Happy Earth Day! … with a Jewish, liberationist twist
Art, liberation, ritual, the environment. For Jewish eco-feminist artist, Helene Aylon, these are the unifying elements of her life's work. In celebration of Earth Day, I've been re-exploring some of her ground-breaking work and realizing that we need more of it!
She writes: "In the 1980s, I tried to ‘rescue' the earth by putting earth from military sites into hundreds of pillowcases. Then I drove the pillowcases of earth to the UN in what I called 'The Earth Ambulance.' But it was also time to ‘rescue' G-d from the Patriarchy. So in 1990, I covered every page from the Five Books of Moses with transparent parchment, and, with a pink marker, I highlighted over words of misogyny and vengeance, cruelty and militarism, words attributed to G-d, and I highlighted between words where a female presence is omitted..."
Read Helene Aylon's full personal statement in Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution. Check out another Jewish environmental activist, Arlene Blum. She's a woman of many talents -- a pioneer in women's mountaineering, a chemist, and a passionate advocate for eliminating the use of hazardous chemicals in every-day consumer products. Click here to learn more.
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This is terrific. Did she publish work elsewhere?