Is it weird that I haven’t gotten my period yet? How do I know if I’m attracted to boys or girls? What is an IUD? How do you put in a tampon? Does sex hurt?
These are just a few of the many questions that my friends and I, year after year, scrawled onto scraps of paper and dropped into the hat of one of our madrichim (camp counsellors) during each summer’s highly anticipated SOS: sicha (conversation) on sex. Every year that I attended Camp Miriam, a Jewish summer camp on Gabriola Island, one night of the session was devoted to a conversation about sex, bodies, relationships, and everything in between. These conversations were usually, though not always, divided by gender, with those who did not fit within the gender binary free to participate in whichever group they preferred. Huddled in our sleeping bags and freed from shame and embarrassment by the power of anonymity, we listened raptly as our madrichim attempted to answer our questions, addressing each with equal care and seriousness.
Looking back, there is much to criticize about recent high-school graduates with little to no sex education training having these kinds of conversations with campers. However, there was something valuable about hearing our madrichim—only a few years older than us and, in our eyes, the coolest people in the world—speak so openly about taboo topics. They created a safe, non-judgmental space where these topics were normalized and we could ask questions that we might not have felt comfortable asking a parent, teacher, or doctor. The formal sex education I received at school lacked this comfortable environment, so I always saved my questions for the summer.
These memories immediately came to mind when I learned that the majority of the founders of the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, the group that wrote the highly influential book Our Bodies, Ourselves, were Jewish. By attempting to demystify and destigmatize the female body, our madrichim were, perhaps unknowingly, carrying on the legacy of these Jewish women.
First published in 1970 as a course booklet titled Women and Their Bodies, Our Bodies, Ourselves emerged from frustration with the mistreatment of women in the medical system and the lack of accessible information about women’s health. During a workshop called “Women and Their Bodies,” held at Boston’s first Female Liberation Conference in May 1969, participants shared their anger over negative experiences with male doctors and the realization that they knew very little about their own bodies. The conversation inspired them to form a group dedicated to educating themselves and other women about their bodies, with a focus on reproductive health and sexuality. From this project, Our Bodies, Ourselves was born.
Although eight of the twelve founders of the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective were Jewish, the collective was not a Jewish organization. Nor is Our Bodies, Ourselves a Jewish book. However, the fact that the majority of the founding members of the collective were Jewish is significant to the history of Our Bodies, Ourselves. In her book, Jewish Radical Feminism: Voices from the Women’s Liberation Movement, Joyce Antler notes that “for all the Jewish women I interviewed, Jewish background was important as a motivator for personal activism” (163). While not explicitly framed as such, the Jewish values of education and tikkun olam (repairing the world) were central to the collective’s work. In the spirit of tikkun olam, they did not simply identify a problem in their society, but actively worked to rectify it. Recognizing that misogyny was embedded within the medical system, they sought to challenge medical authority and, through education, empower women to make informed decisions about their health.
Additionally, the way the collective continuously worked on new editions of Our Bodies, Ourselves in response to input from readers and shifting social and political realities is unmistakably Jewish. Antler writes, “[t]he founders of OBOS created one of the women’s liberation movement’s most enduring treatises, one that, like key texts of the Jewish tradition, derives its vitality from continuing discussion and revision.”
One of the things I love most about being Jewish is that we are taught to always ask questions. Both the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective and my madrichim at Camp Miriam embodied this value and combined it with tikkun olam, creating spaces for curiosity and learning that fulfilled needs left unmet by formal institutions. Thus, while neither Our Bodies, Ourselves nor SOS at Camp Miriam is religious in nature, I see both as profoundly and beautifully Jewish.
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