why Jews should ride with Muslims in Sydney

Watching the events in Sydney unfold, I somehow ended up thinking about what it means to take responsibility for our entire community, even when they fail us. Here's my take on this question in The Forward.

My ears perked up when I heard the news about a potential terror attack at the Lindt Chocolat Cafe in Sydney. “Potential” terror attack, because for a while the nature of the situation was unclear. And then came the now-familiar black flag with white Arabic lettering, and what was murky became just a tiny bit clearer.

For some reason, my thoughts went to what this moment must feel like for the average Muslim living in Australia. Or in London. Or in my own New England city. Because that is an emotion I recognize. Though they had nothing to do with the crime, I imagine that these Muslims experienced that all-too-familiar feeling, that gnawing fear deep in the stomach, that in my house is called, “Oy. Not good for the Jews.”

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on catcalling and compliments

Two pieces of information regarding my latest piece on HuffPost Women. 

1 - I have been shocked to see the online reaction over a video of a woman being repeatedly catcalled. Catcalls are not flattering. They are an attempt to assert power.

2 - The news about a Rabbi videotaping women is horrifying and disgusting. The news that it has become standard Orthodox practice for male rabbis to be in the room while women dunk in the mikvah for conversion is a perversion of Judaism, full stop.

So, following, a history of my relationship to the unwanted gaze.

To the men who made me hide my womanly body

I remember the dress. I felt so grown up wearing it. It was a gift from my great aunt and uncle who owned a clothing store in Nashville. I stood in front of the bathroom mirror and stared at myself. Adjusted the sleeves so that they were ever so slightly off the shoulder. Marveled at the buds of breasts that were beginning to appear. Then I would quickly pull the shoulders back up, alarmed at how old I seemed reflected in the harsh bathroom light. I would slowly spin around, examine how I looked from every angle.

It was still a girl's dress. But the girl inside was just a tiny bit woman.

I wore it that day, walking in Jerusalem, where we spent many summers, through the Arab market. The air smelled of spices, leather and olive wood. Though I could feel the presence of my parents and sister behind me, I walked ahead, tasting, for a moment, a grownup freedom. My focus stayed on the tiny shops, hawkers trying to entice tourists into their entryways. It was midday, but dark in the market, the sun blocked by the ancient stone walls of the old city.

A hand slipped gently into mine. I'm not sure what I was thinking. That one of my parents had reached out, not wanting to lose me, most likely. But the hand felt unfamiliar. And I felt myself being pulled to move faster. When I finally looked up, I saw that a strange man had hold of me. His grip was firm. I was too surprised to know what to do.

I'm certain it was less than a minute until my parents noticed and grabbed me away. The man ran. His back disappeared into a dark alleyway. I didn't really understand what had just happened. That a man had tried to steal me away. For the first time, it seemed I had come up against how the rest of the world viewed my changing body, and it was not exactly what I had expected. In that moment I became aware of the gazes of men as I passed by. I was nine years old.

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my racist summer vacation

So, I know I've been away for a while, holidays, new school year, four kids times three pair of shoes each = I've made friends with the woman at Zappos. Also, I've begun work on a book, fiction for a change. I'm hoping to have it done before my youngest graduates college. In 2028.

This blog post in the Forward is edited down, but I'll put the longer version here and link to the edited one. After the war this summer, I am worried what the Jewish community around the world is becoming. I'm not interested in minimizing the anti-Semites that have come out of the woodwork, nor the genuine evil within Hamas. But I don't want those things to change who I am and what I believe in.

See, I'm so worried, I just ended a sentence with a preposition. 

For some reason, when parents are speaking with their young children, they often employ the royal “we.” “We always say thank you when given a gift,” “we wash our hands after feeding the goat,” “we don't bite our sister.” This formulation is most commonly used in the aspirational, as in, “despite the fact that you've just bitten your sister for the third time this week, we, the powers that be, do not condone such behavior, and expect you to do better in the future.” 

This way of speaking always grated on me. It seemed by some verbal alchemy to remove responsibility from both the child and the parent. With my own children I favor the “responsibility all around” approach. My response to chomping on one's sister - “the next time you bite her, you will have no TV for a week” - puts the onus on both of us. The child will suffer consequences, and I will suffer as I follow through on my threat for a whole entire week, even when said child begs with the most pathetic eyes ever.

In July, I heard this “we” over and over as Jews around the world (appropriately) condemned the horrific murder of Mohammed Abu Khdeir. “we Jews don't do this,” they claimed, even as empirical evidence to the contrary mounted. Some Jews do do this. But they are clearly the exception. Jews know what it's like to be persecuted. That means we don't hate Arabs because of who they are, but we hate how some Arabs behave. We are most certainly not racists. Ok. If you say so.

Until recently I felt vaguely proud of the manner in which my whole community handled questions regarding race. Then last month, I found myself becoming one. A racist, that is. 

This summer, as sirens blared, we experienced the physical stress that comes with even the few runs to the bomb shelter that we had in Jerusalem. The flip in your stomach, rush of adrenaline, heart racing, that washes over you every time you hear a siren. Any siren. Last week, driving on the bucolic 2-lane Cape Cod highway, an ambulance approached. As my breath quickened, I glanced in the rearview mirror. My daughter smiled back at me and whispered, “tzeva adom.” Red alert.

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wherein I avoid talking about politics

I don't generally write about politics. Not that I don't have strong political views. I do. But I don't feel as though I need to be yet another voice in the cacophony of voices drowning each other out on TV and in the press and at your family dinners....

So the following is my musings from Jerusalem, the war raging on the ground and on the airwaves. It's published in The Worldpost, which is the best place I could think to publish it on their vast platform. Maybe it should have been in Huffpost Parents?

I was out to dinner in Jerusalem last week with a group of friends, some American, some Israeli. It was a mostly upbeat evening, with good food and wine, a bit too much of both. Thoughts of the war wandered into the meal like a hungry cat nudging at our shins under the table, but there was plenty of levity as well. Most of the Americans at the meal would have been considered fluent in Hebrew by nearly any standard. The conversation arrived at the one piece of language acquisition that can trip up even those of us who dream in a second language: the figure of speech.

One of the diners said she had just had the opportunity to use an expression for the first time, and she was amused that it was one that was itself already an anachronism. The phrase she used was "Nafal ha'asimon." Literally it means "The phone token dropped." It's the Hebrew equivalent of the English expression "A light bulb went off" or "It clicked," meaning "I got it" or "I finally understood." It refers to the old-style Israeli payphones, which required a dedicated phone token in order to make a call. Anyone who's ever used a payphone -- and we're getting to be an elderly bunch -- knows the feeling. You dial your number, then wait until the call connects, the money in the machine engages, and your stomach does that tiny flip of excitement when you know the call has gone through. It's Oprah's "'aha!' moment," I suppose.

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