About JVoices

JVoices dishes up your Jewish wake up call on some of the most controversial and compelling issues of our time. Forget pluralism–we don’t pretend there aren’t power dynamics that squelch and prioritize some voices and traditions over others. We know the difference between disfranchisement and alienation, and we seek to remedy both. We live in, and love, our communities–in plural–because we live in many, and will not choose between them. Understanding what it is to thrive on the “outside,” our goal is not to “become the center.” Our goal is to stretch any and all assumptions; push beyond party lines and ideology; ask difficult questions to find what emerges amidst and between dividing lines; dream big, beautiful, radical, ritual, traditional, intellectual and visionary dreams; and to always be building on our vast tradition of broadening Jewish life.

Bring all of yourself to the table: www.jvoices.com

**As all community blogs state these days: the ideas, thoughts, and words published on JVoices by contributors and commenters are the opinions of those individuals only, and do not represent the views or positions of JVoices, or any organizations for which JVoices, the contributors and/or commenters may be affiliated with.

Editorial Team:

Cole Krawitz, Founder, Editor and Publisher
Marisa Elana James, Contributing Editor

Contributors:

Gavriel Ansara
Beejhy Barhany
I. Benjamin
Dan Berger
Jen Chau
Noach Dzmura
Aaron Freeman
Rabbi Capers C. Funnye, Jr.
Walter Isaac
Henriette Dahan Kalev
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz
Rabbi Elliot Rose Kukla
daniel lang/levitsky
Charles Lenchner
Rabbi Benyamin Levy
Tucker Lieberman
David Shasha
Ella Shohat
Robin Washington
Dr. Jillian Todd Weiss

Guest Contributors: Loolwa Khazzoom, Aurora Levins Morales

Gavriel Ansara is a polycultural polyglot from an observant Jewish background with ties to several continents. He is a board member of Keshet, Boston’s Jewish GLBTQI advocacy and education organization, and founder/coordinator of Tiferet, a Keshet project designed to meet the needs of Orthodox and traditionally observant Jews who self-identify as gender and/or sexual minorities. An educator, healer, and literary alchemist, his current research involves pioneering holistic psychological models for positive trans youth development and needs assessments for diverse trans youth populations to make successful transitions to adulthood. He has given numerous guest lectures and invited presentations.

Beejhy Barhany

I. Benjamin is a queer 20-something Ashkenazi Jew. She is a bi-coastal Butch with one foot in California and the other in New York. Her interests include organic gardening, yiddishkeit, parenting, disability politics, gluten-free cooking, the diaspora, alternatives to Zionism, and the New York Yankees.

Dan Berger is the author of Outlaws of America (AK Press, 2006) and co-editor of Letters from Young Activists (The Nation Books, 2005).

Jen Chau

Noach Dzmura is a recent graduate of the Richard S Dinner Center for Jewish Studies of the Graduate Theological Union. He works in Berkeley as a Communications Consultant. He is also a community educator and activist for transgender issues in the Bay Area. www.brerrabbi.com

Aaron Freeman is a journalist and stand up comedian and he insists there is a difference. Aaron wrote and performed the best-selling comedy CD “312 4 Ever” and is a popular commentator on National Public Radio’s flagship news program “All Things Considered.” He is also Ace Correspondent for Chicago Public Radio’s morning magazine “Eight Forty Eight.” Aaron co-wrote and directs the hit stage comedy “The Arab/Israeli Comedy Hour.” He frequently performs with the famed Second City Theater and is a sought- after humorous speaker across America. Aaron performs his one man shows “News Today/Comedy Tonight” and “Kosher Chitterlings” for business groups, Jewish groups, colleges, associations and assorted capitalist functions across America.

