Judaism

The Mikvah Queen

annette — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 16:00:00 +0000

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.

In her imagination, Jane recreates herself as Leah, the older sister of Rachel, the beloved of Jacob in the book of Genesis. Jane’s week peaks on Wednesday, when she enjoys private Talmudic study with Mike Silverstein. While her secular parents do not understand her interest in this deep level of religious study, they are supportive and drive her a distance. Jane’s inner monologues reveal a crush on Mike, likely inspired by not only good looks but, more importantly, the knowledge which he opens to her. Jane creates an unusual diary, focusing on the mikvah, a special bath prescribed under certain conditions in Orthodox Judaism, and laws related to ritual purity.

In her quiet neighborhood, lacking close friends of her own age, Jane is drawn to her middle aged neighbor, Mrs. Charlene Walkeson, who is battling cancer. Jane pretends to be sick, plays hooky from school, and spends time at the Walkeson’s house so she is not home alone. Her interest in religious laws of purity inspires a plan to make a healing mikvah for Mrs. Walkeson, in the process giving herself an opportunity to experience this important ritual. Once she gets this idea, she begins to hear God speaking to her (“Leah, my Leah, says God....it’s time”), calling her away from mundane distractions such as dinner time and school work.

As a reader, I wanted to get to know Jane more deeply. She makes all kinds of stream of consciousness observations that are believable from an eleven-year-old girl, and she outlines her Talmudic learning in layer after layer. I loved that she could careen from the technical aspects of law to heartfelt questions—“What would the Torah tell us about mermaids, she wonders?”

It would not have fit with the style of the novel, but my preference would be to see Jane through her interactions with a wider range of people. Her father, so quick to allow her to stay home sick, and her neighbor, amused at Jane’s theft of makeup from her bathroom, gave me an imperfect picture. Also, I did not so much like the style of switching between the voices of Jane and Mrs. Walkeson.

Overall, Jennifer Natalya Fink gives us a glimpse of coming of age and sorting out rules that honors an important rite of passage—the onset of menses. Through the heroine, Jane, the author brings up for reflection questions of women’s im/purity that need to be addressed by people of all backgrounds. I loved listening to Jane rename herself, and insert herself in Talmudic stories, demonstrating the weight of each young girl’s life.

Written by: Lisa Rand, December 1st 2010

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

admin — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Edited by Miryam Kabakov

North Atlantic Books

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. The anthology includes the voices of diverse women, all of them bound by a desire to maintain a connection to traditional Jewish life—reciting daily prayers, keeping kosher, going to a monthly mikveh after menstruating,observing the Sabbath—but with a female partner. Some wonder—obsess,even—about whether this will doom them to an afterlife in hell, or whether living authentically trumps all else. Others question whether lesbianism is completely prohibited, or just discouraged by Jewish law. How about passing as a man, or having a sex change?

Mara H. Benjamin’s “Learning to Be a Lesbian” describes the process of choosing a same-sex partner. “I fantasized about women: Not just about having sex with them, but about the whole package, of what living as a lesbian seemed to offer: Companionship. Understanding. Good food cooked by someone other than me. A presumption that household chores were a shared responsibility. All told, life with a woman seemed a better arrangement than living with a man, even with the one obvious downside, homophobia.”

Benjamin joined a group, called Orthodykes, which helped her to not only come out, but to interpret traditional texts in ways that affirmed her queer, feminist persona. The camaraderie she found also enabled her to push back against heterosexist assumptions.

Sasha T. Goldberg’s “The Road to Yehupetz” chronicles her move from the US to Israel where she lived as a male. A self-described “bulldagger,” she writes that what initially started as “passing,” over time “turned into being... Being a man in Israel was one of the most comforting experiences in my life... I say my prayers, I like to eat, I love and respect women as I love and respect my mother, and I am faithful, hard-working, and neurotic. I was the nice Jewish boy that they wanted me to be.” While Goldberg eventually returned to California and resumed living as a butch female, she owns the power of adopting a false identity. It’s an exhilarating read.

But what of those who don’t want to pass, but instead desire a more radical identity change? Joy Ladin’s “In The Image” is a heartfelt overview of her transition from male to female—all while teaching at Stern College for Women, an Orthodox institution in New York City. Her pre-surgical certainty that she was doing the right thing left her both breathless and terrified. “When, in a few months, I achieve the sin qua non of transsexual transition—living full-time in my new gender role—I will simultaneously complete the mid-life crisis trifecta of losing my career, my home, and my family,” she writes. An Afterword reveals that her worries were at least partially for naught:Stern College did not fire Ladin after she transitioned, but used her example to open dialogue about transgender issues inside and outside the Orthodox world.

