In a world where one in five teens has reported abusing prescription medications, where physical aggression occurs in one third of teen dating relationships, and 81% of 10 year old girls are afraid of being fat, it\u2019s clear that teen girls are dealing with a ton of challenges every day. Jewish girls now have some guidance for developing into Jewish women.<\/p>\n
\u201cRosh Hodesh \u2014 It\u2019s a Girl Thing\u201d is the flagship program of the organization Moving Traditions, directed by Deborah Meyer<\/strong>. It is designed to build intimate and empowering communities of Jewish girls in small groups across the country, and address gender issues in Jewish life. The girls meet every month with a trained facilitator to talk about their lives, their experiences, their gender, their friends \u2014 all within a rich Jewish framework of innovation and tradition. At Purim, for example, the girls might do the \u201cIt Isn\u2019t Romantic\u201d activity \u2014 using the Purim story to think about relationships and first-person narratives, and then creating their own modern Megillot.<\/p>\n Moving Traditions\u2019 first national training conference took place in Philadelphia this past August. Over 65 group leaders \u2014 Jewish women from all over the United States, many in their 20s and 30s \u2014 spent serious time talking about their own experiences. What does feminism mean today? How do we see ourselves as Jews? How can Judaism enrich our sense of ourselves as women? And how can we be good mentors and models to girls in their teens \u2014 so they can think about these questions for themselves?<\/p>\n One of the big topics of the training weekend was dealing with the media \u2014 from television, to fashion magazines, to Facebook. \u201cLet\u2019s make them critical consumers, not passive recipients,\u201d said Tami Astorino<\/strong>. She asked participants to think about Cinderella Ate My Daughter<\/em>, Peggy Orenstein<\/strong>\u2019s book which argues that the all-pervasive media present \u201cfemininity as performance, sexuality as performance, identity as performance, each of those traits available for a price.\u201d These are tough ideas, issues that Jewish women of all ages deal with every day.<\/p>\n That\u2019s why an important dynamic in the Rosh Hodesh groups \u2014 for girls and facilitators alike \u2014 is to know that the girls are the authorities of their own experience.<\/em> \u201cIt\u2019s not about you [the facilitator] imparting wisdom; it\u2019s about accessing wisdom from each other, from you, from the heart,\u201d said Barbara Berley-Mellits<\/strong>, one of the authors of the Rosh Hodesh curriculum. Fundamentally, Moving Traditions advises, it\u2019s not about telling the girls what to think \u2014 it\u2019s about telling them to think.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In a world where one in five teens has reported abusing prescription medications, where physical aggression occurs in one third of teen dating relationships, and 81% of 10 year old… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","tags":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lilith.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/articles\/617"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lilith.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/articles"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lilith.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/articles"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lilith.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lilith.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lilith.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lilith.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}