My Pinkwashed Life

The title of this post is a tip of the nib to Ma Vie En Rose, a great film!

So I heard about Pinkwashing last spring, but it's gotten a lot of press recently with Sarah Shulman's Op Ed in the New York Times.

The basic accusation of pinkwashing is that Israel, seeking to win support of both gay and left-leaning people around the world, touts its record on gay rights to obscure the serious violations of the rights of Palestinians. For a well done example of this kind of PR, see Bret Stephens' video, Will Israel Survive?.

I have two responses to Sarah Shulman and those who accuse Israel of pinkwashing. The first was summed up on my friend Rich's facebook post with the link to her article: No matter what we do, they hate us. I would say it differently like this: When Israel is wrong we're wrong and when we're right we're wrong.

My second response is that of course I agree. Of course gay rights are an incomplete indicator of human rights. I've had ample time to think over the past 11 years about whether it is right that my partner and I took advantage of the benefits allowed us under the law of return and moved here while millions of Palestinians do not have the right of return to this area and while my neighbors across the green line in Wadi Fukin and Husan do not have the right to vote and have limited freedom of movement.

But for me it's not about pinkwashing, it's about reality. It's about my life. And my reality is that my family can't live in the US because my partner and I are a bi-national same sex couple. So gay rights in Israel isn't theory for me, it's fact. It's not something to like or not like, it's something that makes my family life possible. And no David, this is not about my pain. This is about my reality.

The reality is the every country that surrounds Israel has human rights issues. Nothing is black and white, and every country lives with a messy reality. Because Israel is subject to an organized media campaign of de-legitimization, and because Israel cares about its image in the eyes of the western world, for self-serving reasons no doubt, we have people out there making the case for what's good about the reality here. Whether you like that or not, it doesn't make a difference to me. I can't live in the US as a lesbian and I'm here because of the reality of gay rights in Israel.

It's not lost on me that Sarah Shulman is in all likelihood, like myself, a descendant of Sarah Imenu. And perhaps that's a good thing. We are a people with a conscience and our arguments and differences are leshem shamayim. For better or worse, the Jewish people still want Israel to be a light unto the nations and for many people it is love of justice and of the Jewish people and the Jewish tradition that motivates their criticisms of Israel. I would not for one minute want my brothers and sisters to stay silent about what they believe is right. I just ask that they remember that there are people, including gay Palestinians, for whom these issues are not words on a page, are not a matter of spin or of "washing" one way or another. There are many people whose lives are directly impacted by the reality of gay rights here - for the good.

None of us knows where this is all leading - if the decline of women's rights in Israel is any indication, nothing is working out the way we planned. I'm grateful that the anti-gay policies of the US government compelled my family to move to the place where the Jewish tradition and politics are intertwined, where the messy imperfection of reality is the challenge that faces me every day.

What Dad Wrote Me in 1983

Here's some excerpts from two letters I treasure that Dad wrote me in 1983, when I was in Israel for the year. The letters are on two airletters, so there aren't really paragraphs:

My grandfather Burstyn was, I suppose, nominally Orthodox (he was once a mashgiach (is that the word? Kashrut supervisor) on Hamburg-America line ships to the U.S. But I don't recall that they even kept a kosher home when I knew them or went to services. My father essentially gave up Jewish ritual after his bar mitzvah, moving instead into the kinds of Jewish socialism that led to the State of Israel (Mapai) as well as to Bolshevism. He was, I believe, a member of the Arbeiter Ring in his youth in the US. I never heard him utter a word of Hebrew (except maybe the Shma), and I doubt that he would have even joined a synagogue had my mother not come from a religious family. So the religious behavior of my family was conditioned by my mother - - I expect this is true for most families. We did not belong to a synagogue until after my grandfather died in 1940. Before then holidays revolved around the Pezrow...house.

