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Our Favorite New Ad — and What You Still Can't Say on TV
By Leah Berkenwald
A new advertising campaign by U for Kotex has done what no menstrual product company has done before: create an ad that is not only straightforward about menstruation, but also pokes fun at its own history of vague and sanitized ads. Both reasons make this ad campaign groundbreaking, but for some reason, you still can’t say “vagina” on TV.
The commercial stars a hip, 20-something woman mocking the standard menstrual product commercials, which feature young, pretty women dancing, doing yoga, or just being smiley in tight, white clothing. She also takes a well-deserved shot at the infamous “blue liquid” (and the other tampon ad tropes that The Sisterhood discussed here.
I think it’s safe to say this ad demonstrates a victory for feminists, especially those weighing in on pop culture and advertising like Sarah Haskins and the dedicated feminist communities online and elsewhere. Social media has also allowed the voices of women to be heard — letting advertisers know that women are paying attention and are ready for a change from the same old sexist “man” ads and patronizing “lady” ads. But, as you might imagine, the battle is far from over.
Watch the ad:
Leah Berkenwald is the online communications specialist at the Jewish Women’s Archive, and a contributor to its Jewesses With Attitude blog, which cross-posts regularly with the Sisterhood.
March 19, 2010, 11:09am
Why Sara Hurwitz's JOFA Speech Was 'Retrograde'
By Elana Sztokman
There was an exciting energy at the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance conference. Speakers in both the plenary and individual sessions, such as emerging star Lisa Schlaff, made far-reaching statements and bold suggestions about issues ranging from marriage and sexuality to halachic ingenuity. Participants responded in kind with creativity and courage, revealing what seems to be a powerful consensus that Orthodoxy is in the midst of a major overhaul from the ground up.
The fact that conference participants expressed full and enthusiastic support for Orthodox women rabbis offers some sense of the disconnect between this grassroots community and the formal leadership of Modern Orthodoxy. It suggests, as did many of my encounters at the conference, that Modern Orthodox decision-makers are out of touch with the lived experiences of their constituents. Nowhere was this disconnect more apparent than in Rabba Sara Hurwitz’s plenary lecture. As she was called to the stage as “Rabba,” the entire room stood and cheered. This was clearly a place where the Rabbinical Council of America’s pronouncements were irrelevant at best, where Hurwitz was and is Rabbi.
However, as Hurwitz spoke, she revealed that while the audience was ready to take on the RCA, she is not.
Don't Divorce the Mitzvah from Mikveh
By Debra Nussbaum Cohen
At last Sunday’s conference of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance there was an interesting session titled “Rediscovering Mikvah: Creating a New Construct in Thinking about Mikvah.”
Given my increasingly ambivalent relationship to my own mikveh practice, I slipped away from all the sessions on Orthodox women and leadership that I needed to attend to for my coverage of this central issue, and went for some personal inspiration.
The session was run by Dr. Bat Sheva Marcus, an Orthodox Jew who is also a professional sex therapist, and featured Carrie Bornstein, the Mikveh Center director at Newton, Mass.’s Mayyim Hayyim Living Waters Community Mikveh and Education Center,.
March 17, 2010, 8:41pm
The Women in the Crosshairs of 'Freedom of Religion'
By Sarah Seltzer
While much of the weekend’s news cycle was devoted to Bibi-Bidengate, another event in Israel this weekend caught my eye: the protest against sex-segregated buses, which fellow Sisterhood blogger Allison Kaplan Sommer writes about here. In the Sisterhood’s earlier coverage of the issue, Elana Sztokman rightly called the so-called “modesty” policy on public buses deeply discriminatory and sexist. Judy Mandelbaum at Salon’s Broadsheet also has a great round-up of the weekend’s protest and the history of the issue.
There’s a fine line between freedom of religion and the basic democratic principle of separation of religion and state, and it can get particularly thorny in a Jewish state. But at the end of the day, the right to practice one’s religious rituals on public property can’t interfere with others’ right to dignity, equality and basic freedoms. When it does, as is the case with the buses, it’s time for the government to interfere.
