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By Meera Subramanian
This article is cross-posted from The Revealer, a publication of The Center for Religion and Media at New York University
I am overly pragmatic. Each day seems so finite, and there is so much work to do. Big work, made out of endless little work. Schools to construct. Minds to make literate. Wells to dig and water to purify. Inoculations to give and hair to braid and food to feed growing bodies. So many streets to sweep and toilets to build.
Instead, it is time for aarti, the Hindu puja taking place this night, and every night, in hundreds of little temples like this one in Varanasi, India. Someone led me here to this place, tucked into the labyrinth of alleyways behind the Manakarnika Ghat, where bodies are burning. On the way, along the other ghats on the water’s edge, we passed a series of Ganga Aartis – floodlights! amplification! – that attract Indian and foreign tourists alike for the full pilgrimage experience. The masses were stacked on the steps that link city to water and packed into handmade wooden boats just offshore, cameras flashing.But the power went out moments after we passed and we found our way by flashlight to the temple building dimly lit with the inverter’s stored energy.
The Hindu priest is kind, allowing my camera and my curious eyes as I witness the rituals I have watched since I was young. Shiva is the focus here, the stone lingam – more breast than phallus – the centerpiece set in a square of silver embedded into the floor like a pious pit. The priest spends more time in careful preparation for the ritual than it will take to enact it, when three other priests join him and, together their hand bells thunder in unison in rhythm to their chants. As a child, the smell of flowers and fire and the hypnotic sound of the chants would transfix me. Now I can appreciate that this ritual incorporates the five elements into one seamless act. Always I have viscerally loved the moment when, at the end, I can place my cupped hands over the heat of the flame and bring them to my face, my eyes closed.
But I have grown old and I think too much. Now, each day is finite. Now, each and every thing of beauty has a cost. What did it take to bring this beauty here? I watch the meticulous preparations leading up to the aarti, and each object the priest touches whispers its past to me, a hidden history of labor diverted from other work that wouldn’t have been destined for fleeting flames. I think of the…
…seed that was sown that grew the plant that yielded the flower. The hands that plucked the flowers – orange marigold, pink rose, white jasmine, purple petunia, red carnation – and threaded each one onto a garland. The priest’s hands undoing the work as he places each blossom around the lingam. Someone mined the silver and mined the gold, and a boy with too-big jeans has been polishing the metals for an hour. It was likely a woman who gathered the fodder that fed the cow that made the milk that was churned into butter, who stoked the fire that transformed the butter into ghee. Perhaps a farmer in Punjab grew the cotton and a day laborer harvested the crop, which a man now twists into wicks for the oil lamps, fueled with the ghee. Did a child’s small fingers make the match that he strikes to make the flame? Who forged the bell that hangs overhead? Who harvested the sandalwood and ground it into the powder that made the paste daubed onto the lingam? Who grew the fruit set on the platter in offering? The priests took the time to learn the prayers, tongues wrapped around Sanskrit. The worshippers took the time to come to temple, winding through the footpath galis, between the cows and over the dung in the dark during a blackout so ordinary that a flashlight was already in hand. They reach up to ring the bell and bow their heads, calling to the gods. They bring sweets or a few rupee coins to leave on the priest’s rug, woven from wool that someone sheared from a sheep. When it is all done, the priest sweeps the air with tail hairs from a water buffalo, bundled together into a silver-handled broom.
I think too much. For the men who attend, and the few women who venture out in the night (most women come in for the daylight aartis), it was just a few minutes of their time, a few coins from their pocket as offering. A moment of respite and reverie, god-love and grace in a messy world. But multiply the moments. The bills and coins, stacked into a roll and folded deftly into the waistline folds of the priest’s dhoti. The temple visit, every day or even more than once, the minutes turned hours turned days of devotion. Imagine that energy harvested and turned to cleaning up and transforming a nation, for ridding the waterways of the waste that causes 1600 people to die each day in India from simply having the shits[1].
Others are thinking along the same lines. India’s former environment minister Jairam Ramesh caused a stir recently when he complained there were more temples than toilets in India. The Hindu right raised their hackles, blaming the government for their failed job of helping alleviate the fact that two-thirds of India’s citizens defecate in the open, and there are only so many temples, they said defensively, because Hindus have used their own resources to build them. Both sides have a point. The government’s Total Sanitation Campaign aims to have 125 million toilets across the country by 2017. Thirteen years into the effort, recent accounting shows that at least 35 million toilets seem to have already gone missing. I see an image of rolled coins, disappearing into cloth.
So the government can be blamed, but what of the private energy of this predominantly Hindu country? The founding fathers had a different vision. Gandhi had a simple but contained toiletwith a septic tank that led to the fields. He cleaned it himself, defying caste boundaries that relegated such work to the lowest in society. ”Our Indian toilets bring our civilization into discredit,” he wrote in 1925, of the open defecation that was nearly as common then as it is today. “They violate the rules of hygiene.” Gandhi, I think, would have wanted more toilets than temples.
My days in Varanasi came at the end of a three-month breakdown in sanitation because of a contract dispute between the city and the private waste management company responsible for cleaning the streets. The settlement effect was immediate. One night, I stepped past the cow that stationed itself outside my guesthouse each night, and the piles of her once-chewed cud now turned into dung, over and through the layers of plastic bags, food peelings, and other debris of humanity. The next morning, the narrow Old City gali was swept clean, not just outside the guesthouse but everywhere I went. On the main roads and along the riverbanks, an army of workers gathered the detritus into piles. In the water, garbage seiners used wicker baskets to strain out the soggy garlands and aluminum bowls that carried glowing prayers through the holy and wholly polluted water the night before, looking so spectacular and romantic. The utter transformation made it evident what can be accomplished if given priority.
I was told there was a time when the entire community would come down to the riverbank for a two-day communal cleanup. Now, the duty falls to the government and when they contract out to companies who may or may not actually do the work, everything seems to break down in a corrupt quagmire.
Varanasi is a place of pilgrimage. India is a country of worship. And Varanasi, Banaras, is – in the words of scholar Diana Eck – a place where “the atmosphere of devotion is improbable in its strength.”
But what if, my inner pragmatist asks, just a fraction of the energy, money and time that went into building the temples, enacting the rituals, making the pilgrimages, and organizing the festivals, one after the other, was instead spent on improving the most basic elements of human necessity needed in this life? Can digging a latrine be an act of worship? Can placing the plastic bag in the garbage be as much of an offering as casting the flowers it held into the Ganga? Can setting the stones that cover the open sewers be as important as setting the stones for a temple? Isn’t it a blessing to give a child access to water that won’t make her sick?
