A case in point in this year. Ramadan begins today and lasts through the 29th, and while the days won’t be as long as they will be, say, next year, or the year after that, we are definitely talking about going well over 12 hours without sustenance—for 30 straight days!

In an ecumenical spirit, here is some Yom Kippur fasting advice that our Muslim friends may find helpful (caffeine suppositories optional).

Related: Fast Food [Tablet Magazine]

*Correction, November 30: This post originally stated that the Muslim holiday Tabaski marked Abraham’s binding of his son Isaac.

While Jews, who are only around 0.2 percent of the world population, have won a quarter of all Nobel Prizes awarded in the sciences, Muslims, who are one quarter of the world population, have won only a handful, even by the most generous accounts. And while relative to its size, Israel’s tiny academia has been the world’s leading Nobel power over the past decade, Arab universities have yet to produce their first Nobel laureate.

Shavit challenges what he calls a “conventional explanation” for the imbalance—“Jewish genius,” itself a controversial conception—asserting that this x-factor can be broken down into a combination of Jews’ traditional commitment to education, and their concentration in “modern” societies that foster openness to the “greater world” and scientific exploration. “Remove one part of this equation—heritage or modernity—and the ‘Jewish genius’ vanishes,” says Shavit. In fact, he fears that as secular Jews move farther from their heritage and observant Jews becoming increasingly cloistered, the well of Nobel Prize-winning Jews will dry up.

As for Muslims, Shavit blames “a monopoly of the spiritual and the metaphysical” over the rational and scientific in many Arab nations. “Science can only flourish in a culture that does not recognize any taboos and constantly doubts creeds of all sorts,” he says. Meanwhile, “Contemporary leading Arab universities produce books and essays that depict Darwin, Freud, Marx and other brilliant modern minds as part of a Jewish conspiracy to bring about the downfall of humanity.” As a result of this intellectual isolation, he suggests, “the first Muslim affiliated with a Middle Eastern university to win a Nobel Prize will be an Arab-Israeli.”

Muslims, Jews and the Nobel Prize [JPost]

Muslims, Arabs Among J Street Donors [JPost]

Standing Up To Goliath [CQ Weekly, subscription only]

Oregon Law Is Too Strict on Teachers’ Religious Garb [The Oregonian]
Sikhs reject ‘Gaping Hole’ in Oregon Discrimination Bill [World Sikh News]

It was, but as Leora Tanenbaum outlines in her spirited new book, Taking Back God: American Women Rising Up for Religious Equality, women in any number of religions have been waiting much longer than that. The book announces its seriousness with an austere white cover and gothic lettering, contrasting with the defiantly girly designs of her two earlier books, Slut! Growing Up Female with a Bad Reputation and Catfight: Rivalries Among Women—from Diets to Dating, from the Boardroom to the Delivery Room (now mainstays of Women’s Studies bookshelves). Having become recognized as an authority on these thorny feminist issues, Tanenbaum has moved on to a subject that’s even more personally rooted.

Tanenbaum considers herself an observant Jew (Modern Orthodox, to be precise), an identity she divulges right off the bat, in a preface that feels equal parts honest and defensive. Her exploration of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish traditions is guided by a rigorous respect for each of them, but it’s a respect built on the belief that being faithful means challenging your religion when it veers off track. A non-religious person could have written this book persuasively, too, but Tanenbaum’s faith enriches it in some unexpected ways, raising questions about what it means to view any of these religions as an outsider, and what (if any) potential for unity exists among religious women from different backgrounds.

The book is a catalog of familiar, if astoundingly retro, attitudes—the Catholic Church’s hysterical refusal to ordain women in the face of a dire priest shortage, shoddy conditions in the women’s sections of mosques, the Artscroll Women’s Siddur‘s approving commentary that “even a silent recitation [of the Kaddish] by a woman is frowned upon”—threaded with “We Can Do It”-style affirmations. “We do not have to abandon our faith communities,” Tanenbaum writes. “We can stay and make them stronger. And for this to happen, we cannot be polite.” Ultimately, “the issue is not a matter of ‘if,’ but ‘when.’” Her case for equality is pretty basic—after all, the idea at the heart of this and similar struggles is heartbreakingly straightforward—even if the path to achieving it is a predictable minefield.

