Lilith Magazine

Women's Lives Are in Danger

2007-04-19T10:51:00.000-04:00

The Supreme Court has voted to uphold the Federal Abortion Ban, and it is a sad and scary day in America (we're having a lot of those this week). You can actually read the decision in its entirety here. The most detrimental feature of the decision from a legal perspective is likely to be the precedent it sets NOT to make any exceptions for the health of the woman. This is a particularly important in light of halakhic rules that require us to place a high value on the woman's health in such cases. For more on the Supreme Court Decision, check out Feminist Majority, The National Council of Jewish Women and NOW. Read Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Dissent, which she took the rare step of reading aloud to the Court. Although Justice Bader Ginsburg's move was derided as "politically greedy" in some right-wing blogs, we see it as a powerful example of a Jewish woman who refuses to shut her mouth in the face of injustice.

Lilith has been covering issues of choice for over 25 years. We invite you to download and read one such article: "Is Abortion Murder? Jews and Christians Will Answer Differently" by Leila Bronner from our Winter 1997-98 issue.

Please post your comments or thoughts below, or feel free to send them to Lilith's blog moderator, Mel Weiss.

Update: We're Not Giving Up
Despite the discouraging vote by the Supreme Court, we're not giving up so easily. The JTA has just reported that groups are revving up to fight the ruling (check out the quote from Lilith's own Susan Weidman Schneider).

In a show of amazing timing, the Freedom of Choice Act has been reintroduced. (Read the ACLU's press release.) The bill has been reintroduced by Representative Jerrold Nadler (D - NY) and--no surprise here--Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA).

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Rabbis, Rabbis Everywhere!

2007-04-16T11:06:00.000-04:00

Rabbis have been in the news a lot lately--and we're happy to share with you the thoughts of two preeminent Jewish feminist thinkers on recent issues regarding the rabbinate.

Ordaining Gay Men and Women--And You Can Thank Jewish Feminists
First, we would be severely remiss if we didn't point out Rabbi Judith Hauptman's amazing article, Ordaining Gay Men and Women, which featured in The Forward last week. Rabbi Hauptman brilliantly points out the vital connection between the gains and changes made by Jewish feminism and the recent decision by the Conservative movement that its seminaries may ordain gay and lesbian rabbis. (By the way, for a lot more on the nuances of gender, sexuality, ordination and plain old Jewish life, stay tuned for our spring issue!)

The Fantasy Rabbinate, Revised
When Lilith's e-newletter (for which you can sign up here) sent a link to Newsweek's recent story on the Top Fifty Rabbis in America, hundreds of you clicked through to read the in-depth analysis provided by three men who are extremely knowledgable about the Jewish community, using a complicated algorithm. Or, um...something. Many of you shared your thoughts with us (including one letter that wanted to know why cantors have been so ignored throughout this discussion), and so we want to share one back with you. The following letter comes from Letty Cottin Pogrebin--author, feminist guru and a Lilith supporter from the get-go:

April 6, 2007

Letter to the Editor of Newsweek

In your April 2nd issue, Michael Lynton and his friends rated "The Top Fifty Rabbis in America" according to fame, media savvy, influence, and size of constituency. Though many of the "chosen" are superb rabbis, your list – not surprisingly, given those hyper-muscular criteria – contains 45 men and five women.

I've spent the last week soliciting nominations from Jewish friends around the country in order to compile a list of rabbis who satisfy a different set of criteria: spirituality wedded to activism, deeds of lovingkindness, and ability to communicate the meaning and beauty in Jewish life. Since we're talking about rabbis, not bestsellers, their names are listed alphabetically not hierarchically. And since your list was in dire need of affirmative action, you'll understand why my list contains 45 women and five men.

