A Jewish Woman Among Jewish Men

...or, An Unusual Situation. I spent tonight alternating between Rabbi Jeremy and Philip Roth. Quite the whiplash of Jewish masculinity have I.

Tonight's class at Ansche Chesed was, like last week's really excellent. We started mostly with the need for a balance between midrash and halakha--how midrash without acts is impotent and halakha without understanding is ignorant. I like that--it elevates Judaism out of the realm of philosophy. Rabbi Jeremy has a lovely idea about what it really is to approach Judaism with an historically-aware mentality (and the correlative awareness of sometimes fundamental differences of opinion that various scholars have held through time), that it enables a "conversation through time, without homogenization".

The conversation aspect really did get to me. It's pretty Menachem-esque, which is both unsurprising and ever-indicative of something that I'm going to want to look at more closely. Menachem was fairly enamoured of Heschel's concept of God in search of (hu)man. It's very Conservative-Judaism, but put poetically: a constant search and a constant back-and-forth and commitment to finding answers without the ultimate (and ultimately somewhat infantile) pleasure of easy answers.

We learned from this text (among many). I'm not 100% sure that I can decipher the Hebrew attribution, so I'll come back and edit another day:

"One finds in the Torah both 'And God spoke to Moses..." and 'God said to Moses...' Yet one also finds: 'And Moses said to God.' And 'Moses spoke to God.' This is like the parable of a cave by the sea shore. Sometimes the sea surges and fills the shore. And the sea water never leaves the cave, but hence forth the sea water fills the cave, and the cave water returns to the sea. So it is that God spoke to Moses and Moses spoke to God."

Beyond the simple Ecclesiastical feeling to that, it's really poetic. (And I can't tell if it's just the nature of an image of Creation as the shift that sets into motion a constant swirling of waters that keep mingling and mixing and return to mix again, sliding from cave to sea throughout the ages, but there's got to be a Yehudah Amichai poem about this somewhere.) There's something profound and almost solemn about accepting God as a partner in life--it removes the comforting clarity without undoing the ultimately unknowable aspect of the Divine. One of the women in the class was perturbed by what she perceived to be the "distancing" that building this kind of relationship entails. I guess she has a point; the relationship I have now with my parents is certainly less innocent and, in a way more "distant" now that I understand them to be gloriously fallible people than when I was sure they could do no wrong. But it's much more intimate, not to mention intellectually fulfilling, and such are the creature comforts I seek.

We touched briefly on the whole gay thing. I have much, much more to say about this, but in some possibly perverse way, I appreciated Jeremy saying he's pretty much glad it took the movement nearly fifteen years to reach the answer that everybody knows they're going to give in December. (If you don't think they're going to go with the obvious, don't say anything to me. I'm incubating some hope over here. On the other hand, I gave John Kerry a fighting chance in '04, so I've learned how to deal with bitter disappointment pretty well...) He thinks it has increased the depth and span of Jewish learning going on around this issue. Anyway, more some other time.

The really exciting news is that I got to flash my little official feminista card. In speaking about mikvah, Jeremy was repeating two of his critical points: that there is meaning to be found from doing each and any of the mitzvot (I agree) and that the mikvah passed the Rosenszweig (sp?) test of Verification; meaning that "hundred of thousands of people [meaning women, given the context, but whatever] have done it and it enriched their lives. After explaining to him that on Point A we are totally agreed, I pointed out that the Voices of the Happy-Mikvah-Goers are pretty lacking. Not because people hate the mikvah; but where are these women meant to come from, especially the "we've been dead for hundreds of years" crew. We just don't have those voices. Jeremy agreed. And ten minutes later, somebody asked if I were a rabbinical student. Awesome.

More to come when I'm awake...
kol tov.

"Values are for babies. Deeds are for grown-ups."

I went to the first of two free classes that Rabbi Jeremy Kalmanafsky of Ansche Chesed is having about why he's so in love with Conservative Judaism, and kind of down on this whole post-denominational thing. My friend Jenn has told many good things about Jeremy, and it's been years since I've had anyone talk about how much they liked the big C--plus, I scratched out most of a draft about, as my notes read, "J-fem & JPD", and I wanted a different angle to crash around my head for a while.

The class was great--he's an excellent speaker. None of it was that revolutionary to me, but the contrast to p-d, which was pretty much just hitting the scene the first time I learnt all this, was very interesting. Jeremy is put off by what he considers to be the smugly self-congratulatory tone of much post-denominationalism. Then again, he also said something to the effect that "almost every post-denominational Jew is a Conservative Jew", so I guess any detected smugness would be doubly irksome. More on this later.