It’s worthwhile to read about restrictions in different religions side by side, as Tanenbaum positions them here; while there have been books about individual faiths dealing with gender issues (many directed at their respective lay populations), revealing parallels come through when they’re examined in relation to one another. Though Jewish, Christian, and Muslim women all bump up against their own unique obstacles, they experience many of the same limitations: women are second-class citizens, barred or actively discouraged from taking part in significant rituals, and physically separated from men in various ways. All are reckoning with texts that suggest—or say outright—that they’re unworthy.

So why should women continue to practice religions that seem intent on keeping them down? Women in some of the faiths Tanenbaum explores (namely, Judaism and Protestantism) have the option of moving between denominations if one is wildly out of step with their lives. Others don’t have that flexibility. Still others don’t want it: despite being profoundly angered and wounded by institutionalized sexism, many remain committed to traditional sects, which they see as the most authentic version of their religion. Tanenbaum, generally a fan of the Hebrew-heavy Orthodox service, counts herself among them, and explains, “It would be easier to withdraw from observant Judaism by aligning with a liberal denomination, but these women love their Orthodox tradition too much.” In order to stay within their religion, women like Tanenbaum choose to believe that patriarchal ideas about women’s roles are not what their traditions are really about; they come from a time and place that is outdated, and human fallibility (and willful misinterpretation) is responsible, not God.

Fair enough, but things get sticky when she and other religious activists urge women to work to transform sexist attitudes within their religions, while also assuring them (and anyone who might be listening in) that once this happens, those religions will be able to stay essentially the same. It’s a pragmatic line of reasoning, but doesn’t hold up. Tanenbaum maintains that sexism is not in fact integral to Jewish tradition, but other members of her devout community would say that by pushing for inclusivity, she’s asking for the kinds of reforms that would effectively transform Orthodoxy into a different (and by implication lesser) denomination. Even if we accept that these religions have no real basis for the restrictions they place on women, the leadership (and male members of the community, who “stand in the center of their world” while women “are told to move to the periphery”) have self-interested reasons to resist equality. If they don’t budge, religious women are basically left with two unappealing options: seek refuge in a community that aims for gender equality but offers less rigorous observance, or stay in one that’s spiritually fulfilling but stifling.

Tanenbaum quotes one Catholic woman explaining, “I don’t want another church. I just want to get this one right.” It’s sort of a semantic game: wouldn’t that in some ways mean making it another church? Despite the many bold efforts described in these pages, religious women are caught in a cycle of contradictions and multiple allegiances that are hard to resolve in any satisfying way. If you refuse to have blind faith when it comes to gender, for example, why should you have it about anything else? If your chosen religion silences and invalidates you in ways you can’t condone, what’s the point of following it?

The underlying impression is that religion is so worthwhile and enriching that damaging views about women—no matter how extreme—are less persuasive than the community and tradition it offers. On a gut level, these priorities feel appalling: if a fundamental denial of women as complete people isn’t compelling enough, what is the bottom line? On the other hand, as Tanenbaum poignantly quotes a middle-aged Catholic woman saying, “If I leave the church, I will crumble.” So much of her community and identity are bound up with it that she can’t conceive of cutting herself off.

For all its force and intelligence, it’s not always clear who Tanenbaum has written this book for: some explanations seem aimed at the unlikely readers who’ve never even heard of the concept of religious equality. At the same time, she’s uninterested in tempering her outrage. She airs some dirty laundry that people outside specific religious communities might otherwise never know about, and includes some distressing anecdotes: one Modern Orthodox woman’s rabbi forbade her from taking part in her son’s bar mitzvah, and when she objected, barred her from teaching at the synagogue school; a national organization of Presbyterian college women was intimidated by a hardline Christian publication for daring to discuss sexuality. Irshad Manji‘s calls for reform within Islam have been met with death threats. Some of Tanenbaum’s findings and observations are expressed with sarcastic disbelief, butting up—at times awkwardly, at others elegantly—against her attempts to justify her own adherence to particular traditions.

