I find it often helps to see a picture of someone before listening to his ideas.
Steve Sailer’s Law of Female Journalism: “The most heartfelt articles by female journalists tend to be demands that social values be overturned in order that, Come the Revolution, the journalist herself will be considered hotter-looking.”
You can extend this law to understand that the most heartfelt articles by women, like their matings, are in the service of their personal advancement.
Feminism means restricting male choices as much as possible to increase female choices.
As soon as Reform and Conservative Judaism allowed women rabbis, it was the death knell for their movements.
From Tabletmag:
FOR ONE RABBI, THE PERSONAL IS POLITICAL WHEN IT COMES TO IMMIGRATION
I must speak out against injustice—but if I speak up, will I be forced to leave the U.S.?By Rachel Van Thyn
January 26, 2015During the past year’s High Holidays, I, like many other rabbis around the world, wanted to speak about immigration. I shared with my community my belief that we have forgotten our story. We have forgotten the sheer terror of leaving everything behind, moving to an unknown place and starting over.
…I didn’t think I was offering anything earth-shattering. But truthfully, I was scared to speak. In fact, I had nightmares the weeks leading up to Rosh Hashanah. Not your typical pre-High Holiday clergy nightmares. The one where you can’t find your sermon. The one where you sleep through your alarm. The one where you lose your voice the night before you have to chant Kol Nidre. The classics.
These nightmares were different, and their meaning was obvious: As a Canadian citizen living in the United States, I continued to be terrified that I would be forced to leave the life I’ve built over the past decade.
I was born in Canada, but my father and his family were not. After being liberated from Auschwitz, my grandparents Clara and Abraham found that when they returned home to Amsterdam, the same neighbors who had been entrusted with taking care of their valuables now denied having ever received anything. Impoverished, largely alone, and wary of their future in Europe, Clara and Abraham decided it was time to leave the Netherlands, to start over, and to make a new life for themselves and their children.
After that first year, I desperately wanted to stay in New York. I was lucky enough to find various jobs in the Jewish community, and it required a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to ensure I had proper work visas. There were moments when I didn’t think I would be allowed to stay in the country; where my application would be rejected. Then I entered rabbinical school, and with a student visa you might imagine the border crossings would be simpler. They weren’t, for a number of reasons my lawyer has suggested I not publicly articulate. But let’s say this: When you are standing there, waiting for a stamp on your documents, not knowing if this will be the time you will be forced to leave behind the roots you’ve put down, the life you’ve built—there is almost nothing scarier.
I had hoped that things would be easier in my current job. I had somehow been blessed with an immigration lawyer, a member of the congregation, who helped me each step of the way. But the months leading up to this year’s sermon were fraught with difficulty, from papers that were delayed. We had little information about what was happening. I could not leave the country, and I was terrified. I had panic attacks. Even in my sermon, I couldn’t speak entirely freely, because I was afraid it would affect my papers. And as I write these words, I still worry that speaking openly could affect my path to citizenship. As we do with the Torah, I hope you are able to read into the gaps in my text.
People often make jokes when I talk about my difficulties at border crossings. “But it’s Canada,” they exclaim, as if we are the 51st state, or as if it shouldn’t matter because I look the same as they do. By which I think they mean: I am white and upwardly mobile.
It’s so much more complicated than that.
I hope someday to become a dual citizen. I am privileged and grateful to have access to legal representation, and to have a partner who would move back to Canada with me if it came to that. As it happens, we recently got engaged, and marriage will make things easier. But what if I hadn’t found love here? Before I had a fiancé, I had a congregation I loved. I want to stay here, a place I call home.
As a rabbi and as a Jew, I feel a responsibility to speak out against the injustices I see in this world. I read articles about my mentors and teachers getting arrested at protests. I attended the Kol Nidre service during Occupy Wall Street, but it was not a spiritual experience for me. I was too busy looking over my shoulder. If I am arrested for speaking up, will that affect my own future dreams of one day being a citizen?
I felt trapped, unable to speak out and pray with my feet the way I wanted to. So, instead I spoke from my pulpit, but it felt weak in comparison. I choked on tears as I read aloud Emma Lazurus’ words on the Statue of Liberty. I worried about being judged as an armchair activist. I was afraid, for I knew that either path—speaking out or remaining silent—could cost me.
I watch the debates on immigration reform quietly from my living room; I wonder how this will all unfold. When people joke that the United States is getting so terrible they will move to Canada, I consider the truth that my residency is not guaranteed. It would not be a terrible fate to leave, but ultimately I want to be the one who makes that decision.
