Abortion and Jewish Tradition

Posted on May 22, 2022 by sylviarothschild

Discussion about abortion is necessarily complex and frequently freighted with contextual perspectives. Yet an examination of Jewish sources reveals that while indeed this is a complex and nuanced subject, certain matters are clear since biblical times. Firstly biblical law does not treat abortion as murder, but as a civil matter. We find the legal status of the foetus encoded in Mishnah Ohalot (7:6) which speaks of therapeutic abortion even during childbirth:- the life of the unborn child is of less legal weight than that of the mother right up to the point of the emergence of the head, because until that point it is not a “nefesh”. The mother’s right to life supersedes that of the unborn child.

Our tradition also deals with the emotional well-being of the mother. Mishnah Arakhin teaches that a pregnant woman who is convicted of a capital crime is executed quickly in order not to prolong her agony while she carries the child to term. Commentary on this somewhat grisly text makes clear that the rights of the foetus are not greater than the emotional distress of the mother. Once again the mother’s needs take precedence over those of the unborn child.

Interestingly both Rabbinic law (which describes a pregnancy of 40 days as “water”) and early Church law – which permitted abortion until the child “quickened” (about 16-20 weeks), were the norm for centuries. Not that anyone doubted that the body belonged to God, and that abortion was a serious matter, but punishments were not severe, nor was the perpetrator deemed criminal. In the UK, abortion after “quickening” attracted the death penalty only in 1803, and in 1937 earlier abortion was added. After that a succession of laws increasingly limited access to abortion and criminalised those involved. Similarly in the Jewish world some eminent poskim narrowed access to abortion to medically mandated life-saving situations only. In part this was a response to Shoah – Jewish lives lost should be replaced, went the thinking. But clearly something else is in play – the rights of a woman over her own body and her own fertility, accepted for centuries as being in the private domain, were brought into public discourse in order to control them.

Once again the rhetoric is ramping up. But the Jewish view is clear – our focus should be to look after the children and families who are living and who need society’s help, not policing women’s bodies.

Written for “Progressively Speaking” in Jewish News July 2020

Aborto e tradizione ebraica

Pubblicato da rav Sylvia Rothschild il 22 maggio 2022

La discussione sull’aborto è necessariamente complessa e, spesso, carica di prospettive legate al contesto. Eppure un esame delle fonti ebraiche rivela che, mentre in effetti è un argomento complesso e ricco di sfumature, alcune cose sono chiare fin dai tempi biblici. In primo luogo la legge biblica non tratta l’aborto come un omicidio, ma come una questione civile. Lo stato giuridico del feto lo troviamo codificato nella Mishnà Ohalot (7,6) che parla di aborto terapeutico anche durante il parto: la vita del nascituro ha un peso legale inferiore a quella della madre fino al momento in cui la testa emerge, perché fino a quel punto non è “nefesh”. Il diritto alla vita della madre prevale su quello del nascituro.

La nostra tradizione si occupa anche del benessere emotivo della madre. Mishnà Arakhin stabilisce che una donna incinta condannata per un crimine capitale venga giustiziata rapidamente senza farle portare a termine la gravidanza, per non prolungare la sua agonia. Il commento a questo testo alquanto raccapricciante chiarisce che i diritti del feto non sono maggiori del disagio emotivo della madre. Ancora una volta i bisogni della madre hanno la precedenza su quelli del nascituro.

È interessante notare che sia la legge rabbinica (che descrive una gravidanza di quaranta giorni come “acqua”) sia la legge primitiva della Chiesa, che consentiva l’aborto fino a quando il bambino non compiva i primi movimenti percepibili (tra la sedicesima e la ventesima settimana circa), sono state la norma per secoli. Non che qualcuno dubitasse che il corpo appartenesse a Dio, e che l’aborto non fosse una cosa seria, ma le punizioni non erano severe, né l’autore del reato era ritenuto criminale. Nel Regno Unito, l’aborto dopo la percezione dei movimenti fetali, è stato punito con la pena di morte solo nel 1803, nel 1937 è stata poi aggiunta per l’aborto nella fase precedente. Dopodiché una serie di leggi limitava sempre più l’accesso all’aborto e criminalizzava le persone coinvolte. Allo stesso modo, nel mondo ebraico, alcuni eminenti poskim hanno ristretto l’accesso all’aborto solo a situazioni salvavita obbligatorie dal punto di vista medico. Questa è stata in parte una risposta alla Shoà: le vite perdute degli ebrei dovrebbero essere sostituite, si pensava. Ma, chiaramente, è in gioco qualcos’altro: i diritti di una donna sul proprio corpo e sulla propria fertilità, accettati per secoli come dominio privato, sono stati introdotti nel discorso pubblico al fine di controllarli.

Ancora una volta la retorica si fa strada. Il punto di vista ebraico è però chiaro: il nostro obiettivo dovrebbe essere quello di prenderci cura dei bambini e delle famiglie che vivono e che hanno bisogno dell’aiuto della società, e non quello di sorvegliare i corpi delle donne.

Scritto per “Progressively Speaking” in Jewish News luglio 2020

Traduzione dall’inglese di Eva Mangialajo Rantzer

3rd Elul: invention and reinvention

Posted on August 11, 2021 by sylviarothschild

Elul 3 11^th August

On 11th August 1942, Hollywood actress Hedy Lamarr (called “the most beautiful woman in Hollywood”) received a patent with composer George Antheil for a “frequency hopping, spread-spectrum communication system” designed to make radio-guided torpedoes harder to detect or jam. Lamarr and Antheil made an interesting pair of collaborators. She was an Austrian-born beauty and American film star who practiced electrical engineering when off the movie lot; he was an avant-garde composer, notably of Ballet Mécanique, a score that included synchronized player pianos. The two devised a method whereby a controlling radio and its receiver would jump from one frequency to another, like simultaneous player pianos, so that the radio waves could not be blocked.

The two submitted their patent to the US Navy, which officially opined that Lamarr could do more for the war effort by selling kisses to support war bonds. On one occasion, she raised $7 million. She and Antheil donated their patent to the US Navy and never realized any money from their invention, which would eventually become the basis for wireless phones, Global Positioning Systems, and WiFi, among other cutting-edge technologies. (from JWA.org)

Hedy Lamarr was born to a comfortable Viennese Jewish family, and in later life she often spoke of her childhood as a kind of paradise, with forest walks and piano lessons, attending the theatre and later herself becoming an actress in theatre and film. She had an extraordinary life, with six husbands and other lovers, a Hollywood career where she was called the most beautiful woman in film and was generally cast as a kind of mysterious temptress, sexually alluring and always somewhat on the outside of normal life. Life followed art, she lived in America and was a film star, but was not of America, and the role-playing of her professional life seems to have been mirrored in her private life.

Hedy Lamarr never told her family that she was born a Jew, that she grew up with Jewish parents. Her own children did not know of that part of her identity even though Hedy’s mother came to live in the United States and they grew up knowing her. Both Lamarr and her mother had converted to Catholicism – Lamarr for marriage in 1933 her mother some five years later. The children found out their maternal background only as adults, when a documentary maker told them of it.

In the month of Elul we think about our own lives and how we invent and reinvent ourselves, how we try to hide what is inconvenient to our preferred narratives and what we prioritise and why. While we may not be living a life as complicated and as cryptic as that of Lamarr, each of us have questions to ask ourselves about our choices, and about whether we are living our lives as our best selves.

2nd Elul 5781 We can each do our share in making the world a better place.

Posted on August 10, 2021 by sylviarothschild

2^nd Elul 2021 10 August

Ruth Bader Ginsburg sworn in United States Supreme Court

On this day in 1993 RBG was sworn in as the second woman – and the first Jewish woman – to serve on the US Supreme Court.

At the time she said “I am a judge born, raised, and proud of being a Jew. The demand for justice runs through the entirety of the Jewish tradition. I hope, in my years on the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States, I will have the strength and the courage to remain constant in the service of that demand.”

Throughout her life and career, Justice Ginsburg fought against oppression and inequality. She is credited with transforming opportunities and livelihoods previously dictated by gender inequalities. She was influential on Civil Rights Law, and dismantled a network of laws which supported sex discrimination. Perhaps surprisingly, many of her landmark legal successes came while she was representing men. Ultimately, Justice Ginsberg was clear: gender inequality is harmful to everyone.

She also said “Promoting active liberty does not mean allowing the majority to run roughshod over minorities. It calls for taking special care that all groups have a chance to fully participate in society and the political process.”

We can’t be RBG, but she was carrying on a legacy of justice that is our inheritance and obligation too. We may not be able to change or to create legislation, but in our own ways and our own worlds we can have the strength and courage to serve that command.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, asked to give advice to young people about how to fulfil that obligation said “Let them be sure that every deed counts, that every word has power, and that we can do our share to redeem the world despite all absurdities and all the frustration and all the disappointment.”

We can each do our share. Indeed, it is all that we can do. The only question is how we plan to do it.

Eshet Hayil – Women of bible were machers, at home and in the public space

Posted on June 16, 2020 by sylviarothschild

L’italiano segue l’inglese

The biblical verses known as Eshet Chayil are traditionally recited by husbands to their wives at the Shabbat table, a paean of praise for an industrious home-maker, a nod to the burden of both visible and invisible labour undertaken by women. Those whose tradition it is often find it meaningful, a weekly recognition of the sharing of the workload in the marital partnership.

Yet look a little closer at the text, and this description of perfect womanhood is less the expression of family gratitude for the domestic and emotional labour of the matriarch, and more about the lived reality of women who were not only the cooks and needlewomen, weavers and housekeepers, but also the economic powerhouse on whom the family depended.

The adjective “Chayil” is used most often to mean force of a military kind: this woman is strong, powerful, even warlike – not a modest and passive creature. She not only does the home-building but she is also the one who surveys and buys fields, who goes out to buy the raw materials for her products and leaves home again to sell the finished articles she has made; she plants and maintains vineyards…. The woman is the very definition of the sufferer of the “second shift” – not only economically active but also running the home. Arlene Hochschild in her 1989 work on marital roles, discovered that on average women worked 15 hours longer each week than men, adding to an extra month of 24-hour days in a year’s time.

It would seem this woman needs to be “Chayil” and have strength and fortitude to cope with her life. Given this view of women as being efficient and creative, competent and hardworking, forceful and skilled negotiators, one wonders why women have been kept from leadership in the name of “tradition”.

Written for the Jewish News “the bible says” column June 2020

image from British Library 15th century Italian edition perush mishlei

Eshet Chayil – Le donne della Bibbia erano “machers”*, a casa e nello spazio pubblico

di rav Sylvia Rothschild

I versetti biblici noti come Eshet Chayil sono tradizionalmente recitati dai mariti alle proprie mogli al tavolo di Shabbat, un canto di lode per una laboriosa padrona di casa, un cenno al fardello del lavoro, sia visibile che invisibile, intrapreso dalle donne, quelle che la tradizione spesso trova significative, un riconoscimento settimanale della condivisione del carico di lavoro nell’accordo matrimoniale.

Tuttavia, osserviamo un po’ più da vicino il testo: questa descrizione della perfetta femminilità è in misura minore espressione di gratitudine familiare per il lavoro domestico ed emotivo della matriarca, è invece maggiormente centrata sulla realtà vissuta dalle donne, che non erano solo cuoche e cucitrici, tessitrici e donne delle pulizie, ma anche la potenza economica da cui dipendeva la famiglia.

L’aggettivo “Chayil” è usato più spesso per indicare forza di tipo militare: questa donna è forte, potente, persino guerriera, non una creatura modesta e passiva. Non solo costruisce la casa, ma è anche lei che controlla e acquista campi, che esce per comprare le materie prime per i suoi prodotti e lascia di nuovo la casa per vendere gli articoli finiti che ha realizzato; lei pianta e mantiene vigneti…. La donna è la definizione stessa di chi soffre del “doppio turno”: non solo è economicamente attiva, ma gestisce anche la casa. Arlene Hochschild nel suo lavoro del 1989 sui ruoli coniugali**, ha scoperto che in media le donne lavoravano quindici ore in più ogni settimana rispetto agli uomini, aggiungendo un mese in più di ventiquattr’ore al giorno in un anno.

Sembrerebbe che questa donna debba essere “Chayil” e avere forza e forza d’animo per far fronte alla sua vita. Considerata questa visione delle donne come negoziatori efficienti e creative, competenti e laboriose, forti e qualificate, ci si chiede perché le donne siano state tenute distanti dalla leadership in nome della “tradizione”.

