Walking Together, Aleph
Conversations and Explorations,
Rabbi Gershon Winkler and Rabbi Sarah Etz Alon
Eber-Lat Living Laboratory
Cuba, NM
Sarah:
Ravi, I wanted to open this new journal in conversation with you, because it feels right and good and whole that we do it this way. After all I did steal, without asking, the format of Pumbedissa, a publication you, along with Lakme, were an editor and publisher of for many years. It’s a little chutzpulah, appropriating Pumbedissa and re-launching it in this way. But then that’s what the younger generation is for– exercising chutzpah while we still have our passion and ideals intact. The key I feel is to do it in a way that is truly effecting l’dor v’dor, generational continuity. To honor where the Elders have been, and uplift where the Youngers are going.
I’m sitting here in the middle of the wilderness, looking out the window onto all this Blessed Creation, and thinking What is it I want to say to you… in public? And I think the place to begin, is at the first beginning, when you and Lakme started Pumbedissa as a journal of P’nai Or rabbis all those years ago. I’m looking at a copy of your inaugural issue and the date reads August 5753.
I was 21 years old.
Let us pause and take that in for a moment, because there is real Reality in that statement.
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The Reality gets even more palpable when we consider that I am now mentoring 21 year olds as they find their Jewish way in the world. We use the phrase l’dor v’dor all the time, but this is where it’s really at. As I read through ten years of back issues of Pumbedissa I’m thinking Where were the Chevre then, and where are we now? What was relevant to the Elder generation, and is it still relevant today? What progress have we made as a Chevre, as a People? What legacy are you Elders passing to us Youngers? Where have we been? Where are we going? And where are we now?
ויקרא יהוה אלהים אל האדם וימר לו איכה
The Eternal Presence, Elohim, called out to the Earth-Being and said, “Where are you?”
I have a banner hanging on the wall here in my wilderness retreat that reads, in Old Hebrew, “Ayecah” Where are you? I can see it from my desk as I study the teachings of our Sages. And I can see it as I reply to the questions of my students. And I can see it as I write this letter to you now. Always I am being reminded that HaShem is calling to me, Ayecah– where am I? For the sake of honesty, I have to admit, oftentimes I don’t know how to answer. Sometimes I have to look around and find myself before I can answer back, Hineni– Here I am. When I think about where I was when I was 21 years old, and where I am now, and where the 21 year olds just entering adulthood are, I am thinking that there is no more pressing question for us to ask ourselves:
Where are we?
A while back I asked you to walk with me along my rabbinic path. Now, as I approach the rabbinate, I have to ask myself the hard questions about how I will rabbi in the world. Ayecah is ringing loudly in my ears. And it’s clear to me that the biggest issue I’m going to have to deal with is the issue of being a woman rabbi. As I read back in Pumbedissa and wrestle through conversations from years back, I become painfully aware that we really haven’t come very far. Women still don’t have full legitimacy in the rabbinate. How can this be? After all this time? After all the progressive ideals and all the fancy words, we still haven’t managed to fully uplift women in Jewish society.
It’s not that I don’t think that hearts were willing. There is no question that the Renewal movement specifically, and the non-orthodox movements, in general, have made a commitment toward a truly egalitarian Jewish community. The hang-up is that the Orthodox Establishment has presented us with a seeming insurmountable obstacle by refusing to recognize women as eydot, witnesses, and by extension proscribing women from participating on a Beit Din. What this means in effect, is that the Orthodox community will not accept ketubot, gettim, or gerrot documents that are signed by women. This has real People-hood implications, especially for the children subsequently born from these processes. G-d forbid we should be stigmatizing people as mamzerut, or disqualifying their Jewishness because we took an egalitarian stance and put women’s signatures on the documents of wedding, divorce and conversion.
Or so the argument goes. And it’s a good argument. I struggle with it relentlessly. I’ve looked at the issue from every possible angle, read and re-read through the Halacha, through the commentaries, the responsa, and taken first one side and then the other about whether we should or should not include women on these “official” documents. Over and over again I have tried to apply what you have taught me to be the foundational principle of Halachic application, that all her ways are pleasantness and all her paths of peace. I tried, Ravi, I really tried to find a path of Shalom with this issue, and I just can’t see it. Every path involves unpleasantness, every path a subversion of peace. What then are we to do? What should I do? Ayecah Ayecah!!
