As double minorities, LGBT Jews are small in number but have left a profound mark on the course of history.

Inherent in Jewish identity is a drive for social justice, or tikkun olam, the belief in repairing the world. It’s not surprising then, that much of LGBT history is woven with a deeply Jewish fabric.

In honor of Pride Month, here are some of the LGBT Jewish trailblazers who broke new ground and transformed the consciousness of society in ways that were unimaginable at the time:

Politics:

Harvey Milk:

As the first openly gay person elected to public office in California (1977), he became the most visible LGBT figure of his time and set the stage for further mobilization of gay rights in American politics. Once in office, Milk quickly moved to sponsor a bill outlawing discrimination against gays and lesbians in the workplace that, when signed into law, became the most progressive such measure in U.S. history. Only eleven months into his term, he was assassinated, brining an even greater emergence of gay activism in the late 1970s. In 2009, he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Barney Frank:

In 1987 he became the first congressman to publicly come out as gay. In 2012, he would make history again as the first person to marry someone of the same sex while serving in congress.

Roberta Achtenberg:

In 1993 she became the first openly gay public official in the US to be appointed to the Cabinet when the Senate confirmed her appointment to serve as Assistant Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development under President Clinton.

David Cicilline:

The now congressman from Rhode Island made history in 2003 when he became the first openly gay person elected to be mayor of a U.S. state capital.

Jared Polis:

In 2009 Polis became the first openly gay person elected to congress in their first term, and the first gay congressman to raise children while in office. He is currently running for governor of Colorado, which if he wins, will make him the first openly gay person elected to that position.

Barbara “Babs” Siperstein:

In 2009 she became the first transgender person appointed as a member of the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

Culture:

Joel Simkhai:

The founder of the mobile dating/hookup app, Grindr is an Israeli Jew. Love it or hate it, Grindr has revolutionized the way gay men interact and has helped remove the veil of obscurity for gay people—particularly in non-metropolitan areas. When it was launched in 2009 it became the first gay social app to be available on the iTunes App Store and has since become the most popular gay mobile app in the world.

Renée Richards:

In 1977 she competed in the U.S. Open women’s competition, marking the first time a transgender athlete was allowed to play in a competitive sport.

Dana International:

In 1998 she became the first transgender person to win the Eurovision singing competition, representing Israel.

Adam Lambert:

In 2012, Lambert’s second studio album, Trespassing premiered at number one on the U.S. Billboard 200, making him the first openly gay artist to top the album charts.

Martine Rothblatt:

In 2013, she broke new ground when she became the first transgender woman to be ranked as the highest-paid female CEO. Her influence long precedes that, however. She is also one of the co-founders of Sirius Satellite Radio and is a pioneer in artificial intelligence.

Activism:

Magnus Hirschfield:

Dubbed the “Einstein of sex,” he founded the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee in 1897 which was the first recorded advocacy group of LGBT rights in history. His research supported the validity of sexual diversity and transgender identity and he later went on to perform the world’s first sexual reassignment surgery. In 1933 his institute and its library were destroyed when the Nazis took power in Germany.

Larry Kramer:

Dubbed the “angriest man in America,” he channeled his firebrand style of activism to combat anti-LGBT forces and expose bigotry during the AIDS epidemic. In 1982, he co-founded GMHC (Gay Men’s Health Crisis), the nation’s first and largest HIV service organization. Then, in 1987, he founded ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power), a more radical group that pressured government agencies to focus on resolving the crisis.

Evan Wolfson:

Regarded as the architect of the marriage equality movement, he founded the Freedom to Marry and is credited with driving the Supreme Court’s decision to allow same-sex marriage nationwide. As a Harvard Law student in 1983, Wolfson wrote a thesis on the legal basis for marriage equality well before the topic had been seriously considered anywhere around the world.

Jazz Jennings:

At the age of 7, her interview with Barbara Walters turned her into an overnight sensation, becoming one of the youngest people to publicly identify as transgender. Now 17, she has been the face of reality shows and documentaries and is a bestselling author, sharing her story of transitioning.

