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Over
the past few years, I've been searching for stimulating media
that deals with Jewish identity from a soul-searching viewpoint,
rather than the self-righteous standard. Below I've chronicled
books, mags and such that I've enjoyed (and in a couple cases
contributed to). Some are rough, some I didn't fully agree with,
but they collectively represent efforts to look at Jewish identity
from a new perspective.
Black,
White & Jewish:
Authobiography of a Shifting Self
(Riverhead, 2000)
by Rebecca Walker
This is
a fascinating coming-of-age memoir by Rebecca Walker, the daughter
of superstar-author Alice Walker and her former Jewish husband,
civil rights lawyer Mel Leventhal. Shuffled between her divorced
parents, Walker lived a schizophrenic mix of Jewish summer camp
and hangin' with homegirls in the Bronx. If being biracial wasn't
hard enough, Jewishness added an extra wrinkle. The founder
of the activist group Third Wave Foundation, and author of To
Be Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the Face of Feminism,
Walker has spent most of her adult life examining overlapping
issues, and she does so with refreshing honesty here.
Get
it from Amazon.com
Shameless
Plug!
Body Outlaws:
Young Women Write About Body Image & Identity
(Seal Press, 2000)
edited by Ophira Edut (that would be me)
This is
my book. Yep, I edited itas well as its "outlawed"
first edition Adios, Barbie (published in 1998, sued
by Mattel a year later). It's a multicultural collection of
women's "body stories" exploring the overlap between
body image and ethnic identity. Everything from big noses to
big butts to nappy hair is covered, with several chapters written
by Jewish women.
Visit the website |
Get
it from Amazon.com
Eat
FirstYou Don't Know What They'll Give You
(Xlibris, 1999)
by Sonia Pressman Fuentes
Subtitled
"The Adventures of an Immigrant Family and Their Feminist
Daughter," Fuentes traces her life as the daughter of Holocaust
escapees to becoming one of the first woman law students and
a pioneer of feminism's second wave. It's one of the few books
I've seen by women from this generation that deals with being
Jewish and a feminist in a conversational, memoir style.
Get
it from Amazon.com
Generation
J
(Harper San Francisco, 1999)
by Lisa Schiffman
Yes,
it's been accused of being bland, generic, too secular, and
of using one person's experience to summarize an entire generation.
Nonetheless, this book kicked off a collective attempt to
define what Schiffman calls the "post-Holocaust generation"Jews
fumbling through an assimilated American experience, intermarrying
and eating pork (as Schiffman does) and trying to deduce what
the hell being Jewish actually means. Schiffman, a hardcore
secular and a skeptic, dances with this dilemma by exploring
Buddhism, a mikveh, and her relationship with her non-Jewish
husband. Already a national bestseller, Generation J
at least broke some ground for young Jewish essayists hoping
to see the light of a mainstream printing press. It may be
too "basic" for some peopleand the Jewish
world is far too vast, diverse and international for this
American-Ashkenazi book to even claim to coverbut I
consider it a worthy read.
Get
it from Amazon.com
Goodbye,
Evil Eye
(Holmes & Meir, 2000)
by Gloria DeVidas Kirchheimer
This
delightful book of fiction is the first collection of stories
I've ever seen covering the Sephardic experience in America.
Kirchheimer, a first-generation daughter of Turkish parents,
paints vivid tales where superstition, magic, and the folklore
collide with Western skepticism. Having a Sephardic dad myself,
I appreciated how vastly different this was from almost any
Jewish short story book I've read. These are the stories of
so many Jews in the world, yet they're so rarely heard. What's
up with thatis it prejudice or just cluelessness? If
it doesn't sound like Seinfeld, it won't sell? I hope that
publishers wake up to the relevance of the stories of Jews
from the Middle East, Asia, and Africa, which are a huge part
of the Jewish story.
Get
it from Amazon.com
Heeb
Magazine
(January 2002 launch)
Several
Semitic "upstarts" have tried to create a magazine
for the jaded new generation, hoping to bridge the chasm between
Hebrew School lovers and dropouts who've had a few years in
the real world to sort out their feelings. Heeb: The New
Jew Review will try its hand in January 2002. But rather
than trying to appease both the kissups and the cynicsas
past efforts have doneHeeb caters to the latter and shoos
the rest off to their local JCCs. I helped out as a publishing
consultant with this ambitious, unapologetic project. Irreverant
it is indeed: The launch issue features a "Jew-fro"
photo spread and the radical stylings of publisher Jenn Bleyer
(former editor of a punk-rock Jewish zine called Mazeltov
Cocktail). Here in NYC, word on the streets is that Heeb
has pissed off some of the established Jewish organizations,
and to that I raise my Manischevitz. It's time the naughty miscreant
who gets kicked out of Hebrew School class got to tell the higher-ups
that the system sucks and what to do about it. If they're smart,
they'll actually listen. If not, those who get it will enjoy
a chucklethis time without detention.
Visit the website
Yentl's
Revenge:
The Next Wave of Jewish Feminism
(Seal Press, 2001)
edited by Danya Ruttenberg
The first
young Jewish women's anthology of the twentysomething-plus-or-minus-a-few-years
set, this book covers everything from witchcraft to Orthodoxy,
mikvehs to intermarriage, all under the Jewish umbrella. Some
of the essays are a little on the crunchy side for my personal
taste, but it may be that I'm squeamish about most rituals (for
example, a few writers focused on how they incorporate traditional
Jewish practices into earnest, modern movements like ecofeminism).
That said, ritual is clearly an important part of the Jew-spectrum,
and there are enough secular and cynical writers to balance
it out. I particularly enjoyed one of the last essays by Dalia
Sofer, who writes beautifully about being Jewish in Iran, then
Israel, and America. An expanded version of my essay "Bubbe
Got Back" appears inside.
Visit
the website | Get
it from Amazon.com
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