Women Jewish News April 23, 2018

Celebrating Women and Mother’s Day Supplement to Jewish News April 23, 2018 jewishnewsva.org | April 23, 2018 | Women | Jewish News | 13

Women Dear Readers,

W

hile we are gearing up for Mother’s Day next month, this section devoted to women is certainly about more than moms—although those special women are

always front and center, of course!

No longer confined to the home tending to the kitchen and laundry, women are everywhere—working, marching, breaking religious barriers, running for office…and of course, taking care of children, husbands, and parents.

Although there’s plenty to write about concerning today’s hottest news topics with women and Jewish connections—from the #MeToo movement to the Jewish women— young and old—who are front and center leading marches about gun violence, we’ve decided to steer clear from all of that and instead, focus on less ‘hot button’ issues.

And, so, Benita Watts’ first-person account of attending her first BBYO convention as both a mom and an advisor is filled with a special spirit and pride…for her community, her Judaism, her position as interim city advisor, and for her son. Plus, those of us who spent countless days and hours at BBYO conventions will be glad to know that the organization is alive and thriving.

The article on page 16 by a busy mom will most likely be relatable to any woman or man who finds themselves juggling the responsibilities of parenthood with…well, just making it through the day.

What women in Israel and the West learn from each other is the topic of an in-depth exploration of how American Jewish women have viewed (and idealized) Israeli women vs the reality and the impact that American Jewish women have had on Israelis. It’s an interesting piece from our JTA partner. Page 18.

Naturally, we have other articles, too…one about books to read for “crazy busy moms,” another about a rabbinic student producing a video featuring women and transgender Jews teaching how to wear tefillin, and still another about a 34-year-old experiencing a mini-midlife crisis.

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14 | Jewish News | Women | April 23, 2018 | jewishnewsva.org

Terri Denison Editor

Women First person

A mom’s first BBYO convention Benita Watts

I

recently spent two days with 120 teenagers. Sounds horrific, right! However, what an honor it turned out to be. As interim city director of Tidewater BBYO, while preparing for Spring Cultural, I quite honestly was dreading it. How wrong I was. Not having been a B’nai B’rith Girl, I did not know what to expect. I had some understanding from my 15-year-old son, but it did not prepare me for my first BBYO convention. Yes, 40 years late, but I feel very privileged to have had the opportunity to attend.

The event kicked off on Friday when we welcomed the out-of-town teens from the Eastern Shore, Richmond, and Charlottesville. Reunions took place everywhere as old friends got together, having not seen each other for some time.

After candle lighting, kiddish, and motzi, the teens proceeded to devour 30 pizzas.

After birkat and evening service, it was time for opening ceremonies. Then, I had my first taste of just what these teens learn through BBYO. The outgoing Regional boards (one each for boys and girls chapters) took the stage and formally opened the convention. The outgoing presidents were seniors and this weekend was bittersweet given that they will be moving away from this “family” with which they have become so connected. The maturity and leadership skills these teens displayed were astounding and I could feel their bonding and love. Before we called it a night, there was time for a quick competition between the chapters—Chopped: Dessert. For those not familiar with the show, each team is given some ingredients with which to create something edible. In this case, it was graham crackers, dessert toppings, and cans of whipped cream.

Great ingredients for a mess, but the judges seemed to try all the offerings and great fun was had by all. Then, it was time to find house guests and head home.

Saturday began bright and early with Shacharit. After services, the competitions began in earnest: Mini-golf,

project runway, debate, and family feud.

It appeared that everyone took part in at least one competition. After lunch came the competitive events that each chapter had worked on for several weeks including best music video and best song, along with chapter shirts, which each chapter had designed and ordered for this convention. Everything these teens presented, they had prepared themselves as a chapter or team with minimal adult input.

Following a couple of hours free time, when we left the Campus and ate dinner (and I even managed to get some laundry done), we returned to the JCC for evening competitions. These are the sporting events—super-competitive, but everyone had a great attitude. Basketball, volleyball, and dodgeball for the sporty ones, and giant games for the not-so-sporty: Connect Four, Jenga, and Corn Hole.

I heard my son telling our guests that Havadala is special, and it really was. I have never experienced one as meaningful.