Keep Your Wives Away from Them is a bold plea for tolerance. What’s more, the depth of faith that keeps Orthodox lesbians within the fold affirms the need for LGBTQ visibility in both religious communities and their secular counterparts.

Written by: Eleanor J. Bader, July 1st 2010

Holy Rollers

admin — Tue, 18 May 2010 05:43:00 +0000

Directed by Kevin Asch

First Independent Pictures

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. The viewer is drawn in by the intrigue and deceit, yet is left thinking about religion and culture.

We are never told exactly which Orthodox community in Brooklyn Holy Rollers’ main character (and real life person) Sam Gold lives in, but I think that merely speaks to the fact that it could have been any of them. (Post-viewing research proves it to have been Williamsburg.) Sam is a prototypical, ideal Orthodox boy who is studying to be a rabbi, comes from a good family, and works in his father’s shop. Sam's only problem is that he dreams of something beyond his immediate surroundings, and sees money as the means to get him there. His material desire leads him to blindly follow his neighbor into the "easy money" job of bringing "medicine for rich people" back to the U.S. from Europe.

Playing with the inconsistencies of reality is what changes a good story into a great movie. Who would ever believe it was a Jew who instituted and ran such a scheme? Who used a shared faith to exploit young people? And who would think that so many lies could create a positive space from which to question one’s beliefs? I found myself sitting on the edge of my seat, praying that Sam and his compatriots wouldn’t get caught while simultaneously questioning prayer.

Watching Sam’s crisis of conscience made me see so much more than a bizarre news clip in an insular faction of American society. His is a life almost too close to my own, and, really, Sam’s story could be anyone’s coming of age: moving away from the world of your youth, finding who you truly are, and deciding if you want to stay in the place you’re from or choose another fate. Sometimes when we choose to leave, there is no space in our new predicament for who we used to be.

Written by: Nicole Levitz, May 18th 2010

Women and Judaism: New Insights and Scholarship

admin — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 01:00:00 +0000

Edited by Frederick E. Greenspahn

New York University Press

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. Unfortunately, like many textbooks I remember from college, Women and Judaism was written in a scholarly, rather than engaging, format. While there were a few authors who were exceptions, this dry style dampened my enthusiasm for what could have been a fascinating read.

That said, if you can wade through the style, the meat of the book is definitely worth checking out. For starters, there is some interesting discussion about the relationship between Judaism and feminism—the authors don't believe them to be mutually exclusive. Rather than justify the sexism written into historical Judaic documents, several of the authors make the point that it is the sexism of the time that led to the inequity in religious texts—and they think that modern Judaism can, and should, move past it. This is probably the book's key theme: the authors challenge the idea that Judaism is a fundamentally sexist religion, arguing that changing times call for changing practices.

Some of the bare historical facts (the first female rabbi was not ordained until 1972!) were shocking in terms of how late women were accepted into leadership roles, and how long it took for them to be included in traditionally male roles and ceremonies. The essays of Pamela S. Nadell (“Women and American Judaism”) and Sylvia Barack Fishman (“Women's Transformation of Contemporary Jewish Life”) are both eye-opening and highlight the importance of Jewish feminists in the second wave of the women's movement in the United States.

As a writer, the section on literature was of particular interest to me. “Text, Nation and Gender in Israeli Women's Fiction,” by Nehama Aschkenasy, is a very interesting piece; she analyzes the still-evolving feminist literary response to the historically male-dominated Israeli culture. But as Sara R. Horowitz notes in “Women in Jewish American Literature,” sexism has curtailed the celebration and acknowledgment of Jewish women writers in the United States until the last quarter century, which she describes as a “sea change.”

If you can plod through some of the narratives, the ideas contained in this volume make it worth reading each of the essays.

Written by: M.L. Madison, February 3rd 2010

Red Bracelet

admin — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 11:07:00 +0000

By Luckxurys

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. When she received positive feedback from others, she followed her desire to make "fashion that welcomes good energies," and incorporated her own good energies into a proper self-run jewelry business.