Rabbi Capers C. Funnye, Jr. is rabbi and spiritual leader of Beth Shalom B’nai Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation, located in Chicago, IL at 6601 S. Kedzie Avenue. Rabbi Funnye also serves as a Senior Research Associate for the Institute of Jewish and Community Research, located in San Francisco, CA. Rabbi Funnye earned a Bachelor of Arts in Hebrew Literature and rabbinic ordination from the Israelite Board of Rabbis, Inc., Queens, NY. Rabbi Funnye also earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Jewish Studies and Master of Science in Human Service Administration from Spertus Institute of Judaica, Chicago, IL. Rabbi Funnye has served as a consultant to several institutions including; The Du Sable Museum of African American History, The Chicago Historical Society, The Spertus Museum of Judaica, all located in Chicago, IL. The Black Holocaust Museum, located in Milwaukee, WI, Institute for Jewish and Community Research, San Francisco, CA and the Afro-American Museum, located in Los Angeles, CA. Rabbi Funnye has lectured at numerous universities, synagogues, churches and various community organizations throughout the United States. Rabbi Funnye has appeared on several national and local television programs, and spoken on numerous radio programs both national and local. Rabbi Funnye is involved in a number of boards in the Jewish community; The Chicago Board of Rabbis, Jewish Council on Urban Affairs, Akiba Schechter Jewish Day School and Vice President of the Israelite Board of Rabbis. Rabbi Funnye is married and he and his wife Mary have four children and are the proud grandparents of five grandsons. Rabbi Funnye is available for lectures and discussion groups.

Walter Isaac: As a graduate fellow for the Center for Afro-Jewish Studies, Walter studies the theological anthropologies underlying the assertion of various historic Jewish communities in the African diaspora. His academic interests rest in the areas of liberation theology, Jewish legal theory, philosophical anthropology and comparative semitics. An honors graduate of both Bethune-Cookman College and Yale Divinity School, Walter is currently a PhD student in Temple’s department of Religion and a graduate fellow for the CAJS.

Marisa Elana James graduated from Makom Hebrew High School and the University of Connecticut, and is living in Jerusalem and studying at the Conservative Yeshiva. She has taught college literature and English as a Second Language classes at UConn and Rutgers, somehow ended up as an insurance broker, escaped from Wall Street, and is studying to be a cantor. Marisa spends her spare time writing Jewish-themed, queer-friendly kids’ books that she hopes will create a new subsection in the Dewey Decimal system, practicing her Arabic script, and writing indignant letters to important people.

Henriette Dahan Kalev

Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz is a writer and poet, activist, scholar and teacher. A pioneer in women’s studies, she taught the first such course at the University of California at Berkeley in Comparative Literature, where she earned her Ph.D. Since then she has taught all over the U.S., twice as a distinguished chair–at Hamilton College and at Brooklyn College/CUNY, and in fields as diverse as Jewish Studies, Urban Studies, Race Theory, Public Policy, Gender and Queer Studies. For five years she directed the Queens College/CUNY Worker Education Extension Center in Manhattan, and she currently teaches at Queens College in the department of Comparative Literature. Born and raised in Brooklyn, a graduate of City College/CUNY, Melanie worked in the Harlem Civil Rights Movement as a teenager, and continues to be active in progressive movements, anti-war, lgbt, feminism, anti-racism, labor. She gave up a tenured teaching position to return to New York to work against racism in the Jewish community. She was the founding director of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, for which she, along with her comrade Esther Kaplan was honored with a Union Square Award in 2005. See Melanie’s statement in the Jewish Women’s Archives in the exhibit on Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution. Her work is widely published and anthologized in the feminist, gay and lesbian, and progressive Jewish press. She co-founded the JFREJ radio program at WBAI (99.5 FM), Beyond the Pale and continues to guest-produce segments, especially interviewing writers about their work.

Cole Krawitz is a writer, poet, trainer and communications strategist living in Oakland, California. Cole is finishing his MFA degree in Creative Writing at Lesley University. He is currently a Talent of the Professional Leaders Project; on the Community Advisory Board of The LGBT Cancer Project and the Board of Advisors of the National Center for Transgender Equality. In Fall 2007, Cole was a student teacher at UC Berkeley June Jordan’s Poetry for the People Center. Cole was recently a Communications Strategist at The SPIN Project, where Cole trained, coached and engaged in strategy development with grassroots, social justice organizations across the country on how to do communications and media work by and for themselves. Before leaving New York, Cole worked at Demos, a national public policy organization, as a communications and events associate and was a media strategist for Rabbis for Human Rights–North America’s first ever North American Conference on Judaism and Human Rights. Prior to this, Cole was a community organizer at Coalition for the Homeless. Cole was a poet artist-in-residence at Makor/92nd Street Y in Spring 2005. Cole’s articles have been published in Newsday, The Advocate, Huffington Post, The Forward, San Francisco Bay Times, JTA, Jewish Review, St. Louis Jewish Light, Jewish Ledger, AlterNet, Jerusalem Post, New Voices Magazine, Bridges: A Jewish Feminist Journal, Jewish Currents, Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies & Gender Issues, Sh’ma and Clamor Magazine. His poems have been published in The Queer Collection: Prose and Poetry 2007. Cole used to blog for jewschool.com, contributes time to time for jspot.org, and was on air in New York on Beyond the Pale: The Progressive Jewish Radio Hour with co-hosts Esther Kaplan and Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark.