Then, just before the much-anticipated dance, was my favorite part of the

The 28th Virginia Council Board. From left to right: Michael Zedd (Richmond), Jared Gordon (VB), Shane Bishop (Richmond), Zach Sissel (VB), Phillip Goldstein (VB), Mike Stein (Richmond), Andrew Gross (VB), Corinne Brager (Richmond), Jamie Friedman (VB), Leah Weinstock (Richmond), Ariela Press (Richmond), Margaux Gaser (Richmond), Allison Comess (VB), Shelby Brown (VB).

weekend—Havdalah. I heard my son telling our guests that Havadalah is special, and it really was. I have never experienced one as meaningful. Led by the boys’ Schliach and girls’ Sh’licha, candles were lit and carried by the outgoing board members before every other teen entered the room in a snake-like procession.

Thirty minutes of singing took placed accompanied by the guitar and every teen participated. It was so, so special and afterwards my son asked what I thought.

He told me he loves this Havadalah service and that he hopes I get to experience it at a larger event when it is even more impressive. He says he feels such a strong sense of belonging and connection with his fellow BBYO members. Could I ask for more as a parent?

Sunday was election day for the Regional boards. Again, the teens impressed me with their organizational and leadership skills, running the proceedings themselves with occasional guidance from staff. The skills exhibited by the teens on the current Regional board were outstanding and their interactions uplifting. Candidates spoke with poise and confidence and whether or not they were successful, the experience will

Benita Watts with her son, Daniel.

certainly stand them in good stead.

After elections and lunch, the weekend concluded with installations and closing ceremonies. With that completed, the out-of-town teens got on their buses, the local teens went home, and all was quiet.

And, I was left to contemplate this incredible experience. I am so grateful that my son and his friends are so involved in BBYO and I look forward to following their experiences as they embrace the opportunities offered by this amazing organization.

jewishnewsva.org | April 23, 2018 | Women | Jewish News | 15

Women Eight things you have to give up when you have a lot of kids Zibby Owens

(Kveller via JTA)—When I found out I was pregnant with my fourth child, I cried. In fact, I cried for a couple weeks— when I wasn’t vomiting, that is. I had a 10-month-old at the time, and I was still getting used to dealing with three kids.

How I could possibly manage four?

I wasn’t one of those carefree, laidback moms who dealt with things calmly and happily. I like order, clean rooms, being on time, being in control.

And as desperate as I was to have my first three kids, I’d literally never considered having four. Be careful what you wish for: The fertility gods to whom I’d prayed overdelivered. I was going to have to deal with the blessing I’d been given.

Now, almost four years later, I’m still standing. Well, sitting. Actually, I’m slumped over a table at a bookstore cafe

with my third cup of coffee and it isn’t even 9 am. But my gorgeous, sweet, hilarious son is the light of my life. He’s so popular that I spend half my time juggling his social schedule: multiple parties on the weekends, seemingly constant playdates with both girls and boys. Some days he’s the one who keeps me going when I want to return the other three. (Haha, just kidding. I would never write that.)

I knew that in having a big family, I’d have to give up certain things (like sleep).

But here are a few of the bigger surprises: 1. Walking. These days, I run everywhere. My physical therapist is literally on vacation in Morocco—that’s thanks to all the sessions I paid for after a winter spent sprinting up and down Park Avenue in wedge boots. But no matter how much time I budget to get somewhere, something unexpected always happens and

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16 | Jewish News | Women | April 23, 2018 | jewishnewsva.org

I have to race to pick up or drop off the kids. Like this morning—I was ready (on time!) to drop off the big kids at school.

I was about to join them on the elevator when I heard my little guy start wailing “Ooww-eee!” Turns out he dropped “Caps for Sale” on his foot while hanging out on the pantry floor. Typical.

2. The blow dryer. I started drying my hair in the 1980s with my mother’s megaphone-size diffuser attached to a salon-size blow dryer. I dried my hair every day, sometimes twice a day. But now that I have absolutely no time to do this—I barely have any time to shower—I’ve realized that all that drying has been a complete waste of time. Yes, my hair is a little wavier. Yes, icicles form on the ends of my hair as I drop the kids off in the frigid mornings. But hey, no biggie!

3. The first hour of every party. You know those invitations that say “7 pm cocktails; 8 pm dinner?” I’m not getting there for cocktails. If I get there at all.

These days I barely get to attend parties that don’t use Octonauts paper plates— but if I do go to an adults-only affair, I’m late. When the school benefit I was supposed to attend, for instance, was starting—I was still collecting goodie bags at a birthday party with three of my kids, who were running loose in a gym, high on cake.

