Jewfem Blog

I was preparing for my layning, my turn at chanting the Torah portion, when I stopped short. I could not get the words out. The melody of the chanting, the “trop”,  is joyful, uplifting, and in a major key. But I couldn’t do it. Because the words I was chanting in that normal trop were about rape – specifically, the rape of Dina by Shechem, the non-Israelite son of Ham the Hivite. V’yishkav otah vaye’aneha – And he laid her down and tortured her.  (Genesis 24;2) How do you chant about rape? How do you sing in the normal uplifting tune, as if everything is normal, when the story is about this awful violence against a girl? One more moment of being a woman entering a man's world, a reminder that everything we know and do, pretty much, was constructed by a male perspective. For thousands of years, when chanting the Torah was the realm of men’s work, these words were chanted just as all other words in the Bible. Because, of course they were. To be fair, the bible does not exactly condone the rape of Dina. On the contrary, the entire story that follows is about the rage of Dina’s brothers at such an awful thing, the vengeance they sought, and the way they suffered in the long term because of their uncontrolled anger. And while the reader is led to believe initially that their rage was about the fact that Shechem was uncircumcised and therefore impure, we soon realize that this was just a ruse. After all, every man in the town went through circumcision in order to make the rape palatable to the Israelite brothers, but the two of them massacred the entire town anyway. So, it is safe to assume that the brothers were pretty angry about what Shechem did to their sister, and not merely because his penis had a foreskin. And to be quite honest, part of me is grateful to Shimon and Levi for caring. After all, there are a lot of terrible things that happen to women in the bible that barely get noted. Most of the time, the mistreatment of women is treated as par for the course. Grabbing, silencing, using, abusing, ignoring, marrying off against their wills, covering, punishing, blaming, manipulating, hurting, selling off, and yes, raping women and girls are all in the Bible.Just the culture, the way things were done back then, or something.  We read this, we treasure these books, we chant the stories with celebration and fanfare, and move on. So at least here we have this monstrosity of a brutal massacre by brothers who seemed to be genuinely upset about their sister's rape. It’s as chivalrous as it is horrifying. For the most part, the Jewish tradition reads all these texts with the same tune. A recitation of our history for the purpose of remembering. The good and the bad. But I couldn’t do that this week. This was a big responsibility for me. I am figuring out...

I watched a captivating little video clip today about a man who has tried out six different religions – a few varieties of Christianity, two types of Islam, Hinduism, and currently Judaism. His conclusion? It doesn’t matter. All religions are the same. You can imagine how people of each religion might respond to this. After all, the whole point about being in your religion – for many people, at least –  is that you consider it special. How many wars have been fought because people of a certain religion felt the need to prove to the world that theirs is the best, most correct, or only authentic religion? Too many to count. People around the world have, for centuries or millennia, dedicated their lives to the idea that their religion is the True Word of God. Judaism does this, too. I realize that many Jews will take deep offense at what I am writing here, the notion that Judaism promotes its own specialness no differently than every other religion. I can hear the shouting already. How can you say that? How can you put us in the same category as Islam? As Christianity? What kind of blasphemy is that? Jews really ARE different! Yes, we have been telling ourselves that for a long time. Some of our most important moments are swathed in language that says we are chosen and special. Friday night Kiddush: Ki vanu bacharta, Because You chose us and made us holyBlessing on reading the Torah: Asher bacharta banu mikol ha’amim, for choosing us from among all the nations.The Amidah of the High Holidays and festivals: Ata b’chartanu mikol ha’amim, You chose us from among all the nations We have ingrained this notion that our religion is special, unique, or better than everyone else’s inside our collective memory and consciousness. So has Christianity. So has Islam. I’m just saying. So along comes this curious and courageous guy and says something that, to be honest, I have been thinking for a long time. All the religions are the same. We all like to think we are unique, but we are all basically doing the same thing. And what is it that people in all the different religions are all doing?     He gives an analogy of fingers pointing to the moon that comes from Buddhism: It is as if we are all pointing our fingers, looking for the moon, and instead of finding the moon, we are all obsessed with our own fingers. He doesn’t say what “the moon” is in the analogy, but I have some thoughts about it. We are looking for spirituality, purpose, meaning, the God within, the reason why we are here, the way we are all connected, the larger spirit beyond our little lives, collective consciousness, our Divine sparks. We are all divine beings and we are trying to hear that divine voice within our minds. We are all looking for this, and religion often brings us closer to that. Of course, organized...

