Justice – Page 4 – Feminism and Religion

¡La Vida es la Lucha! – Women in the Colombian Protests by Laura Montoya

*Trigger Warning – Reference and description of distressing violence against women at the hands of police*

Alison Melendez was 17 when she was sexually abused last week by a group of Colombian policemen. She was captured for allegedly being part of the protest groups in Popayán, a city in the south of my country Colombia, South America. The next day Alison was found dead. The official version states that she committed suicide. In the social networks, there is a video of four policemen carrying Alison to the detention center, each holding one of her extremities. One can hear Alison screaming, “Four were necessary to carry me? Four against one woman? Cowards!” The next day – before she was found dead – she posted on Instagram that she was not part of the protests that night. She was walking to a friend’s house when the police showed up. She started recording their actions, they saw her and went mad, so they captured her. When she resisted, four of them took her to the police station. In the post, Alison mentions how they groped her to the soul.” In the video, one can see how her pants came off while they were carrying her, and the policemen did not care. They just kept walking. The last time we see Alison in the video is inside the station. Then cameras were turned off.

*End Trigger Warning*

Alison is one of the 18 cases of sexual violence reported during the protests that started last April 28 in different cities of Colombia. In addition, there are 87 reports of violence and abusive behavior against women protesting. Alison’s case has been more visible, but it is easy to find several videos of police officers beating, harassing, and capturing women in the protests on social media. We have been witnessing this terrible violence full of indignation and impotence, despite protesting is our legitimate right as citizens.

A Wish-Fulfillment Dream by Barbara Ardinger

Rest awhile, Dear Reader, and dream along with me. We’re standing on a corner, call it Main Street, Any City, USA. We’re chatting, passing the time of day, being happy we can stand among other people without the fear of a giant virus jumping out of someone’s breath and attacking us. It’s a nice day here on the street. Not much traffic.

Oh, look—there’s a huge box in the middle of the intersection. It’s shabby, looks to be made of old, thin wood loosely clamped together. The box starts shaking, rocking back and forth. What’s in there? Something is obviously trying to get out. As we watch, an orange mist starts seeping out through the cracks in the box. More shaking. Now the box seems to be jumping. More orange mist. And the box shatters. An orange form—is it human? It’s fat. It’s shaking an iPhone. Or is that a golf club? The orange one speaks. “Do you miss me yet?” “Stand back and stand by.” “I’ll be baa-ack.”

On Tazria-Metzora and Covid: Saving Lives, Saving Worlds, and Saving the World by Ivy Helman

It is often said that every year when you read the same Torah passages, you are in a different place, spiritually and otherwise. Therefore, one will always be learning new meanings and discovering new insights from them. No more is that true than in this week’s Torah parshah Tazria-Metzora.

Tazria-Metzora (Leviticus 12:1- 15:33) is a double parshah containing a list of rules concerning ritual purity and impurity, mostly having to do with leprosy. The parshah begins with the requirement for women a certain number of days after childbirth to immerse in a mikvah as well as offer animals for sacrifice at the temple. Then, it commands the circumcision of a boy child at 8 days of age. The next three chapters discuss an extensive list of what has to be all possible encounters with leprosy, including the infection of a home itself. The parshah prescribes various interactions between lepers, homes with leprosy, and the kohenim. Mostly, the kohenim decide if the skin lesions people or houses have are leprosy, another skin disease or harmless. If diseased or if the lesions are inconclusive, the people and houses enter quarantine. The kohenim also consult on whether a leper or house is healed and how to go about atonement. For atonement, former lepers immerse in the mikvah and pay for the kohenim to offer specific sacrifices at the temple. Homes also undergo a type of ritual purification by the kohenim when they have been healed of leprosy. This double parshah ends with immersion requirements for emissions of semen and menstrual blood.

Historically, there are two considerations, which I have discussed in other posts, to address first. To begin with, there is the ancient world’s understanding of disease as punishment for sin. This sin can either be the sin of the diseased person or punishment from generations past. For more about how this cycle of sin, punishment, repentance and atonement work as well as my thoughts on it, see here.

