This is the point when I began to suspect that today’s allergists are closely related to the Rabbis who re-interpreted biblical verses to create modern kashrut. Then we were told that, if we truly loved our daughter, and wanted to really be as safe as possible, we should avoid all foods that say “processed in a plant that also processes tree nuts.”
Monday night, Moving Traditions, the organization that gave us the “Rosh Hodesh – It’s a Girl thing” program, unveiled a new program geared at teenage Jewish boys – along with a substantive report on Jewish American boys’ participation in American Judaism.
But I was in the odd position of having to define the notion of “secular conversion” for myself and for the little family that I had very recently created. No one bats an eyelash when a born Jew refers to him/her self as a “secular Jew.” But for me to say that… Well, this gives pause. And why the difference?
The media is replete with violent images of Palestinians, Israelis and Muslims; of veiled Muslim women subjected to the will of the men in their lives; of a sense of hopelessness regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The recent documentary film “Budrus,” directed by Julia Bacha, offers an alternative version to this story, and through that, hope for an alternative vision for the future.
Jewish Funds for Justice is proud to have teamed up with Rabbi Sharon Brous of IKAR for something truly new, and creative, and inspiring, an antidote to the fear-mongering so prevalent these days. It’s a call for empathy. Radical empathy at that.
Everyday, we come across interesting articles and wonderful resources for Jewish feminists. Now we are bringing them directly to you in a new feature of the Lilith blog, our weekly Link Roundup. Each week we’ll post highlights from around the web.
We are so excited to announce the launch of something new, special, and unique to Lilith online: our new feature column on the Lilith blog, Feminists In Focus: Film News and Reviews. In this series, we’ll be bringing you incisive film commentary and context from fabulous (and feminist!) film critics. You’ll get a fresh perspective on films playing right in your area, and leads to movies so rare–or so new–that they haven’t even been screened yet at your local indie film festival.
Yosef and I just got married in August, the day after Chelsea Clinton, in the Jersey synagogue where I grew up. Now, we’re both back in rabbinical school at JTS.
I chose the “easy” way in, so to speak. Faced with the multiple schools of Judaism, I panicked and went with the one that seemed the least dogmatic. I chose a Reform rabbi to initiate me. But while it was non-threatening in many ways, it also left me with the anguish of choice and agency. It gave me the responsibility of co-creating my own sense of Jewishness.
Abraham’s Daughters, written by Elissa Lerner and directed by Niccolo Aeed, premiered at the New York International Fringe Festival this year along with over 200 other talent-filled plays.
wishing you a chag sameach + an orange on your Seder plate 🍊
"I continued to dread Passover for many years because it rekindled not only painful childhood memories but also my shame over how Jewish I wasn’t."
In a classic Lilith Passover story, Andrea Kott looks back on her childhood seders in the beauty parlor owned by her Hungarian great aunt and uncle.
Read it at Lilith.org.
Art by @holliechastain featured in Lilith`s Fall 2017 issue
"I continued to dread Passover for many years because it rekindled not only painful childhood memories but also my shame over how Jewish I wasn’t."
In a classic Lilith Passover story, Andrea Kott looks back on her childhood seders in the beauty parlor owned by her Hungarian great aunt and uncle.
Read it at Lilith.org.
Art by @holliechastain featured in Lilith`s Fall 2017 issue
"Deftly she scraped the silver scales and forced
one fish into the other; the soft feet
of the calf she boiled into jelly; she stuffed rice
into the plump hen and bound
its wings and legs; she poured hot fat
over the leg of the lamb. Spices
sizzled and baked as she stirred
the bones bubbling in the pot.
They sat round the silver, the red wine glasses,
and read the story of their deliverance."
"Passover" by Thilde Fox ❤️
"Deftly she scraped the silver scales and forced
one fish into the other; the soft feet
of the calf she boiled into jelly; she stuffed rice
into the plump hen and bound
its wings and legs; she poured hot fat
over the leg of the lamb. Spices
sizzled and baked as she stirred
the bones bubbling in the pot.
They sat round the silver, the red wine glasses,
and read the story of their deliverance."
"Passover" by Thilde Fox ❤️
"The next Passover, a former student of my mother’s—Mom had gone on to teach high school Spanish—now a reporter for the local newspaper, contacted her about a story she was writing on Passover cuisine. She remembered my mother as vaguely exotic—a Cuban Jew with roots in Turkey and Greece. Along with drilling her students in stem changing verbs, my mother also unfurled her personal history in the classroom. Here was a chance for my mother to expand her audience beyond the teenagers she taught."
Read "The Empty Seder Table" by Judy Bolton-Fasman from our spring 2016 issue. Linked in our bio 💥
"The next Passover, a former student of my mother’s—Mom had gone on to teach high school Spanish—now a reporter for the local newspaper, contacted her about a story she was writing on Passover cuisine. She remembered my mother as vaguely exotic—a Cuban Jew with roots in Turkey and Greece. Along with drilling her students in stem changing verbs, my mother also unfurled her personal history in the classroom. Here was a chance for my mother to expand her audience beyond the teenagers she taught."
Read "The Empty Seder Table" by Judy Bolton-Fasman from our spring 2016 issue. Linked in our bio 💥
