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A JOURNAL OF JEWISH CONVERSATION Number 5 / Summer 2010 / $7.95 Number 5 / Summer 2010 • Thinking About

SHALOM HARTMAN INSTITUTE Women HAVRUTA A Journal of Jewish Conversation Table of Contents Number 5 / Summer 2010

Editor A Letter to our Readers...... 2 Stuart Schoffman

Associate Editors Thinking about Women...... 4 Laura Major Feminism and Jewish Tradition Orr Scharf A Symposium Editorial Advisory Board Breaking the Silence ...... 28 Bill Berk Women’s Voices and Men’s Anxieties Alfredo Borodowski Ariel Picard By Channa Pinchasi Rachel Sabath- Beit Halachmi Dror Yinon Leah’s Prayers: A Feminist Reading...... 36 Noam Zion By Noam Zion Graphic Design Studio Rami & Jaki Jewish Poetry and the Feminist Imagination ...... 46 Cover photograph by Bruce Damonte The Gifts of Muriel Rukeyser By Laura Major From Silence to Empowerment ...... 54 Women Reading Women in the Talmud Seder Nashim: A Women’s Beit Midrash

Divine Qualities and Real Women...... 62 The Feminine Image in Kabbalah By Biti Roi Who is In and Who is Out...... 70 The Two Voices of Ruth By Orit Avnery Published by the Shalom Hartman Institute, Afikoman /// Old Texts for New Times

Contact us: “Without Regard to Gender”...... 78 www.hartman.org.il A Halachic Treatise by the First Woman [email protected] By Laura Major

HAVRUTA | 1 A Letter to Our Readers

In the Babylonian Talmud (Pesachim 117a), it is taught: “Rabbah used to say something humorous [milta debedichuta] to the other before he commenced [his discourse], in order to amuse them.” In homage to that great sage, I shall open our conversation with a classic Jewish joke:

Stuart Schoffman, Moishe is the manager of the forests on the estate of a Polish nobleman. One day, the a columnist and nobleman calls him in and says, Moishe, you’re a smart guy, make life easy for yourself, be a lecturer, is a fellow normal person, avoid the persecution, get yourself and your family baptized. Moishe thinks at the Shalom it over, then announces to his wife and kids, we’re becoming Christians, and they do it. A year Hartman Institute goes by, another year, and Moishe is wracked with guilt, he can’t bear it any longer, so he calls and editor of his family together and says: we’re going back to Judaism. And his wife Rivkah says: “Moishe, Havruta. His okay, but do me one favor, please. At least wait till after Pesach!” translations of Hebrew literature I’ve told this quintessential chestnut a hundred times, but only lately have I viewed it as a include books by feminist text. The man makes the decisions; the woman cleans the house; and finally, she David Grossman finds her voice and challenges him boldly. Our new issue, devoted to “Thinking about Women,” and A.B. Yehoshua. is meant to illustrate and encourage this sort of reading – to see old texts with fresh eyes, to apply traditional lore to the concerns of the contemporary world. That’s the larger theme of this (and every) edition of Havruta.

Our contributors include Hartman scholars in Jerusalem and North America, as well as prominent voices from the wider community. The articles span many intriguing subjects: intermarriage in the Book of Ruth; a feminist analysis (by a male author) of the prayers of the matriarch Leah; the biblical poetry of Muriel Rukeyser, author of “To Be a Jew in the Twentieth Century;” feminine divinity in Kabbalah; the Talmudic taboo on a woman’s singing voice, which the ancient Rabbis equated with nakedness (and many male still do.)

For the last couple of years, a group of young Israeli women and men have sat around a table twice a week at the Shalom Hartman Institute, studying traditional texts in a beit midrash program called “Seder Nashim.” Havruta invites our readers to join them in a fascinating discussion of an unusual Talmudic story, about a rabbi’s wife who masqueraded as (perhaps) a man and drank a potion that made her sterile – a Jewish woman of antiquity, taking command of her own body.

Who was the first woman rabbi? If you said , who was ordained a Reform rabbi at Hebrew Union College in 1972, you’d be wrong by almost forty years. Our closing Afikoman section features excerpts from “Can Women Serve as Rabbis?” a treatise penned in Berlin by , who in 1935 became the first woman in history to prove by example that indeed they could. This still-controversial topic, and other pressing issues of Jewish life in the 21st century, are candidly discussed by the seven thinkers assembled in our Symposium, who include , the first woman ever ordained a rabbi in the Land of .

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A Letter to Our Readers

As our contributors illustrate, everyone involved in women’s issues travels her or his own path, often unpredictably. The feminist icon Gertrude Stein, raised Reform in Oakland, California, quit Johns Hopkins Medical School in 1901 to pursue a writing career. A friend (as Stein related in her inimitable Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas) beseeched her: “Gertrude Gertrude remember the cause of women, and Gertrude Stein said, you don’t know what it is to be bored.”

Closer to our own time and concerns, Rabbi says, in his spirited roundtable Passover 2010, Jerusalem. remarks: “I don’t want to coerce any woman into having an or giving a sermon. If one Photo © Women of the is happy with how things have been, that is fine.” Not every reader, of course, will necessarily Wall. agree with what they read in our pages – but few, I am certain, will be bored.

Stuart Schoffman Editor, Havruta

HAVRUTA | 3 Thinking about Women

Feminism and Jewish Tradition

{ A Symposium {

n May 2010, many readers were intrigued to discover in the INew York Times that Elena Kagan, newly nominated to the Supreme Court by President Barack Obama, was the first-ever Bat Mitzvah, in 1973, at ’s Lincoln Square Synagogue.

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She had asked to read from the Torah on Shabbat morning, but that request could not be met, not yet, at that Modern Orthodox congregation. Instead, the ceremony was held on a Friday night, and young Elena, future dean of Harvard Law School, read from the Book of Ruth, which, according to the Times, “she also analyzed in a speech.” Today, the ritual of Bat Mitzvah is often observed in Modern Orthodox synagogues, in Israel and abroad, in a variety of ways. At the same time, congregations defining themselves as Orthodox retain the mechitzah, the partition between men and women that has long since been eliminated in Conservative, Reform and other liberal synagogues. Meanwhile, the ultra-Orthodox, who maintain the strictest halachic standards in their insular enclaves, continue to control marriage and divorce for all Jews in the modern state of Israel. Indeed the Western Wall, a spiritual magnet for Jews worldwide, has been converted by the Israeli rabbinate into an Orthodox synagogue. The tensions between Judaism and modernity find perhaps their fullest expression in the arena of women’s rights and roles. Should women study Talmud? Most Jews today, including many Orthodox Jews, will tell you yes. Are women capable of reaching the highest levels of mastery in the sophisticated and technical field of Jewish law? Of course they can, in the consensus, just as they thrive at Harvard Law and Haifa’s Technion. As for women serving as rabbis – well, that depends on whom you ask. Learning, ritual and leadership are but a few of the issues explored in our latest Havruta symposium, by seven influential thinkers, scholars and teachers from North America and Israel. Each, in his and her way, has been involved in the field of Jewish feminism, as pioneers, standard-setters, activists and Self-portrait by the analysts. Our contributors vary in voice and Israeli artist Naomi outlook. They share a sense of urgency, and Gafni. also an understanding that things take time. From the solo exhibition Much has been achieved; more has yet to be “Momentarily Me,” done. 2001.

HAVRUTA | 5 David Hartman: Human Dignity

David Hartman here are three realms in which the need to be dealt with are: what is her role, is the Founding gender issue surfaces in Jewish and how does he see his wife. The moral President of the life: the family, the public and the solution to the agunah problem would be to Shalom Hartman T liturgical. Progress has been made in all change the laws of divorce. That is how far I Institute. Rabbi these areas, but much more is left to be am willing to go. Hartman is a leading accomplished. I think one of the driving The guiding impulse needs to be: Is any contemporary Jewish philosopher forces for progress was women’s learning. given law or practice moral? Does it reduce and internationally That was a major breakthrough that will the human being to an object? Does it cause renowned author and continue to create grassroots dissatisfaction the lack of dignity? I am fully in harmony recipient of numerous with the way public life and private life have with those who see gender questions as an prizes, including the been constructed. Once a woman is learning issue of k’vod habriot, the dignity of human Avi Chai and Guardian Torah, you can’t hold her back. beings. Take this story from the Talmud of Zion prizes. Let’s first address the family realm. Here, in Sanhedrin 39a, for example: A Roman the bottom line is that the woman has to nobleman says to Rabban Gamliel that God be a subject, a full person. Many Orthodox is a thief, since he stole Adam’s rib from him apologists who want to justify the status quo when he was sleeping. Rabban Gamliel’s quote sections of the Talmud that say that daughter then tells the nobleman that she a man should respect his wife more than wants him to send a Roman judge to impose himself. But they don’t realize you can also justice on thieves who came into her house respect your slave. You can be kind to a dog. and stole her silver pitcher, replacing it with So yes, as a minimum standard of behavior, a golden one. The nobleman is puzzled; he you cannot act brutally or coerce the wife, but says that she has nothing to complain about. this doesn’t solve the underlying issue. And She replies that this is exactly the case of the the issue is really the man’s, because men are rib. God took Adam and created something the ones who need to realize that a situation better, a shifcha for a him, a servant. must be created in which the woman is a full Now if the woman is seen as a servant, a subject, and in which she can direct her life. shifcha, then the tradition has failed morally, The acute problem of agunot – specifically and one of the fundamental principles in women who are refused a writ of divorce (get) Judaism has not been upheld. Indeed, so by their husbands – is a case in point. Some many of the laws regarding women violate people are trying to implement pre-nuptial the intrinsic dignity of a person. And all agreements in order to prevent a situation the apologists ask: “What do you want? The where a woman is refused a divorce. This woman has a very important role. She is might help in avoiding suffering. But even a nurturer.” I agree that it is important to throwing the recalcitrant husband in jail be a nurturer. No one wants to give up on and punishing him in order to force him to their image of their mother, always available, give a divorce still keeps the idea of male loving, kind and willing to sacrifice so much. domination in force. The issues that really And no one is giving that up. But we have to

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ask: what price do you have to pay in order there has been some progress. The roots of to create that nurturing mother? Does she this can be seen in a difference of opinion, have to be an object in private and public life? about ninety years ago, between Rabbi Does she have to be a person who is unable to Ben Zion Uziel and Rabbi Abraham Isaac hold any office? HaCohen Kook, the Sephardi and Ashkenazi These questions bring us to the second Chief Rabbis, regarding women’s suffrage. Young women studying realm – the public. The woman has to have Rav Kook quotes the Talmudic saying that Torah. Robert M. Beren the ability to function as a full citizen in a “it is man’s manner to dominate and not Academy, Houston, society, and take responsibility in shaping woman’s manner to dominate” (BT Yevamot Texas. Photo by James that society. Therefore, she should be able to 65b). Women’s participation in any aspect of Lacomb. testify in courts and hold public office. She public life is, accordingly, a threat to shlom should look at her world not as a creation of bayit – peace in the home. Rav Kook basically man but as a creation of human beings. All says that you have to ask her to give up on her human beings have to participate in building right of suffrage so that the husband will be and shaping a meaningful society. satisfied and will not have a wife who argues Halacha does not guarantee this, though with him.

HAVRUTA | 7 This, in my eyes, is a cheap view of the things have been, that is fine. I can’t impose relationship between a man and a woman. on people what should be an expression of As if to disagree is not to respect. If the man total human dignity. feels that the only way he can be secure in On the other side of things are the his home is if everyone always agrees with Women of the Wall. Why do people bother him, then that kind of man and that kind them? The Western Wall does not belong of family are deserving of pity. Rav Uziel is only to the ultra-Orthodox. It is a symbol correct when he asks, how one can expect for all Jews. Certainly, the women should a woman to listen to the legislative body have tact and respect, but to call women who of the government if she has no part in wear a tallit prostitutes, is vulgar and morally shaping it. You can’t have responsibility and disgusting. obedience unless you are part of the process. Preventing their participation, as Rav Uziel says, especially where there is no prohibition Once a woman is learning to do so, would be insulting and deceitful. Torah, you can’t hold her How one can expect a back. woman to listen to the Women are trying to give deeper legislative body of the expressions of religious life. They are not trying to provoke men or take over their role, government if she has no or get back at men for years of oppression. Human beings have a desire to feel they are part in shaping it? active participants in religious life. Why deprive them of that? And who is to deprive The final area that I want to discuss her? What gives me the right to define is liturgical life. Here my daughter, Tova what women should need? This is an issue Hartman, has had a profound influence on of control, and the desire to define what her me. She believes that the gender issue is true nature is. not an issue for women but for men, because So the apologists run away from the men have to ask themselves how they can moral issues and keep on preaching that she subscribe to a Judaism that exploits male is unique, she is the matriarch Sarah, she is domination as a way of living. Praying in the home, she has metaphysical dignity. No our egalitarian synagogue, Shira Hadasha, one denies that. But what rights does she has swayed me completely. I realized how have living in this culture? Can she bring moved I was by women leading the prayers, testimony? Can she participate in elections? women reading from the Torah and women Can she hold public office? Can she pray as delivering sermons. I am still not satisfied she feels fit? Can she be granted a divorce that women are excluded from leading certain when she requests one? We can’t continue to prayers such as the Kedusha, and also cannot keep women limited and unfulfilled. be counted with men in a minyan [quorum of Men are frightened. Once women have 10]. Those are the next things that need to be active roles, then the men don’t know who dealt with in the liturgical arena. they are. Your whole maleness has been I don’t want to coerce any woman into identified by putting on tefillin, a tallit, going having an aliyah or giving a sermon. Those to synagogue. I can understand that. But women who feel a need for reforms in these men need to get used to a change. They synagogue life should have the freedom to go need to develop a sense of maleness that is out and express this. If one is happy with how not based on excluding women.

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Wendy Zierler: Disparate Worlds

My life straddles two Jewish worlds. I history, a triumph of Jewish feminism. I am Wendy Zierler spend my workdays as a professor of Jewish committed to a kind of post-denominational is Associate literature and feminist studies, helping to feminism, where feminist ideals—equality Professor of train rabbis, cantors, and educators for the of access, enfranchisement, a recognition of Modern Jewish Reform movement. I spend my evenings the legal, ritual, intellectual, and spiritual Literature and and weekends, though, in modern Orthodox personhood of all Jews—are acknowledged, Feminist Studies Riverdale, New York. On Shabbat, I alternate enacted and practiced in the variegated at HUC-JIR, New between various Orthodox minyanim and ways that represent our diverse Jewish York, and a member of the prayer groups that are committed both community. North American to halacha and to feminism, but where a Yet in my Orthodox world, the basic Scholars Circle traditional halachic approach often forces a values promulgated by the Reform Breslau of the Shalom compromise with strict feminist principle. Conference of 1846, including the abrogation Hartman Institute. The work I do doesn’t neatly fit into the of the daily blessing in which men thank She is the author prefabricated categories of classical Jewish God for “not making me a woman” and the of And Rachel learning. I am always bringing together granting of women equality under Jewish Stole the Idols: seemingly disparate worlds: classical Jewish law, remain out of reach. The Emergence of texts and modern literary sources, Judaism Modern Hebrew and feminism. My teaching constitutes an The participation of Women’s Writing extended argument for the place of seemingly (2004) and co- secular, even heretical literary sources in the women in the revival of editor with Carole Balin of Behikansi canon of Jewish literary tradition: such as the Hebrew language Atah (In My the works of the beloved Hebrew poet Rachel Entering Now), the Bluwstein, known simply as “Rachel.” In “Kan is a triumph of Jewish Collected Writings al Pnei ha-Adamah,” (“Here upon this Land”), of Hava Shapiro for example, Rachel invokes a biblical source feminism. (2008). to plead the cause of this-worldy rather than heavenly redemption, and imagines In the Reform movement, by sharp “a thousand arms” coming together to roll contrast, there have been so many gains for a stone off a well—a collectivist, Zionist women, so many women rabbis and cantors midrash on Jacob’s heroic stone-rolling in and community leaders, that people worry Genesis 29, which impressed the biblical about the disappearance of men. There Rachel. are those who equate the ascendancy of I am convinced that the revival of the women into leadership positions with the Hebrew language and the participation feminization of Judaism, a term that has of women in this revival (against the an unfortunately negative connotation. background of so many years of women’s Rather than effecting changes in our notions Jewish literary and intellectual silence), is of leadership, and broadening our sense of one of the great miracles of modern Jewish what full representation of both genders in

HAVRUTA | 9 synagogue life can do for people’s spiritual need to be reminded to pray not only when life, the arrival of women in clergy positions I am inspired or overcome with a sense of has in some cases transformed the work into meaning, but also when I am not. something that boys and men no longer want At work, I am surrounded by women who to do, and turned the synagogue into a place have already become, or are on their way to where men no longer want to or feel obligated becoming, leaders in their communities. This to come. This is an issue that liberal Judaism is a given, a quotidian reality in my weekday still needs to tackle. world. Sally Priesand, who in 1972 was the first woman to be ordained as a Reform rabbi, It has always saddened has already retired from her pulpit. For my students, the whole battle for women’s right me that feminist to be ordained is a vestige from a previous transformation is generation, and the absence of ordination for women in mainstream orthodoxy is an associated in the minds oddity, a throwback. My students have been saddened and of many Orthodox Jews bewildered by the recent developments regarding women’s ordination that have with the weakening of arisen at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale. Judaism. In March 2009, Rabbi Avi Weiss formally conferred the title of “” (an acronym Nothing of this sort can be observed meaning “spiritual, halachic and Torah in orthodoxy. On Shabbat, the typical leader”) on , a woman who had Orthodox congregation is packed on both served as a member of the synagogue’s clergy sides of the mechitzah. This serves to team and had passed all of the exams for reinforce an Orthodox self-perception that Orthodox rabbinic ordination. Rabbi Weiss both halachically and sociologically speaking, reasoned that the neologism of Maharat orthodoxy is “the right way” to ensure Jewish would grant authority and yet avert an continuity. It has always saddened me that Orthodox political maelstrom, but it soon feminist transformation is associated in became apparent that the title did not carry the minds of many Orthodox Jews with the the weight he intended. Rabbi Weiss decided attenuation of tradition and the weakening to remedy this by changing the title to of Judaism. “Rabbah,” the feminine form of Rabbi, which I live in my two worlds not just out of sparked fierce objection in the Orthodox necessity, but out of choice. There is an odd establishment. Ultimately, Rabbi Weiss dissonance that has become an integral rescinded the title Rabbah, and promised not part of my life: the feeling of things coming to ordain any more women, in his words, “for together that do not entirely mesh, yet the sake of peace.” need to be together. I need and want liberal What now? It is not clear how many Judaism to inspire me with notions of among the current cadre of supremely change and radical equality, to remind me qualified Orthodox women will agree to join of the need to be intentioned and thoughtful the fray of women’s ordination and subject in my observance and prayer. At the themselves to this kind of controversy. same time, I need and want the Orthodox Why suffer through that, when getting a community to continue to set a high bar PhD in Talmud can grant them prestige of expectation for learning, involvement, without an ulcer? One thing is for certain: observance, and commitment. I want and political censure and denunciation of the

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move toward women’s ordination will not day, land and sea, holy and profane—then to put the genie of women’s learning, ritual what extent are gender distinctions basic to a competence, leadership skills, and spiritual Jewish understanding of the world? Is there capacities and yearnings back into the bottle. a way to incorporate a more fluid notion of While the Orthodox movement might cling gender than that which is represented in to some notion of continuity with tradition these ancient sources? How can one conceive a Jewish theology of gender difference Women praying on with respect to women in Judaism, it has beach, Gaza 2005. Photo been permanently rocked by the revolution that also encompasses a notion of gender by Mati Millstein. of Torah learning. There are very few Jews, equality? on any end of the denominational spectrum, For Jewish feminism to have a lasting who still believe along with Rabbi Eliezer effect, it must also compel a lasting of yore (BT Sotah 20a) that teaching one’s confrontation—both philosophical and daughter Torah is tantamount to teaching practical—with the abiding inequities of her tiflut —licentiousness or foolishness. Jewish law, as represented recently by the There are quite a few, however, who still Women of the Wall controversy and most believe that linking women’s Torah study to starkly by the abiding agunah problem. If the movement or way of thinking known as halacha is a way of walking with God in the feminism is indeed licentious and foolish. world, it cannot be compatible with a status Feminists who remain committed to quo that denies the personhood and rights of Judaism and its core tenets need to continue half of the Jewish community. For me, that to develop a theology of feminism that is a given. Somewhere along the way, halacha explores what is basic and enduring to Jewish went astray. It is the responsibility of great belief. For example, if the Bible seems to halachic minds to work to repair the road. So represent divine creation in terms of notions long as they balk at this task they are failing of distinction and difference—night and to do God’s work.

