Make the Kranjec Test Mandatory for Every Bar Mitzvah and Bat Mitzvah Dvar Torah

The Kranjec Test, developed by Andrea Hoffman, Lauren Cohen Fisher, Rabbi Ben Berger, Leah Kahn, Danielle Kranjec, and Rabbi Charlie Schwartz, requires that a Jewish text source-sheet with more than two sources must include at least one non-male-identified voice.

Inspired by the famous  Bechdel Test, in which works of art are deemed to pass only if they contain at least two women, who talk to each other, about something other than a man.

With at least a century of Torah and rabbinic commentary by women that has been published in English, mandating the inclusion of female-authored sources is a feasible task.

Hopefully it will make the “Draw a Torah Commentator” task turn out like the “Draw a Scientist” task. Starting in the 1950s, a series of studies asked children to draw a scientist and examined what they drew. At first the vast majority of children in these studies drew (white) men. Repeating the study over decades, the number of female scientists drawn has steadily increased. This kind of representation matters.

Do it for Henritta . Do it for Mahlah, Noah, and Hoglah, and Milcah, and Tirzah, the original female interpreters of Torah and advocates for inclusion in the Torah itself, the Daughters of Zelophehad!

And imagine what a generation of men and women growing up hearing women and men quoted will create that we can’t even imagine.

Recon Rabbis and non-Jewish spouses

I have been mulling over this the issue of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College  accepting rabbis with non-Jewish spouses for  a year and have many long discussions with friends and family (some Reconstructionists,  some rabbis, some both and some neither) and I am still not really sure what the correct view is. Here are my thoughts, with more questions than answers.

The issue of rabbis and non-Jewish spouses  raises a number of questions. The obvious one is what do we expect from rabbis in terms of their personal lives. But it also gets at what we think of marriage roles. And, though no one who has discussed it has mentioned it,  it also brings up we mean by non-Jewish.

Here are my thoughts on all three aspects, Rabbi, Spouse and Non-Jewish, with a feminist lens.

Rabbi

What do we expect from rabbis? Though none of the current discussions mention it explicitly, this is a discussion mainly about pulpit rabbis. Most of the concerns voiced on allowing non-Jewish spouse in the rabbinate are less of an issue to varying degrees for  rabbis who are primarily academics, or heads of social justice organizations,or  for those involved in days schools, youth groups, retirement communities, camps, or in hospital, military  or prison chaplaincies.

Jane Eisner writes what she expects in an editorial in the Forward, “After all, we don’t expect rabbis — even rabbis in liberal (read: much less strict) denominations — to pray only sporadically. To go to synagogue just three times a year. To be more interested in tennis than Talmud. We don’t expect rabbis to consider Israel just another country to visit when London and Paris get too expensive.”

What I think Eisner is trying to say is that we expect rabbis to live a deep, immersive Jewish life, that involves daily reflection (if not prayer), continued study and spiritual practices that permeate their experience and provide a lens for other activities, even in their personal life, even in their “spare time”. We expect that from that deeply immersive and reflective life they will offer inspiration, wisdom and guidance to other Jews who may or may not also be living that kind of immersive life.

Is this a reasonable expectation? How all-encompassing or immersive should any job be?

Is a spouse necessary for that kind of immersive life? The numerous single rabbis throughout history attest to the fact that a spouse is not required. But being a rabbi, especially a pulpit rabbi is a tough, stressful, demanding and often lonely job. Unfortunately, while a rabbi is expected to support and serve a community, communities do not always support their rabbis. Would a like-minded companion who could share the struggle with tradition, the festivals, the reflections and many parts of the  journey help ? Undeniably. Would a spouse who was supportive but not really interested in the spiritual journey part be helpful? Absolutely. Would a spouse who was living a deeply immersive spiritual life but in a different religion make it harder? Without question. Impossible? I do not know.