Rabbi Elliot Rose Kukla recently moved to San Francisco where he will be a resident in Clinical Pastoral Education at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) Medical Center. Elliot was ordained by Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 2006. He has been an activist, writer, organizer and educator for more than a decade. He has taught widely about sexual and gender diversity in Judaism in the US, Canada and Israel. His articles on the intersections between Judaism and justice appear in numerous magazines including Lilith and Zeek: A Jewish Journal of Art and Culture, as well as in anthologies published by New York University Press, Jewish Lights and the Union for Reform Judaism Press. For the last two years, Elliot served as the rabbi of the Danforth Jewish Circle, Toronto’s only queer-welcoming and social-justice oriented synagogue.

daniel lang/levitsky is a puppeteer and aspiring rabble-rouser based in new york city. third-generation radical, second-generation queer, light-skinned ashkenazi secular pro-diaspora jew. and yes, i do get off on long strings of identity terms. here are a few more: fem gendertreyf garlic-lover, presently able-bodied, with assigned-male baggage and addictions to chocolate and coffee. current projects include palestine solidarity organizing with Jews Against the Occupation/NYC, immigrant justice work with Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, and more half-finished shows than i’d like to admit.

Charles Lenchner is an Israeli-American, former refusenik, progressive activist. His day job is online advocacy, and most evenings he’s a single daddy man. He keeps Get Things Done and the Little Red Book of Selling by his bed. His long term goal is to witness the defeat of his enemies and rear his head back and cackle like Emperor Ming as he orders Flash Gordon’s death.

Rabbi Benyamin Levy

Tucker Lieberman believes we have already embarked on a Great Turning Point in human consciousness. What better time to explore what binds people to the Earth and to G-d? He is interested in topics of neuro-theology and non-violence. He also studies and writes on attitudes towards castration that appear in twentieth-century fiction, Renaissance travelogues and ancient sacred texts. With degrees in philosophy and journalism, his essays have appeared in the anthologies Finding the Real Me, Becoming, From the Inside Out, and the forthcoming Nobody Passes. He lives in New England and lights Shabbat candles with his Irish fiancé.

David Shasha is the director of the Center for Sephardic Heritage in Brooklyn, New York. The Center publishes the weekly e-mail newsletter Sephardic Heritage Update as well as promoting lectures and cultural events relevant to Sephardic culture. To subscribe to the newsletter or to contact David, e-mail him at davidshasha @ aol (dot) com.

Ella Shohat: Departments of Art & Public Policy, Middle Eastern Studies, and Comparative Literature Tisch School of the Arts New York University

Robin Washington grew up in Chicago in a family of black and Jewish civil rights activists. Participating in sit-ins and protests when he was three years old, today he recalls those events fondly as “family outings.” A nationally award-winning journalist and commentator/guest on National Public Radio, MSNBC, Fox News, ABC News, CNN and the BBC, Washington is editorial page editor of Minnesota’s Duluth News Tribune. He was previously a columnist for the Boston Herald, authoring the newspaper’s popular “Roads Scholar” and “Square Deal” features, and spent two years covering the Catholic Church clergy sexual abuse scandal, on which he still comments for Knight Ridder newspapers. He also worked on the Boston Herald sports staff. Washington’s 25-year-plus print and broadcast career includes previous positions as a publisher, editor, producer and on-air reporter.

Dr. Jillian Todd Weiss: Dr. Weiss is assistant professor of Law and Society at Ramapo College. Combining her expertise in law and gender studies, her area of research is law and sexuality, particularly transgender issues in the law. Her blog, “Transgender Workplace Diversity,” can be found at jweissdiary.blogspot.com

Guest Contributors:

Loolwa Khazzoom has published internationally, in news periodicals including The Washington Post and BBC News; in women’s magazines including Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire; in health periodicals including Self and Yoga Journal; in teen magazines including ELLEgirl and Seventeen; and in other media genres. (For clips, visit here). She is also the editor of The Flying Camel: Essays on Identity by Women of North African and Middle Eastern Jewish Heritage and author of Consequence: Beyond Resisting Rape.