Category Archives: Not remaining silent

Korach: Collective Responsibility

Posted on by
Reply

כל ישראל ערבים זה בזה

“And they [Moses and Aaron] fell on their faces and said, “God, Master of the Spirits of all flesh, shall one man sin and you cast your wrath upon the entire congregation?”   (Numbers 16:21)

The issue of Collective Punishment remains with us as a modern problem and it is no surprise that rabbinic tradition builds arguments to try to dissect and clarify the issues. Call up the question on a search engine and the chances are you will find emotive responses citing the biblical verses of the children paying for the sins of the father – for example Deut. 5:9 “You shall not bow down to nor worship other gods; for I, the Eternal your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me..”. or maybe citing the fate of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah – though of course a closer look at such texts shows that they do not in fact suggest collective punishment, and one can equally find biblical texts such as Deuteronomy 24:16: “Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their fathers; each is to die for his own sin.” Or Jeremiah 31:29-31 “In those days people will no longer say, ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’ Instead, everyone will die for his own sin; whoever eats sour grapes–his own teeth will be set on edge” or Ezekiel 18:20: “The soul who sins is the one who will die. The son will not share the guilt of the father, nor will the father share the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous person will be credited to them, and the wickedness of the wicked will be charged against them. 

The story of Sodom and Gomorrah is in fact a story AGAINST collective punishment – indeed Moses bargains God down from destroying them and destroying the righteous with the wicked, and only when it becomes clear that there are no righteous people at all, beyond Lot and his family (who are warned to leave before the destruction) is the fate of these cities sealed.

 There is no driver towards collective punishment in Judaism – rather the reverse is true in our texts as God is challenged on a number of occasions when it looks like divine punishment will include the innocent alongside the perpetrators – including the verse in our portion. There is no impetus  towards collective punishment but some rabbis – including Maimonides, make the case for collective responsibility, something that becomes enshrined in Jewish Law in the phrase “Col Yisrael arevim zeh ba’zeh” (B.Talmud Shevuot 39a) – All Jews are accountable each for the other. In other words, we have a responsibility to each other, and an obligation to make sure that we all behave properly in the world. If not, then we are guilty of passively colluding with behaviour that is immoral, that we leave unchallenged behaviour we know to be wrong. This is, in many ways, the origin of the periodic “Not in my name” protests to Government – we do not want to be passive, nor to have people believe that we accede to what is done by our elected leaders.

The Code of Hammurabi (c1700 BCE) was the first to bring in to a legal framework the requirement that the punishment should fit the crime, and the bible takes much of that moral world view – including the famous phrase of lex talionis “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” – treated as meaning there should be proportionate punishment rather than a collective retribution. The Talmud puts it rather more fully in tractate Shabbat 54b “Whoever can prevent his household from committing a sin but does not, is responsible [lit seized] for the sins of his household; if he can prevent the people of his city, he is responsible [lit seized] for the sins of his city; if the whole world, he is responsible [lit seized] for the sins of the whole world.”

 The rabbis who taught this are saying that we have a responsibility to each other, and that this responsibility is on a number of levels of propinquity and possibility. Failing to prevent a wrongdoing is not on the same level as actually committing the act oneself. Not stopping someone with whom we have a relationship is not the same as not stopping someone who is unknown to us and at a distance from us. The word “seized” which I have translated as “responsible” does not imply being something to be tried in a court of law, but is more about having a moral relationship to the action, something between ourselves and God rather than between ourselves and humankind.

 We share a Collective Responsibility – among family bonds or amongst the Jewish people, among fellow citizens under shared government, or as human beings who have stewardship of the world.  Jewish teaching is clear that we are not isolated from each other: To use the words of John Donne “All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated…As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all:….No man is an island, entire of itself…any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

 The text of this parashah rings clearly as a bell for us: “And they fell on their faces and said, God, Master of the Spirits of all flesh, shall one man sin and you cast your wrath upon the entire congregation?” 16:21. Collective punishment is not acceptable in any circumstance, but collective responsibility is something for us all to take note of, and to do.

