You’ve read about it in the news. Rosh Chodesh services by women, for women at the Kotel, the Western Wall of the Old Temple. Women are conducting large religious services every Rosh Chodesh at the Kotel, with many of them donned in Tallis and Tefillin. To counter this breach of traditional protocol, Orthodox seminaries are bussing in hundreds, if not thousands of seminary girls to crowd these Reform and Conservative women out and preserve the traditional aspects of the Kotel. There have been skirmishes between the two groups.
Responding to the pressure from outside and inside Israel, Prime Minister Netanyahu has appointed Natan Sharansky, Head of the Jewish Agency, to try to come up with a solution. Sharansky is faced with a Solomonic decision. How can he satisfy both sides?
Sharansky has proposed that an archaeological site just off the present Kotel site but seen as a continuation of the actual wall could be used by the Women of the Wall, the group pushing for women’s rights at the wall. This site has been opened in the recent past to Reform and Conservative groups for Bar and Bat Mitzvah and other services featuring egalitarian minyanim with equal participation by men and women. The Orthodox have tentatively accepted this proposal. The Women of the Wall have opposed the proposed solution, but may accept it with the proviso that the geographically much lower site be raised to the same level as the current Kotel site. They know that any such structural change in the area will require the approval of the Moslem group which oversees the mosques atop the Kotel area. This approval is unlikely. And the debate over woman’s participation at the Kotel continues.
I have separately written in the pages of Community Links before regarding the quest for an increasing role of women in Judaism. Women from the more liberal segments of the Jewish community have sought to express themselves in the attire traditionally associated with men. They have sported Kipot, Talesim, and Tefillin. They have sought egalitarian minyanim where women are called to the Torah, even read from the Torah, and chant the services. They have sought rabbinic and cantorial roles in synagogues. They claim that Orthodoxy puts down women and places them in an “inferior” status where women are relegated to secondary roles behind the Mechitza, the dividers that separate men and women in the traditional shul. In an effort to claim expanded roles, they seek to break down the barriers and enter the previously men’s only world.
Throughout the Twentieth Century, some of these barriers were broken down by Reform and Conservative Jews. Mixed seating of males and females became common in most synagogues throughout the United States. In the last quarter of that century, women Rabbis were ordained at first the Reform seminary and then at the Conservative. Women cantors followed. The Bat Mitzvah celebration became identical with the Bar Mitzvah in these synagogues.
But with the Twenty-First Century, there were to be more changes. Women rabbis took on increasing roles in the communities, with a woman rabbi, for example, at the top of the largest Reform congregation in Beverly Hills. Women were not content to just lead Reform and Conservative communities. They wanted equal rights to participate as Jews in all sites, including the Kotel HaMaravi, the Western Wall of the ancient Temple site, the holiest site in the Jewish world. Not only did they want to participate equally in services there, but they wanted to do it their way, complete with Talis and Tefillin and the chanting of communal services. This was the way in which they would assert themselves. Women would take on increasing roles in Judaism by assuming men’s roles. They have assumed that for women to take on expanded roles in Judaism, they must in a sense become like men and do as men traditionally have done.
This quest to become like men does not acknowledge the roles women have played in Judaism through the centuries. Women have occupied roles within traditional Judaism that have been forgotten in the focus and quest for women to become like men.
As many of you may know, my family comes from the Island of Rhodes. Jews lived on this Mediterranean island since Before the Common Era. They survived Greek civilization, the Roman Empire, and in more modern times, the Ottoman Empire. There has been a Jewish Quarter on this island for many centuries, with Jews, Christians, and Moslems integrated in the marketplace. That is, until the Nazis, may their memories be blotted out, occupied Rhodes in 1944 and forcibly captured the Jews on the island and shipped them to Auschwitz.
There were many traditions on Rhodes. There was the position of La Hermana, a unique leadership position for women. Actually, two kinds of women held this lofty position. The first women who held this position inherited from their mothers the medicinal remedies passed down through the ages. These “medicine women” helped to cure the island’s inhabitants with the tried but true remedies. But, from my perspective, far more interesting was the second type of women who held the position of La Hermana.
These women held leadership roles in the community at large. While the men supervised the ritual of the community, these women took the leadership over the social welfare components of the community, sort of like the current Jewish Federations. There were no asylums for the mentally ill, no nursing homes for the elderly in Rhodes. These women, in their roles of La Hermana, assigned some families the responsibilities of taking care of the ill and elderly. The families would house the ill and elderly and provide for them and take care of them. Other families would be taxed to help pay for these services. These women would also tax businesses in the community to help pay for these social welfare efforts. These businesses were primarily owned by men. Those who did not pay the taxes charged would be ex-communicated from the community, so powerful were these women. Women taxing men to provide for the social welfare of the community!
In this separate but equal form of governance, women were “more equal.”
The women of Rhodes did not lead with Talis and Tefillin on. They had more important things to do. They had to tend to the welfare of the entire community. With their leadership and guidance, no ill, mentally ill, or elderly individuals were without care and assistance. They mobilized the community to ensure that no one went without the needed care. They did not “ship out” their needy. They kept those who needed care within the community. These individuals kept their dignity. This was all done by the La Hermana.
Reform and Conservative women, lacking an understanding of the historic roles occupied by women, seek to achieve equal status in the narrowest of roles, in the ritual aspects of the community. They lose sight of the traditional leadership roles occupied by women. They see women relegated to an “inferior” role in the ritual and forget to see the leadership over the entire community shown by women traditionally and historically.
The ritual role in the community is but one role, and not that important when you contrast the larger purposes of the community. Yes, there are traditional roles in the community for men and traditional roles for women. To see the roles for women as somehow inferior is a misreading of history. That women taxed men and that men were excommunicated from the communities if they did not pay showed the power women held.
Psychologically, and in Jewish thinking, the feminine characteristics seen in women are not a negative. Caring, compassionate, deferential: These are just some of the “feminine” characteristics seen. When women forego these characteristics, is society better off? Rather than seeking ways for women to be more masculine, can’t we pursue a Judaism in which men assert more of their feminine side? Is not the community welfare as important, or even more important than narrow ritualism?
The Lubavitcher Rebbe would say that there is a time when one should even forego faith in G-d. When individuals come to your door and say that they are in need, that they are hungry, you should not say, “G-d will take care of you” and do nothing. You should provide for the needs of the person. You must feed them. Tending to the welfare of the Jewish people is that important.
The Women of the Kotel are misguided. Rather than seeking to emulate men in terms of ritual, they should be engaged in finding more ways to traditionally fulfill their femininity. There is much to be done in terms of the social welfare of the people. Reasserting traditional roles in this regard, for the betterment of the people, should be the top priority.
We have much to learn from Jewish history and tradition.
Robert J. Rome, Ph.D., is a licensed psychologist in clinical practice in Encino, California. He can be reached at RJRome@aol.com.