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Thesis FINAL “Blessed is She Who in the Beginning Gave Birth” An Intellectual History of the Brown Women’s Minyan and the Student Pioneers of American Jewish Feminism By Sienna Lotenberg Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts In the Department of History at Brown University Thesis Advisor: Kelly Ricciardi Colvin April 5, 2018 Contents Acknowledgments .......................................................................................................................... iii Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1 1. The Women’s Minyan: Prayer, Tears, and Institutional Support ............................................. 19 2. Siddur Nashim’s Radically Feminist Liturgical Theology ....................................................... 39 3. Beyond Brown: Academic Jewish Feminism, Left-Wing Spiritual Communities, and the Progressive Mainstream .................................................................................................... 59 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................... 91 Selected Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 99 i ii Acknowledgments In the days when I was deciding on a thesis topic, my nerves calmed when I learned that a thesis did not have to reflect every facet of my academic interests in one crowning jewel of my undergraduate education. In retrospect, I did not need to worry: I had the great fortune to find the Women’s Minyan, a subject which is as personally meaningful to me as it is intellectually stimulating, and which brings together my overlapping commitments to feminism, Judaism, and intellectual history. The road that brought me to a history thesis on Jewish feminist praxis and prayer was one whose clearest signposts were the people who not only shaped me but gave me space to shape myself. It is a great joy to be able to thank some of them here. First and foremost, I am deeply indebted to Professor Kelly Ricciardi Colvin, without whom neither this project nor the joy it brought me would have been possible. She fundamentally shaped how I think about women and gender both within and beyond the academic realm, and supported me far beyond the call of duty as she steadfastly reminded me of my privilege and responsibility to bring forgotten voices back into the fore while encouraging me to trust my own. Other faculty in history department at Brown have contributed both to this thesis and my overall intellectual development. Most notably, the guidance of Professors Ethan Pollock and Naoko Shibusawa through the thesis process has been invaluable. In addition, the Hebrew skills I employ in this thesis are the result of five semesters of Professor Ruth Adler Ben Yehuda’s methodical and patient teaching. Among the most exciting aspects of this project was the opportunity to speak to some of the women who made the Women’s Minyan the space that it was and the faculty and staff who facilitated their work. I am profoundly grateful to Dr. Naomi Janowitz, Rabbi Margaret Moers iii Wenig, Rabbi Laurie Rutenberg, Judy Kaye, Rabbi Richard Marker, and Dr. Rabbi David Blumenthal for giving graciously of their time to speak with me and share, firsthand, their experiences in a moment of history I have come to hold dear. I am also thankful for their generosity in sharing documents that vastly increased my primary source base and allowed me to learn about the Women’s Minyan in ways I never could have without them. In addition, Michael Tyler contributed greatly to my analysis of post-1980 progressive liturgies through his sharing of stories and documents from Congregation Sha’ar Zahav’s various prayerbook projects; I am so grateful for his generosity and for Rabbi Mychal Copeland’s offer to put us in touch. My fellow history thesis writers have provided endless support over the past three semesters. I am particularly grateful that Greer Christensen-Gibbons approached me on the Main Green to commiserate about the prospectus process over a year ago; her friendship, thoughtful comments, and hours spent listening to me talk through ideas over coffee, tea, wine, and the phone have improved my writing and my life. A host of Jewish clergy have contributed to my relationship with Judaism and prayer in ways that are visible in this thesis but go far beyond it. Rabbi Amy Schwartzman has led a congregation where Judaism became a relevant source of spiritual meaning and intellectual engagement for my whole life, and by her very being modeled for me that Jewish women belong in positions of leadership. Cantor Michael Shochet created an environment in which prayer had meaning through music, and