To be or not to be Jewish, lesbian, feminist

[Resistance]

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/379793.html

Prof. Judith Butler, professor of Comparative Literature and Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley, is visiting Israel this week. Butler is an unusual figure in academia. On the one hand, she is a celebrity who has a community of followers and who exudes charisma. Groups of followers sometimes line up for her lectures, as though she were a rock star; and her major influence on feminism at the start of the 21st century is widely noted. On the other hand, many persons outside of feminist academia have never heard of her; nor have they come across her ideas, or been influenced by them.

A political position which has motivated her of late, she says, is that of a Jewish woman who opposes Israel's conquest in the territories. Though she will speak tomorrow in Tel Aviv on gender, the field in which she has made her mark, what has brought her to Israel is her criticism of Zionism.

"I grew up in a very Zionist family, in Cleveland," she recalls. "My mother, Lois, was active in the American Jewish Committee. I always respected her activity, but I always understood that there is a reality for Israelis, and more so for Palestinians, that has not been addressed. Layers of reality in which Israelis and Palestinians live have never been addressed in synagogues of the Reform movement, within which I was educated. They didn't speak about violence and oppression and humiliation. I developed my own criticism of Israel, and also at the same time a strong Jewish identity."