Closer to Fine: COVID-19 Version

A little off my usual topic, but I cope with stress by writing song parodies. Enjoy Closer to Fine: COVID-19 version.

Listen to a Recoding by Sara Borer

All-of-a-Kind Family and the quarentined Passover 

My friend Paula Lewis reminded me of  just how educational All-of-a-Kind-Family by Sydney Taylor was.

Remember that time in All-of-Kind-Family when the sisters got scarlet fever and the family was quarantined and their only contact with others was when relatives dropped off food by the window or Charlie left packages of toys… and they had to have the Seder alone?

Whores and harems: Sexual Politics and the Book of Esther‏

Like most Jewish feminists, I remember that time of coming of age when I stopped begging to dress up as queen Esther for Purim and started to cheer for Vashti and her independence. I thought that was a simple and sufficiently feminist reaction to the Book of Esther. Recently I watched the recent satirical (‪The Jews Are Coming – Esther and Mordecai, Channel 1)

 from Israel, which basically asks, “Isn’t Esther a whore? “. It notes how Esther exchanges sexual favours for political ones. The idea of Esther as a prostitute is more nuanced than is portrayed in short sketch. She is the king’s wife when she asks for favours and is in a society that is totally dominated by men so there is not much free choice. But the sketch was so funny because there is real truth in it and I found it hard to dismiss outright. This twinge of discomfort prompted me to  take another critical look at the original text of the Megillah. When I did I found cheering for Vashti is no longer enough for me. Join me in a tour of the Megillah text through a feminist lens.

Vashti and the possibly nude dancing

My first encounter with the text of the Megillah was in fifth grade. Our formidable Israeli teacher started off our study by saying, “You think you know what the story of Purim is all about! All you know is the baby version. This year we are going read directly from the Book of Esther.” It was in this class that we got to find out what eunuchs and harems really were and why it was suitable for one to guard the other. Things got exciting in the first chapter, when we learned the midrash that when the king asked Vashti to appear “with her royal crown on to show the people and the princes her beauty because she she was beautiful to look at”, he meant with ONLY the royal crown on her head. In other words, she was asked to appear nude in front of  dignitaries and a crowd. When our teacher described this there were audible gasps from the class.

Vashti vs. the Patriarchy

My class was equally shocked when we discovered why her refusal was such a problem for the king. He and his advisors were afraid that the news would travel that the queen had disobeyed the king’s order and women would now women see their husbands in a new light and also refuse to obey their every command. Princesses might now disobey their princes. Those princes, who ruled the states that made up the empire would be mad. So, to stave off this possible horrible turn of events, the princes ask the king to banish Vashti and replace her with someone “better” and also to issue a royal decree that all wives must obey all husbands. Just to make sure that everyone understood this, they had the decree translated into all the local languages and published everywhere in the empire. Reading this today it seems like a bunch of SNL writers got together and tried to write a sketch that was the most over-the-top, cheesiest version of the caveman-style patriarchy possible.

I know we make noise every time Haman’s name is mentioned, but when I read these verses on wives obeying their husbands absolutely, I always wonder why no one in the congregation wants to blot them out with noise. We boo Haman and his plan for genocide 54 times. Can’t we boo misogyny even once?

Esther and the Harem

My daughter’s books on Purim talk about how Esther was modest and didn’t try to use her beauty to get Ahasuerus’s attention. The kids’ books also portray their relationship as a companionable married couple.  These are great messages but also a real misrepresentation of the story. Esther spends a year in the virgin harem house getting ready for her one night with the king after which she is sent to the non-virgin harem house which she can only leave (ever) when called for by name. This does not change when the king likes her better than all the women and makes her queen. Nor does he get rid of either of the harem houses at this point. Somehow that part is not in the kids’ books.

When Mordecai tells Esther that she must ask the king to save her people she reminds him that anyone who goes to talk to the king with out being specifically invited is killed unless he signals otherwise. She mentions she not seen the king in a month. Then when she enters the king’s room and he sees her in her “royal attire”, she is pleasing in his eyes, so he lets her enter and not be killed. This does not sound like a relationship that is built on anything but superficial appearance and sex appeal. Certainly in companionate, love-based marriage we do not risk death by entering our spouse’s room, we do not have to earn an audience by making sure our appearance is pleasing and we generally  converse more than on a monthly basis. If anything she reminds me of a “honeypot” female spy who works for a government getting state secrets by seducing officials of the other side. They are not glamorous James Bond style spies. They serve their countries,  but not in a way that we would aspire to.