Using self-styled hand knitting, hand sculpturing, and silvercrafting techniques that Rosen gained through more than a decade of study, Luckxurys sells creative pieces (mostly bracelets and necklaces) that are stylistically unique. The Red Bracelet uses a simple wax wire knit string, handmade lucky charms, made from a mixture of calcium and polymer clay, and an easy loop clasp to fasten the string after you wrap it around your wrist a few times. The meaning of the color is taken from the Kabbalah. Red symbolizes danger, passion, and love, which makes it the strongest protector against evil. However, other colors are available.

Innovation in jewelry is difficult to come by these days, yet Luckxurys managed to develop something contemporary using an ancient concept. Made to be durable, the Red Bracelet can be worn daily without removal, which might not be such a bad thing for those plagued with bad ju-ju.

Written by: Mandy Van Deven, January 9th 2010

Fucking Different: Tel Aviv

admin — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 17:01:00 +0000

Directed by Kristian Petersen

Filmproducktion

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. Now, while I have not seen the previous two iterations, please allow me the privilege in speculating that Fucking Different: Tel Aviv may certainly be one of the bests in the romantic short film collection genre. The fifteen directors' short films together illustrate a beautiful panorama of diversity in myriad forms within a thriving and vibrant Middle Eastern and Mediterranean metropolis. They shed light on a host of issues such as the Right-Left divide in Israel, dealing with coming out, first love, ideas of masculinity and femininity and Judaism and homosexuality.

Tel Aviv has been called the “mini-Los Angeles” of the Middle East, but L.A. is a place that many say “no one comes from, rather they go to,” but the people in Fucking Different: Tel Aviv are fully present in the times that all residents of Tel Aviv are shaped by. In the first short story entitled “Political Sex”, two new lovers, Yossi and Tzuf must decide whether to be pragmatic or passionate when the discussion turns to politics. In this short piece we see that the gay community is no less driven by a right-left partisan divide. What ensues after said discussion is some visually enthralling sex. This is another reason why this documentary is appealing. These shorts do not conceal or shirk away from what, in reality is everyday life, rather they reveal the ordinary struggles of people who refuse to be ordinary.

Another poignant moment is found in the short containing the story of Emmanuel and Brigitte. We are introduced to a man applying makeup and discussing how Brigitte came to be and how she represents his identity as much as Emmanuel. The waters get even deeper as the story progresses. We learn that Emmanuel performs the oboe for the Tel Aviv Philharmonic and that had he not had that same courage to first perform as Brigitte at a local club, he may not have ever had the courage to reach for his dream and apply to the very competitive Berlin Philharmonic.

“Gay men after being called a 'sissy' or 'faggot' when they are young become fearful of their own femininity...” "Emmanuel/Brigitte" connects seamlessly with the knowing histories of every gay man who was called such names, myself included, when he uttered such a painful truth. The story of some gay adult men is the story of not just helping friends and family become comfortable with something that may be “foreign" or "different” to them, but also becoming comfortable within your own skin and learning to celebrate it, just as Emmanuel and Brigitte do.

Fucking Different: Tel Aviv mixes epicurean delights with sapphic ecstasy and has some of the most scintillating lovemaking between beautiful people while keying you into the notion that there are also some gays who don't fit the stereotype. They would be just fine with a night watching an entire season of Absolutely Fabulous rather than having sex. Make it Battlestar Galactica or Fringe and I'd probably give the same answer. Maybe it is my love of the diversity of a metropolis or simply my lust for Jewish men, but after screening this collection of short films I was ready to book the next flight to Tel Aviv.

Written by: Brandon Copeland, December 29th 2009

City of Borders

admin — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 11:27:00 +0000

Directed by Yun Suh

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. When the wall came down in 1989, these images disappeared out of my every day life, but they are so much a part of my history that seeing them again in City of Borders brought back that claustrophobic feeling of knowing you can’t move about freely in your city, of being acutely aware of your own vulnerability in the face of stone, steel, and weapons that are designed to keep you in place.

It would be missing the point to compare living conditions in current-day Jerusalem to Cold War-era Berlin. What City of Borders highlights so impressively is how unique the political and social context is for people living in Jerusalem and its surrounding areas. Knowing what it feels like to live with walls and borders and barbed wire every day added a layer of meaning to the documentary by filmmaker Yun Suh for me that made the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stand up for the entire sixty-six minutes of the film.