HAVRUTA | 11 Naamah Kelman: No Small Feat

Rabbi Naamah at a historic conference that launched the Kelman, in 1992, The world I was born into and the world my American Jewish feminist movement. In was the first woman daughters were born into are very different. 1986, the first woman was ordained by the to be ordained by In 1968, I celebrated my Bat Mitzvah in Jewish Theological Seminary. Those were the Hebrew Union New York. My father, Rabbi Wolfe Kelman, years of excitement and turmoil. Fears of College in Jerusalem, a leader of the Conservative movement, the “feminization” of Judaism were voiced, where she is currently the Dean. Born and insisted I read the haftarah at our synagogue, as was great anxiety about the future of the raised in New York, on a Friday night. At shul on that festive Jewish family and the energies that might she has lived since occasion, one of the speakers was a woman be “unleashed” by this revolution. What 1976 in Israel, where who had been the very first Bat Mitzvah in energies, indeed! she has worked Jewish history: Judith Kaplan Eisenstein. In in community 1922, her father, Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, the We are finally crossing organizing, Jewish theologian and founder of Reconstructionist education, and the Judaism, pioneered the notion of Bat the “text-tosterone” line. promotion and Mitzvah at the newly founded Society for establishment of the Advancement of Judaism in Manhattan. Progressive and Judith recalled that on a Friday, her father Women’s religious, academic and Pluralistic Judaism suddenly decided his daughter should read intellectual gifts have been a blessing to all for Israelis. the next day from the Torah, just as a boy denominations of Judaism. My bookshelves would do. That night, they practiced together, can no longer hold the riches of scholarship and the next morning, she rose before the and literature that Jewish women have congregation and read. produced. The Torah: A Women’s Commentary, In 1968, so many years after Judith published by the Women of Reform Kaplan’s exceptional debut, it was still Judaism, contains more than 100 entries unusual for girls to have a formal Bat by rabbis, scholars, poets and other Mitzvah. In fact, a prominent Conservative thinkers, representing a range of Jewish rabbi commented to me that night that it denominations. In 2008, it was named was too bad that my reading would be “the Jewish Book of the Year, the top prize of the first and last time” I would ever be allowed National Jewish Book Awards. The fact that on the bimah of a synagogue. Luckily for my it won that honor, and not the annual prize in generation, the feminist revolution was set the category of Women’s Studies, represented in motion by the famous women’s march in a seismic shift. With this new commentary New York City in August 1970. Two years and other fine books, we are finally crossing later, Sally Preisand was ordained as a rabbi t he “te x t-tosterone” l ine. Too of ten, impor t a nt by Hebrew Union College, a precedent soon and impressive works by women have been followed by ordinations of women in the relegated to a gendered ghetto or dismissed Reconstructionist movement. In the fall of as insufficiently “serious” or “learned” (which 1973, 500 women gathered in New York City often means rabbinic or esoteric.)

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Tefillin Barbie. Photo by Jen Taylor Friedman, 2006. www.HaSoferet.com

For too many people, the image of a rabbi There have been major strides made remains bearded and male. Here in Israel, in Israel, but as long as there is an official there is no accepted word for “woman rabbi.” Orthodox Rabbinate and a highly militarized Since I insist on being called “Rav” – the society, the struggle is difficult. The IDF traditional male title – I am often branded remains a male-dominated institution, as a provocateur before I utter a single word. despite efforts to place some women in (“Rabbah” is now a preferred choice for many combat and intelligence units, and fewer in women rabbis, though when the first woman secretarial positions. Since its founding, Orthodox member of a rabbinic team in New the military has remained the favored York was given that title, a great controversy training ground for leadership in politics and erupted.) business, so that many men move easily into

HAVRUTA | 13 top jobs. The original mythic Zionist image The real shift has occurred with weddings. of an egalitarian society, where pioneering Thanks to the Reform (Progressive) and men and women tend the fields and defend Conservative (Masorti) Movements and the borders, remains just that – a myth. Orthodox feminism, thousands of Israeli By the time the state was founded, women couples are opting for non-Rabbinate were mainly raising families and seeking egalitarian weddings. As a result, the professions like teaching and nursing that Orthodox Rabbinate is scrambling to present allowed them more flexibility as mothers. a more gender-friendly ceremony: a bride is Yes, there are many female lawyers and now allowed to present a ring to her groom physicians in Israel today, but the women at the end of the ceremony. Here, I believe mainly work in the public sector, where we have “won.” Sadly, however, divorce is salaries are lower. completely controlled by the Rabbinate. In 1994, when my older daughter Leora Orthodox women have trained themselves as was a Bat Mitzvah, she read the Torah para-rabbinic advocates (to’anot rabbaniyot) portion and the haftarah, and gave a d’var to assist in intractable and difficult cases, Torah at our Progressive synagogue. Judith as well as more routine ones. But the Kaplan, by then well into her 80s, sent us a heavy influence of ultra-Orthodox parties letter to be read at the ceremony -- a gesture within the Israeli parliamentary system of continuity I know my daughter will never has effectively blocked, at least for now, any forget. Since that day, Leora has not stopped changes in divorce law for all Israeli Jews. leading services and reading Torah, at our In 1992, I became the first woman ever shul and elsewhere in Israel. ordained a rabbi in Israel. CNN reported This year, on Purim, I attended an the event, but Ha’aretz ignored it, and Yediot Orthodox Bat Mitzvah in the US; the girl Aharonot put it on the “curiosities” page. read the entire Megillah, no small feat, in The local Jerusalem newspapers, though, a ceremony attended by men and women had more extensive coverage. There were seated separately. In a number of Orthodox no protests from the ultra-Orthodox until synagogues in Jerusalem, Bat Mitzvah girls 1999, when I was appointed by the Meretz read from the Torah on Shabbat, either party to a seat on the Jerusalem Religious in a separate reading for women, or even Council. The matter went to the Supreme before the entire congregation. Orthodox Court, which ordered the council to seat feminists have been very brave in Israel. me, but they disbanded rather than comply. Women now serve as scholars of Talmud, Recently, however, a Reform woman rabbi Jewish law, and more. In the area of ritual, became a member of the Religious Council of though, progress has been uneven. Though Kfar Saba. Bat Mitzvah as a religious rite is virtually Times are indeed changing. In 2007, universal in the liberal denominations in when The Torah: A Women’s Commentary was North America, and a growing phenomenon published, it made the front page of Ha’aretz. in some Orthodox circles too, in Israel There is a growing renaissance of Jewish it is less prevalent, across the religious learning in Israel, and women are central to spectrum. The liberal movements here the flowering of independent batei midrash have pushed hard for young girls to do as and havurot. I believe that despite our modest their brothers do, but most secular Israelis numbers in Israel, the liberal movements – whose thinking on such matters is have been a significant stimulus rod for conditioned by the rabbinic establishment – change, especially in promoting the status of view Bar Mitzvah as standard practice and women. A great deal, of course, remains to Bat Mitzvah as alien. be accomplished.

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Susan Weiss: Parameters of Chutzpah

Though I regularly dispatch members of my “And,” added Rabbi B., “there’s the issue Susan Weiss office to Israel’s rabbinic courts, I rarely set of her tort claim. When Esther sued for is an attorney. foot there myself. However, a few months damages for get refusal, she tied our hands. She founded and back, I forayed down to Tel Aviv to argue The claim puts unlawful force on her husband, runs the Center for a case. I thought I’d be able to leverage a invalidating any subsequent get.” Women’s Justice sensitive legal moment to extract a get, a “With all due respect, your Honor,” I in Jerusalem. Jewish bill of divorce, from a particularly replied, summoning up all the deference She is currently difficult husband, and his equally infuriating I could muster. “The reason Esther is still completing her attorney. In Israel, rabbinic courts have married is because her husband won’t give dissertation at Tel exclusive jurisdiction over the marriages her a get – and because this court won’t order Aviv University and divorces of Jews, and those courts him to do so, let alone put him in jail. And about legal language and apply halacha, religious law. According to with respect to the tort claim, it’s obvious power entitled halacha, a woman remains bound to a failed that it hasn’t infringed on his free will at all, “Not Just Words.” marriage until her husband agrees, of his since he remains firm in his refusal to release Together with free will, to give her a get. his wife.” Netty C. Gross, Our client Esther (not her real name) No matter how I pleaded, the rabbis she is writing a lived with her husband for just three months refused to decide the case on its merits. In book provisionally (months, not years), got pregnant, was badly their minds, the halacha didn’t allow it. It entitled Israel’s beaten, left the house, and has lived apart did not matter that the parties hated each Civil War: Jewish from him for 13 years (thirteen, not a typo). other. It did not matter that Esther, an ultra- Marriage and He still refuses to give her a get. I threw my Orthodox woman, could not enter into an Divorce to be client on the mercy of the tribunal. intimate relationship with another man. The published by “Put him in jail,” I begged the court. (The halacha trumped Western values. It trumped University Press of New England. rabbinic courts have the authority to do my client’s lost years. It trumped the court’s this in order to convince a husband to give crocodile tears. It trumped justice. a get.) The moral of this sad story is that we Jewish “Do you sleep at night?” Queried Rabbi women haven’t gotten very far in the rabbinic B., the head of the tribunal, provocatively. courts. If the status of women in Judaism is “I do,” I answered, not quite the truth. gauged by their status in the rabbinic courts, “Do you, your honor?” I retorted, testing it is not very good. For every step we’ve the parameters of my chutzpah. taken forward, we’ve taken two backward. In “Because whoever has been advising the rabbinic courts, Jewish women have no your client has done her a great disservice,” autonomy and are not equal. Their status is the rabbi declared. “It’s because of those ill- completely dependent on their husbands’ will. advised advisors that Esther is not divorced. For a while it looked like we activists We cry for Esther, but had she given in to were making progress, slowly realigning the her husband’s reasonable demands, she imbalance of power in the rabbinic courts would have been free long ago.” so skewed in men’s favor. We managed to

HAVRUTA | 15 “Get Refuser: There is such an animal,” by Tamar Tzohar: First-prize winner of poster competition, International Coalition for Aguna Rights, 2005.

convince the courts to issue more decisions husband simply agreed in theory to the get against recalcitrant husbands, ordering or and stated his terms for the divorce, the court recommending that they give a get. We even would refrain from enforcing any order against managed to persuade the court to put more him, and demand that his wife accept whatever get-refusers in jail. But as the number of those were his “reasonable” conditions for the get. decisions increased, the courts themselves This is what happened in Esther’s case. began to undermine them. If a recalcitrant Why is the status of women in Judaism, as

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reflected in the difficult reality of the rabbinic ultra-Orthodox enclave, which defines itself courts, so bad? In my opinion, it’s because as the “other” in the modern democratic state. the State of Israel gave the ultra-Orthodox Having deferred to multicultural impulses, a monopoly to decide issues of marriage and the status quo, or just plain politics, the state divorce for all its Jewish citizens, irrespective has sacrificed women to the interests of of their religious affiliation. Only men hold ultra-Orthodox interest groups. If it wants to positions of leadership in the ultra-Orthodox be respected as a true liberal democracy and community. Those men bear no sense of the center of the entire Jewish world, the responsibility to the state or its citizens, and State of Israel must start to acknowledge the are loyal only to their very insular community price that it, and in particular its women, are and its particular “narrative.” That narrative paying. In the spirit of the freedom of religion, is characterized by strict gender distinctions the state must break the monopoly it gave to and textual accuracy. Men are different from the ultra-Orthodox and allow for different and superior to women; and all this is justified denominations of Judaism to flourish. There by an obsessively close reading of the text. are many authentic expressions of Judaism that live in harmony with modern values of If the status of women human life and freedom. Israel must take responsibility for its citizens, in particular in Judaism is gauged by its women, and protect their rights to due process, human rights, equality, and their status in the rabbinic individual autonomy, in all areas of life. courts, it is not very good. The state has deferred to the ultra- On certain public bus Orthodox in other areas, as well. For example, lines, women riders are at the Kotel, the Western Wall, where ultra- Orthodox pressure prevents women from relegated to the back praying with prayer shawls. And on certain public bus lines in Jerusalem, women riders of the bus – a shocking are relegated to the back of the bus – a shocking concession to religious concession to religious extremism. I single out the ultra-Orthodox because extremism. even a cursory look at how women fare in other denominations shows that Jewish women, for the most part, have attained At the Center for Women’s Justice, we equal status to Jewish men. Outside of the ask the family courts to do just that when Orthodox community, women act as rabbis, we sue recalcitrant husbands for damages. halachic arbiters, leaders. They are revered By awarding our clients damages, the scholars. Even women in Modern Orthodox family courts are taking the position that communities have made great strides towards withholding a get is no longer a husband’s equality. All religious texts are open to them religious right, but a civil wrong. for study. They are taking a growing role in Esther was eventually awarded damags of prayer, ritual, and leadership roles. They can close to one million shekels by a family court, be Orthodox and feminist. I anticipate that and her husband filed an appeal. We hope the this trend toward equality will continue, Appellate Court will stand firm on the side of notwithstanding occasional backlash and the Jewish women. The appeal is set for late 2010 ebb and flow of the process. But not in the before a tribunal of three women.

HAVRUTA | 17 Don Seeman: For the Sake of Peace

Don Seeman Orthodoxy is by far the most diverse and The stakes for Orthodox communities is Associate Professor internally pluralistic of all the contemporary could not be higher. Many communities of Religion and movements in religious Judaism. Yet in the are now filled with women doctors, lawyers Jewish Studies at absence of any authoritative decision-making and PhDs; after more than a generation of Emory University. His body, important debates are often raucous increased (though still imperfect) access to ethnography, One and can prove painful or frustrating to high level Jewish textual education, the lack People, One Blood: Ethiopian Jews and some of the individuals involved. The recent of commensurate professional opportunities the Return to Judaism controversy over women’s ordination— for women inside the Orthodox community was published by part of a much broader conversation about has begun to put pressure on communities to Rutgers University gender roles and women’s leadership in adapt. Yet any such innovation immediately Press in 2009. Don is Orthodoxy—has proven to be no exception. pushes up against some of the most currently a fellow of I have participated in these conversations important and deeply entrenched features the North American in a number of different capacities (rabbi, of Orthodox self-identification, which have Scholars Circle of community member, father and husband), as much to do with the relationship between the Kogod Center but I also view them through the lens of a Orthodoxy and liberal Judaism as they do for Contemporary social anthropologist, who is trained to look with the relationships between men and Jewish Thought at beneath the contradictions of the moment women. the Shalom Hartman for underlying cultural themes and anxieties On a political and sociological level, Institute. that define a society. the synagogue mechitzah has emerged in Two apparently contradictory trends recent decades as the single most important threaten today to tear the Orthodox symbolic divider between Orthodox and non- community asunder. On the one hand, there Orthodox communities. While Orthodoxy are obvious signs throughout the Orthodox and , for example, world of increasing emphasis on gender differ considerably today on questions of segregation and the imposition of barriers content as well as process in Jewish law, to women’s participation with men in public it is the absence of the mechitzah, along religious settings, including schools. This is with some other issues related to gender one of the defining features of contemporary and egalitarianism, that most reliably ultra-, but has been felt distinguishes practically all Conservative in American Modern Orthodox and Israeli synagogues today from all Orthodox ones. Zionist Orthodox circles too. At the same I n d e e d , i t i s t h e s e l f - c o n s c i o u s (t h o u g h p a r t i a l ) time, some segments of the Orthodox elimination of sex segregation during prayer community have shown increasing signs (calling women up to the Torah, or calling on of a willingness to experiment with new women to lead certain prayers), that has led models of leadership and participation for the so-called “halachic-egalitarian” or “Shira women, culminating most recently in the Hadasha-style” congregations to perch so abortive attempt to create a formal women’s precariously on the boundaries of Orthodoxy ordination program. - or probably more accurately, just outside

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these boundaries, in uncharted social space. women’s space and inherited practice has These groups represent, in Orthodox terms, been increasingly limited. Authorities have an exaggerated reaction to the tendency of banned the burning of candles that was greater segregation and separation that is a hallmark of women’s religious practice increasingly prevalent. there, alongside prayers for fertility and the In the non-Haredi Orthodox world, sex- distribution of amulets of different kinds. Western Wall, early 20th segregated schools and youth groups are on A yeshiva for men with knitted kippot now century. the rise. Communities in North America dominates the site physically, and competes G. Eric and Edith Matson debate raising the heights of their mechitzot for control of its religious ethos. Photograph Collection, but rarely debate lowering them. In my The fate of sacred space at shrines like Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs office hangs a photo, nearly a century old, of Rachel’s Tomb or the Kotel may seem far Division, pious men standing in prayer at the Western removed from debates about the ordination LC-DIG-matpc-05899. Wall, while a group of women crouch or sit of Jewish women. Yet these disparate in prayer nearby. After 1967, the Kotel was phenomena may actually testify to a single given the status of an Orthodox synagogue underlying dilemma of contemporary and a mechitzah was installed. More recently, religious life: the accelerating collapse of barriers have been raised and refurbished “mimetic Judaism” in our time. Historically, several times, as the site has become a each generation matter-of-factly imitated flashpoint of controversy over issues related the practices of its predecessor. But the to women’s role in communal prayer. At devastating wars and massive migrations of Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem, similarly, the past century, combined with the growth

HAVRUTA | 19 of secularism, have disrupted the norms of unambiguously committed to Orthodox life many Jewish communities, not least those in all its dimensions. that governed issues of gender. The result One of the most important dimensions of has been an unprecedented restructuring the recent debate over women’s ordination, of Jewish life, away from the familial spurred by Rabbi Avi Weiss’s ordination of transmission of religious practice and toward Sara Hurwitz, has been the recognition of the textual or ideological basis of religious the potential for schism within the Orthodox authenticity. But since the textual tradition world, and of the need for compromise. never unambiguously addressed many of the Rabbi Weiss agreed not to ordain any new issues that were guided by inherited norms, “Rabbah” candidates, while the Rabbinical uncertainty and ideological posturing reign. Council of America (RCA), for its part, It is difficult to know how this process refrained from asserting that this innovation will play itself out over time. While Modern is either prohibited by Jewish law or that its Orthodox communities have for the most supporters are beyond the pale of Orthodoxy. part rejected women’s ordination for now, In opposing women’s ordination, the RCA it does seem that high-level Talmudic and invoked the values of “sacred continuity” halachic education for women is now an and communal peace, while reaffirming its accepted part of the Orthodox landscape. support for other forms of women’s learning The most impressive professional programs and contribution to the Jewish community. in Torah for women have been pioneered by In this way, both sides stepped back from the American immigrants to Israel: the yo’etzet brink of a denominational split that might halacha program, which trains women as have weakened them. experts in areas of Jewish family law, and There is every reason to think that this the to’enet rabbanit program, which trains compromise will prove volatile and unstable. women to work as expert advocates for It has been argued that Orthodox Jews individuals maneuvering through the Israeli are currently facing the same dilemmas religious courts. faced thirty years ago by the Conservative Such innovations surely presage future Movement, which did eventually ordain possibilities. So why all the furor over women. Yet this example hangs heavily women rabbis? First of all, mainstream over the efforts of those who believe attempts to normalize women’s religious that Orthodoxy needs to respond more leadership have generally emphasized areas expansively to women’s needs and capacities of technical halacha that affect women most for service. The growth of egalitarianism directly, and in which technical competency in the Conservative movement coincided is at a premium. These are essentially historically with a strong movement away specialist niches that minimize symbolic from traditional observance and halachic and professional competition with men, practice by large swaths of that community, that answer a need felt by many religious and even left-leaning Orthodox leaders women, and that require specialized must be concerned about the possibility of training in areas that many male rabbis a parallel. The significance of this historical today lack. These are groups that have moment will be determined in large part gained credibility over time by providing by the Orthodox community’s ability to an important service while disclaiming any generate models for women’s leadership that desire to supplant traditionally male roles work to strengthen the values it holds most or win pyrrhic symbolic victories. No less dear: excellence in learning and in practice, important, they have appeared to most Jewish continuity, fidelity to Torah and observers to produce graduates who are service of God.

