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Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz

87 quotes

“That I am lesbian is my usual awareness. My close people are almost all lesbians, mostly not Jewish. I live in Santa Fe, among gentiles; and though I am lonely for Jews, I don't go to shul, and never did; and don't pray, or even know the prayers. I think Israel a boiling contradiction; and besides, they don't give queers citizenship. But the rise of Klan activity, Reagan and his white-on-white cabinet, synagogues bombed in France, have me in a sweat. Dreams of the camps. I need to know the network I may be forced to count on. I want to know the tradition, what binds us besides danger.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Liberals and pacifists often challenge the notion of "one's own people." Liberals "don't like labels"; pacifists say, "face your enemy with love." Both say, "people are people." I think Jews are haunted-intelligently so-by spectres of cattle cars packed to the top with our people. Some of who I am roots in the knowledge, as early as I can remember: there are people who did not want us to exist-millions of them. For these people, there is no love. It's easy for me to think in terms of "my people" and "our enemies.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Jewishness is a leitmotif in and out of my brain; not the main theme.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“think about asking every Jew you know: what was your name?”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“gentiles persecuted the Jews for thousands of years before the Nazis got efficient at it”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As Jewish women and Jewish lesbians, we need to reclaim words like pushy/loud/politico/power trippy/cheap/dominating/garish/sexy/emotional/always screaming/bossy/scary temper/difficult style/(and, of course) Jewish mother/(and) Jewish princess...I want a button that says Pushy Jew. Loud Pushy Jew, Loud Pushy Jew Dyke.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“1980. I recognized in Reagan's election that the liberalism I had for years seen as the real danger was being superseded, that the right was gaining power, with all its Jew-hating, racist, sexist, homophobic capitalist thrust. At the same time the anti-Semitism I was encountering in the women's movement and on the left hurt me more, not because it was more threatening but because the feminist left was where I needed to be: this added to my sense of isolation as a Jew.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“the more outside of a Jewish ambiance I was, the more conscious I became of Jewishness.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Why have so many radicals been impermeable to a pro-Jewish analysis and activity? Why are we getting the message that many of our erstwhile political comrades and sisters-including Jews-think it contradictory to be a radical Jew?”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“not only does Jewish oppression elude conventional categories, Jewish stereotypes prove that anti-Semitism does not exist. Jews are rich, powerful, privileged, control the media, the schools, the business world, international banking: the Zionist conspiracy rides again. How could such powerhouses ever be in trouble? These stereotypes, I've realized, prevent recognition of how we are threatened or demeaned as Jews.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“By speaking about anti-Semitism, Jewish women unsettle an unspoken equation in the radical women's movement: in a society like ours, deeply racist and absurdly pretending to classlessness, class comes to be seen as identical to race. People of color are considered the same as working and poor people.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Identity politics of all kinds do contain an inherent potential not only for victim-competition but for splintering movements into 1000 groups whose members at last feel sufficiently the same: comfy but not a powerful resource.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“anti-Semitism has sometimes masqueraded as a disdain for identity politics.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Literally, who will stick up for me if I don't respect myself enough to stand up for myself, if I can't articulate my own concerns so that others understand and care about them? Here is our beginning. Have we been for ourselves sufficiently already? Do we even know who ourselves are?”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For some Jews, "passing" seems a choice; for others, passing means total denial and pain; for still others, passing is something they do without even thinking, and for still others, passing -as white/American/normal- is impossible. Some Jews have never felt a moment of Jewish fear; others smell it daily.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“the nature of the Jewish people on the face of this earth has been totally transformed in the past 45 years”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Anyone who has heard-as I have-Jew-hating remarks said to her face because to the speaker she didn't look Jewish knows both the survival value and the knife twist of passing.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Particularly for those of us who are not religiously observant, much confusion attends our grasping - through anti-Semitism and often prodded by anti-Semitism - for something beyond common danger. We need to figure out how to undo assimilation without being nostalgic or xenophobic: how to reach in and out at the same time.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The way Jews have been met with "not you too," the way anti-Semitism becomes the one issue too many, suggest that many white women are angry and resistant to dealing with racism but are too frightened to express that anger openly; suggest further how little our movement has taught us to see struggles against racism as life-giving, nourishing; as our own.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“'the white man's burden' was a polite name for imperialism.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Solidarity requires the bonding together of a people engaged in common struggle. But solidarity also means standing alongside another struggle, not because you feel guilty but because you recognize it as your own; it means using what you have on behalf of the struggle.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Your privilege, insofar as it divides you from others, is in your way, unless you resolve how to use it for others, as well as for yourself.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“let me say something which in this (christian) culture may come as a surprise: what is best in people is not self-abnegation. What is best in people is a sturdy connection between respect for the self and respect for the other: reaching in and out at the same time”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We have to recognize that Jews are relatively well-off economically compared with most people of color in this country, as with the rural white poor; and that Jews endure about the same level of poverty as other ethnic groups who immigrated around the same time. Our job is to untangle class hostility from anti-Semitism, not to pretend the Jewish people still works in the sweatshop.