H.B. graduates! It is official: She has no idea what she’s doing with her life.

I went to my graduation. It was about as anti-climactic as I expected it to be: my gown was the same obscene shade of red as everyone else’s, I didn’t have enough time to shower before the ceremony, and the rain forced me to wear shoes.

I know, these are all material concerns. But in twenty years, they are the ones I’ll remember, right?

But in all honesty, graduation wasn’t so bad. It was actually kind of funny. All 800 of us graduates shivering slightly in the May rain, bound together by our shared… varieties of hangovers and sleep-deprivation. Some, I am pretty sure, were still drunk. The surrounding jittery faces made it clear that my friends and I weren’t the only ones that had attempted to stay up all night. I guess we had all thought that by not going to sleep, somehow, the night would never end, and in that way, our lives as we knew them would never end as well.

As we waited to begin the walking procession, I breathed in slowly, in the effort to clear my head and take it in, all of it. Restless, scared, excited, tired, loud. There was a lot of laughing, and a lot of silence. We began to walk. Today I Am Graduating. I said to myself, over and over, trying to imbue the words with some sense of meaning or finality. Today Is The Day I Am Graduating. But they just felt like words. I didn’t feel any different; there was no magical Disney woosh going through my insides. It was overcast and cold and I discreetly ate handfuls of Peanut Butter Puffins to stay the growling of my insides. Today. Graduating. As we walked in rows of two through the center of campus, with hordes of cameras and families grinning at us, I felt small pinpricks flutter at the edges of my eyes, but then they were gone.

What was my biggest take-away from graduation (other than the firm handshake I received along with my blank diploma holder)? The assurance that it is okay to have no idea what I am going to do with my life. This was corroborated enthusiastically by all of our graduation speakers, even the ones who seemed to have a semblance of what they were doing with their lives. One of my favorite professors, Elvin Lim, put it a bit more eloquently than I can. He spoke about uncertainty, contingency, and unpredictability.

Standing there in his black velvet suit, he began with a sketch of how contingency has effected human history over time. Contingency, he explained, has been the driving force for humans to create things and ideas. For example, the uncertainty of rain: What is it and why does it occur? In order to answer that question, throughout history, we have believed in idols, gods, sciences. “We do not like not knowing,” he said. “But any “knowing” is merely a device to distract ourselves from the reality that, despite all the facts and bibles and prophecies, we simply do not know.” Ever. He then extended these musings to the realm of happiness and ambition. Why do we want money? He asked. Because money buys happiness? He laughed. No, money doesn’t buy happiness- but it does buy certainty. With enough money, you can feel more secure in your life, more able to get through the curveballs that life throws at you. Money guarantees you protection from the weather, food if you ever want it, entertainment if you’re ever bored. But happiness, he continued, isn’t money and it isn’t certainty. No matter how much we hole up in our moneyed fortresses of faux certainty, life can never be controllable. Happiness, he argued, is allowing uncertainty to live inside of you. Embracing that which we can never know. Not fighting the inevitable. Peace comes only when we finally accept that we will never be at peace. We will always have various forces raging inside of us. Contingency will always exist.

As I sat in my white folding chair, flanked on both sides by 800 red robes and the elusively cold sunshine, I thought a lot about uncertainty. Contingency. Unpredictability. Especially how it relates to me and how I live my life. Like many of the people around me, I do not have a plan for the rest of my life. My friend Sara’s parents yell at her daily as they try to iron out the details of her supposed “five-year plan,” and I grimace from the next room. Is it irresponsible that not only do I not have one, but that I don’t even want one? That every time I sit and try to think about myself five years down the road, I freak out and force myself to do something else? Write, draw, listen to music. Even homework. Anything but think about the future.

I’m not totally sure why my insides curl at the thought of having a career-ready job and a solid life-long plan. Why I cringe at the thought of marriage, or owning a house, or having kids; all things, really, that require commitment and consistency. Maybe it is part of being young, or maybe, in some ways, I acknowledge the reality of unpredictability that life holds. Maybe, in some way, I haven’t let the lure of consistency delude me from the variability of life and the inconsistencies of happiness and desire. And while I know that as I get older there will be certain responsibilities outside of myself that will tether me to certain jobs or ambitions, right now, at twenty-two, they don’t yet exist. I could move to Ecuador tomorrow and work on a farm for three months; I could couch-surf all the way to California; I could barista at the coffee shop down the street. I could spend nights fretting over what to write my novel about, spend days wandering through my neighborhood in a long flowy skirt and no shoes. So why not? These are all things that are possible, that won’t always be. And I don’t know where they’ll lead. Maybe I’ll love Ecuador and stay for six years, and maybe I’ll only love it a little, and quietly wait for my plane-ride home. Maybe I’ll meet people there who are about to drive across the border somewhere else, and I’ll join them. It isn’t that any of these possibilities are more exciting than the others (in fact, they are all terrifying in their small ways), it is that, no matter how hard I try to plan it all out, I can’t possible have any idea. Whether or not I choose, like many others, to stick it out in New York, get an apartment, get a job, try to work my way to the top (or whatever the rhetoric for working hard is these days), there is no guarantee that anything will actually work out the way I plan. That being the head of this company, or the founder of that project will actually bring me the sense of internal eudaimonia that I crave. Or that, twenty years from now, I won’t look out the window of my bedroom and wish deeply that I could be anywhere else.

