Alef: The NEXT Conversation
Nice Jewish Girl No More
By Meredith Druss
This post originally appeared on Alef on 1-5-2011.
It’s a good time to be a Jewish girl.
It’s been six years since Urban Outfitters launched their “Everyone Loves a Jewish Girl” t-shirt (you know, the one with the $$ signs that they quickly took off the shelves and replaced with hearts instead), but its words are still ringing true. It seems that references to Jewish girls are everywhere these days — TV, Twitter, music, movies, and in the pages of my dentist’s magazines. Jewish girls are IN.
While I’m not qualified to track the real data as to the potential cause of this new phenomenon, I can say with a certain degree of confidence that TV seems to have had a major impact. As a TV lover, and as someone who likes to take fictional situations and see if they apply to my own life, I often seek out and feed off of any Jew(ish) reference I can relate to. In my younger years, there were a limited number of Jewish female characters – Grace Adler from Will & Grace, a vocal, neurotic Jewish character; Monica Gellar from Friends; and Fran Fine from The Nanny.
But we’ve entered the 10s, and with the arrival of a new decade came a new kind of Jew. Jewish girls have matured. We are no longer known as the the “girl next door,” now we are the “other woman.” Take FOX’s Glee - Rachel Berry, played by Lea Michele is TV’s new female Jewish character. Sexy, seductive, and maybe a little bit easy, Rachel portrays Jewesses in a new light. Fast on her heels are characters like smart & dorky Annie Edison (Alison Brie) on Community, sexy & competitive Christina Yang (Sandra Oh) from Grey’s Anatomy, and dirty, dirty comedian Sarah Silverman. These ladies are more than just bangable, they are vocal about their sexual frustrations and needs. Oh yeah, and they’re hot.
Which brings me new characters to be compared with. TV and the media are starting to show the other side of the Jewish girl (ambitious, vocal, smart, funny, hot…). In December, Christopher Nixon pronounced Jewish girls the “ethnic fetish du jour” in Details Magazine. In January, Italian Pauly D. from MTV’s reality show Jersey Shore got the hots for an Israeli named Danielle. In February, Troy, the jock on Community, was convinced of his attraction to Annie after being told “…And she’s Jewish!” With all that, there’s renewed attention being paid to the Jewesses, and it’s translating to real-life.
These days, I’m loud and proud about my Jewish identity – my trump card is to say I’m Jewish. With that one sentence, I get a renewed flicker in the eye, a subtle lean-in, and the words “Wait, did you say that you were Jewish?” It’s also quickly revealed when I mention that I work for a Jewish non-profit organization, as when people see my Tiffany’s Star-of-David necklace. These guys, Jew and non-Jew alike, are definitely more interested once they find out. My friends are noticing the difference for themselves as well.
I recognize that this fetish also leads to some disturbing situations. The sexualization of Jewish girls on TV has planted itself into the minds of the men I’m meeting. See, where it used to be that the Catholic schoolgirls were the sexually-repressed and thus easy-to-lay American feminine stereotype, Jewish girls are stereotypically less taboo about sex. Now, when I meet a new guy, and he finds out that I’m Jewish, I’m confronted with a dilemma. I have to determine whether or not he’s interested in me because I am: (a) one of those desperate or easy girls on TV, (b) totally hot AND would make your Jewish mother proud, or (c) smart, sexy, funny, outgoing, and potential girlfriend material.
But I am relieved and thankful for one thing. The attention has made it cool to be a nice Jewish girl. No longer is it something that I feel like I have to hide or deny. The public attention has also let boys in on the fact that there are many, many ways to be a nice Jewish girl. While I can still compare myself to the Monicas and Graces, I can also throw in some sexy & motivated Rachel, some smart & innocent Annie, and some loud & foul-mouthed Sarah. We’ve broken the old “nice Jewish girl” stigma, which is all of a sudden making me just a little more interesting and mysterious.
Photo by adpk, licensed under Creative Commons.
What Comes First?