We face the problem here, too, as our endless tussle over health-care reform proves. Again and again, issues like abortion and abstinence-only education hold up progress, held hostage by “values” legislators, a code phrase for religiously motivated, socially conservative folks.
March 17, 2010, 8:23pm
Bus Segregation Inspires 'Stop in Time' Protest Movement
By Allison Kaplan Sommer
The government’s continuing toleration of gender-separated buses, with men sitting in the front and the women in the back, has struck a nerve with the Israeli public, sparking an angry reaction that has been gathering momentum in recent weeks. A large demonstration against the separated buses has taken place, a hotline has been set up for women’s complaints and now a poster campaign protesting the practice has begun. Ynet reports:
Dozens of young people protesting the separation between men and women on public transportation in Jerusalem toured a number of cities Tuesday night where they hung signs in protest of the “mehadrin lines” that stipulate such a separation.
The activists, who will hold a protest in the capital in another two weeks, are also calling for Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz, who has allowed the gender separation to be instated, to step down.
Katz has continued to allow the lines to operate in defiance of a temporary injunction issued by Israel’s high court. And the number of bus lines is growing: Currently, such segregated buses operate in Arad, Ashdod, Bat Yam, Bnai Brak, Jerusalem and Tiberias. The protest posters were put up as part of a campaign called “A Stop in Time.”
March 16, 2010, 8:26pm
In Linda Richman's Footsteps: 'Ronna and Beverly'
By Elissa Strauss
As much as I love the whole Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen, Ben Stiller, Judd Aptaow schlemiel genre I always shudder a bit when finding out, again and again, that their co-star is a semi-serious perky blond. (For the most recent example, see the new movie “She’s Out of My League”, where the real-life half Jew Jay Baruchel pursues yet another, fair-haired and -eyed interest.) Why can’t the woman ever be funny — and not just spunky? Occasionally, a brunette? And, just once, Jewish?
This regular disappointment explains the joy I felt recently when discovering the hilarious comedy act “Ronna and Beverly”, described by many as a Jewish “Absolutely Fabulous” and played by actresses Jessica Chaffin and Jamie Denbo. Ronna and Beverly are two Jewish divorcees who play the authors of the book “You’ll Do a Little Better Next Time: A Guide to Marriage and Remarriage for Jewish Singles” — and they’re the best things to happen to Jewish female characters since Mike Myers did Linda Richman on SNL.
Rabbi Sperber at JOFA: Confront Halacha's Male Bias
By Debra Nussbaum Cohen
Early Sunday morning, I shlepped my tired self through the rain — taking the subway up to Columbia University — to cover the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance conference. At the end of a long day, I came away energized.
At the First International Conference on Feminism & Orthodoxy back in 1997, there was something electric in the air, and that same electricity was apparent on Sunday.
To be sure, the current imbroglio — see this story for the background and this story for an update — over what roles women with the same training as rabbis get may play in Orthodox institutions and what they can be called was a galvanizing issue. JOFA founder Blu Greenberg told me, afterward, that there were lots of last-minute registrations, likely a result.
'Plan A': NCJW's Campaign for Contraception
By Debra Nussbaum Cohen
When my neighbor told me that “Plan B” was the name he had picked for the sports bar he was opening, I just about choked. Until I told him, he had no idea that it’s the name of the morning-after pill; he went with the name anyway.
So I thought it very clever when I saw that the National Council of Jewish Women is calling its new campaign for contraception access “Plan A.” After all, if we have a Plan A, we won’t need to get to Plan B, right? “Plan A” is an outgrowth of NCJW’s activism on women’s reproductive health and a response to the U.S. Senate’s passage, last October, of a bill that allocates $50 million of new tax money to abstinence-only education programs.
Podcast: How Orthodox Day Schools Can Embrace Feminism
By Gabrielle Birkner
It’s a story of a Sisterhood post done good.
Last month, Elana Sztokman, a regular contributor to this blog, proposed a model for infusing Orthodox day schools with the kind of feminist values that have informed partnership synagogues and have advanced women’s leadership roles within Orthodoxy.
The buzz that her blog post generated secured her a spot as a featured speaker at the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance (JOFA) conference, taking place this weekend in New York. (Sisterhood contributor Rebecca Honig Friedman previewed the conference here.)