Dr. Lea Mazor packs a powerful punch into a tiny frame. This brilliant retired professor of Bible and walking encyclopedia of ancient Israel is teaching us a course in Gender in the Bible, one of my favorite topics. And every week she blows me away all over again with her knowledge, scholarship, and verve. There isn’t an issue that she hasn’t already thought about at length, and there isn’t a verse that she doesn’t have a fabulous personal anecdote about. The first week, when she interrupted her main thesis to share a story about the time she wrote a personal note to Professor Uriel Simon to tell him about the mistakes he had in his book, I made that mistake of saying – my pen furiously glued to my notebook – “Wait, can you please finish your sentence?” She responded, “Of course not!” (Actually, what she said, was, “Ma pit’om”, which literally means “What, suddenly”, but has the effect of a mix between, “No way!” and “Are you kidding me!?”) She did actually, finish her sentence eventually, and we have all learned to follow her along her effervescent stream of consciousness which tends to lead to mind-blowing places. This is a woman with a lot to share, and I don’t want to miss a beat.   Last week, we were exploring the issue of sexuality in Genesis. Big topic, I know. She has a particular thesis that she is demonstrating to us, and it is riveting. The Israelites – that is, the twelve clans that derived from the family of Jacob – were a relatively small bunch of shepherds surrounded by some big empires of ancient Mesopotamia. The Egyptians, the Sumerians, and the Assyrians were among the massive neighboring cultures that were advancing in areas of technology, engineering, medicine, art, and writing, among other things. Modern-day scholars are still in awe about the things that the Egyptians were able to do. (To this day, nobody knows how they built the pyramids.) And so these little Israelites needed a way to preserve their identity and to maintain their own uniqueness and singularity. They needed to create a narrative for themselves to remind themselves how they were Different. Special. Chosen. The way the Tanach chooses to relay how different Israelites are from the Other Nations is along one particular thesis: Sexuality. If you read the text closely, even from the beginning of Genesis, the idea that the Israelites’ distinction is based on purer sexual behaviors is clear. This narrative, Dr. Mazor tells us, is apparent from many texts. For instance, the story of Noach after the flood, in which his son, Ham, and grandson, Canaan, “saw his nakedness” – a euphemism either for rape or castration according to Rav and Shmuel in the Talmud  (BT Sanhedrin  70a) – pointedly aims to justify why Canaan is destined to be servile to the descendants of Shem. The Israelites will have no choice other than to conquer Canaan and his evil sexual deviance. The story of...

“If we can’t talk about sexuality and sexual abuse in the synagogue community, then where can we talk about it?” That is how Rabbi Tamar Elad Applebaum explained her choice on Friday night to dedicate her sermon at her Kehilat Zion minyan in Jerusalem to the topic of #MeToo and sexual abuse. I was so captivated by her talk – as I think everyone in the packed sanctuary was – that I almost forgot where I was altogether. “With all due respect to the Toldot,” she opened, almost apologizing for the fact that she was about to discuss the topic she wanted to discuss rather than the topics traditionally mandated by the Torah portion of the week, in this case Toldot, “the entire Torah is ours, and we need to be able to live by all of it and talk about what we need to talk about.” She is courageous, I thought, perhaps a premonition for what was about to come.    “I want to talk about Eve,” she began, “and why she spoke to the snake, and why she touched the Tree of Knowledge.” Many commentators have remarked that while God told Adam and Eve not to eat from the Tree, Eve actually touched it, and things went downhill from there. A popular midrash says that Eve had added an extra restriction for herself, imagining that God said, "Don't touch the tree" rather than "don't eat." The snake then tricked her pushing her into the tree – and then when nothing happened, he said, “You see? You can touch, you can eat.” But Rabbi Applebaum brought us another midrash that tells a different story. This particular midrash, which is found in Breishit Rabbi and attributed to Abba Bar Koria, says that Adam and Eve had just had sex for the first time, and Adam fell asleep. That’s when Eve went looking for someone to talk to, and found the snake. “Why was she looking for someone to talk to?” Rabbi Elad Applebaum asked us. “Because Adam wasn’t there. He was sleeping. He wasn’t there for her when she needed him.” She then went on to read more deeply into this scenario. “Imagine this. Her first sexual encounter. She was confused, she didn’t understand. Maybe something didn’t happen the way it was supposed to. maybe she was hurting. It wasn't good. We don’t know. Adam went to sleep. She is having a difficult time. What just happened?” The midrash, and Rabbi Applebaum, were connecting the story of eating from the forbidden fruit with the first sexual experience of humanity. That is hardly a stretch. The innuendo is all over the text. Still, the details of this explication were new for me.   “What I’m about to tell you, you won’t find in any midrash”, she said. “It comes straight out of the texts of my life.” I was already entranced. Because I know that those absent texts, the ones of women’s actual lived lives, are usually the ones that speak to me...