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Rachel Adler: Feminist Redemption

How many people have lived to see an old learning my first piece of Talmud at a Rachel Adler world give way to a new one? One thinks Reform camp in my teens, and falling in is Professor of of the biblical Caleb, who experienced the love with the Talmud and its possibilities. In Modern Jewish oppression of Egypt and lived to inherit in college I studied the first chapter of Tractate Thought and the Promised Land. One thinks of those Berakhot and felt that there were layers and Judaism and Jews who experienced the ghetto and layers of meaning waiting to be uncovered. Gender at Hebrew then became citizens of the countries they I still see Berakhot as the Bereshit of the Union College- inhabited. New worlds bring new freedoms Talmud – its book of Genesis – a depiction of . She is the author and also new questions, new opportunities the rabbinic universe, held together by long- of Engendering and also new complications. rooted seedlings of prayer. The tractate Judaism, which The women of my generation grew up in introduces us to the denizens of a teeming won the National a world in which women were “peripheral cosmos: angels, demons, funeral processions Jewish Book Jews,” facilitating Jewish practice for men and wedding guests, as well as the turbulent Award for Jewish while being excluded from most of the microcosm of the academy. Enumerated Thought, and of positive, communal activities that sanctified too are the multitude of natural events that many articles. Jewish life. My mother used to tell a story require berakhot, blessings: earthquakes and about me. I was five years old, taking a walk shooting stars, the great sea, thunder and with her, and she said, “So what do you want lightning. to be when you grow up?” And without For years I studied Talmud in a study skipping a beat, I said, “A nun.” My mother group populated by women rabbis and was appalled. “You can’t be a nun. You’re academics. We took a multidisciplinary Jewish. Jews don’t have nuns.” “Well then,” approach, because we all had different I replied, “I will be the first one.” When I ask methodologies and information to bring myself why I wanted to be a nun, the answer to bear on the text. The literary scholar in is clear. I lived in a mixed Jewish-Catholic our group called our attention to motifs we neighborhood, and in that other religious would otherwise have missed. The historian culture, I saw what I did not see in my own situated us in classical and early medieval community: a way to be a woman and be history. The Bible scholar caught all the holy. I could not have foreseen that I would nuances of biblical allusions. We looked grow up to be a theologian, or that other at David Macaulay’s book, City: A Story of women would become rabbis and scholars. Roman Planning and Construction, to see The closest I could come to imagining such how Roman bathhouses were constructed impossibilities at five was envisioning and why they occasionally collapsed. And becoming the first Jewish nun. we were always alert for any mention of Mine was the first generation of women. Jewish feminists who thirsted to enter In the earliest days of feminist into the richness of a tradition generally scholarship, women were thrilled to see any not accessible to women. I still remember mention of women at all in Jewish texts.

HAVRUTA | 21 Many of us were just in the first stages of Eskenazi and . The new mastering this material. As we feminist feminist Talmud commentary edited by Tal scholars grew more sophisticated, the Ilan, with individual volumes by the best questions grew with us. After all, Jewish scholars, female and male, is expected to texts were, with a few possible exceptions, be a similarly important reference series. written and transmitted by men. Most The book Standing Again at Sinai, by Judith of our reading was about what concerned Plaskow, was a huge step forward in feminist or interested elite groups of learned men theology. about women, and how these writers chose Today, gender-sensitive theology is to represent women. Many of us saw often taken for granted. But there is a lot these texts primarily as indicators of their more theology that needs to be written, authors’ assumptions about gender, rather and I hope I will live to see young thinkers than about women in some unmediated way. do this work. The central question – how We could not proceed as if we were reading does one live a holy life? – must be asked history or biography. anew, now that there is no longer an easy complementarity in which women do some kinds of work, leaving men free to do quite Mine was the first other things. Two kinds of undervalued work generation of Jewish that must now be shared are maintenance and caregiving. Maintenance: keeping feminists who thirsted to our places clean, our utilities working, our laundry done; and caregiving: tending, enter into the richness of feeding, supporting children, the sick, the aged, those in our families and communities a tradition generally not who need our attention. How are these accessible to women. demanding activities to be integrated into holy living?

Still, using the feminist hermeneutics Are there not goals more that some of us devised, we were able to note important than self- what meanings various representations of women seemed to convey, and even to wring actualization? information or implications out of women’s textual invisibility or marginality. It has been inspiring to see how, at the annual meetings of the Association for Jewish Mordecai Kaplan believed that salvation Studies, the American Academy of Religion consisted of the self-actualization of the or the Society for Biblical Literature, individual and the community. But what are no longer ghettoized about the global community? What about in a “women’s section.” Both women and the earth itself? Should they not too be men present papers in which gender is an foci for caring and healing? And shouldn’t interpretive issue. salvation be more than psychological Feminist Jews have had some great health? Are there not goals more important victories. I was lucky enough to be a than self-actualization? I would think that contributor to The Torah: A Women’s a feminist notion of redemption would Commentary, edited by Tamara Cohn envision a world in which, along with prayer

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and Tora h study, a good life for a Jew inc ludes attention to caring and maintenance – these very personal kinds of giving – for our own young and elders, and also for the neighbor, who, as the philosopher Emanuel Levinas teaches, turns his or her face toward us, making a moral claim upon us.

The central question – how does one live a holy life? – must be asked anew.

Another area for holiness is sexuality. How can we avoid stigmatizing the members of our community who are or or bisexual or , given that sexual identities seem to originate in our “hard- wiring” rather than in any preferences on our part. Here the work of Rabbi and Rabbi Elliot Kukla, who have bravely made public their sexual identities in recent years, has been very important. For all of us living in consumer societies, how can we propose alternatives to the commodification and objectification of sexuality that confronts us daily? How can we bring into practice a sexuality that is humane and respectful, that is neither addictive nor compulsive – nor obsessively polarizing and misogynistic, with women sitting in the back of buses and walking on only one side of the street, as in ultra- Orthodox neighborhoods? Emanuel Levinas says that we put ourselves at the service of the other, not because of a conviction that the other is just like us, but being aware that the other opposite sex, what is the neighboring sex?” is not us, is irreducibly different from us Gender scholars have taught us that we and may never be fully understandable oversimplify when we think of gender as to us. The other’s differentness does not a dichotomous, two-valued system. There excuse us from being at the service of the are a lot of neighboring genders out there. other. The mystery writer Dorothy Sayers The question for all of us is what kind of Tisha B’Av at the Kotel, once asked in an essay: “If women are the neighbors we will choose to be. 2009. Photo by Pini Hamou.

HAVRUTA | 23 Rachel Sabath-Beit Halachmi: A River from Eden

Rachel Sabath I spent several years during and after marital reproductive years, mikveh has been Beit-Halachmi rabbinic school studying and writing about powerfully significant in my life in many is the Shalom Hasidic texts on the movement of the male additional ways, often in the context of a Hartman Institute’s body in prayer. Studying the spiritual liberal reconstruction of the traditional Israel Director of phenomenology of the male body further orthodox observance. In my twenties and North American developed my awareness of the extent to early thirties, the mikveh became a place for Leadership Initiatives, which the physicality of every human body, spiritual and religious focus, where I took and is a member including my own, is an essential feature of note of the phases of my experience of the of the faculty and religious experience. As the Psalmist teaches, world and my own self-renewing body, and a research fellow. Rachel was ordained a deeply prayerful stance includes the entire also tried to cultivate my middot – my ethical at HUC-JIR in New body: “All my bones will say: Lord, who is like awareness and practice. As an unmarried York and received You?” (Psalms 35:10) woman, I was not consumed by issues of a Ph.D. in Jewish As a woman, I was created in the image reproduction or family purity, but instead Philosophy from the of God (Genesis 1: 26-27) – the same as was claimed by the power of the place itself Jewish Theological a man and also different. My being a and the depth of commitment and spiritual Seminary. She woman, of course, should in no way limit devotion that surrounded the ritual act of teaches liturgy and my religious life as an individual and within monthly immersion. modern Jewish the community. This assumption, shared During those years, I became an expert thought at HUC-JIR by so many contemporary Jews, is not one on the issues that Jewish women confront at in Jerusalem and has that has informed the Jewish tradition for such places: the differences in the concerns co-authored two centuries. And yet, while one might think of younger versus older women, the various books and published numerous essays. that rational, egalitarian Judaism offers the halachic problems that arose and the best assurance of access to God regardless of ways in which male authorities sought to gender, in fact my womanly experiences of resolve them. I also learned many recipes marriage, pregnancy, childbirth, nursing and for chicken and a lot about husband-wife mothering have challenged this classic liberal relationships and family dynamics. When I view. Rather than becoming immaterial in was asked to act as the “mikveh lady” (a role I order to assure equality, my gender is central later performed in liberal settings), I felt that to how I experience God’s presence in the in order to prepare myself for such spiritual world, and how I understand myself to be intimacy, I needed to create and recite special claimed by God. prayers before greeting the women, and to There are several core religious re-learn all the pertinent halachic issues, to experiences that highlight the role that be sure I would give correct advice. gender has played in my spiritual life. In this Orthodox setting, it was clear that The first is the experience of mikveh, the a male would be the final decision-maker on ritual bath. While the ritual of monthly halachic questions. But inside the mikveh purification has for the most part been itself, male authority was invisible, and observed by Orthodox women during their essentially irrelevant. I met women preparing

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for marriage, many of them fearful of their for nearness to God and the possibility of first sexual intercourse with a man, hoping personal renewal and hope. that the waters would help ease whatever pain My prayers at the mikveh became a they were expecting. I encountered women monthly source of strength for my own in the process of converting to Judaism, spiritual yearnings. Eventually, I composed reconfiguring their relationships with their a prayer in Hebrew and English, which bodies and their mothers and their God and expresses the connection between mikveh, a people. I spoke with women before and after woman’s body, and my ethical values: surgery, rape, illness. At the mikveh, many women came month after month praying Inside the mikveh itself, that they wouldn’t be back the next month because they would finally be pregnant – male authority was and some prayed not to become pregnant invisible, and essentially again, having already been blessed with the number of children they felt they could raise. irrelevant. The women after miscarriage and abortion arrived too, the most sullen, barely speaking. May every limb of my body The silence of the mikveh, the gentle noise of Touched by these living waters the water and the power of the renewal of Be renewed for goodness and life their bodies became a source of hope. The May my toes and feet dance waters of the mikveh seemed to cause new life May I run to do mitzvot and to aid those to flow into them, after death had infiltrated in need their bodies and their lives; and as they May my arms embrace those in need of emerged from the mikveh, the possibility of comfort new life flowing from them seemed palpable. May my hands write words of truth and I wept with them; I wept for them. teaching May my fingers touch others with love My prayers at the mikveh and play music May my mouth speak words of loving became a monthly source kindness, Torat chesed al l’shoni of strength for my own And may my tongue teach words of spiritual yearnings. Torah and prayer May my eyes see sights of God’s many wonders, At the mikveh, I became an insider in a Ma rabu ma’asekha! hidden sanctum where physical, emotional And reflect love and gratitude for this and spiritual desire, joy and sorrow are all whole body. mixed and given expression, verbally and May the month to come be one of hope silently, not in a community, but also not in and love isolation. Here, the individual was carefully As my womb cycles toward fullness and tended to, washed gently, submerged in the again sheds like the waxing and waning waters from Eden that the mikveh symbolizes, of the moon, and once again clothed and set forth into the May I cycle upward, toward world. In all my work as a rabbi in all areas of righteousness, ritual, I have witnessed or experienced very Rebirthed now, b’tzelem elokim, in the few acts and places with such great potential Image of God.

HAVRUTA | 25 Another set of spiritual experiences that egalitarian ideology. Being a Jewish mother have transformed my relationship with entails a much larger meaning for me than God are pregnancy, birth and motherhood. the simple liberal stance of not relinquishing Giving birth to Israeli children was not any possible religious activities because I am solely about personal or familial fulfillment, a woman. It emphasizes the necessity to but also about fulfilling a greater sense of respond to God’s existence and commanding what my fully gendered existence should and presence by going far beyond myself, to could mean for the Jewish people: beyond take ultimate responsibility for others, the blessing of being a woman, beyond my and to literally give birth to and shape the

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Photo © Janice Rubin, The Mikvah Project, 2008. possibility of Judaism in the future. my children has intensified my love of God, My gender, my body, and the specific as well as my love of the Jewish people, the physical experiences of being a mother to land of Israel and all God’s creation. It has new and fragile life – to Jewish children in made me, simultaneously, more religiously a Jewish state – all have a radical impact particularistic and universalist, feminist on the way in which I experience God and and Zionist. In other words, the increasingly Jewish peoplehood, and dream about the postmodern Judaism I might have articulated future of Israel and of Judaism. In some a couple of decades ago has been transformed inexplicable way, deeply related to my sense by my gender and by my life in Israel. Blessed of awe, wonder and gratitude, my love for is the One Who created me a woman.

HAVRUTA | 27 Breaking the Silence

Women’s Voices and Men’s Anxieties

The persistence of a Talmudic taboo presents a serious challenge for Orthodox consumers of popular culture

hould Jewish women be allowed to sing in public? For Smost Jews in the modern world, this question is no more relevant than asking whether women should be allowed to vote. Yet for Jews who live according to halacha – including many Orthodox women who seek to harmonize their feminist instincts with their commitment to Jewish law and tradition – the question is serious and far from simple.

{By CHANNA PINCHASI

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The feminist issue is the litmus test of one’s that a woman’s voice is tantamount to erva attitude toward the tension between halachic – a term that connotes sexual exposure and Judaism and modern life. In this regard, the impropriety. Without denying this principle, subject of “kol isha” (“the woman’s voice”) is Bigman is saying that women’s modesty critical, for the voice, after all, signifies the (tsni’ut) and women’s singing are not per se border between the physical and the spiritual. incompatible. Such singing is permitted, The voice also represents the desire of women as long as it is free of vulgar and insulting to express themselves in the public sphere – sexuality. Rabbi Bigman has finally succeeded their opinions, personalities and abilities. in separating the wheat from the chaff. In 2009, Rabbi David Bigman, the Still, reading his response carefully leaves American-born head of the Maale Gilboa me unsettled. Rabbi Bigman takes the halachic Yeshiva in the north of Israel, was asked sources as the plain truth, as a description for his halachic opinion regarding women of reality, and I find myself offended. As an singing in public, and responded with an Orthodox woman, I wish I could suppress my extensive ruling. Based on a close analysis sense of insult, but I can’t. How can it be, I of a key Talmudic passage (BT Berakhot 24a) wonder, that there’s not one word in his ruling and subsequent authoritative commentaries, expressing any reservation regarding the medieval and modern, it was published by assumptions made in the rabbinic sources? Kolech, an Orthodox feminist organization. What more do you want, I quickly correct On the face of it, his opinion seems quite myself, adopting a stance of practical politics. flexible. In communities that already have Rabbi Bigman, after all, is willing to go to established the practice of women singing bat for women. Criticism like mine, which in public, he concluded, there is no reason questions the basic assumptions of the sources, to discontinue it, provided that five aspects will weaken Rabbi Bigman and those like him. of the singing are appropriate: venue, lyrics, “You see,” observers from the religious right musical style, clothing and body language. wing will immediately tell him, “they are never Bigman even indicated that religious women satisfied.” Yes, it’s a slippery slope, the dissent could work in show business: “There is from our sages’ beliefs. Rabbi Bigman’s tools no problem for those modest and virtuous are the tools of the halachic process. These are daughters of Israel to develop a singing career the rules of the game. You decide, I tell myself: even within the general culture, as long as are you inside or out? they do not make concessions of the refined Inside and out, it seems, is my permanent foundations of Torah culture and do not existential position. I am torn between my cooperate with those vulgar and commercialized understanding, as a religious feminist, that features of the culture around us.” I need Rabbi Bigman and his halachic ruling; and my own personal conversation with the Talmudic sources, which is invariably bolder Women’s modesty and (and perhaps more dangerous) than that of women’s singing are not the most responsive male rabbi. Can I at once support the rabbi, and convey my appreciation incompatible. of him, and at the same time express my fundamental difficulty with the worldview reflected in his decision? I believe that I can. As I read this technical halachic ruling, The Anxieties of Men it’s clear to me that Rabbi Bigman has opened a gate far wider than previously thought The ancient phrase “a woman’s voice is erva” possible. A central tenet of Jewish law holds claims exceptional status in the Israeli

HAVRUTA | 29 religious Zionist public and the Modern Orthodox world. Three little words – kol b’ isha erva – encapsulate the risk of granting women a voice and space in the cultural and social sphere. I think that the power of this phrase derives from its didactic moral status, as expressed by Rabbi Bigman, and also from its halachically binding nature, which has been fortified by generations of rabbinical sages. The combination of “halacha” and “aggadah,” of legal power and homily, has made this phrase more significant than many other Talmudic adages. Also, the statement embodies a much broader worldview concerning masculinity and femininity. In order to clarify these remarks, I would like to review the sugiyah, the Talmudic discourse, in Tractate Berakhot. Rav Hisda said: “A woman’s shok (leg, shin) is erva, as it is written (Isaiah 47:2), ‘Reveal your shok, wade through rivers,’ and it is also written (v.3), ‘your nakedness will be uncovered and your shame will also be revealed.’”

Shmuel said: “A woman’s voice is erva, as it is written (Song of Songs 2:14), ‘…for your voice is pleasant and your appearance attractive.’”

Rav Sheshet said: “A woman’s hair is erva, as it is written (Song of Songs 4:1), ‘Your hair resembles a herd of goats.’”

(BT Berakhot 24a) The Song of Songs explicitly expresses love As is their custom, the sages find and desire. It was called “kodesh kodashim” corroboration for their viewpoint in biblical (“Holy of Holies”) by Rabbi Akiva (Mishnah verses. Rabbi Hisda’s comment demonstrates Yadayim 3:5), hinting that the metaphor itself this well: the verse in Isaiah indeed shows is both holy and dangerous: in the Temple, only that if one reveals one’s leg, one’s “shame the High Priest could enter the Holy of Holies, will be revealed.” Shmuel and Rabbi Sheshet’s and only on Yom Kippur. The appropriation of positions, by contrast, are based on verses from the Song of Songs to underscore the seductive the Song of Songs (Shir HaShirim), a poetic threat of the feminine is a forceful and text that describes love between a man and a suffocating statement. It seems to declare that woman, and which is generally interpreted as one should not read the Song of Songs as a vital a metaphor for the love between God and his allegory, inspiration for an equal relationship nation Israel. Here, however, its verses are in which the woman has passion and a voice, turned to another purpose. but rather as a cautionary tale. The choice of

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this beloved biblical text as proof for restrictive personal, cultural and interpretive elements Talmudic opinions speaks volumes about how that created the mantra “X in a woman is erva” our sages have regarded women, a worldview – just fill in the blank. that goes beyond their comments about body Rabbi Hisda, Shmuel and Rabbi Sheshet do parts. not, we should note (in all fairness), claim that One may wonder how the leg, hair and everything in a woman is nakedness – though voice were actually chosen. Was this Shmuel’s they could, since the Song of Songs also says Orthodox women’s band Ashira at the Dead Sea, personal opinion about female hair? Or was “you are all fair, my love.” Instead, they strive 2009. Photo by Miriam this how women’s hair was seen in those days? to pinpoint exactly where in the female body Alcer. Or maybe the similar ring of the words “erva” nakedness begins to reveal itself: the leg, (nakedness) and “arev” (pleasant) was the voice or hair? Each of the three Babylonian determining factor: the pleasant voice is like sages specifies a different location, on the nakedness, as if the poetry were the proof. assumption that the mere exposure of these Most likely, it was the intertwining of all these will trigger the same response in a man as

HAVRUTA | 31 Rita in concert, Zappa Club, Tel Aviv. Photo by Yossi Tzevker

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erva, the naked female genitalia, resulting in physical and spiritual, body and mind, and prohibited sexual relations. Men in general – expresses both emotion and rational thought. according to the learned men who wrote this All human potential is bound up in the voice: Talmudic passage – cannot control their urges: wisdom, temptation, prayer. A voice is a they see nakedness in a woman’s voice, hair or world: hence the intense religious and cultural leg, and immediately become slaves to their struggle over the boundaries of the woman’s instincts. voice. The issue, indeed, is not merely a And what is the halachic remedy for this matter of singing – it is about the silencing male condition? That the woman must take of women in the largest sense. responsibility for the man’s uncontrollable urges, and hide from sight or earshot anything Opening the Gates that ignites them. Since men work and circulate When I try to think what a woman’s voice is in the public sphere, this also means that the to me, where it becomes meaningful in my proper place for the woman is in the home. In own life, four scenes come to mind: other words, it is not the man’s task to avoid Yom Kippur eve, eating a hearty meal prior the threatening female presence; instead, the to the fast. Everyone who eats on the ninth woman, whose body is temptation, must keep (of Tishrei, the eve before Yom Kippur), the herself under wraps. It is she who is blamed rabbinic adage says, is counted as having fasted and penalized for the fears and anxieties of both on the ninth and the tenth. The awe of the men. coming day is in the air, the holy mixed with The dispute among the sages is actually the mundane. The radio is playing, and there quite interesting: what can be learned from the the Israeli meets the Jewish. For years, the last fact that it is not clear where the nakedness song on Kol Yisrael before the announcement, is located? What does it mean that different “here our broadcast ends; we will return after things (voice, hair, or leg) represent one thing Yom Kippur,” was “Open the Gate,” performed ( , genitals)? And why, to return to our erva by the Israeli singer Tzila Dagan. “Open the main concern, does woman’s voice remain such gate to us, at the time of its locking, because a major issue among the Modern Orthodox? the day is passing. The day will pass and the sun will set; we approach Your gates.” For me, A voice is a world: hence this song is part of the Yom Kippur experience. Beginning in my childhood, I was led into the the intense religious and sanctity of the day by this song; just before the holy day commenced I knew that soon it would cultural struggle over pass and the gate would be locked. The fullness the boundaries of the of Tzila’s high-pitched voice as she sings “we will come to your gates,” gives me goose bumps woman’s voice. to this very day. I think this is the case for many Israelis who grew up on this song. I did not know then that her voice was compensation for The voice is a central motif in Judaism. the absent female voice in the synagogue. The voice is the vehicle of God’s revelation August 2009, Sultan’s Pool in Jerusalem, a in the world. Psalm 29, which we sing as the performance by Yehudit Ravitz, the “mother” Torah is carried back to the ark on Shabbat, of Israeli rock music. A fifty-something secular proclaims: “The voice of God is in power, the woman standing on stage in faded jeans and voice of God is in majesty. The voice of God a simple shirt. She sang as only she knows breaks the cedars…” In human terms, the how, and hundreds of Israelis of all ages sang voice represents the elusive linkage of the with her. Based on appearances, about half of

