JJ the Inquisitive

Why the Bush administration isn't fit to lead an ant colony

2006-12-29T03:04:00.000-08:00

Lovely bit from Yahoo this morning:

CRAWFORD, United States (AFP) - The White House expects ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to be executed perhaps as early as Saturday, a senior official said on condition of anonymity.

The official cited information from US authorities in Baghdad that "it's not going to be tonight our time, or tomorrow their time, it's going to be maybe another day."

"It's the government of Iraq's decision," the official said, as US President George W. Bush and top national security aides mulled an overhaul of his Iraq war-fighting strategy.

Asked whether the execution could spark violence by lingering Saddam loyalists, the official replied that "they start violence for any reason they can come up with."

Yeah, that's gotta be it. Those crazy people in Iraq aren't fighting because they're angry at how American imperialism has destroyed their country. They're not fighting against a foreign occupier. They're fighting because they like to fight. Because they're inherently violent people.

Nice bit of projection there, hey?

American internment camps... in 2006.

2006-12-27T15:57:00.000-08:00

First, to get it out of the way: happy holidays to all of you. I hope you had a better holiday season than these people did. (I can't seem to get to the original XicanoPwr link, so I'm linking Brownfemipower's post; this is via both of them.)

Back in April, I wrote that Texas was becoming home of the new American concentration camp because Williamson County’s T. Don Hutto Correctional Residential Center, a private detention facility in Taylor, Texas, became the newest facility for Homeland Security that would house “immigrants not from Mexico, but caught in Texas.”

While we sit in our home, enjoying our family time this Christmas, just know that 400 immigrants - 200 are children - are being housed in the T. Don Hutto Residential Center. Greg Moses writes:

Immigration attorney John Wheat Gibson represents two families that include a pregnant woman and children ages 2, 3, 5, 12, 14, and 17. The families have been incarcerated since their midnight arrests in early November by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

“The children, imprisoned with their mothers, have never been accused of any wrongdoing. Neither have their mothers,” says Gibson. “All are Palestinian refugees who entered the U.S. legally, but have been denied asylum.”

Maybe if Israel weren't oppressing the hell out of the Palestinians, these families wouldn't have needed to seek asylum in the US, they would have been happily at home in Palestine. Instead, they're in a dingy American internment camp, with no foreseeable way out, for the terrible crime of being brown, poor and from the Middle East. They are stuck between a place where they're being bombed and a place where they're locked up - both of which have a vested interest in dehumanizing them.

Not that I have any illusions left about Israel, but this is another in a long line of disillusionments. Instead of being a "light among the nations", as it so often presents itself to be and is so often presented in Zionist discourse, it is a place from where people are fleeing for their lives.

"Chosen" people?

2006-12-20T00:07:00.000-08:00

This'll be short because I have a whole lot to do this morning.

First of all, I really appreciate all the comments I got on my last post, and thank you very much, BFP and Yolanda for taking the discussion sparked by my post into your own spaces. Yolanda, I promise I will jump into the discussion at your blog later today, because it's awesome.

I also want to make a distinction that wasn't clear in my last post, mostly because I hadn't thought about it yet. There is a difference, a big one, between the anti-Semitism (I use the term in its colloquial sense, but I recognize that it is not strictly accurate as Arabs are also Semites) of the oppressor and the anti-Semitism of the oppressed. As I posted at BFP's blog, while I don't especially like when my Palestinian allies make comments about what "the Jews" are doing, I understand and respect that their feelings stem from their oppression by Israel, and often from the disdain that even non-Israeli Jews have for them. I respect that their "anti-Semitism" is part of their process of resistance. Just as my family who fled the Holocaust sometimes speak bitterly of "the Germans" and not just "the Nazis". Just as most of the Black people I know, both in America and here in the UK, sometimes speak bitterly of white people.

The anti-Semitism that I've realized I was really writing about in my last post is that which comes from educated, bourgeois white folks, especially those who claim to be lefties - and there's a lot of it. And usually, it's "true" anti-Semitism, as opposed to reactionary anti-Semitism. They haven't been oppressed by Jews; they just don't like us, because we're Other, and they use Israel as an excuse for some hand-wringing outrage that they then do nothing to stop or help. But because of the long European historical precedent of shifting blame onto the Jews, and using us as a human shield for absolutely everything that's wrong with the world, we get it from all sides.

So, yes. On to today's topic: Jews as Chosen People.

I'll put it right out there. Anyone who, in all seriousness, claims to be God's Favourite is either a cult leader, an idiot or someone with an ego too big for the room they're sitting in.

Our "Chosen-ness" has had lots of different functions throughout our history. In Biblical times, it was the justification for taking all the land from the Canaanites, Ammonites and other tribes that were living in the land that God supposedly gave to Moses. During the Middle Ages, the Jewish discourse of "chosen-ness" meant that we kept ourselves as completely apart from society as possible; this combined with the Catholic doctrine of us being Jesus-murderers and our forced position as moneylenders to create a scenario where Jews were either kicked out or killed or forced to convert. (This is a huge simplification and please correct me if I'm wrong, but this is the very very basics.) Then, after the Holocaust, we were "chosen" to suffer, because God was testing us. We were His People and He was apparently playing some obscene mind game with us whereby He would see exactly how far He could get without us losing belief in Him. Sort of like an abusive husband.

