Devout Women Say No to Their Second-Class Religious Status   

by LEORA TANENBAUM

For Orthodox Judaism, or any traditional approach to religion, to be alive for women, they cannot be sacrificed to it.

The author ventures into traditionally male territory as she deepens her connection to the Torah.

When women in a religious community demand gender equality, they are often accused of trying to stir up trouble: critics say they have disavowed their femininity, they are not "really" religious, or they are feminist Jezebels.

Observant Judaism is central in my life, as is motherhood. Contrary to what people may say, my religiosity and motherhood strengthen rather than diminish my commitment to gender equality.

I respect halachah (Jewish law) and adhere to it to the best of my abilities. Jewish law guides many, if not most, of the small and large actions I take every single day. I observe Shabbat and Jewish holidays, observe kashrut, and believe that the Torah and rabbinic literature are holy. I raise my children and maintain my household in a way that is connected to centuries-old Jewish laws, customs, and culture.

Yet I also am committed to equal rights for women. The issue of women's status in halachic Judaism remains a sore spot for me, as it does for many other women. There is more work to be done in the struggle for women's equality, especially within the Orthodox movement, which segregates the sexes and assigns them different roles.

For the sake of remaining rooted to traditional Judaism, I'm willing to make some compromises to my feminist ideals. For example, although it goes against the grain of much I hold dear, I tolerate sitting in a separate women's section in my Orthodox synagogue, provided that the physical barrier is neither high nor obscures my view. I send my children (two boys) to Orthodox day school where only boys wear Jewish ritual garments, even though religious authorities admit that girls are permitted to wear them, too. In my household, I alone set aside my professional obligations every Friday to undertake "women's work"-the myriad domestic tasks that enable my family to enjoy a restful Shabbat, complete with delicacies we don't eat during the rest of the week.

But I'm not willing to compromise on everything, and there is one area in which I feel passionately that women must be given the same opportunities as men: religious leadership. When women are excluded from religious leadership positions solely because they are female, it's a very short step to excluding them from secular leadership positions and arguing that women are not as capable as men. This I cannot tolerate. Besides, when a woman is removed from leadership roles, it is all too easy for her to consequently become distanced from the tradition. This doesn't mean that she doesn't love her religion, but that she isn't given the chance to form as close a bond as her male peers and family.

Several years ago, I began leading the weekday morning service on occasion at a Conservative synagogue where my children attended nursery school. In the beginning I took on this role because the synagogue had trouble finding capable lay people who were up to the task, and even though I had never led a service before, I knew I could do it. My only obstacles were stage fright, which to this day I still suffer from, and an intense self-consciousness about my singing voice, which I also continue to experience. But knowing that the community needed someone gave me the impetus to stand at the podium with my annotated prayer book and wobbly voice. And when that first service was over, after I had closed and kissed my prayer book, I realized that I was just as capable as my husband, who had led services many, many times. I could serve the community just as he and so many other men routinely do without giving it any more thought than they do to breathing.

As a parent, it's my job to show my children that women can be religious role models. I began bringing my sons with me whenever I led this service, planting them in the back with books and small magnet toys, so that it would appear natural to them that Ima, like Abba, has Judaic skills. But it began to gnaw at me that they were not being exposed to women chanting from the Torah or other sacred writings. I resolved that I would learn how to leyn (chant) the special musical cantillation (or trope) for the Scroll of Esther. I chose this text as my first because the story-about how Queen Esther, at great personal risk, saved the Jewish people-features a positive female role model and therefore seemed appropriate for my "coming out" as a woman who leyns. Again at the Conservative synagogue-because women are forbidden from doing this at Orthodox synagogues-I chanted the third chapter of this scroll. When my children ran up to me when I was done to show their pride by hugging my legs, I knew I was doing something right.

I also began attending a traditional monthly Shabbat service, called Yavneh, which had just been established in my neighborhood on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Strictly speaking, Yavneh probably occupies no denominational niche. I consider it Orthodox yet cutting edge. Women and men sit separately with a curtain between them; the prayer book is Orthodox; and the prayers themselves are recited according to Orthodox regulations. But at Yavneh, women may lead some parts of the service and also may leyn. The fabric that serves as a mehitzah (the partition between women and men) is pushed aside so that women and men can go up to the Torah, which is in the middle. I have leyned Torah at this service too. My husband has made sure that the boys are in the sanctuary, not the playroom, when Ima is chanting.

Learning how to leyn-still very much an ongoing process for me-is an incredible experience. Having been denied the education of how to leyn from an early age (only boys took classes in trope at the modern Orthodox day school I attended), I had never thought much about what it really entails. I had always figured it was a skill that either one was taught and one mastered, or one wasn't and one didn't. But I discovered that leyning is much more than a skill. It is a sensory way of experiencing the Torah. In order to leyn, one must crack a code of squiggly lines and markings, as well as vowels and punctuation, none of which actually appears in the Torah scroll itself. Therefore, when preparing to leyn, one learns by heart not only the words of the Torah but also its rhythms, as well as something intangible-its soul. When I am learning and practicing my leyning, I feel as though the Torah is inside my head, heart, and body. It is an organic part of me.

Why would anyone want to deny this experience to girls and women?