HAVRUTA | 33 them were religious, screaming their lungs out, excited teachers; girls who are strangers to enjoying the recollection of songs that shaped each other gather in the middle of the month of their identities as Israelis. I’m moved as I hear Elul to pray together for the first time. At the her; I look at her and see a model of a woman end of the service, after “Adon Olam,” a feeling in midlife, making a significant contribution of relief fills the air. Soon the service, with all to contemporary Israel. Her songs are us. It is its awkwardness of unfamiliar tunes, would clear that her femininity, bursting on stage in be ending. Just then, a seventh-grade student contagious vitality, is part of her power: without opens up her backpack and pulls out a shofar. any attempt to seduce. This is how she is. She places it in her mouth and blows: “tekiah, truah, tekiah, shvarim.” The resonant sounds Are we doomed to live of the shofar fill the space and penetrate the heart. Elul, the month of repentance, is here. split lives – sustained I am moved by the girl’s confidence, by her natural ownership of the shofar, by her ability by the voices of women to bring a large group of girls and women into in the general culture, the month of Elul. Such personal recollections help me to but accompanied by the define a cultural landscape. These female voices are not expressed within the halachic knowledge that this is framework – indeed they ignore or defy it. barely acceptable in our Many Israeli women in the religious Zionist and Modern Orthodox communities, who religious world? conduct their daily lives within halachic boundaries, can attest to the kind of life- affirming experiences I have described. A few months after the disengagement from These women often live with a sense of Gaza, I was listening to a new CD called “Orange fragmentation, sometimes even guilt, Days.” One song begins with a recording that regarding the penetration of these voices into documents the singing of the young women their cultural and religious world, even though at the Neve Dekalim Synagogue; this is a the voices feed and fill the soul and spirit. Are song filled with plaintive crying. Slowly, you we doomed to live split lives – sustained by can identify the song. Slowly, amid the tears, the voices of women in the general culture, you can hear the voices of girls singing with but always accompanied by the knowledge gentle and thrilling beauty. The crying voices that this sustenance is, in the best case, barely fade as young women, recorded in a studio, acceptable in our religious world? sing the lines from Psalm 102: “A prayer of the afflicted, when he is overwhelmed and Do Not Disturb pours out his complaint before God.” In their singing is their craving, their longing: “O God, It could be argued that according to Rabbi hear my prayer, and let my cry come unto Bigman’s ruling, all the female voices I have You.” Through their voices we hear the depth cited are permissible. At the same time, the of their religious experience, which remained fact that the religious public is primarily a steadfast even though their prayer – that consumer of women’s voices, and not their the disengagement be prevented – was not producer, tells us a great deal. For most answered. Israelis, it is hard to imagine a religious September 2007. The first day of school at woman belting out the High Holiday prayer the Shalom Hartman Institute’s high school for “Avinu Malkenu” (“Our Father, our King”) girls, known as the Midrashiya. A new school, like Barbra Streisand, or singing the Israeli

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national anthem “Hatikva” before a national facilitate new ways of thinking. For example, audience, as the Israeli diva Rita did at the the term “the nature of things has changed” state’s 50th-birthday celebrations. (The (hishtanut ha’tevaim), utilized in various wonderful performances by Streisand and responsa takes into account that the ways in Rita are both viewable on YouTube.) which certain physical, natural and even social The difficulty in imagining a religious phenomena were seen in the Talmudic period woman in such a performance stems from are no longer applicable. I am also encouraged the internalization of Shmuel’s statement by the halachic principle, dating back to the that “a woman’s voice is erva.” The spirit of 12th-century commentator Rabbi Avraham these words has been deeply absorbed into ben David (RaBaD) of Provence, that “if one Orthodox culture, and has influenced not is used to something, one cannot be disturbed Channa Pinchasi, only how men see women, but how women see by it.” For example, a man who is accustomed, a fellow at the Shalom Hartman themselves – as dangerous temptresses, whose by dint of his everyday life, to seeing the Institute, is a doctoral voices should rather not be heard. A parallel uncovered hair of single women, is unlikely candidate at Bar- source in the Palestinian Talmud (Tractate to be dangerously stimulated by such a sight. Ilan University. Her Challah 12:2) makes the point more bluntly: This rather obvious observation points to the research focuses on “Shmuel said: ‘A woman’s voice is erva.’ What larger possibility that social conditions do gender aspects of is the reason? ‘Through the voice of harlotry change the nature of arousal, and that there Midrash. Channa is a she defiles the land.’ (Jeremiah, 3:9).” is a place in modern halachic discourse for the leader of a women’s Rabbi Bigman’s five conditions limiting man that “cannot be disturbed” by what he feminist beit midrash women’s singing – location, body language, sees – or hears – every day. at the Herzog and the rest – invite a raft of new questions: I’m not calling for rampant Center and an active Is Jerusalem’s Sultan’s Pool, a favorite permissiveness, far from it. It is clear to member of Kolech, outdoor venue for artistic performances, me that women in the contemporary world a feminist orthodox organization. deemed as appropriate? Who makes such a need protection from degradation and judgment? Yehudit Ravitz dresses modestly sexual exploitation, and in this respect by modern Israeli standards, but is she halacha has a broader moral purpose than acceptable according to halacha? And is rock, just protecting religious women. But I do by definition, a musical style that breaks the wish to question the fundamental logical boundaries? When Etti Ankri, a popular structure of halachic thinking in this area, Israeli singer who has become religiously which argues that women are seductive by observant over the years, sings the medieval nature; that men cannot control their urges; poetry of Rabbi Yehuda Halevi – “Friend, and that public space therefore belongs to have you forgotten your presence between men, and women must turn inward. Each my breasts?” – is this a problem, even though reiteration of this train of thought weakens the poet’s word for presence (shekhinah) is a women, and reduces the spiritual and reference to the divine? And the movement cultural wealth of the whole community. that accompanies singing? How can we Over the ages, this model has caused the know when it is the instinct of life itself, and loss of many precious women’s voices. when it is gratuitously seductive? Is it at all I do not presume to offer a comprehensive possible to function as a religious artist – or or clear-cut solution, but I do have confidence enjoy the performance of women – if we live and faith in the Torah’s power to endure in fear of failing, God forbid, to comply with the upheaval brought about by the feminist the five parameters? stance, even its most critical expressions. I am not (of course) a rabbi, but through A woman’s voice, after all, is an important my close study of Rabbi Bigman’s ruling, I instrument of tikkun olam, the repair and have collected a few halachic tools that may redemption of the world.

HAVRUTA | 35 Leah’s Prayers:

A Feminist Reading

How the “unloved” wife of the patriarch Jacob taught the God of our mothers and fathers a lesson in compassion

omen are obligated to pray, that is, petition God for their Wneeds, for everyone needs rakhmanut [divine compassion] (Jerusalem Talmud Berakhot 3:3)

{By NOAM ZION

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What is the window into the biblical a direct, unabashed prayer that sounds more woman’s heart? There are no diaries in the like bringing suit than worshipful pleading. Bible, certainly no women’s diaries. But we Such literary rendering of the inner life of a do have a few rare personal prayers to God, woman – imagined or real – through prayer recited by women at revealing moments of became in the Jewish tradition the paradigm deepest pain and joy. In the book of Samuel, for the proper state of mind, kavanah, for all barren Hannah, ridiculed and taunted by her human petitional prayer. Thus, paradoxically, co-wife Peninah, pours out her heart in the women, who were excluded from temple temple of Shiloh as she weeps. Exhibiting a worship, and marginalized and exempted body language of extreme bitterness and (or excluded) from synagogue prayer, desperation, she appears to be intoxicated to became – through their ability to express the decorum-conscious High Priest Eli: “And deep human need in words and tears – the Hannah spoke in her heart; only her lips halachic and midrashic models for effective moved, but her voice was not heard; therefore prayer. In Judaism, the prayers of women Eli thought that she was drunk” (I Samuel pour out inner longing to God, who, in turn, 1:13). Then, after God responds affirmatively is characterized as a compassionate listener to her prayer by giving her a child, we have to the voices of the persecuted, the neglected a magnificent theological poem in Hannah’s and the needy. prayer of jubilation and thanks (I Samuel 2:1-10). Centuries later, the Rabbis of the Talmud Women were expand this biblical account to enter marginalized and Hannah’s inner world, and ghostwrite a new and more audacious prayer for her: exempted from “And Hannah spoke in her heart” (I Samuel synagogue prayer, but 1:13). Rabbi Elazar said in the name of Rabbi Yose ben Zimra: She spoke concerning became the halachic and her heart. She said before God: Sovereign midrashic models for of the Universe, among all the things that You have created in a woman, You have effective prayer. not created one without a purpose: eyes to see, ears to hear, a nose to smell, a mouth to speak, hands to do work, legs to walk Hannah may be the foremost of the Bible’s with, breasts to give suck. These breasts praying women, but she’s not the first. In the that You have put on my heart, are they book of Genesis, we find the story of Leah, not for nursing? Give me a son, so that I the elder and unloved wife of Jacob. Unlike may suckle with them. Hannah – and her fellow matriarchs, Sarah, (Babylonian Talmud Berakhot 31b) Rebecca, Rachel – Leah had no problems with fertility, which is the usual motive The Rabbis thus invent a new Hannah, for women’s prayer in the Bible. In fact, liberated from her deferential stance toward she had six sons and a daughter. Yet Leah the authority of her husband and the High had much to pray for. Here too, her biblical Priest. They make her into a full-bodied prayers triggered the literary-psychological feminist, who demands that the Sovereign imagination of the Rabbis, who wrote her a of the Universe grant her rightful needs, in personal prayer of petition and protest.

HAVRUTA | 37 Praying at the Sigd festival of the Ethiopian Jewish community, Jerusalem, 2009. Photo by Pini Hamou.

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HAVRUTA | 39 Leah’s inner life is Leah is disadvantaged in “looks.” Her eyes, says the Hebrew text, are “rakot,” which characterized by tzuris, most commonly means “soft,” but can also connote weakness or fatigue. Leah’s eyes chutzpah, and rachmonis, affect her view of the world, but also the way roughly translated as she is viewed by others; they are the only way she is described, apart from birth order, troubles, audacity and in the biblical text. Rachel, by contrast, is good to look at, in terms of what feminist compassion. criticism calls “the male gaze.” As a result, Let us follow Leah’s inner life and its verbal Jacob not only falls in love with her at first expression, in both the Bible and rabbinic sight, but is also willing to pay a bride-price literature. She wrestles indignantly, even of seven years’ labor for Laban. He makes impudently, with God, who has sentenced it very clear which daughter he wants: “I her to a life deprived of her husband Jacob’s will serve you seven years for Rachel, your love. But she also grows in emotional younger daughter” (Genesis 29:18). intelligence, as her initial jealousy of her But Laban gets the better of Jacob, younger sister Rachel, the wife that Jacob manipulating Leah as an instrument to does love, gradually gives way to compassion. deceive the choosy suitor: “Now in the Ultimately, she will try to teach God Himself evening he took Leah his daughter and what she has learned about forgiveness. brought her to him, and he went in to her” (Genesis 29:23). Justifiably, Jacob comes to “Now My Husband will Love Me” complain the next morning against what Laban – not Leah – has done to him. Jacob To put it in Yiddish, Leah’s inner life is contracted as a free agent for the beautiful characterized by tzuris, chutzpah, and younger daughter. Laban responds by citing rachmonis, roughly translated as troubles, Leah’s advantage in traditional legal terms: audacity and compassion. Her tzuris–from “Such is not done in our place, giving away the Hebrew word tzarot, troubles (or “dire the younger before the firstborn” (Genesis straits,” since tzar means “narrow”) – derive 29:26). Indeed, Jacob and Laban had no from her placement in the family. (Indeed in right to make a deal in violation of Leah’s biblical Hebrew, the name for co-wives of the birthright as the elder daughter. The Bible same man is tzarot.) Leah is the first-born imposes poetic justice upon Jacob, who had daughter, entitled to be married off first, yet stolen the birthright of his elder brother she cannot compete with the exceptional Esau by tricking his elderly, blind father physical beauty of her younger sister Rachel. Isaac. Yet here too, Leah is an instrument, a She is passed over when their cousin Jacob, tool of divine chastisement. seeking a wife, falls in love with Rachel at After Jacob has served Laban for first sight. Leah is introduced to the reader another seven years, he takes Rachel as as an obstacle to the fulfillment of Jacob’s his second wife: “He lay also with Rachel, romantic love. and he loved Rachel also, more than Leah” “Now Laban had two daughters: the name (Genesis 29:30). It may be reasonably of the elder was Leah, the name of the inferred from this verse that Jacob did also younger was Rachel. Leah’s eyes were love Leah, albeit less than he loved Rachel. weak, but Rachel was fair of form and But as the Bible scholar Avivah Gottlieb fair to look at. And Jacob fell in love with Zornberg commented in her book Genesis: Rachel.” (Genesis 29:16) The Beginning of Desire:

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Leah is the stone that fractures Jacob’s battle of the sisters escalates: “When Rachel perfect dream of romantic fulfillment with saw that she bore Jacob no children, Rachel Rachel, which is why she cannot be fully envied her sister” (Genesis 30:1). She gives loved. It is not so much that the women Jacob her maidservant Bilhah as a concubine, are different, but rather their symbolic to act as a surrogate mother to compensate roles in the dreams and disappointments for her own infertility. Leah, by now having of Jacob. Rachel will always represent the produced four sons (Judah is born in Genesis unattainable in the European, romantic 29:35), counters by giving her maid Zilpah to sense, while Leah will always represent Jacob as another concubine. “unromantic” fertility. Leah’s hopes to Then, in a rather strange episode, Leah win her husband’s heart through child- gets another chance to produce her own bearing can never be fulfilled, because biological child: fertility is part of the workaday world, like And Reuben went in the days of wheat raising sheep. harvest, and found duda’im in the field, In the very next verse, we see that God’s and brought them to his mother Leah. perspective is radically different: “Now when Then Rachel said to Leah, “Give me, I beg God saw that Leah was hated, he opened her you, of your son’s duda’im.” And she said womb, while Rachel was barren” (Genesis to her, “Is it a small matter that you have 29:31). And Leah, for her part, turns to God, taken my husband? And would you take praying that God’s attentions, expressed away my son’s duda’im also?” And Rachel in the fruitfulness of her divinely opened said, “Therefore he shall lie with you womb, will produce similar attentions from tonight for your son’s duda’im.” And Jacob her husband: came from the field in the evening, and Leah went out to meet him, and said, “You She called his name: Reu-ven / See, a Son! must come in to me; for I have hired you For she said: Indeed, God has seen my with my son’s duda’im.” And he lay with being afflicted, her that night. And God listened to Leah, indeed, now my husband will love me! and she conceived, and bore Jacob the Twice more Leah conceives and bears sons fifth son. And Leah said, “God has given to Jacob, and again the naming of the child is me my hire, because I have given my maid also a prayer for love: to my husband; and she called his name Indeed, God has heard that I am hated, so Issachar” (Genesis 30:14-18). he has given me this one as well! What are these “duda’im”? Most translations render the word as “mandrakes,” And she called his name: Shimon / but no one really knows exactly what plant Hearing. or flower young Reuben picked in the field. Now this time my husband will Duda’im resembles the word “dod,” which accompany me, means “lover” or “beloved” (as in dodi li or For I have borne him three sons! lekha dodi), which supports the assumption Therefore they called his name Levi / that this was an aphrodisiac or a fertility Accompanying” (Genesis 29:32-34) drug. Here, in the Bible’s sole verbal exchange The biblical Leah now emerges as between the two sisters, the contest over a struggling woman, who insists on the duda’im is a battle for Jacob’s love. recognition from her husband as something Leah resists Rachel’s request, indignantly she has earned through hard labor. But that comparing the “giving” of a few flowers to recognition is not forthcoming. Instead, the Rachel, to the “taking” of her husband. Her

HAVRUTA | 41 reaction reflects how hurt and vulnerable she is, and suggests, though this is unspoken in the text, that Jacob has avoided contact with her, preferring to sleep with her tzarah, his second wife Rachel. Leah’s chutzpah comes to the fore in her confrontation with Jacob. She demands an extra night of conjugal duties, which she has purchased from Rachel for an insulting pittance of duda’im. “I have hired you,” she tells her husband with ribald malice, as if he were a male prostitute. The transaction is stripped of emotion; she does not require love or attention. She simply demands Jacob’s services as a hired stud. In Hebrew, the word sachar connotes payment and employment, hence the name of the child, Issachar. “I have hired you,” she tells her husband with ribald malice, as if he were a male prostitute.

And yet, even now, Leah does sustain the hope that her husband will love her. The birth of Issachar is followed by that of Leah’s sixth and last son, Zebulun: “God has presented me with a good present, this time my husband will prize me (yizbeleni) – for I have borne him six sons! So she called his name: Zevulun / The Prince.” Imitation of Woman (Genesis 30:20) The birth of Dinah is immediately followed In the very next verse, Leah gives birth by the birth of Joseph, Rachel’s long-awaited to a daughter whom she names Dinah. But first child: this naming, unlike those of Jacob’s twelve Afterwards she bore a daughter, and called male children, does not rate a prayerful her Dinah. And God remembered Rachel explication. So it goes, in the patriarchal and God listened to her and opened her narrative of the Hebrew Bible. But there is womb, so that she became pregnant and more to the story. bore a son. She said: “God has removed

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[asaf] my shame!” So she called his name name Dinah, from the same root, meaning Yosef, saying: “May God add [yosef] “justice,” as Dan, the son of the concubine another son to me!” (Genesis 30:23-24). Bilhah, Rachel’s maidservant? And, most intriguingly – why is Rachel remembered by A host of questions arises from these two God right after the naming of Dinah; and why juxtaposed events. Why does Leah, who has does it say God listened to Rachel, when the begun again to bear children, suddenly stop “Jacob Encountering Bible never mentions Rachel praying directly Rachel,” by the Austrian after Dinah? Why is Dinah the only one of to God? In Midrash Tanhuma, the rabbis of painter Joseph von Jacob’s children whose name is not explained antiquity sought to provide some answers by Führich, 1836. by her mother? Why did Leah choose the inventing a prayer for Leah:

HAVRUTA | 43 Leah, who after bearing [Jacob] six sons, There is thus no reason for God to alter saw prophetically that twelve tribes were his preferential treatment of Leah, unless to emerge from Jacob. Having [herself] Leah herself relinquishes her demand for borne six already, and pregnant for the justice, or God is overwhelmed by sheer seventh time, and with the two sons born rakhmanut, compassion, for Rachel, the to each of the two maidservants, ten had innocent victim of God’s intervention already been born. Therefore, Leah stood, into Leah and Jacob’s relationship. In the angrily confronting the Almighty, saying: midrash, both possibilities are synthesized, as Leah is turned from an angry victim into “Master of the Universe, twelve tribes are a strong, audacious character who demands to emerge from Jacob, of which I have six, the fair treatment of her sister. God’s change and am pregnant with a seventh, and by of mind, his “remembering” of Rachel, is thus means of the maidservants two and two, understood in the light of the change of heart hence there are ten. If this [unborn] child of his “client,” Leah, who has moved beyond [I am carrying] is also a son, then my sister jealousy to rachmonis. Rachel’s share will not [even] be that of the maidservants!” Leah is turned from At once the Blessed Holy One heard an angry victim into her prayer, and the fetus in her belly was turned into a female . . . And why a strong, audacious did Leah call her Dinah? Because the righteous Leah stood before the Master character who demands of the Universe demanding justice, and the fair treatment of her the Blessed Holy One said to her: “You are merciful, and I too have mercy on her sister. [Rachel],” and it is immediately written: “And God remembered Rachel.” (Midrash Tanhuma, Vayetzeh, Chapter 8) The midrash praises Leah for bringing suit against God. While the substance of her Until this point, God has opened Leah’s plea is to request mercy for her sister, her womb and kept Rachel’s womb closed, as a co-wife or tzarah, the style of the pleading is way of pressing Jacob to love Leah, mother adversarial – chutzpadik – an appeal to logic, of his children, no less than Rachel. But not pathos. She names her daughter Dinah it hasn’t worked. Jacob never engages in –“Justice,” as it were – and argues her case self-reflection even when confronted with in terms of the moral and mathematical Rachel’s prolonged infertility. He responds symmetry of the tribes and their mothers. to Rachel’s demand for children by a brusque Most strikingly, Leah offers herself as a role denial that this has anything to do with him model for God, who decides to act in imitation at all: of woman, rather than the usual theological And when Rachel saw that she bore Jacob model, in which human beings act morally, no children, Rachel envied her sister; and in imitatio Dei: “You [Leah] are merciful, and I said to Jacob, “Give me children, or else I too have mercy on her [Rachel].” die.” And Jacob’s anger was kindled against In the midrash, Leah is crowned with a Rachel; and he said, “Am I in God’s place, new trait missing in her biblical character who has withheld from you the fruit of the – rakhmanut, which in Hebrew derives from womb?” (Genesis 30:1-2). rekhhem, womb. In this Jewish biological