Sincerely,
Letty Cottin Pogrebin

THE “OTHER FIFTY” TOP RABBIS IN AMERICA

Judith Z. Abrams (Reform)
Founder, www.Maqom.com
Rebecca Alpert (Reconstructionist)
Assoc. Prof. Religion and Jewish Studies, Temple University; co-author, Lesbian Rabbis: The First Generation
Camille Shira Angel (Reform)
Congregation Sha’ar Zahav S.F’s gay & lesbian progressive Reform congregation; first lesbian rabbi hired at a mainstream synagogue. (Rodeph Shalom, NYC)
Phyllis Berman (Jewish Renewal)
Director of the Summer Program at Elat Chayyim retreat center; author; creator of ritual and life cycle celebrations
Leila Gal Berner (Reconstructionist)
Founding director, Center for Jewish Ethics; writer of “Song to Miriam” now widely sung in Havdalah ceremonies; historian; author
Sharon Brous (Conservative)
Founder, IKAR spiritual-social justice community in L.A
Angela Warnick Buchdahl (Reform)
Cantor (and rabbi), Central Synagogue, NY. First Asian-American ordained in North America. Board member, Multiracial Jewish Network
Nina Beth Cardin (Conservative)
Editor, Sh’ma: A Journal of Jewish Responsibility. Founding Associate Director, National Center for Jewish Healing; creator first liturgy for stillbirth and abortion.
Ayelet S. Cohen (Conservative)
Associate Rabbi, Congregation Beth Simchat Torah, world’s largest synagogue serving the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered communities.
Dianne Cohler-Esses (Conservative)
Scholar-in-Residence, UJA-Federation, NY; co-director, UJA-Federation Task Force on the Jewish Woman
Mark Dratch (Orthodox)
Founder. Jsafe.com, domestic violence prevention education and activism
Amy Eilberg (Conservative)
First woman ordained as a Conservative rabbi. Co-Director, Yedidya Center for Jewish Spiritual Direction, St. Paul, Minnesota. Co-founder, Bay Area Jewish Healing Center.
Jacqueline Koch Ellenson (Reform)
Director, Rabbinic Women’s Network; chair, Haddassah Foundation
Sue Levi Elwell (Reform)
Author/editor, “The Open Door,” the CCAR haggadah; Founding director, American Jewish Congress Feminist Center, LA; Co-editor, Lesbian Rabbis: The First Generation
Helene Ferris (Reform)
Rabbi Emeritus, Temple Israel of Northern Westchester; first mid-life career female rabbi (ordained at 44); first woman to read from a Torah scroll at Jerusalem’s Western Wall
Tirza Firestone (Jewish Renewal Movement)
Congregation Nevei Kodesh, Boulder Colorado.; author; psychotherapist; kabbalist.
Nancy Flam (Reform)
Director, Institute for Jewish Spirituality; co-founder, Jewish Healing Center
Elyse Frishman (Reform)
Editor of Mishkan Tefillah, new Reform prayer book
Nancy Fuchs-Kreimer (Reconstructionist)
Pioneering teacher of interreligious studies to rabbinical students
Laura Geller (Reform)
Temple Emanuel, Beverly Hills; writer; teacher; feminist pioneer; third woman ordained in U.S.; first woman to be senior rabbi of a major metropolitan synagogue.
Shefa Gold (Reconstructionist)
Liturgical composer; teacher; Eitz Or, Seattle
Lynn Gottlieb (Jewish Renewal Movement)
Founder, Interfaith Inventions; founder, Bat Kol national Jewish feminist theater troupe; co-founder, Muslim-Jewish Peace Walk pilgrimages
Steve Greenberg (Orthodox)
Author, “Wrestling With God and Men: Homosexuality in the Jewish Tradition; featured in the 2001 film “Trembling Before God;” senior teaching fellow, CLAL
Jill Hammer (Conservative)
Director of Tel Shemesh website; co-founder of Kohenet: The Hebrew Priestess Institute; author, educator, poet, midrashist, ritualist.
Judith Hauptman (Conservative)
Talmud scholar; Professor of Talmud and Rabbinics, Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS); author “Rereading the Rabbis”
Margaret Holub (Reform)
Innovator of new ways to connect rural Jews to Judaism; one of the “Redwood Rabbis” who protested destruction of ancient trees in Northern California.
Jill Jacobs (Conservative)
Director of Education, Jewish Funds for Justice; one of The Forward newspaper’s 50 Most Influential Jews
Jen Krause (Reform)
Teacher, writer, workshop leader. Creator of “Backstage Pass,” interview series at NYC’s 92nd Street Y, and “Oy Latte” open dialogues; co-founder Lishmah.
Joy Levitt (Reconstructionist)
Executive director, JCC in Manhattan; co-author, Reconstructionist haggadah, A Night of Questions
Ellen Lippman (Reform)
Founder, Congregation Kolot Chayeinu, Brooklyn, NY; chair, first rabbinic conference for Rabbis for Human Rights (2006); officiated at lesbian wedding NYC (2003)
Shira Milgrom (Reform)
Congregation Kol Ami, White Plains, NY; author; speaker; pioneered co-rabbi pulpit partnership; advocates passionate engagement with Jewish texts, rituals, and traditions.
Marcia Prager (Reconstructionist/Jewish Renewal)
P’nai Or Jewish Renewal Community, Mt. Airy, PA; dean, ALEPH:Alliance for Jewish Renewal’s seminary without walls
Sally Priesand (Reform)
First woman rabbi ordained in U.S. (1972); served Monmouth Reform Temple, NJ
Jennie Rosenn (Reform)
Director, Nathan Cummings Foundation; former Assoc. Chaplain, Hillel, Columbia University; founding board, AVODAH: The Jewish Service Corps
Joanna Samuels (Conservative)
Congregation Habonim, NYC
Amy Schwartzman (Reform)
Temple Rodeph Shalom, Falls Church, VA; only woman among 15 rabbis who met in 2003 with George W. Bush 2003; only rabbi there to raise issue of poverty with Bush
David Silber (Orthodox)
Founder and Dean, Drisha Institute for Jewish Education
Felicia Sol (Nondenominational)
Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, New York City; rabbinic partner to Rolando Matalon and Marcelo Bronstein.
Mychal Springer (Conservative)
Assoc. Dean and Director of Field Education of the Rabbinical School, JTS; former Assoc. Director, Jewish Institute for Pastoral Care, HealthCare Chaplaincy, Manhattan.
Devora Steinmetz (Nondenominational, unordained)
Asst. Professor, Talmud and Rabbinics, JTS
Burton L. Visotzky (Conservative)
Professor of Midrash, JTS, ethicist; author; collaborator on Bill Moyers 10-part PBS series, “Genesis: A Living Conversation;” pioneer in Jewish/Christian/Muslim dialogue.
Margaret Moers Wenig (Reform)
Her Siddur Nashim was first to use feminine imagery and God language in prayer book; gay rights pioneer; outreach between Jews and Latinos; pastoral care for people with AIDS.
Sheila Peltz Weinberg (Reconstructionist)
Institute for Jewish Spirituality; melds meditation and social action in Jewish life
Shohama Wiener (pluralist)
First woman to head a rabbinical seminary; President Emerita, The Academy for Jewish Religion, Riverdale, NYC
Melissa Weintraub (Conservative)
Rabbis for Human Rights, author, first report on torture and Jewish law
Simkha Weintraub (Conservative)
Rabbinic director, National Center for Jewish Healing
Zari Weiss
Eitz Or: Seattle’s Jewish Renewal Community; Rabbinic Cabinet, Brit Tzedek v’Shalom
Nancy Wiener (Reform)
Clinical director of the Jacob & Hilda Blaustein Center for Pastoral Counseling, HUC
Elaine Zecher (Reform)
Temple Israel, Boston. First female rabbi in the Temple’s 130 year history; organized coalition supporting cutting-edge health care legislation in Massachusetts.
Devorah Zlochower (Orthodox, nonordained)
Rosh Beit Midrash, Head of Drisha Institute for Jewish Education; teaches Talmud and Halacha in the Scholars Circle.

