NOTE: As I approach my 70th birthday, I’ll reprise a milestone post here each day until the end of May. Today – from March 16, 2007.
One of the great gifts of an observant Jewish life is the lighting of Sabbath candles. At a prescribed time each Friday, 18 minutes before sundown, it is the obligation of the Jewish woman to light candles as a symbolic acceptance of the Sabbath upon herself. The prayer is said AFTER you light the candles because once they’re lit, the Sabbath rules – ignite no fire, do no work etc. preclude the lighting of a match.
Here’s how it works: you light the candles, move your hands above the candles three times to bring their warmth toward you, then cover your eyes and say a simple blessing. It’s in Hebrew, but it means “Blessed are You, Lord, our God, King of the Universe, who sanctifies us with his commandments, and enjoins us to light the candles of Shabbat.” Yes,the words of the prayer are plain; women say them in every corner of the earth – educated or not, every week and have been doing so for thousands of years. Many of us add prayers of our own, for those we love, for peace, for the lifting of burdens, for a better world.
I always take a very deep breath — the kind they taught us when I was quitting smoking — and exhale very slowly, releasing a lot of the stress of the week before I begin. One of my friends told me that when she was in medical school and having babies at the same time, she’d weep, every week, as she felt the burdens fall from her in the glow of the flame.
Makes sense to me. Something about this ritual is transporting. I also love the idea that this is a woman’s privilege. Much has been written about what observant Jewish women are NOT permitted to do – and much of it is true. That’s another conversation. But the impact of this particular duty is profound, beautiful and serene and I am grateful for it. So, as we move toward the close of this day and toward what I have found to be the true peace of the sabbath – I send to you, whatever your faith – a peaceful wish — Shabbat Shalom.
NOTE: As I approach my 70th birthday, I’ll reprise a milestone post here each day until the end of May. Today – from October 16, 2006
I’ve never been to CBGB OMFUG. Why do I care about a punk music club whose entrance was always spattered with graffiti and most of whose musical appearances were by people I knew almost nothing about — except Bruce Springsteen [he wrote this with Patti Smith] , Patti Smith [two favorites: People Have the Power, Peaceable Kingdom], Joan Jett [I Love Rock and Roll] and a few others? (I don’t t know the lore all that well – but it always seemed to me that women really got a crack at center stage at CBGB.) I think it was just nice to see it there – waving its fist in the air. It has closed – maybe to reopen, maybe not – and I’m just kind of sad to see it losing its lease to what some have called “the suburbification of Manhattan.”
Patti Smith, whom I had the honor to meet at last year’s Media Reform conference in St. Louis, was a real CBGB heroine and I felt, meeting her, a deep connection. We’re the same age. She’s a heartbreakingly honest person who lost her husband way too soon (and wrote People Have the Power partly at his instigation) — a mom and a singular human soul. The music she made was remarkably articulate (she is a poet after all) and inspiring. I’ve linked above to two of my favorites — one of which, People Have the Power, was an anthem of the Vote for Change election tour in 2004.
So what do the final days of a gritty music club where I never went have to do with my life as an observant Jew? Believe it or not – plenty. Both of them were fascinating universes I always observed from the outside and wondered about. Both stood for making one’s own way to truth. That search has taken me, for some reason I’m still grappling with, to the Orthodox Jewish community where I’ve found a home and spirit that brings a new kind of meaning to my life.
At my last big birthday I complained to a friend about my age and her response was “but you’re completely reborn in this new life – you’re not old AT ALL!” In some ways she’s right. I certainly feel that there’s a universe I’m traveling through that’s new, moving, inspiring and mysterious. Sometimes though it’s also a pain. For the past several weeks, from Rosh Hashanah (the New Year) to the end of Simchas Torah (Ending the annual, week-by-week reading of the Torah: the five books of Moses – Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy and beginning again) the holidays consumed days of time: in synagogue, inviting guests to meals and going to meals at friends, building and dismantling a sukkah and observing the prohibition on driving and work. Since this year many of these days fell on weekends it meant NO catching up on work on Sundays and no farmer’s market. (two weird examples, I admit.) Since it’s the end of tomato season that last was sad though not critical to the future of the human race or my household.
