by Adam [➚] · Monday, January 17th, 2011
JTA reports that last month, the 140 member International Rabbinic Fellowship narrowly voted down admitting women to its ranks as either full or limited members.
The Dec. 20 vote came after what the president of the organization, Rabbi Barry Gelman of Houston, told The Jewish Week was a “wonderfully healthy and passionate discussion.”
This is the liberal orthodox group co-founded by R. Avi Weiss of Riverdale, where Rabbah Sara Hurwitz gained fame. Glad to hear that there was neither a rubber stamp nor a hasty thumbs down, but a vigorous debate. Judaism always should be both vigours and a debate, a wrestling with God and the law. In this respect, IRF demonstrates how it is similar to its Conservative cousins- not in that it would consider women as members, but that it would engage in thoughtful debate of the subject.
by dcc [➚] · Sunday, January 9th, 2011
So Debbie Friedman has passed away. JTA has an article and the URJ has issued a statement. Her passing has been really sad for me and thousands of others. I will write a longer post in the coming days but I thought I would invite those of you who were touched by her music and dedication to the Jewish people share your Remembering Debbie stories in the comments here as well as on Twitter with the Hash Tag #rememberingdebbie.
Here is mine: Once in the late 1990s Debbie preformed at House of the Book at the then Brandeis-Bardin Institute and she told us that Jews can’t clap on 2 and 4 and proceed to prove it to us. It was funny. It was sad. It was classic Debbie Friedman.
by dcc [➚] · Thursday, January 6th, 2011
Debbie Friedman, Jewish musical innovator and all around super Jew, has been reported to be in critical condition in an Orange County, CA hospital.
Please take a moment and sing her songs, think of her contribution to modern Jewish life and how we all would not be here talking on this blog and fighting about important progressive issues if it weren’t for people liker her throughout history.
She now needs us to provide her the healing and support she has always provided us.
Thank you.
Update: There will be a healing service for Debbie Friedman at the JCC of Manhattan and it will be streamed online so people unable to attend in person can watch online.
Info: Sunday, January 9 at 8pm
JCC of Manhattan (334 Amsterdam Avenue at 76th St.)
Video streaming available here
by matthue [➚] · Monday, December 27th, 2010
Filmmaker Sasha Perry recently traveled to Seattle to document a historic event: the completion of the first Torah scroll written by women scribes to be commissioned.
There’s a bit of history that you need to know to clarify the situation. Kadima, a Jewish community in Washington, wanted to buy a Torah written by a woman. After making inquiries, they learned that there were no Torahs written by women. So they decided to commission six women to write one.
Since the time that this Torah was commissioned, in 2003, several women have become Torah scribes (or sofrot) is and completed the writing of a Torah on their own. (In fact, one of those is Julie Seltzer, an MJL writer who bakes a different challah for every Torah portion {here’s this week’s — not that it has anything to do with the movie; it’s just independently cool}.)
Perry explains a bit of the background:
Since the time the Women’s Torah Project began, nearly 50 women have become Torah scribes, and one woman, Jen Taylor Friedman, has written 3 sefer Torahs by herself. Not only has Kadima created a beautiful Torah for their community, they have also opened doors for women to take their places in Judaism one step further.
Now that the community has this Torah, what are they going to do with it? The next step is, of course, decorating it — other women from the community are already starting to work on the crown, mantle and yad. But really, the next big step is Shabbat — like any other Torah, they’re going to read the eternal story of our people’s history each week.
Crossposted from Mixed Multitudes.
by chaneld1621 [➚] · Monday, November 29th, 2010
The story of Hanukkah is, well, all about men. For the most part, we learn it that way, unless you’re lucky enough to have grown up in a feminist house committed to breaking that cycle, or you’ve seen this great video, courtesy of the Jewish Women’s Archive. It covers the role of the heroine Judith in the Hanukkah story, and also highlights other important Judiths in history (Judy Blume is my personal favorite). The project is a fantastic example of dynamic history, and of the power that comes with reclaiming and rewriting.
by Rooftopper Rav [➚] · Friday, November 19th, 2010
Only in New York. A noted federal judge reinvents the zeved habat/ simchat bat, courtesy of today’s Wall Street Journal:
… Bennett Epstein [a Manhattan trial lawyer]… recently asked New York federal judge Kimba Wood to grant him a day’s reprieve in a criminal trial to attend the bris of his grandson. Epstein’s daughter has not yet given birth — so he doesn’t yet know the sex of the baby. But Epstein wanted to give Judge Wood ample notice to consider his request, given that his daughter’s due date is Dec. 3, smack in the middle of the scheduled trial.
