Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better

I am a Jewish woman. Hath not a Jewish woman eyes? Hath not a Jewish woman hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?

This post starts right here in College Park. But it ends, like all good things, in Israel…

I am a Jewish woman. Staunchly Jewish, strongly feminist. Proud of both. But lately, I’ve been floundering in intense frustration.

I don’t want to be told what I can’t do because I’m female. I’m sick of studying Torah and suddenly coming upon texts that degrade or downright insult women (e.g.: teaching your daughter Torah is like teaching her prostitution, the sins of Bnei Yisrael are like the menstrual blood of a woman, women are less intelligent than men, etc). I hate the intense anxiety that I feel when I enter the beit midrash and find it entirely populated by surprised male eyes. I’m tired of feeling firmly situated in my religion just to find that really it’s talking only to the men.

It’s ironic that one of the most painful parts of being a Jewish woman is the way supporters approve of women who go out of their way to participate in Jewish ritual. As though being born to a Jewish mother, raised as a Jewish girl, and loving one’s G-d and His creations is not enough of a reason to want to fulfill G-d’s word. Don’t they understand that their approval is just as demeaning as their criticism?! That we need male approval to praise G-d sickens me.

Several friends of mine here at Maryland, committed and well-educated women who are passionate about their Judaism and unwilling to abandon Orthodoxy in pursuit of fulfillment, have come together to address the issue. To empower ourselves, if you will. Only we’re not allowed to say “empower” because apparently it’s a word that scares men. And so, WOJAM is born: Women’s Orthodox Jewish Alliance at Maryland. I wanted it to be WTF–Women’s Torah Forum—but they thought it would send the wrong message. Funny, I think it says it exactly right.

First we began women’s prayer groups once a month, on the holiday for the new month. I love it. It’s not leading the prayers or organizing the davening that’s so wonderful, it’s the knowing how. After having prayed three times a day, seven days a week, for the past fourteen years of my life, I finally understand how the service works. But it hurts to separate from the rest of the community. Every time the door opens between us and the mainstream minyan I’m reminded that we’re cutting ourselves off from them.

So WOJAM brainstormed to find a way to help make us an equal part of the community within the regular services.

We hit upon a novel idea. Pass the Torah to the women’s side after Torah reading on Sabbath mornings and have a woman carry it through the women’s section so the women can kiss it. It’s something that has been instituted in several modern orthodox communities throughout the States, so is not entirely unprecedented. It violates no halacha: we would have a stand between the men and women’s section so that the man and woman passing it off wouldn’t touch each other, and we would do it specifically only on the Sabbath so that it won’t add a great amount of time to services during the week when students have classes to get to.

We discussed it, getting gradually more and more excited about a chance to participate in the davening halachically, and arguing out ways in which to approach the community about it. We spent hours hashing over ways to phrase our point, and whom we should ask for support and who for permission, and whether it would really be beneficial.

The rabbis who are affiliated with Hillel both told us that there are no halachic problems, but they weren’t comfortable deciding such an issue. It’s a community issue, we were told again and again by the different authorities we approached.

So we took it to the community. The two gabbaim, the students in charge of the services, disagreed. The younger one had no problem with it. The senior gabbai, who has lots of influence in the community, felt uncomfortable with it. But more than fairly he said that he didn’t see why his discomfort with it was any more important than our discomfort with our current status in davening.

The next step was a meeting of the leaders in the Orthodox student community, numbering about fifty, male and female. It was at this point that I began to feel the most intense frustration. People had ridiculous reasons for not wanting to allow women to carry the Torah. They were worried about our motivation: do we want this because we’ll get a spiritual high out of it, or only to prove that we can? Never mind that nobody ever asks a guy if he feels close to G-d after kissing the Torah. We were told, “You don’t really want this.” Beg to differ. We know what we want! Some idiot even brought up the issue of women’s menstrual impurity, when everyone with even a modicum of knowledge knows that a) since the destruction of the Second Temple everyone is in a state of ritual impurity and b) a Torah is a holy vessel that cannot contract impurity. Even the guys who had no problem with it were not especially supportive, saying such things as “I don’t kiss it, it doesn’t kiss me” (okay, I know that’s funny). The worst thing I heard was this: “it will influence the way people see modern orthodox Judaism, which is actually really good to women. If we let women carry the Torah, people will think that they were discriminated against in the first place.” WHAT???!!! Meaning, you don’t want people to think you discriminate against women, so you’re going to discriminate against them?! Get a brain, man!

In the end, we decided to poll the community to see how people felt about the issue. And they decided against it.

I understand that growth is a process, that as more and more women are educated and become leaders in chinuch, women’s position in Judaism will change. The part of me that knows that wants to throw up English literature and run straight into Migdal Oz for as long as it takes, till I emerge the next Shani Taragin, Yael Ziegler, or Tamar Ross. But since my Torah study is nowhere near that level, I can try to change things in the broader community. I can support the women who are able to study and learn 24-7. I can raise daughters who will never feel that they have to rely on a man to explain Torah to them, because their gemara education was indifferent at best. I can, and I will. Which is part of the reason for why I am making aliyah as soon as I can.