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metaphor, compassion is the archetypal trait At the culmination of her inner struggle, of women, whereas in the Greek counterpart, Leah transcends her jealousy of Rachel and women are portrayed as hysterical (from the acquires the moral strength to rebuild her word hysteria, meaning womb, the origin relationship with her sister. In Genesis 31, of the word “hysterectomy”) – incapable of Rachel and Leah join forces with Jacob in controlling their emotions, unmanly in their defying Laban, who sold his daughters as lack of self-control. Such emotion is strictly commodities, tricked their husband, and negative in the Greek world, which celebrates now seeks to deny their family of their hard- rationality and physical courage. But it is a earned wealth. The chapter begins: positive mark of divinity in the Bible, where Noam Zion, el rakhum – merciful God – is the first of the And he [Jacob] heard the words of Laban’s sons, saying, “Jacob has taken away all a fellow at the thirteen attributes of divinity revealed to Shalom Hartman that was our father’s, and from that which Moses at Sinai, and a central idiom of rabbinic Institute, has an prayer, especially on the High Holidays. was our father’s has he gotten all this Master of Arts in Asking for divine rakhmanut is a cornerstone honor.” And Jacob saw the countenance of philosophy from of Jewish liturgy, an ongoing tribute to such Laban, and, behold, it was not toward him Columbia University. women as Hannah and Leah as models for as before. (Genesis 31:1-2.) His numerous petitional prayer. publications include: God speaks to Jacob in a dream, telling A Different Night: The him to rise up, leave Laban’s house in Padan- Family Participation A Feminist Postscript Aram, and go back to Canaan. Jacob tells Haggadah, A Different his wives about the dream, and they reply in Light: The Big Book The ethos of rakhmanut is consistent with unison: of Hanukkah and A aspects of modern feminist theory. Carol Day Apart: Shabbat at Friedman Gilligan, a leading scholar of And Rachel and Leah answered and said to Home. Noam is also a moral development, describes the cultural him: leading contributor ideal of the “good woman” in western society. Do we still have a share, an inheritance in to the SHI website’s According to Gilligan, women represent our father’s house? Education Channel. such values as solidarity, networking and Is it not as strangers that we are thought compromise as opposed to male values of competition and individualism. Women of by him? promote an inclusive morality of mutual For he has sold us and eaten up, yes, eaten responsibility, not an abstract morality of up our purchase-price! rights in which one side wins at the expense Indeed, all the riches that God has snatched of the other. away from our father – they belong to us and to our children” (Genesis 31:14-16). Women represent At this moment of truth, these women are no longer rivals, seeking to undermine such values as one another. They have no trouble choosing solidarity, networking between their deceitful father and their now- vulnerable husband. They are moral agents, and compromise as empowered by solidarity and prayer. Jacob and his household flee with all their livestock opposed to male values and goods. Rachel, in a final act of chutzpah, of competition and steals the household gods of her father the idolator. The compassionate God is watching, individualism. and we may assume that S/He is happy too.

HAVRUTA | 45 Jewish Poetry and the Feminist Imagination:

The Gifts of Muriel Rukeyser

“What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?” A secular American Jewish poet finds answers in traditional sources

f the name Muriel Rukeyser is familiar, it may be because of Ia single poem. In 1944, at the height of the Holocaust, she wrote a haunting sonnet called “To be a Jew in the Twentieth Century.” It begins:

{By LAURA MAJOR

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To be a Jew in the twentieth century while discovering new ways to speak to and Is to be offered a gift. If you refuse, about women. Rukeyser was a left-wing Wishing to be invisible, you choose political and social activist and a humanist. Death of the spirit, the stone insanity. She was also a Jew, if not a religious one, who wrote about being a Jew and about Jewish “Accepting, take full life,” the poet continues, texts through the prism of her views on but the full life comes with a price: “The gift gender, culture and politics. As she stated is torment.” The poem’s final, defiant, very in 1944, in a publication of the American American words – “Daring to live for the Jewish Committee called “Under Forty: A impossible” – give the reader hope. The poem Symposium on American Literature and the has been reprinted often in Reform and Younger Generation of American Jews:” “My Reconstructionist prayer books, and retains themes and the use I have made of them have its truth into the 21st century. depended on my life as a poet, as a woman, Rukeyser’s other Jewish poems are as an American and as a Jew.” A closer look no less timely and skillful, and should be at some of her Jewish poetry highlights this better known than they are, for they have fruitful potential of the multiple identities of much to say about . Her the American Jew. overall poetic achievement remains under- appreciated, despite a body of work that was What Kind of Father is That? truly groundbreaking. Her fellow poet and Jewish feminist Adrienne Rich described Among the poetic tools employed by Rukeyser her with admiration as a “beginner,” akin to is the rewriting of ancient myths, primarily Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson: “They Greek and Jewish. Today, in the Jewish case, are openers of new paths, those who take the this kind of creative revision and re-invention first steps, who therefore can seem strange is sometimes called “modern midrash.” and ‘dreadful’ to their place and time.” Rukeyser does not replace the original story with a new one; she recognizes the potency and artistic and cultural value of the biblical “My themes and the use I and Talmudic imagery. She does, however, have made of them have strip the original of its canonical authority; she shows how the original text inadequately depended on my life as a represents women’s experience, and constructs another side to the story. In this poet, as a woman, as an way, she not only grants a voice to previously silent, passive women, but also undermines American and as a Jew.” the universal claim of the original story. Radical feminists might argue that a poet who rewrites or revises past texts or Born in New York in 1913, Rukeyser was traditions cannot free herself from the holds influenced by such modernist poets as T.S. of those traditions: women writers aspiring Eliot, but soon developed her own unique to write on their own terms should draw their voice, and at age 21 won the Yale Younger strength, inspiration and subject matter from Poets Prize. Her career predated the women’s a source other than the patriarchal tradition. movement, and she had no feminist tradition But is it feasible or even desirable to break of poetry from which to draw, but was part away from a rich and ancient tradition? of an emerging feminist consciousness that Rukeyser thinks not. As she makes the exposed, attacked and even appropriated biblical text her own, she challenges the patriarchal notions and strategies, all the aspects of it that misrepresent her as a person

HAVRUTA | 47 and consign her to stereotypical roles. This eyes; only to these men do nothing; seeing confrontation is necessary, for to avoid it and that they have come under the shadow of my ignore the weight of her own history might roof” (Genesis 19:8). When leaving the city, leave her still struggling with that history, Lot’s family was ordered not to look back. not free to create new traditions or connect Despite this divine commandment, “his wife with a female past. looked back from behind him and she became a pillar of salt” (Genesis 19:26). Is it feasible or even Rukeyser picks up the story at the point when Lot and his two daughters flee the desirable to break away cities leaving the salt-pillar mother behind. The speaker, one of the daughters, opens the from a rich and ancient poem by protesting the actions of her father: tradition? “Well if he treats me like a young girl still/ that father of mine…” The way in which she refers to her father reveals both anger and Such confrontation with the “father assertiveness, but the syntax of the line also texts” happens not only on the level of the betrays her frustration and helplessness: written word. The gendering tradition in we expect the conditional “if” statement to the Bible and classical myths, fairy tales be followed by a confident “then,” but this and literature is an important (though not does not appear. Ms. Lot – the daughter – necessarily healthy) part of the socialization recognizes the structure of power relations: process of young women in various cultures; she knows that she cannot change her constant exposure to these traditions father’s habit of controlling her and that inevitably causes an internalization of the empty threats will not help. central values entrenched in them. When All she can do is express her objections. Rukeyser sets out to reinvent Bible stories, She does this by moving between an she has to rewrite on a much deeper, more analysis of her father’s actions and their complicated level than that of the original impact and the memory of her mother. The text. She has to rewrite parts of her own resulting structure of the poem reflects the cultural consciousness – a painful process of dichotomy between the two parents. The deletion and reinterpretation that redefines daughter bemoans the humiliation she feels her existence as a woman. – “everyone on the road knows he offered The poem “Ms. Lot,” for example, tells us/ To the strangers when all they wanted the biblical story of Lot’s family from a was men” – and immediately thinks of her fresh perspective. In Genesis 19, we learn mother and mourns her loss: “And mother that Abraham’s nephew Lot, along with his a salt lick the animals come to.” She speaks wife and two daughters, was spared the harshly of her father, blaming him for her destruction of Sodom. Their escape from mother’s demise: the evil city took place after an especially traumatic incident: Lot, trying to protect Mother did not even know God’s messengers (or angels in human form), She was not to turn around and look. offered his virgin daughters to the men that God spoke to Lot, my father. surrounded his house demanding that these She was hard of hearing. He knew that. messengers be handed over to them: “Behold I don’t believe he told her anyway. now, I have two daughters who have not What kind of father is that, or husband? known man; let me, I beg you, bring them In answer to her apparently rhetorical out to you, and do to them as is good in your question: “What kind of father is that?”

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“The Flight of Lot,” by Albrecht Dürer, 1496.

she repeats as if in disbelief: “He offered us all those men as if she were a harlot (even to those men. They didn’t want women.” though, in the Bible, the physical violation She objects to being offered in trade as a does not take place), her chances for a proper commodity to men in order to serve her marriage are slim: “Who’s going to want me father’s desperate needs. She wants to now?” she asks poignantly. be happily married, and remembers her Rukeyser paints Ms. Lot as being unable mother’s promise that “Some normal man to transcend the hierarchical structures of will come along and need you.” She knows, her time, confining her to the possibilities however, that now, after being offered to available at that period. Indeed Lot’s

HAVRUTA | 49 daughter cannot picture herself as the author The Singing Lands of her own life and happiness, remaining rather dependent on men. She does, Another biblical heroine given voice by however, have the insight to recognize and Rukeyser is the prophetess Miriam in speak out against the patriarchal control to “Miriam: the Red Sea.” In this poem, Miriam which she is subjected. She also recognizes is portrayed as a lone muse, singing at the that the mother-daughter relationship is the Red Sea long after the waters have parted. In sustaining one in her family. the biblical book of Exodus, Miriam played an Lot’s daughter is referred to as Ms. Lot, important role praising God in the aftermath “Ms.” being the designation favored by of the miracle: “And Miriam the prophetess, feminists who wished not to be defined the sister of Aaron, took a tambourine in her according to their marital status. Indeed, hand; and all the women went out after her the “Ms.” title hints at the ambiguous marital with tambourines, dancing. And Miriam status of Lot’s daughter. Is she a “miss,” or is answered them, ‘Sing to the Lord, for he she a “Mrs”? When the speaker asks: “What has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his kind of father is that, or husband?” she is rider has He thrown into the sea’” (Exodus apparently referring to the kind of husband 15:20-21). Lot was to his wife, but Rukeyser relies on In Rukeyser’s poem, Miriam sees herself the double meaning in the line to refer to the as standing “ankle-deep” in water, but she kind of “husband” Lot was to his daughters. has transcended any geographical location: The poem ends as the three flee from “the “High above shores and times,/ I on the cloud of smoke still over the twin cities,” shore/ forever and ever.” Miriam recognizes but the original biblical story, as Rukeyser that her role in history is different from that hints here, unfolds in a shocking way. The of Moses: daughters of Lot, convinced that they are Moses my brother the only surviving humans, inebriate their Has crossed over father with wine and lie with him in order to To milk, honey, impregnate themselves. This is actually an That holy land. act of rape – they take their father as their Building Jerusalem. “husband” without his consent or knowledge I sing forever – which, within the context of Rukeyser’s on the seashore. poem, constitutes revenge for his previous . . . offering of them. My unseen brothers One of the offspring of this incestuous have gone over; union was Moab (the Hebrew suggests “from chariots deep seas under. the father”), a forebear of King David, through I alone stand here Ruth the Moabite. Without entering into the ankle-deep . . . biblical interpretation of their complex act, we can certainly say that the deeds of Lot’s Moses is apparently accomplishing the daughters had an enormous impact on sacred important task of nation-building in the history. The eventual messiah of the Jewish Holy Land – a creative misreading, since nation, after all, will come from the Davidic Moses was forbidden to enter the promised line. The knowledge of these subsequent land – while Miriam remains static, events, together with the voice of Ms. Lot destined to sing on the seashore forever. in the poem, places Lot’s daughter in a new Miriam, of course, does not yet know that light: she is not the passive tool of her father Moses will be barred from entering the but an active participant in history. Holy Land. The key word in these lines is

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“forever:” long after Moses and Aaron will on dry land, the Egyptians drowning – to cease to be, Miriam’s song will echo in the an eternal summit, “High above shores and hearts of the Jewish people. (Indeed, the times.” Furthermore, Rukeyser converts poem’s words “unseen brothers” suggest the the content of Miriam’s biblical song into its mortality of Moses and Aaron.) Although very opposite. In Exodus, Miriam sings in it seems as if Miriam is stuck “ankle-deep” triumphant victory over the Egyptians: “Sing American poets, 1955 at a single point in time, as a muse she has to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; (clockwise from left): transcended history. Her mission is no less the horse and his rider has He thrown into Wallace Stevens, consequential than that of her brothers: the sea.” In the poem, by contrast, she Randall Jarrell, Alan “and I sing, I sing,/ until the lands/ sing to chants “until the lands/ sing to each other” Tate, Muriel Rukeyser, Marianne Moore. each other.” The image of lands singing to – she sings for peace. Rukeyser herself was a Randall Jarrell Papers, each other is a vision of world peace, and radical peace activist, whose political views University Archives and the singing of the muse inspires this exalted earned her an FBI investigation. Though her Manuscripts, University of North Carolina at vision. early communist sympathies waned with the Greensboro. In this rewriting, Rukeyser departs years, she was always anti-war, dedicated to radically from the biblical text. She a vision of lands singing to each other. It transposes Miriam’s song from a specific is this commitment that informs her poetic moment – the children of Israel crossing revision of Miriam’s song.

HAVRUTA | 51 The image of lands reconstruction – imaginative and material – are endless. For Rukeyser, the connection singing to each other is between the individual realm (“What would happen if one woman told the truth about a vision of world peace, her life?”), and the social realm (“The world and the singing of the would split open”), is essential. Rukeyser believed that in order to have an impact on muse inspires this exalted history, one must first take possession of one’s personal history. vision. No Real Survival without These The splitting of the Red Sea has added significance for Rukeyser. Splitting open This connection between personal and is an act that involves the crumbling of cultural history also runs throughout barriers, the breaking down of the illusion of Rukeyser’s long poem “Akiba,” commissioned wholeness. It also suggests the opening of the by the Union of American Hebrew womb in childbirth and the female birthing Congegations and later published as part of new ideas. Indeed, in her poem “The Poem of her series of “Lives” (which also includes as Mask,” she describes herself giving birth – “Kathe Kollwitz”). It is a very different “split open in sleep “ – just before proclaiming sort of poem from those we have discussed her famous words: “No more masks! No more so far – less a rewriting of the Jewish text mythologies!” In other words, being split than an admiring interpretation of an open in birth is so deeply connected to her historical figure who was important to creative processes that it provides her with Rukeyser. In her essay “The Education of a the insight that her poetry must be personal Poet,” published four years before her death and original, stripped of any disguise. in 1980, Rukeyser remarked that Jewish Splitting open allows for new versions of tradition in her childhood household was truth to emerge, and such individual truths, limited to a silver Kiddush cup, the Bible on like the vision of Miriam, can produce the bookshelfand the family lore that her changes in the world. Indeed, as Rukeyser mother was descended from Rabbi Akiva. asked in her poem “Kathe Kollwitz:” Unverifiable,” wrote Rukeyser, “but a great gift to a child.” What would happen if one woman told the “Akiba” is divided into five distinct parts. truth about her life? The first, “The Way Out,” deals with the Exodus, repeating some of the images we saw The world would split open. in “Miriam: the Red Sea.” The second, “For Kathe Kollwitz was a German artist and The Song of Songs,” focuses on Rabbi Akiva’s activist who rebelled against male myths of bold insistence that this beautiful, erotic aggression, creating instead mythical mother text, a metaphoric expression of the love figures with the ability to change society. between God and Israel, be included in the Kollwitz’s reimagination of myth embodies biblical canon. The third part, “The Bonds,” for Rukeyser the heroic act of attempting to looks at Rabbi Akiva’s life, his transformation change the world through art. from ignorant shepherd to brilliant scholar. The act of splitting open or deconstructing The fourth part of the poem, “Akiba Martyr,” myths shows them to be not eternal, deals with his famous martyrdom, while untouchable truths, but simply texts. the final section, “The Witness,” brings Once the myth has been split apart, once a together the Exodus, Rabbi Akiva’s story and taboo has been broken, the possibilities for Rukeyser’s own attitude to history.

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Rukeyser does not re-imagine Rabbi At the very moment at which his physical Akiva’s story from his wife Rachel’s life is most precarious, Rabbi Akiva chooses perspective, as we might have expected, spiritual transcendence. In her classic poem given “Ms. Lot” and “Miriam: The Red Sea.” “To be a Jew,” she makes a similar point: After all, Rachel, the daughter of wealthy “If you refuse” the gift of Judaism, “you Kalba Savua, gave up her wealth, her family choose/ Death of the spirit.” Being a Jew, and normative married life so that the “the she continues, has always meant “torture, huge wordless shepherd” could become a isolation; or torture of the flesh.” learned man. When Rabbi Akiva returns Rabbi Akiva dies uttering the to her, accompanied by his students, after Shema prayer, fulfilling its ultimate Laura Major twenty-four years of study, he reminds commandment: “I knew that I loved him is an associate his students that all he has become and with all my heart and might./ Now I know editor of Havruta. all that they are is due to Rachel. Both in that I love him with all my life.” The moment She received her tradition and in this poem Rachel receives of his death is envisioned by Rukeyser as doctorate in English a supporting role only. The story really full of “delight” and unity: Literature from Bar belongs to Rabbi Akiva – the giant of Torah Ilan University in To love God with all the heart, all passion, study and the symbol of mutual respect. It 2005. Every desire called evil, turned toward was he, after all, who emphasized that “To unity, love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus All the opposites, all in the dialogue. 19:18) is a major principle in the Torah. All the dark and light of the heart, of life In “Akiba Martyr,” the poet retells one of made whole. the most resonant and moving tales in the Talmud (to be found in Tractate Berakhot This moment, for her, is a deeply personal 61b), that of Rabbi Akiva’s death: “This one, “surpassing the known life, day and was an old man under iron rakes/ Tearing ideas:” through to the bone. He made no cry.” My hope, my life, my burst of consciousness: Tortured by the Romans for teaching Torah, To confirm my life in the time Rabbi Akiva remains firm in his faith: of confrontation. Does the old man in uprising speak for compromise? The old man saying Shema. In all but the last things. Not in the study The death of Akiba. itself. The incredible clarity and firmness of For this religion is a system of knowledge; belief demonstrated by Rabbi Akiva at the Points may be one by one abandoned, but time of his death is an inspiration to this not the study. secular Jewish poet, giving her strength . . . “in the time of confrontation.” In writing poetry, in opposing sexism and other forms Now the rule closes in, the last things are of injustice and, as she wrote in “To be a forbidden. Jew,” in “daring to live for the impossible,” There is no real survival without these. Rukeyser draws on her Jewish heritage as Now it is time for prison and the unknown. a source of strength. In the final lines of The old man flowers into spiritual fire. “Akiba,” the poet declares: “The witness Rabbi Akiva will not give up the study or is myself.” Through her deeply personal teaching of Torah – “there is no real survival writing, wrapped in the indestructible without these” – preferring death. And so, parchment of Jewish tradition, “the signs, says Rukeyser, he “flowers into spiritual fire.” the journeys of the night/ survive.”

HAVRUTA | 53 From Silence to Empowerment

Women Reading Women in the Talmud

A strange story from rabbinic antiquity prompts a fresh look at the place of women in the Jewish canon and contemporary society

or many centuries, the beit midrash – the Jewish “house Fof learning” – was a territory for men only. Women were not allowed to enter the hall, much less take part in the conversation.

