About Change

How many years does it take to change from the patriarchal societies of biblical times to gender equality in the modern age? 

The short answer is thousands of years.  Exactly why it is not clear, but in many societies today women are still considered second class citizens.  They are not allowed to vote or to drive.  In some places girls get killed if they attend school!

Here in the US we women have been voting for one hundred years.  We came a long way, but in some progressive companies there is still a gap in pay between men and women.  As shown in 60 minutes of April 15 the CEO of Sales Force was not aware of the gender gap in his own company. When it was pointed out to him he had to spend 3 million dollars in the first year that he implemented true gender equality.  

I have been a true liberal since I was a girl. These days my main challenge to liberals is how come they are so accepting and tolerant with gender bias among Muslims?  Is tolerance more important than equal rights for women?

Why are we all so afraid to criticize Muslim practices?

Why is it so impolite to upset the Muslims?

We are talking about equality for women!!!!  Women are half the population of the world!  We know for a hundred years that genetically their minds and intelligence are equal to men.  We are still fighting for it here.  But in the Muslim world we shrug our shoulders: It is their culture. It is their problem....  Change takes a long time so it will take them a long time...

I am happy to tell you that I found an ally among Muslims!  I met her at the gala of the Museum of Tolerance.  Soraya Deen: an advocate for women's rights in Islam.  I saw this tall lady standing there wearing a beautiful golden sari.  I was immediately drawn to talk to her and we exchanged phone numbers.

Soraya Deen with her friend Raheel Raza.

Raheel Raza received the Museum of Tolerance Award that evening at the Gala.

Raheel Raza is President of The Council for Muslims Facing Tomorrow, founding member of The Muslim Reform Movement, Director of Forum for Learning, award winning journalist, public speaker, advocate for human rights, gender equality and dignity in diversity. 

Soraya Deen was active in opening Northern California's first female-led mosque in Berkeley. In April 2017. This is a place where women can participate and feel empowered. 

She has written an op-Ed article in sister-hood, an award winning digital magazine spotlighting the diverse voices of women of Muslim heritage. The title of her article: "Are Women Welcome at Paris Mosque?"

Here is an introduction written about Soraya in the sister-hood magazine:

Soraya Deen is the founder of the Muslim Women Speakers Movement, and Co-founder of Peacemoms (Promoting Christian Muslim Dialogue.) She is a professional speaker, spiritual activist, lawyer, Educator and Author.  Soraya was the first Katheeba at the inaugural prayer of Qalbu Women’s Mosque in Berkeley.

I met Soraya again on a Sunday morning in Van Nuys and we have agreed to join our voices.  Here are some of her questions to me that I am often asked:

1.    Do women enjoy equality with men in Judaism?

I have multiple answers to this question: 

Everyone needs to consider these simple numbers:

Muslim population of the world is one point eight billion that is 18 plus 8 zeros.

Jewish population of the world is fourteen million that is 14 plus 6 zeros. 

The number of Muslims is over a 100 times larger than the number of Jews.  This difference should be considered every time you try to make this comparison.

My second answer is that change comes much faster in Judaism.  Just some examples: Polygamy was outlawed by rabbis back in the 11^th century.  In main stream Islam men are still allowed to marry four women.  And many Muslims are importing this practice to Western countries.  All this information is available in the palm of your hand.  

An additional answer: Jews have many forms of observance available to them: orthodox, conservative, reform.  They have choices.  I believe the extreme practices limiting women’s freedom do exist, but they are less rampant.

2.   After hearing that I was born in Iran and moved to Israel when I was 4 years old, Soraya asked me: "Why did your parents leave Iran?"

My answer to this question starts with the Jews of Mashhad as I wrote "about me" in my blog:

The Jews of Mashhad were forced to practice Islam for one hundred and fifty years. They kept their Judaic traditions in hiding.  My parents were married in Mashhad then moved to Tehran where I was born.  In 1951 the entire family immigrated to Israel. The Mashadi community kept their specific traditions for decades throughout the world: Israel, New York, London, and Milan.

When the state of Israel was created it was everyone’s dream to live where they are free to practice their Judaism.

Soraya knew about stories like this, but she said hearing it from me made the stories more real and vivid.

I told her about my aunts and uncles given Muslim names: Soraya, Moussa, and Dawood.

She asked me if there was persecution, but I thought it was mainly intolerance. 