*Macher, termine yiddish che indica una persona influente

**Hochschild, A., Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home,

New York, N.Y. Viking Penguin, 1989

Scritto per la rubrica “The Bible says” del Jewish News giugno 2020

immagine della British Library XV secolo edizione italiana perush mishlei

traduzione dall’inglese di Eva Mangialajo Rantzer

Women Wearing Tefillin and Tallit and holding Services – what does Jewish law say?

Posted on May 26, 2020 by sylviarothschild

Women Wearing Tefillin and Tallit and holding Services – what does Jewish law say?

Can a woman wear Tallit? – Yes

Can a woman wear Tefillin? – Yes

Can women read the Torah scroll, have an Aliyah to the Torah and lead Prayer? – Yes

These are the short answers. The longer answers are somewhat more complicated:

An anonymous statement in the Mishna (Kiddushin 1:7) supports much of the argument people use to distance women from mitzvot.

“All obligations of the son upon the father, men are obligated, but women are exempt.* But all obligations of the father upon the son, both men and women are obligated. ** All positive, time-bound commandments, men are obligated and women are exempt. But all positive non-time-bound commandments both men and women are obligated. And all negative commandments, whether time-bound or not time-bound, both men and women are obligated, except for, the prohibition against rounding [the corners of the head], and the prohibition against marring [the corner of the beard], and the prohibition [for a priest] to become impure through contact with the dead.”

*(brit milah/Pidyon haben etc)

**respecting parents etc

This has been described by Shimon bar Yochai as the principle “ Women are exempt from all positive(active) time-bound/based mitzvot – Mitzvot Asset She’hazman Grama” (Sifrei Bemidbar 115 and Mechilta)

The Talmud however is littered with exceptions to this “principle” – women are obliged to many positive and time bound mitzvot – eating matza/drinking 4 cups at seder: Megillah reading; Chanukah candles; Kiddush and other shabbat mitzvot, niddah, Yom Kippur fasting, amidah, Birkat Hamazon etc etc

What becomes very clear the more one examines the literature is that the statement in the mishnah is not “prescriptive” but “descriptive” i.e. it is what they see happening; Also that the reason why women were not always performing the mitzvot was because they had a subordinate role in the household and the ritual of mitzvot was subject to status (think of the frequent phrase “women, slaves and minors” – i.e. the people with the lower social status in the household).

The second thing to notice is that exemption does not mean one is not allowed to do something, only that the person is not obligated to do it. So mitzvot such as tallit and tefillin, which are arguably positive and time bound mitzvot are seen as performed as an obligation by the higher status individuals (free men) and there is no reason why women cannot do them.

We also see that women are given roles in important mitzvot – taking the challah, preparing matzot, Shabbat observance for the household which had implications for the men’s observance. etc – There is no doubt that the rabbis knew the women were capable of being responsible for important mitzvot – they were operating on a world view about social status, not about ability to be responsible.

By the medieval period, the “principle” which was not a principle had become hardened in the minds of many, and the rabbis turned to explaining it: they had to look after their husband’s needs, for example, and that might conflict with the needs of the mitzvah (and by implication God). Or women were “separate but equal” with different responsibilities that would get in the way of such an obligation. Or women are innately much holier than men and therefore do not need to be obligated because their souls will reach heaven anyway. (One dissenting voice suggests that women’s souls may not arrive in the afterlife precisely because they have not done so many mitzvot, but concludes that they achieve the afterlife because they helped their husbands to do them)

And always there is the subject of the domestic domain of women – they will either be doing the housework or holding the baby (or both at the same time), and therefore to also have the burden of the obligatory mitzvot would be unfair.

The responsa from the medieval period onwards mostly assume that the exemption to some obligations given to women implies the mitzvot are forbidden (or “it is preferable women do not do this”) and many women have sadly accepted this as the true state of Jewish law. In part because Torah study (another realm of the “high status male”) has been closed to women generally (with notable exceptions) until modern times. The “proof text” for women not learning Torah is found from Deuteronomy 11:19 where the phrase “your sons” “v’limadechem otam et bneichem” is narrowly understood to mean ONLY “your sons” even though the next use of the word two verses later is understood to mean, as it normatively does, “your children” – an extraordinary distortion of a text in order to support a questionable premise, albeit the distortion is done by R.Yose ben Akiva whose mother Rachel sacrificed her married life in order for his father Akiva to be able to learn and about whom Akiva told his students “My torah and your torah are hers” because of this. (maybe Yose thought that all women should work themselves to the bone for their husbands to study torah – a warning to all mothers of sons J )

Most frequent objections heard today:

“It is not (our) tradition”
“Tefillin and Tallit are time bound mitzvot from which women are exempted”
“These are men’s garments and it says in the bible (Deuteronomy 22:5)

לֹא־יִֽהְיֶ֤ה כְלִי־גֶ֨בֶר֙ עַל־אִשָּׁ֔ה וְלֹֽא־יִלְבַּ֥שׁ גֶּ֖בֶר שִׂמְלַ֣ת אִשָּׁ֑ה כִּ֧י תֽוֹעֲבַ֛ת יְהוָֹ֥ה אֱלֹהֶי֖ךָ כָּל־עֹ֥שֵׂה אֵֽלֶּה:

A woman shall not wear that which pertains to a man; neither shall a man put on a woman’s garment; for whosoever does these things is an abomination to the Eternal your God.

(They are not “clothing”, even if the four cornered shawl that would attract the obligation of tzitzit may once have been used by both men and women to cover themselves)

“Women are showing off or trying to assert something about their power”
“Women are showing excessive piety which is not a good thing”
Tallit and Tefillin are sacred items which should be given proper respect
Women might be doing things that are improper while wearing them – e.g. changing a dirty nappy…. Or may not be alert to hygiene (guf naki)
Wearing Tzitzit / Tallit refers to the obligation and adherence to the mitzvot, many of which women are exempt from.
Wearing Tefillin refers to the obligation to study – women generally do not study and “therefore” should not wear Tefillin.

Women have always been obligated for almost all the positive mitzvot and all the negative ones except the ones that refer to the male body (e.g. beards) or priesthood. Women are obligated to pray daily (though there is debate about what constitutes prayer) and the objections to women praying together with a woman leading prayer for women rest on even shakier ground than the objections to women accepting upon themselves ritual mitzvot. The Talmud records that women can have an Aliya to the torah/read from the Torah, and the only obstacle is “the dignity” of the community – i.e. people might think a woman is doing it because the men cannot.

Why have women historically fallen away from their role in public community? A mixture of social mores and misogyny explains much of it. Society today (mostly) accepts women are not of a lower social status than men de facto, and also women are seen much more in the professions and in the public space, albeit this is still a battle for full equality to be finally won.

Misogyny (albeit dressed in different language) is no longer the acceptable defence it was – although some of the modern diatribes about women’s unholy pride/ aggressive feminism/ asserting themselves/ lack of modesty retain the same emotional base as the earlier responsa that explicitly remind women to be subordinate to their men.

That women come to pray together at the Kotel should never have been an issue for those who know the sources. That women come wearing tallit and tefillin is also not problematic for the Halacha.

There is no reason why women should not do all these things – particularly in the separate and divided public space at the Kotel, and there is every reason why they should be given respect and space to fulfil the mitzvot they have taken upon themselves.

Blu Greenberg wrote many years ago that “where there is a rabbinic will there is a halachic way”. In truth there is already a halachic way, now we need the rabbis to have the will to acknowledge it and to teach it.

Donne che indossano Tefillin e Tallit e tengono funzioni – cosa dice la legge ebraica?

Può una donna indossare il Tallit? Sì

Può una donna indossare i Tefillin? Sì

Può una donna leggere dal rotolo della Torà, salire a Sefer e condurre la preghiera? Sì

Queste sono risposte brevi. Le risposte più lunghe sono in qualche modo più complicate:

Un’affermazione anonima nella Mishnà (Kiddushin 1:7) supporta molte delle argomentazioni che vengono usate per tenere a distanza le donne dalle Mitzvot.

“In merito a tutti gli obblighi del padre verso il figlio, gli uomini sono tenuti, ma le donne sono esentate. * Ma in merito a tutti gli obblighi del figlio verso il padre, sia gli uomini che le donne sono tenute. ** In merito a tutti i comandamenti positivi, legati a un tempo specifico, gli uomini sono tenuti e le donne sono esentate. Ma in merito a tutti i comandamenti positivi senza limiti di tempo, sia gli uomini che le donne sono tenuti. E in merito a tutti i comandamenti negativi, siano essi legati o meno a un tempo specifico, sia gli uomini che le donne sono tenuti, tranne che per il divieto di arrotondare [gli angoli della testa] e il divieto di rovinare [l’angolo della barba], e il divieto [per un sacerdote] di diventare impuro attraverso il contatto con i morti.”

*Circoncisione, riscatto del primogenito etc… ** Rispettare i genitori etc…

Questo è stato descritto da Shimon bar Yochai come il principio: “Le donne sono esentate dalle mitzvot positive (attive) legate ad un tempo specifico” – Mitzvot Asset She’hazman Grama (Sifrei Bemidbar 115 and Mechiltà)

Il Talmud è comunque disseminato di eccezioni a questo “principio” – le donne sono tenute a molte mitzvot positive legate a un tempo specifico – mangiare la matzà e bere le 4 coppe al seder, leggere la Meghillà, accendere le candele di Chanukà, fare Kiddush e altre mitzvot dello Shabbat, la niddà, digiunare a Yom Kippur, recitare l’Amidà, fare la Birkat Hamazon etc…

Quello che diviene chiaro, più uno esamina la letteratura rabbinica, è che l’affermazione nella Mishnà è descrittiva più che prescrittiva. E’ quello che vedevano accadere; inoltre la ragione per cui non sempre le donne compivano le mitzvot è perché avevano un ruolo subordinato nella vita domestica e il rituale delle mitzvot era soggetto allo status (pensate alla frase frequente “le donne, gli schiavi e i minori” – persone con uno status sociale inferiore nella vita domestica).

La seconda cosa che si deve notare è che esenzione non significa che a una persona non sia consentito di fare qualcosa, ma solo che una persona non è obbligata a farlo. Quindi mitzvot come Tallit e Tefillin, che sono mitzvot positive discutibilmente legate a un tempo specifico, sono viste come eseguite come obbligo dalle persone con status più alto (gli uomini liberi) ma non c’è ragione perché le donne non possano farle.

I responsa dal periodo medioevale in poi assumono, per la maggior parte, che l’esenzione ad alcune mitzvot data alle donne implichi che le mitzvot siano proibite (o “è preferibile che le donne non le facciano”) e molte donne lo hanno, tristemente, accettato come il vero stato della legge ebraica. In parte perché lo studio della Torà (altro regno del maschio di alto rango) è stato chiuso in generale alle donne (con alcune notevoli eccezioni) fino ai tempi moderni. Il testo che “proverebbe” che le donne non devono studiare Torà si trova in Deuteronomio 11:19 dove l’espressione “i tuoi figli” “v’limadechem otam et bneichem” è compresa in modo restrittivo a significare SOLO “i tuoi figli (maschi)”, anche se l’uso successivo della stessa espressione, due versetti dopo, è compreso significare, come normalmente avviene, “i tuoi figli (maschi e femmine) – una straordinaria distorsione di un testo, in modo da supportare una premessa discutibile; sebbene la distorsione sia fatta da R. Yosè ben Akivà la cui madre Rachel ha sacrificato la sua vita matrimoniale per permettere a suo padre Akivà di poter studiare e di cui Akivà diceva ai suoi studenti: “la mia Torà e la vostra Torà è sua (intendendo della moglie) a causa di questo”. (Forse Yosè pensava che tutte le donne dovessero impegnarsi fino all’osso affinché i loro mariti studiassero Torà – un avvertimento per tutte le madri di figli maschi).

Le obiezioni che si sentono oggi più di frequente:

Non è la (nostra) tradizione
Tefillin e Tallit sono mitzvot legate al tempo da cui le donne sono esentate
Sono indumenti maschili ed è detto nella Bibbia

לֹא־יִֽהְיֶ֤ה כְלִי־גֶ֨בֶר֙ עַל־אִשָּׁ֔ה וְלֹֽא־יִלְבַּ֥שׁ גֶּ֖בֶר שִׂמְלַ֣ת אִשָּׁ֑ה כִּ֧י תֽוֹעֲבַ֛ת יְהוָֹ֥ה אֱלֹהֶי֖ךָ כָּל־עֹ֥שֵׂה אֵֽלֶּה

Una donna non deve indossare ciò che appartiene a un uomo, nemmeno un uomo deve indossare indumenti da donna, perché chiunque commette queste cose è un abominio per l’Eterno tuo Dio.