Each day is finite and there is so much work to do in this life. There are so many streets to sweep. Instead we sweep air.
Meera Subramanian is an independent journalist who writes about culture, faith and the environment. Her work has appeared in national and international publications includingNature, Virginia Quarterly Review, the New York Times, Salon, Smithsonian, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, The Caravan and India Today. She is a senior editor at Killing the Buddha.
This article is cross-posted from The Revealer, a publication of The Center for Religion and Media at New York University
With support from the Henry R. Luce foundation.
Editor's Pick: This article is cross-posted from The Revealer, a publication of The Center for Religion and Media at New York University.
By Ayala Fader
On May 22, 2012, forty thousand ultra-Orthodox Jewish men and boys gathered at Citi Fields Stadium in Queens to listen to important rabbis rail against the dangers of the Internet. (There were separate places where the event was video-streamed for women, prohibited from mingling, at other sites in Brooklyn). The stadium bleachers were packed with bearded men and boys in traditional black and white clothing, many on their cell phones. The scoreboard was silent, but the jumbotron was alive with close ups of the rabbis’ faces, some crying, and English subtitles for Yiddish speeches. The goal of the asifa (gathering) was not to condemn the Internet, which has become indispensable for “business.” Rather, it was to promote the use of “kosher” filters to limit exposure and use. One rabbi claimed the Internet was more dangerous to Judaism than the Holocaust. Another called it “the nisoyan ha-dor (the test of this generation). All agreed that the Internet presented new challenges to Jews in the “Torah community,” threatening their very existence. The event received a tremendous amount of coverage in mainstream and Jewish presses.
Less publicized, though, was a counter-rally across the street from Citi Fields. Organized by Ari Mandel, an activist with a non-profit organization, Survivors for Justice, this counter-rally sought to bring attention, instead, to sexual abuse scandals in ultra-Orthodox communities and their cover-up, which had been broken in the New York Times just a few weeks earlier. The crowd of a few hundred included many former ultra-Orthodox Jews, those who have “gone OTD” (off the (path)), holding up signs and chanting, “The Internet is not the problem.” Actually, for many victims of sexual abuse, the Internet has been a literal lifesaver. As Mandel explained it, the Internet made it possible for victims to speak out, first anonymously and then more openly as they found other victims, spurring public activism and greater media attention.
Moral Authority and a Crisis of Leadership
These competing rallies are part of a much larger story, one about the struggle in the digital age over the moral authority of ultra-Orthodox rabbinic leadership to control the gedarim (gates) that keep the secular world at bay. Many in these communities call this “a crisis of emune (faith or trust in God)” and blame the Internet for corrupting Jewish souls. Prior to the early 2000s, an ultra-Orthodox Jew who wanted to explore forbidden ideas or ask questions had to go physically outside the community in search of newspapers, the radio, movies, or even, God forbid, the public library. The smart phone changed this, allowing exploration, questioning and even community building away from ultra-Orthodox surveillance (family, teachers, rebbes, etc.).
This new access to uncontrolled knowledge and people made cracks in the communal wall of silence that rabbinic leadership worked to maintain as the sex abuse allegations came out. The sex abuse scandals and their representation in the media highlight the surprisingly porous boundaries that have existed between nonliberal ultra-Orthodoxy and liberal democracy in the United States, which is based on Enlightenment principles of governance, include pluralism and tolerance, protection of individual rights, and the relegation of religion to the private sphere. Smartphones, though, are adding new challenges for ultra-Orthodox leadership, for as rabbinic leaders have tried to contain the scandals, they have further embroiled themselves with the police, the District Attorney’s office, the ultra-Orthodox victims (now grown up) and investigative journalists.
An Anthropologist’s Confession
When stories about the sexual abuse of children in ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities began to come out, though, I confess I avoided them. Journalists reported that prominent rabbis molested young male students for years, then were simply transferred to other schools or that proven pedophiles were given light sentences. They documented witness intimidation that included social isolation of victims and their families: the community boycotted businesses owned by accusing families; their children were not allowed to enroll in yeshivas. There were offers of hush money and even threats of violence. Most disturbing, there was evidence that the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office was complicit in the sacrifice of young boys for the protection of ultra-Orthodox leadership’s moral authority.
Frankly, the cases upset me. Yet (like the good Jewish girl that I am) I also felt guilty. How could I keep avoiding these stories given that I am an anthropologist who has spent the past fifteen years studying first Hasidic childrearing and now the impact of new media in Brooklyn? Despite many of my own ethical disagreements with the women and children I worked with, I have, in articles and in my book, Mitzvah Girls, a study of alternative religious modernity among Hasidic mothers and daughters, tried my best to offer evenhanded and complex portraits. For example, though I admired so many mothers I met, I have also struggled to represent the unapologetic racism that adults expressed to children in their depictions of Gentiles in contrast to the “chosen people.” Similarly, I have tried to understand the moral reasoning behind how and why Hasidic Jews use the rights of citizenship to reject the values of the liberal state.
But the children’s sexual abuse scandals and their cover up felt different. I did not know how to write about or understand them, or even if “understanding” was a form of moral cowardice.
The Long View, 1990s-present
When I began conducting my research during the mid-nineties, there was not much talk about sexual abuse within the community, nor media coverage of it. In the press the ultra-Orthodox, especially Hasidic Jews, were portrayed in common stereotypes: either as sepia-tinged, quaint, pre-modern throwbacks or (told with secular schadenfreud) as hypocrites who, despite claims to piety, defrauded federal programs. From within the community, I heard a few rumors about the molestation of children, especially boys: the Satmar rebbe installed a shomer (guard) in the men’s mikveh (ritual bath) to prevent men from preying on boys; there were tales about the homoeroticism in boys’ yeshivas (think British public schools). Back then though, the most prominent issues I followed in the community were raising awareness about domestic abuse and providing services to children with disabilities who had previously been hidden away as genetic “problems” (a deal-breaker in arranged marriages).
However, in the early 2000s, the molestation stories began: on anonymous blogs and websites within the communities (e.g., Unpious.com, Failedmessiah.com), in The Jewish Week, in New York Magazine, The Forward, and finally this spring, in The New York Times. Everywhere I turned there was another outrageous case of community leaders protecting perpetrators–at the expense of victims. Why? Why only now has sexual abuse of ultra-Orthodox children become a focus of investigative reporting in the Jewish and mainstream presses? And how has the media attention impacted the communities?
