Happening

MOBILIZE

Want to shape the Jewish world? The Professional Leaders Project will provide twenty-somethings with professional and volunteer leadership opportunities in the Jewish nonprofit sector. If you’re in this age group—or a Jewish professional of any age—interested in finding out more, contact Rhoda Weisman at www.jewishleaders.net

Mean girls— and boys. We know that students who fail to live up to classmates’ expectations of masculinity or femininity are targets for taunting and ostracism, and sometimes even violent assault. Learn how to help combat bullying caused by gender stereotypes. Contact the Gender Public Advocacy Coalition’s Gender, www.gpac.org. Activists are also gathering support for federal bill H.R. 4776, making school anti-bullying policies and training procedures mandatory; http://www.gpac.org/youth/ factsheethr4776.doc

If We Knew Then What We Know Now: A Guide to Mourning and Moving On, a new how-to book by Natalie Pelavin, longtime community volunteer and Barbara Sosnowitz, retired social work professor, offers practical advice to widows and others. It’s a simple and sympathetic text, with forms and lists, for a time when a longer read would be daunting. $12 plus $2.50 postage payable to Natalie Pelavin, and send to Lilith Magazine, 250 W. 57th St., #2432. New York, NY 10107.

Sexual Violence Research Initiative promotes and disseminates research to reduce—and respond to— sexual violence. This includes sexual abuse and coercion of adult and adolescent women, child sexual abuse, sexual torture and violence in war situations, and trafficking in women and girls for sex. The SVRJ IS funded by the Global Forum for Health Research and is hosted by the World Health Organization. www.who.int/gender/violence/ sexviolresearch/en/

HEALTH AND WELLBEING

HIV Goddesses: Stories of Courage, is journalist Sharon Sopher’s film of her own story of living with the virus, the centerpiece in A Women’s Wellness and Empowerment Project. Sopher’s goal is to have awareness catch up to the epidemic. Women make up nearly 50 percent of all HIV eases, with girls and young women at greatest risk of contracting the disease. The project includes a photo exhibit of American women living with AIDS and a bookmark with gender-based facts. Says Sopher, who got AIDS while making a film in Africa, “AIDS totally erases who you were and becomes the definer of who you are.” www.cdc.gov/hiv/pubs/facts/women.html

What if you’re Jewish in a non-Jewish care facility? Sacred Seasons: Jewish Resources for Elders, is a series of celebration kits to help facilitate celebrating Shabbat and holidays for Jewish elders in non-Jewish residential care settings. There are people who might otherwise be completely cut off from Jewish life. The kits contain background on each holiday observance, step-by-step instruction, large-type prayers and blessings for participants, and a recording of the songs and blessings. One of several projects from Hiddur: the Center for Aging and Judaism at the Reconstructionist Rabbincal College. Director Rabbi Dayle A. Friedman notes that nearly one quarter of our Jewish community is already over 60, an urgent issue for women, who both bear the brunt of caregiving and longer than our male counterparts. Hiddur@rrc.edu

About What Was Lost. For a literary anthology of writers on miscarriage, to be published by Chamberlain Brothers/Penguin, in 2006— Jessica Berger Gross is looking for nonfiction submissions 4,000-6,500 words long from women writers— and a few men as well. “Miscarriage needn’t be the sole topic of the essays, but rather a fulcrum upon which the nonfiction narratives turn.” Send your inquiry or essay with a short bio to jessicabergergross@mac.com.

ART

Seeing Ourselves explores the female psyche in portraits of women featuring the work of five Jewish women artists: Shanna Tellerman, Lois Blaufeld, Libby Fishman, Lynne Frank and Bella Baran. From January 1 to March 15, at the American Jewish Museum of the JCC of Greater Pittsburgh, 5738 Forbes Ave., Pittsburgh, PA 15217; 412-521-8011 xl05: www. ccpgh.org

Jan Aronson: “A Reverence for Nature,” offers landscapes, nature studies and portraits that “convey the ineffability of the familiar and the mystery of the unknown.”

Leslie A. Golomb and Louise Silk “Deez Nites be All Da Same To Me” presents narrative quilts that tell the story of a slave’s passage to freedom. The quilts fuse symbolic images from the Passover hagada and the Exodus from Egypt with African textiles and the Underground Railroad’s coded quilt patterns that provided directions toward safe havens. Both on view February 14- June 30 at the Hebrew Union College Museum in New York www.huc.edu/museums/ny

The Naava Huppah.