Even so, all these small requirements, which I try to follow since I’ve made this commitment, can consume time and tax serenity and spirituality. I’ve come to love the prohibition on the Sabbath and enjoy the quiet days reading, taking walks, visiting, napping and sharing ideas. But the surrender to and acceptance of all these rules is a peculiar experience and I grapple with it daily. Even so, the quest, like that of the young rebels who put CBGB on the map, is a great adventure – and the learning is exhilarating.
Go listen to People Have the Power whether this post makes sense or not. It will make you happy on a Monday – although that’s easier here today since it’s the third amazingly gorgeous fall day in a row – with leaves turning and leaf smells beginning to fill the air. Which, I just realized, takes us right back to faith and gratitude for the world’s beauty when it shows up.
As Shabbat descends, I offer from 2007, notes on how it feels to light Shabbat candles each Friday night.
One of the great gifts of an observant Jewish life is the lighting of Sabbath candles. At a prescribed time each Friday, 18 minutes before sundown, it is the obligation of the Jewish woman to light candles as a symbolic acceptance of the Sabbath upon herself. The prayer is said AFTER you light the candles because once they’re lit, the Sabbath rules – ignite no fire, do no work etc. preclude the lighting of a match.
Here’s how it works: you light the candles, move your hands above the candles three times to bring their warmth toward you, then cover your eyes and say a simple blessing. It’s in Hebrew, but it means .”Blessed are You, Lord, our God, King of the Universe, who sanctifies us with his commandments, and enjoins us to light the candles of Shabbat.” Yes,the words of the prayer are plain; women say them in every corner of the earth – educated or not, every week and have been doing so for thousands of years. Many of us add prayers of our own, for those we love, for peace, for the lifting of burdens, for a better world.
I always take a very deep breath — the kind they taught us when I was quitting smoking — and exhale very slowly, releasing a lot of the stress of the week before I begin. One of my friends told me that when she was in medical school and having babies at the same time, she’d weep, every week, as she felt the burdens fall from her in the glow of the flame.
Makes sense to me. Something about this ritual is transporting. I also love the idea that this is a woman’s privilege. Much has been written about what observant Jewish women are NOT permitted to do – and much of it is true. That’s another conversation. But the impact of this particular duty is profound, beautiful and serene and I am grateful for it. So, as we move toward the close of this day and toward what I have found to be the true peace of the sabbath – I send to you, whatever your faith – a peaceful wish — Shabbat Shalom.
The young woman who wrote and recorded this song (watch it if you haven’t; it’s wonderful) is a “Singer/songwriter, vlogger, Orthodox Jew, and English major on the verge of ‘real life.'” Her name is Talia Lakritz.
The young woman who wrote and published this piece, which begins with the word “Hineni” (Here I am – a response to God’s call several times in the Torah) is a Maharat and a pioneer in ritual Orthodox Judaism. Her name is Rachel Kohl Finegold.
The young woman who was my best teacher of all things Jewish (and many other things) is a model for many. Her name is Aliza Sperling.
The young women who ranked highest among my other great teachers offered wise, knowledgeable, exciting education both in theory and practice. Their names are Laura Shaw Frank (JD and almost PhD), Rachel Weintraub (JD), Brooke Pollack (JD), and Aliza Levine (MD). There were more, too.
They are all treasures in my life; I wish every Jewish seeker could have so stunning an educational-religious posse.
So what’s going on? Why has The Rabbinical Council of America (RCA) stuck a stick in the eye of every Jewish woman, especially women like these – passionate Jews; learners and teachers – by issuing a kind of fatwa against the rabbinic ordination of Orthodox Jewish women. This is just the most recent episode in the soap opera that their effort to keep women from formal religious leadership. Predictably, outrage ensued.
From New York’s towering Modern Orthodox leader Avi Weiss LA’s Rav Yosef Kanevsky, word emerged that this blow was unacceptable.
Why does it matter? RCA claims that there are plenty of ways for women to participate and even lead, they just can’t be ordained. Why the uproar from college women and teachers and rabbis and parents and – generally – people who really like being Jewish?
Because it’s terrible to continue, with even more emphasis than usual, to shut half your community off — by fiat — from the privilege of spiritual leadership. Remember the slogan “If you can see it, you can be it.” Sounds right doesn’t it? But if you’re set apart, part of your soul is set apart too.
The Jewish people lose way too much, kept from 50% of the talent and strength and smarts and love in our own communities.
