Post by Rabbi Neil on Jul 4, 2017 4:46:04 GMT
Two important people die in chapter 20 of the Book of Numbers, and their respective deaths need to be compared. The first is Miriam, about whom Torah says, “The Israelites arrived as one at the wilderness of Tzin on the first new moon, and the people stayed at Kadesh. Miriam died there and was buried there.” (Num. 20:1) About 20 verses later, though, Aaron also dies. Here’s how Torah records this, “Moses did as the Eternal has commanded. They ascended Mount Hor in the sight of the whole community. Moses stripped Aaron of his vestments and put them on his son Eleazar, and Aaron died there on the summit of the mountain. When Moses and Eleazar came down from the mountain, the whole community knew that Aaron had breathed his last. All the house of Israel bewailed Aaron thirty days” (Num. 20:27-29). The difference is startling, even with our understanding of how androcentric - how male-dominated - Torah is. We could be generous with Torah and say that Aaron was central to the life of the Israelites as described by Torah. After all, the people’s connection with God was largely through the priesthood, they would bring sacrifices and they would atone through the priests. They would celebrate the festivals through the sacrifices they brought to the priests, and as High Priest, Aaron represented that entire sacrificial system that was so central to the lives of the people. Miriam was not. Miriam’s biggest contribution to the community in Torah is that she gathers the women together after the parting of the Sea and she sings to them. In terms of Torah, Miriam’s effect on the people is extremely small.
While the Rabbis who came later clearly also live in a totally androcentric world, they are at least aware of the huge disparity between the people’s response to the deaths of Miriam and of Aaron. They therefore try to increase the importance of Miriam by the process of s’michut, finding meaning in two verses adjacent to each other. Immediately after Miriam’s death, Torah describes that the people are without water, so the Rabbis connect these two verses and say that there existed a special well that moved with the people, and that it existed only on account of Miriam. And that’s great that they elevate her this way, but it’s also rather nonsensical, because the one time in Torah when Miriam takes a leadership role – back in Exodus – she leads the women in song and then the following verses say, “Moses then led the people from the Sea of Reeds and they went into the desert of Shur. For three days they travelled in the desert without water” (Ex. 15:22). They complain against Moses because there was no water, just as they do when Miriam dies. So, how come there was no water beforehand when Miriam was alive? One could suggest that the well came later, but that really doesn’t make much sense – if the well existed because of the merit of Miriam, it should have existed as soon as they left Egypt. So, what we’re left with, unfortunately, is apologetics.
Tomorrow morning during our explanatory service, we will be looking at our birchot hashachar, our morning blessings. Traditionally, one of the blessings thanks God for not having made me a woman. It doesn’t thank God for having made me a man, it thanks God for not having made me a woman. It was suggested as part of a triumvirate of blessings – thanking God for not having made me a non-Jew, an idiot, and a woman. All three are connected because all three are exempt from mitzvot. Women are not obliged to keep many of the time-bound commandments of Torah. The most common reason that Orthodox Jews give for this, a reason that’s even written in commentaries in Orthodox siddurim, are that women are more elevated spiritually than men so that women don’t need it. But that’s obviously apologetics. In fact, after Jenny had given birth she said that she finally understood why Orthodoxy said women were exempt from time-bound mitzvot because they never have the time to do them! They’re changing diapers, they’re feeding the baby, the baby is crying… how is a woman meant to pray prayers at the right time while doing all of those things? And this comes back to Miriam and her role in the Israelite community. Let’s not say that the people were moved by her death because she provided them with water. Let’s be honest and say that the people of the community, meaning the men of the community who were the most important at the time, didn’t care. So what if some woman leads the women in a song of celebration? They don’t care. And let’s be clear, Torah isn’t very friendly to Miriam when she and Aaron are talking about Moses’ Cushite wife. She’s the one who contracts the disease while Aaron isn’t punished at all. Let’s not impose modern sensibilities onto Torah’s perception of women. Let’s not pretend that it views women and special and elevated. If it did, the ritual of the Sotah, the suspected adulteress, wouldn’t have existed, and certainly the Rabbis wouldn’t have engaged in pseudo-pornographic commentary on it. If women were special and elevated in Torah, then it would have just said that one should put a woman suspected of witchcraft to death but not have the same commandment for men engaging in black arts. If women were special and elevated in Torah, then a woman wouldn’t have to bring a sin offering after giving birth, or wouldn’t have to be separated for being ritually unclean during her menstruation.
