to know where the baby went. I just couldn’t handle a literal answer so even though I wasn’t at that time religious at all I told him the baby was with God. I needed him to understand that she was somewhere where she would be as loved as he was on 79th and Broadway.

Several years later when I worked at TODAY, with the support of our Executive Producer, I produced a series about miscarriages. The narrator was an OB himself, one of the TODAY stable of experts. I’m not naming him because this is what he told me (to his credit:) “Thank you so much for doing this series with me. I’ve been an OB for 25 years and I never realized the pain that this causes women.” Seriously. I was grateful that he was emotionally available to admit this but can you imagine? Never realized.

One more thing – partners are NOT sufficiently supported when this happens. They need FAR more attention than they usually receive. My husband has said for years that he wished we could have had a funeral or some sort of service so he too could have a vehicle to grieve.

NONA thank you so much for raising this and for the links to those powerful pieces. The graphic one was particularly evocative as it reminded me of small moments I’d forgotten.

For the record – our second son was born 2 years later. Both my boys are fabulous men and exquisite spouses and dads. I am grateful for them both and the sorrow of our loss is not in any way linked to how I define my unambiguous and grateful love of them.

Even so – the fact that, 32 years later, the silence and shame and insensitivity remains is a travesty. Please share this with doctors, nurses, midwives, preschool teachers and others who are on the “front lines.” Maybe we can help to break the chain.,

Patti Smith, Big Eyes, Mr. Turner and Into the Woods: Women and Art

How do the artists we admire find their way? What do they sacrifice to share their vision with the rest of us? How does it feel? Were they ever satisfied with what they made?

The great Patti Smith answered many of these questions, and more, in her 2010 memoir Just Kids. It was, to me a real gift – a peek behind the curtain that stands between the journey and the outcome. It was a long time before another such revelation turned up. But first, consider this:

“Of course women aren’t as creative as men,” he said. “After all, they create children. They don’t have the same drive to do anything else. How many female composers do you know of?”

That wasn’t some 21st century sexist. That was a professor at Smith, the excellent, committed, women’s college where I spent four years in the late 60s. He was sitting in the “housemother’s parlor” after dinner, speaking with whomever of us had turned up for coffee. I remember thinking “Huh. That’s interesting.” and feeling, at his declaration, not outrage but sadness — and humiliation.

I remembered this moment for the first time in decades as a rash of holiday films raised questions about creativity and art, agency and power, commitment and sacrifice. Into the Woods offered a grim view of women’s lives, where mothers imprison their daughters, daughters abuse their sisters, bakers long to become mothers and deliver their most important lessons after they’re dead, and it’s all the witch’s fault. Steven Sondheim’s beloved musical includes some lovely songs and I went mostly to see Anna Kendrick but still…

No witches but a desperate mother who sells her soul for her art (and, kind of, for love) emerges in Tim Burton’s Big Eyes. It’s the story of American painter Margaret Keane, whose husband Walter stole her art, her talent and her reputation and took them for his own. The cost of continuing to paint and still support herself and her daughter was to surrender the right to take credit for her own work. A woman in the 50’s making art for a living was unthinkable, or so he told her. Her story is a bridge – she owned her creativity but not the product.

Then came Mr. Turner, an exquisite profile of the brilliant JMW Turner, a maker of art, no matter what the cost. The film is a journey through his life as a painter of sea and landscapes and the invincible drive to create images of the beauty he saw. His singular vision, the decisions he made to preserve that vision, his almost Asberger’s detachment from most people and his startling depth of commitment to the two people he truly loved combined in a thrilling consideration of art and love and living with both: a portrait of what is required of any artist, woman or man, to share what they see and feel and understand.

And so we return to Patti. She and Turner are bookends on this shelf. As with Mr. Turner, we learn what she lived and learned and made and what she left behind to do it — a woman slamming through barriers with commitment and with love. An woman’s tale of what must be done – and of a woman expecting, demanding and embracing — as did Turner — all it took to share what she sees with the rest of us.