In Europe and Mexico, younger women and men of all ages regularly offer me their seats on buses and metros. I usually refuse, although at home in New York City, I’m always a little miffed when no one bothers to make a place for me. Yet cashiers never balk when I ask for a senior ticket at the movies or in museums. At first I was surprised: how do they know, I wondered. But of course it’s the gray hair, along with the wrinkles and sagging skin that now mark me.
I first decided to let my hair be gray fourteen years ago, in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. I was on the road, blindly driving north with my laptop, my passport, two cats, and a friend beside me when I knew it was time to let nature run its course. For some ten years before that, I’d been religiously dying my hair dark brown or black, visiting a hair salon every four to six weeks for long hours of “treatments,” compulsively keeping my hair in a meticulously trimmed pixie cut. But the storm emphatically taught me how life can definitively change us: we are transformed, sometimes in an instant, both internally and externally, by our experiences–and I no longer wanted (or needed) to hide that change. I enjoyed letting my hair return to its natural colors, and took pleasure in the new measure of respect some people gave me. Continue reading “Embracing Elderhood by Joyce Zonana”
Storytelling is as old as humanity. We tell ourselves stories – about who we are as individuals, about our families, and about our people – to understand who we are. A lot of narratives are told by a dominant segment of society at the expense of others. I am drawn to stories that flip the script. What stories about real people help us envision a world where all human beings can fulfill our God-given potential?
This week’s Torah parshah is Behaalotecha: Numbers 8:1 to 12:16. By now, much of what comes to pass should sound familiar. The parshah starts with another discussion of leadership and the priesthood. It then prescribes a second Pesach for those who happened to be ritually unclean for the first one and describes the consequences of not participating in the first Pesach if you had been ritually clean. Next, the Israelites’ wanderings through the desert are detailed which includes the divine appearing as natural phenomena and the very loud rumblings of the Israelites’ tummies. Finally, the parshah ends with a discussion of Moses’ wife and Miriam’s punishment. 
Feminism and Religion 