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In our own time, however, Jewish studies avruta: What are your personal have been immeasurably enriched by the reactions to this text? Is it a work of female scholars and students. In feministH story that somehow slipped into the this spirit, the Shalom Hartman Institute patriarchal Talmud? established its Seder Nashim program in 2008. Nashim (“women” in Hebrew) is the name of one of the six sedarim or “orders” of the Mishnah. Yet the program extends beyond Talmudic study to include Bible, Hebrew literature, Jewish history, philosophy, and education. In this new beit midrash, feminist theory and personal experience combine to re-interpret the Jewish canon. The members of Seder Nashim lately invited Havruta’s Orr Scharf to participate in a study session of their beit midrash. The text under deliberation, a fascinating passage from Tractate Yevamot of the Babylonian Talmud, appears at the end of a lengthy sugyah – thematic discussion – that centers on the subject of pregnancy:

Mishnah The commandment to procreate applies to the man but not to the woman. R. Yohanan ben Barokah says: [the commandment applies] to them both, as it is written: “And God blessed them, and God said unto them: ‘Be fruitful and multiply.” Valeria Seigelshifer:

Gemara I think that this is a very rich text, because it contains radical elements within a Yehudit, the wife of R. Hiyya, experienced conventional Talmudic discourse. It tells tza’ar leidah [the suffering of childbirth]. of a woman who openly confesses that She changed her appearance and came childbirth is very hard for her, and that it Valeria Seigelshifer before R. Hiyya. She asked: is a woman is a PhD candidate at brings her physical pain. What is more, she the Melton Center for commanded [by Jewish law] to procreate? can choose not to give birth in the future. Jewish Education at the He answered her “No.” She went and Yehudit is very clever, has knowledge of the Hebrew University of drank a sterilizing potion. Eventually, law, and takes matters into her own hands. Jerusalem. Valeria teaches the matter became known. He told her: at SHI’s Midrashiya girls’ The text presents feminine agency at work high school and works as “If only you would have borne for me one within the confines of the male-dominated an advocacy expert at the more ‘bellyful.’” social framework by which Yehudit abides. Women’s Budget Forum. We also learn that even a woman as clever Photos of Seder Nashim by BT Yevamot 65b and resourceful as Yehudit cannot act in her Yonit Schiller.

HAVRUTA | 55 Shoshana Cohen teaches own name, and that she needs to use ploys those expectations. This text therefore Tanach and Halacha and camouflage to achieve her goals. So my tells a story of resistance. I often look at the Conservative Yeshiva and Talmud at first question is: “Is today any different?” for the places where the texts undermine SHI’s Midrashiya girls’ I’m afraid that we are not that far off from themselves, where the very norms that they high school. Shoshana the reality that Yehudit faced. And this try to establish are questioned. Part of my is a graduate student at Hebrew University in realization leads me to my next question, fascination with those passages is that the Ancient Jewish History, which is strategic: what is Yehudit fighting canonical corpus as a whole cannot tolerate and holds a BA from for? Is she struggling for certain results, or their critique, and yet they are there. Brandeis University in is she fighting for the ability to communicate Again, we must not forget that even Judaic Studies. directly, as herself? though the female protagonist here takes matters into her own hands, she must disguise herself, and as Valeria says, she cannot speak directly as herself. In order to change the system, one must speak in its language. Yehudit cannot speak in her own name about the injustices she has endured, and this is a tragedy in itself, which leaves this system flawed and problematic.

avruta: What about the gaps in the text? Rabbi Hiyya has the last word, butH what does he mean?

Valeria: I’m uneasy about the end of the story. It reinforces the impression that this is mostly about the male perspective, and also that the couple suffers from miscommunication. We may read Yehudit as telling her husband: “You don’t even see me; I’m here in disguise and you can’t even identify your own wife.” But we may also see the husband as being forced to maintain a certain persona – after all, he is the important Rabbi Hiyya, head of the beit din [rabbinic court]. Perhaps he faces pressures that are too powerful for him to oppose. It could be that in a sense his voice Shoshana Cohen: is silenced too. Our reading could follow a few different If you would ask me how I would complete directions. At least on one level, this text his closing statement –”If only you would have is subversive. That is, women face a strict borne for me one more ‘bellyful’”– I wouldn’t framework within which they are expected want to silence his wish for another child. to give birth and not sterilize themselves; But maybe if he and Yehudit had talked more yet within that very system and the text openly, he could have also said, “I understand representing it, we find a way of resisting that you are suffering.” But he didn’t.

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Tsippi Kauffman: I must confess that Rabbi Hiyya’s concluding statement sounded very inconsiderate to me on first reading. I read him as saying “I want more children, and I don’t care if you suffer at childbirth,” regretting that he gave Yehudit a way out of her predicament by telling her that women are not legally obligated to procreate. But upon rereading it, I found that his statement is very personal. I read him as saying, “I would have very much liked another child.” What comes to mind here is the American feminist scholar Carol Gilligan’s distinction between two discourses of morality – a universal discourse of laws, and a personal morality that derives from emotions and specific contexts. Yehudit understands that her only option is to adopt the male halachic discourse, obtaining her exemption from childbirth by asking the right questions about the commandment of procreation. We may consider Rabbi Hiyya’s statement as an indication that his wife had actually led him to adopt the personal, more “feminine” moral discourse. Because rather than telling her, “You are obligated to do XYZ,” we can hear him say, “Oh, I would avruta: Do you think he is angry like so much to have another child.” He with her? lets himself think from her viewpoint for H a moment, and to speak with his personal voice, of Hiyya, not Rabbi Hiyya. This may indicate that he is undergoing some sort of Valeria: personal transformation. This is a possible narrative. But we must Tsippi Kauffman is co-director of Seder not forget that they are not standing on Nashim and a fellow at the Shoshanah: even ground. When the public sphere is Kogod Research Center not egalitarian, you can never assume that for Contemporary Jewish I feel that Yehudit may owe her success to the personal sphere is. Securing equality Thought at SHI. She holds her use of the master’s rules in order to win a PhD in Jewish Philosophy in a highly discriminatory context is very from The Hebrew University the game on the master’s court. He replied hard work. A few pages earlier, in Yevamot of Jerusalem. Tsippi is to her genuine question only to discover 63a, the Gemara describes Yehudit as a author of In All Your Ways that it meant that the game was over for Know Him (Hebrew: Bar Ilan woman who “pained” or “tormented” her University Press, 2009). him. So I don’t know if we can consider his husband. The text does not contemplate final statement as expressing acceptance or the possibility that he is causing her pain vulnerability. too. Such acknowledgement of Yehudit’s needs and wants is essential. While I am

HAVRUTA | 57 prepared to grant that Rabbi Hiyya’s wish denied the right to express and act upon for another child is genuine, our sensitivity their subjective needs and wants in the area to his needs is justified only if we can also of childbirth. Acknowledging the centrality hear Yehudit’s side of the story. Her voice of this dynamic to the scene described here, must be heard. we can certainly read Rabbi Hiyya’s final response to his wife as expressing personal emotion. Perhaps it was the starting point of a discussion that they had never held before. But this miscommunication between them was inevitable under the circumstances. Maybe after this recorded conversation the couple went back home and held a completely different sort of dialogue.

Shoshanah: I agree. Finally, they began a dialogue.

Rotem: Yes, a bit too late for him. But it wasn’t too late for her. It was absolutely clear to her that she would not tolerate the pain any longer. And of course, from the broader context of the discussion in the Gemara it is clear that she had fulfilled her obligations insofar as the letter of the law is concerned: she had twin boys – Yehudah and Hizkiyah – and twin girls, Pazi and Tavi (Yevamot 65b). I’d like to expand on the idea of the presence of a woman in the text, which is very uncommon, even subversive. Here we Rotem Preger-Wagner: have a female protagonist with a name and a voice. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I also think that the personal and legal a long-winded discussion of procreation aspects of Rabbi Hiyya’s statement are concludes with the sages letting the woman intertwined, in spite of its personal speak. This format can also be found in tone. After all, Yehudit took advantage the Talmudic discussion of rape. I believe of a loophole in patriarchal law, which is Rotem Preger-Wagner that the rabbis let women speak with their is a scholar of Hebrew generally watertight. This story touches own voices in the text when they engage in literature. She is founder on one of the cornerstones of the relations and co-director of Seder issues that concern the most fundamental between the sexes: the social dynamics of Nashim, and is a doctoral aspects of women’s autonomy over their candidate at the Hebrew pregnancy and birth. While women possess own body. The rabbinical commitment to Literature Department, the physical capacity to give birth, men Ben Gurion University. complete and comprehensive legislation hold the political, legislative, and rhetorical forces the sages to hear the woman’s side power. In the Talmudic context, women are of the story.

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Tsippi: how far it should go; what price one pays when participating in a halachic world that prides On the other hand, within the story itself, it itself on a legal system that encompasses all is unclear if the voice that she was permitted aspects of life, “when you lie down and when to have was actually recognized as a woman’s. you rise up.” It is unclear whether she dressed up as another woman, or as a man, in order to ask her question within the masculine zone Shoshanah: of the beit midrash. It is very interesting to I think that we should try to sharpen the speculate whether she put on a disguise that definition of tza’ar leidah in this text. Is it made her unrecognizable to her own husband. the common labor pains that every woman And if not, what exactly happened? It could experiences in childbirth, or is it something also be that she had to dress up as a man so more intense? I tend to think that it refers that she could even enter his territory, and to exceptional suffering, as opposed to what he recognized her but had to play along. We happens in most births. Therefore, to a degree, could think of several possibilities. But the this story justifies the expectation that under very fact that she could only sound her voice normal circumstances, women are expected, in disguise, even as another woman, means if not legally obligated, to conceive. that she presented herself as a subject with a certain ambiguity. She could not approach Rotem: him as his wife and speak to him; that is, even when she was allowed to speak, it was I would actually like to suggest the opposite under highly problematic circumstances. reading: I think that the story also applies to the notion of suffering in general. Suffering is not an empty term. It relates to “in pain shall Rotem: you bring forth children” (Genesis 3:16). The I don’t think that she is able to fully assert her idea was already present in rabbinic culture subjective identity in that situation. But her long before this sugyah was composed. But I appearance at the beit midrash is certainly do think that the interesting context here is not faceless. the mishnah that the sugyah discusses; and more specifically, the minority opinion in avruta: Would you define her this mishnah. Hpresence as the voice of suffering? “The commandment to procreate applies to the man but not to the woman.” (Mishnah Tsippi: Yevamot 6:6). This is the opinion of the sages. But R. Yohanan ben Barokah says: “[it The story recognizes the experience of applies] to both [man and woman], as it is suffering at childbirth – tza’ar leidah­. This is written ‘and God said unto them, ‘Be fruitful one reason we selected this sugyah for Seder and multiply’” (Genesis 1:28). I think that Nashim. This is a text we take personally. ultimately R. Yohanan ben Barokah’s opinion And Yehudit’s suffering is truly lamentable. allows the Gemara to subversively reiterate In addition to what almost every woman the egalitarianism of procreation that he is experiences in labor, she has to brave the advocating. A minority opinion of such an scene at the beit midrash in order to release important sage cannot be ignored, even if herself from her suffering. As women it contradicts the majority opinion in the studying Talmud, we are called upon to discussion. It is quite clear to me that the consider the limits of the law: how far into Gemara in this story revives this disruptive the intimate details of our lives it goes, and element from the Mishnah.

HAVRUTA | 59 This is a very interesting feature of saying: “Okay, it’s there, we have done our job rabbinical texts: they leave us with a lot of as feminists.” But most of us have moved on room for work and thought. Surprisingly, from that. Initially, we do have to consider we often find that they offer very strong the meaning of statements related by women counter-responses to their own stated in the name of women. Then, however, we positions, and in this sense they may offer need to consider questions about how this some consolation. system is constructed; how does it construe masculinity and femininity; what are its flexibilities and inflexibilities; and how are Valeria: those subversive voices making themselves Going back to the question of the price that present. each party is prepared to pay: an egalitarian approach also comes with a price tag. Equality with men within halacha means that women Valeria: assume uncomfortable obligations. Yehudit bore children, even though procreation was Our hope is the very fact that we are reading only required of men. And if we translate this text. I cannot play along with the this question to our own times, and we are politically correct expectations of feminists in favor of an egalitarian perception, this – “you let out your anger, you screamed means that women assume an obligation your pain, now do something pleasant.” to fulfill many mitzvot that they may find Sometimes life is unpleasant. I feel no uncomfortable. obligation to come out of my two years at If we choose the less egalitarian, Seder Nashim with a happy ending, because patriarchal option, then the price would maybe there isn’t one. be the constant fear, on the part of men, of The very fact that I am reading this text losing control. The rabbis are fully aware of means that I am doing something for myself that. If control is not absolute, then some and for others - women here and now, and for Yehudit will always appear and break the those who will come after me. They will be able rules, or act subversively. Thus, we must to speak their mind directly, not like Yehudit, ask: what kind of society do we want? A who had to strike a bargain with patriarchy. society motivated by an existential fear of My ideal is not to negotiate or bargain, but not the next threat to our control over it, or an to have patriarchy at all. So if we are expected egalitarian society that accepts the fact that to say that we have hope, let’s not forget about once power is given to people, open conflicts the road that lies ahead. are inevitable? Tsippi:

avruta: What hope women may And on the other hand – although we may draw from texts such as this one? talk about the demise of patriarchy, this will H probably not happen in my lifetime. And in my lifetime I want to live at peace with my mother and father, despite the difficulties, Shoshanah: questions or criticisms I may have. To me, One of the things that I like about our group this text is my mother and father, in a sense. is that we do not stop at that point. Many That is why I don’t think that there is a single feminist readings make do with identifying feminist strategy we should follow, but rather the feminine voice. It’s as though they are that all strategies must be applied. Any way

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we turn it around, these texts were written by are mainly directed at women, our solace men for men who did not see women as they can be found in the very structures of the really are, who objectified women. They did texts establishing those mechanism: they it in their era and I want to live differently; never go all the way with their oppression. yet I want these texts to be part of my life. Contrary to most halachic writings, like And my goal is not to prettify them, or to those of Maimonides, which establish give hope and say that it will have a happy decisive and final rulings and do not leave ending. I want to find in them the elements any room for doubt or argument, the very that can empower women, to highlight or structure of Talmudic discourse opens up emphasize the things that generations of new possibilities. Gemara readers completely overlooked. The We all operate within our culture; there is very fact that women are reading this text probably no way for us to travel outside of it. opens up so many possibilities we must I identify with what Valeria is saying, but I pursue, so whatever it is that we choose to do see no way of how we may do away completely is important. True, the text does have a lot with the existing structures of our society of problems; yet what I want to take with me and culture. That is, I cannot see how any of from it is hope. what she is saying can become concrete. But if within my culture, whose problems I cannot ignore, I may discover oases that provide me Valeria: with alternatives, then this is where I can Strategically, I completely disagree with operate without having to disguise myself. Tsippi. Ideologically, I would like to teach my daughters that we must aspire to have a world in which a woman does not have to Shoshanah: speak like Yehudit. I’m not comforted by I agree with Rotem. Something of the Yehudit’s “success.” This is not what I want openness, the uniqueness of the Talmud, is for myself or for my husband or children. Yet reflected in the structure of this text. I am it doesn’t mean that I resent my culture. To not saying that there are no other books like take the “parents” metaphor, I am very close it in the world. But a text like the Babylonian to my parents; I love them dearly and cannot Talmud or Midrash is radically self-critical. It imagine my life without them. But this keeps offering different and diverse readings. doesn’t mean that I love everything they say The rabbis can tilt in one direction for a long or do. I can love them and say – I don’t like time, but then, just before reaching their this choice that you’ve made, and when I have conclusion, they often undermine the entire my own family I will make different choices. structure that they had just built. This is a structural feature that we should emphasize. This is what I am trying to pass Rotem: on to my students: how to conduct such a Returning to the cultural model that discourse in our own lives; a discourse on the rabbinical texts offer, I honestly think that norms of our culture that is open to different as women searching for a complete revision and multiple voices, which are nonetheless of the power relations within the culture engaged in a perpetual struggle. Here in this at large, we should approach these texts by sugiyah, the Talmud accommodates conflict looking for their structures and seeing how between different opinions and positions, they can be deconstructed. And if the entire and yet it lets them coexist. I think that this rabbinical corpus is an expression, or an is what we can take from this text – models embodiment, of oppressive mechanisms that of social and cultural discourse.

HAVRUTA | 61 Divine Qualities and Real Women

The Feminine Image in Kabbalah

Long before women gained entry into the halls of Jewish learning, Jewish mystics explored and extolled feminine aspects of the Divine

ithin the Jewish religious tradition, the literature of WKabbalah is second to none in its engagement with the feminine. The mystical authors of medieval Spain and southern France, the men who produced the Zohar and related texts, were averse to simplistic conceptions of gender.

{By BITI ROI

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Their sensitive attunement to sexual, as a synonym for God. Grammatically, it is mental, physiological and social aspects of a feminine Hebrew noun, but the Shekhinah female existence is strikingly manifest in initially lacked any female attributes or their imaginative contemplation of God and even a distinctive identity of its own. In the speculations about the interplay of the divine works of early kabbalists, however, it was and earthly realms. Indeed, the contemporary transformed into a queenly personification discourse on women in Judaism – which is of the Godhead, the Matronita: still bound up with Talmudic categories and How many thousands, how many myriads the strictures of halacha – can benefit greatly of holy camps does the blessed Holy One from the riches of kabbalistic imagery and have! … Above them He has appointed perceptions of women and femininity. Matronita to minister before Him in the Sefer Ha-Zohar – “The Book of Splendor” – is a sprawling masterpiece that presents palace … Every mission that the King a complex conception of divinity based wishes issues from the house of Matronita; upon an intricate exploration of the hidden every mission from below to the King meanings of the Hebrew Bible. Its mystical enters the house of Matronita first, and quest is structured in the form of teachings from there to the King. Consequently, of the 2nd-century Mishnaic sage Rabbi Matronita is agent of all, from above Shimon bar Yohai (“Rashbi”) and a handful to below and from below to above … of his contemporaries, written in an Aramaic and no secret is concealed from Her. dialect that is unlike any other in Jewish (II Zohar 51a) writings. The authorship of the Zohar is The Shekhinah is far from being passive. traditionally attributed to Rashbi himself, In times of need, her charms save the People but modern scholars have demonstrated of Israel from being abandoned by the male that it was composed by a group of Castilian God: kabbalists of the 13th and 14th centuries, a circle that included Moses de Leon, Joseph It is like a man who was in love with a Gikatilla, and Bahya ben Asher. Having woman who lived in the street of the acquired a canonical status, the Zohar tanners. If she had not been there, he continues to inspire traditional students would never have set foot in the place; but and scholars of Jewish mysticism, as well as because she was there it seemed to him like adherents of the popular spirituality of the the street of the spice merchants, where 21st century. all the finest scents in the world could be found. (III Zohar 115b) No Secret is Concealed From Her The kabbalistic study of the Shekhinah The cornerstone of the kabbalistic perception seeks to reveal its many different faces: she of the feminine is the study of the dynamic is the connecting point between the heavenly interrelationships within the Godhead, the realm and earthly reality. For the kabbalists, mystical representation of the divinity. In the Godhead is not detached from real life: the face of a tradition overshadowed by the the divine reality is reflected in every concrete masculine God of the Bible, the kabbalists object on earth. Within this worldview, each developed a conception which consists of and every woman represents, in a sense, key feminine elements within the Godhead, the figure of the Shekihnah. Contrary to the the foremost of which is the figure of the medieval philosophical system that conceives Shekhinah. of the world as comprised of static essences, Before the emergence of Kabbalah in the in the Zohar the Shekhinah holds a dynamic middle ages, the term Shekhinah was used relationship with the Godhead as its queen

HAVRUTA | 63 (Matronita) and lover. This relationship extends to life on earth, or as the Zohar puts it in its unique Aramaic, she is alma de-nukba – the feminine world. Each and every woman represents, in a sense, the figure of the Shekhinah.