As so many recent books on and against religion have shown, it may be impossible to be truly balanced when it comes to writing about something so inherently personal. Either way, Tanenbaum will stay focused on this area for some time—her website notes that for her next book she’s looking into the discrimination faced by devout gay people. In Taking Back God, her optimism buoys what is in many ways a depressing survey, but it’s hard not to wonder if it can survive this next inquiry.

Eryn Loeb is a contributing editor for Tablet Magazine.

Jen Taylor Friedman. Tefillin Barbie (2007). Plastic, fabric and leather.

Spertus closed “Imaginary Coordinates,” which included both metaphoric and naturalistic maps of the Holy Land by Jews, Christians, and Muslims, on June 20, 80 days ahead of schedule, since “parts of the exhibition” were out of line with “aspects of [its] mission as a Jewish institution and did not belong at Spertus,” according to a museum release. In a conference call with the press that day, Spertus trustee Philip Gordon insisted, “This has nothing to do with censorship.” Howard Sulkin, president of the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies, said of the developing news stories about the closed exhibit, “We would like to believe that there will be just a blip about that.”

To follow this show, Spertus could have opted for something tame—shtetl scenes by Chagall or colorful Agam designs—but instead it opened “Twisted Into Recognition: Clichés of Jews and Others,” an exhibit which was co-organized by the Jewish Museum Berlin and the Jewish Museum Vienna. “Twisted” is not as edgy as its predecessor—it has neither videos of a nude woman twirling a barbed-wire hula hoop while standing on Israel’s border, nor a driver asking ultra-Orthodox Israeli pedestrians for directions to the Palestinian city of Ramallah—but it is controversial in its own right, with works like Jen Taylor Friedman’s Barbie doll wearing a tallis and tefillin (Tefillin Barbie), and an installation of sculpted and painted noses by Dennis Kardon (49 Jewish Noses).

Tamir Lahav-Radlmesser’s installation includes samples of pubic hair he collected from friends and acquaintances in response to a 1939 exhibit that Josef Wastl, the Nazi curator of the anthropology department at the Vienna Museum of Natural History, created to demonstrate the racial inferiority of Jews. Wastl’s exhibit included plaster casts of faces and pubic hair taken from 500 “stateless Jews” who were subsequently sent to concentration camps.

Ernst Ludwig Hiemer. Der Giftpilz: ein Stürmerbuch für Jung und Alt (1938)

Perhaps the most controversial work in the exhibit is Der Giftpilz: ein Stürmerbuch für Jung und Alt (“The Poisonous Mushroom: an SS book for Young and Old”), a classroom textbook by Ernst Ludwig Hiemer which had a 1938 print run of 60,000. The Spertus exhibit shows an illustration from the book of four schoolboys, matching parts in their blond hair, looking on with their teacher as a fifth student holds a pointer to a blackboard that features chalk drawings of a Star of David, a hunched man who might be the wandering Jew, and the number six. The caption explains the last symbol: “Die Judennase ist an ihrer Spitze gebogen. Sie sieht aus wie ein Sechser,” or, “The Jewish nose is bent at its peak. It looks like a six.”

Spertus hopes the show will be “stereotype-busting,” and its release assures (perhaps both viewers and board members) that the show “does not intend to deny regional, ethnic, or cultural differences. Rather it explores how stereotypes about these differences are conveyed through images and objects, some of which communicate difficult or even brutal messages.” Yet most reviewers aren’t buying it, nor do they seem ready to forgive and forget the “blip.”

Manya Brachear’s review in the Chicago Tribune called “offending Jewish sensibilities” Spertus’ “new stock in trade,” and quoted Beth Gelman, the museum’s director of education, as saying that she expected some people to be offended, because “learning questions our assumptions.” Time Out Chicago’s Lauren Weinberg began her article with a discussion of the censored show, which she hailed as challenging and beautiful, before panning “Twisted” for being “so rigid that it doesn’t leave much room for surprises.” She wondered why Spertus’ show about stereotypes did not mention the museum’s own censorship.

