Contents Foreword, Paula E. Hyman xi Preface xvii Acknowledgments xxi Introduction xxv } Part 1: Why Women’s Seders? 1 For Women Only 4 Esther Broner The Continuing Value of Separatism 9 Judith Plaskow Creating the Ma’yan Women’s Seder: Balancing Comfort, Challenge, and Community 14 Tamara Cohen and Erika Katske Miriam and Our Dance of Freedom: Seder in Prison 22 Judith Clark Every Voice Matters: Community and Dialogue at a Women’s Seder 26 Catherine Spector God’s Redemption: Memory and Gender on Passover 32 Norma Baumel Joseph An Embrace of Tradition 38 Tara Mohr vii viii Contents } Part 2: Reclaiming and Re-creating Passover Rituals for Women 45 Thoughts on Cleaning for Pesach 49 Haviva Ner-David We Can’t Be Free Until All Women Are Important 54 Leah Shakdiel Setting a Cup for Miriam 59 Vanessa L. Ochs The Celebration of Challenge: Reclaiming the Four Children 65 Leora Eisenstadt Orange on the Seder Plate 70 Susannah Heschel The Open Door: The Tale of Idit and the Passover Paradox 78 Sandy Eisenberg Sasso A New Song for a Different Night: Sephardic Women’s Musical Repertoire 84 Judith Wachs I Will Be with You: The Divine Presence on Passover 99 Carol Ochs } Part 3: Women of Exodus 105 Shiru l’Adonai: Widening the Circle of Memory and History 108 Judith Rosenbaum Miriam’s Leadership: A Reconstruction 113 Lori Lefkovitz Their Lives a Page Plucked from a Holy Book 119 Margaret Moers Wenig With Strong Hands and Outstretched Arms 128 Sharon Cohen Anisfeld Contents ix The Secret of Redemption: A Tale of Mirrors 135 Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg “Fixing” Liberation, or How Rebecca Initiates the Passover Seder 142 Bonna Devora Haberman } Part 4: Telling Our Stories 149 A Story for the Second Night of Passover 153 Ruth Behar Jephthah’s Daughter: A Feminist Midrash 159 Letty Cottin Pogrebin Memory and Revolution 165 Dianne Cohler-Esses Leaving on Purpose: The Questions of Women’s Tefillah 171 Chavi Karkowsky Of Nursing, in the Desert 177 Janna Kaplan On Matzah, Questions, and Becoming a Nation 182 Leah Haber God’s Bride on Pesach 188 Kim Chernin The Matzah Set-Up 196 Jenya Zolot-Gassko Women Re-creating the Passover Seder: Bella Rosenfeld Chagall and the Resonance of Female Memory 202 Judith R. Baskin } Part 5: Visions and Challenges for the Future 209 Sanctified by Ritual 213 Phyllis Chesler x Contents Reflections on the Feminist Seder as an Entry Point into Jewish Life 220 Lilly Rivlin Placing Our Bettes: Keepin’ It Real at the Seder Table 225 Ophira Edut Pluralism in Feminist Settings 229 Martha Ackelsberg Conflict and Community: The Common Ground of Judaism and Feminism 235 Ruth Kaplan What Now? After the Exodus, the Wilderness 240 Sharon Kleinbaum Letting Pharaoh Go: A Biblical Study of Internalized Oppression 246 Ela Thier Reflections on Exodus in Light of Palestinian Suffering 251 Lynn Gottlieb Walking the Way as Women 256 Merle Feld Notes 263 Glossary 283 Bibliography 293 Index 297 About Jewish Lights 307 1 Why Women’s Seders? The model of the feminist seder has provided women both with a window into the tradition through their experience as women and with a window into them- selves through an encounter with the tradition. It is a communal ritual model that draws its strength from the coming together of people with a shared history and destiny. —RABBI JOY D. LEVITT, VOICES FOR CHANGE ach year, thousands of Jewish women come together in cele- bration at women’s seders, which have become one of the most vibrant and popular communal gatherings in contem- porary Jewish life. In communities around the world—from EKansas City to Manhattan, New Orleans to Berlin—women create hag- gadahs and plan seders with creativity, energy, and dedication. The largest of these gatherings attracts more than two thousand partici- pants, and hundreds of smaller seders are held in living rooms, syna- gogues, and campus Hillels around the world. 1 2 The Women’s Passover Companion As Karen Smith of Knoxville, Tennessee, notes, these seders are of deep personal and religious significance for participants: “The women’s seder has become for me and for other women a very spiritual event. We pause in our busy lives for an evening of thought and reflection, sharing a common tradition.... We are given a further sense of identi- fication with our people, with our Jewishness, and with our God.” Many participants agree that a women’s seder is a unique opportunity to create a women’s community, deepen the spirituality of their Passover celebration, and explore their Jewish identity in a new context. The writings in part 1 explore this extraordinary phenomenon and ask some fundamental questions about the origin, meaning, and pur- pose of women’s seders. Why were the earliest women’s seders created? How have women’s seders