Jewish Divorce: What You Need to Know

Among the religious community, there's a huge problem of agunot -- that is, women who want a divorce from their husbands, frequently because of abuse or other severe problems, and whose husbands refuse to grant the divorce. Because a Jewish legal stipulation puts divorce solely in the husband's court -- a safeguard from when husbands were required to provide food, money and shelter for their wives, whether or not they were still "together" -- it's become a huge problem in recent times, when to be spiteful, malicious, or merely because of indifference, some men will divorce their wives, sometimes even dating or remarrying, without granting their wife a get.

Among the religious community, there are also a number of insanely heroic people who have made it their life's work to stop these miserable excuses for people. At the forefront of this battle is Mavoi Satum, whose former president, Inbal Freund, is also a gifted writer and performance poet.

She and artist Chari Pere (whose work, btw, you'll be seeing on MJL pretty soon) went to visit one of Mavoi Satum's clients, spent two hours interviewing her and listening to her story, and developed this three-page comic. Pass it around. Spread it everywhere. And let people know that prenuptial agreements aren't just for Donald Trump and his prospective ex-wives -- they're for anyone who wants to avoid years and possibly decades of heartache, legal battles, and trauma for kids that you haven't even conceived of yet.

Go here to read the comic, or here to download a printable PDF.

How Jews Look

A while ago, I got an email from some chick saying asking if I could talk about about being shomer negiah. Yes, it sounds totally sketchy, but Judy Prays was a filmmaker and making a documentary, and you all know how much I like to talk. So, in that context, it was less sketchy -- not much less, but less.

When I started working at MyJewishLearning, one of my first gigs was to start producing short films. I called in the heavy artillery -- by which I mean, Judy -- and we set to work on creating a sort of anti-how-to series.

By which I mean, instead of showing how people should do things, we showed how Jews actually do do them.

The first one premieres today! Check it out:


And this all comes just in time for this week's Torah portion: It's all about the clothes of the High Priest! Whoo, mysterious.

92 words a minute on the subway, standing up.

So good to be in the swing of a new story. This is a short one, and I'm not usually good with writing short stories -- I tend to either build up too much steam so I trick myself into thinking I'm working on a novel, and then 60 or 70 pages later I look up and, woops, I realize I forgot these things are supposed to end.

But I have a good feeling about this one. It started when I was listening to this album, which you can download free from that link, so if anyone wants to start writing, we can have a fun little war.

Also fun: Neil Gaiman's new children's book has been turned into a Flash film by his publishers. A little bit magic, but a little bit cheesy. A friend at HC says that they're starting to do this for all their picture books. Reactions?

Richard Nash Leaves Soft Skull

OK, I'm as freaked out as you are -- here is the story, if you haven't heard. The halloween candy-size version: Richard Nash, who took over Soft Skull Press and polished it and shined it made it (even) great(er), is relinquishing command.

My guess is as good as yours, people. I thought that, if it ever happened, Richard would blast off straight into some new Web 4.0 idea of Twitter novels or Books That Read You or something even more revolutionary. Of course, what he says on his site makes just as much sense -- that he'll be consulting publishers and working to save our industry.

According to their press release, Soft Skull will keep going. Candy in Action will stay in print -- and have I mentioned it looks great in paperback? -- and I'm still friendly with them, as far as I know....and yes, if "Orthodox Girls" gets made into a movie and I sell a million copies of all my books, I still want to put out all my future books on a tiny indie press. There is no back catalogue I have a crush on more than Soft Skull's, from Daphne Gottlieb's manifestos to Mike Doughty's couplets. And, praise G-d, they're still going to be alive (well, except for Doughty, who went out of print a while ago....dammit). And Soft Skull's associate editor is sticking around, which gives me hope for the future, as much as it does for the present.

So there is no reason to be afraid. And every reason to think that Soft Skull will keep going, and that Richard will get under the skin of other publishers and implant little Soft Skull-like parasites there and create new little Soft Skull-inspired life forms crawling through Random House and Harper's and even (gasp) Scholastic...Hey, here's hoping.

A very short review of "Dollhouse"

What did you think of Dollhouse?

I liked it -- I mean, I think I did?? It started slow. Red flag in my brain: this is why Firefly got canceled. If you don't start with a bang, you lose people on TV -- and this is starting with a timid, lo-energy conversation in an office.

It cut to a motorcycle chase. Good intentions, but not as good as it should have been....

The first half didn't seem like a Joss Whedon show at ALL. then the second half was totally Joss Whedon. The show feels a bit manufactured, like it's something they're getting paid to make, whereas Buffy was something that the actors and writers needed to make, whether there was fame and fortune or not...but it was still a pretty damn good action-adventure 45 minutes of my life. The greater plots feel the most forced of all. But last night, the resolution to the kidnapping and the trauma-that-wasn't-really-a-trauma....damn. All of us - me, Itta, house guests - were shaking when we got up afterward.

(And no, we didn't watch it on Shabbos....thank you, Hulu.)

Jennifer Blowdryer: How to Write the Great American Novel on Food Stamps

On Jewcy, I interview Jennifer Blowdryer, who might be my favorite person in the world who ever made me inadvertently homeless. Two days before I was supposed to get to New York City and rent her (swoon) East Village apartment for two months -- a block from the Bowery Poetry Club, two from ABC No Rio, and right down the street from the most amazing graffiti in the country -- she told me that some Long Island girl in a bar had offered to pay her five times the going cost.

Somehow, with her writing and her sense of humor, I was okay with that. Eventually.

Okay enough to cover her new and hilarious short novel, The Laziest Secretary in the World, for Jewcy:

Jennifer Blowdryer revels in those truths about ourselves that we'd rather not hear. While that is ostensibly the job of every writer, few do it with such grace, aplomb, and lack of restraint. Part Emily Post and part Morton Downey, Jr., Blowdryer's subjects are punk-rock Artful Dodgers and Malcom MacLaren-worthy bastards, lovable and loathable in equal doses, people who take a free drink when they're given one and scam one when they're not.

The protagonist of her latest book, The Laziest Secretary in the World, is named Latoya (she's white). She's alternately pathetic and brilliant, a powerhouse at drinking, social analysis, and anything that involves the bottom-most echelon of pop culture. Latoya could write for McSweeney's but instead makes fun of tabloid celebrities. She daydreams of the limitless variety of frozen dinners, having an unlimited cash flow, and of being interviewed on a daytime talk show, answering difficult questions with, "Merv, even if I had a million dollars, I would still buy Butterfingers and M&Ms. I mean, what could possibly replace them?"

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