(Tallit e Tefillin non sono capi di abbigliamento, anche se lo scialle coi quattro angoli che doveva richiamare l’obbligo degli tzitzit poteva essere usato in passato sia dagli uomini che dalle donne per coprirsi).

Le donne si mettono in mostra o cercano di affermare qualcosa a proposito del loro potere
Le donne mostrano un’eccessiva devozione che non è una buona cosa
Tallit e Tefillin sono oggetti sacri a cui deve essere dato adeguato rispetto
Le donne potrebbero fare qualcosa di inappropriato indossandoli, come cambiare un pannolino sporco … o potrebbero non essere attente all’igiene (guf naki)
Indossare Tallit e Tefillin fa riferimento all’obbligo e all’adesione alle mitzvot, da molte delle quali le donne sono esentate
Indossare i Tefillin fa riferimento all’obbligo allo studio, generalmente le donne non studiano e quindi non dovrebbero indossare i Tefillin

Le donne sono sempre state obbligate a quasi tutte le mitzvot positive e a tutte quelle negative, con l’eccezione di quelle che si riferiscono al corpo maschile (la barba) o al sacerdozio. Le donne sono obbligate a pregare quotidianamente (sebbene ci sia un dibattito su cosa costituisca la preghiera) e le obiezioni al fatto che le donne preghino assieme con una donna che conduce la preghiera per altre donne poggia su un terreno ancora più instabile rispetto all’obiezione a che le donne accettino su di sé mitzvot rituali. Il Talmud registra che le donne possono avere una salita a sefer o leggere dalla Torà, e che l’unico ostacolo sia “l’onore del pubblico” – la dignità della comunità – ad esempio che si pensi che lo fa una donna perché gli uomini non sono capaci.

Perché storicamente le donne sono decadute dal loro ruolo pubblico nelle comunità? Un misto di usanze sociali e misoginia spiega molto di tutto ciò. La società oggi, nella maggior parte dei casi) riconosce che le donne non sono de facto di uno status sociale inferiore a quello degli uomini, e le donne sono anche più visibili nelle professioni e nello spazio pubblico, sebbene la battaglia per una piena parità sia ancora da vincere pienamente.

La misoginia (sebbene travestita in un linguaggio differente) non è più la difesa accettabile che era – anche se alcune delle diatribe odierne a proposito dell’empio orgoglio delle donne, del femminismo aggressivo, dell’autodeterminazione, della mancanza di modestia, conservano lo stesso fondamento emotivo dei precedenti responsa che volevano le donne esplicitamente sottomesse ai loro uomini.

Che le donne vadano a pregare assieme al Kotel non avrebbe mai dovuto essere un problema per chi conosce le fonti. Che le donne indossino Tefillin e Tallit non è problematico per l’Halachà.

Non c’è ragione alcuna per cui le donne non possano fare tutte queste cose – particolarmente nello spazio pubblico separato al Kotel, e ci sono invece tutte le ragioni per cui si dovrebbe dare loro rispetto e spazio per adempiere alle mitzvot che hanno preso su di loro.

Blu Greenberg ha scritto molti anni fa che “dove c’è volontà rabbinica, c’è un modo nella Halachà”. In verità c’è già un modo nell’Halachà, ora abbiamo bisogno che i rabbini abbiano la volontà di riconoscerlo e di insegnarlo.

Traduzione dall’inglese di Martina Yehudit Loreggian

Chayei Sarah: Sarah Imeinu was not the rabbinic paradigm of a perfect woman, but a real woman.

Posted on November 20, 2019 by sylviarothschild

Chayei Sarah – Domestic Abuse in Judaism

The International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women is on 25^th November, days after we will have read the parasha detailing the death and burial arrangements for the first biblical matriarch, Sarah Imeinu.

The Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women issued by the UN General Assembly in 1993, defines violence against women as “any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life.” It includes such acts as intimate partner violence (battering, psychological abuse, marital rape, femicide); sexual violence and harassment (rape, forced sexual acts, unwanted sexual advances, child sexual abuse, forced marriage, street harassment, stalking, cyber- harassment); human trafficking (slavery, sexual exploitation); female genital mutilation; and child marriage.

Sarah is introduced to us as the wife of Abraham. Whether she was his niece, his half-sister, or any other relation to him is unclear – but we are not told directly of her antecedents, simply that he takes her for a wife (Genesis 11:29) around the same time that Abraham’s brother Nahor also takes a wife, after the death of Haran their other brother. The second thing we know about Sarah is that she is unable to conceive a child.

It is not very promising stuff. Here is a vulnerable woman who is married into a “patriarchal family” with a husband ten years older than her, and who is unable to do the one thing expected of her – to produce an heir. This is a particular trauma given that her husband has been promised to have innumerable descendants – it is almost as though they are being set up against each other, with no possibility of resolution.

Taken yet again from her settled place she and her husband travel to Canaan, and because of the severe famine there ,onward to Egypt, where she is described as her husband’s sister in order to protect his life. The consequence is that she is taken into the harem of Pharaoh, and while we have many midrashim designed to protect her purity and good name, we have no idea what happened to her there – only that Pharaoh gave her back along with material compensation to her husband, after a series of events which he rightly understood to be divine warnings.

After ten years of living in the land, with no sign of a child to fulfil the divine promise, Sarah does what many a female figure in bible will do after her – intervene in order to bring about that which is expected to happen. In this case she hands over her Egyptian maid to her husband in order for him to have a child. While there are those who might see this as a wonderful wifely and unselfish gift, the clear light of day shows otherwise. Ten years of marriage with no child – this becomes grounds for divorce (Mishnah Yevamot 6:6) – and would leave a woman without family to take her in, unprotected socially and economically. Sarah uses another woman to give her husband the child he desires so much, and in so doing causes greater anguish for Hagar, for Ishmael, for Abraham and for herself. One could argue that the pain this intervention caused resonates to this day.

After the birth of Ishmael the relationship between the two women breaks down completely. Sarah mistreats Hagar, Hagar runs away from home but returns – she has nowhere else. Ishmael and Hagar are banished causing pain to them both and to Abraham who will not know the outcome of their story, Isaac inherits family trauma he cannot begin to understand.

The birth of Isaac is told in quasi miraculous terms. Abraham and Sarah are old, she is clearly post-menopausal. When God tells Abraham there will be another child he laughs, reminds God he is 100 years old and Sarah 90, and pleads for Ishmael to be his heir, only to be told that the promised child and heir to the covenant will indeed be Sarah’s, though Ishmael will be looked after too.

When God tells Sarah, she too laughs, and she is more direct with God – after she is so old would she have such pleasure? she asks. And her husband is too old too, she reminds God. (Genesis 18:12)

God then does something extraordinary. His report back to Abraham Sarah’s inner narrative voice, but he alters it. Instead of the clear message that Sarah has given up hope of such pleasure because her husband is too old, God transposes the person – telling Abraham that Sarah laughed because she feels herself to be too old.

This transposition is the origin of the rabbinic idea of Shalom Bayit – of marital harmony, the telling of small innocent lies in order to keep the peace. The idea that somehow the woman has to disproportionally protect the feeling of the man has become embedded into what might otherwise be a laudable aim. And sadly, Shalom Bayit has become the carpet under which domestic abuse has been brushed all too often down the generations.

Sarah has become the paradigm for the ideal woman for rabbinic Judaism in other ways too – when the visitors arrive o announce the birth of Isaac, Sarah is hidden away inside the tent, her husband facing the world. It is he who hurries around being hospitable, she who bakes the bread for the visitors. Later we will be told that when Isaac marries Rebecca he takes her to his mother’s tent and is comforted and the midrash (Bereishit Rabbah 60:16) will teach “Three miraculous phenomena that occurred in the tent during Sarah’s lifetime returned when Isaac married Rebecca: the Shabbat candles remained lit from one Friday to the next, the challah dough was blessed and was always sufficient for the family and guests, and the Divine cloud hovered over the tent.” The rabbinic tradition generally understand this as showing that Rebecca was, like Sarah, a good and faithful homemaker, their role limited to baking and cleaning and preparing the home. At least one contemporary – and female – commentator, has a different, and in my view more likely view of the meaning. Tamara Frankiel suggests that the midrash is commenting on the intrinsic holiness of the first two matriarchs, such that the wherewithal for Shabbat and the divine presence were always on hand, rather than that the two women were particularly devoted to housework. She comments also that the description of the tent here is a parallel to the later Temple where the ner tamid was always burning, the 12 loaves of showbread always fresh and present in front of the Ark of the Covenant. (The Voice of Sarah: Feminine Spirituality and Traditional Judaism).

The roles ascribed by the rabbinic tradition to Sarah and the other matriarchs – maternal, wifely, home making, providing the resources of hospitable giving while not actually being present when guests come – these are not the roles given in the biblical texts. And the male gaze through which we generally see these women who clearly have confidence and agency in their own lives when seen in bible, has layered both them and the expectations of subsequent generations with an impossible and also undesirable aura.

Sarah does not put herself down when contemplating a child, she is realistic about her chances, the idea of an unexpected pleasure long forgotten, the changes age has wrought to her, and to her husband. She does nothing towards Shalom Bayit here – it is the rabbinic extension of God’s comments which brings us this view of her as a woman who would subjugate herself for her husband’s feelings. Equally there is nothing in the text to suggest she is subjugating herself when presenting Hagar to her husband in order for him to get a child – if anything the power is all hers, as we see in her response when there is a dilution of that power relationship. When she takes charge of Hagar once more, even God tells Abraham to listen to her voice and do what she says, something that remarkably has little traction in the male world of traditional rabbinic texts.

Women in the Jewish community are as likely to be the victims of domestic abuse as women in the wider community – about one in four will experience it. Women in the Jewish community are increasingly being constrained and lectured about “Tzniut”, seemingly understood about women’s bodies and actions only, although most certainly in its earlier meanings tzniut is about humility for both men and women.

Women in the Jewish community are at a disability according to halachah – unable to initiate the religious divorce document of Gittin for example. Increasingly the halachah is being reworked to push women out of the public space, to try to remove and hide women’s voices from the discourse, to push some cultural attitudes as if they are legal ones. And so often Sarah Imeinu is cited – the perfect female paradigm in the minds of the rabbinic tradition, but actually a real woman who develops her own agency and power, who sees the frailties of her husband, who intervenes in history and who laughs disbelievingly at God.

As we mark the day that reminds us of how women have become so vulnerable to male violence that there needs to be an international policy to try to shape a different world, let’s take a moment to see the real Sarah Imeinu, the woman who originally belongs to no man in bible, who marries Abraham and helps him in his life’s work, travelling with him and sharing his destiny, working as part of a team, and subservient to no one.

Image courtesy of Rahel Jaskow – Rosh HaShanah : the sign on the right welcoming the men to synagogue,the one on the left telling women where their separate entrance is, telling them to leave as soon as the shofar service is finished (even though the services will continue in the synagogue), that they should go straight home and not loiter in public places………….

Chayei Sara: Sara imeinu non era colei alla quale i rabbini insistono che le donne dovrebbero somigliare, ma forse dovremmo tutti provare ad essere più simili a lei e dare forma ai nostri destini.

Pubblicato da rav Sylvia Rothschild, il 20 novembre 2019

Chayei Sara – Abusi domestici nell’ebraismo

La Giornata internazionale per l’eliminazione della violenza contro le donne sarà il 25 novembre, qualche giorno dopo che avremo letto la parashà che illustra in dettaglio la morte e le disposizioni di sepoltura per la prima matriarca biblica, Sara imeinu.

La Dichiarazione sull’eliminazione della violenza contro le donne emessa dall’Assemblea generale delle Nazioni Unite nel 1993, definisce la violenza contro le donne come: “qualsiasi atto di violenza di genere che provochi, o rischi di provocare, danno o sofferenza fisica, sessuale o psicologica alle donne, comprese le minacce di tali atti, la coercizione o la privazione arbitraria della libertà, che si verifichino nella vita pubblica o privata”. Ciò include atti quali violenza del partner nell’intimità (percosse, abusi psicologici, stupro maritale, femminicidio), violenza e molestie sessuali (stupri, atti sessuali forzati, profferte sessuali indesiderate, abusi sessuali su minori, matrimonio forzato, molestie stradali, stalking, cyber-molestie), tratta di esseri umani (schiavitù, sfruttamento sessuale), mutilazione genitale femminile e matrimonio infantile.

Sara ci viene presentata come la moglie di Abramo. Se fosse sua nipote, la sua sorellastra o se avesse qualsiasi altra relazione con lui non è chiaro, niente ci viene detto direttamente dei suoi antecedenti, ma semplicemente che lui la prende per moglie (Genesi 11:29) nello stesso periodo in cui anche Nahor, fratello di Abramo, prende moglie, dopo la morte di Haran, l’altro loro fratello. La seconda cosa che sappiamo di Sara è che non è in grado di concepire un bambino.