Of course, not all Jews think like this. Most don't. But there's this undercurrent in a lot of Jewish thought, this idea of uniqueness, this simultaneous arrogance and martyrdom, that I really dislike.

Because if we're the Chosen People, then that means that other people are un-Chosen. That God somehow doesn't like them as much, or doesn't care about them as much. And that sort of thinking, as we've seen so many times, is the top of the very slippery slope down towards theocracy, towards oppression of others because you believe you have the Supreme Being on your side. Towards what Israel is doing now, because people in power believe that God gave them that land and they're more than happy to kill any Canaa... er, Palestinian on it!

Now, a lot of Jews I know think of it in the opposite way. That Jews have more responsibility than anyone else to change the world, to help it, to make it better. And on the surface, this is laudable thinking. But the implications are awful. To suggest that Jews have more responsibility than anyone else, just because we're Jews, suggests that we also have more power, more agency. That we're inherently better suited to take care of things. And this is the top of the very slippery slope towards colonialism, supremacism and racist hierarchies.

I've got to go off and start my day now, but basically: the idea of Jews as Chosen People is worse than useless. If we're going to really have an effect on the world, we can't rely on God to choose us. We have to choose, ourselves, to do what we can to change things, within the paradigms that we have access to. And we also have to leave others alone when we need to, to let others make their own choices.

Why I don't feel safe on either side.

2006-12-04T06:37:00.000-08:00

Also: why I haven't been blogging much.

(Warning: this post will be more emotional than reasoned, I'm afraid.)

Being Jewish is possibly one of the most politically tricky things to be. Despite the fact that 1/3 of our global population was wiped out during the Holocaust, we've been doing extremely well since then, so we're not considered downtrodden enough for liberals to care about us. But we're still The Jews, one of the traditional hot-button trigger groups for rightwing assholes, and hey, we apparently killed Jesus. So we're considered second-class citizens by conservatives, too.

And through it all, we still, apparently, run the world.

This is a common trope on the conservative side. But more and more, I feel like my loyalties to the radical side of things, the place where I feel most comfortable in every other way, are being sorely tested by anti-Semitism that some don't see and others deny exists. "You're just overreacting," they say. "We don't really mean it. It's hyperbole." Or, "Well, Israel is a Jewish state, you have to take some responsibility for it!" As if I have a vote there, or a voice other than a remote cry of protest from way over here. As if I, as a non-Israeli Jew, have any more power to change Israeli policies - or responsibility for them - than a fourth-generation British Muslim has for the policies in Pakistan.

Like the guy over at Brownfemipower's place who, on a thread about Israel, said something derogatory about Jews - NOT Israel, but Jews - in Spanish. I don't speak Spanish, so I don't know exactly what it was he said, but it was something bad enough to get him a chastising. (Even though BFP wasn't the one who chastised him in this case, she often does, and that's why I do feel safe over at her place - she doesn't allow this sort of crap on her blog.) EDIT: The person who made the comment has apologized both at BFP's blog and my own and I have accepted the apology, so if you're reading this for the first time, keep that in mind!

Like the commenter on Digby's blog, a major liberal blog, who made a lot of good points about the way the Republicans are fucking up America and the rest of the world, and then said something about "their AIPAC masters".

MASTERS? Do you honestly think that Israel, the tiny little possibly-failing nation-state that does a whole lot of supremely shitty things to its occupied subjects but is nevertheless a tiny little country, is pulling the marionette strings of the UNITED STATES? Or that that America-Israel Political Action Committee is a more powerful lobby in Washington than the Christian right, the pharmaceutical companies, the bloody OIL COMPANIES? AIPAC is a powerful lobby group, but it is most definitely not the primary motivation of the American powers that be in terms of their screwing up of the Middle East.

The elision of Israel and "the Jews" is already a problem - a major one. And it's becoming more of a problem, because of things like this. The old myths of the Elders of Zion are being once-removed from their source and foisted upon Israel, which is put in the same position as Jews are now: not strong enough on its own to stand up to a real challenge to its power, but SEEN as this shadowy strongman behind all things, pulling the strings and controlling everything.

I've written before about how Jews are in a losing paradox: we're doing too well to be considered disadvantaged, but we're still Other, and therefore seen as dangerous and overpowerful. We are powerful and powerless at the same time, and we get all the crap that comes from each, but none of the benefits. And this bullshit that's becoming more and more prevalent on the Left, this ascribing to Israel all the shadowy, scary powers that used to be ascribed to the Jews - sorry, I'm not buying it.

If you want to criticize Israel for its legitimate failings - which are legion, and absolutely worthy of criticism, and which need to be criticized - then be my guest. I welcome such criticism, and I engage in it myself, because injustice needs to be brought to light and needs to be exterminated. If you want to criticise AIPAC itself, and its doings in Washington, that's legitimate too.

