LGBTQ Communities

Issues of intolerance and discrimination against the LGBTQ community are an international phenomenon. If anything, I felt a connection with the people working for LGBTQ rights in Israel in the ways that this struggle parallels the one here in the US in some ways. However, I was also left with many questions that were not answered by the websites that I hope will become part of the discussion tomorrow that pertain more to the ways in which perhaps the LGBTQ rights struggle in Israel differs in some ways, what challenges are unique to the Israeli context? I was also left wondering what the LGBTQ rights struggle in Israel can teach us in the US?

Jerusalem, Gender and the Nature/Culture Binary

In "Not the Mother of All Cities" Galit Hasan-Roken begins, "It has been called mother, sister, daughter." As she accounts, Jerusalem has repeatedly been gendered feminine. In reading her discussion of this association and critical analysis of it, I was reminded of the way in which nature/culture is itself so often gendered along a female/male binary. This raises the question for me as to whether the feminization of Jerusalem is also a linking of Jerusalem to Nature, and as has been the case in much of our class reading, to God as the origin of Nature, rather than "Man" and humankind.

From Beethoven to Klezmer

Discuss the role of music in your life. How does music help define who you are as a person? How is music used as a method of communication, and what do you see as the role of music in conflict? Feel free to share significant tunes on your blog, or in class.


When I think of the role of music in my life, I am very aware of the way that the role of music has changed for me over time. As a child and young adult my primary focus was on being a classical pianist. There was incredible passion and devotion to my craft and also a lot of long hours of hard work and practice. As a teenager I was very interested in the alternative music scene and that was perhaps where I located my more rebellious teenager angst-ridden self. I was also very taken with music of generations that came before me like Bob Dylan, John Lennon, and Lou Reed.

In my contemporary life, music plays a deeply spiritual role. Once a month my synagogue holds a Shabbat Chai service that is entirely musical with a variety of instruments including a Klezmer violinist. I use Shabbat music to set the mood for Shabbat in my home weekly. I also listen to Klezmer and Yiddish-language music that connects me with a broader Jewish community. Now in addition to playing the classical music I was taught to play, I am learning to play Klezmer tunes on the piano.