Jewish text learning online

Posted on November 19, 2010 by

I will never know the magic of google’s  algorithm;  however, I do know that when I look up “Jewish learning” the websites that I know to have rich, complex, and varied textual learning are nowhere to be found.  Instead, I find websites that are either not grounded in Jewish texts. See My Jewish Learning. Or websites that espouse the one dimensional Judaism of Orthodox outreach movements – where questions actually have unambiguous answers! See torah.org, http://www.aish.com, Judaism 101.

(A note on Judaism 101 –  I do appreciate the author’s identification of his subject position as “Orthodox” on the home page; however I would like to point out his magical thinking about history, where he write that Orthodox Judaism “as recently as 300 years ago, was the only Judaism.”  This statement is far from a fact – there are opinions that Orthodox Judaism is actually a reactionary movement to Reform Judaism, started in mid 19th century)

Below is a list of Jewish learning online resources.   Of course there are hundreds of websites with Jewish learning content – I limited this list to text grounded resources and large collection. I would  say that the websites below are presenting progressive content – progressive used extremely broadly to mean comfortable with criticism and exploration.

Textual Learning List (in no particular order)

1.     Mechon Hadar – some source sheets and streaming video; and a zillion podcasts. I just finished the Ethan Tucker class on Niddah – I strongly recommend.

2.       Bet Midrash Virtual - run by the the Conservative Rabbinical Assembly of Israel, this insanely obsure source has great chavruta or self-study resources. You can sign to receive a short text in an email with some ideas to explore.  Emails since the start of this project are archived. The Mishna study group is already on Bava Kama, the twelves tractate.

3.      Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance -   a comprehensive bibliography of largely academic articles with links to places where some of the articles may be found online. Particularly useful for its Aguna bibliography.

4.       Pardes -  a 30 minute weekly podcast on the torah portion,  and a variety of short articles, which are mainly reposted column from the Jerusalem post

5.       Ritual Well - a project of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, this is collection of articles on developing and redefining traditional practices for lifecycle events and holidays. As its title suggests, this is a potluck of rituals – take what you wish.

6.       Yeshivat Chovevei Torah –  this orthodox rabbinical school posts ALOT of mp3, there are 154 Daf Yomi recordings, and at least 100 more recordings of a variety of lectures by super-star teachers in the somewhat progressive orthodox community.

If you can think of any places I left out – please add the link in the comments section.

Posted in Jewish, Jewish Learning | 3 Comments

Choice-feminism & Egaliterian Halacha

Posted on November 7, 2010 by

Choice-feminism

Ideas that can change the world have a way of at least temporarily giving away their radical-ness in exchange for adoption by society at large.  Feminism (speaking in giant strokes) was domesticated through the emergence of choice-feminism.   Arwyn, at Raising My Boychick, does a fabulous job of explaining why choice-feminism has the effect of continuing a very non-feminist system.   A woman who chooses to largely abandon the public sphere in the name of “choice” – aka the choice to stay home with her children, is making that decision in a world loaded with limitations; and she is simultaneously buttressing the limitations that created the “choice” to begin with.  Even women who do not make that choice, are often forced into the primary caretaker role – hell, the very word “mother” in our culture practically screams primary caretaker (aka the Mr. Mom concept).

Egalitarian halacha (Jewish religious law)

According to (most of) Orthodox Judaism, women are not required to full-fill a set of commandments generally labeled as “positive time-bound.”  Commandments in this category demand a positive action (vs. abstaining such as not eating pork) and have to be completed by a certain time (saying Shema at its designated time  in the early morning).  The apologetic given for this is that women are exempt, because they are primary caretakers.  Under this system  women are not obligated to pray with a Minyan (quorum of ten), thus women do not“count” for a Minyan (ten men are required).  In the past attempts to count women for a Minyan relied on “obligating women” – aka making halacha egalitarian.  Very detailed explanation of this entire issue can be found on the website on Kihilat Hadar, an egalitarian minyan in New York City.

What happens, when choice- feminism meets egalitarian halacha?