 

Tenth of Tevet – the day of remembering those who died in the Shoah

Posted on by
Reply

Today is the tenth of Tevet, an historic day of mourning for the Jewish people for it is the date on which in 588 BCE Nebuchadnezzar responded to King Zedekiah’s rebellion and besieged the city of Jerusalem (2Kings 25:1-2), and bible also records that the word of God came to Ezekiel telling him “”O mortal, write for yourself the name of this day, this exact day; for this very day the king of Babylon has laid siege to Jerusalem”  (Ezekiel 24: 2).  Exile to Babylon became certain from this date, even though the city held out for some time, falling three years later when on 17th Tammuz the city walls were breached and three weeks after that on the 9th Av the Temple was destroyed. By the time of Zechariah (c520 BCE) the custom of fasting on this day was established.

While this fast was originally a response to the tragedy of the destruction of the Temple and the exile of the Jewish people from the Land of Israel for seventy years, it was never seen as only the commemoration of an historic response, but also a response to the suffering of the people. Because of this, and because of the Talmudic dictum that “Good things come to pass on an auspicious day, Bad things come to pass on an unlucky day” (Ta’anit 29a), the tenth of Tevet became seen as an appropriate day on which to commemorate all who died in the Shoah, particularly all those whose date of death was unknown. In 1949 the Israeli Chief Rabbinate declared that “the day on which the first churban (destruction) commenced should become a memorial day also for the last churban,” and two years later this became the official date for the yahrzeit of those who have no recorded date of death.

Yet the Government of Israel chose a different date to commemorate the events of the Shoah, “Yom Ha’Zikaron le Shoah ve la’Gevurah” The Day of Remembering the Shoah and Heroism was passed in Israeli law in 1953 and was originally chosen to be observed on the 14th Nisan, the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising – clearly the Gevurah, the Heroism, was to be a major component of the observing of this day, a deliberate and explicit way to counter the “lambs to the slaughter” accusations of the victimhood of the Jewish people.

There were a number of problems with this date – the month of Nisan is traditionally a month of joy, associated with redemption and Pesach, and to hold a day of mourning in it cut across customs and norms. Particularly, the 14th Nisan is just before Seder night and so the date was moved to the 27th Nisan, which means that it is now observed the week before Yom ha’Atzma’ut, Israeli Independence Day.

And this is where I become uncomfortable. I have always found the link of a week between Yom HaShoah to Yom Ha’Atzma’ut means that we link the two dates in an improper way. The yearning by the Jewish people for their own land once more is millennia old. The practical developments for this to happen began many years before the Shoah, with the work of the Zionist movement which grew out of growing anti-Semitism in post enlightenment Europe. While the events of the Shoah may or may not have had an effect on the speed the establishment of the State of Israel, it does not rest fundamentally upon it – the ties between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel are deeper, longer, and far more complex than it being a response out of the guilt of Europe to solve the “Jewish Question”.  The linkage between the Shoah and the State of Israel has also led to a corrupted narrative that the Jews of the Diaspora were by definition weak and helpless, negating the rich traditions of learning, art, science and being of the Jews who lived in Europe for so many generations.

To have this date on the tenth of Tevet rather than in Nisan would not only realign our observance to traditional timing, it would mean that we would remember all those who died in the Shoah the week after finishing celebrating Chanukah, a festival that grew out of militaristic triumph and that was reinterpreted by rabbinic tradition with the addition of a miracle to become a religious reminder that even in dark times God is with us. To remember our unknown dead, and all those who died at the hands of a great power bent on destroying us just one week after we celebrate the victory of those who fought a great power bent on destroying the particularity of the Jewish people would give us a better sense of perspective. We would be reminded that no battle is ever won for all time and we need to remain aware of the need to combat evil wherever we find it;, that however clever our military strategies we also need to be aware of the reason for our continued existence – that we are a people of God whose work is to increase holiness in the world, just as we increase the level of holiness through the days of Chanukah.  