Edie Windsor:

In 2010, Windsor sued the federal government after she was forced to pay more than $360,000 in estate tax because it did not recognize her marriage to Thea Spyer, a Jewish woman whose family fled Europe before the Holocaust, despite their 44-year relationship. Represented by star (Jewish) litigator, Roberta Kaplan, her landmark victory at the Supreme Court in 2013 set the precedent for what would soon pave the way for marriage equality in all fifty states two years later.

In Judaism, one of the most important principles is the act of remembrance. It’s what has sustained our community through thousands of years of persecution; and likewise, as a gay Jew, invoking that same mindset is important to me when exploring LGBT history. Remembering these people, and celebrating them, today and everyday, is how I express my pride— both as a Jew, as a gay person, and more so as both—an LGBT Jew.

May sharing their stories inspire others to follow in their footsteps.

Photo of Edith Windsor via Wikipedia

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Last Tuesday I heard this fascinating episode of Code Switch, an NPR podcast “cover[ing] race, ethnicity and culture.” For this round, they looked at the place that Jews occupy in America’s odd definitions of all those things. Ultimately, it…

…wasn’t totally off base. They narrated the American Jewish experience of becoming White clearly, accurately, and charitably: as a combination of White society’s whims, and of the desire (or need) to reap the benefits of Whiteness. This meshes well with the shockingly-civil social media debates I’ve gotten into with fellow Jews about our racial identity. The one thing everyone seems to agree on is that light-skinned Jews get White privilege no matter how they personally feel about it.

But before the epic success of that discussion, the episode tries to characterize Jewish identity independently of American race politics. To explain how we define ourselves. And totally flubs it.

They try! They bring on their resident Jew, Leah Gershenfeld Donnella, to present large chunks of the program material. Both by her words and by her undeniable Blackness, she makes clear to everyone that It’s Complicated. (Code Switch host Shireen Meraji says “it should be the show’s subtitle—Code Switch: It’s Complicated.”) And yet they fail almost as soon as they start:

MERAJI: All right, so we’ve answered the question, everybody. Jews are a religious group, not their own ethnicity or race.

[Gene] DEMBY: Problem solved. Well, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. OK. OK. If you take a DNA test, though, it will tell you what percentage Jewish you are. So it sounds like there’s at least some ethnic component to being Jewish.

Blink and you might miss it—amid the charming self-deprecation there’s a conflation of “race/genetics” and “ethnicity,” and a related dichotomy between racial and religious identity. When combined with the (very true) observation that race as an identity category is new, this leaves them at a loss to understand the deep roots of non-religious Jewish identity. Even when their (Jewish) sources bring up concepts like “tradition or identification,” or mention “speaking Hebrew” as a marker of Jewish identity, the hosts never seem to notice or to fit these ideas into their narrative. They talk about the meaning of 23andme, but not of Yiddish revivalism, secular Diasporic Zionism, or hipster gastropubs’ chopped liver. (I have tasted of all these things, and the last is the most satisfying.)

It’s not all guesswork. We have the numbers (thanks, Pew), we know what we think of us. A large minority of Jews (especially young ones) say they’re “Jews of no religion.” Most Jews say being Jewish is about ancestry and culture, not religion; even most Ultra-Orthodox Jews say it’s not just religion.

So definitely not just a religious group. But not “just” anything else— the main impression is of an imagined community whose members disagree about what exactly they’re imagining. How very Jewish. And useless. There’s only one traditional solution to this conundrum—smartass Jews torturously justifying their preconceived notions. I’ll go first!

My tack is to think about that most bitterly-contested of questions: Who is a Jew? Not with the intent of answering it, but to observe the points where it’s uncomfortable. Controversial.

Someone who’s born in a practicing Jewish household and practices Judaism is clearly Jewish. And if they’re non-practicing atheists? Probably Jewish, even if some say they’re Bad Jews. And if instead of atheists they become Lutherans? Ooooh. Much less comfortable. What about Buddhists? Slightly better (judging by the way my father’s voice would communicate ridicule rather than pain).

And if someone who’s not Jewish just starts calling themselves Jewish? Probably not. But if they start studying Hebrew? Going to services? Beginning the conversion process? The line’s blurry, but every Jew has some point at which they start chanting “one of us!”

