Emma Barnett Quotes

Anger at my father and the mess he had got himself into. Anger at the situation and anger that something I had no control over was threatening to control me. When your life implodes, either by your own doing or someone else’s, everything slows down. And I found myself presented at a young age with a stark choice: do I let myself be destroyed by a suffocating shame?

Non-Jewish friends, colleagues and Wikipedia contributors alike, have mistakenly thought of me or described me as an Orthodox Jew. It is true I grew up with that, and it was the form of Judaism showcased to me on infrequent synagogue visits, but it does not, and never has, described my liberal and largely secular life.

My grandmother escaped the Nazis from Wiener Neustadt in Austria and found sanctuary as a housemaid in this country. My husband's grandmother survived unspeakable torture in Auschwitz. In Europe. A two-hour flight from here. I've been. He won't. He can't bear to. Our grandmothers, who read us bedtime stories safe in our beds in this country, this happened to them – people I met and loved.
Only two weeks ago, I opened Twitter on my phone and saw "Jewish privilege" trending. Do you know how that feels? Do you how frightening that is? I have had my fair share of abuse online, much of it sexist or politically charged. But the one form of hate that always stops me in my tracks and makes me feel angry and sad and burned? Antisemitism.

Nearly 10 years ago, my father went to prison. I had just turned 23 and was heading home after a long day at work when my then boyfriend, now husband, rang me and delivered the news. I had known my dad was in trouble, but he kept his business life so separate, I didn’t even know he was going to court the day he ended up being imprisoned for living off immoral earnings.

During that first meeting it became clear that this wasn't a party with a long shelf life. In fact the WEP aimed to influence the political debate and then die a dignified and valiant death – gender equality accomplished. Fast forward seven months and the party has officially launched.

[The experience of a 24 year old sister of a friend] Just after finishing her master’s in economics, she started her first job at a City firm, full of ambition. But then she noticed something. There were no female board members – and all the way through the company there were far fewer women overall.
Rosie invited a large cross section of her female colleagues out to lunch at a local deli and pushed them on the matter. The response? Blank faces all round. None of them had “ever noticed” anything. An awkward silence ensued.
Rosie, not wanting to go overboard, dropped the issue. But, right at the end of the meal, the most senior woman present suddenly piped up. "I do sometimes wonder why all of the women who work here are so beautiful," she said.
No one knew how respond to another difficult truth: it seemed that looks had played a part in the men's hiring decisions. Rosie, bruised and bemused by the experience, has just let matters lie. She has rent to pay.

Not being able to reconcile my secular views with my religious ones is something I too, find hard to explain. Predominantly I struggle to feel comfortable with female rabbis because the Judaism that feels authentic to me is the Orthodox branch, which does everything it can to conserve and not change.
And that's what it comes down to: what part of your religion feels authentic to you – which is very hard to alter when it's been presented to you in a certain way since birth.

[S]ince the start of the latest conflict between Hamas and Israel, protesters marching in anti-Israel demonstrations have regularly held up anti-Semitic slogans, shouting for Jews to be gassed, invoking the Holocaust's chambers of doom. The situation in Britain hasn't been much better [than in France or Germany]. Last week's major pro-Palestine rally, which stopped London's traffic, was littered with placards comparing Israel's – and Jews' – actions to the Nazis ("Well done Israel – Hitler would be proud", read one such sign, accompanied by a swastika). This casual interchange of "Israel" for "Jews" is not just ignorant but often terrifying, especially when linked to references to past atrocities. Indeed, what other group of people get the worst experience in their – or anyone's – history launched at them like a hand grenade?

My experience of periods is extreme because of my endometriosis. But while most women don't have a specific condition, they still often feel grim at that time of the month, require painkillers, need to access the loo more often and may suffer headaches, backache, sweatier brows and the squits.

I personally found the first few months of motherhood discombobulating, knackering, joyous, emotional, frustrating and quite frankly odd.

[On suffering from endometriosis] My body's been such an instrument of torture.

The bogus presumptions about menstruating women are tragically not confined to the history books — namely that we are weak, dirty, unhinged, less than and just different. At the heart of this lingering stigma is the idea that we are unequal to our male counterparts. Women then ingest these views and appropriate them as our own, inflicting wounds on ourselves and other women — and girls — around us. And by keeping periods unmentionable, women become unwitting accomplices in perpetuating these myths.

[Barnett suffered a herniated disc four months after giving birth] I'd had a c-section and two and a half years of IVF and heavy steroids. I wasn't physically good going into the pregnancy or coming out of it. It was an unholy situation and one day I picked up my daughter and it went. It was agony trying to breastfeed, do the school run with my older son, hold my baby daughter through gritted teeth and put the car seat in. So I've also been doing months of physio, exercise and Pilates.

I know how to read Hebrew, but I've still got no idea what it means. I recognise certain tunes, but have no clue as to the order of the service. And while it would be easy to blame my seating arrangement, I'd still have very little idea of what was going on if my gender permitted me a ring side pew.
So I have flip-flopped my way to a few Reform services. And while hearing more passages read in English and regular page number announcements are a comfort, I find myself feeling similarly isolated there. Reform Judaism's ways feel foreign because they lack the familiar rhythms of the Orthodox Judaism I grew up with.
However, in Orthodox services I feel increasingly like an illiterate and ill-educated fool, suffering imposter syndrome.

British Jews aren't scared to talk to each other about the situation in Israel. We're becoming scared to talk at all.