The article by Linda Bloodworth Thomason  -- the brilliant creator of the 1980s sitcom, Designing Women -- about her harassment by Len Moonves of CBS, sheds light on the connections between a man's attitude towards women and the work he creates in the world.  Moonves sexually harassed lots of women . And in the meantime was in charge...

Below is the text of the talk I will be giving tomorrow, first day of Rosh Hashana, right before the shofar blowing, at Kehilat Renana in Modi'in: We are about to do something strange. We are going to abandon the prayerbook, the verbiage, all the texts that the Jewish people have preserved for many generations, we are going to put that all aside an...

My wishes for the year 5779: * Massive political changes: turning the US Congress blue, and getting a new prime minister and coalition in Israel.... * The restoration of hope and optimism * That the cultures of hate will be overpowered by cultures and practices of compassion, empathy, and kindness * that the women (and men!) who have suffered from ...

  Dvar Torah by Elana Sztokman, 25-8-2018, Minyan Renana, Modi'in Parashat Ki Tetze is the Torah portion ( parasha ) that is most packed with no less than 74 commandments between men – or to be more precise, commandments between men and other men, or between men and the women who didn't do anything to them. You might call this parasha , "When ...

       פרשת כי תצא: אשת יפת תואר דבר תורה של אילנה סטוקמן, 25-8-2018, מניין רננה, מודיעין פרשת כי תצא היא הפרשה הכי דחוסה עם לא פחות מ-74מצוות בין אדם לחברו – או ליתר דיוק מצוות בין גברים לגברים אחרים או בין גברים לנשים שלא עשו להם כלום. אפשר לקרוא לפרשה הזאת, "כשאתם עושים דברים איומים, תנסו להיות קצת פחות איומים." אני מגזימה טי...

Jerusalem Post Op-Ed, June 21, 2018 Since Trump took office, it has been difficult for me to be an American-Israeli. Watching fellow Israelis and American-Israelis cheer for a man who has no moral compass or capacity for empathy has been chilling. Moreover, the realization that so many members of my tribe care more about soulless buildings – like, ...

Some highlights from my year at HUC rabbinical school: * Every single Talmud class we had with the amazing Prof  Ruhama Weiss , for whom "love" is not a catchphrase or platitude but an entire way of life, whose classroom is freeing and healing -- in the Paulo Freire sense of freeing --  freedom and compassion in action. * When  Debi Shoua-Haim  conducted the entire prayer service in the female form, with God as "she" and the prayer as "she"....using some amazing texts written also by  Rabbi  Stacey Blank ... Wow, so much healing * When  Osnat Eldar  dedicated the entire prayer service to  # MeToo * When Yael Vergan did an entire service in sign-language * The time we had a Friday night tefilla on the roof of Rabbi Naamah Kelman's house in Jerusalem * Hearing talks from amazing women, like Rabbi  Yael Karrie ,  Orly Erez-Likhovski , Rabbanit  Devorah Evron , and many others. * Learning liturgy with the amazing Professor  Dalia Marx * Learning gender in bible with the amazing Dr.  Lea Mazor * When Dr.  Judith Rosenbaum  came to visit and talked about gender, Judaism, and history * Getting to play piano to accompany the tefilla * Getting to know so many interesting students from many different sectors of Israeli society. Listening to their sermons, watching them create beautiful prayer experiences. Having some beautiful, real conversations about life, God, and the world..... # gratitude   # rabbinicalschool

My daughter  Meital  wrote an article about her trip to India last year that is featured in the amazing JGirls Magazine . Thank you  Elizabeth Mandel  for the beautiful work you do!!  <3   By   Meital Sztokman 423 https://jgirlsmagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Meital-3-Main-Image-300x200.jpg    Last year I got a huge surprise: I was going to fly to India with my parents! My father told me just a few days before our trip, and I was so excited that I couldn’t focus on school. My father runs an NGO in India called Gabriel Project Mumbai, and for the past two years, I’ve been begging him to let me volunteer with them.

