Jewfem Blog

I just finished reading Elana Maryles Sztokman's book The Men's Section: Orthodox Jewish Men in an Egalitarian World, which is a qualitative, interview based study of the men who participate in partnership minyanim.  For those unfamiliar, partnership minyanim were pioneered by a community in Jerusalem called Shira Hadasha.  The model is based on an article by Rabbi Mendel Shapiro in 2001 that suggested the halachic permissibility of women reading from, and getting aliyot to, the Torah in the context of a traditional Orthodox synagogue.  In the model of Shira Hadasha there are now 20+ such communities around the world, where women lead the parts of the service (Pesukei D'Zimra, Kabalat Shabbat, etc.) and participate equally in the Torah service.  These communities have mechitzot (the traditional partition between men and women in an Orthodox synagogue) but the service is led from a podium that either straddles the mechitza, or is in a central neutral area between the men's and women's sections. I am a founding member and gabbai of such a minyan in Raanana, so I was curious to read Dr. Maryles Sztokman's insights into what motivates men to join them and how that plays out in the context of finding a balance between remaining Orthodox while pushing the boundaries in an egalitarian direction.  (The minyanim are not truly egalitarian, as I insisted when ours was named, they are just more egalitarian then the standard Orthodox model.)  The first time I attended Shira Hadasha, I expected it to seem weird.  Although I loved the idea, I was sure that hearing women read Torah and lead services would take some getting used to at the instinctual level.  However, my reaction was just the opposite.  It felt like coming home, like everything was finally in the right place.  Like the harmony had been missing a part, and it was finally complete.  I started looking for opportunities to go back, and later brought my wife (a serial founder of women's tefilot), who also found it inspiring.  We held our daughters' bat mitzvah celebrations in the context of a partnership minyan (that we organized with our friends and family at a hotel). The book begins by defining the "man box" of Orthodox masculinity.  Orthodox men are socialized to live up to an ideal of regular, punctual prayer with a minyan three times a day, with the ideal man being able to lead the service and Torah reading precisely and perfectly.   Emotion and devotion in prayer are essentially ignored in this construct, and men are judged by our peers in our ability to meet this standard. Although I never thought if it in the oppressive terms that the author describes, the Orthodox "man-box" is truly as she describes.  She correctly points out that realization of this standard is dependent on others, usually women, in a supporting role - taking care of children especially.    I was very aware of this in my own life.  Although in college I was pretty good about making minyan regularly, once we had...

I had my first book event on Friday, and it left me uplifted, inspired and humbled. I just can't believe how many people are so deeply engaged in the ideas that I wrote about. It's more than I could have ever hoped for. Some 80 people came to my home in Modi'in, Israel, for a champagne-bagel brunch and a short reading to launch my book, "The Men's Section: Orthodox Jewish Men in an Egalitarian World" (HBI 2011). Congratulations were flying, as were excited reactions from people who have already started reading. My dear friend Dr. Ariella Zeller who did all the organizing, gave a lovely toast and made me feel like a queen. It is  an indescribable feeling of empowerment to have friends who truly believe in you. I prepared a short talk that related my research to recent events in Israel around the exclusion of women in public spaces. I talked about sociological theory of identity, which posits that all of us are searching for social acceptance in some form or another, everyone wants to be labeled as "normal" and "healthy", and the young boys and men who are fighting violently to keep women excluded from society are no different. But they are clearly having a hard time - a harder time than most, I would argue - resisting their troubling socialization. We all have choices, and we all need to practice talking back to our culture. But in Orthodoxy, that can be particularly daunting. And that's what my book explores. It's about identity and agency among Orthodox Jewish men, and the complex and multifaceted processes of finding the "I" within a culture that values male dominating conformity. I prepared three passages to read, each one reflecting different components of my research. I wanted to give expression to the men's voices, but also wanted to describe the larger theory. I also wanted to explain why I was interested in this particular demographic. I prepared the three sections around those issues, noting to myself that I would have to read the audience first. Were they bored, irritated and restless? Then I would only read one. I put them in order in my mind first, and said I would go with the flow and count the yawns if I have to. To my astonishment, they urged me to keep going, and would have stayed for longer had I prepared more. Truthfully, while I was reading you could hear a pin drop. At the end of the second passage, I actually heard a gasp from the audience. Wow, I thought. This is all an author can ask for. People stayed longer than they had intended. And at the end of the reading, after a few questions and overflowing champagne, lots of people came over and told me that they can't wait to read the book! In fact all but three copies were sold! I'm just so excited about that. I really want to engage in conversation. I want the Jewish community to be...