Pretty much, he's devised a slogan for Conservative Judaism: "Faithfulness and Critique". He explains this as the difference between authoratative and authoritarian Judaism, or between rabbinic and halakhic. (I've also heard the phrase "living halakha", but I bet a lot of people would be even more put off by the implications of that phrase than by the contrast with "rabbinic".)

He discussed the difference between a "sect" (small, chosen, intense, demanding) and a "church" (large, often inherited, accomadating), as presented by certain German philosophers whose names I lost on the late-night G train. The tragic flaw with the system, of course, is the fact that sects, if they are successful, generally attract a lot of people and become churches, which kind of suck and certainly don't get the theological problems tackled with the same weight.

He acknowledged that the name of our movement totally sucks ("but only because 'Positive Historical Judaism' is even more lame"), but he has a very interesting view of the role denominations play in our lifes. Quoting George Lindbeck, R. Kalmanafksy said that denominations function much like cultural idioms, providing us with our view of the world. For this reason--also, he claims that only a movement can found institutions (an interesting point of view for somebody whose kid goes to the Heschel School, which doesn't identify and which I have heard held up as THE example of a p-d institution)---he's very into them.

What I thought the most interesting moment of class came not during the discriptions of what Conservative Judaism is, although phrases like "the search for the possibility of truth in majority and dissenting opinions" strike at something deep inside me. (Frankly, I don't need to be sold. At sixteen, with the smartest rabbinical student I'd ever met, I was sold hardcore. But I did appreciate the comments about "a sane traditionalism".) I love the idea that Jewish practice and learning should function as a path towards, not from God. I love the balance between faith and questioning, the implication that the best way to honor an idea is to do it because you love it and not be afraid of poking at it some. I am more comfortabe with the idea of "striving for God" than any other summation of what Judaism should do for me. And these are all the ideas that were being espoused. So the best moment really gelled when a really nice rabbinical student named Brett explained that he understood why Jeremy would cherish and promote the Judaism he had just explicated for almost two hours--but why did he feel that that Judaism is (or, perhaps better, "still is") Conservative Judaism? Although our seminaries are grappling with these issues, they're not really being addressed in the synagogues. I don't know if they're being addressed sufficiently in the Schecter system or Ramah, either (I wouldn't...). And United Synagoge? Say what now?

I was so pleased that this was brought up. Because the problem that was brought up--that Conservative Judaism is too pareve these days--is a far too flippant way to see the issue. I have known some of the most inspirational Conservative Jewish rabbis and rabbinical students--Menachem Creditor, Risa Weinstein, Danya Ruttenberg--and I know that they get it, and they all manage to pass the fire along. But I also learned the phrase "post-denominational" from Danya at a conference, and I think that there are a few too Jeremy Kalmanafskys in the world. I think that he's on to something brilliant with the theory that the Judaism he practices may be the only one to really live on into a "post-Liberal world", but the absolutely terrible PR scheme we've got working for us know might just cause a permanent mutation into a Post-Denominational Movement. And, as long as the thing itself survives, who cares what it's called?

Kol tov...

Lesbians Until Graduation and Jewish Liminal Space

(For Rachel, because I think better when you're around.)

We're considering doing an article on the L.U.G. phenomenon at work. These are my thoughts on the matter.

At first, and mainly to one potential author, the issue seemed to be that there are a significant number of women who "turn straight", especially in their immediate post-collegiate years. And this is a much-talked about phenomenon in the gay world--there are definitely jokes, and bitter stories, about "hasbians". The feminist issue here is not to hard to find: I (along with many other, smarter people, including one author in BITCHfest, my new definitive guide to post-'90s feminism) would posit that what's really at work here is not that women are "turning straight" but that a societal need for bounded sexuality makes people "switch" categories that never really fit in the first place. I think it's safe to say that a lot of the anxiety comes from queer people who feel that their identities are under attack (even in this day and age, coming out is stressful, even traumatic, for many; it's also hard to feel really secure when people across the country are voting on whether or not your desire to be legally coupled could result in the destruction of the nuclear family), and a sort of tribal, you're-one-of-us-or-you're-one-of-them mentality really comes into play. Forcing people to fit into a binary, despite everything we know about human sexuality existing on a spectrum, is not only repressive, but it distorts some of the basic realities of life.

