Jewish Women's Issues

Survivors of Sexual Violence in Jewish Communites

Table of Contents:  

1. Jewish Resources

   • Childhood Sexual Abuse
   • Childhood Sexual Abuse and Pregnancy
   • Domestic Violence
   • Attorneys Experienced Working with Survivors of Sexual Violence
   • Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse Testifying at Legislative Hearings
   • Feminist Resources
   • Incest, Pregnancy, Abortion and Halacha (Jewish Law)
   • Magazines

   • Mikvah Resources
     • Information about the Mikvah - Site includes information on:  How to use the Mikvah, Laws of the Ritual Bath Itself, Using a Running Spring, Time for Immersion, Immersion Procedure, General Rules of Separations on the Skin which invalidate immersion, Post-Immersion, Immersion by a Menstruating Woman, For one who has had a Genital Discharge.
     • World Wide List of Mikvah's - Database of Mikvah's all over the world.Organized by Shema Yisrael.
     • A Ritual for Healing from Childhood Sexual Abuse
     • A Ritual of Healing from Sexual Violence
     • No Ordinary Bath: The Use of the Mikvah in Healing From Incest
     • Healing from Abuse - Mikvah Ceremony for Laura
     • Abortion Ritual

   • Mikvah Articles on Healing
     • Jewish tradition takes on new meaning (09/22/2006)

   • Organizations
   • Parenting
   • Political Issues and Resources Relating to Childhood Sexual Abuse
   • Products
   • Female Sexuality
   • Sexual Assault
   • Using A Shadchan or Other Dating Service: Prevention of Date Rape, Marital Rape, Incest and Other Forms of Childhood Sexual Abuse
   • Women's Issues
   • Women You Should Know

2. Secular Resources

   • Feminist Resources
   • Political Organizations
   • What You Can Do When Parents Mistreat Their Children in Public
   • Women's Issues
   • Great Quotes by Great Women

1. Jewish Feminist Resources - Jewish Feminist Resources gives folks the opportunity to share their "Torah" with each other. We encourage submissions from everyone.

2. Bat Kol: Study from the Inside Out  A unique educational organization that responds to concerns within the Jewish community and beyond with creative and challenging forums for learning

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1. Bridges: A Journal for Jewish Feminists and our Friends - Bridges illuminates a variety of landscapes: for activists, Jews, feminists, lesbians, it is both bread and roses. In these pages, contemporary Jewish feminist culture and politics come alive in all their tumultuous diversity.  Every issue features essays, fiction, poetry, art and reviews on the cutting edge of feminist Judaism, including translations of literature side-by-side with the Ladino, Spanish and Yiddish originals.

2. BRIDGES Submissions Guidelines - Bridges is a showcase for the creative work of Jewish feminists. The editors also welcome work by men and non-Jewish women of particular interest to Jewish feminism. We work with each other and with contributors to publish material that recognizes and values difference. We particularly welcome material by Sephardic and Mizrachi Jews, by people of color, by the old and the young, by lesbians, by those with disabilities, and by working-class and poor Jews. We work with contributors who consider themselves more activist than writer to publish new material on what Jewish feminists are doing.

3. Lilith Magazine - LILITH, the nation's independent nonprofit Jewish women's quarterly, is named for the legendary predecessor of Eve who insisted on equality with Adam. For 20 years, LILITH magazine has been a unique voice speaking out on the interrelationships of Jewish identity and feminism. The magazine brings news of creative lifecycle rituals and holiday celebrations, restores women to Jewish texts and history, showcases Jewish women writers, educators and artists, and illuminates Jewish women's lives in all their religious, ethnic, sexual and social-class diversity. LILITH is a national magazine, a catalyst for action and the resource center for Jewish feminists. LILITH helps individual Jewish women, campus groups and community organizations work for inclusive social and ritual change.  Each quarterly issue of LILITH provides lively reporting, analysis, resource listings, interviews, historical essays, reviews, memoirs, fiction, poetry, and art.

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Jewish tradition takes on new meaning

By Jessie Milligan

Fort Worth Star-Telegram - September

http://www.newsobserver.com/105/story/489217.html

A woman enters a back room of a synagogue. It could be anywhere. Fort Worth. Houston. New York City. The tradition is ancient, and it is practiced throughout the Jewish world. She is going into a mikvah -- a monthly ritual bath.

She will immerse herself in a pool 4 or 5 feet deep. If she follows age-old Jewish law, she will be taking the bath to spiritually cleanse herself after the end of her monthly menstrual cycle and at the end of seven days of abstinence. The spiritual purity of conception will be assured.

The very private rite now is the subject of "The Mikvah Project," a touring exhibit of black-and-white photographs that sheds new light on why modern women continue the tradition. The exhibit runs through Oct. 21 at the Fort Worth Community Arts Center.

