The Jewish Women’s Workshop
It was a joy and an honor to assist Diane Balser (International Liberation Reference Person for Women) at the recent Jewish Women’s Workshop.
There were so many highlights and learnings:
- Being part of a team with M—, who also assisted and who has done an excellent job working for many years with Global Majority Jewish females; and Diane, who has put a lot into making Global Majority Jewish females central
- Participating in an international gathering of female Jews
- Putting “female first”— facing how hard it is to put sexism front and center
- Seeing the importance of the intersection of anti-Semitism and sexism and how the existence of sexism is often denied in Jewish organizational life
- A powerful class on identities; demonstrations with Jewish females who had wanted to be boys when growing up
- Stories shared by Global Majority Jewish females
- A class on subservience—thinking about how we Jewish females have been conditioned to be subservient
In a time when both sexism and anti-Semitism are often denied and we are made to feel that our oppressions don’t exist and don’t matter, it was a huge contradiction [to distress] to put female Jews at the center and combine the work on sexism and anti-Semitism.
Silver Spring, Maryland, USA
Reprinted from the RC e-mail discussion list for leaders of women
(Present Time 206, January 2022)
Last modified: 2022-12-25 10:17:04+00