Let’s see if the following course of events makes sense. A few Wednesdays ago, I was thinking about possible topics for this post considering it would be Mother’s Day. In the midst of thought, the warning sirens in Prague began. They were only being tested but, nontheless, I immediately thought of tornados. You see tornados, as awful and devastating as they are, make me think of thunderstorms and lightning. I love a good thunderstorm, the louder the better.
A Wisconsin childhood supplies plenty of thunderstorms. I cannot tell you the number of times as I was growing up that I stood outside watching the sky turn into that distinctive greenish-purple and smelling the storm on the breeze. Nor could I count the umpteen times we gathered in the basement as the tornado sirens blared and the radio advised its listeners in no uncertain terms to seek shelter. Nor could I recall how many times I sat with my mom during more recent summers watching the storms come in or the lightning blaze across the sky like a spider’s web. We’ve been lucky. Never once did a tornado hit our neighborhood although a house or two has been hit by lightning. Continue reading “Sirens, Thunderstorms, and Bowling: The Divine on this Mother’s Day by Ivy Helman”
It is, I think, quite common knowledge that most Jewish holidays relate to the seasonal cycles of the Earth. Sukkot celebrates the fall harvest. Chanukah sheds light on the winter darkness. Tu B’Shevat marks the end of the dry season and so begin the prayers for rain in Israel. For Purim, we throw off our winter doldrums and let off a little steam to settle our cabin fever. Pesach is no exception: welcome spring: birth, renewal and even creation. The leaves return to the trees, baby animals are born, flowers bloom, warmer weather arrives and somehow the possibilities of the coming summer are endless.
Lilith has been a misunderstood, appropriated, and redeemed woman throughout the ages. Many feminists claim her as an empowering figure in Jewish mythology, her story reclaimed by contemporary artists such as Sarah McLachlan, who created the all-women music tour, “Lilith Fair.” Some queer scholars have surmised that Lilith had a romantic relationship with Eve. Others have claimed that Lilith was a demon who seduced men and strangled children in the night. Quite a disparity, isn’t it?
Embodiment is a feminist principle which has, as its basis, two fundamental criteria. First, humans require their bodies to live. We must acknowledge that our existence is tied to our bodies. This fact grounds us in this world. Here, and not in some other-worldly place, we live out our lives. We are dependent on our bodies and what the world provides for our survival. In other words, humans are inseparable and interconnected to this world. Humans are not above nature as the Western hierarchical dualist mindset would suggest.
Isaac Luria, a Jewish mystic in the city of Sfat, told this tale of creation in the seventeenth century. It caught the Jewish imagination and has been wildly popular as a Jewish creation myth ever since. It captures our longing for wholeness and our experience of brokenness. It also offers a parallel with the Big Bang (a hot seed of light that expands into the universe as we know it) that many find quite compelling. I have loved this story for a long time. To me, it is reminiscent of the story of birth: an empty space that becomes full, then leaks out into the world as a new being. Yet as a feminist who is also committed to sustainability, as more news of our planet’s scorching rolls in, I find this myth is beginning to crack. 
Last week, Lech Lecha was the parshah, Isaiah 40:27-41, the haftarah. It was also the anniversary of Kristallnacht and the fall of the Berlin Wall. And, if you hadn’t heard, the United States elected Donald Trump. Interestingly all four of these occurred not just on the same week, but also all on the same day. What lessons might we pull from this coincidence?
Never has it been more difficult for me to affirm that “love trumps hate” as during this unprecedented United States election season. After watching the Republican Convention last July in mute horror, I took to bed for several days, overwhelmed by the presentiment that everyone–blacks, women, Jews, Latinos, Muslims, queers– other than a certain breed of white American males was doomed to shameless malignment and persecution. The palpable hatred in Donald Trump’s acceptance speech seared me, arousing my ancestral memory of various persecutions of Jews, Muslims, and others–not something I usually think about or choose to foreground. For several months now, I have been haunted (and almost paralyzed) by fear.
Hence Ani Tuzman’s 
We live in a dystopia. This world is filled to the brim in dichotomies: poverty and extreme excess, hunger and mountains of food, disease and cutting-edge medicine, materialism and an immense environmental crisis, and hour-long walks for water and hour-long luxurious baths. There are so many parts of our world that are not just unfair, unequal, broken and undesirable, but violent, traumatic and deadly. And, sometimes it feels like it is only getting worse, or at least, again teetering on the edge of yet another catastrophe.
Feminism and Religion 