Alef: The NEXT Conversation
24: Jewish Women
This week we introduce issue #24: “Jewish Women”
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If I asked ten people to describe what pops into mind when mentioning the topic “Jewish women,” I would likely hear ten vastly different answers (or possibly twelve, if all ten people polled were Jewish themselves). One guy might go into great detail about the Jewish women who populated his synagogue growing up, while the girl next to him describes her grandmother, who survived Auschwitz before making aliyah to Palestine and fighting for Israel’s independence. There may be a jokster among the bunch who actually says, “Sarah Silverman” and is then booted out of the group for insulting women—and humankind—the world over.
Perhaps one or two people would touch on one of the Torah’s strong female characters; there are many from which to choose, including Deborah, aka “The Fiery One.” Passages in the Book of Judges regard Deborah as the original Biblical “fighting woman.” The Torah also views Abraham’s wife, Sarah, as the matriarch of the Jewish people. She is often portrayed as a strong, independent woman who would go to great lengths to provide for her family (you won’t catch me providing stand-in women to my husband should infertility issues arise, but Sarah did just that). Speaking of infertility (well, fertility), a few readers may point to the strong female characters of Anita Diamant’s The Red Tent, in which the women of Jacob’s tribe took refuge and bonded with one another in a red tent while either menstruating or giving birth.
Extending past the Biblical era and into more modern times, other people may very well mention Holocaust survivors, or Holocaust chroniclers like Anne Frank, who did not survive but whose evident strength did and will impact generations to come. Or they may suggest the fiery Palmach fighter, Jordana Ben Canaan, from Leon Uris’ epic novel about Israel’s fight for independence, Exodus, a fictional character but one surely based on both factual and mythological projections of a Zionist ideal.
If you ask me about Jewish women, the first image that pops into mind is not a singular, known individual; rather it’s the image of an older, hearty woman with tight, graying curls, a wizened face and penchant for muttering Yiddish curse words. In my mind’s eye, she’s grappling with a carp swimming furiously around the bathtub of her small, tenement apartment; he can’t go far, the carp, but knows that once he’s caught, his fate of becoming gefilte fish on the old woman’s Pesach table is all but sealed.
Women in Judaism, both from a religious and cultural perspective, clearly take on a different and unique look for everyone. In this issue of Alef, we will explore those ideas and themes. Enjoy the posts and, as always, we welcome your open and honest commentary. If there’s one lesson you learn, though, it may very well be that even though Deborah was, arguably, the first female Jewish fighter, she has hardly been the last.
– Emily Kapit +Alef
Jewish Women Posts:
My Grandmother’s Doily
My Own Mama Manual
The Top 10 Moments for Jewish Women in 2010
Nice Jewish Girl No More
Nice Catholic Girl
Photo by Michal_Hadassah, licensed under Creative Commons.
Inglourious Basterds
by Dustin Stein
I had the privilege of seeing the New York premiere of Inglourious Basterds at the Museum of Jewish Heritage with a rare audience that included film buffs, young professionals, Quentin Tarantino, Harvey Weinstein, Eli Roth, and two dozen Holocaust survivors.
As a member of the Young Leadership Board of the Museum of Jewish Heritage and as an attorney that practices in the field of Holocaust restitution, I often converse with Holocaust survivors. When I recover property or bank accounts for survivors, I see the gratitude in their faces. They have seen more pain than anything I can imagine, and the frustration they must feel when they hear about world leaders denying the Holocaust would be enough to break any human. Yet by fighting for their lost property throughout the world, we force humanity to acknowledge these crimes. The symbolic justice in receiving a bank account or seder plate resonates with survivors, but this is imperfect justice. Exchange rates and the time value of money makes the monetary values of these accounts minimal. Additionally, these survivors lack closure – they lost their family, they were unable to say good-bye, their relatives, mere ashes in some cases because of the crematorium, cannot be brought back. Survivors must cope every day with the pain and suffering the Nazis brought on them.
But Inglourious Basterds brings to the screen one of what may be a survivor’s wildest dream – the chance to exact revenge on the Nazis.
The film is provocative to begin with, but it was even more thought-provoking when seen with Holocaust survivors. I sat there wondering how the survivors would respond to a fantasy about killing Nazis.
The death of the film’s first Nazi brought thunderous applause. I realized that Tarantino’s perversion of history may have fulfilled a lifelong desire of many survivors to kill Nazis, and my frustration with Holocaust fantasy movies likely put me in the minority in the theater that night. With the first post-screening comment, we heard survivors reiterate that the meaning of life is survival. I thought survivors would not want to see any film that diluted the historical and factual nature of the most atrocious human rights tragedy the world has seen. But the repeated comments from survivors, wishing they could kill Nazis themselves, quickly made me realize my folly.
I wondered how the world could not seem like a completely evil place for a survivor. Many in the audience had their entire families decimated, yet they sat there entranced by the characters’ slow dialogue and the anticipated climax.
Seeing the film made me want to know how survivors feel about death. Many of them have told me that they feel they have cheated death by surviving concentration camps, but are now faced with old age and an impending end. They saw hell and survived it, but will still succumb to their own inevitable demise; despite their extraordinary tales, they face the same fate as everyone else. While speaking with Tarantino after the film, many of them expressed that their dreams had come to life on screen. They wanted to murder the Nazis, but here in their eighties and nineties, some with nurses, walkers, or wheelchairs, seemingly bereft of the very vitality that kept them alive during the Holocaust, they saw a perverted film with just enough historical basis to ground it but also enough delusion to entertain.
I can’t help but think of Imre Kertesz’s book, Kaddish for a Child Not Born. The title of his book hints at the pessimistic attitude he seems to have towards life. He asks the question, how can we as humans bring a child into a world capable of such evil as the Holocaust? Once we have seen the depths of evil in the Nazi soul, how could anyone allow someone else to suffer in this same world? Which begs the question – why go on living?
To which survivors find an answer. Many of them defy death as a big middle finger to the Nazis who tried to force them to take their last breath against their will. These individuals measure life with each heart beat and accomplishment.
Photo by Fan the Fire Magazine, licensed under Creative Commons.
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