Oh Yeah, And

19 days until Ordination.

(?!?)

Gone and Back

It was a lovely Pesach, full of family and friends and a nice dose of Israel. Our celebrations centered around the holy city of Haifa, but I did get to sneak out and see friends in Jerusalem for a day or two. I got to see the ultra-Orthodox folks cooking mangels (bbq,) in Gan Sacher, got to drink coffee at Tmol Shilshom and Cafe B’Gina and Tachanat HaCafeh (there was a lot of coffee) and drink Arak at Uganda and sit on my friend’s mirpesset (balcony? that’s the right word, right? I’ve forgotten English) with a gorgeous nighttime view of the Old City walls, got to wander around a little aimlessly with friends, bumping into other friends and having one of those spontaneous Jerusalem Hol HaMoed days. Jerusalem is like a love I’ve never quite gotten over, and probably never will. I don’t have to know now if we’re meant to be together long-term, or just have passionate reunions every now and again before returning to our regular lives. Either way, I’m so glad for Jerusalem. It splits my heart right open to be there.

There was also a day trip to Cesaria to see dear friends who were parked there for the week. Too much goodness. Not enough time.

There was a lot of truly lovely family time as well–catching up with important family that I don’t see often enough, and getting to play at a new house on a moshav in Galilee as part of that. The part with the family was the most important part, and the part about which I’ll say the least.

Now I’m home, jet-laggy and catching up with the life whose deadlines haven’t vanished just because I did for a while.

Hope those of you who had Pesach had it but good.

Publishers Weekly!

Ladies and germs, the first review is in. (This is from PW, the industry rag that reviews books a couple of months in advance of the release date, so that (among other things) potential reviewers can skim the listings of new books and decide what looks interesting and worth their time. Surprised’s pub date is August 15.)

In this memoir of her journey from punk-partying atheist teenager to rabbi-in-training (yarmulke and all), Ruttenberg chronicles the awakening and intensification of religious life. The book’s breezy style, mixing personal anecdotes with reflection, is balanced by thoughtful narrative about what religion is and what it demands of its adherents. The author weaves in her religious studies training gently, applying occasional references to classical theologians (Kierkegaard and Maimonides), medieval mystics (Teresa of Ávila), and modern thinkers (Thomas Merton and Elliot Dorff) as they illuminate a particular insight or experience. Although the details of Ruttenberg’s experience—including wild parties in California’s dotcom boom, a lonely Shabbat in Tel Aviv, and praying in tefillin—may be unique, her description of her growing awareness of the power of ritual, the support of community, and religion as relationship will resonate with all sorts of spiritual seekers. (Aug.)

No Turning Back Now

They have now printed and distributed invitations to ordination, with my name listed on the side along with those of my seven classmates mentsches.

Since it would be really embarrassing to have to use White-Out at this late date, I guess they’re going to have to go through with ordaining me. In, uh, 41 days.

Sweet.

I Want To Live In Bjork’s Magical World

I’ve never seen internal conflict look so startling and beautiful.

So Worth Seeing

HBO has a wonderful new documentary out called Autism: The Musical about, yes, a group of autistic kids working together in a theater group. It chronicles a few kids, as well as their parents and their struggles and triumphs. It’s heartbreaking and moving and really very recommended.

And, lucky for you, the whole thing–all 90 mins of it–is streaming online, here.

Feminism and the NYTBR

One of the best articles in the current issue of Bitch is about the way the NYT Book Review handles titles with explicitly feminist content–and, most notably, who they tap to review such books. I’ve seen this happen a few times (including with friends’ books), and it’s fascinating, to say the least, to see this tracked as part of a bigger pattern.

Sarah Seltzer writes,

The New York Times Book Review has never exactly embraced passionate advocacy—unless it was promoting Pynchon’s and DeLillo’s place in the postmodernist canon. Even worse, it has become the place where serious feminist books come to die— or more accurately, to be dismissed with the flick of a well-manicured postfeminist wrist.


Recently, Times editors—in both the daily paper and the Sunday section—have trotted out a particularly insidious formula for bashing feminist authors. First, hire a female reviewer to unleash misogynist tropes in her piece and then, lest she appear prejudiced against her own gender, throw in an illogical, contradictory statement about the importance of a less threatening version of feminism that isn’t so “polarizing,” “provocative,” or “strident.” 


The emergence of this pattern has been troubling for feminist bookworms. One nasty review was irritating, two were bewildering, and three or more became evidence of a downright bias. Professors and journalists have chastised the editors of the Sunday section for ignoring female authors and reviewers. Despite the fact that women constitute a majority of book buyers, the Times has made merely a passing effort to achieve parity on its pages. For instance, none of the paper’s “Top five novels of 2007” were written by a woman, and only 13 of 50 on its short list were female-authored.


Beyond this, though, books that take women’s issues in hand are rarely taken seriously. It’s not just that they are criticized, which they are, but rather that the books, their authors—and heck, the whole feminist movement—are routinely treated with a mixture of giggly naïveté and barbed antifeminist prejudices. In a 2007 op-ed for In These Times, media critic Susan J. Douglas noted that there’s “a robust tradition in the Times Book Review to stereotype feminists as single-minded, humorless ideologues who march daily to some shrine where we all genuflect before images of Elizabeth Cady Stanton.” 


Read the whole article here.

Here’s hoping that this trend shifts, speedily and in our days.

Happy Happy!

Hag Purim Sameach!!

Blessed Good Friday!

Happy Persian New Year (Nawruz)!

Joyous Mawlid el-Nabi!

Most excellent Magha Puja Day!

Fabulous Holi!

Enjoy Birth of Mahavira Day!

Rock on Festival of Naw-Ruz!

Happy Spring Equinox!

Today is, indeed, a very busy day for us religious folk all over the place.

Moved by Torah

Last night I had the great pleasure of seeing my dear friend Andrea Hodos do her thing. She has a dance midrash company called Moving Torah, and she’s been the artist-in-residence at Hebrew Union College (HUC) this past fall. Last night, she and her students performed a work called “On Dry Ground” that turned out to be an extended meditation on the Red Sea story (Exodus 14-15, wherein the Egyptians are chasing the Israelites, they get to the Red Sea, and have to figure out what happens next), and on moving through fear, how faith and fear work together, what Divine Providence is about. Several famous rabbinic midrashim were woven into the piece, but so were lots of juicy questions and musings on the texts and on what it might have meant to be the Israelites at that particular moment, and what that might tell us about our own relationships to God, trust, leadership, and so forth. It was really yummy.

Then, at the end, she asked a few people to offer their own stories of being at the proverbial water’s edge, and Andrea translated the story into movement, which was really cool. I can’t say that I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the creative processes inherent in dance, and it was very neat to get to have a glimpse into that. I walked out of there energized in a way that I am not nearly enough these days.

All of you reading this, go hire Andrea! She is dazzlingly gifted at taking things we’re used to seeing and spinning them on their head, literally.

Ordination is in 63 Days

But who’s counting?