Prospect Park Alliance, A Butterfly for Brooklyn
Faith and Practice
The Opt-Out Option: Resistance & A Feminist “House Cleaning” of the Soul’s Chametz
This is the last sentence of my horoscope for the week of April 3, 2014:
“You need to be free of the past, free of fearful influences, and free of the self you’re in the process of outgrowing.”
I’m thinking about this sentence as many around me observe Passover, as I opt out of it for the second year in a row, doing a thing that feels razor-sharp-right for me, and also confusing and dangerous. (More than one thing can be true at a time; let’s remember this always.)
Faith and Practice
A Woman’s Freedom: Ten Plagues, to the Tune of “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free" (For the Third Night)
What would it take for women to be free? All women — all ages, born as women, chosen to be women, or just born of a woman and know that the divine female is in us all and is calling to be liberated. What would it take for us all to be free?
I am writing this in a busy cafe, Nina Simone is singing serendipitously in the background, “I wish I knew how it would feel to be free.” You and me both, Nina….
The Ten Plagues of Egypt have been compared to birth pains, necessary contractions in order for a new nation to come to life. READ MORE
Faith and Practice
Amnesia: A Plague of Modern Life, Or, Why It’s Time to Wake Up to Importance of Interdependence (Second Night)
Amnesia is the plague I want to call out. It is a widespread phenomenon of modern life here in the US.
To wit: I am the granddaughter of immigrant garment workers. The forgetting is such that I never even realized the significance of that reality until well into my adulthood. One take on that significance: flight from the familiar into disorientation and vulnerability. Humble origins, a tiny one-bedroom apartment for four people. Being “the stranger,” the ger, the experience that the Haggadah takes pains to remind us of and to transport us to.
Faith and Practice
The 10 Plagues According to Women: For the First Night, Introducing Zeek's Intergenerational Feminist Series for Passover
Editor’s note: This year, Zeek introduces an intergenerational Passover series of feminist plagues. We’ll publish a new one for each day of Passover. This project was inspired, generally, by the 39th Annual Feminist Seder held this March at the home of Barbara Kane and the conversations we had there about creating more intergenerational spaces for feminists and social justice activists, and, specifically, by Letty Cottin Pogrebin’s reading there of “The Ten Plagues According to Women,” which appears here. Over the past few weeks, I reached out to Jewish feminists between the ages of 17 and 70-something, asking each to use the 10 Plagues as a point of departure. To redefine them or reflect on what each sees as today’s plagues, from a Jewish feminist perspective. (These were all written before the Kansas shootings, and it’s with a sad heart we pay particular attention to the connections made between the death of the firstborn and gun violence. —Erica Brody
Read Letty Cottin Pogrebin’s The 10 Plagues According to Women
News and Politics
Poem for the Kansas Shootings
Authors
Then came the ox
who drank the tears
that fell from the eyes
that saw the slain
who fell from the bullets
shot from the gun
held by the hands
raised by the man
who stoked the hate
News and Politics
Jewish GOP Does Vegas, Generation Gap & Circumcision News-- Nu? It's Morning Jew!
Comedians Katie Halper and Heather Gold unpack the news. This week: Governors Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, John Kasich, and Scott Walker walk the walk for GOP money man Sheldon Adelson; thoughts about circumcision – it “puts everything up in front!” – and more. Can you guess which makeup-loving rock-star frontman was born an Israeli Jew named Chaim? Guess. Watch. Laugh. Share.
News and Politics
SPURA, SPURIOUS: A Story of Jews, Politics, and 20 Acres of Demolished Housing on Manhattan’s Lower East Side and the Lessons We Should Learn
Jews in America are as class divided as any other demographic group, and generally we act as such: not in concert, but in conflict. The SPURA saga is worth understanding, remembering and retelling because it complicates any one particular narrative about Jews and New York City’s dark history of destruction and development.
Arts and Culture
Racism in the Art World: Avoid or Act? The Leftist Ethicist
I am an artist living in Chicago. When I go to an opening and see all white artists showing with a 99% white crowd or hear about residencies where it seems everyone accepted is white, I tune it out. As a white person, I am more myself in multi-racial settings. I’m not sure how to change this fact or even sure if I want to change it. Why force myself to connect in spaces that exclude people of color? Is my viewpoint “problematic,” as an activist friend claims? –Anti-Racist & Ambivalent in Chicago
News and Politics
One Poll You Need to Vote In: How Should American Jewish Nonprofits and Philanthropists Spend Their Billions?
Who among us isn’t aware of the gulf between what is and what should be?
As a scrappy online Jewish magazine focused on social justice, arts & culture, spirituality and pushing boundaries, we have some pronounced views. And we know you do too.
A recent study in the Forward – which hosts and supports Zeek, but from which we have total editorial independence – is asking for feedback on the findings of its phenomenal new Jewish study, reported by Josh Nathan-Kazis. The study lays out how Jewish philanthropists and charities spend their money, based on tax reports of 3,600 American Jewish nonprofits. The findings? Some 38% of funds go to Israel-centric programs, 13% to arts and culture and a mere 6% to advocacy. Is that as it should be?
Media and Tech
Holocaust-deniers on Facebook, Trapeze-Swinging Singers, Rabbi-Endorsed Polygamy--Nu? It's Morning Jew!
Comedians Katie Halper & Heather Gold take down the news of the week. Watch. Be amazed. Laugh. Share.
![[the current issue of ZEEK]](../../image/2/100/0/5/uploads/leftistethicistgraphic-52842c6a.png)
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