But if you start using all that old rhetoric of Israel being the shadow-power behind all that's wrong with the world when a) it's, um, NOT; there are a whole lot of shitty things about it, but it's hardly the ultimate vortex of evil in the world today, and b) you really mean the Jews, or if you start talking about how "The Jews" are doing horrible things when what you really mean is the state of Israel, then you are NOT MY ALLY and you are NOT MY FRIEND. What you are is an anti-Semite and you should be ashamed of yourself.

And the rising prevalence of this sort of rhetoric in the work of those who I otherwise respect is starting to make me despair, because I don't know who to trust or believe anymore.

My nose is a political act

2006-10-28T00:53:00.002-07:00

I know, in the abstract, that the personal is political. Hell, I know concretely that the personal is political: I do activist work (not as much this semester, unfortunately, due to a confluence of due dates) and I do my best to live my life according to my politics. Often, I fail, but I try.

However, perhaps my most personal political act is to embrace my nose.

Let's be clear here: my nose is big. Like, Barbra Streisand-big. And it's curved, not radically, but enough to make it distinctively Jewish. It's the most significant physical ethnic marker that I have. It's what makes me "look Jewish".

My nose has also been the physical feature that people have picked on, when they did pick on me. I'm fairly conventional-looking otherwise, due to my Ashkenazi ancestry: blonde hair, blue eyes, medium height, medium weight. There's nothing else about me that's really outside of Western norms. But my nose... well, my nose is its own story. My nose has been carried along with my family's genes for the centuries since my ancestors left the Middle East. My nose is the physical site of my difference.

Naturally, it's also been considered the site of my ugliness, whatever ugliness I have.

***

I've read a lot of blog posts by Black bloggers about hair: its political significance, the hours and hours spent with hot combs and other instruments to make it lie down, stay straight, not make such a fuss, not stand out from one's head so exuberantly. How natural Black hair is often considered inappropriate in Western society, is wrongly considered ugly and in need of fixing.

I wonder if Jewish noses function in a similar - though of course not identical - way.

I know a whole lot of Jews. Like, a whole lot of Jews. I know that the plural of anecdote is not data, but on the other hand, I know at least twenty women who have "gotten their noses fixed". In fact, I'd say that I know more Jewish women who have had rhinoplasty than Jewish women who have not.

Overwhelmingly, there have been two reasons. The first reason has been that their original noses were "ugly". They were too big, too prominent. They were unladylike. Women should have delicate features, should be delicate creatures, here in the good ol' West. Women should not have anything that stands out from their faces, makes a statement, deviates from the tiny-featured norm.

The second reason is that their noses were unmistakable markers of their ethnicity. And even though these women usually had light skin, their noses functioned as physical evidence of their ethnicity, marking them as non-White. They changed their noses to become more White. To fit in better with White society, because no matter how many people declare that anti-Semitism is over and is no longer a problem, those of us who still experience it know that it still exists and is still strong, even if it has become more subtle and more underground. And some of us are so affected by this subtle anti-Semitism, which is part of the widely held view that physical features that mark one as non-White are bad and wrong and ugly, that we go to surgeons and pay them money to break our noses for us.

***

I still hate my nose sometimes. By the norms of Western society, it is unattractive, and having grown up in this society that demands unmarred beauty from each one of its women and has normalized plastic surgery as the solution, I have internalized the message that perhaps it would be better if I just got my nose "fixed".

But you know what? Fuck that.

I've learned to appreciate my nose, even if it's not what White people consider perfect-looking. Especially because it's not, actually. By wearing it proudly, by refusing to change it in the face of White anti-Semitism, by cherishing the path that my nose has taken, genetically, from ancient Israel to 21st-century England, I take back my ethnic identity from those who want me to erase it.

Back! Longer post to come.

2006-10-25T02:00:00.000-07:00

Between teaching my classes, writing the eight hundred million journal articles and book chapters I've had due for this month (read: three, but still), and actually spending a little bit of time with my husband, I haven't had time to blog. But I've decided that I'm going to anyway, papers be damned! Ahahaha!

Will be back soonish with a longer post.

Rosh Hashanah

2006-09-25T14:47:00.000-07:00

I'm a few days late because I've been visiting family and haven't had access to a computer. But I wanted to wish everyone, Jew and non-Jew both, Shanah Tova. May the next twelve months be better and more peaceful than the last.

The coup in Thailand

2006-09-20T01:06:00.000-07:00

I just saw this on the BBC.

I'll be the first to admit that I know almost nothing about Thai politics. Can anyone enlighten me as to the meaning of this, or point me somewhere it's being discussed?

The semester!

2006-09-17T03:08:00.000-07:00

Sorry, everyone (and I do mean, most likely, "one"), for the delay. The semester has started up again, and I'm teaching two classes, neither of which I've taught before. So there's a whole lot of prep work involved, which means less time to blog. Even this will be a relatively short one, and probably not terribly well-written.

