Women and Menstruation in Torah

One week after Jews all over the world nosh on Haman’s hat, dress in kooky costumes and party until we no longer recognize the difference between the ancient Persian equivalents of Hitler and Einstein, our preparation for Passover begins. On Shabbat Parah we study the enigmatic commandment to purify ourselves from contact with the dead through the sacrifice of a young, unblemished, red cow. In many ways, this reading seems to continue the comedic inversions and paradoxes of Purim, the Jewish Mardi Gras. But surprise and delight at our continued presence on earth gives way to thoughtful reflection on emancipation from slavery and the attendant new-found responsibility we incur as a nation of free citizens. Observance takes a serious turn.

Pinkwashing, NYC Style: The LGBT Center Caves to Pressure

Watching NYC’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Center succumb to pressure to cancel a kick-off party for Israeli Apartheid Week, I feel compelled to write an epilogue to my recent post on Pinkwashing. I am reminded once again that we must be vigilant in refusing to allow queer liberation to be pitted against Palestinian liberation because as we know from our queer Palestinian colleagues, the two struggles are intertwined. On February 22nd, Michael Lucas, a right wing Advocate columnist and gay porn entrepreneur, issued a press release calling on the LGBT center to cancel the scheduled “Party to End Apartheid,” which he called anti-Semitic. He threatened to “organize a boycott that would certainly involve some of the Center’s most generous donors.” Infamous for his attacks against Islam, Lucas argued that “Israel is the only country in the Middle East that supports gay rights while its enemies round up, torture, and condemn gay people to death…”

Chapter & Verse / Poems Of Jewish Identity

Two things just brought this new collection to my attention. Our friend the poet Adam David Miller came by with a review of it, and two of the poets, Rose Black and Melanie Meyer, let us know that the first San Francisco reading from it will take place next Tuesday evening, February 22nd, at Temple Emanu-El, San Francisco (details here). “Five Bay Area writers, Rose Black, Margaret Kaufman, Melanie Maier, Susan Terris, and Sim Warkov, all published poets, invited five additional published poets, Dan Bellm, Chana Bloch, Rafaella Del Bourgo, Jackie Kudler, and Murray Silverstein, to contribute to this collection of poems of Jewish identity.” Chapter & Verse: Some notes and observations
By Adam David Miller
When Rose Black handed me a promo sheet for Chapter&Verse I read “Five Bay Area…poets, invited five additional…poets…to contribute to this collection…,” I wondered what manner of work was this. With the thin-skinned, fragile, ego-driven, fractious nature of many poets I wondered how they even got the book together.

Verbal Violence

It was easy for the Left to be smug during the debate over violence in political discourse that opened up in the wake of the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords. The days when violent discourse – and violence – were most popular on the Left are decades behind us, while the Right seems to be constantly ratcheting up the level of verbal violence. But we don’t have to draw crosshairs over opponents’ faces to turn them, rather than their ideas, into targets. Violent rhetoric may or may not spark acts of violence – but there is no doubt that targeting individuals rather than ideas snarls the debate on which democracy depends, and weakens the connection between progressive ideas and the generous, embracing notion of humanity in which they are rooted. I learned the importance of speaking respectfully of and with those with whom I violently disagree from the most conservative people I’ve ever known personally: the students at Stern College for Women of Yeshiva University who had visceral objections to my return to teaching as an openly transgender faculty member.

Why Jews Around the World are Praying for the Victory of the Egyptian Uprising

2/1/2011 Note from Dave Belden: we are delighted to see this piece by Rabbi Lerner is prominent on the Al Jazeera English website today (permanent link here). Ever since the victory over the dictator of Tunisia and the subsequent uprising in Egypt, my email has been flooded with messages from Jews around the world hoping and praying for the victory of the Egyptian people over their cruel Mubarak regime. Though a small segment of Jews have responded to right-wing voices from Israel that lament the change and fear that a democratic government would bring to power fundamentalist extremists who wish to destroy Israel and who would abrogate the hard-earned treaty that has kept the peace between Egypt and Israel for the last 30 years, the majority of Jews are more excited and hopeful than worried. Of course, the worriers have a point. Israel has allied itself with repressive regimes in Egypt and used that alliance to ensure that the borders with Gaza would remain closed while Israel attempted to economically deprive the Hamas regime there by denying needed food supplies and equipment to rebuild after Israel’s devastating attack in December 2008 and January 2009.

Spiritual Wisdom of the Week

This week’s spiritual wisdom comes from Chaya Kaplan-Lester on parshat Mishpatim. Kaplan-Lester is a Jersualem-based educator, psychotherapist, and writer who works to enhance the collective Jewish spirit. She is the founder of Havayah. Mishpatim: “An Eye for an Eye” from a Mystical Perspective
by Chaya Kaplan-Lester
Each week Jews read a portion (“parsha”) of the Torah. This week we read parshat Mishpatim, the parsha of “Laws.”

An Ancient Roadmap for a Challenge of Our Time: how the story of Isaac, Esau, and Jacob applies to Israel and Palestine today

by Rosemary H. Hayes
How influential an ancient story can be is demonstrated in the State of Israel’s insistence on its right to Palestinian territory as “promised” by their ancestral god and recorded in the Hebrew scriptures. However, in our time, Israel’s first president, Chaim Weizmann, said the opposing Palestinian claim to its own existential homeland meant that here was hot a case of “right and wrong,” but a case of “two rights.” This was substantiated by the British in 1917 with Lord Balfour’s famous declaration: “His Majesty’s Government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people … it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.” The roots of this drama lie in archaic tales of the Arab and Jewish peoples, descendants of Ishmael and Isaac, sons of the patriarch Abraham.

Spiritual Wisdom of the Week

This week’s spiritual wisdom on the Torah portion of Yitro comes from Rabbi Zalman Kastel. Kastel illuminates the virtues and limitations of authority and encourages us to always question authority, yet to submit to it when appropriate. Kastel is National Director for the Together for Humanity Foundation. Authority Trashed, Tucson, and Tunisia: Problems and Opportunities of Democracy of Opinion
by Rabbi Zalman Kastel

In rejecting elitism and in pursuit of freedom, we now face the idea that all opinions, not just people, are of equal value. Is this democratisation of opinion, combined with a breakdown in authority, a contributing factor to the madness in the world?

Discovering a Jewish Environmental Ethic During Tu B’Shvat

by Peter D. Goldberg
The Obama administration appeared serious about confronting looming environmental crises, especially global warming and resource depletion. With the new Congress challenged by science doubters and industrial supporters, the prospect of critical reform is considerably compromised. But political and technological adjustments may well not be enough to confront humanity’s ecological challenges anyway. Fundamental personal lifestyle changes, particularly in our Western materialistic values and consumer-oriented ways, may be necessary. Judaism has much of relevance to say on this.Such profound changes, whether dictated by prudence or disaster, will ultimately prove as much spiritual in character as political and economic.