Remember that Aunt Vera lived downstairs with her husband Henry Goldsmith and their son Clifford, in what had been a one-family house, and that Aunt Lil, unmarried, lived at home, as I guess did Uncle Ken until he was married in 1939. My grandfather was a pillar of one of those small, Orthodox synagogues that had never built more than the basement, as short a walk in one direction from his house as his grocery store was in the other. I'll show you the neighborhood sometime if you like. The synagogue had no rabbi in my time, because, my grandfather told me, any of the men could conduct the service and the rabbi was needed only to teach the children, who were then (ca. 1938) all grown up. They did have a cantor, who probably had another occupation. Though I have only the vaguest recollections of going to that synagogue (one of Sukkot where I and some other little boys, also grandchildren, went into the succah with my grandfather who draped his huge tallit over all of us while he read something from a scroll or prayerbook), I obviously imbibed a lot of ritual behavior at that impressionable age...


...I can't remember where I left off. I guess I wanted to say that the rigid, unyielding, narrow orthodoxy of my grandfather could not survive the decline of persecution. And considering that he lost his eldest son (cut off for marrying a shikse [yiddish word for non-Jewish woman- ed.], a story so painful that my mother never told me about it-- [your mother] found out from my aunt before she died), it's not clear to me that his religion did anything for Jewish survival, thus rendering practically as well as morally dubious what I take to be the principal argument for Orthodoxy....

There's more which I'll put in another post. If you are reading this, please pray for more to be revealed about my great-Uncle Jack - the oldest son mentioned above. We've learned so much about him this year and understand more that this was a complicated story. I truly believe that my great grandfather Mendel Pezrow of blessed memory would have done it all differently if he had it all to do over again, and I pray that the coming year will reveal more - G-d willing leading us to know when Uncle Jack died and where he is buried. His birth date was August 1, 1898, and he is remembered in the names of my son Alexander Yakov and his second cousin Jacob. Thanks to the kindness of cousins and strangers, we know the name of the woman Uncle Jack married, Edith, that she had a son, and I've made contact with that son's son. May my great grandfather and Uncle Jack's memories be for a blessing.

Parve Lime Bars

I made this parve lime dessert Key Lime Bars with a Gingersnap Crust from a recipe I got on a blog called Couldn't be Parve. http://www.couldntbeparve.com/ You could cut the sugar. I doubled the recipe and used petit beurre parve cookies for the crust. The recipe is a surprise because the crust rises to the top - I did not know that would happen! I used greaseproof paper instead of foil. Come over soon if you want some - they'll be gone quickly!

Makes 12-16 bars depending on the size
For crust
1 cup gingersnap or graham cracker crumbs (gluten-free gingersnap crumbs worked well to make a gluten-free bar)
1/4 cup sugar
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) margarine.
For filling
3 large eggs
1 1/4 cups sugar
3 tablespoons cornstarch
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/3 cup key lime juice (fresh or from frozen concentrate, bottled is not as tasty in this recipe)
Zest of 2 limes
Confectioner’s sugar for dusting
Preheat the oven to 350 F degrees. Line an 8X8 inch baking pan with foil so that the foil hangs over the sides of the pan, and spray the foil with nonstick baking spray.
If starting with whole gingersnaps process them in the food processor until finely ground. Place the margarine in a medium bowl and microwave until melted. Add sugar and crumbs and stir until well combined. Press crumb mixture evenly into the bottom of pan. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until lightly golden. Let the crust cool while making the filling.
Place the eggs in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment and whisk the eggs on medium-high speed until they thicken, about 2 minutes. Slowly add the sugar while continuing to whip on medium-high, until the mixture is very thick and pale colored, about 5 minutes.
Combine the cornstarch and baking powder and stir together to blend well. Add to the egg mixture and blend together on medium speed, scraping down the sides of the bowl if necessary. Add the lime juice and zest and mix well. Pour the filling over the the crust and bake for 30-35 minutes, until the top is set and light golden and a tester inserted into the center comes out clean or slightly damp. Cool completely on a wire rack.
Lift the cooled bars from the pan using the foil and place on a cutting board. Peel the foil away from the sides and cut into 2-inch squares. Dust with confectioner’s sugar and serve.