I've been thinking a lot about how prejudices are both introduced and reinforced by popular media. I've been reading a lot of genre theory; there are some theorists who believe that the conventions of a genre are there to provide the writer with a "shortcut" with which to set up reader expectations quickly, so that they can get down to plot concerns with a minimum of dilly-dally. This also reinforces the "truth" of genre conventions in a reader's mind, in a sort of feedback loop. This seems to apply even more to genre films or TV shows or music videos or songs. Show a shot of a spaceship and you know you're watching a science fiction show, for instance; but not only does this give the viewer an immediate hint as to which category to file the show into, it also makes it so that the next time the viewer sees a spaceship, she will be even more inclined than last time to immediately think "sci-fi!"

It seems to me, though, that this can also apply to the mass media's gratuitous use of stereotypes. I'm thinking specifically of the travesty of a film called Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man's Chest, which contains two especially egregious elements: a "magical Negro" woman, and a tribe of "cannibals" who speak in a stereotyped oonga-boonga language and serve as disposable, comical foils for Captain Jack. I know that my blogging on this is probably very late, but I refused to pay money to see the movie and so only managed to see it very recently.

The Black woman is a "sorceress" who lives alone in a hut full of eyeballs and other exotically disgusting things. She herself, an absolutely lovely (and, of course, light-skinned; this is Hollywood, after all) woman with dirty hair and blackened teeth and a somehow-off "Jamaican" accent, is portrayed as both exotically alluring and exotically disgusting, following the general cultural stereotype of Black women; she is also portrayed as extremely sexual, the mirror image of the desexualized and virginal Elizabeth, and her sexuality is considered egregious. She is, as I recall, the only woman of colour in the entire movie.

The tribe - well, there's not much I can say about them without devolving into angry swearing. They are an embodiment of the worst stereotypes about Caribbean islanders. They are cannibals; they speak in a nonsense language that is literally incoprehensible (but, of course, Captain Jack can speak it); they are not just "uncivilized" but actually stupid; they are not identified individually but rather as a group, and their deaths, when they happen, are meant to be humourous. I don't imagine I need to go into detail as to why this is absolutely awful, in every way.

There's always a camp of people who, when offense is made, sneer, "Can't you take a joke?" That's also what happened in some of the response to this film. The potrayals were so over the top, they contended, that it's obvious that no one would take them seriously.

And these people are probably right, in a sense. Few people (though not as few as some may think, unfortunately) would watch this film and consciously think that all Caribbean indigenous people are cannibals and all Black women are scary yet hot sorceresses. But what the film does do is reinforce those stereotypes in most people's minds, so that they come to life just a little bit more and seem just a little bit more real (because every stereotype has a grain of truth, dontcha know? Yuk.) The next time the average person sees a Black woman, he is liable to think just a little bit, consciously or subconsciously, of the sorceress in Pirates of the Caribbean.

This is what unchallenged stereotypes do: they build up restricting walls around oppressed groups little by little, in tiny increments like grains of sand, so that by the end of it the walls are high and fast and the builders don't even notice the pounding from the inside.

Back; and, society and the Freudian family

2006-09-05T12:56:00.000-07:00

I didn't go fishing, either. But I ate lots of sushi. Lots of delicious, delicious avocado and cucumber sushi, rolled in rice and sesame seeds and nori strips. Mmmm.

I also got to see my family, and go to a big family event, which was absolutely wonderful. I was raised mostly away from my extended family, because my parents moved every few years when I was young, so seeing all my relatives has always been an extra-special treat for me. I left my husband at home this time, because he had to work, and I missed him, but it was sort of nice to spend some time with just the family I was raised in (I'd originally typed "family of origin", but there are plenty of families formed through adoption and by other means in which the child/ren didn't "originate" with the parent(s) and/or caregiver(s), so I feel that my revised phrasing better reflects the variety of ways in which families are structured - especially considering the subject of this post!).

Spending time with my family meant I got to talk to my brother, who's an undergrad right now and is absolutely brilliant. He's smart to begin with, but he reads voraciously and broadly, which makes him genius-level smart. He recommended to me The Rebel Sell: Why The Culture Can't Be Jammed, which I read during the few quiet moments in a raucous two weeks. (This will come into play in a minute.)

And spending time with my family meant that I got the time to reflect on families in general. My particular extended family is actually extremely unusual in its relative conformity to the social norms of Western society. This is the environment in which I have grown up.

The other day someone I don't know well asked me if I felt "lucky" to have been raised in that environment, where everyone is still married and no one is gay or in a family situation that does not conform to social norms. It's not the first time I've been asked that. I thought for a moment. "I'm glad for everyone's happiness," I said. "I feel lucky to have been brought up with such love, and around people who have such love for each other." The part I didn't say, that in retrospect I really should have said but was too scared and felt too unfamiliar with the person to say, was: "Why would I feel lucky not to have gay relatives or relatives who are divorced or otherwise in non-societally-sanctioned family situations? Why do you think there's something wrong with people who are?"