And so, for right now, with a week of the “real world” under my belt, I am trying my best to stay calm as I plan the next few months. Not years, just months. College was beautiful, but not for the reasons that most people pretend. So few people in our country, let alone our world, have the privilege of spending four years at college. Think about it: Four whole years, and all you have to do is learn. When else in my life will I be able to simply think all day long, talk to others on that purely theoretical plane, and plan the world together? We charted the stars, laughed about good books, stressed about impossible paper deadlines, discussed the ways that history has affected the world of today, postulated the ways that our lives will affect the world of tomorrow.

I’m terrified of leaving school. Terrified of making decisions. Terrified of regret, feeling stuck, being bored. What will happen when one of the decisions I make ends poorly? What will happen if I accomplish nothing, help no one, find myself to be sad and alone?

And that is where Lim’s assurances about uncertainty come in. There is nothing that I can do right now to know the answer to any of those questions. And it is incredibly uncomfortable. It hurts in a soul-shaking way that makes my ribcage feel like jelly. My instinctual response is to run to some job, some idea, and hold onto it as fast as I can– anything to keep myself from not knowing. But that is exactly the point isn’t it? There is absolutely no way to know, even if you think you know, and embracing that within yourself is probably the best thing you can do to ensure that you will, in some small way, be happy with your life in the future.

Remember, happiness means allowing uncertainty to live inside of you. Peace comes only when we finally accept that we will never be at peace. Contingency always exists. Make the best of it.

Today was my college graduation and instead of attending, I’m at work writing about it—much to the chagrin of my poor mother, who has now had two children finish college with not one graduation ceremony to cry at. According to a very informal survey I just took, about a quarter to half of college grads don’t attend their own graduations, so I’m in good company, or at least copious company. I’m sure reasons not to attend all vary, but I would imagine the only real reason to attend is to please the parents. This means either my mom wasn’t pushy enough, or I’m a pretty terrible daughter.

Of course, my decision to not attend commencement was adamant, and of course, now that my entire Facebook feed erupting with pictures of my friends in their caps and gowns, I’m experiencing incredible FOMO– even though rationally I know how bored they all actually are right now, at least according to the texts I’ve been getting. But in spite of the absolute certainty that led me to decide against attending, emotionally I wonder if I’ll regret skipping out on what is one of those major milestones in life. It’s too soon to tell how I’ll feel once the Facebook feed dies down and returns to its normal host of banalities and BuzzFeed articles. In the meantime, I’m just avoiding checking out Facebook, which is throwing me off my habitual procrastination routine. (Switch to Internet server, command+T, type in letter F, press Enter, see Facebook. Those steps are so ingrained I don’t even realize I’m doing it until the newsfeed is in front of me and I’m assailed by cap and gown pictures again.)

My own reasons not to attend commencement were multifold. For starters, I graduated in January. This meant my options were to walk last May or this May, seven months before or five months after I was actually finished classes. If I walked last year, I reasoned, I would have been completely unmotivated to go to classes for another semester after having been handed a (blank) diploma. Of course, seeing as I got married in my last semester and also didn’t care much for college by then, I wasn’t all that motivated anyway. Walking months after finished felt equally silly. Though it’s been less than half a year since I walked out of my college building for the last time, it feels like ages ago that I was a college student (this, too, might have something to do with my utter lack of interest in school by the end). I’ve already caught myself saying things like “those college students” in a condescending tone, as if I’m so vastly beyond that.

In addition to those practical reasons, and the I-would-have-been-bored-silly thing, and the I’m-a-bad-daughter thing, there was a very emotional reason not to attend graduation: I kind of have a love-hate relationship with my alma mater. And by love-hate I mean I love to hate it. You see, I had a few run-ins with my school administration, none of them all too pleasant. There was the time I was on probation with a few friends for breaking a pretty blatant school rule; the time I caused an international media scandal with the newspaper I started there (oops); and the time I didn’t finish all my finals in my last semester because I went on a honeymoon instead. I briefly worried that they wouldn’t let me graduate but assuaged my fears with the realization that of all their students, they probably want me gone fastest. (I recently checked my transcript to make certain, and there it was: Degree Date: January 31, 2013. I was fairly relieved to see that, though I won’t fully believe it until the diploma is in my hand. And considering my school’s general tardiness with that, that won’t happen for quite a few more months.) About halfway through college I realized I had made a mistake about which college I chose to attend, but at that point I felt it was too late to switch. So I finished out my sentence with a sense of doing my time.