by Heather Stone  and Elana Sztokman  Michael Oren is an observant guy. The former Israeli Ambassador to the United States and current deputy minister in the Prime Minister’s Office recently noticed that many progressive American Jews are unhappy with Israel. That's the good news – and does not in itself constitute evidence that he has gone off the rails, as Haaretz's Allison Kaplan Sommer hinted. Unfortunately, rather than engaging with the sentiment of American-Jewish disappointment in Israel, he has taken the patronizing approach of asserting that progressives need to be "reformed". This is not only a bad sign for Oren. It is also a bad omen for the relationship between Israel and the American Jewish community. In a recent interview with The Times of Israel, Oren cited a recent Pew study that found that a nearly equal number of American Jews sympathized with Israel as sympathized with the Palestinians. Taking a Rocky Balboa approach to that statistic, as if political views are a winner-takes-all fight-to-the-death prize to be won, he proposed using some Israeli mega-budgets to target Jewish progressives in order to convince them (us) that we are wrong. His idea reads like a strange cross between kiruv and conversion therapy. As if to say that American Jews who hold progressive views must have something wrong with their brains or their chemistry. Cue eye-roll.  His idea reads like a strange cross between kiruv and conversion therapy. As if to say that American Jews who hold progressive views must have something wrong with their brains or their chemistry. Cue eye-roll.   As those who would be the likely target of such a campaign – we are the Chair and Vice-Chair of Democrats Abroad, Israel – we would like to clarify that his proposed strategy is not only obnoxious but also doomed to failure. There are a few things wrong with his whole idea. First of all, sympathy is not a zero-sum -game. Just because a person sympathizes with Palestinians does not mean that they do not sympathize with Israel or vice versa. This is such a crucial piece of understanding that some of our leaders in Israel and America would do well to note. Jews have some good points, and Palestinians have some good points. It is not one or the other. The future cannot be viewed as us-or-them. Maybe if we stopped this square thinking that "sympathy" is weakness and instead experimented with complex understandings that appreciate all people as real humans, we would be able to find a way out of this ugly quagmire called The Conflict. Second of all, despite Oren’s assertion, the Democratic Party is not anti-Israel or even pro-BDS. The Democratic Party platform promotes a two-state solution and rejects BDS. Some people are so accustomed to demonizing Democratic leaders with hyperbole, lies, and fear-mongering that they lose sight of basic facts. Progressives are not radical extremists. Actually, we believe that we are kind of, you know, normal. Furthermore, progressives are currently bearing the entire burden of moral leadership...

Women were segregated at the Western Wall this week. During Vice President Mike Pence’s visit to the Kotel, female journalists were relegated to the back. The segregation came not during a religious event but rather during a diplomatic visit. And the women who were sent to the back of the pack were not praying women but rather professional journalists and photographers. They had to stand behind the men and behind a fence and could not see what was happening. They didn’t take it lying down. As journalist Noga Tarnopolsky who was there, wrote on Twitter, “This was an aberrant first.”  And yet, the episode was not abnormal in a country like Israel, where the exclusion of women has become increasingly normalized, not only at the Kotel but also on planes, in trains, and at cemeteries. But this was still a new low for women. It was not abnormal for Israel — nor for their guest, Mike Pence. Pence is infamous for his retrograde views of women, brought his views on women with him on his trip to Israel. This is a man who believes that working women stunt their children’s growth. As governor of Indiana, Pence signed a record number of anti-abortion bills, including the infamous HEA 1337 that bans abortion even in cases of unviable fetuses, and demands the burial of all potential fetus remains — including menstrual blood.  As if that weren’t enough, Pence tried to redefine “rape” in a bill in order to limit access to abortion, even for women who would die without care. He also cosponsored the appalling “personhood” legislation that could ban birth control. Politico dubbed Pence a “one man crusade” against women’s reproductive health when he led the campaign to completely defund Planned Parenthood. From the evil to absurd, Pence once used Mulan as proof that women should not serve in the military. Less funny is the fact that he famously refuses to sit alone with a woman who is not his wife, which would prevent women from working, say, as a chief of staff or as vice president. His refusal to be alone with women also maintains the annoying presumption that women are always a sexual temptation to men, no matter what the circumstances.   Rather than taking a stand against Pence’s misogyny, Israel was quick to accommodate it with their own. In the space of an hour at the Kotel, Pence’s visit became the occasion for sending women back even further than usual by preventing professional women from working side by side with their male counterparts. When both radical religious Judaism and radical religious Christianity intersect on the oppression of women, we are all in trouble. Read more: https://forward.com/opinion/392758/mike-pences-israel-trip-was-an-affront-to-women/