Susan Schnur

Susan Schnur is Editor-at-Large at Lilith, an "Independent, Jewish & Frankly Feminist" magazine. She holds a doctorate in clinical psychology and is a rabbi. Schnur wrote a series of weekly columns for the New York Times and her work was published in many other newspapers and magazines. Schnur just got an honorary doctorate from her rabbinical school.

We will discuss issues related to contemporary Jewish life in North America. Readers are invited to send questions to rosnersdomain@haaretz.co.il.

Dear Ms. Schnur,

I wanted to ask you, as a feminist who cares deeply about Judaism and its future, if you can detect any change for the better (women's rights-wise) in the Orthodox community, and do you think there's a chance for equality among the orthodox Jews.

Thank you for your comments.

Rivi Elinson,

New York


Some Orthodox women would argue that there IS equality - that they are separate but equal.

Others work to create study and prayer environments that are separate, but in which women gain the same level of knowledge - ritual knowledge, scholastic knowledge - that men have. Some gender inequities - around the issues of divorce, say - have definitely seen moral progress.

Much in Judaism, not just in Orthodoxy, is patriarchal and entrenched - liturgy and received ancient texts reflect not only misogynist views, but also those that are biased against other groups.

This is a problem in other faiths as well: how and when females (and males sympathetic to morally problematic double standards) move to create a more equitable world is, of course, something that time will tell. I would like to say that I feel hopeful and hopeless in equal measure, but, honestly, I feel more of the latter. Folks who are prejudiced - whether against women, gays, Muslims, whomever - often deeply need their prejudices to prop up their self-esteem. They're not likely to change much, as their biases are so central to their sense of well-being.

I once interviewed some ultra-Orthodox women who pointed out to me how misogynist secular culture is: wives who are dumped when they age; the fact that secular women have to endure a certain tyranny about society's standards for physical looks - the perfect face, the perfect body; the fact that non-Orthodox women tolerate a lot of domestic and child-rearing inequity - they pointed out non-Orthodox working moms who continually have to fight for their husbands to pick up their share of housework and childcare. There's plenty of gender inequality in the non-religious world, they rightly noted.

Many women in Orthodoxy make their peace with inequality - they don't like it, but they love their community and its considerable other beauties and supports, and they don't, understandably, want to lose this.

In general, I do think that women in many cultures on this planet will remain a vulnerable population - a population that must, both routinely and broadly and wearyingly, stoop to conquer.


Dear Susan,

Even with all the good intentions and research that shows transgender folks are not a "teeny" number.....all of this is really marginal to the average American Jew who lives in the suburbs.

I think the constant focus on marginal issues such as transgender people, really pulls Judaism away from people who are dealing with the everyday suburban life.

Focus on raising kids, dealing with marital stress, caring for parents (and holidays, Shabbat etc)....THESE issues mean much more to the average American Jews than your focus on marginal things like transgender people.

Don't you think there is some truth to this claim?

Sam

I totally agree with you.

For the summer issue, I've just this week put to bed stories that are decidedly more "everyday," to use your word.

-- three wonderful pieces about Jewish women and food (one about being a bride-to-be; one about an illustrious Syrian-Jewish family and the role that kibbe played in their lives; one about using recipes that stir back into life memories of people we love);

-- a series of dramatic monologues on the topic of Jewish women and breast cancer -- written by a pre-med student, Nadia Maccabee (our idea here is that readers might be in Jewish group settings -- summer camp, women's organizations -- in which they might perform these monologues and talk about this serious issue);

-- a memoir about sitting shiva for a mom whose legacy was a women's couture shop in Hartford, Connecticut that served Jewish women's clothing needs from 1923 to 1988. This piece is one of a series about women needing to create rituals different from the traditional ones that Judaism offers us. It is also evocative of so many communities in North America that had shops like these.

-- an account by an ultra-Orthodox woman about her decision to go to college -- no one in her extended family, male or female, ever had -- and become a journalist; the enormous price that she paid for this decision, etc.

Plus lots of stories that are reportage, reviews, etc.

Send me your ideas for these other topics that you mention, and we'll be sure to do stories on these subjects.


Dear Ms. Schnur,

You recently interviewed the historian Joyce Antler on the image Jewish Mothers, a topic that is now having some kind of renaissance. Is the Jewish mother stereotype something one ought to cherish or is it one of those images you rather see destroyed?

Thank you
Gina Susman


Gina: First I would say that what's really awesome about the stereotypes of the Jewish mother -- either the life-giving and nurturing stereotype, or the stereotype of a figure who is ridiculed for overwhelming and suffocating her children -- is understanding where they came from historically.