  Rabbi Naamah Kelman had a really busy day yesterday. As Dean of the Hebrew Union College- Hebrew Institute of Religion in Jerusalem, she hosted last night’s smicha or ordination ceremony of the latest cohort of Reform rabbis in Israel. This was a particularly momentous event for the movement in that it marks 100 rabbis ordained in Israel and brought together top Reform leaders from Israel and around the world. But Rabbi Kelman had a few extra special connections to this event. An eleventh-generation rabbi herself as well as the first woman in her family line to reach that stature, and the first woman to be ordained in Israel, she also got to watch as her daughter, Rabbi Leora Ezrachi-Vered was ordained – with honors – bringing the rabbinate to one more generation in the Kelman family. “It was a real dor-dor [generation to generation] moment”, Naama’s sister, Abby Kelman, kvelled. Their brother, Rabbi Levi Weiman-Kelman, was also in attendance, as he served Leora’s escort for the ceremony. Their 94-year-old mother was also there, bringing four generations of rabbinate together. “My mother has been daughter-of-, wife-of, mother-of, and now grandmother-of rabbis,” Naamah told the crowd, welcoming her mother along with all the other dignitaries in attendance. This stirring interplay between family, community, and Jewish tradition that Naamah embodied – as Leora received a special dedication from her father, Dr. Elan Ezrachi, Naamah held her sleeping grandson on her shoulder – is one of the most beautiful aspects of HUC. This is a place that values the whole person – our work, our family, our ideas, our individual journeys and even struggles. The very personal approach to the ceremony, in which family members were invited to present blessings to the graduates and even sing to them, was unlike anything I had ever seen. And it is an attitude that characterizes my experiences there as a student, in which the staff actually want to know how you are doing, not only academically but also personally and emotionally. This joyful, spiritual, sincere, authentic and emotional approach dominated the entire ordination ceremony. It was personal, communal, Israeli, historical, and very Jewish. (And it included  one very special Dag Nachash recitation by Rabbi Michael Marmur). This was a celebration of Jewish tradition, and especially the accomplishments of the Reform movement. “Some people didn’t believe that we would get to this point of having 100 Reform rabbis in Israel,” said HUC President Rabbi Dr. Aaron Panken, speaking in immaculate Hebrew. “But I’m already ready for the next 100.” There is a special significance to “100 rabbis”, he noted, in that a petition by 100 rabbis has the power to change halakhic rulings. “It’s a hard fight for progressive Judaism in Israel,” Abby told me. “It’s like walking uphill on glass barefoot.” This is indeed a great accomplishment in a country that doesn’t officially recognize Reform or Conservative Judaism as legitimate forms of Judaism – not in politics, not in education, not in budgets and jobs, and not...

It was as if I knew this was coming. It was almost fate speaking to me. After I disclosed my serious ambivalence about learning Talmud, because of memories of high school classes in Kiddushin (the tractate of betrothals) in which we would be inculcated with rabbinic declarations like tav l’metav tan du m’letav armelu, which is roughly translated that women would rather be married to anyone than to live alone, it was destiny that the next day I would be sitting in class discussing this exact text. You could not make this up. I am learning Kiddushin. The second chapter. Page 41 Side A. The spot which says, tav l’metav tan du m’letav armelu. I’m back here. Some kind of karma or self-fulfilling prophecy. This will either be a corrective experience or it will scar me for life. I went to my bookcase to find the volume that I used in high school. Of course I still have it. It still has the Yeshiva of Flatbush stamp on the inside front cover, “Elana Maryles 406”. I opened up the page and found all my markings and doodles and highlighting. I drew a lot of birds at the time, apparently. I have a vivid memory of my late Uncle Avi yelling at me for drawing on the pages of the Talmud. “It’s a holy book!” he screamed. I might as well have written on the Torah scroll itself. Ah well. At least the birds came out nice. Maybe the birds can be considered commentary. This is actually a pretty famous sugya, or section. It revolves around the issue of whether people can get engaged via messenger. The bottom line is that the man can use a messenger but a woman cannot, because while a man needs to check whether or not he likes the way the woman looks, a woman does not have the same need. That is, tav l’metav…. It doesn’t matter how the man looks because a woman, effectively, will take anyone. Literally, she would prefer to lay down with two bodies than lay down alone. Right. I’m still here. I haven’t run off yet in a screaming panic. I’m hardly the first person to comment on how awful this statement is. My brilliant friend Rivkah Lubitch –  who just came out with a really important book, From the End of the World till the End of the World, chronicling her work with women trying to get divorced in the Israeli rabbinical court (in Hebrew)– wrote a chilling midrash about this text.  The story of the tav l’metav text is actually worse. This statement does not only defend the idea that women do not have to see their groom before marriage. As Talmudic scholar Rabbi Professor Judith Hauptman writes in her book, Rereading the Rabbis: A woman’s voice, this tav l’metav statement is also used elsewhere in the Talmud as well to justify, effectively, rape.  “This statement also implies,” she writes, “that women prefer sex with any man to no...