Ben Bernstein in a response in the Forward argues that people seek the rabbinate to confer legitimacy on their view or way of being Jewish and that permitting intermarried rabbis sends the message that being inter-married is a legitimate way of being Jewish. He suggest that this is what has, in part, motivated female and LGBT rabbinical students in the past; to be taken seriously by mainstream Jewish institutions they need ordination. I know numerous female and LGBT rabbis and I don’t think that this was their primary motivation for seeking the rabbinate (for the most part I think they wanted to serve and lead the community as rabbis, but recognition was probably a secondary motivator). Moreover, I am sadly not sure how much ordination helps. Mainstream Jewish establishments still treat women and LGBT rabbis as less legitimate.

Spouse

People have equated this issue with the previous issues of admitting women and LGBT people to the rabbinate. While there  are some parallels, I think they are not the same. First off, I think people have no choice in their status as female or LGBT.  Though in literature  love  is described as an undeniable force, we do in fact choose our spouses. I will go out on a limb and say that our choice of spouse, of a life partner, to some degree reflects that values and qualities that we hold dear. How many potential RRC students would consider someone they suspected was racist? homophobic? or even (being realistic here– no intention to offend)  a Republican?

What is the role of a spouse in a person’s job anyway? This is where shifting societal views due to an increase in women’s rights comes in. Not too many decades ago, even in the secular world women were expected to support their husbands career by showing up to events, sometimes with children in tow, for planning and creating social events that forwarded career goals, for fundraising, and for talking to their husband’s clients. In the Jewish world we expected even more. The rabbi’s wife was supposed to host the students, the stragglers  and the lonely for shabbat meals, make matches, visit the sick, prepare brides for marriage, counsel married couples, help run the Hebrew school and numerous shul events, advise on kashrut and recipes, organize the women to cook for events and raise money for tzedakah.

Now that we understand that care-taking and careers need to be accessible to and performed by all genders, it seems these expectations of the rabbi’s spouse should no longer apply. Such expectations would surely deny the spouse’s right to his or her own high-intensity career. As society, though we take a long time to let go of these ideas. And while it is no longer expected for a spouse to set up social events that promote their mate’s career, we often do  expect showing up once or twice a year at parties and events. In the Jewish world, we are even slower to let go of  what were once gender-based ideas of what we expect from a rabbi’s spouse. A testament to these expectations is that to this day only a minority of senior (or only) rabbis of large congregations, male or female, have a spouse who works full-time. (This not a scientific study; just an observation)

Whether fair and appropriate or not I think many congregations expect the rabbi’s spouse and children (if any) to show up at shul regularly (but not weekly), to attend major events in the shul, to get to know the members or socialize at least while they are in the building and to accept occasional  dinner invitations from member families for Shabbat and holidays.

Think of the following scenarios that assume that a rabbi has a spouse and children and think how your current congregation would react and then take a moment to judge if  if that reaction is really fair and in keeping with your ideas of how much one owes to one’s spouse’s job:

• The rabbi’s spouse and children never attend shul or come only on high holidays. They are simply not interested in religion.
• The rabbi’s children and spouse attend are active in a congregation of a different denomination of Judaism. They come occasionally but celebrate life cycle events and participate in major social events in the other congregation.
• The rabbi’s spouse and children attend shul but also frequently attend services of another religion.
• The rabbi’s spouse and children do not attend shul but are very active in the services of another religion and actively and daily practice this other religion in their home.

Whether or not a congregation’s expectations of family involvement are fair or realistic they are part of the landscape of the rabbinate that must be negotiated.

Those expectations and the desire for a rabbi to lead an immersive Jewish life makes having a non-Jewish spouse who is actively engaged elsewhere unquestionably more difficult.  I view it as similar to spouse’s nature/ other spouse’s job or calling conflicts like those below:

• One spouse wants to run for political office or be a successful musician or TV personality and the other craves privacy and couple downtime every week.
• One spouse wants to be an ER doctor or a midwife or a police detective or a social worker in a shelter for victims of domestic violence and one craves reliable, predictable contact and family time without interruption.