4. Reading newspapers the day they arrive. Call me a Luddite, but I refuse to give up my newspaper habit. There’s something about print that I just can’t relinquish. It’s efficient, too: I can skim three newspapers in about 20 minutes and get enough of the cultural zeitgeist to keep up. The problem? I don’t usually have 20 minutes. So I pile the unread papers on the kitchen counter thinking I’ll get to them the next day. Or the next.

5. Any self-care that occurs outside the house. Eyebrow shaping? Pedicures?

Not going to happen. I can’t do anything that requires an appointment. (Except for highlights to hide the gray hairs. That’s

non-negotiable.) Everything else I’ve figured out how to do myself. I feel like Frenchy with her pink-dyed hair from Grease in the “Beauty School Dropout” scene. I’m like a self-taught, pathetic excuse of an aesthetician—but, hey, it works. Mostly.

6. Sending thoughtful baby gifts. I used to send personalized trains and step stools, monogrammed bibs and diaper bags. Now I can’t remember how many kids even my close friends have. To be honest, I can’t even remember my own kids’ names half the time! Actually, I think I might have sent a baby gift, but I can’t really ask to confirm. But I promise to try again with the next kid.

7. Handwritten thank-you notes. I was brought up to use my best, personalized stationary to write neat, thoughtful letters to anyone who gave me anything. I did this for years, and kept it up until I got to the third kid. By the time my fourth kid arrived, I was lucky to even email a note.

(I feel terrible about this.)

8. Committees. Board meetings? Yes. Brainstorming and fundraising and hosting events? Yes. But any organization that requires my participation on a committee is out of luck—I’m not leaving the kids for any breakout sessions. If something is going to add more emails to my life, I say no.

Yes, it’s true: I’m a sleep-deprived, running-frantic-down-the-street mom with wet hair in winter who hasn’t seen the inside of a workout studio in a couple years. But as they say in The Greatest Showman, “I am brave, I am bruised, I am who I’m meant to be, this is me.”

Zibby Owens is a freelance writer and mother of four in New York. She co-authored the book Your Perfect Fit [McGraw-Hill]. Follow her on Instagram @zibbyowens.)

Kveller is a thriving community of women and parents who convene online to share, celebrate and commiserate their experiences of raising kids through a Jewish lens. Visit Kveller.com.

Women This Israeli-Ethiopian woman brings the food of her cultures to Harlem Josefin Dolsten

NEW YORK ( JTA)—At Tsion Café in Harlem, visitors can order a vegetable injera, an Ethopian sourdough flatbread topped with vegetable, lentil and chickpea stews. There is traditional shakshuka, a dish common in Israel and the Middle East where eggs are cooked in a hearty tomato sauce. And then there’s the scrambled eggs with caramelized onions and lox.

The assortment of menu items— random as it may seem—tells the story of the eatery’s owner, Beejhy Barhany, an Ethiopian Jew who moved here by way of Israel.

Tsion Cafe, which is located in the historic Sugar Hill district of the Manhattan neighborhood, represents all of Barhany’s identities.

“It’s a celebration of the Ethiopian, Israeli and American [cultures], so we are

encompassing and celebrating all of these together,” she says.

Barhany, 42, also wants the restaurant to serve as a cultural center of sorts. On the wall hang paintings by local artists, and on the weekends, bands play jazz, a nod to the neighborhood’s influential role during the Harlem Renaissance, when African-American artists, musicians and writers converged in Harlem.

Barhany came to New York in 2000.

She was enamored with the city on a trip here after completing her Israeli army service.

In this city, she feels less defined by her race or status as an immigrant than she did in Israel.

“Here you could be whomever you are and nobody knows who I am. I’m Ethiopian, I’m a New Yorker, I’m here, but I’m not categorized as Ethiopian, Russian, Yemenite,” she says, referring to immigrant groups to Israel that have faced

various types of discrimination.

Barhany was four years old when her family left Ethiopia for Israel. The journey took three years, passing through Sudan, Kenya, Uganda, and Europe. They arrived in Israel in 1983, in the early days of the Ethiopian migration to Israel.

In Israel, the family initially lived in an immigrant absorption center in Pardes Hana, in the country’s north, later moving to the city of Ashkelon. At 13, Barhany decided to move to a kibbutz, where she lived until joining the army at 18.

