It’s not easy to be a feminist Jewish American woman — fully engaged in all of these identities — and stay focused on peaceful, inclusive dialogue. Somehow Letty Cottin Pogrebin, who will be speaking at a Berkshire Festival of Women Writers event this coming Sunday, has managed to do it for herself, and to bring many others along with her.
Pogrebin co-founded MS Magazine back in 1972, and now, more than four decades later, her forthright activist energy still blazes brightly. She is not only still involved in the women’s movement, but also deeply engaged with Americans for Peace Now, a Jewish American group arguing for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She is also actively involved with issues of racial justice in the United States.
Her latest book, a novel, explores African American – Jewish relations from a personal angle, when a Jewish man finds his “soul mate” in an African American woman. There is a political subtext here, as Pogrebin believes that African Americans and Jews are — or should be — “soul mates” within American society. In her 1991 memoir, Deborah, Golda and Me: Being Female and Jewish in America, Pogrebin wrote:
“Together African-Americans and Jewish-Americans make up 15 percent of the population. History has taught us that the fate of each out-group is inevitably linked to the destiny of the others and an assault on one presages an attack on the other. Therefore, we can be each other’s early warning system; we can blow the whistle on threats to the democratic pluralism that protects all ethnic, gender and racial outsiders. It should not take a burning Torah or a flaming cross to make us form a bucket brigade.”
The metaphor of the bucket brigade is typical of Pogrebin’s insistence on community-making as the most appropriate response to social struggles. Whether she’s working for women’s empowerment, peace in Israel or racial justice in America, Pogrebin always goes for community as the goal, and dialogue as the means.
“Stereotypes, distance, and isolation are our greatest enemies,” she writes. Although she’s speaking here about Black-Jewish relations, she might also be referring to Israelis and Palestinians when she says: “The fact of our physical separation has persuaded me that, simple as it sounds, getting together is our most immediate imperative. If we do not live in the same communities, mix in school, or work in close enough proximity, we must create opportunities for contact and collaboration; we must find each other, make our own way from our separate spheres, start the dialogues, take on the action projects, do what needs doing to bridge the chasm.”
Characteristically, she doesn’t just talk about collaboration and dialogue, she makes it happen, founding and participating in groups and organizations dedicated to bridging differences through empathetic conversation. She remembers fondly a group of six African-American and Jewish women who met over dinner several times a year for many years. The ground rules of their conversations were simple: “Anything you felt was true; everything you said would be kept confidential; and you couldn’t slam out of the room if you got angry, you had to stay and keep the dialogue going.”
Pogrebin has also participated for many years in a Jewish-Palestinian dialogue group, with similar goals. “Disdain and disengagement solve nothing,” she writes in her memoir. “Constructive interaction is our only option….Whether it is men with men, women with women, or mixed groups; whether we have a fixed agenda or a freewheeling discussion; whether our style is to posture and pontificate or to bare our souls — whoever we are, whatever we do, wherever it leads, however it hurts, we must get together to talk, struggle, and work through our differences.”
It’s striking to me how these words, published in 1991, still ring so very true today, nearly a quarter-century later. At Sunday’s talk at the West Stockbridge Historical Society, Pogrebin will discuss contemporary issues, and how she continues to work towards her goals of gender equality, Israeli-Palestinian peace, and racial justice in the United States.
These seem like especially fitting topics to be discussing during the Jewish High Holy Days, when all Jews are asked to reflect on their behavior over the past year, and resolve to move closer to the ideal of “tikkun olam,” repairing oneself and repairing the world, with the over-arching goal of peace and social justice for everyone, everywhere.
As Letty Pogrebin says in her memoir, “I realize how easily words like ‘equality,’ ‘justice,’ and ‘peace’ blur into abstractions unless they are made real in thought and action….For me, making peace is a physical act of creation, like writing a book that never existed before, or giving birth to a child. None of these ‘products’ just happens; each takes work. Peacemaking is perhaps the hardest work of all” (375), Pogrebin says —and, I would add, the most essential.
As we move into the 21st century, in a time of global conflict and climate destabilization, it’s clear that we need to make peace not only with one another as human beings, but also with the planet that sustains us, and all the living beings who also call her home. We are fortunate to have the guidance of experienced leaders like Letty Pogrebin, who has been out in front blazing the trail her whole life, as each of us does what we can, in our own sphere, to become the creative leaders our world needs now.
Letty Cottin Pogrebin will speak at the West Stockbridge Historical Society at 3 p.m. on Sunday, September 20 with a reception and book-signing to follow; hosted by Berkshire Magazine editor Anastasia Stanmeyer and Berkshire Festival of Women Writers director Jennifer Browdy. Limited seating; for tickets visit Berkshirewomenwriters.org.
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The weekly EDGE WISE column is curated by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D., associate professor of comparative literature, gender studies and media studies at Bard College at Simon’s Rock and the Founding Director of the Berkshire Festival of Women Writers. Women writers interested in publishing in EDGE WISE can find writers’ guidelines on the Festival website, or may submit queries or columns to Jennifer@berkshirewomenwriters.org.
