Join the boomer crew at I Remember JFK and see what’s on our minds this week. Mine is, as usual, the soppiest…..
OBAMA, CAMELOT AND DOONESBURY – READ THIS!
Yeah I just posted, but this is too good to leave alone.
NOW you can go read my "real" post for today.
ASTOUNDING JEWISH WOMEN: THE JEWISH ORTHODOX FEMINIST ALLIANCE
A 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.
There was a film — Mekudeshet — about the Agunah – women whose husbands refuse to grant them a Jewish divorce. Orthodox women, without this
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
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
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
Since 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.
BLOGGING BOOMERS: THIS WEEK’S CARNIVAL
Once a week I’m part of a "blogging boomers" blog carnival. It’s always interesting and diverse. Take a look at this week’s set of posts. at the home of the spectacular Cafe Glam.
LUST FOR THE MACBOOK AIR – BUT IS IT GOOD FOR YOU?
I usually do enormous research before buying a new laptop. Last time I moved from Windows to a 12 inch Powerbook mostly for the 3 lb. weight at the lowest price. I dropped the darn thing and the disk drive broke so I have to do something — but what?
Apple has quit making Powerbooks under 5 lb and now I know why. They want the market for the super-duper groovy looking, skinny MACBOOK AIR. I’m totally psyched by it, although the price is really stiff – $1800 and there’s no disk drive so you need to spend another hundred on the external one. I don’t know… Here’s what Walt Mossberg says:
I guess I could just get a Vaio – and I don’t know if I have the bucks to do either.
When my husband brought me a surprise – an iPhone I took it back because I couldn’t insure it OR search contacts (you still can’t) and the ATT rates were so absurdly high, so I know that even with Apple, looks aren’t everything. But the idea of a light machine with power (even without a disk drive) is so seductive. And it’s so damn gorgeous. What are you thinking about this BEAUTIFUL new toy?
JULIE’S SHOWER: WHO EVER THOUGHT RAISING SONS WOULD BE SO GREAT!
OK 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
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.
Then stop over to this week’s boomer blogging carnival. It’s fun to read and I am really enjoying being part of it.
WARNING – INAUGURATION DAY
Today is January 20th. Just one year – one year — from today we will Inaugurate a new president. So if we care what happens we better get busy if we’re not already I guess. What happens that day is going to matter plenty.