Choice-feminism and egalitarian halacha cannot co-exist. Is it possible for a woman to freely choose a role that routinely prevents her from performing religious acts that that she previously found religiously, spiritually and personally significant and which the religion values greatly. She performed the positive time bound commandments, with an understanding that tradition believed that she could not/should not perform thus, because (there are other reasons of course) she was a potential womb first and a spiritual being perhaps second, perhaps not at all.  After years of expressly rejecting this mentality, she then finds herself to be none-other than what she feared – she becomes a mother, that sad non-obligated creature. If only she could be a parent….wistfully she thinks, if only…..

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There is something odd about DC’s Gather the Jews

Posted on October 28, 2010 by

“Gather the Jews” is a clearing house for DC Jewish information – a self proclaimed space for “hyperlocal Jewish News and Events in Washington DC.”  The website is easy to navigate and use.  It is simply a communal Google calendar where anyone can add events.

Now, the strange part: the website’s blog.  Have you noticed that it’s intellectually “frum?”   Claiming to be a place for Jews of any affiliation and then hosting a *Frum blog (as the only blog) on their website makes me question the authenticity of their concept. I am disappointed by the existence of yet another venue that perpetuates  only one kind of Judaism under the um-marked umbrella of “Jewish.”

Failing to expressly reveal one’s affiliation is deceptive to the people who may not have the Frum-dar that results from an orthodox upbringing.   This is the proverbial equivalent of pregnancy crises centers that claim to offer “comprehensive reproductive health care” but in fact do not provide abortions.

Their intellectually frum-ness is transparent, the telltale signs are all there; God is referred to as “Hashem.” Jews are discussed in the full glory of their “chosen-ness.”

“Jews must go above and beyond the call of duty by shining the light  of              goodness throughout the world and inspiring others to become moral and recognize Hashem.” – On “Parshas Noach“

The nations rejected the torah and us Jews accepted it. (Hurray for us!)

In a Divine act of spiritual insider trading, Hashem offered all of the nations of the world to invest in Torah with the guarantee that its shares would pay off in large returns. To potential investors he promised eternal life – Not bad! Remarkably, the Jews, known for their keen business savvy, were the only ones to take Hashem up on this offer of a lifetime (no pun intended). -  All Israel has a Share

While these ideas certainly exist within Judaism, and they are uncritically accepted and venerated by some. There are also other ideas and there is critic.

When it comes to Gather the Jewish, there is two explanations for the strangeness of their Blog.

1) Did Gather the Jewish simply forget their disclaimer that they are a Frum organization?

2) Or did they forget to find another person to add a non-frum voice to their blog?

 

*”Frum”  is amazing hard to define and is completely bound up with Orthodox Jewish culture. The term  as I am using it, is focusing in on uncritical elements of orthodox theology.

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Raising a Jewish daughter v. raising a daughter Jewish-ly?

Posted on October 18, 2010 by

Raising a Jewish daughter v. raising a daughter Jewish-ly?

I am Jewish, so is her father. We live a life within the Jewish community. At seven months, she has never gone for longer than two weeks without attending services.  All objective facts point to        Z being raised in a Jewish home.  However, I hesitate to say that we are raising a Jewish child, simply because we are raising a child jewish-ly.  (Just as I hesitate to assume she will choose her birth gender – nevertheless for now she is a girl).

Z may not always be Jewish and this does not worry me.  I worry that she may not find her voice in spiritual practice or progressive faith communities will fail her, that she will one day go to college and run into the likes of AISH, a super-conservative Jewish outreach organization and like it.

I wish for my daughter a deep and satisfying spiritual practice that rest tentatively on the edges of justice – today those edges are most clearly characterized by acceptance of homosexuality.  The edges are likely to be different for her, and when she finds her way to the edges, I will be immensely joyful if her spiritual practice is pushing her there.  If she does not identify herself as Jewish because her spirit leads her in some other direction – be it Buddhist, Christian, Pagan, etc…., I do not think that this will cause me any grief.

Within the progressive religious context, requiring fidelity to a natal religion does not compute, except perhaps for culture (more on this to come).

Much of what I love about Jewish practice is the ritualized meals on Shabbat: inviting, cooking, serving, praying. Lengthy multi-course meals reoccurring every week.

It would be wonderful if she adopted these traditions – but this is a wish for me, not a wish for her, because I do not see an absolute value in Judaism.