For example:

-- How and why did Borscht Belt comedians germinate the fond, but negative, image of the Jewish mother -- how did these comedians jump into non-Jewish culture through the medium of Ed Sullivan's TV show?;

--how and why did Erik Erikson weigh in with his very negative feelings about the Jewish mother, and how did his evaulation have an impact on our culture's understanding of her? (Did you know he had a Jewish mother, and that he hated her?);

-- how and why did Robin Morgan (the ur-feminist of Ms. Magazine) handle her conflicts -- over being a Jewish mother, over having a Jewish mother, and over being a Jewish mother to the feminist movement -- in the ways that she did? That's really interesting, too;

-- et cetera -- there are tons of rich and surprising historical antecedents that configured these images.


Read Joyce Antler's You Never Call! You Never Write! A History of the Jewish Mother, and you will be blown away by the smorgasbord of Jewish mothers she presents who are vital, canny, brainy, empathic, and incredibly energetic. These historical portraits are what led me to end my interview with Antler by saying, "I love us!"

The stereotypes themselves are kind of like pasta: banal, overwrought, standardized, flat. Not hugely interesting ... though certainly knowing that the negative stereotypes impinge on some Jewish mothers' sense of themselves and their freedom to be who they are, to be, perhaps, large -- is reason to push back against the belittling images. And it's also worth pointing out to those who think negatively of the Jewish mother that she has always produced -- both historically and now -- extraordinary children. Isn't it interesting that she could be so hideous and still pull this off?

Second, I would say that, in understanding the images of the Jewish mother that our culture has wrought, the key word is AMBIVALENCE. We're ambivalent about the Jewish mother. That's what's behind creating these projected, polarized images --

One image being that of the treacly, inflated, adored "yiddishe mama" (created, by the way, by a highly unlikely progenitor); and the other image being that of the inflated, child-eating Jewish monster-mom.
Look, mothers, in general, are so core, so desperately needed by children, that they're extremely powerful. Jewish mothers, as immigrants to the US, as members of a minority group that was routinely victimized, needed to be particularly protective; we've been mothers to the nth degree. So for those of us who haven't yet really grown up, who don't yet feel personally in control of our lives, we'll stay stuck in these projections. (I thank Dr. Katherine Jungreis for these insights.)

Where you smell polarization -- where you see the absence of integration --- that's where you'll always find deep ambivalence. Our culture, at heart, feels so ambivalently about us.

They just can't resolve what they think of us, so, in Solomonic fashion, the resolution is to split us in two.

Susan Schnur

To read Lilith articles and blogs visit Lilith.org, the website of Lilith magazine--independent, Jewish & frankly feminist


Dear rabbi,

My first question is about your recent article with Melanie Weiss dealing with ordination of gay rabbis. You write: "here's what's coming down the pike: not just lesbians or gays applying for admission to the Jewish Theological Seminary, but those on the next ramparts: young Jews who reject "binary sexuality" altogether.... Jews who are transgender; Jews who don't want their orientation or gender dictated by other than themselves."

I'd like to ask you two questions about this article:

1. Why do think this will be the next controversial item on the rabbinical agenda?

2. You ask the question, and I would like to hear your answer to this question: What about the "straight" rabbinical student who becomes "gay," the "gay" student who becomes "queer," and the male, or female, student who becomes? something else. What's a seminary to do?

Best

Rosner

At Lilith, middle-aged editors like myself are in touch with a lot of younger progressive Jews - my co-author on this story, Melanie Weiss, is in her twenties (she's Lilith's Assistant Editor) - and we're aware that issues of gender identification and of sexuality are big items on their dockets. We're committed to younger feminists and feel it's important that Judaism take seriously the issues that matter to them.

We're also aware of what's happening today at liberal seminaries -- one of the stories in Lilith's section on "Navigating Sexuality Today" is by a transgender rabbi, Elliot Kukla. We asked him for blessings that a transgender person might say during these heavy moments of gender transition. He responded with blessings that he wrote for a friend who wanted to mark each time that he took testosterone. That's so intimate -- it makes the issue so real; it dares us not to have compassion.

The personal is political -- we just saw legislators in the Commonweath of Massachusetts uphold the legality of gay marriage. Why? Largely, they reported, because they were moved by individual people's real stories -- a grandmother talked about her gay grandson; a mortician talked about how he handled funerals for gay partners. These testimonies moved legislators to change their votes, to think with their hearts.

Although I believe in compassion, I don't believe in political correctness, and I wanted to know, actually, before I embarked on these stories about sexuality, whether transgender people were a teeny negligible population or were, in fact, significant. Were there a lot of people who felt anguish in their gendered bodies? -- was it like the anguish of gays in a discriminatory world, in a world of "passing"? -- or was this a politicized, trumped-up issue -- "sound and fury, signifying nothing"? I'm a clinical psychologist; I did some research -- and I was stunned by the numbers. I had no idea. Transgender issues deserve our attention and compassion.

"What's a seminary to do?" The answer is that it should lead from its heart. Its decisions should be values-based. If seminaries' decisions aren't values-based, what other organizations' values will be?

Susan Schnur