In all, my feelings of finishing school were more one of utter joy at being done with it all than pride of accomplishment. It’s sad to say, but graduating college simply isn’t as big a deal as it might be to some other people. It’s always something I expected to do, something everyone in my social strata has done or will do. Celebrating something you were always expected to do seems a bit frivolous (not that I’m ever one to refuse a celebration, but commencement is more of a task than a party). Thus, attending my commencement ceremony would be voluntarily submitting myself to a school event featuring a long series of lectures—the very thing I was so eager to be done with. And it wouldn’t feel like a true college lecture if I didn’t have my laptop out with Facebook open. Perhaps if college had been a more meaningful experience for me, if I had gotten my degree for any reason other than to have one under my belt, I would feel connected to the ceremony, but as it is I’m just glad to have the whole experience behind me.

Don’t get me wrong—I had some great times in college. I made friends with some of the most incredible people I’ve known, and I had my own personal journeys. But I can and will celebrate those highlights with a party they deserve. If I send my mom pictures from that, they might even make her cry.

BBC World Service recently released the results of a 25-country survey determining how the world’s citizens view 16 countries and their influence on the world. Iran came at the very bottom of the list, with 15% of respondents seeing it as having a positive influence and 59% saying it has a negative influence. That result is far from shocking, seeing as Iran is publicly building up its nuclear capabilities and has the world on edge with a threat of nuclear armament. If you’re American, you’re familiar with Obama’s growing disapproval of Iran and its nuclear program; if you’re a Jewish American, you feel the threat even more strongly, as there is not only strong enmity between Iran and Israel, but Israel also falls within Iran’s missile range. Add to that Ahmajinedad’s refusal to recognize Israel as a state and purported threats toward Israel’s “criminal and terrorist Zionist regime,” his denial of the Holocaust, and his basic hatred of all things Western, and it’s easy enough to conclude that Iran is just one big country of evil.

What’s often not recognized, or is perhaps forgotten, though, is that a country’s government and politics are not actually reflective of the people living in the country. It’s easy to conflate a country with its people, and to forget that the citizens are, essentially, human beings just like us. But a country does not necessarily reflect the people inside it, especially a country led by an oppressive regime where the government is actively working to stifle the many and varied voices of its countrymen. Iran may be a world terror, but the people therein are mostly just people, good and bad, like the rest of us.

Brandon Stanton, the photographer and blogger behind Humans of New York and someone who inspires people (and me) daily with his insight into the beauty inside each person, discovered this when he went to Iran back in December. As he wrote in an article a couple weeks ago for Bettery Magazine, “the people that live in Iran are the exact same people that live in New York City. They’re just wearing different clothes, speaking a different language, and praying in a different way.” Stanton describes his anxiety-wracking trip to Iran and his fears of being arrested simply for being American; his actual trip was uneventful in any dangerous way. Instead, he met “normal” people who are “avid consumers of American culture.” Stanton discovered the simple truth that the anti-Western regime of Iran did not actually speak to the pro-Western people of Iran. Or, as Stanton said more profoundly,

Iran’s government has become one of America’s most hated and feared enemies. A recent Gallup poll showed that 89% of Americans have an unfavorable view of Iran. Clearly, as an idea, Iran is very threatening to Americans. It’s a blank slate on which we project our fears—some founded, some unfounded. But face-to-face, one-on-one, America has no greater friend.

The same idea applies to Israel as well. Israel and Iran are hostile neighbors and have been since the Iranian Revolution of 1979; there has been constant talk of imminent war between the two countries for years. But the people of Israel do not hate the people of Iran. In a TED Talk that has gotten over 1 million views, Israeli graphic designer Ronny Edry discusses his unintended online movement for peace between these neighbors, a social media campaign led by the people of Israel and Iran. In March 2012, Edry posted an image of himself and his daughter on Facebook above the caption, “Iranians…we <3 you.” Overnight the picture took off in a way Edry never expected. Thousands of other Israelis posted similar posters, and soon Iranians began responding in kind. (One Iranian response: “You are my first Israelian [sic] friend. I wish we both get rid of our idiot politicians, anyway nice to see you!”) The movement spread to other countries, with new pages on Facebook being created every day to express love between all imaginable countries and Israel or Iran.

Of course, Andy Samberg started the whole Iran-loving trend. But loving Ahmajinedad might take a bit more effort than loving Iran’s innocent citizens.

Photo courtesy of Catie Damon, 2013.

Across from Red Sea tobacconist and flanked by a dive bar, parking lot, and storage unit is Urban Adamah, a one and a quarter acre Jewish urban farm in the heart of Berkeley, California.  Rows of collard greens, chard, onions, beets, and peas radiate from a newly-built yurt and cob oven. Inside the farm, the surrounding city falls into a distant hush. Young people pushing wheelbarrows occasionally look up to greet wandering strangers.

Urban Adamah is completely open to the public so long as tasty fingers are kept to themselves. Host to a residential fellowship, a Hebrew school for children from the San Francisco Bay Area, and a farmer’s market, the farm donates every vegetable and flower they grow to the community. Founded by Adam Berman in 2010, Urban Adamah originated as a spin-off project from Adamah, a Jewish leadership residential program in Connecticut.