Non è materiale molto promettente. Ecco una donna vulnerabile che è sposata in una “famiglia patriarcale” con un marito di dieci anni più grande di lei, e che non è in grado di fare l’unica cosa che ci si aspetta da lei: produrre un erede. Questo è un trauma specifico, dato che a suo marito è stato promesso di avere innumerevoli discendenti: è quasi come se fossero stati messi l’uno contro l’altro, senza possibilità di soluzione.

Allontanata ancora una volta dal posto dov’era stabilita, lei e suo marito viaggiano verso Canaan e, per la grave carestia lì presente, di nuovo verso l’Egitto, dove viene presentata, per proteggere la sua vita, come sorella di suo marito. La conseguenza è che viene portata nell’harem del Faraone e mentre abbiamo molti midrashim progettati per proteggere la sua purezza e il suo buon nome, non abbiamo idea di cosa lì le sia successo, solo che il Faraone la ha rimandata indietro unitamente a una compensazione materiale per suo marito, dopo una serie di eventi da lui giustamente intesi come avvertimenti divini.

Dopo dieci anni di vita nella terra, senza alcun segno di un bambino che mantenga la promessa divina, Sara fa ciò che molte figure femminili nella Bibbia faranno dopo di lei: interverranno per realizzare ciò che dovrebbe accadere. In questo caso, consegna la sua cameriera egiziana a suo marito per avere un figlio. Mentre c’è chi potrebbe vedere ciò come un dono meraviglioso e disinteressato, la chiara luce del giorno mostra il contrario. Dieci anni di matrimonio senza figli: questo diverrebbe motivo di divorzio (Mishnah Yevamot 6:6) e potrebbe lasciare una donna senza una famiglia ad accoglierla, non protetta socialmente ed economicamente. Sara usa un’altra donna per dare a suo marito il figlio tanto desiderato, e così facendo provoca maggiore angoscia per Hagar, per Ismaele, per Abramo e per se stessa. Si potrebbe sostenere che il dolore causato da questo intervento risuona fino ai giorni nostri.

Dopo la nascita di Ismaele il rapporto tra le due donne si interrompe completamente. Sara maltratta Hagar, Hagar scappa di casa ma torna: non ha nessun altro. Ismaele e Hagar sono banditi causando dolore a entrambi e ad Abramo, che non conoscerà l’esito della loro storia, Isacco eredita un trauma familiare che non può iniziare a capire.

La nascita di Isacco è raccontata in termini quasi miracolosi. Abramo e Sara sono vecchi, lei è chiaramente in post-menopausa. Quando Dio dice ad Abramo che ci sarà un altro bambino egli ride, ricorda a Dio che ha cento anni e Sara novanta e supplica perché il suo erede sia Ismaele, solo per sentirsi dire che il figlio promesso ed erede dell’alleanza sarà davvero di Sara, anche se di Ismaele si avrà comunque cura.

Quando Dio parla a Sara, anche lei ride, è più diretta con Dio e gli chiede: adesso che è così anziana avrebbe tale piacere? E anche suo marito è troppo vecchio, ricorda a Dio. (Genesi 18:12)

Dio quindi fa qualcosa di straordinario. Riporta ad Abramo la voce narrativa interiore di Sara, ma alterandola. Invece del chiaro messaggio che Sara ha rinunciato alla speranza di tale gioia perché suo marito è troppo vecchio, Dio traspone la persona, dicendo ad Abramo che Sara ha riso perché lei si sente troppo vecchia.

Questa trasposizione è l’origine dell’idea rabbinica di Shalom Bayit di armonia coniugale, il racconto di piccole bugie innocenti per mantenere la pace. L’idea che in qualche modo la donna debba proteggere in modo sproporzionato il sentimento dell’uomo si è radicata in quello che altrimenti potrebbe essere un obiettivo lodevole. E purtroppo, Shalom Bayit è diventato il tappeto sotto cui gli abusi domestici sono stati spazzati via troppo spesso lungo le generazioni.

Sara è diventata il paradigma della donna ideale per l’ebraismo rabbinico anche in altri modi: quando i visitatori arrivano o annunciano la nascita di Isacco, Sara è nascosta nella tenda, suo marito affronta il mondo. Lui si affretta a essere ospitale, lei cuoce il pane per i visitatori. Più tardi ci verrà detto che quando Isacco sposa Rebecca la porterà nella tenda di sua madre e verrà confortata e il midrash (Bereishit Rabbà 60:16) insegnerà: “Tre fenomeni miracolosi verificatesi nella tenda, durante la vita di Sara, tornarono quando Isacco sposò Rebecca: le candele di Shabbat rimasero accese da un venerdì all’altro, l’impasto della Challà fu benedetto e fu sempre sufficiente per la famiglia e gli ospiti, e la nuvola divina si librò sopra la tenda”. La tradizione rabbinica generalmente lo interpreta mostrando che Rebecca fu, come Sara, una buona e fedele casalinga, il loro ruolo è limitato alla cottura, alla pulizia e alla preparazione della casa. Almeno un commentatore contemporaneo, e femminile, ha una visione diversa e, a mio avviso, più probabile del significato. Tamara Frankiel suggerisce che il midrash stia commentando l’intrinseca santità delle prime due matriarche, in modo tale che il necessario per Shabbat e la presenza divina fossero sempre a portata di mano, piuttosto che le due donne fossero particolarmente dedite alle faccende domestiche. Commenta anche che la descrizione della tenda qui è parallela al successivo Tempio, dove il ner tamid bruciava costantemente, i dodici pani dell’offerta erano sempre freschi e presenti davanti all’Arca dell’Alleanza. (La voce di Sara: spiritualità femminile ed ebraismo tradizionale).

I ruoli attribuiti dalla tradizione rabbinica a Sara e alle altre matriarche: materno, coniugale, casalingo, fornire le risorse dell’ospitalità ma non realmente presenti quando gli ospiti arrivano, non sono ruoli assegnati nei testi biblici. E lo sguardo maschile attraverso il quale generalmente vediamo queste donne, che godono chiaramente di fiducia e libero arbitrio nella propria vita se viste nella Bibbia, ha stratificato sia loro che le aspettative delle generazioni successive con un’aura impossibile e anche indesiderabile.

Sara non si mortifica quando prende in considerazione l’idea di avere un bambino, è realista riguardo alle proprie possibilità, all’idea di un piacere inaspettato dimenticato da tempo, ai cambiamenti che l’età ha portato a lei e a suo marito. Non fa nulla per la Shalom Bayit, è l’estensione rabbinica dei commenti di Dio che ci porta questa visione di lei come di donna che si soggiogherebbe per i sentimenti di suo marito. Allo stesso modo non c’è nulla nel testo che suggerisca che si soggioghi quando presenta Hagar a suo marito per fargli avere un figlio: semmai il potere è tutto in mano sua, come vediamo dalla sua reazione quando c’è un indebolimento di quella forte relazione. Quando si prende di nuovo carico di Hagar, anche Dio dice ad Abramo di ascoltare la sua voce e fare ciò che dice, qualcosa che ha straordinariamente poca popolarità nel mondo maschile dei testi rabbinici tradizionali.

Le donne nella comunità ebraica hanno le stesse probabilità di essere vittime di abusi domestici delle donne nella comunità più ampia, circa una su quattro li sperimenterà. Le donne nella comunità ebraica sono sempre più costrette a tenere conferenze sulla “Tzniut“, apparentemente intesa solo riguardo i corpi e le azioni delle donne, anche se certamente, nei suoi primi significati, la tzniut riguardava l’umiltà sia per gli uomini che per le donne.

Secondo l’halachà, le donne nella comunità ebraica sono incapaci: incapaci, per esempio, di intraprendere il documento di divorzio religioso di Gittin. Sempre più la halachà viene rielaborata per spingere le donne fuori dallo spazio pubblico, per cercare di rimuovere e nascondere le voci delle donne dal discorso, per sostenere alcuni atteggiamenti culturali come se fossero legali. E così, spesso, viene citata Sara imeinu: il paradigma femminile perfetto nelle menti della tradizione rabbinica, ma in realtà una vera donna che sviluppa il proprio agire e il proprio potere, che vede le fragilità di suo marito, che interviene nella storia e che ride incredula di Dio.

Mentre segniamo il giorno che ci ricorda come le donne siano diventate tanto vulnerabili alla violenza maschile da dover esserci una politica internazionale per cercare di plasmare un mondo diverso, prendiamoci un momento per vedere la vera Sara imeinu. La donna che non appartiene in origine a nessun uomo nella Bibbia, che sposa Abramo e lo aiuta nel lavoro della sua vita, viaggiando con lui e condividendo il suo destino, lavorando come parte di una squadra e non servendo nessuno.

Immagine gentilmente concessa da Rahel Jaskow – Rosh HaShanà: il cartello sulla destra accoglie gli uomini in sinagoga, quello a sinistra dice alle donne dove si trovano i loro ingressi separati, dicendo loro di andarsene non appena il servizio di shofar è terminato (anche se il servizio continuerà nella sinagoga) e che dovrebbero andare dritte a casa e non bighellonare nei luoghi pubblici ………….

Traduzione dall’inglese di Eva Mangialajo Rantzer

3rd Elul: birthday of Menachem Meiri

Posted on September 3, 2019 by sylviarothschild

3^rd Elul birth of Menachem ben Solomon Meiri or Ha’Meiri (1249–1306)

The Meiri was a Catalan rabbi, Talmudist and Maimonidean, regarded as one of the most brilliant commentators of his time. His works, which have often been ignored by much of the halachic process since, show a clear and logical – and scientific – approach to our great foundational texts. He was a philosopher whose learning kept him open to new approaches – from the Jewish Encyclopaedia we read that “Meiri was too much of a philosopher himself to interdict the study of philosophy. Thus, when solicited by Abba Mari to give his adhesion to the excommunication launched against the secular sciences, Meiri wrote him a letter in which he emphatically defended science, the only concession he made being to forbid the study of secular sciences by any one before he has thoroughly studied the Talmud.”

He is especially famous for his writings on Jewish-Gentile relationships, repeatedly holding that the statements against the other nations in the Talmud and the discriminatory laws against them, were only about the long-disappeared idolatrous nations of that time, and in no way were to be used in his contemporary setting. He was also a clear early voice in support of women’s reading of the Sefer Torah and the Megillah within the community.

Other comments of his are also worth bringing forward for attention– for example on the fractious dispute that has surfaced in our time: Kol b’isha ervah – the idea that a woman’s voice is sexually provocative and must therefore not be heard – also provide useful early texts to remind those who would silence women en masse in public spaces, that their viewpoint is not miSinai. On the nature of Ervah as it relates sexuality he is clear that this is highly subjective. “That a person knows himself and his inclinations” and that Kol B’isha does not apply when one knows that her voice will not be sexually stimulating. And concerning this the Torah says I am the Eternal your God” — indicating that each person must draw an honest and individual boundary”

He rules that even a minor may read from the Torah scroll for the community. He believes that one’s obligation to read the Torah publicly is not one that falls under the halachic concept that a person of lesser obligation cannot perform a commandment on behalf of a person with a greater obligation, for that is holds only for individual obligations and not communal ones. Hence, women too can read from the Sefer Torah.

There are downsides to his writing. In particular I found his comments on who to marry disappointing: Commenting on BT Yevamot 63a where Rav Pappa advises “Be patient and marry a woman who is suitable for you. Descend a level to marry a woman of lower social status, and ascend a level to choose a friend” Rashi glosses: “Do not take an important woman as your wife, lest she find that you are unacceptable to her” But the Meiri goes further in his commentary -“Never seek a wife among those who are greater than you, lest as a result of her higher standing, she rules over you. Surely then she will not obey you regarding household tasks.”

We are all children of our time, and we have all absorbed the generation norms in which we live, to a greater or lesser degree. The Meiri was of his place and time, but had the courage to speak against much of the prevailing fear of “the other” – be they women or gentiles. And he continued to be open to knowledge from whatever source, defending the learning of the sciences and a good and rounded education. We need more such voices today.