Yael Vurgen, a classmate of mine at HUC rabbinical school and a fellow-Modi’in resident, led a morning prayer service (tefillat shacharit) this week that was unlike anything I have ever experienced. And it was all around the very basic concept of listening.   She transmitted this by doing the tefilla in sign language. Here is a clip of Yael teaching the prayer "Ha'azina" -- "Listen" -- in sign language. This is the prayer that opens up the idea of listening in prayer, where we ask God to listen to our prayers.    Notice that in order to sing this in sign language, you need hands free. You can’t be holding your prayerbook or anything else. Also notice that you need to use your eyes. You have to be present and focused and awake. In fact, sign language requires using your entire body in a sense. This makes the prayer experience something visceral, fully felt. There is no skimming or absently going through the motions. Here is a clip of Yael teaching the morning passage Moda Ani, “I am grateful”, in sign language.   Here is how Yael explained the significance of this to us: Today we are praying in signs of hearing, or the absence of hearing, and a different type of hearing. Sign language enables us to “hear” by seeing, as in “Seeing the sounds” It’s  about recognizing a different quality in the words. Not their sounds, but rather to think about how they look. How would the word “spirit” or “soul” look? How would the words “light” and “darkness” look? How about “compassion”? Here is a clip of Yael teaching the prayer "Yotzer Or" in sign language:   To engage in prayer with this kind of consciousness is to transform the prayer experience from one that is about repetition and tradition to one that is about awakeness and presence. In this exercise of beginning to think about the diversity of the human experience, we are able to open ourselves up to the vastness of humanity as well as the potential of broader spiritual and human engagement. You are not just you. You are not just your immediate senses. There is more to the world, to the earth, to this thing called life. Open your eyes to see this vastness, to others, and only then to fully see yourself. The prayers at Hebrew Union College, led each time by different students who bring their own passions and life lessons to the event are so often like this. These are prayer services that are both rooted in tradition and creatively unique. There is no going through the motions at the HUC tefilla. Each moment is thought through, meant to be experienced fully. As one Orthodox staff member told me, “I go to my regular [Orthodox] morning minyan to get the job done. But I come to the HUC tefilla to talk to God.” Exactly that. I’ve had this debate with some of my classmates. One friend says that the Reform tefilla...

In addition to the gift I received last night in the form of an unambiguous reminder of how and why I am where I am, I also received this beautiful poem from Elke Weiss. Wow.   A Poem for Elana  by Elke Weiss She asked them.  How long will I wait for women rabbis? They told her to wait. Wait just a little longer, and while you do it, serve chicken soup and smile because everything is wonderful. How long will I wait to see Agunot free? They told her it would happen soon. Another five years. Ten years. Just wait a little longer. And make sure to look pretty while you wait.  How long will I wait to have women be equal? They told her to be grateful for the curtains and the rules and the diamond ceiling, and enjoy the golden cage and chains, because confinement was a gift.  How long will I wait to have the abuse against women be addressed? They told her to understand that things take time and look at all the tiny victories and shouldn’t be happy to have grape juice, why ask for wine? How long will I wait till you hear me?  They told her to be invisible and small and helpless, and to be a passive victim, and to bear the burden of honor, while having none of the honors herself.  How long till you realize you care more about image than substance? They told her to think of her great grandparents, and think of her family and think of the community and think of everyone but herself, like a good Jewish woman.  So she told them farewell and walked away.  They asked her how could she be so ungrateful and think of the Torah and think of her great grandparents and think of everyone but herself, because tradition mattered.  And she told them.  No.Elke Weiss, WOW. I have shivers from this. Thank you !!!