Why the King wants to Kill Haman

After Esther reveals she is Jewish and asks the king to save her and reverse Haman’s decree, the king takes a moment and leaves the “feast of wine” to head out to the palace garden. At this moment, no decision has been made at all to save the Jews and no decision has been made at all to punish Haman or what kind of punishment that might be. Haman stays to plead for mercy from Esther.  The king returns from the garden to find that Haman has “fallen on the bed that Esther was on”. Shocked he says, “Is he also going to ravish the queen while I am in the house?”. It is then that the king decides Haman should die. When my class heard this, there were no gasps from aghast tweens, just a shocked silence. Did the teacher mean what we thought she meant? Did Ahasuerus decide to kill Haman at least in part because he thought Haman made the moves on his woman? With a modern adult eye, what is more shocking the easily wounded male ego that drives decisions of state or the treatment of Esther as a sexual object who is the property of a man?

The Truth about Purim

While Esther was still very much a hero for risking death to save her people, it is a kind of narrow, constrained heroism I don’t dream of for my daughters. If they are old enough to hear the “real story and not the baby version”, then kids are old enough to be taught about what women’s place was in the world of the Megillah, and what it is today and how while a lot of things have changed, not enough have. Just like there are still people who hate irrationally and destroy nations to advance their political power and egomania like Haman, there are still plenty of people who think that “every man should rule his house”. (There may be some overlap in those two groups). Our kids need to hear these troubling parts too, and to hear our unequivocal reaction.

Let’s hope our daughters get to thrive in positive ways, neither by opting out or leaving an oppressive culture like Vashti nor by doing what they can through sexual appeal within an oppressive culture that devalues them, like Esther. Let’s hope if they influence rulers it is because they are themselves politicians not because they are sexual partners of them. Let’s hope if they want to protest the patriarchy, they have more options than ending up banished. Let’s hope they read the Megillah and find its misogyny hilariously distant from anything they experience in real life.

If they were sons

It is early on  a weekday morning and my 8-year-old comes into our room and jumps in bed with me and with  our two year old who has been sleeping next to me. We move over to make room for her and we hug each other. We cuddle each other. We tickle. We roll over each other. We make “sandwiches” where one child is the “cheese” and the other child and I are the “bread”. There are horsey rides and human sculptures. There are squishy group hugs. Despite my desperate desires for more personal space and more sleep, this is the “hug time” that my daughters treasure and that I am sure I will miss when it ends. (We have already lost my 13 year old, who, understandably and typically for her age, wants to sleep and needs the physical disctance. She still cuddles and tickles with the younger ones, just not at “hug time” with me).

But this weekend as I was engagingly our usual wild and unselfconscious hugging, tickling and playing, I thought to myself, “If I had sons instead of daughters would I be doing this exactly the way I am? Would my eight year old son be here in the same very physical way?”  And the fact that I could not quickly and easily say “Yes, of course” stopped me cold.

Those of you who know me or my blog know how hard I work to reduce the effects that gender stereotypes have on how I interact with the world in general and especially how I interact with  my children. But I couldn’t honestly and quickly say yes to my own question.

In the wake of the recent Jian Ghomeshi scandal  (a famous CBC radio host is accused of physical and sexual assault of numerous women), I have had a lot of conversations with people about how our culture enables sexual assault.  People mentioned the pervasive cultural objectionable of women  and the linking of sexuality to violence. We focus on how bad it is for boys to grow up in this culture of violent pornography and the constant  social messages they get about women, sexuality and consent, and rape culture .  The local paper had an essay by Gabor Maté on  the problem of narcissistic male rage  where he writes

We live in a society steeped in male narcissism, one in which aggression towards women is deeply entrenched in the collective male psyche. Nor is male sexual predation confined to a few “sick” individuals: that we see it portrayed, relentlessly and voyeuristically, in movies, TV shows, and advertising is beyond obvious, except for those mired in denial.