Tu b’Av: an especially joyful festival to be reclaimed

Posted on August 15, 2019 by sylviarothschild

The three weeks that lead from the 17^th Tammuz (breaching of the walls of Jerusalem) to the 9^th of Av (Tisha b’Av) are traditionally a period of mourning, known as bein hametzarim – in the narrow straits. So it is all the more surprising that just one week after Tisha b’Av comes an especially joyful festival – the full moon of Av brings us Tu b’Av – when we are told:

Rabban Simeon ben Gamliel said: Never were there any more joyous festivals in Israel than the 15th of Av and the Day of Atonement, for on them the maidens of Jerusalem used to go out dressed in white garments – borrowed ones, however, in order not to cause shame to those who had none of their own. These clothes were also to be previously immersed, and thus the maidens went out and danced in the vineyards, saying: Young men, look and observe well whom you are about to choose; (Mishnah Ta’anit 4:8)

The rabbis of the Gemara are perplexed – ““On the 15th of Av and on the Day of Atonement,” etc. It is right that the Day of Atonement should be a day of rejoicing, because that is a day of forgiveness, and on that day the 2nd tablets of the Law were given to Moses; but why should the 15th of Av be a day of rejoicing?”

And so begins a fascinating rabbinic journey into what is behind the celebration of the fifteenth (Tu) of’Av :

“ Said R. Yehudah in the name of Samuel: “On that day it was permitted to the members of the different tribes to intermarry.” Whence is this deduced? Because it is written [Num 36: 6]: “This is the thing which the Eternal has commanded concerning the daughters of Zelophehad,” they claim that “this is the thing” implies the decree was only for that generation, but for later generations the decree doesn’t apply.

Joseph in the name of R. Nachman said: On that day the members of the tribe of Benjamin were permitted to intermarry with the other tribes, as it is written [Judges 21. 1]: “Now the men of Israel had sworn in Mizpah, saying: Not any one of us shall give his daughter unto Benjamin for wife.”

Rabba bar bar Hana said in the name of R. Johanan: On that day the last of those who were destined to die in the desert died, and the destiny was thus fulfilled;

Ulla said: “On that day the guards appointed by Jeroboam to prevent the Israelites from coming to Jerusalem were abolished by Hosea the son of Elah, and he said: ‘Let them go wherever they choose.'”

Matnah said: “On that day permission was given to bury the dead who were killed in battle at the city of Beitar”

Rabba and R, Joseph both said: On that day they ceased to cut wood for the altar, as we have learned in a Baraita: R. Eliezer the Great said: “From the fifteenth day of Av the heat of the sun was lessened and the timber was no longer dry, so they ceased to cut wood for the altar.”

There is a golden rule in rabbinic exposition – the more explanations given for something, the less likely it is that anyone knows what the explanation actually is. Clearly a celebration on the 15^th of Av, which coincided with the beginning of the grape harvest, is part of the custom and practise of the Jews by the time of the Talmud, but its origin is already lost in the mists of time.

Let’s look briefly at the Talmudic explanations before looking at the festival itself.

The story of the daughters of Zelophehad is told in the book of Numbers- a rare piece of case law in that book and a powerful piece of text about women confronting Moses in order to attain fairness under the law. Zelophehad is dead, he had 5 daughters and no sons, and according to the rules of inheritance at that time, the girls would be left without anything. They approach Moses and argue their case, including the fact that their father will be forgotten in his tribe. Moses has to ask God about the merits of the case, and God tells him that the case of these daughters is valid; they should indeed inherit from their father. Later a problem arises, the leaders of the tribe of Manasseh – which the family of Zelophehad belong to – also bring a petition to Moses. Should daughters inherit when there is no son, and then marry into another tribe, the inheritance and land that would normally stay within the tribe will be given to the tribe that the woman marries into.

So the law is amended – such women who inherit land from their fathers must marry only within their own tribe – a limiting phenomenon that itself causes problems. So Rabbi Yehuda quotes Samuel by saying that tribes may now intermarry freely – and the date of this decision was the fifteenth of Av on the last year before the Israelites entered the Land of Israel.

The second explanation in the gemara is from a much darker story found at the end of the book of Judges, where a woman staying overnight in the territory of the tribe of Benjamin, was gang raped until she died. The other tribes went to war against the Benjaminites who would not give up the criminals for justice, and a ban was proclaimed which meant no one could marry into that tribe. This ban was eventually lifted on the fifteenth of Av. One assumes that this idea comes from the commonality of Tu b’Av to the statement in the Book of Judges ““And see, and, behold, if the daughters of Shiloh come out to dance in dances, then come out of the vineyards, and let every man catch his wife of the daughters of Shiloh, and go to the land of Benjamin.” (21:21)

The third explanation – This comes from a midrash found in the Jerusalem Talmud amongst other texts, which say that the generation who were to die in the desert because of their connection to the sin of the Golden Calf expected to die on Tisha b’Av. This would cause a problem – if there were to be so many deaths on one day, then who would be able to dig the graves and bury the people? So Moses sent out a decree: On Tisha b’Av everyone must dig their own grave and sleep in it. Those who would die would die, and the survivors would simply have to fill in the graves with the bodies already in them. But many did not die who felt that they too were destined for this fate, and so they continued to sleep in the graves they had dug for themselves until they saw the full moon of Av and realised that Tisha b’Av was well and truly behind them. They would live!

The fourth explanation: King Jeroboam (c900BCE) had challenged Rehoboam the son of Solomon, because of his authoritarian rule, and took the ten Northern tribes with him to his capital Shechem. He built two temples as rivals to the one in Jerusalem (Bethel and Dan) and banned his people from going to worship in Jerusalem. Fifty years later, the last King of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, rescinded the ban – on Tu b’Av – and the joy that ensued is encoded in the festival.

The fifth explanation also involves graves, in this case the ones slaughtered in the rebellion against Rome led by the false messiah Shimon bar Kochba in 135. The massacre of the Jews by the Romans was estimated by one Roman historian as being at least 580 thousand dead and many more taken captive into slavery in other parts of the empire. The majority of the Jewish population was exiled from the land and the land given a new name by the Romans – Syria Palestina – to try to sever the connection between the land and the Jews. Tisha b’Av saw the final destruction of Temple and hopes, and the fortress of Beitar was breached and its inhabitants murdered and left unburied. So Rav Matnah’s explanation for Tu b’Av is that 6 days after the tragedy (some stories say a year and six days), the Romans finally permitted the burial of the slaughtered Jews – on Tu b’Av.

After such dramatic explanations the final one in the list is more prosaic, but also most likely to be the case. Simply that the full moon of Av is around the summer equinox, the days are beginning to shorten and one might be less sure of enough dry weather for the wood cut down for the Temple sacrifices to be sufficiently prepared for its use, and any wood cut down later would be liable to smoke unpleasantly. This explanation is bolstered by the fact that we know of customs in the near East whereby the end of the season for cutting wood is marked by celebration including dancing and music.

So having established that Tu b’Av was being celebrated in Mishnaic times, that the young women would go out into the vines wearing white dresses they had borrowed so as not to be identified by their clothing, that they danced and sang and that clearly a shidduch market was in full swing on that date – the young men would chase them and choose their brides – the rabbinic tradition tried to explain the event using stories of rape, graves, massacre, orphaned women claiming economic rights and hence losing the right to marry outside of their tribe, civil war and rebellion against both internally among the Jewish people and also against an oppressive occupying power. One has to wonder why.

I am reminded of a recent “tweet” that asks why a prominent politician is tweeting terrible racism, and suggests that the deflection is to stop people paying attention to something worse – the statutory rape of underage girls. Here the rabbinic tradition has a clear story of strong young single women in public space, helping each other with their clothing and “seductively” dancing and singing among the grape vines, with their symbolism of wine and wealth and fertility. So immediately there is a deflection – Beitar! Bnot Zelophehad! Possibly the darkest story in bible of a young concubine gang raped and murdered, whose fate was to be cut into twelve pieces each of which was sent to one of the tribes of Israel! Sin and death and lying in the grave! Rebellion and Massacre!

It seems to me that the Tannaim (the rabbis of the Mishnah, c50-200CE) were fine with the celebrations of Tu b’Av and the fact of young girls out on a summer evening enjoying their bodies, their strength and their music, but the Amoraim (the rabbis of the Gemara c200-500CE) were decidedly not. So Tu b’Av became a date more often ignored than celebrated. The single attention was liturgical – Tachanun (the penitential section of prayers of supplication and confession) are not said on Tu b’Av. Only since the modern State of Israel has been established has Tu b’Av been celebrated – it has become a kind of Jewish “Valentine’s Day”, a day for love, for weddings, for romance. The 19th century Haskalah poet Judah Leib Gordon wrote about its celebration in the newly planted vineyards and certainly for the more secular Israelis this is a Jewish festival to take to their hearts.

It’s worth noting the framing of the Mishnah where Tu b’Av is recorded. It is mentioned in the same breath as the most solemn day in the calendar – Yom Kippur, the Sabbath of Sabbaths, the white fast. On this day people traditionally wear kittels – the white shrouds they will be buried in. The day is a day of joy as well as penitence, because when we have truly repented, God will forgive us. We leave the day lightened by our activities and return more able to continue with living our lives.

There are real similarities between the two festivals, albeit one is a day out of time “as if dead” and the other a day of sensuous delight. Each reminds us of the importance of living our lives as fully and as well as we can. Each reminds us about living” in the now”, each helps us create our future selves.

So – let’s reclaim Tu b’Av, the full moon that follows three weeks of mourning, that takes place 6 days after the blackest day in the calendar. Let’s remind ourselves that life must continue, joy must be part of our living, that relationships with others matter and that the future is ours to create

Esther: the Book, the Woman, the power shifts.

Posted on March 13, 2019 by sylviarothschild

The book of Esther is one of the last to be added to the Hebrew canon, for a number of reasons, not least that the name of God does not appear in it. The book is a puzzle, filled with allusions and hinting at hidden depths. Even the name of the eponymous heroine, Esther, comes from the Hebrew root ‘s.t.r’ meaning ‘to conceal’ although it may of course be a Hebrew form of the name Ishtar the Babylonian goddess of love, war, fertility, and sexuality, or the Persian ‘satarah’ meaning a star.

It is also a book whose meaning is to be understood not at the surface level of the p’shat. Placed within the final section of the Tanach (Hebrew Bible), the Ketuvim, it is firmly in the realm of ‘writings’ rather than ‘word of God’. This book is not history in the sense of recording events that happened – it is history in the sense of revealing a continuing truth that speaks to each generation.

The book begins in the Persian capital of Shushan, with the King Ahasuerus hosting an enormous banquet for the nobles and princes of his province, a banquet which then grew to include the others in the fortress. Meanwhile Vashti the queen hosted her own banquet for the women and all went well until the King decided to require Vashti to come show herself and her great beauty to his guests, wearing the Royal crown. Vashti said no. Now much has been written about Vashti – how she was a feminist icon, her own woman. Rabbinic tradition tells that she refused because she understood that she had been asked to come wearing ONLY the crown. Or that she had a tail! There is also a midrash that says that Vashti was more royal than her husband (according to this she was the orphaned daughter of Belshazzar and Ahasuerus had been the steward in the stables of her father) and so she refused to obey him and show off the regal regalia. Whatever her reason, Vashti said no and this sent the men’s banqueting company into a panic. The king and his advisors are worried that if she gets away with her refusal to obey her husband, then other women will get the idea that they too will not have to be compliant and obedient to theirs, and then who knows what would happen?

So Vashti is banished (some say executed) – not primarily for her act of disobedience, but “pour encourager les autres” ie to compel others not to copy her behaviour. The text is unabashed and very clearly about the submission of women to men: “When the king’s decree will be published throughout the great kingdom, all wives will give honour to their husbands….and he sent letters…that every man should rule in his own house”.

When the king had calmed down (and we presume sobered up) he realised that he would want feminine company now that Vashti had gone, and his advisors once again had the solution. “Let there be sought for the king young virgins fair to look on, and let the king appoint officers in all the provinces of his kingdom so that they may gather together all the fair young virgins to Shushan the fortress to the house of the women…and let ointments be given them, and let the maiden that pleases the king be queen instead of Vashti” and this advice pleased the king. Choosing a wife in this way would mean choosing a young unformed girl who could be moulded to fit the wishes of her husband.

Esther appears as one of these virgins collected for the beauty contest whose prize was to be consort to the king. We meet her as an orphan, the daughter of Avihail and cousin of Mordecai, a Benjaminite. We learn very little about her as a person, but we find that she is described as beautiful that she is obedient to Mordecai’s instruction not to reveal her identity or Jewishness, that she finds favour in the eyes of the eunuch responsible for the women and she appears to be compliant with all that is asked of her. The text also tells us that Mordecai is able to walk every day before the court of the women’s house, to know how Esther did, and what would become of her – unbelievable in any harem setting, and yet critical to the narrative. Mordecai retains control over Esther in this way even though she is being groomed for the king.

