Uncategorized
How Judy Blume’s ‘Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret’ broke taboos around interfaith marriage
(JTA) — When Judy Blume’s young adult novel “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” appeared in 1970, intermarried families were a small segment of the American Jewish population. Perhaps 17% of Jews were married to someone who wasn’t Jewish; today, 42% of married Jews have a spouse who is not Jewish, and in the past decade, 61% of Jews married non-Jewish partners.
Through the 1960s, middle-grade and young adult fiction rarely acknowledged the existence of these families, reflecting and reinforcing their outsider status. Today it is routine for authors to address the reality of inter-religious and culturally mixed families, portraying them with insight and compassion. (See “Not Your All-American Girl” by Wendy Wan-Long Shang and Madelyn Rosenberg, “Becoming Brianna” by Terri Libenson and “The Whole Story of Half a Girl” by Veera Hiranandani.)
This change was made possible partly by Blume’s story of sixth-grader Margaret Simon and her one-sided conversations with God.
Blume’s status as a pioneer in young adult literature is usually associated with her honest approach to the emotional, physical and sexual milestones of growing up, with her works still attracting readers and still finding an honored place on lists of banned books. That legacy is being celebrated in April with a new documentary, Amazon Prime Video’s “Judy Blume Forever,” and a theatrical release by Lionsgate of a feature film version of “Are You There God?”
Yet her treatment of contested identity in intermarried families is as revolutionary as her openness about bras, menstruation and sexual feelings. Actors Lena Dunham and Molly Ringwald, comedian Samantha Bee and many authors, including Raina Telgemeier, Tayari Jones and Gary Shteyngart, have cited Blume’s influence on both their lives and their work. Book lists for intermarried families frequently list the novel as a resource.
Margaret Simon is 11 years old at the start of “Are You There God?” Her Jewish dad and Christian mom have pointedly ignored the possibility that their daughter might have questions about her identity. Along with other issues of teen angst, she feels compelled to decide if she is Jewish, Christian or neither. Without any guidance, the last alternative leaves her in a frightening void. As she pointedly asks God, in her ongoing series of questions for Him, “I can’t go on being nothing forever, can I?”
Margaret’s parents, Barbara Hutchins and Herb Simon, fell in love and defied their respective parents by marrying out of their faiths. They assure Margaret that she has no religion, but can choose one when she is older, oblivious to the fact that this solution seems more of a burden than a promise of future freedom. Their avoidance of any serious engagement with either religion or culture renders any possible choice unlikely.
Blume situates Margaret’s search within the specific landscape of post-World War II America. When the Simons decide to leave their Upper West Side home in New York City and move to suburban New Jersey, their decision suggests a coded reference to their religious status. Long Island is “too social,” an implied euphemism for “too Jewish.” Living there might have made it harder for their relatively unusual situation to be discreetly ignored. On the other hand, the more affluent Westchester and Connecticut are “too expensive” and “too inconvenient.” Farbrook, New Jersey has enough Jews for it to feel right for Herb, but not so many as to make their mixed family stand out.
Margaret also suspects that her parents’ are determined to put distance between the Simons and Sylvia, her paternal grandmother, who lives in New York City. This gregarious woman shows up at their new home unannounced and toting deli foods, making it clear that Margaret’s one unambiguous connection to Judaism is not going to disappear. While Barbara’s parents utterly rejected her when she married a Jew, Sylvia has pragmatically decided to accept what she cannot change. In the postwar era, more Jews began to abandon or minimize religious practice, while still maintaining ethnically distinct customs. Like holiday observance or synagogue attendance, ethnic Jewish culture is also absent from the Simon home. Sylvia’s Jewish food, her frequent trips to Florida, even her combination of sarcasm and smothering warmth, provide Margaret with markers of the tradition her parents have eschewed.
Still, when Sylvia repeatedly asks Margaret if her (nonexistent) boyfriends are Jewish, the young girl is baffled. Given her own lack of consciousness of herself as Jewish, why would Margaret care?