AP Photo/VoxIzNeias.com
Sex Abuse Scandals and the Press
Part of the answer is found in recent and prevalent national exposure of child abuse at morally fallible, powerful, sacred institutions. Media coverage of the Catholic Church sexual abuse scandals was a transformative moment in journalism, historian Jonathan Sarna told me, which paved the way for reporting about the ultra-Orthodox Jewish cases. Other cases include the Boy Scouts, the Horace Mann School in New York, and the Penn State football scandal among others. All involve struggles over a great deal of money (potential legal battles, football programs, prestigious institutions), public perception, and the political power of some institutions to reject the authority of the legal system. In all of these cases, children were abused while responsible adults—priests, teachers, rabbis, coaches— looked away because of the high stakes for the institution.
The Catholic Church and the ultra-Orthodox community’s responses to the investigative journalism were similar, trafficking in knee-jerk stereotypes. The Church claimed the Boston Globe, which broke the abuse story, and the media more generally were “anti-Catholic.” Ultra-Orthodox newspapers like Der Yid lashed out at The Jewish Week and Times reporters, calling them anti-Semitic “Nazis” and “traitors to the Jewish people.” A reporter for a Jewish press who wished to remain anonymous told me that, other than these vituperative attacks on the non-Orthodox media, the ultra-Orthodox presses have been silent on the issue of sexual abuse.
While the majority of child sex abuse crimes–Jewish, Catholic, and other–were committed by older men against young boys in their care, in the ultra-Orthodox communities, there have also been cases of sexual abuse of girls. Due to strict gender segregation in these communities, the abuse occurs more often in homes than in yeshivas, either by male family members or relatives. I have even heard from several anonymous sources that rebellious young girls (and boys)—pathologized as “at risk” youth (at risk for leaving their communities)—are often required by the school to visit a “Torah therapist” from within the community who charges a great deal; there is at least one counselor who has a long history of sexually abusing his female clients and who is currently being prosecuted.
Similarly a fictional account, Hush, of a girl who witnessed the incestuous sexual abuse of her friend who eventually hangs herself, came out in 2010. First published pseudonymously by “Eishes Chayil” (woman of valor), the author recently went public as Judy Brown, speaking out after eight-year-old ultra-Orthodox Leiby Kletsky was murdered in Borough Park, Brooklyn, by an Orthodox Jewish man, Aron Levi, in July 2011. Levi, who had a history of mental illness, approached the little boy, who got lost walking home from day camp for the first time, and was seeking directions. Levi kidnapped the boy then drugged, killed, and dismembered him. He received a forty-year prison sentence this past August. The event stunned the neighborhood because the criminal was one of their own.
The majority of the sexual abuse cases publicized thus far, though, have been of older men preying on younger boys in yeshivas. This has opened the door to familiar liberal critiques of the consequences of “repression” of sexuality in non-liberal religious communities. Like the ultra-Orthodox presses’ response, these critiques also invoked stereotypes. For example, some claimed that “insular” or “closed” societies, particularly ones with gender segregation and codes of modesty, are ripe for sexual deviance. As one social services provider told me, “They (ultra-Orthodox children) don’t even have names for the body parts. Everything is tushy.” I too have documented that among Hasidic Jews there is very little discussion of the body and sexuality for children or even for young people preparing for marriage. However, there is no evidence of more–or less–abuse in non-liberal religious communities. The Penn State football program and the Horace Mann School had rampant, unchecked cases of sexual predators, yet are secular liberal institutions.
Ultra-Orthodox Power and the State
However, the consequences of the media coverage for ultra-Orthodox Jews have clearly been quite different than for the Catholic Church or many other institutions. It is worth noting that at least some at the New York Times knew about the allegations of sexual abuse as early as 2006, when community insiders offering evidence and contacts approached them. An anonymous source told me that this contact at the Times declined to take on the story because the paper feared being seen as targeting the community; they would only write about the story if an elected official or politician was implicated in covering-up the cases. So it was not until May, 2012, that The Times published two articles (May 9th and 10th) on Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes and his stymied efforts to prosecute sexual abuse among the ultra-Orthodox. The Times coverage made a big splash, impacting the visibility of the cases and putting pressure on Hynes’ office to step up its efforts to prosecute offenders.
More than anything else, The Times’ alleged decision to avoid targeting the community itself highlights the tremendous political influence of the ultra-Orthodox in New York. Politicians court them because community leaders are able to mobilize huge voting blocs: A rebbe or a prominent rabbi simply tells his followers whom to back and thousands in a community will turn out to vote as advised. Ultra-Orthodox leadership has built powerful alliances with city and state politicians who watch out for their interests, be it zoning laws (e.g., building new yeshivas, school bus lanes), access to state and federal programs (e.g., Headstart, food stamps) or in the sexual abuse cases, using their own rabbinical courts rather than the New York State legal system until 2009.
The power of the ultra-Orthodox communal leadership has led to preferential treatment at the city and state levels that is often framed in a pluralist discourse as abiding the “special cultural needs” of ultra-Orthodox Jews. The ultra-Orthodox leadership has invoked the Jewish concept of mesira (turning over)– the historical injunction against reporting a fellow Jew to a non-Jewish authority for a crime– to authenticate what amounts to a cover up. Ultra-Orthodox rabbis have claimed that involving the police in sexual abuse charges is mesira; until more recently they preferred their communities use their own rabbinic courts, which have historically handled civil disputes (e.g., divorce, marriage, custody, property), not criminal cases. These courts are not designed to prosecute sexual abuse cases. As The Times reporters Sharon Otterman and Ray Rivera noted (May 10, 2012), rabbinic courts do not have formal power to punish, subpoena or collect evidence. Some rabbis even refuse to hear testimony from women or children.
Many of the victims and a lot of the media have continued to challenge the validity of rabbinic courts decisions on management of sexual abuse, claiming that they merely bury charges, especially against prominent rabbis. In fact, one of the primary arguments made by victim activists has been that criminal cases must be brought before the New York State legal system and that using the rabbinic court is a violation of state law.
The Politics of Cultural Sensitivity
The DA office’s handling of sexual abuse allegations highlights political favoritism legitimated by “cultural sensitivity,” meaning a sensitivity to the unique beliefs and practices of ultra-Orthodox communities which require special treatment. In theory, this sounds good (especially to me, the anthropologist) but in actuality this has meant that the ultra-Orthodox leadership got to dictate much of the way the sexual abuse cases were handled. Perhaps this explains why, as Paul Berger at The Forward noted, DA Hynes admitted that for the first eighteen years he was in office he did very little to take on allegations of sexual abuse.
