By Rabbi Philip Graubart
LA JOLLA, California — Not long ago a well-known Jewish female singer performed in my synagogue on a Saturday night. She was staying in town over Shabbat. In making the arrangements, she requested that she be put in a hotel in walking distance to an Orthodox synagogue. I was surprised because I’d known her and her family for years, and they were anything but Orthodox. Also, the last time she’d performed at my synagogue – a different one – she openly disdained the fact that Orthodox Judaism would not count her in a minyan, or allow her to approach the Torah, or become a cantor or rabbi, or, in some cases, allow her to sing in public. Many Orthodox rabbis, she pointed out to me back then, forbid their congregants from purchasing her recordings, or attending her concerts. They prevent her from making a living.
So why, I asked, now, a few years later, did she insist on attending an Orthodox synagogue? Why not my Conservative synagogue? After all, we were bringing her, selling her CDs, generating business, treating her as a respected Jewish artist, with as much integrity and worth as a man. No Conservative (or Reform) rabbi would forbid anyone from buying her music. We would be proud to call her to the Torah; we would be thrilled to ask her to lead us in prayer, or to teach us from the bimah. She answered that yes, all that was true, but, in her experience, Orthodox synagogues offered deeper spiritual experiences. Not wanting to debate her, I made the arrangements. But I thought it was a shame that she was sacrificing her full integrity as a human being for what she felt was “a deeper spiritual experience.”
I think about this incident often when I ask myself an extremely uncomfortable question. How many Jewish women – how many Jews – still care about egalitarianism? When I was coming of age as a Jew in the 1970’s, egalitarianism – the struggle to endow Jewish women with full ritual equality – was among most important and vital issues facing the Jewish world. I entered rabbinical school with the second class of future female Conservative rabbis. These – some of them became close friends – were pioneers, inspiring leaders in the struggle for Jewish women to be counted, to fully participate in Jewish ritual life, to become leaders. They cared passionately about the struggle for ritual equality because they saw it as both an issue of basic human dignity, but also as the crucial step for ensuring American Judaism’s viability. Our culture, they reminded us, after much struggle, now accepts women doctors, and lawyers, and professors, and politicians. How can we then teach our daughters that they can strive for full dignity in every American endeavor, except Judaism?
Sadly, in my own admittedly limited experience, I see evidence all around that this issue has stopped being important to many Jewish women. An Orthodox synagogue near my house contains many woman doctors and lawyers and other professionals – women who would never put up with secondary status in their professional lives, but don’t seem to mind it at all in their religious lives. Other young Jewish professional women I know send their children to Orthodox schools, where they will learn that, when it comes to basic rituals, women are not equal to men. But more alarming, I know many, many strong, professional Jewish women who agree in theory that men and women should be equal in Jewish ritual life, but participate rarely, or not at all in synagogue rituals, leaving them to men. So, I wonder. Does anyone care about this issue anymore?
I do. For me, it’s not just a question of basic human dignity, it’s the best and most correct reading of classic, historic Jewish sources. But my point is not to argue that now. The women pioneers before me – along with many Jewish men – argued it so well, with great erudition, eloquence and passion. My point now is to wonder where that passion went, how much of it actually filtered down to contemporary American Jewish practice, and not just in certain New York, Boston, and Los Angeles neighborhoods, but all over. Why, to put it bluntly, are the women who seem to care most about Judaism choosing the Jewish movement which least respects their full individuality?
Certainly non-Orthodox Judaism has failed in many respects. The singer who performed at my synagogue was correct that Orthodox synagogues often (but not always) offer livelier spiritual experiences. And the early egalitarian innovations may have moved us in slightly wrong directions. Most women, for whatever reasons, simply don’t like wearing tefilin, and it’s probably not necessary. And there may be some wisdom in separating men and women in prayer (but equally, not with women struggling to see over a balcony mechitzah). But whatever flaws we may find in non-Orthodox Judaism, it’s still the only form of Jewish spirituality that recognizes the full soul equality of Jewish women, the only form of Judaism where women can be religious leaders, where they can enjoy full ritual access, where they can count. As everyone knows, non-Orthodox Judaism is suffering profound attrition lately, with only a bleak future ahead. If Jewish women don’t support it – if we all don’t support it – that would be bad for everyone, but it would, in my opinion, be most tragic for Jewish women.
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Graubart is rabbi at Congregation Beth El in La Jolla.