…

Ghomeshi’s reported behaviours arise from a misogynistic culture that degrades and confuses people of all genders. Few men enact extreme hostility, but few are those who do not harbour anti-feminine aggression somewhere in their psyche.

When we are talking about confusing physical affection with aggression, of getting physical affection wrong, I can’t help wondering, how many boys who aren’t very small get “hug time”? How many real, unperfunctory, unselfconscious hugs does a boy get in week?

And what does that do to them?

 

 

Girls are Easy: A Rant

I have three daughters. When people hear this, be they co-workers, parents I meet in the playground or people in the supermarket, they very often say, “You are lucky; girls are easy” or “Girls are easier to__” . People say this whether they themselves are the parents of boys, boys and girls or have no children. They say these things whether my kids are screaming and running or playing quietly. I have heard this so often and for so long it has inspired this rant.

I have been told girls:

• are easier to toilet train
• are easier to discipline
• don’t run away
• are better at listening
• are less likely to avoid homework
• are more willing to do housework
• are less likely to get lost
• are more responsible
• are better at communicating
• are better at introspection
• are less clumsy
• are less likely to eat bugs
• are less violent
• are more trustworthy
• can do errands earlier and more reliably
• are quieter
• can cross the street at an earlier age than boys
• can take care of their siblings, whereas boys can’t or won’t
• can remember instructions better
• are less likely to take things apart to see how they work
• dress themselves earlier
• can sit still
• are less likely to make poo and fart jokes and noises
• will clear their own dishes
• are better at school
• are more polite
• are cleaner
• are more organized
• understand adults better
• are more patient
• are more persistent
• are more  independent
• mature earlier (both in the infant/toddler range and the teenager range)
• learn better
• follow directions better

So after hearing this kind of thing for more than 13 years here is my question:

If according to this cultural knowledge/ set of stereotypes boys seem to be slow, unreliable, immature and irresponsible idiots then by what magic do they then suddenly turn into men who seen are as more competent, more professional, smarter,  with more valuable opinions and more deserving of jobs of with higher pay and higher responsibility? How does that work?

My daughter on Kippah and tfillin

I generally don’t post my kids’ achievements on my blog or facebook, but I couldn’t resist this one as it is so close to the themes of this blog. Here is Tefillin and Standing Out  by  my eldest.  It is short so you can head over to V’Tzivanu to check it out. Here is a quote:

Later, the first week after bat mitzvah, when I could wear tfillin, I left my tfillin — which my parents gave me — at home the first time because I was embarrassed to put them on when no other girls were. I eventually took them to school and one of the male teachers who put them on every week showed me how. The teachers were very friendly and made me feel more at ease. A few people gave me weird glances but nobody really cared. I felt different and a little on edge. The tfillin helped me feel like a Jewish adult, but I felt a little unsure of what to do. The next time I put them on I still needed help tying them, but I remembered more. I was more comfortable wearing my tfillin because I had done it before.

On an interesting note, she never mentions tallit, which she saw women wearing since birth, and which her school presented as non-optional (unlike tfillin).

 

 

All-of-a-kind Family tore down the mechitzah on Simchat Torah

What were shuls like in terms of seating  early 1900s in the United states?

The family pew/mixed seating came to Reform shuls in the 1850s and was adopted between the 1920s and mid-1950s by most what were to become “Conservative” congregations and a small but significant minority of what were to become”Orthodox” synagogues. (The terms were not used in then the way there are today and the movements were less  separate then). Most traditional shuls had michitzot. But that did not mean they were as strict as people seem to think today.

I was astonished to (re)read this passaged from the beloved children’s book, set in the Lower East Side in 1913, All-of-a-Kind Family Downtown by  Sydney Taylor, for whom the premier Jewish Children’s book award is named.

From the back of the synagogue Uncle Solomon’s voice suddenly rang out, “All the world is singing on this joyous holiday”. Right hand cupping his right ear, left arm flung wide, he began shuffling his feet in time with his song. The sisters stared at him, astonished. Could this be their dignified Uncle Solomon?“ Papa, he’s dancing!” Gertie shouted. “It a party?” “Yes, my little one, Papa cried gaily. “It’s God’s party and everyone is invited.”

