Fall 2015

After Brain Surgery, Food is a Link to Memory: “Stir,” by Jessica Fechtor

reviews

The memoir Stir, by Jessica Fechtor (Avery, $25.95), celebrates living life to the fullest. Fechtor tells of how, as a married graduate student in her late twenties, she went for a run one morning and an aneurism burst in her brain. This book charts the course of her recovery, interspersed with recipes from the meals... Read more »

Kishinev to Stonewall, and Beyond: “Vera’s Will,” by Shelley Ettinger

reviews

This first novel from longtime progressive activist Shelley Ettinger is a multigenerational saga that begins in Kishinev, circa 1903, during a massive Easter Monday pogrom that leaves one member of the Resnikoff family dead and the rest shaken and horrified. That’s the gripping opening to Vera’s Will (Hamilton Stone Editions, $16.95), vividly detailing the anti-Semitism... Read more »

“The Hands of Peace: A Holocaust Survivor’s Fight For Civil Rights,” by Marione Ingram

reviews

Marione Ingram, a German-born Jew who survived the Holocaust and wrote about her wartime and postwar experiences in an earlier memoir, has now published her second, The Hands of Peace: A Holocaust Survivor’s Fight for Civil Rights in the American South (Skyhorse Publishing, $24.99). This is a struggle which she says called out to her... Read more »

“An Improbable Friendship: The Remarkable Lives of Israeli Ruth Dayan and Palestinian Raymonda Tawil and Their Forty-Year Peace Mission,” by Anthony David

reviews

The friendship between Israeli Ruth Dayan and Palestinian Raymonda Tawil — deep, decades-long, not-afraid-to-be-contentious — defied national taboos. They are powerful in their own right, despite being related by marriage to men whose fame eclipsed their own: Ruth Dayan was the wife (and then ex-wife) of the late, iconic Israeli General Moshe Dayan and Raymonda Tawil was mother-in-law to... Read more »

A 20-Year-Old’s Queer Jewish Feminist Take on the SCOTUS Ruling

voices

It was a slow Friday morning at the front desk of the museum where I work, so I was browsing the news. That’s when I saw it. The 5–4 Supreme Court decision recognizing marriage equality across the nation. I was flooded with unexpected emotion — and taken aback by an unfamiliar sense of American pride. Could it... Read more »

Coming Out as Hairless Beauties

voices

Here at our table for four, where we find ourselves referring to the rest of the world as “haired,” we superhuman alopecians discuss all that we have in common. The ability to shower in 30 seconds. Irritation at the way sweat drips off a hairless scalp when doing downward dog. Exasperation at the all-too-familiar lascivious... Read more »

The Talmud & “Female Viagra”

voices

There are passages from the Talmud which are incredibly sex positive. And while admittedly there are some which are less so, I like to focus on those which support sexual activity within a marriage as a critical component of a healthy relationship. In a passage in Ketubot, the tractate which deals with issues pertaining to... Read more »

In Jerusalem, Mourning Notices for One Palestinian and One Jewish Child

voices

In Israel — and especially in Jerusalem, where I am living — grief is a public affair. Call me morbid, but it’s one of my favorite things about this place. Posted on walls and in shop windows, sometimes layered dozens deep, stark, black-on-white mourning notices announce recent deaths and, sometimes, where the family will be observing the traditional Jewish... Read more »

Challenging Sexist Conversion Practices

voices

Even before Jews around the world began reeling from the scandalous case of Barry Freundel, an Orthodox rabbi in Washington D.C. who secretly and frequently videotaped women immersing naked in the mikveh next to his synagogue, a bold Orthodox independent filmmaker, Nurit Jacobs-Yinon, was exposing another case of abuse of rabbinic power and the mikveh... Read more »

Amy Winehouse, “Typical North London Jewish Girl”

voices

Amy Winehouse died of alcohol poisoning at age 27 in 2011. A new documentary film, “Amy,” now in wide commercial release, has us reflecting on the life of this complicated and preternaturally gifted jazz singer. When Winehouse belted out her raw, original songs — a combination of jazz and R&B — in her throaty contralto, she mesmerized listeners. Besides... Read more »

Remembering Miriam Schapiro (1923–2015)

voices

Pioneering feminist artist Miriam Schapiro died in June, age 91. Her work appeared on the cover of Lilith’s Summer 1997 issue and elsewhere in the magazine. With Judy Chicago , Miriam Schapiro founded the Feminist Arts Program at CalArts in 1971. There they created the iconic installation “Womanhouse,” described in the artist’s artnet.com obituary as... Read more »

Rainbow Jews Threaten a Black-and-White Worldview

voices

It is tempting to read Yishai Schlissel’s terrorist act at the July Jerusalem Pride Parade — stabbings claimed the life of Shira Banki, a 16-year-old marcher — as confirming the opposition between the religious and secular realm. Schlissel’s words indicate that he seeks to limit the very definition of Jew to those who believe that same-sex love and desire... Read more »

Girls in Trouble: a Song Cycle About Biblical Women

voices

It’s a bumper season for musician and lyricist Alicia Jo Rabins. Divinity School, a book of her poetry, was just published, and she has just released a new CD, part of her song cycle “Girls in Trouble,” “about the complicated lives of biblical women” rendered in their own blunt words. The song in the voice of... Read more »

