Saving women from the 'chain'

Here is an article I wrote in this week’s Haaretz about the importance of halachic prenuptial agreements in the battle to help agunot.
As many of you know, I have spent a large portion of my year here trying to promote the agreement (a very painstaking and frustrating process).
Yesterday was both Taanit Esther and International Agunah Day.
The link between Queen Esther and agunot appears tenuous at first—one an example of female empowerment, the other of female victimization, yet in this holiday of nehfoch-hu (topsy-turvey), the linkage can be seen as a call to overturn the agunah status-quo. While great responsibility lies with rabbis, community leaders and lawyers to encourage signing of the document, each and everyone of us should feel compelled as Esther did, to take a stand for what is right in the society in which we live. Let us continue to fight for all possible solutions to the agunah problem in Israel and abroad, but in the meantime, let us work to reduce the number of future agunot, by promoting the signing of the prenuptial agreement.

The prenuptial Agreement for Mutual Respect can be found at
www.youngisraelrabbis.org.il

The prenuptial Binding Arbitration Agreement can be found at http://www.rabbis.org/Prenuptial_Agreement.cfm

Bissli, Falafel, and Bazooka

I wrote this in response to the attack last Thursday. It may be part of a larger project.


As terror attacks increase in Jerusalem, Ehud Olmert, in an attempt to pacify his coalition government, made the unusual decision to deport all non-Zionist foreigners. In order to determine who is a Zionist an ad-hoc committee has been set-up. The committee, commonly called Ahavas Yisroel, has been going neighborhood by neighborhood and bringing non-residents in for questioning. The following is an excerpt of one interrogation.

Transcript # 108

AY: What is you relationship to Zionism?

108: My relationship? In some ways I was born a Zionist. The same way I was born with brown hair or the hairy mole underneath my nose. My whole life I have traveled at least once a year to Israel. I went to visit my grandfather, who made aliyah in the last years of his life. He gave me a gold pin for my 10th birthday that said Kulanu Yerushalmim.

AY: So do you consider yourself a Zionist?

108: I was never sure if you had to live in “Zion” to be a Zionist. After all no matter how much I support the existence of Sweden, I will never be a Swedenist. Yet there must be something different to being a Zionist. Perhaps an obsession with a country where you don’t reside, or a preoccupation with a concept of the Land of Israel that goes back 3,000 years. Or supporting a country at all costs.


AY: And do you consider yourself a supporter of Israel?

108: Yes, although I am sometimes embarrassed to be associated with the actions or inactions of the country. Spending time in Bethlehem and Hevron, I am disgusted by the actions of settlers but disappointed to the governments tacit condonement of such acts and how these things illicit hatred from another group of people. But more often, I am confused about how to deal with something like the separation wall that causes Palestinians economic pain and psychological anguish but has created a successful barrier in preventing terror attacks. It makes me begin to question by values.



AY: And these actions are not in line with your values?

108: Which values is probably the better question. I believe in a Jewish State and I also believe in a democratic one. And I am realizing this may be a contradiction in terms. When looking at the way other nationalities are treated in Israel, it is sometimes hard to be a liberal and a Zionist. But when a bomb explodes 5ft from where you are standing or when your boyfriend is fighting in Lebanon, it is harder to be a Zionist and a liberal.


AY: So you are not a Zionist?

108: Wait, I read Exodus three times! I used to dream about Paul Neumann, I mean Ari Ben-Cannan. I just get frustrated with how migrant works live or how the police turn a blind eye to prostitution. When a leading Rabbi declares that an earthquake was caused by homosexuality I cringe.

AY: Please answer the question directly:

108: and I hate the way Israelis never say please or thank you, and have no concept of lines. And why do they always need to push? I’m sorry…..what was the question again

AY: A Zionist. Are you one? Yes or no.

108: When I hear about a terror attack in Israel, I feel a deep pain in my right shoulder, and I mourn as part of a nation with the collective. The deaths in Gaza leave me profunndly saddened mainly because I fear how it will affect the moral fiber of Israel. In the moment of pigua or bomb, my universalism, my relativism, vanish and I am a raw member of the tribe of Israel, crying out to God. So what does that say about me? About the type of person I am?

AY: It says you a Zionist. Please take some complimentary Bamba on the way out.