Rachel McAdams and Abby Ryder Fortson in the forthcoming film adaptation of “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.” (Dana Hawley/Lionsgate © 2022)
In the larger world of Farbrook, Margaret’s new friends seem to have more secure identities, conveniently defined by membership either in the “Y” (Young Men’s Christian Association) or the Jewish Community Center. Perfunctory attendance at Hebrew school until after one’s bar mitzvah is the furthest extent of her peers’ Jewishness. Margaret explains that her parents are “nothing” and that, prior to their marriage, they were Jewish and Christian, as if those identities could be cast off like an article of clothing. When Mr. Benedict, her enthusiastic young teacher, distributes a questionnaire, Margaret completes the prompt “I hate” with “religious holidays.” He attempts to draw her out about this troubling answer, and she scornfully observes that her teacher acted as if “he had uncovered some deep, dark mystery.”
On one level, he has. Her mother’s blandly universal definition of God as a “nice idea,” who “belongs to everybody,” is clearly a denial of the fractures in her family members’ lives.
Blume also captures the essence of mid-century non-Orthodox Judaism as comfortably accessible, yet also somewhat empty. On a visit to Grandma Sylvia’s elegant temple, the atmosphere is quietly decorous, the sanctuary filled with well-appointed congregants and beautifully arranged flowers. Sylvia’s rabbi greets Margaret with an enthusiastic “Good Yom Tov,” which he translates as “Happy New Year,” although it is actually a generic holiday greeting.
When Margaret later visits Presbyterian and Methodist churches, she notes the remarkable similarity among all three experiences.
The novel’s one incident of specific religious practice involves Margaret’s brief, unfinished confession in a classmate’s Catholic church. Having participated in bullying, Margaret tries to assuage her guilt through a ritual alien to both her father’s Judaism and her mother’s Protestant Christianity. She even momentarily confuses the priest with the silent God of her conversations. Nothing could be further from her parents’ rejection of religion, or from Grandma Sylvia’s loving assurance to Margaret that “I knew you were a Jewish girl at heart.”
When Margaret’s Christian grandparents decide to resume contact, the suppressed anger in the Simon home finally erupts. Herb is furious, and accuses his in-laws of only wanting to meet Margaret “to make sure she doesn’t have horns!” — a caustic reference to a persistent antisemitic myth. Blume had subtly foreshadowed this disruption of the status quo in a parallel event at school. When a Jewish student, backed by his parents, refuses to sing Christmas carols, the implicit agreement of the town’s Jews to quietly conform is broken. A Christian girl, in what seems an act of retaliation, then refuses to sing Hanukkah songs. These acts of resistance reinforce Margaret’s marginal status. Her intermarried family represents neither conformity with postwar norms nor an assertion of Jewish pride.
Blume appears to tip the scales in her portrayal of Mary and Paul Hutchins, Margaret’s maternal grandparents. Entirely unlikeable, simultaneously pushy and cold, they insist that the granddaughter they had never acknowledged is Christian. After their failed visit, Grandma Sylvia returns, along with her sweet and obviously Jewish new boyfriend, Mr. Binamin (“rhymes with cinnamon”). Readers rooting for the triumph of Margaret’s Jewish roots may breathe a sigh of relief here, but hope for a satisfying ending is illusory. Margaret’s search for a stable sense of self is still unfinished, and will not be satisfied by choosing membership in either the Y or the JCC.
For young readers, the novel’s discussion of religious identity proved as life-changing as its honest portrayal of puberty and menstruation. “I related to that kind of conflict of religion,” the comedian Chelsea Handler, who grew up in a mixed Jewish-Mormon home, told Blume in 2020. “At that time, I just found out my mom was Mormon, on top of thinking she was Jewish, and your books were such a reprieve for me and such a joy.”
More than 50 years ago, Judy Blume tackled a difficult subject, about both changing demographics and the search for authenticity in American Jewish life. Margaret’s conclusion that “twelve is very late to learn” about the essence of who you are still poses a challenge, while her persistent search for a meaningful identity offers a degree of optimism.
