“The Ladies Guild Collection is a series of paper-cuts that combine rabbinic misogyny with sexualized images of women, all on a nice paper doily.”

That’s the introduction to artist Jacqueline Nicholls’ paper-cuts series, The Ladies Guild Collection, which focuses on misogynist rabbinic texts and their rigid depiction of women’s roles in Jewish life. Nicholls, now 42, grew up in an Orthodox home and was often angered by the representation of females in traditional Jewish texts—scenarios that were at times mirrored in her everyday life.

Nicholls’ interpretation of and frustration with specific Talmudic texts are portrayed through the mediums of embroidery, corsetry, drawings, and print, depending on the text she has chosen to analyze. Besides being a full-time artist and mother, she also teaches adult Jewish education, where she continues to question societal norms and open a dialogue for those around her.

I’m interested to know about your Jewish background and how you’ve mastered the texts so well.

I grew up in a very traditional Orthodox home and I went to a mainstream day school which wasn’t Jewish. But I grew up shomer Shabbat and observing kashrut, and then after I completed my degree I studied at Nishmat, which is where I fell in love with Jewish learning. What I gained most from Nishmat, which is a traditional women’s yeshiva in Jerusalem (a very unusual place; I went there the second year it was open which added to the excitement of being there) was direct engagement with textual learning—learning the skills but also having the sense that it’s your own personal responsibility to engage with these texts yourself and not be reliant on a teacher or rabbi to translate and interpret, but instead to come up with your own readings and understandings and develop your own relationship. I think that was very formative. I was about 20 or 21. It was a very serious, high-level textual study.

Were you always artistic? Did art and exploring Jewish texts become a natural marriage for you?

I was always drawing as kid. My family was always drawing as well, so I was involved in making things. Now I don’t have an issue speaking in front of people, but as a child I wasn’t so confident speaking my mind, so drawing was a way to communicate. We grew up very observant of all the holidays, but, when I was five or six, my mother allowed me to draw on Shabbat, because I was very upset that I wasn’t allowed to draw, and she was upset that I hated Shabbat because of that, so she let me. When I was older I began to better understand what Shabbat was about, but looking back now I think it’s really interesting that my mother did that.

It’s really nice she did that. You may have had different views about Judaism, or at least about Shabbat, if she hadn’t.

Yes. I also think it took a while as an adult to really feel that I had permission to call myself an artist and say, ‘Yes, I am an artist.’ And yes, the works that I’m doing in terms of this engagement with Jewish texts and ideas is a legitimate thing to make art about. It’s not Judaica, it’s not decorative, and it’s not always about making things beautiful. It’s about challenging, questioning and exploring to make art.

You also teach adult Jewish education. What topics do you cover?

I teach a couple of things: I teach Tanach, the Hebrew Bible. I also teach some other Jewish programs like Jewish law, but I mainly teach Tanach.

There’s a lot of anger in your work about Jewish textual depiction of women. How do your projects reflect the relationship between men and women in Judaism?

I don’t think it was one particular moment growing up of, ‘Gosh, it would be so much easier to do this if I was a boy,’ but it’s little things, and those little things all add up. That’s what my series of paper cuts is all about. It’s taking these lines that were written in a particular time and context that still carry a certain weight today because they reflect attitudes that are still present. It’s also not an attitude only within the Jewish community, treating woman as separate, and as objects.

It’s the view that having the women’s voice included in the discussion of halacha and how Jews should live is not valid. It’s very much a discussion in which men participate and women are talked about. I started the series of paper cuts with a couple of things that made me very angry, and I felt I had to get them out into the open. Then more and more frustration kept coming out and my anger increased.

How do you think the depiction of women in texts affects men?

There are very misogynist texts. Women are the direct victims but it also harms men that women are being treated and talked about in this way. But men’s roles in misogynist texts are also representative, like the fact that they can’t take sexual responsibility for themselves, so women have to cover up. That’s not a dignified way for men to be portrayed. I think it limits what a man can be and it keeps it fixed in a very rigid way. It’s a very black and white; there’s only male, and only female. It limits both of us and it harms everyone. The complexities of human life don’t fit into any category.

Do you feel a change is imminent?

