I did an about face this month. I decided to stop believing in PMS.
It’s kind of pathetic, but I hadn’t even considered the culturally fabricated origins of this bio-myth until stumbling across this debate, in a blog that I sometimes read. It was kind of like finding out that the Tooth Fairy doesn’t exist—obvious in hindsight, but earth shattering in the moment. Because let me be clear: I have blamed my hormones for a LOT.
Duncan is a dog who works. Like his colleagues who sniff out drugs and bombs, he has been trained from puppyhood to associate treats, praise, and significant Christmas bonuses with the sweet, over-ripe scent of bed bugs, a scent barely detectable to the human olfactory system.
I recently took a teacher training program to learn to teach yoga to cancer survivors (if you are so inclined, this is the one to take, IMHO). Tari devoted a large portion of the program to the challenges posed by the “reconstructive surgery” process. It turns out that, in an effort to return women to “femininity” and “normalcy” (not my words), we end up limiting their range of motion.
The rabbi reminded the women that even more important than saying brachot was wearing modest clothes. He chastised the women who wear beautiful sheitels (wigs) and railed against tight, short skirts. It is quite extraordinary – women have been part of the twists and turns of Jewish history for thousands of years, but in today’s world they are merely the guardians of the modest hemline.
Recently, Jezebel alerted me to the fact that American Girl was retiring its Revolutionary War doll, Felicity Merriman. I got incredibly sad at the news, although my Felicity doll has… Read more »
Light-skinned, American Jews have access to white privilege – I don’t view this as debatable. Yet I have always felt acutely aware of my cultural difference. In a sea of Christianity, I was constantly called upon to speak for all Jews as the authority on holidays, culture and history in my public high school, and my culturally Jewish summer camp was a haven for discussing things that I couldn’t in the outside world.
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?
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.