Read this story by the renowned feminist Letty Cottin Pogrebin, on the death of her mother:*
“One night about twenty people are milling about the house but by Jewish computation there are only nine Jews in our living room. This is because only nine men have shown up for the memorial service. A minyan, the quorum required for Jewish communal prayer, calls for ten men.
“I know the Hebrew.” I say. “You can count me, Daddy.”
I meant I want to count. I meant, don’t count me out just because I am a girl.
“You know it’s not allowed, he replies, frowning.”
“For my own mother’s Kaddish I can be counted in the minyan. For God’s sake, it’s your house! It’s your minyan Daddy.”
“Not allowed!” says my father.
Later she wrote:
“The turning point in my spiritual life….I could point to the shivah experience in my living room, say that my father sent me into the arms of feminism, and leave it at that….No woman who has faced the anguish and insult of exclusion on top of the tragedy of her bereavement forgets that her humiliation was inflicted by Jewish men.”
It’s heartbreaking, isn’t it? Such a loss for those who wish to serve and all of us who need them. Besides, as my friend Chana reminded me, in last week’s parsha God told Abraham “Whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you.” If only He’d get in touch with the RCA and remind them, too.
Few places are more private, spiritually critical, inspiring and, as Rabbi Danya Rutenberg writes, comforting, than the mikveh. Her piece on the unspeakable desecration of that space by Washington Rabbi Barry Freundel, who allegedly used hidden cameras to spy on women while they were there, brought me to tears even though I became observant when I was older and the mikveh less central than it was for all my younger sisters, who taught me to keep kosher and light candles and honor Shabbat. For them it is all so much worse, a kind of collective rape. Rutenberg writes:
I don’t know what percent of the water in the mikveh is actually made up of women’s tears, but I suspect it’s a lot. The mikveh is meant to hold vulnerability. The fact that one is naked when immersing is not just a literal fact — the symbolism of it penetrates every single pore, every inch of the self that goes under the living waters. It is, for a lot of women, a unique place for a certain kind of stopping, a certain kind of reflection, a certain kind of engaging with the present moment and with God. Not everyone has the same experience, obviously, but the ritual of mikveh opens up a space that can be exquisitely intimate and deeply personal.
Six years ago, I wrote about one young woman’s mikveh experience; I’m republishing a version of it here as an example of just what has been violated.
We had a party Saturday. Ice cream cake, fruit, songs and verses. It wasn’t exactly a birthday party, but kind of. It’s very tough to convert to Orthodox Judaism. Rabbis ask you over and over if you’re serious. You have to study. You have to read out loud in Hebrew. You have to answer questions to a board of 3 (male) rabbis. Then, you have to immerse yourself in a mikveh. It’s the culmination of several years of study and soul-searching.
So we had a party to celebrate a young woman who had navigated the process and, just this past week, emerged from the waters – Jewish. As she spoke to the assembled women she told us not just about her own journey, but, in a way, about our own. Unable to begin without tears, she decided first to read the passage that seemed to her to describe where she’d been – and where she’s landed. (Another convert friend of mine told me she’s clung to the same verses; they have particular meaning to those who choose to become Jewish, to “go where we go.”) Standing at one end of the table and surrounded by many of the women of our congregation gathered in her honor, she began to read from the Book of Ruth.
Mother-in-law Naomi is trying to convince her widowed daughter-in-law Ruth to go back to her own nation and not suffer with her.
But Ruth answers “Don’t ask me to leave you! Let me go with you. Wherever you go, I will go; wherever you live, I will live. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God. Wherever you die, I will die, and that is where I will be buried. May the LORD’s worst punishment come upon me if I let anything but death separate me from you!”
The story represents much of what she feels about her new life. Her choice: to immerse in the mikveh as one person and emerge as another, committed to the very demanding requirements of conversion and to join the tribe that I was born into and, for much of my life, lived within – accepting my identity as a Jew but very little else.
In many ways, I have made the same choices she did. Compared to the way I live now, the Judaism I knew then was an identity easily moved aside when inconvenient. Now, after four years of increasingly observant life, my identity is so tangled with my Judaism that there’s no way to pretend it isn’t there, isn’t affecting all I see and every choice I make. They call it “the yoke of heaven” — acceptance of the rules handed down so long ago. It looks so weird from the outside, so whether you’re my young friend choosing to become a Jew, or me, choosing to actually live like one, you’re somewhat set apart by your decisions. Keep kosher – you can’t eat in most restaurants or even at your old friends’ homes. Observe the Sabbath, you can’t go see Great Big Sea or Bruce Springsteen or to a good friend’s 40th birthday party because they’re on a Friday night. Honor the holidays and you may antagonize clients and risk losing business. And sometimes, friends, and even family, look askance, withdraw or just shake their heads.
