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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.
Back Home in my New Home
Category: Lilith Online
One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: A Two-Act Conversion Story
Liz Lawler
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.
At the Theater: Abraham's Daughters
Amanda Walgrove
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.
A Wildly (Maybe Not) Un-Feminist Choice
Liz Lawler
I chose my mid 20s to make a wildly un-feminist choice. I converted to Judaism. For a man.
I’d like to pretend that I “always felt Jewish” or that discovering Judaism felt like coming home. But no such luck.
Return
Maya Bernstein
It is a time of returning. Rosh HaShanah, the Jewish New Year, is upon us. We are in the midst of the Hebrew month of Elul, which, in preparation for… Read more »
Nothing New Under the Sun: Chelsea Converts Lately?
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Chelsea Clinton’s looming nuptial festivities have the gossip blogs in a tizzy: what’ll she wear to walk down the aisle? Can mixed-faith marriages work? Who’ll she invite to the ceremony? And, is she really going to convert? Angela Himsel has a few insights into what that might be like, from her frank Lilith article 10 years ago on “What Converts Talk About (When Jews Aren’t Around).”
A Room of One’s Own, In Time
Maya Bernstein
There was a great cartoon in the New Yorker magazine a couple of weeks ago; it pictures a mother driving with her three kids in the back seat. The kids… Read more »
Letter from Jerusalem: Listening on the next generation of Conservative women rabbis
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For my first two years in rabbinical school, I felt pressure to be both a Jewish man and a Jewish woman. I accepted the full gamut of ritual obligation, but never had any conversation around integrating my gender identity into the role of rabbi.
She’s A Boy
Maya Bernstein
A month ago, a day after our son was born, my husband brought our “big girls,” ages 4 and 2, to visit me and the newborn in the hospital. “You… Read more »
In case you thought all Jews were safely in the pro-choice camp…
Susan Weidman Schneider
In Shifra’s Arms puts out inaccurate information about abortion risks, including reiterating the utterly disproven hypothesis that abortion increases a woman’s risk of breast cancer.