Where else can you find a Muslim organizer trained by a Jewish organization to work with a coalition comprised mostly of Christian churches? Nowhere but Bend the Arc’s Community Organizing Residency, as covered recently in the NY Times.

The Community Organizing Residency (COR) is creating a nationwide network of religiously diverse community organizers. Jewish, Muslim and Christian residents of different denominations are placed with congregations, unions, or community groups. Each one is paired with a professional organizer who trains and mentors them. They attend intensive retreats together for interfaith study and reflection about the role of faith in organizing.

COR is the only program of its kind in the country. Now coming into its third year, it has been shown to be highly successful, with almost every resident who went through the program now employed as an organizer. Just as important is the qualitative feedback from COR residents, who use words like “transformative” to describe the program. COR residents uniformly speak highly of the training, and tell us that both the professionalism and the interfaith aspects of the program set it apart in its power to support them and impart strong organizing skills.

Residencies begin on January 16, 2013 with a four day opening retreat, and end on July 24, 2013 with a three day closing retreat.

To apply please visit www.RootedinFaith.org. Please contact Info@RootedinFaith.org  with any questions or for more information. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis and are due no later than June 15, 2012.

GO AND LEARN: JEWISH COMMUNITIES AND BOYCOTT, DIVESTMENT, AND SANCTIONS
What: A community workshop and open conversation hosted by Young, Jewish, and Proud NYC
When: Sunday, May 27, 3-5 PM
Where: The 14th Street Y Jewish Community Center, 344 E 14th St, NYC
www.facebook.com/events/316417711745518/

How big is the Jewish tent? Across the US, Jewish communal institutions are restricting what young Jews CAN and CANNOT discuss when it comes to our relationship to Israel. But YOUNG JEWISH, & PROUD NYC believes that a strong Jewish community needs space to wrestle with difficult issues like Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israeli human rights violations.

That’s why we’re bringing GO & LEARN, a workshop of open and honest conversation about the BDS movement, straight to Jewish spaces across the country.

This Shavuot, a holiday traditionally spent in study, we will challenge silencing and celebrate the Jewish tradition of free inquiry. This is an opportunity to explore a controversial issue on Israel/Palestine through facilitated conversations and text studies. We invite you to join us whether you have never heard of the BDS movement, know a little about it, or actively oppose it.

In honor of Shavuot, we will also be eating some traditional Ashkenazi dairy TREATS!

The 14th Street Y is most easily reached by the L train’s 1st Ave. stop. Upon arrival, tell the front desk that you are there for the “Go and Learn” event.

Please RSVP, or direct any questions to Carolyn at cskpickles@earthlink.net.

But yesterday, about 1000 protesters took to the streets of Tel Aviv to call for the expulsion of African asylum seekers from Israel. Some wore T-shirts that said “Death to Sudanese.” They were organized by Members of Knesset who called the refugees a “cancer.” They dismantled a car driven by two black men that had driven into the chaos. Several people were hurt and other injuries were prevented only because activists warned African families and individuals to stay off the streets. This protest- not the first race riot in Israel- was not hidden or small. It was mainstream, public and disturbingly large.

How do I feel about this?

Disgusted. Ashamed. Saddened. It is sickening to think about the fact that Israel was built by refugees and the children of refugees (my family included) and yet, somehow in 64 years, we have forgotten. In a country that reinforces the memory of the Holocaust and encourages citizens not to forget the history of discrimination and delegitimization, how horrifyingly twisted are yesterday’s events? I write about that boy because his story does not sound so far from that of my grandmother’s. They are different but they are so much the same.

I hope that this is when American Jews can step in. These protests are part of a larger disturbing trend and we should not sit by as it happens in our name. We should urge Israel to choose options that protect the dignity of all human beings, and not a “chosen few.” We should encourage voices and actions of Israelis who live by these values- like those of the doctor who continues to inspire me. Our history and its lessons should be moving us to help and welcome those in need. I understand the challenges Israel faces, but those do not warrant, and never have warranted, a disregard for human life.