Uncle Solomon’s feet kept whirling faster and faster. They were carrying him clear across the back of the synagogue. He did not dance alone for long. One after another joined in to form a circle. Pious old men forgot the stiffness in their aching joints and danced shoulder to shoulder with the younger men and children. The curtain separating men and women was thrust aside, and so contagious was the revelry, many of the younger women joined the dancers. In and out and roundabout, Uncle Solomon led them, and the excitement kept mounting.

Voices feebly raised at first, soared ecstatically higher. Feet that had moved hesitantly, quickened their pace. Only the older women remained seated on the benches, bobbing their heads and clapping their work-worn hands in time with the dancing. Mama, too, was caught up in the moment, bouncing a delighted Charlie up and down on her knee.

The sisters, swept along in the general furor, were prancing about in all directions. Tiny Gertie was hemmed in by a sea of moving legs till Papa swung her onto his shoulders. There she rode on her bobbing throne, smiling down triumphantly at Charlotte who was holding on for dear life to her dancing Papa.

Yes, it is is a fictionalized account of Sydney Taylor’s (Sarah Brenner’s) early  life and there are a few very small, trivial  historical inaccuracies. But when she so carefully recalls so many ritual details like how to kosher meat with salt at home or what it is like behind the mechitzah on Yom Kippur, I doubt she would randomly make this up.

No religious expression is static over time or immune to the world around it. And we are all the richer, spirituality  for that.

After all, is it really God’s party if not everyone is invited?

 

It’s all about sexuality, not vaginas or porn: The Anne Frank controversy and our denial of female sexuality

The story that a parent in Northville, Michigan filed a formal complaint with the local School Board after her 7th Grade daughter was assigned to read “Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl“, has the Jewish and the general blogosphere buzzing with indignation.

The  world’s most famous holocaust book is made up of several versions of an honest and well-written diary that Anne Frank kept while she was a young teenager living in a cramped apartment with a few other families, hiding from the Nazis. They were found and she died in a concentration camp. Her father published an edited version after the war which was made into a play and a movie. An unedited version was released in 1995, after Otto Frank’s death containing parts that were deemed too private in 1947.

The passage that alarmed the mother of the middle-schooler was:

Until I was eleven or twelve, I didn’t realize there was a second set of labia on the inside, since you couldn’t see them. What’s even funnier is that I thought urine came out of the clitoris … When you’re standing up, all you see from the front is hair. Between your legs there are two soft, cushiony things, also covered with hair, which press together when you’re standing, so you can’t see what’s inside. They separate when you sit down and they’re very red and quite fleshy on the inside. In the upper part, between the outer labia, there’s a fold of skin that, on second thought, looks like a kind of blister. That’s the clitoris.

The mother, Gail Horalek, called it pornographic.  It is not. It is merely an accurate description of the vulva. Ms. Horalek’s reaction is more common than we like to think as we are very uncomfortable with women’s and girls sexuality. Note that the passages about the menstrual cycle were not upsetting to this mother. Vaginas are ok to talk about in terms of  male sexual pleasure, fertility or in their role as the birth canal. It is specifically because the parts that are mentioned in the passage are those that are commonly associated with female sexual pleasure that upset this mother. Does she think that while reading this her daughter or her friends might discover pleasurable aspects of their anatomy that they would not otherwise have known about?

But what struck me as proof of the depth of this problem of our deep discomfort with female sexuality  is that many of the blog posts and articles decrying this attempted censorship from a feminist point of view unwittingly participated in it.

Let’s look at their titles:

Suburban Detroit Mom Says No to Reading about Anne Frank’s Vagina (Jewlicious)

School district pulls Anne Frank’s diary over ‘vagina’ passage | Alternet

Anne Frank’s Diary Too ‘Pornographic’ For 7th-Grade Students …

from a previous, similar controversy:

Anne Frank’s Diary Pulled Off School Shelves Over A Vagina

Anne Frank book banned because of the word “VAGINA“ – Godlike …

Virginia Schools: Anne Frank’s Diary Too Sexual For Adolescents

Diary of Anne Frank pulled for “vagina” passage « Sex Hysteria!