It was not until 2009 that the DA created a sexual abuse hotline, Kol Tsedek (Voice of Justice), advised by a “cultural liaison,” a Lubavitcher Hasidic woman who is a social worker. A source who works closely with the DA’s office told me this liaison has opened up lines of communication and made huge inroads in raising community consciousness about sexual abuse. Some others though have told me that too often the liaison has counseled victims to withdraw charges, especially if the accused is an important rabbi.
However, even in setting up the hotline, which has made an impact by increasing the number of yearly prosecutions from zero to between seventy to ninety (the exact number is disputed), the DA’s office has continued to bend to the wishes of Agudath Yisroel, the ultra-Orthodox leadership and policy organization that represents some sectors of the Hasidic world and most of the Yeshiva world. The Agudath, which is directed by a Counsel of Torah Sages as well as lay advisers, makes political, social and religious rulings for participating communities. In 2009 Hynes agreed to Agudath’s position that anyone who wishes to press charges must first receive permission from his or her rabbi or Hasidic rebbe and only then may they contact the police. The DA also agreed not to publish perpetrators’ names publicly, another Agudath position.
Hynes claims that he must continue to work through Agudath because the ultra-Orthodox are “worse than the mafia,” a reference to the community’s common practice of intimidating victims and meting out its own forms of justice. The press, especially Jewish presses like The Jewish Week and The Forward have taken activist roles. Paul Berger in The Forward (May 29, 2012) reported that they, along with other media outlets, filed a request under New York’s Freedom of Information Act for the release of the names of all those accused via the Kol Tzedek program. So far, the DA’s office has denied those requests.
Hynes claims that he can only protect the victims if he works with “cultural sensitivity.” And yet, do other perpetrators who go through the DA’s office get the same kind of culturally sensitive treatment? Are other communities or institutions able to set the terms of prosecution or withhold names of the accused? Clearly not. Only the politically powerful are able to use “culture” and insider “cultural liaisons” in order to protect the authority of communal leadership.
James Estrin for The New York Times.
Why Is the Cover Up Tolerated?
How, I have to wonder, can the community stand for this cover up? I spent years in a Hasidic girls’ school and in Hasidic homes, where most children seemed cherished and protected. Indeed, there is much about Hasidic childrearing that is admirable. How and why would community leaders use their political power to put ultra-Orthodox children at risk?
I have a few theories that speak to the shifting relationship between the ultra-Orthodox leadership and the world in which they find themselves today. First, there are different values at work, values that are in direct conflict with the liberal state’s emphasis on the protection of the individual, especially the child. The good of the community–that is ultra-Orthodox Judaism–may trump individual suffering, especially when the crimes involve the taboo topics of sexuality and sexual deviance. I suspect this is generational as well, with older ultra-Orthodox Jews (those who are most often the community leaders) unfamiliar with and unwilling to engage the language of sexual abuse. One of the stark portraits drawn of Gentiles, especially for children, is of a lack of modesty and explicit sexuality. Such talk about sexuality is thus deemed goyish(Gentile) and not becoming for Jews.
Young Leiby Kletsky’s murder last year is a piece in this puzzle. As writers Shulem Deen onUnpious.com, Matthew Shaer of New York Magazine, Judy Brown at Jewish Week and others have noted, the community is so concerned with protecting its children from secular and goyishe popular culture that they often close their eyes to deviance and danger within. Not to mention that, more broadly, the moral universe children are taught includes black and white distinctions between Jews and Gentiles, moral and immoral. Immoral observant Jews rattle this universe.
Even the perception of sexual abuse victims, particularly those ultra-Orthodox who decide to leave their communities, is becoming less black and white. Many have gotten support at Footsteps, an organization founded by Malkie Schwartz in 2003. Footsteps helps those who break with their “insular” communities, offering “educational, vocational, and social” support for its members. This has helped to alter the perception among the ultra-Orthodox that those who leave their communities, especially those who were sexually abused, are what the community often calls “bums.” Seeing some who have left go on to college or become writers or even activists creates a more complex picture of those who choose another life over the “truth” of Orthodoxy.
Second, prosecution at the state level would open the door to potential law suits which would involve large sums of money, not to mention chillul hashem (desecration of God’s name, or besmirching the moral standing of the community before Gentiles). This fear of public exposure or shame can make for strange alliances. Catholic Bishops and ultra-Orthodox rabbis are the only two religious leaderships in Albany who continue to fight the extension of the statute of limitations for prosecution of sexual abuse crimes—from age twenty-four to age thirty. Both groups have a lot to lose.
Finally, a reporter for The Jewish Week who wished to remain anonymous offered me another, more cynical theory for the communal wall of silence, a silence which has failed ultra-Orthodox children. Rampant illegality facilitates much of ultra-Orthodox communal life, particularly the practiced use and misuse of government funding. I have written about ultra-Orthodox competing notions of citizenship in my book, Mitzvah Girls, that include using government resources to build up their own communities. Legally, many qualify for food stamps and welfare. There are, though, some who misuse government funding or violate tax laws. This is nothing new. When I was doing fieldwork, these kinds of white collar crimes were not unusual. There is little social sanction for those who commit them if they contribute to ultra-Orthodox charities, which most do. As a Hasidic friend once remarked, “That’s golus (diaspora),” meaning that shared space does not mean shared goals for citizenship and community; at the end of the day, ultra-Orthodox Jews are waiting for the messiah, not liberal democracy. However, if sexual abuse victims went directly to the police instead of to their rabbis, there could potentially be a flood of lawsuits, which would require legal investigation and public exposure of practices the community may want to keep quiet.
New Conversations
The media and victims have played a critical role in forcing the recent conversation that so many were once reluctant to have. Some within the community have begun to respond. There are dissenting voices and recent attempts to train the next generation differently. For example, there are some who do not agree with the prohibition against notifying the police and they speak out, though they often suffer intimidation and censorship for it.
The Orthodox press, Artscroll, published the first book of its kind, Let’s Stay Safe, in 2011. This popular picture book is designed to provide parents with a “tsanua (modest) way to speak to children about a broad range of safety matters.” Safety here goes from wearing helmets when bicycling to warning that “only your parents or a doctor can touch you in a private space that is covered by a bathing suit.” One page is especially poignant, clearly a response to the murder of Leiby Kletsky. If you are lost, the book directs readers, go ask “a cashier, a mommy or a policeman” for help. Gone is the assumption that any Orthodox Jew is a safe haven. I have also heard from a social services provider that there is a group of women visiting a bungalow colony in the Catskills this summer to raise awareness among the mothers there.
