Orthodox Jewish Men in an Egalitarian World
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Th e Men’s Section HBI Series on Jewish Women Shulamit Reinharz, General Editor Sylvia Barack Fishman, Associate Editor Th e HBI Series on Jewish Women, created by the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, pub- lishes a wide range of books by and about Jewish women in diverse contexts and time periods. Of interest to scholars and the educated public, the HBI Series on Jewish Women fi lls major gaps in Jewish Studies and in Women and Gender Studies as well as their intersection. Th e HBI Series on Jewish Women is supported by a generous gift from Dr. Laura S. Schor. For the complete list of books that are available in this series, please see www.upne.com Elana Maryles Sztokman Harriet Hartman and Moshe Hartman, Th e Men’s Section: Orthodox Jewish Men in Gender and American Jews: Patterns in an Egalitarian World Work, Education, and Family in Contem- porary Life Sharon Faye Koren Forsaken: Th e Menstruant in Medieval Dvora E. Weisberg, Levirate Marriage Jewish Mysticism and the Family in Ancient Judaism Sonja M. Hedgepeth and Rochelle G. Ellen M. Umansky and Dianne Ashton, Saidel, editors, Sexual Violence against editors, Four Centuries of Jewish Women’s Jewish Women during the Holocaust Spirituality: A Sourcebook Julia R. Lieberman, editor Carole S. Kessner, Marie Syrkin: Values Sephardi Family Life in the Early Modern Beyond the Self Diaspora Ruth Kark, Margalit Shilo, and Galit Derek Rubin, editor Hasan-Rokem, editors, Jewish Women in Promised Lands: New Jewish American Pre-State Israel: Life History, Politics, and Fiction on Longing and Belonging Culture Carol K. Ingall, editor, Th e Women Who Tova Hartman, Feminism Encounters Reconstructed American Jewish Education: Traditional Judaism: Resistance and 1910–1965 Accommodation Gaby Brimmer and Elena Poniatowska, Anne Lapidus Lerner, Eternally Eve: Gaby Brimmer: An Autobiography in Images of Eve in the Hebrew Bible, Th ree Voices Midrash, and Modern Jewish Poetry Elana Maryles Sztokman Th e Men’s Section Orthodox Jewish Men in an Egalitarian World Brandeis University Press Waltham, Massachusetts Brandeis University Press An imprint of University Press of New England www.upne.com © 2011 Brandeis University All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Designed by Katherine B. Kimball Typeset in Minion by Integrated Publishing Solutions University Press of New England is a member of the Green Press Initiative. Th e paper used in this book meets their minimum requirement for recycled paper. For permission to reproduce any of the material in this book, contact Permissions, University Press of New England, One Court Street, Suite 250, Lebanon NH 03766; or visit www.upne.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sztokman, Elana Maryles. Th e men’s section: Orthodox Jewish men in an egalitarian world / Elana Maryles Sztokman. — 1st ed. p. cm. — (HBI series on Jewish women) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-1-61168-078-2 (cloth : alk. paper)—isbn 978-1-61168-079-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)—isbn 978-1-61168-080-5 (e-book) 1. Equality—Religious aspects—Judaism. 2. Orthodox Judaism—Doctrines. 3. Women (Jewish law) 4. Shira Hadasha (Jerusalem) I. Title. bm645.e85s98 2011 296.081—dc23 2011030022 5 4 3 2 1 Th e publication of this book was generously supported by the Lucius N. Littauer Foundation. To Jacob, with love Contents Foreword by Sylvia Barack Fishman ix Acknowledgments xiii Prologue 1 I Introducing Orthodox Men 9 1 Jewish Men on the Borders 11 2 Th e “BOMB”: Th e “Be an Orthodox Man” Box 31 3 On Hippies, Heretics, and Hafi fniks 69 II Changing Men, Changing Society 83 4 Orthodox Men Creating Partnership 85 5 Jocks, Dads, and Homebodies 109 6 Men Encountering Feminism 135 III Orthodox Men Creating New Boundaries 155 7 “Just Not Reform” 157 8 Th e New Patriarchy 176 IV Refl ections and Conclusions 199 9 Refl ections on Orthodox Masculinities 201 Epilogue 219 Appendix A: Notes on Methodology 229 Appendix B: Data on the Interviewees 232 Glossary 237 Notes 243 Bibliography 255 Index 263 Foreword Sylvia Barack Fishman In traditional Orthodox synagogues, worshippers are partitioned into male and female spaces. “Th e women’s section,” as it is oft en called, seats girls and women, who do not take vocal leadership roles in the Hebrew service, despite the fact that today many Orthodox women have excellent Judaic educations and liturgi- cal knowledge. Th e women’s section is a clearly defi ned area—a balcony, or a section of seats behind a latticework, curtain, or fencelike structure—and it is never where the holy ark containing the Torah scrolls is located. All the action of the service is conducted by the worshipping congregation of men and boys over age thirteen in the space where the Torah and the podiums to read, chant, lead the congregation, and deliver sermons are also located. By default, one may call this main congregational area, as Elana Maryles Sztokman ironically does, “the men’s section.” Sztokman went from “following the rules” of Orthodox female comport- ment to “stepping out” of her “assigned role.” For the fi rst time in a life that had included weekly attendance at Orthodox Sabbath prayer services, she felt “truly present” when she led the congregation at the fi rst Shira Hadasha Partnership Minyan in Jerusalem—a liberal Orthodox service that inaugurated a new ap- proach, allowing women over age twelve to be called to the Torah, to read from the Torah scroll, and to lead parts of the service for men and women who sit separated, in the Orthodox fashion, by a mekhitza partition. However, unlike most other Orthodox congregations, the mekhitza in a Partnership Minyan al- lows males and females equal access to the Torah service. And, as Sztokman explains in this fascinating and lively social analysis, the innovations are far more than visual. Some girls and women who participate in Partnership Minyanim—which now number 22 in the United States, Israel, Australia and elsewhere—regard their enfranchisement as an unexamined and welcome gift . But Sztokman has a researcher’s curiosity. Who are the men frequenting Partnership Minyanim, x Foreword she wondered? Are they ideological feminists? Extraordinary individuals? Why would they voluntarily relinquish the exclusive ownership that men enjoy in conventional Orthodox prayer services, while still remaining committed to the obligation of thrice-daily prayer? Unlike men in more liberal wings of Judaism, where female worshippers are sometimes the majority these days, the men in Partnership Minyanim retain their Orthodox sense of male obligation. On principle, Partnership Minyanim do not commence without a minyan (prayer quorum) of ten men, plus ten women. In a world where women’s enfranchise- ment has oft en been accompanied by declining male interest and involvement, the men of the Partnership Minyan provide an intriguing model. Sztokman freely admits that her research has been one expression of her advocacy within a Partnership Minyan in Modi’in, Israel, where she lives. She vividly describes the great passion for prayer among the men of her childhood in devoutly Orthodox Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where synagogue Judaism was an unchallenged men’s club. She traces the process through which the fi rst Part- nership Minyanim were created, placing them in the context of simultaneously emerging Independent Congregations like Mechon Hadar in New York. With her keen eye for telling details, her wit, and her startling insights, Sztokman shows that although gender equality was a profoundly motivating goal for both Orthodox and non-Orthodox innovative congregations, women would not have been able to achieve change in either “without the compliance of men, especially powerful men.” Th e fi rst lesson of her study, then, is that male part- nership made women’s greater participation possible. Th is book’s subject is “men who dwell in transition”—not always a comfort- able position! As the construction of femaleness changes, so does the construc- tion of maleness. All-male environments like Orthodox synagogue leadership are oft en permeated by pressure to follow all the rules incumbent on men, and Sztokman brilliantly lays out the multiple ways that Orthodox societies box men into patriarchal systems: Orthodox men compete on scales of piety, ear- nestness, and ritual and intellectual precision. Men who don’t measure up are viewed as dilettantes, and considered less manly and strong. Th e prayer shawl, tallit, which some men managed to safeguard even in Holocaust concentration camps, is symbolic of this male seriousness and strength, as are the phylacter- ies, teffi lin, proudly donned by Orthodox Israeli soldiers every weekday, with- out exception, even on the front lines. For Israeli Jews, these ritual objects are thus super-male symbols of gevura, courage and prowess—words that come from the same Hebrew root as the word for male, gever. Along comes Orthodox Foreword xi feminism, with one of Sztokman’s mentors being photographed in tallit and teffi lin while she nurses a baby! It should not be surprising that in Israel resis- tance to feminist changes sometimes take more dramatic form than in the United States, and Sztokman skillfully unpacks the signifi cances of the resis- tance as well as the changes. Male on male competition demands fl awless public performance skills in chanting from the Torah scroll and leading services, and sloppiness is punished by a “culture of pouncing on the fl awed layner (Torah reader)”—a circumstance terrifying to neophyte Torah readers. Young men are trained not to react emo- tionally when veteran readers “bark” corrections at them. For many, not react- ing means not feeling—and eventually feeling nothing throughout the prayer service, she argues. Th e swift Israeli prayer service has an ethos of “ba’im, gom- rim, holchim,” “we come, we fi nish, we go.” Religious emotions of excitement, aff ection and anticipation are much more likely to be aroused by “learning,” the rigorous study of rabbinic texts than they are by prayer in conventional Ortho- dox settings.