A Radical Notion
I remember the first time I put on tefillin, more than two decades ago. The dawn air was grey and cool and I had made my way to a quiet hall at the Elat Chayyim retreat center. A handsome, young, gay cantor had promised he would teach me. I looked up at his kindly face with warm eyes and a trimmed black beard. He handed me a well-used dark blue velvet pouch with a gold Magen David embroidered on it; it was fraying a little at the zipper. With trembling hands, I unfolded the bag and found a set of pre-loved tefillin in there. Their straps were thin and narrow, and their boxes of modest size. I suspect they had been a bar mitzvah set.
‘A fellow cantor wanted to give these to a woman’, he said. As birdsong gathered outside, he taught me how to slide the tefillin upon my arm, rest them upon the crown of my head and, with the appropriate blessing, coil the strap around my fingers, spelling out the letter ‘shin’ for Shaddai. I felt a sense of God both embracing me and empowering me. These tefillin gave me a sense of strength; of standing just a little more upright. For years, I would faithfully lay them, every morning, rigorously committed to the commandment from which I knew the tradition had exempted me.
As a much younger Jew, and not-yet-a-rabbi, my tefillin were not only empowering to me but triggering to others. At that time, I didn’t know of a single other Dutch Jewish woman who wore them. Some Orthodox people mocked me for wanting to assume the mitzvah. Some Reform people ridiculed me for adhering to such a strange and outdated ritual. Wherever I took my tefillin – and they have traveled far-and-wide – my devotional choice was not a neutral one. Nonetheless, I stuck with it.
I was both fulfilling an act of divine service, with the humility and love this requires, and I was staking out a feminist claim to what I saw as both my right and my representation to be a full and equal member of the Halakhic nation. I wear tefillin because I love God. I also wear tefillin because I am a feminist.
The Malakh haMavet, the Angel of Death, took Dolly Parton from us last week. This week, Gloria Steinem was taken from us. I grew up in a proud second-wave feminist household (my mother has broken many gender barriers in computing, boating, nautical mechanics and astronavigation). Still, I didn’t learn much about Gloria Steinem until I watched the excellent series ‘Mrs. America’ about the Equal Rights Amendment and efforts by one Phyllis Schlafly to undermine it. The actress who played Gloria Steinem played her brightly and sharply and as a younger feminist of a different generation, I felt both inspired by her – and her peers – as well as indebted to her.
There’s a well-known quote: ‘Feminism is the radical notion women are people.’ It is attributed to Marie Shear, in 1986, who was an editor of ‘A Feminist Dictionary.’ This definition is so clean and simple, and so foundational to the humanism that feminism belongs to. For me as a Jewish woman, being counted in the minyan, wearing a tallit or tefillin and even becoming a rabbi was an embodiment of that simple truth. Just like younger generations of women stand on the shoulders of the giantesses of the first, second and third wave, Jewish women stand on the shoulders of Jewish women who have, in the words of Orthodox feminist Tamar Ross, ‘expanded the Palace of Torah.’ With every coil of black leather I wrap around my arm, I am cognizant of how hard others have fought; how their torches have lit others’ torches so that we carry the light through into the word.
It is very easy to connect Parashat Nitzavim to Gloria’s activism and legacy. ‘Atem nitzavim hayom kulchem’ – ‘you stand this day before the Eternal your God… the entire body of Israel – your children, your wives, and the stranger amidst you, from wood chopper to water drawer, to enter into the covenant that the eternal your God is making with you…’ (Deut. 29:9-11).
The inclusion of wives is obvious from the text; the 13th century commentator Chizkuni also explains that the reference to the water drawers and wood choppers is also gender inclusive, with the first being female servants and the latter being male.
With this memorable and compelling opening, the Torah is clear-eyed about its inclusivity. Of course we know that the Torah is not always inclusive. Marginalized people, including women, are often counted out, not listed or demoted to a lesser position. Such is the reality of a bronze-age, patriarchal text. On the other hand, sometimes we catch glimpses of a transcendent, redemptive egalitarianism in the text and we embrace it wholeheartedly.
Gloria fought for the entirety of her adult life for that covenantal inclusion. Not for a God, but rather through the bonds and commitments that human beings make with each other. In the covenant of humanity, women should hold equal weight. That to her, and to us, is a non-negotiable. To stand at the cusp of the Promised Land claiming the truth, be it 3300 years ago or today, of our equality, dreaming of a society where human dignity and flourishing is available to each and every one of us, is our enduring mission. We dedicate that mission to each small act in our own lives where we move that needle. And we honor Gloria’s memory through the work of our own hands.
Please let me uplift Gloria’s legacy through some signature quotes. May her memory be for a revolution. Amen.
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“Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all is a form of planning.”
“Women may be the one group that grows more radical with age.”
“We’ve begun to raise daughters more like sons… but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters.”
“Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It’s about making life more fair for women everywhere. It’s not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It’s about baking a new pie.”
“A liberated woman is one who has sex before marriage and a job after.”
“Far too many people are looking for the right person, instead of trying to be the right person.”
“When humans are ranked instead of linked, everyone loses.”
“Empathy is the most radical of human emotions.”