Maybe these “culturally sensitive” attempts from within the community will help. Ari Mandel, the activist, is cautiously optimistic that attitudes are changing as more and more victims speak up. And critically, more and more victims who step forward are believed by community members. Ultimately, the sexual abuse scandals and widespread use of the Internet are challenging the moral authority of ultra-Orthodox leadership, which has relied on hierarchy, silence and sometimes secrecy to fortify the gates around their communities. Those gates, never impermeable, have even more openings for the ongoing cultural and political exchanges between ultra-orthodox communities and everyone else. There are clearly changes on the horizon. And I’ve concluded that writing about these changes from a historical and cultural perspective is not, in the end, a form of moral cowardice. I believe it is my moral obligation.
Ayala Fader is a cultural and linguistic anthropologist who teaches at Fordham University’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology. She is the author of Mitzvah Girls: Bringing Up the Next Generation of Hasidi Jews in Brooklyn.
Editor's Pick: This article is cross-posted from The Revealer, a publication of The Center for Religion and Media at New York University.
Bob Vander Plaats and others make declarations about “God’s law” when speaking about the Constitution. He and others rewrite history to their own political benefit stating that our founders established the United States as a “Christian Nation.” Enough is enough. Iowans must demand higher standards for candidates and public officials.Why do the financial and political objectives of organizations like The Family Leader go unexamined by media? And what is it about candidates’ religious conviction that makes interviewers and voters so reticent to ask more questions? Does the Constitutional promise of religious freedom not prohibit politicians from legislating according to their personal belief? And what lessons should Iowa teach the rest of us? I have interviewed Ryan Terrell several times over the last couple years, specifically to talk about the political involvement of The Family leader in Iowa. After her op-ed I to reached out again to find out how Iowans and Americans can “demand higher standards” of public officials–and maybe in the process force a shift in the public conversation and resulting media coverage. Below is an excerpt from our email interview. Andy Kopsa: I would really like to ask candidates how they would legislate their personal beliefs for their diverse constituents. For instance, Christians whose specific beliefs are not held by all. Reporters aren’t asking these questions. Are they off limits? Connie Ryan Terrell: Asking any candidate for elected office what role their faith or values will play in creating public policy or making appointments is the purview of the public. It is in the public’s best interest to understand that relationship. On a related note, it is always appropriate to ask a candidate how they would deal with a situation when the tenets of their religion come into conflict with the Constitution or a public policy. What would hold the highest priority? Would they be able to uphold the Constitution, setting aside their religious beliefs? Other questions could include: How would your values help you formulate public policy that promotes the common good? What are your views on maintaining a boundary between religion and government? What steps will you take to protect the rights of your constituents regardless of their faith or beliefs? Do you believe religion or religious language should ever be used for political gain? What are the standards you set for yourself to ensure that you guard against it? AK: Local and national news outlets have cautioned that Iowa is cruising toward irrelevance as the first caucus-holder in the nation because TFL and others’ extreme beliefs are controlling the political narrative. Do you find this to be the case? And if so, could this actually be an opportunity to shift how we address religion in politics, both in Iowa and nationally? CRT: I’m probably a little jaded on this but I think the media helped to create this situation and then the blame is placed solely at the feet of Iowans. Look at the number of Google Alerts for Vander Plaats as opposed to the attention given to moderates or progressives, religious or not. Let’s remember, the religious right is still a minority, even in Iowa. However, media attention leans heavily toward the conservative message and events. Why? Because that message creates fun, sensationalized and sometimes even crazy headlines. The moderates and even the progressives are much less exciting and certainly not nearly so entertaining. There is little effort on the part of the media to provide balance for the public, in Iowa or nationally. The moderate and traditional Republicans aren’t interested in the extreme, tea party candidates. This places them in a bind since all we are seeing in Iowa are the ultra-conservative folks. The GOP needs to do a better job in attracting the moderate candidates to our state so there is a balance in the message and opportunity for moderates to explore the policy positions of the candidates that match their values and that they would consider viable. AK: Maggie Gallagher of The National Organization for Marriage appeared on PBS’ The News Hour to decry the legalization of same-sex marriage in New York. During her conversation with the host, she declared that the marriage battle is just getting started. She briefly referenced Iowa as part of that fight. While Iowa has marriage equality, it is clear that TFL and others are pushing for an amendment. What could Maggie Gallagher be hinting at? CRT: It is our understanding that Focus on the Family, NOM (National Organization for Marriage), AFA (American Family Association) and more are fully financing Vander Plaats and his efforts. Certainly national money is being leveraged and spent for a flurry of Caucus-related activities that promote TFL and Bob, including the bus tour hosting most of the extremist candidates along the way. Without a doubt Bob will continue his attacks on the current and future civil marriages of families who are just trying to live their lives as anyone else would. He will undoubtedly continue to receive the lion’s share of his financing from out of state extremist organizations who want to destroy those marriages for their own personal religious reasons, even though their attacks have no basis in the Constitution or the law. It is simply a misuse of religion and power. Most Iowans are fair-minded and respect our Constitution, which in the end will keep civil marriage for all families firmly in place. Note: Iowa Family Policy Center AKA The Family Leader has been generously funded by NOM, AFA and The Family Research Council in the past AK: What counter measures is Interfaith Iowa planning for the eventual dumping of big money into Iowa from out-of-state anti-gay organizations? CRT: Interfaith Alliance of Iowa is a founding member of Justice Not Politics and I serve as the Board Chair. Justice Not Politics is the lead organization in Iowa to educate the public on the role of the court, the judicial retention process and the critical need for judicial independence. Justice Not Politics, with all of its supporters and coalition partners, will take an active role throughout this year and next in providing that necessary education to successfully defend the courts. In addition, Interfaith Alliance of Iowa will continue to broaden our network across the state to engage and empower progressive people of faith and goodwill to help us protect religious freedom, sustain equality for all Iowans, and promote civility in our state. It is through these grassroots efforts that we will be successful on all fronts. AK: I am continually amazed that the media gives Bob Vander Plaats a pass on his arguably extreme religious views as well as his misrepresentation of fact. How can the media hold candidates and kingmakers to a higher standard? How do you and Interfaith Iowa plan to do the same? CRT: The public and media need to more vigorously question public figures and candidates when they make broad, general statements or statements of fact. If broad or general, ask the candidate to elaborate and to give examples. If it is a statement of fact, ask them for a reference of proof. If they hold themselves up as an expert or scholar (e.g. historian; theologian), ask them if they are indeed an expert or scholar or if the statement is just their personal opinion. Making statements as if they are fact does not make it so. Regarding higher standards, I was challenging the public specifically to hold candidates to higher standards in regard to respecting the religious beliefs and religious freedom of every American. We as a public must demand that respect from our candidates and our elected officials. We must call them on it when they step over a line. We must ask them questions that help us understand their commitment to religious freedom. We must be actively involved in the fate of our own democracy. I was at my optometrist’s office the other day. I got into a conversation with two of the office staff who both said neither had ever voted. Ever! They had lots of opinions about politics but they had never voted. My assumption was if they never took seriously their right to vote then most likely they had also never taken seriously their responsibility to be an informed voter. I gently urged them to do both. Religious freedom is arguably the most important right necessary to maintain a healthy democracy. The electorate must take this right and the associated responsibilities seriously. Our elected officials and candidates must honor the religious freedom of every American and work tirelessly to defend it at every corner. The health of our democracy, to state it simply, is at stake. Andy Kopsa is a freelance writer based in New York City. She has written for The Washington Independent and AlterNet. As a native Iowan and former Iowa newspaper editor, Andy writes frequently for the Iowa Independent. For more on The Family Leader’s marriage pledge, read here, here, here, here and here. Reposted from The Revealer, a daily review of religion and media.