Fourteen years ago, in an article in Pumbedissa, Reb Zalman raises this issue, unleashing a flurry of counter articles and responses from the Chevre centering on the need of going to every length possible to prevent the stigmatization of people as illegitimate in the eyes of the Orthodox community. I have seen the living reality of this in my own chevre. I know people who have become Ba’al Tshuvah and sought to marry within the Orthodox community, only to be told they are mamzer, illegitimate, because their mothers divorced and re-married without obtaining valid gettim. I have chevre who grew up Jewish, had bar/bat mitzvot, the whole megilla, only to find out that the Orthodox community requires them to undergo years of study and orthodox conversion because their mothers’ conversions weren’t considered valid. The fears of Yesterday’s generation are playing out today.
But I have seen a different reality as well. I have seen the hurt and confusion of couples about to go under the chuppah when I tell them that neither I their rabbi, nor any women can sign the “official” ketubah. I have seen the pain of women converts who are told that men must witness/ be present at their mikveh and that no women can sign their teudah. And I have felt my own pain and anguish, as a rav, as a woman, as a Jew and ultimately as a human being, when over and over I have had to step aside while men conduct the official processes of bet din and teudot. What am I saying to the people who I serve as rabbi when I disappear myself from these crucial moments in their lives? It’s cute that we do this dual document thing, one for the Orthodox community, and one where we all get to sign, but the truth is, it’s a sham, and everyone knows it. By conducting ourselves in this way, what we are really saying is that the presence of women in the rabbinate and in spiritual leadership is a sham. That women are not, in fact, equal in our communities. This is what we are saying. Where is the pleasantness and peace in that?
We therefore have to choose between two distasteful situations. Do we continue to bow to Ultra-Orthodox standards and de-legitimize women’s roles in the rabbinate? Or, do we boldly declare that we can no longer perpetuate this injustice and risk stigmatizing our children?
Almost a year ago I participated on a Beit Din for a woman conversion student of mine. And since I know she will be reading this article, let me say that it was a wonderful weekend, a true gevalt, and a real honor to be there with her. But it also was one of the harder moments in my rabbinic career when once again I was unable to sign the official teudah/document of her conversion. After working with this person week after week for a year, walking with her every step of the way– how wrong it was that I couldn’t sign on the dotted line and testify officially for all to see that this woman is a gevalt, and a real Jew, as real as you and me.
I swore to myself that I would never compromise my integrity in that way again. Never again would I give way to an all male rabbinate. But never is a long time, and it’s possible that I might choose one day to step aside as a woman rabbi if the needs of the moment overwhelmingly call for it. This also you taught me, to judge every case on it’s own merit. But in general, as a general practice, I can’t do it anymore. I can no longer pretend it’s okay to discount women in this way.
Time is not going to heal this wound. The Orthodox Establishment is never going to come around for us. And why should they? They have won the war of Authenticity, and we in our passive stance gave them the victory. When are we going to stand up and demand of the Orthodox community, of the State of Israel, of our own colleagues in the progressive movements, of ourselves– when are we going to demand of Klal Yisroel that women be uplifted as fully equal members of the community? When is this going to happen?
An entire generation has passed since the non-orthodox community began ordaining women as rabbis. When will we recognize their legitimacy in practice and not just in words? Every time I do a baby naming, holding the next generation, the third generation post-Shoah in my hands, laying those kiddos on the Sefer Torah, whispering their sacred holy Hebrew names in their ears– every time I do this I am thinking I am going to work every day of my life to ensure that your future is Blessed within Klal Yisroel and in the World. If I don’t take this stance for women, for myself, for the healthfulness of the entire community, then every name-day bracha I’ve given those children has been a lie. This is the legacy of l’dor v’dor. When I look into the eyes of these children, these New-Born Souls of Israel, it is HaShem looking back, AYECAH? And I am answering, HINENI.
Reb Gershon:
I hear you loud and clear as you echo my sentiments as well on all counts. The root of the problem lies in Israel. People know they cannot settle there as wife and husband, or as Jewess and Jew without proof that comes from an Orthodox rabbi. And not only an Orthodox rabbi but a specific Orthodox rabbi who is approved by the Israeli rabbinate and is on their “list”– something even the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America has been critical of because it negates many of their rabbi’s qualification and authorization to do conversions, marriages, and divorce.