So, a group that you can be in by ancestry; with initiation rites and customs that you’re supposed to follow, but don’t lose membership by shirking; that you may be kicked out of for adopting another group’s ways, depending on how much bad blood there is; and that you’re formally adopted into by practicing said rites and customs and being recognized by the community. You know what this sounds like? Someone at Code Switch knew. They did, after all, call the episode, with head-scratching earnestness, “Members of Whose Tribe?”

Image via Pixabay.

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Earlier today, a regular occurrence ran its course—JK Rowling saw a tweet that upset her, and so took to Twitter to retort. Fans have learned to hold their breath whenever she says something, because she has not been without controversy.

But this time the cause was just— the tweet that set her off insisted that Jews, as a religion, could not be the victim of racism, so Rowling spoke out to decry anti-Semitism.

Most UK Jews in my timeline are currently having to field this kind of crap, so perhaps some of us non-Jews should start shouldering the burden. Antisemites thinks this is a clever argument, so tell us, do: were atheist Jews exempted from wearing the yellow star? #antisemitism pic.twitter.com/H5xLLXTdQO

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) April 18, 2018

(The context of the original argument was a response to British-Jewish comedian David Baddiel, who reported a racist incident he experienced.)

Rowling also shared a “test” for anti-Semitism (including questions like, “Do you accept that millions of Jews perished in the Holocaust?”), and shot down arguments that since Arabs are Semitic, anti-Semitism applies to them as well. (Did she explain this is a sensitive way that the phrase was literally coined by anti-Semites to explain that they hated Jews? No, but partial credit for explaining the gist, JK.)

Of course, some Jews on Twitter gently pointed out (not for the first time) that Rowling herself may be guilty of subconsciously perpetuating anti-Semitic stereotypes. The hook-nosed, money-loving goblins of her books are certainly… familiar.

In any case, today, Rowling wins the day. And finally, a mazel tov “Nice Jewish Fangirls” podcast co-host Michal Schick, who Rowling tweeted out during the course of the conversation. You finally made it, girl.

Soon enough, Rowling moved on, as she does, and switched to pictures of Harry Potter pet cosplays and Kanye’s triumphant Twitter return, and her constant vigilance over the Internet continues.

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The woke Jewish comedy album you’ve been waiting for is here.

Nato Green is a comedian from San Francisco, and The Whiteness Album is his second release. His first album, from 2012, deals with a a lot of similar, political material, but if you can still remember that far back, you’ll know it was a very, very different time.

And what sort of politics is that? Well, The Whiteness Album tackles gentrification, white supremacy, class revolutions, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, homelessness, immigration, Donald Trump, climate change, Nazi punching, and splitting chores with one’s spouse. If this sounds like a lot to tackle in less than an hour, you hardly notice when listening to the album. Green is non-threatening, even soothing at times. His talent is operating within the world of “punch-up” comedy, attacking those in power with teeth, but never letting vitriol get in the way of a good punchline. What could be preachy is instead a smart, but not alienating outlet for frustration with the world today.

And what’s really notable about Green’s comedy is his relationship to his Jewishness. Many Jewish comedians today only invoke their identity as self-deprecation, and punchlines about anti-Semitism are usually in the past tense. Green is here to remind us that Jews are still a marginalized group, but manages to do so with nuance.

For example, Green settles the matter once and for all: Are Jews white? He gives arguments for and against, and ultimately sums up: “Too white for the police, not white enough for the Klan.”

Jewishness comes up organically throughout Green’s comedy, because it’s part of his way of interacting in the world that’s both familiar and refreshing to hear articulated. He even laments that the left claims to advocate for oppressed groups, but that Jews are often an afterthought at best.

“They sort of work their way down the list,” says Green. “They sort of get to the bottom and say, ‘Stand up for the oppression of people with nut allergies! And people who are bad at parallel parking! And Jews, I guess.'”

Is this an album to play for a conservative relative to convince them that Black Lives Matter isn’t a racist concept? Perhaps not, but it’s likely a great album to play when you get home from a protest outside Trump Tower.

