Meet the women who want to save your life

 

I have been busy in recent times, doing some freelance writing and editing for a business magazine – a bit out of my comfort zone, but it’s been fun 🙂

I just wanted to come back on the blog to update on a few things I’ve enjoyed writing in the last few months. Today I’ll post about a piece I’m particular proud of writing (and I’ll update with more links in the next few days):

So here’s my feature in the Jewish Chronicle about several inspiring young Jewish women I interviewed with breast cancer or who are carriers of the BRCA gene mutation. These women are doing amazing work raising awareness around the disease.

Here’s a taster of the first few paragraphs of the article. (For the full article, click here ):

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month

Danielle Stone

When Danielle Stone, 32, was diagnosed with breast cancer, she took an unusual step: “I told my friends: ‘I want you to feel my breast, so you know what cancer feels like.’” Her friends were shocked, but grateful. “Now they know what to look out for,” she says.

Stone was diagnosed just one month after giving birth to her first child, daughter Livvi-Rae, now four months old. “I was breastfeeding and felt this lump; I just assumed it was milk-related. Not in a million years did I think it would be cancer. My GP thought it was probably a milk-related cyst, but referred me just in case.”

She has HER2 positive cancer, “the same cancer Kylie Minogue had. My type of cancer is called ‘random’. It could happen to anyone,” says Stone. “That’s why I want to make people aware. If it wasn’t for breastfeeding, my situation would be very different now.”

Since her diagnosis three months ago, Stone has become a bit of a campaigner to get women to check themselves regularly: “Check your breasts to make sure you know what’s normal. There are no other obvious symptoms of breast cancer. If you don’t know how, look on YouTube. This is particularly important for young women who aren’t offered mammograms.”

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and with the disease affecting one in eight British women, this includes many Jewish women too. Like Stone, other young Jewish women have become accidental activists too, seeing themselves with a responsibility to raise awareness.

……………………….

(Another link to the full article here)

 

 

confessions of an orthodox feminist

Some musings of mine published recently on the Forward’s Sisterhood blog, which I haven’t written for for quite a while.

These thoughts were triggered after the whole shul (synagogue)-going binge over the high holidays, during which I came to the (disquieting) realisation that I, the supposed feminist, still feel a bit too at home in not very feminist-friendly shul settings.

Was pleased to see the article prompted a good flurry of comments, some of which attacked me for my complacency in this sphere.

Here are the opening paragraphs of the piece – click here for a link to the full article (and comments):

———————————–

Confessions of an Orthodox Feminist

By Rebecca S

Over the recent (and somewhat endless) round of high holidays this year, I came to some disconcerting realizations about my attitude to shul-going as a woman and a feminist.

Coming from an orthodox background, I have realized that however much of a feminist I am, I still don’t feel comfortable in prayer settings of other denominations where real equality reigns. It’s a dismaying head-versus-heart dilemma, and I’m trapped by it. Why is it that I, a supposed 21st century feminist, still feel more at home in a segregated prayer service than at an egalitarian service where women are fully active participants, not just onlookers?

Again and again, I confess that I betray my feminist sensibilities by seeking out the comfort of orthodox shul settings. And I find myself squirreling away quietly behind the mechitza (the partition separating men and women) in the women’s section, instead of joining in the services as an equal participant, and as a real feminist should.

This year, for Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, my husband and I chose to attend a small hasidic (“ultra-orthodox”) shul in our neighborhood of Riverdale, in the Bronx. We usually go to a more modern orthodox shul, which is very large and can be quite impersonal. But I yearned for a more intimate prayer experience — and also hoped the services might not drag on as long

Read more: http://blogs.forward.com/sisterhood-blog/164634/confessions-of-an-orthodox-feminist/#ixzz2AbbhofgM

A spiritual activist takes on the tznius (modesty) police

Time to get back on my soap box and start blogging again (after a long summer spent relaxing back in the old country).

 
So in Monsey, about an hour north of New York City, a town with a large population of frum Jews (many of whom are Hasidic, or devoutly Orthodox), it is a fairly common occurrence to see posters adorning lampposts, notice boards, and random walls across town proclaiming that in order for G-d to be/remain in our midst, or to avoid divine retribution,  women have to, for example: –

– Wear looser clothing, so as not to attract the wrong kind of attention;

– Refrain from wearing beautiful, human-hair sheitels (wigs) that could send out the ‘wrong message’ (Orthodox Jewish women have to cover their hair, and many do so with wigs, but some branches of Hasidic Jews proscribe the use of wigs and authorise only cloth hair coverings, such as shpitzels, or snoods);

– Wear skirts of a certain length only (Orthodox Jewish women are prohibited from wearing trousers, and must wear skirts instead, which should extend below the knee).

This last item forms the topic of interest today. Recently, in Monsey, a new ruling was promulgated on posters across town stating that women must wear skirts “that extend exactly four inches below the knee“. Not three inches, not five inches, but four inches. Women who wear skirts either longer or shorter than this length, the proclamation went on to proclaim, are causing the shechinah (G-d’s divine presence) to depart from our midst.

(How the proclaimers know of this direct causal relationship between the length of local women’s skirts and the presence or absence of the shechinah therein remains a source of great mystery to those not in the know.)

In the event, a young, Orthodox Jewish spiritual activist who lives in Monsey – my niece by marriage, Rochel Kind – decided to take on the proclaimers at their own game. She went round town and everywhere she found a poster of said proclamation, stuck up next to it her own carefully formulated response, showing how the directive is quite out of line with the halachot (Jewish laws) governing modesty. Using the appropriate terminology and jargon as well as using reasoning based on the Jewish legal traditions, she responded in kind to the modesty police. Here is her inspired response (glossary of Hebrew terms below):

Related blog posts:

Honey, I’m just popping down to the garage to pick up some cholent

What, didn’t you know Jewish women aren’t allowed to drive?

Muslims and Jews united in…banning women from driving

Reading Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s ‘Nomad’

heads, shoulders, knees and toes

GLOSSARY:

hidur: extra ‘beautification’ of a Jewish law, but not a requirement

halacha / halachos: laws / religious instructions

makor: a textual source from the Talmud or other Jewish legal texts

Gemara: the Talmud

Beis Hamikdash: the Temple in Jerusalem

sinas chinam: baseless hatred / intolerance

ahavas chinam: baseless love / tolerance

Klal Yisroel: the Jewish people

ahavas yisroel: love of fellow Jews

b’kedusha: holy

Hashem: G-d

mechalel Shabbos v’yom tov: breaking the laws of Sabbath and holy festival days.