Lisa Batya Feld's Blog, page 4

R Cake

There’s a Hebrew College tradition that each year of rabbinical school, your class shares a cake that eventually spells out “Rabbi.” It’s been bittersweet for me, seeing on social media as members of my class back in Boston, most of whom I haven’t even met yet, took part in this tradition together, without those of us in Israel. But my classmate Max called us all together and gave us cakes he had baked himself, using melted white chocolate to spell out the letters appropriate for each of our years. I’m so grateful to him for making  sure we don’t miss out even though we’re far from home!

One last time

Last Shabbes in Jerusalem. Susan and Yosef very generously invited me to ask whomever I wanted over for dinner, with them handling all the hosting details for however big a crowd. It was such a love-fest, and my friends said such beautiful things about why they liked me, which was incredibly moving. We stayed up long past midnight singing everything from “Hashkiveinu” to “Seasons of Love” and having deep conversations. We are going to be dear friends for life. This has been the best of years.

Day of Remembrance

Last morning at the Wall with my classmates. It’s been my spiritual center, the thing that’s nourished and maddened me, been the focus of so much of my religious and political life this year. In the middle of morning prayers, I started crying, knowing how long it will be until I get to return.

We went from there to celebrate Yom HaZikaron, the day Israelis remember all those who have died in all their wars, at the Gymnasia, a local high school that predates the founding of the State. To mark the day, the school had candles, pictures, and biographies of every student and teacher in the school’s history who had been killed. Then everyone gathered in the courtyard to hear the names of the dead, which begin with the initial War of Independence and continue through to present day. Each name is followed by where they died, which ranges from, “fallen at the Suez Canal” or “fallen at Entebbe” to “killed by a bus bomb on the highway” or “killed on Derekh Beit Lechem” (a five-minute walk from my house).

The thing about having a memorial service in a high school in a country where everyone does army service is that the bulk of the audience is either kids doing their intake for army service, kids who graduated last year and are currently serving, or grads who have come home to hear the names of old classmates. Everyone knows someone on the list or is acutely aware they could be on next year’s list.

For the most part, the audience was sober, listening to the names, the sad songs, the brief remarks about particular people being highlighted this year, but there were quiet murmurs of friends reuniting, couples cuddling. It felt to me like people had to check out for brief moments when the day got too intense, which I totally understood.

I came to this country in time for the New Year, the beginning of all things. This day of remembrance feels like an appropriately somber goodbye.

Baby naming

For a class assignment, we’ve been asked to construct a baby-naming ceremony. I knew I’d had one as a baby, but I didn’t know anything else about it, so I asked my dad for details. So far I’ve learned the following:

1 – There’s an audio recording of the whole thing!

2 – They chose to do it on the first Rosh Hodesh after the eighth day after my birth. (Not knowing this, when we were asked in class about timing, I also thought Rosh Hodesh was a good time because it has ancient and modern associations with women’s rituals of community.)

3 – They wanted women from the community doing as many of the ritual roles as possible, so a female friend of theirs read Torah. This also meant that my Orthodox grandfather was called up to the Torah with a woman reading, way back in 1978. The recording apparently includes the blessing he gave me.

Also, as I’m designing this ritual, I want it to have optional components that would work for a baby of any gender, for adopted or biological children, and for single parents as well as queer families. I also want to adjust the language around the ancestors invoked in the blessings and the aspirations the parents have for the child, because I think there’s some problematic language in the ritual of circumcision which a lot of rituals use as a template. (For example, instead of wishing the child gets to the wedding canopy, I’d wish the child to have love.) Since I’m very aware of my status as a non-parent making a ritual for parents, I’m reaching out to friends and family with kids, asking if there are particular aspects of circumcision or baby naming ceremonies that really resonated with them or were problematic for them.

The chosen menu

It’s fascinating being in Israel for Passover. A third of the restaurants are closed altogether, and the ones that are open either have signs out or tell you the second you come in the door what level of observance they’re following. And the food is creative and delicious (gnocchi with mushrooms, chestnuts, and cream sauce at a place that usually serves pasta, for example). I have mixed feelings about being part of the majority culture, but this I’m enjoying.

Reading tally update

Since I’ve done a reading check-in on this date several years in a row, I figured it would be a good idea to keep it up. I was braced for a gentle reminder that I need to do better–I’ve had a lot on my mind this year, and I tend to backslide into old habits if I’m not careful.


 


But so far, this is a pretty banner year–80% of the authors I’m reading do not identify as male, and 55% are writers of color and/or LGBT writers. Some of this is due to the fact that I’ve been actively seeking out such authors and have new favorites whose books I grab as soon as they come out, but some is also due to the fact that, compared to when I started, there are so many more writers of color and openly gay and trans writers getting published by mainstream publishers and short-listed for awards. So even if I default to just reading what’s hot right now, that’s a much more diverse selection than it used to be.


 


That being said, the longer I do this, the more aware I am of the flaws in my system. How do I classify authors who are intersectional? As I expand my oversimplified gender breakdown to note non-binary authors, should I use the same category for trans authors, or continue classing trans authors by their declared gender? I’d love to hear suggestions if anyone has them, so I can better challenge myself to seek out authors who broaden my horizons.


 


And for those looking to broaden their own horizons, the stories that are blowing my mind this year include Zoe Quinn’s Crash Override, Martha Wells’ Murderbot Diaries, Mary Robinette Kowal’s The Calculating Stars, Sarah Rees Brennan’s In Other Lands, Naomi Novik’s Spinning Silver, and both “A Series of Steaks” and “Fandom for Robots” by Vina Jie-Min Prasad.