I asked her if she heard about the pogroms against Jews, she said she never heard the word.  The pogroms who drove many Jews to wonder around and seek better lives are not known to many Muslims.  But Soraya complained that in the mosques they are always taught to hate Jews, to the point where she is tired of it.  She talked about "men with beards" who keep telling women what to do, but she is on a mission to empower women to follow their own wishes and desires.

In a small way I am hoping to bring a change in equality for women around the world.  Maybe the day will come that all men and women will work hand in hand for a better world.

My Childhood Stories of Passover

If you check out Google Maps for this address: 40 Chachmey Israel, Tel Aviv, Israel, (שד' חכמי ישראל 40, תל אביב) you will find the house where I grew up in in Tel Aviv.
Look at Google Earth and you will see the latest photos taken of the boulevard and the three houses at this address. Go into the long yard till the house in the back and you will see a large cement back yard in front of the house. There was a cement bench here where my grandfather used to lay a round metal tray with the washed walnuts.  He used to dry the walnuts in the sun so that they will be ready to prepare the Charosset for the approaching Passover Seder. We lived in this house until I was in eighth grade. The house had two rooms a small entry, a kitchen and a bathroom.  Eleven of us lived in this house.  My younger siblings were born
here, my brother Moti and my sister Elana.  My paternal grandmother lived with us in the room on the left. She was a small woman, so we called her small grandma (bibi katan.)  My maternal grandparents with our three teenage uncles (Moshe, Shlomo and David) lived in the second room on the right.  This grandmother was a big woman, so we called her big grandma (bibi gadol.)

I am writing this story in memory of my beloved uncle Moshe Siman Tov who passed away in January 2018.  When he served in the Israeli army I slept in his folding bed as there was no place in our room for an extra bed.  In turn I slept in Shlomo and David’s bed when they were soldiers. 

All the kids used to get an extra week off school before the Passover holiday. The whole family was busy with thorough cleaning. Every shelf and drawer in the closets were emptied and scrubbed clean.  We layered a fresh shelf paper before placing any items back. Occasionally my mother would paint a wall or a window that needed refreshing.  Springtime was the occasion to move the winter clothes away and bring in summer clothes. This was the once or twice a year when we got new clothes. That made us very happy that spring is coming as the words of a popular song.  After my family had moved to our own house, we continued coming to this house for Passover Seders and family gatherings.  There was an opening between the two rooms to allow a place for a large table where four families dined and celebrated.  My aunt Soraya came with her four kids: Aviva, Itzik, Alon and Ronit.  She had bags with the food she prepared for her family and their own dishes and utensils. We were five and we also brought with us our foods and dishes. My uncles were still singles and they used to lead the Seder. They had bottles of wine on the table. The small shot glasses were placed on a round dish covering a bowl of water. We used to rinse the glasses in the water after each glass out of four we drank as the bitter herb (maror) we used romaine lettuce which was the only kind at the time in Israel.  The Charosset was on the table and we all loved it.  We used to watch our grandpa grind the walnuts with other sweet ingredient in a mortar and pestle.  The most amusing part in the Seder was the reading of Dayenu (that would have been enough.)  Uncle Moshe was reading it while the rest of us were each holding a green onion and hitting each other.  We walked from one person to the next making sure we don’t miss anyone and laughing out loud the whole time.

The first course was a fried steak of carp fish that each mom prepared for her family.  In the meat dishes we avoided using any beans which were not kosher for Passover.  For desert we had hot tea with sugar cubes.

After the meal the mothers were in the kitchen each washing her dishes and packing her bags.  The kids and the uncles read the rest of the Hagada singing Echad mi Yodea and Had Gadya.

These days of 2018 most my cousins and specifically the younger kids born to my uncles have created a WhatsApp group including eighteen cousins.  The group name is a very good sign.  (Siman mamash Tov.)  That is how I heard of my uncle’s death and I immediately got a plane ticket to fly to Israel.  I had the privilege to see all my cousins during the mourning period and we all brought up memories of the house on Chachmey Israel. 

What Does the Word Lesbian Mean in 1923?

I attended a talk with this title at a seminar in the UCLA department of Jewish Studies.  The speaker was a historian from Tel Aviv University Ofer Nur. 

I did not expect much from the talk so I was really surprised as to how the talk progressed and especially the comments from the diverse audience. We started talking just about the word lesbian, but the discussion evolved into cultural differences and human attitudes toward unusual and misunderstood behaviors.