A newly created marriage canopy memorializes Naava Applebaum, who, with her father, was killed by a terrorist’s bomb in Israel the day before her wedding. She had worked with pediatric oncology patients at Shaare Zedek Medical Center A donation of $5,000 to the Naava Applebaum Sherut Leumi National Service Program at Shaare Tzedek will help continue her work and will bring you the huppah for use at your wedding. Contact Stephen Schechter (212)999-5585.

JEWISH LAW

Ask a woman. Yoatzot halakha are women trained as halakhic consultants. They can answer questions in Hebrew or English about Taharat Hamishpachah (an area of Jewish Law that relates to marriage, sexuality and women’s health). They’re trained in Torah plus psychology, gynecology, infertility, women’s health, family dynamics and sexuality. They can be reached through a web site or telephone hotline. The medical advisor is Deena Zimmerman, MD. Nishmat s Golda Koschitzfy Women’s Halachic Hotline in Israel: 972-2-642-0102; toll free from the United States and Canada: 877-963-8938; www.yoatzot.org

READ THESE

Amid Grief: Writings by Israeli Jewish Women on Peace Seeking. The 2004 issue Bridges Jewish Feminist Journal opens with a heated excliange of letters between Israeli poet Lois Bar-Yaacov and American poet Adriemre Rich. It contains testimony in poetry, art, essays and reviews by Terry Greenblatt, Naomi Chazan, Deborah Greniman, Shani Werner, Rela Mazali, Hannah Safran, Linda Zisquit, Shirley Kaufman, and others. $9 from Bridges, PO Box 1206, Ann Arbon MI 48106 www. bridges]ournal. org

“The Eleventh Hour,” a short story by Emma Lazarus, is reprinted for the first time since it’s original 1878 publication in the premier issue of Maggid, a Journal of Jewish Literature, focusing this time on American Jewish writing. Included are Cynthia Ozick, Rebecca Goldstein, Alicia Ostriker, Nava Semel and others. $9.95 from Toby Press, www. tobypress. com

Koret Young Writer Award.

One writer whose work contains Jewish themes will be awarded $25,000 and spend three months in residence at Stanford University. The winner for 2005 will be honored at the 7th annual Koret Jewish Book Awards ceremony on April 11,2005. (Full disclosure: last year’s winner was former Lilith intern Rachel Kadish.) Applicants must be 40 or younger and have published no more than one book of fiction, non-fiction or poetry. Non-U.S. residents may also apply. Scholarly work will not be considered. www. koretfoundation.org

BE THERE!

Sisters of ’77. In November 1977, 20,000 women and men from across the U.S. came together at the first National Women’s Conference in Houston, Texas, to end discrimination against women and promote their equal rights. In a one-hour documentary film by Cynthia Salzman Mondell and Allen Mondell, Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Eleanor Smeal, Ann Richards and others also look back at how that weekend changed American life. Airing on PBS on March I.

www.pbs.org/sistersof/77

I’m Glad You Asked: An Evening of Free Advice Hosted by Susan Stamberg. In the shtetl you consulted the rebbe, the matchmaker, or your mother. The New World brought new possibilities: newspapers, radio, television, the Internet. Are redheads cursed? Will I die if I marry a woman with a dimpled chin? How do I get my parents to stop speaking Yiddish in public? From the Bintel Brief to Dear Abby to Drs. Ruth and Laura, advice mavens have used mass media to dispense commonsense wisdom and voyeuristic entertainment. February 28, 2005, at the Washington DCJCC, and March 28, 2005, in Chicago at The Abbey Pub; www. nextbook. org

The Avodah Dance Ensemble recently marked the retirement of its founder Joanne Tucker. Julie Gayer, now artistic director of liturgical and educational programming, is creating a new dance repertory for Friday night services the themes of candle lighting/ candle sticks; mikvah and multicultural interpretations of water; and a poem “Enemies” by Charlotte Zolotow, The troupe is available for school visits, workshops and residencies. www. avodahdance. org

Women’s Economy: Creativity, Work, Volunteering and Slavery. Work as empowerment or exploitation of women, and the influence of religion, ethnicity, and social class will be among the themes of a March 3 conference in Rishon LeZion, Israel, organized by Sylvia Bijaoui, Yafa Berlovitz and Frances Raday—for the Isruel Association for Feminist and Gender Studies 972-2-5340593, ibii@netvision. net. il