The Nation is founded upon the Israelite Women

In the Talmud, Rabbi Yehoshua Ben Levi announces several times that women are obligated in a number of festival rituals because "they too were included in that miracle." He says this of the festivals of Purim. Chanuka and Pesach:

1)      "Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said: Women are obligated in Megilla reading, for they, too, were included in that miracle" (Megilla 4a) 

2)      "Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said: Women are obligated in Chanuka candles, for they, too, were included in that miracle" (Shabbat 23a) 

3)      "Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said: Women are obligated in these four cups [of wine on Pesach eve], for they, too, were included in that miracle" (Pesachim 108a)

Rashi and the Tosafot disagree about what it means that they were included in that miracle.

Rashi: As it says (Sota 11b): “Through the merit of the righteous women of that generation they were redeemed.” This is also said regarding Megilla reading, for they were redeemed through Esther, and also regarding Chanuka candles." 

Tosafot: It seems to me that [it means] "even they were in that same uncertainty," implying in that danger.

Rashi's position is about agency - the women were central and instrumental in the redemption of Purim, Chanuka and Pesach. Tosafot's position is more passive, it is that the women were equally under threat.

After a recent Bibliodrama in which I asked participants to experience the events of the enslavement from the women's perspective, I got an insight that puts the women even more at the centre of things than even Rashi suggests. After all, during the years of the enslavement, we do not see the men acting in any fashion at all - there is no leadership, no attempt at resistance. 

The women, on the other hand, take vey active roles as mentioned in the midrashim. They make sure to keep their husbands attracted to them; they work to save the male children. As my bibliodrama participants indicated (and I particularly thank Joanne Yelenik Jackson), they did what women naturally do which is to band together and become as resourceful as possible, and this strengthened them considerably.

I remember when I attended a class called "Women in the Holocaust" with Professor Judy Baumel, the studies showed that women created small social cells with other women, for support, while men did not.

And it seems to me a possibility that this is not just some nice thing, and not even just the Talmud's "they were included in that miracle", but rather that this was precisely what G-d desired to happen as the nation was in formation. The nation would be founded upon women coming together to create strong bands of resourceful human beings who could resist external pressures.

This would later help to mitigate the damage at the Golden Calf [1], and also mean that the human beings who would enter the Promised Land were also, many of them, ones who had been the resourceful ones in Egypt - for an entire generation of men died out in the desert, but the women lived on.

We don't hear much in the Torah itself about these women's actions, but these women were right there, keeping the Israelite nation from falling apart time after time. They are the Jewish people's backbone.

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[1] Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer 45:4-5

…"And Aaron said to them, Break off the golden rings" (Ex. 32:2). The women heard (this), but they were unwilling to give their earrings to their husbands saying: “You desire to make a graven image and a molten image without any power in it to deliver.”

The Holy One, blessed be He, gave the women their reward in this world and in the world to come. What reward did He give them in this world? That they should observe the New Moons more stringently than the men, and what reward will He give them in the world to come? They are destined to be renewed like the New Moons, as it is said, "Who satisfieth thy years with good things; so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle" (Ps. 103:5).

The men saw that the women would not consent to give their earrings to their husbands. What did they do? Until that hour the earrings were (also) in their own ears, after the fashion of the Egyptians, and after the fashion of the Arabs. They broke off their earrings which were in their own ears, and they gave (them) to Aaron, as it is said, "And all the people brake off || the golden rings which were in their ears" (Ex. 32:3). "Which were in the ears of their wives" is not written here, but "which were in their ears.

4 Banim, and Why I am Not Choosing to Become a Rabbi

My truth tends to emerge from my experience.

The traditional assumed evolution of the Arba banim in the Haggadah is from last to first: from the One Who Does Not Know How to Ask, to the Simple, to the Wicked, to the Clever. But my lived experience suggests the reverse direction: according to the order in which they are actually written.

For years I struggled with typecasting as the clever child. I was the intellectual, and to the extent that I could do that successfully, I was given a place in the world. Had I been a man, I would have become a rabbi. Being a woman freed me to take my journey with fewer prying eyes, fewer consequences.

In my late twenties, I carefully began to discover the wicked child in me, questioning the existing order, make changes in my dress and my thinking. Thus I evolved and still do. The wicked child continues to live in me, occasionally racing around and roaring inside; but she has become part of the whole. As I hit middle age, I aim to run with the wolves. That’s still a work in progress.