Mikketz

Posted on by
Reply

“I have dreamed a dream and there is none that can interpret it”

 How does Pharaoh know that his magicians are not giving him satisfactory answers to his dream, but that Joseph’s interpretation is the correct one?   What tells him to discard the professional responses in favour of the account from a young unknown with his  vision and clarity of purpose?  For Pharaoh recognises Joseph’s analysis as true, his connection with God as unparalleled, and his ability to translate the dreams into achievement invigorating.  Taken hastily from his prison, Joseph is elevated to ruler of Pharaoh’s household because he has the ability to translate insight into action.

Parashat Mikketz is always read on the Shabbat in Chanukah, the festival of rededication of the Temple when we remember the Maccabees who fought for the right to worship in their own way. And while it is called a festival of lights, it is more accurately a festival of rights, as we commemorate the struggle of a people to freely express their religious and cultural identity and openly be themselves in a world with different values and hatred of otherness. 

As we read Pharaoh’s words to Joseph – “Halom Halamti” – I have dreamed a dream – we are reminded of that other formulation – Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream”  that underpinned the American Civil Rights movement in the last century. The turning of a dream into a vision, by using it as a springboard to change the way the world works is a theme of both the festival and the parasha. In both cases the passionate outsider sees clearly what must be done, in both cases the status quo is forced to change.

Pharaoh must have known all along the meaning of his dream, to have rejected the interpretations of his ministers. Dreams are not especially helpful as insight, but only as a guide to action.  He needed the energy of vision to come along to help him transform the dream to reality. We too hug our dreams close, knowing what we should be advocating and enabling but all too often choosing passivity rather than activism.  So when will we begin to turn the dreams we dream into practical visions for the future?

 

How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world.

Posted on by
1

As human beings we are programmed not to understand our own mortality. Few of us believe it to be true; most of us shy away from thinking about it for more than a few moments at any one time. Whenever I am privileged to be part of someone’s final journey I am reminded that I too will have to take this path, and yet somehow the knowledge does not penetrate too deeply for very long. As is traditional in Judaism, we have a powerful focus on life, on what we do in this world. In Pirkei Avot (4:21) Rabbi Jacob (2nd Century CE) describes this world as “a corridor to the world beyond.” We prepare ourselves in this world so as to be in good order to appear before God.

What does the preparation look like? One theme I have come to recognize is that what we do in this world is hugely important, yet it doesn’t always look important. As I write the funeral eulogy for people I see that sometimes a quietly lived life, loving others and caring for them has had extraordinary impact on a small corner of the world. Sometimes working at a particular profession has a powerful long lasting effect  – healing the sick, teaching skills, creating gardens…. Sometimes there have been numerous honours bestowed by the world, but no family or good friends who care enough to come to mourn. What I have learned is that a life well lived can look different depending on who has lived it, but there is always an impression of that life left on the universe when it has been lived fully.

When Dylan Thomas advised us to “not go gentle into that good night”,  he thinks in part of those wise people who, “because their words had forked no lightning, they/ Do not go gentle into that good night”.

I have been privileged to meet many people whose words have, indeed, forked lightning – albeit in a gentle and undramatic way. And one of these is my own sister, who, while on chemotherapy for breast cancer some 16 years ago, started a fundraising quiz which has now raised over 80 thousand pounds. Initially the money was for equipment for her local hospital that would mean that other women would not have to have so intrusive a treatment as she herself suffered, later the money was directed to the Macmillan cancer charity.

She had just turned 40, had started a new and demanding job, and her two children were both under ten when the diagnosis came out of the blue and her world collapsed and she was parachuted into that parallel universe that is the domain of the seriously ill. As she surfaced through what felt to her like “the cold waters of fear, anxiety and confusion” she coped by deciding to focus on doing something that would make things easier for the women coming after her, and to distract herself and set her mind down a different path than fear for the future, she devised a cryptic quiz that she would sell to family and friends. The quiz, selling for £2 a copy, took on a life of its own, with its recipients selling it on to their family and friends, and her target of £500 was surpassed four fold.

Every year after that she, her husband and an old school friend created, sold, marked, the new quiz. It has now become a fixture in many homes, something to do over the Christmas period, with the possibility of a small prize to the winners. Hundreds of people now contact her for a copy of the quiz, a JustGiving page allows people to donate and many offer more than the requested £2.