I have come to believe that the primary reason male religious authorities exclude women (and gay men) from full participation is that this act defines their faith in opposition to the contemporary world and to competing denominations. The exclusion of women (and gay men) is an identity marker that demonstrates authenticity. Orthodox Judaism staves off the individualism of the Conservative and Reform movements. Catholicism stands in opposition to Christian reformation. Evangelical Protestantism resists the liberalism of mainline Protestantism. Traditional Islam distances itself from contemporary culture and from other religious worldviews. Curbing women is a symbol, a shorthand communication of resistance to change. When you hear that a specific religious community does not allow women's ordination or men and women to sit together in worship, you know that it sees itself as the last distinctive holdout against a chaotic culture lacking in boundaries.

I understand and respect the need for a community to take a stand in favor of a particular worldview and to reject alternative worldviews. I support firm boundaries in many contexts, religious and otherwise. But it seems wrongheaded to put women in the crossfire. Women do not need to be sacrificed for the sake of tradition. It doesn't even make sense to deny full religious experience to women, since they are usually the ones with power in their homes and can determine the extent to which their families will adhere to religious tradition in the first place.

Besides, Orthodox women today are the best Judaically educated Jewish women in all of history. Over the course of the twentieth century and continuing into the twenty-first, there has been a surge of Orthodox girls and women seeking to study Torah and Gemara in depth. They know the halachah. They know which mitzvot they are permitted to perform. They can cite the Talmud upside down and sideways. And that is precisely what they are doing. They are speaking up, drawing from their extensive knowledge to collect their religious rights.

The movement of girls and women learning Torah at an advanced level was not motivated by rebellion against the contemporary world or established Orthodoxy. Those who want to rebel tend to leave Orthodoxy for another denomination or ditch the tradition altogether. Rather, the movement stems from a sincere and genuine desire to form a close connection with Jewish tradition. Nonetheless, according to theologian Tamar Ross, women's learning has become a "time bomb." Now that women have access to the inner sanctum of tradition, it's not possible, or desirable, to tell them they can only go so far but no further.

This phenomenon is hardly limited to modern Orthodox Jewish women. Religious women from different faith communities similarly embrace Bible and Qur'an study, which empowers them to become more actively involved in their faith. They are taking back their faith intellectually. The more they learn, the more they discover that they love their tradition and want to honor it as faithfully as they can-which means being full, active participants, if not leaders.

Among Catholics, there is a network of women becoming illicitly ordained as priests. The Vatican excommunicates them, but many Catholics nevertheless want to see a woman in a leadership role. In December, the National Coalition of American Nuns went public in its endorsement of women's ordination and of Roy Bourgeois, a renegade priest who is facing excommunication by the Vatican because of his support for female priests.

Evangelical Protestant women are challenging scriptural interpretations that place husbands as "heads" over wives, who are instructed to be "subservient." They are protesting churches, schools, and seminaries that refuse to hire women to teach classes that include male students.

Muslim women are participating in prayer services in which a woman recites the khutba (sermon) and women pray adjacent to men, instead of behind them. An internationally publicized woman-led prayer was held in New York City in 2005, with scholar Amina Wadud serving as imam. Inspired by the power of that service, several other women occasionally serve as imam in Boston, as well as in Canada and South Africa.

In addition to Yavneh, there are over a dozen similar prayer groups-labeled "partnership minyans" by the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance-in Jerusalem, Los Angeles, Chicago, New Haven, Cambridge, Queens, the Bronx, Manhattan, and several other communities.

To the devout woman who wants to experience her faith to the fullest, here is my advice:

• Educate yourself about your religion. Self-assurance, independence, and empowerment flow from literacy. Join or start a Bible or Qur'an study group or other type of religious reading group. If you can, lead a group to educate others. Or read and learn by yourself. Don't feel ashamed or embarrassed if you know too little: no one, no matter how learned, fully understands divine truth.
• Press your religious leaders to be as innovative as possible. Schedule an appointment with them; email them; come up to them after worship. Although we need grassroots pressure from lay women and men, we also need knowledgeable leaders unafraid to push against boundaries that limit us all. Leaders and lay people must work together.
• Put your money where your faith is. When you tithe, give zakat, or give tzedakah, choose the beneficiary of your money wisely. Many people unreflectively give their charitable dollars to traditional religious organizations that promote ideas about women they themselves do not hold. But there are many alternatives. Organizations such as the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance; Agunah International; Tikkun and the Network of Spiritual Progressives; Lilith; Call to Action; the Women's Ordination Conference; FutureChurch; Catholics for a Free Choice; the Evangelical and Ecumenical Women's Caucus; Call to Renewal; Sojourners; Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual; Muslims for Progressive Values; Progressive Muslim Union; Muslim WakeUp!; the Women's Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equity; the Foundation for the Advancement of Women in Religion; and many others endorse religious equality for women. Support the organizations, institutions, and publications that reflect your values about women and religion.
• Learn about other faiths; reach out to members of other faiths. The more we know about each other, the more connected we become, and the more we can learn from one another.

No one knows exactly what God intends. It is up to us to figure things out. We will always have multiple answers to our questions. And this is a good thing: wrestling with interpretation can only yield a richer understanding of our religion.

Leora Tanenbaum is the author of Taking Back God: American Women Rising Up for Religious Equality (FSG 2009). www.takingbackgod.com.