Elana spoke with me today in the Forward studio about her vision for Orthodox day school education and the often-troubling messages that Orthodoxy sends to boys and men — topics on which she’ll be presenting this weekend.
Listen to the podcast:
Passover Cleaning: How I Learned To Embrace Israel's National Sport
By Allison Kaplan Sommer
In the weeks leading up to Passover, housecleaning is transformed from a private activity into something of a national competitive Israeli sport. In my corner of greater Tel Aviv suburbia, spring means the smell of ammonia, not roses, is in the air. Walk into the supermarket, and you have navigate past shelves full of cleaning supplies, before you make it to the milk and eggs. You can’t turn on the television without commercials for the latest gadget to make cleaning easier, faster and better; public service announcements sternly warn the population against the inhalation of too many toxic cleaning products.
Once we were slaves in Egypt, now we are slaves to the image of the idealized Passover home, with everything perfectly scrubbed and in order.
When I first moved to Israel 17 years ago — a childfree career woman and a feminist, with no fondness for normal housework, let alone this kind of frenzy — I was appalled at first. It all felt like some kind of conspiracy on the part of obsessive-compulsive neat freaks to make their freakish socially acceptable, and pressure the rest of us to meet their ultrasanitary standards.
Reared a Reform Jew, I became slightly more understanding as I became more familiar with the tough standards of getting the house kosher for Passover in the Orthodox world.
March 10, 2010, 5:02pm
Younger Women To Headline JOFA Conference; Event To Focus on Leadership, Education
By Rebecca Honig Friedman
It’s been three years since JOFA’s last national conference in New York, which may explain the seam-bursting program, with more 50 different sessions in the less than 24 hours. It seems that organizers of the 2010 conference, which begins Saturday night, have decided to cram three-years’ worth of pent-up Jewish feminist activity and thought into a night and a day.
From the first-ever JOFA Film Festival to workshops on art and spirituality to a bevy of discussions about expanding women’s ritual and leadership roles in the Orthodox community, this year’s conference appears designed to affirm relevance to different types of people in the Orthodox community — especially younger ones.
The agenda is broad, and the average age of the speakers seems younger than in previous years (though that is a personal impression, not a mathematical survey). Most notably, the opening plenary on Sunday, which is meant to set the tone for the conference, features four women under the age of 40 — Rabba Sara Hurwitz, Erin Leib Smokler, Laura Shaw-Frank and Lisa Schlaff — who embody JOFA’s principles and are dynamic personalities in their own right.
March 10, 2010, 4:07pm
Set in Westport, a Jewish Retelling of 'Sense and Sensibility'
By Sarah Seltzer
In Cathleen Schine’s “The Three Weissmanns of Westport” — currently on The New York Times’ extended bestseller list — Jane Austen’s tale of two very different sisters, “Sense and Sensibility,” is transposed to the world of Manhattan and Connecticut Jewry. Miranda Weissman is a headstrong, romantic and a disgraced literary agent, while her practical, prim older sibling, Annie, is a librarian and divorcée. When their beloved stepfather abandons their mother, Betty, for a younger woman, and pushes her out of their Central Park West apartment, Miranda and Annie join her in self-imposed exile in a cousin’s each cottage in Westport, Conn.
There, the sisters and their mother learn lessons, large and small, about their family, themselves, romantic love and even etiquette. For example, Betty relays to her daughters the directive to always bring food when invited to a non-Jew’s house: “Just because we must respect the customs of other cultures, does not mean we have to starve,” she explains.
The Sisterhood’s Sarah Seltzer spoke recently with Schine about finding the perfect Jewish last name for her characters, fighting the crowds at Manhattan’s Fairway market, and Jane Austen’s legacy, beyond “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.”
Who's To Say Tefillin Barbie Is a Rabbi?
By Jen Taylor Friedman
“You know Barbie’s getting a new job,” says my friend Mimi to me. “People can vote for her new career.”
I put tefillin on a Mattel Barbie doll in 2006, unwittingly creating the Jewish icon now known as Tefillin Barbie Tefillin Barbie has a religious-girl denim skirt, a T-shirt, the tallit and tefillin more generally worn by Orthodox men during morning prayer, and a volume of Talmud; a whimsical activity for a vacation morning, she generated an absolutely vast and wholly unanticipated amount of reaction, positive and negative.
