Conferences Coming Out My Ears

But damn, they're all so good. Tonight, I went to one panel of the excellent "A Jewish Feminist Mystique? Jewish Women in Postwar America" conference, co-organised by the incredible Rachel Kranson. Tonight's presentation was about growing up in the '50s, and it was awesome. Although the worst moderated panel I've ever seen (and who knew moderating was something you could screw up?), it was probably the only panel I've ever encountered where all I wanted was for each of the four panelists (Alix Kates Shulman, Judith Shapiro, Anne Lapidus Lerner and Ruth Abram--an SLC alum!) to keep talking and talking and talking. They were funny and charming and inviting and their material was totally accessible, even to me, relative fetus that I am. Hopefully, NYU or JTS will post the video of tonight's goings-on, so be on the lookout and for sure watch it; I just want to touch on two points I felt were pertinent.

1) Cultural Jewish Identity Say What?
Although all the panelists professed a Jewish identity, there was definitely discussion of what mix those identities were, given the various components of religious, secular and the-goyim-treat-us-differently. Judith Shapiro made my jaw drop when she said that she thinks her generation was the one to find a firmly culturally Jewish identity, and that she didn't know if that would be possible nowadays. A rather audacious claim, I think. After all, I'm a Millenial. (Although, it did occur to me that, from an anthropological point of view--one Shapiro herself might engage--our own insane self-awareness as cultural Jews might interfere with the authenticity of the identity. After all, we're pretty ironic about our Jewishness.) I caught her on her way out, and we briefly discussed how much the Jewish community has moved to the right. I think she's right about that--it's one of many reasons, I think for this incessant and incredibly harping insistence that my generation isn't invovled, isn't affiliated, blah blah blah ad nauseum. But something wasn't jiving for me. And it wasn't until the ride home on the 1 train (that became the 7 train, that became the G train) that it clicked: Judith Shapiro, k'mo ani, is from New York. Her stories about the non-Jewish components of Jewish culture--Chinese food, basic menu skills in Italian--were so familar to me, because I've heard them over and over from my Bronx-born mother and I tell them myself. None of the other panelists shared as precise a connection to her exact definition of secular Jewish culture as my younger boomer parents would. We were both looking for the answer in time, but I'm pretty sure it lies in space. And I think that if this generation of Jewish youth changes that, it'll be because the prophets among us take it all to the internet.

2) Mommy, Where Do Jewish Feminists Come From?
Well, from the Civil Rights Movement, if you ask Alix Kates Shulman, which several people did. Shulman is sure that the over-representation of Jews in the CRM is directly related to the subsequent high number of Jewish women in the Women's Liberation Movement (and use of that term, by the way, is a rock solid way to date yourself). She maintains that it was impossible for women involved in the CRM to remain silent at the way women were expected to serve coffee to the revolutionary types. It set off "aha!" moments sort of en masse.

I like this theory a lot (especially the paralellism between how the Civil Rights Movement and what I would dub authentically Jewish feminism both alter their respective systems from the inside out, instead of advocating separatism--I think it marks them not only as doubly courageous but really more mature movements), but I don't think it explains everything. This is a question to be thought on much more: why? Why so many Jewish feminists? Because we know more about oppression? I don't know. I'm ready to think more. But until I do, I'm going to sit back and enjoy the fact that I heard four women in their sixties rock the (bobby) socks off their audience tonight.

Kol tov...