I would guess that many other progressive Jews feel the same way; then why worry about our children identifying as Jewish when they grow up – instead we should worry about our children joining Jewish religious communities that are non-egalitarian, homophobic and otherwise reactionary.

Posted in Jewish, religion | Leave a comment

The radical “Sister-Wives” – a review

Posted on October 14, 2010 by

My last year of college I wrote a rather lengthy thesis, where after many interviews and  much reading,  I came to believe  a rather simple idea:  many women who practice patriarchal forms of a variety of religions, understand their practice in terms of particularity within  universality. The women see their practice as incumbent only upon them, either as a personal preference, or a manifestation of God’s calling the them – and not universally applicable to either women in general, or even to other women of faith, who may be called to practice differently.  This is significant because it undermines a widely held understanding of fundamentalist practice, as by its very definition,  encroaching upon us either in fact ( anti-gay marriage crusade) or in spirit (unsaved/unfaithful/unpracticing are going to hell).  In other words, why tolerate people who either want to change the law to match their religious texts or just deep down inside believe that we are damned?

What if, at least for some of the believers, these assumptions do not apply?

The new TLC show “Sister Wives” is a fabulous conformation of the radical power of particularity within university.  Sister Wives is about a polygamous step-family with four wives, one husband and sixteen children in total. The wives are able to embrace polygamy as a “faith” practice as they explain on the NBC interview, while maintaining openness to alternatives for their children, and thus for us all. On the show, the language embraced by the sister wives is “lifestyle.”

There is magic in members of the Fundamentalist Mormon Church calling their faith based choices a “lifestyle.”  A lifestyle is optional and personal, the opposite of forced religious practice, the opposite of conventional thinking on fundamentalism.

This show, amongst many things is a coming out party in ways large and small and I never miss a good coming out party. When Christina, the stay home wife, goes to the hospital to have her sixth baby, the family is exuberant.  The other babies in this family were all born at home, because the family feared the treatment they would receive at the hospital.  Here they tell the doctor right away. The doctor, a young woman, replies “I have never done a delivery with a polygamist before – I have a lot of polygamist ancestors.” This is exactly what an awkward guest would say at a coming out party, a version of the classic “I have a gay cousin.”

After the birth, the entire family stomps to the hospital. Janelle, the working wife, says while the audience watches her hold the new baby, Truely, “I guess all the children are sort of like my children, it is like me expecting another child without the work.” In relation to Christina’s baby, she has the subject position of a “man.” She gets a baby without the “work.” Does she mean the work of childbirth, or does she mean the daily grind of taking care of a baby? If she means the second, the meaning, is enhanced, because as a mother who works long hours, arguably she is not the primary caretaker of her biological children either.  In a previous segment the wives mention that the children think of Jenella as the fun mom – she is the one who takes them to the movies and lets them eat ice cream for dinner. This role is also traditionally occupied by the father (in a soft patriarchy), who is the fun parent and not the disciplinarian.  Plural marriage is indeed providing Jenella with an “alternative lifestyle,” to the one enjoyed by man-woman couples, where the woman serves as the primary caretaker. Janelle is my favorite.  If was a polygamist, I would be her.

Stay home wife, Christine is my second favorite.  As a little girl she dreamed of being a third wife!  She wanted the other wives and not the husband. As a young woman she only wanted to date married men.   Is her platonic love for women hiding queerness stirring beneath the surface?

I don’t know.

I cannot imagine living with other women or men so intimately, raising their babies, sharing their meals and not wanting to share their beds; but that is me and my predilections.  The women in this show are asking us to see them as making a credible choice for the love  of God, for the love of each other, for the love of their children, perhaps even for the love of Kody, their surfer-haired husband.  In return they are giving us a paradigm for universalist religion that is rich and deep, dripping with tolerance (if not welcoming) of the other, while living a life saturated with meaning that comes from the practice of faith every moment of your day and not just on insert-your-day-of-rest-here.

