Back of the bus? What about back of the shul?

In the recent firestorm over women's issues in Israel, nothing has been more emblematic than the long-overdue pushback on Haredim who try to enforce a "women in the back" policy on public buses.  This is such a clear and obvious violation of women's rights, and evokes such strong visceral reactions in anyone familiar with the American civil rights movement that it is an easy target.

In the segment of National Religious Orthodoxy that I am part of, everyone seems to agree that forcing women to the back of the bus is not a halachic requirement, and is a Haredi stringency that is counter to the way we see ourselves as Orthodox Jews.  Women in our community would never accept being sent to the back of the bus.

So why do we accept women at the back (or the top) of the shul?  At the corner of my street is a shul we used to be members of.  They completed a building a few years ago and the women's section is a balcony.  There is a small cage-like section with a few seats on the main floor in the back, but that seats only a few people.  The beit midrash, where daily services are held, has an ever shrinking women's section in the back corner.  It looks (and must feel) like a cage with only one or two seats.  This is despite the fact that there are women who come to say Kaddish at many of the daily services.  On the one hand, I admire these women for their commitment to Kaddish despite the way they are being treated.  On the other hand, I wonder how they can allow themselves to be treated this way.

By the time the shul was built we were active in another shul, but we had kept an associate membership.  When we saw what had been built, we withdrew our membership, but it is still the most convenient daily minyan.  Unfortunately, my regular shul is only a Shabbat minyan, and there are no better alternatives in the area.  I daven there regularly, but it makes my blood boil.  I love the Rabbi at this shul.  He is a progressive by almost all standards in Orthodoxy.  His wife is a brilliant talmidat chacham (Torah scholar) and speaker, as well as a leading lawyer in Israel.  How do they put up with this?  (To be fair, he was hired after the building was built.)

This is not a rant against this specific shul.  It is a problem across Orthodoxy in the Diaspora and Israel.  I can somewhat understand that buildings built 50 years ago are hard to retrofit (although that too is possible).  But how can a shul built in the past 20 years, in the Modern Orthodox community, not have a women's section which is side by side with the men?  Have we made no progress at all?  In my main community, we use a shul that was built with a balcony. It was designed (also in the past 10 years) by a famous woman architect who is secular.  What was she thinking? Would she have built a lecture hall (the shul is on a University campus) with a section in the back for the women?  We did not build the shul - it was just the best available option when we were looking for a venue.  However, we put a mechitza down the middle downstairs, and use the upstairs as overflow seats for the men.  It is doable - people just need to insist.

This is not a halachic issue.  I accept the the halachic need for a mechitza and separate sections for men and women.  I just don't accept that women should be at the back of the shul, any more than they should be at the back of the bus.

A Feminist look at Partnership Minyanim - Book Review and personal response

I just finished reading Elana Maryles Sztokman's book The Men's Section: Orthodox Jewish Men in an Egalitarian World, which is a qualitative, interview based study of the men who participate in partnership minyanim.  For those unfamiliar, partnership minyanim were pioneered by a community in Jerusalem called Shira Hadasha.  The model is based on an article by Rabbi Mendel Shapiro in 2001 that suggested the halachic permissibility of women reading from, and getting aliyot to, the Torah in the context of a traditional Orthodox synagogue.  In the model of Shira Hadasha there are now 20+ such communities around the world, where women lead the parts of the service (Pesukei D'Zimra, Kabalat Shabbat, etc.) and participate equally in the Torah service.  These communities have mechitzot (the traditional partition between men and women in an Orthodox synagogue) but the service is led from a podium that either straddles the mechitza, or is in a central neutral area between the men's and women's sections.


I am a founding member and gabbai of such a minyan in Raanana, so I was curious to read Dr. Maryles Sztokman's insights into what motivates men to join them and how that plays out in the context of finding a balance between remaining Orthodox while pushing the boundaries in an egalitarian direction.  (The minyanim are not truly egalitarian, as I insisted when ours was named, they are just more egalitarian then the standard Orthodox model.) 


The first time I attended Shira Hadasha, I expected it to seem weird.  Although I loved the idea, I was sure that hearing women read Torah and lead services would take some getting used to at the instinctual level.  However, my reaction was just the opposite.  It felt like coming home, like everything was finally in the right place.  Like the harmony had been missing a part, and it was finally complete.  I started looking for opportunities to go back, and later brought my wife (a serial founder of women's tefilot), who also found it inspiring.  We held our daughters' bat mitzvah celebrations in the context of a partnership minyan (that we organized with our friends and family at a hotel).


