Changing Judaism

Moderated by Judith Plaskow, professor of religious studies at Manhattan College, the third panel of the Ingeborg, Tamara & Yonina Rennert Women in Judaism Forum, "Changing Judaism," addressed how feminists have sought to reshape Jewish theology and religious practice. The conversation included:

• Rabbi Sue Levi Elwell, regional director, PA Council, Union for Reform Judaism;

• Judith Hauptman, E. Billi Ivry Professor of Talmud and Rabbinics, Jewish Theological Seminary;

• Norma Joseph, associate professor of religion, Concordia University;

• Lori Lefkovitz, director of Kolot: The Center for Jewish Women's and Gender Studies;

• Danya Ruttenberg, author, Yentl's Revenge: Third Wave Jewish Feminism.

Although considerable strides have been made within many denominations of Judaism to address and accommodate women's experience, much work, the panelists agreed, remains to be done. Professor Plaskow noted that, in the decades since the late 1960s, increasing numbers of synagogues across the United States have accepted women as rabbis, cantors, and Torah readers. Women-centered rituals have flourished. Cutting-edge feminist and queer scholarship has contributed to a vibrant new cannon of literature. And yet, Plaskow worried that "progress toward equality is stalled." She went on to say:

It's rare not to find lip service to the concept of equality, but there are often significant gaps between theory and reality. And that means that we are dealing with an aura of obfuscation around these issues that was not the case 30 years ago, when the opposition was more blatant and, in some ways, easier to deal with.

As representatives from the Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, and Reconstructionist movements, each of the panelists echoed Plaskow's assessment: each celebrates her denomination's liturgical, ritual, and educational innovations; each acknowledges inequalities that persist within her religion's inherently patriarchal, inherently heterosexist framework; and each wrestles to balance a desire for change with a deep, abiding respect for tradition. At first glance, we might overlook this shared experience by focusing on divergent paths of belief and practice, on the differences that separate one denomination from the next, but we must remember that if "the fabric of Jewish life and thought [is], in Cynthia Ozick's word, 'frayed'," then the work "of each of the women on this panel . . . has been to live a Judaism that is repaired, made whole by the inclusion of women's wisdom, women's insights, and women's questions" (Elwell).

Indeed, a fair amount of the resistance to Jewish women's advancement within Judaism has come from preconceptions that disable feminists from working across denominational divides. Norma Joseph provided a moving example of this as she lamented the frequency with which Orthodox women are advised to leave Orthodoxy rather than to advocate for more just treatment within it, an interaction that stems, she claims, from a popular and widespread misunderstanding that Orthodoxy cannot, by definition, incorporate change:

Innovation of Orthodoxy is a reality. In the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries, Orthodoxy emerged from internal divisions and opposition to Enlightenment. In other words, it itself is a new and radical movement. It was incredibly successful, and most successful at marketing itself as the one movement that was the direct and continuous heir of all of the 2000- or 5000-year history that preceded it . . . Orthodoxy stands on the back of an innovative agenda, but convinced everybody it was non-innovative.

Judith Hauptman furthered the point by encouraging Jews to view change as a vital part of all Jewish practice. In speaking of the Conservative movement, she insists that "feminist change was made within the framework of halakah, Jewish law." Change, then, is not a matter of opposing or denying authority, but rather the result of a "philosophy of accommodation to evolving ethical sensitivities."

Because this evolution can be seen across the spectrum of Jewish religious experience - from the Reconstructionists' imaginative Kol Haneshamah prayer book series to the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance - Hauptman suggests that there is "a more significant distinction than denominations," and that is between "egalitarian Jews and non-egalitarian Jews." The most far-reaching change will doubtlessly come about when Jews committed to equality share their strategies for securing it across denominational boundaries. Lori Lefkovitz described a nondenominational effort called Ritualwell that aims to create a space in which Jewish feminists can do exactly that: the project, co-created by Kolot and Ma'yan, is

a democratic vehicle for feminists to share creative Jewish rituals. [Its] feminist relationship to tradition is remedial and varies from contribution to contribution; some are subtle modifications in the direction of egalitarian inclusion, and others are more radically inventive.

"It is vitally important," says Danya Ruttenberg, "to present feminist theology, ethics, analysis, and interpretation as mainstream Judaism" rather than as an alternative to it. "That ultimately is how we will make important, real, lasting change." To engage in this process is to be willing to do the difficult and daily work of revising our rituals, rereading our texts, rebuilding our religions as temples "where we can all live full lives." Of this daunting task, Rabbi Elwell reminds us, "our sages teach us it is not up to us to complete the work, but neither are we free to desist from it."