Four years after the beauty contest had begun, Esther went to the King and he loved her and made her queen by placing the crown on her head, a worthy replacement for the beautiful Vashti. And still Esther kept her Jewishness hidden, “for Esther did the commandment of Mordecai, like as when she was brought up with him”.

The narrative turns to a story whereby Mordecai discovers a plot against the king, who tells Esther, who in turn tells the king and clearly cites that the information came from Mordecai – but not apparently with the added information that he is a blood relative – and so the conspirators are examined, found guilty, and executed; and Mordecai’s name written in the book of chronicles of the king. Yet apparently no reward is given…..

Now we turn to Haman the Agagite, who is promoted above all the other princes and advisors and the king commands that everyone shall bow down before him. And so of course, everyone does – everyone but Mordecai – who said it was against his religion to bow down to a person. Haman decided to be rid of all the Jews in the empire.

This is five years after Esther had become queen – five years where she had not divulged her yichus, nor it seems has had a child. The king seems to be continuing with sampling the beautiful young virgins of the empire, and according to the Midrash Esther was not only keeping Shabbat (by virtue of having seven maidservants so that she always knew what day of the week it was), not only keeping kashrut as an early adopter of vegetarianism, but was also taking instruction from Mordecai about the laws of family purity – for what else would he be doing by walking in the by the court of the women’s house except keeping her on the halachic straight and narrow?

Lots (purim) were cast by Haman to decide the most propitious date for the pogrom against the Jews – it would be in Adar, eleven months hence. Haman set his trap. He told the King that “there is a certain people scattered and dispersed in all the provinces of your empire, and they have different laws from others, and they don’t obey your laws. It isn’t a good idea for you to have them in the empire, so set a decree that they should be destroyed, and I will pay a lot of silver into your treasury. The King simply took his signet ring and gave it to Haman, saying that both the silver and the people were Haman’s to do whatever wanted. It seems a passive response, and inexplicable that the King would have refused the money raised from allowing the pogrom. And yet the narrative is unperturbed.

The decree was sent out throughout the empire, permitting the people to “destroy, to slay, and to cause to perish, all Jews, both young and old, little children and women, in one day, even upon the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, which is the month Adar, and to take the spoil of them for a prey.” The King and Haman settled down to drink and the text records that the fortress of Shushan was perplexed. To them, if not to the narrator, this seemed bizarre.

Mordecai clothed himself in mourning clothing of sackcloth and ashes and paraded through the city and at the gate of the king. Through Hatach, a chamberlain of the King, Esther found out what was happening and Mordecai sent her a copy of the decree with the instruction that now was the time to go to the King and beg mercy for her people. But Esther told him she couldn’t. Unless the king summoned her she was at risk of death for approaching him; and worse – she hadn’t been summoned for a month – maybe she was losing her position in his affections.

But Mordecai’s words were chilling. “Don’t think you will survive safely if the rest of the Jews are attacked. You and your descendants will perish, even though deliverance will surely come from somewhere. And anyway, who knows, maybe this is the reason you have been led to your position in the harem?”

Esther seems to come into her own. In the first, and only, nod to religious ritual in the story, she demands that the Jews should fast for her for three days, and decides that she too will fast along with her handmaids, and after that she will go into the king unbidden. “And if I perish, I perish”. Sadly the midrash glosses this taking of power back into submission: the Babylonian tradition understands that Esther was in fact the wife of Mordecai as well as his cousin. This would mean her living in the harem of the king would constitute adultery, the punishment of which would be death. However, one could make the case for her being compelled to live with the king, and therefore the punishment mitigated, but should she voluntarily approach the king then this case fails and Esther becomes an adulteress and forbidden forever to Mordecai. Poor Esther, being asked to remove the lifesaving defence of compulsion….

But for now the tables are turned. Mordecai goes on his way “and did according to all that Esther had commanded him.” The power dynamic shifts – for now.

Esther approaches the King successfully and asks him to come with Haman for a feast that very day. At the feast, the king again asks her what she wants, and she replies that she will tell him tomorrow, if he comes again with Haman to another feast. Haman is overjoyed to be included in the feasting, but his mood darkens when he sees Mordecai at the gate, still refusing to bow to him. He keeps his cool and goes home where he tells his friends and Zeresh his wife of all the honours that have come his way, but says he cannot enjoy them as long as “Mordecai the Jew” is sitting at the gate. Zeresh and the friends offer advice – he should have a gallows built immediately, then in the morning get the permission from the king to hang Mordecai, and after that he will be able to enjoy his good fortune and high status.

But that night – another plot twist! The king cannot sleep, he asks for the book of records to be read to him and finds that Mordecai was never repaid for his information about the plot against the life of the king. Haman, come early to get permission for the hanging of Mordecai, is invited to offer suggestions on “What shall be done for the man whom the king delights to honour?” and Haman, so certain of his favour in the court asked himself: ‘Whom would the king delight to honour besides myself?’ and comes up with no contender. Thinking the king wants to honour him he suggests that such a man should be dressed by other noble princes in regal clothing complete with crown, settled on a horse and taken through the city with the proclamation “This is being done for a man that the king wishes to honour”

The king is delighted with the suggestion and tells Haman to carry it out on Mordecai. Afterwards Mordecai returned to the king’s gate and the humiliated Haman goes home. Haman’s friends and wife tell him that if Mordecai the Jew has prevailed over him, then it is a sign that he will fail in his quest to destroy all the Jews of the empire. At that moment, before he can really process the information, the servants come to take him to Esther’s banquet.

And it is getting worse for Haman. For the king now asks Esther what it is that she wants, and she replies that she would like her life and the life of her people who are condemned to be killed. When the king asks who has condemned them, she answers quite bluntly ‘An adversary and an enemy, even this wicked Haman.’

Haman is terrified. The king is furious. Esther is silent. The king goes into the garden to think, and Haman pleads for his life before the queen. In a moment of farce the king returns from the palace garden “into the place of the banquet of wine; and Haman was fallen upon the couch where Esther was. Then said the king: ‘Will he even force the queen before me in the house?’ ”

What happened while the king was outside? Did Esther engineer the situation as a tableau before his return? Did Haman trip and fall on her? The text doesn’t tell us. But we know now that Esther, compliant and beautiful, has also been strategic and thoughtful in getting her request met. She is not an ignorant young girl at this point, but a mature woman who has been queen for some time…

Haman is taken out and hanged on the gallows built for Mordecai, a lovely tidy twist to the story. His house was given to Esther, who also told the king of her relationship with Mordecai. Mordecai was promoted and given the king’s signet ring that had originally been given to Haman. And curiously it is Esther who then sets Mordecai over the house of Haman. No doubt now who is the boss in that relationship.

Esther then works to reverse the decree against the Jews engineered by Haman. She cries before the king and asks him to write new letters contradicting the original orders to destroy the Jews. But he cannot for the king’s letters signed with the king’s seal are immutable. Instead he suggests that as Esther is now in charge of the house of Haman, she and Mordecai can now send out other letters also signed with the seal of the king to inform them that “the king had granted to the Jews in every city that they gather themselves together and stand for their life, to destroy and to slay and to cause to perish all the forces of the people and the province that would assault them, their children and women, and to take the spoils.” They were to do this on one day – the 13^th day of Adar.

This was seen as a great day for the Jews and many people in the Empire converted to Judaism. So when the date for the pogrom came around all the king’s officers were on the side of the Jews and it seems that there were relatively few enemies to slay throughout the empire – 75 thousand in total in that huge expanse of territory – except in Shushan itself. There 500 men and the ten sons of Haman were killed on the 13^th Adar and 300 more on the 14^th Adar but no spoils were taken.

The book then concludes with an explanation of the festival of Purim, to be kept throughout the generations and tells us that “Esther the queen, the daughter of Abihail, and Mordecai the Jew, wrote down all the acts of power, to confirm this second letter of Purim.” And that “the commandment of Esther confirmed these matters of Purim; and it was written in the book.”

Power seems to be firmly in the hands of Esther, but the book ends with an addendum that “For Mordecai the Jew was second to king Ahasuerus, and great among the Jews, and accepted of the multitude of his fellows; seeking the good of his people and speaking peace to all his seed.”

So what do we, as modern women, make of the story of Esther and the festival of Purim which the book attempts to explain?

We see that a vulnerable orphaned girl ends up a powerful woman. Having been compliant and obedient, passive in the hands of the men around her, she later reveals herself as being a woman with a shrewd strategic mind, who ends the story as a woman of great power and control, the owner of Haman’s estates, the writer of letters in the name of the King.

In this she forms a literary counter to Vashti, the woman who began the story with great power but whose choice to refuse her husband’s wishes in a public snub made her the ultimate powerless ‘outsider’.

But Esther does not use her tactical instincts and rise up to defend her people until she is reminded that even living in the palace would not protect her from sharing the fate decreed for her people. Only the realisation that she too is vulnerable makes her act. In this we might see the pattern of abused women everywhere whose lack of confidence cause them to lose agency and accept with painful passivity until the moment when they finally realise the lack of choice – to act or to die.

It is generally accepted that the book of Esther is a late book, probably written @4^th century BCE and it seems to be a polemic written for diaspora Jews to remind them that life will always be hard, there will always be people who hate them in the lands they are living in, and yet unlike modern rhetoric the book seems to be adding to this information that there are ways of dealing with this situation: contact with government, integration into the society, walking the fine line between accepting the mores of the country and taking a principled stand to retain Jewish identity.

I am always struck by the line from the havdalah service – the Jews had light, gladness joy and honour – so may we also” which is a reference to the book of Esther. It is placed liturgically at one of the most frightening times of the week, when Shabbat is going out and we are to face the world again, with all its uncertainty. The ‘extra soul’ departs until the following week, we are bereft and diminished. And we comfort ourselves with the words that come from the end of the book after all the fighting and fear that the Jews of the empire faced. Essentially we repeat each week that living in Diaspora is insecure, and yet we can do it. And more than that, we can grow in confidence and skills just like Esther.

written for Beit Deborah magazine

illustration from BL Hebrew Project digitised collection – the beauty parade with Esther

Esther: il libro, la donna, i cambi di potere.

Di Rav Sylvia Rothschild, pubblicato il 13 marzo 2019

Il libro di Esther è uno degli ultimi ad essere stati aggiunti al canone ebraico, per una serie di motivi, non ultimo il fatto che il nome di Dio in esso non compare. Il libro è un puzzle, pieno di allusioni e indizi nascosti in profondità. Persino il nome dell’eroina eponima, Esther, deriva dalla radice ebraica “str” che significa “nascondere” sebbene possa essere naturalmente una forma ebraica del nome Ishtar, la dea babilonese dell’amore, della guerra, della fertilità e della sessualità, o possa derivare dal persiano ‘satarah’ che significa stella.

È anche un libro il cui significato non si comprende restando al livello superficiale dello peshat (uno dei quattro metodi esegetici del testo, corrispondente al significato letterale, ndt). Il libro Ketuvim, gli Agiografi, collocato all’interno della sezione finale del Tanach (la Bibbia ebraica), è saldamente nel regno degli “scritti” invece che in quello della “parola di Dio”. Questo libro non è storia nel senso di registrazione di eventi accaduti: è storia nel senso di rivelazione di una verità continua che parla ad ogni generazione.

Il libro inizia nella capitale persiana di Shushan, con il re Assuero che ospita un enorme banchetto per i nobili e i principi della sua provincia, un banchetto che poi cresce fino a includere altri nella fortezza. Nel frattempo Vashti, la regina, organizza il proprio banchetto per le donne e tutto va bene finché il re non decide di chiedere a Vashti di venire a mostrarsi, e mostrare la sua grande bellezza agli ospiti, indossando la corona reale. Vashti dice di no. Ora, molto è stato scritto su Vashti: su come sia un’icona femminista, una donna che appartiene a se stessa. La tradizione rabbinica dice che lei rifiuta perché capisce che le era stato chiesto di venire SOLO con la corona. O che avesse una coda! Vashti era più reale di suo marito, racconta un midrash in base al quale ella era la figlia orfana di Baldassarre, mentre Assuero era stato il maggiordomo nelle stalle di suo padre, e così lei rifiuta di obbedirgli e mostrare le insegne regali. Qualunque fosse la sua ragione, Vashti dice di no e questo manda la compagnia degli uomini al banchetto nel panico. Il re ed i suoi consiglieri sono preoccupati che se lei si allontana rifiutando di obbedire al marito, allora le altre donne avranno l’idea che anche loro potranno non essere obbedienti ai loro, e poi chissà che cosa potrebbe succedere?

