Lilly Rivlin: A Passionate Presence

A Passionate Presence:
Lilly Rivlin Offers a Powerful Feminist Perspective

by Doug Chandler

Whenever Lilly Rivlin is asked about her background, she's proud to say she was born in Jerusalem, but often adds that she was born in "Palestine," an answer she knows irritates Israelis and Palestinians alike. Part of a large, well-known family whose presence in the Holy City dates back more than 10 generations, Rivlin does so for two reasons: "First of all, it's true." And, second, she wants her audience to know that Jews lived in the area long before Israel's creation, "and my family," she declares, "was part of that community."

For those who know her, this is pure Lilly: open, upfront and never afraid to speak what she considers the truth, no matter whose feathers she ruffles. Among the views she holds dear are a passionate belief in feminism, which she hopes will someday reverse an imbalance among those in power, and the Gandhian concept of non-violent resistance.

Rivlin does more than merely voice her opinions. As a leader of Meretz USA, where she has served on the board for eight years, she has made a conscious effort to recruit additional women, including Evelyn Gelman, Barbara Epstein and Phyllis Miriam, currently the organization's secretary. "And I wish I could bring in young women," says Rivlin, who, with Larry Lerner, was elected co-chair of the executive board in December. "If this article is an appeal to anything, it's to draw young women" to the group.

In a recent interview in her large, cozy studio at Westbeth, an artists' community in Greenwich Village, Rivlin traced her passion for social justice to her days in Habonim, the youth group affiliated with Israel's Labor-Zionist movement. Her commitment to feminism has other roots, linked, she said, to the things she observed in her own family.

Lilly and her parents, Julius Benjamin Rivlin and his wife, Bella, moved when she was eight to Washington, DC, where her father owned a grocery store and, later, a bar. But like many families, hers was also dysfunctional, Rivlin said, recalling how her father loved Bella and kept her alive in the final years of her life but was also "a philanderer - a womanizer - who had affairs all over the place." Long before her mother died, Rivlin is convinced, she was "done in," psychologically, by her father's behavior.

Years later, Rivlin's pride in her extended family, along with her sense that there might be a story to tell, provided the motivation for her first film, a documentary called "The Tribe." The film grew out of a reunion of the Rivlin family in the early 1980s at Binyunei Ha'uma, Jerusalem's convention center. As many as 2,500 members turned out, said Rivlin, who added that her family's history struck her as a "microcosm" of Jewish history.

Later still, her mixed feelings of love and bitterness toward her immediate family jogged Rivlin into making "Gimme a Kiss," a film about her parents. She made the film toward the end of their lives, when both were confined to hospital beds, and believes it offers "a critical but compassionate view" of her father's actions. "The film is basically about love," Rivlin said.

As a young adult, though, Rivlin thought she might enter the US Foreign Service. With that goal in mind, she attended George Washington University, where she earned a bachelor's degree in government, and the University of California at Berkeley, where she studied international relations as a graduate student.

While in Washington, Rivlin led the area's chapter of Habonim, becoming the first woman, she said, to head any of the group's chapters. Rivlin's involvement in the group shaped her "basic ways of looking at the world," imparting a concern about social justice and the rights of minorities.

But her presence at Berkeley, where she was in the vanguard of political activism, proved even more formative. "I found my community," Rivlin said, adding that she and other students of her era "laid the groundwork for the Free Speech Movement" in the early '60s, helping create a more progressive atmosphere on the nation's campuses.

Rivlin also took classes with Joan Bondurant, a professor of Indian studies and the author of Conquest of Violence: The Gandhian Philosophy of Conflict, an influential volume then, as now. Bondurant, now retired and living in Arizona, quickly became a role model for Rivlin, who hopes to make a film about the scholar.

After Berkeley, where she married an Israeli professor, Rivlin moved with her new husband to Israel and, with two cousins, opened "one of the first discotheques in Jerusalem." The marriage didn't last, and Rivlin traveled for a while in Italy. But she rushed back to Israel during the Six-Day War, when, on behalf of the Jewish Agency, she led volunteer efforts on Mount Scopus.

All of which led to a job that Rivlin still calls the "best experience" of her life - working as the researcher in Israel for Larry Collins and Dominique LaPierre, the two authors who were then writing O Jerusalem! The book, published in 1972, is a day-by-day account of the spellbinding events that led to Israel's creation. Rivlin interviewed more than 200 people for the book, hearing their stories, and described her work as all-consuming.

Politically, though, Rivlin saw things as beginning to darken. She believed even then, only a few years after the war, that Israelis and Palestinians had to come to terms with each other, a task that would involve trading land for peace. But she sensed that parting from the newly occupied territories might be tougher than many people thought - a realization that prompted Rivlin to leave Israel.

She lived in England for three years and returned to the States in 1973, feeling "it was time" for her to come back, both personally and professionally. Since then, she has written and edited several books, contributed essays to numerous publications, and made several films.

During all this time, Rivlin has continued her political activism, visiting much of the Arab world through a tour led by the Fellowship of Reconciliation. She has also befriended Israelis and Palestinians - mixing easily, she said, with both groups - and helped organize the world's first feminist Passover seder, an idea that has spread rapidly.

Rivlin discovered Meretz USA through her friendship with members of the group and her interest in the organization's events. "I felt comfortable [at Meretz USA gatherings], as I did in Berkeley," Rivlin said. "They believed in all the things I believe in, and, before I knew it, I was on the board."

The project that currently takes up most of Rivlin's time is a film about female Israeli and Palestinian peace activists. She began the film more than 20 years ago, giving it the working title "Between Sarah and Hagar," mythic matriarchs, respectively, of the Jewish and Arab peoples. But Rivlin believed that most people at the time weren't ready to hear the film's message, and shifted her energies to other, related projects, such as workshops on the theme of Sarah and Hagar. She returned to the film three years ago and is now raising the funds to complete it, the bane of every independent filmmaker.

Along the way, Rivlin has begun to alter some of her views. While in the past, she recalled, she was certain that electing more women to office would remake the world, she believes today that women "are not immune" to the same tensions and bitterness as those that divide men. "Maybe it would be different if more women were involved," she said, adding that she considers their absence from policy-making roles a tragedy, but she noted that 20 years ago she never would have said "maybe."

Rivlin is also less hopeful about the world in general, saying that the growing number of conflicts, the growing gap between rich and poor, and increasing anti-Semitism reminds her of Europe in the 1930s. "As a progressive Zionist," she said, "you have to watch your right flank, your left flank and have eyes in the back of your head as you move forward slowly."

But there's still an ounce of what some of Rivlin's friends might call idealism. For all of her doubts, Rivlin said, she continues to press for social change, knowing of no alternative, "because the world won't let go of me and, more importantly, I won't let go of it."

Doug Chandler, a friend of Meretz USA, is a freelance writer with a keen interest in the Jewish world.