For some couples these might be difficult but solvable problems, for some they might be insurmountable. But it would be foolish to ignore the potential conflicts and difficulties.

Non-Jewish

Every defender of this policy talks about the wonderful involvement of numerous non-Jewish spouses in raising Jewish children, being lay leaders and committee people in shuls, being highly involved in the social justice activities of a shul or graciously making space for Judaism in their homes. They are far  more dedicated and involved than some Jews who have no interest and do nothing.

Personally, I know a lot of these non-Jews. They prepare their kids for bar and bat mitzvah lessons and make the numerous arrangements for the day. They send their kids to day schools. They keep kosher kitchens or  prepare full seder meals and bake challah. They light the chanukiah even when their spouse is away and make Purim costumes. They are active in shul committees and activities. They volunteer extensively for Jewish-based justice agencies. Some are interested in Judaism, some are not. Many are atheists or agnostics. But one thing they all have in common (at least the ones I know) is that they rarely, if ever, set foot in non-Jewish place of worship, except as guests for life cycle events. The vast majority of these supportive, involved non-Jews are not actively involved in another religion. Most of them are content with Christmas and Easter dinners being celebrated with their parents or relatives and not in the couple’s home. (If they are from non-Christian homes, then my wildly unscientific sample says they are even less likely to observe non-Jewish holidays). Excluding people who marry people like this seems like a mistake.

Those opposed to this policy bring up the scenario of the non-Jewish spouse who actively practices another religion bringing non-Jewish prayers, holidays and practices into the weekly or daily routine of the household and sharing this practice, knowledge and belief with the couple’s children. They ask how can you have a Jewish family life when your spouse and children say daily prayers to a different god and fill the house with symbols and festivals of another religion and refuse to join you in the observance of Judaism.

And therein lies the problem. The non-Jews described by the proponents and the non-Jews described by the opponents are not the same non-Jews.

Ignoring this difference makes this discussion more confusing than it has to be.

Obviously people change and grow and someone’s religious identity at  the time of marriage or at the time their spouse is thinking of applying to rabbinical school may be different five or ten years later. But that is true of all applicants and spouses and the decision being considered is based on a static point in time.

Options

Basically, I think having a pulpit position, given the demands of the job, the fair or unfair congregational expectations and the immersive nature of the job while having a non-Jewish spouse who is actively involved in another religion is very difficult. I am not ready to say it is impossible or that some really together, super-mature people might make it work. It is however something that would make and extremely tough job a lot harder.

Would it have been useful to say yes to non-Jewish spouses who agreed to have a Jewish home (however the couple defined it) and raise their kids as Jews, but no to non-Jewish spouses who actively practice another religion in the home  (or are clergy in one) and do not agree to raise their children as Jews?  A Conservative rabbi has proposed ( and then withdrawn) the idea of allowing intermarriage of couples (not of rabbis- this is Conservative) who promise to raise their kids as Jews. Other ex- Conservative rabbis make the conditions of intermarriage a Jewish home and Jewish children (if there are any).

Would something like that not have worked here? Did the RRC feel that it would involve too much prying and evaluation? Or that it was unfair? A pointless half-step? I cannot tell from their statement.

Religious rights don’t justify discrimination

My Canadian Take on the “Can’t Sit next to Women on a Plane” Issue.

From the Toronto Star

What has been a recurring problem in the U.S. has now reached Canada.

In the U.S. Orthodox Jewish men have caused numerous delays and turmoil on flights by insisting women switch seats so the men can avoid sitting next to them. On a recent Porter flight from New Jersey to Toronto, a woman was asked by an airline attendant to switch seats to accommodate an Orthodox Jewish man who did not want to sit next to her for religious reasons but did not ask her directly.

The men in these cases present their cause as a simple request (or a demand) for religious accommodation. The women who are asked or pressured by the men and sometimes by airline attendants to move see the situation as discrimination based on sex and feel their rights are violated. Both religious accommodation and freedom from discrimination based on sex are integral values that define our view of ourselves as a nation.