Janice Rubin, 51, and Leah Lax, 50, of Houston, set out to document this ritual of transformation, and when they did, both say they became transformed.

Rubin initially had rejected the monthly immersion baths as anti-feminist.

"I used to see it as stigmatizing women as unclean," says Rubin, who went to high school in Fort Worth and on to a career in photography. Her work has been published in Rolling Stone, Newsweek and Texas Monthly.

Then in the late 1990s, Rubin renewed a friendship with Leah Lax, an Orthodox Jewish woman.

Lax had written a short story about a woman who used a mikvah after sexual abuse. Lax wanted no one to see the fictional story. She hid it under her mattress. She didn't want anyone to know that she was suggesting a nontraditional use of a tradition dating to biblical times.

"Who would marry my children if I am seen as rebellious?" asked the mother of 10.

But Lax talked about her short story with Rubin.

"I started to see the mikvah as being about transformation from one state to another," Rubin says.

As Rubin started to accept the tradition, Lax started to feel comfortable about discussing modern uses for the mikvah.

Eventually Lax would take the short story out from under the mattress and use it as part of her application to the University of Houston creative writing program.

Lax went along when Rubin went to photograph mikvahs in Houston, Austin and Fort Worth's Congregation Ahavath Sholom. Models were used in those photographs.

"The models were all at a place of transition in their lives," Rubin says. "There is an edge of something real in the photographs."

One model had just sent her last child to college. Another was going through a divorce. Yet another was recovering from a serious illness.

The photographs, some of them taken underwater, show the mikvah as a tranquil and meditative rebirth.

"It's this incredible moment in a frenzied life where you stop completely still," Lax says. "When a person is under the water in another dimension, it is not the present, it is not the past. It's complete silence. This is a way of accessing my deepest spirituality."

Women started talking to Rubin and Lax about the mikvah.

One woman said that she used her time in the mikvah to mourn her infertility. One saw it as a way to cleanse herself of an abusive marriage. Another told of how her conversion to Judaism was not complete until she could participate in the mikvah. Still others use it in the most traditional sense.

In addition to the photographs using models, Rubin and Lax decided to photograph actual mikvah participants. Those photographs, taken in the women's homes, are accompanied by text describing why the women choose to continue with the ritual.

The photographs depict the women without revealing their faces. As it has for centuries, privacy still surrounds the mikvah.

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1. Jewish Women International - Through the JWI Action and Advocacy Network women speak out on such issues as reproductive rights, domestic violence legislation, children's mental health, and foreign aid to Israel, helping to shape a better world for women, children, and families.
2. NA'AMAT -  NA'AMAT, Hebrew acronym for "Movement of Working Women and Volunteers," NA'AMAT women act locally, nationally and globally in 16 countries. We are united in belief and in action around issues ranging from religious pluralism to an improvement in the status of women at home and in the workplace, from child well-being to peace in the Middle East, from the ability of single parents and new immigrants to build a life for themselves to the end of domestic violence. We help women, and we help women help themselves. of NA'AMAT in the 1930s, wrote that NA'AMAT was "the first and last women's organization for which I ever worked."
3. National Council of Jewish Women - For over 100 years, NCJW has brought together women of conscience committed to the Jewish principle of Tikkun Olam: repairing the world. Its members meet the issues of the day head on – fighting to improve the lives of women, children and families – through programs of research, education, advocacy and community service.
4. Women in Green - In existence only since late 1993, the Women for Israel'sTomorrow, a registered non-profit organization, has accomplisheda great deal. In addition to weekly street theater and publicdemonstrations, we write weekly articles, commission posters,advertise in newspapers, and lecture to groups in order toeducate the electorate on the consequences of certain governmentpolicies, such as abandoning the Golan Heights for an illusorypromise of peace, and pandering to Arafat, without requiring himto live up to his obligations under the Oslo Accords. We insistthat Israel remain a Jewish state. We are actively andintimately connected with the fight to preserve a unitedJerusalem. We support and encourage the brave Jewish communityin the ancient city of Hebron, and sponsor annual Hanukkah and Purim parties with gifts and professional entertainment for theisolated Jewish children in that community.

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1. Parenting Sexually Abused Children in Jewish Communities
2. Kosher Home School.org - Kosherhomeschool .org is devoted to providing information and networking to Jewish homeschooling families worldwide. It is sponsored by "Baltimore Area Support for Home Education with Regard to Torah" (B.A.S.H.E.R.T). At kosherhomeschool.org we hope to address the special needs of Jewish homeschoolers as they strive to provide a superior education in Judaic Studies (l'mudei kodesh) as well as Secular studies (l'mudei chol).
3. National Jewish Girl Scout Committee - Non-profit organization which works in cooperation with Girl Scouts of the USA. Its functions are:  * to promote the Jewish Girl Scout award programs and religious services in Girl Scout Councils .  * to assist Girl Scout Councils in extending Girl Scouting in the Jewish Community .  * to encourage cultural exchanges with the Israel Boy and Girl Scouts Federation.