By Yocheved Sidof
What comes first, the chicken or the egg? What about love or sex? In my life, Love came first; or so I thought…
I grew up in a tightly knit Chassidic community in the Midwest, the first-born child of Iranian immigrants. I was raised with a lot of rules. Some were religiously influenced and others were cultural, but one of the big rules – NO Boys – fell equally into both categories: big-time religious and cultural no-no’s. According to the laws of Tzniut (modesty), boys and girls are separated from a very young age. There is very little socializing, and absolutely no touching, between opposite genders in strict Orthodox communities. (These laws are meant to sensitize us to the power of attraction and the sanctity of sexuality). That aside, there was no way my parents would let their Persian Princess be swept off her feet too easily; it just wouldn’t fly.
I came to New York City at the vulnerable age of seventeen to attend Stern College for Women. It was my first independent foray into this crazy “concrete jungle where dreams are made of” (Sorry, I couldn’t resist). Suddenly, I was surrounded by tons of women who were hanging out with guys, dating, looking for The One. My friends covered the whole spectrum: some dated without touching their partners at all, while others slept with their boyfriends. I fell somewhere in the middle. (Don’t tell my parents.) As I searched for my soulmate, I had one big rule – I would only have sex with my husband.
The issues of touch and sexuality were never so clear-cut for me. My convictions were totally in-line with my upbringing, but it was hard to hold stead-fast when there were so many pressures to deal with. Then, after years of tumultuous relationships and broken hearts, I met my man. We shared common interests, common values, and common goals, but we never shared a bed; we wanted our intimate life to begin as a committed, married couple.
We both believed in the sanctity of sex, and wanted to express that union of body and soul only within the context of a committed marriage. Sure it’s a risk (we all know the ‘test-drive a car’ analogy), but it was a risk we felt was worth taking.
I’m directing a documentary called Can’t Touch This, about the laws surrounding premarital intimacy in Judaism, i.e. Shomer Negiah. We have on-camera interviews with Rabbis, sex therapists, psychologists, and educators, and most importantly, hours of honest conversation with people who grapple with this question almost everyday: What is the interplay between religion and sex? How, if at all, does a person’s belief in G-d inform his or her sexual choices?
For one of my favorite shoots we traipsed to Times Square, camera in tow, to get some man-on-the-street interviews. Under the tantalizing billboards of scantily-clad men and women, we asked our fellow New Yorkers questions about sexuality, such as: How often do you think about sex? How did you learn about sex? What is meaningful touch? If in a relationship, how long would you wait to have sex? One honest man offered this take on building sexual compatibility: “If you have the mental chemistry, and you’re hitting it off, I believe the sex can be just as exciting. It just has to be… nurtured. And I just have not been lucky enough to find someone with that kind of patience. We live in a fast food society, fast sex, everything is fast. I don’t have time to practice with you. We’ve got to get it right the first or second time, or I’ve got to move on.”
I didn’t decide to marry my husband based on our sexual compatibility, how great he is in bed, or how quickly we each learned the other’s desires… I didn’t have any idea how we’d vibe together as a sexual couple. We formed our shared sexual identity as a married couple, and that created a beautiful, yet very vulnerable, sense of intimacy. Love and sex were woven together in a cycle, allowing each to nurture the other. It definitely wasn’t seamless, but I knew that even if our intimate life wasn’t perfect, I wasn’t at risk of losing him–he truly loves me for me, and not for how adept I may be in bed. We would work through the rough patches, and commit ourselves to gratifying each other–not for sex’s sake, but for love’s.
And you know what? That man-on-the-street is right. We do have unrealistic expectations about sexual gratification. Popular media totally misleads us about how sexual compatibility is formed. It’s not instantaneous. Nobody has ‘great sex’ right away. It takes time, practice, sensitivity, commitment … and a whole lot of love.
…
This post originally appeared on Alef October 22, 2010.
Yocheved Sidof is a photographer, filmmaker, and teacher who lives in Brooklyn, NY. She and her husband Yossi are the proud parents of Reuven Uriyah, 4 years old, Ma’ayan Chaya, 2 and a half, and Tzofia Malka, 3 months.
Photo provided by the author.
22: Couples
This week we introduce Issue #22: Couples
…
No question about it, dating and marriage are hot button issues for the Jewish people. Between conversations about where the community stands on homosexual couples, to debates about where it stands on interfaith couples, there is an awful lot of chatter. Not to mention that hemming and hawing coming from your mother, insisting that you marry a nice Jewish boy or girl and settle down to give her some grandchildren. Not to also mention the ominous and ever-present JDate angel and devil sitting on your shoulders. To join or not to join? That is the question.