The actual topic was: “What Does the Word Lesbian Mean in Palestine in 1923?”

This was how the seminar was advertised:

“This seminar is based on an unpublished manuscript of a novel, written in 1923 by Sara Rappeport (1890-1980) member of kibbutz Beit Alpha, entitled: “The Wives of Sheikh Husseini.” This exceptional novel describes a love affair between a kibbutz member and an Arab Sheikh that ends in marriage, a baby boy named Ishmael, and membership in the Haifa branch of the Palestine communist party. The word Lesbian appears in the novel and Nur explores its meaning and context. The use of the word “Lesbian” in Hebrew in Israel begins in the late 1950's. Going back to an isolated use of the word in 1923 can teach us something new about same-sex relations in the imagination of those who lived in Mandatory Palestine and in Israel. Dr. Nur will reconstruct the context in which this exceptional novel was written and the relationship of the writer with her literary mentor at the University of Gottingen during WWI: the German thinker Lou Andreas Salomé (1861-1937). Rappeport’s novel realizes the particular variety of feminism that Salomé espoused.”

Sara Rappeport, the writer of this novel is described as progressive/radical Bohemian, German feminist asking the question: “How do women live in Patriarchy?”

While at the university Sara studied chemistry and her husband studied mathematics/philosophy.  They also belonged to a literary club named “Salome,” lead by Lou Andreas Salome.  The book “The Wives of Sheikh Husseini” was written as a poly-amoric fantasy. We saw the quote from this 1923 fantasy including the word Lesbian: Women used to pick wives for their sons and nephews by talking to the girls and even touching and fondling them with “almost lesbian thoroughness.”

The discussion was around the history of the word homosexuality, which was coined in 1860 in medical and literary publications.  Any previous references in the bible and other sources refer to specific unusual behaviors that were not referred to as homosexuality.

One of the questions asked referred to sheikhs and their harems: “How common was it among their “wives” to be lesbian?”  Dr. Nur stressed that this is a “loaded” question and it is certainly “politically incorrect” to ask.  However he himself did ask this question at Ben Gurion University in Beer Sheva.  A female Muslim professor answered yes, it is common after much hand wringing.

The following discussion was about East/West differences in the attitudes toward touching, hand holding, fondling among friends and relatives.  One guest commented that American Indians refer to trans-genders as “Two Spirits” and they are considered higher spirits and are given male/female names simultaneously.  Another comment: In French the word lesbian could be “Les Bien” meaning The Good!

This was a surprising seminar as one narrow topic in Jewish history turned into a survey of humanity, east west attitudes toward touching and public displays of affection, and global progress of understanding behaviors such as homosexuality or mental illness.  

About the speaker:

Ofer Nordheimer Nur teaches at the Multidisciplinary Program in the Humanities and the NCJW Gender and Women’s Studies Program at Tel Aviv University. Primarily a historian, he received his PhD in 2004 at the department of history at UCLA. He was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Centre d’Études Juives at the EHESS in Paris from 2003-2005 and at the Franz Rosenzweig Minerva Research Center at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem from 2005-2007. He’s the author of Eros and Tragedy: Jewish Male Fantasies and the Masculine Revolution of Zionism (Academic Studies Press, 2014).

The Ego-Self and the Higher-Self

We learned a mantra at my Naam yoga class that has to do with the ego.  It is one of my favorite mantras as it is meaningful, it has a great melody and personally it is powerful. The purpose of the mantra is to balance the chatter and voices in your head.  On one hand, our ego has a loud voicd that keeps on chattering and directing our thoughts.  On the other hand we all have a "higher self."  Many cynics laugh at this concept of a "higher self," simply because it is very quiet.  It is no more than a whisper.  This is why this mantra is so important.  For a minute or two we sing the mantra and try to quiet our thoughts and carefully listen to that whisper of our higher self.  It is not always rewarding, but once in a while we do get a new insight, a new idea or a thought that enlightens us: Aaahhh...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25YCfRo2b3E

At the religious school where I teach the Rabbi was teaching the kids about the Ego-self, the Higher-self, the soul and experiencing the love of God. 

My colleague who attended this teaching wrote to me: “It was fascinating and I personally came out of it as a better person.”

I am asking myself: What is a better person?  What makes you a better person?

Personally I am happy to be aware that there is a higher-self somewhere in my identity.  I am happy to know that it is possible for me to listen to it’s quiet whisper. Little by little I may get a glimpse at the higher qualities within me that I can utilize in my life.