(By the way, several of these women were recently featured in a Lilith article titled "Ordained! Women Rabbis Speak Their Minds"--check it out and see what these rabbis have to say about what it took for them to get where they are.)

Passover Best Bets for NEXT Year: Start Now

2007-04-12T11:12:00.000-04:00

Now that Passover's over and we've all crossed the sea and the desert back to our normal, hametz-eating lives, it's time to compare notes. What worked or didn't work this year? What new and exciting rituals, readings and recipes enhanced your seders or your holiday-at-large? Email your answers to Mel Weiss, Lilith's blog moderator, and watch them appear below!

Passover Best Bets 2007

A Truly Personalized Haggadah
This was my first year making my own haggadah. Although I relied heavily on the Reconstructionist Press version--Rabbi Joy Levitt and Rabbi Michael Strassfeld--(which I bought in bulk during my Hillel-leading days at a major lefty college), I got to mix, match and add my own commentary, particularly helpful when non-Jews out number Jews at your seder. It felt like the best of all possible worlds--and an acknowledgement section let me feel like I was adequately crediting everyone in true feminist fashion. It was great to have the finished product, but I don't think I'll be updating or upgrading any time soon: it took me long to photocopy than it did to clean my apartment!

--Mel Weiss, Brooklyn, NY.

Those Who Have Come Before Us...
The host of our first seder asked us to write our names on the inside cover of our haggadot. We thought that was wonderful--an amazing way to see who passed through the holiday each year.