Barhany disputes what she sees as a common but distorted narrative: that Ethiopian Jews were poor and suffering prior to moving to Israel. She says her family chose to leave Ethiopia because of a longstanding wish to return to the Jewish homeland. “[W]e voluntarily left Ethiopia because we wanted to be in Israel,” she says. “We had our land, we had our properties, we

didn’t starve or anything like it. We were doing very well.”

Barhany opened Tsion Café in 2014 with her husband, Padmore John, a native of the Caribbean island republic Dominica.

Barhany is also the founder of Beta Israel of North America, a group for Ethiopian Jews. She founded the group in 2000, so she could come together with others who shared her background. She estimates that some 1,000 Ethiopian Jews live in the New York area.

Her two children, a 12-year-old girl and 8-year-old boy, are part of the Ethiopian Jewish community here—and other communities as well.

“They are Ethiopian, Israeli, American, Caribbean,” she says.

“I’m a proud Ethiopian, a proud Jew, a proud black female living in Harlem, so all of that is part of me,” she says. “I celebrate all of that.”

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jewishnewsva.org | April 23, 2018 | Women | Jewish News | 17

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NEW YORK ( JTA)—American Jewish women have idealized Israeli women as feminist role models since the days of prestate Israel, when women were photographed plowing fields alongside men.

Post-independence posters featured images of female soldiers fighting alongside men. A chain-smoking Golda Meir served as Israel’s prime minister nearly 50 years before a major American political party would even nominate the first woman for president.

It’s a persistent myth of female empowerment, but a myth all the same.

“Until recently there was a perception that Israel had real equality for women,” says Francine Klagsbrun, a New Yorker and author of the recently published biography Lioness: Golda Meir and the Nation of Israel (Schocken). “Women were in the army.

Only later did we learn they often had servile positions and in the yishuv [prestate Israel] women were laughed at when they tried to build roads. It was not the equality women here believed they had.”

Israeli and American Jewish women have learned much from each other since Israel was born 70 years ago. There has been an intertwined mutual influence, say leaders in both countries. American women were inspired by powerful Israeli role models.

And Israelis absorbed, often slowly, feminist ideas from their sisters abroad.

“We were seen as superwoman,” agrees Anat Hoffman, a Jerusalemite who is the director of Women of the Wall and the Israel Religious Action Center, which advocates for civil and religious rights.

“But we suffer from the disparity of salaries and domestic violence” as American women.

“For too long, Israeli women were romanticized and objectified. How many times I heard the sentence ‘but I thought you guys were so strong!’ No, I’m much more like you than you can imagine,” she says. “Romanticizing has done neither of

us a lot of good.”

Golda Meir had much to do with that romanticization. In 1948, the Kiev-born, Milwaukee-raised kibbutznik was the face of Israel during a barnstorming fundraising tour of the United States ahead of the inevitable war for independence. She went on to serve in a wide range of Jewish Agency and government roles before becoming prime minister in 1969, a position she held until 1974. Since then, there has not been another woman in the role.

“She continues to be seen as a woman who made it, one to emulate, a strong woman who knew how to use both her political and womanly skills to get ahead,” Klagsbrun says.

Overall, American Jewish women have had greater impact on Israelis than the reverse, she says.

“Once the feminist movement became important in America, it very much influenced Israelis in forming their own,” Klagsbrun says.

Yet there was resistance to American feminism among many Israelis. Writer and political activist Betty Friedan wrote in the New York Times in 1984, “On my first pilgrimage to Israel, in 1974, Golda Meir had refused even to meet with me.

Hostile Israeli women leaders, like so many male Jewish leaders in the United States, considered ‘women’s lib’ a threat to the Jewish family.”

That resistance continues today, some say.

Elana Sztokman, a writer focused on gender issues and a rabbinical student in Israel’s Reform movement, was raised in Brooklyn and moved to Israel in 1993.

She lives in Modiin and is involved with Women Wage Peace, a grassroots organization that brings together women from every sector of Israeli life—religious and secular, conservative and progressive, Arab and Jewish—to press for a settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“In my experience, Israelis aren’t really interested in influencing America or being

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influenced by America,” Sztokman says.

“There is a resistance of native-born Israelis to impact by American-born women.” By way of example, she noted a distinct lack of interest by the Hebrew-language media in covering events spurred by American issues, like a March for Our Lives in Tel Aviv.