This absolute power of the Israeli Rabbinate is not something that evolved gradually and that we could have nipped in the butt. It was well entrenched within the founding by-laws of the establishment of the State of Israel, and there doesn’t seem much we can do about it since our voice in general is not listened to as qualified voices in the arena of Judaism which they purport to be the most authentic version.
And so it is indeed frustrating, even for myself, that I cannot complete a wedding for a couple bent on immigrating to Israel, for example, or a convert hoping to move there. I do the rituals with flavor, with depth, with meaning, with sanctity galore, but it means absolutely nothing once they migrate eastward to Israel or fall in love with an Orthodox partner. And so I warn them beforehand, both conversion candidates and marrying couples, that in the eyes of God they will be Jewish, in the eyes of God they will be married. And all according to our tradition. But in the eyes of the Saduccees who wield all the authority in the Temple, they would have to do it all over again.
Women not qualifying as witnesses is not as black-and-white as it is cracked up to be. Certainly they qualify. The halacha originally had to do with availability, not qualification. Women in those days were preoccupied with raising the kids and tending to the fire, to the home. It was considered beneath their dignity to have them schlep to court all the time (Babylonian Talmud, Gittin 41b). Therefore, they were not required to respond to court summons, and anyone not required could not be compelled and therefore not reliable for being called to testimony. If they did come of their own volition, of course their testimony qualified. There are numerous situations recounted in the Talmud where women were indeed kosher witnesses if they did come forward, were able to get a babysitter, etc.– voluntarily, and their testimony upheld, demonstrating that had nothing to do with trust or qualification or capacity, but solely with dependable availability. Likewise, a king, too, was ruled out as a witness. And that is a better way to put it: ruled out, as opposed to un-qualified. And based on these sources it is ludicrous to not allow the signature of a woman on a Gett or Ketubah or T’udat Yahadut or T’udat Gey’rut and so on.
Also, it is not the case that a woman’s immersion for conversion must be witnessed by men. Actually, this is forbidden on account of modesty. Rather, the halacha is that the male members of the beit-din must be out of sight of the mikveh and the woman’s immersion is witnessed by women alone, who then shout to the male members that it’s been done. Another example of the testimony of women being totally acceptable in traditional Jewish law. Her testimony is even accepted concerning herself, for instance following her period, her man is forbidden from resuming intimacy with her until she informs him that she has immersed in the mikveh. Until she tells him this, even if he knows that she went that night, it’s hands-off until she testifies to him that she has immersed (Shulchan Aruch, Yorah De’ah 185:1– Ra’ma adds: “even if the man sees that her clothing is blood stained, she is believed).
An even more potent example is that of a woman who claims her husband died. We believe her without demanding any proof or witnesses and she is permitted in marriage to another. This is a very sensitive and severe circumstance where we are standing at the very edge of the brink of the question of adultery and iggun (a situation where a woman cannot remarry because her husband refuses to give her a gett even by compulsion of the courts, or because her husband is missing and there is no evidence he is dead). Yet, we accept her testimony even though she is not a neutral party to the case (Babylonian Talmud, Yevamot 114b). In fact, we accept the testimony of any woman who comes forth to free her from the uncertainty of iggun (Babylonian Talmud, Yevamot 87b-88a, and 93b).
As for women rabbis, it is clear from our traditional sources that there is nothing in our halacha that forbids this, and in fact there were numerous women rabbis throughout Jewish history. If a woman could be a prophet, then certainly she could be a rabbi! And there were ample women whose rulings on Jewish law overruled those of their male counterparts. There were women who taught Talmud and Halacha, women who wrote Kabbalah texts, women who were scribes, sof’rim, and women who ran yeshivot (yes, for men)! You can find all this complete with sources in Shoshana Pantel Zolty’s maginificent work And All Your Children Shall Be Learned (Jason Aronson Publishers, 1993). More than 300 Halachot were ruled in favor of the famous Beruriah back in the 2nd century. When our women would create customs, they were not challenged by the rabbis but outright accepted on the authority of the women alone.