Section 1233 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) died a first death in the summer of 2009 in the debate over healthcare reform, during which healthcare opponents characterized the provision as a call for government-run "death panels." Former Lieutenant Governor of New York State Betsy McCaughey, who consulted with Philip Morris while working on the hit piece against the Clinton healthcare plan "No Exit," coined the "death panel" moniker; Sarah Palin popularized it. Then John Boehner, at the time the House minority leader, claimed that the provision would lead the country down "a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia." Fox & Friends repeated the "death panel" meme dozens of times, and soon, the provision was stripped from the healthcare bill. But last November, the Obama administration quietly inserted it into Medicare's annual regulations—after the customary public review period. The New York Times's Robert Pear broke the news on Christmas Day that end-of-life counseling was to be covered by Medicare. Immediately, right-wing think tanks, some with legal cases against the healthcare bill, leveraged the "death panel" rhetoric to bolster their arguments. While "prolife" blogs spread the news alongside accusations that the regulation would further endanger the "sanctity of life," much of mainstream media pushed back at reemergence of what Politifact called "the biggest lie of 2009." On Fox, guest host Tucker Carlson said that the regulation would convince Americans to "forego aggressive life-sustaining treatment," but was challenged by another correspondent. Nonetheless, the Obama administration, blaming procedural irregularities, dropped the regulation only three days after it went into effect, but it's clear political considerations played a role.
Opponents of the healthcare bill got the White House running scared by spreading the "death panel" meme from conservative legal groups to Fox to right-wing blogs and back again, both after the Affordable Care Act passed and after Christmas. But they weren't building a messaging chain from scratch. Instead, they worked the same network that has been mobilized since the 1970s to fight legal abortion. For the past decade, those same religious organizations have begun working to limit treatment choices for those facing the end of their lives, a development that increasingly impedes meaningful healthcare, and resigns countless elders—including millions of aging Baby Boomers—to "healthcare" that does little for, or even damage to, their quality of life.
A host of anti-abortion groups denounced the end of life counseling regulation, including Operation Rescue's Troy Newman and Janice Crouse of the Beverly LaHaye Institute at Concerned Women for America. Family Research Council's director of Congressional affairs, David Christensen, told The Christian Science Monitor, "We're concerned this [the regulation] could be misused, especially in a state like Oregon that sees mercy killing as a legitimate medical service." Three days after Pear's story, Mathew Staver, chairman of Liberty University's Liberty Counsel, a conservative legal organization (think "Choose Life" license plates case), said, "When you remove the sanctity of life from the equation and place health care under the control of government bureaucrats, you end up with increased costs, decreased care, and death panels." Judie Brown, the president of American Life League, gave a succinct summary of the "prolife" conflation of end of life care with abortion: "Nothing good can come of this. This will affect everybody's parents and grandparents and preborn babies, and it will not affect anybody for the good."
About 80 percent of Americans wish to die at home, yet 80 percent die in institutions, because the default mode of medical care in the United States is to "do everything," as Thaddeus Pope, law professor at Widener University, describes it. For the past fifty years, medicine has focused on curing illnesses and ailments but not on guiding patients through the dying process. So terminal patients are now frequently given rounds of treatment long after they've been found ineffective simply because doctors fear "giving up." Aggressive intervention enables doctors and patients to deny the inevitability of death and prevents them from planning for the process of dying.
Particularly for patients over 65, aggressive treatment and their side effects can be more debilitating than what they're intended to cure. From CPR (reliable statistics don't exist, but most studies suggest the procedure saves lives less than a quarter of the times it is performed—and often breaks bones) to artificial nutrition and hydration (which employs a stomach tube for feeding even though loss of hunger and the inability to ingest are natural symptoms of the dying process), treatments that don't actually improve patients' lives but provide a significant revenue to doctors, hospitals and medical manufacturers are common practice in our medical system. Yet patients often don't know that they can refuse treatments or decide where to die. Providing insurance coverage for discussions about end-of-life care would help restore choice to those facing a path of unwanted treatment and would reduce the cost of healthcare. It's a win-win prospect, but that's the rub: Republicans and their "prolife" allies have characterized any attempts to reform "aggressive care" as cost-cutting attacks on the most vulnerable.
The terms themselves are confusing. "End-of-life care" is often referred to as advance care planning, the process by which a patient talks to their doctor and family about how they wish to die and decides which medical interventions, like CPR, they do or do not want. The advance care planning the Obama administration attempted to include in Medicare is entirely distinct from Death with Dignity (DWD), though both come from a commitment to patient choice and autonomy. State "Death with Dignity" laws allow a patient who has been diagnosed with less than six months to live to ask for lethal medicine from a doctor who cannot be prosecuted. In the United States proponents prefer the terms DWD or aid in dying, while opponents refer to "euthanasia." Advocates for the availability of good end-of-life care and advance care planning—there is no umbrella term—argue that patients have a right to be fully informed of care options and to accept or deny treatments. End of life counseling simply involves informing patients of their care options (which, if the patient lives in Oregon, Washington or Montana includes Death with Dignity) and helping them to plan accordingly. Since the death of Terri Schiavo in 2005, antichoice groups, the Catholic Churchand their denominational and legal allies have raised alarm about "euthanasia" on their well-organized and -funded platform.