“There’s a common sentiment here that Americans come here, stay in expensive hotels and have a lot of money to spend without really understanding the nuances of Israeli life,” she says. “Israel is also preoccupied with its own issues,” like terrorism and security.

Nevertheless, “We the feminist movement, the social change movement, have learned a tremendous amount from American Jewish activists,” says Hamutal Gouri, a founding leader of Women Wage Peace. “Especially when Israel started building its civil society and social change movements, so much was influenced by theories and practices of Jewish American organizers.”

Women of the Wall, which advocates for women to pray as they wish at the Western Wall, embodies the influence and limits of largely American feminist ideas in Israel. Americans launched the group in 1988. They were in Israel for the First International Feminist Jewish Conference when Rivka Haut organized a group of 70 to pray together at the Kotel.

Klagsbrun headed the procession while carrying a Torah scroll, making her the first woman in history to bring one to the Western Wall.

The prayer group meets at the start of each month at the Western Wall to pray and has met fierce resistance from the Orthodox rabbi who controls the site.

Members have been arrested for trying to read from a Torah scroll.

But while a 2013 poll found that half of Israelis supported the aims of Women of the Wall, and many of its members and supporters are native Israelis, there has been no public outcry to hold the government accountable for agreements it has made with the group and broken.

Women of the Wall continues to be regarded as an American import.

“The issue of religious courts, of divorce, of agunot, still thousands of them here, that’s far more important than

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Kaufman. NCJW convened a symposium in Israel in March that brought together 260 Israeli and American women.

“We are constantly engaging with Israelis when they come to the U.S.,” she says, “and we would love to formalize an exchange program.”

Shalvi, a longtime Jewish educator, described how she was influenced by religious feminists in America. On her first visit to New York, in 1977, she met Judith Hauptman, a Talmud scholar and future rabbi, and Arlene Agus, who revived the ancient custom of celebrating Rosh Chodesh (the start of each month) as a women’s holiday. They told her about Ezrat Nashim, a group advocating for greater ritual roles for women. At the time she was principal of Jerusalem’s Pelech school for Orthodox girls, which from its founding included Talmud study. Yet she had never thought of women leading worship.

On her second visit to the U.S., in 1979, Shalvi was first called to the Torah.

And burst into tears.

“I realized it was the first time I had seen a Torah scroll up close,” she says. “I was 53 years old and thought if I’d been a boy, I would have done this 40 years earlier. The unfairness and injustice of it struck me so.”

Since then there has been enormous growth in the number of women seriously engaged in Torah scholarship, from the plethora of post-high school seminary programs for girls in Israel to graduate programs in Talmud for women in the U.S., including at the Orthodox Yeshiva University, and in Israel at Bar-Ilan University.

Despite the cross-fertilization of ideas, a mystique about Israeli women still has a hold on American Jews, says Galit Peleg, Israel’s consul for public diplomacy in New York.

It has been revived by Wonder Woman herself. Since portraying the superhero in the 2017 film, Israeli actress Gal Gadot has since been nearly ubiquitous in American media, charming late night talk show hosts and audiences alike with her confidence and warm candor.

“She’s the Israeli woman that kicks ass,” says Peleg, Peleg recently spoke to a group of

Americans at a pre-Passover event and mentioned, in passing, having served in Israel’s military. From that moment on, that’s all the American Jewish women wanted to hear about, she says.

It seems that the Wonder Woman effect—the image of Israeli women as strong, confident, funny and warm— tenaciously clings to the way American Jewish women think of their Israeli sisters.

Yet there are challenges unique to Israeli women, say experts.

“The state of constant conflict and a divisive political landscape is a reality that especially marginalizes women’s voices,” according to the NCJW/Dafna Fund report. “Rising nationalism and religious fundamentalism that is increasingly part of the political atmosphere is further preventing the inclusion of women’s voices in public debate.”

There are also ways in which Israeli women are trying to bring their confidence to American Jews.

Take Supersonos. The organization was created in Israel three years ago by advertising executive Hana Rado to increase women’s visibility as speakers, on panels and at conferences, and on boards of directors. Supersonos has grown rapidly in Israel and in newer outposts in Berlin, London and New York, says Keren Kay, a co-founder. Three years ago it had 100 women in its network of professionals. Now it has over 2,000, says Kay, who lives in New York.