Even so, what my friend has chosen — what my husband and I have chosen — what the community of friends we love has chosen – is a life rife with meaning and commitment, with tangible goals to be better, more honorable, more committed beings with an informing value system and sense of purpose. After a lifetime that was pretty successful and often seemed glamorous and highly visible, this is a choice of which I am very proud. Different from before, but at least as demanding intellectually, ethically and emotionally as any other stop on my life’s journey. In many ways, it has allowed me to rediscover the person I used to think I was, and liked – as a writer, a thinker, a wife and mother and friend. I am grateful that I have found it, and so very glad that this generous and articulate young woman reminded me, through the moving and exquisite reflections on her own choice, just why I made mine.
Two new little boys will enter our family before the end of September. We’re excited, happy for our lovely sons and their wives and very happy too that our grandchildren have such wonderful people as parents.
There’s another thing, that (even though it is, of course, obvious) I hadn’t thought about in a long time: these children, while we can’t trace personal generations very far back because so many records and stories were lost in the Holocaust, have a family that goes back to Abraham and to Moses and Mt. Sinai and to Sarah and Rachel and Rebecca. Of course, we all, biblically, begin with Adam and Eve but because I’ve always known I couldn’t trace our family, I didn’t let myself consider what we might never know – it was too painful.
I think that’s why the sudden recollection of this spectacular Jewish lineage became an almost new discovery even though the reality has always been part of our lives. We, and our children, and theirs, are part of something well beyond ourselves. I am grateful to be part of the tribe – and pray that our boys, and theirs – and their moms – travel safely as the world continues on its magnificent, scary and complicated trips around the sun.
This is what the women saw. There are few sanctuaries more beautiful and moving than this 1675 Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue in Amsterdam, and here the women, while separated, were still able to share its beauty. In fact, in many ways, they saw more.
The service, certainly, but also the outside world for which they prayed. It was a hike to get there, of course, but the dignity and faith that infuses the place was more available to them than in many other observant synagogues. It’s difficult to describe the peace and beauty of this place, even with a photo. Or two. The black and white one is a wedding photo taken in the synagogue.
So where you ask is the statue? Well, he’s right here. Baruch Spinoza, whose ideas wreaked havoc in religious communities of Europe. Here’s what Wikipedia says:
Philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel said of all contemporary philosophers, “You are either a Spinozist or not a philosopher at all.”[8]
Spinoza’s given name in different languages is Hebrew: ברוך שפינוזה Baruch Spinoza, Portuguese: Benedito or Bento de Espinosa and Latin: Benedictus de Spinoza; in all these languages, the given name means “the Blessed”. Spinoza was raised in the Portuguese Jewish community in Amsterdam. He developed highly controversial ideas regarding the authenticity of the Hebrew Bible and the nature of the Divine. The Jewish religious authorities issued a cherem (Hebrew: חרם, a kind of ban, shunning, ostracism, expulsion, or excommunication) against him, effectively excluding him from Jewish society at age 23. His books were also later put on the Catholic Church’s Index of Forbidden Books.
A powerful figure in Jewish history and history in general, he stands just steps from the Synagogue, there – and not there; a compelling figure of faith — and doubt.
We are currently sailing through the Kiel Canal, an engineering feat that cut northern Europe in half and created a pathway that reduced isolation for many. Tonight we stop in Helsingborg, Sweden and Friday night, in Copenhagen.
How can there be a women's story that women are not allowed to tell? Today is Purim – the celebration of the rescue of the Jews from the Persian King Asueras' evil adviser Haman. In a classic (and highly fortunate) intermarriage, she became the favorite wife of the powerful king. Unaware that she's Jewish, he's chosen her from all the maidens of Shushan and fallen for her – hard. The story is intricate but it ends with a bad guy trying to get the King to kill all the Jews (sound familiar?) and the Jewish Queen Esther convincing the King that the bad guy is indeed bad, and thus saving the day.