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1. Sisters Keeper - An alternative to tampons and kotex.

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1. Talli Y.Rosenbaum, PT - Talli Rosenbaum is a urogynecological physical therapist specializing in the treatment of female pelvic floor and sexual dysfunction.
2. Painful Intercourse: A Physical Therapy Approach to Treatment - Painful Intercourse is known by the term" dyspareunia" (pronounced dis pa roo ne a). Every woman has probably experienced it once or twice in her life, either due to a yeast infection, perhaps after childbirth, or due to vaginal dryness. When intercourse is always painful, even sometimes impossible, and there is no clear identifiable medical cause, women are often made to feel that perhaps the problem is "psychological". This feeling is even further strengthened by the fact that dyspareunia is considered a mental health, rather than medical diagnosis, as evidenced by the fact that it is listed in the DSM IV psychiatric diagnosis manual.

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Kresel's Korner  - What is the role of women in Judaism? Why is it different than that of men's? Judaism recognizes women's unique spirituality. This site explores these issues in depth.

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1. How Being an Immigrant Shaped My Life - Sonia Pressman Fuentes - Talk to Class in Writing in Industrial and Labor Relations, Theme: Minorities (Including Women) in American, School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.

2. Medieval Jewish Women in History, Literature, Law, and Art: An Annotated Bibliography - Compiled by Cheryl Tallan

3. Women of the Holocaust - Dedicated to women who were murdered while pregnant.  Holding little hands of children or carrying infants in their arms on the way to be gassed. In hiding. To the mothers who gave their children to be hidden, many never to find them again. To the righteous gentile mothers and the nuns in convents, who were hiding and protecting the children in their care.  Or as fighters in the resistance:  in ghettos, forests, partisan units.

4. My Mother the Scientist - Mom had been taught to turn to the synagogue in times of trouble, and it seemed to make especially good sense in this case, because our synagogue had more scientists in it than most Ivy League universities. Our rabbi, a celebrated civil rights activist, was arranging networking parties for unemployed eggheads. But when my mother asked for an invitation to one of these affairs, he accused her of being selfish. "After all—there are men out of work just now."

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1. Feminist Mom Center of the Universe

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1. Women Leaders Online - History of women getting the right to Vote in the USA, and other informations about elections.

2. NOW and Violence Against Women - National Organization for Women -  Page on violence

3. Search the Directory of Women's Organizations

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1. Femina Web Search for Women

2. National Women's Hall of Fame

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Inside every older person is a younger person -- wondering what the hell happened.

-Cora Harvey Armstrong-

The hardest years in life are those between ten and seventy.

-Helen Hayes (at 73)-

I refuse to think of them as chin hairs. I think of them as stray eyebrows.

-Janette Barber-

Things are going to get a lot worse before they get worse.

-Lily Tomlin-

A male gynecologist is like an auto mechanic who never owned a car.

-Carrie Snow-

Laugh and the world laughs with you. Cry and you cry with your girlfriends.

-Laurie Kuslansky-

My second favorite household chore is ironing. My first being, hitting my head on the top bunk bed until I faint.

-Erma Bombeck-

Old age ain't no place for sissies.

-Bette Davis-

A man's got to do what a man's got to do. A woman must do what he can't.

-Rhonda Hansome-

The phrase "working mother" is redundant.

-Jane Sellman-

Every time I close the door on reality it comes in through the windows.

-Jennifer Unlimited-

Whatever women must do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult.

-Charlotte Whitton-

Thirty-five is when you finally get your head together and your body starts falling apart.

-Caryn Leschen-

I try to take one day at a time, but sometimes several days attack me at once.

-Jennifer Unlimited-

If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning.

-Catherine-

When I was young, I was put in a school for retarded kids for two years before they realized I actually had a hearing loss. And they called ME slow!

-Kathy Buckley-

I'm not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because I know I'm not dumb .... and I'm also not blonde.

-Dolly Parton-

If high heels were so wonderful, men would still be wearing them.

-Sue Grafton-

I'm not going to vacuum 'til Sears makes one you can ride on.

-Roseanne Barr-

When women are depressed they either eat or go shopping. Men invade another country.

-Elayne Boosler-

Behind every successful man is a surprised woman.

-Maryon Pearson-

In politics, if you want anything said, ask a man-if you want anything done, ask a woman.

-Margaret Thatcher-

I have yet to hear a man ask for advice on how to combine marriage and a career.

-Gloria Steinem-

I am a marvelous housekeeper. Every time I leave a man I keep his house.

-Zsa Zsa Gabor-

Nobody can make you feel inferior without your permission.

-Eleanor Roosevelt-

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Last Updated:  10/03/2006

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

--Margaret Mead