I spent the anniversary of Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination at a mother-son learning event at my son’s yeshivah. Well, it wasn’t officially a Rabin memorial event; it was more like the not-Rabin event. It was advertised as an evening to commemorate the yahrtzeit of Rachel — the matriarch, not the poet.Yes, she’s been dead a long time, much longer than Rabin, and for most of those three millennia or so since her demise, her yahrtzeit has gone unnoticed. But seeing as it coincides with the Rabin thing, religious educational institutions in Israel have suddenly rediscovered her, finding in her a wonderful way to assemble the masses without having to make a statement one way or the other about their position on Rabin, Yigal Amir, or the intersection of politics and religion in Israel. When my son texted that he actually wanted me to come to this event (he knows about my poor attendance record at these kinds of things), I was actually quite excited. Not so much about memorializing Rachel, but about the fact that my son wanted to be seen in public with me. That’s a coup in the world of parenting teens. Actually, the truth is that I love learning Torah with my children, and was really happy that he considered this a welcome opportunity to study some Jewish sources together. Plus, I should be supportive of the fact that the school recognized mothers at all, celebrating our minds and not just our baking skills. That’s a good thing, and he was right that we should go. But the fact that it was on Rabin’s Memorial Day was not really part of the discussion. Read more: http://blogs.forward.com/sisterhood-blog/146249/#ixzz1dme2cNxKImage: Mother and Son by Stephen Armstrong. Go to http://www.pollockgallery.com.au/exhibitions/200710_stephen_armstrong/armstrong.html for more info.

There are moments when I feel bad for boys. Like every time my son tries to get a babysitting job.

The scene is almost always the same. A parent — almost always a mother — calls up to ask my oldest daughter to babysit. My daughter, in age-appropriate behavior for a 17-year old, will often say that she is busy, but that she has a younger brother who may be available.

“But does he know how to babysit?” usually comes the reply. Other times there is an awkward silence, when the offending mother realizes she is about to be obnoxious — sexist really — and tries to make other excuses. Lately, questions about the availability of my son’s younger sister have increased in frequency. She is 12½ , by the way, and is now in high demand, with at least one weekly job.

My son, by contrast, has had about two babysitting jobs in the past six months. (Not to worry, he is in high demand as a dog-walker, so he still has money to go to the movies with his friends.)

My spouse, master chef and master of kids in the kitchen, offers a sticky idea for making Rosh Hashana extra sweet. Published in The Forward Rosh Hashana edition. If the purpose of dipping apple slices into honey on Rosh Hashanah is to bring about a sweet year, caramel candy apples offer a kind of extreme dipping. The recipe puts a new twist on a custom that is hundreds of years old. Some believe that the tradition of dipping apples in honey originated from Solomon’s “Song of Songs” which says, “As the apple is rare and unique among the trees of the forest, so is my beloved — Israel.” In addition, a midrash, or biblical tale, says that trees and all vegetation were created on Rosh Hashanah eve. Others argue that the tradition came from Eastern Europe, where few biblical fruits, other than the apple, were common. Apple trees were also harvested around the holiday season. Either way, it is a beautiful custom: apples, the fruits of love, created on Rosh Hashanah eve, dipped in nature’s sweetest goo. It’s a sticky, finger-licking reminder of a sweet year. Caramel candy apples are a snazzy version of the practice, like an ancient tradition on steroids. The process of making them is rather straightforward and a fun way to spend an afternoon in the kitchen, especially with kids. Each caramel apple is dipped in a delicious lacquer of the gooey stuff and individually designed with endless options for colorful toppings. Read more: http://blogs.forward.com/the-jew-and-the-carrot/143487/#ixzz1cqpW7EZf