Elevate Difference

Reviews tagged Judaism

The Mikvah Queen

In The Mikvah Queen, the mind of Jane Schwartz bursts with a surprising mixture of Talmudic stories, ‘70s popular culture, and the stream of consciousness impulses of a preteen girl. Author Jennifer Natalya Fink gives us the story of a young woman who turns to her cultural and religious heritage for tools to aid her in approaching adolescence and beginning to understand herself in new ways.

Keep Your Wives Away from Them: Orthodox Women, Unorthodox Desires

Approximately 900 years ago, the Jewish philosopher Maimonides wrote a book, called the Mishneh Torah, that acknowledged the presence of women “who rub against each other.” His advice to the tract’s male readers was clear: Keep your wives away from them. Sadly, it is one of the only Hebraic texts in which the existence of lesbians is acknowledged. Kabakov’s collection of fourteen personal and scholarly essays not only acknowledges Jewish dykes, it argues that as long as Orthodox Judaism exists, there will be Orthodox LGBTQ people.

Holy Rollers

Holy Rollers is a story of sex, drugs, and Orthodox Judaism. In the late 1990s, a group of drug dealers used young Orthodox kids from Brooklyn as mules to carry ecstasy back from Amsterdam to New York City. On the surface, this fictionalized account of these real events seems so simple: the sinful preying on the innocent.

Women and Judaism: New Insights and Scholarship

Why is it that so many scholars—people well-versed in captivating ideas and history—are dry writers? Being a feminist with Jewish roots, I was really excited to review Women and Judaism. Divided into four sub-categories: classical tradition, history, contemporary life, and literature—the volume did present some very interesting thoughts on women's role within the Jewish religion.

Red Bracelet

Based in Tel Aviv, Israel, Luckxurys was started by designer Tali Rosen out of a personal frustration: she was unable to find a traditionally turquoise hamsa, palm-shaped amulet used in jewelery that is thought to protect a person from the evil eye. The tradition of using a hamsa (the Arabic word for the number five, hence the symbolism of a hand) to ward off evil began in the Middle East as a practice of Islam, and is now a part of Jewish mysticism. After searching unsuccessfully for her prized stone, Rosen decided to simply make one herself.

Fucking Different: Tel Aviv

Fucking Different: Tel Aviv is the third installation of this international collaboration of visual storytelling, starting first in Berlin and New York City in a sense similar to Paris Je T'aime_and _New York, I Love You.

City of Borders

I grew up in Berlin. The images of the wall, of barbed wire around strips of no-man’s land dividing the city, and of rigorous border controls and heavily armed border guards were a normal part of my life for a long time.

The Passionate Torah: Sex and Judaism

This new collection of essays, solicited from among the world’s most brilliant scholars of rabbinic literature, interpreters of the Torah, and professors of gender studies, is the first book I would recommend for those preparing to teach advanced courses in Jewish Studies. The essays range in tone from playfulness to fairly turgid exegesis, but the pieces are—without exception—bold, honest, and unabashed.

The House of Secrets: The Hidden World of the Mikveh

I felt very divided when reading The House of Secrets. On one end of my ever-teetering religious spectrum, I find joy in the empowerment a woman gains while embracing her belief system. On the other end, even though I am a non-Jewish woman, I found the commonalities in my childhood religion and the mikveh to be somewhat disheartening.

Shalom India Housing Society

Shalom India Housing Society is an apartment complex formed in the wake of the shocking riots of 2002 by Erza, an Indian Bene Israel Jew and a contractor by profession. The Society is formed to allow Jews to maintain a separate identity in multi-religious India. The Bene Israel communities trace their descent to Jews who escaped persecution two thousand years ago and were shipwrecked in Alibaug in Mumbai. Since then they have made India their home.
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