--Susan Weidman Schneider

Successful Food Ideas
1. Charoset: I make it from chopped apples (tart green and red delicious) with the skin on, pecans, white raisins and honey.
2. I always buy cooked foods for the holidays, since I'm just too tired to make roast chicken breasts, turkey, brisket, chopped liver, chicken soup, gefilte fish, kugel (potato and sweet potato) which are so well prepared by a glatt kosher butcher
shop, kosher for Passover.
3. I saute fresh sweet onions and fresh mushrooms to add to vegetables, etc.
4. I prepare two kinds of matzoh brie: sweet and savory. For the sweet, I add some of the large amount of charoset that I have prepared for the seder. For the savory, I add some of the sauteed onions and mushrooms.

--Lynn Liss

Miriam and Susan and Miriam Again
My best Pesach moment was inspired by an e-mail from your magazine! I saw the article about Miriam's Cup, so I Googled that. I found a beautiful one from Armenia and sent it to my cousin, Susan, in Bellingham, Washington. She's a fabulous woman (wife, mother and amateur folksinger). We grew up about 1,200 miles away from each other, so we don't really know one another very well. Her paternal grandmother (Miriam) was my aunt (father's sister). Aunt Miriam died a little over a year ago at the age of 100 (7 weeks after her big birthday bash). Aunt Miriam kept our family together. Sixty-two relatives came to Tucson in Jan., 2006 to celebrate her centennial. We had three parties that weekend. One of them had 112 people in attendance. Aunt Miriam looked great. At one of the parties, some of the family entertained us, including Susie and her daughter Arielle. It was a watershed event for all of us. I collected e-mail addresses from everyone who wanted to participate. We don't all correspond as well as we should, but some of us correspond better than we used to. Anyway, I just wanted to thank you for inspiring me to purchase, send and give my cousin a beautiful Miriam's cup for Pesach. Susie loves it!

--Sara Leviten

A Rarely-Heard Seder Compliment
I went through our few previously-used Haggadahs and, because my grandchildren and I
have short attention spans, I worked for a few hours and compressed them. I managed
to get a three page Haggadah out of all ot it, and as everyone at the table agreed,
it was instructive, enjoyable and best of all - short.

Because we were able to eat my incredible brisket immediately, one comment raved,
"this seder was perfect for us hypo-glycemics."

--Shirley Pullan

Pesach for the Rest of Us
Marge Piercy's PESACH FOR THE REST OF US
was a marvelous text and figured in the
compilation of our own family haggadah.

I am sure that many others felt the same.

--Judy Geller-Marlowe

Liberating Kugel Recipes
Carrot Pudding for Passover
For me it is always a non-measuring recipe. If you need to measure - forget it!
Take nice fresh carrots, firm, ( I use l0 - 12) and put into the Cuisinart in the length to get finely chopped up. (If they fall sideways they get woody and thready.)
When done, add 2 tsp. baking powder, 3 jumbo or 4 normal eggs, honey - about 1/2 cup and or 1/2 - 3/4 c. sugar, and 1/2 or so cups of dark raisins.
Lightly grease pan with oil, pour in mixture and bake at 350 for about l hr. as you want all the carrots to cook soft.
Delicious hot or cold, as side dish or dessert.

Broccoli Pudding
Freeze 2 large bunches or broccoli. Sautee 4 onions in a little oil. Boil two potatoes.
Next day: defrost broccoli and slice up in Cuisinart, add onions, 4-6 eggs (depending on size), mash up potatoes and add, 1 tsp. baking powder (the more you add the fewer eggs you neeed, salt and pepper to taste
Bake at 350 for about 45 min. to l hour. If you like crisp edges, preheat pan before putting in mixture.

Any of the above recipes can be broken up into pans of various sizes so you can freeze unused portions.

--Ita Aber

Jewish Theological Seminary to Ordain Openly Gay Students

2007-03-28T08:15:00.000-04:00

From the JTA, Monday, March 26, 2007:
" The Jewish Theological Seminary announced Monday that it would change admission policies to accept openly gay students at its rabbinical school.

Arnold Eisen, chancellor-elect of the Conservative movement's flagship institution, made the decision after consulting with the seminary community and conducting a movement-wide survey, both of which found strong support for the change.

In December, the movement's legal authority, the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, endorsed three opinions on the question of homosexuality. Two upheld the movement's traditional stance barring gay clergy and commitment ceremonies, while a third opened the door to gay rabbis and commitment ceremonies while upholding the biblical prohibition on male intercourse.

The conflicting opinions enabled individual Conservative institutions to make their own policy decisions. In Los Angeles, the University of Judaism's rabbinical school has already admitted two openly gay students for the fall term. The movement's other seminaries – in Jerusalem, Budapest and Buenos Aires – are not expected to follow suit."