Please check out 972mag.com, Haaretz.com and www.flickr.com/photos/activestills/ for more information and photos. Also, please go here to sign on to this letter by IRAC (the Israeli Religious Action Center) to President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to respond to the violence.

So what does this have to do with Judaism? In 2006, the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards (CJLS) of the Conservative Movement voted on several respona regarding homosexuality and Judaism. Much was written at the time about the fact that conflicting respona each received sufficient votes to be considered acceptable interpretations of halacha. The Dorff, Nevins, and Reisner Responum narrowed prohibited behaviors sufficiently to open a path to homosexual Jewish marriage and ordination. Two others, the Roth Responsum, and the Levy Responsum, concluded instead that homosexual Jewish marriage and ordination were not compatible with halacha. The Levy Responsum uniquely claimed that reparative therapy to change sexual orientation could be effective, explicitly suggested such therapy as an option for adults unable to have opposite-sex relationships, and also implied that such therapy should be suggested to teenagers.

The Levy Responsum approached this recommendation for reparative therapy in an odd way. It cited research on the fluidity and ranges of sexual orientation, and then made the logical jump to argue that since sexual orientation is fluid, it might be possible to actively work to change one’s sexual orientation. To support this jump, the resonsum cited personal correspondence and press articles from organizations and therapists actively promoting and/or profiting from reparative therapy. The responsum cited only one article from a peer reviewed journal to support the supposed effectiveness of reparative therapy, in “Fact #5” on pages 6-7 of the responsum. That article is the now dis-avowed article by Dr. Spitzer, mentioned above.

The only cited scientific evidence behind this responum’s conclusion regarding reparative therapy, has been disavowed by its author. The responsum was approved by Rabbis Aaron Mackler, David Wise, Loel Weiss, Baruch Frydman-Kohl, Leonard Levy, and Joel Roth. I don’t expect this development to change their opinions regarding homosexual behavior. Still, they placed the recommendation for a practice known to be hurtful and to have little to no positive benefits into halacha. Do these rabbis still support this responsum and recommend reparative therapy as a halachically valid option? If not, will they publicly say so?

There’s also a lovely bit of irony here. After the votes on these responsa, most or all of the above six rabbis resigned from the CJLS because the liberal responsum was also approved. . Rabbi Roth explained his reasoning as follows, “What divided us was the question of our right to adopt a legal stance attributed to one sage that the prohibitions against sexual behavior other than male intercourse are rabbinic in status, d’rabbanan, and not biblical, which attribution is itself open to serious question and is denied by most decisors.” Yet, at the same time, Rabbi Roth and colleagues codified into halacha the practice of reparative therapy based on the opinion of a single (modern) sage who was in strong disagreement with most other sages in his field. Rabbi Roth even testified to his own ignorance regarding reparative therapy on page 28 of his own responsum, “I am not competent to judge (and neither, I believe, are the other members of this Committee, or, to a very large extent, homosexual men and women throughout the world) which side of this debate is correct, and whether whatever side seems to be correct today will remain correct tomorrow, or in five years, or in fifty years,” and made clear that the issue of reparative therapy was irrelevant to his larger thinking on this topic. Despite self-declaring himself not competent to judge, he did exactly that by voting to support the Levy Responsum.

While I could end this as a critique of just these six rabbis, this episode challenges the Conservative movement’s approach to modernity & halacha. The Conservative movement still formally considers the Levy responsum, an opinion that directly cites unsound science, as halachically acceptable. Even if all 6 rabbis who voted for it disavow it now, is it possible to formally change the status of a previously accepted position (it was already accepted in parallel with a disagreeing responsum)? More generally, any type of Judaism that uses modern science to interpret halacha faces programs when scientific knowledge evolves. The Conservative movement is young enough that the scientific understandings behind halachic interpretations don’t often change, but the Levy Responsum won’t be the only time this happens. I prefer a halachic system that uses our scientific understandings, even when flaws like this arise, to a system based on ignorance–but what is the scientific threshold for calling a previously accepted halachic interpretation invalid?