Weinberg is surely aware that it is rare for any museum, let alone one funded by the Jewish United Fund/Jewish Federation, to criticize itself in its own exhibit, but she might be on to something in her critique that the show does not even attempt to respond to stereotypes of Israelis. She also questioned why there are “zero mentions of Palestinians” among the clichés of “others” included in the show: The only Muslim representative is Women of Allah: Rebellious Silence, a photograph of a woman wearing a headscarf and holding a gun in front of her face, which is covered with Arabic writing. The photograph was taken by Iranian artist Shirin Neshat, whose work also appeared in “Imaginary Coordinates.”

Howard Zieff. You don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s (1967)

As for a question Weinberg did not ask: Why doesn’t “Twisted” tackle stereotypes of Jews by Jews? If the museum really wants viewers “to closely examine stereotypes and clichés, and to reflect on them and discuss them,” wouldn’t it have been fascinating if the show included ads from the Yiddish press at the beginning of the twentieth century which were designed to assimilate Eastern European immigrants? What about cartoons from Jewish newspapers, in which Jews of one denomination denounce other types of Jews? Showing nineteenth-century walking sticks with noses that double as handles, which were later appropriated as anti-Semitic objects, is an important and ambitious move for a Jewish museum, but an institution that is quick to expose others’ stereotypes might try interrogating and exposing its own biases.

The subtitle of “Twisted” promises that the exhibit will explore not only Jews, but “others.” Instead of examining the philosophical and psychological processes of interacting with (and often forming stereotypes of) “the Other,” Spertus narrowly defines “others” simply as non-Jews. Had “Twisted” taken a closer look at the Jewish community, it would have had to address the fact that Jews are hardly homogeneous, and that members of one denomination often see Jews of different nationalities or levels of religious observance as “others,” too.

Before it tries to repent, Spertus needs to identify exactly where it fell off track. Steven Nasatir, president of the JUF/Jewish Federation in Chicago, told the Tribune that “Imaginary Coordinates” was “clearly anti-Israel” and that he was “very surprised” and “saddened” that a Jewish institution would host such an exhibit. Michael Kotzin, executive vice president of the same organization, added that a Jewish museum is the “last place the Jewish community should hear echoes” of anti-Israel sentiments. But if museums should avoid edginess and provocation, one wonders what venues the American Jewish community has set up to hear constructive feedback and new ideas.

Luckily the Jerusalem Post’s Marilyn Henry elevated the discussion with her observation that the censorship “inadvertently performed a great communal service: It opened the door to a long-overdue discussion on the role of American Jewish museums.” Henry recommended that angry viewers either close their eyes or go home. “I, for one, do not see the geopolitical balance of the Mideast shifting because an American Midwestern museum exhibits its map collection,” she wrote. Instead, Henry sees American Jewish museums as “cultural sanctuaries,” which “may be the only open Jewish space in the U.S. where traditional, ethnic, and disengaged Jews can meet with each other and with the larger community.”

Nasatir and Kotzin seem to think of Jewish museums as mirrors that ought to reflect what the community already believes, while Henry sees their potential to look forward. This is surely a struggle for all museums—not just Jewish ones—as they try to prove that their mandate as educational institutions necessitates some pushing of the envelope. Being on the vanguard does not just mean filling an exhibit with pop culture symbols like Tinky Winky (the allegedly gay character from Teletubbies), Aunt Jemima, and Michael Jackson, as “Twisted” does. It is refreshing to see Monty Python’s comical Life of Brian beside Franco Zeffirelli’s sobering Jesus of Nazareth, and Al Pacino’s performance as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice in an exhibit that also includes Howard Zieff’s ad campaign, You don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s, which shows a Native American man with braids and a feather also wearing a black hat and holding a deli sandwich. But this subject begs for more than just clever juxtapositions of art and kitsch.