Attachments area

Preview YouTube video Guru Brahma Guru Vishnu - Guru Mantra With Lyrics - Sanjeevani Bhelande - Devotional

The caterpillar

This is the story of my small ecosystem on my 3rd floor patio.

The first plant that my friend got me as a gift was a one gallon yellow hibiscus.  The specific variety with a bright red dot in the center of the large yellow flower.  

This small hibiscus plant grew up really fast on my patio, facing the sunny south
side of the building.  Soon I had to move it to a larger and larger planter.  It is now taller than me!

I often see a visitor flying in to suck the yellow flower, an amazing humming
bird.  It is absolutely stunning to see this tiny little bird fluttering in the air!

I had other plants on the very same patio: a red geranium that I had to cut back, a rose Bush that did not last, a white jasmine. 

My new friend Gail moved to the area a few years ago.  She told me she moved
in with her daughter who has a large corner house.  They have a large
garden with many trees and a vegetable garden.  I am so envious of people
with gardens!  In front of the house they have a bunch of milkweed plants.  You know these long green leaves that monarch butterfly worms like to feed on.  Generous Gail gave me a small pot with a milkweed plant one day.  I happily brought it home and transferred it to a planter, added extra soil and watered it.

The milkweed grew and grew and looked beautiful, until one day I noticed the fresh
green leaves were almost gone.  On one of the eaten branches I saw a large
beautiful striped caterpillar!  

Perfect stripes of curling yellow black and white. It was fat and quite amazing.
I got so excited I immediately took its photo and sent to all my friends and my
sons.  I kept on going out to the patio and checking on it.  A few hours later I saw it crawling out of the planter and this was also such a new sight, a fat beautiful striped caterpillar crawling around with its antennae’s moving up in the air. What was it looking for?  Later on I saw it up on the patio wall.  In the end it disappeared.  I never saw the chrysalis or the butterfly.

Did the humming bird have a feast?

Moonlight Sonata

My stream of consciousness rambling.

You know how the people at Google say they know what you want before you know it yourself.  As I just read the biography of Elon Musk, Google keeps suggesting to me any articles about Tesla and SpaceX.  A few days ago Elon Musk posted on Instagram photos of earth from his satellite.  In the caption he just wrote "Moonlight sonata."  You can hear the soft piano music as you are watching photos of our planet from space.

A new friend I met told me he practices transcendental meditation two hours a day. After years of practicing Iyengar yoga I only got to do some visualization and guided meditation.  My curiosity led me to the trusted YouTube.  I typed TM in the search.  The first video that showed up was introduction to TM.  The music was the soft piano melody of moonlight sonata.  The instructions were to do absolutely nothing. No effort in trying to focus on anything just be quiet in the moment hear the soft music.

I never learned to play music and I cannot carry a tune.  I was wondering about all the students of piano who worked on playing Moonlight Sonata for hours and hours.  My friend who loves music claims that it is like oxygen for her.  For her there is no life without music.  It gives her a high like some people get from alcohol or drugs.

Personally I get a high just thinking about my knowledge of protein chemistry.  I am thinking of the building blocks of proteins as the alphabet of life.

The alphabet is what helps us write and communicate our knowledge to the future generations. 

In Hebrew there are 22 letters and they are classified by the part of the mouth that produces them: Guttural letters, letters made by the lips, teeth or tongue.

Similarly proteins, the language of life, are made of 22 amino acids.  The amino acids are classified by their chemical properties: Acidic, basic, neutral or hydrophobic.  (They attach to fat or lipids and not the water medium.)

Some of the longest words in English are made of 15 to 22 letters.  On the other hand proteins have a much more complex task and some are as long as 5,000 amino acids.

What about music?  As far as I know there are 8 musical notes.

 And the combinations of melodies and songs and symphonies are

 staggering!  Just listen to the Moonlight Sonata!

The Future of Food

The world population is about to grow from 7b to 9b.  We keep hearing and wondering about this question:  Can the earth sustain such a large population? 

There are many people who are certain that we need more wars to kill some people.   These people cannot comprehend that it is possible to feed everyone.  There are also those who demand less cruelty to animals.  The most convincing advocate that I enjoy reading and listening to is the Israeli historian who wrote two international best sellers: Yuval Harari.  I followed many of his lectures and that is when I first heard of 3D printing of hamburgers.  Searching for the latest data in 2017 I found a 2013 Guardian article Titled:

Google's Sergey Brin bankrolled world's first synthetic beef hamburger.

