The Role of Men in Orthodoxy
Near my home in Jerusalem is a rather famous congregation called Shira Chadasha. It is famous because it is one of only a handful of synagogues in the entire world which is "Orthodox egalitarian," that is, they take the most liberal existing opinion by Orthodox halachists on the matter of how women may participate in prayer services, and allow women to engage as much as possible. In these congregations, sometimes called "partnership minyans," women are not counted as part of the necessary quorum, nor are they allowed to lead every part of the service, but they do lead some parts of the service and read publicly from the Torah.
As much as I understand, and often share, the motivation for women to join such a congregation, I've often wondered: What is in it for the men?
Enter The Men's Section: Orthodox Jewish Men in an Egalitarian World, by a casual acquaintance of mine, Elana Maryles Sztokman (disclosure: She gave me a copy so that people in Jerusalem who can't afford to buy a copy will be able to borrow it from me – and indeed, it is now available for loan!). Sztokman interviewed 54 men from around the world, of a variety of ages and backgrounds, who go regularly to partnership minyans. She held focus groups, and long individual conversations – and observed closely at her own partnership synagogue, Darchei Noam in Modiin.
When she started, she thought she would find a cohort of feminist men. Instead, what she found was a complex kaleidoscope of pressures, ideals, longings, and fears that both drive men away from mainstream Orthodox congregations and also limit the amount of change they are willing to implement in a partnership one.
The answer to my question – what is in it for the men? – is complicated, and of course "men," even men in a subculture of a subculture of a subculture, are never monolithic as a group – or consistent as individuals. Some want to correct the anti-feminist injustices of mainstream minyanim. Some are correcting the stultification of the halachic process. Some – perhaps the most feminist – are there because their wives and children like it better. And some perceive their partnership minyan as more open and welcoming than shules that enforce what Sztokman calls the "Be an Orthodox Man Box"—the box in which a man must be perfectly on time, layn perfectly, be perfectly pious and deeply learned, wear the right kippah, put on tefillin every day, be heterosexual and married and have children, and be a good provider, and be "serious" and "committed" and "not a hafifnik." In a place where it is more OK to be a woman, certainly it is OK to be a different type of man.
It all reminded me of the time that I brought two non-Jewish, American instructors to Israel to teach a weekend self-empowerment course I'd enjoyed in the States. Neither had ever been to Israel, and one had never before taught a course in which most of the students were Orthodox. Toward the end of the two days, I asked him what he thought of our community. I thought he might express confusion about some of our laws, or about how covered-up the women were, or how much we tended to argue with the instructors – far more than people from other cultures.
But what he said was "I'm struck by how hard the men are working to get it right."
Being a "good" man in any culture – whatever it means from place to place – is harder than being a "bad" man, regardless of whether it is "harder" or "easier" than being a woman. But being a good Orthodox man –irrespective of the challenges associated with being an Orthodox woman – carries huge responsibilities in terms of commitments – to praying on time, to a wife and kids, to a stable job, to Jewish law, to learning.
In a world that allows different voices – women's voices – men sometimes feel that a partnership minyan is a place where they can "break the box" and be a different kind of man, one who is welcoming, and does not "bark" when the Torah reader makes a mistake, and who is, in subtle ways, more free.
Sztokman doesn't address it too much, but that last point feeds right into the reasons that many Orthodox people "won't set foot" in a place like Shira Chadasha (and I admit I am among those who have never prayed there, for reasons not always clear to myself and not for me to try to unthread in a blog post). The same forces that make it more "welcoming" and "outside the box" can also make it more "hafifnik" – not serious. If to be Orthodox is, by commonly accepted definition, to be a "serious" and "committed" person, then the man who does not go to a mainstream synagogue because he feels there are things more important than perfect renderings of complicated rituals, or because he did not live up to the social and halachic expectations in a mainstream Orthodox synagogue, is, by definition, not Orthodox – and the partnership minyan, as a place where such a person would feel comfortable, is not Orthodox either. If it is a place for men who are low on the Orthodox hierarchy, how Orthodox can it be?
Sztokman does address the tensions within partnership minyanim that stem from that very problem. Remember, some men are there despite the fact that they were high on the mainstream Orthodox hierarchy, for reasons having to do with their views on the halachic process; they are there neither to feel more comfortable nor to help women, but to demonstrate their beliefs of what halacha is. Since the members have different reasons for being there and different visions of what the congregation is all about, conflicts often arise, such as one notable case in which some members of Darchei Noam insisted that they not describe themselves in their mission statement as "halachik," because if they use the term "halachik" rather than "Orthodox," they will be seen by Orthodox people as – wait for it – non-halachik. (Sztokman does not appear to understand this, but every Orthodox person I told about it said "they are right.'") An important force in many partnership congregations is the fear of being labeled "Conservative" or "Reform," and Sztokman documents cases in which congregants, men and women alike, put the brakes on ritual changes that might put them outside the Orthodox "camp," whether they believed the changes had halachic relevancy or not.