The Jewish angle is a little harder. Susan Schnur pointed out to me that a lot of the discussion about this "phenomenon" takes place at coastal, liberal undergraduate institutions, where Jews generally comprise a large percentage of the student body. Totally agreed--although I think that this takes place everywhere, and only gets theorized to pieces in some places (there's also something a little classist going on in here). But I think that there's more.

Jewish culture is definitely couple-minded and family-minded. Our institutions and community functions are largely family-driven. The desire to be permanently coupled is very Jewish, and maybe this makes people "decide" to go straight--or just to pick an easily understood sexual orientation--as soon as society is ready to perceive them as "single adults" (instead of "students"). Even a lot of institutional gay Jewish life is what I would call "gay" instead of "queer", there being an understanding that if you're there, you're gay. Not a lot of room for ambivalence. Anyone who's been recently can also tell you that Jewish singles events are not for people who enjoy being single--they're for people who are currently uncoupled and seeking to change that. I think all of this stress on coupling creates an atmosphere that, however consciously or unconsciously, makes people (women, especially) feel that they have to commit to an identity that will most easily facilitate finding a partner, and often, "queer", "undecided", "sometimes I date boys and sometimes I date girls" isn't that identity, so they go with what's most prevalent, most prominent, or easiest.

And, finally, this is a Jewish-feminist issue because one of Jewish feminism's lasting legacies to Judaism was its encouragement to explore liminal space. I think Judaism is--or appears to be--a very cut-and-dry religion that really functions by separating things into discrete categories (kosher vs. traif, priestly class vs. not, etc.). And what the texts didn't solidify, thousands of years of tradition did. But J-fems really challenge that--sometimes by calling for direct confrontation with text or rituals, and sometimes just by pointing out that there are ways of doing Jewish that may appear radical or "wrong", but that just exist in a somewhat marginal space within Judaism. (I think the tallit piece in the Fall issue--Schnur-authored, of course--showed this so, so beautifully. Susan basically said that there are more spaces that can be sacred than meets the eye, and that it's possible that men and women perceive the sacred differently. I don't like the essentialism here, but there's something beautiful about the validation it provides for women/people in general who experience the holy outside of traditionally-bounded places, times or experiences.) And maybe the "phenomenon" of Lesbians Until Graduation just demonstrates that there are still frontiers left for us to work on.

So let's get started.
Kol tov...

JPD, part the first

Rambling here is going to be my prep for two (!) articles that I've managed to snag on the topic of post-denominationalism and (Jewish) feminism. If just reading that made you want to throw up in your soul a little, click on. It's going to be a mouthful.

So, from the beginning: while there's not a hell of a lot written about post-denominationalism (at least Jewish post-denominationalism--now to be known as JPD, ere my fingers fall off), but I found something on MyJewishLearning.com, cribbed from Contact Journal. The author describes JPD as a movement constituted by Jews who "abjure" the concept of denominations--not those who merely don't see themselves as affiliated. The author, Steven Cohen, calls JPD "quite a healthy phenomenon" in Jewish life, and cites several examples, including Pardes and Kehilat Hadar. He also strongly leans on the Conservative Movement as the source and pool-of-resources for JPD. These are all important points, but I've got a lot more to say about the subject. Let's begin.

Working perhaps backward (not so much a first for me), I want to talk about the rise of cool cultural Judaism. By now, everybody and her mom (or, in my case, her dad), has heard of amazingly popular Matisyahu, and although I guess the argument could be made that he's not entirely secular entertainment--although I think a majority of his fans are using him as iPod fodder rather than a religious experience--he's still only indicative of a general upsurgence in Cool Jewish Stuff: everything from Jewzapalooza to Chosen Couture to Heeb magazine. We had a guest in the office last week who said that for the very first time in her life, she understood how someone could call him or herself a cultural Jew and really get something out of it. For the purpose of this train of thought, the only thing I'd like to take away from this is that there has been, if not a forerunning, at least concurrent phenomenon of reimagining taking place in Jewish secular life. Ten years ago (and this is being generous) there wasn't really much going on that was Jewish and cool. Of course, there have always been tons of Jewish musicians and artists, etc., but from Irving Berlin to Bob Dylan to Natalie Portman, the whole name-changing-and-not-mentioning-the-Jew-thing didn't really help shake the self-image of uncool Jews. Of course, there's been a rise of ethnic-as-cool across the board, which probably helped spike this phenomenon, but I'm seriously digressing here, so let's put it away for a while.