At the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation annual meeting in 2009, Bobby Schindler, brother of Terri Schiavo and head of the Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation (recently renamed the Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network), spoke alongside other anti-abortion luminaries like former Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline. Schindler has styled himself as an advocate for the disabled, reflecting a trend among "prolife" groups who have expanded their definition of "innocent life" to include the disabled, elders, the dying, as well as the "unborn" (or "pre-born," as anti-abortion groups have begun to say). "Saying Terri was in a Persistent Vegetative State [a medical diagnosis for minimal or no brain function] was dehumanizing," Schindler told the crowd, "like not using baby for the unborn. We've been primarily concerned with abortion but how many are being killed on a daily basis by euthanasia?"
The Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation is far from the only antichoice group now also fighting patients' choice at the end of life. The National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) has taken up opposition to health care reform and advance care planning with abandon; their Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics, named for the disabled early vice president of NRLC, "serves as NRLC's arm in fighting to protect the vulnerable born from both direct killing and denial of lifesaving medical treatment, food and fluids." They've maintained a blog about end-of-life issues and healthcare reform since June of 2009. These groups have long held that the legalization of abortion has cheapened the value of life; in their eyes Death with Dignity does the same, and legitimizes their fear that the United States is on a "slippery slope" toward state-sanctioned killing of "innocent life" among us.
A collective American reticence to frankly discuss death enables organizations like the Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network and NRLC to misinform the public about existing government programs like hospice, Medicare and other legal tools for the elderly, like advanced directives and medical proxies, which can provide more control over how they age and die. Combined with a paternalistic medical profession that's only recently begun training new doctors on how to talk to patients about how to plan their end-of-life care and a Republican party dependent on the support of antichoice groups, "pro-life" groups have been able to fundamentally shape state and federal legislation.
Of course, even in the absence of this regulation, doctors and patients will continue to initiate conversations about end-of-life care—but not frequently enough to save uninformed seniors and terminal patients from painful and pointless treatments they don't want. And not often enough to stem the crisis in healthcare financing aging Baby Boomers will bring.
When advocates of the Stupak-Pitts amendment to severely restrict abortion coverage took healthcare reform hostage, advocates for women's health were reminded of the outsized ability "prolife" groups have to determine healthcare policy. The defeat of increased funding for end of life care should serve as a warning to all those concerned about autonomy over their own healthcare choices.
Alex Grey's Painting
Alex Grey's Dr. Albert Hoffman
Alex Grey's Carbon Jesus
Alex Grey's Oversoul
Trying to provide a parallel to the pseudo-logic of Islamophobia is a challenge. Here is but a vain attempt from American history: fear of the Japanese during World War II. Many differences are immediately apparent. The United States was actually at war with Japan (it is not at war with Islam), Japan is a nation rather than a highly disparate group of religious practitioners, and the war was being fought in good part through conventional tactics. Even so, the widespread fear of a fifth column had horrendous consequences for freedom in America. The American government, under an Executive Order from the Roosevelt Administration, rounded up and interned more than 120,000 American citizens in guarded camps, even though few if any had even considered undermining American war efforts. Their lives were tossed into disarray, undermining the American dream they immigrated for and the Constitutional values for which their brothers in arms were fighting overseas.
As a country that has long prided itself on representing a superior national enterprise, we must learn from our past. We have not yet taken unconscionable measures against our Muslim citizens and must avoid doing so at all costs. As our history indicates, our Constitutional values may well be at stake when we fear and single out an American community.
Currently, we see Islamophobes and fear-mongers inching us toward unthinkable violations of religious freedom. In America, the overwhelming majority of Muslims are peace-loving and loyal citizens. Their mosques and community centers reflect this outlook. Yet when civic leaders in New York recently went public with their hope to transform the former Burlington Coat Factory building into a Muslim community center, they were tarred and feathered for “radicalism.” Their proposed Park51 center was mislabeled the “Ground Zero Mosque” and the center’s visionaries, Daisy Khan and Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, were labeled terrorist sympathizers. Both condemn terrorism and have worked tirelessly for decades to prevent it through interfaith collaboration and dialogue. Rauf even partnered with the George W. Bush administration to work for Middle East peace. Moreover, the movie theaters, swimming pools, dining areas and conference centers they propose are hardly radical. Only through conflation, distortion, and fear could we become so afraid of a mere recreation center.
Some say that the notion of a “mosque” near the hallowed site of Ground Zero is insensitive. That position might seem consistent but for three things: the proposed Muslim community center is out of sight from Ground Zero, other houses of worship have not been barred from the area, and little (negative) attention has been paid to the strip clubs in the neighborhood. When strip clubs are prioritized over a place for people to talk, socialize, and pray, it seems clear that fear is at play. Better a known vice, the fear-mongers imply, than a less understood religion.
Cost of this fear is tremendous. Protests against Park51 have metastasized into a national movement against the establishment of mosques. Fighting the construction of mosques has lead to even more outrageous threats – and plans by one extremist church in Florida to burn copies of the Quran on the ninth anniversary of 9/11. Even some local and national politicians have joined in the chorus of fright. Long-term solutions to terrorism are far more complicated than short-term political gain; it is easier to unite constituents against a phantasm than for a purpose. Fear of the unknown has spiraled out of control, targeting Sharia, places of worship, and now even Scripture. The fear is feeding on itself, and starting to consume the essence of religion in America: freedom. The Founding Fathers knew that when one house of worship is endangered, none of them are safe; when a Torah is burned, a Bible may be next; when one kind of religious law is defamed, theologies of all kinds may become subjected to hate.
It would seem that in the name of preserving American values – supposedly against terrorism – we have come to actually compromise those same values. Freedom cannot be preserved through its own debasement. Singling out Muslim Americans, much as with prejudice against Jewish Americans and Catholic Americans before them, will prove to be wrong. The question is how much damage will be done before the fear subsides.
Impeding the construction of Park51 actually strengthens radicals. Daisy Khan and Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf have more than proven their love of America and desire for peace. If anything, the Park51 community center they envision will revitalize the neighborhood still recovering from the 9/11 attacks. It will be a sign from moderate Muslims that they stand with all Americans in the process of rebuilding – and mourning – the devastation.