When I asked her about it recently, she wrote to me “Facing your own mortality head on and so bluntly, actually sharpens your thinking about what is important once you do come up for breath.  It also makes you realise how short a time we are on this world anyway – cancer or not.”

So – if you want to know more and would like to take part in this year’s quiz (with a botanical theme), please e mail her at Joycerothschild2@hotmail.co.uk or contact me via the blog and you too can take your part in one of the myriad small and unsung actions that go on across the world and leave a definite  and positive mark on the world.

also see http://www.solihullnews.net/news/local-news/solihull-woman-queen-quizzes-6740209

Kristallnacht. November 9th – 10th 1938

Posted on by
1

“The November Pogrom in Baden-Baden.’

 The events of 10.11.1938 in Baden-Baden were described by Arthur Flehinger, a teacher at the Hohenbaden Gymnasium, who subsequently came to Bradford, Yorkshire,  in a report he wrote in 1955: (In Stadtarchiv Baden-Baden 05-02/015). Translated by Rabbi Walter Rothschild.Image

“Until the infamous 10th November 1938 Baden-Baden remained largely sheltered from the worst excesses of the Nazis. This was not because anyone wanted to grant the Jews of the Spa town any especial privileges, but from purely egoistic reasons, because the Spa had strong international connections which had to be maintained; It was, as one said, Germany’s Visiting Card. Any major disruption of the inner peace would have had as an effect a reduction in the number of visitors from abroad and therefore a reduction in foreign currency takings, and the Nazis needed money and more money. Of course all the Nazi Orders (fingerprinting, Jewish forenames etc.) were imposed just as strongly as elsewhere. However, the foreign tourists would not notice any of this. But whereas foreign newspapers were as good as invisible in other cities, in Baden-Baden one could read ‘The Times’ almost until the end, and it was a particular irony of fate that only one day after the Order regarding Jewish forenames was promulgated that the ‘Times’ published an article stating that ‘Sara’ meant something like ‘Duchess’ and that ‘Israel’ meant ‘one who argues with God.’

From Summer 1937 onwards it was noticeable that a different wind was blowing also in Baden-Baden, and that the Nazi poison was eating its way also into the otherwise relatively calm town. The lawn behind the Kurhaus offices was prohibited to Jews. The owner of the formerly famous hotel Holländischer Hof decorated the entrance to his restaurant with the conspicuous lettering “Dogs and Jews Forbidden.’ In the Jewish shops, insofar as these still existed, the Party Members were ever-more ruder and saw it as their responsibility to report to the Party anyone who still had the courage to enter a Jewish business…..

The 10th. November ended any remaining hesitations and illusions of calm, and Baden-Baden also experienced its Nazi ‘Razzia’.

At 7 in the morning a Policeman appeared at our house in the Prinz-Weimar-Strasse 10 and ordered me to accompany him to the Police Station. Since I had been teaching at the Baden-Baden Gymnasium for many years I was known by both young and old and I observed the policeman‘s own embarrassment. It seemed pointless however to enter into any discussion with him and so I walked along with him… maintaining my calm appearance. In the town at this hour it was of course still quiet. If one saw anyone else in the street, it was another victim under police escort. The number of poor enforced early-risers grew, the closer we were to the Police Station. Although in normal times the Season at Baden-Baden would be over in November, there were still some Jews staying in those hotels which were still avaailable to them. Others had settled here since 1933, since this town seemed like an Eldorado compared to the places they had lived in until then.

In front of the Police Station the infamous Supervisor had posted himself like a sort of Gessler and demanded that everyone who passed him had to take off their hat. It would have been pure madness to refuse. About fifty victims were already gathered at the Police Station and more came continuously to join us. The Police were all in their Gala uniforms. It was a Day of Triumph of the Strong over the Weak, and at the same time a dramatisation of Lafontaine’s fable ‘The Wolf and the Lamb.’ Everything was carefully minuted, with German accuracy and efficiency.