So if you want a comedy album that mentions Andrea Dworkin, the candombe dances of Uruguay, and polyamory without seeming completely pretentious, The Whiteness Album is for you. And yes, it’s on Spotify. Check it out.

Photo courtesy Nato Green

The post ‘The Whiteness Album’ Is Funny, Smart, and Very Political appeared first on Jewcy.

Tu B’Shevat is many things: Ancient tax festival, kabbalistic celebration of nature, communal birthday of all trees, and contemporarily: a sort of Jewish Earth Day, a call for conversations about sustainability and our duty to protect the natural world.

Borrowing a little bit from each tradition (except maybe the taxes part), I am celebrating the birthday of the several hundred worms that currently live in my pantry.

Yes, they’re there on purpose.

Since Sukkot, I’ve been composting right in the pantry of my kitchen. The plastic shelves take up fewer than ten cubic feet in space, but contain a tiny ecosystem of worms, the occasional invasive fruit fly, and an ever-growing pile of fresh compost.

I honestly don’t know why I decided to do this. I’ve gradually shifted to being more “green” over the years, but I’m far from a fanatic. Maybe it was my desire for pets— I’ve never had one of my own. Maybe I was tired of dropping off my food scraps a few blocks away during very limited hours; my neighborhood doesn’t have compost pickup, like some others in Brooklyn. Mostly, I just thought it seemed neat. I did the research, and the maintenance costs are minimal, as is the time-commitment.

I shouldn’t have been surprised by my friends’ range of disinterest to disgust, but I was.

“I’m getting compost worms!” I excitedly told one chum who’s so eco-conscious that she was once an Adamah Fellow— and that’s a Jewish farming/social justice program.

“Oh,” she replied. “Wow. That’s rather hardcore.”

Uh oh. Had I bit off more than I could chew? Well, with many more mouths to feed now, I had lots of help chewing. With my husband’s full support (so long as I took primary responsibility), I went full-steam ahead, and received in the mail, about 500 “red wrigglers.”

The system is pretty simple: The worms live in a stack of special plastic bins with a bit of dirt and old newspaper (and that’s one thing less to recycle). When my husband or I produce raw waste— from egg shells to banana peels (things like meat are a no-no), we chop the food into smaller pieces and bury the food about an inch down in the mixture of the box, and go about our day. Over time, the old food disappears, and the worm castings (yep— poop, but it’s essentially rich soil) builds up in the stacked shelves/boxes.

Judaism has the concept of “bal tashchit,” of not being wasteful, going back to Biblical laws about not cutting down fruit trees during a war. Today, the phrase is more often used in conjunction with concepts like reducing, reusing, recycling. And food waste is a particularly frustrating need to address— nearly half of American food gets thrown out, when there are still people with not enough to eat. Furthermore, improperly discarded food can contribute to greenhouse gases, an extra kick in the pants for the issue. Much of the problem has to do with the relationship between commerce or industry and food, but individual households are also responsible for doing their part.

As for composting at home as opposed to outsourcing the job, cities like New York may have eyes bigger than their zero-waste stomachs; from finding spots for the raw food, to needing trucks to transport the goods, the logistics of how to reduce food waste create more challenges that doing-it-yourself can alleviate.

Well, fulfilling my responsibility is all well and good, but composting has also been amazing fun. It helps that I’m not squeamish about looking at, or even touching worms (though I rarely need to), but I love opening the bin and seeing the wrigglers living up to their name. I love seeing how quickly the food I leave disappears, and the rich, dark castings take their place. Sometimes the seeds that end up in the box manage to sprout, despite the lack of sunlight, and get to be several inches tall before they too are worm food, which is a cute reminder of mortality to have right under the spice shelf.

Plus, I can leave the worms alone for days, even weeks, and they’ll be fine. Name a pet that’s as low-maintenance.

I think also of the book of Jonah, when the single, God-sent worm eats the tree shielding the prophet overnight. Jonah decries the loss of the tree in a lesson about valuing all life, but I’ve come to see the worm as an industrious little hero. Maybe the Bible just doesn’t mention a soft pile of worm castings where the tree once stood, but if Jonah stopped to think, he could use the fresh soil to grow a new tree. (For what it’s worth, my worms aren’t interested in eating still-growing plants, and would not have treated Jonah that way. Good worms!)