It’s also easy for me to focus on the Conservative movement because it’s my own movement, but Dr. Spitzer’s work is cited by Jewish organizations in other movements, too. Any guesses on whether any other Jewish organizations will now publically change their positions on reparative therapy?

Yesterday Tel Aviv rioters, incited by leading MKs in Prime Minister Netanyahu’s coalition, attacked Eritrean and Sudanese asylum seekers and refugees from famine and genocide. The violence followed a rally of 1,000 Tel Aviv residents chanting hate slogans and calling for detention and deportation. Seventeen rioters were arrested after attacking with clubs and pepper spray women holding babies, businesses that service Africans, and even cars with African drivers. A journalist was spirited away under police protection after residents chased him down. How quickly Israeli Jews forgot.

It seems many Israelis have forgotten. Israel is supposedly the “center” of Jewish life, to where Diaspora leaders point as the place where knowledge of Jewish historical persecution is part of the public’s awareness. The UN’s covenant on refugee asylum was one of Israel’s first contributions to the international community: the country’s first government championed, campaigned and signed the voluntary law. Just like the Israelites enshrined the lessons of slavery in the Torah, early Israelis enshrined the lessons of the Holocaust in international law. Both are Jewish contributions to global morality.

It thus seems inconceivable that the home of last summer’s sweeping social protests would be home to crowds burning refuse, singing “The people want the Africans to be burned.” This is the same haven hailed as the most gay-friendly city in the world. Which Israel is the real one?

There are approximately 60,000 asylum seekers in Israel, an estimated 85% of whom are from Eritrea and the Sudan. Israel lacks a clear policy: immigration is closed to non-Jews, leaving the debate over how temporary is temporary asylum: zero to short. The lack of policy means that under varying regimes, Africans fleeing through Egypt are either shot at the border, driven back into Egypt, placed in prison, or just dropped off in Tel Aviv. Refugees lack permanent status and work permits, leading to a belief that they breed crime, which is refuted by official statistics and police declarations. Maya Paley, a New Israel Fund Social Justice Fellow placed with asylum rights NGOs, reports in the LA Jewish Journal,

There have been numerous claims that the asylum seekers are raping and burglarizing the Israelis, but the statistics of the police department prove otherwise. The crime rates among the African asylum seekers are much lower than that of the general Israeli population. While I do not excuse or condone any crime whatsoever, I do believe that it is unacceptable to exaggerate and make erroneous claims about an entire population of people.

At the rally, Likud MK Miri Regev called Africans a “cancer in our body,” while Likud MK Danny Danon declared on Facebook that “Israel is at war.” National Union MK Michael Ben Ari and Kadim MK Ronit Tirosh also invoked immediate expulsion. Tel Aviv city counselors spoke at the rally and the city’s mayor was joined by calls for expulsion by the mayors of Ashkelon, Eilat and three others.

It is telling that even while Yair Lapid, a new political figure opposed to the right-wing, decried the incitement, he too blamed human rights defenders with his anti-African sentiment: “I support the arrest and deportation of infiltrators, the completion of the [border] fence and preventing their entry into Israel, and I think that human rights organizations should think about the rights of the neighborhood residents first, because charity begins at home.”

I know that not all Israelis have completely forgotten. Some residents escorted African children home to safety. The Israelis who founded and staff the eight Israeli NGOs that comprise the Refugees Rights Center, such as the Hotline for Migrant Workers, the African Refugee Development Center, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, and others under the support of New Israel Fund haven’t forgotten.

Likud Knesset Speaker Ruby Rivlin, Police Minister Aharonovitz and Prime Minister Netanyahu offered more measured chastisements. Rivlin immediately denounced the violence, “It’s OK to protest and demand a solution from the government but once [sic] cannot be dragged into incitement and use words the anti-Semites use against us.”