Around 10am we were led into the courtyard and here had to assemble ourselves in rows. The fuss with which the vermin of the Third Reich ran around indicated some special sort of Aktion was under way. Around midday the gate was opened, and the column of defenceless men marched off, heavily guarded right and left, and forced to process through the streets of the town. It seemed they had waited until midday to be sure of a crowd of observers. But to the honour of the Baden-Badeners let it be said that the majority of them refused to let themselves be seen on the street. What those who were observing could see, was mere humiliation. There were three teachers who were not ashamed to be seen on the street. One of them, Herr Dr. Mampell, merely let the column pass by him; Whereas another, the Director of the Volkschule, Herr Hugo Müller and his friend Herr Schmidt had gathered a number of young pupils, so that they could call out ‘Juda Verrecke!’ Whether this demonstration really cheered up the spectators is something I strongly doubt. I saw people who were weeping behind their curtains. One of the decent Baden-Badeners is reported to have said: ‘What I saw was not a Christ figure, but a whole column of Christ figures; With heads raised, and not bowed down by any sense of guilt did they march….’

The column neared the Synagogue, where the upper steps of the staircase outside were already filled with a mixed crowd with and without uniform. That was a real running the gauntlet; One had to pass by the mob, and they made sure to howl insults as the sorry procession passed. I myself looked people directly in the eye all the way along the procession and as we reached the top steps someone called down, “Don’t look so cheeky, Professor.’ That was actually less an insult as more a confession of their own weakness and fear.

In Dachau also later I observed that the officials couldn’t stand being stared right through. The mob was less merciful with my friend Dr. Hauser – he was a busy and much-respected lawyer in Baden-Baden, later on he and his wife were taken to Southern France, then to Celle and from there to the death chambers in Auschwitz. The poor fellow got many punches from those who claimed the right to use their fists, and I saw the pitiful chap later fallen onto a tallit that the Nazis had spread out on the floor, so that we had to walk over it.

In the synagogue everything had been turned upside down. The holy floor of the architecturally-so-beautiful Temple had been defiled by vile hands. The House of God had been turned into a playground for black, uniformed hordes. I saw how people were busy upstairs in the Women’s Gallery running to and fro…. These were not Baden-Badener. For the 10th. November the authorities had brought in SS men from neighbouring towns, that is people who were not restricted by even a faint spark of humanity and were therefore in a position to carry out their vile work without any sense of disturbance…..

Suddenly a rude, fat voice called out ‘You will now sing the Horst Wessel Lied’. It was sung in a way that anyone could have expected, and so we had to ‘sing’ it again a second time. So for a second time we had to struggle through their ‘National Hymn’. Then I was called to go up to the Almemor and I was given a passage from ‘Mein Kampf’ to read. In the circumstances a refusal would have only endangered my life and that of my fellow sufferers. So I said, ‘I have received the order to read the following’, and I read quietly enough. Indeed, so quietly that the SS man standing behind me gave me several blows to my neck. Those who, after me, also had to read samples of this fine literary cookbook of the Nazis suffered similarly. Then there was a pause. We were in no way allowed to use the toilets, but had to do what we had to do in the courtyard, with our faces to the wall of the synagogue, and in the meantime received kicks from behind.

From the synagogue we then had to go to the Hotel Central opposite. The hotel owner, Herr Lieblich, who had of course not been warned in advance of the pleasant programme for the day, had suddenly to conjure up food for about 70 people. He managed to achieve this in a masterful fashion. That we managed to get anything at all to swallow down was really a miracle….

There was then a great mystery concerning our future destiny. No-one seemed to know what they planned to do with us. We were fully cut off from the outside world. Our anything-but-quiet discussions were then broken by the Cantor of the community, Herr Grünfeld, who entered the room as white as a corpse and with a bleeding heart said, ‘Our beautiful House of God is in flames.’ The most brutal of the Hitler band then commented on Herr Grünfeld’s tragic news, by adding in a frivolous manner the sentence ‘’And when I had anything to do with it, you would all be there in the flames too.’