But the culture gap has an impact: Supersonos holds networking events in New York. And though there have been powerful women working on the same issues in the American Jewish community for years, Kay was unaware of them.

“It’s a dialogue,” says Women Wage Peace’s Gouri. “I wish there was more of a dialogue and that there was more of an exchange. There is so much for us on both sides to learn.”

NCJW’s Kaufman says: “We have a lot to learn from the Israelis and we have a lot to offer them in building civil society.

There’s learning back and forth from both sides. We’re going to try to build this woman-to-woman relationship over the next 70 years.”

Women What my mini-midlife crisis made me realize Danielle Ames Spivak

(Kveller via JTA)­—My recent 34th birthday brought a mini-midlife crisis. A 48-hour period of existential questioning concluded with a watershed moment: I need to have more fun.

That’s easier said than done. With work, three little kids, bills, and trying to run a traditional Jewish home, I realized I’ve completely forgotten about fun.

When I was in my early 20s, Saturday nights were spent at nightclubs in the Meatpacking District followed by shawarma runs with friends at 3 am. So what happened? After decade’s worth of stresses—which included a husband in surgical residency who was never around, losing my first pregnancy at 22 weeks, and working full-time through nauseous pregnancies with very short maternity leaves—fun had slipped to the bottom of my very long to-do list.

It’s hard to prioritize fun when everyone in your orbit depends on you for survival. But I now realize I need to shift some of these priorities around.

One recent evening, my five-year-old daughter made a joke, and I laughed out loud. Her response? “Mom, I have never heard you laugh before.” That isn’t true, of course. I do laugh, on occasion—especially when I am watching Keeping Up with the Kardashians.

But she had a point: I am too serious.

My mother—who is smart and loving with a doctorate in Jewish studies—seemed to only enjoy life’s little luxuries once her kids left home, like playing mah jongg and going to the gym. For the sake of my sanity, however, I can’t wait until retirement. I need to lighten up now.

“Me time” is something I realized I’d confused with “fun time”—that an occasional manicure wasn’t cutting it in the “fun” department. But since I’m not able to jet off for a long weekend in Cabo with my girlfriends, I’m learning to recognize that fun can be had during life’s little moments.

I’m determined to unearth the slightest instances of humor and lightheartedness

in my everyday life—“being in the now” is my new mantra.

Every weekend, for example, my Instagram friends share their “Sunday Funday” posts. I decided it’s time I had a Sunday Funday, too. The Sunday after my birthday, my husband was working, and my kids and me were coughing as if we had hairballs in our throats. But instead of feeling sorry for myself, we all bundled up—it was 60 degrees—and went to the park.

We climbed to the top of the slide and, one by one, my kids rode down on my lap. We giggled, amusing ourselves in the most simple way. Thoughts of “what should I make for dinner?” faded and I let go of regret that we weren’t going on vacation anytime soon. Instead, I saw the playground through the delighted eyes of my kids. And you know what? It was fun.

Later that week, I brought my fouryear-old daughter to my office. Together, we explored a place familiar to me through her eyes. We ate m&ms and colored at my desk. Another day, my two-year-old son and I did errands, but we stopped on the sidewalk to wait and watch airplanes in the sky, jumping and squealing together.

Don’t get me wrong, I also need adult fun in my life. Whether it means my husband and I get out more to comedy or dance clubs, or to play tennis, or to drink martinis—or all of the above—I’m working on making that happen.

Still, the first step was me acknowledging that fun is a state of mind. I’ve learned that no amount of money or time or energy will bring fun—the key is being present.

As my Nana Goldie always said, “The past is history, the future is a mystery, but the present is a gift.” This year, I am going to relish in the present and laugh a lot more along the way. Who’s with me?

Danielle Ames Spivak is mom to three kids ages five and under based in Los Angeles.

Kveller is a thriving community of women and parents who convene online to share, celebrate and commiserate their experiences of raising kids through a Jewish lens. Visit Kveller.com.

jewishnewsva.org | April 23, 2018 | Women | Jewish News | 21

Women Five books even crazy busy moms will want to read Jordana Horn

(Kveller via JTA)—So many people tell me that they don’t have time to read. I understand the dilemma. Reading is often portrayed as an immersive experience, one that you can’t do without a fullfledged commitment of an event-free day and a deck chair.

Well, would-be reader, I’d say that is wrong. I read in five-minute increments wherever I go, and you can, too, with these riveting books easily broken into small, digestible and delicious chunks.