In the Tel Aviv offices of the Hotline for Migrant Workers, a Birthright-Taglit tour organized by New Israel Fund and the Union of Progressive Zionists (now J Street U), met with those Israelis to learn about the condition of asylum seekers in Israel. Together, all 40 of us walked the few trash-strewn blocks to a Sudanese refugee shelter. I can understand the sense of physical intimidation when our gaggle of Americans and Israelis, average height 5 feet, met the few dozen Sudanese men, average height seven feet. But any fears quickly bled away as their shy spokesman told the stories of the survivors in the shelter lying mattress-to-mattress on the floor. Their belongings were small piles of clothes and the bathrooms offered the center’s only privacy.

“Why aren’t there more women in this shelter? Do they sleep elsewhere?” asked a participant. An awkward silence passed before our host could answer with eerie matter-of-fact, “They don’t survive the walk.”

Click here for Shavuot study texts on refugees and migrant workers, brought to you by the New Israel Fund.

Click here to tell PM Nentanyahu and President Peres that violence should not be tolerated, brought to you by the Israel Religious Action Center of the Reform Movement.

P.S. Half the links in this post are thanks to the excellent first-hand reportage of the crew at +972 Mag and the slideshow is also their crew through Activestills. Kol hakavod on empowering independent journalism and ground floor activism.

(x-posted to Justice in the City)

Now that the election season is heating up, once again the question will be asked, what does the Jewish community want? How will they vote? What will they base their choice on? If you listen to the polls, the pundits and the politicians (and many of the putative spokespeople for the Jewish community) the answer is simple: Israel. However, the question needs to be asked: is this the right answer? What should Jews care about, as Jews?

If by being Jewish one means connecting oneself to the wisdom of the Jewish tradition one would find that Jews who put social and economic justice at the heart of their concerns are tapping a deep vein. When God informs Abraham that God is going to destroy Sodom, Abraham challenges God: “Will the judge of all the world not do justice?” Speaking of Sodom, the prophet Ezekiel understood their sin as “She and her daughters had plenty of bread and untroubled tranquility; yet she did not support the poor and the needy.” Jeremiah channels God saying: “but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight,” from which Maimonides, the great 12th century Spanish Jewish philosopher and jurist, understood that the true goal of the religious and philosophical path—beyond even knowing whatever it is that one can know about God—is to practice love and righteousness and justice in the world. 

It is the Rabbis who move from the hortatory to the practical. In the third century mishnah, and the later Talmuds, the Rabbis move beyond the individual obligations of charity—whether demanding that the corner of the field be left over, or helping one’s fellow when she falls on hard times—and establish poverty relief as a political obligation to be fulfilled by cities and gathered by assessment. Every poor person who lives in, or even passes through a city must be supplied with two meals a day, a place and provisions for sleeping and shelter. As a matter of fact, residency in a town is itself described in terms of obligations towards others. When one lives in a town for certain period of time (3, 6, 9, 12 months) one must take on various levels of obligation towards other residents and the town itself.

The rabbis unpacked the Levitical verse: “For it is to Me that the Israelites are servants: they are My servants, whom I freed from the land of Egypt.” They interpreted “they are My servants and not servants to servants.” The central act of Divine intervention in the world is seen by one of the greatest Talmudic Sages as a prooftext that workers cannot be forced to work against their will.

I could go on. Social and economic justice issues are the heart and soul of the Jewish tradition, from Isaiah to the Rabbis of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (of all denominations) who spoke in favor of, and some who demanded, that workers be afforded the ability to organize and have the protections of collective bargaining.

So why is it that when a politician wants to reach out to the Jewish community she goes to AIPAC, or he goes on a trip to Israel? Most American Jews live in the very cities which were devastated by the economic collapse and are being victimized by the monetizing of our morals (in which the economic bottom line always trumps the ethical bottom line). Most American Jews feel the call of the tradition to create cities wherein justice lies. The thinking that the American Jewish vote should be swayed only by a candidate’s policies on Israel is made all the more absurd by the lack of any real daylight between the policies of Democrats and Republicans on Israel. As a community we should demand that when politicians speak about Jewish issues, they speak about the issues that really matter to us, issues of social and economic justice.

I will give Jeremiah the last word (channeling God, of course) : “And seek the well-being of the city to which I have  exiled you, and pray to God on its behalf, for in its peace you shall find peace.”

