Chesler Facebook Chronicles

Facebook Musings. February 25, 2015 - April 27, 2015.

April 27, 2015

The Holocaust Museum in D.C.

Last week I visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. I have been there before. This time, it was too much for me to bear. I got physically sick. But first I had some quarrelsome thoughts. Are some of the very well done exhibits also a Disney-fication and universalization of genocide? Why-oh-why does this Museum Book Shop have to carry books about all other mass murders, atrocities, and genocides. I took photos of the books about genocide in Bosnia, Rwanda, Cambodia, Srebenica, Armenia, Burma, Nanking, and, most recently, Norway. I photographed what was written on the Museum façade: "Think About What You Saw: The Next Time You Witness Hatred; The Next Time You See Injustice; The Next Time You Hear About Genocide." All well and good but are Jews not allowed our own "petty" and "provincial" sorrows, are we not entitled to mourn and memorialize our dead without having to turn it into a teaching moment for everyone?

And then I had a meeting with a most wonderful young woman with whom I am working on a feminist project and guess what? Once I told her where I had just been, she revealed that she herself was a Greek Orthodox Turk and partly Armenian and she shared her family's story of persecution, exile, and loss. And so I became ashamed of my bitterness and was reminded that Jews are commanded to care about our own—but also to care about humanity, all God's creatures, and that it is to our credit that we do so.

April 26, 2015

NYT: Purposefully Pernicious on Israel?

Yes, the New York Times is purposefully pernicious on the subject of Israel. We know this. Here's today's proof. On page A10, the six word headline reads: "Israeli Police Officers Kill Two Palestinians." For those who read only the headlines or who are already "Palestinianized," one assumes that such killing is gratuitous, uncalled for, typical, and typically vicious. Read the article and you will learn: "Two Palestinian men were fatally shot by the Israeli police after attacking officers with knives, one at a contested shrine in the West Bank and the other at a checkpoint near East Jerusalem." At the end of the piece, you will read: "Also on Saturday, a man wounded three Israeli police officers when he struck them with his car."

Are the headline writers incompetent? Hardly. Are they restricted in terms of their word count? Hardly. Proof: In the same issue, on page A24, there is a nine-word headline which reads: "Man, 24, Killed by Detective in Struggle During Arrest."

April 21, 2015

ARAB TV CHANNELS IN WASHINGTON, D.C.

Here I am at a five star hotel in Georgetown. The hotel's TV guide does not show us any channels from Europe or the Far East but it has no fewer than 24 channels in Arabic described as "Middle Eastern." Hebrew is not offered. We can get Al Jazeera, Abu Dhabi Sport, Quatar, BBC Arabic, Syrian TV, Jordanian TV, Al-Hayat, etc. I find this interesting.

April 15, 2015

Last night I attended the premiere performance of a one woman drama titled "The Thumbprint of Mukhtar Mai," written by Susan Yankowitz and performed, composed, acted, and sung by the amazing Kamala Sankaram, who was accompanied by pianist Mila Henry. A year ago, both Yankowitz and Sankaram presented a full-fledged opera which was musically and thematically glorious. Now, this stirring and heroic story has been turned into a one-woman play which lasts about 40 minutes--perfect for college campuses and conferences.

Mukhtar Mai is the extraordinary Pakistani girl (who was gang-raped by tribal "superiors," and who, instead of killing herself, dared to bring the rapists to court and to win. Her family stood behind her. Despite many death threats, Mukhtar Mai, formerly illiterate herself, opened a school for girls which she expanded into a shelter for girls and women in flight from domestic violence and honor killing.

Please find a way to bring this performance to you campus or to your organization. A splendid QNA will follow and an important time will be had by all.

March 19, 2015

Dr. Bart is very old feminist colleague of mine and it was a pleasure to dine with her, not once, but twice on her visit to NYC. Here we are at the Brooklyn Diner. Dr. Pauline is delivering a lecture for the UN about violence against women and then returning to North Carolina.

Oh, how has time flown. Pauline now has great-grandchildren in addition to her body of work. Most academic feminists have bypassed the most radical, most radiant, and most original of Second Wave feminist work and have become mired in post-colonialism, post-modernism, anti-American, anti-Israel, and LGBT studies as opposed to Women's Studies. It is a great loss. I quipped: "Someone needs to write another version of Dale Spender's Women of Ideas and What Men Have Done To Them which was about the British suffragists. The new version would be titled: "Women of Ideas and How Feminists Have Disappeared Them."

March 2, 2015

A Gathering of Jewish Feminists--the Girls of Summer

Left to Right Seated: Aviva Cantor, Frieda Forman, Joan L. Roth. Standing: Phyllis Chesler

Aviva and I worked together back in the day, beginning in the early 1970s, on a press conference about anti-Semitism among leftists and Jewish feminists, a conference on being a Jewish feminist. Aviva, who co-founded the magazine Lilith, interviewed me in its pages many times.

Joan L. Roth has photographed the Second Wave feminist movement but we connected more intimately after a group of women prayed with a Torah in the women's section in 1988 and returned the following year to donate a Torah to the women of Jerusalem.

Frieda Forman, a Canadian scholar, especially of Yiddish women writers, is a new treasure. She described us all very aptly as "shiffshvesters," (ship sisters), and explained that women who traveled alone from Europe to the United States, bonded with other such travelers and the bond lasted and was meaningful.

February 25, 2015

A Star Is (Reluctantly) Born

Yesterday I was filmed for nearly three hours by the most intelligent, sympathetic, and visionary of directors for a film about feminism and about my work. We talked a great deal about An American Bride in Kabul, Woman's Inhumanity to Woman, and Women and Madness, as well as about my research into honor-based violence and honor killing. The film's working title is: "Feminists: What Were They Thinking?" Director/producer/interviewer Johanna Demetrakas, producers Lisa Remington and Cheryl Swannack have formed the "Crazy Wisdom Production Company."

The feminists whom they are interviewing were all photographed by Cynthia MacAdams in her book Emergence, which was published in 1977. Among many others, the women include Kate Millett, Lily Tomlin, Patti Smith, Gloria Steinem, Michelle Phillips, Jane Fonda, Meredith Monk, Laurie Anderson--and myself.

Johanna allowed the entire crew to ask me questions and their questions were earnest, deeply felt, and important. Here we are, posing all together; here I am talking to Johanna; and here I am, posing next to my books.