Comments on Sisterhood

Comments that came to me from a reader via facebook got me thinking about this wonderful piece by Bernice Johnson Reagon and because of how the world works these days I googled her and when I couldn't find it I wrote to her and she wrote back (which is amazing, because she's one of my role models) and told me how to find the piece which is printed on someone's blog here, and found in an easier downloadable word format if you google Bernice Johnson Reagon Coalition Politics, and published in a wonderful anthology called Home Girls, which is a must read, and if you never read this article, read it now. It relates exquisitely to what I wrote in my last post but please don't think I am comparing myself to this amazing woman - she is light years ahead of me and her website is here.

Sisterhood, Coming out again, and lesbian mainstreaming

Here's a song I learned at the Seneca Women's Peace Camp in 1988 - suitable for Parshat Beshalach

Come come sisterhood, come joy eternal
Our love is mystical, our love is carnal
I'll dance nimble steps, I'll be a Miriam
Leading my people across the water

It's a rewrite of a Shaker tune. The Shakers, along with my grandparents pictured on the post below, roll in their graves when I sing it.

I came out in 1987, while working in the Battered Women's Movement. I was surrounded by women's community and much influenced by a close co-worker who considered herself a separatist. With her and a bunch of other women, I went to Michigan, the mythic women's music festival, in the summer of 1988, a life-transforming experience. I joined a women's mystery school around that time and went on six retreats with a group of women. I joined Achyot Or, a Jewish women's group that meets every memorial day weekend. I was surrounded by sisterhood.

This week Felice Yeskel, a guiding light and spirit in Achyot Or, a tremendous woman and role model for me, died. You can read more about her here.

On the day of Felice's funeral this week (and the day of Debbie Friedman's funeral), I went to give a talk to a small group of North American volunteers about same-sex Bi-national couples. I made a power point presentation and told them about Alen's and my story, as well as about how immigration is part of our family's stories. It was the first time I had done anything like this and it was very well received.

On the way home, I picked up a soldier who was on his way to Beitar Illit, the Haredi settlement near us. I said I wanted to support anyone from Beitar who serves in the army. As we drove up the hill I considered what I would tell him about myself, and eventually told him I have a female partner. He checked my language in Hebrew to be sure I meant Bat Zug and not Ben Zug. I could almost feel the change in him as he sat next to me. For him, an ultra-orthodox man, it's probably the first time he's ever met an out lesbian. We had a wide-ranging discussion that included his asking me some questions like how we had our children. Did I open his eyes? Does this make change? I don't know.

In 1990, a few years after I came out, I went to hear Starhawk talk on Valentine's Day. Those of you who know anything about her and anything about me know that our religious lives and directions are very different, but I definitely felt at this presentation that I was in the presence of a Holy person. One thing she said I remember - that it was time to work together - for women to work with men. I found that hard to accept, but in some level I took it as true, and have worked with men almost ever since, and for the past ten years, intensively. It's been a hard change for me to swallow, based on where I came from, but shortly after that time I let go of whatever separatist direction I might have gone in.

Yet and still. I miss sisterhood. I miss the intensity of the world I came out into. Alen and I ordered DVDs of the L word and we've been watching it. It's nice to connect with lesbian identity in some way. Our lives are SO mainstreamed - to the point where we have to work to find and be part of any kind of gay or women's community.

This is written in love for all my friends of all the years - especially in my heart are all the women who supported me when I came out, Lisa who went to the Starhawk talk with me (can that be true? On your birthday?), Felice's partner and daughter, and all my sisters from Achyot Or. Your thoughts and feedback are sincerely requested!!!

Grandpa moves in!

This is for my newly found cousin, Andrew, a 25 year old with a keen interest in genealogy who knows more about my grandfather Julius's family than I've ever heard.

I had one grandparent for 22 years. My grandmother Nellie died years before I was born. My grandfather David Edward, known as Teddie and Eddie, died when I was 6. That left me with no maternal grandparents. I was lucky, however, that I still had a whole bunch of great-aunts, great-uncles, and many of my mother's 25 first cousins. My mother still has two aunts - her aunt Lena just celebrated her 100th birthday last week.

I've always known a lot about my mother's family, helped by family genealogists such as Herbert, z"l, and his wife Rosalie, and now my mother's cousin Lola. Then last year we happened to find online a connection to someone here in Israel who is married into my mother's mother's family. We were able to supply him with details and he told us things we didn't know about the Diamonds, my maternal great grandmother's family from whom I took my last name.