Sadly the same cannot be said for Kody who says the following, when Meri, the baron wife (also the radical one), asks him to acknowledge her feelings of  jealousy, by considering how it might feel if she took a another lover.  Kody says “it is not something I am comfortable imaging. The vulgarity of you with another man sickens me.  It is against man and nature.”  Here I was, about to ask him to sign my legalize group marriage petition!  (I harbor the hope that the sister wives would sign it)

I am not sure what to do with this absolutely unmovable double standard – besides to point out that Meri was willing to move it, even if just a millimeter, by requiring him to imagine a different (aka egalitarian) world.  Meri (perhaps radical because she is baron), is also the radical one – not only does she question the double standard, but she also questions “where the lines in who we can love,” when discussing her relationship to the other children.  Like Janelle, Meri is also living a deeper sort of alternative lifestyle. She wanted to have eight children, and she got 16, and birthed only one of them.

Posted in gender, queer, religion, sexuality | 3 Comments

The blog I never write

Posted on May 27, 2010 by

This is the blog that I never write. I have had this blog since I started law school. This summer I finished law school – I have written less then forty entries in three years into the blog I never write. I did not write about my pregnancy or my birth, even though I am an avid read of birth blogs.

I have found myself to be fundamentally incapable of doing something I enjoy, but which I do no have to do.  Any project/hobby that I have ever started I have abandoned. This blog lies alongside every knitting project I never finished.

I am proficient at completing my “responsibilities” – and there it ends!  This perhaps was the reason I found fundamentalist religion so appealing – it took away the choice. My spiritual/ritual life became a responsibility – I did not see observing shabbat or pray as a choice.

I love the idea of this blog, I love its title, I love everything about it.  Except I do not write in it – despite a strong urge to write, and yet I do not.

It is hardest to do what we want and not what we must. What would it be like if I did one thing I wanted (0ne active thing – procrastination activities like watching all seven seasons of Buffy do not county).

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Mikvah – followed by Tefillin

Posted on June 24, 2009 by

This morning, on my 25th birthday, I put on Teffilin (my teffilin), for the first time. I marveled at the visceral wonder – wrapping leather cords around my arm – an act of prayer. Its pagan strange beauty made me want to pray – to seek out, to dissolve. For the first time (in a long time), I felt like a full spiritual being – unstuck, I think is the best way to describe the experience, of me, a gendered woman, putting on an item so obviously meant for me, and yet completely foreign, completely denied to me, because as a woman, I was not supposed to be embodied; my body being too carnal: birthing and bleeding. I was supposed to pray without the objects of prayers – the tallit and the Teffilin.

My body was supposed to the object of the rules of men – and not my object, to be used in prayer. The night before putting on Teffillin, I went to an orthodox run mikvah. I bathed, put on my robe, and got ready to dip, my new Tefillin in my bag. The woman working in the mikvah that night, did not want me to use it – because my body was not as she wished it to be. I was wearing my nose ring and a ring on my finger. Both I do not remove for mikvah. She told me that she was going to call a Rabbi – that these are actually not her rules– but his, the man made these rules, she was just following them. We are the enforcers. I, without saying anything, dropped by robe, and went into the mikvah. I had a right to be there – my body, with its rings, had a right to be there – a right to use this community resource. I using the mikvah, with a non-approved body would in no way render it less kosher: I just wanted to dip. The woman working in the mikvah did not say anything to me – she was silent.

And I was utterly joyful; joyful to have dipped in the mikvah – to be performing this utterly embodied ritual in my body – to be dipped, not because I menstruated, but because I was going to put on Tefillin. Mikvah, like Tefillin is denied to women. Yes, married women can use the mikvah in order to have sex with their husband. But they cannot use it to be spiritual beings – to use their bodies in prayer/ as prayer. I do not want to imply that the using the mikvah after menstruation is somehow less spiritual, less embodies, rather, I am arguing that circumscribing mikvah usage to this on one occasion is in fact denying women a full spirituality – it is allowing ritual only as it effects men (women can touch them after mikvah) and not for purposes that are entirely her own. Purposes outside the desire of men.

Even non-orthodox mikvahs have been known to prohibit menstruating women from using the mikvah, when there is no prohibition for men to use the mikvah at any point, and in general the mikvah claims to be there for purposes outside nidah. However, just the thought of a woman with blood between her legs, deciding she is nevertheless worthy of ritual, worthy of spirituality is an impossible thought.

Posted in gender, halacha, religion | 3 Comments