AJR Honors Dr. Phyllis Chesler
March 13, 2008, 10:19 pm |
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By Fern Sidman
Jewish Press Op-Ed contributor, Dr. Phyllis Chesler was the recipient of the 2008 Kehillah Award for Distinguished Public Service, bestowed upon her by The Academy For Jewish Religion at their gala dinner on Monday evening, March 10th. The resounding message of this year’s dinner was the call to continue to create an atmosphere of respect and unity amongst all branches of Judaism and was aptly entitled, “Embracing All Voices”. The dinner which took place at Manhattan’s elegant Harmonie Club was attended by several hundred people.
Also honored was Jane Dystel, a literary agent who grew up in the book publishing industry. She received the AJR Voices of Vision Award.
Phyllis Chesler is an emerita professor of Psychology and Women’s Studies at the City University of New York, a prolific author, psychotherapist and expert courtroom witness. Dr. Chesler has written 13 books, including her seminal work, Women and Madness and more recent books about anti-Semitism and Islamic gender apartheid. She is an affiliated professor with Haifa and Bar Ilan Universities in Israel and has lectured and organized political, legal, religious and human rights campaigns in the United States and throughout the Middle East and Far East.
Phyllis Chesler. Photo by Leonard Yakir - brooklynphotographer.com
In a statement published in the AJR dinner program, Dr. Chesler was being honored for “her enormous record of accomplishment and commitment in the fields of social and religious justice. She is a champion of righteousness on behalf of women and on behalf of the weak and underprivileged.” The Honorable Betty Weinberg Ellerin, recipient of last year’s distinguished service award introduced Dr. Chesler, calling her, “a larger than life presence on the activist scene” and one who” generates intellectual excitement” through her writings and oratory. She concluded by referring to Dr. Chesler as “a treasure to our people, our gender and our faith”.
Dr. Chesler departed from her prepared speech and delivered her remarks with the aplomb of a veteran academic, often bringing the audience to laughter in her folksy, extemporaneous manner. Dr. Chesler remarked that throughout the course of her life her work had been “attacked, slandered or censored” and she queried as why she was being honored by this distinguished institution. “What have I done wrong?” was her response when finding out that the AJR had decided to pay tribute to her and her work. Dr. Chesler, a Borough Park native, gave a biographical sketch of her life, paying homage to her parents and her ancestors for “having risked and sacrificed everything, so that one day, one of their descendants could stand here before you today.” Dr. Chesler’s passion and commitment to idealism and activism originated in her youth when she became an ardent Zionist. In the early 1950s, subsequent to the establishment of the modern State of Israel, Dr. Chesler would, “pack machine gun parts for Israel in a private home right across the street from the Young Israel of Borough Park”.
Dr. Chesler was part of the vanguard of the Second Wave feminist movement of the 1960s and confides that her “feminism was partly influenced by my Zionism; partly influenced by my own amazing experience in the early 1960s as a captive bride in Afghanistan”. She laments the fact that her former feminist friends have shunned her for exposing “anti-Semitism in the progressive movement” and tells of the “betrayal of America and Israel” by progressives. Dr. Chesler has worked tirelessly to spotlight the “tragic plight of women in the Islamic world” as well as documenting the horrors of Islamic religious apartheid. Dr. Chesler is most proud of her association with those who are seeking to create “a place for women in Judaism” and has been “learning Torah with Women of the Wall co-founder, Rivka Haut for 20 years.”
Dr. Chesler said that throughout her life she “kept evolving intellectually” and was always “engaged in ‘lech lechahing’, moving on, turning myself inside out.” With great insight and profundity she said, “This is not only Avraham’s (our forefather) lonely and visionary genious but is also the story of the Jewish people.”
Related: Judaism, Feminism