State Funding and Fertility Treatments–In an Israeli Prison

Posted on February 10, 2012 by Tara Bognar

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How seriously do we take reproductive rights and freedoms?

Israeli Prison Services (IPS) just agreed to fund fertility treatments for two convicted murderers who met and married while incarcerated. The two have the right to conjugal visits and their freedom to procreate is not restricted, but unlike other Israelis, they would not normally be entitled to state funding for fertility treatment. They were prepared to argue, in front of an administrative court, that that restriction violates their right to have children.

Equal access to reproductive freedom is a right long fought for by feminists. Still, reproductive freedom has meant different things to women in different social, economic, and cultural positions. In the United States, poor women, women of color, and women with physical and mental disabilities have fought against forced sterilization and even forced abortion, while other women must fight for access to voluntary contraception, sterilization, and abortions.

The idea that the state should actively decide who may have children touches on core issues of personal autonomy and bodily integrity. In the United States, even people who are convicted of abusing or murdering their children are not legally prevented from having other children.

If everyone else in Israel has the right to state funding for fertility treatments, can it be just, legal, or moral to deny that right to someone just because they are incarcerated? What if their life sentences mean that any children would inevitably become the wards either of the state or another family member? (According to current law, the child may be raised by their mother in prison until two years of age).

Because IPS voluntarily granted funding, no Israeli court had to make that decision.

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Peach Fuzz Lishma (for its own sake):
(“Peaching, Not Preaching”)

Posted on February 7, 2012 by Guest Blogger

by Rabbi Mindy Avra Portnoy

Who picks peaches in August? Certainly not people like me, a rabbi who always anticipated the Jewish High Holidays by beginning to think about writing sermons as early as May. And by August – don’t ask!

But this year is different – now I’m semi-retired (and my husband retired 6 months earlier) and we are out on a weekday (!) in August picking peaches at Larriland Orchard in the countryside not far (but very far psychologically!) from D.C. Perfect sunny day, not humid, breathable air unlike much of the rest of the summer.

The two young women who are handing out the baskets for peach retrieval explain how to select the best peaches. No green on the flesh, a little hard (they’ll ripen in 3-5 days), these rows over here, not the ones farther back. For a born-and-bred city girl like myself, these directions are invaluable. And next to apples (for which I’ll return in a month), peaches are the easiest fruit to pick. The basket fills quickly, long before I’m tired or bored.

As we return to the vending stand to pay for our peaches, we find the two young women (interns? members of the family?) discussing the problem of their sensitivity to peach fuzz, how their constant exposure causes a kind of allergic reaction. Who knew?

Returning to the car, I begin contemplating this phenomenon, heretofore unbeknownst to me. Peach fuzz… the dark side of nature… environmental hazards?.. and suddenly, I realize what I’m doing. I’m thinking “sermon”; how can I possibly use this anecdote in a sermon?

But I don’t need to do this anymore. My only responsibility now is to eat the peach; and several nights later, to bake a pie or two to share with my book group. I don’t need to derive any powerful lessons (whether actual or contrived) from the orchard experience.

It’s a new way of living – but fortunately, as a Jew, I know a term for it – “lishma”. We are urged to study the Torah, for example, “lishma”, for its own sake, but not because we will derive some advantage – economic, professional, psychological – from doing so, but simply “for its own sake”. And so with peaches, and on a more macro level, nature itself. After 31 years of preaching, I need to re-learn how to do this. Continue reading →

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Feminists in Focus:
In Darkness on the Shortlist

Posted on February 6, 2012 by Naomi Danis

In Darkness, a film by Polish director Agnieszka Holland (Europa, Europa), is based on the true story of Leopold Socha (Robert Wieckiewicz), a Catholic sewer worker and petty thief who, though not especially fond of Jews, is willing to court danger in 1943 Nazi-occupied Lvov in order to make some easy cash, and hides a group of Jews underground for over a year.

Jolanta Dylewska’s startlingly beautiful color cinematography lends a heartbreaking immediacy and vividness to all the lives depicted, and the film’s photographic feat creates a powerful contrast between the above ground light and the underground darkness, conveying more than a metaphorical moral gravitas. Shot in Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, German, Yiddish and even a little Hebrew–all with English subtitles–the film feels thankfully un-Hollywood, and it depicts a humanity replete with kindness and selfishness, cruelty and courage,fortitude and desperation, hope and goodness, with the Jewish characters, too, shown in all their human frailty.

There were moments in the film when I wanted to cover my eyes, like one of the characters who covered her own eyes and her daughter’s, but however troubling and terror-filled, this compelling film tells an important story we may never understand, but ignore at our peril. As the director noted, it continues to echo in different places in the world, from Rwanda to Bosnia.

The Polish entry, In Darkness has been shortlisted for an Academy Award for best foreign film, and opens in New York on February 10 at the Angelika Film Center & Lincoln Plaza Cinemas.