So Epstein was stuck in the slightly awkward position of asking Judge Wood for a day off if, in fact, the baby turns out to be a boy. If it’s a girl, well, no bris, no day off needed.
Wrote Epstein, in this letter filed with the court on Thursday:
Should the child be a girl, not much will happen in the way of public celebration. Some may even be disappointed, but will do their best to conceal this by saying, “as long as it’s a healthy baby.” . . . However, should the baby be a boy, then hoo hah! Hordes of friends and family will arrive . . . for the joyous celebration . . . known as the bris. . . . My presence at the bris is not strictly commanded, although my absence will never be forgotten by those that matter.
Judge Wood, in a note written at the bottom of the letter, granted the request. But she did Epstein one better. Wrote Wood:
Mr. Epstein will be permitted to attend the bris, in the joyous event that a son is born. But the Court would like to balance the scales. If a daughter is born, there will be a public celebration in Court, with readings from poetry celebrating girls and women.
We say, well done Judge Wood!
How did Epstein respond to the answer? “It was wonderful,” he told the LB on Friday. “It struck the perfect chord.” Epstein said he appreciated being granted some time off to celebrate, given the burden such a request places on a court. “As a lawyer, you don’t want to make a habit of asking for things like this,” he said. “You’re really asking for a disruption of the court’s time. So I’m very grateful.”
And on the topic of having to ask a noted female judge for time off to celebrate the birth of a boy, but not a girl, Epstein minced no words:
“Look, the Jewish religion is sexist. It just is. But I didn’t make the rules!”
by Rebez [➚] · Friday, November 19th, 2010
This Following Torah commentary was written by Rabbi Andy Shugerman of Aventura, Florida. Andy is both a graduate and current employee of JTS as their development Rabbinic Fellow. The following Dvar can also be found here.
Commonly found in coroner’s offices across North America is the following motto: “We speak for the dead to protect the living.” Ancient and modern biblical commentators have taken a similar stance toward the rape of Dinah and its aftermath. A close examination of Genesis 34 and contemporary responses to its narrative will show how one of the Torah’s most troubling passages can inspire us to take action. We must, in the words of Proverbs 31:8, “speak for those who cannot speak for themselves.” We must address similar injustices in today’s society in order to protect the living.
Chapter 34 of Genesis laconically opens with the rape. Verse one tells how Jacob’s and Leah’s only daughter “went out to visit the daughters of the land.” The next verse immediately reports that Shechem, a Canaanite man, “saw her, and took her and lay with her by force.” The next fifteen verses describe how Shechem, infatuated with Dinah, enlists his powerful father Hamor to “get me this girl” by brokering a deal with a speechless Jacob and his enraged sons. The brothers assent to Shechem marrying their sister only if he and his clan circumcise themselves; otherwise, they “will take our daughter and go” (34:17).
As shown above, among the various motifs in Genesis 34 is the repeated use of the Hebrew verb root LaKaCH for “get” or “take,” and three of its eight appearances figure prominently in the narrative’s closing verses. Three days following the mass circumcision, Dinah’s brothers Shimon and Levi “took each his sword” (34:25) to slay the townsmen and then “took Dinah out of Shechem’s house and went away” (34:26). After the other brothers “seized . . . all that was inside the town and outside” (34:28), the action concludes with Jacob’s furious reaction to his sons’ rampage, to which they reply, “Should our sister be treated like a whore?” (34:31).