There are men who take their "committed and serious" ideals from mainstream synagogues and bring them along to the partnership minyan; they look down on the men who are less meticulous – and even more so on the women, who are not "properly" trained to read from the Torah, do not have a nussach, often come late, do not come at all because they are taking care of the children . . . They are the guardians, on one hand, of the "Orthodox" part of "Orthodox egalitarian," but have not considered all the external factors – the non-halachic realities, if you will – of matters such as childcare, or the cultural reasons that Orthodox women have become conditioned to arrive late to services (such as the fact that even in partnership minyanim, they do not "count" and therefore their presence is optional). Being uninterested in the ways that women's participation makes the group more diverse and welcoming in general – for men, too – some of the men are more focused, and troubled by, the danger of being perceived as "not serious" or Conservative – which, in some communities, is the same thing.
Sztokman's book gave me a lot to think about vis-à-vis Orthodoxy, as well as vis-à-vis my own sense of gender identity. Reading her book raised fascinating questions for me about what it means to me to be a Jewish woman in the Orthodox community, and the sort of Orthodoxy I like and don't like, and the qualities that I find attractive or expected in men – and why. I highly recommend the book for anyone interested in religious issues or gender issues; the forces at play in partnership synagogues extend far beyond these niche communities, tugging at the definitions of masculinity for men who live in a world populated by women, too.
Posted by Sarah at 10:52 PM 4 comments:
Building Hospitals Out of Tears
(Note: readers who use Internet Explorer are reporting problems with my formatting. In Firefox the post is fine.)
I've always been fascinated by Henrietta Szold, the famous – and never-married – woman who in 1912 founded the Hadassah organization. Szold's efforts to bring sound medical care and education to Israel probably saved thousands of lives during her lifetime. By now, through the Hadassah medical centers, she has saved probably hundreds of thousands, if not millions.
But reading Irving Fineman's biography of Szold, Woman of Valor, made me realize that Szold's greatness runs far further than the success of Hadassah. It introduced me to her other achievements, and to the fact that she might have died in obscurity if a famous Talmudist at the Jewish Theological Seminary hadn't broken Henrietta Szold's heart.
Today is the 66th anniversary of Henrietta Szold's death, and I want to mark the occasion by filling in some information you won't find on Wikipedia about her.
Henrietta Szold's entire life (which started in 1860) was largely shaped by the fact that her father, Rabbi Benjamin Szold, was a prominent member of the American Jewish literati of the time; a devoutly observant Jew; and a warm, loving father who made Henrietta feel that she was "better than seven sons" when in fact she was the oldest of eight girls.
It was because of him that Henrietta spoke perfect German and was active in the vibrant German-American Jewish community of Baltimore. It was with him that Henrietta studied German poetry and classical Jewish texts, and because of him that Henrietta was used to hobnobbing with notable members of the American Jewish community of the time; Marcus Jastrow and Alexander Kohut were family friends. He nurtured her intellectual curiosity, discussed his writings with her (and later, her writing), and encouraged her to be socially, politically, and religiously thoughtful and active.
Did you know that Henrietta Szold founded the first night school for Russian-Jewish immigrants? In the wake of mass immigration to America following a series of pogroms, she saw a need to help her fellow Jews gain marketable skills and English fluency. But they were available only in the evenings, when their daytime labor jobs were done. So, during the day Szold taught at a girls' school, and in the evenings and on weekends she taught English to Russian men, women and children. When her classes became too large, she recruited other teachers, raised funds for her school, and acted as administrator.
She cared deeply for "her" immigrants, whom many Western Jews considered to be "uncouth," and the anti-Semitism from which they had fled gave Szold much food for thought. Over time, she became increasingly involved in Jewish causes, did writing and translation for the new Jewish Publication Society, and became active in the new Zionist movement. She developed a reputation as an inspiring public speaker and used that skill to raise funds for Jewish and Zionist causes. In 1898, she became the only woman to be elected to the executive committee of the Federation of American Zionists.
By now Henrietta was well into her thirties and living in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of New York, where she had moved with her beloved mother and one sister after the death of Rabbi Szold. Her social life revolved around the synagogue at the Jewish Theological Seminary, and she was employed by the Jewish Publication Society while working furiously for Zionist causes on the side.