Meanwhile, back to the paternal side. My Grandpa Julius, z"l, died when I was 11. My Grandma Zena, z"l, lived another 22 years. And though she died 15 years ago, most days it still feels to me that she lives in my house. That's partly because her furniture is in our living room and bedroom, items from her home hang on my wall, and just a few weeks ago Alen knocked down a picture of her at 13 or so with her own mother, Pearl (Antine) Pezrow, my great-grandmother.

But the other way Grandma lives here is inside my head. Two weeks ago Alen was frustrated by how our kids write on the walls, break things and lose things. Not to mention the moms who, while we don't write on walls, still manage to do our share of damage around here. We were looking for the thing that fits inside the top of the food processor to push down the vegetables onto the grater for making latkes. It was a stressful Friday as we tried to get ready for my brother and his family to visit - clearing out two guest rooms, tidying, cleaning and cooking. Alen said, "We need to take better care of our things." What I heard her say was, "You are completely worthless" or something along those lines. It's a voice I hear pretty much every day, the voice of Grandma's disapproval echoing off the walls as I look at any item of clutter or dirt that I find here, or when the kids misbehave.

It's worse than that though because were I to become a tidy, uncluttered person, I would be betraying my mother and father, as in the statement of Grandma's I remember best, "Your father was always a tidy person; I don't know why he married your mother."

I lived the first 33 years of my life in that middle space, balanced between my grandmother, the consummate homemaker, and my mother, her unacceptable daughter-in-law, and my father, who believed "the modern woman's dowry is her earning power," and supported my mother in her quest for a PhD, tenure, all the way up to her deanship.

When Grandma died, I felt something loosened, and I spent 15 years trying to honor her memory, acknowledging openly the positive aspects of her legacy - her homemaking, her sweet tooth, her love that I felt very strongly when I was very small, the many gifts she gave constantly. See how she looks in the photo above. She was a charming woman who cared deeply about others.

But at Hanukkah dinner I decided enough is enough. Through tears I told my brother, "I want Grandma to move out of this house. It's been 15 years. I want her to go."

Later that day I saw her picture with Grandpa on the refrigerator. I wasn't sure what to do - take it down - leave it there?

Then this Friday my father sent me a message he got from Andrew. We never talked much about Grandpa's side of the family. It wasn't a pretty story and we never knew much. With few descendants, the Burstyn line seemed to have faded away other than us and our first cousins. And there wasn't anyone holding up that end.

So I figured Andrew finding us is a message. Grandma isn't moving out. Grandpa is moving in. I have a chance to learn a whole lot more about him, his family, where he came from. Maybe through this blessing I will find some balance. Stay tuned.

Countdown time!!!!

Well I heard from KBY today that at least 10 of you have contributed to my $49 from 49 friends (acquaintances are also welcome!) campaign for my 49th birthday. The countdown is on as the birthday is coming right up. So please....your donation will make such a difference to our community and you'll have the joy of knowing you are supporting progressive Judaism in the Judaean Hills! Make your donation here and THANK YOU!!!!

What I want for my birthday and making a difference

So friends - for my 49th birthday, which is coming up next week, I'm looking for 49 people to give $49 to Kehillat Tzur Hadassah.

I was talking tonight with a friend who is a leader in a Modern Orthodox congregation down the street. I told her that when we lived in Jerusalem, it didn't matter which congregation we belonged to. All the synagogues we were part of had plenty of people active in running them. No one particularly noticed if we came to shul or not (except maybe if our kids made too much noise).

Since we've moved to Tzur Hadassah, it's not really like that. Somehow over three and a half years we've gotten very involved in synagogue leadership. I've written elsewhere on this blog about what an eye opener this has been for me. I have so much more appreciation for the lay leaders of the congregation I served back in the states. With a minyan of other families, we find ourselves putting heart and soul and endless hours into keeping the congregation going. It's hard work and many times I feel we are not so successful.

Meanwhile, we're sustaining non-Orthodox Judaism in the Judaean Hills, which is actually no mean feat. We have ultra-Orthodox communities on either side of our town and a growing modern Orthodox community in our town. Of the so-called secular population, there are plenty for whom the synagogue they don't go to has to be orthodox. And many people in town just don't care whether there are synagogues of any kind here.

We keep going - with a preschool, a bar/bat mitzvah program, plans to start a youth group, weekly services, holiday programming, blood drives, food collections, etc. etc. We offer a non-orthodox alternative and lots of families want that, even if it's only a few times a year. The kids in the shul and community are living a different kind of Judaism than they can get elsewhere - it's something that's very important to me to offer my children.

