Standing At Sinai, the First Time

This past Shabbat at Ansche Chesed, the feminist theologian Judith Plaskow was in our community, to celebrate a bat mitzvah with us. As we read Parashat Yitro – with relates the revelation of the 10 Commandments at Sinai – one sort of feels like it is Plaskow’s signature parasha, given the title of her most well-known book, Standing Again at Sinai. That 1990 work led the way in Jewish feminist theology. More than 20 years later Standing Again at Sinai remains full of insight. The title refers at least partly to the fact that the Torah itself seems always to address a male audience (speaking of “you and your wives”, for instance), consistently marginalizing women, always the “second sex,” never the mainstream. Feminist religion would have to stand at Sinai again to receive revelation anew. To a feminist Jew, like myself, this is a powerful critique of the tradition, and certainly shapes my own religious mindset going forward.

The most notable example of the Torah’s androcentric orientation is Moses’ command to the Israelites to prepare for revelation [Exod 19.15]: “Be ready in three days – do not come near a woman.” Could any proof be clearer that our Torah speaks mainly to men, and considers women worse than marginal, practically inimical to the religious experience? Almost undeniable, and instantiated by plenty of commentators.

And yet… amazingly, some of the Sages read this verse precisely against the grain, to extract from it a mandate for women’s inclusion in the revelation – precisely the opposite of the apparent semantic meaning. I will paraphrase/explicate the rabbinic teaching, associated with Rabbi Eleazar ben Azarya (2nd century CE), which can be found in the Talmud Shabbat 86a, paralleled in the Midrash on Exodus called Mekhilta [Bahodesh 3] as well as in Rashi’s commentary to Exodus 19.15. (Warning: minor sexual explicitness follows.)

Be ready in three days – do not come near a woman. Seminal emission renders a person ritually impure. This is true whether the semen came from a man in the usual course, or whether it re-emerged from the body of a woman following sex. Whoever’s body emitted semen, male or female, would be considered equally ritually impure. (See Leviticus 15.16-18 for all this.) Semen deposited within a woman’s body could re-emerge for as many as three days, the Talmud says, but may be ignored after that time. Therefore, in warning “do not come near a woman,” Moses is telling his male listeners: do not compromise your wife’s eligibility to be present for God’s revelation. You might come and go, so to speak, but three days later she could still experience ritual impurity from an earlier encounter. You must abstain, Moses says, so that she too can be ready to stand at Sinai, the first time. According to this teaching, men are commanded to avoiding sex for the sake of the women’s experience of God, not for the sake of the men’s own experience.

Now, if a modern traditionalist offered such an interpretation, we’d sniff and call it apologetics, and accuse him of distorting the simple meaning of the Torah. But Rabbi Eleazar ben Azarya lived in the 2nd century! He certainly never knew he should be embarrassed by the Torah’s latent misogyny or androcentrism. He never heard a feminist critique of anything. He is not apologizing. He’s just explaining what seems to him the fullest meaning of the Torah.

And to our great surprise, this position turns out to be actually quite egalitarian. The ritual purity rules for males and females are, in this case, the same. And for R. Eleazar ben Azarya, so too the opportunity for men and women to stand at Sinai is fundamentally egalitarian.

Now, I would not deny Plaskow’s argument, which has a lot going for it. Certainly one midrash cannot disprove the reality of pervasive androcentrism in classical Judaism. Plaskow herself notes this text (p.27 in Standing), citing it as an example of a positive rabbinic instinct for women’s inclusion, although those same rabbis would “continually re-enact” exclusion.

Fair enough. But as a religious Jew and a student of the Sages, my deepest held belief is that the Torah contains the seeds of its own renewal. We certainly must be honest about where the Torah tradition has turned into blind alleys, where it is difficult for us moderns to find meaning. But this ancient text is an amazing counter example, I think, of the power of interpretation to keep Torah alive. It’s the never-dying, ceaselessly growing tree. From two millennia ago, an echo of an ancient rabbinic voice insists that everyone in Israel must be able to share the covenant. If that’s not the Tree of Life, I don’t know what is. I feel we’re all still standing at Sinai the first time.