So, let’s be real. Torah, our foundational document, is profoundly sexist. Our customs that developed from that sexist document tended to be sexist, too. Why do women light the candles? According to one commentary because the glow of the candles makes her more attractive to her husband. The idea that she might perform a religious ritual in order to sexually arouse her husband really is the epitome of sexism. Of course, that’s only one commentary amongst many but the point is that it exists and draws on the sexism of the past.
Reform Judaism prides itself on its egalitarianism. Women and men sit together, prayer together, lead prayer services together, can become Rabbis together, and can access God in identical ways together if they so wish. They can, of course, bring their gender into their Judaism if they so wish – the point of egalitarianism is that we can choose how our gender plays a role in our spiritual lives, not that our spiritual lives are determined by our gender. But then how far can that go? Can Judaism exist beyond gender? Is it still Judaism? There are millions of Jews worldwide who say that Judaism and gender issues cannot be separated and that removing gender from Judaism creates something other that merely apes Judaism. Such individuals might look at Miriam’s Cup on the seder table and say it’s all very cute and with the best of intentions, but it’s just not Judaism. We can retort with a response that says it is, but underlying this entire discussion is an important question, which is what form does egalitarian Judaism take?
As an example, one of the songs that is often sung on Shabbat morning is modeh ani l’fanecha, in which we offer thanks to God. To its credit, Mishkan Tefillah notices that modeh ani is the masculine form and it provides the option for women to sing modah ani. In the very popular song hineh mah tov, in which we sing how good it is that achim, brothers, can dwell together, Mishkan Tefillah suggests achyot, sisters, as an alternate. In the morning blessings, men thank God she’asani ben chorin, thanking God who has made me free, while women thank God she’asani bat chorin because it would make no grammatical sense for a woman to use the term ben about herself. So, to make Judaism egalitarian, do we need to just make the grammar appropriate for differing people? Do we take the prayers that were traditionally for the men and just shoehorn the women in and say, “This is the traditional prayer made relevant for a more egalitarian age?” What about ritual? Do we take rituals that were created by men for men and just reshape them for women? Take the seder service. If we call the four sons the four children, have we done enough? If we add narratives of Shifrah and Puah, and of Yocheved and Miriam to the Haggadah, have we balanced that which was imbalanced? If we insist on a cup of Miriam next to the cup of Elijah, has our Judaism become egalitarian? Or do we have to go further? I would suggest not because there’s one thing that still hasn’t been fully addressed in most Reform circles – melech ha’olam. God in Hebrew prayer is masculine. We can translate that as “Sovereign of the universe,” as Mishkan Tefillah does, but the noun is a masculine noun. The name Adonai is very specifically a male term, meaning lord. We can’t avoid the fact that referring to God through masculine pronouns renders the entire service androcentric. So what do we do with that? The Reconstructionist siddur suggests alternate forms, B’rucha at Yah, for example, instead of Baruch atah Adonai. If we truly believe that God is neither masculine or feminine, that God is beyond gender, then there shouldn’t be an issue with that grammatically speaking. The problem with it is not grammatical, though, but practical. If one word in every five pages is different then that’s okay for community unity. But when every prayer starts and ends with differing words for differing people, how do we bring people together in prayer? How can we say everyone is praying the same prayer when every noun and verb used for God takes a differing form?
There’s no easy answer for this. This sermon certainly isn’t going to solve decades of progressive Judaism’s struggle for theological and ritual legitimacy, particularly because for some progressive Jews it’s totally appropriate to take the traditional prayer that were androcentric and just adjust the language when relating to male and female worshipers, while at the same time for some progressive Jews the prayers aren’t egalitarian if God is always masculine. Indeed some would say that even this does not go far enough, and that the only way for our prayers to be egalitarian would be to allow women to create and insert their own prayers into the service, sometimes replacing those with stereotypically androcentric themes. That’s not a case of “if the men don’t like it, tough, we’ve had to put up with this for millennia” but, rather, a statement that men are so invested in the themes of the liturgical flow that they don’t even see how androcentric they are. I’m not sure I agree with going this far, but certainly at least as far as questioning the gender of the metaphors we use for God seems appropriate to me.