The earthly presence of the Shekhinah in general, and in womankind in particular, is also extrapolated from the literal meaning of the word. The Hebrew root shakhan, from which the word derives, means “reside” or “inhere.” In his mystical work Sha’arey Orah (gates of light), composed in the same period as the Zohar, Rabbi Joseph Gikatilla finds a biblical precedent for the notion of alma de-nukba: “The Shekhinah, in the time of Abraham our forefather, is called Sarah, and in the time of Yitzhak our forefather is called Rivkah, and in the time of Ya’akov our forefather is called Rachel…” Reflecting a similar view, the Zohar concludes that “all of the in the world share in her knowledge of the divine secret” (II Zohar 105b). Medieval Jewish philosophers, on the other hand, could not accommodate a conceptualization of a dynamic divinity, let alone the notion of a divinity with overt feminine attributes. For them, the inferiority of women was grounded in such proofs as Eve’s creation from Adam’s rib, and manifested in “essential” female qualities like deceit, inquisitiveness, garrulousness and pride. The influential Provençal philosopher, scientist, and biblical exegete Gersonides (Ralbag) (1288-1344) placed women on an interim rank between beasts and men. In his commentary on Genesis 3:30, he observed: “‘And Adam named his wife Eve,’ in accord with his perception of her feebleness of mind, that is, that she did not

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transcend other animals considerably… for corners of streets and highways in order most of her functions were indeed adapted to attract men … This is the finery that to physical matters, to the feebleness of her she uses to seduce mankind: her hair is mind and for her servitude of Man.” Even long, red like a lily; her face is white and the sophisticated Maimonides, writing pink; six pendants hang from her ears … in Cairo in the 12th century, employed her tongue is sharp like a sword; her words classical philosophical categories to draw smooth as oil; her lips beautiful, red as a a comparison between men (who are both lily, sweetened with all the sweetness in “matter” and “form”) and women (who are the world… “matter” alone): The fool turns aside after her … and Matter is in no way found without form and is consequently always like a married woman commits harlotry with her … What does she who is never separated from a man and is do? She leaves him asleep on the bed … The never free. (Guide of the Perplexed, III 8) fool wakes up, thinking to sport with her as before, but she takes off her finery, and While the modern reader may find them odd, turns into a fierce warrior, facing him in a such observations preclude the possibility garment of flaming fire, a vision of dread, of understanding the feminine in a complex terrifying both body and soul, full of horrific and interesting way. eyes, a sharpened sword in his hand with The kabbalists too conjured up negative drops of poison suspended from it. He kills images of women, but these did not always the fool, and throws him into Gehinnom. (I represent them as inferior. The Jewish Zohar 148a-148b, Sitrey Torah) mystics were obsessed with the magical powers associated with women’s bodies – In an era dominated by rigid sexual their hair, fingernails, womb, blood – and in identities, the early kabbalists appreciated some Zoharic depictions, women appear as the fluidity of gender. Here, in the Zohar, demons: the female demon morphs, in a seamless transition, into a male warrior. The Jewish mystics were Mother, Lover and Creator fascinated by the magical Perhaps the most important contribution of the Zohar to Jewish theology is the powers associated with elaboration of a symbolic framework known women’s bodies – their as the sefirotic system. Literally meaning “sphere” or “region,” each sefirah – there hair, fingernails, womb, are ten in all – represents an emanation of a different aspect of the Godhead, and blood. is interconnected with the other sefirot in myriad ways that the mystics sought to untangle and elucidate. Two evil spirits are attached to one The Zohar’s multifaceted presentation another. The male spirit is fine, the female of the feminine is most conspicuous in spirit spreads out down several ways and the distinction between two sefirot: Binah paths, and is attached to the male spirit. (understanding), which stands for the Eve as warrior, from a Mother; and Malkhut (kingdom), which is the fresco in Villa Carducci She dresses herself in finery like an (Soffiano, Italy), by wife and lover, or in some cases the daughter. Andrea del Castagno, abominable harlot and stands at the If the figure of the Shekhinah marks the c.1450.

HAVRUTA | 65 kabbalistic acceptance of woman as part of descriptions of the relations of Binah with its the heavenly realm, then the contemplation subordinate sefirot. of Binah and Malkhut is an attempt to explore The kabbalistic link between childbirth aspects of the feminine in order to gain and the creation of the world is derived from deeper understanding of the world. a creative reading of Proverbs 2:3, a verse In his Sha’arey Orah, Rabbi Joseph conventionally rendered as follows: “If you Gikatilla identifies Binah with abundance, cry out for insight” – ki im labinah tikrah – pregnancy and nourishment. He calls it the “and raise your voice for understanding.” The “Mother,” progenitor of the seven sefirot that kabbalistic reading revocalizes one key word are situated beneath it in the structure of – a common ploy in rabbinic interpretation of the Godhead. Other designations of Binah, the Bible – turning im, “if,” into em, “mother,” according to Gikatilla, include olam ha-hayim producing a new meaning: “For you will call (world of life); mekor ha-hayim (source of binah, Mother.” life); Elohim hayim (the living God); and sod As men who considered themselves ha-hayim (the secret of life). All of these part of a long line of biblical interpreters, reflect feminine qualities that the kabbalists the members of the Zoharic circle often identified within the Godhead, and indicate drew on Talmudic teachings. It is therefore that these men conceived of Binah as the unsurprising that the rabbinic reading of the ground of the whole of existence. creation of Eve, out of the rib of Adam, also In this spirit, the authors of the Zohar associates binah with femininity, in a nice identified this sefirah with the beautiful play on words: “And God built [vayiven, the imagery of Genesis 2:10: “A river flowed out biblical form of banah] the rib which he took of Eden to water the garden.” For them, this from Adam into a woman” (Genesis 2:22), verse was expressive of the notion of divinity shows that the blessed Holy One endowed as the source of the all-encompassing flow of the woman with more understanding life, an emanation of the maternal sefirah. As [binah] than the man” (BT Niddah 45b). This an aspect of the Godhead, Binah is thus the insight apparently eluded the philosopher power of creation. Indeed, certain kabbalistic Gersonides, though not his kabbalist traditions perceive the Creation as God’s act contemporaries. of childbirth. In contrast with the maternal Binah, the The notion of Binah as a womanly creator sefirah of Malkhut represents God’s partner and is supported by a linguistic analysis of the lover – the erotic side of the feminine. Malkhut name. In the Talmud, binah is considered desires, seduces, pines, yearns, and also envies, a specific type of wisdom, related to the suffers rejection, expulsion and banishment. “ability to surmise one thing from another” Her relations with the “male” sefirot above her (BT Shabbat 31a). The kabbalists go a step (she is the lowest sefirah) are amorous, and farther, arguing that binah not only denotes are manifested by waves of attraction and a cognitive function (discernment), but also repulsion, union and separation. But Binah a maternal function (procreation). Gikatilla, and Malkhut have their own relationship as in his Sha’arey Orah, observes that “another well, that of mother and daughter. When reason why she is called Binah is because she is Malkhut reveals herself during the pilgrimage the secret of conceiving sons and daughters.” to the Temple, Binah, her mother, lends The author plays upon on the similarity Malkhut garments and jewelry, as we learn at between binah and the Hebrew word ben, the opening of the Zohar (I:1b): meaning “son” or “offspring.” Indeed, the The demon Lilith, rendered by Dante maternal functions of conception, childbirth [A]nd Mother lends Daughter her Gabriel Rossetti, 1868. and breastfeeding appear in many of the garments, though not adorning her with

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HAVRUTA | 67 Rendering of medieval demonic figure Hulda (Holla), by Israeli artist Yael Ramot, 2006.

her adornments. When does she adorn The characterization of Binah as partaking of her fittingly? When all males appear Din is pivotal to the kabbalists’ conception of before her, as is written: “[All your males femininity. Din, through Binah, is not only shall appear] before the Sovereign, God” associated with justice and punishment, but (Exodus 23:17). also describes a refining and limiting quality, The maternal aspects of Binah, however, which discerns the infinity of details that are only part of the essence of this sefirah. Just constitute the world. Without Din, the world as importantly, it is identified as possessing would be an undifferentiated influx of divine elements of harshness and judgment that grace; Binah presides over its allocation to her belong to the divine quality of Din (law). As subordinate sefirot. The maternal Binah, which defined in Talmudic writings, Din is the polar represents divine abundance, also disburses it opposite of divine grace and mercy (Hesed) . as appropriate and withholds it if necessary.

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Talking a Good Game men, the kabbalists returned home to women of flesh and blood: their mothers, sisters, For the kabbalists, Binah endows the world wives and daughters. The question of how with form: the emanation that it receives from these women informed the mystical works the higher sefirah of Hokhmah takes shape of the Zoharic circle is most fascinating, and within her. This helps explain the kabbalistic unresolved. Quite plausibly, the women who association of the two feminine sefirot with breastfed and raised their children, cooked, the organs of language and speech - Malkhut cleaned and ran their households, also served with the mouth, and Binah with the tongue. as the muses for such mythical figures as the In midrashic and medieval Jewish writings, omniscient Matronita, the discerning and Biti Roi, women’s verbal skills are often stereotyped fecund Binah, or even the terrifying demonic a fellow at the as gossip and chatter. The Zohar, however, seductress with the sharpened sword. Shalom Hartman chooses to emphasize, regarding women’s use Historical evidence is too scanty to allow of language, the ability to describe abstract Institute, is a doctoral us to determine whether such fanciful candidate at Bar-Ilan entities and to differentiate one thing from imagery also reflected a more lenient University. A veteran another. approach to patriarchal norms within the lecturer in Jewish family and community. Bold literary visions philosophy, Kabbalah In midrashic and medieval do not necessarily translate into practical and Hasidism, Biti changes in cultural or economic life, or has taught at such Jewish writings, women’s psychological adjustments in the day-to-day institutes as Drisha, world. Therefore, one must treat with caution YCT Rabbinical verbal skills are often any claims that that the kabbalists were the School and Stern College. She is a precursors of contemporary feminism. stereotyped as gossip and former Jerusalem Fellow at the chatter. One must treat with Mandel Institute for Educational Furthermore, in the Jewish tradition, the caution any claims that Leadership. world was created through speech. In rabbinic midrashim, and in the ancient mystical text that the kabbalists Sefer Yetzira (“Book of Creation”), the world were the precursors of is created by ten divine statements. For the medieval kabbalists, Binah’s procreative contemporary feminism. and discerning attributes and Malkhut’s association with the mouth converge in olam During the next golden age of Kabbalah, in hadibur, “the realm of speech.” In addition to 16th century Safed, the Zoharic tradition was its divine connotations, this “realm of speech” further elaborated and enriched. Shabbat was also the mundane domain in which the hymns such as Rabbi Shlomo Elkabetz’s Lecha kabbalists lived and worked, spending most Dodi depicted the holy day as queen and bride. of their time talking to one another as they The leader of the Safed kabbalists, Rabbi Isaac studied Torah and endeavored to decipher Luria (the “Ari”), established a custom whereby the secrets of its language. a man would kiss the hand of his mother at But since women were barred from joining the hour that Shabbat began, as a symbolic in such lofty activities, it is rather ironic that greeting of the Shekhinah. Such a gesture, abstract feminine entities were designated reflecting respect for real women and their to define the essence of kabbalists’ daily mystical counterpart, provides one charming practice. After a hard day of contemplating example of how kabbalists wove their abstract the feminine aspect of the divinity with other ideas into the fabric of daily life.

HAVRUTA | 69 Who is In and Who is Out

The Two Voices of Ruth

A small ancient book captures both the spirit of feminism and the durability of patriarchal tradition

brief, pastoral literary work is tucked among the books of the biblical A canon. It has no bloody battles, no immoral commands, no zealotry or hatred. It is a much-loved little book, about which Rabbi Zeira said in the Midrash: “This megillah tells us nothing of purity or impurity, of prohibition or permission. For what purpose, then, was it written? To teach how great is the reward of those who do deeds of kindness.” Its name: Megillat Ruth, the Book (or “Scroll”) of Ruth. {By ORIT AVNERY

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Rabbi Zeira’s overall impression has been husband,” and he dies. Her two sons marry confirmed and embellished by many Moabite women, and then also die; and “the generations of scholars and teachers. It woman was left without her two sons and is echoed annually by pulpit rabbis on the without her husband.” Before, she was “his holiday Shavuot, when this megillah is read in wife;” now he is “her husband.” the synagogue. Yet the pleasant, cozy nature The very first voices to be heard are those of the Book of Ruth masks its contradictions of women: the Jewish woman Naomi and and complexities, which derive from ancient her Moabite daughters-in-law, Ruth and Moab and Bethlehem and continue to Orpah. Throughout the megillah, women are resonate in Jewish life. at the center of conversation, as speakers and as subjects; indeed women are present Can the fringes of Jewish in every scene of the story. When Naomi tries to persuade her sons’ widows to society become a part of return to their Moabite families, she uses an unusual expression: “Turn back, each of the center? you to her mother’s house,” as opposed to the more commonplace “father’s house.” The The Book of Ruth tells the story of a wording underscores the idea that at a time marginal character, and deals with an of grief, a woman needs a supportive female important question: Can the fringes of environment. Only there can the widows Jewish society become a part of the center? regain their strength and rebuild their lives. Ruth, a childless, non-Jewish widow, arrives in Bethlehem from her native Moab. Her travels are over, but a new, more difficult Throughout the megillah, journey begins: one that crosses boundaries women are at the center of gender, nationality and religion. On all these topics, the Book of Ruth does not deliver of conversation, as a single, clear-cut opinion. It may be argued, in fact, that the text of this megillah offers the speakers and as subjects. reader two different paths of interpretation, each buttressed by a selective analysis of the All through the Book of Ruth, women are material. Let us consider these in turn. portrayed as active and decisive, taking the initiative, able to set goals and achieve them. The Harmony of Women Naomi sends Ruth to the threshing-floor The first option is to see the Book of Ruth (goren in Hebrew), albeit with the caution of from a feminist, somewhat subversive a conservative older woman: “And he will tell perspective, in which the gentile woman you what you are to do.” Whereas Ruth, a wins in the end and is accepted by Jewish spirited young woman with a will of her own, society. Indeed the world of women and turns to Boaz and tells him explicitly what to female solidarity are at the center of the do: “Spread your robe over your handmaid, story. When Naomi’s husband and two sons for you are a redeeming kinsman.” Boaz, die, what at first seemed like a story about aroused by the assertive woman who stands men quickly and decisively shifts into a story before him, readily complies and goes one about women. The first verse of the book better: “I will do for you whatever you introduces “a man of Bethlehem ... he and his ask.” The narrative even contains a hint of wife and his two sons.” But two verses later, mockery: The manly Boaz is a leader in his the man, Elimelech, is identified as “Naomi’s community, and commands respect as a

HAVRUTA | 71 farmer and man of wealth. Now, he falls This creative interpretation of Torah into the web of a young woman, ready to do law is compounded by a greater subversion: everything according to her wishes. apparent disregard for the rules governing Boaz was a kinsman of Ruth’s dead membership in the Jewish people – who is in husband, and Naomi sends Ruth to the goren and who is out. The Torah, after all, forbids in the hope that the resultant intimacy will marriage with Moabites: Naomi, Ruth and Orpah, by William Blake, 1795. end up in marriage, and in the preservation An Ammonite or Moabite shall not enter of her son’s stake in the lands of Bethlehem, into the congregation of the Lord; to their as well as her own family connection with tenth generation shall they not enter into Ruth. According to the Torah, the brother of the congregation of the Lord forever; a man who dies childless is required to take because they met you not with bread and the man’s widow for a wife, to continue his with water in the way, when you came out family line. (This practice, known as levirate of Egypt; and because they hired against marriage, is called yibbum in Hebrew.) Boaz you Balaam the son of Beor of Pethor of is not a brother, but Naomi and Ruth adapt Mesopotamia, to curse you. (Deuteronomy the law to their own purposes. 23:4-5)

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This rationale for the prohibition surely the rest of the people bless the marriage of does not apply in the case of Ruth, who proved Boaz and Ruth, the foreigner who is now at by her actions that she had not maintained the center of family and history. the hostile tradition of her people vis-à-vis In the biblical stories of Lot and his the Israelites. Thus, according to the Book of daughters and of Judah and his daughter-in- Ruth, what happens in practice overrides the law Tamar, sexual transgression, initiated by formal stricture of Deuteronomy. strong women, is a source of tribal and even What is more, the marriage of Boaz and human continuity. Here, Ruth breaks protocol Ruth creates not only a personal family and takes risks, as if in the knowledge that dynasty but a national one, the house of only such a move will assure the continuance David, their great-grandson. Ruth the of Jewish history. Sometimes, these stories Moabite moves from the margin to the center, teach us, it is necessary to step outside the and enters the national pantheon. This is law in order to maintain the tradition. perhaps the true greatness of this megillah: More than anything, the Book of Ruth the recognition that mingling with the Other, describes a friendship between two women even members of a hostile group, may be the unlike any other in the Bible. Ruth’s foundation of growth and continuity. The motives – compassion, loyalty, and love – Book of Ruth is willing to base the Davidic never appear elsewhere in a relationship monarchy on an act of deviance that flouts between women. Again and again, women the rules – indeed a law intended to protect are portrayed as competitive and jealous. the continuity of the community. Cases of female rivalry are the biblical norm: The megillah describes a process of Sarah and Hagar, Rachel and Leah, Hannah transition – from the outside to the inside, and Peninah, and even the two prostitutes from foreignness to acceptance – and who appear with the baby in front of King Ruth clearly represents the essence of the Solomon. The Book of Ruth provides an foreigner. In general, the Bible stresses the alternative model. True, Ruth and Naomi physical beauty of its heroines, but in Ruth’s are not sharing a man, but they could, after case, her looks are never described. It does all, represent conflicting interests. The older not matter if she was pretty or not. She is woman wants to preserve the memory of her a faceless heroine, liberated of gender, freed husband and son; the younger wants a family from the patriarchal male gaze. of her own. Yet there is harmony between Ruth has come a long way. When she them, and they take care of one another. arrived in Bethlehem together with her mother-in-law, it was Naomi who was the center of local attention. But by the end of The Book of Ruth the megillah, the city elders allow her to enter describes a friendship the town gate, ritualizing her entry into the community. Until now, she has been on the between two women outside: on the road with Naomi, gleaning in the field of Boaz, leaving the city for thegoren. unlike any other in the Only in the fourth chapter, in the scene of the “redemption” of the inheritance, at the town Bible. gate, is she permitted to enter the house of Boaz. The gate is a symbolic locus of social The biblical text uses the verb davkah in definition: the elders sit as gatekeepers, Ruth 1:14: “Ruth held fast to her,” i.e. Naomi. determining who is in and who is out. At the More commonly, that same Hebrew verb climactic moment of the story, the elders and applies to man and woman, as in Genesis

HAVRUTA | 73 2:24: “Therefore shall a man leave his father child-bearer. Ruth, in the end, turns her and his mother, and shall cleave [v’davak] to back on her own heritage in order to carry his wife; and they shall be one flesh.” Just forth her husband’s name. She serves as as a man moves from his biological family to an example of a woman who is loyal, first his wife, so too does Ruth leave her parents and foremost, to her husband – a willing and cling to her mother-in-law Naomi. It is a participant in the male-centered story that female bond, based on love and responsibility, gives power and honor to men, and lists only caring and belonging. fathers and male children in the account of Generally, the relationships of biblical the family saga. woman are mediated by men. The Book Yes, Ruth is industrious and proactive, of Ruth asks: how do daughter-in-law and as we have seen. Yet the erotic scene at the mother-in-law relate to each other after threshing-floor conforms to a patriarchal the son has died? Are they like mother and picture of woman as seductress. Moreover, daughter? Or is it more like a marriage? It is it is not this encounter that carries weight; an independent tie that exists beyond men, it is the scene at the city gate, where ten men beyond women’s roles in a patriarchal society. (and only men) decide who may enter the When Ruth’s son is born, Naomi takes him community, that really matters. Only now to her bosom, and the neighborhood women may Boaz and Ruth be legally married in the give him his name, Obed. The closing scene eyes of the male-dominated collective. of the megillah is all about women. The new baby is not related to Mahlon, Ruth’s late husband. The child ties the women together, The erotic scene at the Ruth and Naomi, and brings them both a gift threshing-floor conforms of new life. to a patriarchal picture of A Son has been Born to Naomi woman as seductress. This comforting, liberal and feminist reading, however, is not the only interpretation available. The text of Ruth also undermines these conclusions, and presents women In the process, women are turned from and foreigners as utterly marginal to the actors into objects. Ruth, who initiated normative patriarchal system. The book the whole process, becomes the object of begins as a man’s story – “and a man of contractual acquisition, handed over to Boaz Bethlehem of Judah went to sojourn in the in the same fashion that he acquires the lands country of Moab” – and ends with the lineage of Elimelech, Naomi’s late husband. Boaz’s of men: “Now these are the generations words “to the elders and all the people” clearly of Peretz ...” The very last verse suggests summarize the transaction, and support a that the entire justification of this megillah patriarchal reading of the whole story: derives from the birth of David, as if the You are witnesses this day, that I have women in the story are supporting players bought all that was Elimelech’s and all that in a male drama. The women may have been was Kilion’s and Mahlon’s from the hand instrumental in solving a family problem, of Naomi. And also Ruth the Moabite, the but their activity is but a subplot, behind the wife of Mahlon, have I bought to be my scenes of the main narrative. wife, to restore the name of the dead to his Indeed, the women too seem to see inheritance, so that the name of the dead “The Gleaners,” Bible illustration by Gustave themselves as part of a patriarchal system. shall not be cut off from among his brothers, Doré (1832-1883). Naomi’s agenda focuses on woman’s role as and from the gate of his place. (Ruth 4:9-10)