In fact, that rhetorical question in the passage’s final verse encapsulates the concerns of the male personalities in this story. After Shechem inexplicably ravishes Dinah, he seeks to acquire her in a way that would dignify the coerced intercourse of their initial encounter. Her brothers, on the other hand, desire retribution for this “outrage . . . a thing not to be done” (34:7) that has turned their sister into a sex object. In Shechem’s eyes, Dinah is an item for negotiation; for her brothers, she represents a defilement and a cause for revenge.
According to this literary analysis, one can see how Genesis 34 presents its violent narrative of the loss and repossession of power, property, and honor. Amidst all the explicit atrocities, though, perhaps the most subtle tragedy is the way in which both Dinah’s virginity and her voice are stolen from her. Not once does she speak in the entire chapter, nor do any of the men ever address her directly. Unfortunately, many ancient and medieval rabbis add insult to her injury, as they place the onus for the rape on Dinah and/or her mother Leah. For example, Genesis Rabbah 80:1 assigns moral responsibility to both Dinah and Leah, for “a woman is not immoral until her daughter is immoral,” as Leah herself “went out to meet (Jacob) like a harlot.” This type of moralistic comment may have been intended to protect women from exposing themselves to danger, but it unfairly assumes that either Dinah or Leah could have prevented what occurred.
Instead of blaming the victim, the action-oriented divrei Torah of two female colleagues have articulated a fresh approach that has affected me deeply. Rabbis Arielle Hanien and Sharon Brous have both spoken about the rape of Dinah, in particular, and the difficult passages in the Torah, in general, as requiring a visceral reaction from contemporary audiences. We are meant to feel disgust and horror in reading these verses; indeed, those emotions make this difficult text sacred if we pay attention to our discomfort and act upon it. According to my colleagues, we are uncomfortable precisely because we know that these kinds of violence persist in our world today. We can neither ignore the plain meaning of the text or its striking context in our broken world. Instead, Rabbis Hanien and Brous would exhort us to hear God’s voice calling us to action through this and other challenging narratives that disturb.
To place this perspective in dialogue with current events and advocacy efforts, consider the following passage from Randy Gener’s article “In Defense of ‘Ruined’” in this past month’s American Theater magazine about one of the most produced and most troubling plays on stage this season:
This tradition of objectifying women during conflicts . . . has stepped up to new levels: Fighters have systematically used rape and murder in the former Yugoslavia, in Rwanda in the 1990s, and currently in Darfur with the intent to eliminate ethnic groups and to induce forced displacement. The prevalence of rape and other sexual violations in Eastern Congo has been described as the worst in the world. Women, children and even some men are being attacked by multiple assailants, often in public and in front of their neighbors. Even the United Nations’ peacekeeping forces have been accused of rape. Sexual violence wasn’t recognized as a war crime until June 2008 when the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1820, a small step toward ending what Jan Egeland, the former humanitarian affairs chief, described as “one of the biggest conspiracies of silence in history.”
As Gener describes, Lynn Nottage’s play Ruined has received critical acclaim and large national audiences even though—or perhaps because—its pervasive subject matter, sexual violence, is such a taboo for conversation, let alone performance. Nonetheless, the fact that the play won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Drama attests to the public’s need and desire to hear these stories. Will we similarly examine cases of rape among male inmates in American prisons or cases of American servicemen sexually assaulting their female colleagues on military bases and in combat zones? What of the ever-expanding problem of human trafficking in industrialized countries, including the United States and Israel?
This Shabbat, let us follow the example of these women rabbis and artists who have spoken for Dinah and for others who could not speak for themselves. We must unravel other “conspiracies of silence” by bringing new attention to bear upon the persistence of sexual violence in all forms in the twenty-first century. Let us passionately question and courageously embrace the parts of our tradition and our world that challenge us the most. May we thus realize the full message of that passage from Proverbs 31: “Speak up, judge righteously, champion the poor and the needy . . . for the rights of all the unfortunate.”
by Adam [➚] · Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010
I don’t begrudge all the earnest folks who do good work for the jooz. I even like when they are all named to important lists. Like Slingshootz. And the Forvertz 50. And the Joozish Week 36-24-36. Etc. Etc. Etc.