“Hurrah,” people say. “Now we can have Rabbi Barbie!”
But why, people? Why? Barbie put on tefillin and picked up a gemara, so now she has to be a rabbi? Why can’t she be an IT engineer who prays with tefillin and learns gemara in her lunch break?
See, we have this little problem in the liberal Jewish world. We assume that anyone who’s Jewishly invested must be on the rabbinical track. Not completely Jewishly illiterate? Surely you are in rabbinical school. Pray with tefillin? No one does that except rabbis. If Barbie is wearing tefillin and learning gemara, how can she possibly be anything other a rabbi?
Jen Taylor Friedman is a Jewish ritual scribe and scholar. The entire piece is available at Jewesses With Attitude, the blog of the Jewish Women’s Archive, which cross-posts regularly with The Sisterhood.
March 8, 2010, 6:39pm
Israel's 'Most Sexist' Ads
By Elana Sztokman
Sex sells. This marketing approach has become so commonplace that it is not only used to sell cars, beer, and football, but also to sell seemingly innocuous items like yogurt, laundry detergent, toothpaste, potato chips and lawn mowers. It is even used to target female consumers, for products such as facial cleanser, diet soda, perfume, tampons, and salads at McDonald’s. The marketplace has become so immersed in sexed-up images of women that, apparently, many people do not even realize anymore how hurtful these ads can be to the female gender.
To remind people that using women as sex objects in order to sell products is hurtful and distorted, WIZO has launched a campaign for the second year in a row to highlight “Israel’s Most Sexist Commercials of the Year.” No, not “sexiest” but most “sexist.” Their criteria for “sexist” is frighteningly simple. Sexist ads are ones that chop up women’s bodies into parts or depict women’s bodies without the faces, that depict women’s bodies as edible replacements for food or meat, that offer women’s bodies as objects for sale or consumption, that reinforce stereotypes and stigmas about women, that infantilize women or portray women as stupid, that promote women as sexual servants, that encourage violence or sexual violence against women, and that legitimize rape.
March 8, 2010, 2:44pm
International Women's Day: Whom Should We Celebrate?
By Debra Nussbaum Cohen
Today is International Women’s Day, a day to – what? I’m not really sure. It is, according to the [official site] of the day, “a global day celebrating the economic, political and social achievements of women past, present and future. In some places like China, Russia, Vietnam and Bulgaria, IWD is a national holiday.”
This is its 99th year, after being established by a German socialist politician and agitator for change, Clara Zetkin. She established the first International Women’s Day in Germany.
Zetkin came up with the idea in 1910, at the second International Conference of Working Women. According to the IWD site:
She proposed that every year in every country there should be a celebration on the same day - a Women’s Day - to press for their demands. The conference of over 100 women from 17 countries, representing unions, socialist parties, working women’s clubs, and including the first three women elected to the Finnish parliament, greeted Zetkin’s suggestion with unanimous approval and thus International Women’s Day was the result.
March 8, 2010, 10:32am
At the Oscars, Golda's Biographer Pulls a Kanye West
By Gal Beckerman
In an Oscars ceremony that seemed languid at times and straight up bizarre at others (interpretive breakdancing?!), one moment stood out as one of the more dramatic of the evening. If you were watching, you know what I’m talking about: the woman who pulled a Kanye. Well, it turns out — doesn’t it always — that there is a Jewish connection, and a pretty funny one given the circumstances.
The winner for best documentary short went to “Music By Prudence,” a film about a group of Zimbabwean musicians. Its director, Roger Ross Williams, stepped up to the microphone to make his acceptance speech, got about 10 seconds into it, and was then, almost literally, shoved aside by a woman in a purple gown, saying “Let a woman talk!” Williams then stood there stunned, as the woman indeed talked until those telltale strains of orchestral music sounded and the show moved on.