Now they are their own, unique program, mixing organic farming with social justice. They offer sustainability discussions along with their public Jewish holiday feasts and are a part of the growing number of environmentally mindful Jewish farms across the U.S.

I was able to talk to Zach, one of the program’s participants, this week. He told me most of the eleven to fourteen fellows that work at the farm are not San Francisco Bay Area natives. The majority are twenty-somethings with roots scattered across the country who felt disillusioned with Judaism after college. Now, they all live together in an “ugly cement” house with big kitchen a couple of blocks away while working full time at Urban Adamah.

For fellows like Zach, Urban Adamah has given them a fresh approach to Judaism that centers on gratitude. Gratitude for all living things and an awareness of the transformative process of nature we are all a part of.

“Like the laws of Kashrut, what is it really saying?” he explained to me. “Pay attention to what goes into your body. Be aware of your food source.” I notice that the entire farm is sprinkled with these “back to basics” biblical references.

Zach leaves to continue farming and I go up to a sign that reads: Bal Tashchit, translated as “do not destroy” from Deuteronomy. The principle prohibits us from cutting down fruit trees in times of war, even if it were to help us defeat our enemies. This law was later expanded to include avoiding all types of waste.

I walk through a row of vegetables planted in pallet beds—Urban Adamah’s answer to gophers and polluted city soil. The pallets are made from recycled materials including reused coffee sacks and bits of grade plastic.  Passing a pit full of honey comb with dangling, buzzing bees I read another sign: Mechayei Hameitim, translated as “blessed are you, spirit of the world, for enlivening the dead.” Here the blessing is linked with awareness of life and death. The rejuvenating cycle of dying matter that sustains new life is represented in many ways, simple composting included.

Suddenly, I remembered a paper I wrote in a class about the story of Cain and Abel. It always bothered me that God rejected Cain’s food offering from the soil for Abel’s lamb. I couldn’t understand it. In the end, I figured that God thought the proper gift was a sacrifice, a life.

Though my hippie education had taught me that plants were just as much alive as animals, I understood the biblical distinctions that are made for the soul. I knew that the ground was cursed at the end of Genesis, with soil symbolizing death and blood. The name Adam comes from the word for soil, adamah, which contains the root word dam, meaning blood.

Originally a life-giving substance, soil also functions as human grave-sites. When Abel offers the first of his flock to God he gives a blood-filled creation. Blood is the “seed of life” in the Torah and Abel is literally offering a life to God. When Cain presents his crops, he is offering a blood-less thing. Abel represents the nomad who lives in communion with the land. Cain on the other hand, is a cultivator, a manipulator who uses tools and later represents the father of civilization. I was not convinced that God liked farmers at all.

Needless to say, generations later Jewish farming looks a little different.

Over the past couple decades, Jewish communities have embraced environmentalism. There is a lot of ecological wisdom in the Torah and young people are excited to read the text with new green-tinted glasses. Environmentalism also champions communal thinking, something Jews have been valuing for thousands of years. Urban Adamah is of course not the only organic farm that synthesizes sustainability practices with Jewish education.

Similar projects include The Gan Project in Chicago which teaches ways to incorporate environmental education into modern Jewish life, Philadelphia’s Jewish Farm School that trains participants about food systems and sustainable agriculture, Hazon a large group that sponsors organic health programs, environmental stewardship, along with Jewish education, are just a few.

Walking through rows of golden Calendula in pallets raised off the ground I notice a trail of fluttering Buddhist prayer flags in the wind. I feel at peace. Urban Adamah has successfully created a sacred space, one of solace and accountability, where rampant individualism is left at the door for communal thinking. I spot a sign that reads “Goats around the corner.”

Following the arrow, I stumble upon a big pen of three chestnut goats that all run up to me excitedly. I break into a smile, pet them, and back away, back into the garden, back into the right-angled cement gridlock of the city streets.

CC Reuters

It takes a lot for the Association For Asian American Studies to make international headlines. The AAAS is a group of academics within the fields of Asian and Asian-American Studies who work to advance the fields of Asian Studies and Asian-American Studies. Not exactly the kind of organization regularly covered by CNN. A quick Google search of that organization, however, turns up myriad articles from the past few weeks. Last month, they became the first academic organization in the United States to endorse an academic boycott of Israeli universities — and they did so unanimously.

We have a few questions:

• Why is an organization whose mission is to promote better understanding of “Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, Hawai’ian, Southeast Asian, South Asian, Pacific Islander, and other groups,” according to their website, taking a stance on Israel-Palestine?
• How did a large group of scholars unanimously agree on anything, let alone something so controversial?
• And how does the AAAS reconcile support for “the protected rights of students and scholars everywhere to engage in research and public speaking about Israel-Palestine” with advocacy work making that engagement more difficult for students and scholars in at Israeli universities (which, last we checked, are part of “everywhere”)?