But the most amazing result of this wormy journey has been subtle— a growing awareness of how much food scraps my household produces, and how, in ideal circumstances, they decompose and become part of the earth. It’s made me reconsider my meals in and out of my home, and where they came from, and where they’re going next.

I’m still not an eco-fanatic, but maybe I’m on my way.

Tu B’Shevat is also a strange holiday due to its timing; it’s hard to think about things growing when many Diasporic communities are still mired in mid-winter. But I’m committing to harvesting the worm castings and, when it’s warmer, filling a window box in my kitchen, just a few feet from where the worms do their work. I’ve never had a plant I didn’t kill, but I’ve been sustaining life for months now. I think I’m ready to try again. The rest I’ll drop off at a community garden, or offer to friends.

In the Torah, God commands humankind to take dominion of the earth, to rule over the other species that live there. Today, that passage is also seen as a call for responsibility of the world in our care. Well, I’ve captured the circle of life in a box, a tiny utopia for lots of little living things. I see to their needs, and in their tiny way, they’re seeing to mine.

Photo of worm via Flickr. Photo of worm hut by Gabriela Geselowitz.

The post This Tu B’Shevat: Celebrating the Worms in My Kitchen appeared first on Jewcy.

Chanukah has always been regarded as a holiday about resistance. So in these #metoo times of women speaking truth to power, you can make sure your celebration includes the story of a courageous woman rising up to defeat a fearsome enemy. The Book of Judith is coming back.

In this story, the ancient people of Bethulia block the path to Jerusalem of an invading Seleucid army. Furious, the bloodthirsty General Holofernes lays siege. As water supplies dwindle and infants and elders fall sick, the starving population prepares to surrender.

Enter our badass hero, a childless widow with a bold plan. Judith convinces the Bethulians to give her a few days to save the city. She uses her last drops of water to bathe and dresses in her finest robes. She laces up her sandals to show off her smooth ankles and heads down the mountain to the enemy camp. She convinces Holofernes that she has information critical to his success and will betray her people because they are no longer following their strict religious diet. (OK, they are starving to death and trying to survive, but luckily Holofernes isn’t up to date on his Torah studies.) Holofernes and his men are a little nervous about the strange Hebrew God who, rumor has it, sent plagues down on the Egyptians, so they welcome Judith as a turncoat. They even throw her a party.

At the bacchanal, Judith shares her goat cheese with the general, a salty snack that leaves him thirsty. When she gets him alone in his bedroom (she wore those sexy sandals for a reason) she plies him with wine until he passes out drunk. She then uses his own sword to cut off his head, which she carries back up to Bethulia in her cheese basket. Judith’s success inspires her people, who rally to chase off the invaders. The story of Judith is sung throughout Judea, encouraging her relatives, the Maccabees, to rise up against their oppressors. But we all know that part of the story.

Judith’s cunning and bravery has been resurrected throughout history as a symbol of the weak challenging authority. An iconic painting by Artemisia Gentileschi shows the artist herself as Judith, slashing the head off of a Holofernes that resembles Gentileschi’s rapist. In Florence, a statue by Donatello bears the inscription “Behold the neck of pride severed by the hand of humility,” referring to Medici rule. One of the Chanukah lamps decorated by a triumphant Judith is said to represent Empress Maria Theresa of Austria standing up against Frederick the Great in 1741. The list goes on.

Some Sephardic communities have celebrated Judith for centuries. Traditionally, the seventh night of Hanukkah is reserved for, chag habanot, or Festival of the Daughters. Women study Torah, celebrate their daughters, and enjoy special treats prepared by the men. These treats are dairy based in honor of the cheese Judith used to trick Holofernes.

American Jews are now reinventing the Festival of the Daughters tradition. Why not indulge in wine and cheese one night of Hanukkah and tell her story? Why not use one of the fantastic recipes out there to make cheese latkes? Why not let the men cook and clean one night so the women can rest and tell our own stories?

And these day, with women risking everything to tell our stories, to run for office, to #resist in these crazy times, we all could use a little more courage every day. Perhaps celebrating the story of Judith at Chanukah will embolden us as we march forward into our own battles.