—
The post How Judy Blume’s ‘Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret’ broke taboos around interfaith marriage appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Shower, shelter, swipe: Israel’s ‘startup nation’ meets Iran war with a wave of apps
(JTA) — TEL AVIV — Smartphones have become as essential as shelters for Israelis riding out Iran’s missile attacks, with internet traffic up 25% since the war began on Saturday. From the screaming alerts of the military’s official app that, as one comedian put it, sound like a “baby dragon giving birth,” to bomb-shelter Tinder to multiple apps that tell you when it’s safe to shower, the startup nation is trying to digitize the panic into something more manageable.
At the serious end of the wartime app stack is Home Front Command, the Israeli army’s app available in Hebrew, Arabic, Russian and English. It uses GPS to figure out where you are and only pings you when your area is at risk, with separate alerts for rockets, missiles and terror incidents. In this war, Iran’s long-range fire has come with an extra layer of notice, a warning-before-the-warning that can buy people a few more minutes. The shorter-range threats from Hezbollah, which joined the fray on Tuesday, do not come with that same courtesy.
Bomb Shelter Locator turns shelter-seeking into a map exercise, listing around 20,000 official sites, offering offline city maps and walking routes, and estimating the time it will take to reach the nearest protected space.
For anyone who cannot sprint, Purple Vest tries to close the gap. People with disabilities or older residents can register in advance and request help during alerts, with volunteers using the app to locate them and assist with shelter access or urgent supplies.
For others, shelters are turning into accidental social spaces where people can meet-cute on a mattress. The Hooked app, originally built for speed-dating at events, now doubles as a bomb-shelter icebreaker. Shelter-goers post a QR code at the entrance, and singles who scan it can see who else in the same bunker has the same relationship status. US Ambassador Mike Huckabee — who has not been single since high school — shared it on X alongside the caption: “Someday they will tell their kids ‘we met on a dating app in a shelter while dodging ballastic [sic] missiles.’”
But for some, even showering has become its own risk calculation. Martine Berkowitz was one of many who vented after her attempts to scrub up were interrupted by missiles no less than five times on the second day of the war.
For software developer Ben Greenberg, a father of teenagers, Berkowitz’s complaint was familiar, so he built an app called Best Shower Time that spits out a percentage risk score on whether a shower is likely to be interrupted by an alert.
Posts about it spread on social media and what began as a tool for his family is now drawing about 5,000 visitors a day. Greenberg, a California native who immigrated to Israel from New York in 2018, insists it’s “not a joke app.”
“Sirens are just the ultimate example of lack of control in one’s life,” he said, describing the app as a way to “restore some level of control and predictability … in a time when that feels most vulnerable and most taken away from us.”
The app uses real-time alert data from the Home Front Command, and the score is based on four inputs: how long it has been since the last alert, the average gap between alerts over a six-hour window, whether the frequency is trending up or down, and the total alert count over the past 24 hours. Those are weighted into a single score that appears when you open the app.
Users can then set their own parameters, including how long a shower typically takes and how much buffer time they want afterward to dry off and reach shelter.
And for those who have a penchant for extended bathroom breaks, Greenberg added a separate option that relies on the same logic.
It’s not the only app homing on issues of basic cleanliness to emerge this week. Another app, Can I Shower Now?, has developed a following of its own.
Berkowitz said she was “grateful” for apps to help her navigate the question of whether to jump in the shower. After checking and seeing a 13% chance of a missile alert on Wednesday afternoon, she decided to risk it.
“I took a full 20-minute hot shower and washed my hair. It was lovely. And the next warning only came when I was finished and getting dressed,” she said.
Greenberg is piloting a new app, called Best Walking Time, based on the same principle and prompted by his wife, who regularly walks around the neighborhood during work calls but has been afraid to stray from home lest a missile head their way.
The post Shower, shelter, swipe: Israel’s ‘startup nation’ meets Iran war with a wave of apps appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Gavin Newsom says some ‘appropriately’ call Israel an ‘apartheid state’ while questioning US military aid
(JTA) — California Gov. Gavin Newsom provided sharp criticism of the Israeli government during an interview this week, suggesting that he agreed with claims that it is an “apartheid state” and questioning U.S. military aid to the country.