Yes. Has it been fast enough? No. The fact that, recently we had the Yeshivat Maharat graduating female Orthodox rabbis, that wasn’t conceivable 20 years ago. It’s hugely groundbreaking, but it’s not a big deal that there are these knowledgeable women who learn to that level—it was groundbreaking that somebody gave them certification. What’s also groundbreaking is the demand for them. These women have jobs, and there’s a big demand among Orthodox communities who want female leadership.

I also think the democratization of traditional Jewish learning and text is progress. I’m sitting in London doing my Daf Yomi drawings, which include a page of Talmud a day, and I have the option to go online to share it or I can go on Twitter and have a conversation with people all over the world who are doing the same thing.

The ability to make connections has grown, and now we have easy access to these texts. I think the fact that we’re able to have immediate access to conversation about texts and issues even though we’re living in very different countries is very exciting.

How do you choose which art medium to use for each text?

I’ve used lots of different art forms, so when I was working with the misogynist texts, it felt right to use paper cuts. There’s something very satisfying about taking a sharp knife to these words, but also you’re left with a very stark black and white image which represents misogyny well.

I did a series of embroideries called Ghost and Shadows, based on various stories of women in the Talmud. They are anonymous women who aren’t main characters, and have no names. They’re fleeting but very haunting. I chose to use embroidery because it’s a very feminist craft—you can hide something and put it four layers down so you have a sense that it’s underneath the page, so it fits conceptually with that.

Do you find your audience is more male or female?

I think my work speaks to different people depending on what resonates with them and their own life experiences. I think some of the work speaks more readily to women, especially the Ladies Guild Collection because I think there’s a recognition of, ‘Oh yes, I’ve been really annoyed by that particular text, and now we’re going to laugh at it together.’ And in particular with the paper-cuts I try to have at least a bit of a sense of humor, although I do think they became angrier as that series went on. I don’t know if it speaks more to men or women, I’ve had really interesting reactions from both.

I always include a summary about the text I’m working on for each piece, so people can familiarize themselves with the story. I’m always really intrigued by people who have had a very traditional upbringing, like those who come from a Yeshivish world who can instantly recognize things which may be quite subtle. I try to use different aspects of Jewish ritual life as vocabulary within my work. So whether or not you recognize that is how familiar you are with Jewish ritual life. Sometimes I need to point it out, but its always interesting when I don’t have to translate and people just get it.

(Image from the Ladies Guild Collection, by Jacqueline Nicholls)

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The post Spotlight On: Jacqueline Nicholls, Bold Jewish Artist appeared first on Jewcy.

Before I began studying Daf Yomi—or daily page of Gemara—I used to measure time and the seasons of my life in haircuts. In August of 2008, I shaved my head and set off for a year’s travel in New Zealand, allowing my recently-shorn hair to grow out during my backpacking ramblings. Each year, as Pesach rolls around, I make sure to get in a haircut, signaling the end of winter and beginning of warm days to come. Now, eight months into the Daf Yomi cycle, I measure time in pages of Gemara. Berachot 2: I was in the midst of a physically and emotionally challenging chaplaincy internship. Shabbat 88: I was traveling in one of the most remote places in the world, exploring fjords by overnight boat. Shabbat 149: my 30th birthday, Shabbat, Boston, surrounded by friends and loved ones.

Just as Daf Yomi distinguishes one day from them next, marking the passage of time, we are approaching the culmination of the counting of the omer, the 49-day-period from Pesach to Shavuot. Each night, we count the number of the day out loud, raising each of the preceding 49 days to a higher level of holiness and awareness, increasing our anticipation for day 50, during which we receive the Torah anew. On that day, I plan to stay up to the wee hours of the morning with a grateful eye toward all the Torah I’ve received and all of the Torah, and all the pages of Gemara, that I have yet to learn.

This Daf Yomi that accompanies me everywhere, keeping me busy on trains, planes, and overnight cruises, refers to the page of Gemara one learns daily as a part of a 7-and-a-half-year cycle. More than 90,000 people attended the siyum hashas that marked the completion of the most recent Daf Yomi cycle at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey this past summer. If one just keeps plugging along a page at a time, in fewer than eight years, one will come to learn all of the 37-volume rabbinic text known as the Gemara, in which the rabbis discuss and debate how to apply the oral law. The breadth of these texts is incredible, ranging from a detailed encyclopedic guide on dream interpretations—if you dream of eggs, then your requests hang in the balance; if you dream of a goose, you’ll become the head of a yeshiva—to the ins and outs of the criminal justice system and what constitutes an offense punishable by death.