We can find some possible answers to the first question from past articles in the Journal of Asian American Studies, produced by the AAAS. One 2006 issue was devoted entirely to articles discussing Israel-Palestine and questions of anti-Arab discrimination in the United States. Sunaina Maira and Magid Shihade, in one article, discuss why there should be efforts in academia to “connect anti-Zionism in the context of Middle East politics to anti-racist and anti-imperialist movements in the U.S. and Asia,” and characterizes Israel as engaging in “ethnic cleansing.” They got just what they wished for with this resolution.

While that interest is clearly an ideological one, there may also be a less principled reason for this endorsement. The classic aphorism that “any publicity is good publicity” may have been a major factor. The humanities are losing funding at universities around the country, and students are often opting to go with more “practical” majors, and organizations like this one may feel that any opportunity for name-recognition could be a possible remedy to those issues. What message does it send, though, that the AAAS jumps at the chance to take a stance with regard to Israel-Palestine but does little to promote issues of relevance to the groups explicitly part of their field of study? Korea has certainly made some headlines lately, and advocacy on behalf of Korean-Americans who may be experiencing discrimination would seem pretty logical for an organization like this. Perhaps they should focus their efforts on platforms of that nature. 

The second question is a particularly interesting one. It turns out that, while unanimous, only 10% of the AAAS’s membership voted for this measure, with 90% abstaining or not present at the vote. While we could not find the precise size of the organization’s membership body, 10% of it is likely a pretty small number. This organization’s choice to emphasize the “unanimous” nature of the vote, while the vast majority of its members did not have a say, might not be a blatant lie, but it certainly seems a bit disingenuous.

The final question is the most important one. The organization claims to respect academic freedom for students and professors everywhere, but simultaneously has created a resolution that restricts the ability of Israeli students and professors to partner with foreign Professors. Eleven professors at Hebrew University alone teach classes whose primary subject matter is South or East Asia. What might this endorsement mean for Asian Studies concentrators who want to study abroad in Israel? What might it mean for members of the AAAS whose research projects might logically take them to Israel? Will they sacrifice those projects, despite the positive contributions they could make to the field? It seems that the AAAS perceived Israeli Universities as restricting academic freedom, and their solution was to further restrict academic freedom. That does not seem like a particularly helpful answer to the problem.

As college students, it is sometimes a bit annoying when we hear about how our Professor will be gone for two weeks in some foreign land to attend a conference of big-wig academics. But it seems like those opportunities are ones that can benefit the individual professors, our academic departments, and Universities in general. The AAAS has endorsed a policy that would deter individuals from taking on those opportunities, and whose ramifications could affect students directly as well. We hope that other associations actively choose not to follow their example, because doing so could have a detrimental effect on American universities.

New Voices Opinions Editor Lex Rofes

Our very own Lex Rofes — New Voices opinions editor and student representative on the board of Hillel — has joined forces with J Street U President Simone Zimmerman for a truly cracking op-ed at JTA about Hillel’s pluralism shortcomings:

(JTA) — Throughout our four years in college, Hillel  as been our home on campus. We have been involved extensively, with one of us serving as president on campus and on the Hillel international board.

While we both found in Hillel a supportive community, when it came to our relationship to Israel, Hillel was not always so welcoming. One of us often avoided expressing political views in Hillel board meetings for fear of losing credibility. The other openly expressed her political views, which was met at times with harsh criticism.

We both remained committed to working in Hillel through moments of challenge, but we know many others who, meeting such obstacles, simply stepped away.

In past decades, Hillel faced a similar challenge concerning religious observance. Hillel now strives to ensure that religious practice and background is no barrier to entry, actively working to involve LGBT voices, students from interfaith families, Jewish atheists and others. Yet on Israel, the same pluralism is lacking. Students who express ambivalence toward Zionism or support boycotts of Israeli products often feel they are not welcome in their campus Jewish community.

…

I highly recommend taking a look at the full piece at JTA.

This article was originally posted on jU Chicago’s blog, and can be found here.

Tikkun olam has become a motto for young socially-conscious American Jews, at least so it seems to me. This phrase has been adopted as the Jewish call to social justice action. It is commonly translated as “repairing the world.” The verb “t-k-n” means to fix, and olam means the world (as well as “eternity,” as in l’olam, “forever”). But I have also heard tikkun olam translated as “healing the world.”

These two translations may seem interchangeable, but I believe the latter is much truer to the spirit of service I believe in: a holistic one, a cooperative one, a one not easily split into a giver/receiver dichotomies. What is the difference between repairing and healing? Repairing is mechanical. It implies specific problems to be addressed. You repair a leaky person, while you heal a person. Repair might be appropriate for a mechanical object, but what ails the world is more than the sum of its separate problems. To me, so much that’s in need of repair can be traced back to the same root causes, which are personal and spiritual: fear, lack of respect, “us” vs. “them” mentalities. Amidst the complex and situation-specific factors that cause war, environmental degradation, or economic inequity, I believe that, at some level, their root is individual people’s fear of scarcity. As in: “there will not be enough for me, so I need to take what I can and protect my own.” This is where healing comes in. This fear is what is most in need of healing.