City of Borders tells the stories of gay and lesbian men and women in Jerusalem, Ramallah, and Givat Ze’ev. This one simple sentence entails all of the stunning complexities that City of Borders addresses: issues of sexual identity in the context of fundamentalist interpretations of religion are embedded in the larger context of the political conflict between Israel and Palestine. Personal experiences are not, and cannot be separated from the political realities the men and women in City of Borders live in.

We get to know Boody, a devout Muslim Palestinian man who risks his life climbing the fence from the West Bank into Jerusalem to go to the city’s only gay bar, Shushan. Boody later decides to leave his hometown Ramallah, as well as his friends and family, to immigrate to the U.S. because of constant death threats against him and his family for being an openly gay man—and Ramallah’s first drag queen.

We learn about Samira and Ravit, a lesbian couple who not only faces repercussions for living an openly lesbian life, but also for breaking another big taboo: a love relationship that centers intimacy between Jews and Palestinians. We meet Adam, a young gay activist who lives in a Jewish settlement in the West Bank and is a staunch defender settlement policy, thereby introducing one of the most complex political issues between Israel and Palestine into the mix. Finally, we follow moments in the life of Sa’ar, owner of Shushan, and at the same time the first openly gay man elected into city council in Jerusalem.

These four stories combine to show us—sometimes subtly, sometimes aggressively—that borders in the region are more than walls and barbed wire, that perceptions of us versus them, of "I versus the Other," are so deeply ingrained in both religions, history, and politics in the region that even a moment of intimacy between lovers can turn into a moment of fucking the enemy.

City of Borders is remarkable in many ways. It is packed full of images and insights that stayed with me long after I put the DVD back into its case. The most remarkable aspect of the documentary is that it does not (over)simplify. It layers the realities of the political conflict, complex religious controversies—both within and between Islam and Judaism—and the clash between historic roots and modernism on top of personal stories of finding and accepting sexual identities. It is this approach that drives one point home very loudly: there are no easy solutions to dealing with the borders in our minds.

Written by: Annette Przygoda, November 24th 2009

The Passionate Torah: Sex and Judaism

admin — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 23:00:00 +0000

Edited by Danya Ruttenberg

New York University Press

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. They starkly confront the challenge of reconciling sexuality and spirituality from the perspective of those who study, worship, and identify with the Torah and the Talmudic tradition of critical analysis, while also maintaining active feminist belief and commitments to social justice that often seem to conflict with Jewish law, at least as it has been traditionally construed.

Each of the essays deserves more than the cursory notice possible here and would serve as ideal prompts for further (and badly needed) engagement on the nexus between religious law and the realities of living. A representative piece is Haviva Ner-David’s poignant essay “Reclaiming Nidah and Mikveh Through Ideological and Practical Reinterpretation.” The author confronts the subject of menstruation and its “impurity” as it arises first in Leviticus 15:19-33. The priestly and later rabbinical interpretation of this significant part of each month as a time of impurity for women, when they were denied access to worship in the temple, “reinforced the patriarchal power structure that gives these men their power.”

But rather than rejecting the law and rabbinic tradition, the author reinvents it. When she is in nidah (having her period), she finds herself naturally more “closed and self-absorbed,” so that the ritual immersion becomes a powerful transition to a state of greater openness. Further, she and her husband have negotiated the “distancing laws,” whereby intercourse during a woman’s period and the seven “white days” afterwards is prohibited, so that they make sense practically and spiritually in terms of their own relationship. Most profoundly, I thought, she has invited her husband to join her in the mikveh immersion, so that the ritual is a reinvigorating element in their relationship.

One of the shortest pieces in the book is similarly moving and frank, Rebecca T. Alpert’s “Reconsidering Solitary Sex from a Jewish Perspective.” She references Talmudic argument about whether the “punishment, to cut off a man’s hand, is a law or merely a curse.” For better or worse, the possibility that women masturbate seems not to have occurred to the Rabbis, and the author concludes simply and joyfully, “Self care is an important Jewish value.”

Equally provocative is Naomi Seidman’s semi-autobiographical essay “The Erotics of Sexual Segregation,” illustrating the point that the breakdown in traditional cultural segregation between men and women has “entailed a certain erotic loss.” The editor’s own essay “Toward a New Tzniut” is related in advocating a connection between subjectivity and eroticism, the self-love that grows out of claiming one’s own sexuality through a connection with the divine.