This project is both a collective experience as well as an individual one. Sometimes as a kid I used to revel at a blank television screen, imagining all of the television shows that continued on, drama and lives unfolding, even while my personal television set was turned off. My experience of Daf Yomi is similar. When I am tuned in, I am part of this great unfolding, privileged to this other world whose stories continue one after another, day after day. As long as I keep my set turned on, my Gemara opened in front of me, I get to keep one foot in that world and one foot in this, but as soon as I close my book, the stories of that world are lost to me.

Yet, each person’s experience of Daf Yomi is completely unique and tailored to that person’s needs, goals, and of course, time availability. There are hundreds of online podcasts and in-person classes to guide one’s learning. One can learn the original Gemara in Hebrew and Aramaic, follow an English translation, or any number of possibilities somewhere in between.

My daily practice consists of a mix between using the online podcast of Rav Yitzhak Etshalom as well as learning from the Steinsaltz Gemara, which has an incredibly reader-friendly commentary running along the sides of the page to help explicate the complicated ins and outs of the text. I love Rav Yitzhak Etshalom’s podcast because he’s fast, sharp, and sticks closely to the text while explaining just enough so that I understand the major concepts. But, on the days when I find myself without Internet, perhaps in the air for 8 hours, electronic devices turned off, I turn to Steinsaltz.

After I complete each daf, I jot down a list of topics of note and then attempt to distill some small piece of that day’s learning into a 17-syllable haiku. For years, haikus have been my go-to literary form in which I can translate content into a creative nugget. My haiku craze began while working at Trader Joes years ago when I wrote haikus on various food items to teach other employees about our products. However, the literary form has since taken me from smoothies and granola bars to the parshiot of the Torah and now finally to Daf Yomi. Even in just one page, the daf covers a vast amount of terrain, perhaps beginning with the halachic minutiae of how to prepare food for animals on Shabbat and concluding with a story about the laundry practices of Rabban Gamliel from which we learn that white clothing is more difficult to wash than colored clothing.

It would be impossible for me to hold and remember all of the content in one daf, let alone in 37 volumes worth of Gemara. It is through my daily haiku writing that I integrate and internalize one aspect of that day’s learning and ensure that if nothing else, I have 17 syllables to take away with me. It can be an incredible challenge to stick within the form, confined by only 17 syllables. And, yet, there is something meditative and truly satisfying when I finally land on exactly the right combination of syllables and sounds that contain within them a powerful nugget of an idea.

Sometimes I find myself looking at my bookshelf, eyeing different volumes of Gemara, wondering which one I’ll be learning while I have my first child. Will it be in Suka, or perhaps Beitza? Where will I be in the cycle when I graduate rabbinical school in two years? First real job? Second child? The next big move? When I look at those slim, travel-sized volumes, neat and ordered on my bookshelves, I see the next seven and a half years spread before me. I can guess at some of the events that will mark these pages, but the one thing that will remain constant amid change and transition will be my daily practice of Daf Yomi, grounding me in time.

My Top 5 Haikus:

Brachot 45
what’s the halacha?
go see what the people do:
a world of practice

Brachot 58
the world inundates us
all the time; look for wonder
in quiet places.

Shabbat 30
the fear of the thing:
so consuming it prevents

living—just let go.

Shabbat 82
delving deep into
wiping and constipation
this too is torah

Shabbat 113
let it not be an
exercise in wordplay. make
it matter to you.

***

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Move over, Aly Raisman—the gold medalist turned Dancing with the Stars contestant is no longer the Jewish community’s Olympic Golden Girl. Who has dethroned the Hava Nagila-playing gymnast? None other than Ryan Lochte, the grill-wearing, nonsense-spouting swimmer.

Jeah.