Gilad is home

It's so hard to put into words the overwhelming feelings I have had today. I woke up at 5:30 am, not thinking anything special, but unable to sleep. At 7 am Alen called from on her way to work to say that Gilad Shalit would be released this morning. I told the kids they could not watch any cartoons and put on the tv news, something we rarely watch here. Sasha said that all the soldiers had come home but Gilad Shalit did not come home.

We watched the build up on tv for awhile and then I dropped the kids at day care and got in the car to work. On my way to work I was listening to the radio news and several text messages came in from security updates I got. Then I sat at work with one eye on Haaretz.

I talked to my boss about how one of the people being released today is the woman who blew up the Sbarro restaurant in August 2001, right after Alen and I moved to Jerusalem. His friend's daughter, Malki Roth, was killed in that bombing, and her parents started Keren Malki in her memory to help families of children with disabilities.

I read online about the other woman who everyone was talking about today - the one who lured a 16 year old boy from Ashkelon over facebook and got him to Ramallah where he was shot. I remember when that happened.

I went to the bank. The person who served me is someone who has worked there since I lived here. He said no one's mind is on work today. I started talking about the Sbarro bombing and the bombing at Moment cafe that happened in March, 2002. I was a block away when it happened, though I did not tell him that. He told me about a customer who was right in the cafe and was miraculously unharmed. We agreed that we should hear only good news.

I came home and watched Gilad return to Mitzpe Hilah. We postponed dinner to watch Noam Shalit talk to the press at 6 pm. In our Sukkah at dinner Gabi said, "I don't understand why 1,000 Palestinian prisoners are exchanged for one person. It's a damn iska (agreement)."

We talked about how Sasha was less than 2 months old when Gilad Shalit was kidnapped. I tried to imagine what 5 years has meant - to him, to his parents. That's Sasha's whole life, all his growing, all his years.

I once heard Elan Ezrachi talk about how Israel is considered a "high context society" - where what happens to the nation affects each person. I have never felt it more strongly than today. The kids' day care provider was telling me how she had the kids watch the news and how people would be asking, "do you remember where you were when Gilad Shalit was released?" I was too overwhelmed to think of what to say. Then she asked me (maybe a little suspiciously), "were you watching this today"? And I reassured her, yes, yes, the tv, the radio, the internet, yes, I've been glued to it.

And all day I'm wondering - what does it mean to be a parent, to be a child, to be a citizen of this place. I so often wonder what I am doing here. And I have thought of something I heard on the radio - how one of the Hamas leaders, I think it was Haniyeh, told a reporter how he admires the Israeli spirit and commitment, how the Israeli people cared so much about one person.

And I thought of the poem, "Each of us has a name", and of how what has gone on with Gilad Shalit has expressed the notion that he who saves one life is as if he saved the entire world.

And I've felt sad because with all the joy of Gilad's release there's still the overwhelming sadness of the situation we are living in and the sense of intractability. And the fear - that the release of people who have taken innocent lives will lead to more terror attacks, that any one of us could become G-d forbid Noam or Aviva Shalit and any one of our children could be Gilad Shalit. And amazement at the nobility and persistence of the Shalit family, how they have stood their ground and fought for this day, and incredible joy that it is finally here.

It'll be a New Year

I had one of those innocuous conversations today. With someone I really like, someone I was happy to be talking to, someone I had not seen in awhile.

She asked how I am, how the family is, in a way that indicated she cared and wanted to hear. So I said it's been a hard time, the past 6 months since Lucas died, that we saw his family, that it was hard.

And she said, "it'll be a New Year". Meaning well, it's a nice thing to say.

