Art & Lit

I started off my Friday with some morning enlightenment from Maira Kalman's meditations on law and women breaking barriers -- women like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Sojourner Truth.

Happy National Poetry Month! To celebrate, I've been reading some new poems and revisiting old favorites by women like Muriel Rukeyser, Adrienne Rich, and Maxine Kumin.

A few weeks ago, MyJewishLearning.com released "How Jews Look", a four-and-a-half minute film profiling a few Jews reflecting upon their own appearances in connection with their Jewish identities.

Happy Women's History Month! Earlier this week, the Jewish Women's Archive proudly launched the online version of Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia, edited by Paula Hyman of Yale University and Dalia Ofer of Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and originally published by Alice and Moshe Shalvi of Shalvi Publishing, Ltd.

Did you know that there's a special prayer for preparing the wicks of Shabbat candles? Neither did I. This past Tuesday, I listened to Dr. Aliza Lavie discuss her book, A Jewish Woman's Prayer Book, a collection of prayers composed by and for women over hundreds of years in all parts of the world.

Years ago, when I was working on my undergraduate thesis on Yiddish film, I attempted conversation about the subject at cocktail parties (well, at that point they weren’t yet cocktail parties, but there were definitely M&Ms) –

“Yiddish? Film? What? Like Yentl?”

In a recent session of my comedy class for Jewish high schoolers, I instructed the students to re-do a scene in the style of the "Tonight Show with Johnny Carson." I might as well have said "gee willakers" and put on my newsies cap.

I repeated, "Johnny Carson?" Blank stares. Ice.

"Ok, Jay Leno?" Nothing.

"How about Conan O'Brien?" One said that he knew of Conan but had never seen it.

This past weekend I saw a documentary film called Who Does She Think She Is?. The film profiles five female artists who are also mothers, as well as several commentators including Tiffany Shlain, creator of The Tribe, and Courtney Martin author of Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters and contributor to Feministing.com.

Yesterday I attended a workshop on themes of social justice in Jewish music. I was given a music packet that included songs by Bob Dylan, Peter Yarrow (of Peter, Paul, and Mary), Pete Seeger, Jeff Klepper, the stud-of-a-Jewish-Rockstar Rick Recht, and E18hteen (the modern Jewish rock band founded by Dan Nichols). "E18hteen" sings that catchy song "Kehilah, Kedoshah" which is all the rage in Reform Jewish camps (I'm not going to lie -- I dig this song despite its cheesiness).

While listening to the Writer's Almanac this morning, I was reminded that today is the birthday of poet Muriel Rukeyser (1913-1980) who lived to "breathe-in experience, breathe-out poetry."