The high point of the tragedy had been reached. The hope of being able to see our families again that evening was now replaced by a strong pessimism. When at last those over 60 years old were sent to their homes, we were as good as certain that a sad fate awaited us. There was then a sort of inspection by a high-ranking SS officer, who attempted to add some sort of motivation to the whole event. Also Herr Medizinalrat Dr. Walter, a well-known and active member of the Party, appeared that evening in order to give at least an appearance of humane treatment to those who were to be excluded on health grounds. In reality the files on the fifty or so remaining had already been closed. The bus waited in front of the door, and with it a whole crowd of ‘angry’ citizens. The deportation to Dachau had been already long-planned, only we poor victims didn’t know it. We had to run out to the bus, and whoever didn’t run enough received a firm reminder…. At the station we waited for a special train from the Freiburg district. It brought the Jews from the Upper Baden region. In each compartment sat a guard. Not a single word came from his mouth. As the train turned after Karlsruhe in the direction of Stuttgart, one heard only the horrible word ‘Dachau’.

Hear Our Voices

Posted on by
4

The wonderful Anat Hoffman was arrested  recently at the Kotel, for the crime of saying the Shema out loud there with a group of women who were in Israel celebrating the Hadassah centennial birthday. Even to write this sentence seems surreal – how much more so for the people who experienced this event and what followed. Anat was handcuffed and her legs shackled, she was strip searched, dragged along the floor, and finally left in a cell with a young woman accused of prostitution who herself was the target of lewd remarks from the staff.  She was not allowed to call her lawyer.  There was no bed in the cell where she was held overnight. Anat, who describes herself rightly as “a tough cookie” was frightened and miserable.

No charges were made and the next day a court released her on condition she did not go to the Kotel for 30 days.  Why was this allowed to happen? As Anat herself says “What is the purpose of arresting a woman, interrogating her, collecting video footage of her every move, questioning witnesses and spending hours writing reports, if at the end charges are never made? I believe the purpose of this harassment and treatment is to wear down the leaders of our women’s prayer group, to exhaust us into giving up our struggle for these rights.”

I consider myself to be one of the Women at the Wall and am part of their Chevra. I daven with them on the rare occasions I am in Israel on Rosh Hodesh – they actually only go to pray the  morning service once a month, early in the morning, and in accordance with constraints imposed upon them take their torah scroll around the corner to the Robinsons Arch area to read it. (Bizarrely the perceived holiness of the wall appears to the ultra orthodox ‘minders’ to be only where it meets the Kotel plaza.)  Like thousands of men and women around the world, I care about what happens to this relatively small group of women from across the religious community who choose to pray together at the site of the Temple in Jerusalem.  I care because they are looking after some of the most important values in my Judaism – of mutual respect, of sensitivity both to prayer and to the complex differences in prayer that are the signature of the Jewish world, that all people are able to pray in peace and community, that every voice is heard.

Why are women’s voices being suppressed in some ultra conservative Jewish communities, and why is the State of Israel complicit with this suppression when its founding principles state the exact opposite?

The phenomenon is known as “Kol isha erva”, which could be translated as “a woman’s voice is licentiousness” and even a cursory study of this concept shows an increasingly narrowing of interpretation over time until it becomes the exact opposite of the original biblical statement. In Song of Songs we read the verse “O my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock, in the covert of the cliff, let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice; for sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely.’ (2:14) “let me hear your voice “Ki kolech arev” for your voice is sweet”. Whoever wrote that beautiful book which is found in Tanach clearly believed that women’s voices should be heard and that they are sweet (arev). In the Talmud, in a discussion specifically about saying the Shema in the presence of a woman who may be sexually alluring, one rabbi uses this verse and puns upon it – a woman’s voice is no longer sweet (areiv) but nakedness (ervah) [Berachot 24a].  This particular pun does not seem to become codified into halachah at the time – it develops over time and in hardens only in the sixteenth century – the great codifier Joseph Caro makes this clear when he writes “but it is, in any event, good to be cautious before the fact not to see hair and hear the voice of a woman singing during the recitation of Shema.”[Beit Yosef, Orach Chaim 75]. This language makes clear that there is no general existing prohibition at the time of writing.