The name of the woman, Elinor Burkett, didn’t register last night, but this morning I suddenly remembered where I had heard it before. Burkett is also an author, and last year I reviewed in the Forward a biography of Golda Meir that she wrote. The book, titled “Golda” was published in 2008 and — to quote myself — it is a “sympathetic but unapologetic” look at Israel’s first woman premier. I estimated at the time that Burkett had done a pretty good job giving us a more complex picture of Golda, one I described as presenting “a tragic, lonely, sickly figure, a terrible mother who cuckolded and neglected her husband, alienated her loved ones and often terrorized her closest friends.”
March 5, 2010, 1:01pm
Rabbi Avi Weiss Backs Down From Ordaining Women
By Debra Nussbaum Cohen
It’s seems like an effort to put the rabba back in the hat.
Rabbi Avi Weiss, who is not usually known for backing down from a fight, on Friday announced via a statement from the Rabbinical Council of America that after discussions with officials there, he is rescinding his decision to describe the women who complete his five-year course of study at the new Yeshivat Maharat as ordained rabbas — a feminized form of the title rabbi.
Last spring, he announced that women who completed this course of study, comparable to that which male rabbinical school students receive at his Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, would be called Maharat, for Manhiga Hilchatit Ruchanit Toranit, which means leader in Jewish law, spirituality and Torah.
It did not prompt as much of an outcry from the Orthodox world as I had expected it would. But that changed when, in late January, Weiss changed the title of the one woman already bearing this title, Sara Hurwitz, to rabba, saying that the change would “make clear that Sara is a full member of our rabbinic staff” at his Bronx synagogue, the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale.
March 3, 2010, 5:14pm
In Israel, the Most Popular 'Jewish Mother' Is an Arab Muslim
By Allison Kaplan Sommer
In the world of Israeli popular culture, the most popular maternal figure at the moment is a very different kind of Jewish mother — a proud Arab Muslim who prays five times daily, calls the Koran her favorite book, obsessively puffs on a hookah pipe and proudly wears a keffiyah.
Futna Jabber is one of the five finalists on Israel’s version of the reality show hit “Big Brother,” after viewers voted week after week to keep the vivacious 37-year-old on their screens for more than three months. So popular was Futna, that she didn’t even have to worry in the last round of voting: None of her housemates nominated her for eliminations. The results of the final eliminations will be announced Thursday on the show’s finale.
March 3, 2010, 4:39pm
Are Wage Gaps Keeping Israel Out of the OECD?
By Elana Sztokman
The gap between women’s wages and men’s wages in Israel is getting wider. According to the latest annual survey conducted by Oketz Systems, men in senior management positions in Israel are making on average 29% more than women in identical positions.
The survey results show a distinct widening of the gender gap in salaries. Last year, the gap was 26%; in 2007 the gap was 25%; in 2005, the gap stood at 23%. It exists in all levels of employment, but increases in senior management positions. The gap is 24% among CEOs, 26% among those second in command, and 41% among product managers. The widest gap of 49% is noted among marketing managers, in which men earn on average 29,480 NIS ($7,833) per month and women earn on average 19,730 NIS ($5,243) per month. Only in administrative positions does the gap all but disappear — with monthly wages of 5,270 NIS ($1,400) for men and 5,260 NIS ($1,397) for women.
Embracing the Bad-Ass and the Beauty
By Sarah Seltzer
I couldn’t read all the Esther and Vashti talk around the Web, without chiming in myself. Like Elissa Strauss, I dressed up as one of the two queens every year at my Jewish day school’s Purim carnival — at least until 3rd or 4th grade when we started getting more creative with our costumes. Whether I was Esther or Vashti depended on the statement I wanted to make any given year. I remember feeling quite torn between being the perfect princess and being the bad-ass one (not that I knew what such a term meant, but I knew they were different).
The way I was told the story of Esther and Vashti makes me realize how early we’re indoctrinated with certain conceptions of gender — the good, obedient, selfless girl vs. the rebel. These two are our very own Jewish version of the Madonna-Eve, or Virgin-Whore dichotomy. Many feminists this week have talked about the way Esther and Vashti represent two ways of dealing with the patriarchy — either using beauty and patience to get your way, or standing up outright and facing the consequences. It’s the kind of debate we have in feminist circles all the time: Do we concede rhetoric to get change accomplished (the Esther way) or do we stand up for our principles at any cost (the Vashti way)?
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