Healing means literally “to make whole.” In tikkun olam, we can look for the world’s already inherent wholeness. Conceiving of the world as whole, we already are more inclined to respect it–since, any harm that we do, we do it to ourselves as well. I remember Nigel Savage, the director of the Jewish environmental organization Hazon, discussing the carbon footprint: would you be less likely to waste energy if, each time you turned on a light switch, you imagined a stream carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere somewhere miles away? The world is already whole, we just need to remember that it is.

Another of the ways this attitude of healing as making whole manifests is in conversations between people of different faiths. So many Jewish and interfaith organizations live out tikkun olam by revealing the underlying wholeness of faith. Kids4Peace, Project Harmony, Interfaith Peace-Builders, and many, many other organizations are bringing to light this wholeness is Israel and Palestine. These organizations are going about repair by getting to the root causes of brokenness: reminding people of all religions that they share a single earth and a similar sense of faith.

Lately I have heard it argued that tikkun olam has been overused in Jewish progressivism, an umbrella term under which any sort of political or social justice initiative is placed, when in fact tikkun olam is not at all central to Judaism. Tikkun olam is not one of the mitzvoth. It never actually appears in the Torah, but only has a few oblique references in the Talmud. However, to me, this concept is deeply characteristic of the Jewish tradition, reflected in the very nature of the halakhah. A system of laws so concerned with every action’s effect on the community–both the immediate and the cosmic community–has at its heart a knowledge of interdependence and wholeness. Before we take it upon ourselves to repair the world, let’s first remember that it’s already whole.

As I sat down to review Ruth Feldman’s “Blue Thread,” I struggled to make sense of how to describe the novel in a way that wouldn’t, by default, turn away large segments of the reading public. With my fiancee, also a voracious reader, I tossed out ideas for pitching this novel without falling into the trap of genre-dropping: “Uh, it’s smart? Touching? Wait, could I say something like, ‘It’s genre fiction for people who don’t like genre fiction?’ No, that’s not right.” Ultimately, I decided it was impossible. “Blue Thread” is decidedly rooted in a couple obvious sub-categories of fiction. But it’s also better than a great deal of its peers. In a few words: Ruth Feldman’s “Blue Thread” is Young Adult fiction at its most thoughtful, touching, and relevant. But if you’re an adult, don’t click away. You also need to know about this book.

A few things make the timing of “Blue Thread” most pertinent. One, the rising interest in the Young Adult book markets. Increasing numbers of readers are turning to YA for thrills, drama — hell, even social commentary — regardless of age. Many of these books are decidedly “genre” in bent, sci-fi and fantasy being the most common, and there’s greater openness to what YA authors have to say about the real world. Two, the greater proliferation of young heroines, especially of the feminist-friendly variety. For every Bella Swan (“Line?”), there’s a Hermione Granger, Katniss Everdeen, or Lyra Belacqua. And three, one of the seemingly hundred of  culture wars (the War on Women), which carries with it echoes of women’s suffrage more than a hundred years ago. “Blue Thread” hits all these benchmarks perfectly, sporting a strong female lead, some soft magic, and healthy doses of commentary to boot.

Without giving away too much, “Blue Thread” tells the story of Miriam, a young Jewish girl in the early 1900s whose attempts at transcending the expectations of her gender are frustratingly rebuffed. Through the magic of a blue thread on a very special prayer shawl — belonging, it seems, to her great-grandmother — Miriam is thrown into the distant past, where she encounters the Daughters of Zelophehad and takes part, first hand, in a fight for the rights of these strong women. As Kirkus Reviews points out on the book’s back cover, it feels a bit like “Devil’s Arithmetic”: that is, there’s a time travelling heroine re-visiting Jewish history.

Unlike that book, however, which connected contemporary Jewish identity with the legacy of the Holocaust — an unsurprising approach given when that book was first published — Feldman’s story has much more to do with disparate parts of the Jewish world trying to understand themselves: values and ethics, the voices of women and men, and the tension between progress and tradition. While some may already know the biblical story of the Daughters (check out the Book of Numbers, those who don’t), this is an effective introduction geared specifically toward young adults.

That its primary audience might be young readers should, however, be no obstacle to curious others. Feldman’s prose is simple, yes, but not sterile or dull. Each of her primary characters has something of a unique voice and manner of speaking; dialogue flows well between characters. This is no small achievement in any genre, but its absence is often given more of a pass in YA lit because of its less discerning audience. The book’s first-person narration is an effective choice too, given Feldman seeks to provide a platform for these strong female characters to express themselves. Miriam is a sympathetic heroine, and her observations about the world she’s from, and the one in which she finds herself, are insightful and compelling. With economic language, Feldman paints a vibrant picture. She never over-explains, nor does she commit that chiefest of all sins: telling the audience, rather than showing them.

Feldman exudes a playful respect, as if willing to acknowledge the inherently silly nature of a time travel plot, but urging the reader to join her for the ride. To do so is entirely worth it. As I was explaining to my fiancee while putting together this review: if I had a child, I’d want that child to read this book. It’s a cheesy sentiment, perhaps, and I haven’t failed to notice the rising levels of strong, positive female leads in many other places. But “Blue Thread’s” unique Jewish angle, coupled with the popular tropes of YA novels, makes it especially poignant.