As an observant Jew, I see the importance of accommodation. As a feminist, I cannot abide someone regarding gender as a reason to reject a seatmate on a plane. How can these seemingly conflicting values be resolved?

Read the rest here

It’s not about the extra mitzvot: Mansplaining the Morning Blessings

In Orthodox prayerbooks, a traditional daily morning blessing specifically thanks God for “not making me woman.” It is a part of a trio of prayers expressing gratitude for what we are not. The other two members of the trio are thanking God for “not making me a slave” and for “not making me a non-Jew”. These blessings remain only in Orthodox prayerbooks, at least in the negative “who has not made” formulations; all other denominations having gotten rid of them for various reasons.

I have heard numerous well-intentioned men (and a some women like Mrs. Leah Kohn and Kressel’s Korner) explain that the blessing for not having been made a women is not a negative reflection on women, which the simple or pshat reading would tell, you but in fact is gratitude for the additional mitzvot/ obligations that a man has, but which a woman is exempted from due to her duties to her husband and children. These explanations sometimes refer to this blessing’s place in the trio as part of the explanation. Slaves and non-Jews have fewer mitzvot as well and the man saying these blessings is simply grateful for his greater obligations to God. Women’s fewer obligations are explained because women serve God differently through their child-rearing and household  duties. The claims is that intention of the prayer’s authors was never that women were lesser beings, only different.

Siddur copied by Abraham Farisol in Ferrera, 1480

Those who defend the contemporary use of this prayer also frequently suggest that this formulation has been “the traditional” and only formulation since the time of the Talmud.

Before I comment on the “it’s just more obligations” argument, here is a brief history if these blessings. Most of this timeline comes from My People’s Prayer Book: Birkhot hashachar (morning blessings) By Lawrence A. Hoffman and Three Blessings by Yehudah Mirsky

• 3rd century B.C.E. A prayer, attributed to Socrates, expressed gratitude for having been born human and not a brute, a man and not a woman, a Greek and not barbarian. The Zoroastrians had a similar prayer.
• 200 C.E. Jewish version appeared in Talmud (Menahot 43b). The trio of blessings  was unconnected with the dawn blessings/birkhot ha-shahar, which is their current location in the siddur. The rest of the dawn blessings were in a different place — Talmud (Berakhot 60b)
• 750-825 C.E. The trio made its way into the dawn blessings /birkhot ha-shahar in Sefer Halakhot Gedolot (“Book of Major Laws”)
• 13th century. Due to Christian scrutiny, Jews altered the text of “who has not made me a non-Jew” substituting less direct words (like “Samarian”), phrasing it in the positive as “Who has made me a Jew,” or omitting the blessing.
• 13-14 centuries. Because many Jews were servants they either replaced the word slave with “boor” or “beast” or removed that  blessing.
• 14th century.  An  alternative form for women to say was established: “Who has made me according to His will,” in the code of Jacob bar Asher. Men still said the original blessing.
• 14th century. The Rome Machzor replaced “who has not made me a non-Jew” with “who has made me an Israelite”.
• 14th-15th century. In Southern Europe women said “who made me a women and not a man” (1478, 1480, siddur copied by Abraham Farisol in Ferrera ), or “Who did not make me a man”or “Who made me a woman.” See photo.
• 18th-early 19th centuries. “Non-Jew” was changed to nokri/foreigner in many Liberal (Reform) books and some in Orthodox ones.
• 1850s The Reform movement issued a prayerbook with the blessing, “Who has created me to worship Him” for both men and women.
• 1872 No Reform prayerbooks have “who has not made me a slave”.
• 1873 The Positive-Historical influenced prayerbook (precursor of Conservative) omits all three original blessings and replaces them with “who has made me an Israelite”
• 1895 The “woman” and “non-Jew ” blessings were removed from the Reform siddur
• early 20^th century. The blessing “For making me as God wished”, which became the main Orthodox option for women, appeared as a selection in smaller type in the main prayerbook with “women say” printed above it.
• 1945 The  Reconstructionist  prayerbook had with all three blessings in the positive: made me free, made me a Jew and made me in God’s image.
• 1946 The Conservative prayerbook had all three blessings in the positive. From this point forward the negative forms appeared only in Orthodox prayerbooks.
• 2000s Orthodox prayerbooks have “For making me as God wished” presented side-by-side with “for not making me woman”.

