My mother picked me up from Columbus International Airport
on Wednesday afternoon, both of us relieved that my flight was on time and I’d
made it to Columbus. I’d spent the past few chagim fantasizing about being
home. Columbus’ leaves are just turning, its greenery punctuated with sharp
bursts of maroon and traced about with more common amber and bronze. We stopped
to pick up our Communist-Socialist-Agriculture basket and headed home to cook.
The first night we ate in the sukkah, a family minhag on
Shemini Atzeret. My father has rigged it up with Christmas lights and wind
chimes that turn it into a delicate autumnal wonderland. The young couple we’d
invited, a professor of Israel Studies and a professor of Talmud, as well as
his British parents, a judge and a businessman, made fascinating conversation.
The judge (who seemed a proper British lady but turned out hilarious) informed
us that, “you meet the most wonderful people when you run them over.” The
businessman waxed poetic about a production of Macbeth he’d seen in Polish. The
Israel Studies professor answered my question by saying that he does
“theoretical, not applied,” Israel Studies. And the Professor of Talmud, well,
she had the most incredible take on women in Judaism, one that made me want to
mimic my kids with a “preach!” after
every word. I kept thinking about how far I was culturally from my school’s
milieu.
The next day, my rabbi sat down across from me at kiddush.
“So you decided to come home for Simchat Torah, huh?”
“Yes! Rabbi, here the men make sure the women have a Torah
to dance with, and there’s a women’s Torah reading, and the children have such
a beautiful role, and it’s home…” He smiled, and I broke off. I was too shy to say all
the rest, that the Columbus community glows with ineffable warmth—strangers
were brought into the dancing, which slowed patiently for the plucky older
woman who wanted to dance, while children raced beneath the outstretched arms
of the adults. The shul is full not only of women seeking an active role
for themselves and their daughters in Judaism, but with men who check that the
women have a Torah to dance with and a space set up for leining, men who insist
that their daughters feel valued, and a rabbi who carefully balances his more
conservative community members’ needs with these vibrantly seeking congregants’
yearnings. How can I begin to explain that, though I would probably choose a
partnership minyan over my parents’ style shul, the fact that it is full of
people seeking a halachic, communally-engaging, morally upright Judaism makes
it wonderful?
Later that morning, the women gathered upstairs in two rooms
for the women’s reading of the Torah. Women who are used to more, politely read
the single brachah the rabbi had mandated; women who had never received an
aliyah before summoned up the courage to work their way through the brachah. I
felt the familiar gush of belonging at being a part of tefillah, and an even
stronger pride watching my mother introduce and arrange the reading.
On the last round of reading, my high school gemara Rav’s
wife received shlishi, which I was leining. I couldn’t exactly explain to her
why it mattered so much to me that I got to read for her. I’ll never be able to
read for him, and connect to him through ritual, not just learning, and so
being able to read for her somehow made a difference. Then, at the end, we
crowded into the other room to share a misheberach, and I heard the most enchanting
thing. A young girl who had listened to her mother practicing leining over and
over had learned the first pasuk of her mother’s aliyah, and stood at the low table
in front of her, reading the first pasuk with her. The two voices, one piping
and one deep, blended harmoniously.
This is a particularly bright young girl, fluent in Hebrew
and English both, who several months back approached her mother, saying, “Ima,
I think I’m ready. I know anim zmirot. Let’s tell the rabbi.” It hadn’t
occurred to the child that only boys were going up to the bimah to lead anim
zmirot; she saw only engagement in Judaism and her personal ability and
readiness to give to the community.
The rest of the weekend, I thought about it and talked about
it with my parents, old friends, the young mothers of the congregation, and the
Talmud professor. Simchat Torah is always a particularly fraught time for
Orthodox women. The amazing changes at my parents’ shul were done in joy and
respect, without the slightest negativity. Yet even after being in such a safe
space, the chag leaves me wondering about women’s role in Judaism. Will the
little girl who read Torah with her mom grow up, as I first imagined in a surge
of happiness, with a feeling of value and a wholehearted commitment to her Judaism?
Or will she run away like me and so many of my more thoughtful/high-powered
female friends, giving all of her leadership ability, her bright intelligence,
her desire to perfect the world, to the secular society that can appreciate it
so much more, and maintain Judaism in a solely personal sphere because the
community cannot value what she can bring to it? I look at the shul in which
she’s growing up and I know that’s not true. She will lein on Simchat Torah,
read megillah on Purim, give shiurim and lead her peers in Torah study. Perhaps
she will grow up without any bitterness.
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| Best magazine cover ever |
And the thing is, I grew up without bitterness. It took two
years of midrasha, three years in college, and a lot of investigation into the
halachic process, to bring me to the polite distance I keep from the Jewish
community today. After watching my mother this chag, I realize that women like
me will not change Judaism. It is women like her, women who are joyous with
their lot and excited to find they can do something more, that will bring
Orthodox Judaism slowly but surely into the twentieth century (their great-granddaughters
may bring it into the twenty-first). I, for whom a gag reflex is triggered when
a well-meaning man tells me, “of course women can do that,” can no longer abide
being in the same room as a discussion about whether women can or cannot
celebrate some aspect of their religion in public. It’s my religion—how dare
you imagine that you have control over it? Don't give me permission to
celebrate my faith communally. But mostly, at this point, I nod and give a
sickly smile.
My withdrawal from community means, to me, that I can have
no say, no power, in how the Jewish community develops. But it’s a withdrawal
that has allowed me to keep my joy in Judaism. To celebrate it personally, in
tefillah and learning and kashrut and Shabbat, in my private conversations with
G-d and considerations of how to act and what to say. It hurts too much to offer the raw, gaping slashes of wounds that I’ve received over
the years to communal observance, even while withdrawal feels like I'm betraying something and stifling my religious identity. Eventually, I will find a community driven by
the same impulses that drive me, and then I will again begin to contribute and
be part of a community. Until then, I will enjoy the brief simple delight of
leining on Simchat Torah, give what I can to the Sunday School children of the
Conservative community in Charlotte, quietly celebrate my religion on my own terms,
in my own private space, and repeat over and over the lines of the Shabbat davening, which, in my mind, represents the religious feminist's creed:
