Remembering Melanie – and I can’t believe she’s gone – I hardly know where to start.
We had the same book editor, Joan Pinkvoss at Aunt Lute Press, and Joan introduced me to Melanie around 1992, knowing we would connect. Of course we did! Soon after, Melanie wrote a blurb for my first book, Voices from A ‘Promised Land’: Palestinian & Israeli Peace Activists Speak Their Hearts. She was out there with other New York City Jewish Women Against the Occupation, way before it “fashionable.”
Then I was interviewing her on our community Pacifica radio station, KPFA, about her own books. Tribe of Dina gave me so many stories to relate to, and My Jewish Face resonated as well. But it was The Issue is Power that truly blew my mind and began expanding my thinking. Certain passages just left me in awe. My book copy is deeply underlined and a bit battered from use.
I remember in one interview how she talked about how crucial it was to work intergenerationally — and for us to honor younger activists, writers, scholars, artists. She said something like, “They have the fresh thinking and courage, we have certain kinds of experience — we need to use those together to create the most effect social change” (only of course her words were a bit more eloquent).
When I decided to write my doctoral dissertation on internalized anti-Semitism, I knew I had to have Melanie on my dissertation committee, where I got to learn so much more from her, especially about how to think with complexity: like whose voices are we hearing, and whose are getting left out? What is not being said here? How is anti-Semitism different in New York City and in Arkansas and in Oakland — and/or how are Jews perceived differently in each place? Her essay “Jews in the U.S.: The Rising Cost of Whiteness” continues to teach me so much.
And then there’s The Colors of Jews — a true classic that should have received much more public acclaim, but to this day is passed hand to hand for its brilliant analysis, out-of-the-box thinking, varied stories of Jews of color interwoven with Israel-Palestine, and her own personal experiences. Our Bay Area Women in Black group brought her to the Bay Area for a book reading event soon after the book came out.
Possibly more than anyone else, Melanie taught me how to think. She modeled for me being a lefty, feisty, Jewish lesbian feminist radical anti-racist voice, ally, activist, thinker, writer, teacher, doer. (And for her, bringing the working-class chutzpah to it all.) When I was writing my recent book, Hope into Practice: Jewish Women Choosing Justice Despite Our Fears — and I quote her and refer to her all the way through it — I would in my own way try to “channel” her voice. Not that I imagined myself as smart or as skilled a writer/thinker as she — but I would imagine how Melanie would frame or discuss something: succinctly, with humor, including the complexities. I can see her handwriting now, her face, hear her voice…
And I remember one time when she came to the Bay Area with her beloved Leslie. Just seeing their connection and joy together brought me joy.
Even though her presence is now gone from us, Melanie’s legacy is overwhelming and I’m betting/hoping it will influence generations to come. I feel so blessed to have been able to learn so much from her. May her memory be for a blessing.
—Penny Rosenwasser, Jewish Voice for Peace, Kehilla Synagogue