The book begins by defining the "man box" of Orthodox masculinity.  Orthodox men are socialized to live up to an ideal of regular, punctual prayer with a minyan three times a day, with the ideal man being able to lead the service and Torah reading precisely and perfectly.   Emotion and devotion in prayer are essentially ignored in this construct, and men are judged by our peers in our ability to meet this standard.

Although I never thought if it in the oppressive terms that the author describes, the Orthodox "man-box" is truly as she describes.  She correctly points out that realization of this standard is dependent on others, usually women, in a supporting role - taking care of children especially.    I was very aware of this in my own life.  Although in college I was pretty good about making minyan regularly, once we had kids, I consciously decided that I did not see any great merit in being a Tzadik at someone else's expense, and only went to minyan when it did not interfere with my being home with the kids in the mornings.  However, I never really questioned the ideal of the "minyan man", I just decided that in the conflict between that ideal, and my ideal image of a father, I would temporarily give up one for the other.  Even after reading the book, and understanding her critique, I still see the "man box" she describes as a positive value.

The second part of Dr. Maryles Sztokman's book is about how the partnership minyan does, and does not, break the "man box" of Orthodox masculinity.  While she appreciates the efforts men must make to empathize with women's disenfranchisement in order to step aside and allow women's leadership alongside men's, she is critical of the way men somehow still find ways to hold on to power.  More importantly, she concludes that the partnership minyan is essentially a masculine construct that women are being allowed to participate in, rather than creating a joint construct in which men and women can share - not only the roles, but in the creation of the construct itself.

The book's critique rang very true to me, but I am not sure how to respond.  In today's world, if I wanted to participate in a fully egalitarian religious experience, I have options outside of Orthodoxy.  The reason I remain Orthodox is that, despite my own difficulties with traditional structures, I am not willing to throw out the baby with the bathwater.    I want to reform from within, not break away.   Clearly, women are paying most of the price for the slowness of this reform.    Is the price worth it?  I guess individual women need to decide for themselves.

One thing I certainly took away from the book were specific ideas about what to avoid at our own minyan.  I certainly hope that some of the more egregious occurrences described in the book would not happen to us.  However, we do struggle with the need to balance the need to encourage new and unexperienced baalei tefilla and baalei keriah (both men and women) with the desire for a reasonable standard in quality.  I understand the author's concerns about how this standard impacts how people feel judged, but the reality is that it can be unpleasant to sit through a long service where the reading (the issue is mostly with Torah reading) is poor.  Reading the book has made me more conscious that we need to handle corrections gently and to be forgiving as new people take the very brave step of trying to lead the congregation.

Some of Dr. Maryles Sztokman's informants expressed their social need to remain Orthodox.  In my opinion, she was overly dismissive of this need.  Both men and women have a social need to belong.  By joining partnership minyanim, we risk our affiliation with the communities (beyond the direct prayer community) that we live in.  Especially in Israel, the schools our children go to, the social milieu we are part of, and the terminology we define ourselves by, are all Orthodox.    It is not surprising that many participants of the partnership minyanim want to make sure their membership in the minyan does not risk their acceptance in the larger community.  I personally think it is a lost fight, and I am not so hung up on the label, but I see where it comes from.  I am lucky enough to live in a community where, while the partnership minyan is controversial, my participation in it has not risked my ability to fully participate in other congregations in the area.   I also did not grow up in the Orthodox community, so I have less at stake.

However, on the larger issues, I question what we can do to make the service more reflective of the feminine while still remaining Orthodox.  The author has a lot of discussion of the way punctuality plays a negative role. I understand her point, and I certainly try hard not to make anyone individually feel bad about their late arrival.  However, I also know how uncomfortable it can be to wait for a minyan, especially when there are mourners who want to say Kaddish.  On the one hand, they want to say Kaddish.  On the other, I am concerned that they are made to feel uncomfortable for holding up the congregation because otherwise we would continue to a later part of the service, as Pesukei D'Zimra does not require a minyan.  What does a prayer service look like if no one worries about coming on time? We don't need everyone there, but without a minyan, there are issues I don't know how to solve.