All we can say here is: finally! (And kol hakavod to all those people who have worked so hard for this.)

You can read the JTS press releases here, and you can also read Chancellor Eisen's letter to the JTS community.

Be on the lookout for LOTS of stuff on Jews, the Conservative movement and Jewish gender and sexuality in the upcoming spring issue, and please leave us your thoughts below!

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The V-Word Strikes Again

2007-03-07T13:15:00.000-05:00

So apparently, "vagina" is the new bad word at John Jay High School in New York. So bad, in fact, that you can be suspended for saying it at an open mic session, which is exactly what happened to three female students just recently. That they were performing a selection from Eve Ensler's "Vagina Monologues", which celebrates the reclamation of our most basic vocabulary, is an irony apparently lost on school officials.

Putting aside, for one moment, the fact that the Supreme Court has made clear that students don't check their rights at the school door, let's just pause to ask: Vagina? Really? Out of all of the potentially harmful things going on in schools today, you're concerned with students employing words that can be found in most biology text books?

You can see more of the controversy up close and personal here (Firefox only), but we also want to here from you. Can you believe that this is happening in 2007? Do you have parallel stories from decades ago? Think Eve Ensler should write these young women college recommendations?

Leave your thoughts below. In the meantime, Mr. School Principal: vagina you.

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No Laughing Matter?

2007-03-06T23:15:00.000-05:00

We all know the joke about how many feminists it takes to screw in a lightbulb. ("Just one--and it's not funny.") You would think this stereotype might be combated by the assumption that we Jews are so inherently funny (as so many have worked so hard to prove). But I imagine in this case, feminist trumps Jew in public opinion. So maybe it's time to talk about a specifically Jewish sense of feminist humor.

In an age when Eddie Murphey in a high-tech fat suit qualifies as standard comedic fare, it may be safe to say that our society's standards have slipped. But what about aggressive, edgy, in-your-face comedy? Is it good for the Jews? Is it good for the women?

I don't want to spark a debate on whether Sacha Baron Cohen or Sarah Silverman are positive or negative influences in society (I happen to be an occasionally uncomfortable fan of both), but I do want to talk about--and hear about--how the dueling assumptions about Jewish humor and feminist humor collide in pop culture and people's lives.

The recent JewSchool kerfuffle over Maya Escobar's JAP video really brought home for me the touchiness of the subject and made me wonder where my own sense of humor (which I like to think of as sophisticated, dry and in favor of cleverly offensive absurdism) runs crashing into an indignant self-righteousness. Writing from a generation that simultaneously values "taking a joke" at all costs and teaches us to scream bloody murder at the slightest offence, I think how we understand humor says a great deal about us.

So...what's Jewish feminist humor? What does it look like? What does it permit? Can it exist as an understood canon? Or should we be happy when the occasional funny-woman comes along who fits the criteria?

Please leave your thoughts, or send them in to be published here. We want to hear you talk back!

Cheers,
Mel Weiss
Blog Moderator

Update
After receiving an email from Maya Escobar herself--in which I learned that her art is intended to evoke, provoke and do all manner of other -vokes to people's thoughts, and not just to get the cheap laugh--I am ever the more thoughtful about how humor and offence can intersect at our most sensitive spots.

On her blog, Maya asks, "What does it feel like to be called a JAP?" Check out a range of interesting answers, and be sure to add your own, here.

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Barbie's To-Do List: Lay Tefillin, Pick Up Nobel Prize...

2006-11-22T12:57:00.000-05:00

As a Jewish woman who considers herself an ardent feminist, I never know if my (spoken or unspoken) messages to my daughter have registered. And as a mother and grandmother, I try to follow the advice of a friend who has told me the importance of keeping my lips zipped whenever I can contain myself. After all, she says, my grandchildren aren't my children. But there have been some very nice surprises, as the following suggests.

Prologue: some years ago while shopping for nonsexist toys for my grandkids, now ages 4 (a little boy) and 7 (granddaughter), I noticed a huge display of Barbies at the checkout. Since the young woman taking my money was not my daughter, I felt free to say, "I wish your store wouldn't sell those." She replied, "But everyone likes them." I said, "But no one looks like them! Nobody has bodies like theirs. These dolls are totally false and don't do anything positive for little girls' self-images." Needless to say, no action was taken.

Flash forward: At my granddaughter's fourth birthday, I noted that she,Tamara, had received three Barbie dolls. If I had been asked, I would have said that they should be returned to the stores where they were purchased.