And If a Stranger Shall Dwell Among You

When I walk into 3 Har Zion all I see is chaos. Beds stuffed into every available space in the hallway. Children running around sans parents. The smell of sewage seeping into the smallest corners, and flickering lights that are more reminiscent of the brothel it once was than the African refugee shelter it is now. The shelter, 3 blocks away from the Tachana Hamerkzit (Central Bus Station) in Tel Aviv, houses over 400 refugees – mainly from Eritrea.
The coverage around the plight of the refugees has centered mainly on the issue of the crossing through Egypt and whether or not Israel should allow refugees to enter the country. But there is barely any coverage of what happens to them when they are here.
“My name is Natural, Natural Black,” one refugee from the Ivory Coast tells me. One thing I realize as I do my work is that everyone just wants to be heard. Whether it is the women who push and shove to have the first pick of donated clothing or the man who makes sure to tell me he has a BA in politics as I register him to do agricultural work. The children clamor for me to pick them up, and speak to me in Hebrew. “Eyn Baaya” “Mah Nishma?”
In the chaos I concentrate only on the tasks set before me. Organizing clothes. Counting Beds. Registering newcomers. If I think about the big picture for too long, I feel useless and impotent. As I work, slowly I see some order to the madness. The Africans who speak English are often the group leaders and the ones who have traveled together feel a brotherhood to one another.
In the past month over 1,000 refugees have crossed into Israel seeking a better life. This is not a problem that will disappear. Israel must create policies and standards if it hopes to gain control over this situation. This article in JPOST describes the shelter I work in and gives a broader background to the issue in general.

An open letter to the rabbinate

Here is an op-ed I wrote in today's Haaretz about the need for change in the Israeli rabbinate

Salam wa Aleikum (peace be upon you); wa Aleikum ah Salam (and also peace be upon you)

I packed for my week in Jordan pretty carefully Socks, umbrella, baseball tee. But as soon as I crossed the border I realized that I forgot the most vital item for a Jordanian holiday–a Tankh. Who knew that Jordan is overflowing with stories from both the Torah and Neviim?
During our first taxi ride, our driver pulled over to show us Ain Musa and after a few minutes of bilingual pantomiming, I understood that this was where Moshe hit the rock that prevented him from entering Egypt. In Petra, I saw Jebel Haroun, where Aharon is buried and which is now a pilgrimage site and a mosque.
Even the secular city of Amman, more known for night clubs than holy sites, has many biblical references— most famously as one of the kingdoms with which King David was constantly at war with in the book of Samuel.
Mount Nebo was the most awe-inspiring. It is there that Moshe, after traveling 40 years in the desert, is supposed to have looked upon Israel. Moshe was buried there in an unmarked grave. The view from the mountain was breathtaking and there was an oddly tangible holiness in the air. It made no difference to me if these events actually occurred there or not, by seeing them I couldn’t help but feel more connected to tradition and history.
At the Allenby bridge it took nearly an hour to cross the border into Israel, and I couldn’t help but sympathize with the complaining Israelites, stuck in the desert for forty years.

I break tradition, sometimes my tries, are outside the lines

Last night I attended a lecture by Tova Hartman based on her new book “Feminism Encounters Traditional Judaism: Resistance and Accommodation”. Hartman reminded me of my previous passion (and perhaps obsession) with issues relating to Orthodoxy and feminism. Although I am still considered by most people to be the craziest ortho-fem they know, in recent years I have lost interest, preferring to accept the status quo. This has less to do with apathy then with a feeling that because of my level of personal observance I have no right to object to decisions made in the religious world. I have always thought that real change comes from within, and that I had to be perfectly Halachic before I could “rebel”. In some ways this is true: Tamar Ross might speak heresy but she dresses like she is from Mea Shearim so she is respected. But that’s not me. As I stopped going to daily minyan, started to wear jeans and expanded my social circles, I thought I lost my right to criticize or make waves. Tova addressed this feeling as one that she encounters in many female Orthodox circles. She dismissed them as irrelevant in the struggle of advancing the status of women in Judaism; after all she said “do we ask a man who comes to say Kaddish where he was yesterday?” Her examples might have come from Kafka and Freud but for me it was a simple reminder “If I am not for myself who will be for me?”

A Change is Gonna Come

When I saw this article in the Jerusalem Post this past Friday I screamed. Since then I have received dozens of emails encouraging me to join the Hartman Smicha program and become the first orthodox women rabbi (sorry how could I forget Haviva New David). Among friends there has been a lot of discussion about how this isn’t really Orthodox smicha and how no one will accept it as such. But to me all of this is irrelevant. This is an inevitable step in the progress of women’s orthodox feminism that can be linked to Nishmat’s Yoetzet program or the Drisha Scholars. Some have claimed that this will fracture the already delicate Orthodox community. But to me this split has been coming for a while and it is unclear what issue will ultimately break the Beast? Homosexuality? Shira Hadasha? Working with agunot, I have seen what happens when those who are more modern kowtow to the ultra religious in order not to rock the boat; people with real grievances get ignored, things that are halachically permissible are pushed aside for Kllal Yisrael. I’m not looking to turn the system upside down but if this is a slippery slope than I for one have been waiting a long time to slide on down.