Honest Again - Forward

I’ve been away from Honest to God for a few weeks, mostly working on a research project for another audience, but I’ll get back into the swing now, beginning with this.

Last month I posted the earlier comment called “Not So Honest Kars-4-Kids” about the charity which would seem to be intentionally obscuring its Orthodox affiliations, perhaps to attract gifts from Jews and non-Jews who would not otherwise support their mission.

I want to give a big shout out to Josh Nathan-Kazis of the Forward who has been carrying this story … umm…. Forward, with a couple of excellent pieces about that group’s dodgy use of money.

Check out these pieces: http://forward.com/articles/149879/ and http://forward.com/articles/149459/

Well done!

Fasting and Bearing the Yoke

I’ve just completed the easiest fast day of the year – the 10th of Tevet, a minor, sun-up to sun-down fast. (It’s so easy because it always falls around the winter solstice, so the fast usually concludes around 5pm at the latest.) Off the top of my head I couldn’t tell you what the 10th of Tevet commemorates. No doubt it is something about Nebuchadnezzar and the destruction of the first Temple.

Nonetheless, I keep this fast and the other minor ones, including those whose meanings I do connect with intensely, like mourning Moses’ smashed tablets on the 17th of Tammuz, political extremism on Tzom Gedalya.

I like fasting – it’s physical and spiritual and intense, even as you feel a bit weakened. I realize that not so many people in my corner of the world observe the minor fasts. And I wonder about why that is.

Modern liberal people choose not to fast not only because they don’t connect to ostensibly historical events, long forgotten by everyone. Rather, I think we liberal Jews are not so good at incorporating difficult and trying experiences into our religion. We do what we like to do, and rarely feel called to endure any pain.

Not that I favor religious self-mortification for its own sake, or to emphasize basic human abjection. But I do think that – if religion is to be a rounded spiritual experience, not just a birthday party – it needs to confront the bad news as well as the good, and ritualize them and internalize them. Furthermore religion – at least this one – requires you to bear the yoke. You have to carry practices that try your endurance, not only those which celebrate your pleasure.

That’s how I experience fasting and why I continue it: it helps me internalize and ritualize life’s failures and suffering, and trains me in bearing the yoke of service, even in ways I don’t really enjoy bearing.

It all reminds me of a passage in the short story “My Quarrel with Hirsch Rasseyner,” by Chaim Grade <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaim_Grade>, the great Yiddish writer (who just happens to be buried in the Ansche Chesed cemetery). In this work, Chaim Vilner, the narrator, an apostate Yiddish writer who left the world of the yeshiva – obviously Grade himself – encounters an old fellow student, who remains a fierce defender of traditional pietism. The story takes place mostly in 1948, in Paris, and the two hammer out their world views, in the wake of all that each suffered in the Shoah. One gets the impression that Grade is having this conversation in his own head, hearing both the power of the pietistic argument, as well as the inevitability of secularism and apostasy as they force unanswerable questions upon tradition.

The pietist, Hirsch Rasseyner, complains that the liberals only know how to lighten the yoke of Jewish commitment; they never know how to intensify it, until it grabs your whole heart and soul, down into your internal organs. “Lighten the weight a little, they said, so what is left can be borne more easily,” Hirsch says. “But the more they lightened the burden the heavier the remainder seemed. I fast twice a week without difficulty, and they can hardly do it once a year. Furthermore, what the father rejected in part, the son rejected in its entirety. And the son was right! Better nothing than so little. A half-truth is no truth at all. Everyone, and particularly a young man, needs a faith that will command all his intellect and ardor.”

There is a lot of depth to this, even though I have no desire whatsoever to practice ultra-Orthodox religion. But it is certainly true that in my corner of the world we should build up our necks more, so we can bear the yoke better, even when it hurts. We need to, we need these fasts, so we can train ourselves to make religious meaning out of life’s ugliest moments.

See you on Taanit Esther.