So as I was reading The Rebel Sell, I was alternately nodding and shaking my head along with it. Overall, it's a really good, thought-provoking text, though it fails to clinch its argument in places - sets everything up and then just stops. But one of the things that jumped out at me was the explication of how deeply entrenched Freudian psychoanalysis is in Western, especially American, society. Not just in academic production or even cultural production, either - in idiom, in pop psychology, even in the educational system. The concepts of the id, the ego, the superego - despite the fact that Freud's theories are indeed theories (in a completely different way than evolution is a theory, mind you) they are largely assumed to be accurate. Not only that, but they are hugely simplified for mass consumption, losing the nuance and retaining only the large, rigid structures.*

And included in Freudian theory is a very strict construction of the way men and women relate, the way parents and children relate, and the way the family must be structured in order to keep from damaging the child for life. There must be two parents, a mother and a father, Freud claimed. He also claimed that the son wants to have sex with his mother and kill his father, and vice versa for the daughter. Implicit here, in this theory that has wormed its way into the bedrock of our thought processes, are two things: that all "normal" people are heterosexual (and therefore want to have sex with the opposite sex parent), and that all "normal" people have two parents, one of each sex. Sure, according to Freud, we have to repress these drives; but they exist, nonetheless, in all of us.

Literal adherence to the Bible or the Torah or the Koran or other religious texts with anti-gay elements explains the aversion to homosexuality and alternative family structures that religious fundamentalists have, but there are plenty of people who are only putatively fundamentalist, or who aren't even all that religious at all, who still think that homosexuality is "icky" or just vaguely wrong in some way that they can't articulate. And there are lots of people who are squicked out even by the idea of considering a family which doesn't conform to the het-parents-with-bio-kids model a real family. I wonder if this deep-seated inculcation of Freudian familial theory - which have been transmitted in much the same way that other insidious social myths are - is responsible for some of that. Perhaps, in people's cognitive maps of their social environments (apologies to Jameson!), there's some faint but rigid structure modeled on Freud's idea of gender and family roles, into which people who choose to live in alternative family situations do not fit. This seems to be extremely jarring for many people, and maybe that's why.

And if so, I wonder how we can help people un-learn these ideas.

*I myself am far from an expert in Freudian psychoanalysis; any errors in this post are entirely my own!

Gone fishin'.

2006-08-19T16:00:00.000-07:00

Well, not really - my one experience with fishing, at age eight, was highly traumatic. I caught a fish "big enough to eat", as my dad said, but when I realized that we would actually have to kill this live, struggling, wriggling thing, I burst into tears and made my dad throw it back. Never went fishing again.

The same thing that makes me a crap fisherwoman makes me a good peace activist, I guess.

Anyhow, I'm off to visit my family for two weeks, and I doubt I'll have much time to post. But I really appreciate all yall who've dropped by and read and commented, and I've enjoyed clicking through to your blogs and reading them too. Back at the beginning of September. :)

Read this story.

2006-08-17T09:48:00.000-07:00

Lenny Bruce (yes, that is his real name!), a former IDF soldier and anti-war activist, has written an unbelievably moving account of his experience as a soldier in Lebanon... in 1982.

Please go and read it!

Being a Reform Jew.

2006-08-14T10:36:00.000-07:00

(I'm working on a longer post on the Lebanon situation, but I don't think I'm at the point yet where I can post it. In the meantime, check out Brownfemipower in the links for some incisive commentary, and also check out Semitism.net.)

Growing up, I knew of three kinds of Jews: Reform, Conservative and Orthodox. These slowly hardened into a hierarchy into my mind, a three-part harmony of Judaism. Orthodox people wore long skirts and sometimes funny hats, and went to synagogue a lot. When you went to their houses for Shabbat dinner, you had to wait a long time before eating, because there were a heck of a lot of prayers to say. Reform folks were like my family: High Holiday Jews with a smattering of Saturday synagogue attendance, who occasionally snuck a shrimp or a piece of bacon when nobody, especially God, was looking. Conservative Jews were an amorphous group in the middle, neither as liberal as Reform nor as staunch as Orthodox. These were the only three kinds of Jews I knew, and they were defined largely by their level of religious observance.

As I grew older and gained a Jewish education beyond my Hebrew day school (where, as I will explore in another post, the maps of Israel didn't include the territories - I was literally seventeen years old before I realized that Israel was actually a lot smaller than I'd thought), I learned that there were other, more theological differences. Orthodox Jews came in many flavours: Hasidim, Modern Orthodox, the Mea Shearim wackos who spat on me in Jerusalem for having my skirt an inch too short. There was another sect, Reconstructionist, that I'd never even heard of; they were even less observant than Reform, and I always imagined them as the Deadheads of Judaism. Some Jews still believed that one day an entirely red calf would be born, and that its sacrifice would bring about... something.

But there was a distinction that was extremely important to me, my beliefs and my politics. I am a Reform Jew; my reason for being so is that Reform Jews believe that the Temple need not be "rebuilt" literally in Jerusalem, but that anywhere in the world can function as a Temple if it consists of a Jewish community.