I'd like to take a moment to talk about Evangelical Christians. (I know, I know--hold on.) The New York Times just published an article about the movement's concerns over losing its teens--read it here: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/06/us/06evangelical.html?ex=1160798400&en=53f06f3b16392e8e&ei=5070&emc=eta1. The point is, whether it is the nature of the youth to rebel or there's something in the water these days--like the rise of secular humanism--that's drawing people away from their religious bases. Hillel, in its "Millenials" report, found that today's young Jews lack interest in traditional Jewish institutions. (Hillel didn't publish their findings--although I saw a very impressive PowerPoint at the 2005 GA--but you can read more at http://www.pbcsmarketing.com/hillel/article4.php.) So, there's resistance to current religious institutions across the board, and a current rise of street-level empowerment, made possible by the rise of the Jewish hip. What's going to happen?

Well, obviously, a hell of a lot of Jews are going to drop out of the scene. Interestingly, for those who don't drop out, or who drop and later drop back in, there's a new sense of agency in the creation of The Jewish Now. And although JPD is a movement which draws its movers and shakers out of a Conservadox Millenial pool, I think there is a strong arugment to be made, theoretically, that this movement is an inheritor of the Jewish feminism of the 1970s.

A common enough phrase around the Lilith office is "voting with your feet". Just today Susan Schnur told me she believes in it--but I don't think she does, not the way I mean it. Especially not Schnur, a woman who believes that we're just biding our time before we take over the liturgy and rework it to make it more feminist. From Paula Hyman & co's statement that "we are your daughters", Jewish feminism was the pioneering movement of our time that really called for a radical restructuring of the very core of Judaism (and Jewishness)--from the inside. While contemporary secular feminists urged a departure from organised religion, Jewish feminists of all stripes were calling for a New Jew Order--revolution from the ground up. While Queer Jews are definitely an offspring of this methodology, I'm ready to explore the possibility that post-denominationalism will be the feminism of my generation--a shift in the paradigm of Judaism that starts from the ground up. It works well with what we've seen are the tendencies of Millenials--we're "hypercommunicators", we're tech-savvy and we deminstrate an awareness of living in an increasingly "flat" world. All of these are helpful attributes if you're going to democratize an often extremely hierarchical religion.

There's a lot more to be said about this, and I'll get around to it, but I think I need to go do some research now. Please leave ideas!

Kol tov...

Homey Don't Pray That

For the chag, I managed to hit up three shuls in under thirty hours--a personal record, and I'm proud. I snuck into Anshe Chesed (don't believe your friends when they say that no one checks tickets for Ne'ilah)--and was struck by the humor of a still-a-"Millenial"-even-though-I-graduated-college sneaking in to services.

I liked having a holiday with a lot of different things going on, the different melodies, the different agendas of of rabbinical and lay leaders. Susan told me on the phone this morning how surprised she was to have really enjoyed Yom Kippur this year, and I realized how much I had enjoyed mine as well--everywhere I went there were friendly faces, and I took a very long walk in the bright sunshine up to Jenn's apartment before mincha. Usually, being a Wandering Jew (not having a set shul of my own) makes me feel sad, or, alternately, depressingly young and unfinished--like I'm still tied to the excuse that I'm in school, or just not ready to settle down yet.

But this yontif I really experienced the pleasant side of treating synagogue life as a pick-your-own adventure. The fact of the matter is that I'm really not prepared to settle into one steady pattern of shul life. It was lovely to be davening with a totally unfamiliar set of people, and, given that two of the services I attended were free, I had access to a really interesting cross-section of New York Jewish life. (More on why it's demoralising for shuls to be capitalising on High Holidayism some other time.)

I'm going to make a more conscious effort to enjoy the opportunities I have (and can further create) to go out and sow me some wild shul-oats. I feel as though I've spent a lot of time recently meditating on how the profusion of JewLife in New York causes people to almost burn out a little, and although all of the conversations have focused on cultural activities, I wonder if the same isn't true of synagogue participation. Although it's wonderful to find that Special One that fulfills all your spiritual needs, I imagine it can be informative, diverting or downright healthy to go out and explore a little bit. That's right: I'm advocating Shul Non-Monogamy.

That said, here is a partial listing of shuls across the city:http://www.ecben.net/nysynagogues.shtml. Maybe it's not the most comprehensive ever, but they should be forgiven, because they show the borough flags.

So enjoy. Go be a player, yo!
Kol tov...