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Link Roundup:
The Susan G Komen Backlash and Workplace Discrimination

Posted on February 3, 2012 by Jill Finkelstein

Welcome to this week’s installment of Lilith’s Link Roundup. Each week we post Jewish and feminist highlights from around the web. If there’s anything you want to be sure we know about, email us or leave a message in the comments section below.

http://www.flickr.com/branditressler

On Tuesday, Susan G. Komen for the Cure announced that it would no longer be funding Planned Parenthood’s breast cancer screening program due to its new policy that blocks organizations under investigation from receiving grants. Though Susan G. Komen denied that its decision was motivated by a secret political agenda, critics pointed out that the new policy was enacted just a few months after U.S. Rep. Cliff Stearns launched an investigation to determine whether or not Planned Parenthood had used government funds to pay for abortions. In addition, Susan G. Komen’s newly appointed Senior VP for Public Policy Karen Handel is anti-choice and vowed during her run for Governor that she would eliminate funding to Planned Parenthood for breast and cervical cancer screenings. Despite whether or not Komen’s new policy was a cover-up for political motivations, the organization faced a major backlash and announced on Friday that it would be reversing its decision. [The Atlantic]

A new study reported that while women make up 68% of the voluntary sector’s workforce in the U.K., only 43% of the country’s charities are lead by women. In addition, the study found that women are grossly under-represented in the religious sector, as only 15% of religious organizations have female leaders. [eJewish Philanthropy]

Anti-choice politicians may want to reconsider their stance on women’s reproductive rights. A new report revealed that there is no correlation between restrictive abortion laws and reduced abortion rates. In fact, the report showed that between 1995 and 2008, countries with fewer restrictions had lower abortion rates than countries with more restrictions. [Ms. Magazine]

Dina Bakst, founder and president of A Better Balance: The Work and Family Legal Center, attributed a gap between U.S. discrimination laws and disability laws to the lack of job security for pregnant women. She explained that while federal and state laws protect pregnant women from discrimination in the workplace and the Americans With Disabilities Act requires employers provide disabled employees, including pregnant women suffering from medical complications, with “reasonable accommodations,” “pregnancy itself is not considered a disability [therefore] employers are not obligated to accommodate most pregnant workers in any way.” Hoping to combat this problem in New York, State Senator Liz Krueger and Assemblywoman Aileen Gunther recently introduced two bills that would require employers to provide pregnant women with reasonable accommodations that are recommended by their health care providers. [NY Times]

Heeb magazine reported that last week, 24-year-old Marina Weisband resigned as director of Germany’s Pirate party. Weisband had been attacked regularly for being Jewish, but denied that anti-Semitic hate mail played a role in her decision to resign. Instead, she attributed her resignation to fatigue and a desire to to obtain her her graduate degree. [Heeb]

For more coverage on the latest news stories, follow us on Twitter at @LilithMagazine.

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Feminists in Focus:
Reporting back from the New York Jewish Film Festival
But would you go there? ‘Welcome to Kutsher’s: The Last Catskills Resort’

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Amy Stone

(The New York Jewish Film Festival, presented by The Jewish Museum and the Film Society of Lincoln Center,ended Jan. 26. Look for these films at other festivals and, hopefully, in commercial distribution.)

What does it say about the state of American Judaism that the New York Jewish Film Festival’s final offering was the documentary “Welcome to Kutsher’s: The Last Catskills Resort”? Sad to say, we are talking the resort of last resort.

The Kutsher’s story testifies to the drive and determination that made Kutsher’s a  piece of Jewish Americana for more than a century. This is the tale of three generations of Kutshers who oversaw the rise and watched the demise of the resort formula they perfected. Three meals a day – all the kosher food you could eat; free, top-flight entertainment; fun for the whole family; and the Kutsher niche – famous athletes on staff.

There was plenty of room for strong women in the Kutsher family. In 1907, Louis and Max Kutsher and Max’s wife, Rebecca, had saved enough money as tailors on the Lower East Side to buy farmland in Sullivan County in upstate New York. Like other Jewish farmers, they took in boarders from the Lower East Side. When guests turned out to be more profitable than chickens and cows, the Jewish resort business was born, responding to working-class Jews finally able to afford vacations but barred from gentile-only resorts.

The second generation Mrs. Kutsher was a true partner in turning Kutsher’s Farm House into Kutsher’s Country Club. Milton and Helen Kutsher married in 1946 and by the 1950s, Milton was taking major business risks to expand Kutsher’s to more than 1,000 acres and create a luxury resort growing so fast guests were signed up for facilities before they were built.

The heroes of the film are Helen Kutsher and son Mark. This was truly a family operation. As Mark says of his mother, “She could be in a mink coat and pick up a gum wrapper two bellboys had left for the night porter.” And it was a family operation with heart. When asked if a certain waiter was still there after 30 or 40 years, Helen Kutsher’s reply was, “Of course. He doesn’t have anywhere else to go.”

Husband-wife filmmakers Ian Rosenberg  and Caroline Laskow have preserved a lot of Kutsher’s history – though they were called to task at the film festival world premiere for not including Kutsher’s as the great Jewish singles mating ground. Continue reading →

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