With “Twisted,” Spertus had an opportunity to distinguish itself from other Jewish museums, becoming self-conscious and thus vulnerable. Instead, it settled for being just another PR voice for American Judaism, piling up even more evidence that Jews are marginalized and oppressed. Until it manages to grapple more fully and honestly with the provocative topics it raises so promisingly, it will be hard to treat the museum as much more than a $55-million building with a great view of Lake Michigan.

Menachem Wecker is a writer based in Washington, D.C. He blogs about religion and the arts at Iconia.

Tell me about your parents.

My father was born in Turkey; he comes from a Muslim family that pretty much goes to the mosque on high holy days of the Muslim religion. My mother is an American-born Jew whose lineage seems to be Eastern European. Her family has been here for a very long time; my great-great grandfather was born here. So those were the two backgrounds that came together. I didn’t really understand until I was much older that there was conflict between the Muslims and the Jews. We did Hanukkah when I was a kid. When I was around thirteen years old my uncle, the rabbi, started sending me tons of Jewish books.

You lived in Turkey for a while as a kid. What was that like?

I had one uncle who was orthodox and who would pray five times a day. As a kid I was very much intrigued by that, and when I lived in Turkey I was exposed to a lot of that kind of worship. You have the mosques, the crying out five times a day, the devotion. I have memories of parades and feasts, family gatherings. Maybe weddings, for all I know.

Turkey had mandatory military service, which my father had to do since he was still a citizen. So we picked up and moved when I was four, then returned to the United States when I was about six-and-a-half. After we moved back here, I’d still go to Turkey every summer, from the end of June to the end of August. The Muslim religion is on the lunar calendar—it’s funny how similar it is in many ways to Judaism—so the holidays change. Sometimes when I was there it was Ramazan, sometimes it wasn’t.

When did you begin to realize that these two religious groups were often in conflict?

I had the education of a Flushing High School student so I didn’t really grasp what was going on in the world. But then, even when I did start to get it, I understood it from a Jewish standpoint: Muslims were not good. As I went through my teens I was very conflicted. I had my mother’s side of the family and my father’s side. But my father never really asserted his Muslim religion. Like I said, we celebrated Hanukkah. We went to Yom Kippur dinner with my grandmother. My father never introduced his Muslim—or Turkish—traditions into the household. I think the combination of circumstances—that he was the only member of his family here and the extremely secular Muslim life he’d led in Turkey—made it easy for him to let go.

Your father was an immigrant.

Yes. He came here in 1957, when he was 23 years old. He lived in a kind of underworld of Turkish students in New York. They hooked up with Turkish gas stations, Turkish laundromats, people who needed cheap labor—there were even houses where you could rent a room in the Turkish community. You could move here without speaking much English and stay within the Turkish enclave. But then he met my mother at Queens College.

What was your father studying?

Engineering. He’s a professional engineer. And my mother’s an anthropologist. She has a Ph.D. in anthropology. They were very different. I didn’t understand when I was a kid. I really didn’t know. You don’t really get to go around and check out everybody else’s family, you don’t really get to compare. I thought my life was pretty much normal.

You sound kind of wistful when you talk about how your father didn’t bring Muslim culture or practice into the family. Yet you’re raising your son, Ben, in a structured Jewish way. How did you decide to do that?

When I was nineteen I met and fell in love with—and eventually married—this woman of Jewish heritage, Faith. She’s twelve years older than me. If I hadn’t developed my relationship with her, I don’t know how much of a Jew I would be. When we decided to have a child, she pretty much said to me, I want to raise him Jewish, and I want him to be bar mitzvahed. I’d never been bar mitzvahed and she’d never been bat mitzvahed. We had long discussions about it. Before I signed on, I saw it as a big inconvenience: the huge expense, all the services you have to go to, the school, everything. I can’t say this was a problem for me. It just wasn’t really what I wanted. But as Ben got older, and I got more into it, I learned a lot about Judaism that I hadn’t known. I went to a lot of services. I read scripture. I was able to organize the hodgepodge of Jewish knowledge I accumulated during my childhood. And coincidentally I went to work for an Orthodox Jewish mortgage company. So I was kind of immersed in this Jewishness for a while, maintaining my identity but absorbing what was around me. Not that I picked up much religion from my Orthodox coworkers. What I did pick up from them is how they have integrated themselves into today’s business world in a unique way. They did business off of radio ads posted by the company—but mostly, Orthodox Jewish loan officers basically deal with the Orthodox. Their biggest referral sources were people within their synagogues and their Jewish communities.