So a biblical verse used to describe the sweet voices of women singing is reinterpreted in the third century to suggest an intentional sexual provocation that might happen if a woman were to sing in the hearing of a man intent on praying Shema, and then by the sixteenth century the solution seems to have been not to get men to concentrate harder on their prayer but to quieten women’s voices – and this then hardens into the view that women’s voices should simply not be heard.

Let us be clear. Women pray in the bible. Their voices are heard. Rebecca goes to enquire of God when her pregnancy is hard. Hannah prays in the Temple itself – and ironically is accused of mocking prayer because she is speaking only in her heart and moving her lips soundlessly – The priest expects her to make a sound and is suspicious when she doesn’t. There is nothing pious or authentically Jewish about suppressing the voices of women at prayer. For every source that demands this kind of modesty from women, there are other sources that say quite the opposite. The responsa literature has always taken into account context, culture and norms when judgements are decided and this has historically happened even in the discussion about women’s voices. It seems that the reverse process is now happening – context, culture and norms are being created by the decision to criminalise women’s voices at prayer, and the history of women’s prayer is being buried by a modern kind of fundamentalism.

So if this prohibition is being used more and more in the modern world to shut women out from the public domain, we have to ask ourselves why – what is going on in some parts of the Jewish world that the men want to assert such a misogynistic power? What are some men so terrified of living alongside that it has come this week to the arrest and violent treatment of a middle aged woman for singing the Shema in prayer?. Why should the Kotel, remnant of the Temple and focal point for Jews across the world, become de facto the most orthodox of synagogues, rather than a place of prayer for all Jews? Why when Judaism has a strong tradition of recording all opinions rather than only the majority decision, should all voices that are not part of one world view in Judaism be silenced? And why when the declaration of Independence states that : “THE STATE OF ISRAEL will,, foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.” are the police involved in arresting the women who are trying to pray, rather than the men who are throwing chairs at them from the other side of the mechitzah?

Women have been arrested with increasing frequency for praying at the Kotel just like women pray all over the world. Their voices and even their images are being denied, suppressed, removed from public discourse by a fanatic few who claim that theirs is the authentic Jewish response. It is not. And we cannot sit back and let it become by default the assumed voice of Jewish authentic tradition.  This must be challenged every time and everywhere  it happens. In the words of the prophet Isaiah “For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not keep my peace (62:1). Anat and the Women of the Wall will not. I will not. Will you?

Rabbi Sylvia Rothschild October 2012

not remaining silent

Posted on by
Reply

So, why a blog, and why now? Well a blog because it seems to be the best format to create a mosaic of the different interests in my life – Judaism, liturgy and ritual,  Ethics, the balancing of different but competing goods, food, modernity and its challenges – and because seems more bite sized and manageble than a full web page. Maybe that will come later.

Why now? as a follower of Hillel, I would have to reply, “if not now, when?”.As the eighth woman to received semichah at Leo Baeck College in 1987 I was one of the early cohort of women becoming rabbis, and each of my colleagues were faced with the same issues- how do we earn our place in the world as rabbis, as rabbis who are modern and progressive for whom tradition has a place but not a veto? And add to that the extra question – how do we function as women in this historically male role?  We learned about Regina Jonas, rumoured to be the first woman to be ordained in modern times, who died in Auschwitz, and  only when the Berlin Wall fell and the archives became more available did we see proof of her semicha (ordination) and of the work she did. Within less than a generation her voice had been hushed to the merest whisper. That was a lesson for us all – the voices of women must be both in the public domain and recorded as such, or the forces that try to diminish their power and their contributions will slowly but surely cover them over and ultimately stifle them. One of our responses as a group was to write two anthologies – “Hear our Voice”, and “Taking up the Timbrel” – references to the rabbinic statement that the sound of the voice of women leads to licentiousness, and the other to Miriam, prophetess and leader with Moses and Aaron through the years of wandering in the wildnerness in the bible, who took up her timbrel and sang a song of joy at the parting of the reed sea.

Another response is this blog and others like it. As I add my voice to the chorus of women’s voices out there in the world,  I project it further from my normal spheres of Home and Family, Synagogue and Movement, Committees and Boards. Bible tells us the world was founded on words as God spoke and things happened. We are created in the image of God, surely we too can use words to create a better world.