It is not reading about a vagina that upset Ms. Horalek. It is reading about Anne Frank’s vulva and clitoris that upset her. The vagina is not mentioned in the passage above. If we are going to look down on someone for being uncomfortable with basic human physiology, then we probably should be using the correct terms ourselves. Calling the vulva a vagina is part of our discomfort with female sexuality. ( For a full discussion of why this is so see  V is for… )

Many girls and boys grow up thinking that girls use their vaginas to pee, for example, which they do not. This is because parents usually refer to the vulva as a girl’s vagina. We do not pee out of a vagina, shave it, or see it (unless we have some medical devices or are very invasive). ( For a full discussion of why this see V is for… )

My children use the correct terms.  So sure criticize this woman and her censorship. But take a look in the mirror as well.

Dear Hanna Andersson, Girls like Star Wars too

Dear Hanna Andersson,

I have enjoyed buying your clothes for my 3 daughters and for friends and relatives for years. I was first attracted by the simple, comfortable designs that focused on what kids would want to play in. As advertised the clothes are very soft, the seams especially un-itchy and they last to hand down. I saw your company as a refuge from a culture that tries to sexualize little girls. I appreciated the ethos you projected that allows girls to be pretty and decorated without being sexy and without restricting their ability run and play. I cheered when a favourite blogger, Marjorie Ingall, wrote about you in a column on finding fun but appropriate clothing.

I won’t buy clothing made of flimsy, shimmery fabrics (call me crazy, but I think girls should wait until second grade to dress like they’re plying their trade on the West Side Highway) with visible logos (if Old Navy wants me to advertise for them, they’ll have to pay me), or with Barbie or Bratz on them (if Josie wishes to embrace overly sexualized, lobotomized, pouting, dewy femininity, she can look at any number of the glossy magazines Mommy writes for). Fortunately, my daughter and I have found that we can agree on Hanna Andersson clothing, which Grandma Betsy and Grandpa Jordy generously keep us well stocked in. It isn’t cheap, but it’s soft, washes beautifully, is cut nonwhorishly, wears like iron (if you liked it on Josie, you’ll love it on Maxine!) and comes in amusingly crazy psychedelic patterns that appeal to my H.R. Pufnstuf-meets-Frida Kahlo aesthetic but contain, among other colors, pink. Everybody’s happy.
http://forward.com/articles/7404/picking-your-parenting-battles/#ixzz2C85AZqhR

So you can imagine my disappointment when I saw that your recent launch of your Star Wars line is aimed at boys only. My daughters love Star Wars! This is a picture of my 6-year-old from last Halloween:

A girl who was bullied for loving  Star Wars  (while people told her it was just for boys) became a brief internet sensation after people expressed  their support of her and  their outrage at her exclusion. (Girl Bullied for Loving Star Wars).

Please reconsider and offer Star Wars clothes for girls too. (They could even be the same designs).

Having It All and Being Good Jew Too – Forward.com

Having It All and Being Good Jew Too – Forward.com.

my latest article in the Forward

As the season of tightly packed Jewish holidays wound down for another year — after the whirlwind of family dinners, synagogue services and even volunteer shofar blowing on top of the upheaval of a new school year for our children — my husband and I reflected once again on how hard we try to “have it all.”

As observant Jews, we feel obliged to, and desire to, attend morning and evening services, to do the spiritual work of repentance and to transform our words into meaningful actions. As involved Jewish parents and children to our own parents, we feel obliged to serve family dinners that honor the holiday, to have these meals at times and in ways that suit both our young baby and our own weary parents. We feel obliged to guide our younger children through the learning of brachot and how to blow the shofar. We teach the elder ones the meaning of the liturgy and the content of the Torah readings, and engage them in the philosophical discussions that the season prompts.

We have yet to meet all these obligations. My husband I take turns going to Kol Nidre, alternating years. We have left our children in day care during synagogue and the daytime meals. We have friends who wanted to have family dinner in the evening and host a lunch after synagogue; to make that happen, they stayed home from synagogue to prepare. After catching our breath, we concluded that Jewishly it is not possible to have it all.

The phrase “having it all” has recently resurfaced with respect to women having fulfilling careers and also being actively engaged parents. It was first popular in the 1970s, when I was a child; that’s when women began demanding and taking their places in professional careers.

To the extent that women were welcomed into professional, traditionally male careers, they were expected to behave as the men did — to wear a suit, to work 80 hours a week, to stay late. But if both parents of a (heterosexual) couple were doing the traditionally male jobs, who was taking care of the many needs of family and community? Needless to say, the model broke down.