The largest protest in the world: India’s Farmers Protest by Anjeanette LeBoeuf

So much has happened since my last post. From the inauguration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the GameStop Investment, the military coup of Myanmar, the 2^nd Impeachment Trial and Republican Acquittal of Donald Trump, a catastrophic Artic Freeze of Texas, and other states, and the upcoming “no holding back, tell all” from the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. But what I really want to focus on this month is on something that is struggling to maintain publicity and support despite its importance; The Farmer’s Protest/Strike in India.

Continue reading “The largest protest in the world: India’s Farmers Protest by Anjeanette LeBoeuf”

It’s Time to Thank Stacey Abrams Again by Carol P. Christ

The insurrection in the Capitol on January 6 has dominated the news ever since. Coverage of the Democrats’ victories in the two Senate runoffs in Georgia has been virtually nil. Now that it seems that at least as long as the National Guard is deployed to defend the national and state capitols, the insurrectionists have been stopped, it is time to thank Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff–and most of all to Stacey Abrams–for returning control of the Senate to the Democrats.

As is well-known to most readers of FAR, Stacey Abrams narrowly lost the election for Governor of Georgia in 2018 due to voter suppression.

Voter suppression of voters of color and young voters is a scourge our country faces in states across the nation. Georgia’s 2018 elections shone a bright light on the issue with elections that were rife with mismanagement, irregularities, unbelievably long lines and more, exposing both recent and also decades-long actions and inactions by the state to thwart the right to vote.

In response to widespread nation-wide efforts of Republican dominated states to suppress the vote, Stacey Abrams founded Fair Fight. Continue reading “It’s Time to Thank Stacey Abrams Again by Carol P. Christ”

Sappy modern carols won’t cut it; Gritty Advent Hope is what we need this year. — by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir

As we careen toward ever more terrifying surges in the Covid pandemic, with experts predicting apocalyptic catastrophes by Christmas time, I find myself reacting to the vast majority of modern Christmas songs, stories, movies, and cultural norms with increasing distaste. In these scary, painful weeks leading up to Christmas, my culture has very little to offer other than distraction and superficial jollity. Ho ho ho, Santa Claus is comin’ to town.

Distraction does help, a little. It’s addictive, of course. We turn more and more to social media, with its carefully designed dopamine boosts from each “like” and “love” reaction, each funny cat video, each smug political joke, to keep us from confronting the terror and trauma of our current reality. It’s a legitimate coping mechanism, a crutch that can be useful in many ways. Continue reading “Sappy modern carols won’t cut it; Gritty Advent Hope is what we need this year. — by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir”

Poem: In These United States- The Court Supreme By Marie Cartier

We have nine justices usually but one of our most beloved, and notorious,

Ruth Bader Ginsberg, RBG, has gone to the Summerland, across

the Rainbow Bridge, to the afterlife—wherever that is for her, she’s

gone there. May her memory be a blessing. May her memory be a revolution.

And we are left with eight, five conservatives and

three liberals. RBG was liberal. Our current Pennsylvania Avenue occupant has already

nominated someone to replace RBG. This someone believes that god

speaks to the wife through her husband, the wife is submissive to the husband in all things,

she must submit in all things to her husband.

Sigh. As someone joked, this someone is walking through and slamming shut,

all the doors that RBG kicked open.

This nominated replacement believes that a woman has no choice in the matter of pregnancy,

and being gay is (once again) a sin in the eyes of the law, as well as her church.

This RBG replacement is Catholic, I guess.

I’m Catholic, too.

Maybe you’ve seen that meme on social media?

“I’m Christian. Oh…classic Jesus or Republican Jesus?”

That’s a joke: Ha. Ha.

Continue reading “Poem: In These United States- The Court Supreme By Marie Cartier”

Wisdom from our Ancient Female Lawgiver and Judge Traditions by Carolyn Lee Boyd

As I have witnessed both the joy of so many across the world at the nomination of Kamala Harris for Vice President and the deep sorrow at the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, I am struck by the fact that, in 2020, supremely qualified women still need to be trailblazers to hold high office. After all, goddesses and wise women gave a number of cultures their systems of laws and governance and have been celebrated for their wisdom as judges for millennia.

