Yona Zeldis McDonough
A new anniversary edition of Night Swim gives us a chance to reexamine our conversations about antisemitism, reproductive rights, and care work– ten years later.
Jessica Keener’s Night Swim, A Decade Later
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On Cormac McCarthy’s Jewish Heroine
Justine Orlovsky-Schnitzler
Why would Cormac McCarthy assign Jewishness to his characters in a book so overwhelmingly Catholic?
Do I Have a Right to Sing for Peace?
Rebecca Katz
A mother wrestles with her lullaby during wartime.
The Skin I’m In: Ozempic, Fatphobia, and Hunger
D B Ashkenazi
I’m waiting for the day that my body isn’t a point of discussion at all
Picturing Those Who Were Taken
Names and Faces
Four Israeli artists illustrating the victims of the October 7th tragedy.
What Tahara Can Teach Us
Alana Krivo-Kaufman
During a Tahara, the Jewish ritual for sanctifying a body after death, we wash the body in a continuous stream of water, we engage in spacious silence, and we recite words which affirm the inherent goodness of every soul, every life an entire world.
Bring Them Home
Susan Weidman Schneider
We are three weeks into the most threatening time I have lived through as a Jew.
Amazon Is Sold out of Sackcloth.
Rabbi Jen Gubitz
I am sitting shmira – / Guarding the memories of the dead / until they are returned / to their families embrace.
Letter from Israel: The Definition of Insanity
Elana Sztokman
Do we use our pain to unleash violence and hatred onto others? Or do we use our pain as an instrument of compassion, to learn to recognize the pain in others?
Be a part of the story
Are you preparing for your Passover to look different this year?
What Haggadah inserts are you using? Will you have an orange on your Seder plate? An olive? A place setting for hostages?
Tell us in the comments.
Are you preparing for your Passover to look different this year?
What Haggadah inserts are you using? Will you have an orange on your Seder plate? An olive? A place setting for hostages?
Tell us in the comments.
We were having a lot of trouble getting into Passover this year. And then we saw @tirtzahbassel`s new painting, "Red Sea Parting," (23”x22”, gouache on paper, 2024.) Wish Miriam and her drummers could be our doulas, ushering us through this time.
***
@tirtzahbassel writes—Wound/Womb: A friend sent me an illumination from a medieval Haggadah that portrayed the Israelites emerging from the Red Sea through a vulva-shaped opening, and it made me think of the story of Exodus as a story of birthing.
After I gave birth to my son, I remember telling my friend that “giving birth is one thing you can’t think your way through”. Intellectual preparation or rationalization were so vastly inadequate to meet the intensity of this pain. There was no reasoning with it, only a dawning realization that the only way forward was through, that the most you can handle is one contraction at a time. You muster every ounce of psychic and physical power that you can command and count ten breaths because the doula said you can handle anything for ten breaths, and you have no choice but to believe her.
We often see our traumas as wounds, but can we see them as wombs? Could the blinding pain be a contraction that we cannot conceptualize, but can move through breath by breath, knowing it is not a mark of victimhood but an ability to birth new life?
We were having a lot of trouble getting into Passover this year. And then we saw @tirtzahbassel`s new painting, "Red Sea Parting," (23”x22”, gouache on paper, 2024.) Wish Miriam and her drummers could be our doulas, ushering us through this time.
***
@tirtzahbassel writes—Wound/Womb: A friend sent me an illumination from a medieval Haggadah that portrayed the Israelites emerging from the Red Sea through a vulva-shaped opening, and it made me think of the story of Exodus as a story of birthing.
After I gave birth to my son, I remember telling my friend that “giving birth is one thing you can’t think your way through”. Intellectual preparation or rationalization were so vastly inadequate to meet the intensity of this pain. There was no reasoning with it, only a dawning realization that the only way forward was through, that the most you can handle is one contraction at a time. You muster every ounce of psychic and physical power that you can command and count ten breaths because the doula said you can handle anything for ten breaths, and you have no choice but to believe her.
We often see our traumas as wounds, but can we see them as wombs? Could the blinding pain be a contraction that we cannot conceptualize, but can move through breath by breath, knowing it is not a mark of victimhood but an ability to birth new life?
We lost one of the greats— visionary artist (and beloved children`s book author) Faith Ringgold. May her memory be a blessing. Passover is the perfect time to lift up her midrash (telling/interpretation) of an exodus story with "Here Comes Moses" (2014).
The writing around the edge reads:
Aunt Emmy said he`d find us one day.
That boy came North to freedom in a storm.
He lost his mother and father on the way.
"They`ll never find me in this storm, but we will all find Freedom, God willing.
We were born to be free, I will never give up," said Moses.
Moses was only twelve years old when he came to Jones Road on Thanksgiving Day in 1793.
We lost one of the greats— visionary artist (and beloved children`s book author) Faith Ringgold. May her memory be a blessing. Passover is the perfect time to lift up her midrash (telling/interpretation) of an exodus story with "Here Comes Moses" (2014).
The writing around the edge reads:
Aunt Emmy said he`d find us one day.
That boy came North to freedom in a storm.
He lost his mother and father on the way.
"They`ll never find me in this storm, but we will all find Freedom, God willing.
We were born to be free, I will never give up," said Moses.
Moses was only twelve years old when he came to Jones Road on Thanksgiving Day in 1793.
"I knew his seder was not just a tribute to his grandfather, an affirmation of his own history. It was a refutation of that feeling of not belonging. It was about his experience of being Jewish, saying out loud that being Jewish mattered. Who was I to insist on a place at the head of that table?"
Re-reading Jennifer Burleigh`s "A Place At the Table" as we stare down Pesach—linked in our bio.
Illustration by @sofinaydenova in Lilith`s Fall 2017 issue.
"I knew his seder was not just a tribute to his grandfather, an affirmation of his own history. It was a refutation of that feeling of not belonging. It was about his experience of being Jewish, saying out loud that being Jewish mattered. Who was I to insist on a place at the head of that table?"
Re-reading Jennifer Burleigh`s "A Place At the Table" as we stare down Pesach—linked in our bio.
Illustration by @sofinaydenova in Lilith`s Fall 2017 issue.