But I begz your pardon, what’s with this Jewish Community Zeroes thingy? All the issues of teh femalez aside teh questionz iz, ‘Wasnt this whole thing just a clever tactic for JFNA* to collect several hundred thousand emailz of teh young Jooz? *(not their real name, which is much longer and is never to be abbreviated even to save space)
We at Jewschool felt we ought to do the same… Since we’re all about the Joozploitation, we are very proud to announce…
**Teh Jewschool Progressive 36 Lamed Vavnik Double Chai Latte Hero Sandwichez… Bitchez.**
Zero Calories
Honoring movers and shakers doing good work on behalf of (or for) the Jooz in the areas of:
Social and economic justice and do-gooding
Peace (in Israel and elsewhere, except Iceland)
Jewish culture (whatever
that is)
Spirituality (‘specially the touchy feel-y sort)
Inclusivity (Pluralist, Racial, Gender and all that ‘faggy’ stuff)
Media (it is the message after all, liek this blog)
Other things we hate but have to include.
Step one:
We announce the contest and make it sticky on the site. (check)
Circulate it via email, blogosphere and intertubes. (need your help here)
Develop snarky but slick logo that looks Obama-esque (uh, check?)
Step two:
Nominations accepted via form submission on the website
Post facebook event/app/group/widget to redirect voters to jewschool.com
Be sure that heads of major Joowish organizations and entities iz nominated.
Also, anyone with a huge email/twitter/facebook following…
Note that femalez iz welcome to apply but will not be winnerz
(cuz they iz too stoopid… naw, cuz they all already iz heroz- hi mom!)
Step three:
Inform all nominees they are finalists. Because they are all special.
To be named a 36, they must encourage their supporters to vote for them
(and be popular).
Votes are accepted via hosted form, which collects their name, locale,
email, etc.
Step four:
Announce winners of the cheerleading squad via press release, youtubz
and facespaces.
Compile voter list into email database and announce winners via email list
Solicit their financial support, just for shirtz and gigglz
step five:
Use the email list for our own purposez: to give all teh kittehz cheezburgerz er- Kosher tofu-parve cheezburgers..!
Muuuuhahahahahaha!!!! I eatz it up. I laffs at u.
More »
by David A.M. Wilensky [➚] · Thursday, October 28th, 2010
If you’re not bored with it by now, if against all odds, you’re still following developments in the Jewish Community Heroes campaign from the Jewish Federations of North America, you may have noticed that none of the finalists are women.
Former Limmud NY Executive Director Ruthie Warshenbrot (full disclosure: when she was at Limmud NY, she was my boss for a year and a half) definitely noticed. She and Shannon Sarna from the Bronfman Foundation have an article at eJewish Philanthropy today about it:
More than half of the 2010 Slingshot organizations are headed by women.
More than half of the 2009 Avi Chai Fellows (“the Jewish genius grant”) award winners are women. More than half of the current Joshua Venture Fellows are women.
And over 70% of Jewish professionals are women.
The number of women finalists in the Jewish Federations of North America’s recent Jewish Community Heroes campaign: Zero.
The Jewish Heroes project fails to accurately reflect the landscape of the Jewish community’s best and brightest. When the vast majority of professionals working to enrich the Jewish community are women, how should it come to pass that not a single women is counted among our top five heroes?
[...]
Read the rest of their article here.
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol [➚] · Wednesday, October 20th, 2010
Salon reports that on Tuesday, the Working Group Against the Trafficking of Women pulled a stunt in Tel Aviv intended to jolt people out of their stupor about sex trafficking in Israel, and ultimately to get enough signatures to push forward a measure that would criminalize johns.
Although here in the states, I’m generally inclined to avoid clipboard holders (I’m perfectly capable of finding my own petitions to sign, thank you, and generally opposed to giving out my name and address to random people on the street whom I have no idea if they really represent the organization they state), this would probably grab my attention:
Activists lined up seven women like merchandise in the window of a shop in Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff Center mall. A sign above them read, “Women for sale according to personal taste.” Haaretz reports that some “were made up to appear as if they had been beaten, and all had price tags that listed details such as age, weight, dimensions, and country of birth.”
