Thinking About Women

SHALOM HARTMAN INSTITUTE A JOURNAL OF JEWISH CONVERSATION • • CONVERSATION JEWISH OF JOURNAL A A JOURNAL OF JEWISH CONVERSATION Number 5 / Summer 2010 / $7.95 Number 5 / Summer 2010 • • 2010 Summer / 5 Number Thinking About SHALOM HARTMAN INSTITUTE HARTMAN SHALOM 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, Jerusalem Afikoman /// Old Texts for New Times Contact us: “Without Regard to Gender” ..................................... 78 www.hartman.org.il A Halachic Treatise by the First Woman Rabbi [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 rabbis 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 Jews 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 Sally Priesand, 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 Regina Jonas, 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 Naamah Kelman, the first woman ever ordained a rabbi in the Land of Israel. 2 | Summer 2010 A Letter to Our Readers /// Stuart Schoffman 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 David Hartman says, in his spirited roundtable Passover 2010, Jerusalem. remarks: “I don’t want to coerce any woman into having an aliyah 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 Manhattan’s Lincoln Square Synagogue. 4 | Summer 2010 Thinking about Women /// A Symposium 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.

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