Do you find yourself feeling religiously stirred when you go to synagogue? Or do you feel it’s more of a social habit?

I don’t think of it as a social thing. The fact that there’s other people there is often inconvenient. It’s more of a personal thing. A personal communion. Though I do find it really interesting that we have this entire planet of Jews all studying the same part of the Torah at the same time every year. That’s amazing enough for me to take notice. The basic message I get from the readings on the holidays is all good stuff. But it doesn’t translate into real life for most people.

What do you mean by that?

Doing the right thing. To me, Judaism clearly says “Do the right thing.” Be nice to your neighbor, give to the poor, etcetera, etcetera. Yet when you walk out the doors, the person who was sitting next to you in the pew will steal your parking space in a heartbeat.

When you were working at that mortgage company, how did you fit in?

I was there for five-and-a-half years, I had a very good relationship with them. I think I left on good terms, but I realized I couldn’t go further with them because I wasn’t an Orthodox Jew.

Were they aware that your father’s family was Muslim?

Yes, but it didn’t really matter to them, because in the Jewish religion, you’re Jewish if your mother is a Jew. I just wasn’t Jewish enough for other reasons.

Have there been any situations in which it seemed important to identify yourself as Muslim?

When I talk to people in Turkish, I sense that they assume I’m Muslim. Up until age 16, when I was in Turkey I claimed to be Muslim, even though I didn’t really know what it was. It was just that I sensed that not being it was bad. I remember very clearly one time when a man in Turkey, who knew I was American, started asking me questions about my mother, my father. And then he asked me if I was a Muslim.

And what did you say?

“I am what my father is.” That worked for everybody else. But he called me this derogatory term for stranger, it’s like uninvited stranger—as in, “you don’t want this person around.” Yavür. I told my grandfather and he got very upset.

But to me, going to Turkey was really about being with my grandparents, boating, fishing, and hanging out with my Turkish friends. Religion had very little to do with my life back then.

Do you think your background gives you extra insight into the problems that Jews and Muslims have with each other?

I don’t know about extra insight. But it gives me unique insight. I feel above it all in a way: I understand the conflict, I know it looks hopeless, I’m hoping that one day it can be worked out and be peaceful. Their dietary rules are the same, the way they worship their God is the same—some of the characters in their scriptures interchange with one another. I think they should coexist, and I guess that’s from the way that they coexist within me. I have never really felt conflicted since I am who I am from within me. I never felt that I needed an external force to define who I am.

Do you believe in God?

Well, I don’t believe in a supreme deity, but I believe that as humans we have to have a belief that governs our behavior, and I believe that we believe there’s a God.

Are you an atheist?

No. Because I think that part of the human condition is that you need to aspire to something like a God to justify good behavior. I believe that the goodness that I put out into the world is from me, it’s not from any God or my belief that there is a God. Does God wear a red suit or does God wear payes? Who is God? I know that the planet was created by nature and geology and forces that are way beyond our comprehension.

You won’t say that you’re not an atheist, but you won’t say that you believe in God because you can’t believe that there’s a deity. You say you believe that people need to believe in God, and yet you don’t seem to need to believe in God, and you don’t believe in God. I’m confused. What’s the line you’re drawing there?

What humans have done is take what’s naturally within themselves and transferred the goodness to God. They read what they believe are God’s words, and it’s as if it’s a voice coming from somewhere above them teaching them to be good.

So, the goodness within people: is that what you believe in?

I do believe in the goodness within people, and I do believe that we believe in God.

If you don’t believe in a deity then how do you deal with the fact that you’re going to die? What gives you strength in the face of your mortality?

The pursuit of happiness.

Do you think you’ll ever get it?

I’m happy now.