Melina Selverston-Scher is a writer based in San Francisco. She recently completed a historical novel based on the story of Judith and Holofernes called For You and All of Us. Her blog is: What Would Judith Do.

Gentileschi’s painting via Wikimedia.

The post This Chanukah, Fight Misogyny with Wine and Cheese appeared first on Jewcy.

A lot of ink has been spilled about Linda Sarsour’s place on a panel tonight at the New School on anti-Semitism, and a prominent benefactor has threatened to withdraw funding for the New School as a result. A lot of the negative reactions have to do with who Linda Sarsour is, what she’s said about anti-Semitism in the past, and what she supports. And there is an up-swelling of bigotry and Islamophobia rearing its ugly head, for which as a public Muslim figure, Sarsour is an unfortunate lightning rod.

But a lot of the censure has much to do with who is considered to be an appropriate spokesperson for the Jews about a Jewish experience. In activist and leftist circles, it is taken for granted that the people most appropriate to define their struggles in life are the ones who experience it. Thus, it is expected to defer to Muslims when the topic is the experience or definition of Islamophobia, or African-Americans when the topic is anti-Blackness in America, or women when the topic is misogyny. Why are Jews not afforded the same deference? Who has the right to define what we suffer for our Jewishness, or to define what it is to be Jewish? Who are the gentiles that are perceived to be experts on us from the outside, and why are we deferring to them?

While some of the panelists are Jews, none of them are experts in the topic of anti-Semitism. There are no scholars in the field, nor activists whose focus is combatting anti-Semitism. The panel has two members of Jewish Voices for Peace, one member of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, and the Arab-American Association of New York. None of these groups focus on anti-Semitism. The issue then becomes not just who is on the panel, but why this panel exists at all.

The eventbrite page reads: “When antisemitism is redefined as criticism of Israel, critics of Israeli policy become accused and targeted more than the growing far-right. Join us for a discussion on how to combat antisemitism today.”  In addition to an unproven assertion that critics of anti-Semitism do not focus on far right purveyors of anti-Semitism, the framing of this event seems to focus less on defining anti-Semitism or combatting, but minimizing it and redefining it in the framework of the Israel-Palestine conflict. That is dangerous for those of us who live with the consequences— namely, Jews.

It’s no surprise then that ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt slammed the event, saying “Seriously there’s not a single Jewish organization that studies this issue and/or fights this disease (such as @adl_national) would take this panel seriously, let alone the institution that put it together.”

A panel like this may not be a total disaster. JFREJ released a PDF concerning antisemitism, a result of their earlier webinar (also featuring non-Jewish input!) and while there are issues with the document, including the historically inaccurate too-rosy view of Jewish life as second class citizens in the Muslim world or glossing over the prevalence of anti-Semitic rhetoric in anti-Zionist circles, it is still a decent bit of work. But it is unlikely that we will see even this caliber of result from this panel. What is far more probable is that anti-Semitism will be minimized and redefined to suit the political needs of the group in question, as will the fundamentals of Jewish history and identity.

Instead of wrestling with the difficulties presented by Zionism, anti-Zionism, and anti-Semitism head on, we can expect this universally anti-Zionist (or at best, agnostic) panel to redefine the issues into non-existence, and thus write off the majority of Jewish opinion as wrong and misinformed— a misled people, acting against their own self-interest, an elitist opinion trotted out by those too out of touch to understand why people make the decisions they do, and what motivates them, for good or for ill.

The left often fails in anti-Semitism by refusing to look at Jews as a community. They are usually willing to go to bat for a Jewish person’s individual rights, but almost never for our communal rights. To justify this, they will redefine our identity, our history, our oppression, and ourselves. We are not permitted to speak for ourselves. At best, we get spokespeople we did not elect, speaking on behalf of others in our name, but not in our interests— as is the case here. As with the right wing, Jews are more useful as pawns than as people.