I didn't say a lot of what's on my mind - how I don't want to go to Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur services, how in the New Year Lucas will still be dead, how the world will still be a place where a 4 year old boy can suddenly leave, where a family can be left with grief.

Yesterday, September 11, I did not think much about Lucas. I thought about all the people who died that day 10 years ago.

But today, September 12, I'm back to where I was. Not looking forward to a New Year, not knowing what it means to make a fresh start when a piece is, and will always be, missing.

And knowing that this is what people my age, which is not that old, and some younger, do all the time. That figuring out how to live with loss is basically figuring out how to live. I don't have it figured out yet.

Many years ago someone told me a year is important because after a year, you've gone through all the seasons. I have no doubt next high holidays will be easier. For now I'm dreading the thought of trying to be present as we read, "who shall live and who shall die". Alen's been listening to a Leonard Cohen version of it in the car - I don't know how. I changed the disc when it came on.

Painful Driving Questions

Tomorrow is six months since Lucas died. Last night, I looked at 192 photos of him that his aunt Lisa has on her facebook. The whole time feeling how I still can't comprehend this.

On the way home from work today, Sasha was with me thanks to strep throat. A coworker and friend was in the car with us. Sasha started talking about places he wants to go for his birthday and mentioned that Alen said we could go to Trinidad. I wonder if she did.

So I asked him why he wants to go to Trinidad and he said he wants to see Lucas's toys, and that he wants to see Lucas. So I said you know if we go there, we won't see Lucas, he's dead. Then Sasha started asking about if he was buried. Then he asked if he was in one of those things Dracula goes in (because we have a book with a picture of a vampire in a coffin, and it's the only picture of a coffin Sasha has ever seen). So I tried to explain what cremation is, in Hebrew, and that when someone is cremated there are ashes, but Sasha didn't really know what ashes are. Then Sasha said it was too bad because he wanted to see Lucas, and I explained that we can't see people who are dead and that Lucas's body isn't here anymore and we can't see his spirit.

My friend didn't say anything.

Later in the ride I told Sasha I wanted to tell him something about my friend's father (that he produces musicals) and Sasha said, "what, is he dead?"

Then we talked about being grandparents, and people dying when they are grandparents or great grandparents.

The way it is supposed to be.

And I have a whole new pile of students, wonderful students, who don't know, who didn't hear, and still friends who for one reason or another we have not told, and time goes on. And I still feel that I have no idea what I believe anymore, that the G-d I believed in before this happened was more like Santa Claus, that I have no idea who the G-d is that I believe in anymore, and that the abyss remains very close. That am dreading the long prayers of the high holidays and the unetaneh tokef. And that my heart is with our family in Trinidad.

The 17th of Tammuz - Repairing the Breach

I've made some progress looking for Uncle Jack. It's not very pretty and somewhat chilling.

I was never able to learn Uncle Jack's real story. Grandma said he "fell in with a bad lot." I think my father told me Jack's father wanted nothing to do with him but that Aunt Lil kept in touch with him in the 1930s.

Uncle Jack was arrested in Boston when he was young. Drove a car in a robbery, which he claimed he was not connected with.

In 1930, he was living with a wife and stepson in NY.

I found the stepson who died in 2005. His widow spoke to someone who is helping me, and said that he grew up in an orphanage and then on the streets before he joined the Navy.

This stepson had a son, who is not mentioned in his obituary.

That's three generations - father estranged from son, stepfather estranged from stepson, father estranged from son.

In a letter to the stepson's widow I wrote:
I think that, if my great-grandfather Mandel had everything to live over, he would have tried to find a way to reconcile with his son, and that in some way I am carrying the desire to make some healing of this breach.

Today, the 17th of Tammuz commemorates the day the Romans breached the walls of Jerusalem. Only today I realized that when we gave Sasha the middle name Yakov, we were also naming him after Uncle Jack (Jacob) Pezrow/Pesarevsky.