The questions are endless, and where are the role models sent to tell us what to do? Of all the high-profile Jews in Hollywood – Sarah Silverman, Adam Sandler, Natalie Portman, to name a few – none of them have high profile relationships that we can scrutinize and compare to our own. In fact, this year’s highest-profile Jewish relationship belongs to not-so-Jewish Chelsea Clinton (now Mezvinsky).
When the Love and Sex Issues of Alef came out last February, we had no idea what a ruckus they would cause. Now, after eight more months of reflection, we bring you the Couples Issue, jam-packed with tales of Jewish relationships and how they got to be the way they are. Our writers might not be celebrities of Hollywood, but you should feel free to scrutinize the relationships they share with you anyway and as always, we’d love to hear what you have to say.
- Alef
Photo by Lachlan Hardy, licensed under Creative Commons.
Couples Posts:
Type A Dating
What Comes First?
He Said/She Said
Soy Vey
Big Q’s, small r’s
Deconstructing Amy
This Little Light of Mine
An Unorthodox Coming Out Story
By Jessica Annabelle
Coming out can bring out a wide range of emotions – liberating, difficult, scary, fun, slow, sudden, not actually surprising to everyone but you, political, and super confusing.
For example, the first time I had a crush on a girl was super confusing. Rachel was, like myself, a nice Jewish girl and she happened to sit next to me in Modern Lit class. The important thing to know about Rachel though, was not only that she sat next to me, but that she often wore low cut and loose fitting shirts and sometimes they fell forward and I could see her boobs.
It was the best thing ever.
Simultaneously, it was weird and inexplicable and obviously didn’t mean anything. I had already been through a handful of boyfriends, so I was completely certain having a crush on Rachel did not mean I was a lesbian. On the contrary, I decided having a crush on Rachel meant I was totally normal, because she was hot and all of my guy friends had crushes on her. This weird thing, I decided, had everything to do with her shirts being irresistibly sexy and nothing at all to do with me.
I had successfully convinced myself I was into shirts, not girls. Several years later when I went on my first date with a girl, I explained to the few friends I told that I just “really liked her piercings.” And about a year after that, when I first slept with a girl, I realized that these sorts of explanations were probably no longer going to work.
Because I wasn’t sure how to tell my family and friends from home that I wasn’t straight anymore, after 18 years of evidence to the contrary, the first people I talked to about these new experiences and the questions they raised were my college friends at Hillel. When I tell other people in the LGBTQ community that the first place I came out was in my religious community, their reactions tend to range from surprise to disbelief. For many of my queer friends, religion is dangerous terrain, full of enemy soldiers laying in wait to attack with cures for homosexuality and promises of an eternity spent unloved. This hostile environment is not exclusive to Evangelical Christianity, but can materialize in the most liberal of churches, in small talk with a fellow member of the tribe, or in the mosque. I was blessed with an entirely different experience.
For me, Hillel was a safe place (looking back, even the safest place) to come out because my friends there were also family. We enjoyed each others company and conversation, but in addition to that, we were Jewish. There was a bond between us that could not be broken, and I held on tightly to that as I reinvented myself.
As I sorted through the new questions that arose with each of my new experiences with girls – like, was I interested in women romantically as well as physically? Is this whole thing really worth potentially upsetting my poor mother? And, am I allowed to call myself “queer” when most of my relationships until now have been with men? – I started to rely more and more on the ritual of Shabbat. Once a week, Shabbat allowed me to take a deep breath and set aside the uncertainties. For one day, I focused my energy on celebrating the answers I had found and appreciating the community that sustained me.
It’s been about a year since I first admitted to my best friend and fellow Hillel board member that I might be kind of into girls as well as guys. I’m definitely queer and Jewish and while my mother is not yet able to say LGBTQ three times fast, she has a pretty solid understanding of a few other new terms, including bisexual, Prop 8, partner, and dental dam.
One last thing – Rachel came out about six months ago.
Photo by Made Underground, licensed under Creative Commons.
Do You Have The Touch?
