Orthodox Jewish Feminism
March 19th, 2009
When I was growing up I yearned with a desire to be just like the boys in shul and be called up to read from the Torah. I yearned to feel that intense connection to God, that I so clearly did not feel sitting behind curtain number 1. I always felt a profound sense of loss that I could never participate fully in the minyan or make an actual contribution to Judaism other than raising Jewish children or baking challah.
In my bais yaakov upbringing I felt stifled by the de rigueur chumash, navi, and mishlei, things that were appropriate for girls to learn but never quite stimulating enough for me. I wished to learn gemara; to be treated as an equal. I would watch the men dance with the Torah on Simchas Torah and feel a profound sense of loss that it was not me. That I was merely relegated to sit and watch.
After I got married I suddenly discovered a whole network of Orthodox Jewish Feminists. Women who yearned for more. For the first time in my life I danced with a sefer torah, and I found out that there were people who would teach me gemara, or how to lane megilla, and suddenly the Judaism of my childhood seemed to have shifted to a Judaism that could with time be inclusive.
In my shul recently there has been a search for a new Rabbi. The biggest questions on many people’s minds are what role will women play? Will they be able to dance in the main sanctuary with a sefer torah? Will we have a yoetzet? Will there ever be a female shul president? Suddenly before my eyes the patriarchal Judaism is taking stock and realizing that women feel excluded and if they sit on their haunches and do nothing, the already small orthodox movement will grow smaller.
I attended the Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Dinner recently and at the panel discussion the question was raised “Is there a moral imperative to have orthodox female rabbis?” It’s a question that will shock many and while there are many more pressing issues on the table it is something to think about as the dynamics of our community change.
I was so excited the other night meeting the famous blogger Jewess, otherwise known as Rebecca Honig Friedman, who brought to light the whole Mt. Sinai Shul announcer controversy. I am inspired by women like my friend Orly Lieberman who is changing the way we view Taharat Hamishpacha and doing an amazing job educating kallot. I am inspired by female scholars like Sharon Weiss Greenberg, Miriam Segura Harrison, and Ruth Balinsky. These women sit and learn gemara in a beit Midrash just like men, something I never thought growing up could be a possibility.
I feel blessed to live in a community that takes women’s issues seriously and I hope in my lifetime that there might just be an orthodox female rabbi.
Posted in Uncategorized
I think that the education of women has drastically improved since the 1980s. What has changed in the past couple of years, is the acceptance of advanced Jewish education in the mainstream orthodox community. Most communities are ready for female leaders…it seems as if the title is going to need to wait.
I first would like to say that I am on the Frum side of Orthodoxy. However, as I read the parsha each week, I see that even back then, women played a role…there were prophetesses who the tiny nation among nations listened to. Perhaps we are here because they did. Then again, there were Queens, who literally risked their lives on behalf of their people, who otherwise would have been eradicated from the face of the earth, (G-d forbid)
I learn with a Rebbetzen of a Chabad shul. We learn anything we want. We have studied Gemara as well as some obscure book on why we do certain things in the kitchen the way we do – it is connected to ancient ways of everything from tilling, planting to harveting, for example. We have studied Gematria and can add words at the shabbos table faster than many of the Yesiva students.
We, as women, are the formative teachers of the next generation of Jews, both male and female ones. We instruct our children on everything from how to make a bracha after using the toilet to singing their night time shema. We share with them the importance of eating only kosher food to beginning to mimic our own habit of davening as they walk behind us with any book, most probably up-side-down, as they learn the Hebrew words by heart.
I have also belonged to a shul in a city about 2 hours from where I live now that had and still has a female president. Why? Because even the males present realised that she was the best person for the job.
One does not have to break the rules. One does not need to even bend them. One only needs to study carefully and see when and where man-made traditions of separation came about, and then research back to see if there is a Torah-based foundation for a set of rules or if the rules are simply tradition.
Torah trumps Tradition.
All the best,
Leeba
Hi! I like your srticle and I would like very much to read some more information on this issue. Will you post some more?
Indeed, in our times the original reasoning for sex segregation no longer holds. Women don’t have to spend all their time at home, and praying men need not salivate over their female rabbi while they see half-dressed women on streets.