At least that’s what Malina Saval, a mother and lifelong swimming enthusiast, argues in a Tablet essay:

And yet, I’m here to argue that it’s time we stop making fun of Lochte, at least long enough to focus on a career achievement that has thus far gone completely unnoticed in the Jewish community. Lochte, who isn’t Jewish but believes God has a “plain” for everyone, may not be a rabbinical scholar, but what he has done—and to a much larger degree than most swimmers in the history of the sport—is spread Talmudic wisdom to swim fans, Jewish and non-Jewish, all over the world.

According to Saval, “The Talmud (Kiddushin 29a) specifies three skills that parents must teach their children: Torah, how to make a living, and how to swim.” By her logic, since Lochte has made swimming cool—not just to watch on TV once every four years but to actually do—and has toured the country encouraged kids to get in the pool, he’s done a Talmudic-level service for Jewish parents.

Read the full essay here and let us know what you think in the comments.

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Dr. Ruth has seen the play based on her life seven times already—and it only opened to the public today. Written by Mark St. Germain, Dr. Ruth, All the Way is running at the Barrington Stage Company in the Berkshires. The play stars That 70s Show’s Debra Jo Rupp as Westheimer, and Rupp is apparently doing a very convincing job in the role.

“When Debra Jo Rupp plays me, I pinch myself and I say ‘Ruth Westheimer, keep quiet, you are not on stage!’” the 84-year-old sex therapist told Radio Boston. “I think it’s me up there!”

It wasn’t easy. “The accent was a nightmare, quite frankly,” Rupp explained. “Her dialect is not one land.”

Listen to the full interview with Westheimer and Rupp, and hear a clip from the show where Rupp, as Westheimer, explains the Talmudic basis for figuring out how often a woman should sleep with her husband. Spoiler alert: it depends on his occupation.

The post Dr. Ruth Discusses the New Play About Her Life—and Debra Jo Rupp’s Accent appeared first on Jewcy.

i feel like a party crasher. you’re suppose to do WHAT for 7.5 years beforehand? #siyumhashas

— jacobgoldman (@jacobgoldman) August 2, 2012

Last night, nearly 90,000 Jews headed to the MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J. to celebrate the siyum hashas, the completion of a seven-and-a-half year cycle of Talmud study known as daf yomi. The Times estimated that of the 90,000 gathered, 30,000 to 40,000 had themselves participated in the daily study, while the rest of the crowd was there to support and celebrate their completion.

As Miriam Krule helpfully explained in Slate earlier this week, “Daf yomi literally translates to daily page, and if you stick to the schedule, in just under eight years you can finish all 36 tractates of the Talmud.” She goes on to explore the enormous complexity of the lengthy task, noting that more recent technological innovations have made the process accessible to a wider audience—likely contributing to the record-breaking number of attendees last night.

But New Jersey wasn’t the only place to celebrate the end of the study cycle. Tablet Magazine featured a moving reflection from a participant in an all-female Torah study group in Jerusalem:

But the idea of a group of women teachers and students learning the entire Talmud is still unusual. The women in Matan’s daf yomi group are not interested in making a statement about female abilities, or pulling a stunt; they’re interested in learning the text, studying Torah lishma, for its own sake. Still, Matan chancellor Malka Bina noted that the siyum hashas has special meaning for the women involved: “This is a historic day for Jewish women’s scholarship,” said Bina. “Women have once again proven that they are capable of the same learning qualities as men.”

The New Jersey event—which 20,000 women attended, separated by a mechitza in the stadium’s top tier—was chronicled with smartphones and video cameras, a further reminder of the technological developments of the past seven years. Jewish Humor Central even put together a list of the funniest tweets from the evening, which ranged from suggestions of starting a wave through the stadium (or a cheer of J-E-T-S) to pointing out that ‘daf yomi’ rhymes with ‘macaroni.’ Hope the Maccabeats saw that one!

What does 90,000 people praying and celebrating look like, you ask? Well, just like this:

The post After Seven Years of Talmud Study, Participants and Supporters Celebrate appeared first on Jewcy.

• If you can say that you spent 45 years translating the Talmud into modern Hebrew, as well as adding your own commentary, you can say you’ve led a fulfilling life.

• The world’s first interactive online yeshiva.

• Chicago prepares for the 2011 mayoral elections, which is now called “Rahmageddon.”

• Judd Apatow interviewed on The Sound of Young America.

• Did Hitler plan a UFO attack on London?  Probably not.

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