I Am, I Am, I Am, Maggie O’Farrell’s memoir, is perfect in so many ways.

Among those ways is how suitable it is for those who only have time to read in truncated chunks like commutes or carpool lines: The book is written in a

series of 17 short stories about near-death experiences O’Farrell has had over the course of her life.

“Thank You”.

22 | Jewish News | Women | April 23, 2018 | jewishnewsva.org

From the very first gripping tale of a hike, I found myself riveted by how well she marries well-crafted prose with fascinating experiences. O’Farrell takes the reader along the course of her life, whether it is in a near-miss on a mountain hike or submerged beneath a riptide in a deep, night-darkened sea.

The memoir jumps around O’Farrell’s life non-sequentially, much like how a parent’s mind leapfrogs all over the place in the middle of the night. In choosing to have her stories not be recounted in linear time, the author makes the implicit case that experience is not valuable due to its proximity to the present, but rather due to its proximity to the roots of who we are as people.

Who we are is determined by where we have been and what we take away from those experiences. From childhood encephalitis to near-drowning to miscarriage to birth, we are a jumbled aggregate of feelings, longings and fear.

That jumble takes its fullest and particularly rich form in her chapter, Daughter, in which she recounts the experience of an unexpected pregnancy turned into a daughter with a long list of allergies, several of which could trigger lethal anaphylaxis. As O’Farrell writes about the effects of living with a child with a life-threatening condition, parental readers will feel their very heartbeat synchronize with hers.

“Your lives are conducted with a constant background hum of potential peril,” she writes. “You begin to experience the world differently. You may no longer go for a walk and see a garden, a playground, a farm full of goat kids. You must always be tabulating and assessing risk: that pollinating silver birch, those food wrappers in the rubbish bin, those flowering nut trees, those gamboling dogs, shedding their dander and fur into the air.”

Her masterful choice of the second person to reel you into her life and her love leaves you—no pun intended in a book about near-death—breathless.

Mothers of Sparta: A Memoir in Pieces,

by Dawn Davies, is similar to O’Farrell in that it is a collection of easily readable, hard-to-put-down essays, but radically different in that it is a more humorous and fiercely honest collection.

I’ll cut to the chase: This is one of the best books I have ever read. I can’t say it better than the reviewer who wrote on Goodreads, “This is the first book I have read that both wrenches your gut with heartbreak and makes you laugh out loud at the humor at the same time.” It’s that marriage of pain and humor that Davies makes perfectly in her prose.

Davies tells the story of her itinerant life, moving from place to place as a child, and her tales of finding love and creating a new blended family. She does so with flagrant, fierce honesty, and that honesty resonates with truth and purpose. As she watches her children swimming at night and takes pictures of them, she writes: “And as you click two simple photos, paper fossils that will one day remind you how they once walked the Earth, you realize you have taken everything for granted.

Your time with them. Their brief speck of time as children, the soft faces that turn to you as if you are the sun, the fact that time seems to move so slowly when in fact, it is whipping past you at one thousand miles

Women per hour and why you haven’t flown off into space is beyond your comprehension. They will never stay yours, for they weren’t yours to begin with.”

What a beautiful kick in the face that is.

Mrs., by Caitlin Macy, is a contrast to the others. The novel is a wild and crazy ride through the wild and crazy world of Manhattan schools, parents and students.

I have always been fascinated by this world in the anthropological vein of Wednesday Martin’s Primates of Park Avenue. In a world with so much ambition and so much wealth, what could go wrong? A lot, as it turns out.

Mrs. follows an independent woman as she navigates her way through this world from the vantage point of smart, detached and yet inextricably involved outsider. She has a front-row seat—and even, semi-unintentionally, a role—in the downfall of a prominent and beautiful socialite mother and her Manhattan family. If you liked Big Little Lies, either the book or the show, you will read this and immediately start casting parts in your head.

Only Child, by Rhiannon Navin, is pretty much the antithesis of a light read.

It’s an emotionally gripping, riveting book that will seize you and not let go.

It’s written from the point of view of a six-year-old survivor of a school shooting,

suspicions were unfounded).