This is a book every synagogue library would do well to carry. With “Blue Thread,” Feldman has made a not-insignificant contribution to recent Jewish fiction: strongly ethical but never preachy, thrilling but never garish, inspiring but never chintzy. That it’s geared to touch an impressionable audience always in need of positive vibes to outmatch a seemingly endless barrage of media negativity, body-shaming, victim-blaming, and casual prejudice, makes it all the more necessary.

For more information about Feldman in general or “Blue Thread” in particular, check out this interview by New Voices’ own Simi Lichtman.

Hassid or Hipster? It’s a topic of discussion that never gets old. But what about these bearded men’s female counterparts? While I don’t think we’re going to see any Hasidic women sporting crop-tops and wedged Supergas anytime soon, there may be more stylish overlap than you’ve previously considered. Whether it be the variety of hats lining a married woman’s shelves or the various shul outfits hanging next door in her daughter’s closet, many Orthodox women certainly care about their outfits.

I saw it myself both while growing up in the Modern Orthodox world, and while living (although on the West Indian side) in Crown Heights over the summer. Even the sweltering heat didn’t stop the baby-laden mothers all around me from showing off their very finest duds. Long floral cotton dresses, chunky wedge (toe-covering) sandals, huge sunglasses, printed head scarves, gold bangles. I often felt under-dressed in their presence (and not because my elbows were showing).

I’m not the only one who has noticed: Fashionista.com, a real-world style and beauty website, just ran a spotlight on, believe it or not, Orthodox women’s fashions. The title of the article? “Orthodox Jewish Women Find New Way To Be Fashionable In Crown Heights.” After a brief run-down of Tzniut (modesty) Laws for Dummies, the article discusses the plight of fashion within the confines and restrictions of Orthodox Judaism. The women interviewed are mainly fashion entrepreneurs: Orthodox women who run side businesses, consignment shops, and designer brands that bring fashionable modest clothing to religious consumers. As one of the women, who opened a consignment shop called Frock Swap, in the article explains:

“Our lives were always focused around fashion and shopping and how to figure out ways to dress, look good and involve our style while not compromising on modesty,” says Polonsky. “We are appealing to the everyday Orthodox girl that loves fashion, to the girl that loves waiting for the next Vogue edition.”

The article then interviews two sisters that began a line of modest skirts called MIMU MAXI. The author noted the “ombre-styled” shetil that one of the sisters was wearing, as well as the ankle-length leopard skirt that the other had on. They are simultaneously approved because their aesthetics “would fit into any street style blog.” The sisters described their fashion impulses as a form of “Jewish creativity,” stating that “being creative is so much a part of being Orthodox: all of the foods, all of the festivals we have–you might as well get dressed up for them.”

While I went into this somewhat trite article with the expectation that I would be irked by it (fashion “journalism” does that to me), I was surprised by how annoyed I was. Annoyed to the point of cringing. Let me explain: As someone who was never “Orthodox” enough, no matter how pure my intentions or how long my study sessions lasted, I am disheartened to hear Orthodox women talk about clothing in such a reverent way. Equating Jewish festivals with designer clothes? Talking about appealing to the Jewish girls who can’t wait for Vogue to appear in their mailbox? It feels more than a little hypocritical to judge me about my bare knees (which is a hostility I felt repeatedly throughout the summer — when I would sit down on subway cars, Orthodox women would shift over slightly, as though my mere presence was enough of a contaminating force), revere yourself as a  Jewish anachronism, and also describe yourself as “an everyday Orthodox girl that loves fashion! (giggle giggle)”.

Additionally, fashion is not an innocent form of “Jewish creativity.” It is quite contradictory that a person, on the one hand, does mitzvot and prays for the messiah, but on the other hand valiantly supports an industry that is contingent upon labor abuse, inequality, and materialistic consumption. The people who make the clothes that we wear are more often than not underpaid, the labor is outsourced to countries who are forced into cycles of underdevelopment, and fashion itself is a form of buying and selling of material goods that is created through systems of reinforced inequality.

I am not arguing that Orthodox women should take no pleasure in their appearance, I’m merely wondering out loud how this makes sense, according to the very laws they set for themselves and others. One would hope that the forms of Judaism that see themselves as most “authentic” to a primordial state of Jewish purity, would see the melding of Judaism and fashion as, well, problematic. What the people quoted in this article, as well as my own witness (and the myriads of articles that talk about the rampant eating disorders, girl-fighting, domestic abuse etc. among women in Orthodox communities), illustrates is that Ultra-Orthodox Jews are clearly not outside the mainstream. They, too, are imbricated in American ideologies of  beauty, value, and superficiality. When I learned tzniot (modesty) laws growing up, I was taught that they had as much to do with cultivating internal self esteem as they did with “protecting” men from having lustful thoughts about my body. It is disheartening to see how the laws of tzniot are being stripped to their bare minimum (cover your knees or else you aren’t holy!) and warped to fit in with the surrounding culture of chic narcissism. It appears to me that Orthodoxy that labels itself as somehow different from modernity (read: most) is overdue for a self examination.