A generation later, people came to see that feminism or egalitarianism cannot be about just “allowing” women to take on the traditionally male roles — it had to be about changing what both male and female roles in the workplace and the home were.

The way to “have it all,” insofar as that is possible for either a man or a woman, is through paid parental leave, flex-time and family-friendly work conditions that allow parents of either gender to scale back during the child-launching years. “Having it all” also requires cultural expectations and social structures that value both professional work and the work of raising a family and caring for relatives and community.

Though Judaism has gone through the first stage of this evolution — the bringing of women into the realms traditionally reserved for men — it has not made the necessary leap to the next step and changed the expectations of men and women so that religious and family needs are met by both.

In Judaism traditionally, women have been excused from what are called positive commandments (the Thou Shalts as opposed to the Thou Shalt Nots) and time-bound commandments (ones that must be done at a specific time of day), which happen also to be the commandments that are done in public, are performance oriented and are associated with prestige.

A few generations ago, only men would rise early to pray daily, lead the grace after meals, buy the lulav and etrog, study texts, build the sukkah, burn the hametz and prepare to give sermons, to read Torah and to lead services. Women would coach the children on the Four Questions and teach them the basic prayers and songs. Women made sure the Hebrew schools had holiday snacks and decorations, flags for Simchat Torah and Purim carnivals. Women would plan, cook for and clean up from the holiday and Sabbath meals; bring meals and help to the sick, bereaved or disabled; plan for spontaneous invitations to lonely or new people, and organize community events.

The rationale for this traditional division of labor as provided by the medieval commentator Abu Dirham (and echoed by the Shulchan Aruch) is that a woman is a servant of two masters: her husband and God. To spare a woman the difficult choice that might arise if her husband commanded her to do something while she was supposed to be fulfilling a divine commandment, God graciously bows out, relinquishing the claim on women’s time. Despite the obvious misogyny of their time, the Mishnahic and medieval rabbis did grasp an important element of mitzvot that we miss today. It is not possible to do all the public mitzvot of a time-bound-nature and also do all the mitzvot of childrearing, cooking and household management. Jewishly, you cannot “have it all.” Just as in larger society, where women’s equality in the workplace required more than opening the door to the office or boardroom, in Judaism the path to full egalitarianism cannot be just about women taking on the public mitzvot of prayer and ritual. To make sure women are equal on the bimah, they must be obliged to be there as much as men are.

It is a well-known sociological phenomena that in an environment where men must do something and women may do it but do not have to, the women will often not [do the carry out the] activity. It is important that both men and women see themselves as equally obliged to take on the traditionally female mitzvot of caregiving, hosting, community building and educating, and that they see themselves as equally exempt from the positive time-bound mitzvoth while doing so. It is not enough to say that women can read Torah; we must also say that while a man does child care or cooks for the Sabbath or takes care of elderly parents, which are also his obligations, he is exempt from synagogue for that morning. We cannot all be at Neila and then all go to a break-fast meal; someone has to be there laying out the food and setting up during the service.

For years, women have been banging on the door of the synagogue, fighting for the rights to all the public mitzvot. But that is not enough: The door to the bimah and the synagogue boardroom is not fully open to women until men also charge (or are led through) the doors that are the sites of so many other mitzvot — the doors to the nursery, kitchen, the Kiddush or youth programming committees, the retirement home volunteers, the parent-teacher associations and junior congregations.

Moving to the practical from the theoretical is very difficult. A friend of mine recalled the end of a Seder meal where he was having a discussion with men of different religious practices about feminism and Judaism. Meanwhile, his mother-in-law and pregnant wife were cleaning the dishes. After a while he roared to the group: “Stop talking about Halacha and feminism. Get up and get in the kitchen.”

________________________________________________________

Dear Forward headline writer:

You added the sub-heading: Can a Women Have a Career and Observant Family?

The whole point of the article is that equality in the workplace is an analogy for equality in the synagogue. Just as women’s equality in the workplace depends on changing both women’s and men’s roles in work and family, so women’s equality in the synagogue is dependant on changing views of women’s and men’s obligations in both family and ritual. Your sub-heading totally misses the point!!!