Newsom, a likely 2028 presidential candidate, offered his rebuke of the Israeli government during an event on Tuesday with the hosts of “Pod Save America,” a political podcast, while promoting his new memoir, “Young Man in a Hurry: A Memoir of Discovery.”
During the conversation, while suggesting that Israel’s alleged influence over the United State’s strikes in Iran was “pretty damn self-evident,” Newsom took aim at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“The issue of Bibi is interesting because he’s got his own domestic issues. He’s trying to stay out of jail, he’s got an election coming up, he’s potentially on the ropes, he’s got folks, the hard line, that want to annex the West Bank,” said Newsom, adding that “others are talking about it appropriately as sort of an apartheid state.”
When a host of the podcast asked Newsom whether he believed the United States should consider “rethinking our military support for Israel,” the California governor replied, “It breaks my heart, because the current leadership in Israel is walking us down that path where I don’t think you have a choice.”
Newsom’s comments come shortly after the politician vowed he would “never” accept AIPAC funding, a stance that has increasingly become a litmus test for Democratic candidates amid record low support for Israel among its base.
While Newsom has been vocal in his critiques of Netanyahu in the past, saying earlier this year that he is “crystal clear in my love for Israel — and my condemnation of Bibi,” his latest comments signal a notable shift in tone as he adopts a more openly critical stance on Israel amid growing pressure from the Democratic party.
“I didn’t expect to be in that place, you know, a few years ago, let alone, you know, where we are today, and it’s accelerating in real time in a deeply, deeply alarming way,” said Newsom.
Calls to strip U.S. military aid from Israel have gained traction among progressive Democrats in recent months, with a record number of Senate Democrats voting to block weapons sales to Israel in July.
In January, Netanyahu said for the first time that he wanted to “taper off” U.S. military aid to Israel over the next decade, a goal that was quickly welcomed by South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham as pockets of the Republican party have grown increasingly skeptical of U.S. aid to Israel.
The post Gavin Newsom says some ‘appropriately’ call Israel an ‘apartheid state’ while questioning US military aid appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Andrea Weiss, trailblazing Reform rabbi who merged scholarship and activism, dies at 60
(JTA) — Rabbi Andrea Weiss, a former provost of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion who made history as the first woman to ordain rabbis in the Reform movement, has died.
Weiss died on Tuesday surrounded by family at her home in Lower Merion, Pennsylvania, following a year-long battle with cancer. She was 60.
“Andrea brought lev shalem — a whole heart to everything she did,” Cantor Jill Abramson, HUC’s interim head of seminary and director of its Debbie Friedman School of Sacred Music, said in a statement. “Whether in a classroom or a hallway discussion, she has always been a model of what it means to live a life guided by scholarship and sacred purpose. We will miss her presence in these halls and hold her family in our prayers.”
Weiss’ death strikes another blow for the leadership of the Reform movement, which has also buried two leaders of HUC who died prematurely while Weiss worked there — Rabbi Aaron Panken, then the seminary’s president, in 2018, and Rabbi David Ellenson, its past president, in 2023. The school of sacred music, meanwhile, is named for another luminary of the movement who died prematurely at 59 in 2011.
Born on Sept. 9, 1965, Weiss was raised in San Diego where her family belonged to Temple Emanu-El. In 1987, Weiss received her bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and was ordained as a rabbi at HUC in 1993.
Weiss joined the HUC faculty in 2000 alongside Rabbi Lisa Grant, who served as the director of the school’s rabbinical program.
“There was actually four of us, four women, who started at the same time, and we really changed the whole gender balance of the faculty, which was very exciting and thinking about, long term potential of what that would mean for the culture of the school,” Grant told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
During her tenure at the school, Weiss led multiple initiatives including a curricular redesign, the launch of the Virtual Pathway for Rabbinical students and the creation of the Seminary Hebrew Program.