In my readings on Zionism (which are far from comprehensive, I will admit), one motif that keeps popping up in terms of religious Zionism is the idea that the Temple, the Head Honcho of Synagogues, the one that was destroyed once by the Babylonians and then again by the Romans, must literally be rebuilt on the site where it sat 2000 years ago. This is arguably the sentiment behind the song we sing at the end of the seder: "l'shanah haba'ah b'Yerushalayim". Next year in Jerusalem. This idea, that the spiritual centre of Judaism must physically be a rebuilt Temple on that ancient site in Jerusalem, is intrinsically linked with the idea of Israel as the spiritual centre of Judaism and as the (exclusively) Jewish homeland. Obviously, for those of us Jews who are post-Zionist, who see the downfalls and failures of Jewish nationalism, such a worldview is fatally flawed. We cannot physically situate Israel as the centre of Jewish life, and make the completion of the project of Jewish spirituality contingent upon the building of a new Temple on contested land, whilst retaining our commitment to social justice and to the work of fighting for the human rights of the people who share that land and who are oppressed by the Israeli government.

I also believe that community, especially Jewish community, transcends physical location. The Jews were in many ways the original diasporic community - and if there is one thing we've learned, or should have learned, it's that a homeland is what you make it when you've been in the diaspora for as long as we have. This is not to say that a fond regard for one's ancestral homeland is wrong - but there is a difference between knowing and respecting one's roots and displacing huge numbers of people in order to forcibly form a distended facsimile of what once was, thousands of years ago, a nation-state of Jews.

My Judaism isn't limited by physical boundaries. My God, who is a loving God, does not choose one group of Her/His children over another. My community is built in love, not on the backs of the oppressed, and my spirituality does not tolerate injustice. I disavow all those who would do harm to others in my name, and in the name of my faith - and at all.

And that is why I am a Reform Jew.

We're all made out of ticky-tacky...

2006-08-13T08:17:00.000-07:00

...and we all look just the same.

Or rather, we would, if we all followed the overarching feminine aesthetic of Western society. Tucked tummies, taut butts. Smooth unfreckled skin (unless we're Lindsay Lohan) - it's got to be tanned to the point of skin cancer if we're White, and light to the point of bleaching creams if we're not White. Straight blonde hair mandatory, however it comes about, through destructive bleaching or ironing or painful chemical treatments. If Beyonce can do it, so can you. Designer clothes only, bought every two weeks to keep up with the ever-changing fashion. Less than 10% body fat - what, you still get your period? What are you thinking? You'll ruin your dress, if you can still fit into it!

Everything processed. That's the key word. Natural is imperfect, and in an aesthetic culture of forced perfection, imperfect is unacceptable. So, too many women commence the tweezing, waxing, squishing, cutting, injecting process of becoming a patriarchally-perfect woman in this society.

We took a trip to the shopping mall today - our nearest grocery store, within walking distance since we don't have a car, is at the back of one. The girls were out in force, teetering on their wedges, their painted lips making little pink O's into their cellphones, "destroyed" jeans hanging from their skinny hips. One looked much the same as the next. We walked through the mall, watching them pick through racks of identical shirts at the Gap. Later, they walked up and down the aisles of the grocery store, picking up this or that piece of meat, foil-wrapped ready meal, shrink-wrapped head of broccoli. And it struck me, how our culture is built on processing everything, from vegetables to people.

Everything is globalized, super-sized, standardized. In our quest to make everything available to everyone quickly, to satisfy this culture's slavering need for instant gratification in all areas of life, we have shed individuality in favour of the quick, easy, cheap solution. But it's strange, because somehow conformity has become a mark of status, of acceptance. The closer you are to the middle of the mainstream, the more you process yourself, the less you act or dress or behave as an individual, the closer you come to the prevailing ideal. Not exclusively, but especially, if you are a woman.

I was thinking about this, and then I came across this blog post in my Internet travels, by a young woman who is explaining why she makes her own gifts for family and friends rather than buying them:

"You know, we do a lot of things, like the garden and the handmade gifts, that end up saving us some money. Still, I don't think that saving money is the best reason to do these things ourselves. Instead, I think the greatest benefit is that they disconnect us from endless marketing and purchasing, and reconnect us with our own lives and with the people we love."

Inspiring, eh? I think she's right - while it's impossible to get away completely from the bright, hyperreal consumption society in which we live, it's important to try, at least sometimes, to step outside its boundaries and do things on our own terms, not those of the culture which seeks to process us into oblivion.

Yes, they do understand.

2006-08-02T10:35:00.000-07:00

I've never watched much TV or read many magazines, I must admit. We don't have cable at home because it's too expensive, and I'd usually rather spend money on real books than on 200-page advertisements for anorexia culture. But two things have happened recently that have led me to partake of both: my husband, bless him, got me a discounted gym membership as a gift, and I had to go to the hospital for a scan, bless the NHS for being free.

At my gym, there are four tiny TV's at the front of the room that get the same four basic channels as we get at home. There isn't any sound, unless you want to pony up for some headphones that plug into receivers in the workout machines, but the pictures can provide a welcome distraction after I've been running on the treadmill for two miles and would rather not think about how my lungs are about to explode. And at the hospital, when I went, there was a wide selection of colourful, trashy magazines in the waiting room. I couldn't help it. I like colourful things.