It hasn’t been a secret for some time now that sex trafficking in Israel is an enormous problem. Way back in 2005, a report was issued by The Parliamentary Inquiry Committee, headed by Knesset member Zehava Galon of the left-wing Yahad party, which commissioned the report in an effort to combat the sex trade in Israel. Findings showed that some 3,000 and 5,000 women were smuggled to Israel annually and sold into the prostitution industry for about $8-10,000 American dollars, where they are constantly subjected to violence and abuse. Two years before that Israel passed a law that would allow the state to confiscate the profits of traffickers, but watchdog groups say it is rarely enforced.
This law would be different. In 1999, Sweden took the same approach advocated by this new measure, and criminalized johns; trafficking has since been significantly reduced. A report in July of this year, published by the government of Sweden evaluated the law’s first ten years and how it has actually worked in practice. It states,
street prostitution has been cut in half; there is no evidence that the reduction in street prostitution has led to an increase in prostitution elsewhere, whether indoors or on the Internet; the bill provides increased services for women to exit prostitution; fewer men state that they purchase sexual services; and the ban has had a chilling effect on traffickers who find Sweden an unattractive market to sell women and children for sex. Following initial criticism of the law, police now confirm it works well and has had a deterrent effect on other organizers and promoters of prostitution. Sweden appears to be the only country in Europe where prostitution and sex trafficking has not increased.
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol [➚] · Friday, October 8th, 2010
On a lighter note, Jewish women in Hollywood are still a topic of discussion. In a recent Slate article Rachel Shukert gushes over the show madmen for its portrayal of… Jewish women.
Although there seems to be some breakthrough in how Jewish women are shown in popular media, somehow, writers – many of them Jewish men, while having no problem casting Jewish women as beautiful, write Jewish women as unpleasant.
On a technical level, this comes as no surprise—there is certainly no shortage of beautiful actresses who happen to be Jewish: Mila Kunis, Rachel Weisz, Mélanie Laurent, Hollywood ur-Jewess Natalie Portman (whose name I can never hear without a preface of “why can’t you be more like …”). But they rarely, if ever, play explicitly Jewish characters—sainted Holocaust victims notwithstanding. Hollywood’s repulsion isn’t directed toward actual Jewish women, but toward its image of the “Jewish Woman” who even in 2010 is still consistently portrayed as bossy, obnoxious, pushy, materialistic, shrewish, gauche, and impossible to please: Mrs. Ari on Entourage, Susie Greene from Curb Your Enthusiasm, Jill Zarin from The Real Housewives of New York (a real person playing a fictional character playing a real person). Real Jewish women can laugh at these depictions, but they can sting, too, not least because they are so often manufactured and promulgated by Jewish men: our brothers and our cousins and our dads. I mean, is that what they really think of us?
by Danya [➚] · Monday, October 4th, 2010
Author and feminist powerhouse Jaclyn Friedman is currently on a delegation with the Nobel Women’s Initiative, traveling around Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, meeting women on both sides of the conflict involved in peacemaking work.
Jaclyn wrote from Ramallah:
Once again, I find myself strangely hopeful, despite the odds. Not because I think it will be easy to achieve any of what needs to be done. But because if these women, living in these circumstances, can find the strength to be hopeful enough to keep working to create the communities and lives they deserve, it would be a grand betrayal for me to not hope and work alongside them.
And, happily, there are plenty of places for us to hear what they’re talking about: Here‘s the Nobel Women’s Initiative blog with all the participants’ reflections on what’s happening; here‘s Jaclyn’s travel accounts at Feministing; here‘s a liveblog of a conversation with Palestinian and Israeli women peace activists in Nazareth. And she’ll be liveblogging her dinner with the International Women’s Commission starting at 12:15 EST TODAY, so ch-ch-check it out.