I credit him with bringing into my life the melodies that made me fall in love with liturgy. Cantor Tracey Scher built greatly on this musical-liturgical foundation and shaped me as a Jew, a feminist, and a person by valuing my voice and contributions, even in my teenage awkwardness. Rabbi Sarah Mack has been an invaluable sounding board throughout the writing process and generously allowed me access to her personal prayerbook library. iv This thesis is about Jewish women making choices, and I am blessed to have a family that has encouraged my choices. I am particularly grateful for my mother, Lynne Doner Lotenberg, who has inspired me to choose Judaism since day one and whose expertise in Microsoft Word saved me many hours. I am lucky that she values our longstanding tradition of editing each other’s work as much as I do, and my grammatical correctness is due in large part to her efforts. It is an even greater blessing that she taught me to read and purchased girl-centric historical fiction for her kindergartener—who knew its impact would last this long? In addition, my sister Eliana has been a source of constant support mixed with teenaged derision without which I would take myself much too seriously. Finally, I am grateful to Brown RISD Hillel for being a space of Jewish creativity and community for me in the 2010s as it was for the Women’s Minyan in the 1970s. It has been a particular joy to research and write much of this thesis in the same walls that housed its subject. The support of the staff and my fellow students, especially Noah Fitzgerel, Sarah Joffe, Abby Skerker, Shosh Rosenzweig, Daniel Youkilis, and Andrew Marmor, made it possible for me to balance my Hillel presidency and my Reform Minyan leadership with this project and be proud of all of them. It is an abounding blessing to share an institutional lineage with the Women’s Minyan, and I am grateful to all its members for shaping progressive Judaism as I know it and being exemplary makers of their own religious lives. Modah ani l’faneichen—thank you all. v vi Introduction “The Lord is my Mother, my Strength,” read the assembled group of women rabbis and rabbinical students in unison. For Rebecca Alpert, a Reconstructionist Rabbinical College student, this moment was transformative. At the 1977 retreat of the newly-founded Women’s Rabbinical Alliance, she prayed with a liturgy that spoke to her experience as a Jewish woman for the first time. Fourteen years later, the experience remained powerfully etched in her mind: The experience of praying with Siddur Nashim ... transformed my relationship with God. For the first time, I understood what it meant to be made in God's image. To think of God as a woman like myself, to see Her as both powerful and nurturing, to see Her imaged with a woman's body, with a womb, with breasts – this was an experience of ultimate significance. Was this the relationship that men have had with God for all these millennia? How wonderful to gain access to those feelings and perceptions.1 Siddur Nashim, the prayerbook (siddur) that inspired this rabbi-to-be, was created in 1976 by two Brown University undergraduate women, Naomi Janowitz and Margaret Moers Wenig, for the Brown Women’s Minyan, the all-women prayer service they attended at Brown University.2 1 Rebecca Alpert, “What Gender is God?” Reform Judaism, Winter 1991, 28; Carole B. Balin, “From Periphery to Center: A History of the Women’s Rabbinic Network,” in The Sacred Calling: Four Decades of Women in the Rabbinate, eds. Rebecca Einstein Schorr and Alysa Mendelson Graf (New York: CCAR Press, 2016), 140; “Rebecca T. Alpert,” Temple University directory website, accessed April 1, 2018, https://sites.temple.edu/rebeccatalpert/cv/. Alpert notes in her piece that she encountered the siddur at a “retreat for women rabbis and rabbinical students,” while Balin identifies the Women’s Rabbinical Alliance (WRA) as the group of this sort composed of women from the New York campus of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College (RRC) in Wyncote, PA. Because Alpert was a student at RRC at the time, it follows that she was attending a retreat sponsored by this group. In addition, Balin notes in her chapter that the WRA prayed from Siddur Nashim at its 1978 convention. 2 Maggie M. Wenig, class of 1978, Interview for the Pembroke Center’s “Brown Women Speak” oral history archive, first interview, 1989. Interviewed by Miriam Dale Pichey, https://www.brown.edu/initiatives/women- speak/interview/maggie-m-wenig-class-1978-first-interview. A minyan is the required quorum for Jewish public 1 Their prayerbook was the
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