If you've read this far, I know you are wondering how you can make that $49 contribution for my birthday. Just go to http://kbyonline.org. Then go to step 1 on the right and choose "Tzur Hadassah". And follow the rest of the instructions to donate.

Your support of Kehillat Tzur Hadassah will be a wonderful birthday present. And for every dollar donated, yes every dollar, I pledge to spend 15 minutes during the coming year either working for the synagogue (yes, I'm doing it anyway) or parenting Gabi and Sasha (yup, I'm doing that too). And if you ask nicely, I might even agree to spend a free minute or two enjoying my partner (instead of discussing synagogue business). So make that donation today! and THANK YOU!!!!!!

Music Rant

This rant was inspired by my sister in law, Eliza, who published on her facebook status last week, "what is your favorite music to clean by?" This evoked rage in me, because I did not have a snowball's chance in hell of being able to clean by music, since I could not get an hour to myself in the house when the kids weren't there - either controlling the public space - tv or music - or sleeping and when whatever choice I made of music would either wake them up or annoy them or Alen.

So now....finally....I have a couple of hours to myself in the house to clean or do whatever I want and can't find anything I want to listen to. Here's the problem - I have no energy or time to find new music, and I don't like anything we have here. All those cds of music I used to love - Jackson Browne, Elton John, Dire Straits. I put them on and I don't like the way they make me feel. I don't want to be the person I was when I liked this music. None of the old songs are doing it.

So I look for my Garth Brooks double live cd. Some of you may remember Sasha broke one of the discs in half last year (or was it the year before?). But I'm supposed to have one disc still. I clean up all the cds and put them back in their cases. 30 minutes go by. The cds look better and will stay organized for 45 minutes after the kids get home. No Garth Brooks. Nothing I want to listen to.

Now I am sure if you know me or you've read this far, you will understand that I am seriously old. That's right - no Ipod, no Itunes, no ear plugs. No downloaded music, not even a cd burner as far as I know. I have not made the leap. I don't know how and don't have time to figure it out.

So this is a plea - if you have some old cds that you are not using, something good, Cris Williamson, Meg Christian, Heather Bishop, Margie Adam, Garth Brooks, David Allen Coe (google him if you want to see real music :-)), please pack them up and send them to me - I'll send you my address. And please, send me some good music karma if you have any and concrete baby steps I could take to return to the world of music.

P.S. Last March, I bought a radio CD for my car. The CD never worked. I went back once, they said they fixed it, it wasn't fixed and I couldn't find time since then to go again. I have 3 more months to get there. I mostly listen to talk radio. How did I become this person?

What Would You Do, Dear?

Anyone remember those books by Maurice Sendak - What would you do, dear? and What would you say dear? They were great!

Ok, here are two challenging scenarios from today. For those who read my earlier post on coming out again, this first scenario can be titled Not Coming Out Again!

Visiting a very ill colleague in hospital - actually I was outside with her family. Her brother in law (looks somewhere between orthodox and ultra-orthodox) says, "Do you have a husband, a family?" I demur, some kind of nod, he asks how many kids I have, their ages, we move on. Here's the kind of situation I don't come out in. The nursing home where I volunteer sometimes is about the only place where I don't speak up. Back when I lived in the states, I had these kind of encounters nearly on a daily basis. Mainly due to Alen's job working with youth, we kept what I would call a very low profile while not being in the closet exactly. Today these situations are so few and far between that they grate. I almost always tell people, I have a partner, which in Hebrew comes out female. I've even had people correct me, you mean "ben zug" and I say no, I mean "bat zug".

Challenging scenario number two was harder. We went to the library and Gabi picked out a book from the "time tunnel" series - they had read one in her class. Then at dinner she tells me she's gotten to a chapter where they get uniforms, and that they are in Poland, in some place that hates kids and all the kids are in some kind of institution. My ears perk up and I run to her room to find the book - one of the chapters is entitled "carts full of clothes arrive in the ghetto". I immediately call the mother of one of her friends who doesn't answer and then my brother for advice.

After several calls the consensus seems to be not to take the book away from her because that will make it mysterious. Her friend's mother suggest she update me on the story as it goes along and Gabi suggests she read the book to me. (O joy.)

The friend's mother also says she would probably not have agreed to the book, but I didn't look closely and might not have realized at first glance that it is about the Holocaust. I would probably be a bit less traumatized if I wasn't currently reading a book about the Shoah myself (A Death in Vienna by Daniel DaSilva). I tell Gabi the book is probably too old for her, might scare her, talks about a difficult time, and she says she wants to continue reading it. My brother tells me they learn about the Shoah very early here - this mom is not ready.

What would you do dear?