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HAVRUTA | 75 The fourth and last chapter of this slender Conservative Subversion book brings us back into the light of day, the real world of social relations based on Where does this leave us? The megillah gender, nationality and status. It is thus not presents a subversive female story, yet surprising that Ruth retires to the sidelines it is wrapped in a standard patriarchal and Boaz takes center stage. It is he, not she, package. Ruth the outsider enters who receives the blessing of the elders. Nor Bethlehem and marries Boaz, but by the is her name explicitly mentioned: “The Lord end her voice is silenced. At the start, she make the woman that has come into your speaks, acts and initiates, only to become house like Rachel and like Leah, who both the object of a business transaction, with built the house of Israel.” The absence of her her child attributed to Naomi. The Torah name, in a story about the perpetuation of law of levirate marriage is adapted with names, is doubly significant. Her role is to flexibility, yet rigid patriarchal structures carry the seed of Boaz – and her identity, in continue intact. And the Moabite origin of the end, is unimportant. the House of David, bold and trangressive Consider, too, the birth of Ruth’s male though it may be, is enclosed within a child. Naomi takes the baby to her breast, and conventional narrative of a dynasty of it is she who is blessed by the other women: Jewish males. “Blessed be the Lord, which has not left you this day without a redeemer, that his name may be famous in Israel ... A son has been The megillah presents born to Naomi.” By displacing the birth onto Naomi, the women emphasize its significance a subversive female for the tribe of Judah, and even suggest that story, yet it is wrapped Ruth cannot be fully trusted to give the boy a proper Jewish upbringing. in a standard patriarchal Ruth’s identity, in the end, package. is unimportant. This doubleness, in my view, is the right way to read Ruth. Neither the feminist nor One comes away with the impression that at the end of the megillah that bears the patriarchal interpretation will do on her name, Ruth is divested of her needs and its own, for the text itself is polyphonic, her individuality. Throughout, all the local speaking in more than a single voice. David characters, from the “servants who was set Biale, in Eros and the Jews, has it right when over the reapers” in the fields of Boaz to the he says that the Book of Ruth “at once elders at the gate, regard Ruth coldly, as a reinforces and subverts patriarchy,” though Moabite. Boaz, who accepts and embraces her, not many other scholars have taken this is the exception who proves the rule. Overall, point of view. Readers who acknowledge the community of Bethlehem considers Ruth the mixed messages of the text, and are to be a surrogate mother, a womb for hire. willing to absorb them all, are best able Until her child is born, she is of no interest to construct a full picture of the complex to the local women, and even after the birth, reality they reflect. she is shunted aside in favor of Naomi, one of The Book of Ruth, it is generally held, their own. And Naomi, too, is but a secondary was written in the 4th or 5th century player in the narrative of patriarchal lineage. BCE, in the period of the return from

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Zion following the Babylonian captivity. within the Jewish people. It is as if two The megillah reflects a fierce and painful schools of thought sat down together to polemic that was central to Jewish life in write the same story, from different points that era, on a subject that remains difficult of view: one in support of accepting foreign in our own time: intermarriage. women, and the other opposed. Thus the The Jewish communities in the Land of Book of Ruth is the embodiment of the Israel in those days were then composed polemic itself, not an argument for one of three groups: Jews who had remained position or the other. behind and were not exiled to Babylon; Beyond that, the book is a literary work Jews who returned from exile; and non- that touches in many subtle ways upon Orit Avnery, Jews who accompanied the returning exiles such enduring issues as one’s relation to a fellow at the – many of them gentile women married to the other – to those who are different, Shalom Hartman Israelites. Tensions were high, as evidenced marginal, foreign, alien. Its chosen heroine Institute, is by the order of Ezra the priestly scribe that is as foreign as they come – a Moabite – and completing her Jewish men must “put away” and “separate its center, Bethlehem, is the home territory doctorate in Bible from” their “alien” or “foreign” women of the Israelite monarchy. The peaceful studies at Bar-Ilan University. Orit (Ezra 10), and also the disturbing scene Megillat Ruth is a potentially explosive lectures at a variety described in Nehemiah 13: text, precisely because it does not judge of venues, including which of its voices is more compelling, or Also in those days I saw Jews who had Pelech High School require the reader to do so. It does not say married women of Ashdod, of Ammon, and Midreshet that all foreign women should be accepted: Lindenbaum. and of Moab; and half their children Ruth is portrayed as an exceptional person spoke in the language of Ashdod, and with unique qualities. On the other hand, could not speak the language of Judah, the text does not call for barring the door but according to the language of each to all those who are different from “us.” All people. And I quarreled with them, and in all, it tells the story of a Moabite woman cursed them, and struck some of them, who not only joined the people of Israel, and pulled off their hair, and made them but became a central figure in its royal swear by God, saying, “You shall not dynasty. give your daughters to their sons, nor When both sides see themselves as take their daughters for your sons, or for partners in the same polyphonic story, yourselves.” it may be simultaneously told as a tale of radical subversion and one of classic The Book of Ruth conservatism, with each side balancing the other. The main point is that both sides of constitutes a frank the controversy have a stake in the national story, and each recognizes the other as composite of conflicting integral to the big picture. Only then can voices within the Jewish they begin to find a sensitive, cautious solution that both preserves the traditional people. system and enables it, at the same time, to meet the challenges of changing times. A solution that gives fresh meaning to the Considered in this context, it would prescription of Rabbi Zeira: “To teach how seem that the Book of Ruth constitutes great is the reward of those who do deeds a frank composite of conflicting voices of kindness.”

HAVRUTA | 77 Afikoman /// Old Texts for New Times “Without Regard to Gender”

A Halachic Treatise by the First Woman Rabbi

he name Regina Jonas is not well known, though it Tshould be. Fraulein Rabbiner Jonas, as she preferred to be called, received her rabbinical ordination in Berlin in 1935: she was the first woman rabbi. The second was Sally Priesand, who was famously ordained 37 years later at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati.

{By LAURA MAJOR

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Jonas died in Auschwitz in 1944. It was institutions of the community.” But as rabbis only after the Berlin Wall fell in 1991, began to flee abroad with the worsening and previously inaccessible archives Nazi persecution and men were taken to suddenly became available, that she concentration camps, Jonas, who refused Jonas was fully returned to history. Her to leave Germany, found herself filling a gap ordination certificate, her contract with in Berlin synagogues. As the situation for the Berlin Jewish community, newspaper Jews deteriorated, Jonas too had to perform articles by and about her, photos, and forced labor in a factory, where she continued personal correspondence all shed light on to preach and lift the spirits of those that this intriguing character and establish came to listen. her historical status as the first female In 1942 Jonas was deported to rabbi. These materials form the basis of Theresienstadt, the Nazi’s “model” ghetto. an excellent biography, Fraulein Rabbiner There she met the psychoanalyst Viktor Jonas: The Story of the First Woman Rabbi, by Frankl, the future Auschwitz survivor and Elisa Klapheck, a German-born scholar now acclaimed author of Man’s Search for Meaning. serving as rabbi of the Egalitarian Minyan of Frankl, who was in charge of “psychic Frankfurt am Main hygiene” at the camp, appointed Jonas to Regina Jonas, born in Berlin in 1902, receive new trainloads of Jews and comfort originally became a teacher, as was common the shocked and frightened passengers. She for young women. Soon enough, striving worked indefatigably until, in October 1944, higher, she enrolled in the Hochschule für die she and her mother were sent to Auschwitz. Wissenschaft des Judentums, Berlin’s Academy Before her deportation to Theresienstadt, for the Science of Judaism, an academic Jonas had placed her documents in the care seminary for liberal rabbis and educators. of the Berlin Jewish community. These files, A traditionalist, Jonas did not completely which collected dust for fifty years, include identify with the liberal stream of Judaism, Jonas’s halachic treatise, a few highlights of but knew that the Orthodox rabbinical which are discussed below.* seminaries were closed to her. She graduated in 1930, having completed the same course Jonas did not completely of study as her male colleagues and written a identify with the liberal halachic treatise entitled “Can Women Serve as Rabbis?” But it was not until 1935 – just stream of Judaism, but after the Nazi Nuremburg Laws had revoked her rights as a Jew – that she received knew the Orthodox ordination, privately, from Max Dienemann, rabbinical seminaries the liberal rabbi of Frankfurt am Main. Her acceptance as a rabbi was certainly were closed to her. not immediate or universal, and she struggled to find a pulpit position in Berlin. Quite surprisingly, Berlin’s Orthodox rabbi, In this treatise, Jonas searches traditional Felix Singermann, not only addressed her sources for reasons why a woman can hold as Rabbinerin, but also sent her a letter religious office. While the Reform movement expressing his “deeply felt congratulations” at abandoned the binding nature of halacha in the “good news.” In 1937 she was contracted order to allow innovation – which eventually by the Berlin Jewish Community to serve as * The full text of “Can Women Serve as Rabbis?” appears in Elisa Klapheck, a teacher with academic qualifications and to Fraulein Rabbiner Jonas: The Story of the First Woman Rabbi (Jossey-Bass/John “provide rabbinic pastoral care in the social Wiley & Sons, 2004.) Translated from the German by Toby Axelrod.

HAVRUTA | 79 included the ordination of women – Jonas Regina Jonas, “Can Women Serve supports no such rejection. She uses biblical and rabbinic texts to prove why women’s as Rabbis?” participation in public life is permissible Jonas’s treatise is structured around the and desirable. She is thus a forerunner of duties of a rabbi. She begins by listing nine contemporary Orthodox women who now such obligations: seek ways to reconcile women’s public and liturgical roles with Jewish law. 1. The rabbi must be well versed in the most important Jewish writings of both a She is a forerunner of spiritual and secular nature, particularly the Torah shebichtav [written Torah] and contemporary Orthodox Torah sheba’al peh [Oral Torah]. women who now seek 2. He must teach others, both children and ways to reconcile women’s adults. 3. He must be active as a preacher in the public and liturgical roles synagogue and in addition must deliver with Jewish law. religious addresses for funerals, weddings and bar mitzvahs. 4. He must fulfill actively the requirements Then as now, this was a controversial for marriages and for the get [divorce stance, as evidenced by an editorial decree], chalitza [the ceremony in which published in 1931 on the “women’s page” of a shoe is removed, symbolically freeing a the liberal journal Israelitisches Familienblatt brother-in-law from marrying his deceased in response to a lecture delivered by Jonas on brother’s widow], and the acceptance of the ordination of women: gerim [converts]. One may say: neither we nor many 5. He must make halachic decisions, valuable rabbis keep the tradition anyway pasken. – why then should we be especially prevented from ordaining women as 6. He should deliver talks outside the rabbis, if we want and think we must do synagogue to arouse interest in Jewish so. But one can not say: women as rabbis subjects among the Jewish community. – that is in the spirit of the Talmud and 7. He should be available to help Torah. congregants with personal matters related Jonas bowed neither to the criticism to any distress of their soul. from the liberal stream nor the Orthodox 8. He must work for social welfare, for community. As she wrote in an article (also youth welfare, and for general communal for the “women’s page”) of the Central-Verein welfare, as well as arbitrate in conflicts Zeitung in 1938, she believed firmly that: between members. God has placed abilities and callings in 9. And last but not least, obviously, he our hearts, without regard to gender. Thus must lead an appropriate lifestyle by each of us has the duty, whether man or following the religious teachings of woman, to realize those gifts God has Judaism and fulfilling the tasks given him given. If you look at things this way, one as leader of the community. takes woman and man for what they are; human beings.

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Jonas sets out to prove that “these tasks apply to the male rabbi and therefore to the female rabbi as well.” To that end, she first surveys the Talmudic attitude to women as well as biblical examples of how “when women wished to and were able to express themselves, no obstacle was placed in their way as long as their work was valuable and carried out in a solid way.” Interestingly, throughout her treatise, she places great emphasis on the notion of tsni’ut (modesty), arguing that if women are to assume public roles, they need to keep the traditional ideal of modesty intact. On the other hand, she subtly notes how modesty is sometimes cynically invoked as an excuse to prevent the participation of women in public religious life. She also claims that modesty must be considered in a cultural context:

[W]omen eagerly assumed religious responsibility and were active alongside men in public religious life, despite the wonderful and ever-true Jewish term tsni’ut, and the serious demeanor of women meant that tsni’ut was never disrespected by them. How wonderful would it be if today’s women still wished to keep the values of tsni’ut as already shown by the quote of Rambam [Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Ishut, 24.12], which hints at contact between boys and girls and discusses modest fashion, according to which it was improper to reveal body parts. Here, too, the sensibilities of Jewry have apparently changed, unfortunately, to the disadvantage of Jewish ideals. Unfortunately, in strict halachically observant circles, when these bounds in particular are overstepped it is not seen as a transgression against the law, though the transgression is stated clearly. “God has placed abilities and callings in our But when it comes to a relaxing of the hearts”: Memorial religious ban [against women participating plaque, Berlin, 2001. Text by Jonas from the in public religious life] in the loosest sense Central-Verein Zeitung in of the word, in which the justification of 1938.

HAVRUTA | 81 Anti-Semitism and Jewish Money /// Stuart Schoffman

restricted women from certain religious responsibilities and actions, were quite fitting and earn the highest respect – however, today, where woman is clearly present in public life and accomplishes practical tasks in cooperation with men, contact has become casual. As a result, her presence among men, even in a house of God, is no longer sexually stimulating to men and certainly not to women. Many decrees of our sages were withdrawn, as we earlier have seen; particularly concerning this kind of tsni’ut, they lose much of their severity. To support this argument, Jonas quotes the book Derech Pikudecha (The Path of Your Commandments), a commentary on Torah law by the Hasidic master Rabbi Zvi Elimelech Shapiro of Dinov, published in 1874. The quoted passage displays a strikingly pragmatic understanding of the issue at hand:

[I]t must be said that during the time when the “Keren Yisrael” [glory of Israel] was in its proper place (that is when all was well in Yisrael) , and the economic situation of Israel was excellent, one saw no woman outside the house, because, they were not involved in trade. If a tsni’ut is given, as regarding the religious man had an opportunity to see a woman activity of a woman in the service, whereas it was something special, it seized his certainly seriousness, good manners, and thoughts and his heart with fantasies – pure motivation are guiding her, because which does not happen anymore; today most women long for this, it nevertheless is under the burden of life in the Diaspora looked upon as a “destruction” of Judaism. and the difficulties of earning a living, Rabbi Sally Priesand at her ordination, How beneficial it could be to have a women work in the trades. It is nothing Cincinnati, 1972. Photo woman in the rabbinic role to reclaim the special to see women, it is a matter of courtesy of American lost meaning of tsni’ut by example and being accustomed, it does not excite the Jewish Archives, Hebrew Union College-Jewish through teaching. fantasies of a man. Institute of Religion, In spite of everything, in dealing with Cincinnati. Jonas rejected the notion that women the theme at hand, one must, as is often were intellectually incapable of performing repeated here, take both the changing rabbinic duties. She responds to Maimonides’ times and the sensibilities of earlier times contention that women cannot learn Torah into account. In previous days, the decrees “lefi ani’ut da’atan” [because of the poorness of our sages of blessed memory, which of their intellect]:

82 | Summer 2010 “Without Regard to Gender” /// Laura Major

First of all, if she displays “intellectual She quotes a passage from Berakhot 10a poorness” or inferior appreciation for that testifies to Beruria’s “talmudic agility the things to be learned, she cannot be and the delicacy of her soul:” condemned [for this] . . . Is it any wonder, given that women were kept so long from In the neighborhood of Rabbi Meir there free exercise of their intellectual powers, lived some thugs who tormented him that [a woman’s] lack of education resulted greatly, and Rabbi Meir prayed that they in her being less able than the man to should die. Then his wife Beruria said to follow a subject deeply when confronted him: “How do you justify this? It is written with it. Is it any wonder that she remains (Psalms 104:35), ‘Let sins cease,’ but that intellectually awkward . . . if her only does not mean the sinners, only the sins. occupation were in the home and her Furthermore, look at the end of the verse, education only oriented toward family ‘and let the wicked be no more.’ If the sins matters?! Too often, others directed her are eradicated, does it mean that there attention to superficial matters, leaving are no more evildoers? You should rather no room for anything more difficult. But pray for mercy for them, so that they will as we have seen, nevertheless, important repent.” From then on he prayed for mercy women have lifted themselves from the for them, and they repented. rest exactly with regard to this. There is one single remedy for all these deficits One of Jonas’s most inventive arguments that “cling” to the woman, and that is was her contention that women, as intellectual education; because the powers housekeepers, were well-suited to the role of available to humans will atrophy if not pasken, i.e. the making of halachic decisions. used! Jonas cites numerous examples of Their entire work as household learned women in history, focusing “supervisor” is [in effect] pasken. This particularly on the famous Beruria, wife is possible for in this area she knows of Rabbi Meir. Talmudic accounts prove something: no one else can represent Beruria to be intelligent, witty, and her and therefore she had the chance “showing no tiflut (frivolity) or divrey to demonstrate in practice that she can hevel (trivial words), as is so often said in summon the requisite understanding and later discussions about the intelligence seriousness for such matters. of women.” Jonas was apparently also If she now has a career as a rabbi and must gifted in wit and humor, yet, like Beruria, make decisions in other areas in which she disdained frivolity. As evidence of has studied, then nothing revolutionary Beruria’s erudition, Jonas cites Rabbi has happened. With the seriousness that Yohanan’s response to a “young disciple” her job entails, she puts into practice (BT Pesahim 62b): something that women long were allowed to do in the household, only to a greater Now if Beruria, the wife of R. Meir and the extent . . . and therefore does not offend daughter of Hananya ben Teradyon, who Jewish sensibilities. It is written that “one would learn in a day three hundred rulings relies upon women,” so it is not foreign to from three hundred myriad rulings, and Judaism if this “support” is broadened from even she did not succeed in learning it in the narrow, permitted range into a larger three years, and you say that you want to one of pasken, to which in principle there is finish it in three months! no objection.

HAVRUTA | 83 Jonas then discusses the matter of The final issue that Jonas tackles sermons delivered by women. Once again, in depth involves issues of marriage she addresses the issue of tsni’ut, shifting and divorce. Here, Jonas admits, the some of the burden to men: challenges are formidable, but they are not insurmountable. The difficulty mainly That something such as tsni’ut should stems from the halachic prohibition against prevent her from preaching is also not women serving as witnesses in a rabbinical acceptable, for certainly in her dress she court, a beit din. Jonas’s strategy is to would not be taken in by the “fashionable downplay the rabbi’s role: frivolity” to which unfortunately the world of our women today have surrendered, What does the rabbi actually do al pi din as she must wear the clothing befitting [according to law] in these aforementioned to her job. Her hair likewise is covered cases? Properly speaking, nothing except and the appearance of the woman to men for a minor involvement with the get. during the sermon need not give rise to That he is present at marriages in his any halachic objections as it can only be a rabbinic capacity and delivers a talk is a fleeting glimpse, and it is to be expected modern custom that has nothing to do that a serious man pays attention in a with halacha. Similarly with the get, his strictly religious mood during the services. presence is not absolutely necessary . . . Jonas indeed dressed according to the Where is it forbidden that women can be highest standards of modesty, and also mesader ha-get [one who facilitates a divorce believed, according to her biographer Elisa decree]? . . . One should not underestimate, Klapheck, that a woman rabbi should with regard to this procedure in religious life, remain single and chaste. In the summer particularly with what precedes the delivery of 1939, however, Jonas fell in love with of the get, that women have a special ability Rabbi Dr. Joseph Norden, a widower thirty to overcome some of the difficulties that years her senior. The feelings were mutual, arise through the ill will of one member of a as evidenced by Norden’s correspondence couple, or even to prevent the divorce. with Jonas. Klapheck documents their love The concluding words of Jonas’s treatise affair, but admits that “it is hard to know reflect the passion of her belief and her how far the relationship went.” Her personal rabbinic mission: conflicts aside, Jonas was firmly convinced that women rabbis are a necessity, bringing Finally, the lifestyle of the rabbi is to the pulpit qualities that men cannot addressed. It goes without saying, but it deliver: still much must be firmly emphasized, that only those men and women should devote Just as both female doctors and teachers themselves to the job of rabbi, teacher, in time have become a necessity from and custodian of Jewish ideas who are a psychological standpoint, so has the suffused with Jewish spirit, Jewish self- female rabbi. There are even some confidence, Jewish morality, purity and things that women can say to youth, Jewish holiness, who could say, together which cannot be said by the man in the with the prophet Jeremiah (20:9): “But his pulpit. Her experiences, her psychological word was in my heart like a burning fire observations are profoundly different shut up in my bones…” from those of a man, therefore she has a different style. I must fight for God.

84 | Summer 2010