All that history was to just demonstrate that the blessings have been changing since they were introduced.  So change is neither forbidden nor inconsistent with what was done by Jews in the past. Moreover in terms of non-Orthodox Judaism, the change away from all three blessings  in their original forms has been around for 70 years.

So when we have a compelling reason, that a basic reading of the blessing is offensive to women, and change this blessing, we are not that different than the Jews who came before us.

And how compelling is the reason? Let’s look at the point that men had more mitzvoth/obligations than women and they had different duties but were still equal in the eyes of the authors of the prayer. What reasons are given for these fewer obligations for  women? The medieval commentator Abu Dirham explains is that a woman is a servant of two masters: her husband and God. To spare a woman the dilemma that might occur if her husband commanded her to do something while she was supposed to be fulfilling a divine commandment, God graciously bows out, relinquishing the claim on her time. This explanation also appears in the Shulchan Aruch/Code of Laws. Later on and even today we see explanations that suggest that women are inherently closer to God because of their “spiritual” nature and thus do not require extra mitzvot, and at the same time are less subject to temptations or less grounded in their bodies and thus need fewer mitzvot to make them closer to God.

While women, non-Jews and slaves had fewer mitzvot to fulfill, they were also of much lower status and women and slaves had very few, if any, rights as people.  The authors of the Talmud saw none of these categories, non-Jews, women or slaves as their equals but all as lesser beings. The Talmud asks, when discussing this trio of  blessings why the category slave does not just cover women as well:

What form should the morning blessings take?..who has not made me a slave..Isn’t a slave to equivalent to a woman?”(Menachot 43b)

Rashi explains this passage:

For a woman is to her husband as a slave is to his master

There is  a direct connection between this lack of status, being seen as lesser beings and the lack of obligations.  Mitzvot were and are seen as good things to have and being exempt from them to serve the needs of others is not an equal exchange. We are taught all over rabbinic literature that the opportunity to perform additional mitzvot is something to be sought after and the performing mitzvot is our principal way of interacting with and serving God. Nechama Leibowitz wrote that mitzvot elevate “daily, egoistic activities to the level of divine service”. So, the idea that women have fewer mitzvot, but are still equal but just different  (less likely to sin, more “spiritual) does not mesh well with this basic principle of rabbinic Judaism.

Moreover in the culture of the time, and to a far lesser extent in ours, the freedom of Talmudic men to study Torah and pray three times a day was because their women or slaves were taking care of all the menial housework and all the difficult parts of  childrearing for them. Women without rights suffered horribly throughout history, this time period included, however advanced the rabbis may have been on some issues. One example of the numerous way lower status and had real consequences in the lives of women is that  a rape victim had to marry her rapist and could not initiate divorce. Another is that a father could marry his daughter to a person she despised while she was still a minor.

There is an inherent connection between fewer mitzvot and the associated real suffering of women through lack of human rights and lower status. Ignoring this connection is trying to decouple inherently linked concepts that have been connected by the rabbis right from the introduction and discussion of this blessing in the Talmud  onward.

This attempted decoupling reminds me of this article, The “Southern Belle” Is a Racist Fiction, and many like it which delineate why  glorifying Southern Culture without connecting it to slavery is wrong.

And the Belles of today do exactly that—if you bring up sl*very, they’ll point to all the nice parts about the Old South. The architecture, the parties, the sipping of cool drinks on warm porches. Oh, the fields? Those fields are just for growing delicious strawberries and tomatoes for folks to enjoy. Nothing more……Unfortunately for the nostalgics, the Old South is synonymous with the Antebellum south, which in turn is synonymous with the slave economy. Bu-bu-but tradition! Sorry. Your tradition was someone else’s nightmare. Pining for those days, even if you’re too detached from national history to realize it, is pining for the comforts of whiteness when black people were property.