Later, Szold would hypothesize in her diary that she'd never married because no one ever could live up to her father. It is possible, too, that she was loathe to settle down and take care of a home and a man when, as a spinster, she could stay busy devoting her enormous intellectual gifts, organizational abilities, and speaking skills to the Jewish community.
But when Rabbi Louis Ginzberg joined the JTS faculty in 1903, everything changed. To say that Henrietta was smitten would not be an overstatement. He was intellectual, elegant, well-spoken, handsome – he was someone that Henrietta Szold could admire. Almost immediately her world started revolving around him – around translating his work from German to English, around sitting in on his classes, around listening to him talk for hours during their weekly walks on Riverside Drive.
The dynamics of their relationship are – and were then, it appears – open to interpretation. And here is where we find Henrietta Szold at her most human. How many among us cannot sympathize with her confusion?
According to her diary – in which many dozens, perhaps hundreds, of pages were devoted to Ginzberg, who almost immediately became an important figure in the Conservative movement – she knew it was improbable that Ginzberg loved her, or ever could love her; she was 13 years his senior, and who had ever heard of such an age difference in a couple? Nevertheless she analyzed the nuances of every word he said to her, every letter he sent her when he traveled abroad, every Shabbat meal he spent with her and her mother, waiting, hoping for him to "declare himself."
Certainly it was impossible that she should say anything first. Such a thing would not be seemly for a woman. No, she must wait for him to make up his mind about her, or for his feelings to change, or for him to gather up the courage to propose. And if, sometimes, he traveled but did not send her letters, and if he never thanked her for her help with his work, surely it was because he saw her as such an intimate and deep love that verbalizing his feelings was not always necessary.
Later, Ginzberg would tell those closest to him that in the four years that he waited for Szold after Shabbat services so that they could walk and talk by the Hudson River, he never realized that they were anything more than friends and intellectual equals. Perhaps he saw her as sexless. Perhaps he assumed that a relationship with such an older woman was so out of the question that surely no one, especially not a person as reasonable and intelligent as Henrietta, would ever consider such an outrageous idea. Maybe he really did think that her willingness to spend hours and hours translating his work for free and her willingness to be seen walking with him weekly were acts of friendship and nothing more, even when such weekly walks, at that time, were a sure sign of courtship.
Later, Szold would discover that JTS gossip had been divided about her; some could see clearly that she loved Ginzberg and were wondering what he was waiting for, but others felt that he was pursuing her, and that her Victorian reticence indicated that she was rebuffing him.
In 1908, Ginzberg, then thirty-five, traveled to Europe, and when he returned to New York he came to call at the Szold home. "Can we go into the other room?" he asked Henrietta. "I have something to tell you."
For a moment she was dizzy with anticipation, for surely he was about to declare himself at last. She led him into her room, and as soon as she closed the door, he said "You will be surprised to hear that I am engaged." His back was to her; she had a moment to compose herself before he turned around, to pray for the strength not to cry, though in the ensuing conversation, in which she spoke calmly, evenly, rationally, she felt she might crumple to the floor. His fiancée was 22 years old; he'd met her three times before proposing.
The trauma of Ginzberg's engagement was the spark that ignited Szold's subsequent journey into the pages of history. It was to get Henrietta away from New York – to give her a change of scenery – that Mama Szold insisted they take a trip together to Palestine. And it was in Palestine that Szold saw with her own eyes the deplorable hygiene and almost nonexistent healthcare in the Jewish settlements. The Zionist men of the world, she felt, were focused on politics and geography and strategy; it would take women to make sure the Yishuv was clean, and orderly, and safe.
After founding Hadassah and traveling the United States to raise money for it, Szold eventually moved permanently to Palestine, where for a short time she herself acted as head administrator of the Hadassah health organization. Right through her 70s and 80s she kept working, not only for Hadassah but for the Youth Aliyah movement, which brought hundreds of young European Jews to Palestine before the outbreak of the Holocaust. (Her work for Youth Aliyah deserves its own section on Wikipedia; unbelievably, it's not even mentioned.) Szold died in 1945.
Henrietta Szold is remembered now for the lives she saved, the organization she started, the icon she became of Jewish womanhood. But, personally, I love the story of Henrietta Szold because it goes to show that even those of us who engage in romantic follies, even those among us who fall in love with our friends and create fantasy worlds in our minds – finding meaning where there is no meaning to be found – even we fools can change the world.
Posted by Sarah at 10:28 PM No comments:
Building Hospitals Out of Tears (Note: readers ...