Women Inventing Themselves in Israeli Cinema

voices

The film “Self Made” (“Boreg” in Hebrew, meaning “hardware screw”), written and directed by Shira Geffen, opens with the collapse of a couple’s bed, out of which falls Michal Kayam (played by Sarah Adler), an artist, hitting her head. After her husband leaves on a business trip, she orders a new bed. But going about... Read more »

What to follow in your world.

happening

Memory Objects Author and artist Melanie Braverman founded the Alzheimer’s Family Support Center of Cape Cod to provide free supportive services for families and individuals living with Alzheimer’s disease/dementia. Books are objects that form — and inform — memory. Recalling how the mother-in-law she cared for was attached to particular books even after she could no longer read, Braverman... Read more »

What We Save, and Why We Save It

from the editor

Number One on the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list is The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, by Marie Kondo (not Jewish, in case you were wondering). You’ve read the book? Me too. It changed, maybe forever, the way I fold my underwear and line up my t-shirts. The book’s guiding injunction (Japanese folding tricks... Read more »

Truth Is Even Stranger than Cold-War Fiction: “The Hours Count,” by Jillian Cantor

reviews

Meet Millie Stein, a New York City housewife, circa 1947. Millie’s saddled with a remote, Russian-born husband, a son who may or may not be autistic and a mother who favors Millie’s perfect, suburb-dwelling older sister. The only ones on Millie’s side are her beloved Bubbe Kasha and her new friend, Ethel Rosenberg. In The... Read more »

A Child’s Perspective on Chile’s Disappeared: “I Lived on Butterfly Hill,” by Marjorie Agosin

reviews

I Lived on Butterfly Hill, by Marjorie Agosin, opens in the idyllic coastal town of Valparaiso, Chile, in the early 1970s. This middle-grade historical novel, translated from the Spanish by E.M. O’Connor with illustrations by Lee White (Atheneum, $17.99), is based loosely on the 1973 coup by General Augusto Pinochet, who ousted socialist president Salvador... Read more »

Wallpaper

feature

We’re standing in line at the Reindeer Express when she broaches the subject. She, meaning my sister Sarah. Married now for the second time and happily at that…though it’s only five months into the marriage, so my fingers are crossed pretty tight. Her sons — my nephews — are eight and six, and we’re holding their coats and lunch... Read more »

Smelling of Apples

feature

Rachel is trying to figure out the perfect line break when she hears Carraway’s footsteps. Outside, the leaves are changing color, brassy oranges and sunflower yellows. She stares through the window at the roots of the trees and the dim blue glow of the emergency phone boxes that surround the quad. Carraway knocks on the... Read more »

Stones

feature

I place a smallstone on my father’smarker flat to the ground to say, your memory lastssolid and enduring. I place a smallstone on my father’smarker flat to the groundto say, rest peacefullyno need to ache and wander. I place a smallstone on my father’smarker flat to the groundto say, this pebble, your name,is carried in... Read more »

A Catskill Summer

feature

When I was a little girl, Pagliaccio was my favorite companion. He went wherever I went, and although that wasn’t very far in my neighborhood, we traveled well together. The summer of 1945 was the first time Pagliaccio and I were truly going to be far from home, away from the hot pavement and sweltering... Read more »

At the Thrift Shop

feature

Most people can’t bear to go to the animal pound because of the urge to adopt all the abandoned animals they see. For me, the location that pulls at my heartstrings is the Goodwill Store in Plantation, FL. I can’t stand to leave all those forlorn-looking menorahs and kiddush cups in the store. Like forsaken... Read more »

The Princess Problem

feature

My name begins with E, a namesake of my grandmother Esther. So I’ve spent many a moment, like Jewish feminists before me, wrestling with the in-your-face dualities of the Book of Esther, one that places a would-be hero (and hidden Jew) in a harem of virgins for the king to peruse and use. And it’s... Read more »

Always a Crossword Between Us

feature

On a recent Sunday morning I sat at the kitchen table in my fluffy white bathrobe, sipping a cup of hazelnut coffee and tapping one polished red fingernail against a wooden pencil. The New York Times crossword puzzle was spread out before me, and as I searched my brain for a four letter word meaning... Read more »

When is Daddy Coming?

feature

I opened my front door and Dad brought Mom in, carefully unzipping her long down-filled coat and handing me her water bottle and a bag of disposable underwear. He reminded me when she would need to eat, drink and use the bathroom. Then he kissed her soft, wrinkled cheek, stroked her balding head, and drove off... Read more »

Choosing to Be a Foster Mom

feature

In my biological family it is, ironically, becoming foster parents that runs in our genes. Because of my family history (more on that later) I feel a pull — much stronger than toward any other mitzvah — to foster children who need homes. Yet for most Jews, this is an issue that has fallen off our radar. Here’s my... Read more »

Lonely Planet Mikveh

feature

On the Third Day of Creation, God gathered the lower waters together and called them “seas.” The Hebrew word for this gathering is mikveh. I am in my neighborhood mikveh in Jerusalem. The paint is peeling, and rusted exposed pipes hiss from each cubicle. I reach for my plastic packet from the Ministry of Religion (light-green... Read more »

Fall 2015

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