It's an old story with both sexist and feminist implications but today it emerged with a new life – at least for me. Here's why: it's required that Jews hear the story of Esther, the Megiila Esther, read twice during the holiday. It's read with a melody – a "trope" that's quite lovely. Usually, in observant Judaism, men preside. Prayers and readings are the domain of the male voice. But women are "permitted" to read the Megilla for a gathering of women. It's a act of Jewish feminism. And that's what happened this morning.
I wish I could describe the emotion that arises as one hears the women's voices together, and the single voices, one by one, reading out the story. It's an act of faith, an act of love, really, but it's also an act of community – the community of women coming together to share the story of a feisty queen who overcame fear to save her people.
Of course you would be correct to suggest that the simplest solution would be to choose a branch of Judaism that has made its way past such rules and you'd be correct. But we've chosen, despite the difficulties, to live this life, partly because of the very community that produced this day. And it comes, as a friend reminded me last night, as a package. So there will be moments – many of them – of frustration and anger. Of a sense of deprivation and loss. And the, just when it seems terrible — something lovely happens. Something like today.
We all feel gratitude for the beautiful moments in our lives. In the observant Jewish life we live now those moments are often built around life-cycle events, usually moving and sometimes profound. Last week, we had a Sunday that brought the entire thing into broad relief. It's taken me a week to think it through and write about it though. It was just so huge.
We began early, at a bris. That's the moment of circumcision, welcoming a Jewish boy into the covenant with God on the 8th day of his life. This one was held at the parents' home, full of their friends and those of the grandparents. The mother's mom and dad are good friends of ours, kind, generous, no nonsense people, a librarian and a doctor. Like any mom, she was helping her daughter. Like any mom, she was greeting guests with hugs and personal welcomes. Like any mom, she was dashing from counter to table with salads, platters of food, drinks, desserts. Unlike most moms though, she did it all with a "crew cut". In the midst of chemotherapy for breast cancer, she's decided there was no sense in "wearing something silly" to cover her hair loss, so she didn't. Watching her hold her new grandson, both of them reminding us of the value of life at its most basic, was amazing. You can imagine how it felt to be part of this – new life, fighting for life, affirming life – all in one family in one day. It was quite a thing.
Blown away, we set off for our second destination, far less nuanced and very sad. A young friend with a toddler, expecting her second child very soon, had lost her mother to cancer. The funeral, filled with other young parents with infants in their arms, was sad as they always are, laden with the grief felt by both this daughter and her husband. Her parents had long been divorced, her ailing father lives with them, and for her last months, her mother had as well. It's a huge thing to be that responsible for each parent singly and still live with one's responsibilities for spouse and children. This couple took the responsibilities on gracefully and willingly.
It was heartbreaking to hear the impassioned tribute this young woman gave to her mother, to understand the depth of her loss. Jewish funerals are immediate, simple and highly symbolic: the 91st Psalm recited as the procession stops seven times on the way to the grave to symbolize the reluctance to bid farewell, internment in a simple pine box, all attendees contributing to covering the coffin until the grave is full, shovel by shovel, to support the lost and the mourners. I've always said that the way Jews deal with death is one of my favorite of its many beautiful attributes; it seems to add symbolism to the grief and meaning to the death.
Deeply depleted, as if a gray cloud had descended on our day, we returned to the car and moved on. We were late, but able to arrive midway through our next engagement – a wedding. As you can imagine, it was tough to rally but we did our best. The bride and groom are a lovely (and very tall!) young couple, with a combined sweetness and wry sense of humor that endeared them to everyone. So we were honored to be there. It reminds, too, that life is indeed a circle, as corny as that sounds, filled both with sadness and joy.
We ended this amazing Sunday with a kind of interim ritual – between the beginning of life and the rituals of adulthood: a bar mitzvah party. The young man celebrating his Saturday Torah reading and entry into Jewish adulthood is a remarkable kid, and the joys of this celebration were compounded by the special nature of this boy and his family – all hugely active in the community – fun, scholarly and kind. They were the first people we met when we moved to this aging community that has since grown into a thriving, intergenerational congregation. Newly arrived from Boston, they had chosen it because it needed new members to replace those who had moved away or died. When we got here, the "bar mitzvah boy" was a little kid. Now he's a poised young man with legions of friends from age two (really) to 82. We all consider them a gift. It was wonderful to celebrate with them.
So that was our day: a journey through Jewish tradition, commemoration of joy and grief, birth and loss, life and death — and a reminder of what an amazing journey we all – Jewish or otherwise, travel together.