Miriam’s death, therefore, lays down a profound challenge for modern, progressive Jews. It asks of all of us, “Are you going to address this imbalance? Or are you just going to let it stand for millennia? Are you going to tokenistically include me, and all women, in prayer, or are you seriously going to bring Judaism into the 21st century?” The answer to that question, perhaps more than any other, truly reveals the character of our Judaism. And now that I have raised the question, we have to ask ourselves as individuals and as a community how we respond. The answer is unlikely to be anything we expect, and that, I think, is the point. Of Abel, God said to Cain, “Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground.” Perhaps with the death of Miriam, God now calls to us and says, “Your sister’s blood cries out to you from the ground.” The question for all of us now is how to respond to that cry.
While the Rabbis who came later clearly also live in a totally androcentric world, they are at least aware of the huge disparity between the people’s response to the deaths of Miriam and of Aaron. They therefore try to increase the importance of Miriam by the process of s’michut, finding meaning in two verses adjacent to each other. Immediately after Miriam’s death, Torah describes that the people are without water, so the Rabbis connect these two verses and say that there existed a special well that moved with the people, and that it existed only on account of Miriam. And that’s great that they elevate her this way, but it’s also rather nonsensical, because the one time in Torah when Miriam takes a leadership role – back in Exodus – she leads the women in song and then the following verses say, “Moses then led the people from the Sea of Reeds and they went into the desert of Shur. For three days they travelled in the desert without water” (Ex. 15:22). They complain against Moses because there was no water, just as they do when Miriam dies. So, how come there was no water beforehand when Miriam was alive? One could suggest that the well came later, but that really doesn’t make much sense – if the well existed because of the merit of Miriam, it should have existed as soon as they left Egypt. So, what we’re left with, unfortunately, is apologetics.
Tomorrow morning during our explanatory service, we will be looking at our birchot hashachar, our morning blessings. Traditionally, one of the blessings thanks God for not having made me a woman. It doesn’t thank God for having made me a man, it thanks God for not having made me a woman. It was suggested as part of a triumvirate of blessings – thanking God for not having made me a non-Jew, an idiot, and a woman. All three are connected because all three are exempt from mitzvot. Women are not obliged to keep many of the time-bound commandments of Torah. The most common reason that Orthodox Jews give for this, a reason that’s even written in commentaries in Orthodox siddurim, are that women are more elevated spiritually than men so that women don’t need it. But that’s obviously apologetics. In fact, after Jenny had given birth she said that she finally understood why Orthodoxy said women were exempt from time-bound mitzvot because they never have the time to do them! They’re changing diapers, they’re feeding the baby, the baby is crying… how is a woman meant to pray prayers at the right time while doing all of those things? And this comes back to Miriam and her role in the Israelite community. Let’s not say that the people were moved by her death because she provided them with water. Let’s be honest and say that the people of the community, meaning the men of the community who were the most important at the time, didn’t care. So what if some woman leads the women in a song of celebration? They don’t care. And let’s be clear, Torah isn’t very friendly to Miriam when she and Aaron are talking about Moses’ Cushite wife. She’s the one who contracts the disease while Aaron isn’t punished at all. Let’s not impose modern sensibilities onto Torah’s perception of women. Let’s not pretend that it views women and special and elevated. If it did, the ritual of the Sotah, the suspected adulteress, wouldn’t have existed, and certainly the Rabbis wouldn’t have engaged in pseudo-pornographic commentary on it. If women were special and elevated in Torah, then it would have just said that one should put a woman suspected of witchcraft to death but not have the same commandment for men engaging in black arts. If women were special and elevated in Torah, then a woman wouldn’t have to bring a sin offering after giving birth, or wouldn’t have to be separated for being ritually unclean during her menstruation.
So, let’s be real. Torah, our foundational document, is profoundly sexist. Our customs that developed from that sexist document tended to be sexist, too. Why do women light the candles? According to one commentary because the glow of the candles makes her more attractive to her husband. The idea that she might perform a religious ritual in order to sexually arouse her husband really is the epitome of sexism. Of course, that’s only one commentary amongst many but the point is that it exists and draws on the sexism of the past.