Here are his complaints in order (This is just the outline, for the full effect, you’ll need to go see the actual essay):
I. I am the Lord your God, Who took you out of Egypt to ‘repair the world.’
II. You shall not be judgmental.
III. You shall be pluralistic.
IV. You shall personalize your Judaism.
V. Meaning, meaning shall you pursue.
VI. You shall create caring communities.
VII. You shall encourage the airing of all views.
VIII. You shall not be tribal.
IX. You shall celebrate your Jewishness.
X. You shall hold the Jewish conversation in public.

Just to get them out of the way, I’m just going to skim over my major wuts in is piece:

I’m kind of mystified by number 5. Is he saying that Jewish survival, should it have, for example, no Torah at the center, and no community, is worthwhile for its own sake? Why? Number ten, OTOH is classic Wertheimerian krechtzing. He just doesn’t actually get that there is no non-public square anymore. I know the guy is basically a grump (and sexist, though that doesn’t come out so much here) who spends his editorial time complaining about “the kids these days,” but does he really want to advertise the fact that he has no idea what year it is and is unaware of the use of new technologies and how people – not just Jews- actually live?

Still, even a stopped analog clock is right twice a day: He’s right that the term “tikkun olam” which doesn’t really mean what people think it means, has even in the more general way it is used currently, come to be essentially meaningless (Rabbi Jill Jacobs takes this on concisely in the introduction to her first book).

I also agree that being judgmental is now considered to be the greatest insult (not just in Jewish circles, either) but I think that the world wants not less judgmentalism, but more. Judgment is the great human gift – not everything is acceptable, and indeed, there are things which are not Jewish, no matter how says they are. Rabbi Jeremy Kalmanofsky takes this on over at jCast in his review of David Teutsch’s A Guide to Jewish Practice: Volume 1 – Everyday Living in which he points out,

This work – and I suppose by extension Reconstructionist Judaism in general and maybe all non-Halakhic Judaism – seems unable to say that anything is assur, just plain forbidden. Its alternative ethos is that if good values can be attained through a given practice, if individuals or communities can make something work, then classical Jewish norms have no business stopping them. But for me, this is no prescription for Jewish integrity or keeping faith with the Torah and Sages, and risks a kind of self-indulgent narcissism…
Tattoos come in for positive evaluation in the Reconstructionist Guide, with no discussion at all of the biblical prohibition, because they can “evoke spiritual meaning or use Hebrew words that connect to the act of prayer as a form of walking meditation” [pp. 87-88]…
And very dismayingly, this work of Jewish practice cannot even bring itself to affirm monogamy and sexual fidelity within marriage, gay or straight, as absolute Jewish norms. While Jews have generally favored monogamy, Teutsch writes, “it is not obvious that monogamy is automatically a morally higher form of relationship than polygamy.” If “polyamory” – multiple romantic and sex partners – were practiced with honesty, flexibility, egalitarian rules for men and women, with trust and without jealousy, it could help couples “avoid some possible forms of exploitation” and avoids “the violation of vows and the need for secrecy” as found in most affairs. “Perhaps some people can manage it successfully and live enriched lives as a result” [pp. 217-227].
Wait … what?! What did I just read?

Uh, yeah, no kidding. What, indeed?

Wertheimer goes on to object to young Jews rejecting to the notion of a tribe (what he means is that he objects to the idea that many Jews – and this isn’t even vaguely a phenomenon of this generation – actually it’s perhaps even more of that of his own- are cosmopolitan, and view solving problems for the world, or other peoples, as worth investing our time and money in). Oddly, many of those Jews invest that time and money as Jews (back to his complaints about Tikkun Olam). Actually, there is a thread of legitimacy to this one. I think, if one were to state this more reasonably, one could refer to the notion of circles of tzedakah – Jewish tradition actually rejects the idea of giving everything away and not caring for one’s own first.