The nosy neighbor Lucille, right out of Central Casting, provides a great triangulation to the relationship. Each person grows unexpectedly from encountering the others. Let’s go with the food analogy and say the book is sweet rather than savory. I’m not making the case that it will change your life. But like those M&Ms carefully hidden in bags of trail mix, the book will make you happy. And sometimes that’s enough.

which initially I worried that I would find cloying. Instead, after getting past some of my issues with language used (“would a six-year-old really say that in that way?”), it was a relief of sorts to read things through a child’s viewpoint.

After all, personally, I am in a mom’s head basically 24/7, so the opportunity to see things through a child’s eyes was the equivalent of shaking the kaleidoscope and acquiring a new sight in exchange. It was a gift, as a parent, to be able to see these events that preoccupy me daily through the eyes (even if fiction) of a child.

It was also truly enlightening to get back in touch with ideas and ideals of forgiveness through childhood innocence.

Kids have feelings, we remember as we read this book, that may not be nuanced in the way ours are, but have their own nuances and permutations and unexpected elements just the same.

Jordana Horn is a contributing editor to Kveller. She has written for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Forward and Tablet. She has appeared as a parenting expert on the Today show and Fox and Friends.

Kveller is a thriving community of women and parents who convene online to share, celebrate and commiserate their experiences of raising kids through a Jewish lens. Visit Kveller.com.

The Story of Arthur Truluv, by Elizabeth Berg, is more of an on-the-go snack for those who might be intimidated by a more immersive and emotional read.

This novel is a comparatively quick read and is upbeat about second chances at happiness. Arthur is a widower who meets a troubled teenager, Maddy, at the cemetery, and strikes up a completely appropriate friendship with her (I know, I am among the more cynical, and that struck me as suspect, too, but my

jewishnewsva.org | April 23, 2018 | Women | Jewish News | 23

Women This video will feature women and transgender Jews teaching you how to wear tefillin Josefin Dolsten

(JTA)—Rachel Putterman never learned how to put on tefillin when she was younger, so when she enrolled in rabbinical school, she consulted with fellow students. But the 52-year-old couldn’t quite get the hang of how to properly align the leather straps and tiny boxes of the phylacteries, which Jews are commanded to bind on their arm and forehead during weekday morning prayers.

She went looking for tutorial videos on YouTube, but was disappointed to see that many of the videos featured only men.

“It was just upsetting to me that there was nobody that looked like me. It seemed like a glaring gap,” Putterman, a student at Hebrew College, a pluralistic rabbinical school near Boston, says.

She also noticed that many of the video tutorials were not shot professionally and

were of poor quality. Putterman decided to change that.

Last month, the former public interest lawyer set up a fundraising page for money to produce a high-quality video featuring a diverse group of people showing how to wrap tefillin. The video, which Putterman is directing and fellow Hebrew College rabbinical student Gita Karasov is producing, will be called All Genders Wrap and include a diverse group of 10 people, including women and men of various ages, ethnic and racial backgrounds, as well as transgender and gender-nonconforming Jews.

“I want to make a statement to counter what you see when you go on YouTube, that there are people of all genders engaged in practice,” says Putterman, who enrolled in Hebrew College as a part-time student in 2013 and is now a third-year full-time student.

The video will also feature a Jew who wraps tefillin according to Sephardic rather than Ashkenazic customs, and a lefthanded person (left-handed people wear tefillin on the right rather than left arm).

Though she initially received a positive response from members of the Hebrew College community, she was not sure if the project would resonate with a larger audience.

“My instinct was that this was going to strike a chord within a small subset of the Jewish community: the part of the community that is interested in laying tefillin but not the Orthodox,” she says.

Tefillin have traditionally been worn almost exclusively by men, and most Orthodox congregations continue to follow that practice. However, many non-Orthodox synagogues encourage both men and women to strap on the leather boxes, which contain handwritten

parchments with texts from the Torah, during prayer.

Putterman’s instinct turned out to be right—she surpassed her goal of $5,000 in eight days, with over 100 people donating.

She will use the money to hire a professional crew (the cast is made up entirely of volunteers) to shoot and edit the video. Putterman hopes to release the video in September, and also plans to launch a website that will feature the personal stories of each of the 10 instructors.

Putterman says that making the video was a way for her to unite her passions for feminism with her Jewish practice.

“I’ve been a feminist activist my whole life,” she says. “There’s something so profoundly satisfying about this visual imagery of non-cis[gender] men wearing this stuff, and not just wearing it but engaged in the practice.”

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24 | Jewish News | Women | April 23, 2018 | jewishnewsva.org