I am in no way saying that the two situations: women’s lack of personhood throughout  the majority of Jewish history and slavery in America, are equivalent.  What is problematic in both cases is putting one’s own comfort and desire for tradition above the fact that those traditions were inherently linked to the suffering of others.

Men’s extra obligations in rabbinic Judaism were based on and enabled by women’s oppression. It is wrong to preserve and glorify a time when women were basically property and eminent, educated men were unashamed to compare women to slaves, even if the comparison was not one hundred percent literal. If your tradition was someone else’s nightmare, then it needs to change.

The Freedom Seder, radical but not Messianic

As I wrote here before, I  like to get ready for Passover by reading the original Freedom Seder which took place on April 4, 1969, the first anniversary of the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, the third night of Passover.

Hundreds of people of varied racial and religious communities gathered in a Black church in the heart of Washington DC to celebrate the original Freedom Seder. For the first time, it [explicitly] intertwined the ancient story of liberation from Pharaoh with the story of Black America’s struggle for liberation, and the liberation of other peoples as well.

 

As radical as they were for the time, I noticed something a bit sad this time through:

How much then are we in duty bound to struggle, work, share, give, think, plan, feel, organize, sit-in, speak out, hope, and be on behalf of Mankind! For we must end the genocide [in Vietnam],* stop the bloody wars that are killing men and women as we sit here, disarm the nations of the deadly weapons that threaten to destroy us all, end the brutality with which the police beat minorities in many countries, make sure that no one starves, free the poets from their jails, educate us all to understand their poetry, allow us all to explore our inner ecstasies, and encourage and aid us to love one another and share in the human fraternity. All these! For, as is said, “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig-tree, and none shall make them afraid, for the mouth of the Lord of hosts hath spoken. For let all the peoples walk each one in the name of its god, but we will walk in the name of the Lord our God for ever and ever.”

* Insert any that is current—such as “Biafra,” “Black America,” etc.—depending on the situation.

 

With all its calls and hope for”Liberation Now! Next Year in a World of Freedom”, it still acknowledged that each year or era ahead would have its own  war crimes or genocide to talk about at the seder. So in this part of the Freedom Seder there is not exactly a vision of a utopia or Messianic future, but more along the lines of

לֹא עָלֶיךָ הַמְּלָאכָה לִגְמוֹר, וְלֹא אַתָּה בֶן חוֹרִין לִבָּטֵל מִמֶּנָּה

It is not your duty to complete the work. But neither are you free to desist from it.

 

Video of the seder is below:

 

 

Enjoy a young Arthur Waskcow and Rabbi Balfour Brickner and Rev. Channing Phillips. Rev. Phillips tells abortion jokes. It was filmed by the CBC. (Yes you have your 1960s era well funded Canadian public broadcaster to thank for this historic footage.)

You can get a copy of the haggadah in pdf here.

Hagbah observant progressive feminist Jews talking about Torah, egalitarian practice texts and Jewish life

New fb discussion group if you are interested join us

Hagbah: observant progressive feminist Jews talking about Torah, egalitarian practice texts and Jewish life

A light-hearted guide to women’s kippot

The Forward recently published a guide to yamulkes and what they mean. Disappointingly, they did not included any kippot worn by women. And that is where I come in…

When Women Wear Kippahs

(I did not choose the title)

It wasn’t the “grassroots” of Orthodoxy. It was liberal Jews.

There is a fascinating (to me anyway) and respectful debate about Partnership Minyanim going on in a multi-part series over at Modern Torah Leadership. It starts off with an essay by Rabbi Aryeh Klapper,  Are Partnership Minyanim Orthodox?  and then includes responses from Rabbi Dr. Martin Lockshin, Malka Simkovich, Shira Hecht-Koller, and Dr. Yoel Finkelman.

