don't believe the headlines

As I sit avoiding the news about tonight's debate, here's something to take your mind off. Ignore the sensational headline. We're all perfectly fine. No need to arrange a candlelight vigil or anything. But the Trumpian winds are blowing and they encourage just this kind of bad behavior. So, vote early and often. This piece appears in today's Kveller.

I live in a notoriously Jew-y suburb. Local summer camps serve only heckshered (kosher certified) snacks, club sports play on Sundays, and Supercuts has a line out the door right before Passover. For a religious family, this makes life easier in a whole host of ways. And, to ease my liberal conscience, the town has a startling diversity, with numerous churches, a mosque, and a Hindu temple.

So, despite alarms sounded daily on my Facebook feed, there are ways in which I am shielded from anti-Semitism here in my bubble, and my children are, as well. I feel unabashedly good about this.

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take the money and run

This may be a bit esoteric for some, but in Israel the mikvah (ritual bath) issue is a big one right now. And, lest American feel superior, in many communities, Orthodox run mikvaot will not allow Conservative or reform conversions in their pools, because, cooties. No, actually, they believe they'd be seen as condoning non-Orthodox conversion. In the Forward today, I explain why sometimes separate but equal could be a step in the right direction.

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what I did on my summer vacation

Sometimes as a religious feminist I feel stuck between a rock and a hard place. I am clearly hated by the religious establishment in Israel, and I've become accustomed to it. But when secular Israelis have no love for me either...I'm left wondering what else I can do but laugh. In today's Forward I tell a little story where my mouth may have gotten the best of me, but I'll blame that on my father. Heredity is a bitch. 

This is not a story about Women of the Wall. That is a story for someone else to tell. So many women have been dedicated to that cause for so many years. I am just a sometimes joiner. A tourist, if you will.

But my daughters really wanted to go. So, despite my dislike of crowds, and of getting up bright and early in order to be spat at and called a Nazi, how could I say no?

When we arrived at the Western Wall gate, the coffee I had chugged at home only 15 minutes earlier had not yet fully kicked in. And so it took a moment to notice that the women’s security line was moving at a snail’s pace while the men — carrying full bags, backpacks, even guns — moved quickly through their lane.

Next to our metal detector, there was a man with a velvet kippah going through each woman’s bag with a fine-toothed comb. He removed books and paged through them, and I couldn’t for the life of me imagine what exactly he was looking for.

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a picture is worth a thousand words

This piece in today's Sisterhood at the Forward is the result of many recent conversations I've had  with women about the picture we have in our mind when we hear the word doctor, or President, or Jew. And what we can do to change those pictures. 

When I was a kid, we had a famous riddle that I heard/told dozens of times. It involved a man and his son who were in a car accident. The man dies instantly, and the son is rushed to the hospital. The surgeon is about to operate on the boy, and suddenly exclaims, “I can’t operate on this boy. He’s my son.”

There was a delicious fun in watching as the brows of those listening to this riddle would slowly furrow, heads tilting. I’d be giggling inside, full up with the knowledge that they would surely kick themselves when they heard the solution. Because, amazingly, they almost never came up with it on their own.

Read more: http://forward.com/sisterhood/344264/why-is-it-so-hard-to-get-used-to-a-woman-wearing-a-tallit/#ixzz4DYnHj7BW