by Danya [➚] · Monday, September 6th, 2010
This just in from Women of the Wall, in reference to Hoffman’s arrest in July:
This week brought with it more attempts to vilify Women of the Wall and protect the Western Wall as accessible for ultra-Orthodox prayer exclusively. The Jerusalem Police recommended this week that the Ministry of Justice press charges against Anat Hoffman for the felony of “gravely obstructing a police officer in the performance of his duties”, in regards to her July arrest while holding a Torah at the Western Wall. The sentence for such a conviction is up to 3 years in prison. Members and supporters of Women of the Wall in Israel and abroad stand behind Hoffman, and have been busy sending hundreds of letters and pictures of women holding the Torah to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Head of the Opposition Tzipi Livni, Chairman of the Jewish Agency Natan Sharansky, and Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz, the rabbi in charge of the holy places. In these letters, women from all over the world ask Israeli leaders, “How is it that as Jewish women, we are free in Berlin, in Rome, and in Chicago, while in Jerusalem it is illegal and profane for us to read from the Torah?” Supporters are encouraged to continue to send letters and pictures from the website, womenofthewall.org.il/solidarity/take-a-stand, conveying a clear message to Israel’s leaders that Women of the Wall will not be intimidated or silenced.
In response to Women of the Wall’s twenty year battle to read Torah on the women’s side of the Western Wall, Rabbi Rabinowitz issued a new regulation, giving him sole and complete control over who is permitted to enter the Western Wall Plaza with a Torah. This new dictatorial procedure extends the blockade against entering to the holy site with a Torah to not only women, but also men who might be determined unfit to carry a Torah by the extremist Rabinowitz. Adv. Nira Azriel is preparing a statement on behalf of Women of the Wall to the authorities regarding the unreasonable strictness of the new regulations, which promise to worsen conditions for women even further.
by Dibur Acher [➚] · Friday, September 3rd, 2010
Recently there has been a little buzz about the not-really-so-new ideas at Kohenet, the Hebrew Priestess Institute (founded in 2006), which was founded Holly Shere, a folklorist, and Jill Hammer, a JTS ordinee and her co-director. Tablet ran a short article about it, reasonably even-handedly attempting to explain what they are and do.
The responses in the article, from Rabbi Daniel Nevins, dean of the Jewish Theological Seminary’s rabbinical school,“I don’t see how Kohenet, to judge from its website, is compatible with Jewish belief and practice,” and from Rabbi Moshe Tendler, a dean of the seminary at Yeshiva University, are, respectively, accurate and a bit over the top. Nevertheless, they both really miss the point anyway.
More »
by David A.M. Wilensky [➚] · Wednesday, August 11th, 2010
Crossposted to New Voices
Despite Women of the Wall leader Anat Hoffman being banned from the Kotel plaza for 30 days, Rosh Chodesh services proceeded today in the plaza and concluded, as usual, with a Torah service at Robinson’s Arch. And they live-tweeted the whole thing!
Among other things, they tweeted:
Proof that police + rules are becoming more extreme: we have always have blown shofar, today police stopped us + confiscated the shofar
Evidently the shofar was returned when they headed down to Robinson’s Arch. Another tweet:
Shofar blowing at robinson’s arch. A beautiful, free sound
Personally, I think that wall is an idol, but if men are free to worship at its feet, women should be too.
So Rosh Chodesh sameach, yidn.
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol [➚] · Sunday, August 8th, 2010
NEWS ITEM: In a special news report published online by the NEW YORK JEWISH WEEK, a woman was designated by Rabbi Avraham Weiss to lead Kabbalat Shabbat services on Friday night, July 30, for the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, an Orthodox Union synagogue.
The article goes on to say
In the past year, there has unfolded within American Modern Orthodox Judaism the first major evidences of a pending theological schism, as a small but media-savvy minority of rabbinic activists from the YCT/ IRF camp have begun pushing the MO envelope farther to the Left than mainstream Modern Orthodoxy ever contemplated. At the center of the impending schism is Rabbi Avi Weiss. He is charismatic and dynamic, rabbi of a shul with a large membership where he can introduce any innovation he desires, and he has a rabbinical seminary and rabbinical association in place to give his agenda the aura of a legitimate “movement.” Although Young Israel synagogues do not readily accept YCT graduates as congregational rabbis and the 900-member RCA does not regard YCT ordination as carrying the legitimacy of a RIETS Semikha, Rabbi Weiss has decided that he no longer needs communal approbation to venture on his own because he has the minions.