I discovered today by accident (in a long email thread forwarded to me that made an aside reference to this) that my cousin, Harry Maryles, wrote me an "open letter" on his blog two months ago condemning my decision to become a Reform rabbi because, well, it would be a terrible shame to do this despicable thing to my ancestors. "She is joining a movement that her parents, grandparents and great grandparents fought against," he claims. Maybe he is right. My grandfather, who he claims to represent, died in 1955, way before I was born, so who the heck knows. Anyway, he writes, "By joining the Reform Movement she is saying that their version of Judaism is as valid as that of Orthodoxy but better in the sense that it is more welcoming - and a far better place for feminists like her." That's right. That is exactly what I am saying. I'm wondering why he is not embarrassed by that, why all Orthodox rabbis are not completely ashamed that they represent such a culture that makes women feel that way. Anyway, he continues, "I would ask my cousin Elana, to re-consider her choices. Please please don’t do this. I ask you to reflect on your family and your heritage. The negative repercussions may be far greater than you anticipate. And doing this may end up being the biggest mistake of your life." Okay then. I posted this on my Facebook page. I explained as follows: I am putting this out there in case any of you are interested in getting an insider's glimpse into what some of us have to deal with in our lives. I'm not going to honor this essay with an actual response or defense or explanation of my life choices, in part because he didn't bother to actually write to me or tag me or speak to me directly, so I have nothing to reciprocate (I have written in the past about how much I hate being talked "about" instead of talked "to", and this whole thing about men talking to other men about me and what other men think about women like me just makes me bristle). But also, I am not responding in order to remind myself that just because a person happens to be a blood relative, it doesn't mean that they have any clue about you, your life, or the wisdom of your decisions. This is a good reminder of that. And also, it is a reminder that every time women seek to follow our own minds and our hearts, there is someone there to claim that we are actually owned by others, by our ancestors, by an abstract community, by some kind of other-worldly obligation. Wow, I am so done with that. That was last night. This morning I woke up to an incredible outpouring of love and support. Including from some incredible people whom I consider teachers and mentors. WOW!  What a gift. This is such an opportunity to be...

Here is a quick round-up of the #MeToo movement in Israel from the past few days:* Alex Giladi, the head of Keshet, has been accused of rape by at least two women. In a very Harvey Weinstein-esque description, women were apparently told that if they want to get a meeting, they have to speak to "it" -- he would say this while standing naked in front of them. So we know what "it" is. Anyway, Giladi hasn't denied this, and has "stepped aside" from his current role but has not suffered any consequences of these revelations. * Haim Yavin, the famous news anchor, has been accused of making similar propositions to Neri Livneh. Haim Yavin has that same "clean cut" image that we have seen in other alleged sexual predators, the Bill-Cosby type of father-figure style that makes people reluctant to believe he would do such a thing. * Ehud Barak apparently helped Weinstein cover up -- not literally, but figuratively -- his actions by connecting him with the Mossad. What does it tell us that Israeli security agents were being used to help a rich rapist, with zero interest in the victims? There are layers of patriarchy here and we have only begun scratching the surface of what this means. * Gabi Gazit has been accused by Dana Weis of sexual harassment, where he would kiss her on the lips without permission. He has not denied these allegations and in fact sort of bragged that "One day, people will be telling stories about me from 45 years ago." This was actually just 15 years ago.  * Yoram Zak of Big Brother (a Keshet production....) would routinely send the women on his staff explicit sexual notes and comments, like an entire email all about the erection he had because he thought about how beautiful they all are. The emails don't lie. As opposed to the others here, he has apologized and said that he is embarassed by what he wrote then and has changed. He says he understands now what he didn't understand then, that this is wrong.  * MK Yael German has joined the ranks of the testimonies by sharing that she was sexually assaulted by her gynecologist.  * The late Tommy Lapid, who everyone knows was crass and gross -- though some considered those qualities endearing in the man -- has been posthumously accused of attempted rape of journalist Sylvie Keshet in London in 1063. His son Yair points out that we can't ask the father what really happened. True. So we'll just leave this there.  * An unnamed senior executive in the tax authority sexually harassed his colleagues and was fired for "medical reasons" rather than face the consequences.   If I missed a story on this, please share so I can add it.  To stay up to date on these stories, follow the Gender-in-Israel-List on Facebook#GamAni