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The attitude that claims we-of any group- are essentially victims and so can't be charged with our behavior is destructive to all of us.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“True coalition is not a smattering of tokens. True coalition forms between groups, the premise is that each group has a strong base in a larger community. Thus Jews who want to work in coalition need not only to know who we are but to be bonded with other Jews.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We must want equality, and we must grasp that equality does not coexist with class structure.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We forget that people can change, including our own people; including ourselves.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We know that while nothing guarantees allies, callousness guarantees callousness.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Perhaps we need to engage, even in uncertainty, and work out issues as they arise...If we could start working together before we trust, understand, or like each other, we might learn to.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“However difficult, weary, or frightening, there is only one way to go: forward. But singing.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When we are scapegoated we are most conscious of how we feel humiliated, alienated, and endangered. But the other function of scapegoating is at least as pernicious. Scapegoating protects the source of the problem we are being scapegoated for, the vicious system of profit and exploitation, of plenty and scarcity existing side by side.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“just as a racist remark by Jackie Mason does not reveal the inherent racism of all Jews, let us not assume that an anti-Semitic remark by Leonard Jeffries, or by ten Leonard Jeffries, reveals the heart of the African American community. We need to recognize the destructive role played by the media in fanning the flames of the "Black-Jewish Conflict.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What I think we must keep poised in response to our knowledge that communism as practiced has failed; so has capitalism.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This desire to identify with whiteness, as well as bigotry and fear, blocks solidarity.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“one task in creating a culture is to reclaim what one ought to have learned but that somehow went by and was lost.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As long as we cherish the creativity of ordinary women and value what women themselves have valued, we center exactly on the passionately egalitarian vision named in "women's liberation.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“we should recognize that to the extent that lesbian culture represents the experience, insights, values, and interests of most lesbians, it will have a combative relationship to the dominant culture-as long as in that culture, lesbians are oppressed. Rubyfruit Jungle doesn't alter this oppression. Lesbian culture, for it to belong to and represent most lesbians, will be pro-woman, pro-working people, and multiracial. This means that a genuine culture of lesbians will always be in danger of repression, co-optation, and absorption, until such time as lesbians have control of our lives.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It's simple. If I teach everyone to talk, future generations will not find a woman's Brooklyn Jewish accent unpoetic or comic. But if British aristocrats-or even William Carlos Williams and Allen Ginsberg-prime our poetic sensibilities, my voice will never sound classic.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“one way to expand protection for sexual freedom is to assert this freedom. If our developing culture does support sexual honesty, then perhaps explicitly sexual art and literature will replace exclusively floral interpretations of our cunts.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“things are in motion. Grace Paley has said, when people stand up, other people discover they've got legs. While there are limits to this kind of analogy (not everyone can stand, or has legs for that matter), the motion is unmistakeable.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What we are beginning to see glimmers of, and what we must see operating in full force if there is to be a human future-not to be melodramatic, but given the level of environmental disaster, this is our last best shot-is more and more unity across our differences.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Keeping balance means being very open to change, especially in a time like now when the ground is shifting. It does not mean digging in your heels.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I think we are entering a time when we need inspiration and vision. We need fresh voices. This means we need people to feel that what they have to say is welcomed, not that they're going to get dumped on the second they open their mouths. We need to create a sense of permission.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We need a new level of sustained activism-not only symbolic action. There have been too many marches where we get a permit and go home afterwards. What is significant about marches is the promise they offer, a promise of trouble, and it is time to live up to those promises.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Are we so attached to structures developed years ago as to believe that these are the only structures in which our organizations can function?”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Progressive Jewishness is about that strand of Jewish tradition which heads toward justice. It must include all the other liberation struggles. Its root is compassion; its assumption, that domination is not only wrong but unnecessary. Progressive Jewishness approaches the world with an ethical imperative and a Marxist slant on constant transformation. Always something needs doing. The world is not a fixed entity but constantly changing, and as progressive Jews our work is to help shape these changes.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sometimes I say this myself, like a mantra: WE ARE THE ONLY ADULTS. This enrages and frightens me. What it means to me is no one will do our work for us. No one can show us the way, or make good on our errors. If the Jewish people need spiritual and political redirection-and we do-if the planet needs saving, and the U.S. needs to spin on its axis, we'd better get busy. No one will do it for us.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The more the Israeli and Palestinian movements come into communication and coordination, the more possible peace seems. (p 110)”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I've been to Palestine. It exists, right next to Israel. The problem is not that Palestine threatens or erases Israel. The problem is that there are Israeli soldiers all over Palestine. (p 172)”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source