Even when I was very young, I thought those historic individuals who decided to give everything to the poor and live on offerings were actually rather selfish – what were their families eating? I wondered. Jewish tradition advocates, rather, taking care of oneself first, then one’s immediate family, then one’s community, and only then the wider world. The question today comes in because we don’t live in communities of only Jews. Today, community is a rather nebulous concept, and it becomes much more difficult to decide how to allocate resources. This is actually a very difficult – perhaps one could even say, a talmudically difficult- question, and Wertheimer dismisses it far too easily.

He also objects to “caring communities.” Again, he is rather imprecise. Does he really object to people being pleasant to one another? I doubt even he really goes that far. Rather, what he seems to be unhappy about is an uneven model: synagogues have become, in many congregant’s eyes, fee-for-service institutions. They pay what they want, and expect to get certain services. But then, they also want to feel warm and good, and have that institution take care of them, without realizing – there is no “institution.” The institution is us. If we want community, we have to provide it. If we want to be in a place where we care about each other,and provide safety nets for one another, we have to contribute to it. It’s the difference between a friend and a therapist. With the therapist, if you don’t pay your bill, you don’t get help. With a friend, there’s no fee, but to have a friend you have to be a friend. Same for Judaism, and community.

The rest of Wertheimer’s complaints merge into a kind of grayish, undifferentiated mass. He complains about celebrating Judaism (what he means is that he objects to young Jews insisting that the evidence is that we have no good reason, at least in the USA, to live in fear of our neighbors), about pluralism (really, is it that important that we all fit into very narrow categories? I wonder where I would go, since I’m a halachicly pretty traditional (except on specific things where I consider myself more stringent, such as who counts in a minyan: I believe everyone has chiyuv), textually obsessed, geeky, politically (very) liberal Jew. I like the Conservative movement’s big tent, but if the orthodox started counting women as equals, I could see myself there, too). This flows into his complaints about being open to airing all views and personalizing our Judaism.

Wertheimer seems to be worried that this generation (never mind that it’s just as true, if not more so of the previous generation) isn’t parochial enough. He notes,

Michael Berger astutely observed in a riposte to Kaunfer: “If something is yours, you don’t feel the need to ask ‘why’—it’s just yours. The French don’t wake up every morning asking why should French culture exist—it just does, it’s theirs, and many of them are proud of it.”

Really, he can’t aspire to Judaism being more important than French culture? In fact, this little aside elucidates an attitude that is more problematic than ones he is complaining about. I actually agree with several of his points (and believe me, that doesn’t happen often), but this little aside stopped me dead, because the reveal here is that he apparently doesn’t actually believe that Judaism has anything to say.

To say that “we should be proud of it just because it’s ours” implies that there is no greater meaning to it. This is actually far more radical and sad than any of the attitudes he critiques. At least the people who want Judaism to have a big tent think that there’s a holy mission there, an important one; at least the people who want to personalize Judaism feel that some piece of it will speak just to them, and have meaning; at least the people who think that anything goes feel that somehow there is something holy about Jewishness that can connect them to the divine. But saying that we should be Jewish without any further examination, that we should be Jews just because – well, that implies a deep lack of faith. It means there is nothing deeper to him, and Jack Wertheimer: on behalf of the cheerful greeters, the open-minded, the cosmopolitans looking to save the world through their Judaism, on behalf of all these people, I reject that. I proclaim with perfect faith, that there is more to Judaism than “I love it because it’s mine.” I disagree with all kinds of Jews about all kinds of things. But I love Judaism, because it is holy, because it speaks with meaning, and because it connects us to the divine through torah. And so do all those people you dismiss out of hand.

Perhaps God loves Israel just because we are God’s, but as a human being graced with the blessing of judgment, I require more out my path, my halacha. I live a Torah life because God commanded it, but if God were evil, I would be right to reject him. Even Abraham asked if the Judge of the world should not do justly. or as my mother used to say to me, when I was a child, “If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you jump off a bridge?”

As it happens, I do love it, and it is mine. But if other people love it, that makes it no less mine, even if I think they’re wrong about what it means, or how to do it. It’s curious that nowhere in the diatribe is there a word about the God, or prayer, or for that matter, even about study, let alone about halacha. Curious.