In my late thirties I discovered meditation. I was taught to approach the world with beginners’ mind, “What’s this?” My journey of rejecting the intellect and embracing my experience and the body became more full and rich. I evolved again. learned to know life biblically rather than in a western mode. I’m still learning how to ask “What’s this?” or “Tell me about you,” and practice listening to the other’s perspective cleanly, without bringing all the baggage and assumptions the wicked and the clever child bring.

Now I am wondering if perhaps the end point is to get to a place where you don’t even ask. You sit in silence, and let the other person tell you what they choose to. At the end of the book of Job, after all of his fierce questions, G-d appears in a whirlwind and gives him no answers, just a full-on experience, opening his eyes to creation. Job stops asking his questions. Something changes; he repents and is silent. He even "forgets" how to ask; he has become an experiencer, who learns simply by taking in the Being of all things.

In one of the most powerful books I’ve ever read, Siddhartha by Herman Hesse, Siddhartha transitions from being a young man, religiously talented, arrogant, (“I can think, I can wait, I can fast”), to a man of the world, rich, a gambler, with a lover, and finally to an old man sitting by the river, ever listening for its message. I believe Herman Hesse would concur that the evolution of the Arba Banim is actually in the reverse direction as I argue, as exemplified in the life of Siddhartha.

Perhaps the above answers why I haven’t chosen to become a rabbi now that the doors have opened to Orthodox women, despite my obviously leanings in that direction. Orthodox ordination would take me in the opposite direction to my life journey. When being a rabbi comes to mean asking “What’s this” – or not asking at all, just listening, just being – then I may consider it. Till then, I am content with my journey.

Why Don't We Just Tell the Story?

For years now, I've been wondering why we don't actually read over the Exodus story at the Seder, considering that this is the essential act of the night?

Why instead do we get the story piecemeal throughout the first part of the Haggada, in fragments, interspersed with all kinds of other random paragraphs containing other things (rabbis sitting in Bnei Brak, four children, ma nishtana etc) which, though interesting, are not the actual story? It's true that the Hagaddah may well be "the story about the story",  or "instructions to tell the story" which is very nice - but what happened to the story itself?

Good questions are like fine wine, they improve with age, they sit and stew until something emerges. 

This year I did my Seder alone due to the coronavirus, so I had the time and possibility to insert whatever I liked into the Seder ritual.  I told myself aloud the story of the Exodus, to see how it felt to do so (it felt ok, but a bit bare). Afterwards, as I was reading the Haggada, I noticed with greater clarity the pieces of the story that do appear, scattered throughout. 

And a sudden insight arose for me. Our life stories do not come linearly and clearly, with each day building upon the previous one in a way where we see how it fits in. Instead, our narratives develop in a windy and unclear way, with detours, seemingly irrelevant passages, obscure incidents. It is only when we look back from much further down the line that we can actually make our story coherent, and tell it in a way that it has a start and a middle (and perhaps an end.)

Right now, for example, we are in the middle of the coronavirus story. We are able to tell the beginning, but as we are still very much in the middle, we only have access to fragments of the ongoing plot, and certainly no clue about the end.

The Haggada is a reflection of the messiness of how our stories develop. As such, it holds a more profound message than a straight up story told directly would.

So I FINALLY have an answer that speaks to me. Ahh, that feels good.

Right to the Edge

In the narrative of the Akeda, the binding of Isaac, we see that God lets Abraham arrive at the very moment when he is about to cut his son's throat, before sending an angel to command him to stop:

10. And Abraham stretched out his hand, and took the knife to slay his son.
11. And the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham; and he said, Here am I.
12. And he said, Lay not your hand upon the lad, nor do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, seeing that you did not withheld your son, your only son from me.

Why wait until the very last moment? A couple of possible reasons present themselves.
1) In order to verify that he actually meant to go through with it, so it would be as if he had done it, and shown the dedication and obedience G-d wanted.
Or
2) In order to have Abraham and Isaac undergo the most powerful and transformative experience possible, without actually going through the act of father sacrificing son.

Which one of the above is true would depend on the divine purpose of the Akeda. Perhaps both are true.