We have to bear in mind the tragic oppression we lived under in both Christian and Islamic lands for millennia. The Church burned women at the stake for being too learned, or too public with their wisdom. The Muslims curtailed education of girls and forbade women from study. We were not first-class nobles living under the oppressive regimes of either, and whatever abuse they accorded their own women certainly would have affected our communities in general and our women in particular, and in far worse consequences, and so we went underground. Nonetheless our women were educated, learned but discouraged from being too public about it, living in the climate of Church-inspired madness.
Paul: “Let a woman learn in silence with all submissiveness. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to remain in silence” (1 Timothy 2:11-13).
Tertullian: The women of the heretics, how wanton they are! For they are bold enough to teach, to dispute, to enact exorcisms, to undertake cures– it be even be to baptize!” (Ante-Nicene Fathers: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers down to A.A. 325, vol.III [William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.: 1951], p.253)
In the fourth century, the woman scholar Hypatia was hacked to death with oyster shells by Christian monks because, as St. Cyril explained, she was a sinful woman who had acted against God’s commandments by teaching men (Riane Eisler: The Chalice and the Blade [Harper and Row: 1987] pp.132-133)
Martin Luther: “If [women] become fatigued or even die, that does not matter. Let them die in childbirth– that is why they are there.” (Karen Armstrong: The Gospel According to Woman: Christianity’s Creation of the Sex War in the West [Doubleday:1986], p.69)
But Thank God, we can come out now. The coast is clear, and we can revive the age-old legitimacy of women teachers, sof’rim, mohelot, Torah leiners, and halachic authorities, otherwise known as rabbis and rebbes. I provided much of the sources for all this in my book The Way of the Boundary Crosser in the chapter on “Women, Torah, and Feminiphobia.”
I agree vehemently that we need to take a stand and not allow ourselves to be intimidated by those who claim an absolute monopoly on Halacha and Minhag, and we need to be aware that in so doing we will forge our own way, but I doubt it will change much of anything at the core of the orthodox communities and their rabbinic authorities. But some, probably. I remember an Orthodox man came to our Story Fires retreat in Cuba six years ago. I tore toilet paper for his use on Friday before Shabbat, and he brought his own food. He then took my halachic teachings about using the drum on the Shabbat and posed it to his rabbi back home. The rabbi dismissed my arguments completely and clung tenaciously to his stance that any musical or rhythmic instrument is forbidden on the Shabbat. My man continued to nudge the rabbi, repeating my sources, and finally one day the rabbi walked over to him in shul on Shabbat and said, “okay, but don’t spread the word on this.”
So change is possible. And in the meantime, as we educate our people to the beauty of our tradition we are still responsible to continue our disclaimers so that their choice to follow our path and honor us as teachers and spiritual guides regardless of our gender– is made with full disclosure and integrity. And if we are truly doing it l’shamah, then we’ll let the humiliation ride and just do our work in the world.
Sarah:
Yes Yes Yes. Tov Tov Tov.
Only, I wonder about letting the humiliation ride. I agree, that when doing the work of rabbi, we need to set our egos aside and be fully present in the needs of the moment. For many years as a maggidic pastor I “let the humiliation ride” for exactly this reason. Until one day I began to notice that I wasn’t the only one being humiliated and that de-legitimizing women in this way is causing real harm to individuals and to the community as a whole.
You rightfully point out that this is not just an issue of women, but of all non-orthodox rabbis and even some from within orthodoxy being
disqualified by an Israeli state-sanctioned ultra-orthodox rabbinate. How much more absurd then does this make the position of non-orthodox rabbis, especially in Renewal and non- denominational circles, in refusing to allow their women colleagues to be present as Eydot and to serve officially on Bet Din. It is absurdity beyond measure.
As for letting our humiliation ride, for how many generations is this okay? How many generations does it take until asking half the population to exist in a state of humiliation can no longer serve the cause of Shalom, of peace? L’shamah is a tricky thing. The path of Shamayim is not always clear-cut, and neither is the path of humility. This is what I would ask of my rabbinic colleagues, male and female– to step forward fully onto the path of rightness and bring into being a true state of equity in our Jewish communities. Doing the work, l’shamah requires this commitment from us.
May HaShem, HaKadosh Baruch Hu, bless us that we do it with Strength and with Grace.