The publishing world is hard to get into. To make the process easier, and to give graduate students real-life hands-on experience with publishing, Portland State University created its own publishing house for its publishing school’s Master’s students. The company, Ooligan Press, was founded in 2001. Students are involved in every step of the publishing process, from design to marketing, and each title has about 25-30 students working on it from beginning to end. It’s an unusual approach to publishing, and it’s been largely successful, publishing between three and six books each year.

One such book, the young adult novel Blue Thread, was published last year and won this year’s Oregon Book Award for Young Adult Literature. The story follows Miriam, a young Jewish woman during the suffrage movement, and travels with her on a journey including her grandmother’s prayer shawl and the women of the Bible. Ooligan Press will be publishing a companion novel to Blue Thread this fall. To read our review of Blue Thread, stay tuned for next week’s post. 

We spoke to Blue Thread‘s author, Ruth Tenzer Feldman, about this and her other books. Feldman is incredibly accomplished, and has written more than 10 books and innumerable articles on every topic. Blue Thread was her first fiction piece. We have a feeling that if you read her interview, you’ll end with more questions than answers about this quirky, successful writer.

You’ve written about a lot of topics, from your Corgi to the Dust Bowl to solar-power cars. How do you pick all these topics, and how do you keep all of them straight?

Most of my articles have been for magazines that have particular themes each month. The trick is to find something that relates to the theme and that interests me enough to research and write about it. I’m learning as I go along, which helps to keep the writing fresh. How do I keep them straight? I don’t. Ask my family. One month I am so into, say, how leeches are used in modern medicine, and the next month I’ve already forgotten half of what I’ve written. Why? Because I am so into….you name it.

Oh, my, Oregon by far. Portland is wedged on the rainy side between volcanic mountains and the sea, and I’m about 90 minutes from both. On the other side of the Cascades is high desert and a whole ‘nother world. Awe-inspiring. I like being in a city with quick escape routes to nature.

I’m off to Istanbul and the Island of Rhodes as part of research for my next book—the one that’s still forming in my brain and is total vaporware on paper. This one intertwines Portland, Oregon, in the future and Istanbul in the 16th century. How? Not sure yet. Of course I could research this all on line, but the trip sounded like fun. 

Most of your books are nonfiction, but your last one is historical fiction/fantasy. So is the one coming this Fall. Which type of writing interests you most and why?

Tough question! I have a passion for both “faction” and fiction. Having colored within the lines for my first ten books, I simply had an itch to…well, my polite friends refer to “stretching the truth.” I prefer to use the term “lie.” I was writing a biography about Calvin Coolidge and I so wanted to invent incidents for him. That’s when I knew it was time to try fiction.

Is there one particular story you still want to write?

After my mother died, I discovered a plastic bag in the dining room cabinet. Inside was a yard or so of thick, hand-dyed-and-spun flax, and a note: “My mother’s mother made this in Russia. All that’s left to remember her! Hachva was her name.” I yearn to write about the making of that flax. But what?

Rarely. I do get bored when I’m politely listening to someone drone on and on and on. And then I start to imagine what he/she would look like with an extra ear growing out of his/her nose, and then I’m not bored. My brain is engaged, if not my attention.

I can write/revise for maybe five or six hours a day max. Then I’m toast. So there’s time for reading. These days I’ve been reading a lot of young adult literature. Recent favorites include John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars, Maggie Stiefvater’s The Scorpio Races, and Paulo Bacigalupi’s Ship Breaker. Not the very latest from what I’ve read, but certainly the most memorable.

My opinion is colored by Sam, age six, who plays computer games and is totally into Star Wars everything, but who also devours real print books and is happy to gape with me at a swarm of ants on the sidewalk. Will he stay as balanced at sixteen? I’d like to think so.  So now is when I should confess that when I want to totally unwind, I play Angry Birds. 

I suppose I could say that the social justice component of Judaism informs nearly all of my books, as it does my perspective on life in general. Certainly Blue Thread, and the upcoming book, The Ninth Day, is steeped in Judaism. Serakh, the daughter of Asher, is a character in both books, and she comes straight from the Torah. She’s listed among the 70 Jews who came to Egypt in the time of Joseph, and she’s there again during the exodus about 400 years later. Nu? Such a woman deserves a midrash. She’s had several over the years. Mine isn’t the first. In my version, Serakh travels through time and space, which she calls the olam. As in “forever and ever” and the universe. A mind-stretching word from the liturgy.

Blue Thread pairs the woman suffrage movement in 1912 Oregon with the biblical daughters of Zelophehad. The Ninth Day pairs the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley in 1964 with an attack on the Rhineland Jews during the First Crusade, and resulting self-martyrdom (kiddush ha-Shem). Yup. A bunch of Jewish themes. Judaism was the garden plot I happened to be born to tend, and so that’s where I reap and sow.