Weiss taught several courses at the school, including “The Poetry and Power of the Psalms,” “Literary Artistry of the Bible” and “Teaching Bible to Adult Learners,” a course she co-taught with Grant beginning in 2003.
“Rabbi Weiss has been a transformative presence at Hebrew Union College for more than two decades,” said the school’s current president, Andrew Rehfeld, in a statement. “Her scholarship, vision, and fierce commitment to the formation of Jewish clergy have shaped this institution in ways that will endure for generations. We are grateful beyond measure for her service and hold her and her loved ones in our hearts.”
Weiss received her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 2004, where her research centered on metaphor and biblical poetry, scholarship that informed her later work including her 2006 book, “Figurative Language in Biblical Prose Narrative: Metaphor in the Book of Samuel.”
In 2008, Weiss won the National Jewish Book Awards Book of the Year as the associate editor of “The Torah: A Women’s Commentary,” the first comprehensive collection of Torah commentary written entirely by female scholars. Sen. Elissa Slotkin chose the text to be sworn in on last year.
In 2016 and 2020, Weiss led a nonpartisan, interfaith initiative titled “American Values, Religious Voices” that brought together 100 faith leaders to write letters to former President Joe Biden and President Donald Trump as well as Congress during the first 100 days of their administrations. The letters were later published as two books.
Weiss described the initiative at the time as “a national, nonpartisan campaign created from the conviction that scholars who study and teach our diverse religious traditions have something important to say about our shared American values.”
Grant said Weiss offered a model of Jewish engagement that was validated by the ancient rabbis.
“There’s a great Talmudic debate about which is more important, which is greater, study or action, and the rabbis have this back and forth about it, and in the end, they conclude study because it leads to action,” Grant said. “She certainly lived that, that her study and her teaching led her to be an activist as well.”
In 2018, Weiss was appointed as HUC’s provost, becoming the first female rabbi to ordain rabbis in the Reform movement.
Grant said the honor was “extraordinarily meaningful and very heavy” for Weiss.
“She would make the time every year to meet individually for an hour with every single student, to hear about their story, their journey, their learning,” said Grant. “And she would craft that into a short blessing upon ordination.”
As news of Weiss’ death spread on Tuesday, many of her former students and rabbis whom she ordained eulogized her on social media.
“Rabbi Andrea Weiss helped me to grasp and appreciate biblical poetry in a way that nobody else could,” wrote Evan Schultz, the senior rabbi of Congregation B’nai Israel in Bridgeport, Connecticut, in a post on Facebook. “Her wisdom helped shape me as a rabbi and a writer. She was brilliant, kind, and genuine.”
Rabbi Binyamin Minich, the leader of Kehilat Daniel in Tel Aviv, recalled in a post on Facebook being a part of Weiss’ first ordination cohort.
“I remember this feeling of awe, understanding that our 2019 cohort of Israeli Rabbinical Program alumni would be the first ordained by a woman,” wrote Minich. “That meant the idea of women being rabbis settled fully in the Jewish contemporary life and ascended to a next level. It was the real proof of [lalmud velelemed leshmor vela’ashot] – ‘to study and to teach, to preserve and to act.’”
Rabbi Shira Koch Epstein, the executive director of Atra: Center for Rabbinic Innovation, recalled connecting with Weiss in 2019 in Jerusalem and hearing about a bar mitzvah project Weiss had helped organize for her son. The project brought his baseball team to Cuba, where they donated equipment and met with locals.
“It was a big project that they did that was really inspirational; it inspired my son, Ami, to do a baseball-related mitzvah project for his bar mitzvah,” said Epstein. “Definitely not as ambitious as theirs, but Rabbi Weiss really taught me both Torah and the living Torah, of how to turn what you care about and your interests into tzedakah and action in the world.”
Weiss is survived by her husband Alan; her two children, Rebecca and Ilan; her father, Marty; her siblings, Mitch, Laura and Roger; her sister-in-law Catherine; and her nieces, nephews and cousins.
The post Andrea Weiss, trailblazing Reform rabbi who merged scholarship and activism, dies at 60 appeared first on The Forward.