Summer update

I’m now 70% of the way through my summer intensive (one nice thing about a ten-week course is that the little progress bar in my head updates automatically at the end of each week), so I feel like I’m overdue for talking about how it’s going. There’s too much for one post, but I will say that my brain is stretching to accommodate new ways of thinking and being in the world, and that I’m very clear that I’m on the right path. It’s been lovely getting back into the rhythm of daily prayer and wonderful studying the intricacies of Talmud with my various chevrusa (study partners).

One of many transformative realizations: One thing I’ve always known about myself is that I’m terrible with languages. I’ve been a C student my whole life, whether in French or Latin, Middle English or Arabic. So I started flinging myself at the barrier of Hebrew last year, trying to rebuild the shambles of what I’d learned as a child. I downloaded two phone apps and used them every night before bed. I took a college course, running pell-mell across campus during my lunch break every day at work. And… I did pretty well. A-/B+ well. But I kept dismissing it, thinking this was still the easy part, any minute now I’m going to hit a wall I just can’t scale while my classmates sail past me. But I’m 70% through this intensive and my grades are the best I’ve ever gotten.

When I was in Colorado, a friend laughed out loud in disbelief when I told her I was a geeky loner with no social skills—I was by far the most social, most connected person in our class. It was time to let go of the childhood story that no longer fit my lived experience. Today, staring at my latest quiz grade and then turning back to the story I was translating, felt like another such moment.

I can’t wait to find out what else isn’t true about me.

After a Long Silence

For the past many months I’ve written very little, either for this blog or for my current novel, Orphans and Methane Breathers Preferred, because my head space has been taken up with a major life change: applying to rabbinical school. It took me years to decide this is what I really wanted to do, and then quite a long time to go through the epic saga of placement exams, essays, interviews, financial aid applications, all that fun stuff. But I got into both the schools I applied to and finally decided which one’s right for me, which means I’m tentatively allowing myself to get excited by what the next few years will bring and my brain is now freed up to do things like writing again for the brief window before classes start (afterwards, my hope is that my writing will follow the rhythm of the school year: bursts of activity in summer and around holidays).

So today, after months of mourning that I just didn’t have the wherewithal to tackle Orphans, I spent a couple of hours struggling to write a little more than one page, single-spaced, and another couple of hours cleaning up all the notes and false starts in the manuscript. I know, it doesn’t sound like much, but the writing is that first creaking of the gears, remembering how words work, remembering that the characters need to sound and act like themselves, reacquainting myself with what’s happened in the story so far versus what I was holding in reserve for later, versus the ideas I nixed because they didn’t quite fit.

I showed up at the page. I showed up for hours, and I’m left with a manuscript that’s stronger, clearer, and which I’m actually excited to work on. Here’s to more progress tomorrow, in all things.

Reading Stats, 2017

This is long overdue, since last year really got away from me, and the chaos of the last year is also reflected in the fact that I read a lot less this year, and didn’t make the same effort to seek out new authors. That’s played itself out in important ways in the data. The authors I read this year were overwhelmingly women–68%, in fact! I read about the same number of writers of color, but my stats for LGBT authors took a nosedive when I wasn’t actively seeking them out, which meant that only 32% of my reading this year was of non-white, non-straight folk. Clearly, I still need to put more active effort into broadening my horizons.

Some of my favorites from this year

Margot Lee Shetterly, Hidden Figures

Jenny Lawson, Let’s Pretend This Never Happened

Marika McCoola, Baba Yaga’s Assistant

Brennan Lee Muligan and Molly Ostertag, Strong Female Protagonist, Book 2

Shonda Rhimes, Year of Yes

Hillary Rodham Clinton, What Happened

James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

Final tally for 2017

16 male writers: 26%

43 female writers: 68%

4 mixed/anthologies: 6%

15 writers of color: 24%

4 LGBT writers: 6%

1 disabled writer: 2%

43 white, straight, cis: 68%

Me, too, but what’s next?

To guys who are wondering how to respond to #metoo beyond an emoticon: When I was a freshman, a friend of mine was raped by someone else in our circle. Most people in the group could not believe that someone they liked could do that, and believed him when he said it was a misunderstanding, she was just crazy, etc. Faced with a choice between losing her friends or pretending it had never happened, she recanted her accusations and tried to rationalize what had happened to her. The guy went on to rape three other women that I know of.

When your knee-jerk reaction to hearing an accusation about your guy friend or colleague is that there must be a misunderstanding because he’s perfectly nice to you (you, who are not his victim type), you signal to victims that we cannot trust you to listen or help or intercede for us. When you run interference by making sure your friend or colleague isn’t alone with girls at parties or late at the office, you are enabling your friend, because you’re not confronting him about his behavior, you can’t watch him every second, and you’re signalling to victims that you know there’s a problem, but your priority is avoiding conflict by protecting your friend/colleague from the consequences of their actions.

Here’s what you CAN do. Listen to us. Believe us. Ask how we want to handle the situation and back us up. If you are in a position to confront your friend/colleague about their behavior, do so: he is far more likely to listen to you than to us, and if you really believe he’s a decent guy who just doesn’t understand appropriate boundaries, getting called out is the only way he is going to learn. If he still doesn’t change his behavior, extricate yourself from him. Men surrounded by friends, admirers, and contacts seem trustworthy, but if it’s clear no one wants to touch them with a ten-foot pole, it’s harder for them to convince new victims to trust them.