More »
by David A.M. Wilensky [➚] · Friday, July 23rd, 2010
I’m always afraid of saying anything about women on the internet because obviously I’m a moron with the wrong junk between my legs. But I gravitate toward saying things about rabbis. Especially lists of them. So here we go.
Last month I wrote about Newsweek’s lackluster list of influential rabbis (and a rabba). The folks behind The Forward’s Sisterhood Blog have their own list out this week in response: The Sisterhood 50. In describing this feminist critique of the maleful Newsweek list, The Sisterhood said:
The Sisterhood, the Forward’s women’s issues blog, has twice called attention to the chronic underrepresentation of women on Newsweek’s annual “50 Most Influential Rabbis” list. Compiled by Sony Pictures CEO Michael Lynton and his friend Gary Ginsberg, this year’s Newsweek list had only six women on it — and most of them were on the bottom half of the rankings.
The results got us thinking about all the female rabbis whose influence cannot necessarily be measured by their national/international profile, their media presence or the size of their constituencies — some of the criteria on which Newsweek bases its rankings — but who, nonetheless, are playing important roles in shaping the Jewish story.
When my mom was a kid, she invented the children’s caucus of the Texas feminist something or other (she’ll correct me in the comments, I’m sure), so I grew up with feminism. I like it. I even like saying I’m a feminist myself. So the idea of The Sisterhood 50 appeals to me. Yet, in practice, a lot of it looks like wishful thinking that only serves to prove one point: There just aren’t that many women in influential rabbinic roles. More »
by chaneld1621 [➚] · Tuesday, July 13th, 2010
In Jerusalem, I sleep like the dead. I sleep like someone who’s had every second of the last ten days scheduled, like someone who has hiked, climbed, schlepped and sweated across Israel with 38-44 people in tow at all times.
I sleep this way every night and day until Erev Rosh Chodesh, when my sleep is fitful, filled with dreams of women having bags of shit thrown at them. Actual shit. In one scene, a woman is hit in the head with said bag. She puts her hand on her hair to feel it. In my dream, I can see her eyes, but she is no one that I know.
I wake groggily and proceed with my plan to go to the Kotel and meet the Women of the Wall. Jerusalem is already hot, and by the time I’ve winded my way through the streets of the Old City, I am literally a hot mess. On the women’s side, there are the usual suspects, and so I go right to Robinson’s Arch, where there are people snapping pictures and singing. I’m stopped by a woman in an orange t shirt, filling her water at a fountain. “Are you with Women of the Wall?” she asks me. “I’m trying to be,” I say. “Well, something has happened,” she says gravely.
She tells me the story, that Anat Hoffman has been arrested for carrying a Torah across the Kotel Plaza. There is a group gathered at the police station at Jaffa Gate. “Who gave this order?” she wonders aloud. “What is going on in this country?”
We leave each other, and I head back, reviving my dislike of the Old City as I struggle to remember how I got to the Kotel in the first place. I just want to go back to bed, maybe in Israel, maybe in the States, but regardless, I want to neuter this exhaustion that’s suddenly taken everything hostage.
As I glue myself to the wall in order to avoid an oncoming bus at the edge of the Armenian Quarter, I see them: the group of women. There are probably fifty of them, maybe more, waiting. I stand with them, still exhausted, but now there’s also a numbness. It’s been this way for my whole trip, me waiting to feel something, I don’t care what, just something about this place that previously has made me feel everything.
There is not a romantic ending here, of course. There is not even an ending. I’m still sweaty and pissed off, and more importantly, there’s still a misogynist war being fought in the name of spiritual civil rights. But sometimes what you need finds you, and maybe that happened yesterday when we sang Esa Enai, a song I have beautiful memories of in a former life. I heard it differently this time, especially the verse “ezri me’im Hashem,oseh shamayim va’aretz.” My help comes from Gd who made heaven and earth. “Va’aretz” landed sharply on my ears, and I can’t stop thinking about it. It was the first flicker of authenticity, of purity, in two weeks, and there it was, in a most wrong moment.
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