This is odious. It is also typical. Even JFREJ admits to anti-Semitism’s cyclical nature, and the forced re-definition of Jews and the pathological bigotry we faced in order to benefit the elites. Where this panel of non-experts will inevitably drop the ball is in their failure to realize that in their circles, they are those elites, and they are doing nothing more than pandering to the demands of a gentile majority, seeking to inflict their self-interested moralizing on our backs. And if we have to pay for their self-aggrandizing in our blood, then so be it. It’s a price they are willing to have us pay.

After all, it’s a price we’ve paid before.

Image via Wikimedia

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(Jewcy even once threw our hat into the feminist Sukkot ring with the Ushpizienne, a list of female Jewish comedians who would obviously make any holiday party amazing. It’s not the most intellectual of responses, but who wouldn’t want Ilana Glazer in their sukkah?)

Anyway, since it’s traditional to decorate your sukkah with representations of your metaphorical guests, there have been some gorgeous designs of these ushpizot, some of which you can purchase for your own weird Jewish booth thing. Let’s look at just a few gorgeous choices, each in a very different visual style:

1. 1. Dov Abramson’s Ushpizot: “Make Room in Your Sukkah”Abramson is an Israeli artist who sells his designs on Etsy. His ushpizot series comes as posters or party banners (cute!), and he covers his bases, using both Biblical and historical figures. His illustrative portraits of the women are fun, but still definitely respectful. Plus, why stop at 7 female figures when you can have over two dozen? Eve! Miriam! The daughters of Zelophehad! Nechama Leibowitz! Ofra Haza! The hits just keep on coming!

1. 1. Ma’yan’s Prophets
      Ma’yan is a Jewish feminist organization that went with seven women regarded  as prophets: Sarah, Miriam, Deborah, Hannah, Avigail, Huldah, and Esther. It uses collages with evocative imagery to share the stories of these prophetesses. You can order a poster (designed by Ellen Alt) here.

1. JOFA’s educators
   The Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance actually ran a Kickstarter campaign to fund their poster, back in 2014. They chose no Biblical figures, and actually went with women a bit more obscure to the layperson— prominent female Jewish scholars and educators (each portrayed by a different artist). So if you want to learn about Flora Sassoon, this might be the poster for you, and if you already know her life’s work, this is definitely the poster for you.

Or, you could get all three of these! Listen, it may be too late to get these in time for the holiday (especially if you’re not in Israel and interested in Abramson’s work), but you may be able to make it work, or at least use these pieces of art as inspiration for your own feminist sukkah.

And of course, tweet us with pictures of your own feminist sukkah art. Especially if you went the ushpizienne route.

The post Welcome the Ushpizot appeared first on Jewcy.

Jewish-leftist activism didn’t go into a coma following early labor struggles and wake up in the era of Trump. Each stage of fights for American social justice has had explicitly Jewish flanks. In the era of Martin Luther King Jr., for example, there were the likes of Jews for Urban Justice.

The JUJ was based out of Washington D.C. in the 1960s and ‘70s— the first leftist Jewish group of its kind in that era. Anti-racist, anti-war, often anti-Jewish establishment, the group ruffled feathers straddling the worlds of radical activism and Jewish community.

Jewcy is on a summer residency! To read this piece, and our others for July and August 2017, go to our big sister site, Tablet Magazine!

The post In Decades-Old Jewish Social Justice Manifesto, Lessons for Today’s Activists appeared first on Jewcy.

Because 2017 continues to be a year of Rod Serling-esque weirdness, the latest group in the ongoing battle of the left and the alt-right in America are the Juggalos.

If you are unfamiliar with the Juggalos (or Jugalettes, for women), they are devotees of a hip-hop group known as Insane Clown Posse, comprised of white men who paint their faces to look like mildly scary clowns and bear monikers like Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope. ICP is so important to its fans that true believers have formed a subculture; there are Juggalo gatherings, fashions, rituals, etc. Juggalos don’t have a great reputation; their music of choice is mocked in the mainstream, and their deliberately crass behavior, coupled with the prevalence of Juggalos coming from poor, uneducated backgrounds means that they’re often the subject of derision. The FBI even categorized them as a violent gang.

But now, the Juggalos’ time for redemption has come.

Jewcy is on a summer residency! To read this piece, and our others for July and August 2017, go to our big sister site, Tablet Magazine!

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