There are two advertisements, one from TV and one from the magazine, that have been sticking in my head, refusing to let go until I write about them.

The advertisement in the magazine was grey text on a white background. (I'm working from memory here, so I apologize if any of this is inaccurate.) It's an advertisement for a foundation that helps women in poorer countries who have developed fistula, a shockingly common complication of childbirth that results in a dead baby and a hole in the membrane between a woman's vagina and her urethra or anus. As you can imagine, it's terribly unpleasant, a far cry from the anaesthetized, soothing white background of the advertisement. Women with fistula have a hard time keeping themselves clean and are often incontinent, which severely limits their participation in everyday life.

So, fine. They don't want a picture of oozing excrement on the page of the magazine. Understandable. But what struck me was the text. It was one of those "case study" narratives that's meant to highlight one person's experience and make the reader feel sympathy for that particular person. Okay, fine again, if a bit essentialist. But no:

The major narrative of the text is that the woman "doesn't understand". She "doesn't understand" why her baby was born dead. She "doesn't understand" why she leaks urine. She "doesn't understand" why her husband has left her.

My first reaction was, "well, who does understand why horrible things happen, except maybe Rabbi Harold Kushner?" (He's the author of that classic book When Bad Things Happen to Good People, if you're wondering.) But my second, almost simultaneous reaction was one of revulsion. This advertisement was suggesting that the woman "doesn't understand", not because she's human and as flabbergasted by tragedy as anyone else, but because she is poor and from a poor country and probably not white, and therefore she is too stupid to understand what is happening to her. This is the way the advertisement is meant to tug at the reader's heartstrings: by the concept that the woman in it is inherently inferior, inherently Other, to the reader, and therefore needs the reader's help. It's a terrible way to raise money for what is otherwise a good cause.

The advertisement on TV was one of those World Vision commercials - you know, the ones that have been around for many, many years, the ones with Black women staring at the camera with demoralized expressions, while flies crawl around on the faces of their children. What gets me about these advertisements is how similar they are in terms of shooting technique and style to advertisements I've seen for the RSPCA (the UK animal shelter people). The people in them are presented as entirely hopeless: they stare with sad, puppydog eyes at the camera, waiting for some kind white person to swoop down and "adopt" them (literally - that's the rhetoric used) and for just X amount per month, you can get pictures of and letters from the child whose life you've singlehandedly saved. Never mind that they have mothers already, they have communities, they - like everyone else - have lives far richer than what is shown on television. They need a white sugar-daddy/mommy, and you, the watcher, need a child-scrawled testimonial to your generosity, and a couple of pictures of a kid who, despite your "adoption", you will probably never meet. (Notice, too, how adults are never "up for adoption"; they are, it seems, expendable, or at least invisible, to World Vision.)

It seems to me that even contributions to charity have become a form of capitalism, and the recipients of those contributions have become, in a sense, goods for purchase. When you contribute to their organizations, these adverts promise, you'll be buying two things: a sense that you've done some good in the world, and a renewed sense of your own distance, your own superiority, in relation to the very people you're helping. They can't do it on their own, you're told - but not because they've been pushed into the position they're in because of hundreds of years of colonization, or because they've been preyed upon by horrendously unfair economic policies. No. They can't do it on their own because they "don't understand," they don't know any better, they're just magically poor through their own doing rather than any injustices heaped upon them by the West, and they need you to save them from themselves. They can't do it on their own because they - through no fault of yours or the West's, of course - are too poor to buy food, or too far from a clinic where their fistula can be surgically repaired (a clinic that, due to GW Bush's funding rules, has probably been shut down anyway). Only you, the Rich, the Superior, the Civilized - only you can save these poor, downtrodden, inferior, Other people.

That is what these advertisements tell the reader or watcher. And it is a terribly sad state of affairs in our society if that is the best way to get people to contribute to charity, if white people really feel the need to oppress people of colour even as they are "helping" them in order to feel secure in themselves.

The Four Children, and ignorant questions.

2006-07-26T00:23:00.000-07:00

In Judaism, on Passover, we have a meal called a seder. Its purpose is to help us gather with our families and spend time with them, and also to reflect on injustice and oppression. Though it began as a retelling of the story of the Jews' enslavement in Egypt and an entreaty that we never forget such things, many modern seders, including my own family's, have expanded to include discussion and activism regarding all of the different forms of oppression at work in the world, from the literal slavery that still endures to racism, sexism, classism and other unjust matrices of power, and what we can do to heal those wounds.

One part of the seder that I've always found really interesting is the story of the four children. (Well, in the Torah, they're the four sons, but my family always talks about the four children, in the spirit of egalitarianism.) These four children each have a different interpretation of the seder and what it means (textual help from Ohr Somayach):

The Wise Child asks, "What are the testimonials, statutes and laws Hashem our G-d commanded you?" She has paid attention in her lessons and knows enough to ask the right questions at the right time.