What else can we change?  I would like to explore finding a way for men and women to lead services equally, and not just some parts as is currently practiced.  I am still examining the sources, but I see it as a project to undertake during my ordination studies.   However, that solves nothing from either the feminist or Orthodox perspectives.  From the feminist perspective, it is an extension of sharing roles in this masculine construct - it does not feminize the experience.  From the Orthodox perspective, it will make it harder for partnership members to see themselves as Orthodox sociologically, and certainly for others to see them that way.

The book left me at a bit at a loss.  Is it possible, even in the long-term, to have an egalitarian Orthodoxy?  Is halacha so irredeemably patriarchal that we need to choose between our commitment to egalitarianism and our desire to remain part of halachic discourse?  Both my friends on the right and on the left would agree that I do have to choose.  I am still trying to explore how to reconcile these values.  As long as there are women (and in particular my life partner) who are willing to explore with me, I will continue to do so.

Ani Maamin - Statement of first Principles

At my older daughter's Bat Mitzvah a couple of years ago, I gave a speech outlining my values.  It is a good introduction to the blog.

We hope that our deepest values are expressed in the way we live and the way we raise you.  However, sometimes we may give off confused signals – we are only human after all.  Are the messages we are sending you every day the ones we mean to send? Are our values reflected by our actions?  I hope so, but I wanted to talk to you today about our basic values, in a very explicit way - so that there is no confusion about what we mean.    

The most basic idea that Mommy and I try to live by, and to teach you to live by, is the respect for the inherent value of every human being.  When we recognize that every person around us is created בצלם אלהים – in the image of God -  then we will treat them accordingly.  All sins against others come down to a failure to see the other as a person like ourselves, a subject in his or her own right, whom we must not harm, any more than we would want to be harmed.

Mommy has often summed up her teaching philosophy as simply respect for her students.    In my work, I try very hard to see the value of everyone I work with, on my staff, my colleagues, my management and my customers.   Most importantly, respect for you and your siblings as people is the basis of our parenting philosophy, although you might not always see it.  While this value is basic, it is a lifelong struggle to maintain it.  The temptation to see other people as objects is very great.  It is the struggle that defines our lives – we may not win it, but we must never give up.

However, we are not only human beings, we are Jews.  Being a Jew means to be part of a community that lives in covenant – in ברית – with God.    There are 2 important parts of that statement: First, we are part of a community, not on our own.  Second, we have a relationship that binds us together and obligates us to each other, and to God.  The content of that covenant is multi-faceted and multi-layered – but the fact of the ברית is what makes us Jews.

We are not simply Jews, though, we are Zionist Modern Orthodox Jews, and each of those modifiers is important to us. 

We are Orthodox because we are part of the community of Jews who are שומרי תורה ומצוות.  We believe that we are obligated and enriched in the observance of Halacha, and that Talmud Torah is central to the way we engage in our relationship with God. 

We are Modern Orthodox, because we don’t believe that our acceptance of Orthodoxy implies in any way that we need to reject the world around us.    We can learn from everyone, and we are confident enough in our identity that we can even internalize values from the outside world.  We believe that Halachic innovation has always been and continues to be the mechanism through which Torah remains a living covenant.

The first part means that we can look at modern ideas like feminism and say, “that makes sense, that works for us” and not feel we are betraying our Jewishness.  On the contrary, we can see that feminism is ultimately the recognition that women are included in the first value I talked about – that every human has inherent value.  The second part means that we can try to find ways to correct the discrimination against women within the context of Halacha, without undermining our commitment to Halacha.

Finally, we are Zionists – could you guess from where we live?  To me, being a Zionist is more than just the belief that Jews need their own country as a matter of our survival, although there is that too.  Zionism means that the only way that we as Jews can fully realize our covenantal destiny is to be a sovereign nation in our own land.  It was easy to be the “good guys” when we were persecuted in exile.  The test of our commitment to God and to God’s will is when we are in charge, when we are responsible for how we treat the poor, the oppressed and the stranger in our midst.   It is a privelege and an awesome responsibility to live in a generation where we can be part of this challenge.

I will end with the value of הכרת הטוב.  It is usually translated as “thankfulness”, but I want to emphasize the literal meaning – “recognition of the good.”   It is easy to read the newspaper every day and see all the problems in the world, and especially this country, have to face.  הכרת הטוב does not mean to ignore those problems, but to always recognize the tremendous blessing that it is to live in this time and place.  It means to recognize the effort and sacrifice made by the people who built and continue to build this country, and to thank God for the miracles שבכל יום עמנו.