In fact, the only true beneficiaries of Islamophobia are the terrorist organizations that want to show that America is not actually free, that Muslims will never be welcome here. Terrorism is both a cause and a product of fear; Islamophobes amplify the voices of extremists and create polarities that need never exist.
Rather than unwittingly aiding extremists, Americans should return to their core values, namely the profound belief in religious freedom. It is what the Pilgrims came to the New World for and what the Founders fought for during the Revolutionary War. As the great patriot Thomas Paine proclaimed, “I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow creatures happy.” That is a credo to which all Americans of faith can ascribe, so long as they do not succumb to fear.
Joshua Stanton, is co-Director of Religious Freedom USA and a Founding Editor-in-Chief of theJournal of Inter-Religious Dialogue™. A Schusterman Rabbinical Fellow at Hebrew Union College, he is the recipient of numerous leadership awards. He is also a blogger for the Huffington Post and serves on the Board of Directors of World Faith, as well as the Education as Transformation project.
This article is cross posted from The Revealer, a publication of NYU's Center for Religion and Media, and is part of an ongoing series about Shari'ah.
Afghani schoolgirl
A church down in Gainesville is planning to hold an "International Burn A Quran Day" on 9/11, part of its larger "Islam is of the Devil" campaign. The pastor talks about the point of the event in an interview with the Friendly Atheist: Do you think Muslims will turn to Christ as a result of this? This is our prayer and desire that they would seriously reexamine their religion. They will then come to the conclusion that Islam is of the devil and Christianity is the only true religion. … Have any of the media reports of this event portrayed you unfairly or inaccurately? Would you like to set the record straight on any particular issue? We have been accused of being racist. We are not attacking a race. In other words, we are not attacking the Moslem. We love the Moslems and hope that they would come to true salvation. What we are attacking is Islam, the religion, and Sharia law, the political system. This leads Cathy Lynn Grossman at USAToday's Faith and Reason blog to ask, "Is it evangelism?"* It is, of a sort. It's not the kind of polite hey-we-actually-have-more-seats-than-butts-to-fill-them campaigns most people are used to from mainline Protestants or Catholics. Nor is it the high-pressure sales jobs often depicted in the media. In fact, it may not even be directed at Muslims, despite what the good pastor says. It reminds me of nothing so much as the enormous signs and newspaper ads that have been popping up lately, plumping for a Tea Party rally in the county park. At first, this struck me as rather odd. We live in rural Washington County, Wisconsin, after all. It's F. James Sensenbrenner's district, one of the most Republican areas in the entire state. So why would you need to declare—using plenty of caps and bold face—the strength of conservatism in a burnt-over mission field? For the same reason some churches burn the Quran. If you sit with these events long enough, if you listen behind the violence of their expressed intentions, it begins to resemble a Fletcher Hanks comic book. You start to hear the cry of sad and angry little men, shaking their impotent fists at a world changing without their consent. "International Burn a Quran Day" isn't about the truth of Jesus Christ. It isn't about converting heathens. It's about gathering together an anxiety-ridden remnant to protest the power of Christendom melting away like an ice cube on a hot August sidewalk. If there is to be a conversion, then, it will be a movement of "weak" Christians to "strong" ones, believers who burn with the spirit of over-againstness. It isn't exactly a good news kind of evangelism, but there it is. *At least she did. An updated (and renamed) version of the same post shows how the political and religious worlds grow together, with the Lieutenant Governor of Tennessee questioning if Islam might not be a "cult" and therefore not deserving of First Amendment protections. I don't know what's worse: that a politician would try to ride that kind of bigotry into office, or that it might work. Daniel Schultz, a.k.a. pastordan, is a minister in the United Church of Christ. He serves a small and very patient church in rural Wisconsin. He is the author of Changing the Script: An Authentically Faithful and Authentically Progressive Political Theology for the 21st Century, forthcoming from Ig Press. Reposted from The Revealer, a daily review of religion & media.
In my interviews and survey of 3,000 fans, the majority express sometimes contradictory beliefs in the supernatural while asserting adherence to traditional religious institutions. Yet, while Twilight won’t replace organized religion, it reflects a longing for sacred and extraordinary experiences in everyday life that are perhaps missing in traditional religious venues. In pilgrimages to Forks, Washington, the setting for the books (in July 2009 alone, 16,000 fans trekked to Forks like supplicants at a holy site, more than the total number of visitors in 2008), fans indulge the fantasy that a supernatural world exists alongside our own, searching for vampires in the woods and lingering outside the re-imagined home of Bella. Rather than fueling interest in vampirism, a concern among some Christian critics of the books, the series provides what Laderman calls “myths that provide profound and practical fulfillment in a chaotic and unfulfilling world.” It’s also impossible to separate these moments of spiritual enchantment from the Twilight franchise, which ceaselessly offers consumption to women and girls as a way to retain the feelings of belonging, romance and enchantment. There are Edward and Bella Barbie dolls, lip venom, calendars, video games, graphic novels, and fangs cleverly promoted and eagerly purchased at conventions and online stores. Yet, the shrines attest to the way fans also transform these objects into something personally vital within the messy entanglements of commerce and enchantment.
At a recent screening of Eclipse, a man proposed to his girlfriend on bended knee in front of the theatre audience, and then they rejoined the cheering crowd to watch the film.
Currently, a replica of Bella’s engagement ring, which Edward bestows upon her in Eclipse, is one of the most popular items for fans to purchase, providing another way for the romantic narrative of the film to cross into regular life. The vision of romance offered by Eclipse and encapsulated by the ring is almost supernatural and otherworldly to most girls and women who encounter the failure of marriage as a romantic institution and the schizophrenia of messages about sexuality from “Girls Gone Wild” to “True Love Waits.” Into this bewildering mix, Twilight offers a fictional mirage of romance and enchantment. First, there are the scenes in Eclipse where Edward insists on preserving Bella’s virtue before marriage. Bella is assured of eternity with the person she loves because unlike humans, vampires’ emotions are not fickle and transient. She will remain in the form of a lithe teenage girl without the creeping malaise of middle-age, disillusionment, and financial strain that accompanies marriage over time. Edward explains how in his time, he would have asked permission to court Bella, stealing kisses with her while drinking lemonade on the front porch. It’s a vision of romance and relationships far removed from the daily life of most fans, but in the immediacy of watching the film, it seems anything might be possible. You might even receive a marriage proposal in the movie theatre.