By Rita Polevoy
A few weeks ago, I went on a date with someone who was Shomer Negiah, meaning, someone who doesn’t engage in physical contact with members of the opposite sex. The expectation of no touching was there from the start of the date, but the thought of not being able to even hug him was a turn-off for me. The only positive aspect was at the ever-awkward date goodbye – I didn’t have to worry about whether he would go for a hug, a kiss, or more.
Physical boundaries can be useful at times. Hugging someone you haven’t seen in a long time is gratifying at first, but the sensation does not last forever. It makes me question the reasoning behind Shomer Negiah. Is the idea that touching a person of the opposite sex makes you want to have them sexually? Or does an observant man not want to shake my hand in fear that I am menstruating and am considered “dirty”? Is he afraid of what his wife would say if she saw us shaking hands? I have a hard time understanding the problem with basic physical contact. Some argue that a single touch from another human being can spark desire, emotion, and provocative thoughts, but even looking at another person can have these same effects. It would be ridiculous to suggest that we stop looking at each other too.
Orthodox rabbis and other observant folks who argue in favor of Shomer Negiah claim that it heightens the sexual experience once you finally engage in sexual activity with someone you love. They say that in the end, it isn’t all about sex anyways – it’s about love and closeness between two people. They also mention that divorce rates are much lower among those that follow the practice. I’m not trying to degrade the Orthodox community, I just want to point out that throughout the life of an average human being, most people have multiple sexual partners (A study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2007 showed that men average seven partners throughout their lifetime).
Many children are taught to hold off on any sort of sexual activity until marriage. Â However, I was taught that sexual desire, and eventually in later years, sexual activity, was acceptable. My parents still warned me about consequences of having too many partners and always encouraged me to use protection. Because of their understanding view, I found it easy to talk to them about “the birds and the bees,” and this led me to make thoughtful choices about who I slept with, and about how far along into a relationship I wanted to be before making such a personal commitment. Why did my parents raise me this way? They always said that good sexual chemistry is an important factor in a healthy relationship and that it’s dangerous and potentially disappointing to walk blindly into a commitment when you haven’t experienced the physical side of that person. Sex cannot make a relationship, but it can certainly help strengthen its bonds.
There are many different viewpoints on whether it is okay to share your body with a person who you are not bound to by a legal contract. Either way, we all have sex eventually. Here’s where some religiously-observant people argue that having sex before marriage defiles the true purpose of sex. However, sex is not written on paper and confined to the boundaries of a Ketubah. A signature will not bring the guarantee of sexual understanding, satisfaction, or if ever needed, escape from marital rape and sexual abuse. Having listened to arguments about what sex before marriage is or is not, it seems like some people have formed a preconception about what it is supposed to be. We are all, regardless of our level of religious observance, prone to extra-marital affairs or even some pre-marital experiences. Between two consenting adults, there is no person of authority present to say “no.” Sex is holy and great and wonderful and, pun intended, absolutely orgasmic.
Many secular people understand just as well as observant people that sex is something special.The magic of sex is that even after the first time it leaves one craving for more. There’s no doubt that the sanctity of sex can be compromised by multiple one-night-stands, random hookups, porn, rape, or abuse, but to reduce sex to a physical act performed by two people in a “holy way” is not fair to the act of sex or to the people performing it. I won’t deny that sex is probably really amazing when you and your partner are virgins and you’re touching and caressing each other for the first time – this is exciting, of course, but it is foul to say that people who have more than one partner throughout their lifetime (say two or three) find sex less exciting or thrilling. In fact, pre-marital sex can be a blessing, not only by bringing a person who is experienced in what they are doing (like being able to identify what their partner likes and needs) but it takes away the discomfort of feeling insecure about what one looks like naked and the excruciatingly painful moment of being penetrated for the first time and being confused about what is going on and how it is all supposed to work.
There is nothing in secular society that says that you absolutely must “test drive the car before you buy it;” people in this realm are treated the same as in observant realms – as individuals that are able to make their own decisions. I am of course in full support of anyone who chooses to abstain from sex or even from physical contact before marriage, but I am also in support of those who have experienced what it means to have sex with a person you love and respect and who feels the same about you.
Photo by stephend9, licensed under Creative Commons.
Read more articles from Issue 08: “The Sex Issue.”
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