While the essays contain very interesting exchanges on the nature of rabbinic authority and how vital it is for Orthodoxy and how Partnership minyanim challenge it, I could not help focusing on another aspect of the exchange.

In his pro-Partnership Minyanim essay, Rabbi Lockshin writes on the issue of enacting change that does not come from rabbinic innovation but is driven by the will of the laity:

Partnership Minyanim do not have the support of the “gedolim,” the great Torah sages of our generation. In this, PMs are like many other innovations introduced into modern Orthodoxy in the last two hundred years—they proceeded from the grass roots. Many of them later won the (often grudging) approval of some gedolim. In this category I would list, among others:

• Sermons in shul in the vernacular.
• Beardless rabbis.
• Believing that the world is more than 6000 years old.
• Bat mitzvah celebrations.
• Orthodox Jews studying humanistic subjects in a university.
• Women’s tefillah groups.
• Women teaching Torah to men.
• Women reciting mourner’s kaddish in shul.

Implementing these innovations, it was argued in almost every case, would ultimately lead people to abandon Orthodoxy. Rabbi Henkin has made the same claim about PMs. Rabbi Aaron Soloveitchik took another approach when he gave his unenthusiastic support to women reciting mourner’s kaddish in an Orthodox shul. He said that if we did NOT permit this, women would be likely to go to a Conservative shul to say kaddish.

While Rabbi Lockshin is a scholar and real mentch and is paving an admirable path in a difficult landscape, I have to disagree with him here.

The list of innovations he lists above did not originate directly in the Orthodox laity. Every innovation listed (OK so maybe not the university thing) was something that was started by liberal Jews and which they were ridiculed, called ‘treif’ and rejected by Orthodox Judaism of the time for. Do your really think that Orthodox women would have begged to say Kaddish in droves if that was something that was not done without comment for decades by their liberal sisters? Rabbi Soloveitchik’s response reveals the truth- that women wanted basic ritual rights they saw in other denominations and would have left Orthodoxy to get them. So while the laity may have asked for these changes, they originated elsewhere. And while he is less blunt, Rabbi Lockshin echos the idea that modifying Orthodoxy to meet women’s needs is far preferable to having them go to a Conservative minyan.

Within Orthodoxy, change driven by the demands of the laity are indeed threatening, but more so is change driven by innovations in other denominations.

Advocates of Partnership Minyanim and other forms of Open Orthodoxy  are facing a lot of threats with Orthodoxy and a lot of pressure. They are threatened with being called illegitimate and having their rulings  and their conversions declared invalid. Being the face of these movements requires a fair amount of courage.

I wish these advocates also had the courage acknowledge their links and debts to liberal Judaism, without shame, and not discount the history, contributions and the validity of religious innovation that originated within it. I say this even though doing so I know would create more problems for their reputations in the eyes of their more fundamentalist colleagues.

An Orthodox-Friendly, Egalitarian Bencher: Something Old, Something Very New

I am delighted that the TORCH of JOFA  (Jewish Orthodox Feminist alliance) published my post on the new Orthodox-friendly Egalitarian bencher.

My points are that while egalitarian benchers are not new (see my list in the article) and this one is not really innovative in its egalitarianism it is innovative in its desired audience- Modern Orthodox Jews. What does this mean for observant non-Orthodox Jews? his post is my take :

An Orthodox-Friendly, Egalitarian Bencher: Something Old, Seder Oneg Shabbos Very New

 

Judith Kaplan Eisenstein’s Own Reconstructionism: a brief exegesis on “Hannuka, O Hannuka”

This post is inspired by comments from my Dad.

While Judith Kaplan Eisenstein will always be most famous for having the first Bat Mitzvah in 1922, she was an accomplished scholar in her own right as a Jewish musicologist and teacher, publishing many books and articles on Jewish music eventually earning a PhD.

For example, the English translation of the originally Yiddish song, Hannuka, O Hannuka that Jewish children everywhere sing was composed by her.