Quindi Vashti viene bandita (alcuni dicono giustiziata), non principalmente per il suo atto di disobbedienza, ma per il suo “encourager les autres”, lo si fa quindi per evitare che altre donne imitino il suo comportamento. Il testo è sfacciato e molto chiaro sulla sottomissione delle donne agli uomini: “Quando il decreto del re sarà pubblicato in tutto il grande regno, tutte le mogli daranno onore ai loro mariti … e invierà lettere … che ogni uomo dovrebbe governare nella sua propria casa”.

Quando il re si fu calmato (e presumibilmente era tornato sobrio) si rese conto che avrebbe voluto una compagnia femminile ora che Vashti se n’era andata, e che i suoi consiglieri avevano ancora una volta la soluzione. “Si cerchino per il re, giovani vergini, belle da vedere, e che il re nomini ufficiali in tutte le province del suo regno perché riuniscano tutte le belle e giovani vergini a Shushan, la fortezza, nella casa delle donne … e che siano dati loro unguenti, e che la fanciulla che piace al re sia regina invece di Vashti” e questo consiglio piacque al re. Scegliere una moglie in questo modo avrebbe significato scegliere una giovane ragazza non ancora formata che avrebbe potuto essere modellata per soddisfare i desideri di suo marito.

Esther appare come una di queste vergini raccolte per il concorso di bellezza il cui premio era di essere consorte del re. La incontriamo come un’orfana, la figlia di Avihail e cugina di Mordechai, un Beniaminita. Sappiamo molto poco su di lei come persona, ma scopriamo che è descritta come bella e che è ubbidiente alle istruzioni di Mordechai di non rivelare la sua identità o ebraicità, che trova favore negli occhi dell’eunuco responsabile delle donne e sembra accondiscendere a tutte le richieste che le vengono poste. Il testo ci dice anche che Mordechai è in grado di camminare ogni giorno davanti al cortile della casa delle donne, per sapere come stia Esther e cosa ne sarà di lei, cosa incredibile per un qualsiasi harem, e tuttavia critica per la narrazione. Mordechai mantiene il controllo su Esther in questo modo anche mentre la stanno preparando per il re.

Quattro anni dopo che la gara di bellezza era iniziata, Esther andò dal re e lui la amò e la fece regina mettendo la corona sulla sua testa, degna sostituta della bellissima Vashti. E ancora Esther teneva nascosta la sua ebraicità, “perchè Esther obbediva al comando di Mordechai, come quando era cresciuta con lui”.

La narrazione si trasforma in una storia in cui Mordechai scopre un complotto contro il re, lo racconta a Esther, che a sua volta lo racconta al re e cita chiaramente che l’informazione viene da Mordechai, ma apparentemente non aggiunge l’informazione di essergli consanguinea, e così i cospiratori sono esaminati, vengono giudicati colpevoli e giustiziati; e il nome di Mordechai viene scritto nel libro delle cronache del re. Eppure a quanto pare non viene data alcuna ricompensa…

Ora ci rivolgiamo ad Haman l’Agagita, che era stato promosso al di sopra di tutti gli altri principi e consiglieri e il re comandò che tutti si inchinassero davanti a lui. E così, naturalmente tutti fecero, tutti tranne Mordechai, che disse che inchinarsi davanti a una persona era contro la sua religione. Haman decise di sbarazzarsi di tutti gli ebrei nell’impero.

Sono passati cinque anni da quando Esther era diventata regina, cinque anni in cui non aveva reso noto il suo yichus, né sembra che avesse avuto un figlio. Il re continuava a provare le belle giovani vergini dell’impero, e secondo il midrash Esther non stava solo osservando lo Shabbat (in virtù di avere sette schiave in modo da sapere sempre in quale giorno della settimana fosse), non solo osservando la casherut, come una dei primi ad adottare il vegetarianismo, ma stava anche ricevendo istruzioni da Mordechai sulle leggi della purezza familiare, per quale altro motivo egli sarebbe entrato nella corte della casa delle donne se non per mantenerla strettamente in linea con le regole halachiche?

Haman tirò delle sorti (purim) per decidere la data più propizia per il pogrom contro gli ebrei: sarebbe stato ad Adar, dopo undici mesi. Haman pose la sua trappola. Disse al Re “c’è un certo popolo disperso in tutte le province del vostro impero, e ha leggi diverse dagli altri, e non obbedisce alle vostre leggi. Non è una buona idea per voi averlo nell’impero, quindi stabilite un decreto per distruggerlo, e io aggiungerò molto argento al vostro tesoro. Il Re semplicemente prese il suo anello col sigillo e lo diede ad Haman, dicendo che sia l’argento sia il popolo erano di Haman e che avrebbe potuto farne qualsiasi cosa volesse. Il rifiuto del re di accettare il denaro raccolto per permettere il pogrom sembra una risposta passiva, e inspiegabile. Eppure la narrazione è imperturbata.

Il decreto fu inviato in tutto l’impero, permettendo al popolo di “distruggere, uccidere e far morire tutti gli ebrei, giovani e meno giovani, bambini e donne in un solo giorno, nel tredicesimo giorno del dodicesimo mese, che è il mese di Adar, e fare bottino. “Il re e Haman si accomodarono per bere e il testo riporta che la fortezza di Shushan era perplessa. Per loro, se non per il narratore, questo sembrava strano.

Mordechai si rivestì di abiti da lutto di sacco e di cenere e sfilò per la città e alla porta del re. Attraverso Hatach, un ciambellano del re, Esther scoprì cosa stava succedendo e Mordechai le mandò una copia del decreto con le istruzioni che ora era il momento di andare dal re e chiedere pietà per il suo popolo. Ma Esther gli disse che non poteva: era a rischio di esser messa a morte se si fosse avvicinata a lui a meno che il re stesso non l’avesse chiamata e, peggio ancora, non era stata convocata da un mese, forse stava perdendo la sua posizione negli affetti del re.

Ma le parole di Mordechai erano agghiaccianti. “Non pensare che sopravvivrai in sicurezza se il resto degli ebrei sarà attaccato. Tu e la tua discendenza perirete, anche se la liberazione da qualche parte sicuramente arriverà. E comunque, chissà, forse questa è la ragione per cui sei stata condotta nella tua posizione nell’harem?”.

Esther mostra le proprie qualità. Nel primo, e unico, cenno del rituale religioso nella storia, chiede che gli ebrei digiunino per lei per tre giorni, e decide che anche lei digiunerà insieme alle sue ancelle, e dopo di ciò andrà dal re senza nascondersi. “E se perisco, perisco”. Purtroppo il midrash rimprovera questa presa di potere alla sottomissione: la tradizione babilonese intende che Esther fosse in effetti la moglie di Mordechai e sua cugina. Ciò significherebbe che la sua vita nell’harem del re costituirebbe adulterio, la cui punizione sarebbe la morte. Tuttavia, si potrebbe giustificare il fatto che fosse costretta a vivere con il re, e quindi la punizione era attenuata, ma se lei si fosse avvicinata volontariamente al re, allora questo caso non avrebbe ragione d’essere e Esther diventerebbe un’adultera e quindi proibita per sempre a Mordechai. Povera Esther, le viene chiesto di rimuovere la difesa salvavita della costrizione ….

Ma per ora le carte in tavola sono diverse. Mordechai andò per la sua strada “e fece tutto quello che Esther gli aveva comandato”. Al momento la dinamica del potere è spostata.

Esther si avvicina al re con successo e gli chiede di venire con Haman per una festa proprio quel giorno. Alla festa, il re le chiede di nuovo ciò che vuole, e lei risponde che glielo dirà l’indomani, se verrà di nuovo con Haman ad un’altra festa. Haman è felicissimo di essere incluso nel banchetto, ma il suo umore si oscura quando al cancello vede Mordechai, che nuovamente si rifiuta di inchinarsi a lui. Si mantiene tranquillo e torna a casa dove dice ai suoi amici e a Zeresh sua moglie di tutti gli onori che gli sono stati offerti, ma dice che non può goderseli finché ” Mordechai l’ebreo” è seduto al cancello. Zeresh e gli amici offrono consigli: dovrebbe costruire immediatamente una forca, poi al mattino ottenere il permesso dal re di impiccarvi Mordechai, e dopo sarà in grado di godere della sua buona fortuna e dello status elevato.

Ma quella notte: un altro colpo di scena! Il re non riesce a dormire, chiede il libro dei documenti da leggere e trova che Mordechai non è mai stato ripagato per le sue informazioni sul complotto contro la vita del re. Haman, arriva presto per ottenere il permesso per l’impiccagione di Mordechai, ed è invitato a offrire suggerimenti su “che cosa deve essere fatto per l’uomo che il re si diletta ad onorare” e Haman, così certo del suo favore nella corte, si chiede: “chi il re sarebbe deliziato di onorare oltre me stesso?”, e non presenta alcun contendente. Pensando che il re voglia onorarlo, suggerisce che un tale uomo dovrebbe essere vestito da altri nobili principi con abiti regali completi di corona, sistemato a cavallo e portato in giro per la città con la proclamazione “Questo è stato fatto per un uomo che il re desidera onorare”.

Il re è soddisfatto del suggerimento e dice ad Haman di applicarlo a Mordechai. In seguito Mordechai torna alla porta del re e l’umiliato Haman torna a casa. Gli amici e la moglie di Haman gli dicono che se Mordechai l’ebreo ha prevalso su di lui, allora è un segno che fallirà nella sua tentativo di distruggere tutti gli ebrei dell’impero. In quel momento, prima che possa davvero elaborare le informazioni, i servitori arrivano per portarlo al banchetto di Esther.

E per Haman le cose stanno peggiorando. Poichè il re ora chiede ad Esther cosa vuole, e lei risponde che vorrebbe salva la sua vita e la vita del suo popolo che è condannato a essere ucciso. Quando il re chiede chi li ha condannati, risponde in modo abbastanza schietto “un avversario e un nemico, proprio questo malvagio Haman”.

Haman è terrorizzato. Il re è furioso. Esther è silenziosa. Il re va nel giardino a pensare, e Haman implora per la sua vita davanti alla regina. In un momento farsesco il re ritorna dal giardino del palazzo nel luogo del banchetto delle libagioni; e Haman giace caduto sul divano dove stava Esther. Quindi il re dice: “Costringerà addirittura la regina dinnanzi a me in questa casa?”

Cosa è successo mentre il re era fuori? Esther ha progettato la situazione come un tableau prima del suo ritorno? Haman si è spostato ed è caduto su di lei? Il testo non ce lo dice, ma ora sappiamo che Esther, compiacente e bella, è stata anche strategica e riflessiva nell’ottenere la sua richiesta soddisfatta. Lei a questo punto non è una ragazza inconsapevole, ma una donna matura che è stata regina per qualche tempo …

Haman viene portato fuori e impiccato sulla forca costruita per Mordechai, un bel colpo di scena alla storia. La sua casa è data a Esther, che racconta anche al re della suo rapporto di parentela con Mordechai. Mordechai è promosso e riceve l’anello con sigillo del re che era stato originariamente dato ad Haman. E curiosamente è Esther che poi colloca Mordechai nella casa di Haman. Nessun dubbio su chi ora in quel rapporto sia il capo.

Esther poi lavora per invertire il decreto contro gli ebrei progettato da Haman. Ella piange davanti al re e gli chiede di scrivere nuove lettere in contraddizione con gli ordini originali di distruggere gli ebrei. Ma egli non può perchè le lettere del re, firmate con il suo sigillo, sono immutabili. Invece suggerisce che siccome Esther è ora responsabile della casa di Haman, lei e Mordechai possono inviare altre lettere, firmate anche con il sigillo del re, per informare che “il re aveva concesso agli ebrei in ogni città di radunarsi e difendere la loro vita, per distruggere e uccidere e far morire tutte le forze del popolo e della provincia che avessero ad assalire gli ebrei, i loro figli e le loro donne, e prendere il bottino. “Dovevano fare questo in un giorno, il tredicesimo giorno di Adar.

Questo fu visto come un grande giorno per gli ebrei e molte persone nell’impero si convertirono all’ebraismo. Così, quando arrivò la data del pogrom, tutti gli ufficiali del re erano dalla parte degli ebrei e sembra che ci fossero relativamente pochi nemici da uccidere in tutto l’impero: settantacinquemila in totale in quell’immensa distesa di territorio, tranne che nella stessa Shushan. Lì cinquecento uomini e dieci figli di Haman furono uccisi il tredici di Adar e altri trecento il quattordici di Adar, ma non venne preso alcun bottino.

