“When I was a child, I was told
that when Aunt Bella left Germany in the late 1930s,
she went to Palestine.
Which didn’t mean that she went to a country called ‘Palestine,’
because no such country existed.
As I grew older, I learned the details of this history:”
Please read the rest of my own poem “History Lesson in 210 Words” on the Jewish Journal website (and excuse the self-promotion!).
“From the very start, Lilith positioned itself at the place where feminism and Jewish life intersect, where the x and the y axes—the abscissa and the ordinate of our identity—meet. (Or is it the Scylla and the Charybdis?)
In 1994, for Lilith’s 18th anniversary issue, I outlined the magazine’s origin story:
“While our Jewish backgrounds ranged from Orthodox to assimilated, and our politics pretty much covered the map too, we all identified strongly as feminists and as Zionists.” We believed unwaveringly in Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish and democratic state, while publishing writing unequivocally critical of some Israeli government policies.
This season, some have declared the intersection of feminism and Zionism unacceptable. Who has the right to confiscate either part of my identity?”
Source: “Intersections and Intersectionality,” Susan Weidman Schneider’s Editor’s Note in the current issue of Lilith magazine. Full text available online.
Shabbat shalom.
In a slight shift this week, I’ll share the following tweet with you.
Where to begin w/this @TheTakeaway segment? Maybe w/this ahistorical text on website (which, btw, he DOESN'T say). https://t.co/XdnKpoe8dQ pic.twitter.com/ItL4nMPIqR
— Erika Dreifus (@erikadreifus) April 13, 2017
“One thing is certain: Rabin could not have made peace by himself. It takes two sides to conclude a genuine peace agreement, and I am dubious that the Palestinians are up to the task. But I am also confident that Rabin would not have let Israel become a binational state. Whether Israel will have the political leadership to prevent that outcome is something that only time will tell.”
Source: Dennis Ross, “A Life with Consequences” (review of Itamar Rabinovich’s Yitzhak Rabin: Soldier, Leader, Statesman), Jewish Review of Books