Police, defying the mechitzah, to teach Deb how a woman ought to wear her tallis.

It wasn’t long before I spotted the photos on Facebook, counting several friends among them. Based on the two photos included in this post, I decided to talk to Deb (pictured) about her experience today and each month she joins Women of the Wall for their Rosh Chodesh davening.

Right off the bat, Deb made clear that she hasn’t historically connected to the kotel as a place where she’s wanted to daven. However, she finds that the more she goes with Women of the Wall, the more she wants to go. It’s the community Women of the Wall is fighting to create that speaks to her more than the wall itself.

She told me, the group is “called ‘women’ but it’s actually creating a space for all who want to daven there, who have the right to access this public, Jewish space.” The group’s mission states they “seek the right for Jewish women from Israel and around the world to conduct prayer services, read from a Torah scroll while wearing prayer shawls, and sing out loud at the Western Wall – Judaism’s most sacred holy site and the principal symbol of Jewish people hood and sovereignty.” Deb appreciates that they’ve also created a “queer-friendly space,” and that they “call attention to the need for spaces that are friendly and welcoming to all. There are folks who identify as genderqueer and trans who are invited to lead services, read from the Torah, and take on other roles. Likewise, Women of the Wall creates a welcome space for all genders, including male-identifed folks, to participate in the Torah services” that they hold at Robinson’s Arch after they move from the Western Wall.

Wearing a tallis in a hijab-like manner is apparently permitted.

When I showed Deb the two photos from Facebook, she said that she feels like she’s being “singled out each month” by the police, because she wears a tallis that is more traditionally considered a man’s, and not a colourful tallis that might be more “feminine.” Today, a policeman asked permission of Anat (co-founder of Women of the Wall) to demonstrate, using Deb and her tallis, how women should properly wear a tallis like a shawl. The idea being that this would avoid the 2001 law that makes it illegal for women to perform those religious practices “traditionally done by men” at holy sites, like reading from the Torah, wearing tefillin or a tallis, or blowing the shofar.

“He folded it up, and put it around me like a fake scarf… Of course I unfolded it and ended up wearing almost like a hijab instead!”

Her other response to the police? She davens extra loud when she’s with Women of the Wall. I asked if that was a way of protesting the police interference, but she corrected me. “The truth is that I’m extra loud so that the women feel a presence. And it’s for the policemen, so they hear the truth of the davening, rather than the protest of the women. Because that’s really why I am there: so that I can pray and sing and so can any other person. I guess I like to think I bring some davening confidence…”

Her confidence, and the monthly return of so many woman (and folks of all genders) reminds us that they’re fighting over a public space. A Jewish space. And women (and those who identify outside the gender binary) have just as much right to pray in public as men.

There was always something odd about the Sweet Genius himself. His flamboyant style hinted at his being gay, but unless you knew his name is Ron Ben Israel, his Austrian accent never would have outed him as a Tel Aviv born-Jew.  Of course, his Viennese mother might have something to do with that, as well as giving him knowledge of delicate European style confections, which appeared in Martha Stewart, Vogue and many food pron books before the New York Times named him “the Manolo Blahnik of cakes.”

New Yorkers and foodies may be more familiar with Ron Ben Israel, but for those less in the know, JTA profiles the Sweet Genius star:

In 1999 he opened Ron Ben-Israel Cakes in New York’s SoHo neighborhood with one oven and one mixer. As people fled downtown New York after the 9/11 tragedy, he was able to capitalize on lower rents and expand his operation.

Coming from a secular Israeli upbringing, Ben-Israel wasn’t ideologically interested in making his shop kosher, but for a caterer for some of New York City’s biggest hotels, it was a prudent business decision.

He chose OK Laboratories, the Chabad-affiliated kashrut organization headquartered in Brooklyn, which now certifies his shop’s pareve cakes.

After serving in the IDF in the 70′s , he studied dance and pursued a Ballet career that eventually brought him to NYC, where while working odd jobs to make rent he discovered baking.

Sounds like a sweet story. Only a sweet genius could have cooked it up. Check out the full profile here.