evolved over the past thirty years? What exactly is a women’s seder? Is it an event for women only or about women only? Is it an inherently feminist ritual, and should it be? What does a women’s seder mean to the different women who participate in it? And how should a women’s seder approach traditional Passover liturgy, texts, and rituals? In part 1, the authors address these questions from a wide range of experiences and perspectives. Some have been seder organizers for years—writing haggadahs, creating rituals, and shaping the event for hundreds, even thousands of other women around the world. Other contributors bring their academic and activist perspectives to the dis- cussion, exploring women’s seders from a more theoretical perspective. Each author links her discussion of women’s seders with an examina- tion of broader feminist concerns or larger questions about the histo- ry and meaning of the Passover holiday. In “For Women Only,” Esther Broner, creator of the first women’s seder, reflects on the origins and goals of the women’s seder she has organized each Passover for nearly thirty years. Describing the excep- tional intimacy, honesty, and trust among attendants, Broner con- tends that this atmosphere would not have been possible in a group including men. Broner’s personal account of the need for these seders in her own Why Women’s Seders? 3 life and in the lives of the women who attend them is complemented by “The Continuing Value of Separatism.” In this reflection, scholar and activist Judith Plaskow argues that all-women’s gatherings are signifi- cant because they provide not simply a women’s space but a feminist space in which women have the opportunity to “critique normative texts and to create alternative rituals and liturgies that place women at the center.” “Creating the Ma’yan Women’s Seder: Balancing Comfort, Chal- lenge, and Community” further explores the ways in which women’s seders enable women to challenge traditional texts and experiment with new rituals and liturgy. It features companion pieces by Tamara Cohen and Erika Katske, former staff members at Ma’yan: The Jewish Women’s Project of the Jewish Community Center of the Upper West Side. Ma’yan organizes the largest women’s seder in the world, and its published haggadah is used in dozens of smaller seders each year. Cohen, the primary author of the Ma’yan haggadah, focuses her atten- tion on the process of writing liturgy for a women’s seder, while Katske, a veteran seder organizer and former program coordinator at Ma’yan, analyzes the meaning and implications of the decision to include—or exclude—men at feminist seders. The next piece follows the Ma’yan haggadah to a remarkable women’s seder where it is used. In “Miriam and Our Dance of Free- dom: Seder in Prison,” Bedford Hills inmate Judith Clark reflects on the significance of celebrating freedom at the Passover seder while serving a life sentence in prison. Clark describes how participating in a women’s seder allowed her to find a “new way into the meaning of Passover,” rekindling her “quest for holiness, freedom, and community.” The range of women’s seders described in the opening pieces reveals the stunning diversity of individuals and communities celebrat- ing this ritual. Catherine Spector’s “Every Voice Matters: Community and Dialogue at a Women’s Seder” contends that we must highlight, explore, and celebrate this diversity. Discussing numerous strategies for doing so, Spector suggests that pluralism requires us to do more than simply invite all women to join us at the table; it demands that we find 4 The Women’s Passover Companion ways to make every woman feel that her voice and contributions are a central, treasured part of the event. In “God’s Redemption: Memory and Gender on Passover,” Norma Baumel Joseph focuses not only on women’s seders but on Passover, more broadly, as a holiday that engages women in meaningful religious celebration. Looking at Passover as a holiday of redemption, Joseph dis- cusses the divine model presented in the Book of Exodus. Joseph invites us to reflect on the ways that Jewish women can—and must—act in the image of the redeeming God of the Exodus narrative. Tara Mohr’s “An Embrace of Tradition” examines the factors con- tributing to the popularity and appeal of women’s seders. In this reflec- tion, Mohr explores the ways in which women’s seders create a unique space for Jewish women, asking us to understand women’s seders as a space for authentic engagement with Jewish ritual and tradition. Together, these voices explore the myriad ways in which women’s seders encourage such engagement, connecting Jewish women to their tradition, and bringing forth contributions that will enrich, renew, and transform Jewish life for generations to come.