Reform Judaism prides itself on its egalitarianism. Women and men sit together, prayer together, lead prayer services together, can become Rabbis together, and can access God in identical ways together if they so wish. They can, of course, bring their gender into their Judaism if they so wish – the point of egalitarianism is that we can choose how our gender plays a role in our spiritual lives, not that our spiritual lives are determined by our gender. But then how far can that go? Can Judaism exist beyond gender? Is it still Judaism? There are millions of Jews worldwide who say that Judaism and gender issues cannot be separated and that removing gender from Judaism creates something other that merely apes Judaism. Such individuals might look at Miriam’s Cup on the seder table and say it’s all very cute and with the best of intentions, but it’s just not Judaism. We can retort with a response that says it is, but underlying this entire discussion is an important question, which is what form does egalitarian Judaism take?
As an example, one of the songs that is often sung on Shabbat morning is modeh ani l’fanecha, in which we offer thanks to God. To its credit, Mishkan Tefillah notices that modeh ani is the masculine form and it provides the option for women to sing modah ani. In the very popular song hineh mah tov, in which we sing how good it is that achim, brothers, can dwell together, Mishkan Tefillah suggests achyot, sisters, as an alternate. In the morning blessings, men thank God she’asani ben chorin, thanking God who has made me free, while women thank God she’asani bat chorin because it would make no grammatical sense for a woman to use the term ben about herself. So, to make Judaism egalitarian, do we need to just make the grammar appropriate for differing people? Do we take the prayers that were traditionally for the men and just shoehorn the women in and say, “This is the traditional prayer made relevant for a more egalitarian age?” What about ritual? Do we take rituals that were created by men for men and just reshape them for women? Take the seder service. If we call the four sons the four children, have we done enough? If we add narratives of Shifrah and Puah, and of Yocheved and Miriam to the Haggadah, have we balanced that which was imbalanced? If we insist on a cup of Miriam next to the cup of Elijah, has our Judaism become egalitarian? Or do we have to go further? I would suggest not because there’s one thing that still hasn’t been fully addressed in most Reform circles – melech ha’olam. God in Hebrew prayer is masculine. We can translate that as “Sovereign of the universe,” as Mishkan Tefillah does, but the noun is a masculine noun. The name Adonai is very specifically a male term, meaning lord. We can’t avoid the fact that referring to God through masculine pronouns renders the entire service androcentric. So what do we do with that? The Reconstructionist siddur suggests alternate forms, B’rucha at Yah, for example, instead of Baruch atah Adonai. If we truly believe that God is neither masculine or feminine, that God is beyond gender, then there shouldn’t be an issue with that grammatically speaking. The problem with it is not grammatical, though, but practical. If one word in every five pages is different then that’s okay for community unity. But when every prayer starts and ends with differing words for differing people, how do we bring people together in prayer? How can we say everyone is praying the same prayer when every noun and verb used for God takes a differing form?
There’s no easy answer for this. This sermon certainly isn’t going to solve decades of progressive Judaism’s struggle for theological and ritual legitimacy, particularly because for some progressive Jews it’s totally appropriate to take the traditional prayer that were androcentric and just adjust the language when relating to male and female worshipers, while at the same time for some progressive Jews the prayers aren’t egalitarian if God is always masculine. Indeed some would say that even this does not go far enough, and that the only way for our prayers to be egalitarian would be to allow women to create and insert their own prayers into the service, sometimes replacing those with stereotypically androcentric themes. That’s not a case of “if the men don’t like it, tough, we’ve had to put up with this for millennia” but, rather, a statement that men are so invested in the themes of the liturgical flow that they don’t even see how androcentric they are. I’m not sure I agree with going this far, but certainly at least as far as questioning the gender of the metaphors we use for God seems appropriate to me.
Miriam’s death, therefore, lays down a profound challenge for modern, progressive Jews. It asks of all of us, “Are you going to address this imbalance? Or are you just going to let it stand for millennia? Are you going to tokenistically include me, and all women, in prayer, or are you seriously going to bring Judaism into the 21st century?” The answer to that question, perhaps more than any other, truly reveals the character of our Judaism. And now that I have raised the question, we have to ask ourselves as individuals and as a community how we respond. The answer is unlikely to be anything we expect, and that, I think, is the point. Of Abel, God said to Cain, “Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground.” Perhaps with the death of Miriam, God now calls to us and says, “Your sister’s blood cries out to you from the ground.” The question for all of us now is how to respond to that cry.