Here are a few of the goddesses and wise women lawgivers:

the Italian goddess Egeria gave Rome its first laws and taught the correct rules for Earth worship;
the Babylonian Kadi, was goddess of Earth and justice;
Ala of the Ibo people of Nigeria is both the Earth Mother and lawgiver of society;
the Greek Themis, daughter of Gaia, symbolized the social contract and cohesion of people living on Earth;
the Inuit Sedna both gave humanity abundance from the ocean for life from her own body and withheld it when her laws were broken;
Marcia Proba, whose historical reality is unclear, is said to have created the ancient Celtic system of laws known as the Marcian Statutes that may have influenced later British law;
past and present Women’s Councils and Clan Mothers of the Iroquois and other Indigenous peoples as well as those of Societies of Peace have brought harmony and well being to their people for tens of thousands of years.

Continue reading “Wisdom from our Ancient Female Lawgiver and Judge Traditions by Carolyn Lee Boyd”

ANNA’S DANCE: A BALKAN ODYSSEY by Michele Levy – Book Review by Joyce Zonana

Toward the end of her complex odyssey, Anna finds herself alone in an ancient Istanbul synagogue, where at long last she unreservedly “name[s] herself” a Jew and experiences connection with a God that “fuse[s] both male and female” and “from that wholeness birth[s] mercy and love.” Vowing to work to “help repair [the] world”–tikkun olam–she moves forward to face her life with a “sense of wholeness” that had eluded her for so long.

202002_Zonana_Joyce How to come to terms with the most maligned or vulnerable aspect of ourselves—whether it be race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexuality, physical ability, or any other trait—remains among the most pressing questions of our time. Should we try to “pass,” identifying with the oppressor and denying or rejecting who we are? Should we assume a militant, defiant stance, wreaking vengeance on those who have harmed us? Or can we find a way to embrace and affirm ourselves, neither denying nor reifying the pain of our individual and collective pasts? Can we love those who have harmed us?

These are among the questions faced by 23-year-old Anna Rossi, the central character in Michele Levy’s complex, lyrical new novel Anna’s Dance: A Balkan Odyssey (Black Rose Writing, $20.95), set in the turbulent summer of 1968.

Raised in the U.S. as a non-observant Jew, Anna has nevertheless been seared by anti-Semitism—both the indignities experienced by her parents, and those she has encountered herself. Her mother, a brilliant mathematician, had been denied admission to Purdue’s engineering school— “You’re a woman and a Jew”—and rejected by her Irish-American mother-in-law as a “filthy immigrant Jew.” Growing up in a Northern Virginia suburb, Anna was branded “Miss Israel” in the ninth grade and given low marks by a teacher who insisted she was “not like us.” Later, in college, a professor called her a “Jewish bitch.”

Continue reading “ANNA’S DANCE: A BALKAN ODYSSEY by Michele Levy – Book Review by Joyce Zonana”

Listening to the Noise: The Connections between Milada Horáková, Anti-Semitism, and the Black Lives Matter Movement by Ivy Helman.

This month more than most, I feel like I have so much to say that I don’t really know where to begin. It doesn’t help that next door they are remodelling an apartment and, outside my window, there is a crew drilling up the sidewalk and another roofing the house across the street. The noise and its echoing are overwhelming on Prague’s narrow streets.

Perhaps the best place to start is with a similarly loud occurrence. On June 27th, Prague commemorated the 70th anniversary of the execution of Milada Horáková using the city-wide intercom system. Minute-long excerpts from her trial and execution were broadcast throughout the day. Horáková, the only woman to be executed during the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia, was a long-time proponent of democracy and women’s rights. In the field of women’s rights, she focused on the status of women and children, spending considerable effort on women in the workplace and reconciling their work with family responsibilities. She was also an outspoken critic of the Nazi Regime, having spent time as a political prisoner in Terezin. When the war ended, she joined parliament, but resigned right after the communist take-over. After continuing to speak out against the Communists, she was arrested in September of 1949 and charged with attempting to overthrown the government. She along with 12 others were interrogated and tried. Four of them, including Horáková were sentenced to death. She was publicly hanged on the 27th of June 1950. Eighteen long years later, she was posthumously exonerated, and in 2000, the Czech Republic unveiled a commemorative tombstone for her in the National Cemetery at Vyšehrad Castle. In 2017, a film was made about her life and legacy. Continue reading “Listening to the Noise: The Connections between Milada Horáková, Anti-Semitism, and the Black Lives Matter Movement by Ivy Helman.”