But what strikes me most, right now, is the demand from Abraham to pull back at the very last second. It is not at all easy to stop an action when the momentum is already in place. Yet Judaism sometimes demands precisely that.

A vivid example is on the wedding night. After merely one conjugal act, in the passionate heart of their first night together as a couple, the groom and his bride must part because she has become impure (this is assuming she was a virgin):

"Following the expenditures [of the wedding], he immediately goes in and has relations with her. But when she says to him, 'I saw [blood] like a red lily,' he immediately withdraws from her. Who prevents him from drawing close to her? What iron wall or pillar stands between them? What snake bit him, what scorpion stung him so that he does not approach her? [It is] the words of the Torah, which are as soft as a lily, as the verse states: 'You shall not approach a woman in the impurity of her menstrual flow.'" (Shir Ha-shirim Rabba 7:3)

As in the Akeda, Judaism sometimes has a way of bringing you to the very edge of something and then requiring you not to cross the line.
People have a tendency to keep away from cliff edges and from edges of all sorts, just in case one might fall off them. This is the reason why in keeping halacha, many are stringent and keep the law more strictly than necessary, fearing that if they walk along the very edge of what is allowed, they will slip over it.  

And yet, Judaism will not allow wholesale stringency and keeping far away from those liminalities, those risky boundaries. It challenges its adherents to come close, very close, yet not cross. "You can do this," it admonishes. "Be mature, be self-disciplined, do it."

A prime example is matzah, unleavened bread. Matzah, once it passes 18 minutes of exposure to moisture becomes bread, the food absolutely forbidden on Pesach. Were matzah not commanded, no one would eat it, for it is too risky that it might pass the forbidden 18 minute boundary. Yet the Torah demands that it is matzah of all foods that we eat on Pesach.

The Torah wants us to walk on the (right side of the) wild side, to stand in the risky zone, and to do it successfully.


I also think of how the rabbis commanded us to light two candles before Shabbat came in. This is also a risky custom, for lighting of fire is completley prohibited on Shabbat, from the Torah. If the person lights a minute after Shabbat comes in, instead of doing an admirable act, they have committed a prohibition. So the rabbis did their best to put a fence around this halacha, by adding "tosefet Shabbat", 20 or 40 minutes.

In the olden days,  the candles would have to be lit anyway to create llight in the house, so the custom caused them to be lit before Shabbat, which was good. But today, we light these flames solely because of the rabbinically instigated action.

And in fact I know people do light late, including people who aren't Shabbat observant but like the custom. So it really IS a risky proposition. That is why the calendar left by the Jerusalem municipality's religious department in my mailbox says in huge bold letters beneath lighting times: REMEMBER TO LIGHT ON TIME, FOR IT IS PROHIBITED TO BURN FIRE ON SHABBAT!)

And yet the rabbis did not just take the safe route and say, "You know what, never mind, you don't have to light candles. Just pretend, or make the blessing on an electric light." They won't allow us to be wholesale "machmir" and avoid risk always, even if it does say אשרי אדם מפחד תמיד.

Go rabbis!

The Seder's Wise Child - Missing the Point?

Of the four children at the seder, the answer to the wise child is the only one not taken from the biblical verses. Instead, we teach this child a law, that

one does not eat anything after the Pesach sacrifice (afikoman).

While we hold the oral law in high esteem, the fact remains that for whatever reason (and many reasons are offered for this anomaly), this child is set apart from the other three, in that the educational words explicitly laid out by the Torah itself are not given over to this child. The child is willy-nilly “poresh min hatzibbur”, separated out from the community of children and deprived of the original words of the Torah.

Could this in some subtle fashion result from the fact that this child is not whole-hearted (is not tam)? is too involved with his or her own intellect, the minutiae or casuistry, to be listening to the other children’s questions with any interest, due to undervaluing the place of fresh and innocent questions? Does this child perhaps not want to be lumped with the others, and is trying very hard to talk on an adult level – and has therefore forefeited a place with the children, the central feature of the seder, and the biblical verses given to them as a gift?

Ultimately, the child is included in the four children, of course, but we cannot but notice this fact setting him or her apart.

My advice would be, do not let the wise child grow up too quickly. Help these children stay connected to their genuine childish nature and educate them not to look down on the other children for fear of missing Gd’s revelation in the verses, that comes marked with a big sign marked “CHILDREN ONLY”.