The article states: 

The man who has bankrolled the production of the world's first lab-grown hamburger has been revealed as Google co-founder Sergey Brin. The internet entrepreneur has backed the project to the tune of €250,000 (£215,000), allowing scientists to grow enough meat in the lab to create a burger – as a proof of concept – that will be cooked and eaten in London on Monday.

Brin's money was used by a team led by physiologist Dr. Mark Post at Maastricht University to grow 20,000 muscle fibres from cow stem cells over the course of three months. These fibres were extracted from individual culture wells and then painstakingly pressed together to form the hamburger.  The objective is to create meat that is biologically identical to beef but grown in a lab rather than in a field as part of a cow.

The world's first lab-grown beef burger was cooked in London in 2013. The in-vitro burger was cultured from cattle stem cells.

In experimental biology the jargon is: IN VIVO- experiments in the whole living animal.  IN VITRO- experiments in the test tube using tissue or cells from the animal.

The impact of meat consumption from raising cows is immense:  It produces 18% of greenhouse gases.  70% of antibiotics used in the US are used on cows.

"Cows are very inefficient, they require 100g of vegetable protein to produce only 15g of edible animal protein," Dr Post told the Guardian before. "So we need to feed the cows a lot so that we can feed ourselves. We lose a lot of food that way. With cultured meat we can make it more efficient because we have all the variables under control. We don't need to kill the cow and it doesn't produce any methane."

Then I found another article from 2015 by a New Zealand blogger repeating the same facts and talking about 3D printed food:

In 15 years' time, there's a chance some of the beef you consume will have been grown in a test tube. The cow never would have had a beating heart, nor a brain, nor would it have seen a paddock or a feedlot. It would just be a bunch of cells and tissue.

Not in 100 years, not 50 years, but 15 years. Perhaps even less. Known as "cultured meat" it's just one of the ways scientists are trying to solve a very global problem. Namely: how do you feed a population that doesn't stop expanding when there's a finite amount of farmable land in the world?

Meat, particularly grain-fed beef, is also a massive contributor to global warming. Thanks to factors like methane emission, deforestation to create more grazing land and the amount of energy it takes to harvest corn and other grains for feed, the livestock industry produces more greenhouse emissions than every mode of transport on earth combined. 

The bottom line is if we keep eating meat in the manner we do and don't invest in more sustainable farming solutions, the world as we know it is likely to end. This isn't hyperbole. And scientists the world over are working on some far-out solutions that are close to becoming real.

Cultured meat

If we all started eating more vegetables grown with solar power instead of fossil-fuel draining livestock, things would start to turn around for the environment in a big way. Unfortunately, experts say world meat consumption shows no sign of slowing and demand for it is expected to increase 73 per cent by 2050, even though 70 per cent of farmland is already used for livestock.

Test tube meat could be a solution to the globe's insatiable appetite for protein. In 2013, Professor Mark Post, of Maastricht University in the Netherlands, presented a burger made of cultured beef to an audience in London. Made using stem cells harvested from a cow's shoulder, the burger took three months to grow and, by all reports, tasted much like a normal burger, if a little less juicy.

According to the Maastricht University's website, cells taken from just one cow could produce 175 million burgers.

"I expect cultured meat to be available in 10-15 years," says Canberra-based science writer and author Julian Cribb. "It is likely to catch on as it will be cheaper, use far fewer resources such as water, land, nutrients and pesticides, and can in theory be tailored to the precise dietary requirements of the individual. Synthetic clothing is already universal and food is likely to follow."  

Cribb says cultured meat will end the reign of industrial meat by replacing it. "It will ensure the production of real meat from animals goes upmarket and farmers receive a much better price for it, as happened with wool since synthetic fibres arrived, enabling them to care for their land better," he says.

As for consumers possibly not wanting to eat a cow that never went moo?

"If it's cheap, healthy and tasty, people will eat it even if they don't know how it was grown," Cribb says. "Do you really know what's in your snack food today?"

Other subtitles in this article:

3D Printing

Soylent

Personally and genetically modified food

More current articles:

Ten Food Trends that will Shape 2017 - Forbes

There is a 2017 publication from FAO:

The future of food and agriculture in the US: Trends and Challenges