It is in this song we can see how her father’s Reconstructionist teachings influenced her. Specifically, we can see a rejection of a supernatural God, and the emphasis on culture and on history.

Here are the original Yiddish lyrics, my literal translation and Kaplan Eisenstein’s familiar translation.

Kaplan Eisenstein’s English	Yiddish	Yiddish literal translation
Hanukah, Oh Hanukah, Come light the menorah. Let’s have a party. We’ll all dance the horah. Gather ’round the table; we’ll give you a treat Dreidels to play with and latkes to eat	חנוכה אוי חנוכה אַ יום-טוב אַ שיינער אַ לוסטיקער אַ פריילעכער נישט דאָ נאָך אַזוינער אַלע נאַכט מיט דריידלעך שפילן מיר, פרישע הייסע לאַטקעס, עסן אָן אַ שיעור.	Hanukah, Oh Hanukah A beautiful celebration. Such a cheerful and happy one, There is none like it. Every night with the dreidels we will play, Fresh, hot latkes we will eat endlessly.
And while we are playing The candles are burning bright (or low). One for each night, they shed a sweet light To remind us of years long ago. One for each night, they shed a sweet light To remind us of years long ago.	געשווינדער, צינדט קינדער די חנוכה ליכטלעך אָן, זאָגט על-הניסים, לויבט גאָט פאַר די נסים, און לאָמיר אַלע טאַנצען אין קאָן. זאָגט על-הניסים, לויבט גאָט פאַר די נסים, און לאָמיר אַלע טאַנצען אין קאָן.	Come quickly children. Light the Chanukah candles. Say “Al Hanissim”, praise God for the miracles, And we will all dance together in a circle! Say “Al Hanissim”, praise God for the miracles, And we will all dance together in a circle!

What Kaplan Eisenstein takes out:

• The reference to God performing the miracles of Hannuka, faithful to both a rejection of a super-natural God and to historical records and the Books of the Maccabees’ accounts of the events of Hannuka
• The reference to the “Al ha-Nissim” prayer that thanks God for the miracles of Hannuka (see above) and the wars God fought on our behalf
• The connection of lighting candles to “Al ha-Nissim” which is traditionally sung immediately after we light the candles

What Kaplan Eisenstein leaves in:

• Dancing
• Latkes
• Dreidles
• Candle lighting
• Remembering “years long ago”

For extra fun you can take a look what is left out of and what is added in to the Hebrew version, written by Avraham Avronin and released in 1953.

My translation of the Hebrew	Hebrew version	Original Yiddish literal translation
Days of Channuka, Days of our Temple! With Joy and happiness we will fill our hearts. Day and night we will spin our sivion (dreidel). We will eat a lot of sufganiot (doughnuts). Light up, kindle the many chanuka candles for the miracles and for the wonders* that the Macabees performed.	יְמֵי הַחֲנֻכָּה חֲנֻכַּת מִקְדָּשֵׁנוּ, בְּגִיל וּבְשִׂמְחָה מְמַלְּאִים אֶת לִבֵּנוּ, לַיְלָה וָיוֹם סְבִיבוֹנֵנוּ יִסֹּב, סֻפְגָּנִיּוֹת נֹאכַל בָּם לָרֹב. הָאִירוּ, הַדְלִיקוּ נֵרוֹת חֲנֻכָּה רַבִּים! עַל הַנִּסִּים וְעַל הַנִּפְלָאוֹת אֲשֶׁר חוֹלְלוּ הַמַּכַּבִּים.	Chanukah, Oh ChanukahA beautiful celebration.Such a cheerful and happy one,There is none like it.Every night with the dreidels we will play,Fresh, hot latkes we will eat endlessly.Come quickly childrenLight the Chanukah candlesSay “Al Hanissim”, praise God for the miracles,And we will all dance together in a circle!

*The Hebrew uses the phrase “for the miracles and for the wonders” which are the opening words of the prayer “Al ha-Nissim“, except the prayer attributes the miracles to God, the Hebrew version attributes them to the Maccabees.