The Wicked Child asks, "What does this drudgery mean to you?" Not only does he exclude himself from the conversation - "you" rather than "us" - but he dismisses the ceremony itself, as a whole. He not only leaves himself no place in it, but he leaves no place for it.

The Simple Child asks, "What's this?" She knows very little about the ceremony or what it means, but she is curious and seeks respectfully to understand.

The Child who does not know enough to ask, or, as I call him, the Clueless Child, has no context even to begin to understand Passover and the Seder. He hasn't even the base to ask a question.

There has been quite a lot of rabbinic commentary on the story, as there is about everything in Judaism, and in contemporary times there is discussion of a Fifth Child, even less involved than the Clueless Child, who does not even show up to the seder - this is meant to represent the entirely secular Jew who identifies with Judaism as a cultural, perhaps political, but not religious orientation. (I'll probably be talking a lot about this "type" of Jew in the next little while, what with everything going on in the Middle East, but not right now.)

I have a little bit of a different take on the story, though. I've been reading quite a lot of posts about stupid, ignorant, offensive questions people ask. From what I know, it started when nubian at Blac(k)ademic was asked by a white colleague whether her skin got hotter than the white woman's own, because ya know, a black T-shirt gets hotter than a white one and isn't skin just like T-shirts, and what do you mean there's a whole history of Black oppression and white ignorance that might make such a question offensive? The incident exploded into the blogosphere (am I using that word correctly?), with some people - mostly those who belong to minority groups and have been asked similar offensive questions - sympathizing/empathizing with nubian, and others dismissing her concerns like good privileged folks. Some of the ensuing discussion had to do with what level of responsibility falls on minorities to educate the majority about their experiences, worldviews and politics.

Obviously, the short answer is: none. It's never nubian's, or anyone else's, responsibility to tell anyone anything, to interact in a certain way with anyone else, to share anything they don't choose to share. Such a boundary is incredibly important, especially for those whose spaces (more on spaces next post!) and lives and livelihoods have been co-opted, interfered with, appropriated and otherwise destroyed by members of the majority. So, the responsibility is none, zero, nada.

It can, though, sometimes be helpful to try and educate someone. If you're in the mood, if you're not too tired, if you've eaten enough - if YOU want to educate someone, and it's coming from you, and is not an expectation from the other person - a little bit of education, like an answer to a respectfully-phrased, intelligent question, or a reference for a book that might help clarify a concept, could be a good thing to provide. But I think that an important determining factor - in my own case, anyhow, when I'm asked an idiot question about my ethnicity/religion, which is more often than you'd think - as to whether I choose to provide an educational experience or whether I tell someone to fuck off is what kind of child they are.

Are they a Wise Child? Have they done the initial research? Are they coming to me with hope, but no expectation? Have they asked a question in a respectful manner? Are they identifying themselves as someone who will use the answer in order to further the cause of anti-oppression? Do they know at least the basic correct terms in which to address me? (I once had someone ask "What's it like being a kike?" No kidding.) If we disagree, are they respectful of my opinion? If I'm at all in the mood to educate, I'm most likely to have a constructive dialogue with a person like this, in which I can hopefully educate him or her about my experiences.

Are they a Wicked Child? Are they coming from a place of disrespect, or looking for a particular answer? Are they likely to misrepresent me or what I tell them? Have they deliberately exposed themselves only to one side of a particular debate? Are they discourteous? Do they use offensive terms? Every single time, I will tell a person like this to fuck off - they may be educatable, by someone, but it ain't gonna be me.

Are they a Simple Child? This, for me, is the trickiest category - I'm interpreting it, for my purposes here, as a person who knows a very little bit, the very basics, but either hasn't done the work necessary to know more, or has no idea where to start. The distinction between these two subcategories is, for me - and it may not be for others - really key to how I will react. Are they intellectually lazy? Do they have a vested interest in a certain outcome? Do they treat me like an expert or like a case study, a token, a representation of my people rather than an individual? Are they humble in their ignorance or arrogant in it? If I do tell them something they want to know, are they grateful for my guidance or do they treat it as their right as privileged people? My interactions with this sort of person really depend on my mood and how they come across - if they really have no clue where to start, I'll often give them a gentle push and/or help them along, but if they're too lazy to do their own damn research, I tell them so and that they'll get no help from me.

Are they a Clueless Child? Well, if they were, they wouldn't be asking, would they? ;) I kid... but if I ever come across someone who is truly so ignorant, through having had absolutely no contact with those of my ethnic/religious heritage and no education whatsoever in the challenges we face, I'll let you know how I handle it.

This is just how I, personally, choose to handle interactions with people who want something from me that's related to my being Jewish. I would never try to generalize my own experiences and choices across oppressed groups. It's just worked pretty well for me, thus far. Especially the telling people to fuck off part - I really enjoy that! ;)

Jumping in here...

2006-07-26T00:19:00.000-07:00

I'm not new to reading blogs, but I'm new to writing them. I've been inspired to keep one, though, by BFP at Brownfemipower, who is really amazing.

So, here goes!