The book takes on the “queering of Jewish theology,” what the Torah and its interpreters say about having “good sex,” prostitution, divorce, and intermarriage. Wendy Love Anderson dares to explore “the Goy of Sex”—groan!—a brief history of Jewish-Gentile “boundary-crossing” sex. Sarra Kev interprets the Mishnah Sotah as rabbinical pornography: the Sotah is a woman accused of adultery and forced to endure humiliation and a sort of public rape before the gaze of the powerful men punishing her—and the literary gaze of the male students re-imagining this ghastly scene as part of their religious training.

This is a brilliant book, as well as an entertaining and moving one, with implications that extend well beyond the immediate project of Jewish-feminist exegesis.

Written by: Rick Taylor, August 21st 2009

The House of Secrets: The Hidden World of the Mikveh

admin — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 16:46:00 +0000

By Varda Polak-Sahm

Beacon Press

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. There is much beauty in the reasons for immersion in the mikveh, such as, the closeness a woman feels to her god, her husband, and the continued spiritual transformation she receives from it. However, what was difficult to digest was the mindset of some of the women in the praxis and the praxis itself. Even still, none of my opinions discount the informative and fascinating job Varda Polak-Sahm does in detailing a world many of us have no clue exists.

A mikveh is an obligatory cleansing from head to foot that is firmly entrenched in Jewish law, from the knowledge needed to enter the mikveh to the items used to cleanse the menstrual impurities that preclude entrance. The women who perform the immersion have the power to turn away those they feel have not obeyed the rules associated with cleanliness and those who are non-Jewish. It is believed that the flesh of a non-Jew will contaminate that of a Jewish bride who must immerse in the mikveh on the eve of her wedding.

Polak-Sahm tells of the relationship between the Jewish woman and the mikveh through her own personal experience and the experiences of the Balaniyot (the woman performing the immersion), as well as the many women who habit the mikveh. For Jewish women who choose to make the mikveh a part of their lives, it provides a spiritual connection that goes beyond religious doctrine.

There are many aspects concerning the mikveh that both trouble and fascinate me. The same menstrual blood that is considered a manifestation of and justification for Eve’s mental promiscuity and corruption of Adam is the same blood that is considered to be a blessing of sorts. This blessing is what allows the Jewish woman to propagate the Jewish population, thus fulfilling her obligation to God, and distinguishes true femininity from the stigma of barrenness. The rules of the mikveh fall under Jewish law—law that was and is set by men.

Of course, it is easy for me to be opinionated about a religion I was neither born into nor chose to adopt. I realize how easy it also is for me to rain down spiritual condescension with claims of backward, patriarchal, and misogynistic belief systems placed on women who choose to remain complacently ignorant. What stands out, however, is the conviction with which these traditions are upheld and Polak-Sahm’s ability to capture the innocence and dedication that these women give in upholding this aspect of Jewish tradition. No matter what we may think of this aspect of Judaism and those who implement it, Polak-Sahm seems to invoke the question of how firmly we are convicted to our own spiritual advancement. Perhaps the balancing act we undergo on a daily basis, to solidify our own connection to the Creator, should leave us with less time to judge those who remain solidly grounded in theirs.

Written by: Olupero R. Aiyenimelo, August 14th 2009

Shalom India Housing Society

admin — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 22:56:00 +0000

By Esther David

The Feminist Press

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. Most of the Bene Israelis have now returned to their promised land, leaving very few behind.

Shalom India Housing Society traces the life of the Bene Israel Jews settled in West Ahmedabad. The protagonist of the story is Prophet Elijah, who blesses the life of a Bene Israel Jew with happiness. He also grants the wishes of people in the community. Esther David unveils the way Bene Israelis have adapted to Indian ways of religious worship; every Bene Israel Jew in India has poster of Prophet at their home. This violates basic tenets of Judaism, as idol worship is taboo.

The story begins as the prophet visits each house of the Shalom India Housing Society on the first day of Passover when Haggadah was being read out. The book is divided into nineteen chapters and the author enraptures us by sharing the pains, love, passion, and the loneliness of the members of the Shalom Housing Society.

Though humorously tailored, Esther David has portrayed the fears and issues faced by the members of this small community to keep their identity, culture, and beliefs sacrosanct in India, a land of many gods. The author unveils the problems of being a minority community in India, and their yearnings to return to Israel.

Though the characters in this book are Jews settled in India, the insecurities the book vocalizes are the feelings and frustrations of the members of a minority community everywhere in this world. I was deeply touched by these lines “Where is the home? Is our home within us or somewhere else?”

Written by: Sunitha Jayan, April 26th 2009