However, later the same day, I heard my daughter Claire telling Tamara that the reason Barbie was dressed up was that she was on her way to pick up her Nobel Prize in Medicine.

The moral of the story: Our daughters may be listening to us even when we think they aren't!

--Julia Wolf Mazow, writer and Lilith regular

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Tallitot Redux

2006-11-22T10:02:00.000-05:00

Lilith makes the (web)pages of the JWA blog as people discuss "that tallit article" from our Fall 2006 issue. Check out the post.

(Also stay tuned for a photo of the much-discussed Tefillin Barbie in our WInter issue.)

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Among the Nations

2006-10-09T20:09:00.000-04:00

I know we're just past the season where we have to repent our sins, but I just finished reading the incomparable Modern Jewish Girl’s Guide to Guilt. I loved it, and in solidarity with all of the excellent essayists therein, I thought I’d confess to something that often causes me to grapple with my own guilt.

I live with non-Jewish roommates. I am dating a non-Jew. I live in a decidedly non-Jewish neighborhood (for that, at least, I think we can blame economics). A solid chunk of my closest friends are—surprise!—not Jewish. During my last year of college, one of my housemates actually said to me, “You know, for someone who does Jewish stuff as much as you, you don’t really hang out with, you know, Jews too much, do you?” In the tightly interwoven Jewish community, I am a thread that frequently wanders away on her own.

I’m not one hundred percent sure how this trend of living so thoroughly among the nations got started, although from time to time I idly form theories. (I’ve pretty much narrowed it down to too much PBS as a young child, or the fact that I failed to thrive at a sort-of-Jewish sleep-away camp—an experience that I think consisted mostly of hiking by myself while wealthy girls from Long Island blew-dry their hair and mocked me). I’d like to blame it on my innate curiosity and love of diversity. Possibly it’s that I am not quite the Jew I think I should be—so who am I to differentiate or judge? Most likely, I am sure, is the thing that people have been telling me my whole life: I am one stubborn pain-in-the-butt. I fell into good friendships with people who I liked because they were and are kindhearted, well-intentioned, brilliant, hysterically funny or some combination thereof.

I have been mightily blessed with quite an impressive assemblage of Jewish women who have acted, over the course of several years, as friends, mentors and guides. Without them I’d doubtlessly be lost. Their guidance, however, has not necessarily erased the twinge of loneliness as I explain for the seven-hundredth time that no, I’m not making a nice dinner and lighting candles to be romantic—it’s Shabbat! Shabbat? It means, like, “the Sabbath." Yes, another Jew thing. Yes, I do seem to do them a lot.

My Jewish identity experienced a renaissance after my freshman year in college, and the obsession to learn more, learn deeper only burns brighter day after day. It has been, though, something of a solitary journey. I am acutely aware of the communalism of Jewish identity, but by and large that’s had something of an abstract feel for me. Now, post-college, things are starting to shift a little. My school, among the more liberal of the East coast hippie hangouts, has as its motto “You are different; so are we.” The Lilith office is more about “Please pass the kugel—and by the way, what are your plans for the hag coming up?” I am enjoying this new experience, but I don’t regret my earlier ones. Being a little lonely in my initial post-Jewish-identity-crisis stage gave me space to reason things out on my own, to formulate and marinate in the idea of what kind of a Jew I wanted to be.

And it taught me something about those non-Jewish friends—whose indelible place in my life puzzles many people. I have a whole cadre of chaverim who are fluent in what we dubbed JewSpeak, which is, to them, a totally foreign tongue. It is possible that you have not lived until you have heard “Gut Shabbos!” out of the mouth of a Lutheran, Norwegian-stock Minnesotan. My Jewish community welcomed my fervor with knowing smiles and open arms, and my GoyAllies ™ happily listened to me ramble, breathless with excitement, even when they had no idea what I was talking about. That’s love, right there, and at times it obliterates any strangeness or guilt I may feel when I’m the only Jew in the room not to know the name, age, marital status and social security number of every other Jew in a five-mile radius.
I can see myself being pulled slowly into the vortex of Jewish community as life progresses from here, can see myself being woven ever more intricately into the delicate pattern of this huge, beautiful, messy tapestry. But I doubt I’ll ever unravel these earlier ties completely. I learned just recently that the commandment to be l’or goyim isn’t just translated as “a light to the nations”—it can also be read as “a light among the nations”.

Makes sense to me.

--Mel Weiss,
Lilith's Assistant Editor

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