Hila Ratzabi
By Hila Ratzabi
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Culture The One-Woman Hebrew School
In early 2010 I received an email with the subject line “Hebrew tutor for my (awesome!) 11-year- old daughter.” The dad who had sent that email found my name through the Jewish Theological Seminary, where I had done my undergraduate studies at the Double Degree program with Barnard College back in 2003. Someone in career…
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The Schmooze Jewish Lesbian Poetry for a New Generation
When I received my copy of “Milk and Honey: A Celebration of Jewish Lesbian Poetry” (A Midsummer Night’s Press, 2011), edited by poet Julie R. Enszer, I was surprised at how small the book was. Measuring only about six by four inches, it seems designed to fit easily into a purse, or perhaps not to…
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The Schmooze How To Be Jewish, Israeli, Muslim and Palestinian, All at the Same Time
When I entered Saint Joseph’s Catholic Church in Greenwich Village on a recent Sunday afternoon to see the play “In Between,” which explores the cultural identity of a Palestinian-Muslim/Jewish-Israeli man, I suddenly felt hyper-aware of my own Jewish identity. It seemed telling to me, and surprising, that the only current New York performance of this…
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The Schmooze After Ten Years, a Jewish Poetry Journal Bids Farewell
Those of us who have participated in the Jewish poetry scene in New York City over the last decade might argue that the journal Mima’amakim invented it. Though Jewish women and men have been performing and publishing poetry for many decades as part of a thriving New York poetry scene, Mima’amakim established the first readings…
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Life Seeking Essays From Women in Interfaith Relationships
When the Forward published my essay on being in an interfaith relationship last year, I could never have predicted that I would eventually decide to put together an entire anthology of essays by women in Jewish interfaith relationships. Before I wrote my essay, I had carried ideas for it in my head for a long…
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News Invisible Revisions
My American-Jewish childhood may have been typical: Friday night dinner was followed by 20/20 on TV, Saturday morning synagogue often preceded a trip to the mall. I went to a Conservative Jewish day school where controversial topics were often discussed openly, though not interfaith dating or marriage. The implied assumption was: We were expected to…
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