Il libro si conclude quindi con una spiegazione della festa di Purim, da serbare attraverso le generazioni e ci dice che “la regina Esther, la figlia di Abihail, e Mordechai l’ebreo, scrissero tutti gli atti di potere, per confermare questa secondo lettera di Purim.” e che “il comandamento di Esther confermava queste questioni di Purim; ed è stato scritto nel libro.”

Il potere sembra essere saldamente nelle mani di Ester, ma il libro termina con un addendum: “Perchè Mordechai l’ebreo era secondo al re Assuero, e grande tra gli ebrei, e accettato dalla moltitudine dei suoi simili; cercando il bene del suo popolo e parlando di pace a tutti i suoi discendenti”.

Allora, cosa facciamo noi, come donne moderne, della storia di Ester e della festa di Purim che il libro tenta di spiegare?

Vediamo che una ragazza orfana vulnerabile finisce col diventare una donna potente. Essendo stata obbediente e passiva nelle mani degli uomini intorno a lei, si rivela in seguito come una donna con una mente strategica acuta, che conclude la storia come donna di grande potere e capacità di comandare, l’intestataria della proprietà di Haman, e la scrivente delle lettere nel nome del re.

In questo lei costituisce un contraltare letterario a Vashti, la donna che ha iniziato la storia con grande potere ma la cui scelta di rifiutare i desideri del marito in un affronto pubblico l’aveva resa un caso estremo di impotenza ed emarginazione.

Ma Esther non aveva usato i suoi istinti tattici e non si era mossa per difendere il suo popolo fino a ché non le era stato ricordato che persino vivere nel palazzo non l’avrebbe protetta dal condividere il destino decretato per il suo popolo. Solo la consapevolezza che anche lei è vulnerabile la fa agire. In questo possiamo vedere il modello delle donne ovunque maltrattate, la cui mancanza di fiducia fa perdere loro la capacità di agire e le fa subire con dolorosa passività fino al momento in cui finalmente si rendono conto della mancanza di scelta, agire o morire.

È generalmente accettato che il libro di Esther sia un libro tardo, probabilmente scritto nel IV secolo a.E.V. e sembra essere una controversia scritta per gli ebrei della diaspora per ricordare loro che la vita sarà sempre dura, ci saranno sempre persone che li odieranno nelle terre in cui vivono, eppure a differenza della moderna retorica, il libro sembra aggiungere a questa informazione che ci sono dei modi per affrontare questa situazione: il contatto con il governo, l’integrazione nella società, camminare sulla linea sottile tra l’accettazione dei costumi del paese e l’assumere posizioni di principio per mantenere l’identità ebraica.

Sono sempre colpita dalla battuta del servizio dell’ havdalà: “gli ebrei avevano luce, gioia, gioia e onore, così possiamo averlo anche noi” che è un riferimento al libro di Esther. È collocato liturgicamente in uno dei momenti più spaventosi della settimana, quando Shabbat sta uscendo e dobbiamo affrontare di nuovo il mondo, con tutta la sua incertezza. “L’anima aggiuntiva” se ne va fino alla settimana seguente, e ne siamo deprivati e sminuiti. E ci consoliamo con le parole che arrivano dalla fine del libro, dopo tutti i combattimenti e le paure che gli ebrei dell’impero hanno affrontato. Sostanzialmente ripetiamo ogni settimana che vivere in Diaspora è insicuro, eppure possiamo farlo. Inoltre, possiamo aumentare la fiducia in noi stessi e nelle nostre capacità proprio come Esther.

Scritto per la rivista Bet Debora traduzione di Eva Mangialajo Rantzer

Vayelech: the time for us to grow up and take responsibility for our choices is upon us. or: the bnei mitzvah of the people of Israel

Posted on September 13, 2018 by sylviarothschild

Eight years ago one of my dearest friends was about to be seventy years old, and she decided to celebrate this momentous and biblical age by having her batmitzvah. I had tried to persuade her to do this for years and she had brushed me off; it is typical of her that she made her choice by herself on a date that had such resonance, and then throw herself into study and thinking for herself. We talked a little about the date and the sidra, and then she chose to direct her own study and do her own research. Luckily she sent me a near final draft. I say luckily because she never read this drasha or celebrated that long awaited day, for with everything planned and organised and ready to go, she suffered a cataclysmic and sudden bereavement and the weekend was taken over instead with grief and shock and the arrangements to honour the dead.

We spoke a while afterwards about her celebrating her batmitzvah on a different date but we both knew that was not really going to happen. The anticipated joy would never be the same, the shadow of grief never quite left her, and she too would depart this world suddenly and unexpectedly and quite dramatically, leaving the rest of us a small flavour of the shock she had experienced on the day of her birthday batmitzvah, to grieve and to question, and to process the reality of what happens when a life is torn from the world without warning.

Checking my computer recently, and thinking also of her as I do at this time of year, I came across an email where she had sent me this draft of the drasha she was to give to the community she had been at the heart of for so many years. With the permission of her children, I want to share it here.

“Vayelech is the shortest parsha in the Torah. It is 30 verses long, and I don’t recall ever hearing it read. In non-leap years like this one it is linked with Nitzavim. When I read Nitzavim-Vayelech they held together. They are followed next week by Ha’azinu which, when I looked it up I discovered is one the 10 Shirot [songs] conceived or written as part of the Almighty’s pre-Creation preparations. The only one still to be written is the song we will sing when the Messiah comes.

We are coming to the end of the Torah. This name, given to the first of the three sections of the Hebrew Bible, is better translated as Teaching. We are coming to the end of the month of Elul the month in which we begin to prepare for the approaching High Holy Days, and in the coming week we will celebrate Rosh Hashanah which in turn is followed by the 10 days of penitence and Yom Kippur. Then in roughly a month’s time on Simchat Torah we will finish reading the Teaching, the end of Deuteronomy, and seamlessly begin Bereishit – Genesis – again.

Vayelech must contain the most important rite of passage in the whole history of our planet. But we will come to that.

Israel is camped in its tribal groups on the banks of the Jordan, waiting to cross. The preceding parsha, Nitzavim, tells of Moses addressing the whole of Israel, in preparation for entering the land God has promised them. He reminds them they are standing before God, and is clear that every person is included in this relationship.

[my son] tells me I can tell one joke… a clear example of don’t do as I do, do as I say …but I have two, and we will come to the second soon. A very good friend sent me a card, writing in it “I saw this, and thought of you.” The cartoon was a line drawing of 2 dogs, the larger one saying: “I understand more commands than I obey.” I hope you agree with me, that this is arguable!

Moses and God know from experience that the Children of Israel will fail to follow God’s Teaching.

Moses warns those listening to him that the consequences of disobedience will be that the land will become desolate, but mitigates this by prophesying they will make t’shuvah, return to the right way, and God will reconcile with them and bring them back.

And he says something that has always troubled me: that the commandment he is giving to them and so to us “is not beyond you, or too remote. Not in Heaven, or across the sea. It is very close to you… in your mouth and in your heart, so you can do it.”

What I have never been sure of is what this is, what it is that is in my heart, and in my mouth? Not the 10 Commandments – too many! And not the 613 mitzvot buried in the text. And then the man who is not my chief rabbi, Jonathan Sacks said quite plainly on radio 4, no less, what it is, even quoting where I should find it. It is found in Genesis chapter 18, vv 17 – 19, where God is choosing Abraham because he deals with his household with Tzedakah and Mishpat: two words which together give the meaning of justice tempered with mercy. This is how we hope God will deal with us on Yom Hakippurim.

And finally Moses said that we have a choice, God has given us the choice of life and death – blessing and curse. We should choose to love God and walk in God’s path and keep God’s commandments. And just as the penalties for not doing so have been listed, the rewards of obeying are explained.

What we have been told is that all Israel is equally bound by this covenant, regardless of social position or occupation. And that even if we disobey God’s Laws there can be future redemption.

Further, we know that obedience to God’s Laws is within our scope.

And also that we are to have that freedom to choose that sets us apart from the animals.

And then we come to today’s portion, .Vayelech “And he went” which is the beginning of the rite of passage for the Children of Israel.

There is to be a change of “Top Management”. This is the day of Moses’s 120th birthday, and Moses has finally accepted that it is also his death day. It’s been hard for Moses to come to terms with his mortality, and he has behaved a little like a child trying to justify not going to bed, not just yet. There’s no time to discuss this today, try reading Louis Ginsberg’s Legends of the Jews. God has been forbearing with this servant with whom God has been in conversation for the last 40 years.

In this time the generations born into slavery have died, and the people who are born into freedom have known no other Leader. Moses has taught them, settled disputes, referred knotty halachic problems directly to God, and brought back the answers. It is explained that God will go with them, and lead them across the Jordan. Further, that although Moses may not go, they will have Joshua.

Moses has been frightened of dying, and the Almighty has shown him Aaron’s painless death. God is giving him the signal honour of dying on the anniversary of his birthday, and although Moses is not to be allowed to cross the Jordan God has taken him to look down upon the land.

Moses is kept busy on this day – there are the tribes to address, and writing enough copies of the Teaching to give one to each tribe, and lodge one in the Ark of the Covenant. This is talked of as a witness against the people, but I suppose it’s the master copy, and proof of God’s promises and provisions. Moses writes The Scroll to the very end, until it is finished, which is taken to mean that it is prophetic, containing as it does an account of his death. Further, the Almighty gives him a message to deliver, and a song of 43 verses, one of the 10 Shirot, to teach to the people.

How many people do you think there were, camped by the river? How many going into the Promised Land?

Jacob went to Egypt with 72 souls in his household. A rabble of 600,000 freed slaves left Egypt – and these were the men of fighting age. Add their relatives – minimally a wife each, one child. – Not parents and siblings – this could cause doubtful accounting – a conservative estimate would be 1,800,000 people. No wonder manna was needed!

Nor was it just Jews who escaped Egypt, plenty of escapee opportunists would have taken the chance, and been the “strangers within your gates” who are to have equality under the covenant with Jacob’s descendants.

The instruction was given for this to be read every seven years in the shemittah year. All Israel is commanded to gather at Succot in the place God has appointed (eventually the Temple in Jerusalem) and the King read to the people from the Scroll.

And the chapter ends with the prediction that Israel with turn away from God, and that God’s reaction would be to turn God’s face away from them – but also with the promise that their descendants will not forget the words which will remain in their mouths.

So what is happening?

It seems that with the completion of the Torah and our entry into the Promised Land, our Creator considers we are grown up. We have the Torah; we have the record in it of discussions and decisions. We are aware that we can judge matters between human beings – but not matters between human beings and God. We cannot deal with these because it is not our business to govern or over-rule another’s conscience.

God will not appoint another Moses – there is to be no dynastical continuity. No further theophanies. Israel has become a nation of priests with everyone having access to the Almighty and to God’s mercy.

And when we begin Genesis all over again, we go back to Creation and the dysfunctional families of Adam and Noah. When we come to Abraham, look out for the Teaching and how it is built on chapter by chapter.

And where’s the second joke? – listen to the translation.”

Sadly, we never heard the second joke. And the poignancy of some of the comments in the drasha make for difficult reading for those who knew her and knew her later story, though the mischief of her personality comes through this text for me, as does her clear and certain faith in God. This was a woman who, as administrator in the synagogue, would regularly leave open the door to the sanctuary in her office hours “because God likes to go for a walk”, but actually so that visitors would feel able to enter and sit and offer their prayers or order their thoughts. She would tidy up the siddurim and make sure they were properly shelved, saying that upside down books “gave God a headache”, to cover her need to honour God by keeping the synagogue neat. She spent hundreds of hours talking to the lonely, reassuring the frightened, supporting the vulnerable. She spent hundreds of hours creating the databases and systems to ensure that the synagogue ran as effectively as it could. And the roots of all this voluntary caring for the synagogue community was her own life’s struggles and her awareness that if God considers we are grown up now, with equal access to the Almighty and no “top management” to direct us, then we had better get on with it, with the work of creating and sustaining the world with tzedakah and mishpat, with righteousness and justice.

In this period of the Ten Days, as we reflect on the lives we are leading, the choices we are making, and the mortality that will come for us all, either with or without warning, I read her drasha as a modern ”unetaneh tokef”, and, as I was for so many years when I was her rabbi and she my congregant, I am grateful for the learning I had from her.

In memoriam Jackie Alfred. September 1940 – January 2017

rabbisylviarothschild

the occasional thoughts of a working woman rabbi in England

Category Archives: Women and Judaism

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3rd Elul: birthday of Menachem Meiri

Tu b’Av: an especially joyful festival to be reclaimed

Esther: the Book, the Woman, the power shifts.

Vayelech: the time for us to grow up and take responsibility for our choices is upon us. or: the bnei mitzvah of the people of Israel