Seriously? Conservative women can leyn (on average) just as well as Conservative men. If you were talking about the Orthodox, then I’d give it to you, but since men and women in the egalitarian movements recieve the same education, that statement doesn’t make sense.
Please note that women are not exactly encouraged to learn to leyn, and even in communities that call themselves “egalitarian” it’s often tough to find someone willing to teach a woman.
I’ve been very lucky at my current shul to have learned from two amazing people who have been reading from the torah for longer than I’ve been alive, and I hope that the day comes when people who call themselves egalitarian really mean it. In the meantime, this is dead on.
the kind of community about which marisa speaks deifnitely already exists. it just so happens that one of my favorite torah readers is a woman, and all the truly superlative leyning i have experienced as of late has been by a ba’alat koreh.
i am not claiming that the claims she makes are not real and should not be taken seriously, but the other side of the coin, the earnestly and successfully egalitarian side exists as well.
I was also thinking that it could be that the women are better because sometimes they are the ones who are more committed to the ideal in egalitarian situations.
ah, one of the great things about the reform movement. girls *always* leyned better than the boys did in hebrew school. teach a girl to fish, and she’ll haul em in.
Zing!
bwahah
Seriously? Conservative women can leyn (on average) just as well as Conservative men. If you were talking about the Orthodox, then I’d give it to you, but since men and women in the egalitarian movements recieve the same education, that statement doesn’t make sense.
Please note that women are not exactly encouraged to learn to leyn, and even in communities that call themselves “egalitarian” it’s often tough to find someone willing to teach a woman.
I’ve been very lucky at my current shul to have learned from two amazing people who have been reading from the torah for longer than I’ve been alive, and I hope that the day comes when people who call themselves egalitarian really mean it. In the meantime, this is dead on.
the kind of community about which marisa speaks deifnitely already exists. it just so happens that one of my favorite torah readers is a woman, and all the truly superlative leyning i have experienced as of late has been by a ba’alat koreh.
i am not claiming that the claims she makes are not real and should not be taken seriously, but the other side of the coin, the earnestly and successfully egalitarian side exists as well.
Couldn’t one choose to interpret this as an allusion to women being superior Torah readers?
mrs. themicah is a much better Torah reader than me.
crammed,
I thought it was. That’s the case in the quite matriarchal C synagogue in my neighborhood…
I was also thinking that it could be that the women are better because sometimes they are the ones who are more committed to the ideal in egalitarian situations.
yaaziel, we might both go to the same place…
ah, one of the great things about the reform movement. girls *always* leyned better than the boys did in hebrew school. teach a girl to fish, and she’ll haul em in.
I also assumed that the women were the better layners, as, in my experience, the generally have been.